Hey all,
I’ve been at the game for about 60 hours playing all the classes and playing up to heresy difficulty and this is my two cents on a number of things that could use improvements to the core gameplay experience. I’m mainly aiming to address stuff that is annoying/unfun, bad/unfair design, discuss why it is the way it is, and offer some suggestions/alternatives/improvements to discuss.
I’m not going to discuss class, weapon, curio, or map balance here as I feel those are separate individual topics.
(I will put up several options for improvements, not indicating they should all be put in, just one of them.)
Onwards!
1. Chip damage from behind/sides from instant spawn enemies the moment you turn around
Why this is bad:
You are doing your due diligence and checking your six but are not rewarded by you dealing with a possible threat/covering your team, but instead you are punished it.
There are a TON of other hidey holes such as closed doors that only AI can use and crawlspaces, where they can sneak out of BUT the audio cues are nonexistent or VERY low.
There is another thread with a video showcasing this here.
Again, this is poor design to get at our health pools over time, as it does not reward playing well and feels like a “cheap” way to reduce player health.
Possible fixes/improvements:
- Remove this entirely
- Prevent enemies from insta-spawning within a small radius around the player, and spawn more grunts or specials from doors/crawlspaces instead
- Spawn the enemy further away and telegraph the rear attack with an earlier and MUCH louder audio cue/footsteps of the enemy to give you an appropriate timeframe to deal with it instead
2. “Trash/Grunt” mobs do not audio cue loudly enough
Along with mobs teleporting behind you after looking away or coming out of a closed door as soon as you look away, the noise made by these is either completely missing (door open) and the cue for an enemy about to melee you in the back or side (very light whispery/whooshy noise) is incredibly faint compared to the rest of the game. Lowering the music to nothing barely helps and also deprives you of the great soundtrack.
Possible fixes/improvements:
- More granular audio settings, currently we can only change master, sound effects, and music.
Sound effects should split out all these various effects so we tune them a bit to make them more audible compared to the music and other. - Crank up footsteps, sprinting footsteps, attack preparation grunts a lot more when low amounts of enemies are nearby
**in general this type of audio needs to be louder in my personal opinion
3. Slide-stepping enemies hitting you
This was a problem in vermintide and it rears its ugly head here again, enemies have a sort of homing attack system when they initiate attacks that makes it guarantee it will hit you no matter how you move, even if you are completely out of the way, unless you activate a manual dodge. However the ai can “slide” and both feet will not move and they will still make the attack connect even if you dodged. This is most notable with Rager and Melee Ogryn enemies and can end up with you getting stun locked in range of their attacks despite using dodged.
Why this is bad:
First of all it looks awkward as all heck, gives you the wrong visual feedback, and then when you take appropriate action, punishes you for it anyway. This is similar to the teleporting enemies as it feels like a cheap way to get at your health even if you have taken the appropriate measures against it. This quickly just becomes frustrating and not fun to lose health like this.
Possible fixes/improvements:
- If an enemy winds up an attack, much like the player, it should only be able to move so far with it before it launches the attack, it cannot hold it throughout its homing attack phase till it hits.
- Stop the slide-stepping entirely
- Match enemy leg animations to its movement appropriately
- If slide-stepping is intentional, and a form of an enemy using their own version of dodges to move, it should match the player’s movement and not be able to go forwards, or it could have a special telegraph to indicate it is a slide step attack that you may need to block or side dodge instead of backstep.
4. Muties charge has no cooldown, and can grab with no momentum, and they can do a 180 in less than 1 meter of space
Muties are largely an annoyance that gets dealt with by your sharpshooter or psyker usually BUT, they have some very odd mechanics that can make them an undodgable chain CC monster as they can turn around on a dime, they ignore heavy hits to the face and immediately charge your character, their grab and throw vs their grab and hulk slam into the ground is extremely inconsistent and there does not appear to have an indicator of which one it will be when you do get grabbed.
They also grab with the left arm and have a longer grab reach than their right side making dodges mostly useless if you dodge to their left as then can just turn into you with their patented formula 1 brakes.
Why this is bad:
Inconsistent grab mechanics, little to no charge cooldown, possible to get chain CC’d for quite a long period of time with next to no counter until it dies. Lastly, guaranteed health damage with hulk slam is possible to get chained into repeatedly due to above
Possible fixes/improvements:
- Make 2 versions of the Mutie: Rightie and Leftie, one likes to throw you towards ledges, the other likes to ground pound you, and respectively they have an arm on each side larger than the other. This will reward you for visually checking them and dodging to their “weaker” side and you and the team knows what to expect based on the highlight outline if its a rightie or leftie going to launch you or needing to be shot ASAP before it does HP damage with ground slam.
