The game needs balancing for sure… but I play suboptimal and off meta builds for fun. You can have a private match with friends and all play melee only.if you really want. No talent points, all grey weapons, etc.
I get your upset about there being a meta but just push for balance changes 
“Force everyone to use meta”.
Are you kidding? I have been carrying, clearing, and doing just fine on Havoc 30+ and Auric without the ‘meta’. The meta isn’t even the ‘best’ builds, just the easiest to use. I have only ever met ONE person give me crap for not using meta builds and they were promptly ignored by the rest of the team.
Most Effective Tactic Available is basically the best
Sometimes it feels like if they replaced the current skill tree system with a single button that instantly swapped your build to, say “Ranged,” “Melee,” or “Hybrid”, most players probably wouldn’t notice much difference in practice. With so many “must-pick” talents and a scattering of dead options, most builds end up feeling nearly identical. The only real distinctions come from weapon choice and from players who manage to maximize very specific talents or combos, or in the other end, when a person has no idea how to make use of certain things and end up not being able to carry their weight, noticeably so.
Current system incentivizes min-maxing and meta chasing, whilst punishing sometimes severely, people who try to make “balanced” builds, since you are not being specialized in anything in particular and thus limiting your potential.
Say you take bleed talents on zealot but don’t really use a synergistic with bleed weapon, it’s like trying to use a steering wheel with your feet. While if you take knife or ds, you could easily overperform if you are skilled.
This creates a “skillgate” I feel, that if you are unwilling or unable to engage with Fatshark esoteric descriptions and mechanics, you are probably not gonna have a good time, apeing content creator’s behaviour only gets you so far.
I think a system were “both” exist could make it more accessible to new players. Some mmos have built-in recommended build tutorials, who handhold you into making a decent build that fills a role, say, you are playing arby, there’s an option to enable “build guide” with an option for “health tank” (could even have cool roleplaying names such as Dreadnought to get more attention) that involves true grit and health curios, and the system would tell you optimal talents to choose in your tree and optimal/recommended weapon and curio options. Advanced players can just ignore this system entirely and proceed as we currently do. This new system, could also be a way for Fatshark to indirectly communicate intent, which would be a net positive in communication for everyone. Cudos if people can save and share their own “build paths”.
Great post.
Never said it was most effective, just easiest. A vet with a helbore is often better than a vet with a plasma if they got the skill for it, but plasma is the current meta. A lot of the meta is just about doing as much damage as possible while ignoring actual situations that can occur, which is why I found unprepared players often getting wrecked and bogged down by gunners on higher havoc levels because they brought a short ranged secondary and have no option to deal with ranged enemies. Also, a lot of build hyper focus on maulers/crushers but then struggle against other enemy types. I see this all the time, players that are really good at killing things but then they have no defense when that fails and start to crumble.
The game dosen’t force you to use meta at all. People just don’t want to try and learn how to use different builds. Meta builds are already built for them and often don’t require combos or set-up. But there are other builds that would be more effective in many situations.
META means Most Effective Tactic Available
Plasma IS better than Helbore in the best way to play vet (melee build with shout, either DS or PS) since it’s a weapon you can quickly deploy, fire once and save, while also being a weapon that requires no nodes spent on it (unlike Helbore that requires Shocktrooper and/or One in Motion)
Plasma can essentially 1 shot gunners and 2 shot reapers (as well as 1 shot specials), very quickly, very consistently, plasma is a weapon that covers everything you would need for a melee vet (which is right now, the best way to play vet)
Oh I never said you’re forced to run meta, I was just clarifying what META actually means since you made a contradiction in that statement. I love running offmeta in H40
META Doesn’t exactly mean “easier”, that’s just a casualty of this game, not exactly the standard of what defines META. If DS was nerfed, then Relic Blade would become META for Zealot, and so and so
Meta isn’t an acronym lol. It’s shorthand for “metagaming”/“metagame” which is basically “the process of finding the most effective tactics available” but metagaming has been around for decades, the term “meta” as shorthand is much more recent though iirc.
Yeah, uh huh. Pop in there and take care of that semi-circle of a dozen heavy gunners with limitless ammo and no need to pause to reload. Here’s your thunder hammer. Have fun!
