Should Crushers in Damnation be buffed into having way more HP but have their spawn rates reduced so they function like mini-bosses? Or do we like them better when we can build to insta-gib them?
I’ve just been thinking about how carapace and Crusher spam dominates build decisions right now. I know you have thoughts about ranged enemies being spammed, but I really do think we’re one weapon balance pass away from gunners being fun to shoot at.
In all honesty? If they didn’t come in packs of three or four I’d be fine with Damnation crushers taking multiple Thunder Hammer swings to kill.
Why it’s always hp/dmg? Why not about interesting mechanics? Give them ability to charge or perform aoe slam, faster swings combo, or become enraged on low HP. Constantly changing enemy stats and ammounts doesn’t make game more interesting and challenging (it also breaks audio engine and tanks frames)
You have a playble ogryn wich is a completely different thing from enemy ones to that degree they don’t belong the same ubhuman type almost. Sure bulwark shouldn’t be able to taunt a player, ok, give him ability to roar and buff surrounding mobs.
Now you have stonger enemies, without patchnotes saying “your thammer deals less damage just because”, and players don’t go crazy cause of nerfs/buffs. There is a mechanic that justifies it and you have control over it - priorityze bulwarks if you can.
You left crusher alive with with 1/3 of hp, gg noob, he’s starting enrage animation, kill it now or for the next 5 seconds he will ignore any damage and deal x2 damage, move x2 faster.
Because balance is completely bonkers and unless the devs already have unused animations for Crushers they can slip into the game, new mechanics for existing enemies probably isn’t happening. Seriously, there’s a dozen issues per character, per weapon for this one enemy that needs addressing.
I am very much in the camp that this game needs actual new enemies that are not locked behind f*king Havoc or once a year/once in a lifetime events, but I think that deserves a new thread.
Ye, but I would say it’s the one of those things they shoud spent money on from MTXs.
Either way it’s pointless and endless loop - buff enemy stats >people cry “weapon x bad” > buff weapon > you have the same challenge level again as before
What is a balance discussion for, then?
Depends? If we are talking about weapons that underperforming in the current state, like mg12 for example - then there are things to discuss. If it’s about “should we buff crushers HP” then no, there should be more interesting ways to implement.
Balance isn’t a thing in the vacuum, enemy design dictates how you interract with them, stats come after. If you don’t improve and upgrade design, you have only 2 ways of increasing challenge, already mentioned
Right, and you suggested they enter a rage state at low hp. But how are they living long enough to get to a rage state if the current balance is nuking them?
You mention AOE. That’s cool, how’re we supposed to deal with groups of AOE attacks in melee? Does the AOE go through block or send us flying like Plague Ogryns? Is the goal to discourage fighting in melee and pushing people into anti-carapace guns? Should we even nerf bolter or plasma at that point?
Even if/when the three biggest offending weapons get adjusted, the game will still be largely geared towards killing carapace as fast as possible. In my other comment I really didn’t feel like I needed to explain all of the ways carapace armor dominates build decision making, but that is how things are. Even flamer/soulblaze builds need to bring sources of anti-armor to deal with crusher packs.
If you don’t want to talk about their HP, okay, but it’s going to be talked about eventually. I’m talking about it because I heard the idea mentioned in a stream. It sounded like a good idea to me because I like monstrous specials and would be happy to have an uncommon enemy that rewards some teamwork.
I’d love to see some of your suggestions on brand new enemies, too, btw.
Maybe it’s a chicken or the egg situation, but i don’t think you should drop new mechanics on a perfectly balanced game, cause they will break the balance anyway. So add new things to test them, then balance stats. I might be wrong, it’s just an opinion.
Well these was just examples, concepts. Diving with them is very speculative.
Not everything. Some things are able to chip dmg HP, you have rumbler blow here, frag nade there, trauma blast after, etc.
Would you like to have every crusher enraged everytime? Probably not, it would be annoying. It should happen from time to time. On top of that you can change HP threshold, duration of enragement, animation speed, etc.