- Staggerable after charging and missing, getting hit delays charge cool down if hit during this period
- Longer CD on charge ability and instead runs away before re-attempting grab (much like assassin in vermintide)
5. Snipers target acquisition time is way too fast & also possible to grief downed players via resurrect when targeted by snipers
Snipers can shoot your pinky toe if it pokes out for less than 0.001 seconds somewhere, and it is more effective to dodge the tracking beam than to try dodge the shot after you’ve been spotted.
Why this is bad:
Snipers in most games are a controversial topic as is, but AI sniping as it really can’t miss is largely frustrating as most coders do NOT program variability in the shot the AI takes. While mostly fine, this leads to some unwanted situations where you walk around a wall being completely unable to see the beam, are immediately locked and shot before you can do anything at all. I feel like I am repeating myself that there is just too much stuff in the game that leaves you unable to see/receive the telegraph warnings and you get punished for it despite being able to take action if you had been able to correctly hear/see the cues.
Secondly, if you are sniper locked and downed, the beam tends to stay on you, this can lead to unscrupulous players or unware teammates to revive the character, who is instantly shot before being able to even move and is immediately downed, receiving a wound stack on top of it. A nasty player can exploit this to kill you completely.
Possible fixes/improvements:
- Short, temporary immunity to ranged damage after being revived, especially when sniper is around
- Improve sniper tracking rate, but increase the delay on target lock before the shot
- Shot variability so it can miss (this should be fine based on the speed of the round, ie. you won’t dodge out of the laser and get hit by the shot going wide and into you)
6. Pox Hounds having teleport-no-jutsu and afterimages-no-jutsu aka being largely untrackable via aim in close quarters while moving + pouncing through doors and walls
Pox hounds themselves I think are pretty balanced, the issue comes from the unstable nature of the FPS in this game and the way these things move at lightspeed. Often times you will see pox hounds move from 3rd floor to ground floor instantaneously with no animation because they are just that juiced up, and they tend spazz out like crazy when acquiring a target when multiple are available
Why this is bad:
I understand that these are supposed to be the forces of chaos but this is a bit much as it currently stands with the game being rather unstable from match to match. And being grabbed from closed doors or from behind a thin wall is not very fun
Possible fixes/improvements:
- Continued game performance updates
- Doors must be fully opened before Pox Hound can pounce + Better pathing/pounce pathing for the hound
- When not sprinting, hound should telegraph an incoming pounce visually
7. Daemonhost
This thing is mostly problematic due to its constant attack speed and the fact that sprint is one of the most useless things in this game at the moment due to enemies being able to slide-step
This is another one of those “guaranteed to lose hp with no counter” even with a shield ogryn teammate, the Daemonhost will pick someone that may not be your ogryn (usually it is whoever work them up from what I can tell)
Running away just gets you hit in the back, and blocking quickly leads to 0 stamina and full damage anyway, dodging doesn’t matter because more attacks are incoming and you will hit your dodge cap sooner than they will stop.
This then becomes a dps check for the 3 other party members to stop someone getting assassinated usually.
Why this is bad:
Unless you are the ogryn teammate and also have a shield, this is frustrating as there is little to no defense against it and you are going to get executed. If you aren’t an ogryn, you have to rely on a completely random matchmaker to give you an ogryn tank teammate
Possible fixes/improvements:
- After a certain amount of attacks missed and/or blocked Daemonhost becomes exhausted for a few seconds for damage. This puts them in line with some of the bosses that have shields at the end of levels and allows for some damage opportunities by all
- Using damage grenades, box of grenades, or flash grenades on the Daemonhost will cause it to be stunned temporarily
- Using damage grenades, box of grenades, or flash grenades on the Daemonhost will cause it to stagger briefly and choose another target after recovering
**in the case of the latter 2 this is a choice to expend resources to make this manageable, which I think is a good tradeoff
Thanks for listening, I’m pretty sure I missed on explaining more pros and cons of these, and I’ll edit as needed or reply to comments with additional thoughts when I can.
Love the game still, want to see it get even better!
edits: fixed some typos and sentences