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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I agree with a lot of these aspects, and happy to see someone actually post a detailed description. However I think there were some things that were missed.

One is the broken pacing system, everyone by this point has probably noticed the trend of hordes/events with very few specials, and then as soon as its clear you get 4-5 or more specials all spawn at once. It just feels random and unsatisfying, as it sometimes screws you, or more often just makes the specials a joke to deal with. Vermintide 2 is night and day more consistent in this regard.

When it comes to ranged weapons, I don’t think they need more ammo, I think they need to be more effective. Its absurd that going back to vermintide 2 feels like getting actual guns that do their job, especially when you have real melee/ranged hybrid options. Currently in the game a lot of the ogryn weapons etc. which technically do have melee movesets are all borderline useless for melee, when you can’t block, dodge is worse, and you can just swap to your melee weapon and swing just as quickly. Rapier+pistol in verm2 though had a consistent and interesting use for the special attack.

So many ranged weapons feel incredibly limited, and with suppression being useless for some of them It just feels like we don’t actually have the tools for the job. I think the balancing around ammo is the issue for that. Devs gave us more ammo so we could use our guns more, but toned down the effectiveness/utility to balance it. What that does is make it harder to justify using ranged weapons.

The only reason we do run out of it on harder difficulties is just because of bad enemy spawns and the bad map design/cover forcing us to use it.

I miss having tools like the trollhammer, which obliterated hordes/specials/anything, but were very limited ammo wise, and now we have stuff like a 4 shot grenade gauntlet for the equivalent class which does single digit splash damage on difficulty 1, and doesn’t even have that big of a radius for stunning. I can shoot it more, but it just doesn’t do much that I couldn’t do just by swinging my melee weapon, and when I have to start reloading it, and you need to use it to deal with some specials, it just gets relegated to the exact same role as vermintide 2, special sniping. Most of the time I actually feel like this game pushed ranged weapons into more of a boring niche than vermintide 2.

Another really big and simple issue is the way enemies are spawned ahead, and how you almost always end up in ranged fights at the entrance to rooms, where there is no cover except for the doorway, which just really limits how much of the team can actually fight and is just boring.

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22

To add onto this. one of the biggest issues in DT, is the lack of animation canceling when you are attacking. This causes MASSVIE issues with the game feeling sluggish and slow to respond. Its really bad with ranged weapons and trying to switch to melee. Its especially noticeable on the psyker who has very long casting animation for his ranged attack weapons.

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I agree with pretty much everything here. I hope the devs take a good look at this piece of solid constructive criticism

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24

This thread sums up just about every complaint I have with the game at the moment. I only got into VT2 when the hype for Darktide started building, and I’m tempted to go back to it and not touch Darktide until the majority of the issues raised in this thread are fixed. As it stands, the game is hampered by baffling design decisions, constant crashes, unreliable framerates, and poor balance.

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25

Well said! Especially regarding the dodge/stamina points you made. When I first began following Darktide, I believed that this game would be even better than VT2. After all, Fatshark had already created one of the best melee combat systems on the market. All they would have to do at this point would be to add a satisfying and improved ranged combat system, right?

When I played the technical test and Closed Beta Test, it felt like they’d managed to do it. It felt absolutely amazing. Coming from over 1k hours in VT2, I felt comfortable, yet also felt that I could still be challenged, especially with the new ranged combat. Now, melee combat just feels awful. It’s lost a huge amount of its cohesion, just as you said. Additionally, was it really necessary to nerf every single melee weapon in the game, just because the combat knife and dueling sword allowed you to dodge faster than you could sprint? This feels like a kindergarten teacher punishing every student in the classroom just because one of the little brats ate all the crayons. Just decrease the dodge range on those two weapons. Don’t make the player feel as if their movement is suddenly unresponsive and slow.

Also, what do they mean about “no kiting allowed”? Sure, I could kite all day if I were just fighting some random zombies, but half the enemies are just going to whip out a lasgun and pop me if I get too far from them! That’ll stop the kiting real quick, especially with the stagger that comes from being shot.

