It doesn´t need any more nerfs, it´s in a good spot. What we need is a compromise between a longer activation of the weapons special and the possible output. Giving it back 2-4 swings or maybe even the 3-5, so it wouldn´t feel that clunky for those who wants to use them, isn´t a big deal if we put rules on top.
But those rules need some impact like less damage + cooldown. It shouldn´t last in “Swing swing, dead horde, waiting for the cooldown or a battery-charge while everything is dead anyway.”
The best way would probably indeed to increase the base-performance by a minimum and adding more different blessings with buffs BUT drawbacks to keep this special-playstyle alive.
I mean… some poeple just seem to never grow up at all. While others start to moan before trying out new stuff. It´s part of life that stuff will change and yeah, being a bit mad about changes effecting your gameplay is one thing. But exeggerating caused by a balance-patch in videogames is another… Poeple really should calm down. The game wouldn´t even exist without the devs and it wouldn´t have a great gameplay and variety without balancing and adding different circumstances (even drawbacks) in general.
But 2 swings as a base and 4 with Pc with an longer activation or a delay between 2 activations is that what I would consider a good compromise.
But, it is a nerf… And I doubt that players can support a new nerf.
The damage reduction is clearly also a nerf.
There’s people overreacting… About flamer, there is no reason to complain as it is yet a great weapon.
On PS, I would not say that cause, yes it was needed, but the nerf is really hard for people that were used to this weapon.
I tested without PC, the weapon is yet effective. You can use non energized swing for normal enemies and energize only when needed. It works great.
With PC you don’t have to think about all of this… You activate and you wipe everything in front of you (like shown in the video I posted)
Let me say at the outset that I’m fully aware that I’m a minority opinion in this topic, so all I can do is try to be as respectful and balanced in my commentary as I can.
I think that far too many discussions from the pro-nerf camp lose sight of what the draw to weapons like the Powersword and (presumably [I never tried it myself]) the flamer were in the first place; beyond their effectiveness, it’s simply that they were fun. Hell, they were a sheer joy to use. Were. The nerfs changed that and they changed it in a big way.
I’ve come to suspect that there is perhaps a subconscious assumption from those calling for nerfs the loudest that all players seek the same challenge as those that play on Damnation, “and that if they don’t now, then they should, and if they still don’t, then just dismiss them”. I honestly hope that’s the case, because the alternative is simply not wanting others to have fun unless they abide a subjective, occasionally even arbitrary set of criteria. What never seems to factor into these discussions is that there’s a great many players that frankly don’t care about any of that and just want to have fun, and are fully content to play in the lower difficulty settings. And I’m one of them.
I had 937.9 hours logged on Steam. I’ve never played Damnation. I don’t intend to. I was thrilled to stay in Malice and occasionally into Heresy. So I wasn’t encroaching on the challenge that some here find so compelling when I was using my powersword to cut through hoards. But I and others like me are the ones hit most acutely by these nerfs, because we are below that Damnation skill level, and simply do not have the skill, drive, energy, time, or what-have-you to adapt to those weapon changes. The result is that they have removed the fun, and it is for that reason that I contend that the nerfs are AWFUL. Full stop. That’s why any claims of “oh weapon X still does just as much damage” are MEANINGLESS. Functional is not the same as fun.
I’d recommend giving the announcement page for Patch 7 on Steam a look, because they tell a very different tale to the somewhat more homogenized sentiments sometimes seen on the forums. Page after page is full of players (who paid for their game just like we all did) consistently saying that this patch has made things un-fun. And the comments haven’t stopped coming in either.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I’m going to convince anybody one way or the other with my spiel here. And I’ve tried to be as polite and general as I can. But I’m raising this point because I think a lot of the post-nerf discussions have started to miss the forest for the trees somewhat, and it occurred to me that maybe a 30,000 ft view could be helpful. Hopefully that adds something to the conversation and I hope that I’ve stayed respectful in the attempt.
I don´t really see the nerf if you get ride of “clunky gameplay” for those who wants to rely on the specials, while also offering more powerful swings.
