4 Player horde shooter is nothing new that FS has come up with as a genre.
Just because they made 2 previous games and now the third, does not make the ‘‘Tide’’ in their names an unique standalone thing that suddenly puts their horde game into a separate game genre.
And i REMEMBER the Devs saying MANY things. And 70% of the things they SAID and PROMISED are still missing or got CHANGED ENTIRELY.
Fact is that this game has a setting. It plays in an existing Game Universe, namely Warhammer 40K.
So Cut the Bullcrap with the constantly attempts to mix 40K and WH Fantasy. This compare and mix
of the Universes has been dealt with by Games Workshop a long time ago, where they declared once and for all time, that these both Game Types are NOT playing in the SAME universe.
I get it. Many of the former or still fans of Vermintide 2 want Darktide to become more like VT2.
Just forget it! If they would make Darktide any more melee focused then it already is now, then it will utterly destroy its connection to the 40K universe and become just another failed attempt of a 40K game. And there have already been to many failed 40K game adaptations.
Isn’t this just the perception due to the skill required for hard engaging? Even as a VT2 Vet engagement decision-making did take me 80 games on Zealot to get used to. Now I can just charge in with both Zealot and Psyker into shooter groups without much issue, but…
You are either good at it and mop the floor with the shooters or you will be shot to pieces and down pretty fast if you aren’t. The skill set you need to acquire isn’t intuitive at all. Zealot is extremely forgiving in this regard allowing you to learn, but on other classes there isn’t a lot of room to make mistakes while learning.
There is nothing stopping you as a Zealot or Ogryn to just chop up enemies. I’ve seen it done and I’ve done so myself. It’s a lot more useful than just sitting back and taking potshots.
I go even further, with at least 2 close-range classes in the team that work together you can bomb rush almost all encounters in the game. It’s actually a little too easy to do for my taste.
Have to say. I’m absolutely blown away by how good 40k ranged weapons feel in this game: bolter that feels exactly how a bolter should and it isn’t even overpowered, Lasguns are superb, las pistol is absolutely commissar mode walking between the heretics and executing them, and plasma that I loved even before the recent changes…
Yes the Plasma rifle is good. But somehow for me it is the wrong Plasma for these fights we have to do.
The Plasma Rifle we have would be absolutely top tier when the game would not constantly place melee mobs behind your back while you try to shoot range enemies.
But DT fire fights are fast paced and demand you to shoot many enemies that come from all directions.
The rate with that the Plasma Rifle overheats and limits the amount of enemies you can shoot, makes it a not so wise choice.
They should have brought in a Plasma Pistol first. One with less overheat per shot and a little less power. One with that you could shoot at least 15 times before being forced to let it cool off.
Of course not. I’m not saying it is. But what exactly makes you think FatShark would name this game DarkTIDE and then for it to be entirely different than the Vermintide games?
Adding the missing things won’t make this game anything but what it’s fundamentally designed to be - a Tide game in the 40k setting.
The game is still fundamentally designed to be played akin to the other Tide games. This is not a fps game a la Call of Duty or Battlefield in the Warhammer 40k setting and it was NEVER intended to be.
The devs themselves said they intended for it to be 50/50 melee/ranged. So, when the gameplay significantly deviates from that isn’t it natural for people question it when they signed up for what the developers said?
You want this game to be something it wasn’t designed to be and it’s about time you accepted the design intent.
really wasnt where i was going starting this thread, im not saying it needs to be more melee focused , its just im noticing a lot of times where melee would be the far better option and people just seem to refuse to do it.
the oggie furiously dancing backwards refusing to put away the heavy stubber, the psyker surrounded and beaten on all sides still desperately trying to get purg staff shots off or assasination targets we used to surround and just give a beat down now 3 people are sitting at range plinking away mag by mag doing almost nothing to his shields.
and it makes me wonder why? what about the game is getting people to do this?
Oh god, the memories… I’ve got into a habit of telling people what to do at the boss fight, just to avoid situations like this. Even if the player played really well isn’t any indication the she won’t fup majorly at the boss fight.
It will naturally change a bit from class to class because of how they are designed. But when a class designed for melee (Ogryns) spends entire runs in ranged mode something is off.
Going full melee is a lot more rare and a lot more difficult than full ranged.
No - what I‘m saying that „tide games“ is an irrelevant terminus. It doesn’t describe a sub genre or a game series. I just googled tide games - first page nothing FS related.
Of course you are free to consider DT to be part of an ominous series of „tide games“. Outside the Vermintide fandom no one does. For most both are just L4D clones in different settings.
