Core gameplay sum up issues, bad changes from previous games and illogical approach to core mechanics/loop Mega Thread

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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First of all: I love Vermintide games. I put thousands hours into them. I was looking forward to Darktide but right now I am just sad how you are downgrading the experience that was the staple of Vemintide 2 which was melee combat and movement while keep doing the same mistakes despite us, you and community, working together in last 4 years to make Vermintide 2 a game that is today. I don’t know who is on balance team in Darktide, how decisions are made but I can’t shake feeling that those are not the same people that handled Vermintide 2 or sometimes I even wonder if they played it. Becasue there are fundamentals in Tide games that made then success they were.

Movement and Core of Melee Combat:

  1. Vermintide 2 melee combat consists of 4 main actions you can do as player to keep your self safe when you are fighting enemies. Those are: Dodge, Block, Push, Push attack
  2. The way it was always in Vermintide 2 (and nobody ever complained about that) was that Stamina is tied to Block and Push actions, while Dodge was tied to weapons, that have dodge count and cooldown build in as part of balancing different weapons.
  3. What it did is make sure you can use all 4 actions in tandem with each other: you dodge while attacking, your stamina is regenerating, so when you need to block you block, avoid stagger, push, keep doding. Dodging while you push attack for extra control, dodging to your down team mate so you still have stamina to block attacks while you revive him. Blocking enemy overhead attack, doding side, get little stamina back, push, get out of clutch situation, resposition.
  4. The Goal in Vermintide 2 was to make sure you can use all those actions. They work together, not against each other.
  5. The way you handled It so far in Darktide just makes everything worse: Dodge stopping stamina from regeneration is preventing using Point 3 above. Instead you only Dodge now and no matter how much you will nerf Dodge, we will continue to Dodge because that was beauty of Tide combay system plus when you dodge you stay mobile instead of standing still and blocking while you are getting body blocked and powned to the ground.
  6. I was thinking really really hard about any reason for that change you made. There is none. All you did was to destroy the flow of your own system without any benefit. Mechanics in combat should work in tandem, together, not against each other. Only then the system work as whole. Currently it does not. It has nothing to do with making game harder, only with making the basic mechanics if your own game frustrating. Please remove Dodging stopping stamina regeneration. It has no place in this game.

Next important thing is dodge count mechanic for weapon balancing. Again, I feel like people that are making decision right now have no idea how their own Vermintide games did it more importantly: WHY the did it.

  1. The basic logic behind melee weapons dodges in Tide games are: dodge is way to avoid damage. The other way to avoid damage is CC (Stagger) and killing. The logic in Tide games is: weapons that have more CC have lower dodge count, weapons that have less CC but more single target DPS have more dodge count to compensate
  2. The example in Vermintide 2 is 2h hammer and 1h axe. One has infinite cleave so it’s dodge count is low. Your primary way of not getting hit Is to make sure your melee swipes keep as many enemies in front of you staggered. Low kite capability. 1h axe has pretty much no cleave, but it has high single target and armor dps. So because it can’t keep a lot of enemies staggered (so more enemies are still actively swining at you) you need high dodge count to compensate.
  3. Again in Darktide it makes absolutely no sense why Dagger, dueling sword, 1h axe were hit with dodge nerf count, when they have abysmal CC and cleave. The whole point of those weapons should be that you need to keep being mobile and dodge around and keep striking because you can’t control enemies. Weapons with good cleave should have lower dodge count as they can allow themselves to dodge only when needed because a lot of enemies are constantly staggerd. Weapons that are in middle (like Chainsword) should have dodge count in between. So for example a big cleave weapon like Power Sword should have 2-3 dodges, Chainsword 4-5 and Dagger or 1h axe 6-10. Why are you forgetting those basic fundamentals of tide weapon system
  4. The change to dodge cooldown from 0.5 sec in Vermintide 2 to 1.0 second is again without any sense, especially for low dodge count weapons. You are being rooted in place for whole second with 0 Stamina because you were keep dodging the masses of enemies. You can’t block, you can’t dodge, you can’t push. What little stamina start to regenerate because you have 1 sec cooldown on dodges is actively being shattered by horde attacks which now you have to block (with no stamina) before you can dodge again.