It´s just a tradeoff for, which lasts in less activation-timing and positioning needed, but with a bit less damage or so ofc. It´ll still be in the players favor gameplay-wise and perhaps more effective thanks to 2/4 swings.
I disagree since it´s in a decent spot. But what´s kinda wrong is the way it got nerfed yes. That´s why i would go the way to bring more swings back gameplay-wise, but tuning them somewhat down in one or another way is needed then.
I´m nearly at the point to say “get ride of PC”. Let the sword always have 3 swings but bring them in line with other damage-sources and put a cooldown in between.
Or the other solution… bring in more blessings and make the available. So either poeple can e.g. go for PC with 3-4 swings, which have a slightly decreased amount of damage, or they could tweak it into the direction of e.g. forceswords, where you´ve just one really powerful swing to deal better with elites.
It would atleast offer more variety without the need of hundreds of different weapon-variants.
I´m sure flamer still is the same so.
I do get how clunky PS has become for special-button players. But the kind of fun you´re describing pretty much comes from the effectiveness and that FS designed the weapon around this special instead of its normal-performance. No matter if it was intended or by mistake, but this is the reason we´re here now.
I´m fully aware that some poeple just want those permaswings back. And i´m on their side if its implemented balanced. (Which it isn´t imo since Powercycler is still strong af.)
Dunno if you or others would be happy then. But in no way it should come with multiple swings and the tons of damage again.
That´s pretty much what i claim at any time. (And others do the same so…)
The easiest solution to cater different types of players is, to keep atleast damnation challenging for those who seek some form of challenge. The issue is that weapons like PS or flamer trivialized it. (Others still do and need tweaks aswell.) And as been said, the game shines with its gameplay and there is just no gameplay if a single person kills everything withing seconds. It´s just a walking simulator with decent graphics in the end.
And here we´re at the issue that a bunch of those “buff please” players just don´t want to choose a lower difficulty, because there are less spawns or not as many materials available. But that´s something easily addressed by lowering the RNG or material costs, while keeping high int modifiers always available.
If you´re one of those that prefer just to stomp enemies and are fine to choose a lower difficulty to do so, then thumbs up for that. Others just don´t want to “miss out” something on the cost of the enjoyment of better players and ofc on the cost of balancing.
That´s hard to take care for. The issue is that players will automatically grow in this game. Even if it takes long, you´ll find better weapons and will get better at the game for sure. You don´t even need time or energy to do so, just check out how better players e.g. deal with specials and try it out. Or in kind of melee content get used a bit to its basics.
I personally dislike all the stats-nonsense so… dunno how often i claimed it within the last weeks, but just look above. Balance stuff in its core, then come with fast available blessings so the player can tweak the weapons on their preference.
I´m sure it´ll suit pretty much every player thanks to the free choice, and ofc it´ll automatically last in a bunch more fun to them without exeggerating stats to do this job.
I really try to keep even players like you into account, for real. It´s just that balancing is important and what hinders a lot of players in their enjoyment are different system coming together or just straight up personal issues like FOMO or something.
If FS would hand out more materials and would get ride of the blessing-tiers, while also make them easier available, then poeple wouldn´t run around with “I need this blessing!” in their head, which actually hinders them from having fun with others i guess.
If damnation wouldn´t have more materials, noone actually would´ve a reason to play it besides the challenge it should offer.
If we would´ve high and low intensity always available, then poeple could use it to get used to higher difficulties or can freel slay through endless hordes on lower difficulty to have their sort of fun.
It´s just that too many difference things are coming together. We need changes and tweaks to them, and ofc poeple needs to accept, that they may need to choose between “better progress” and “their fun”.
EDIT: And just saying… if you´ve a weapon being able to cut everything in half on the highest difficulty, while 90% of the whole arsenal is able to this only on the three of five difficulties, then it should be obvious what´s wrong.
Ofc powerful stuff will always attract a lot of poeple who just wants to slay freely through hordes of enemies. But as you´ve said yourself, you may never interact with damnation and rarely with heresy. So you maybe actually miss the knowledge to judge about that kind of balancing.
I mean… pretty much everything is strong on malice, so it´s hard to make claims about buffs / nerfs there. PS outshined there aswell with the huge cleave, but thats about it.
