Intro
Hello. This is Spazz, a pissed off Veteran Sharpshooter main. In this megapost I’d like to point out a severe oversight that the “Combat Team” must have made when making the gunplay for Darktide. Now that I got to level 30 and played around nearly with each gun variant available as a Veteran Sharpshooter in both betas we have had so far I want to spotlight some issues regarding ranged combat, weapon balance and the overall gunplay. I will also do my best to explain why is everyone calling gunplay unresponsive, why is everyone swapping their mains for a Zealot right now and why so many people absolutely despise autoguns and ranged combat.
The Critical Design Flaw Of Ranged Combat And The Paranoia
As others have already pointed out there seems to be some kind of paranoia regarding the ranged combat possibly overtaking melee combat at any moment any time and becoming ultimately superior. The results of this illness? Artificially degraded gunplay that is dumbed down and kept under strict restrictions to not pose a threat to other gameplay elements. Darktide was marketed as a coop horde “shooter” with hybrid combat. We have been assured many times that since this is no longer Warhammer Fantasy but Warhammer 40K the ratio of melee/ranged would be adjusted compared to the Vermintide series. This is not the case. The ratio of melee and ranged combat in Vermintide 2 was about 80/20 and up to 30/70. Darktide was supposed to be a 50/50. Right now I can tell you this is not the case.
In the Vermintide series the enemies are designed to swarm and surround you from all sides jumping off the ceiling at you and also climbing up the walls to you. This wasn’t a problem in Vermintide as the entirety of ranged combat could be summed up to what the community quickly named “elite sniping”. You take a rifle/crossbow/pistol that has enough damage to kill all specials with a single shot to the head and your melee weapon of choice. Later when in-game when you hear a special you swap to the pistol that you have taken after pushing away the horde, fire a single shot executing the special and swiftly get back to melee to avoid getting hurt. This then became the meta for nearly all characters and classes as it was the easiest and most optimal playstyle and it stayed that way forever.
It sadly looks like since Darktide runs on the fundamentals set by Vermintide all of the above still can be applied here. The hordes swarming the players from all sides are still present (which is of course good as it is the staple of the Tide games) but the ranged combat isn’t any more appealing gameplay wise and that’s why so many players on higher difficulties pick guns (Yes, the stub revolver and lawbringer shotgun) that they can spend the least time shooting before switching back to melee. Why? Because they want to avoid getting hurt by enemies coming from all sides like in Vermintide.
All of this wasn’t really that big of a deal until you realize that there are also dozens and dozens of corrupt guardsmen/scab gunners that race to ruin your day. That’s why toughness comes in. You get a shield in place of the legacy temporary health and you can now take part in ranged combat with some promise of protection. Until that protection inevitably runs out that is of course. You regain that toughness just like you did - you guessed it - in Vermintide. You cut up the enemies. What do you do when there are no enemies close and there’s a bunch of ranged enemies? What do you do when you’re a Sharpshooter Veteran and you have to stay a little behind your team to take care of enemy guns while the melee guys engage in melee? You die.
You don’t regenerate toughness in ranged combat as any class but the Veteran Sharpshooter and that is ONLY provided that you take one of the three toughness perks that are completely worthless (but better than nothing). This right here is one of the main reasons why ranged combat is taking the backseat and the Veteran Sharpshooters struggle so much. Let’s quickly go over the available perks for this character (the other characters are out of luck and have no perks that regain their toughness when using guns while the Psyker can regain his toughness while killing using warp energy) but before that, I’d like to remind you that on Damnation difficulty enemy lasguns and autoguns deal from 50 to 70 damage and that there is absolutely zero toughness restoration in ranged combat. Let’s put that into perspective then. Veteran Sharpshooter has 200 toughness by default (more than other classes but ultimately there is no way to reliably regain that shield not to mention that all of his perks replenishing toughness got cut in half after the last beta - mind blown).
