How Enemy Spam and Bloat trivialize Darktide

[deusvult6]

The change was definitely palpable after the talent tree update. There was a period there where I wasn’t quite eking the full potential out of my build (zealot kept getting nerfed too) and was not yet used to 20 gunners or ragers spawning in at once.

It seems to me that after the power increase they had to scale the game difficulty to match. Of course, they have the issue that it has to be a challenge to those with well-chosen and -designed builds but not be utterly insurmountable to those with poor builds which is quite a stretch given the amount of power builds now convey, but it is also speculated they ran into an entity number issue.

Previously, combat was primarily horde and mobs with very occasional scattered elites and small waves of specials on their separate timer. If you recall, it took real effort to get 3 elites in one spot for the psyker self-splosion challenge. I only got it with the team effort of two shield ogryns shoving 2 shotgunners while waiting for the next one to spawn. The challenge for ogryn to knock over 6 enemy ogryns often took a zealot to run through the first half of the map and aggro all the ambients he could in the hope that there MIGHT be 6 ogryns among them (then die and let them go back to the ogryn player camping a choke-point). And there usually weren’t. When they added crusher patrols it became trivial.

The theory has widely been that the deciding factor here was cross-play. Because of console limitations on number of entities, they had to compensate by somewhat reducing the number of units but have high threat units constitute a higher portion of entities in play at any given time. Ergo the gunner/rager spam parades. If you recall, crossplay was rolled out at the same time as the rework (Oct 2023) so a lot was happening all at once. (In fact, that may have just been the X-box launch, no?)

I guess it’s two different types of gameplay and it’s definitely not the worst thing they could have done but a part of me does miss the non-stop pox hordes of the old days and the worst enemy in the game being the humble shooter.

[kqgee]

Agree.

As much as people on the forums complain, include me!, Darktide is fun! I am excited for new maps and hopefully the skulls reveal pumps new life into the game.

[harlekein]

@rally

require different responses but can die quickly when you slip up

Which game are you playing? Good players only die because special spam and the bugs that come with it.

[Wahid]

@JanZamoysky

You won’t find much sympathy here. A lot of us here are for that high you can get from challenging gameplay. DT achieves this through gameplay intensity, constant enemy spawns and difficulty modifiers. VT2 simply does that differently.

---

On the contrary, he will find a lot of sympathy on the forum, as many of us with 1-3k hours played concur with the current status of the game.

The director spamming specials and elites every single second is not fun.

Sorry, but it really isn’t, and it’s not fun when current Darktide spams so many units that the audio breaks.

The entire point of disablers and specials is that they should be a rare occurrence that keeps you on your toes when you hear their warning sound, but instead you get 10 Trappers spawning after each other in every single room.

And the game’s spam spawning elites instantly recharges our ultimates, thus further breaking the game.

The game spams units, and the player classes are quite overpowered, but Darktide is also exhausting to play.

It’s ironic how Vermintide 2 is a much harder game without needing to spam monsters at you every millisecond, isn’t it?

I’m saying that as a person who played my first Vermintide 2 game ever after 3k hours of Darktide, by the way.

But, apparently according to canon, four rejects/acolytes can wipe out ten different monstrosities in a single match, making them stronger than the Ubersreik 5 (the heroes), who are literally trying to save the planet. /s

Darktide would benefit from a full on reset regarding balance, blessings and enemy power.

Bring back the old Scab Stalkers!

[Enforest]

@Wahid

The entire point of disablers and specials is that they should be a rare occurrence that keeps you on your toes when you hear their warning sound, but instead you get 10 Trappers spawning after each other in every single room.

That’s even if the engine and desynched servers allow you to hear them… While it’s managable to deal with this on Auric HISTG, it gets quite absurd on Havoc… For example there is an event that spawns five Dreg Bombers on Havoc. FIVE. And you have to fight them with the constant mutant yelling and Crusher/Rager clowncars. It’s just cheese countered by more cheese from the player’s side.

Very funny that some people still think there is “mUh sKiLl” involved in dealing with this.

@Wahid

And the game’s spam spawning elites instantly recharges our ultimates, thus further breaking the game.

The game spams units, and the player classes are quite overpowered, but exhaustinf to play.

As much as the basic skill trees were bland and boring on the release, the rework sadly broke the core gameplay. Who the hell thought that giving skills that give flat CDR or RNG chance to trigger on elite/special kills is a good idea? Not to mention abilities that don’t fit the game at all and blatantly overpowered, like Stealth and VoC (shoutout to the contrarian lorelets who argue against adding actual Warhammer weapons because of “muh not lore friedly for lowly rejects”, but knocking down an armoured Ogryn with a shout or going invisible every couple of seconds while wearing rags is apparently 100% cannon and GW approved.

Speaking of “lore friendliness”, I think it’s the core issue with Darktide design. It’s like they’ve made content and squeezing as much as possible, so every piece of Wargear must be “equial”, yet they fail to balance the game around it. No bloody way that a knife and a parade rapier are the best anti-armour weapons in the game, while Thunder Hammer or Chain Axe at least 2 times slower at killing high threat enemies.