Toughness and Chip damage in melee:

  1. You introduced 2 melee classes in game. Zealot and Ogryn. Both of them already suffer from range enemies knocking down their shields. Their whole kit is revolving about being in melee. To add to that Ogryn has talents for power attacks, meaning long windup, more exposed, while Zealot relies on low HP and regenerating toughness in game when you made sure he will get hit in HP despite having high shields. I want to ask you question: did you ever test that above difficulty level 2? Because right now Zealot is just horrible class to run. You are supposed to get stronger on lower HP, play high risk high reward game. In V2 it worked because of THP. In Darktide it was supposed to work due to toughness. Yet you made sure it won’t work by introducing chip damage. Why? Ogryn and Zealot already have hard time on Diff 4-5 due to range attack aimbot spam. It’s IMPOSSIBLE to avoid being hit in melee. However it is possible to play good enough to protect your HP by keeping your toughness up. But it doesn’t matter due to chip damage. Either Zealot needs to get full rework if you want to keep chip damage or your have to remove chip damage or introduce a mechanic where you can’t be downed if you still have shield up. But then you made sure you introduce flame attacks that INSTANTLY drop toughness to 0. It’s like you actively try to make sure you add things in game that won’t make your own designs to work. I don’t understand why you do that.

The range enemies meta and issues with it:

  1. Darktide was supposed to have more range combat. That was fine. All you had to do was to transfer melee combat from V2 and add more range combat opportunities. However you are actively trying to turn this game into cover shooter and make sure that your own idea of “hybrid” combat does not work, again introducing mechanics that work against each other
  2. The amount of range enemies spawns that map can generate is sometimes just stupid. I had many times on Diff 4-5 (even 3) situations where we were standing in a room for couple minutes and just shooting tons and tons of camping range enemies. That’s not fun. I don’t play Tide games to play cover shooter. Sorry to break it for you but tons of games do this better than you because they are cover shooters. The moment Ogryn or Zealot tries to have their fun they are getting shredded to pieces by range enemies who have aimbot and never miss. But oh, that’s why you gave them charges right? To close distant? That’s why you added spring, right? To close distance?
  3. Then why range enemies cancel your spring and movement. Why they have so low melee switch proximity where they go back 1 meter and keep shooting you instead of switching to melee? Why range attacks cancel ultimate charge? It was supposed to be Hybrid combat, not First Person Shooter. And lets add to that a stunlock when your toughness Is down. Or that 90% of poor Ogryns I play with on Diff 4-5 feel they have no other option that to use Shield weapon because they are getting decimated. Use cover you say?
  4. Your Cover system does not work. Not only cover does not protect player models as there is no universal player model like in normal FPS games, Ogryn is too big but also your Cover system has no influence on enemies accuracy. Cover system in games works because when you hug cover the enemies start to shoot inaccurate either way above cover, to sides of cover or into centre mass of player that is fully behind cover, so hitting cover. In your game a tip of my head is above cover and obviously enemies aimbot pick that up. They also don’t lose range tracking when I sprint. Which brings me to next issue
  5. Why is even sprint in this game? You can’t out run horde anymore, you don’t move faster than horde like in CBT where it was viable option to run to your dead team mates to pick them up since enemies are faster and slide/glide on attack to make sure to hit you with magnetized phantom range. Range enemies also do not lose tracking on shooting you when you sprint. In most FPS single player games or co-op games range enemies start to shoot slightly behind you when you use your limited sprint. This makes it viable tool to change cover, move perpendicularly to range enemies etc. In your game it’s just…. Useless.
  6. Range weapon swtich animations. Tons of threads about it so to sum it up: It’s bad. It should be smooth, even if some weapons would be slower. But when you are in clutch and pressed by Ragers, Horde etc. and you NEED to shoot that coming Flamer becasue he will knock your toughness to 0 and you switch to range weapon and you are lock in to rack slider animation before you can shoot, getting hit during that in melee while being unable to even dodge because you have no stamina left, dodge cooldown is super long and you die. That is not hybrid combat that’s bad designed combat.