At Arm’s Lenght - This perk replenishes 5% toughness per second when far away from enemies (another reminder that you’re in a horde shooter where the enemies come in masses and from every angle which makes this very hard to achieve unless playing against the grain of coherency and staying behind your teammates while losing all coherency regen). 5% of 200 toughness is 10 toughness. This means that to replenish your toughness loss from a single shot taken you need to wait out of combat between 5 to 7 seconds. How exciting. Now this might be one of the worst perks in the game because it’s pointless and works against the coherency system and the idea that the enemies are at all times above you, under you and behind you. Remember the rule of “there’s always a rat behind you” from Vermintide? Well it’s even more applicable here with enemies spawning behind you. I believe this ability should be totally scraped and changed to “replenish 8% toughness with each ranged kill”. Unless you want to introduce a all across the board toughness regen with ranged combat.
Exhilarating Takedown - 10% of 200 is 20. This means that you need to kill 3 to 4 enemies shooting the weakspot/headshot to regain toughness that you have lost after being shot once. This is all that you can depend on if you have 3 melee players in your team. Good luck. I would bump up this regen back to the value it was in the last beta. Most of times you loose all your toughness with a single hit/two or two-three autogun volleys. It really wouldn’t break the game if you could regen that toughness back after scoring 5 headshot kills. These are headshot kills and not just headshots.
Confirmed Kill - A perk that is a gamble whether you have a Zealot or that will quickly nuke elites with the Stub Revolver before you can kill them for toughness regen or not. The same goes with Psykers quote on quote stealing your toughness regen. After killing an elite (not both special or elite) you regain 50 toughness and then regen another 50 toughness after that (if you have no toughness curios). Tough luck if there are no elites and only scab gunners.
So fighting for your toughness in ranged combat is pretty hardcore, isn’t it? Well, let’s see how players fighting in melee struggle with upkeeping their toughness. Surely everyone is playing Zealot Preacher because he sounds cool and not because it’s a class that can snipe elites, rush into scab gunners locking them in his superior melee and also his unrivalled sustain. Anyways, here’s me swinging my sword (check out my toughness bar) after I lost all my toughness and needed to replenish it.
Toughness Regen Compilation
Oh.
Melee Vs Ranged Chart
Made a quick list of facts about melee and ranged in Darktide. The limited ammo hurts even more at low levels because for some reason max ammo scales with item level. Sorry for the bad quality. Gimp crashed halfway so the list isn’t complete and is in poor quality (managed to shadowplay the last 5 minutes of my desktop and then screenshot it). Take it as you will.
The Great Tertium Autogun Ammo Shortage
The problem - the autoguns have 2-3 times less ammunition that lasguns and sometimes the amount is so drastic that you literally cannot clear a single hallway without going out of ammo with it. You can ABSOLUTELY run the entire mission melee only swapping to your revolver occasionally while you can absolutely NOT run the most of the mission with your gun unless it’s a lasgun. Not even a Veteran Sharpshooter can do that that is supposedly a ranged support class that has to take pressure off of his teammates gunning down all the ranged enemies, specials and elites. Does this “dedicated” ranged class have enough ammo compared to other classes to accomplish that? No.
The Ammo Solutions
Veteran Sharpshooter changes:
Now you no longer have to fight for ammo in public lobbies and each ammo pickup will last twice as long since you’re a class that is as focused on firing your guns as a class can be in this game.
Autogun changes:
- Braced Autoguns +50% max ammo (ammo pool is almost fine)
- Infantry Autoguns + 100% max ammo (ammo pool is bad and inferior to lasgun’s)
- Headhunter Autoguns + 150% max ammo (ammo pool and ammo efficiency on these is abysmal)
Possible lasgun changes:
The entire root of this autogun problem is the design of lasguns. Because they’re labelled as “high capacity” (despite being very similar stat-wise to autoguns) they can carry even over 100 rounds in a magazine and hundreds more shots in reserve. There is literally no reason for it except for the fact that it makes sense in the lore. That’s why autoguns are garbage. Because lasguns have plenty of ammo and the autoguns have none. This is literally it. Why not make lasguns have minimal recoil (like the accatran recon lasgun, the one that is full auto and can satisfyingly track any target at any range)? You will hit 3 birds with 1 stone. You will keep a special and cool characteristic of lasguns (more cool than more ammo in my humble opinion), you will fix the autoguns and make them competitive by doubling the ammo for them and lastly, you will please the lore nuts behind “lasgun recoil?” posts. Could you possibly ask for more? This is your million-dollar idea on how to fix this issue once and for all.
