Differing perspectives on balance stem directly from differences in gaming philosophy

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
26

Actually that’s not the case. On Chinese gaming forums, the standard for being able to play Cataclysm 40 solo (without a premade team) is that you no longer find Auric Maelstrom missions difficult.

Besides, the highly specialized builds on the Asian server are designed to handle the extreme pressure of the Cataclysm environment, but Damnation difficulty doesn’t impose those same stresses. If you’ve played Damnation on the Asian server, you’d know that people just play whatever they want—all kinds of builds are common there.

As for the average time to reach Floor 40, I don’t have an estimate, but I can use my own experience as an example (I don’t remember the exact playtime, so I’ll use level as a reference):

My first character was a Veteran. I reached level 100, then cleared Cataclysm 40 for the first time with a premade team and got the materials. By level 200, I climbed to Floor 40 almost entirely on my own (I joined a team near the end just to save time instead of grinding further).

To be fair, I have to admit that a small subset of players do reach Cataclysm 40 by sticking to premade squads the entire time, and they might end up in the situation you described. However, even these players can improve their skills under the harsh conditions of Cataclysm and with the guidance of veteran players in their teams.

Overall, the scenario you mentioned is a rare exception. Most players on the Asian server don’t care whether others are using meta builds when playing Damnation.

27

grossly misrepresent it

What exactly do I “grossly misrepresent”?

If you actually read my posts, you saw that I understand why certain nerfs are needed. I might not personally want a lot of nerfs, but I understand the need for nerfs of Duelling Sword or Flame Staff or Pickpocket or some other specific cases.

That being said, nerfing VOC and Bubble, but barely buffing other abilities?

If barely anyone uses bubble outside of Havoc, why was it nerfed? Bubble doesn’t impact how fast enemies are killed, meaning it’s not the cause of current enemy density. In fact, Scrier’s Gaze in the hands of skilled player gives them both more DPS and more personal survivability. This nerf to bubble only made it so it cannot be used with other keystones, aside from Warp Charges which reduces its cooldown. I’ve used Bubble in brainburst-focused Havoc build with mid keystone, and Bubble already came slower than with the meta setup.

VOC is undeniably strong, but it was just that Vet’s other two abilities were underpowered compared to it for a very long time, and it’s hard for most people to play Vet in a different way. I play all three ultimates, but I empathize with other players who see no reason to play anything but VOC. Exe Stance just recently got 10% highlight and longer duration, and it’s a far cry from Scum’s Desperado in Havoc and Sharpshooter keystone is just weaker than the other two. The changes to Stealth are decent, but they don’t do much in the long run. Veteran just cannot afford running into groups of enemies in Havoc in Stealth to be on the offensive. Take +1 charge talent and the cooldown is way too long.

I’m pretty sure VOC’s nerf is not enough anyways. They’re probably gonna nerf it again in 6 months, people won’t use the square wall or stealth. They go against the design of the gamemode. Bubble nerf is just weird all around.

just one out of the 45+ difficulty levels the game offers

Regular Damnation is balanced, it’s just too easy for good players. Anything below Heresy is a non-difficulty, basically a practice until you reach level 30. Heresy is… I haven’t played it in a long time, but I’ll be generous and say it’s normal mode for newer players, while Damnation is normal mode for slightly less new players.

Auric can be hard, but I know some people disagree. I played duos in auric and I played auric with bad teammates and builds that take way more skills than meta setups. It’s plenty challenging for the majority of the playerbase. People with lots of hours expect a bit much from PVE game with slow content updates if they want challenging game every time in auric. The challenge comes from overcoming new challenges, and not fighting Crusher for the 1000th time, expecting it to be a challenge every single firefight, no?

Havoc is broken. Havoc 31 can be as hard as Havoc 40 if you roll a bad map and a set of modifiers, also depends on the teammates heavily. Havoc needs a total rebalance of climbing experience, locking certain modifiers to appear only on high levels of Havoc, and I’d argue certain maps too.

28

Most EU players don’t know smoke grenades stop Rodin Karnak from shooting at the players.