Scrakes in KF2 behave kinda like that, they trigger from damage dealt to them. And fleshpounds trigger on timer and go on cooldown after enrgaement phase.
As i said, it was an example. If there will be need stat tweaks after implementing new mechanics and you see they aren’t being triggered in 99% of times, then sure stats should be adjusted. There are internal testings and beta branches also, it’s not like i’m saying you should just release it and adjust stats month after.
I would say yes, since it’s inderect and ground pound. If attack is telegraphed properly, has audio cue and somewhat not crazy you have time to dodge or interrupt it with stagger.
I personally don’t like any mechanics that turn off player’s input or mess with placement - stunlocks, pushing, etc.
That’s a good question. I don’t think it will. Depends on if it’s 360 AoE spam or like a cone area infront that is properly telegraphed and happens occasionally. Sometimes there is no other way but go in melee cause of resource managment. On top of that you can encourage people to melee with making melee weapons strong.
Also i wouldn’t say it’s bad if some range options are extremely good vs melee enemies, and some melee weapons good vs ranged enemies (like some enemy witch that casts protective bubbles of rot flies that reduce incoming range damage)
Yes, because there is nothing much to specialize against to and because FS made rend to be universal, so there is no trade off. Devs enabled to be a jack of all trades and good at everything.
If all none-horde enemies would be able to throw some shenanigans and there will be new enemies, like dangerous infested elites. For example plague bearers that works kinda like Bile Troll in V2 - infested, high hp, regeneration, invulerable towards bleed, vulnerable towards fire (fire also stops regeneration) - people will have different specialization loadouts.
Eeeehh i mean we can generate a lot of ideas here, but realisticaly what FS would bring probably nothing. Would be cool to have all enemies from the concept arts atleast. I believe things like that could work
This is a interesting question honestly, and just buffing crushers is the easy solution. Though I think crushers as is aren’t bad as long as more weapons become able to deal with armor to some extent. Really I think most weapons should deal some amount of damage on carapace headshots.
My ideal solution would be to just add a actual “miniboss” standard enemy, that could take the role crushers sort of did at game launch. I think a plague marine could work as long as they are spawn capped to 1-3 (3 at most in like havoc 40, 2 in auric maelstrom).
Now people think marines would be too OP and wipe the floor with our characters, and yes probably if it’s a normal marine. But plague marines are about as fodder as marines come, they aren’t fast or very tactically aware. A bloated and slow plague marine with a heavy tox flamer and some big weapon like a power fist would make for a cool miniboss that would probably take as much fire power as a weakened plague ogryn to take down. They turn slowly and telegraph their attacks a lot but if you get hit by a power fist your instantly downed no matter over toughness, and a heavy tox flamer would deal very fast corruption damage. A cool mechanic would be them standing behind hoards and empowering them like tox gas empowers enemies, so they don’t just dogpile you along with the 6 bulwarks and 9 crushers.
Plague marine as miniboss vs ex guard officer as a full boss would be weird, and even vs Twins. Even if PM will be a boss it should be a proper lord like Nurgloth in V2. Not even saying they need a sanction from GW to implement it, considering they can’t add lore accurate cosmetics, PM in DT is 0% chance.
Well think about it, a plague marine is no where near as strong as a beast of nurgle or a plague ogryn (just look at tabletop stats). And the scab captains are only tough because they have force shielding (they actually have the same health as a crusher). So a basic plague marine without any force shielding would be weaker then all of our current bosses.
For some reason i think GW cares about CSM representation more than about Nbeast.
There is no way traitor officer with shield is tougher than PM. And even if it would, such hierarchy doesn’t make sense.
People tend to over exaggerate how strong marines are. They aren’t that strong, when you think of a strong marine being a one man army and tearing through a entier army, you are thinking of a marine captain like Titus, or a chapter master like Marneus Calgar. A standard battle line new recruit marine is not much better then a veteran scion.