So YOU are the Lead Developer of FS now, or how come you talk like you would make the decisions here?
Ah, so you are taking us all hostage until FS does all what you demand here, noone is allowed to have fun and play damnation on the same time.
Right now the PS does all that still. It is just it’s handling that got totally wrecked by the patch.
And sure the PS cuts many things in half. It is a Power sword. Same as the Thunder Hammer Kills and smashes around a Crusher, so does the Sword cuts it, when the dmg break point is reached. Its a Power Weapon and is able to crack/cut Carapace. It has to cut it on its break point. And if it cuts Carapase, is has to cut everything under Carapace too.
Normal Blades that cause bleed on Carapace, there i would start to wonder. But hey they seem to find the soft spots between the plates with those axes all the time i guess.
The parts of patch#7 regarding the PS have been a terrible mistake. There is no other way then reverting it back to normal. And then to finally and proper fix the Bug that sometimes occures, where the powered state is keept for endless heavy swings in one chain.
And if there should be any further nerf regarding the ability to deal with Carapace, then they better get rid of the movement/dodge penalty. Or simply copy the Illis Force sword to the Vet and make it look like energy and not force, since the Illis outperformes the PS by miles without any restrictions on the field of dodges.
And since you so elegantly ignored the part from me in the other tread and just picked out one line you liked to react to, i will tell you here again.
If they ever fix the Chastetise the Wicked bug, you better not come here to complain about it. Because it could be that SOMEONE then comes and pastes in about 5 DIN A4 Pages full of YOUR lectures about how you think, that broken stuff HAS TO BE FIXED regardless of lore/fun or what ever reason.
Thank you for saying this. Drawbacks in weapons are what can breathe life into combat. Its why i was opposed to completely eliminating the self-stun on the thunder hammer even though it was such a glaring drawback. The hammers we have now split the difference between proposed changes and really feel great to use.
Actually posts like yours are precisely why there is so much ongoing discussion. I actually strongly agree with you that they removed the fun in the weapon. It feels like ass to use EVEN THOUGH ITS A REALLY GOOD WEAPON. It should be fun to use. Really fun. It should look and feel awesome. One of the things that makes it feel awesome is swiping through a horde of enemies in one go. I still remember it from my first time hands on in open beta and thinking how cool it was. So i want to find a way to balance around how cool it should be to use without trivializing the gameplay so that other players don’t get to have fun too.
Thanks for making these tables, its super helpful.
I’m open to those ideas for sure. Some moderate changes to bring it in line with expected power sword behavior are probably desirable.
Ah yes, sorry about being everywhere at once. I think i have one thread on general weapon balance/vision and one on chainswords. Other people have dedicated power sword conversations going so i am participating in their conversations as an attendee.
Seriously do you even take anything into account what´s written down? Can you even imagine that games only shine, because a bunch of balance is already a thing?
So again… what´s the point of different difficulties if it´s not catering different types of players? Why do we need 5 of them, if we could´ve one we can faceroll with certain weapons? And hell we do even have more than 5 if we take low / high int into account!
Now imagine you can have your fun on heresy, which has a lot of stuff damnation has. Some poeple do even claim that it´s harder because the AI director often goes rampage. Or that high int heresy is harder than normal damnation in general. So what´s wrong?
There are so many possibilities to find a middleway to cater so many players, so what´s wrong with them? Heck, there is even a thread where poeple wants to get ride of low int missions, while i say “let them stay so poeple can get used to difficulties, or just to relax a bit?!”
I didn´t picked out anything and i told you why. I remember you´ve stating multiple times stuff like “Zealot-mains just don´t want to let us Vet-mains having fun, etc…”. This is just nonsense.
Oh yes i´m, cool hm?
You know how it´s meant and i told that often enough aswell that i would like to find a middleway in several topics coming together. There is no chance that everyone will get catered to 100%, but if poeple like you would finally stop to focus only on themselves, then yes… we as a f**king community would be able to make this game a better place for everyone.
But no… better moan all day about FS, work against each other and even claim insults while acting highly egoistic. That´s how we´ll achieve everything i guess.
