Enemy spam problem - discussion, feedback and ideas for a solution

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
22

I’m sorry, but I must disagree strongly. The AI director must spawn 15+ ragers or maulers in order for them to pose any challenge on higher difficulties. Enemies have been pushed out of their niches long time ago. I believe that making it, so the enemies do not immediately die and can effectively do what they’ve been created to do, which in turn removes the need to spam them, is what I would call bringing back the niche that these enemies once had.

And more enemy types will not fix the enemy spam. It will only make it so that the players are going to be drowning in a different enemy type, not in less of enemies.

You also proposed that instead of buffing the enemies stagger resistance/health-wise, FatShark should give enemies new attack animations. However, if you think that enemies like Crushers or Maulers, or Ragers, or Bulwarks having an extra animation\s will make them more powerful and therefore make them have to spawn less, I must ask you: How many animations do you think does the Crusher have?

-He can swing his hammer in 3 different ways;

-He can kick/punch/backhand/elbow/uppercut the player to make distance between him and the player;

-Swing his hammer when charging at the player.

There are definitely animations I missed. Case in point, Crusher has a lot of high quality animations that someone worked hard on animating. Now, how many times have you seen any of these animations while in game? I’d guess you’ve never seen almost half of them. The reason for this: even Crushers, the biggest of enemies that are not bosses, are always immediately staggered by players and killed in a matter of seconds. The same goes for as much as 6 Crushers sent at the players at once. All of them get staggered and can rarely do anything before dying.

What I’m getting at here is giving enemies, in the current state that they are, new animations is actively wasting resources and energy, since they won’t even be able to show them most of the time due to how easy every enemy is staggered in the game and how quickly they die.

And making changes and additions to the AI director doesn’t contradict what I’m saying. It has already been said in this thread: Changes to the AI director and buffing the enemies so they do not need to be spawned in outrageously high numbers can go together and improve the game greatly.

You can 100% disagree with my ideas, however I will question your position, because what you proposed does not really fix the enemy spam issue, as I have explained above.

Also, you must remember that buffing enemies aims to significantly decrease their spawns. So when I suggest making all enemy Ogryns more stagger resistant and giving them more health, that doesn’t mean I want players to be bombarded with the same 6+ of them in every high difficulty game, but now more powerful.

This for that. Buffs to the enemies for the decrease of their spawns. It’s not to make the game harder. It’s to make the game have more teamwork, niches and less drowning in guts, blood and carapace.

23

The true answer here is to scale everything back. Player power and enemy power. There’s no need to get all fancy with it.

24

I’d agree, but the problem with that is the majority of the playerbase does not want any nerfs to the classes or their weaponry. The dueling sword nerf is something that still has not happened, yet the mere possibility of it happening is enough to upset some people.

Buffing enemies is a solution that is less complicated for FatShark to achieve, rather than nerfing a lot of weapons, perks and abilities, in my opinion.

25

First and foremost, rather than buffing enemies, it would be better to nerf the overall player power that has gone too far.
The difficulty balance in Darktide, including Havoc, is severely broken, and I believe Fatshark should focus all their efforts on balancing before adding any new content.
For the next major update, I don’t even mind if no new content is added—as long as they thoroughly review and fix the balance.

26

It’s hard to balance things through nerfs in a game where the majority of the playerbase has a Helldivers 2 mindset, where if something is too strong, the less strong things need to be buffed and not the other way around.

So at this point buffing the enemies instead of nerfing the weapons is easier, in my opinion, for FatShark to do without getting bombed with negative Steam reviews from the angry players who hate to see numbers go down.

27

Wow, cool. Now tell me how many of them MATTER. Ooops, it’s only overhead.

If you will simply add numbers - you won’t fix anything, you will just ruin the game. Literally nothing will change but the time you need to kill the enemy. Yay, dancing around 1 crusher for 5 minutes is so FUN.

Simple example - there’s enemy you can’t kill right away. Bulwark. And this is the worst enemy in the game, because you can’t just kill it, you need to wait for it to open. But the issue is that bulwark, just like ANY enemy in the darktide is boring as hell by himself, he doesn’t deserve the time you waste to kill him. No interesting attacks, tricky mechanics, nothing. same with crusher.

That’s why your idea is bad and i say that you don’t understand what are you demanding.

I said this idea in several thread already and do it again:

More animations and attacks are needed. Real attacks. If crusher\bulwark will charge at you like player ogryn does - if will make enemy more interesting and dangerous, will actually make it worth your time, instead of being boring-ass damage sponge.

Let gunners(Or even riflemen) toss grenades.

Mutant seems to be strong enough to knock down and full-mount ogryn - let him slam his fists against the ground for stagger and AoE damage and actually punch players.

And so on. Even without any tweaks in will make elites much more dangerous as single units.

P.S.: I also remind you that it’s a horde shooter.

28

Darktide and FS don’t have even a fraction of the problem HD2 & AH had with the immense popularity viral moment and continued success hanging in the balance.