Shooter game, range weapons, yet where is ammo?:

  1. So you made range combat much bigger than in Vermintide 2. Fine. Then why so many weapons have so low ammo count? If you don’t play Veteran many weapons like autopistols, autoguns etc. have so low ammo that it just doesn’t cut on higher difficulties with your current range spam.
  2. Which begs more important question: why isn’t ammo shared in this game? The issue many times is that people simply steal all the ammo. I don’t blame them with how game currently is. Wouldn’t it be easier and more co-op friendly if ammo on pick up was shared so people could write “nice find” in chat instead of “stop stealing all ammo!” all the time to each other because nobody in this game wants to have low ammo count if next part of map can have 50 lasgunners camping.

RNG here, RNG there, RNG everywhere and Store refresh endgame:

  1. I fully understand there will be crafting system so I will hold with writing too much here as maybe that will save this RNGtide game from how currently it looks like. But we have what we have in beta so that’s the issue right now
  2. Store is horrible. Refresh every hour for random stuff. Store should at minimum just have 3 items of EACH WARGEAR you can currently have. 3 days I have been seeing lasguns and shovels. Finally after 3 days I got Bolter.
  3. Rarity in story doesn’t go up. It should be at least purples at level 30. Also Power does not scale. I have currently ~440/450 Power weapons but Store is keep giving me weapons with Power between 360-400?
  4. Same with contracts? RNG, RNG. Oh, autguns and legendary-crafted… auto pistol? Ok, see you in 15 hours then. So great progression
  5. Which brings us to next topic: where is reward for finishing maps?

Lack of mission rewards:

  1. Lootboxes in V2 were bad. We all know it. You had to finally add crafting for red items because RNG from boxes was horrible gear progression experience for any player that is not hardcore (which like what 90% playerbase?)
  2. However, at least we were getting guarantee reward from every mission. Also side objectives like tomes, grims, killing monsters, finding loot dices were increasing our reward
  3. Currently after level 30 there is no reason to do missions apart from doing them? I have “chance for reward”? Again, RNG. So it’s RNG to get reward, RNG what reward, RNG what rarity, RNG what properties, RNG what traits. Do you guys own casinos or something? What is it
  4. At least give guarantee Blue item on Difficulty 3 with side objective fully made giving big chance for purple. At least give guarantee Purple on Diff 4 with chance of Master-Crafted with side objective done. At least give guarantee Purple on Diff 5 with high chance of Mater-Crafted the more side objectives we do. Sure, it’s RNG what we will get but at least there is reward there, which makes sure people will try to get better.

Penances:

  1. Your main argument for lack of scoreboard was that you want to highlight “co-op values” and new scoreboard will show co-op friendly stats that align with your vision of cooperation values
  2. Yet your Penances are forcing people to play totally in anti co-op way for selfish gameplay that risks the fail of whole game for chance of getting their reward. How is 1. Working with your penances design. Was it ever play tested? I would like to see devs completing some of them with randoms as I hope you realize 90% of players play with randoms without using any voice chat in game?

Talents:

  1. Again we have situation from Vermintide 2 where talents don’t feel like reward for progression. Many talents are fillers, have no visible strong impact on gameplay, don’t change enough to justify grinding next few levels. Talents in a row should be competitive, but not in way of all are trash but that all are amazing. It’s not that hard you know you only have 18 talents for each class. It’s not Path of Exile skill tree.