I don’t think it’s ever going to be addressed, so if there ever will be Darktide 2, just make us bloody Stormtroopers/Bodyguards/Whatever Inqusitional elite from the start and give us actual cool Warhammer gear. Couldn’t care less about shovels, knives, double-barrel shotguns and other hobo weapons in my 40k game.

[Frish]

@Enforest

No bloody way that a knife and a parade rapier are the best anti-armour weapons in the game, while Thunder Hammer or Chain Axe at least 2 times slower at killing high threat enemies.

This right here makes me super sad, I have a lot of fun playing this game overall but it’s a super bummer moment when I’m charging up a big attack and it whiffs because some DS-wielding puny insta-slays Crushers apparently. I have learned to ping the targets I am not going for to compensate

While I think a complete balance reset is probably off the cards, I would like to see enemy counters see a bit more attention. There should be more drawbacks to using certain weapons against certain enemies.

This skews nicely towards cooperative play where you are inherently rewarded by complementing your team-mates, as opposed to being jack-of-all-trades master of all.

[Ralendil]

@deusvult6

Previously, combat was primarily horde and mobs with very occasional scattered elites and small waves of specials on their separate timer. If you recall, it took real effort to get 3 elites in one spot for the psyker self-splosion challenge. I only got it with the team effort of two shield ogryns shoving 2 shotgunners while waiting for the next one to spawn. The challenge for ogryn to knock over 6 enemy ogryns often took a zealot to run through the first half of the map and aggro all the ambients he could in the hope that there MIGHT be 6 ogryns among them (then die and let them go back to the ogryn player camping a choke-point). And there usually weren’t. When they added crusher patrols it became trivial.

To be fair, this was a call of players. They cried all that they could to get the HiStg always available.
I think that Auric should remain. There are players that like that.

But I would like a different game. And seeing that they delivered a different game with Havoc (that I dislike, but that’s not the point), I think that they could add also this game type. Made a poll about this.
So a lot less elites, like what we had at start of Darktide. But elites that mean something… And more hordes… and in proportion, also, more lesser enemies.
At least this is my dream… and if they could stop mixing factions, it would help me to get immersed.

But, we need also a balance pass. I don’t ask for a fine balance pass… I have lost hope in the will for Fatshark to do that… I just want that they nerf the most obvious OP weapons. DS, PG, Psyker (soulblaze?? or whatever talent that permits that), and Boltgun. Ideally, I would prefer successive little nerfs to find the right balance… But I fear that they will hurt just one time the weapon and it may be good enough (flamer) or kill the weapon (autopistol), but they won’t come back on it before 1 or 2 years.
So, I don’t ask them to go too far in the nerf, but nerfing them is really needed.
As an example… PG should be balanced with small cleave with light shots. I would say a 3.5 enemies (better than agri revolver (2) but less than zarona one(5)). Charged shot should have increased cleave scaling with time of charge. It would be a cleave 100 if fully charged (but you may play with exploding gun). Venting should damage a little your health (2-3 hp), bypassing toughness. Damage should not be tweaked. Ammo are good also. But survivalist should get a 1% ammo return on the ammo reserve + ammo clip. This change has to be done (in this scenario).
Here it would be a balanced gun. Will it happen? I doubt… so I just ask them to reduce the cleave..

[MangoSeasons]

Oh my brain reading all this.
All this thread is projectile vomit inducing.

[ForumWarrior]

Ok? It still isn"t believable no matter how you feel about it.

[Ensrick]

Well, I stand corrected, for some reason I thought back in 2024 when I checked the average count for VT2 was at 6k and higher before that; looks like Darktide is in a healthier state than VT2 was for most of it’s lifecycle.

That doesn’t change how I view the state of the game; I’d attribute that to 40k being more popular than Warhammer Fantasy. Most of the players seem to be going through the standard game, leveling, unlocking blessings, etc. Those who play Aurics 5s still seem to be a minority by comparison. I have a much easier time finding a match in the standard game, and that game mode has been trivialized. So it’s that, or play the absurd stuff.

[Badwin]

@Ensrick

I’d attribute that to 40k being more popular than Warhammer Fantasy.

I don’t know. I don’t think Deep Rock Galactic has more players because the concept of “dwarves in space” is more popular than Warhammer 40k. Likewise, I don’t think the “brand power” of Helldivers is keeping more people in HD2 than DT & SM2 combined.

[Ensrick]

In this case, I think it mainly comes down to the brand and setting. As far as I’m aware, none of the more popular co-op horde games have leaned into increasing player power while counterbalancing it with bloated numbers and mission modifiers to the same extent that Darktide has.

Also, in general, melee-focused fantasy games tend to attract a smaller player base compared to FPS titles; co-op or otherwise. I personally prefer the former, but the options are definitely more limited.

[aroth68]

@Ensrick

it should make enemies become more dynamic; introducing new enemy types or having existing enemies that use different weapons, attacks, and strengths and weaknesses. Making existing enemies more dynamic higher the difficulty, the more engaging the game becomes.

