There must never be a situation where you hesitate to nerf the DS or Plasma Gun just because of backlash from certain influential communities. Just like with the Power Sword, there will no doubt be review bombing. But you must not cater to those who try to force changes through such pressure or force. Balance tuning is for everyone, it’s meant to ensure that all players can enjoy and play the game comfortably moving forward.
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There wouldn’t have been a problem in the slightest if balance changes were more frequent and underwhelming weapons weren’t left to rot in such states for years (Hellbore lasgun… ahem-ahem, a weapon so broken in parts of its core that it’s actually funny).
So hopefully, there will be more communication, more feedback collection, and more frequent changes. However, what we going to have soon is a good start!
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cudos to op, well said
anyway: those DS / Plasma Gun people can switch to Ogryn and its non existent overperforming skill floor xD
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All players? you mean you represent everyone? Where is your investigative report? Where does your data come from?
Look at helldiver2, that’s the most obvious example of a game balance issue. Obviously, the results do not support your point of view.
Some people seem to forget that this forum doesn’t represent the majority, that the people who come here are a very, very small percentage of the players, and that most people would never come here when they didn’t have a problem.
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I don’t think the game lives or dies by balance (it would have died a while ago if so), and outside of high Havoc levels, the game’s weapon balance, given that it has triple digits worth of weapons, honestly isn’t that bad currently.
For people playing Malice/Heresy/Damnation, the “meta” that is often complained about online basically doesn’t exist the way it does for the people playing Havoc 40. You can run most anything and do fine. You don’t see the same “meta” builds and weapons every single run.
The “harder than hard” modes, Auric Maelstrom and Havoc, appear to have been heavily built around, or at least been tuned in ways that dramatically emphasize the qualities of, a handful of weapons that are stunningly capable in the way the dev’s have chosen to make those modes extra-hard. Outside of those challenge modes, mostly such weapons don’t feel anywhere near as capable, a PG doesn’t have the same pull in Damnation that it does at Havoc 40 when you aren’t ultra-limited on ammo and don’t have 12 dudes spawning on the same spot for the PG to insta-blap.
That said, I think the DS desperately needs its ability to defeat armor heavily reduced or eliminated (even setting balance issues aside, a saber has no business defeating heavy armor with pokes, that ability is narratively inappropriate), and I’m not super opposed to the new PG changes, but I also don’t think they’re a huge issue regarding larger retention or playability issues for your average player at typical difficulty levels in their current state.
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But the presence of an OP weapon is a problem for everyone – even if you use it or not, even if you like it or not. It’s just a bad thing to have in the game.
Also, I’d assume that if so few people are opposing the changes to these guns, then we probably have a situation where you’re in the minority. Both the pro-nerfers and the anti-nerfers came here to complain and discuss – we’re inherently a small portion of the player base. But if you’re a minority within a minority, you should present some solid evidence to conclude that there’s actually more opposition to fixes or that the split is equal.
What might actually be true is that the majority of the player base is simply unaware of the issue. Then there’s a smaller majority that supports fixes, and finally, a small minority that opposes them.
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This.
When they say “all players”, they of course mean just players from forums with thousands of hours. A bit tacky to word the post that way, trying to misrepresent who wants these nerfs the most.
In fact, casual players don’t care for nerfs. To them, it’s like removing content or at least wasting game dev time when they could spend it on improving something else.
But at this point, let them nerf DS and plasma. After the past revolver nerf where they just slightly nerfed rending, I have hopes Fatshark won’t just destroy both weapons. Funny how small that nerf was, yet people instantly stopped claiming revolver was OP.
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First, the game lives and dies by its core mechanics and content, but it can be brought down by a lack of balancing. We all love Darktide here and don’t want it to be beaten down by itself.
Also, I wouldn’t go as far as to call Auric a super hard mode – because it isn’t. Many players are perfectly fine there, and what’s worse is that the OP stuff is so OP that it turns a supposedly hard mode into something much easier. As for Malice – there’s no real meta there because you can complete it with an under-leveled piece of soap and not even feel it. It’s a tutorial difficulty for newbies, giga casuals, or people doing penances.