Smoke is also not meta on EU servers, because it has a hard to pinpoint hitbox and mechanics are not clearly explained anywhere in the game. There’s no way to “train” smoke placement in the game, you need dozens and dozens of real games experience and lots of research outside of the game to understand how smoke works.

Lots of people also don’t know how to push with the smoke. You throw smoke grenade and your team wrongly camps the same spot, when the right call is to push enemies Gunners at the same time as you cover Gunners with smoke. Otherwise you just let enemies stack in the backline, and when the smoke disappears you will be met with a gunner wall.

I’ve used smoke probably a dozen times or so but personally I don’t like it even after winning games with it, because it can be inconsistent. I’ve seen dogs still jumping at players inside the smoke. Gunners keep shooting through the smoke. It can mess up visibility for fighting elites.

Yes, people have trouble fighting Twins to this day. Despite the fact that you can kill Rinda Karnak in 2 clips of Bolter if you shoot her in the head while the shield is down. Most players are still too scared to fight them in melee, most Psykers don’t use melee against Twins in public lobbies that I play. It’s a mess.

Weapons like chainsword and shock maul are good against Twins too, one player with one of them is enough to quickly break their shield. It’s just that they’re not that great for the rest of the mission.

29

If a PVE game level is designed for peak players only, leaving out most players, its complete failure. This aint a PVP game that has rank in it anyways

30

Using smoke grenades on the EU server is indeed a frustrating experience. On the Asian server, the use of smoke grenades is, loosely speaking, a systematically inherited practice. Outside the game, many players teach you exactly how to throw smoke grenades—even down to the precise placement for every checkpoint on every map. No matter which class you play, you’ll often hear one phrase: “Follow the smoke.”

That’s actually the charm of smoke grenades: you act as the team’s brain, deciding how the group moves forward. (In fact, in random lobbies where no one uses voice chat, smoke grenades are the clearest signal to unify the team.) Players on the Asian server enjoy this kind of contribution to the team—even if it means giving up carrying armor-piercing grenades to deal more personal damage.

31

Any videos of gameplay from the Vet’s perspective for smokes? When I looked on youtube previously there was very little that showed up.

33

I’m sorry, I don’t know how to upload videos to YouTube either，Or does this website support uploading video files?

34

Up 30mb last i checked

35

yep, they will keep shoot the position they last seen you, even in smoke.

However, with smoke, it’s more enjoyable to stand and shoot other enemies when there are no melee enemies around.

36

Your comment implied people want the entire game designed in the context of expecting people to have a pre-made, when in reality people only ask for Havoc 40 to be designed that way. Which, as I pointed out, is an absolutely tiny portion of the difficulties offered.

Hence it is a gross misrepresentation to extend “I want Havoc 40 to challenge my pre made” to “I want the whole game to be miserable for PUGers”.

The rest of your post is more or less irrelevant to what I was saying, though I admit I have to grit my teeth to not get sidetracked getting on my soapbox defending Exe Stance. Every comment made against it just reminds we why we’re not allowed to have nice things in this game.

37

So I would like to share (actually copy paste from my reply for another post) some of my opinions. First thing first, what ever I said may not be like one hundred correct or related to your opinion, so if I offended you my apologies. it could be I don’t fully understand.

So here is my opinion, I don’t think the balance change we are receiving is like “right” or “wrong”, I played with my friends a lot in havoc, one from China, one from Germany, and one just like me we are in Canada, so I have heard tons of different opinions, Euro communities they are more casual, meanwhile somehow players in Chinese communities they really take thing seriously, so our game play was like first we fulfill the Chinese guy’s wish to reach the level 40 every week, than we just try out all the build we want. And yes, the meta would be just like what you mentioned, Voc veteran and bubble shield, using the meta we are quit good to pass the lvl 40 in one or two runs.

