Alternatives for raising difficulty?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

After playing for something 200+ hrs I feel like the weapons are perfectly balanced for the health of Malice enemies. The increased health pool of enemies make many weapons that are fun to use on Malice very handicapped at Heresy or Damnation. For example on Malice all three marks of infantry lasguns are effective and offer fun choices - on heresy only MG XII remains useful.
On the same time Malice isn’t chellenging enough for seasoned players - so I was thinking about other ways of making higher difficulties chellenging without narrowing down the choices of viable weapons.

  • Numbers: This one is obvious and already done by the current system so let’s move on.
  • Damage: Enemy attacks could be even more damging then they already become
  • skill: Enemies could attack faster/more often/more accurate - maybe some even block/parry.
  • tactics: Enemies could use the environment more effective - ranged and melee units could coordinate better
  • awareness: Enemies could see the player group farther away and react more aggressively
  • Special Enemies: On higher difficulties new enemies could appear like Death Guard Marines or maybe commanders who call reinforcements, mortar strikes or buff their troops attack until killed.

All these changes could increase the difficulty without turning the enemies into annoying bullet sponges.

What are your thoughts?

2

Wow, you opened a can of worms here bud. Get ready for half the people to argue that the game is too difficult on Heresy & Damnation and all guns should be buffed, while the other half argue that Heresy & Damnation are too easy and all guns should be nerfed.

1 Like
3

I think it´s completely fine since it´s already a thing. Just look at gunners or snipers… they clearly do their job and try to find better spots “to stay alive” most of the times.
Normal enemies aren´t that smart, but clearly smart enough to reach the point to become annoying while being sneaky behind you and burn your shield/health with just 2-3 shots.

This wouldn´t fit the melee-gameplay and will make things worse pretty fast. It´s another thing if it´s a boss / lord doing so, but not normal enemies.

A big NO. There are a bunch of maps where this is a thing and you don´t have much cover (e.g. khasma trainstation at the beginning).
With some bad luck in spawns you´ll already have a hard time pushing. And this game is about both, melee and range. Not everyone sits back on his lasgun-vet and enjoys the freedom of a stealthperk.

We already had this in V2 with the Beastmen. While i think they´ve been fine and somewhat different, a lot disliked them. And such buffs can and will become a clear gamechanger if you can´t get ride of them immediately.

a) Imo we need a bit more balance between the end-events. Bosses can kill you through the block easily, nurgle tentacles will respawn super fast, but scanner missions? They don´t change on higher difficulties.

b) There are too many med-stations on the maps and sometimes even more medpacks. This should be more limited. We already have a bunch of lives with our wounds, which also bring our health back while being rescued. It´s too forgivable for heresy / damnation right now.

c) There are a bunch of weapons and some classperks still outclassing the difficulties. This needs to be adressed first to actually balance the game and to keep atleast damnation challenging.

d) If we could kill all enemies as we do on malice, then we would need atleast the doubled amount of spawns. But this won´t even change much since they´ll die fast and keep our toughness on point. So far some kind of “bulletsponging” is fine and it´s limited to Ogryns and bosses anyway. The rest will die as fast as usual depending on your weapon-choice.

e) Too increase the difficulty with anything that is “not just numbers or enemy-behavior”, then we need more events with real mechanics and depth. On top there shouldn´t be “fixed spawns” as there are right now at the most end-events.

4

I play all classes - lasguns were just one example. Chainweapons, Thunder Hammer, Slabshield and autoguns all also become less fun to use with higher health pools.

That’s the point - there are weapons that still work quite well on higher difficulties sure. But many don’t and that’s a pity in my eyes - and that’s why I’d prefer a different approach to larger health pools.

Thought about that too - but with grimoires they become more relevant.

What are you thinking about?

PS

This one I don’t buy because it depends simply on the scale of implementation. If any pox walker attacked like a rager and blocked every strike - yes it would be unplayable and no fun. But if some unit types attacked just slightly more aggressive and had a low chance of blocking incoming strikes it would make combat more challenging without breaking the fun combat mechanics in my opinion.

