An elephant in the room, but.. Moving in DT feels awkward and clunky too often. Even when jumping over obstacles you’re supposed to be able to go through, it sometimes require you to hit the button twice. And if your professional soldier is facing a platform of their chest (or even waist) level - they are completely powerless before such impassable obstacle.
Sarcasm aside, allowing players to move more freely and go through openings they currently can’t go through really would make gameplay way more dynamic and flexible. Here are some ideas:
All human-sized classes now are able:
Climb on about waist- or chest-height platform in front of them with a moderate speed
Climb on about head-height platform with a rather slow speed
Immediately interrupt the climbing process, drop down and wield their weapon as usual
If attacked or shot at, it effectively removes a few digits from the climbing progress bar. So if attacked by a single groaner or two, or shot at by a stalker from a distance, they still can do it, though much slower than normally
All platforms you can climb to are part of what is reachable normally as of now; you can’t abuse the new feature by climbing into unexpected hiding places
You now also can use tactical descent on ladders, quickly sliding down instead of painfully slow descending used as of now (or jumping down and hurting yourself)
Ogryns are, as expected, way worse at this stuff, so they only can slowly climb to a chest-height platforms at best
The climbing itself is started same way as jumping over small obstacles works atm: you press forward and jump while facing it.
In addition, new talent node is added to the stealthy side of the tree on Veteran and Zealot:
“Athletic” - significantly increases speed of all climbing and ladder ascending/descending actions, and somewhat increases length of their jumps. Also allows them to slowly climb onto platforms above their head levels (they jump up and then climb up onto it). The node should be hidden well below that tree section, to make it hard to get it unless you are invested in this particular sub-class. This will allow those sub-classes to fully unlock their potential and move around the battlefield with unparalleled freedom
And one last suggestion: if falling over the edge of something with no foes around, all operatives should be able to climb back slowly on their own. Like, really, it just makes no sense when you are just left hanging there indefinitely until saved by a teammate, making the process of getting back from this state rather slow is enough imo.
AI will ignore this feature as if it never existed, it’s only for players to have, to cut corners and make unexpected moves and interesting plays. From AI’s standpoint, it the same as if they saw a player in the point A (from where they started climbing) - then saw them again at point B (where climb ended). Also if you have more than a couple mobs on your tail, they won’t allow you to conduct climb in the first place.
But anyway, this (whether or not it breaks AI) is fairly technical stuff only FS devs can assess, so sorry, it’s a rather weak argument (unless you can prove you know their code ofc)
okay one carnival section has a way around a possible dh spawn to climb UP, but in which map is there a section where jumping would create falling damage and one would use the ancient glue-ish ladder that hasnt changed in its dumb mechanic since half life?
seriously, i cant remember once a ladder down and it scares me of dementia
Slow climbing up ledges would feel like ass and also essentially be a death sentence in a fast-paced game like Darktide. I think the game actually feels great to move around in, vaulting over obstacles, dodging and weaving, leaving some poor suckers in the dust. Learn to navigate the maps and you won’t have a problem. This isn’t Apex Legends.
I agree with sliding down ladders.
As for climbing back up ledges, nuh-uh. You couldn’t do that in Left 4 Dead, either, and it’s the game playing nice by not letting you immediately fall to your death. Hard no to anything that’s a cheap way of not being disabled or downed.
I see this argument made a lot by people who don’t know what they’re talking about like it’s a silver bullet to any and all criticism. Yes, this is a true statement, but you need to have an understanding of the kind of game Darktide is, what fits, what doesn’t, and how much fun something would actually be.
Is it unrealistic that you can’t climb up chest-height ledges? Sure. Is this a feature that would be fun and frequently used if it were in the game? I don’t think so. Veteran has the innate ability to peek out of low cover when using ADS, and never in my hundreds of hours of Veteran experience have I ever used it. That’s a realistic feature, doesn’t mean it works.
Smoothing geometry, so that you don’t get stuck on tiny corners and rails and other nonsense
and
Removing about 3/4 of all random stupid edges and lack of rails hidden in tiny dark areas so that falling off the map is just less of a problem except in areas where it’s a very clear hazard.
i wonder how it’s still not possible to just press use IF one wants to use a ladder instead of getting glued to it at the first touch even during a fight. just
Let’s start being dethroning ladders as one of the final bosses in Darktide. You get stuck on them so much. Add an interact button, stop with this automated interaction. We often dont want to climb a ladder, we just want to jump off.
that would literally brick 90% of the maps. every other blockage is only a fraction higher than your max climb distance
That’s hardly a problem, it’s just about adding a “non-climbable” property to every blockage out there. Just because it has appropriate height doesn’t necessary mean you can climb it. Like, all walls that mark the edges of a map would be non-climbable too.
At least in trapper’s case you understand why. Why exactly can’t my physically-fit Vetaran pull up his body on the rails and climb onto platform, when nobody is even around to mess with him? It just looks completely stupid.
If you look at Apex Legends/Overwatch it mimics an ice rink and no friction.
Darktide has a bit of realism in laboured movement from drawing the gun, running with it, going up ladders/slopes, the sway of heavy weapons, deceleration and not instant stop after dodge/running. So you can’t twitch react per say, but kind of plan ahead your movements ahead to take that into account.
What I wanted to say is that arguments like “but it could break something” or “it was like that from the start” are non-arguments really, just some excuses people make up to defend “the old thing” they accept “as is”. If you look at history of development even DT itself, there were many times they radically changed designs of some systems in game, based on feedback. DT itself changed rather radically from VT too. That’s a normal process of evolving every still maintained project goes through, completely reiterating the same thing leads to staleness and lose a huge part of its audience. Adding new interesting mechanics is the core part of keeping your game alive, especially one that is build around re-playing the very same missions over and over again (so already repetitive and stale).
Any change can potentially break something - but without change there wouldn’t be neither DT, nor VT. We would still play Left for Dead 10 with better graphics and same levels, same classes.
It absolutely will. The reason why I brought it up is because numerous times I was irritated by being pressed into some dead end by a hoard, from where I could easily break out by climbing a waist-size platform in a couple seconds (IRL) - but I couldn’t. It could be of enormous use to the vet’s infiltrate builds, allowing them to become much more useful “flavor” of vet, as they would be able to traverse the battlefield with ease, helping their fallen comrades and saving seemingly lost missions. Currently their mobility can be severely limited by a waist-height rails on their way, it’s pitiful.
QED - you failed to take into account map layout and enemy density, and died for it. It’s not the fault of the game for not being White Knuckle, it is your fault for letting yourself get cornered.
We must be playing different games. According to you, there are magical chest-height insurmountable boxes everywhere you can’t climb over. In my experiences, the maps tend to be pretty open with very few obstacles in the play area, and the ones that are there make for good cover. I have had no trouble getting from A to B aside from a massive wall of enemies, stealth or no stealth.
and it scares me of dementia 