Unlocking Wargear while leveling:

  1. For the love of god, at least when players unlock new wargear when they level up give them at least white/green basic version of that weapon to their equipment so at least they can play with it, instead of waiting few days to have chance for it to appear in store

Too many changes, too fast. Please adopt baby steps approach:

  1. Many changes above especially horrible ones to dodge/movement were done behind community back, without any community feedback first. You had the same problem in V2 where instead of changing one small thing little by little and monitoring feedback and how game is changing you are hammering down 10 changes at once, all at huge numerical values up or down without even testing first. The change to Veteran Tier 3 grenade talent where it was changed from 8% on Elite Kill (yes, it only trigger os ELITE enemy, not any enemy) to 5% shows your lack of staying in touch with your playerbase. It was talent that nobody was choosing because it was bad, you… nerfed it. If you had any statistics showing that most players were choosing this talent, it’s actually because your UI for it is still incorrect and says “Enemy Kill” instead of “Elite Kill” so majority was taking this talent thinking it’s on any kill of any enemy. My guess is this nerf of 8% to 5% is becasue even your own team thought it was on Enemy Kill becasue UI says so… I wouldn’t be surprised.

There are of course issues with UI, pox hound, enemies AI, disconnects, crashes, balance of trash weapons etc. but I those things I know can be fixed with time. But the core of gameplay is where you are seriously downgrading your game.

Final words. “Rembmer Who You Are”:

Please kindly take a step back and think why Vermintide 2 had reputation of best First Person melee system. Read them my and others feedback about what have you done so far to it in this game and ask yourself a question: did you make it better? Was there are reason to do that to something that had 4 years of proven recipe? The core gameplay is something that will keep this game floating. Or make it sink. I have seen more negative feedback about core gameplay (not technical issues, it’s beta) of Darktide in last 7 days than I saw in Vermintide 2 for last 4 years.

Remember, I love your games. But so far it’s 50/50 frustration and fun when playing this one. And it’s not because of technical issues.

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I agree with most everything here, especially the issues with melee combat. DT is on paper a much harder game than Vermintide 2 (more dangerous ranged enemies, elites are tankier than their VT2 counterparts, etc) yet they nerfed the melee system into the ground despite the higher difficulty and inherent changes that come with more ranged enemies. The game simply feels worse than VT2, and difficulty can’t be a justification for these changes as the average player struggled on the top two difficulties in VT2 despite it being, again, an easier game on paper. Lower enemy tracking, revert the dodge lockout to VT2 levels, let us regenerate stamina while dodging, etc.

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This, 100%.

I cannot fathom, in any way whatsoever, why they have designed things the way they have. It’s so backwards I feel like I’m learning Calculus before I learn how to do addition.

The penances are infuriating. The current state of the game is mind boggling. This goes full launch in 6 days. And it’s STILL going to feel bad to play because:

  1. Chip damage
  2. Terribly designed Feats with no actual synergy beyond ONE. SINGLE. PLAYSTYLE.
  3. “Trying to fix what ain’t broke”. Seriously, I don’t understand why you would take a formula that works and then “WOOSH!” it across the room to see how the shattered pieces can fit together EVEN WORSE than ever before.
  4. A severe lack of respect for player time. In 2022, soon to be 2023, the only people who have time to sit here and grind because they have NOTHING ELSE TO DO are full time streamers. 90% of the playerbase’s time gets flat out disrespected while 5-10% get a chore. What? Why? To what end?
  5. Feels like fun is to be shamed. Games are SUPPOSED to be fun. Not a 2nd job. Or even a 3rd job. I break myself at work and come home after an overnight shift expecting to unwind. Instead I load up what should be a game from one of my favourite universes, and feel like I’m being treated like my intelligence is non-existent.

-_- I don’t even know what to think.

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This entire post is incredibly spot on.

