I genuinely don’t know why you got asshurt just now. It really doesn’t matter what your experience on H20 is because that’s heresy, we were talking about auric damnation not being idfficult enough.
Like I’m not joking, go check in the code, it’s heresy. Good on you for enjoying it, but it doesn’t bear relevance in a discussion for what people who find the game too easy on auric damnation should do. I’m personally not content playing H20 like you because it’s too easy (it’s heresy). As things shift further up, it becomes too annoying to pug. There’s no middleground for Havoc.
I know I’m not one of them, but truly-skilled players were not satisfied with the difficulty level (and maybe even still aren’t, as I’m sure the absolute cream of the crop are making progress on soloing H40).
Maybe, just maybe, high Havoc isn’t for you? Try some lower Havoc if you’re looking for a perfectly-puggable experience that meets all your other criteria (like no communication).
You’re conflating good players playing together with the soloqueue experience. It was in a fine spot of difficulty for playing with randoms.
Which Havoc level would you say is fun to pug yet still challenging?
For me, right now (I’m pretty rusty and only getting in like 4 hours a week if I’m lucky, after regularly playing A5s and AMs with good success rates) it’s the 20s. Like I said, sometimes ya click with a team and ya win and sometimes ya don’t. We’re getting all the boss spam of Havoc, and it’s definitely a different/harder experience than A5s imo. I only pug right now.
Maybe that’s where you belong?
Below 30 feels too easy to me and is boring, 30+ is immediately no fun with randoms because of how the bespoke modifier works internally. Again, not sure you’re the right person to talk about this though given that you haven’t played it yet. Not sure why you’re trying to jab at me with me belonging on 20s when I just told you they’re actually so boring to me I don’t want to play them for the same reason I dont play low int damnation.
This is all beside the fact that it has less maps and modifiers so it’s just inherently less appealing for variety reasons.
Not trying to jab at you, bud. If you can’t pug at 30+, because of the variability of other players, get a team together. Or don’t!
We have arrived at agreeing that Havoc is not a difficulty solution to the base game being too easy I guess? That’s what I was saying to begin with
No, we’ve determined that Havoc doesn’t work for you because you have extremely specific requirements and can’t seem to find somewhere along the spectrum that offers significant challenge but still somehow insulates you from the greatest random difficulty modifier of them all, other players.
Wanting to play a tide game with random matchmaking and having appropriate difficulty levels and balance for it is pretty specific, but I also don’t think it’s an unreasonable ask. It’s how I played VT1 and VT2, and it’s how I played DT until the balance patches made it go awry and it’s no longer enjoyable with randoms
And again, all other factors aside, Havoc is not really an acceptabel substitute even if it did provide that balance because it’s missing over half the maps in the game. It’s a pretty harsh drawback to playing a l4d type mission based game to have over half the missions disabled. Quickplay map variety was just beginning to get to an acceptable level before the power creep.
It’s not how I played VT1, but it is how I (mostly) played VT2 and have (almost entirely) played DT. And I continue to pug in Havoc and have a great time, bolstered by the actual sense of teamwork that I’ve felt when most of my teams stick together win or lose.
Dunno what the solution is for you.
I’m fairly certain that the solution is either reigning in the powercreep or failing that, adding a higher difficulty a la cataclysm, which was my favorite patch besides chaos wastes. Obviously people enjoy the concept of a sixth quickplay difficulty because it was quite populated and the real tryhards could tryhard away on DWONS (and on DT, havoc). They could also add chaos wastes which was fun to just quickplay away in. Either way the current state of the game is not ideal for people who just want to quickplay and actually lose matches sometimes. Havoc is too niche and limited and has different balance from the base game, whereas the base game is just too easy. It’s not a replacement for actually balancing the game properly
I think it’s entirely possible that the rest of the game is considered pretty fine by most of the normies who don’t sink 2k hours into it. And it’s entirely possible that the gap between what Havoc offers and what you want is a terribly small niche.
But who knows! Maybe we’ll get that 6th difficulty! And hopefully they’ll balance the outlying weapons/blessings/talents soon.