Maybe start thinking once out of your highly egoistic and super lore-accurate box, seriously. But hey… maybe we should be that lore-accurate, so we, the players… will die every 5 meters because we got hit by anything. (But i guess this wouldn´t be ok, since it´s a game right? And it should be fun right? And dieing is no fun… right???)
No it’s not i know what you meant. It was a clear statement about your tone an attitude.
And who are you to tell me what difficulty i have to play. I play damnation dam well and successful.
And you sure do not tell me or anybody else that damnation is not for people who want to have fun.
Damnation is no VIP Club. And we have 5 difficulties for People who level up their Chars. And then they try out the next level step and maybe they see they are not ready yet. And then with level 20 something they suddenly flat out survive Heresy and get better and better. And then they hit 30 and try damnation. And some games later they play Damnation as if it would be Malice.
Or they have a bad Day and just want to play some Malice after work an have a go with their max stat equip. Whatever.
This is a team based 4 player PVE game. And ALLLLLLLLLLLL the problems that you see about balance, aside from bugged stuff like blessings that count up to 400% dmg + are coming from one core element of Darktide. You never have a guarantied Team of 1 type of every class.
And that is a good thing, because that brings way more variety then VT.
But it also means that you can not have one class that is only god at A and bad at B. Because then if you have 4 times one class and B happens, all would fail.
You dont like the power sword? Ask your Vet if he could play another melee.
Or if he is to eager with melee fighting, ask him to shoot more and let him have more ammo, so he can pump some shots into the horde mobs.
Your Vet can not see and his Ult gets overshined by flames? Ask the Zealot not to bring a flamer or at least not engulf a room when there are shooters out of his range that fire at the team.
Your Psyker takes out all the momentum and pressure from the fights with the Surge staff? Ask him to not taser EVERYTHING so the team has something more to do.
OR! Find a Group of 3 others and talk beforehand about your gear.
But do not demand the DEVS to wash out all the stuff that you personally dislike and don’t want to see in PUG missions on damnation.
And yes there are many treads where people ask for many things. They may do that without your consents.
BTW
Right! this is just nonsense. You do not remember that, you imagine that, because you can not even separate all the people any longer, that call you out for your nerf this nerf that demands.
Maybe your Character, but sure not mine. Because mine wears no Helmet, thus he has 40K plot armor.
Just for you and that´s really the last time i´m gonna react to you. You don´t even seem to remember what you write down by yourself between all the moaning…
Audio and visual stuff is one of Fatshark’s strength as a developer, they could and should give PS more effects for when it’s on and when it turns off. Look, I hate the thought of Veteran Lawnmowers coming back to Damnation and ignoring every shooter and special on the map to greed for melee kills, but “Power Sword Always On” is an idea that can be tweaked.
Chain axes and Eviscerator have shredding attacks without having to be activated first, right? Ain’t that the same thing without being overtuned?
If I had to pick an attack that can just “be on” and adjust power/attack speed accordingly, I would choose heavies since Vet mains are addicted to that. Heavies are flashy, cleave a bunch, looks cool and has satisfying lightsaber noises.
There’s other things FS can do, like a cooldown between activations and stuff. The battery charge idea I’ve seen floating sounds cool, but I doubt that would happen.
Well, regarding the messages here…
I play all classes, but the ones I prefer is, first the zealot and secondly the veteran.
Why do I think that PS should be nerfed?
Cause the veteran had best ranged weapons and also best melee weapon.
Has this patch changed that?
No… Veteran still has the best melee weapon…
Was this nerf justified?
Absolutely…
Should they revert changes?
No… However they should tweak a little the weapon.
For me they should add one energized swing as a base and let +2 from PC . And they should add a delay between 2 activations.
Should they introduce the change I propose as soon as possible?
No, they should not cause players have already been upset of this nerf.
Do players overreact about this nerf?
Sure… This weapon was not overpowered, it was far more than this. This weapon was the more powerful melee weapon you could get…
And the worse is… This has not changed if you have PC
Besser nen Windbeutel als jemand der nur gequirlten Bockmist von sich gibt.