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26

I guess my biggest concern is, if they do change a lot of this stuff, how little confidence that conveys to their audience about what they even want the players to be doing with their game. Some of this is pretty fundamental, like dodges costing stamina, or the way toughness works vs temp hp, and a lot of big changes have already started happening, between betas, between patches - but it’s hard to know why, or if the changes are even worthwhile, since most folk aren’t even level 20+, and the game is still fairly unstable in a lot of areas.

The drastic difference between the last beta and this one seems pretty significant, and there’s no reason to think it won’t just keep changing. It may eventually not even resemble these early designs; it could end up getting a Winds of Magic update to completely overhaul its systems, too. It just kinda feels like they don’t have a solid grasp on what the combat is supposed to be, only that it should vaguely resemble the source material and their last couple of games.

I’d just like to hear what they think about a lot of the topics currently being discussed, why they changed major rules in the combat flow, and what the goal is behind those changes. It would be pretty illuminating if, say, they were balancing around a lower difficulty like DRG’s devs do, and thus didn’t really test on the higher threat levels.

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This post has some really solid feedback that seems like a collective sum-up of everything thats been talked about on the forums here for the past week.

Need to keep bumping it so the devs will hopefully take note of it!

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28

Agreed.

Dunno why they’re making all these poor changes. The funniest part to me is when I try to sprint away from a poxwalker (I have like 3 seconds ahead of the mob) and a poxwalker doing that running + swing attack STILL catches up to me. There’s no point in sprinting, dodging, no point in playing any other class than veteran.

DT gonna be a poopy cover fps shooter, there’s a ton of better fps games out there that blows DT out of the water.

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29

The chip damage to health in melee honestly feels like they are trying their damnedest to make you want to use your ranged weapons more. Which i get it, its kinda the ghimmick of the game, but at the same time, doing that is not the answer. If you made ranged more appealing as an option to fight, people would use it more.
The problem there is, range is not appealing in a lot of places because of a lot of what OP said.

You are up against things like:

  • low damage weapon vs the enemy
  • Near Aimbot levels of enemies
  • Cover that does nearly nothing
  • Fighting over ammo constantly
  • Enemies that spawn behind you are quickly throw you out of cohesion.

They are trying to push us to use range, but at the same time every mechanic of the game is punishing us for using ranged.

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30

Ogryn’s have almost nothing against the large amount of ranged enemies. Haven’t tried the heavy stubber yet which may help, otherwise if you’re not using a shield and your charge is on cool down, good luck trying to advance through any amount of gunfire.

As long as things are in melee range I’ll be right, however I’m still getting shot from 2 meters away by the backs of groups I’ve just started engaging.

I’m not struggling to finish levels, it just feels like I’ve got absolutely no options to deal with most ranged enemies other than waiting for team mates to get them or picking a shield and turtling. While shields are perfectly viable strategies, they’ve always been my least favourite weapons in V1/2.

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31

Agree with everything, disappointing and frustrating to see such a regression to what made Vt2 so engaging and fun to play. Entire thread compiles all my current problems with the game, hopefully Darktide will eventually not be such a slog to play.

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32

Great thread! I just want my Ogryn charge to not be interrupted by anything. It’s my only trick. It just feels “off brand” to not be able to charge through e.g. fire.

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Finally caught up with this thread; big respect to the OP for such a well thought out piece of criticism, I agree with everything they said and a lot of the other points made especially concerning the stupidity of Chip damage through toughness which needs to change before release.

I’d only add that the main priority for me is fixing the movement by taking it closer to how it felt during closed beta: reverse the dodge reset timer nerf - it’s destroying the rhythm of combat, and slightly increase both base movement and sprint speed. If you combined this with dodge not cancelling stamina regen then sprinting would actually be useful if (rightfully) limited.

While we’re talking about Dodge counts - why is this still hidden from the player? Have the UI/UX guys draw us a little green dodging man with a number over his head showing how many dodges you’ve got left, and have him turn red when he runs out or something. It’s not difficult to implement (there was a mod for VT2 that just showed the number) and it shouldn’t be hidden from the player again.

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34

These two stand out to me.

Cover seems non-functional as is.