Vermintide 2’s combat is designed in such a way that if you are able to manage your resources properly (i.e. dodge count & stamina) you would always have an option available. Whether it was a defensive or offensive move, using all of these actions in tandem with one another allowed the combat to scale with any amount of enemies on screen if you were skilled enough. This is not an easy feat for most melee games to pull off, and it is why there’s a dedicated competitive community (Onslaught Series) for a PvE Co-Op game no less. Lets not forget about all of those grinding out true solos as well.

Darktide’s combat currently reminds me of a more janky Vermintide 1. Naturally, I’m surprised to see it move back in that direction considering a lot of the changes in Vermintide 2 seemed to be in response to Vermintide 1’s combat.

Fatshark managed to pull off such a robust gameplay loop with Vermintide 2, which makes it all the more painful to not see it return in all of its glory. I seriously hope the developers read this thread and take the feedback to heart, or at the very least provide some insight into their current combat design philosophy that would justify such a regression.

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Yo Trix, I remember you from the Mordhau days. Glad to see you’ve moved to the Tide series, and especially glad that you’re evidently very good at it (I see you’ve done some solos on your Youtube).

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100% agree.
Getting hit by ranged is crazy not just stunning you but it actually pushes you back.
The slow weapon switching makes no snese.
The elites and specials are spongey.

There was celebration of how that the characters are “Low Power!!!”, which doesn’t necessarily mean anything as you can make a game as a demigod and get 1-shot and make a game as a hedgehog and go mach 1, but it does sadly ring true becasue if the characters were more interesting then the gameplay likely would have been more interesting.
If you had characters of some nimble ninja cyber assassin type character, some elite special forces imperial guard character and whoever else then devs would more likely create gameplay that this game deserves either way. Why would you have such slow weapon switching in a Tide game that is all about doging an enemy melee attacking you while switching to range to headshot some elite?

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I can say I agree with pretty much everything said. For people coming from 40k, be it tabletop players, book readers or whatever else GW has in the franchise, and also for YouTubers coming from outside, this is probably a pretty good game! From what I’ve heard a 40k game that isn’t garbage is an absolute rarity, so Darktide is a damn treat!
For Vermintide players coming over though it’s a bit disappointing to say the least. I can only speak for myself and a lot of people I talk to via Discord, pretty much all of which are Vermintide modded players, but the combat of this game just feels so butchered compared to Verm. I for myself especially hate to even look at the talents and wrote a page or two of feedback in the last beta already. It really isn’t pretty.
At least Vermintide Zealot only has bad synergy with other heros and their talents. Darktide Zealot has bad synergy with the whole game.

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There are some good points in this thread. My biggest thing is weapons swapping. This game is 100% harder than vermintide2. Im a cata player to give context. The weapon swapping slow down is unnecessary. They fixed the push to attack animation a bit but it still feels slow. Again another unnecessary change from VT2 to make the game hard which it doesnt need. Doesnt make the game funner just feels bad.

Also in the close beta the ranged enemies would change to melee when you got close to them. Feels like that was tweaked and it made it worse because now they just shoot you in the face when a group of 10 are right next to you.

The mutant needs to be looked at as well. But I made a stand alone post for that so i wont go into detail here.

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Fully agree with OP’s concerns. The stamina/dodge situation is especially terrible.

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Just have to say I pretty much agree with everything above, as someone with hundreds of hours in both VT games. Combat just feels jankier here and i find myself getting frustrated frequently not because of a skill fail but because of a mechanic - weapons take too long to swap between, every time you get certain weapons out you do a kind of partial reload animation for them even though you didnt fire them since the last time, and no matter how i play I just feel its almost impossible to fully avoid taking damage in large hordes.

I’d reached the point in VT where I felt i could wade into a horde of any size with almost any class and weapon and generally clear it without taking damage provided i knew the weapon i was using and played to its strength, by that mix of dodge/avoid/block/push. In DT i feel that every time I wade into a horde im going to come out with missing health no matter how well i play. I’m sure I can get better at the game and improve this, and I know this game isnt VT2, but the mechanics are so similar and I felt so confidant in VT2 that it’s a real downer going back to this.

