Well, I’ve been trying to get the Warp Battery for 2 days now, and I just found out the description is wrong and the minimum difficulty is Heresy, not Malice…
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Okay, fair point. You got me on this one.
Ignoring the plight of casual players is a fundamental mistake for game devs. The majority of players seem to play in and around Malice difficulty, and while not all casual Malice players move on to higher difficulties, a good number of them do (I was one). The more you strangle the casual playerbase in order to cater to hardcore players, the more you strangle the overall health of the playerbase in the long term.
Now, I absolutely do not think hardcore players should be kicked to the curb either, but FS cannot and should not let casual Darktide content languish just so hardcores can have a good time. If overtuned weapons are making Malice unfun to the point that potential future hardcore players are dropping the game, that’s not good for the long term health of the game.
At the same time, it’s genuinely very hard to make a weapon or ability feel fine to use on all difficulty levels, given how the game is currently designed (where a weapon or ability does the same amount of damage regardless of difficulty level). Which is why I think VT2 used that Hero Power cap system to try and prevent endgame-crafted weapons and max level characters from too completely trivializing lower level content.
I’m not exactly sure what precisely FS should do for Darktide, but it would behoove them to make sure that something like, say, Assail feels good on all difficulty levels–rather than Assail making Malice feel unfun while being fine on Damnation, or vice versa.
The problem here is - Malice shouldn’t be played, even by casual players.
People get the wrong impression from difficulty presentation.
This isn’t like VT2 where Champion is for max level players just like Legend and Cataclysm.
Malice in this game is instead more like the Arathi Highlands in WoW. Mid level difficulty so you can level.
Even a casual player should play Damnation or at the very least Heresy+. There is a reason these two make up the Auric Level difficulties. Because they’re the ACTUAL endgame.
And if you play still Malice, then don’t be upset for the lack of challenge. You chose to go with your end level gear into the mid level area. That’s how it just is.
No. People should play what they want to play. And even if that weren’t the case, it remains true that most players tend to play on Malice anyway and seem to like playing there. Forcing casual players to move on to Heresy+ is just going to tick them off. Not everyone wants to do Damnation all the time, and I say this as someone who almost exclusively plays on Damnation and Auric.
…and deal with the consequences accordingly. If I sign up for easy mode, I can’t complain that the game is too easy mode. Simple as.
Level up or stay within one’s boundaries set by their Hubris. The Emperor would be most displeased with this grotesque display of heretic behavior, varlet.
Quite the jump there.
“Forcing casual players into Heresy+, not everyone wants to play Damnation.”
Heresy is leagues easier than Damnation, even Heresy+ is. That was different when the difficulty was bugged in the beginning with old Endless Horde modifier being set to permanently being on. But that’s not the case anymore so there is no excuse.
And Malice is ridiculously easy. It’s a difficulty made for level 10 characters.
I mean let’s be real here, people in this thread are literally complaining that the game does exactly what it promises. You pick an easier setting and get an easy playthrough. What a total shocker, I guess. People just need to stop expecting to have their cake while they eat it.
Honest question - what is the problem here for casual players? Are there casual players complaining about lower difficulties being trivialized en masse by people with high level gear steamrolling through? What actually is the problem regarding casual players and difficulty? Or is this just an imagined problem?
That said, the game has serious problems retaining large numbers of “casual players” but these problems have nothing to do with difficulty. Rather, it’s the lack of any coherent story or player connection to it, limited visual/environmental diversity of maps, lack of procedural generation/variability in maps, finite limit of “good” cosmetics or other rewards to work towards, so seasonal content or events to rope players in, no way to earn premium cosmetics through grinding. The list goes on. Casual players (I know many of them) play through all the maps and level up halfway to 30 and say… “is that it?” VT2 suffers from the same issue, and its rooted in the games structure.
There’s no cap on hero power last time I checked. I can be maxed power level (650) and play in the lowest difficulty missions. I know because I was maxed on every character and helped level up friends who started out at the lowest level.
If I sign up for easy mode, I can’t complain that the game is too easy
I need to be clearer here: I am not saying Malice is too easy. I am saying that Malice can be not fun if other players are using well-rolled endgame weapons and abilities to steamroll lower difficulties. If a lower difficulty is too easy then it might be a sign that the player should think about playing on higher difficulties; however, if a lower difficulty is not fun because the Assail Psykers or whatever kill everything before you can meaningfully interact with the rest of the game, then that is a problem.
If a casual player who normally likes to play Malice is finding that Malice is not fun anymore, then what will they do? Try Heresy? Or get frustrated and stop playing? I’m concerned that the latter will be more likely than the former, which will make it harder for casual players to transition into harder difficulties. A Malice casual who finally gains confidence to move up to Heresy+ is someone who benefits the hardcore community; a Malice casual who gets annoyed with all the Assail Psykers and leaves will not. I’d like to help those Malice casuals transition as smoothly to Heresy+ as possible; part of that is ensuring Malice remains fun to play, and that means making sure certain weapons and abilities aren’t overly dominant on all difficulties.
There’s no cap on hero power last time I checked. I can be maxed power level (650) and play in the lowest difficulty missions. I know because I was maxed on every character and helped level up friends who started out at the lowest level.
I could have sworn there was one? Something like how the 2nd or 3rd difficulties would cap you to 300 Hero Power? Obviously someone who’s at max level with 600 Hero Power gear can still play those difficulties, but I thought the game artificially lowered your Hero Power on your gear down to 300 if you did so?
That said, the game has serious problems retaining large numbers of “casual players” but these problems have nothing to do with difficulty.
I agree that stuff like Assail on Malice isn’t the biggest problem in retaining casuals, and I agree that the lack of story limited amount of repeatable content are the biggest issues. However, I don’t think weapons being too powerful on Malice and below helps, either.
At the end of the day, if Malice and below aren’t fun for this reason or that reason, then DT will struggle with retaining its casual playerbase.
I don’t like this idea, it’s the death of the game.
They did it in Diablo and it ruined the game: when you can’t gauge how much powerful you’ve become with progress, the progress itself becomes meaningless.
If I do 100 damage at T5 but 50 at T1, I’m playing at the same difficulty throughout the game, at that point there’s not even a reason for difficulties to be there.
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Not really the same as “autoscaling”, there’s no point in balancing weapon damage itself.
Also you will never play the same difficulty in DT even if everything in game would be auto-scaled. DT is balanced almost entirely by spawn director (less difficulty equals less spawns), not by amount of hits it take to kill an enemy.
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