Curios/Relic changes:
Add a +% max ammo modifier for players who want to make up for the bad ammo roll on their weapons and also for players who want to make best of ranged combat.
Quick Comparison Of A Lasgun And An Autogun
I hope this video will show how huge the issue is that we are dealing with and why autoguns are simply dragging you down. The braced autoguns are okay-ish, the infantry autogun are bad, but the “headhunter” autoguns are straight up abysmal. Check this out (sorry that the video is out of sync, I don’t have a proper vidya editing software).
Artificial Ranged Complications And Unresponsive Gunplay
I have never seen anything like this in gaming and that’s because it’s anti-player, anti-fun and just amazing to think somebody would take the time to implement such a thing to be a part of their game. I’m sorry but how hard do you have to think to in any degree justify ruining a great, fluid gunplay system with such abominable roadblocks to make the gameplay less responsive and clunky/stiff and then going out of your way to do it?
Why does aiming in and out prevent the player from firing their weapon?
- No tactical shooters do this
- No milsims do this
- No battle royales do this
- No horde shooters do this
- No action shooters do this
- No FPS games at all do this
Video Example (Explained Below)
In this first clip of the video I dump 3 magazines with my infantry autogun by holding the left mouse button and tapping the right mouse button to zoom in and then letting it go to zoom out. What actually happens in the game is I fire in bursts because there is a 1 second delay that prevents and gun from firing when you lower your weapon to your hip and when you scope in. At first it seems like controlled bursts, then like quick bursts and in the last full auto when I click the aim button faster my gun is no longer able to fire as if my trigger had gone missing.
In the next clip I try doing the same with the braced autogun and then I just completely break the wonky gunplay of Darktide. Here as I’m using the new autogun and zoom in during a full auto my gun just straight up refuses to fire completely giving up on the stupid restrictions. You can see on the keyboard and mouse tracker that I’m holding left mouse button and nothing happens after I scope in. After that I try firing full auto again, this time zooming in for a second and then letting go of the scope. Results? My weapon won’t zoom out even though I’m no longer making any inputs to stay in the zoom and the gun will just continue to fire zoomed in when I keep holding left mouse button.
Testing firearms in this game was an eye opening experience. It was truly astonishing. Each time I went into the meat grinder I found new idiotic mechanics and designs. This one is really a gold mine. We might have a case of “how not to do gunplay in video games” on our hands.
To think that all of this was intentionally put in place to ruin the fun… Now that is stunning dedication right here. Ever wondered why Battlefield, Call of Duty, Arma, Tarkov, Insurgency and ANY other game never does that? It’s because there are more smart ways to slow down the ranged combat without making it feel clunky and unresponsive. Here are a few examples of gunplay done right that I recorded going through my steam library. All of the games I will mention now sit comfortably at a 90% steam rating. Darktide has mixed reviews right now. Sure not all issues are gameplay related but it wouldn’t hurt to see what these games do well and try the solutions for yourself. Gameplay is THE king. It is what keeps people playing after they grinded out everything and achieved everything too. If gameplay won’t be fluid and enjoyable then not only there won’t be any long-time players but also it will shorten the attention span of the newcomers. Just make it a seamless transition so that it doesn’t feel like you’re driving over a curb each time you want to want to zoom in and zoom out as you’re shooting in a intense scenario and want to swiftly kill the bad guys.
Killing Floor 2 Aiming Short
Arma 3 Aiming Short
Payday 2 Aiming Short
Cover System Overhaul
Like I said earlier the cover in this game doesn’t work. That’s simply because the height slider made it impossible to size the cover to the universal player model. Your head will stick out most of time and you will be shot regardless if you’re crouched behind the crate/barrel or not. Here’s my quick fix (enemies will shoot at the center of your gravity when there is a cover between the two of you and they will also have their spread increased).
