A dozen reasons to Improve the Visual/Audio Damage Effects (damage feedback players observe on enemies)

I will suggest how to achieve this below, but first

REASONS TO IMPROVE AND CONSIDER BETTER VISUAL DAMAGE EFFECTS:

  1. Thats almost everything in this game. Your everything stand or fall based on how good this visual/audio damage effects/feedback is.
  2. Its the majority of the activities and the experience in the game.
  3. The entertainment itself is majorly about the joy of “fighting evil” while holding on your own character hands guns and moving around with your own character’s body, so all the more focus on making the FOCUS of Quality Assurance, stretch/goal efforts for release.
  4. Its good investment for the money in video game development.
  5. Its the natural evolution of game design.
  6. Its in many cases the standards whereby players measure and compare games against each other: “the fighting/killing is more gratifying/fun in this game than in that other game”. If you know the standards whereby you are going to be judged, why not work overtime on it?
  7. Proper audio/visual feedback of the game (whatever content, even if its not combat, but all the more important if its combat) is the future, where it can improve a lot and impress us, like proper cinematics/animations/movies, so is the matter of proper visual/audio damage effects/feedback.
  8. Kept Vermintide 2 relevant in its own niche and any cross genres with above average visual violence against Evil, as its undeniable that once players try it, they buy it. (therefore, consider a free weekend/trial/demo/beta, whatever to maximize this effect of people trying, liking and purchasing),
  9. Darktide needs this solid step to ward itself against Sci Fi competitors in the future: (and there be many secret Sci-fi games that are being made by big game companies, rumored, that will probably be on par to what Darktide has already shown, but since they will be more MMORPG, MMOish and in a bigger scale multiplayer than the 4 player Co-Op, Darktide has the opportunity to focus on getting the upper hand to provide better feel/variety/complexity on the violence visual feedback aspect), which, is one of the biggest factors of FUN in this genre or in any real time action combat game of any genre.
  10. Its fun/entertaining to watch, which is a necessity during this Streaming era, and due to the insane competitiveness of attention amongst all other games, every little bit of properly done visual damage effects helps player retention and curiosity sales.
    Its genuinelly Fun to play mechanically, responsive, aiming/hitting specific body parts, having different/varying effects, with different types of projectiles/damage sources, on different enemies, etc.
  11. Doesnt get boring, because complexity/variety is closer to “simulational” as “procedurally generated”, i.e., instead of just complexity tier 1: do 100% of damage, show death animation, enemy disappears few seconds later out of thin air, or complexity tier 2: do 100% of damage and the last body part out of a few hit, show dismemberment of that area. Go for complexity tier 3, one step above, one star above, at the standard when it surpasses most players ability to cope/unravel psychologically, bypassing the creeping time bomb of boredom staleness from “have done that, have seen that, meh”.

Currently there is some glaring, blatant, flaws. Even below average. Anyone saw proper knockback effects on any of the enemies from any of the long range weapons on the enemies? Not even in contemporary setting the visual effects from being shot at are so soft/uneventful.

I call for an AMPLIFICATION of the staggers/knockbacks/knockdowns, etc effects. Im being honest, I am not “feeling it” from watching the videos. Its like watching paintball. No offense, you developers can easily/cheaply tune up these aspects, cant you? Did I got spoiled watching one so many Warhammer 40k animations? such as Astartes Project by Syama Pedersen. Enemies get hit, they get knockedbacked even to the wall as part of the projectile force propels them. You see the audio/visual effects there and its like 4 stars quality. I am not asking for 4 stars, but atleast 3 stars. (Vermintide 2 is 2 stars and Darktide looks like it will be just 2 stars as well in this aspect).

Anyone saw pushing enemies backwards 0,5 or 1 to 2 meters per shot on the Darktide gameplay videos?
Thats what is expected of at least some of the weapons some futuristic military industry complex would design for, considering mass numbers of threats being often the situation to be considered in weapon designing. And considering the sci-fi futuristicness, its quite viable, believable and actually, part of the expectation for those that reasonably immerse/d themselves on the setting, considering Warhammer 40K is an ace at actually thinking through these futuristic details (and other aspects as well).

Simple tweaks to add before release:
proper Knock backs.
proper Knock downs.
By proper I mean, disabling, somehow, before “death state”, if one non lethal shot with a non lethal weapon (all according to the lore and setting, of course) is fired some body part area.

What is the most important thing?
Visual/Mechanical damage Pre-death states! The extra star that will put Darktide above the rest sci-fi shooters in general, otherwise mediocrity like the rest.

Not an impossible mission.

In Darktide, currently, Anyone saw any dismemberment while the enemies are still alive?
Any permanent damage from aiming at the enemies specific body parts:
For example LEGS area:
legs to slow them down, or
cause them to fall sideways, or
backwards, or
stumble, or
crawl only afterwards, or
just squirm on the floor or
just shoot/try to melee while crippled from the floor, or
try to heal themselves or
be helped by their teamates or
be carried by their teammates or
any specific damage source type to that area: fire, shrapnel, warpfire, explosions, penetration, concussion, etc.

Now do the same for TORSO, HEAD and ARMS, HANDS.

Its just one step above in complexity. Create pre-death state, animations for pre-death states, visual/sound effects/feedback from pre-death states. (enemies screaming, in pain, all the actual stuff that is missing from my “immersion” giving these life or death scenarios). Otherwise any game company will make a scifi game where you fight some insectoid, or aliens or robots and will achieve the same thing by doing nothing beyond/superior/better than what has been currently done.

Thats why I think you should consider improving this.

The motivation for this post came from watching todays twitter video post " The Veteran doing what the Veteran does best #DARKTIDE

TLDR version:
If the enemies feel pain, then make pre-death states, animations, visual/sound feedback, then your game is one star above the rest, which is enough to keep the lead for many years.
The players, being humans, have eyes and ears.
And even in love there is proper visual/sound feedback. And what if its this aspect of game design the thing that make players choose one game over others?

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