Collection of Feedback concerning the upcoming patch

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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This is a more complete collection of feedback given in different topics, which I decided to collect in one place.

Note that I recognize these suggestions to be possibly problematic to implement so that they arrive with the patch, and that is not the intention with this. I suggest these so that they could be implemented in the future, since I deem them additions which would make the game more enjoyable and diverse.

Psyker:

- Feedback 1:
Addresses: Gun-Psyker Build Diversity

An addition of a new node on the way to Disrupt Destiny, as a third option between Kinetic Deflection and the other new node:

Bewitched Assault: (example title)
Non-Warp based attacks gain 1% Rending for each 10% of Peril you have.

This way gun-psyker build variety is further incentivized, since rending is more important for non-revolver gun-psykers.

You could also go for:

Bewitched Assault: (example title)
Non-Warp based attacks apply 1 stack of 0.25% Brittleness to enemies for 5 seconds for each 10% of Peril you have, up to a maximum of 160 stacks. (max brittleness of 40%)

This would be the more team-oriented approach.

- Feedback 2:
Addresses: Lack of tinkerability for Psyker, re-adding lost Mind in Motion + Brain Burst/Rupture combination.

Add more tinkerability to psyker abilities directly after blitzes.

Like so:

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This way psyker becomes the most tinkerable class, as was the design intent in the original class overhaul

- Feedback 3:
Addresses: Gun Psyker

An additional node next to True Aim, as a third option:

Tranquility through Matter: (example name)
You have a 25% increased Ammo Reserve

- Feedback 4:
Addresses: Poor design of Kinetic Flayer, which can be made into a thoughtful and skill-based ability.

Kinetic Flayer ought to be changed to:
-Using Weapon Special with Brain Rupture activates Kinetic Flaying. Your next attack Brain Ruptures the target or your next Brain Rupture charges instantly and costs no Peril. Your next attack can only activate this while not at critical Peril. This effect has a cooldown of 15s.

This way the ability is more fun and promotes intelligent use, rather than random. The cooldown can be increased to account for the increased usefulness.

- Feedback 5:
Addresses: Reintroduced the old needlessly removed Cerebral Lacerations

A new node to Brain Rupture, bringing back the old needlessly removed talent from before the class overhaul:

Kinetic Lacerations: Target of Brain Rupture takes 25% increased damage from all sources after a successful cast.

OR, as a new non-revolver gun-psyker friendly option:

Kinetic Lacerations: Target of Brain Rupture gains 25% Brittleness a successful cast.

React if you see! :smiley:

- Feedback 6:
Addresses: Certain Psykers want to have high Peril Gain, to force certain builds to take peril reduction is bad design, since this can be easily fixed with additional nodes that allow psykers to dodge the negative modifier that is peril generation reduction.

All 5% Peril Generation Reduction nodes ought to be given alternative options that lead to the exactly same routes as the Peril Reduction nodes. For example 5% Toughness Damage Reduction, +5% Movement Speed and +5% Health

- Feedback 7:
Addresses: Warp Rupture is completely void of purpose. Suggested change make it into skill-based burst damage ultimate.

Warp Rupture was not told to be addressed. I suggest that it could be reworked entirely into an ability that rewards skill and which can serve as horde clear and high single target damage.

I suggest that it could be changed so:

Shrieker’s Stare: Venting Shriek now causes an invisible beam to shoot from the center of your vision that cleaves through everything to erupt from your eyes. The beam causes damage which builds up over time when it is inside a head of an enemy, causing immense damage at maximum build up.

This can be accompanied with an increase to the cooldown.

- Feedback 8:
Addresses: Brain Rupture giving 2 stacks of True Aim was a good feature of Brain Rupture.

It is unwise to change the Brain Rupture’s stagger on half-ready-cast to no longer count towards True Aim, as it was a good mechanic for the ability.

- Feedback 9:
Addresses: Smite and Surge granting stacks of True Aim was a good feature.

I would bring back the Smite and Surge staff ability to randomly hit a body part back, since that allowed for True Aim to work with those abilities.

This does not have to increase or decrease damage dealt, but it should give the ability to get headshot hits even if all damage is calculated as if hitting the torso.