“Zealots” wollen Vets nur das Spiel kaputtmachen, weil die ja alle neidisch sind und immer die besten sein müssen.
Ich erinnere mich auch, dass du irgendwann Anfang Februar kein Bock mehr auf das Spiel gehabt hattest, weil alles kacke und langweilig… bist aber immer noch hier.
Oder wie du prahlst, dass du Damnation regelmäßig clearst und deshalb super viel Ahnung hast, aber irgendwann mal meintest, dass du nur eine 50/50 Chance mit einem Vet + PS hast, ans Ende zu kommen. Die beste Range-klasse mit der besten Melee-waffe… und da schaffst du es nicht zu carrien, meckerst aber über all die anderen, welche angeblich zu doof zum Spielen sind und die eigene Klasse nicht verstehen, und deshalb den Veteran kaputt nerfen wollen… ja ne ist klar.
Ist wirklich der Hammer. Ich habe schon dutzende von deiner Sorte kennengelernt. Immer sind die anderen Schuld, oder das Spiel, oder die Entwickler sind fürn Popo. Und wehe jemand sagt was gegen mich oder das was ich will, wie können die nur…
Schall und Rauch und absolut kein Verständnis für Spiel-design, geschweige denn andere Meinungen… nichts weiter. Allein nur um den nächsten Mimimi-Post zu lesen würde ich dafür beten, dass FS das Powersword ins Sankt Nimmerlein verfrachtet. Aber hey… ich kenne auch Leute die das spielen möchten, und Überraschung… selbst die sagen “Ja war krass und gerechtfertigt, fühlt sich aber clunky an. Nur das sollte gefixt werden.”
@Ralendil
I’ve said before that I respect you and your ability to frame an argument in a balanced way without devolving into insults, and I’ve meant it. Sincerely. Even though I think I personally disagree with everything you’ve written.
That said, respectfully, I wholeheartedly disagree. I simply do not think that your desire for a nerf in pursuit of your preferred manner of “game balance” should come at the expense of the fun of such a wide swath of players and not in a PVE game.
Even if for no other reason than it takes more effort to train us plebs how to “powersword correctly” than it does for you to look the other direction when somebody uses a weapon in such a way you find disagreeable or perhaps simply communicate your concern to your teammates. I don’t think it’s right to have your rulebook imposed on others against their will and leave them with no viable alternatives. Not when their goal is simply to have fun.
I’m sure this isn’t practical, I’m just fantasizing here, but what I’d like to see is the nerfs reverted and a new difficulty level for you guys so you can have all the gratifying challenge you want without feeling the need to deprive us lower skill players of whatever weapon characteristic you find so irksome. Because as it is, you must admit that this insistence on nerfs is a bit absolutist. I’ve made this point before, so I apologize for being repetitive, but I paid for my game the same as you did.
Believe me… I am far from a good player.
I train… I started at malice (one of my first topic opened on this forum was Why there is so much difference, in term of difficulty, between malice and heresy) and now I play every days damnation.
But, let’s say it, I have times in the missions where I can shine and be really effective and even sometimes I can save the mission (and the team), but that’s not all the time…
Often, too often, I commit errors. Too often I wonder why did I do this thing totally stupid…
I am not also the more efficient. In the video I have uploaded, I see several errors. But, from 33’’ to 1’40’’ you can see what a PS with Power cycler can do on a damnation difficulty. And, again, I am not the best player you can find…
The problem of the absence of balance is that it impacts others…
Example, about the reduction of ammos for the flamer. Yesterday I have left 2 games cause there was players that were using flamer and where stealing everything…
Sure they were really efficient… especially cause my veteran could not even use his ranged weapon… But it was not stopping them to take ammos.
Such things ruin your fun.
That’s the same to the OP weapons. Sure, I love to be able to kill an horde like I do in the video. But that’s too strong. And when you compare what can do a veteran and what can do a zealot, that’s sad.
The zealot has bonus for ranged weapons only for close combat, and that’s a specific feat (that I use for the templates I use with shotguns). But the melee weapons are all worse than the power sword.
