Your “class fantasy” is just another phrase for “I don’t like those balance changes”. Hive Scum atm is one of the most overtuned classes in the game. These complaints are just hilarious.
It really doesn’t take a lot of skill to single out few specialists or elites from time to time…or shockingly do what everyone else is doing and open a couple supply crates as you traverse across the map. Those changes do not matter on lower difficulties at all, if you are playing high Havoc, you are already above average player.
You’ll be suprised at the verious skill levels of some players, not trying to caste shade to some players but this is a reason some classes like psycker, HiveScum and to an less extend veteran get ‘buffs’, and Ogryn, zealot and Arbites get numorous amounts of ‘nerfs’ For you and me it is almost standard, and some still shoot bursters in the group.
I get that some wanted it, and i think i speak for the majority alot wanted it to be succesfull (despite wanting more maps, weapons or a different mode) , unfortuntly it is not and as you say underbaked.
There’s nothing really to talk about if everything is just rhetorically couched behind class fantasy and fun, concepts that are very subjective and exist only in one’s head. I personally find this version of Gun Scum more fun than before. I haven’t experienced any loss of fantasy playing the class.
I don’t think PP should be a Desperado subnode as proposed, unless it’s something only active while in Desperado. Class abilities are meant to be active abilities that do not provide any benefit when they are inactive. It would break the concept of a class ability to do this. Furthermore, as the name pickpocket implies it requires actual physical contact. Having ammo bags drop from enemies would be not only less engaging and therefore less fun for me but also less true to the name.
I can only speak about myself on this one and not what the rest think
The thing is that before, people could build mega damage + safety and not worry about CDR/ammo since pickpocket alone covered that
Now people gotta build towards the ammo (CDR on stimm, Desperado, Chem Dependency) to recreate that old experience, but I have a feeling they either don’t know they can do that, or think it’s too much of a hussle to manage stimms and CDR
When I see your point of “you can balance pickpocket by reducing dmg/cleave” it confuses me considerably since, by swapping talents to prioritize Desperado uptime, you’re already nerfing your dmg and cleave while still basically able to shoot nearly all game
You’re all missing the point. A perfectly balanced game just makes everything feel the same, and that kills variety. Eventually, it turns into a ghost town. Having one or two overpowered options can actually be healthy for a game. In a PvE game, not letting players feel powerful is the biggest mistake you can make. You keep calling this patch “perfectly balanced,” but the result was a DLC with overwhelmingly negative reviews. No matter how much you defend it on forums, the facts speak for themselves. If this Hive Brain nerf was really as good as you say, why isn’t the game sitting at “Overwhelmingly Positive”? You tell me. I’m genuinely asking because I want to understand.
The game has different classes, with abilities, blitzes and keystones augmenting the gameplay. Not sure how you get that the game will feel the same if everything is at an even playing field.
Wouldn’t this just lead to meta chasing and gatekeeping instead?
Since the game is not solely judged on balance changes, and people might have other things that they dislike about the game. And as you’ve pointed out:
Players like this, and if it is removed they will leave a negative review.
Yeah but I think there’s a difference between Relic Blade levels of OP (strong and engaging) vs Duelling Sword (strong, safe and simple)
The 2nd one needs nerfing, skill required and mental taxation when using something should be elements that justify something being OP/Strong
DS isn’t hard enough to justify it’s current power
Same applies to Abilities. Before Pickpocket was so braindead strong that You could essentially shoot the entire game with no care for planning nor positioning
You’re a 100% right but this is what annoys everyone of us here
Players want to be (feel) strong, with 0 effort at the highest difficulties
If they wanted to feel strong with 0 effort at normal levels of difficulty that is understandable, since well it’s the difficulty designed for players to goof and relax
This is what’s extremely problematic with these kind of arguments, people will use them to justify their mega OP stuff carrying them through Maelstrom/Havoc while still being at a novice level of skill
In fact your comment of “nerfing power kills variety” is so wrong in this context since people already feel like they NEED to run stuff like DS to feel good
Enemies need to be readjusted for all weapons to shine, and the outperforming weapons that take no effort need to be tuned down
Look, I have NEVER seen anyone who left a negative review after pickpocket nerf, play any difficulty below Havoc/Auric
This should tell you much about the type of people who are leaving these reviews
Hive Scum DLC never had good reviews, and I can list every big reason why since the day it was released
It was not admech
Its “in lore relevance” is the same as Rejects, which was a huge turn down for many after Arbites which is a “class above rejects”
Its entire design is built around the player already KNOWING how to play the game (dodging, managing priorities, fighting in melee, combos, etc), thing that inmediatly make people think the class was weak (it was mega OP on release and still is).