A veteran kasarkin with a plasma gun VS a new recruit marine. Is a pretty even fight, just look at the RPG systems or most imperial guard books, even the tabletop. A veteran human with a good gun can kill a marine and its not that hard or weird, obviously the marine is just as likely to kill them, but a plasma shot to the face kills a marine 9/10 times, and the veteran is probably actually the same or a better shot and much more experienced in combat.
And then you are comparing a random marine to a veteran human with a energy shield, and its way in the humans favor.
A new marine is probably ~35 and has ~10 years of combat experience to have gotten past the scout stage, plus whatever trials they went through between 14-25. A Imperial guard captain or even someone like a veteran scion has probably been in combat for 30+ years from the age of 18 to whatever age they are now, and its not exactly unheard of for them to be 100+ with rejuvenating treatments and various minor stims and other enhancements. So your average imperial guard captain would have seen more combat and is probably much more competent and capable then a new marine.
And then you need to consider that well made human carapace is actually pretty good and can deflect bolter shots often, neverminded when they get energy shielding as well. Energy shielding is very OP and easily out classes marine armor. Plus plasma weapons pretty consistently can kill marines in only one or two shots.
So you basically end up in the situation with a much more competent and experienced human that has shielding that the marine cant even touch, with a plasma pistol that can over charge and blow the head off the marine. And yeah when you consider all of that, the captains we fight are already significantly more threatening then a marine.
This obviously flips when you look at veteran marines who are like 300+ years old and have killed enough people to fill the grand canyon with bodies. And yeah when your talking about someone like Titus they are on a completely different planet from anything a human can reach, plus they get energy shielding as well and stronger masterwork tier marine armor, though the iron halo is a little inconsistent in how strong it is or what it even does.
Sure. But we are playing 4 hobos with poor physics, have you seen character creation? Not kasrkins. Also, kasrkins have augmentations for muscle grow and maybe something else. Eisenhorn mentioned that kasrkin neck is thick as tree almost.
Another thing CSM are stronger than SM, not even talking about scout.
Neither traitor officer is a scion.
It happens only if SM/CSM was ambushed, or there were more targets, not 1to1.
Like Ciaphas survived duel with CSM cause his fingers are bionic and cause Jurgen flanked CSM with melta.
I don’t know how it’s relevant. Carapace is only for elites, and even then doesn’t cover full body, regular humans use flak. Aswell as any personal voidshield is extra rare and not for the expandable rejects. Not even sayin such mechanic not in the game for a player.
Tabletop rules and stats is a bad example of lore representation, they serve dice game and so dice roll situation happens.
How GW do lore is they follow named character > unnamed, like in the Rogue Trader your party kills several Word Bearers. But it’s RT party with named characters, not uh “rejects”
So unnamed CSM > unnamed officer.
Death Guard has it’s own codex, it’s a big faction, and since GW is overprotective, expecting to have PM in the game that can’t have lore accurate Krieg set after 2 years from release…as i said - almost 0% chances. I mean, why it’s not a thing instead of Twins then? What DT will have is Wolfer at some point probably. And other V2 bosses reskined to become DT bosses.
It would be another talk, if playble classes were something like sororitas, admech magos, inquisitorial acolyte psyker, scion/kasrkin. And all named charatcers like in V2.
Sure though that really applies to any scion or really just veteran imperial guard in general. Our 4 by the time they hit level 30 are well beyond scion tier, our level 30+ characters are a very elite kill team, killing one or two marines is not unreasonable.
Also we are talking about the lumbering plague marines, they are known for being durable not skilled.
Depends on the author, Im just using tabletop stats and in most of the RPG systems a top of the line human is a bit above a base line marine.
Not saying our characters would be equipped with it. Im just comparing a marine to the scab captains we see. The scab captains evidently have carapace chest plates and helmets and have full shields. If we can kill them we can kill a marine.
Yes Im using the RPG systems mostly as my source here since they are supposed to be more accurate to the lore, as they are meant to simulate the lore.