The actual fun and challenge of this game come from solving fast-paced puzzles under tight time pressure by leveraging your mechanical skill and knowledge of the game, and long-term puzzles through buildcrafting and progression.
When a weapon is too strong or too weak on its own, it invalidates parts of that fun and challenge – and that makes the game feel worse overall.
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We mean all, as everyone who plays the game. Because fixing OP stuff is good for the game’s health in general.
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Basicaly this, it’s not about to nerf or not to nerf. Both buffs and nerfs can be harmfull.
Also interesting how it turned up with flamer. Me personaly and many others were advocating for the flamer armor damage nerf. There was some voices about cleave. For some reason FS also nerfed flamer ammo.
Some people immideately start crying that flamer is literally unplaybale.
And look what we have now. It was about cleave all along, flamer is a king in Havoc cause of density.
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Yes, I know what you mean. But it doesn’t allign with what the many players think outside these discussions. You can twist it around all you want, but I have friends of all skill levels playing with me, while I’m myself Havoc 40 regular. How many Havoc 40 players said they’re happy with these potential changes (when I asked)? Zero.
I have two friends with ~100 hours who I sometimes play with on normal Damnation. One of them who ran two melee weapons on Psyker, DS and Greatsword.
Do you really think they consider this change a healthy one when devs nerf one of the two weapons they enjoy? Be honest.
Yes, I tried to push them to try and use other weapons. But if people don’t enjoy them, you can’t do anything about it. When they saw me using tac axe and combat axe all the time, all they could say, “How can you use that? These axes feel so awful to wield”.
At least more weapon buffs come with the next patch.
Don’t negotiate with terrorists
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If they haven’t expirienced DS on vet or zealot, they probably will not understand. But again, if they invest 200 hours more, will their opinion on DS change? What about 500 hours more?
Like you can’t rely on the feedback of unexpirienced players about raw balance, cause their opinion may change tomorrow. Unless it’s very argumented, not pure emotion “i will be frustrated”. About bad tutorial, grind, difficulty curve, sure. All things that no matter the hours will stay bad. But the balance perception changes with time.
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How many Havoc 40 players said they’re happy with these potential changes (when I asked)? All of ’em.
That’s unfortunate for your friend then. That’s why I support the idea of having a mark for the DS that retains the thrust stagger instead of the parry – so lower skill level enjoyers of the weapon can still use it comfortably.
And it’s not like these changes kill the weapon – that’s why I prefer to call them fixes. We’re not coming from just “feelings” toward the weapon, but from hard statistics and hard feelings about those statistics. The weapon is overrepresented in higher difficulties, has almost no drawbacks, absurdly low TTK, and still retains impeccable defensive capabilities – all while being one of the simplest weapons in the game.
And the supposed changes actually make it a better weapon: they narrow its niche, give it more room for skill expression, and buff the underperforming mark.
If changes like that aren’t considered healthy for the game, then brother – maybe no balance change that isn’t a buff would ever be seen as healthy.
And that “it’s a PvE game so balance doesn’t matter” argument is so delusional there’s no reason to even entertain it.
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years ago, ‘we’ used to say: “If you want to hate your game go to its official forums.”
Nowadays you’ll just find disengeuous e-lobbyists and people who think an opinion is a good balance proposal, because they said so.
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Also, in some thread there was a question “why noone was complaining about DS when it was psyker specific weapon”. While armor damage is still unreasonably high, them giving DS to vet and zealot is what made it a problem. Because having 3-4 psykers in team isn’t a common expirience. But when you have 3-4 human characters running the same OP weapon sh.it just scales dramatically.
There probably will be a drama, but it’s on the FS side, don’t leave powercreep to exist for 3-6 months, teaching players it’s the new norm.
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Of course, my opinion isn’t everything, and I have no intention of forcing it on anyone.
but I’ve been playing this game since the beta test, and my total playtime is about to reach 5,000 hours.
I’ve used every class and every weapon extensively, and I believe I can judge what’s good and what’s problematic.
At the very least, the people who come to this forum to post and discuss are passionate about the game and genuinely want to see it improve.