but do I think they need a nerf ? Well it’s a yes and no answer I will give, yes because those talent are performing way better than other talents, and they are slowly strangling other talents, for instant if we can pass havoc 40 way easier with shields and voc why should we choose anything else? For instant once my Chinese friend invited me to hongkong server to paly with him, I’m really experience with zealot with the critical build (fury of the faithful with hammer), I myself don’t use any mod but my friend told me I was like lv500 or something basically they said it was high. But no body would like even to try to join. I have practiced so much to master the usage of all aspects of zealot and people only want a zealot with chorus, it’s very frustrating, not to mention in hongkong server looks like everyone expected you to have the health bar mod on so they don’t need to paint for you. It’s quit annoying for me since I personally (only personally) think the hp bar mod is quit like a cheating. So overall, I think they deserve a nerf because they are way over performed than other talents.

so why not buffing all other talents you may ask? Here is the “NO” part, the reason is simple, the Havoc has broken tons of the basic mechanics and CAN NOT be considered the same as the normal plays like maelstroms or Auric. The “emperor’s light fading” has pushed players to choose the shield, when the game first came out, we zealots use fury charge to flank the ranged enemies ( good old days, stalkers used to be walking backwards super fast), or simply dodge our way through, in havoc 40 stalkers and traitor guards three shots you without even let your teammate to revive you, they don’t even switch to melee even you are with in melee range. like what you said about the reviving perk for the VOC, I totally agree, but it’s not really “not useful in higher difficulties” it’s not useful in havoc 40 only. Why a revive perk in a place that you can’t even revive? Not to mention the armored horde, people saying that “we don’t need meta”, tell me, here is a small room, here are ten or twenty crushers and bulwarks in front of you, sometime they even just “teleport” to your face, without a VOC or Chorus, what you gonna do? grenades? supplies are extremely limited. Shoot your bolters? nah not enough ammo, even veteran himself needs more ammo. If we only use Havoc to do the balance, everything needs a buff. Stagger, suppression, dodge, these were the basic mechanics for defense, but in havoc all these mechanics has been suspended, you want to stun lock the enemy? good luck with the glowing crushers. you want to suppression the enemies? Guess what you don’t have ammo, you need to save for high value targets (the trapper is the worst when they came among ten crushers with glowing blue eyes). Dodge? Gunners three shots you when you are dancing with the crushers. I haven’t seen a normal horde with zombies for quit a while now. Every time if there was a horde there were only crushers and berserkers, not enjoyable to fight against nor enjoyable to watch. I want to see a chainsaw tears through bodies with blood and flesh split through the screen, not an iron wall that can one shoot you and you are using a needle to stab them like you are a desperate man.

oh wow I really wrote a lot, but if you read through I really appreciate that, the havoc is the thing behind everything, if you look closer to the meta build, you will see no matter VOC, Chorus, or smoke grenade no of them are really “Darktide skill based”, I’m not saying if you are using these you are not skilled, no, if you use those you are actually very skilled, because you know the main issue of the havoc : extremely high enemy damage, reduced stagger receiving, limited supplies and most importantly, reduced basic mechanic that made Darktide fun, has made havoc 40 more of a dps check, you deal crazy damage before your shield and golden health gone, congratulations! you made it! No? you either die of not enough ammo later or enemies run you over. The havoc 40 is the reason, I feel like the “Darktide” and “havoc 40” are like two totally different games for now.

39

First off, all this text was translated by AI, and actually I have no idea where I said “highest mechanical pressure” (I checked what I sent carefully and didn’t find this phrase). Of course, I might have missed it. If I did mention this concept anywhere, I hope you can point it out in detail so I can find it—I’ll get back to you then.

To start with, regarding the Hong Kong server, the real issue is this: before you join a game and see your teammates’ builds, you have no idea how they approach this Havoc run—whether they’re just trying to win, or playing their favorite build. Different play goals lead to different views on builds. But to avoid inconveniencing others, players on the Hong Kong server default to assuming teammates want to win, so they use the meta builds. In fact, if you asked your Chinese friend to change their ID to something like “Casual Room, Any Build Welcome,” you could play whatever build you wanted on the Hong Kong server, because this would filter in people who think the same way. From my own experience, I’ve queued with four Psykers or four Zealots in the Hong Kong server’s matchmaking.