Also, I will be updating this with any more feedback, but that is all for now.

- Feedback 10:
Addresses: Obscurus could be made more fun and interesting, increasing player-options and build diversity.

The moveset of Obscurus was not addressed. I suggest that Obscurus moveset is made so that Heavy 2 comboes into Light 1, so you can have a horde-combo of Light 1 Heavy 2 Light 1 Heavy 2 etc. Heavy 1 should combo into light 2 and light 3, and light 3 should shombo to Heavy 1.

Additionally, the powered-up state of Obscurus should give a cleave effect like Illisi on Light 1 and Heavy 2, to make it truly the middle option between illisi and deimos.

- Feedback 11:
Addresses: Disrupt Destiny still fails to target specialists, ogryns, poxwalkers and groaners.

Disrupt Destiny still does not select specials, ogryns, poxwalkers, or groaners as targets, unlike how the ability states “Enemies within 25m have a chance…”. This can be easily fixed. IF you are worried about the targeting being bothersome, you can always have the ability mark multiple enemies at random, for example: “1 to 3 enemies within 25m have a chance…”

Furthermore, I heavily suggest that kills by allies in coherency are counted as your kills for the purposes of gaining 1 stack, not necessarily the toughness and the speed boost. Without this, the co-op game penalizes the teammates active participation in combat.

If this is too strong of a feature, you can cut out different bonuses of the Precision buff into new nodes. I rather have the ability work as written and be made less frustrating and anti-co-op and have it cost more points.

- Feedback 12:
Addresses: Charged Strike, is poorly designed, since it does not utilize psyker’s main mechanic of Peril, and can be easily made to be a fun and thought-requiring ability.

I suggest you do not implement the ability as is, instead, since the ability has no mention of peril, and it doesn’t require the actual use of smite as a blitz. I suggest that you change it to:

Charged Strikes:
Using Weapon Special when wielding Smite activates Charged Strikes, your melee attacks and non-Warp based ranged attacks electrocute enemies, damaging them, without stunning them. This builds up peril whilst active, ending when reaching full Peril. (Does not explode you, similar to how channeling smite to the end doesn’t.)

This way the ability requires forethought, is interesting to use and makes you use the blitz. Also ties it to peril management and gives it a fun gun-psyker use.

- Feedback 13:
Addresses: Since Brain Rupture and Smite have (based on these suggestions) gained a use of the weapon special button, Assail could get a fun ability.

This is a more light-hearted suggestion, but since all the other blitzes now have, based on these suggestions, a weapon special use, Assail could get a new node:

Shard Swarm:

Using Weapon Special throws all shards simultaneously, shards deal 66% reduced damage. Gain 7,5% Peril for each shard thrown this way.

The damage could also be reduced by more, such as 75%

Ogryn:

-Feedback 1:
Addresses: Antisynergy of the upcoming Offensive Defense Blessing.

Offensive Defense is antisynergistic with stamina regeneration.

Offensive Defence

  • Gain a stack for each stamina spent blocking. Your next attack gains +4-10% melee power per stack and consumes one stack. Last 3.5s. Stacks 5 times.

This blessing is antisynergistic with Block Cost Reduction, this should be addressed since shield is one of the weapons which most wants Block Cost Reduction.

An easy fix would be: “Gain a stack for each stamina spent blocking (calculated before Block Cost Reduction).” Courtesy of @Somberyu.

Veteran:

-Feedback 1:
Addresses: The needlessly removed Sustained Fire, which if brought back increases build diversity.

Bring back the needlessly removed Sustained Fire.

Note:
"
Relentless

  • Removed. It is now included in Executioner’s Stance per default.

Dev Note:

Relentless was pretty much a must pick for the viability of the Ability.
"
-Since Relentless is now removed and integrated into the ability, I suggest replacing Relentless with the needlessly removed Sustained Fire, allowing for more fun build diversity. You also have the ability already in the old files, so the amount of effort for reintroduction is minimal.

-Sustained Fire was (for any new devs): Opon Ability Activation, gain 60% of your Toughness back and instantly reload your Ranged Weapon.