In this game it’s become OETA Only Effective Tactic Available.
A build system should allow you to make an effective character by taking multiple different paths. There are many weapons and talents you cannot take at higher difficulty levels (or any difficulty level for some of them) because they’re ineffective. If you’re going to have ineffective weapons and talents, why even include them? That’s my point.
If I take any lasgun as veteran and free ammo on crits, I never even have to pick up ammo. But if I take infantry autogun and consistently headshot the rabble infantry, I’ll run out of ammo and every box I go to (knowing where all of them are) has plasteel or diamantine in it now. Meanwhile, the dozen heavy gunners in elevated positions backing up the half dozen crushers that will charge me as soon as I walk in there have limitless ammo and don’t have to pause to reload.
Plasteel and diamantine? I assume you are talking about Auric / Maelstrom experience. There are some situations where ammo can be more scarce, but Auric shouldn’t give you trouble. I used to make screenshots of open ammo crates at the end of the map, because of this.
I don’t know how you play and what setup you run, but unless you are insist at shooting every enemy with IAGs or braced autoguns, you should be fine. If you are a vet you are more likely to be forced to adjust your ranged loadout around your team mates ranged picks, zealots with flamer, bolter, or Ogryns with PBB. Even then, it all depends on how good those players are at recognising their main purpose is front lining. not gunning for days.
I started playing darktide when we had the feat system but i never fully leveled up and maxed it out, i stopped playing for a while and came back after the skilltrees were added. I would genuinely like some way to go back and play some kind of ‘darktide 1.0’
I dont think darktide should completely change and go back to that system though, the skill tree system we have now is really cool, it just needs to be balanced better but like thats ever gonna happen 
In my opinion havoc could have been that actually, havoc is supposed to be darktide but hard right?, and I remember darktide being pretty damn hard back in the day when we didnt have a whole skilltree and maxed out weapons/curios equipped, malice used to kick me and my friends asses and we’d get humbled right back down a difficulty level or two when we were first starting out playing/learning this game, ‘hey man that mission went pretty well lets up the difficulty to malice, it cant be too bad right?’ and then we promptly would get our asses handed to us and go right back down a difficulty 
And i know you can already take off all your talents and take grey weapons and stuff into missions to make them harder, trust me ive already done some ‘Ogryn No Build’ runs in the past, but that doesnt change the enemies to be the way they were back then(spawn numbers and stuff like that). I think personally i would probably like and play more of havoc if it was just basically a ‘darktide 1.0’ kinda thing. And not like EXACTLY darktide 1.0, like those old class feats would most definitely need to be changed up some or have some balancing done and all that good stuff, all the choices should be viable etc etc
Man, I hate being that guy, but… are the weapons ineffective or are you ineffective with them? This is a critical distinction.
It’s 100% true that some weapons and talents are completely outclassed, but most of the time it’s not that they’re ineffective/unusable, it’s that there’s just something better. A pair of scissors is perfectly capable of shredding documents, but I’d choose a paper shredder 100% of the time over a pair of scissors for any serious document shredding. The paper shredder being better doesn’t mean Scissors are “ineffective” though.
Edit: Also, you say:
You do realize that it’s a 4-man squad, right? Unless you’re playing true solo there’s 0 reason for your kit to handle everything yourself. There’s also a 2nd weapon slot. Just because Zealot is melee focused doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pull out your ranged weapon in circumstances where melee is a death sentence. This just seems less like “OETA” as you claim, and more you’re lacking fundamentals and are blaming the game. And again, I hate being that guy as I never want to jump to “skill issue” as a response to criticism. But honestly? Skill issue.
You guys really gonna fall for this weak ass bait?
???
Are you somehow suggesting everyone plays Havoc 40 with other people that don’t tolerate “non-meta” build?
If yes, then I’m sorry for you.
The talent system gives the illusion of choice. I say illusion because there are still talents that you have to take if you don’t want to be wildly worse.
I honestly would prefer the old feat system. Give us 3 choices per feat tier and balance them instead of trying to balance every conceivable combination of talent points. It still gives you some ability to mix and match to fit your own playstyle but is so much easier to balance and tweak.
I’m ambivalent about whether the number of feats should be reduced or not.
I think the Paradox of Choice by Schwartz applies here.