Because I’m pretty sure 70% of the playerbase does not know that their weakspot is on the unarmored back
Thank you
Do maulers need a pink belly? They look pretty cool, its more how the hitbox itself is designed to be hit from literally behind and people don’t try to dodge the dog because the regular poxy is so jank for that vs. push (and push doesn’t give you an easier buttstab). But this dog is easier to dodge, and the easiest way to kill it is to just side step it (usually not even needing dodge because its so slow), which I’m sure more people will pick up on in time. But if they turned them into fireflies or baboons I would be upset, thing looks pretty mad max with the houndmaster.
No because it’s not their weakspot, it’s the least armoured section, 2 completely different things
Meanwhile on the dog, its weakspot is so unnoticeable and NOT intuitive at all, because it almost looks like he’s fully armoured except for that tiny skinny but part that people do not notice at all
“painting” was an hyperbole obviously, I meant to say “make it more obvious that their butt is a weakspot”. Make it more fleshy, give it scars, SOMETHING that would signify “oh shii the dog is hurt there, let me HIT IT THERE TO MAKE THEM SUFFER”
it kinda reminded me of this stuff when you said paint
i know it was an example, but making things obvious would kinda be immersion breaking
if people dont know the weakness of certain enemies, it’s on them, that’s when game knowledge becomes a thing rewarding players by learning how to deal certain things by experience.
I guess you’re right about that but then again I would expect 70% people don’t know that maulers get less damage on their head with a majority of weapons. You’d be surprised how many people who play on Auric don’t care about that kind of stuff. Even if you’d paint a big red crosshair on the armoured dog butts many people would not care about it. The people that do care will figure that stuff out pretty fast as it’s already a big indicator that hits to the head don’t give you the weakspot hitmarker but hits from behind do.
Me personally I have not seen anyone attempting to whack at its head, its more that from the front the dog is annoying to melee by design, and that’s the easiest way to kill the dogs we’ve been dealing with. Its to stagger it back so it can re-engage. In due time I think we’ll see people side-step the dog and smack it in the ass more in game (its way more visceral and cool and faster to do this). I would way rather they put this and other recently added enemies in the meat grinder though, like why are they not there? It’d be immediately obvious from the hit marker system where to whack this enemy, take mental note of it for when you see it and be done with the whole gimmick.
I’m pretty sure there’s a middle ground between “hidden info that makes no sense until someone tells you” and “paint the ladder yellow”
Good devs add some indication of a possible action, not just point it out right away, but keeping it fully hidden is also bad design
Again you can notice the head of the mauler gives you a full blue or light blue hitmarker when you hit their head, and a white (for the most part) hitmarker when you hit the body. That is an indication, but there’s no indication of the armoured hounds in specific NOT taking weakspot dmg on their head but instead their barely visible skinny butt (and it gets worse since normal hounds DO have their weakspot on their head, so it makes it even more confusing)
BoN has the most video gamey giant glowing weakspot imaginable and that’s been fine for years. As for carapace dogs, I think the only part that’s kinda deceiving is the big pauldron on the top of its back and the side armor panels since everything except the head is flak and infested. At the same time it makes the carapace dog stick out more so it’s not so bad. I think they’re fine as is.
Edit: nevermind I booted up the game to hit one and the armor is very accurate to what is carapace and what is not. It works just fine.
there were many secret and hidden info in vt2 as well at gameplay design, and that was the good part of it.
That affects gameplay directly like this? (I should’ve clarified that part before)
Other than specific weapon moves being only accessible after doing something I can’t really imagine anything else, especially in enemy interaction
yea
yea this is just 
there were way many hidden things at gameplay level, and with interaction with enemies too and certain attacks could be dodged just by jumping where many people not being aware of it cause no knowledge.
the point is that if there is no clear guided design to it, it doesn’t automatically mean it’s something bad or badly designed. some things can be hidden and the player needs to discover by themselves
I mean everything behind the pauldron is flak so that’s basically a weakspot, and the infested parts are completely unarmored on the model so that’s still accurate. Those side panels are the only thing that would throw someone off but they look cool.
Seriously though this and all enemies really should be in the meat grinder. There’s other secondary weakspots to enemies like burgle (mouth) and packmaster (canister) as well players could better understand outside the live game. Everything shouldn’t fall on mods and secondary sources when we could just use that.
For something to discover there should be clues
Not devs exactly saying “hey here!” but at the same time SOMETHING that makes you say “huh, this is weird, what would happen if I do X”
Because if “discovering” something is hitting at random until you see the weakspot hitmarker that’s bad
yeah, it’s kind of like how the terrible terminology for effects on weapons requires you to read forums or watch youtube videos if you want to know the difference between rending, brittleness, and cleave.
Anyone who disagrees and thinks those are super clear hasn’t tried to introduce someone new to Darktide.
Long Story Short, Fatshark is bad about this, to such an extend that there’s an entire suite of mods to address things like explosion radius and hit boxes.
I really wish you could turn that on in the Psykarium, where areas like weak spots would just be straight up highlighted.
(I was kinda hoping that the Skitarii would have a talent node that would let them see weakspots as targets, kind of how the Advanced Combat Doctrine works, but with flashy colors. Would have been cool, but auto aim is pretty neat, too.)
Defenitely something that amazes me is that they don’t add the enemy into the Psykanium the moment it gets added to the game
Happened with plasma gunner last year, they added it WAY AFTER its release, and I’ll assume the exact same thing will happen wit Vanguards
I don’t even think they’ll end up actually adding the armored hounds
just add them to the psykhanium
“why do people not know x about this enemy” the answer is because its not in the psykhanium