My point is that we are too powerful. Yes, we need a certain power level, true, but what we have now is way too much. Enemies that otherwise meant to be threats getting oblitarted in 1-2 hits. This applies to bosses too.
I’m not saying we should struggle with every encounter but we also shouldn’t be going trough everything like knife trough butter.
The problem is two fold:
First now it’s really easy to aquire a perfect weapon. This is not a complaint about the new itemization, it’s lightyears better than the slot machine upgrade system we had before, but it’s definitely effecting it.
The other problem is the rework of the talent trees that multiplied the power level and potential of the classes. These two together are just too much.
But like I said at this point it’s next to impossible to fix it in this game, maybe the next installment but not this one.
You can’t appeal to both camps (casuals/hardcore) without at least somewhat dissapointing one of them. It’s Don Quixote’s windmill fight all over again.
You are really kind
The guy suggests to throw away all current balance, that would lead to an another mess for 1 or 2 years.
It was fun trying to make non-meta builds work on cata though. Especially when you liked a weapon despite it being sub par 
They did retain it for the machine gunners. I’d like to see a pass for shotgunners and regular gunhands though, definitely somewhere in the ballpark without instant death for not sliding. Maybe introduce a slide cooldown too, seems odd to have decaying dodges but infinite buttslides. This also worsens the experience for console players (lol them right) because you have to basically bust fingers to pull them off consecutively. Think of the xbots and their aquillas.
If by casuals we mean the overwhelming bulk of the playerbase, that’s probably correct.
If the gear and abilities matches the difficulty and people are clearing the mission, it sounds like everything is in working order. I don’t think there’s a case to be made that people who legitimately belong at Malice or Heresy games can be carried in Auric Maelstrom by gear or talents, those players will still fail games at those lower difficulties even with the most powerful builds.
Darktide’s basic game premise is as a 40k clone of “Left4Dead”, a zombie horde shooter about 4 random survivors teaming up to survive a zombie apocalypse. The characters are a freshman college girl, an ex-green beret in his 60s, a biker dude, and a junior IT analyst. Not all power fantasies need to be about originating as the biggest of badasses.
Darktide throws on a class system, a much heavier emphasis on melee combat, and greater itemization, but fundamentally it’s an L4D game where the characters aren’t the biggest badasses in the universe.
The opposition kinda spells that out, looking at the enemies present in the game, even the the biggest and scariest of them are basically just big infantry, not even proper monsters as far as tabletop 40k is concerned. The Rejects are fighting underhive scum, rebel guardsmen, and mutants. They’re not fighting battle tanks, daemonic engines, super soldiers, alien battle suits, or Greater Daemons.
Hell, we’ve only even got one proper actual Daemon enemy in the game, the Beast of Nurgle, which is renowned for essentially being a huge mindless happy puppy in the flesh of a rotting plague hulk that genuinely wants to make friends.
I have no problem with them catering to casuals as they are after all a business and need to make money. But it hurts replayability and that hurts the game’s long term plans as well. Like, why should I play now? To stomp everything? Something has to give but you also can’t please everyone.
Glad you’re back here once again telling bald faced lies about a game you very clearly don’t play.
Only things that were majorly nerfed semi recently were moonbow and javelins, which were both very widely complained about, certainly not just by “elite players”.
Meanwhile OE and WP were both mega buffed recently, and pretty much every single weapon in the game besides the aforementioned moonbow and javelins are vastly stronger than on release.
It’s fine if you don’t like VT2, but as I’ve said to you numerous times before, you GOTTA stop straight up lying about it.
“Boy howdy, I sure do love warrior priest, the only thing I wish they’d change was how annoying the passive rage meter is outside of combat/its decay rate.”
Fatshark actually does this
“Coruscation staff and javelins kinda suck out the fun of the game, I wish they’d do something about them.”
Fatshark actually does this. (In fairness it took longer than it probably should have)
“Darktide, why aren’t you more like your older brother.”
Yes-yes. Merry-happy ratman is back-back. Great talk-debate can now-now commence.
Another part of the power creep you didn’t mention boils down to people finally grasping the armor system and how to make use of it.
+25% specified dmg against one type + certain Blessing combinations do allow to the player to melt through anything, circumventing the specialized nature of most weapons.
Where we will come to disagree: I don’t see it as an issue, as preparation is half the battle. Crafting and using a great loadout should be rewarded.