DT player count has already stabilized to before the space cop DLC injection, up to a month before-hand numbers in fact.

They already dropped the cosmetics ball on arbites haaaard, so what is there to lose to another nerf averse bomb? I suspect the most vocal of those players keep playing anyway, like most of us begging for reigning in of the power creep.

FS needs to nut up and make the game they envision, like AH still tries to do. If that means a properly balanced game all of us can learn and adjust to, bully for us. If that means continuing the power creep, bully for whoever keeps playing, I guess.

Damned if they do, damned if they don’t at this point. And that’s no one’s fault but their own.

29

If you will simply add numbers - you won’t fix anything, you will just ruin the game. Literally nothing will change but the time you need to kill the enemy. Yay, dancing around 1 crusher for 5 minutes is so FUN.

That is exactly what I suggested. Have an enemy that is hard to fight alone and that can be brought down quickly with a team working together. I see an enemy like this existing in Darktide as a good thing

Simple example - there’s enemy you can’t kill right away. Bulwark. And this is the worst enemy in the game, because you can’t just kill it, you need to wait for it to open.

I know this, which is why I suggested that it has a stagger meter, so its guard can be broken.

But the issue is that bulwark, just like ANY enemy in the darktide is boring as hell by himself, he doesn’t deserve the time you waste to kill him. No interesting attacks, tricky mechanics, nothing. same with crusher.

I must ask you something. Have you played Vermintide 2? I’m asking this because this is the game that I look up to when thinking of ways to buff Darktide’s enemies and make them more similar to their Vermintide 2 counterpart. That game has Chaos Warriors. Imagine Crushers but more stagger resistant, more health and spawns in much smaller numbers than Crushers do in Darktide. Taking those enemies down alone on high difficulties is a chore, especially with everything else existing around you like other enemies. This is why a whole team working together is the best way of killing a Chaos Warrior. It also encourages teamwork, like I explained in my post.

Because something I start to feel is that we simply have different tastes and expectations when it comes to Darktide. You say that dancing around an enemy to kill them is an awful and boring thing, while that is exactly what was the bread and butter of Vermintide 2 and Darktide as well (regarding bosses). Enemies like this are supposed to be bullet sponges who take a long time to kill alone but die quickly when the whole team works together to bring it down. I liked fighting Chaos Warriors and would love to fight enemy Ogryns who would be just as powerful as them. in Darktide.

More animations and attacks are needed. Real attacks. If crusher\bulwark will charge at you like player ogryn does - if will make enemy more interesting and dangerous, will actually make it worth your time, instead of being boring-ass damage sponge.

Let gunners(Or even riflemen) toss grenades.

Mutant seems to be strong enough to knock down and full-mount ogryn - let him slam his fists against the ground for stagger and AoE damage and actually punch players.

What you say sounds like you find every single enemy in the game to be stupid and boring, and that they all need new animations, which is a lot of time, money and resources that needs to be put into creating them.

And once again, those animations are meaningless if they can’t be used by the enemies, because they immediately get staggered and killed by the players in a matter of seconds. I’m actually curious what you have to say about the issue of enemies being staggered too easily because that problem is what would render any new animations from enemies to be pointless. We would rarely actually see them because every Crusher, Bulwark, Mauler etc. spends the majority of the time being staggered. Only because they are spammed in high number, can they do anything.

So if we give them new animations and reduce their spawns then the game just becomes boring because everything dies just as quickly, but this time there are fewer enemies. It just becomes a race at who can kill more, and all those animations never even play out.

That Crusher with a brand-new charge animation just got hit in the head with a rock/plasma shot/grenade/tactical axe special attack and is laying on the ground then dying immediately by being beaten to death in 5 hits from a bully club to the head.

Do you see what I mean? Enemies in this game die too quickly and get staggered too easily, and because of that I find giving them new animations to be a waste of resources.

30

Darktide and FS don’t have even a fraction of the problem HD2 & AH had with the immense popularity viral moment and continued success hanging in the balance.

Agreed, but I don’t think FatShark is a studio that would take risks. I could always be proved wrong, though.

DT player count has already stabilized to before the space cop DLC injection, up to a month before-hand numbers in fact.

I think it happened because a lot of people were reminded at Skulls event that Darktide exists and played the game to test the waters in how it plays and to check if things, that weren’t in the game at release, were finally added by now.

They already dropped the cosmetics ball on arbites haaaard, so what is there to lose to another nerf averse bomb? I suspect the most vocal of those players keep playing anyway, like most of us begging for reigning in of the power creep.

Once again, FatShark is not really a studio known for having balls of steel and power-walking through angry players wanting a different game than the one the devs envisioned. That is how we got talent trees instead of the talent system like in Vermintide 2. Players were leaving, and so FatShark has sacrificed a part of their vision in order to save the game.

FS needs to nut up and make the game they envision, like AH still tries to do. If that means a properly balanced game all of us can learn and adjust to, bully for us. If that means continuing the power creep, bully for whoever keeps playing, I guess.