When you compare this class to Arbites, Arbites is a class that gives the new player instant satisfaction, first because of the dog which will kill things for you, and second because the playstyle of the class is straight up bonking people without thinking much
Is Arbites OP? Not really, he’s defenitely BELOW hive Scum, yet people LOVE the class because of all previous points I made
The issue with Hive Scum is that people don’t wanna learn, and their whole fantasy was being able to permanently shoot without thinking about anything (no prioritization, no positioning, just hold m1 against ALL enemies and back dodge)
Fatshark failed to make Hive Scum and experience good for everyone, both at the top and those who are learning the class/game
If the entirety of Hivescum public reception is “the guy who can perma hold m1”, then the class was a failure from the get go
literally no one has said this patch is perfectly balanced. No one in this thread specifically has said or implied that. Why did you put that in quotes. Who are you talking to.
Balance aside the game barely runs on anything amd related, has a myriad of technical issues from opening menus leading to increasing memory leaks that inevitably crash the game and lobbies that close themselves, to nonfunctional features like the social menu. Even if you ignore that the new game mode sucks and the balance is extremely stale, and the game being review bombed before the patch even came out, there’s a ton of other reasons aside that make the game not really well-liked right now. We can pretend that it’s entirely because of the new balance, a class, weapons or enemies being changed or added etc. but let’s be honest, this game is pretty mid, and not worth defending even by dedicated fans.
It’d be nice that part of the fantasy of this game was actually about using all of your tools and utilities and experience to make it through difficult situations, that a class can be good at ranged, but needed to use melee every now and then. Instead, we get discussions like “can the 1 billion maulers in front of me drop ammo so I can be a little rumba walking through my kite loops, shooting infinite bullet. If I can’t shoot 95% of my 30-50 minute games on the highest difficulties, it’s a bad fantasy”.
Exactly. What they should really be focusing on is optimization and reducing the game’s memory load. If they keep wasting time on these “smart” balance changes that nobody asked for, we’re never gonna get those fixes. I booted up the game today, and I literally crash every three matches. That alone should tell you optimization is what needs to be priority number one right now.
Look, no matter how much you try to balance a game, there’s always gonna be some overpowered crutch weapons or builds. That’s just common knowledge at this point. Gaming history has shown that every game has at least a few cheesy options. Instead of hating on them, you might as well just accept it.
If Fatshark could keep the number of crutch builds per class in Darktide to around 2 or 3, that’d already be solid balance. No matter how hard you nerf those weapons, new ones will just take their place. The only other option is to gut everything across the board, but honestly, that’d probably kill the game even faster.
Let’s say Veteran’s Command Order is too strong. If I were working in Fatshark’s balance team, I’d nerf Command Order, but then I’d also go ahead and nerf Infiltrate and Volley Fire at the same time. Or let’s say the armor-breaking grenade is overtuned—I’d just nerf all three grenade abilities together. Would that really be good balance?
Honestly, I think what Fatshark should focus on right now is: optimization > new content > balance. Their dev speed only lets them really work on one thing at a time. We need to find ways to get more new players into our warband, and optimization is a must-have for that. The heavy memory usage and unstable servers make the new player experience pretty rough, which means low retention and no one sticking around long-term. This is already a huge problem that needs fixing ASAP.