-Feedback 2:
Addresses: The rationale for removing Vanguard and replacing it is not logical. The ability was enjoyed by a minority, who really like it, but as you stated, it was a “tax” to go further down. Then, if the effect was a “tax” there is no need to remove it. You can introduce the new wield speed effect and retain the old effect, since the old effect was a “tax” anyways, so it should not be removed if it wasn’t worth anything. This way the people who like it, can keep it, and those who only took it as tax can get their new wield speed.

Removal of Vanguard is unfun for those players who really got benefit from it due to stacking Sprint Cost Reduction. One Motion should keep Vanguard’s Sprint cost reduction effect, if it was not performing as wanted, since if the 20% sprint cost reduction was seen by an unvaluable tax, then removing the effect and adding 25% wield speed is nonsensical. Instead, you can just keep the 20% Sprint Cost Reduction of Vanguard in One Motion.

-Feedback 3:
Addresses: Skirmisher is clunky to use due to all stacks falling at the same time, this lesson was learned with the old Warp Charges and later again with Disrupt Destiny.

Another change to Skirmisher could be to have the stacks lower 1 at a time, instead of all at once.

-Feedback 4:
Addresses: Enhanced Target Priority is antisynergistic with itself. This poor design can be changed to be a thoroughly enjoyed co-op tool.

I suggest that Enhanced Target Priority target kills done by allies in coherency refresh the duration of Executioner’s Stance, otherwise this ability is antisynergistic with the teammates being given aid in killing the enemies which, if they kill, take away from the veteran’s ability to maintain the buff that the teammates benefit from, resulting in a foolish game-design where the players who gain the benefit of the ability do not want to use it to maintain it.

Zealot:

-Feedback 1:
Addresses: The rationale to the change to Swift Certainty is based on a misconception of the usefulness of the stamina-sprint-dodge mechanic by the developer. Also some notes about the ease of use and prevalence of sprint-sliding.

The upcoming suggested change to Swift Certainty is a mistake

The change is as follows:

Swift Certainty: Sprint Speed: 10% to 5%

Dev Note: The Dodging effect of Swift Certainty is already a very strong effect. We’re lowering the movement speed slightly.

The Dodging effect of Swift Certainty IS NOT very strong, since Stamina-Sprint-Dodging is not a strong effect, it works only when you sprint at an 86 degree or more angle to your ranged attacker. When there are multiple ranged attackers, this means that there is no reason to use Stamina-Sprint-Dodging when one can just spam sprint slides to evade, and not need Swift Certainty in the first place.

I would suggest backpedaling on this change, at least if this is the rationale.

Alternatively, you can fix sprint sliding, so that it isn’t the easy 80% of ranged damage nullification it currently is, this can be done by having sprint slides cost stamina and by having them not give an evasion effect when at 0 stamina.

And when this change is done, making the Stamina-Sprint-Dodging good by increasing the angle of dodging from 86 degrees to something like 45-50 degrees can offset the fix to sprint sliding.

-Feedback 2:
Addresses: Loner is poor design for a co-op game. This fix makes it less tiresome for co-op friends whilst still retaining similar functionality, but no longer allowing complete disregard of the team. This, I deem is a good way to make it a team-oriented forerunner ability.

Loner is not a good choice for an ability in a co-op game. To have Loner be all about that Coherency, I suggest the following change, which makes the ability more acceptable in a team co-op game:

Loner: Your Coherency Radius gains an Extension Radius, making it 10 times larger. (You can only gain a maximum of Coherency 2 from allies in the Extension Radius.)

This way friends can benefit from your coherency even when far away, and you benefit from their coherency.

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didn’t read the whole thing but this alone deserves an upvote

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Honor and Glory, For the Carrion Lord!

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Thank you for the formatted and organized notes :pray:

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The Psyker needs 13 buffs?

I have honestly no concept of how some of those changes would change the game balance. It’s truly a myriad of a wish list.

I think I personally would have found it easier to process if you’d done the suggestions like this:
Problem = x
Suggestion = y

That way it’s easier to reconcile in your head why we need these changes to a class that has a lot of variety already.

(PS How do you charge a weapon while wielding smite? Is that just a passive ability from taking the node?)