I also believe that casuals and hardcore players can be catered to and Darktide already does a good job, but I will agree that the hardest difficult could use a little push. Maybe dab the enemies “Battle-hardened” or “Elite” and give them something extra - Either in the resistance department or extra behaviors making them smarter.
I think so, too. The first point about the dueling swords I already disagree with. In my opinion, any weapon should be able to delete carapace, IF you build fully for it (as long as you have to sacrifice something else like crit rate for instance).
It’s more fun when it actually works. Most of VT2 options moved into the “meh” direction for a really long time and it was common to only see people using specific weapons / talents all the time.
How many reworks did VT2 get? 4?
Lying? How am I lying? I’m not talking recent VT2 changes. I’m talking lifetime. VT2 when it came out and up to 2 years in, had an abundance of powerful (and sometimes too cheesy, agreed about that) options. It was interesting and rewarded experimenting. But they then made quick work of most combinations and the game got very boring as a result.
The balance about most things was totally off. Critfishing with Swift Strike remains the most powerful (and even necessary) option to this day, while most other Blessings are absolutely useless.
The Breakpoint system and the reliance on Swift Strike Blessing mean that you also build everything the same always. Go for Power+ until you hit Breakpoints, fill all empty slots with Crit chance or ATK speed.
Reminder: The game has over 5 Blessings for melee and Ranged weapons, each. And over 10 attributes to slot into your weapon.
In the ranged department you get a bit more choice, but only because the fun was patched out of ALL the options.
True Assassin builds - Gone
Infinite ammo builds - Gone
Quick cooldown builds - Gone
Anything out of the ordinary - Gone
It’s just not that enticing to play. What’s more, the coolest game mode in my opinion remains Chaos Wastes. Why? Because it discards all the builds and adds new interesting Blessings that actually make a difference. But even that had some strong adjustments.
If the roguelite mode disregarding all the itemization is the strongest gameplay in an RPG, that’s a sign of the RPG elements not being very good. Sorry to say it.
VT2 stopped being fun for me when I realized they’d nerf everything that worked a little too well - Resulting in a game where the gameplay doesn’t evolve and neither does the challenge rise with it. The map variety is strong, but the encounter variety is poor, causing you to feel like you only change scenery.
The dodge to stagger overhaul was certainly an attempt, too. More like trying to obfuscate break points and doing effectively nothing to dodges.
So am I. The whole power system literally wasn’t working at launch for like a month so I don’t really count that brief period. Over the life time of the game, the average power level has gone significantly up, not down. Yes there are outliers like the infamous wigglemancer, famished + lingering battle wizard, and release SotT that were legitimately game breaking at the time. I really think you underestimate the multiple talent passes and cumulative weapon buffs over the years. There are vastly more powerful setups to choose from now than there were in the past. Most things work and there are still a good number of setups that are overkill even for vanilla Cata.
Traits is pretty much the one area you are correct about but that is more than counter balanced by everything else, and at least opportunist is a very valid alternative to swift slaying in a good number of instances, unlike Darktide where stagger blessings are very very rarely if ever worth it. Perks were literally never interesting, nothing has really changed there in either direction.
Fine I retract the “lying” comment, I just think your judgement is extremely off here.
Another aspect of the player power curve going up was also fixing things like talents, abilities, item traits and perks that didn’t work initially.
Okay I get that, but somehow the game just feels that way to me? Boring? Without any meaningful variance (with a few exceptions, like Mercenary KrubKrub).
The itemization being pointless is such a big thing for me. Why is there X options, when only Y matter? That’s so disappointing. Feels almost like the Payday 2 bloat of weapons and items (of which most are also not exactly meta).
If you think the game is just playable fine, maybe it’s a matter of taste for me then. Well each to their own.
Oh yeah, that first year of things not working was straight up hilarious. In the beginning even Against The Grain was bugged with the barn door that wouldn’t open. Hilarious. But I wasn’t taking that into account. Most talent combinations just felt pointless for most of VT2’s lifetime after the first big rework.
Sure, I’m not trying to tell you how to feel about the game. I just don’t want to misrepresent FS’s general balance trends. In both VT2 and DT we are much stronger now on average across way more builds than earlier in the game. Of course I’m not saying that compels anyone to like one or the other. I’m also not denying there have been outlier power spikes for specific setups that have been flattened.
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