I’ve been rotating around playing a lot of games I used to play - WWZ, Vermintide, Back 4 Blood - and it seems like Darktide’s highest difficulty is the lowest of them all.
I want to come back and enjoy Darktide some more… and I crave more 40k in my life… but, this is kind of a serious issue.
This could be solved if fatshark would let us create custom games on maps where we can decide the modifier type and amount. And possibly the option to increase enemy damage/health, similar to hades’ heat system.
My group and I just want to play an auric maelstrom with every single modifier and +20-50% enemy health and damage and bang our collective heads against a wall until we clear it. Preferably on every map.
Especially because Deep Rock Galactic is adding customizable difficulty modifiers to Hazard 5, since the modded Haz 6 community is pretty large. I expect a lot of hardcore players to flock to DRG in June once S5 drops.
To me this is why the Class update was such a double edged sword:
The customizability and freedom it gives players is great. It’s really awesome and fun the stuff you can do, although Vet and Psyker still need a bit of work.
The downside is that the power spike it gave to players compared to the system in place before was absolutely insane. And certain builds can still absolutely trivialize the game.
Personally, I’m not sure if only an increased difficulty is enough. I think weapons, enemies and certain builds and talents (not all of them) need a bit of a shakeup in balance.
Obviously this is something that would be very hard to do and probably isn’t a priority right now, which is understandable. But this is one of the reasons I stopped playing the game.
Maybe if the crafting update has Red weapons we’ll get a new difficulty?
Every time i’ve mentioned the game being too ez on reddit i got downvoted. I can see why they made the game less difficult as there are input differences. A lot of casual players on controller is going to have a hard time if you made modifiers like more 1 shot downs, more mobs that take off 1/4 of HP with just a hit.
To be honest it doesn’t matter, if there’s no new content and worse, the way maps and modes are poorly rotated, nobody’s except the very niche is going to play this game long to grind cata 3
Stop kicking and screaming for stupid buffs and whining at the slightest veteran nerf, and voilà, higher difficulty
“I want the Bolter to one shot everything because muh lore” is incompatible with “i’m so gud i require Auric Maelstrom x10”
the reddit downvotes are a given, people usually hate to get put on their place.
until confronted with reality everyone thinks he’s the hot sht and society has risen a whole generation of "i’m special"s
in real life a rough beating is a very efficient one time education to not run your mouth or mind your manners/know your place when around “better” people.
like i’m not gonna argue with the 300 pound prison tattoo guy unless i’m chuck norris.
then again, no such thing behind a screen and it shows in every situation.
higher difficulties don’t take away anything from the game other then their illusion of being entitled to the “whole content” and god forbid they stay in a difficulty fit for their skills.
years ago when i was training at the gym i went by the 80kg dumbells daily and thought to myself “one day i may” training my butt off beyond exhaustion.
i enjoyed watching the big guys throwing them around like it was nothing, but never did it cross my mind that they shouldnt be there because i wasnt able to lift em or that it was my “right” to do so because i pay a gym membership.
whenever i post a link to a really good match i had on reddit, the downvotes are the first to come in.
usually i grin to myself that someone feels snubbed watching others perform.
like it physically hurts them to post a “well played dude” .
so yeah, i’m all for higher diffs, not just one, maybe even a scaleable for fixed groups to provide new walls to bash your noggin through.
its not like the lower diff playerbase would lose in numbers for i can’t think of any reason to step down from auric maelstrom anyways.
Ye, I feel you. Current Maelstrom is way easier than VT2 Cata. Not like much can be done about it with the current player base.
Apart from the insane power spike that patch 13 did, there was also the issue of constant nerfing of shooters to basically irrelevance.
I do remember a time where a single shooter’s salvo would do 100 toughness damage and a shotgunner would be something to be seriously feared. It was the best time playing Zealot charging in and living on the edge feeling like a god soloing a gunner team, now even on the hardest difficulty and triple the spawnrate it’s just meh.
Currently characters are way too tanky, mobile and deal way too much damage. Normal or elite enemies pose close to no danger. It isn’t even the problem with “muh overperforming weapon”, it’s a general illness of the game where the you can pick up some durable build and just run around the map as 4 solo player even in VEG maelstroms.
Worst offenders are Zealot and Ogryn in this regard, which can just disregard the entire team and run around as some kind of manic. While VoC Vet is a bit less problematic, since it’s invulnerability output is at least team based (it usually kinda sucks at crunch compared to other builds).
Unless defense and mobility gets nerfed to hell so you can just tank and kite endlessly this game will not really have a proper gameplay, only like we have now where the creators are just trying to up the spawnrates of specials, so you might drown in them, but I don’t have my hopes up.
Unless we get to the point where a Zealot running out alone is an actual risk requiring someone to watch over him, unless a Ogryn requires firepower from allies to survive, and unless Psyker/Vet in turn needs the protection of the previous 2 the game will stay as the current easy 4 man solo game.