The veteran has the best ranged weapons and all feats permit him to be even better. And he has the PS, best melee weapon of the game.
Sure the nerf has really lowered the power of this weapon, especially for the PS without PC. I even guess that it is cause of PC that FS had to nerf this weapon. But yet, the PS can be the most powerful melee weapon in Darktide.
I would have no problem that this weapon can do great damages in a limited time (2 - 4 swings) but has a cooldown after that.
But as I said, I am not sure that this idea could be taken in consideration by the player base that are angry at Fatshark.
However, it was obvious that this weapon was/is too strong. A nerf was really needed.
Such OP weapons lower a lot the difficulty… and we get, after that, people that beg for more difficulty (even the youtuber that call everybody “stupids” etc. thinks that they should have let the OP weapon and introduce a new increased difficulty). But, if they just balance weapons, then the most difficult level won’t be so easy…
Problem is that you can take weapons that are not OP, you cannot force the others to do the same. And then, this impacts your gameplay.
About PC itself… If you wait enough, you will finish to see it in Merk’ shop. You just have to always keep 3000 marks to take it when you will see it. About crafting, we all agree there’s a problem, and even Fatshark seems to consider it. The problem is that we don’t agree about the solution… but I tend to think that we need better rewards and better Brunt’s armoury…
I feel like this one is overcorrected. For starters I hate how good power cycler now is, I hate how immobile the weapon feels and not having that killing power to back it up (unless you wish rng gods for power cycler) and finally I don’t particularly like how the nerf was delivered.
Yeah this one was without a doubt a stupid weapon pre patch, with or without cycler or the stupid bugs surrounding it. Now it just feels annoying to use without the absolute bis of rolls.
Either you embrace this current version and give it some mobility, unpowered damage or you go back a step and nerf it some other way like with the many times suggested power/heat system.
Again you perfectly demonstrate with your thoughtful commentary why I hold you in high regard, despite our opposite view points. I applaud you. And thank you for being so thorough in your response.
But I still fundamentally disagree that a nerf was “needed”. A nerf may have been preferred by some here in the forums, perhaps even many, but a need implies an empiric standard that does not exist when we are discussing something that ultimately comes down to one’s individual enjoyment, which is an inherently subjective consideration, and varies from person to person.
For all your eloquent observations, your assessment is still built on subjective preference. Because of that, I don’t think it’s right for any one side to dictate the playstyle of the other. I’m trying to be careful with my wording, because I don’t want to diminish your concerns, but what you’ve listed, I myself simply don’t see as problems.
Perhaps that reflects a lack of discernment on my part, but it makes no difference to me how others play as long as they’re not being jerks. If they want to mow down the hoards with an OP weapon and get to them before I do then that just means I have to be faster next time. Do I see things that annoy me in-game from other players? Sure, sometimes. This is a multiplayer game. And though I’m confident that you especially do not intend for it to come across as such, the bulk of the pro-nerf arguments simply come across as elitist. “My way of fun or no fun at all”.
But rather than finding ways to circumvent this, the nerfs have simply eradicated the option of such playstyles from existence. This uncompromising, overbearing approach is the kind of thing that does damage to the playerbase, and the player count wasn’t in the safest place to begin with. Speaking for myself, the nerfs have shattered my fun. And I know I’m not alone. Anecdotally, based on what I’ve read outside the forums, I’m honestly not even sure if removing the locks would be sufficient to repair the damage and bring in more players if the nerfs aren’t also rescinded or at least heavily revised.
At its core though, I just don’t think it’s right to be taking something away from another group that holds another view to my own. Whether or not that’s intentional is ultimately less important than the fact that this approach, in appeasing one side of the player base, has made the other actively poorer and offered NOTHING in return.
I suspect that neither of us is going to convince the other to change our opinion, but I really appreciate the thoughtful, polite discourse and your thorough responses.
And yet there is not a single weapon that got “eradicated (…) from existence”. The Power Sword still slaughters waves and elites, and the Flamer still kills everything but Crushers.
Whenever we are at a point where FS does kill a weapon my view will change, but right now everyone who says the Flamer, or PS is dead is really in dire need to adjust their view.