That’s the opposite of my experience. The game is apparently way too easy, yet people just die and ragequit. Then the new ones join and repeat the same. Nothing really changed for years, after the cross-play addition. Either I am very unlucky, or some people are on a very high horse.
I don’t know, in my experience, nothing is “that cool”. Most random players just mop the floors or insta-leave, and then nobody replaces those bots (kinda singleplayer everyone asked for 
)
I’m not saying balance isn’t important, but this kind of reads like a FromSoft pro using an items only build to kill a boss and saying consumables/summons are too strong.
Little disconnected with the reality of the playerbase at large. The average player is still not going to be able to accomplish what you did here.
In the same way those pros don’t use spirit ashes, just don’t do that specific build. This doesn’t seem that egregious considering how long it took to clear the level.
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Thank you
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When I was seeing random level 40 players who were likely new to the game yesterday holding W throughout the mission, walking past medstations while wounded and ammo while they’re at 0-10% it was pretty disheartening and we beat that mission in only 17 minutes :c
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Almost makes you wonder if they are botting, someone doing that could definitely (eventually) make it to 40 if they let it run long enough.
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Lol yea, I’ve seen plenty of very foolish players but the big difference now is that they’re winning while learning so little on Auric. There’s a world of difference between a bad player piloting Psyker vs Arby.
No they’re definitely human players, what I’m saying is that the powercreep’s gotten so insane that the game doesn’t give new players enough reason to care about learning the game’s intricacies and it makes me sad.
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On this topic, I’ve seen level 1000+ Zealots who spam ping the elevator/door and refuse to help with the giant mixed horde/boss because they don’t know that most of the major spawns are progression based and probably think that enemies will despawn after the elevator ride or whatever. I’d rather play with “noob” Arbitrator who at least does something than with something like this.
You may probably go insane if you start thinking about playerbase quality too much.
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I don’t really think powercreep is as big as factor to that particular problem. I’d place a much larger assignment of blame on the fact that some of those game mechanics are under an optional section of the tutorial.
As well as the fact that even the mandatory requirements can be bumbled through without the player even realizing they’ve bumbled through it.
E.g. I watched as my wife (new to PC gaming) was able to panic click through a lot of the initial tutorial without reading the blurbs/important info that came with them.
This is the kind of game that definitely would have benefited from those kinds of tooltips that appear on the side of the screen when you make certain repeated mistakes.
A good analyst does try to look at the details but I’m really surprised that, given the 3 items:
- dog bots can duo an auric while their masters spectate.
- the masters avoiding death while watching their dogs do all the fighting takes some skill.
- it takes 2 dog bots 50% longer than 4 humans to clear an auric.
Why is anybody arguing that points two or three make point one a non-issue?
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I think you’re both right. Powercreep definetely gives some advantages to such players, on the other hand there are so many variables in the gameplay, such player may be “carried” and “helped” by better teammates and more generious director in one run, then get absolutely obliterated on the first way in other. Unless you closely monitor such players over a long period, putting all the blame on powercreep, Arbitrator and especially the dog is very dishonest.
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Believe it or not the dog feels balanced right now, even if getting kills just for existing is cheap.
They should be only a fraction of the player’s power and they are.
Some people aren’t impressed because they could take any good build and beat that map twice as fast and efficiently. To me that implies that the dog is indeed “balanced” (don’t just take my word please, play these dog-only builds in maelstrom pubs and see what happens).
You could nerf the dog today and literally nothing will change, except everyone will be running lone wolf because the dog is useless relative to players.
I mean yes, things have gotten out of hand and you’re showing how stupid this is
Two Man, Auric, DOG ONLY, NO DODGING AND SPRINTING
but at the same time it manages to feel reasonable and balanced, otherwise what the hell is the dog going to do when 50 elites show up and it manages to kill 3 when the team is done with the rest?
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Back in the days 40-45 minutes was a norm for a 4 players team. Nowdays adhd peeps see 25 as a long run.
Can we already turn DT into mobile game with auto play button, so it would be peak?
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Yeah powercreep is definitely a concern to keep an eye out for. I just mean lacking foundational skills isn’t really a result of that in itself.
The whole point of this showcase makes no sense.
Yes, the dog does damage. Therefore, it is possible to fully outsource the damage to the dog + blitz.
Is it better than actual players? No.
Is it the optimal way to play? Hell no.
Does it take more effort to play this way? Absolutely.
Is it efficient/fast? No, it’s almost two times slower than normal gameplay and most of the time players avoided actually killing the enemies.
This is just a gimmicky self-challenge run. The way it tries to attract attention to balance issues is wrong.
No? I still have a 1.5 years old screenshot of an end-mission stats where I had basically solo grind through Auric Maelstrom that cycled through 10 teammates until the decent ones joined. It lasted for 49 minutes which felt like an ethernity.
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Yes? I rememeber pre 13 patch games were 40 minutes on average. 45 is a longer one with clutches. After skill tree update 35 become a norm. There also were different balance patches before 13th, that affected it probably. I’m talking about the game state before Maelstrom even, iirc.
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To be fair, I wouldn’t even consider Darktide a pre-beta before the class update, because how broken the game was. Half of the blessings didn’t work, some enemies like hounds and mutants were practically undodgeable, getting good gear was almost impossible due to casino + people barely knew how to play, so yeah, it makes sense that games were longer on average.
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Sure, but what we have is a trend. Runs become shorter and shorter. Cause FS does nothing on the enemy side of the balance, no new mechanics, no new enemies. Just some density increase after they released new stuff or break something. And as we see poluting the game with density doesn’t work well as a counter balance.
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I agree with this, we need massive changes for both players and enemies.
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