Absolutely agree with you - Zealot and Ogryn players should use their ranged options in preparation of melee charges - that’s how these classes are designed and how they are most effective for the team. Vets and psykers using ranged options as main tool and switching to melee only in emergency situations is fine.
Refusing to melee altogether makes no sense for any class however.
The problem however is with the players not the game design.
It´s not about “tide-games” being an outstanding and genre-defining title like “souls-like” has become a tag. It´s about the “tide-SERIES”.
FS chose to make horde-games, but that´s it. What their whole series, the tide-series, defines IS the melee-combat. That we talk about the Warhammer-series aswell is something they chose, but also something you could completely redesign. Like Vermintide could have been the exact same game but called “Orktide - A lord of the ring game”. So far DT could be something else instead of 40k aswell. Those are just skins, nothing else…
BUT if we look at the gameplay… there is no other game that could actually be “a tide-game”. Hordegame? L4D? Yes they exist and have been longer a thing, but not any game out there defines its own horde-gameseries with a great melee-combat / combat in general.
So far if DT relies heavily on range-combat, the outstanding brandmark FS developed lasts in “just another shooter” or “just another horde-game” in skin XY.
EDIT: And just saying… there have already been 2 games. If the devs wanted DT to become completely range focused, they should’ve communicate that. But it didn’t happen, so ofc tide-veterans expect a good mix with the same addicting melee-combat.
So that some 40k fans show up and be like “It’s 40k, change the game in our favor!”, meanwhile completely ignoring what made the tide-series what it is, is highly questionable…
Darktide is only a thing because the first 2 games succeeded, and that was not because of a warhammer fantasy tag.
As i´ve said above, if a game doesn´t force you to melee, especially when range “is the answer to anything”, then it´s the games fault. And we´re in a state where you can handle a lot of situations or actually even prevent them by playing that boring “pewpew” game all day long.
Just pick my example… i did my 2-3 Zealot runs today to finish the weeklies. It felt cheap, boring, i pressed LMB all day long and dodged a bit while reloading.
This is nothing i personally expect from a tide-game and to be honest not even in hordegames in general. PvE games live and fall with the gameplay and there is just none if you can hold LMB on a flamer, minigun, autogun or whatever to deal with pretty much everything. Dunno how those “range only” players can enjoy this…
I feel like this is what it all boils down to. Some people just don’t want to engage.
Playing on Zealot when I engage other Zealots and Ogryns usually sit for around 5 seconds before they join me. On Vet running plasma, I have to be the first to jump in and mop up the remaining shooters after all priority targets are dead.
Even on psyker I just get bored after a while with everyone covering taking shots at the enemies behind cover and just run in… and then have to solo the whole remaining part of the encounter because people are too afraid to go in.
It’s already optimal to go in especially when all priority threats are already cleared, you will clear the encounter way faster, and it’s safer than waiting for 2 more waves of specials to spawn on Stg, but some people just want to sit back and take it sloooooow…
Have to say it’s not something that always happens, I do get heavily engaged in focused teams, or something in the middle, but it does happen enough that it could color the player perception…
Its kinda dependent on class, really. My zealot gameplay is like 75/25 melee focused. My veteran gameplay is like 25/75 favoring ranged. My ogryn tends to be like 60/40 and my psyker tends to be more like 15/85. Not even because of weakness its just that psyker has advantages in range and being able to shoot constantly without ammo concerns.
And so is Darktide. Which is what makes it not exactly the 'tide game people are expecting. Vermintide was very melee oriented for obvious reasons. Darktide places a much bigger focus on ranged combat and unlike vermintide which had few ranged enemied the combat has many ranged enemies. Lower skill players may opt to use ranged more instead of risking melee when dealing with gunlines. There’s nothing wrong with this at all. Aside from them maybe missing out on some fun.
People often come here to complain that this ie a tide game and shooting is too prominent or whatever and what they mean is “i want more melee!!!” Which is just a bad way to argue for what they want AND flies in the face of what Darktide is. Its not vermintide. Its Darktide and that means hybrid combat.
And I don‘t agree it is one series. It is not vermintide 3 and there is a reason for it.
Disagree again as the setting matters. If they made a middle earth game and just refined their vermintide concept, yes that‘d work. Both are high fantasy with very similar mechanics. 40k‘s sci fi setting is to different. Here guns have to be more dominant.
Nope - they pay good money to use GW licenses. If it didn’t matter they wouldn’t pay and wouldn’t have changed the setting. There is still enough unused WH fantasy stuff for new horde games. They chose 40k because they wanted 40k fans to buy the game.
That is fair and square. And I feel they delivered that. If it was completely ranged focused the PS nerf wouldn’t have stirred such strong reactions. And as OP mentioned: Players refusing to melee hurt the team and are annoying - so melee is important.
