Fite me!
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Anyone who thinks DT has bad balance has never played Dead By Daylight or Overwatch where they literary nerfed characters only to revert their nerfs year later without any additional changes
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You know two games can have bad balance at the same time, right?
Just because Fast Food Chain A gave you a literal piece of rotting meat doesn’t mean that Fast Food Chain B giving you frozen nuggies (that haven’t been reheated) isn’t an awful experience
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Also, both of those are PvP games, so balance debates make sense there. In Darktide, which is primarily PvE, obsessing over “perfect balance” misses the point. The game is about teamwork, fun, and adapting to challenges, not chasing some impossible competitive equilibrium.
For comparison, I played Evil Dead: The Game (an asymmetrical PvP title like Dead by Daylight), and that community was downright toxic when it came to balance. No side could have anything “good” without the other crying like the sky was falling, throwing out absurd fallacies and wild exaggerations as if they were legitimate arguments. That’s the kind of endless, hostile cycle PvP games fall into. Darktide doesn’t need that, it thrives on cooperation, not competition.
All that being said, I think some stuff could use help, like ogryn and zealot, I don’t want to dive into specifics since I’m not a gamedev, but otherwise, I kind of agree with OP, it’s “just fine”. Could be worse, could be better.
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Maybe I’m just too good at video games for my own good but I really can’t agree. Most weapons in the game are serviceable, there are a few grossly overtuned outliers, and a few unusuable pieces of junk. For the most part, I think weapon balance is actually fairly solid - there’s a lot of viable options. Talent balance is more eh, but I haven’t slept since yesterday and I’m too tired to formulate a proper explanation on that front, sorry.
Issue comes in with the philosophy of the balance. I think the game is too intense and it’s really mentally draining, I have to play on autopilot if I don’t want to tucker myself out, and I don’t think that’s a good thing. It’s balanced around spamming elites and specialists at you, and you need ways to deal with large groups of both of them in any build you make. It’s pretty limiting with what you can do, and any time I run something kind of off-meta it feels a lot worse to play (which sucks because mk3 eviscerator has my favorite moveset).
I need scientists to study why exactly people play DbD all these years later, because I cannot for the life of me imagine anyone in the history of ever has actual fun playing it. Game should’ve been dead within a year.
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At least they switched up the meta instead of letting it fester.
Either you don’t play above heresy, or you’re meta slave.
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I think that first point is what sort of confuses me here. Some see the game as a competition to do the most damage/ have the most kills or whatever. That turns allies into adversaries, if they’re worse off they’re liabilities, if they’re better then they’re competition.
Get a great team with similar skillsets and dedication and play with them consistently? The game’s challenge is sure to stop being stimulating enough in the long run. Or it needs to be ridiculous, which we see nowadays in some cases.
Get a team with some less experienced players? Well suddenly they’re liabilities, they impact the fun, they’re “tourists” who should stick to lower difficulties as so on. To be clear this isn’t my view, just how I assume many see it. I actually enjoy protecting a player I see as less prepared and assisting a player that knows what they’re doing more than me.
This ends up creating the same sort of toxic environment. Is the game perfect? No, but it’s also not that catastrophic either. It should be seen as a team game not a race. Of course everyone is free to approach it as they wish, their choice not mine. But in the end my approach keeps me enjoying the game while I think nobody can deny the atmosphere around the forum for example can get negative.
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This is a mindset I have yet to really shed. I want to cooperate with my team, and I go through the trouble of saving teammates that are worth saving and marking supplies for them, but it’s so often that I just end up doing half of the work compared to everyone else anyways. It’s not that they’re tourists, most pubs I queue with are somewhat competent for the most part, but I’m just so far ahead of everyone else that it’s frustrating anyways.
That said, it’s still satisfying to tear up everything, and doubly so whenever someone says “hey girl that was rad”. Just wish I didn’t have that toxic mindstate.
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Your post is very on point.
Is the game perfect? No, but it’s also not that catastrophic either. It should be seen as a team game not a race. Of course everyone is free to approach it as they wish, their choice not mine.
Words to live by.
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I mean true true
The thing is, we’re not at that point or close to that point
There’s mega outliers that have been outliers for a very long time now
Wanting those nerfed is not exactly wanting perfect balance, but some semblance of it
Combat Blade was seen as the mega OP weapon, and now it’s 2026 and DS took that spot not because the knife became balanced but because DS is even more mega OP weapon since years ago
This needs to be fixed
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I see a lot of people complain about people who rush off solo. Just let them, and if the other 3 stick together, then Rambo over there is gonna either need to be a god-tier player who can avoid every single punishment the Director sends their way, or they’ll die.
It’s how my friends and I handled the “I’m the protagonist!” players in FFXIV. If they don’t want to play as a team, I won’t pull aggro off them, or heal them, since clearly they can handle it without a team. People either quit the match or learn to play as a team.
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I want to clarify I do not judge anyone for having it. We are sort of pushed in that direction, I know I played PvP games and had the same attitude at times, sometimes even downright toxicity. I think the best approach is thinking about it like you said in your last paragraph.
