I went and played some vermintide again cause well its still one of my favorite games and i distinctly noticed the way enemies spawned, which is to say in a restricted flow of direction. No clown car doors placed in every crevice and wall for them to pour out of, in fact a majority of times they were pouring out of somewhere it was from one general direction so the group could actually try and manage the incoming tide.
Now lets compare that to darktide.
Darktide has the distinct issue of enemies for some reason always at all times being behind you in almost every firefight, making drawn out and fierce battles more nerve wracking than they ought to be. I can understand one straggler trying to path behind you cause you passed the guy buy after wiping out a horde of poxwalkers but what i do not get is all these emperor forsaken doors opening up so the horde can take a magic shortcut right into your arse! I feel like there ought to be some management from the AI director of placing the enemy hordes along your path instead of surrounding you. One of the worst places to fight is metalfab cause its so cramped and enemies instead of facing you head on will prefer to path all the way above you then drop down behind you in massive numbers, making fighting back fairly difficult when you’re dealing with enemies in larger numbers in front of you. The whole issue seems to stem from enemies seemingly wanting to surround you at all costs, even if that means taking the magic spawn doors directly to your location even if thats karking stupid.
As im not a game developer i don’t know what the main solution is or how they got it right in vermintide i just know its apparent in gameplay and i would like to see some improvement on that front.
I’m perfectly okay with enemies coming up behind me. I do think enemies should be spawning from doors that aren’t visible to the players when feasible. The game already punishes you for splitting up and there are plenty of places for them to spawn out of and funnel into the squad from.
A Poxburster spawning next to us with little to no warning is kind of a bummer.
I’m just gonna note that VT2 did have spawn doors clown car-ing enemies into you…they were generally holes in the ground though. And it was usually a solid stream of rats so you knew where it was ending…rather than DT sporadically releasing enemies just waiting for you to turn your back because you think it’s done.
I’ve actually seen guys hang out inside the doors, behind the black wall that obscures them. I know this because I’ll keep slashing at that black space and killing stuff. And you can see the Pox Walkers do it all the time with the Veteran SS skill. They’ll just stand there, behind the curtain, not making a sound until they’re ready to move, step out and explode after two ticks of their noise maker…if that.