Silent poxbursters making sound only when they already jump you and trapper net going through thick elite packs are a bigger issue here.
I understand why Trapper can do that, but considering you can’t always hit them in the middle of the horde, there needs to be some kind of compromise, such as enemy hit mass affecting the range of net. AKA if trapper shoots through Bulwarks, the net gets destroyed, but if they shoot through unarmored enemies, it can still hit players.
You get grabbed by a Chaos Spawn, then immediately a Flamer burns you or a bomb lands at your feet. The team dispatches the specialist immediately, but if they don’t have VoC or Chorus to deploy this instant, you’ll burn to a crisp before you’re given back your agency as the Spawn will not release you just yet.
Even if hard CC is deployed, you’ll either die or receive massive damage as between the natural slowdown and stagger from flames and bodyblocking of the Spawn itself you won’t just stop taking damage immediately the moment you’re freed.
In addition, you’re still vulnerable to all attacks even if they targeted someone else, so if your teammate just dodged a Crusher overhead next to you being pummeled by a Mutant, you will be hit and die.
It’s not fair in the slightest no matter how you personally feel about it. Yes the game got powercrept to the point where the best players can barely be challenged by anything short of such instant death moments - but even if you belong to this group, you’re being misleading by calling it “fair”. If the grab itself has any sort of punishment aside from disabling the player, then that is the punishment you should receive for being grabbed - so normal melee damage for Mutant, Corruption for Pox Hound / Beast of Nurgle / Chaos Spawn, and that’s on top of the displacement which is the most dangerous part of it.
Yes, if somebody gets grabbed by a Spawn you should be punished absolutely. They might not like this point of view at all, but that’s really too bad, do better next time. You can cheese a boss in so many different kinds of ways now by dooring them, ledging, bubble, charging/ULTing to stagger lock & stay supressed, etc. People will whine about this, but bosses shouldn’t be an easy task to deal with that’s why you block on attack & dodge backwards not to take damage & find better placement. In this particular instance in the video, he chooses to get cornered in the first place to get grabbed & die. That’s literally nobody’s fault but his own doing. We’ve all probably done this before through poor decision-making & it’s a learning curve to never do it again. This is the same exact principle as the BoN… Don’t stand in the goo & don’t get swallowed, I know, it’s a simple concept. It’s been forever since I’ve been grabbed or swallowed whole, personally. I honestly cannot even remember the last time either of those instances happening to me. But, I strongly feel this is a skill-issue the vast majority of the time. I know if you get surrounded there are certain situations in which it’s impossible & I get it, for sure… People just need to be more self-aware of their surroundings when they play. I know not everybody can be a Telopots here or play at a higher skill level, but do your best when you can.
Not fair means unfair. I’m not sure why you’d even contest it but whatever, I can agree unfairness is a spectrum and all of those mechanics are not on the “abhorrently unfair” end if that’s what you meant.
Then fix the damned grab on Chaos Spawn to make it dodgeable consistently without using dodge-slide. The grab hitbox/lifespan doesn’t match its animation in the slightest and is supremely difficult to dodge with low mobility weapons without sliding. This attack was terrible ever since Chaos Spawn has been introduced to Darktide despite being perfectly fine and fair back in Vermintide.
Normalize punishment - make players immune while grabbed, raise the punishment inflicted on them when it happens. A Mutant catches you? Alright that’s no longer “5-10% of HP (0% with overtoughness) or absolute incineration” - you lose 15-20% HP and receive a movement + attack speed debuff for 5-10s. But it shouldn’t be subject to random unfortunate accidents like being overheaded while he pummels you, or whatever.
People defending this interaction see it as necessary because of for how low the usual punishment is. This isn’t a solution to that problem, it’s a band-aid with a multitude of unpleasant side effects.
Fix the core issue instead of treating the symptoms.
there’s stuff that’s obviously not meant to happen like getting thrown through walls/floors and ending up in the nirvana part of the map.
some serious clipping issues that still exist especially with chaos spawn and a lesser extend the mutants.
then there’s the very rare combo when either one throws you into a demon host or beast of nurgle maw, but this already falls (for me personally) in the category of happens.
i made my peace with the engines limits when it comes to collision detection, such as hitting and getting hit through closed doors/spawn airlocks, staircases and others.
on the other hand part of the gameplay is exactly this kind of chaotic dynamic that keeps it fresh.
trapped inside a mixed horde? of course i scream(rather cough right now) at the top of my lungs.