I mean seriously I’m currently farming penances for Zealot and I had 2 games already on AuricSTG with some madman in the team just zipping through the map leaving everyone behind with the other 2 teammates being total beginners dying every 2 second, and what was strange to me isn’t that there are some madmen with some specific build can just leave the party and run through the map, but that I could easily just survive totally alone and slowly, but surely follow him with my random build. The absolute state of this game’s difficulty.
You have no idea how desperately 99% of society needs a good slap or punch to the face to put things into perspective. Main character/I’m special syndrom is a goddamn epidemic and most people are insufferable for it.
I 100% agree. Everyone needs to get it into their heads that I’M the main character, not them.
This. Power creep is real and it doesn’t require a new difficulty level to fix it.
But… I am the main character.
I’m not sure they’ll ever get rid of this absurd power creep. Every time they address literally anything, like Vet’s survivalist aura being absolutely busted with the new elite balance, people screech and exclaim the class is now worthless.
I am also absolutely certain that the psyker playtesters are smoothbrained cretins and terrible at the game. Psyker is already extremely strong and one of the biggest power creeped classes but they BUFFED disrupt destiny so it has near 100% uptime now. So now every psyker build that runs disrupt destiny just has a very nearly permanent +15% damage, +30% crit damage and 37.5% weakspot damage. Absolutely crazy to buff this. Atleast before it was an actual ramp up, like it would reset between active fighting areas and on elevators. Now it just drops back to 10 during an elevator ride and then it’s instantly back at 15
Smite also got buffed via EP which is absurd. Now you can just hold down EP smite into a mixed horde to kill it and it’s basically a better purgatus staff (at the expense of really turning the game incredibly boring). I’ve been using it for the penance, literally ONLY using smite all game to see how it does and I was ending every game with most special kills, most elites, 800k damage and 800 enemies killed. Keep in mind this is the BLITZ SLOT that can also stunlock every enemy in the game minus bosses, and keep in mind you can literally just use this all game long while dodge sliding and you can’t even blow yourself up with it. How the hell did that need a buff?
I don’t think that will be the case. Haz 5 is pathetically easy, and even modded difficulties aren’t that hard if you have a team that knows what they’re doing.
Especially the fact that we aren’t getting a harder level of Deep Dive, the whole update is just kinda fine. Some new toys to play with, a couple of stationary enemies, a new mission type. Probably fun for a couple of hours but I’m not sure that it will replace DT for me.
On a side note, it’s dissapointing to me that DRG is taking the back seat to Rogue Core, because I am just so incredibly sick of rouge lites and have no interest in the title. Especially when a lot of those new weapons and environments could’ve been in base DRG (maybe that will be their season 6, idk).
Its more than likely when that item update hits that it will increase the player power once again. Problem really is that anytime something is nerfed on the player-side you get massive complaint threads. If you buff enemies they suddenly are too spammy, tanky or annoying to deal with.
You only have to look at the bomber enemy to realize it went from team wiping to nearly irrelevant in a span of couple patches.
The feedback is all over the place. With the current player power it feels like we are missing at least 2 difficulties.
If difficulty is raised, or more higher difficulties are added, we need more gatekeeping.
During the past week, i had a lot of damnation matches, where i had all three teammates die (not just downed, but die) within the first 5 minutes of the mission.
When ever anything spawns behind the group, there are still people in the auric playlist, who run backwards and towards these enemies.
There are still players in almost every single group, who have such bad awareness, that they walk past medicae stations without noticing them (although their locations never change), even when outfight and under no pressure.
People are still unaware of the existence of their grenades (although the new penances might raise player awareness), and they are blind to any pickups like ammo and medipacks.
Players who are not good enough to even carry their own weight on a low int heresy mission, have no business being in the auric playlist.
Yet those players are numerous and can easily make the game more difficult than it would be, when playing entirely solo.
There are a lot of terrible players around (probably with no self awareness and no shame).
If higher difficulties were added, those players would still behave the same way and queue for the highest available difficulty.
There needs to be a higher barrier to entry, or public matches will be almost guaranteed to fail.
No main character wears a helmet, EVER. Step aside, amateur. I AM the main character.
If Fatshark actually took their job seriously, they would reach out to the community to understand which difficulty modifiers and maps are liked and why. Finally players would have an ability to:
Honestly, I could see the game feeling far too easy IF people play with a solid team and that team sets themselves up to synergize with eachother really well. However if you’re like me and you PUG auric damnations all the time you’ll know that the secret difficulty modifier is your team mates, and having 3 bad team mates can turn a the easiest mission into auric damnation solo mode.
I agree, add quickplay like V2 and I might start playing more frequently.
Obviously it will depend how you play the game. I for instance typically play with 1 buddy, so in that instance i might not be getting the “true solo horror”, but i personally believe the game should have the option to challenge even those 4 man try hards.