You are good, that’s great, you carry the team to victory if you have to and if from time to time someone commends you for it, great, you deserve it. I think you see that it’s negatively impacting your enjoyment at times. Truth is you cannot really make people play at the level you might want, you have to adapt to them to an extent, if you go with randoms.
If you manage to shed the “pressure” I think you will find that you can have both your drive to perform the absolute best you can and also enjoy the random nature of queuing up with randoms. What helped me was just focusing more on the present experience, having fun in the moment regardless of if I win or lose in the end. You can have both, just don’t let either turn sour.
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I have this mindset, but I don’t go around telling my team they suck or get angry if they do better than me
But this mindset helps me do better, obviously I’ll do everything required to win with the team even if that means taking a huge hit on my stats
But having a point of reference that inspires me to better, and to see the fruits of my labor when I do best, is a good part of my entertainment and progress as a Darktide player
Constantly nerfing myself and still catching up with stats I used to have with the best stuff is just a huge dopamine hit
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Yeah sometimes you just have to “let go”. That player will do as they wish, could you spend some 10 minutes asking them to work alongside the team? Maybe, but you might just end up ignored. Best you can do is as you said, focus on the players who do wish to cooperate.
Yeah as long as being competitive fuels your enjoyment then there’s nothing wrong with it at all. If you maintain the balance then you hit the sweetspot. But we are humans and sometimes prone to excess, that tends to get worse over time if we do not notice it.
That excess leads to us seeing everyone as competition.
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Yeah, and it’s better than rushing after them to try and keep up and getting yourself or your team wiped in the process. Imo the team should move as fast as the slowest member, I’m sure that’s not going to be a popular opinion though
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You think wrong
If I want balance it is because I want to be able to use things NOT considered good.
I don’t talk about not using meta. This is what I mostly do. I talk about things under good. I cannot use them at all because all players use meta.
That’s why we need balance… or a solo game mode at least
If you take a bad weapon and encounter a purgatus psyker or any meta build, you cannot play at all.
Example, I would like to use lawbringer. But this weapons sucks. If I use it… I will spend my time trying to kill something
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don’t, it’s what sets you apart from those just “participating” and is key to improving yourself further.
without that constant fire in your belly, you’re bound to stagnate and eventually get bored or worse “content at mediocrity”
being competitive IS human nature, it keeps us alive and on our toes once 
hits the fan.
and let’s be honest, a 25%each won match is a boring one at best, those where 3 hit the deck and you clutch your lungs out are the ones to be remembered and enjoyed
IS the spice of the game, not cumbaya hand in hand across the finish line.
this.
there’s a reason only a small group excells at tasks others deem difficult or impossible.
far too many are complacent in being “good enough” or having the “I helped, right?” mindset.
and while darktide aint the be all end all “dark souls with bongo drums” skill proof, people can yap and nag all they want, the moment someone solos/carries or clutches when the whole team fails he’s the superior player, period.
this pvp/pve comparison nonsense is like saying usain bolt is in the UFC octagon, so he’s a shitty athlete.
if we meet in the same game, these rules are the comparison line, not some external prerequisites that aint even part of said game.
lately, that extent ends with at which point I cut my losses and don’t backtrack for the umpteenth time to pick up the same dude and waste resources that’d be better spend in real engagements up ahead.
people join a certain difficulty its up to them to adapt to its rules.
I don’t jump into a heavy weight ring and don’t expect to be beaten to death either 
the moment hive scum deletes whole rooms with the push of one button, he aint an asset he’s a reason of playing bystander instead of performer.
don’t know about you, but I don’t play a game to “not play” a game
dueling sword…..boom bringer
dueling sword…..boom bringer
decisions decisions 
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Being competitive is alright, letting it turn to excess is not, which is where I disagree with your view on this. Trying to excel at a given task is all good, nothing wrong with it, all power to you. Comparing yourself today with yourself from yesterday and seeing an improvement is really good.
The problem is when that focus turns away from you and your own growth and towards others, in negative ways, then you start becoming harmful to the collective. I know you value individual excellence, and that has its merits. But that’s not really the only part of the story.
I will go off-topic, but society as we know it, with all of its benefits, comforts and perks was not the work of ONE person, it was the work of a collective. An intelligent architect will design the best building, but it’s a collective of people who will build it, the architect won’t just clap his hands and everything will appear.
Society evolved not because some dude excelled at some sport or video game or whatever sort of competition, it evolved because of the collective efforts that true, required the input of exceptional individuals too. But none of it would be possible without the two subsets.
You could send a Rambo type to war, sure maybe he will do something impressive at first, then he will get shot and would lose cause of sheer numbers. You might be individually skilled and that’s great, but if you lack the capacity to also apply it in a collective, then honestly in the end you lose to a less skilled individual that knows how to work better in a team.
Headlines always focus on the exceptional, but that’s never the whole story. And if everyone dislikes you because they know you won’t work alongside them, you won’t see that spice at all. Your comparisons to exceptional sports individuals are too narrow to apply here and to life as a whole.
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