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Sounds like it is similar to the Brain Rupture talent that lets you passively trigger it, too.
Take the node and you get a passive bonus effect that does something related to the blitz, without you having to wield the blitz.

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These are not buffs. These are feedback on how to make psyker more interesting/less frustrating to play.

These are new talents, talents cost talent points to activate.

The “buff” to psyker here is to have psyker be more tinkerable, as they stated in their design intent during class overhaul.

Besides, the changes to, for example, Brain Rupture pale in comparison to the relative damage reduction nerf that brain rupture got when switching from the old Class system to the Class Overhaul, where the health of enemies was increased, and Brain Burst damage was lowered, which means that Brain Rupture roughly broke even to the old Brain Burst damage, but did not scale with the increased health of Brain Rupture.

Furthermore the Brain Rupture ability to assist teammates was removed, so was the ability to use Mind in Motion with Brain Burst. Which is another case of actual LOST tinkerability of the psyker class when the class overhaul came.

To reiterate:

The suggestions of new talent nodes are worth 1 talent point each, so they are not “more powerful” but they have more options. Then other suggestions concern themselves with upholding tinkerability of the psyker skill-tree or fixing existing abilities not working as intended.

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Did you perchance read the notes of the upcoming patch?

The developers informed players of an upcoming node to Smite: Charged Strike.

My countersuggestion to their idea was this:

You wield smite, press weapon special, it begins an effect where you build up peril, during the effect your weapons get the effect of the existing-revealed Charged Strike which electrocutes enemies on heavy attack, but instead of only on heavy melee attacks, all attacks and ranged non-Warp attacks.

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Granted, I’ll add this for clarity :+1:

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I think I understood correctly first time around; but from what I can work out your suggested change does not work the same way as the new Charged Strike node.

I may be wrong. But I understand it as this:

Charged Strike is a node you take that hangs off the Smite node in your tree. You don’t need to use smite to trigger it, it’s a passive ability that affects any melee heavy attacks you make.

You trigger it simply by:

  1. hit 1 for melee, do heavy attack.

I think your suggestion is different, because it would create a new activation mechanic on blitz skills. As I read your last note on this; you’re suggesting:

  1. hit your default blitz key, e.g. G to switch to Smite
  2. Then you hit your special melee/ranged weapon activation key (I have it on Caps for example)
  3. Then you hit 1 or 2 to switch to your melee/ranged weapon
  4. Then you strike/fire

Do you think I’ve got that wrong?

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Indeed, this is how I suggested it to be.

+The activation starts to expend peril as if you cast smite, and you cannot stop this, it ends when your peril reaches 100.

The rationale here is: compared to the suggested Charged Strike, Charged Strikes makes the ability more fun in twofold ways: first it requires peril management, a core gameplay aspect and second it allows for more diverse utilization of the ability.

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I thought so. That’s why I posted as I did.

And will all grenades/blitz skills get a new activation mode?

Because that builds in a new key-combo and game functionality. Sounds fundamentally hard for them to make a new grenade/blitz alt-mode, but also quite likely OP if I can trigger a blitz ability as a weapon buff skill, trigger Scriers as a special ability, then just go to town on the entire screen for 10 seconds?

I reckon you’d be better asking for something like that on a special ability; like Scriers Gaze.

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I do not think that you can last 10 seconds with Scrier’s gaze and suggested Charged Strikes. More like 3-5 due to the increase in peril use. I would wager that my suggestion of “Charged Strikes” is far less powerful when combined with Scrier’s Gaze than the suggested “Charged Strike”, since that didn’t mention a Peril Cost and as such you could activate Scrier’s Gaze and perform heavy attacks, going to town, getting Scrier’s Gaze to ramp up considerably further up than if you used my suggested Charged Strikes with Scrier’s Gaze.

Psyker ones are suggested to gain such. It is an easy way to implement more interesting mechanics. Also a good way to reimagine old less-than-ideally-designed concepts.

I daresay not, psyker blitzes are weapons, use the same code. Suggestions are as hard to code as Scier’s Gaze and The Eviscerator. These are well within implementation-viability.

I could write pseudocode for all the suggestions, if that is requested.