Ranged Special Actions
Some of these special actions are really garbage. My money is on the fact that it’s probably not to overshadow the almighty good ol’ reliable melee system. It takes like 20 hits with a pistol to take down a normal scab shooter. That’s meme material right there. Here’s proof.
I really liked the bayonet stab on the luscious lasgun though. I love the bayonet special action and the fact that you can bayonet while aiming with no issues. This was a pleasant surprise. I wish you could charge it too to confirm a one-stab kill on the corrupt guardsmen. Now imagine if there was no artificial roadblocks in place such as the aiming in and out breaking the firing action on guns. This would allow the player to charge his luscious lasgun into overheat then stab the enemy and as the bayonet is still in the enemy release the charged shot into his guts.
Ofc this isn’t possible because this would surely overshadow the melee system and put it to shame. Fun fact: During WW1 soldiers were told on the firing range to always stab the enemy, then twist the blade to get it out and if that doesn’t help then try firing to free their rifle. This lasgun was one of my personal favourites because it’s special action wasn’t tacked on last minute and was actually fun. Like I just explained this special ability still has a lot of untapped potential if you want to make things fun Fatshark.
Hit Registration
The hit registration in this game may be the very last nail in the coffin of ranged combat or gunplay. Just look at this clip. Half of my ammunition just vanished lol.
Summary (joke to sweeten the grim reality of the state of ranged combat):
Shots 1-5: Clearly missed.
Shots 6-9: Missed due to recoil (bad spray control).
Shots 10-11: Very close, but recoil and inaccuracy make these reasonable misses.
Shot 12: Likely didn’t actually fire because the lasgun was already overheated.
The Feeling Of Guns
The autoguns, the lasguns, all the guns in this game sound fan-tastic! They sound fantastic, they look fantastic, but ultimately the joy of using them is held back by all the issues I listed in this post. Big props to the VFX artists, 2d and 3d artists that made it possible. The combat mechanics designers? Shame on you.
Pox Bursters Are Unfair And Broken
Yes, an entire chapter in my post is dedicated to those things. Why? As we speak the pox bursters are the most unfun and unfair enemies to encounter making them easily the most dangerous enemies in the game just under the plague ogryns and such. That’s because there is literally no counterplay to them if they spawn close. If a pox walker spawns on the other side of the wall with a door in it you are sentenced to an explosion to the face. Shooting them won’t help because they’re already in the boom distance. You can say your prayers and goodbyes to the entirety of your toughness bar and the 2/3 health you will be missing in the next few seconds. You almost, ALMOST had this pox burster figured out but there are two things that need fixing.
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Minimum distance spawn from the player. This will automatically fix the issue where they spawn 6 meters away from you, open the door and jump into you. Let me be clear. There is NOTHING you can do as a player to prevent this from happening. Bad RNG will absolutely kill you and your entire team if a single pox walker gets a wonky spawn.
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The second move would be introducing a reliable counterplay. That would be of course the block shove and dodge away combo. Right now it’s not reliable because even if you have stamina sometimes the pox walker will just ignore it. Secondly, they explode as soon as they land on their back after you push them. This is even harder to pull off if you’re pushing them against some stairs because they will land on an elevated position (compared to the ground) even quicker and will instantly detonate in your face. Pushing them away should ALWAYS interrupt any action of the poxwalker sending them back and then giving you a 1.5 grace period before they will explode on their own (unless their health goes down to 0, in that case they explode regardless). Just like that you have a fun enemy that you can counter if you buy enough time when fighting other enemies and you no longer are furious because the fight is unfair. Cheers.