To me, at least, it is clear that they will do major sacrifices in order to keep the majority of the playerbase happy. So that most certainly means almost no nerfs and almost only buffs.

Damned if they do, damned if they don’t at this point. And that’s no one’s fault but their own.

That’s classic ObeseMegalodon for ya

31

Is that really a majority of the player base?

Only FS know I guess, but even they probably don’t.

I find it a stretch to think the dedicated ~5-10k players that roll steadily toward poxbreaker + TL 5000 on a single character truly enjoy a hold W and click simulator.
Maybe that’s just a horribly off-base take and others play this game for different reasons entirely. But I thought the superior game play was the common thread for anyone that stuck with DT, and challenge is part of that.

I think this is more likely chasing after “untapped market” or players that have left. And that would just be the latest in a string of, imo, stupid management decisions.

In the modern arms race of “live service” games, tossing your dedicated base aside seems foolish. Engagement is supposedly the king in this market space and dedicated players can be worn down to buy cosmetics if they weren’t whales already. Catching a few stray aquila purchases from players that drop in for a month at most and bounce seems…less strategic I suppose. But I’m no MBA.

The new/untapped dollar is also king, though, but they leave so much of this money on the table with how they handle Macrotransactions that I have a hard time believing they’re trying to maximize income either.

It’s destined to remain hidden to us which FS is chasing more until they start to show their hand on the issue.

32

To which I say, tough sh!t. I really do think the bandaid needs to be ripped off here.

33

Most DT players I know that are worth their salt have also put quite a bit of time into Vermintide. You don’t need to mansplain the better-designed video game.

34

Players despise having their movements limited.

I’m not saying your wrong, but there’s more to it.

VT2 chaos and beastman elites were way tougher to one shot for most classes and builds and also those elites had punishes. The Chaos Warriors have a bugged upswing attack that deals double damage, comes out fast and is easily the most dangerous move in the game. That and the punch had no telegraphing, you had to understand how your playstyle triggered them in order to avoid it or else you’d eat dirt (and people still felt the game was too easy)

35

VT2 is great and a success, I love it, DT should be 1:1 of it

I don’t know…

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Guess power creep killed VT2..?

36

How is giving enemies new moves and behavior going to help the situation?

The AI director could spawn 10 gunners that can do backflips, someone will notice it and then-nevermind they are dead because well that’s what you are supposed to do.

So what would change?

37

I like enemy spam, I don’t think it’s a problem. There are many games that I wish had as many enemies on screen as this game does.

I don’t think you really have the right idea about VT2. In VT2 anyone on their own can easily take down a Cataclysm Chaos Warrior, there is no reason at all to ‘work as a team’ against them, so that point is moot. That level of coordination is almost exclusively for boss-type enemies.

38

I’m just leaving that here in case you were referring to my in your comment. That is simply not what I’m saying, and I made that clear.

At least to the people who read through the entire post.

39

I like enemy spam, I don’t think it’s a problem. There are many games that I wish had as many enemies on screen as this game does.

Unfortunately, the issue here lies not in the experience but the engine limitations.

After patch 13 happened and talent trees were introduced, a problem with balance arose as players became too powerful. The developers decided to balance it out by increasing AI director’s enemy spawn. This, while effective at first, caused issues that are still present to this day:

-Too much enemies can prove to be too much for players computers, causing a drop in frames and game’s performance;

-Too many enemies is too much for the game’s engine, which leads to things like silent specialists, which no one likes or wants.

As I explained above.

I don’t think you really have the right idea about VT2. In VT2 anyone on their own can easily take down a Cataclysm Chaos Warrior, there is no reason at all to ‘work as a team’ against them, so that point is moot. That level of coordination is almost exclusively for boss-type enemies.

The idea that Chaos Warriors are designed to be fought with more than one player I took from how players behave when Chaos Warriors appears.

This kind of dynamic already exists in Vermintide 2. Once a Chaos Warrior appears, the majority of the time, the whole team starts attacking it to quickly kill it. It makes random players share a common goal: killing a dangerous and tanky enemy.

As I explained above. I also got that idea from in-game voice lines.

They say lines like “Chaos Warrior! Maybe don’t fight it alone!” or “Riot Shield, work as a team!”

Voice lines like these. To me, at least, it’s clear that the design philosophy behind Chaos Warriors was to make them an enemy who is best fought with the group and not alone.

Regardless, the argument that anyone can take down a powerful foe, if they are good enough at the game, is an argument that can be applied to any CO-OP game ever. Why work together in Left4dead2? Players can bunny-hop and speedrun the entire map in mere minutes if they are good enough. Vermintide 2 can be beat solo, and every boss can be killed by a single player if they are skilled enough.

Case in point, there will always be a minority of players who will be skilled enough that they can take down even the most challenging of foes. However, we shouldn’t center the game around them. Thus, I find that argument irrelevant to the overall discussion.

40

If you use your brain you’ll find the answer.

Jaj22 41

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