5

Not saying its you so, but a lot of poeple forget that this game is part of a melee series of games. This game is just a mix to fit better into the universe and to bring something new i guess.

The difference here is, that i think the a lot of weapons are fine. Those weapons which are too strong like e.g. bolter, powersword, flamethrower don´t have any meaningful cons meanwhile killing everything. The lasgun is strong aswell… dunno if it should be nerfed yet, maybe in its ammo-limit. The most stuff is overall pretty fine, has clear pros and cons poeple need to get used to or have to find a good combination between their weapons.

I do know that poeple want it “effective” to find some form of fun, but i´m not one of them. Imo heresy and damnation are too easy for every player with a bit of skill especially while sitting or having someone with the named weapons in the party.

That´s why we need a better balancing in the first case, which lets teamcomps with different classes / weapons aka 1x hordeclear , 1x specialkiller, etc…" shine, instead of having one-man armies that just “outstat” the game.
And yes… the most don´t even have godrolls or T4 blessings etc and can clear damnation easily.

That´s why resistence on curios will become a thing. And the most run atleast damnation without them anyway.

Just more stuff to interact with instead of pressing a button and wait for the next spawns. The scanner-missions are fine since they completely rely on the players. Everything else is just straight up boring and mostly locked behind waiting times like “defend” into “kill”, or just reactivate your skull every couple of seconds.

They could also add some kind of “player-split” like 2 paths where 2 poeple go left and the other 2 right with a hint which enemies awaits you, so you can take the path with the better weapon-preference.
Then you may collect special stuff or press a button to open the door for the other team, whatever you can believe.

Or give us keys to unlock an extraboss with extra-rewards, let us choose a door out of 3 paths and either you´re lucky and got the “easy way” or you´d bad luck and chose a tough one.

Maybe make the actual bosses somewhat tougher. Nerf their damage, but don´t let us just “smash the shield”. Let us bait them under a pipe and then we´ve to open it, so the boss will be doused in lava to get ride of the shield.

A bunch of stuff might be hard thx the bot-addition, but overall there are possibilities.

It would just last in more smashing tbh.

We would need to lose stamina or get a short knockback while attacking a blocking enemy and this would break the fluid gameplay.
As i´ve said, it´s fine on bosses. I think Spinemanglr in V2 act that way with his dualies. But having such random enemies suddenly block will be either boring and in the worst case annoying based on the way of implementation and scaling of its impact.
Right now we already have stagger-resistance so…

EDIT: In the worst case you´ve a blocking enemy you´re weak against already caused by your weapon-choice aswell. This will be frustrating as hell.

1 Like
6

New moves for increased difficulties is interesting. Once players get better the viable weapons will open up. Just like V2, you can use pretty much any weapon.

I wouldn’t budge with core game mechanics or buff/debuff weapons until we get more classes/maps/crafting/performance improvement.

7

Actually, IK think both…
Flamer and Power sword are too powerful
Several weapons are balanced
Few needs a buff… laspistol, shredder autopistol, infantry autogun, shotgun, revolver, lasgun MG Ia and MG IV

But most important, either buff or nerf needs to be slight. Better to nerf / buff several times than buffing or nerfing too strongly.

You’re right about this… Hab dreyko is, in my opinion, the most difficult mission. Just cause of this

8

Tbh I feel like this is the whole point of what something like the modifier system should be used for on top of the existing difficulties.

Maybe by opening up more modifiers that change enemy behaviour and give enemies new abilities. Payday 2 does a good job of this with their crime spree system.

The modifiers do things ranging from spawning more enemies, replacing weaker enemies with harder ones, giving existing enemies new abilities and more.

As an example the game’s shield enemy gains the ability to reflect projectiles or is replaced with a harder version of it.

Alternatively stuff like the game’s medic unit heals all units around it whenever it dies or the cloaker drops a tear gas grenade when they die.

I can foresee maybe having assault guardsmen squads which throw grenades and have Hellbore las guns or an Ogryn that gets a ripper gun instead of a heavy stubber.

