Okay, I’m just going to word-vomit everything I can think of in this post. It probably won’t be formatted well and I’m sorry for that, but I actually am really enjoying this game and I want it to do well so I think it’s important that people give the devs as much feedback as they can.
DISCLAIMERS
- I’ve only really played Vet so far (Ogryn to lvl5 if that counts) so all of my feedback will be coming from that viewpoint.
- I did not play the first beta, only this pre-launch beta.
- I might make a few comparisons to Vermintide 2 in this post. Yes they are different games, but they’re similar and from the same developers and everyone else is comparing the two in their heads even if you won’t admit it.
- I don’t have solutions for a lot of the problems I’m about to write about and this isn’t supposed to be an “I know better” post, I just want to put them out there for the devs to take a look at.
GENERAL GAMEPLAY
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Ranged attack slowdown, and the stun when your toughness is broken, feels frustrating and kind of pointless. If a group of enemies are peppering you from afar you’re already taking damage and being punished, there’s just no need to make it worse by stunlocking you.
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Enemy suppression seems a little overtuned and our suppression of enemies feels a little weak (with some guns).
As a Vet player, it’s frustrating trying to take out the group of traitor guard for my team when their suppression has my lasgun waving all over the screen like I’ve never held a weapon before but my shots don’t seem to make the enemies duck and run like they’re supposed to. This doesn’t apply to Snipers and Gunners, I think heavy suppression from those specials is fine. -
Currency should be account wide. I do like that each of my characters feel like they’re on their own journey, but I can see a point where I get to level 30 on Vet and have all the gear I want to buy and at that point my currency will just be collecting dust when I could be buying gear on new characters. Crafting materials could still be character specific? I don’t know. Imperi-bux should be account wide.
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Team banter feels a bit disconnected at times. There are some really great conversations in there, but there’s also times where all 4 characters just say some line about topic X and none of them really have anything to do with what the others said. This might be something that changes with full release, who knows.
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On the topic of team banter, the random calling out of ammo and med stations should definitely not interrupt any dialogue that’s happening. I’ve had a few banter conversations be interrupted by my character shouting about medicae to my team who definitely already knew it was there. I do like that the players passively call out ammo pickups for the teammate with the lowest ammo though.
CLASS STUFF
Psyker, from the POV of a non-Psyker
I will preface this by saying I haven’t played any Psyker so I will leave the in-depth discussion on that to people who know more than me. BUT I do think this is an important issue/point of view and I want to bring it up.
As a Vet player, I sometimes feel like the Psyker doesn’t bring as much to the table as it should. Brain Burst is an awesome skill but most of the time I’ve found that I can snipe any special or elite faster than my Psyker teammates can charge up their burst. Sure, I could leave it for them, but my job is to shoot the threats before they get to our team no?
At the very least their BB should charge much faster than it does now so that they can deal with specials the same way I can. They have great boss damage and Ogryn-killing potential, but they should be able to quickly deal with groups of weaker specials too.
Veteran
Like I said before I’ve only played Vet so far and I think overall they’re in a decent place so I won’t get into too much detail with it.
I will say that most of my issues with Vet are more to do with the overall gunplay in Darktide.
The idle aiming sway on some guns feels a little extreme to me especially on a Veteran Sharpshooter, and the massive recoil from shooting the bolter makes it unfun to use when trying to pick off distant targets. I know that’s what it would be like for a normal human to use a bolter, but at least give me some better recoil during my ranged ability to help pick off important enemies? Surely there has to be a point of gameplay>lore accuracy in there.
Weapon animations overall feel sluggish. The draw speed/switching speed for some ranged weapons is so slow that I can’t do my Sharpshooter job of sniping specials properly. They’ve either already finished their charge, taken their shots or I’ve gotten surrounded in melee before I can switch weapons.
While I’m on the topic of weapon animations, I really feel like there needs to be a way to charge my power sword or rev my chainsword while blocking. Taking that second to charge it while I’m being rushed in melee is a great way to get hit.
Before I made this post I was reading feedback from others and I saw this post that talks a lot about gunplay as a Sharpshooter, it covers a lot of my own issues so rather than try to (probably very poorly) explain them myself I’m going to link to that post now.