Toxic Penances
Did you guys read these out loud when making them or we’re they a last-minute idea. Because it really feels so. Achievements like that generate crazy amounts of toxicity and tension between players trying to enjoy the game and players trying to grind the cosmetics. The worst part about these things? These probably won’t be changed for MONTHS and will play a huge part in creating a toxic environment in the game but will be ignored or shrugged off as something that can wait. Okay Fatshark, since you hadn’t had the chance yet. Let’s read these together, no hard feelings.
I feel so sorry for Ogryn players not being able to do this achievement because some rando tries speedrunning the map or just splits off for a second. It is literally impossible to complete this penance without begging others to help you with it in public games. Scrap this concept and rename the achievement to “Bodyguard”. It would work lore-wise and encourage teamplay instead of artificial challenges if all you had to do is to stay in the range of at least ONE of your teammate’s coherency at all times. It’s already hard because it’s a “no die” challenge. You die, you get separated and you lose. Your team dies, and you go rescue them but lose anyways since they were teleported away. Now your objective is to stick to your team so that you’re always close to SOMEONE and that you have to protect them or you lose. Fun and makes sense.
The “get downed at the start of the map and speedrun heresy map” penance. Don’t get me wrong. We all get a kick seeing Zealots hop into the game trying to do this achievement, speedrunning and trashtalking their team if they don’t follow and comply, but I think that the speedrun part of this achievement isn’t at all necessary. Why not just make it "Complete a mission of Heresy Threat or higher with less than one Wound remaining for 90% of the time and without dying once? Now the wolf is happy and so are the sheep.
Ah yes. Another achievement that requires the player to instantly become a huge burden for the rest of the players as he joins the game. F-over the guys you join to by not using your shotgun/revolver until the last segment of the map and don’t do your job or you lose challenge. The concept behind it had me in tears. Veterans joining heresy to quit 5 minutes later because they missed a shot with their bolter? Check. Veterans not using their ranged weapons they should support their team with? Check. I ain’t gonna cry if you make this one easier. I mean damn. I even had a guy go off on me because I “stole his kill” so then he proceeded to AFK and then dcd when he got killed. It doesn’t help that the Veteran coherency restores ammo so it’s better to stay behind the team so that you don’t “accidentally” regenerate more ammo that you have to fire. I have no idea how to salvage this excuse of an achievement. Try lowering the accuracy to 95% so that maybe players will be less tempted to lobby-hop after missing a single shot. Maybe change it to something useful so that the team benefits from it and not vote kicks you from the game lmao. A good idea of a penance that would make sense for the Veteran Sharpshooter would be around killing elites and specials. How about “Complete a mission on heresy threat or higher having double the special kills compared to anyone else on the team”. Was this so hard?
This penance requires the Psyker to kill a monstrosity without the help of others and all effort is lost when anyone wants to help. This literally works against the whole concept of teamwork you had in mind and on top of that Psykers get pissed at their teammates because they can do nothing to stop them except teamkilling them with barrels (I’ve seen it all now). Just change it to "Brain burst the boss twice within 10 seconds of the boss appearing and don’t fall below the 90% mark of peril for as long as the beast is alive. Now it’s in Psykers hands to try his best to get the achievement and his team will help and not get in the way when fighting the boss.
Other
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Ranged fire damage stopping sprint action is just silly. This doesn’t stop the player from rushing at the enemy. Instead of sprinting at the enemy to close the distance, they turn 90 degrees left or right and sidestep-slide into the enemy. I won’t argue about the fact that heavy scab gunners suppress you and slow you down to a halt but regular small arms fire?
