I can’t find the thread or I’d just post in it. Sorry. But a few days back someone was complaining that the Director for Damnation and Heresy is actually nuts. Initially I didn’t agree, I had played damnation missions while tooling around with my vet and it didn’t feel so bad, ezpz vs auric. But I’ve played a few more instead of my usual Auric missions and some solo-melee only runs recently and I am seeing what he means.
I’ve got bursters spawning around corners with little warning, trappers spawning in overlapping pairs, enormous piles of ambient elites. In one game I walked past a daemonhost and a plague ogryn and an ambush all spawned simultaneously. Like sure, I’m good at the game. I can even handle a fair bit of this solo with nothing but a chain axe to a fair degree. But the point is damnation isn’t really the difficulty level for me in the first place. I’m an Auric Maelstrom kind of guy. I like getting my teeth kicked in by absurd spawns. But Damnation (plain) is a level of difficulty that is in literal terms beneath me, which is why I chose it for solo runs. Its supposed to be easier than Auric. It doesn’t seem like it at the moment. It may be worth tuning the director for these lower levels even if I like how Auric is feeling right now. This game isn’t just for me after all.
In my eyes the OP of the said thread got an unjustified amount of flak from our forum goers.
It is a fact, that the AI Director can spawn an ungodly amount of elites/special out of thin air, leading to situations that are very difficult or even impossible to counter, resulting in frustration. Not to mention the pathing, which allows enemies to crawl back into spawn doors and come out behind your back, Portal style. Nothing beats a crusher patrol coming out of the room you just cleared.
I am more or less fine with it, as I’ve some excellent gamers in my group and can also carry my own weight, but I am led to believe that the difficulty spike is too much for many people to bear, especially on “regular” damnation. I can imagine going back to heresy as very demotivating…
I wouldn’t try to tune it down that much. Just make it a 6th Level or something. If there are people like you Reginald it would be a crime to take away Director who is actively trying to kill you with all means at it’s disposal and still failing.
Just Git Gud
I’m kidding but serious get a decent team. stop playing solo
Zealots can solo kill bosses
Ogrens can tank the demon host
Psykers can protest the team from ranged enemies while stunning an entire hoard of enemies
Veterans have krak grenades I guess. Idk veterans are fing useless half the time haha
With a good team this type of situations become just another walk in the park
Look simply put. Having something in the game that is too hard is not necessarily a bad thing.
You can drop down a level and have just as much fun as you were having before
And having a harder mission means you can challenge yourself and your team to beat it. Even if you can’t beat it constantly
To be fair the OP there was lamenting about simple shooters giving him trouble, and he does deserve all the flak for that. I have to really have to go out of my way to make a build that has a hard time against shooters.
Someone playing t5 should have the basic movement techs down to move/dodge/slide around to avoid fire… but maybe this is just the veteran player coming out of me remembering playing aggressive Zealot a few months after release when an unlucky double shotgun shot would just delete your health bar, and if you didn’t have CritDR up one salvo from a simple shooter would evaporate your blue bar.
but maybe this is just the veteran player coming out of me remembering playing aggressive Zealot a few months after release when an unlucky double shotgun shot would just delete your health bar, and if you didn’t have CritDR up one salvo from a simple shooter would evaporate your blue bar.
That’s that Nish, I am glad that you admit it. I also play Auric and like to fool around with different builds since the DT came out, so I can very well relate. In our group, we trigger every DH on purpose regardless of situation to spice things up and are silently hoping for a Twitch mode like in Vermintde
I think, that majority of the forum goers are actually the unsaid elite of Darktide / Vermintide community. What here is considered basic might be quite problematic for other people. I liked the fact, that in the said topic plenty of our experienced forum guys offered genuinely good advice, which for me, is one of the reasons of this forum to exist: share the knowledge, make the game & community better.
Offtop out.
Also to straigten this out: I like the crazy AI on Auric/Maelstorm, but also can understand, that the changes in difficulty that came with latest patches might have been problematic, and some situations created by AI director (3x Poxburster to the face in cramped room) can be frustrating.
I just hate that poxbursters can insta-explode at the doors. It’s inconsequential playing as Zealot, but with Vet and Psyker any door just puts the fear in me.