I’d personally enjoy a sixth difficulty, just basically as ‘Havoc but without the health/toughness tax’. It feels like it would be a super fun middle ground that could be attached onto quickplay/be one difficulty added on to Auric, because right now with how things are being balanced there always seems to be two modes for me:
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I play Auric Damnation, I have a good time, but my brain is off. It has to turn on occasionally with multi trapper/dog spawns or pox bursters, or when my teammates die/aren’t actually Auric capable and leave me to do most of the heavy lifting, but otherwise it stays off, and I happily cut and bonk down heretics like shreds of wheat at a good cadence regardless of how the rest of my team mates do (and only ever go down if I fail to see a trapper/dog in time and get o-ked because reasons).
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I play Havoc, have to turn on or die, have a pretty good time but don’t really care to engage with the systems around it anymore (even if 40 does ‘lock you in’ now finally, but I don’t really care about re-grinding for it for the experience of sitting and clicking on people/waiting for people to join me and having to be the arbiter of fun). And beyond that only really have the stamina to do it once or twice a week, given the build requirements and the amount one has to focus to get through.
And then I’m like ‘I want to have to pay attention but not get dropped in 2 seconds because my health pool is tiny’, but that doesn’t exist. There’s no ‘I get 4 monstrosity spawns with a massive wave but I actually get to keep the tools to deal with it’ difficulty right now, there’s just ‘a pleasant entertaining walk in the park’ and ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAA’. And I think it would be super cool to have the ability to click ohh this is a lot but I got this difficulty for those wanting a balls to the walls havoc light experience but also don’t want -50% toughness and health, no safety net/emperors fading light, gunners that end your soul and a deamon host spawning in the back of the map while 3 captains and a nurgle chase you around the arena (just the captains and nurgle is fine thank you).
(I feel this is also why so many continually request for a solo mode/there’s been such a resurgence in asks for it these days. People realize Auric Damnation is fun when it’s effectively playing it by themselves, with 3 other freshly level 30 accounts that have no idea what they are doing and are best when they are just pulling a net off you. But as soon as you get 4 people that know what they are doing you just crush it without a problem at all, so people are looking for ‘that 4 player quickplay experience where 4 randos just drop in and have the time of there lives’, or, when not allowed to have that, ‘just let me play by myself then already dang it’.)
It honestly baffles me how anyone could want Darktide slower. The relative speed gap between different weapons and the relative speed gap between players and enemies shrinking? Sure. Totally understandable. But slowing the entire pace of the game down? Even at its fastest, Darktide is already slow.
Everything else being equal, a slower Darktide is also an objectively easier Darktide.
I do understand that the Vermintide games were languid in comparison to Darktide, but compared to…almost everything else ever released, Darktide is slow.
Silly to equate movement speed with actual speed of gameplay interactions. VT2 was far more fastpaced than DT, and it’s in part BECAUSE you can’t just run away from stuff. You pull it you fight it, which can get very stressful with many enemies. Compare to just running away from stuff in Darktide, which is always a low input activity that’s always the same.
I’m super curious what you and others would want out of a difficulty between A5/AM and Havoc 1-40. I get that the systems around Havoc aren’t perfect (although they’re being improved and will hopefully continue to be). But if you could quickplay into Havoc whatever-level-you-want, would a 6th difficulty be necessary? And if it didn’t have 3 captains and a beast and all that, what would it have?
Movement speed of the player and enemies literally is part of interaction pace. If the gap between every aspect of the game remains the same, but the game speed was reduced by 15%, interaction pace goes down. This is in fact how this works. You’re obsessed with this outrunning concept. Let’s remove this from the equation. Every enemy is now slightly faster than the fastest player build. What’s more interaction? The game at the current speed, or the game at half the current speed?
I love what Darktide is. It’s an arcade game. It’s Robotron, it’s Gauntlet, it’s Smash TV, it’s L4D. It’s mayhem and flow state and all that good stuff.
But I also get wanting the core system to slow down a bit and be a bit more chunky, like VT2. I think an alternative mode could fill that niche. Maybe we’ll see it one day!
In the meantime, I’m playing around with a mod that changes the availability of dodges that I think will offer an interesting feel. Kinda like @Amelia unbinding dodge!
Yes, but less movement speed of the player doesn’t mean gameplay will be slower paced. The opposite is the case. It’s the relative speed of the player that needs to go down so you can’t just kite mobs of enemies easily anymore, which will make for a more interactive, faster paced game.
I can understand how someone might want that experience, but like, VT2 exists, still has a playerbase, and still gets content. I don’t know why someone would want Darktide, a game that is still objectively not that fast, to be like a slower game that is already easily accessible.
Relative speed? Sure. I’d do that by speeding up the enemies, not slowing down the player.