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The plasma gun is worse than the bolter in every way. The worst part is that it’s the identity weapon of the Veteran Sharpshooter and it’s not even compatible with the perks that you can equip. Ew. The top perk at lvl 30 reloads your weapon when using the ability in an instant but does NOT vent the heat from the plasma gun while doing so. This is awful because as you reload you went the weapon from 100 to 0. You can’t instantly vent the weapon while reloading after using the ability because it’s already reloaded (but still overheated after use). It’s so bad. Also, who on earth decided that it was a good idea to DRAIN HEALTH as you’re venting this gun? You know well this won’t work as it didn’t work in the last 8 years with Sienna in Vermintide! Seriously. The only fun thing about the plasma gun in Darktide is the fact that I can vent about this terrible weapon on forums more than I can vent the overheat in the game. Again the concept on paper was amazing. You can fire the weapon and then swap to melee, you can fire the weapon and swap to melee and repeat (you swap and it vents slowly on its own), but it’s just a worse bolter with no ability to burst down targets, charge up time, a slower rate of fire and the ability to instantly kill the user that is trying to provide any value to the team with that thing. The ammo pickups for this weapon are abysmal. The very least you can do is to double the ammo reserve and the amount of ammo you pick up and allow the players to vent the plasma gun without losing health. Maybe even decrease the heat generation by 20%. Such a disappointment.
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Allow us to reload when sprinting. It’s not like this is going to massively break the flow of combat or anything. If you already force must force us to commit to reloading then at least allow us to reload when sprinting.
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Making Veteran’s ability highlight the enemies in orange a perfect textbook example of poor UI design. At least allow us to change the colour to purple in the settings so that it doesn’t get lost in the ever-present fire from zealots, bombers and flamethrower elites. Also why do lasgun shoot trails and the sniper laser sight share the same red colour. These look very similar and are easily confused. This shouldn’t be the case if one sniper shot can clean your entire toughness bar and then 2/3 of your health.
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Ping delay. Why is there a 1-second ping delay if we already have two ping buttons (the ping enemy button and the quick chat/ping button)? It’s just unnecessary and disruptive. Sometimes you want to quickly ping and run away and you end up pinging an entirely different place. Video shots of my middle mouse button activating and in-game I’m pinging after a 1-second delay after I turn away.
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Emperor’s gifts are garbage. I don’t need white gear that is 100 ilvl lower than the weapon I’m currently using. They’re not exciting at and everybody just skips them. What if these were rare and you could get up to 2 weekly? These would give always give items that are identical ilvl or higher than the strongest weapon in your inventory/armory and would come in purple rarity, maybe even sometimes legendary. I don’t really know how to make this system better atm but it’s worthless.
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Allow us to craft weapons. It’s been said a thousand times by now. I’ve been waiting for the lawbringer shotgun to come to the shop at for 3 days now. Three days have I been enduring this pathetic RNG system. Yeah the shop is great when you want to F-around and test out weapons but when you already made your mind you either need to login every out like its a fkn mobile game or beg the RNG so that the weapon drops after the match. Crafting weapons needs to be a thing in Darktide too. I don’t care if it’s pricy or not.
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No visual or audio cues for grims and tomes. In many games you quick join into sometimes you wonder “Huh did I get slapped around this hard already? we just started this one” only to find out that your team is carrying grims. Play the sound (reusing the V2 grim sounds would do fine as it was pretty cool) and show on the right side that we have x of x amount of collectables on hands between the players. At least show them in other player’s inventory next to their ammo like you did in Vermintide 2
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Post of others that make a lot of sense and that I agree with wholeheartedly:
Ping delay Example
Expandable Achievements
Which missions didn’t I complete yet? No idea. We had this in V2.
Tab Menu Too Empty
If Fatshark tried making a feature complete game without dumbing it down so that it can act as everyone’s safe space.
I said it once and I’ll say it again. If giving more detailed information about teammates will increase the toxicity then just be a responsible multimillion company and ban the players who make everyone’s experience worse. Clipping away features from your product from everyone won’t help to change the behaviour of toxic players. If they’re toxic they will still be toxic regardless. They don’t need to see how many times you died or what weapons you run. If they see you die or hear you use an autogun they will talk crap and it won’t matter if they see it on tab or by looking at you.
Honorable Mention
I was talking to my friends about the autoguns and they pretty much said they were terrible. Later I was browsing reddit to see what’s up and a post from Darktide swung by. It was about autoguns being bad. I said to myself these can’t be THAT bad compared to lasguns. So I went into the meat grinder and tested the weapons myself and went on discord to share my discovery. Here’s two screenshots of my convo because I thought it was funny but also to make a point.