BUT if the alternative is the neuter every possible situation, the gameplay would become rather stale in my opinion.
is it janky?
no doubt about it.
then again having no match ending threat from our usual suspects like mutant/trapper/beast of nurgle, given one can finish an auric maelstrom in around 20 minutes with the current power level, what outside havoc would there be thats not “autopilot” ?
so i prefer the potential of still fkking up by misplay to a disney land ride where all limbs are expected to stay inside the vehicle at all times.
It’s annoying imo that you always have to dodge to the right, under the spawn’s arm, even as ogryn. Dodging to the left gets you grabbed, no matter if there’s 2 miles of free space. Hence, I always try to stay to the left side of a corridor when fighting a spawn, but it’s often not that simple. The worst part is how buggy this still is, get released from a grab and you’ll often fall through the floor.
If the power creep got to the point where nothing aside from the most unfair of attacks can threaten you, wouldn’t the game become much healthier if both were gone as opposed to driving into a spiral of overpowered players vs. abhorrent enemies (and silent specials since audio system can’t handle such intensity)? Some food for thought.
This is a compelling argument that has caused me to change my position. Consistency is the magic word here, and I’m all for more consistency. There should be punishment for being grabbed, but it should be consistent. Immunity from all attacks for the duration of the grapple, but increase the damage of the grapples on Spawn/Mutie is a fair trade.
It is true that currently the actual effects of a mutie/spawn grapple can vary dramatically depending on the situation, this would effectively normalize the penalty for being grabbed and I’m all for it.
True, I would expect the power creep to go on as Fatshark has consistently showed that it doesn’t want to cater to the hardcore playerbase beyond the necessary minimum capacity. But change has to start somewhere, and hardcore players should know better than anyone that this spiral is gonna eventually ruin Darktide.
So far the hardcore playerbase seems unwilling to bite the bullet and support balancing toward fair encounters. In order not to enrage them further while still giving casual players the “lite” experience they want, Fatshark ramps up the power creep with each and every update - this often includes enemies as well. Case and point: recent “open to debate regarding Duelling Sword” - discussion is opened, hardcore community lays out their arguments uncontested, nothing happens.
Both one-sided and two-sided (like we have right now) power creep kills all enjoyment from the game. If we can’t have proper balancing, however, one-sided power creep - be it on players or enemies’ side - is much easier to notice and raise awareness about, so it has better chance of solving the problem. I would prefer the first step to be taken towards fair enemies, but if it was the opposite with nerfs I would welcome it as well.
Unfortunately, I feel like the hardcore part of Darktide playerbase doesn’t see it that way and will only support balancing from one side - which is likely why Fatshark is too scared to balance the game properly, and in turn we are where we are. I’d hope to be wrong, but so far that’s the only thing that makes sense.
The topic is about solutions to a boss grabbing you, not a mutant.
Slowing a players movement down is probably the most unfun thing in gaming.
It is consistent, its called being punished. The extent of that punishment is the variable. I sometimes play with friends on diff 4 for a consistent experience.
Immune while grabbed? I suggest auto death if grabbed by bosses for the next darktide event.
what’s really scary is the possibility that, after all the staff changes over the past few years, there’s no one left on the current Darktide team who actually understands balance tuning, and they’re basically stuck, unable to do anything. I mean, just a bit of test play should make it obvious that DS is a huge problem, and you’d think they have some good playtesters, but it’s been ignored all this time.
I think that the HD2 balance fiasco and the Darktide communities reaction to the power sword nerf compounded to make them extremely scared of nerfing anything ever again. Unfairly, because these things in part got such negative reactions for factors outside of the nerf itself - for the power sword for example the nerf wasn’t actually huge but it hit the blessing that people spent 200 hours on gacha rolling for. At that point it’s just a giant middle finger, to make people grind for an ultra rare 0.1% blessing to make the weapon good then nerf it. I’d attribute the negative reviews more to the RNG itemization horseshit that was at its worst at the time.
He took other high profile lead designers with him such as Morja, who describes his position as
My main responsibilities were enemies implementation and design, and Left 4 dead style conflict director implementation and design.
Aswell as a couple of programmers. By the way, I just saw this and it’s not really related to the question, but some of them have very interesting things posted on their linkedins, which you may relate to Fatshark and their departure.
Why from one extreme of the spectrum to the other? Is there not a middle ground? This is irrational.
You conveniently left out the part where I noted if immunity from outside attacks while grappled were to be implemented, the damage of the mutie/spawn should be increased slightly - not sudden death lol.
happens.