Maybe a modification for pox bursters that leave a damaging cloud or the trapper actually drags your team off similar to the pack rat.

9

9e2

I came fully prepared to see a convo about Damnation difficulty. Not quite sure how to respond because of how many wildly different takes I’ve seen about weapons based on everything from possible breakpoints to theoretical total damage to DPS measuring.

But to OP’s post I just feel like the only answer is to move on up and relearn how to use the weapons based on what they can do when the TTK for everything goes up.

1 Like
10

It´s actually one if not the easiest one in my eyes, but i guess it depends on the experience. This event just offers variety and either reward skill / teamplay or punish bad skill / bad teamplay.
All other events can be done faster and easier with a good team aswell, but the variety is not really existent and as been said, they´ve mostly just waiting times than relying on player-impact.

Btw FS could also add some kind of “matchmaking MMR” for the difficulties.

I don´t mean some kind of PvP MMR others can see to dodge if you´re not good enough, or that defines your ranking. I mean an algorithm that has an impact on the map and enemy - difficulty.

So let´s it goes from 1-10 and you´re 5, while your buddy plays on 3, then the game will balance itself out on an average of 4 in its difficulty. And i don´t mean “heresy” with 4, i mean something more variable based on stats, circumstances, the weapon-choice etc…

With such a matchmaking, we could go far above damnation with a decent group or play with different skilled friends on a more balanced map.

And just for example… it could suddenly be that you have to scan the doubled amount of stuff on e.g. level 8 MMR. Or your scanner can break and you need to repair it, maybe only one teammember you´ve to chose at the beginning has one, etc… Just give the AI director more options.

Such little stuff can have a big impact on the gameplay-variety and the difficulty aswell. But i don´t think such a thing will ever happen so…

11

Wait a sec-

Oh I completely missed that this was about malice difficulty.

I mean I guess the suggestion of having expanded modifiers works on any difficulty still stands but I thought this was about H+

While I think having a difficulty where more things can go wrong is good (a few coop games to my knowledge has a director like this such as L4D2 and to my knowledge Payday 2 has stuff like this the higher up you go) I would rather it be a toggle or a selectable difficulty rather than it just turning on randomly.

The director already has a few issues keeping track of stuff like dumping 4 pox bursters back to back and I think asking for it to do more tracking is asking for problems.

However circling back there could literally be a modifier called “faulty equipment” that makes things break or go wrong more often. Maybe in addition ammo kits only restore a half or quarter per use, hp kits have half the healing, grenade boxes are half full / can randomly explode when grabbed or even have faulty doors that close and lock on their own.

12

Fwiw modifiers and difficulty specific enemies ain’t a bad idea, I dig it

13

Of course the existing difficulties should stay and it should be toggled on / off by the players-choice.

More modifiers are clearly needed, but it´ll last in “the usual” really quick. Even stuff like fog / night is somewhat cool, but poeple get used to it and there are less spawns than usual. More hounds last in less other specials, atleast it feels like that.

Such random stuff like you said last would be welcome. Could be annoying for some players, but would tweak higher difficulties a lot. And i´m sure there will be players enjoying it for the gameplay-variety as they usual do in rogue-likes where bad luck will happen, but also some “godlike”-runs.

14

This is the best one. Like it is in Killing Floor 2, higher the difficulty the more special moves zeds have. Charge or rage mode for crushers and bulwarks, tactical roll for scabs (well they do it, but rarely). Maybe smoke grenade/reinforcement call for gunners, it realy could be anything. Thats why i like bomber the most, he can toss grenade with different animations depends on range or he can just drop it after death.

1 Like
15

It is - on one hand I prefer how certain weaker weapons handle on malice (e.g MG Ia Lasgun or chainsword) - on the other hand I prefer the Challenge of H+ (which I play with narrower set of weapons due to raised health pools). That’s why I was thinking about how the challenge of H+ could be kept while at the same time more weapons stay viable due to HP pools of the enemies not increasing.