This can be turned around: Finally we have a decent 40k coop game and some vermintide fans show up and cry that their beloved unpowered axes should be on par with power swords and bolt guns are to deadly…
There are already 2 games in which you can hack unpowered steel into rats all day long but since deathwing sucks there is no decent 40k coop game.
Many people like me bought DT because of the setting - and our concerns are just as valid as that of any V2 fan.
Maybe because they like shooters? Simply shooting stuff dead until you won actually sells quite well since Wolf3D.
However this playstyle already hurts the team as such players eat up all the ammo and they tend to die more often because you‘re usually more mobile with melee weapons and can block. So there are enough incentives to swing your melee weapon already.
And that is the big point where you are wrong. Yes they made 2 games before. Yes they made an outstanding first person melee system that works.
But they chose Warhammer fantasy for a reason. Because the setup and the world-building was already done and they only had to choose what to implement out of the hundreds if not thousand of possible weapons, enemies and places to fight in.
And then they choose 40K for their 3rd game.
YES it was for the WARHAMMER setting of the first 2 games, that they succeeded. Well lets be honest, VT2 succeeded. VT1 got so infested with cheaters that ruined almost every run, that most players dumped the game really fast.
But it was the setting inside the Warhammer universe, that attracted most of the players. Players that got attached to the game, even when it had its flaws. Because they loved them for the Warhammer part and stayed.
And now don’t act like ‘‘So that some 40k fans show up and be like…’’
40K as a setting was chosen to actively attract those 40K fans, that dislike Fantasy. And Warhammer in general was chosen because FS knows dam well that people who are involved in Warhammer are known to spend money, much much money on said Hobby.
We Warhammer 40K fans did not suddenly showed up! Fatshark announced a new game in the 40K setting and put on a BIG sign that red ‘‘We do a 40K game! 40K fans come here and give us your cash’’.
You say they could have made Orktide and use Lord of the Ring setting. Sure. They could also use Star Wars or other existing settings with already existing fan bases. But that is the point. They had and always have to use existing settings. Because if they would build their own setting and lore and then come up with a release like VT 1/2 and now DT, they would have been bankrupt after VT1 already. The clingy fanbase of the Warhammer franchise was it, that prevented them to end like other studios that released unfinished games.
this will sound mean, but what you’re describing is just people being bad at the game. These kinds of games are popular with folks who can’t compete in PvP FPS games(not being mean, it’s just true), and as such you’ll find a lot of arrogance mixed with ignorance; the number of vets who NEVER trigger their ability is crazy, the number of preachers/Ogryns who completely disregard coherency(even on tier 5) and then blame their team is pretty bad.
I mainly use psyker force sword(Obscurus master race) and increasingly am running it with a pistol because I need the mobility to keep up with oblivious death-wish teammates.
Remember coherency is important for some builds…
EDIT: On the Purg, lot’s of folks trying it out since the buffs(I hate it)
That’s because they don’t need to bother learning how to melee. Aslong as everything goes right, you don’t need to melee at all. If guts hit the fan, they die.
The game is at fault for that, and Iam not sure it’s fixable without adding a bunch of new enemy types.
Darktide does a poor job of teaching people melee. The most prominent Ogyrn weapon, the Bull Butcher, is a left click stick. It attacks fast enough that canceling the third hit takes longer than just hitting left click, and unless you are surrounded you are not able to get hit while spamming. No footwork needed. No dodging needed. No blocking needed. No pushing needed. Just left click spam to victory. It is the same for Vet with the bloody PowerSword. It is absolutely stupid that we got weapons that are able to do this at Damnation level.
Right now we got one enemy that is absurdly hard to beat in melee combat. The Bulwark. As far as Iam concerned making the Bulwark breakable in range combat was a mistake. It should have worked like in VT2. Push twice to open a Shielded Stormvermin for a short duration. That would have put an actual mechanic into the game that asks for melee combat, and introduced people to pushing, and getting in and out of melee combat without getting their face turned into Lasagne.
(This whole “people dont know how to melee” story also reflects in other parts of this community, like the “buff ogryn”, and “vet op” posts. It also skews with peoples perception of weapons, like the new barbed club. Just left-clicking sucks. Block canceling after the second light is mandatory.)
I don’t think so. I think if people want a melee focused game, they’d have more fun in V2. I’d hate for this to just turn into V2 in space. DT’s better mix of melee/ranged is much more enjoyable for me.
yeah , thats not the point i was trying for. im saying about the moments when melee is simply the right answer but your seeing more and more people dropping dead rather than do it.