  1. Enemies can seemingly shoot you over cover even when you are level with them, or above them, and crouching.
  2. The things that you can and can’t shoot through seems totally arbitrary. e.g. you can be shot through some grate flooring, but there’s plenty of areas like this players cannot shoot through. This creates situations where enemies can shoot you from below.
  3. There is absolutely no system to make better use of cover. I’m thinking of a leaning mechanic so we can peek out.
  4. Enemy spawns are obviously weighted to surprising the player. It’s hard to make use of cover when there are melee mobs spawning behind you constantly.

Veteran can take a camo talent that makes it so enemies are less likely to target you if you stand still. In my experience you can stand still in plain view of a large group of ranged enemies and they won’t shoot you. What is the point of cover?

Stamina is a resource used by too many mechanics, sprinting completely demolishes it. As you said, you can’t outrun melee enemies, which was true in VT2 as well. You can dodge kite them of course, but that’s not the same. Also, it just feels slow in general.

It adds a very jagged, cumbersome edge to the gameplay, taking away from any possibility of the movement and melee combat feeling fluid and impactful.

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35

I think the reasoning behind making melee worse is to incentivize the players to thin out melee hordes with your ranged weapons.

Sadly Fatshark isn’t terribly talkative about their design choices and what led to them right now, so we can only speculate. They’re probably crunching until at least November 30th.

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I think the reasoning behind making melee worse is to incentivize the players to thin out melee hordes with your ranged weapons.

If that’s their reasoning then that’s incredibly silly considering most of the ranged weapons in DT are poor at horde clear. Hell, VT2 has quite a few ranged options that clear hordes exponentially better than any weapon in DT (griffonfoot pistols, grudgeraker, hagbane shortbow, Sienna’s staffs in general, etc).

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That might be a consequence of the design of specials mutants, and the existence of gunners. In Darktide you do not want to let specials get close to you, at all. And gunners quickly scatter upon noticing you.
But in VT2 you can get away with approaching and meleeing almost all specials (not the gatling gun rat if you’re its target), even if it’s not the most efficient tactic.

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Having spent 60h playing one class, I’m starting to get it…
Many things still blow my mind and make me genuinely salty.
Good post though. Lots to agree on.

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39

If I had to guess it is the fact that due to lesser skill expression, he doesn’t have to live with the idea that there are people, who are much better than him and that that level of skill is perfectly attainable if you pracitce.
Honestly I don’t get either why so many people conflate gimping the player with increasing difficulty. The modded community in V2 must consist of magicians going by that logic, as they accomplished increasing the difficulty without gimping the player.

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40

1.you mised slide , special attack , and normal attack
2.becuase Vermintide was first, bet if they did it reverse order you would see coplaints.
3. yeah the combat is different , i think youll find your over using dodge
4.ok
5. but stamina does regen while you attack, mob density has changed and they need to ge tin position to attack , order the incoming attacks, interupt them in order , use fast specials or sweeping staggers etc.
6. i Loved V2 but the dodge spam was cheese and repetitive the same little routine all occasions. when you make the adjustment this system is very dynamic and hugely rewarding its like recovering in a game of tetris.

  1. 2 and 4. its not vermintide, the games changed were playing darktide you need to either treat it like its own entity
    3.[quote=“Benny89, post:1, topic:59809”]
    Dagger, dueling sword, 1h axe were hit with dodge nerf count, when they have abysmal CC and cleave
    [/quote]
    they have insane CC . not all cc is big cleaves now fast attacks are cc, the specials those have are some of the best cc in the game , i believe the special on the axe and duelling (havent used the knife) will CC any scab special or elite and go a long way to staggering an ogryn esp if as a counter.

im not sure yet, some feats not working dont have good weapons and for me a lot of audio cues seem missing or unreliable, fully agree right now zealot doesnt have the tools to do the job they gave it. hell you can unlearn all your feats and you wont notice .

those las scabs can definitely get out of hand , i was thinking might be a way to buff coherancy and have them miss more or stagger less more coherancy you have. or they could just be nerfed :wink:

agree with most of the rest

i think they did improve it, sure some kinks to work out. but we have v2 its still there, im glad they pushed it forward with darktide .
i recall quite a few complaints with v2 hyperdensity , the cleave rebalance all were fatal as i recall.

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