It’s like 90% of the damage I take on that 2 is from unlucky/bs poxies.
i do find it rather interesting that people are still complaining about difficulty btw. does anyone here remember playing pre skill tree update?
the only think i could think about after the update was how much easier the game got, pre skill tree auric missions felt impossible, and level 5’s felt like a good challenge, and level 4 was where you went if you wanted to have fun and earn resources consistently
at the moment it feels like the difficulty shifted down a level for each mission
you can complete level 5 more consistently now so its worth farming resources from them
level 4’s are easy
and auric missions maelstroms etc are where you go for extra challenge
The highest difficulty is auric. I am playing normal damnation right now and am extremely surprised by how aggressive it feels. To clarify my point; i don’t want to see auric tuned down. But i can see why damnation and probably heresy are feeling very punishing
As many of the regulars here know i run a solo melee only challenge in normal damnation hab drayko. Having done hundreds of failed runs i am very familiar with how it feels to play. The density in normal damnation has climbed significantly and special spawns are far more aggressive. Previous patch i was consistently making it past the midpoint. Now i barely make it to the midpoint, thats how much more challenging it has become. As i said at the start. This isn’t really a change i need, i’m fine insane difficulty. Its weaker players that concerns me. Its actually nutty how much more intense damnation feels, its almost hi-shock from patch11 tier… Not quite right but…whew. i’m surprised things are so thick and aggressive.
I can see normal T4 and T5 being harder now because of the increased elite spawn (especially from behind) to balance the fact that hordes dribble out instead now. The timings were also changed because of the increased horde clear times, otherwise the next horde occurs immediately or during the previous hordes. And specialist waves happen more often and all at the same time instead of being a staggered, gradual back and forth pressure.
I think people who say it hasn’t changed are so inured to the difficulty of high int or maelstrom that they have totally lost perspective on difficulty and can’t really see how other people can, will and are struggling with the changes.
I’ve seen stuff spawn in right next to me a few times. It’s especially bad when you’re at an open door spawn and a burster spawns and instantly explodes. I think it’s more a matter of how they have things spawning in and cues, rather than density.
Yeah i kind of feel this, i remember when starting the game 1 crusher was a WTF moment and now it’s basically an expected thing to see an avalanche of crushers followed by a horde of Ragers and Shotgunners.
I do think though if you drop down to normal T4s/5s and it feels the same then something is defiantly off.
jokes aside, is hell, i used to play this for melk juice but oh boy, i get people constantly dying in level 1 and 2s, i get better luck completing the ‘‘no team death’’ contract in Auric
play auric, you got a better chanche of finding good team mates
Some normal damnation match feel like Hi-intensity damnation for some reason with how many Crushers/Maulers or Ragers horde AI director decide to spam, and it’s not even a patrol or anything.
It was fun but took me forever to clear the no death contract.
Also the surprise overhead buttf_ck can be really annoying, they need to make louder sound if AI director think it’s fine to spawn them from behind the team with horde.
It feels like FS tried to “correct” the powercreep we got with patch 13. It gave so much power that basically the difficulty shifted down 1 level.
I find this fine since t5 should require the use and understanding of mechanics, but it came a bit too late IMO. People have already gotten used to their power and the relatively “lower” difficulty so the recorrection won’t feel good to the majority.
I probably have to go and play some to see for myself.
Edit:
Played 3 games (normal Damnation), it’s a lot easier than anything Auric has to offer. I kill the same amount of specials (at least, usually more) in an STG map personally as a normal Damnation map has in total. There are sometimes Crusher or gunner groups, but they aren’t that big.
What I would say, is that there are definitely a lot of shooters. It might be variance too, but 2 maps had seeds that were very ranged heavy and had ~400 ranged enemies which is pretty high. 3rd map had ~250.
Have to say tho. STG just means more specials, not more enemies in general.
Welp, if t4 now is like t5/t5 is like pre-patch auric on purpose, they should have said they rescaled it “because metrics show blah-blah-blah we think such decision blah-blah-blah…”, and rescale materials/rewards aswell.
Either way it will hurt players ego. Most people will not tolerate that fact they must go on lower difficulty now and grind materials harder.
I know, it would hurt mine after (checks Steam), 1651 hours most (I’d say… 1400?) as a Veteran.
I was capable of finishing Damnation Malestorm and cluth 25% 10% of the time. Now I’m gloryfied passive buff for the team or a glass cannon / ball and chain. Pick one:
needs you
is hell, i used to play this for melk juice but oh boy, i get people constantly dying in level 1 and 2s, i get better luck completing the ‘‘no team death’’ contract in Auric