I also agree with your point that smoke grenades, bubble shields, and golden toughness aren’t really overtuned in non-Havoc modes. The real culprit behind their overtuned state is the “Emperor’s Light Fading” buff—without golden toughness, a Veteran or Psyker gets one-shot by a Crusher’s heavy attack, can’t even go down, and even scattered regular gunners pose a huge threat. Meanwhile, our Gunner’s toughness doesn’t even reduce damage from regular gunners.

But now that Fatshark has chosen to balance around Havoc mode, I stand by my point—I don’t think Fatshark’s current balancing approach will let more weapons and skills see play in Havoc 40.Because none of their buffs to other weapons and abilities address the core reasons why they’re unviable in Havoc difficulty

40

Thanks for the answers, I gotta say, people on EU do the same thing about smoke but instead with psyker bubble/dome shield basically, which I think similar in execution, but in practice pretty different.
And people are looking for proper lobbies, people are looking for psykers they want, several times I’ve seen hosts wait for 10-20 minutes until they get a bubble psyker. The fun thing is, I have much more sucess rate with people that are NOT using bubble, and play well on different psyker setups, while playing meta becomes long and just, well, boring for me, I appreciate stuff like smoke or bubble, but when people waste 1 hour walking every inch of the map when psyker moves his shields, this is a miserable experience.

People are reluctant to adapt, an Asian server it seems to be even more of the issue because of time constraints, but then, again, Havoc 40 not being a true final difficulty is bad for the game, tuning down meta to the point where it becomes an actual challenge, with all of this said, sounds like the right thing, not the wrong thing.

And “weapon being unviable” in Havoc also sounds a bit wild from perspective here, main issue for everyone on EU is literally that “if weapon can kill armored enemies it works” which in terms brings “Heavy Sword” or “Chain Sword” or few other weapons to the point where they could be viable with more work, and buffs could bring them up, at least on some classes, especially on Scum or Arbites where they have better “Rending” sources.
The worst thing of this, for me, is that every arbites meta build is “Break the line” with “Forceful”, and my my climb to 40 I used strictly “Castigator stance” which people consider to be bad, while, I was deleting lines of gunners and saving my teammates from dangerous specialists with forward moves. Fatmangus shown the “triple hp curio” zealot build to the world, and everyone learned how actually good zealot is only after that.

It all comes down to desire to win staying above desire to play and I will forever disagree that desire to win is more important. If the way to let people apply more skill to the game is to nerf the meta and bring weak weapons to the table, its a solution. Perfect state would be that people consider havoc 40 a challenge with proper rewards for it, instead of it being “you clear havoc 40 so you get most resources (that you don’t even need anymore cause you cleared it)”.
What was Asian server experience with “Rot Armor” modifier? Everyone on EU felt it as a difficulty modifier 10 times above the normal havoc 40, i’d consider people, who can clear it consistenly, way above normal players, even if they abuse shock mines or psyker lightning.

I love off-meta players, they are here to prove their skill, and they perform much better then even those who abuse meta. But in all honesty, there isn’t much that can be called off-meta. What are builds that are even considered meta on havoc? Do people run Executioner Stance/Infiltration veterans? Do people use Charge zealots? Chain weapons?
Sorry that I ask so much, but topic got me pretty interested on perspective.

41

What even is the point of having so many difficulties if you feel entitled that the majority of the playerbase should beat the hardest one

42

I will try to summ up
“Havoc 40 is considered to be clearable by normal players” (because everyone is brought here)
”Without meta perks its unplayable” (nobody learns to play the game)
”You play Havoc 40 to get most resources” (everybody wants to skip progresion in the most “efficient” way possible, even if just running aurics would be much better for resource grind)

So, what would make havoc 40 an actual peak and difficulty in this game? Why should we make harder difficulties if current solution to beat it is meta abuse, to the point its considered an obligation, not an achievement, to make more weapons even less viable? to make meta abuse even more obligatory for winning?
Destroying the meta and nerfing enemies that people abused meta against would serve the game better then creating more difficulty. Perhaps moving the resource gain from havoc 40 to havoc 30 (before dying light 2) would stop players from bringing newbies to “obligatory meta session each week” (as well as letting players choose havoc difficulty to play on. Im not sure if it will be better or worse for havoc 40 lobbies themselves)

43

People actually grind high havoc for resources? I hardly touch it and my account is still flooding with plasteel and diamantine. Though play time probably matter too I guess.