Before and during development of DT, they really projected the feeling that DT was gonna take all VT2’s systems and turn it all up to eleven.

But when it came to enemy types, FS just gave some standard mooks different types of guns, put some flak armor on melee mooks’ heads, ctrl-C ctrl-V for most other things, and then called it a day

Another problem with their simplistic choice to go for tons of enemies to ramp up difficulty (as opposed to your suggestion) is the obvious performance issues (it’s CPU-heavy for all that AI and pathfinding, and GPU-heavy for everything else such as shading etc.)

[Badwin]

@aroth68

But when it came to enemy types, FS just gave some standard mooks different types of guns, put some flak armor on melee mooks’ heads, ctrl-C ctrl-V for most other things, and then called it a day

There are plenty of behaviors that weren’t in VT2. Enemies taking cover, positioning and flanking, responding to suppression, etc. These aren’t just reskinned beastmen archers were fighting.

[Ensrick]

Nah, there are more enemy types and behaviors than VT2, it’s just they are trivialized by how easily the player can spam certain abilities and so they just throw in tons of them.

I just played an Auric Maelstrom 5 today, and we won fairly easily with me and another Veteran spamming the toughness buff, and a couple psykers, one using lightning staff to stun everything, and the other using blaze and shields. I had a simple autogun and tac-axe, going for a more meat and potatoes play-style. The brittleness stacks are so effective. I’m a little rusty, so I died a couple times, but the whole thing definitely felt less impactful than a game of Vermintide 2. The main modifier was just ridiculous special spam; lots of gas, muties, dogs and such. Using the scoreboard mod, I had a super high defensive score mainly from buffing toughness.

I’ll say that although Darktide has a lot more enemy types and behaviors rarely does it feel like it matters much. I feel so disconnected from the gameplay elements when everything just turns into a blur that I have to gun or slash through. I get kills with Veteran or Zealot just by spamming the most effective attacks into a crowd and often the kill feed shows me what was actually there because I can barely discern what’s going on when there’s like 10 ogryn shields blocking my view, and grenade spam.

[MadMartigan]

I’m perhaps in the minority in this thread but I want MOAR enemies lol. I am at my happiest when I am sweating in a vast sea of heretics.

It gets very sweaty when cornered and I love that.

Over 3.5k enemies is when the fun-o-meter starts pinging for me lol

[MixedLetters]

I mean tbh Maelstroms I feel are the worst proponent of this, I actively don’t play them/only play Auric Damnations most of the time because the ‘bonus modifiers’ on Maelstroms are actively just anti player and garbage. ‘Infinite Poxbursters, 15 thousand mutants, 20% CA cooldown so the game becomes even more trivial than it already is, enhanced blitz making it a Psyker playground’. Though Shock Trooper gauntlets can feel largely the same in Auric Dam, but there’s usually variety in their spam to a degree outside of the really bad directors, and any other modifier besides that just becomes good hectic fun most of the time.

I feel Maelstrom is basically it’s own ‘gimick gamemode’ at this point, with little reason to call it ‘the pinnacle of achievement’ given all the bonuses it gives you. And Auric Dam tends to be more fun for me as well as it’s where all the ‘for fun’ players are (like myself), so while you’ll see meta here and there more often than not you’ll just see a bunch of weird stuff and people ‘making it work’, or people that have just hit level 30 and now you got a REAL game on your hands. And I find that way more enjoyable than ‘people trying to get into Havoc/get Auric Storm Survivor number 53 blitzing the bonus CDR Maelstroms with ease’.

[Ensrick]

Maelstrom is definately the worst. Regular Auric 5s are much better.

[deusvult6]

I think I agree with most of what you’re saying. Yes, we could not revert to the old composition without large rebalancing but even moreso, I’m not sure it can be done at all so long as crossplay remains on. VT2 has separated platforms for this very issue and there may simply not be any good way around it.

@Ralendil

To be fair, this was a call of players. They cried all that they could to get the HiStg always available.

Perhaps, but Shock Troop Gauntlet only increases the number of specials similar to the old Seek and Destroy modifier. I don’t know what High Intensity actually does in the code but all it says it does is generate more hordes and specials.

So the whole thing with more elites is kind of its own thing. Almost like we are playing with the old VT2 Vanguard modifier on all the time by default now.

[Khorne_Dawg]

I’m with @Ensrick on this one. It’s just ridiculous at this point.

Post-Patch 13 Darktide’s Enemy/Player Balancing is completely out of whack. The AI Director is constantly throwing temper tantrums in order to counter the insane levels of powercreep. Fatshark absolutely should focus on getting a sweeping Balance Pass out at some point soon.

Sienna’s Sword is quite possibly one of her best Melee Weapons in Vermintide 2. The Mk I Catachan Sword is the exact same Weapon, but it’s mediocre at best in Darktide due to the insane levels of Carapace Enemy spam.

Powercreep isn’t being combatted with frequent Balancing spot checks, but by the AI Director’s temper tantrums. It shouldn’t work that way.