To summarise: when i died in VT2 i always felt it was because I messed up. I didn’t target the right thing. I mis-timed a dodge. I didn’t notice a mob. I missed a shot on an assassin. When i die in Darktide it mostly feels like i died due to a weird animation lock or a feeling like I was helpless and just died to a normal pack of things despite feeling like I was playing correctly.

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Strongly disagree. I wasn’t a hardcore VT2 player. I have a couple hundred hours in it. For me though, Darktide is far superior in terms of core gameplay.

There seems to be a vocal minority that were for the most part expecting or wanting a VT2 reskin, with a 1:1 mechanics copy. I mean if that’s what you want play VT2. These nitpicks about dodge/stamina and acting like the sky is falling makes no sense to me, but to each their own.

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Well, the “tide” is in the name, so it’s not entirely unreasonable to have such expectations.

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Entirely agree, and that means also with the fact that we do love the game

There’s something amazing in there, but marred with many questionable designs and designs interactions

I’d also like to add one point about the ranged mechanics

Using a projectile weapon with a startup animation, should shoot where your mouse is when the startup animation is over
Not where you first clicked
It’s called aim flick, flick-shotting or flick shot, and it’s basic, fundamental FPS gameplay you don’t need to try and reinvent with clunky, awkward controls

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I don’t know. I have 700 hours in VT2 and the melee combat feels pretty comparable to me. Different weapons in VT2 have different dodge characteristics and the variance doesn’t feel much different in DT to me. All my VT2 skills seem totally translatable with no more adjustment than I’d need switching from a light high dodge weapon to a heavy slower dodge weapon. I’m fine with dodging inhibiting a little stamina regen. Gives the combat a little more challenge and need to juggle things.

What is really even being argued for here? You want melee to be “easier” so that the game is just easier? Or that it’s easier to get into melee?

Every character has a ranged and melee weapon. Sometime a battle requires more ranged engagement sometimes it’s more melee focused. The variance is a good thing IMHO.

I much prefer toughness and how that can absorb damage compared to the temporary health system. Feels much more intuitive and less punishing to take a stray hit and it refers pretty quickly when in coherency, which is a fun mechanic. The chip damage breaking through to HP is weird, but I don’t think it’s the end of the world either.

I think there are a lot of nuances and trade offs that have been added into the system that might make it feel less smooth or make it “harder.” But those very same things also give you more to think about relative to your positioning, your teammates, and how to approach an engagement. It adds more depth and thinking.

For example, weapon swapping not being as instantaneous means it’s harder to switch to ranged and work in a quick shot before switching back to melee. In VT2 this was really easy to do. In DT it’s harder, and you need to either make more space, rely on teammates, or take a calculated risk and potentially a little damage. It seems totally fine to me.

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Where did I write I want it easier? I want to be smoother, more responsive, more fluent where core mechanics like block, push and doge work together instead of against each other. Not downgrading the melee system that was in V2. Increasing difficulty by making junky, sluggish, unresponsive mechanics is lazy way of balancing your game, especially if previous game was challenging too and you didn’t have to resolve to such low solutions. Currently NOTHING good came from making dodge not regen stamina. Not a one positive change from it.

“Wanting game to be easier” where majority of player base never did all base missions on Cata is bad argument. Vermitnide 2 was challenging enough so that most never even did Cata.

Me: "Oh this sniper rifle shoots innaccurate in ADS! "

You: “I see, you want range combat easier? Not hitting targets is part of difficulty”

Sorry but that is your kind of argument here.

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I agree with your main points here, but want to add that ranged enemies were absolutely managable before the dodge nerf. One could dodge a scab group and a sniper with some skill with the axe or knife.

In this range focused meta, dodging becomes far far more important than pushing, since you can’t push someone shooting you from the other side of the room, it was entirely possible to close the gap by dodging, but not anymore.