And among them, when it comes to the current topic, the DS and Plasma, a significant number of players are calling for nerfs, and I share that opinion.
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Sure, though I’d argue that’s context dependent, a lot of stuff that’s “OP” in the game, is only OP in certain conditions. I think most people can agree for instance that the DS has insanely overtuned armor-defeating potential and that impacts stuff across all difficulty levels (while feeling narratively wrong for the weapon fundamentally), but the PG only really feels like it’s an issue in ultrasweat modes that scale their difficulty differently than the rest of the game.
Likewise in a Coop PvE game, there is a place for power levels to have some variability that wouldn’t stand in something like a competitive PvP title. Most 40k fans expect that the Plasma Gun for instance will be a more capable weapon overall than a Las Pistol and aren’t terribly bothered by that imbalance in and of itself (and might be more bothered if it wasn’t the case), so long as the Las Pistol is still useable/functional and can feel fun.
Ultimately regarding the game Living or Dying by balance however, I don’t think either the DS or PG are huge issues that determine whether the game lives or dies, I wouldn’t put them in the top 10, maybe not even top 25. Outside of the highest difficulty levels and players with quad digits worth of hours invested, comments about OP weapons are practically nonexistent, particularly relative to weapon balance earlier in the game’s life. Meanwhile issues with lack of mission choice, connectivity issues, relatively tame events with pointless rewards, Havoc deranking/party finding, lack of narrative focus, talent/tree issues, long periods without updates, terrible new player onboarding regarding gameplay mechanics, and FOMO RNG mechanics built heavily into almost every aspect of the game (even as the most painful elements have been rolled back), etc are all substantially more important to the health and life of the game than any current weapon balance issues.
When my I ask my friend group what to play, and people consistently choose Helldivers over DT, it’s not because of balance issues or a boring metagame, it’s because Helldivers always has fun new stuff going on and a real narrative drive, while nothing substantially new has been added to DT in those respects in quite some time (particularly for people not interested in insane difficulty modes).
Might I ask how many hours you have in Darktide?
If you’re young with great twitch reflexes and quad digits worth of play hours in DT (enough play time to consider it a part time job), Auric might not be super hard, but I’d suggest these such are not typical players either but dedicated enthusiasts.
With my best twitch reflexes stuck back in the days of Unreal Tournament, Quake III, and CS 1.5/1.6, and having hundreds of hours but not yet having reached a thousand hours invested in DT, I certainly find Auric missions to be insanely difficult. I’ve had all 4 classes at 30 for a couple years now, been playing since just a couple days after Launch, and play DT with a several different groups of people I know IRL, but neither myself nor anyone in those playgroups can trivially beat Auric games, we run them once in a while as a challenge (as we rotate between DT, Helldivers, and DRG) and usually lose badly.
Yes, I am younger than you. I have 600 hours in this game.
I totally agree with most of your points. I never argued that a game lives and dies by its balance (of course, unless it’s a high-level competitive esport). It lives and dies by its mechanics, systems, and content.
The problem with Darktide, though I do like the game, is that it clearly has issues in ALL departments. It’s nearly impossible to play a minute of it without bumping into some point of friction between the player and the game.
(For example: for some reason, the game requires me to press SPACE( and only space) just to move to the character selection screen. I’ve already double-clicked the game icon, skipped the opening cutscene, and clicked PLAY in the launcher… and it still wants one more button press.)
As for the Plasma Gun – I expect it to be powerful, unwieldy, and dangerous. The issue is that it’s currently only powerful in its current implementation.
That’s the problem: the current version of the PG doesn’t incentivize the player to engage with its core mechanics, like heat management or charged heavy shots, and on top of that, it feels oddly comfortable to use (the pullout time is oddly fast).
For the Dueling Sword and its place in the balancing priority list – I’d say it’s easily in the top 25 at least. If you have a dedicated high-difficulty mode for challenge, then handing players a “magic tool” that solves major chunks of that challenge while invalidating other options due to its sheer power… that’s a bad thing. Is it worse than Zealot having only one viable build path with slight variations? No. But it’s still important, and I’m glad the developers are taking the time to address it.
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the flamer buff is genuinely the worst buff they did in 2024.
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