That’s literally the entire point. If it isn’t punishing then people will just ignore it and the mechanic might as well not exist.
I think maybe you think about it wrong. It is less about the game and more about the person playing the game.
I can play Kerillian and mainly use the deepwood staff but switch to sword and dagger if needed. I can also swap that around and play mostly with the sword and dagger on the exact same build.
In Darktide I mostly play vet, but depending on loadout I may use my ranged weapon more, or I could use my melee weapon more. Just depends on how I feel honestly.
If you ever played Left 4 Dead 2 then you’d realise it is barely anything. One shot in Left 4 Dead 2 and you can completely kill your team mate.
When I came to Vermintide 2 after that, I was surprised at how weak friendly fire was.
I don’t think it takes much ‘skill’ to avoid friendly fire. Just about being aware of your positioning and where you are aiming, and how much splash damage you are doing.
I mean that is a good question, but that extends way beyond Vermintide 2 and reaches more into game design really doesn’t it? In my opinion it’s a bit more immersive, adds detail to the world, and also adds some more dynamics to the gameplay. Seems like a small thing but I think the game would feel a bit flat without it.
I also think in Vermintide II’s case, a team mate could just spam aoe attacks on you to kill surrounding hordes which would probably make the game too easy.
Exactly. In my opinion the damage should be a lot more honestly.
Lol, wut? That’s not true at all.
Some careers and team combos don’t have to worry about ammo, like having a Ranger bardin dropping ammo packs, and if one or two players are melee only (or fire witch) then there’s plenty of ammo to go around for the rest. And obviously some of the range-heavy careers (Bounty Hunter, Waystalker, etc) can easily get away with a lot of ranged spamming.
But if you have a team where everyone uses an ammo-based weapon on Legend+ the ammo stores don’t stretch that far. Sure, it’s not a limitation if you only use your ranged for taking care of specials when needed, but if you want to use it for more (horde clear / just shooting stuff for fun) then you run out frequently between pickups.
firstly, at veteran ranged players spam the living t1ts out of it, get tons of kills and so on. Ranged FF is a good way of stopping people spamming ranged fire like a pillock into everything and everyone. The game is still Melee focused I think and coupled with the increase in HP of enemies at Champion gets players used to the idea that even ranged characters need to handle themselves in melee. At Legend there’s often a BH or WS who spams ranged but gets downed very fast when made to melee.
FF also stop the stupidity of things like the poison bow on elf, and OE ult being thrown around like confetti.
I happen to think FF might be a smidge too weak and should really hurt if you FF someone.
You cooperate by giving your ranged teammate a clear shot, and by picking firing lanes that help your melee teammates without doubling up on what they’re fighting already. The mechanic does encourage cooperation in the truest sense of the word, by necessity. It forces you to have eachothers backs rather than just mindlessly spamming everything downrange.
The game as a whole is cooperative in the sense that there are disablers who will stop you from going off alone. There are hordes of enemies that will down you if you don’t have a teammate. There is plenty of cooperation without this added mechanic. I don’t think at any time in my 4000 hours of gameplay, I’ve thought, “you know, this is pretty fun avoiding shooting my teammates.” Avoiding damage from enemies and disablers is the true nature of cooperation in the game, not avoiding damage from TEAMmates.
You also mention getting each others back, which I agree with. You DO have to get each other’s back even without the added friendly fire. As for spam, the weapons that do the most damage are the single target weapons, like Bolt Staff or Bounty Hunter’s ult, etc. Weapons with the highest potential for spam, like the Flamestorm Staff on Sienna or Bardin’s flamethrower, do the least amount of friendly fire. So the argument kind of goes out the window.
Im assuming you’re new to these games, but ammunition have NEVER EVER been a limitation on ranged weapons. Not even with torpedoes is it much of a limiter.
Ammo isn’t an issue on base difficulties when you’re playing the game properly. Ammo becomes an issue when you spam your weapon endlessly. Do you know how many times I’ve seen people abuse the torpedo and then run out of ammo? Then along comes a monster and they are less able to stop it. If you spam the flamestorm staff, you have to vent, and with limits on temp hp regen, you’ll only end up venting green health.