Honestly, outside of title and insignia I wished FS didn’t put these rewards(cosmetic icluded) in Havoc in the first place so people would stop seeing it as progression rather than a choice.

Even game like Helldiver or other horde shooter doesn’t give much incentive for people to play the highest difficulty (though that still didn’t stop player from doing it and malding anyway..)

Also I’m from SEA btw.

44

First of all, I must point out that your summary is biased.

For the first point: On Fatshark’s forums, clearing Havoc 40 is often portrayed as four highly skilled players acting independently, relying on their individual mechanical skill to beat the difficulty. However, players on the Asian servers believe there is more than one way to do it—solid teamplay can also clear Havoc 40. The classic example is the smoke grenade: a Veteran who brings smoke grenades sacrifices their own damage output, but grants the entire team far more room for error. That’s why Asian server players tend to favor smoke grenades. So we think it’s reasonable to reach the highest difficulty through teamwork in a 4-player cooperative game.

As for the second point: Players on the Asian servers don’t think the game is unplayable without a meta build. But the fact is that using a meta build does improve clear rates. When Asian server players play with friends and don’t have to worry about clear rates, they will happily pick non-meta builds just for fun.

Regarding the last point, you might still not get what I mean. Maybe I should use an analogy: in the view of Asian server players, the Havoc mode is like a cursed mode with higher difficulty and more upgrade resources. Some people do play Havoc just for the materials, but that’s far from the only reason.

45

For players who don’t have much playtime, Havoc mode is indeed a great source of upgrade materials

46

First, I want to emphasize that I don’t think the desire to win outweighs the desire to play. The problem, especially on Asian servers, is that you can never be sure whether your teammates are starting this Havoc run to win or just to have fun. (Maybe it would help if Fatshark let players add custom tags to Havoc lobbies.) Usually, players who “play for fun” in Havoc have more time, and they’re willing to set aside their own desire to experiment temporarily out of consideration for those who want to win.

Now, back to the topic of weapons and builds. In the understanding of Asian server players, chainsaw-type weapons like the Ripper Sword are already great options for Zealots running the middle tree. Especially with the Rot Armor modifier, a Ripper Sword 15 with the Bloodthirst blessing—activated by killing enemies—can handle Rot Armor foes very effectively, and it also performs well against bosses and sergeants. But overall, there aren’t many weapons that can deal reliable damage to armored enemies.

Finally, regarding the Rot Armor modifier. Let me start with the difference between smoke grenades and armor-piercing grenades: on EU servers, armor-piercing grenades are a great way to deal with Rot Armor, but Veterans on Asian servers almost always bring smoke grenades instead. So how do we handle Rot Armor?

The most common solution is the Ogryn’s Grenadier Gauntlet. Its special attack provides both crowd control and area damage, and its blessing can apply Vulnerability to a wide area. Plus, its damage is explosive, so it isn’t reduced by Rot Armor. It works extremely well with a Psyker’s Soulfire—helping the Psyker kill elites to trigger Crisis Burn, and the Vulnerability effect boosts Soulfire’s damage against armored targets.

Another option is the Scum’s Poison Stake and RPG. The most creative and insightful counter, though, is the Hellstrike Force Staff. This weapon has powerful crowd control, and with the Soulfire Blaze blessing and Wildfire talent, it also excels at clearing hordes of small enemies.

In short, while Asian players see Rot Armor as a troublesome modifier, it’s still considered something average players can overcome with good teamwork.

47

I think this is a PvE game, so there’s no need to compare yourself with others. One undeniable fact is that every time you clear a higher difficulty, it means your skills have become more refined than before