ELITES AND SPECIALS
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Pox Hounds: Just a total step back from Gutter Runners in VT2. The AI seems really buggy for both pathing and target selection.
Sometimes if you hit them while charging they just run around confused until they die.
They have too much health, even on Difficulty 1 they’re 3-4 shots from majority of weapons. Runners in VT2 were mostly a 1shot except for on higher difficulties, but even then, the classes that were kitted for special sniping would still 1shot them. I feel like the threat (or fun) of these types of enemies is needing to take them out quickly before they’re on your team, not waiting until someone gets pounced and then everyone gives it a whack. -
Mutants: My only real issue with these enemies is the charging full speed around corners and locking onto you from the moment they spawn. Right now it feels less “everyone keep an eye out for that Mutant” and more “I wonder who he’s going to zoom out and grab in the next 0.5 seconds”. This issue is much worse in tight corridors and small rooms.
I think it would be much better if their charge attack was a straight line aimed at their target and anyone who gets in their way is knocked aside (something like a mini VT2 Chaos Spawn but with a charge instead of a grab), you could even up their toughness a little to make up for their now slower movement. -
Trappers: Honestly I actually think this special is pretty good as is, they just have a few AI issues that seem to apply to everything. (I wrote about this further down in the General AI Stuff)
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Snipers: There’s some rare issues where if they spawn and have line of sight on you, they will shoot immediately without the normal warnings. Besides that I kind of think they’re fine?
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Gunners and Shotgunners: Good enemies
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Bombers: The special itself is fine but the slowdown from their firebombs makes it feel like you’re walking through knee high mud while you’re trying to get out of the fire and it’s just annoying.
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Poxbursters: As with the Trapper, don’t really have any gripes with this enemy specifically.
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Lumping all of the Ogryn elites (Bulwark, Reapear, Crusher) into this one: I think they’re all fine. Maybe other people would like to give more input on this but so far I think they’re pretty good.
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To add to that, the Maulers (both 2h and dual wield) are good. They’re pretty scary when they get close to me as a Vet and I like that, encourages me to stay near my best Ogryn bud.
GENERAL AI STUFF
These issues apply to all of the specials in some way.
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When a special spawns they make a unique sound that is very clear to everyone. The problem is, sometimes after you hear that sound you just won’t spot the enemy for a while after that. Some of my fellow Vet players might have noticed with their snipey-vision wallhacks that the AI spawn and then just kind of stand there behind walls for a minute doing nothing, or they teleport around to different spawn-doors. This can be irritating because you set up to snipe them the second they appear and then just end up standing around waiting. Most of the time this has no serious impact on the gameplay but it still should be addressed.
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This point is more for the charging specials: When you hit an enemy during their charge it can cause them to stagger and lose their target/cancel the charge, which is good and I assume intended. The problem is that after that they sometimes just kind of wander around and don’t select a new target? The Hound specifically just goes into panic mode and runs around trying to evade you but never goes back to attacking, so you just end up chasing it around while the benny hill theme plays in the back of your mind.
BOSSES
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No complaints about the Plague Ogryn and Beast of Nurgle from me right now. There was one instance of a BoN eating me through a wall but I assume that’s more of a general AI
targetting issue than a boss-specific thing. -
The… Big Guys? I don’t remember the actual name of the enemies at the end of Assassination missions. Their ranged attack is beyond annoying. I mean, crazy high damage AND a big
knockback? And it’s undodgeable? (At least in my experience.)
From all of my runs so far the only reliable way to deal with this boss type has been for everyone to pile onto them in melee and keep them out of ranged combat. Not necessarily an issue but for a game that wants to have some focus on range it feels a little cheesy.
The End.
That’s all the feedback I can think of for now. Maybe I’ll add more but right now it’s 1am and I’m too tired to think. If you managed to read this far through, thanks.
I’d like to encourage everyone to share their own thoughts in comment sections or their own posts, more (helpful) feedback for the devs can only be a good thing.
Again, sorry for poor formatting or whatever.
=)