GW is not that protective and plague marines are regularly used as fodder in many books. Out of the chaos marines, if you need a bunch to just die its either unnamed renegades, plague marines, or rubric marines. So I think throwing in a few plague marines isn’t unreasonable.
It would be another story if we were talking about like actual death guard and named characters. Firstly deathguard =/= plague marines. There are numerous lesser plague marine warbands that are not actually deathguard.
Our characters only start out as rejects, its pretty clear if you listen to the vox chats in later missions, look at the lore cutscenes, or even the way characters interact with you as you walk around the hub area. All of the characters respect you by the end and you are clearly something of a legend, numerous voice lines literally call your player character a legend to the crew when you walk past scions on the bridge.
True they call us Hero of Atoma. But it’s hard to imply any power level. You can say we killed plenty of DH and Nbeasts, but how they work in the game, well it’s not how they work in the lore.
Gameplay of a horde shooter doesn’t rly make any sense. You go on your first mission with autopistol and kill dozens astra millitarum soldiers. It’s so cause of gameplay, not cause it’s accurate to the lore. Ludonarrative dissonance as is.
What would be a proof is some actual story shift, like lines “blah-blah-blah, your character is going through advanced trainings, eats better food, takes some combat stimms, has some bionic and augmentations”. Or if gameplay elemets were implying that - you can put a bionic hand a have +10 meele damage, etc.
When you have non lore accurate enemies (and you can’t in this type of game) it’s hard to speculate about power level.
No need to, fumes they spread will make you die puking while rot flies eating your eyes. Like it would happened with Nbeast.
Yes. But it’s almost always named character > unnamed. Or if it’s 2 named then wins the on who is the main hero. GW just say “well he’s built different”. That what we have with Titus.
The thing is, GW don’t like to put non posterboys. Because they see any media as something will attract players to the tabletop. Big factions - more hype. SM2 - smurfs vs 1000 sons. RT - word bearers and space wolfs.
I might be missed something, but there is no scions on the bridge.
But overall, we can argue forever, i just don’t see it’s possible, cause it’s been 2 years and we don’t have any of that, but suddenly there will be PM? Eeeeeh.
I kinda like the idea in theory, but in practice I think that maybe just rewards the safer fast crusher killers even more? Like fighting 3-4 crushers that take a few extra stabs with DS is probably an easier ask than fighting that many with a T Hammer that now takes two special heavies to kill each one. Don’t really know what you can do about crushers without toning down how well some weapons do against them.
I think that is generally implied. Our psykers unlock new skills, our zealot and veteran start carrying bolters and relics. Etc. It might not be outright said “Your going to get these enhancments” But suddenly being able to sling around a nearly full sized bolter?
Well its basically implied that most nurgle diseases are faith based, if your faith in the emperor is strong enough you will remain untouched, its only when you falter that they start to hit you. Of course there are the more extreme plagues that can effect even astartes, but they are obviously not just normal diseases.
Also we still manage to kill beasts of nurgle perfectly fine. And the “disease” Is reflected as “corruption”, when you falter or get effected by disgusting things you get corrupted and when your corruption hits a certain point you die.
Our characters in darktide are clearly “hero” tier according to GW. I mean just look at the models they chose to represent them on the board game.
The veteran is clearly a kasarkin, the psyker is clearly pirmaris, the zealot looks more like a sister. The ogryn is just a ogryn but y’know ogryn stuff.
well yeah but just in the context of throwing some plague marines at us the darktide team can just make up a plague host like “Oh these are the Poxbringers and here is some lore on why they have the weapons they have”. Y’know like they did with the mobian 6th to explain why there are so many imperial guardsmen with melee weapons.
Not scions but the acolyte troopers. Either way the sister says stuff like “let me touch you, I wish to share in your blessings” sire melk gets much more friendly with lines like “If I could bother for some of your time I could use your assistance with some contracts” various bridge crew talk about your accomplishments and etc etc.
Really I dont think having marines would be that weird and it would add some much needed diversity in enemies. I just want more enemies in general so why not a handful of marines?