If you disagree with me that ammo is limiting factor on spam as the game currently is, then surely you’ll agree that limits on ammo WOULD BE a better way to control spam than friendly fire – in a world where the game is properly balanced. I don’t think I’m wrong in making either of my points, but you’ll likely agree with me on this.
“I don’t think it takes much ‘skill’ to avoid friendly fire. Just about being aware of your positioning and where you are aiming, and how much splash damage you are doing.”
This depends on the difficulty. If you’re on cataclsym, sniping elites with the Bolt Staff or, say, a hook rat in a mixed horde, while your fontliners are protecting you, you’re going to snipe your teammate accidently sometimes. This becomes even more true once you play cata twitch and such, but I’ll exclude that from my argument because lots of people don’t play cata twitch but only the base game (like legend).
Let’s say it doesn’t take much skill. What does a skilled players percentage look like? They only hit teammates one in every thirty shots with their bolt staff? I’m not good match but that’s like 3% isn’t it? Not very high. But in a game of cataclsym, you’ll probably use your bolt staff at least thirty times in a difficult game, especially one where you’re the primary special killer. That’s sixty health points that your teammate will lose. (I don’t know the exact number, but it’s somewhere around there.) To me, that’s crazy.
I mean that is a good question, but that extends way beyond Vermintide 2 and reaches more into game design really doesn’t it? In my opinion it’s a bit more immersive, adds detail to the world, and also adds some more dynamics to the gameplay. Seems like a small thing but I think the game would feel a bit flat without it.
This is the exact topic that spurred the discussion. Darktide doesn’t have friendly fire, but Vermintide does. Does Darktide feel flat? Maybe, but it wouldn’t feel LESS flat if you added friendly fire. I like to think that the game designers learned from the weaknesses of Vermintide and implemented those things into darktide (small UI things, for example). But I still like Vermintide 2 better.
I also think in Vermintide II’s case, a team mate could just spam aoe attacks on you to kill surrounding hordes which would probably make the game too easy.
I’ve commented on the spam argument in another response. You’ll have to see that for more.
There’s also the hidden issue where FF triggers Bardin’s gromril armour or the Zealot ‘avoid death’ skill. I think FF does change the gameplay for the better, making players at least have some thought about what they’re doing.
Sigmar praise this blessed shot!
Aoe attacks mostly do almost no damage, the bigger problem with aoe attacks is that you rob your teammates all the nice THP. So FF preventing players of deleting all the nice THP via aoe attacks is actually quite nice.
I actually wish Darktide would add in friendly fire. People need to stop walking through me to block my shots.
Maybe the “technology“ (magik) in W40k allows to prevent those ‘accidents’.
yea no thanks, maybe for an event as an experiment but each player having potentially dozens upon dozens of automatic fire to spew into each other can quickly turn into a FF kill fest, among an already stressful/high intensity game. I main ogryn and vote no on FF in darktide. This is much better in V2 where most weapons are 1-shot or semi auto (excluding the cranky dwarf minigun). Most dwarfs already have a tough time seeing past ankles, so they are used to creating their own LoS.
I’m not saying it needs to be full damage. Just to disincentivize intentionally blocking shots.
I already don’t shoot when my teammates are in the way just out of habit. So I know it’s possible to not shoot them. Even ogryns.
Unless you were invoking the Ogryn’s IQ, I don’t see what your class has to do with qualifying your opinion.
Or you know, you could learn to space and skirt to the side to shoot…
Like even in the case of friendly fire, the onus is more so on the shooter than the shootee
I already adjust my positioning and avoid shooting teammates in both games because I think it’s nice. I’m not denying the shooter has responsibility. I just think spatial awareness should go both ways. A small FF penalty would incentivize that without turning it into griefing.
Your argument relies on assigning fault. But I would argue the fault is in design. My argument was about shaping player behavior through incentives.
I mentioned Ogryn because of his size. Ogryn is the biggest and gets peppered A LOT, we know when we are in the way, which is a lot of the time.
That being said, that’s part of the problem, people are not intentionally blocking your shots, they are just playing the game and happen to dodge, or be, in front of you. If anything I would point to level design/enemy design, outside of sniper special, its mostly fish in a barrel fights.