For me dodge cancels stamina is not nearly as important as getting mobility back, since pushing is useless against range, and sprinting is close to useless as well.

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Most of your points are 100% correct, it’s like with every small update instead of fixing just a single problem by rebalancing it/removing it or changing it they also completely change everything around it like the resolved problem is now a major balance issue that must be reined in although it wasn’t even given time for people to give feedback and playtest(the dodge changes you’ve mentioned)

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For me though, Darktide is far superior in terms of core gameplay.

So the player being significantly weaker with less player skill expression is superior to you? What about Darktide makes its core gameplay better than VT2’s?

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Just to be clear. IDK if you took me saying this game is harder to mean I want it easier. I’m a cata player for God’s sake. I play this game because of the adrenaline inducing challenge. I said this game is harder to preface that it is unnecessary to gank the smoothness of the gameplay or artificially make the game more difficult by handicapping the player. The balance is fine. You don’t need to handicap weapons swapping, for example. To give an absurd example (not saying to do this or that FS is doing this!!) Makes no sense to balance a game by removing the reload mechanics lol just make the enemies strong.

I remember in VT2 when they removed the infinite dodge. That was a good move. That was a broken mechanic. Slowing down weapon swapping or push to attack animation isn’t a good move. You are handicapping the player from doing a basic task. Infinite dodges have no negative. Switching from melee to ranged has an inherent drawback I.E you can’t block. You need to do it smart. Pushing then attack you eat up your stamina. Very different pro’s and con’s.

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My current general issues are pretty straightforward:

  • Ranged Scab units stick together as squads, resulting in ‘pockets’. This gives clear locations for the Zealot / Ogryn to charge into and disrupt.
  • Ranged Dreg units are disorganized and wander in the open, meaning ‘wrangling’ any significant number of them is impossible.

In the CBT there was this fantastic eb and flo to the combat system where there’s be pockets of Scabs that would set up and pressure you. They’d move up in tandem, and it’d feel like a genuine threat. They were a lot of fun to fight.

Dregs, on the other hand, are just filler. And while they may be weaker than Scabs in some manner or another, I have no clue, there’s so many and they’re so separated that they’re actually more of a threat, while also killing that eb and flo feeling the cbt had.

  • The dodge timing change just feels bad. 1s is so slow it feels extremely off in a way that it feels more like an ability with a CD, almost, vs an innate dodge mechanic.
  • Ranged knockback is too punishing with such sluggish dodging.

I get that they want to cut down on dodge dancing, and I’m fine with that. But in a world where there are so many ranged enemies and they’re all staggering and stunning you, it just makes for very clumsy feeling gameplay. One of these needs to be fixed up. I’d rather the dodge be returned, to allow you to weave through gunfire, as opposed to the brute force fix.

  • Chip through toughness is fine, but the way it’s treated vs hp is not.

I don’t actually mind toughness as a stat that’s a kind of… DR shield. The issue is actually how strong it is vs hp. It reduces ranged damage to 0, it stops ranged stagger, it significantly reduces melee damage based on its percent… You end up in a situation where Veteran is a more durable class than Zealot. Zealot, even with its very low toughness, often prefers +toughness because of this.

A potential idea for fixing that:

A system such as ‘Invulnerability’, taken from the tabletop’s invuln save, could be added. It would be a flat damage reduction that applied after Toughness but before HP.

So, say Zealot had an ‘invulnerability rating’ of 3 and 100% toughness. They get hit by a 20 damage attack. 2 goes through, because 90% reduction from full Toughness. 2 is reduce by 3 to a minimum of 0, 0 damage taken. But if that attack deal, say, 40 damage, then it would be reduced to 4. 4-3 = 1, and 1 damage taken.

You could potentially increase this reduction against ranged damage, making classes like Ogryn and Zealot less punished for getting up close and personal.

It would also make HP curios on those classes more valuable than they currently are.

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