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This is more to do with my attempts to understand the crafting system based on the information and copied from my post earlier today:
(I think Strawhat is already aware of this one)

Given most of the conversion is being done by turning our existing accountwide"Blessing Stickerbook" into Mastery for those weapon families:

What provision there will be for the starting Mastery levels for players who have gotten to level 30 (perhaps on multiple characters) but who don’t have much if any unlocked blessings in the “Blessing Stickerbook” Esp. for those who primarily played between the November 2022 release and when Crafting & Blessings were finally fully implemented almost 3 months later with Patch #4 “Blessings of the Omnissiah” towards the end of February 2023.

There are a few people who stopped playing in the early days of the game who might have reasonable playtime but simply won’t have any unlocked blessings.
Or perhaps won’t have the knowledge about collecting blessings because they get drawn back into the game after the Unlocked and Loaded update.

  • Should they have a minimum Mastery level so they are not utterly at the ground floor of a starting character and account for some amount of playing with weapons. Noticeably enough to have more than level 1 perks.
    I am worried about returning players who left due to frustrations with the game in the early stages - esp. when rewards were bad and crafting was incomplete, returning to be met with a bit of a frustrating grind.

Likewise for existing weapons:
As I understand it all weapons and curios get transferred over. All the locks are broken (yay!) and all weapons will be upgradable to 380 base rating (yay!) - even if we don’t have specific control over the bars update.
BUT with the change to the modification points system, which seems based of an item’s Power which I think is capped by a player’s Mastery in that weapon’s weapon family:

How exactly will the current rating system (up to 550) be converted into the new Power system (up to 500) and how many modification points existing weapons have to spend? - And will this be limited by the player’s Mastery in that weapon family. For those few existing rating 550… could a player who hasn’t maxed out Mastery in that weapon family - would these be potentially locked out of changing any perks and blessings on those existing weapons?

Esp. because it seems that Tier 2,3,4 perks require a certain progression along the Mastery track to unlock.
Unlike now where you stick tier 4 perks and blessings on the weapons you get on your level 2 character - if you really want*

*“Fun fact” - you can’t do any upgrades on your starting rating 85 weapons if you keep them.

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Are you sure you posted this in the correct thread?

I welcome it, but I do not know if you misposted.

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Yeah, this is what I am concerned for from what I understand of the coming crafting changes.
The link is to my compilation of changes as I understand it.

Most of what I’ve seen of the rework looks great. Not perfect but vastly better than what we have.

But whilst it looks good for both new players and established players who have collected lots of blessings.

These two edge cases are potential points of frustration, esp. for players returning to the game from The Bad Early Days™* having heard that crafting and loot is finally fixed.

Apologies if this thread is more specifically about on the weapon and blessing changes in the Patch notes.

(*I really enjoyed playing when the game was" bad".)

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If they don’t know many blessings then they have lost nothing. They just learn them in a different way. A way that costs a lot less plasteel than the bad old days.

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This thread is more about the talents of the classes, but sure!

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Hah. Thread hijack! :stuck_out_tongue:
Think that guy got the wrong end of the stick and thought this was a free-for-all.

Anyway, if FS were going to start making mechanical changes to their game, then I’d prefer a sidearm slot rather than them fiddling with some kind of alternative grenade mode. My 2 penneth worth.

Well, I’ll eat a load of humble pie if Fat Shark do indeed come to you for some pseudo code! I do admit my errors generally, so that’s a promise.

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I hope there’s more for Ogryn than just buffing the pickaxe that already performs best. Tons of ideas floated for improving Mk6 Ripper, Mk5 Stubber, Mk6 Cleaver and Mk2 Bully Club…Grenade Gauntlet is still exceedingly mid for less ammo than a Kickback too.

Honestly I was hoping for more rebalances for him than anything. Especially with some bad new blessings that will change little or be inferior to x/Skullcrusher on the melee side.

Also what of the normal weapons that just got dumpstered either through being bad thought out weapons or later additions. Obscurus Force Sword, Kantrael las pistol, that same named family of lasguns, Headhunters…Combat Shotguns…surely there was a part 3, right? I mean we only get ‘game balance’ once a year at this rate.

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