Part I: Makes the game harder without adding new enemies, potentially reducing the need to have more enemies on the battlefield at any given time
Note: I’ve made some edits based on feedback, also some great points were made and these changes would be better implemented as optional modifiers for private matches rather than additions to public matches
Make Dreg/Scab Gunners and Reapers immune to all Suppression/Stagger effects
Give Scab Gunners smoke grenades that they deploy at their feet when attacked by ranged fire. This fits their nature as the more tactical variant of “gunner” and would benefit their “squad” of Scab Shooters as well
Make Scab Ragers enraged after being stunned. This is the green eyes pox gas buff.
Give poxwalkers that return from the dead the green eyes pox gas buff.
Change Bomber behavior so they always drop a grenade at their feet when they die.
Part II: Adding Enemies
Create a new Specialist, Dreg Psyker. This low level Psyker periodically targets a player in line of sight, disables their ability and reduces their vision range temporarily. Sound cue to targeted player and eyes flash green before attacking.
Create a game modifier that spawns a Daemon Host if the team doesn’t reach the ritual site before the timer runs out. This Daemon Host kills two players instead of one and then leaves. The ritual site will always be just before the final arena.
Gunners were pretty great for maybe a week or two, when fatshark increased their reaction speed, which lead to a giant wave of butthurt and yapping from this place and reddit, resulting in fatshark nerfing them again.
Not sure how this would play out with sniper modifier. Might just group them up even more and make them even easier to take out with certain weapons.
Reapers are mostly unyielding, so there it might make sense to make them at least immune to suppression. But isn’t this idea just giving these three enemies the nurgle blessed modifier permanently?
Combining this and the previously mentioned point, wouldn’t this just create shotgunner deathblobs again? What is the counterplay for melee characters then? When the now stagger immune, always shooting shotgunner groups comes around the corner.
Don’t know about everyone else, but when it at least comes to dreg shotgunners, there always seems to be one or two that does not like to collapse into melee. Just having the shotgunners spawn more appart to give them a natural distance between one another could already give this effect, while making them harder to lockdown as a group.
Always nice with more stuff. Most of the other points looks good aswell, however. At this point you might have to think about how other people would react to these changes, making some of them into more modifiers could be an idea or just have them be a thing in a new difficulty level.
Primary question: How much more challenging does Darktide need to be? Not that I’m opposed to greater difficulties being included, but how many players would actually find such relevant?
Most people play Malice or Heresy and find that plenty of challenge even at 30 with good gear, only a small proportion even main Damnation. The overwhelmingly vast majority of the playerbase is not good enough for Auric Maelstrom, and of those that are good enough for the game’s highest difficulties, fewer still are good enough that a greater challenge is even appropriate. With that in mind, if implementing the suggestions into existing difficulties, would this add value or just frustrate most players?
That said, some thoughts.
On one level I can see where this could make things harder if you’re under fire trying to get the sniper or in tight confines, but on the other hand it’s also concentrating targets making it easier for AoE weapons/abilities and for players not being focused to engage the shooty blob. To me, part of what makes Snipers so dangerous is who they often appear from places and angles that aren’t near anything else, making them particularly awkward to engage. If they’re hiding in a clump of gunners, that may actually make them easier targets to deal with.
Only Reapers are Unyielding, the other gunners are Unarmored/Flak depending on location.
How would this actually look/impact the player? And would it mean much if you’re just swinging an axe into them anyway?
Sounds neat if one wants some greater difficulty.
That’d definitely make things harder, but would remove some nuance/skill from combat.
Ok I got the categories wrong, still Gunners and Reapers at least shouldn’t be affected by Suppression/Stagger, when providing Suppression themselves is all they’re really good at.
Not really. Shotgunners are already very squishy and can easily be killed by most ranged weapons. If anything this change would make them more of a strategic threat that players need to adjust for instead of something that can just be melee blitzed to death.
So basically these changes to make darktide more challenging are based on enemies counter melee players, based on:
Give Scab Gunners flashbangs that they drop at their feet when attacked by melee.
Change Shotgunner behavior so that they don’t engage in melee combat at all, rather they continue blasting their shotgun when attacked via melee.
It literally means “don’t engage on melee with them”, and i think these are pretty bad takes, for zealot you probably be fine, but for the other classes it could be a huge pain, even more in my case that i play with +150 ping.
Basically these changes just makes worst literally the core of the game (melee) and why it’s so fun to play it.
Not necessarily just more challenging. These changes can also greatly reduce the need to have vast amounts of enemies spawned at a time. That affects the performance of the game as we’ve seen.
And part of the reason you play with 150 ping could be due to how many enemies are spawned in at any given time. Increasing the enemy effectiveness reduces the need to have a ton of enemies active simultaneously.
Only if they have time to get set up. As it stands engaging them in melee completely removes them from combat and ranged suppression sources are plentiful among the 4 classes.
I’m on board with this idea, partly because of console limitations ( no truly massive hordes ), partly because of balance (CDR abilities mainly), and partly because more interesting AI and tactics would imo be great.
But… not like this:
Suppression as a whole feels underutilised, even though imo it has great space for cool gameplay (rootin’, tootin’, and shootin’ anybody? ) and helps alleviate the need for precision weaponry. Meaningful gap-closing for Ogryn for instance – firing a salvo to interrupt a shooter squad setting up so you can sprint across a room and get to beatin’. If anything I think suppression should be expanded!
Shotgunners… yeah I’m glad they’re stupid enough to put away their actual shotgun and pull out a club versus a rampaging Ogryn lol… immersion be damned!
And I’m not keen on the idea of introducing flashbangs against the players, that honestly sounds like a recipe for disaster. If it’s a suppression effect, maybe? But then what’s the point of dropping it in melee, idk. What’s the counterplay, just look away?
Circling back to this, as I think it’s a compelling idea. Part of what I’d really like to see is armour types having a more meaningful impact. Sure you’ll have some sticky mixups in quickplay, but that would also add a layer of teamwork and coordination out of necessity. I don’t mean to say that certain weapons do 0 damage to carapace for instance, and ideally this is compensated by fewer enemies that are harder to bring down.
And then, once this is sorted, crank the spawns back up to 11 and call it Auric Auric
I think players should be nerfed instead of enemies buffed. This game is already mentally taxing to play and I don’t need more garbage to deal with that I would still just instantly delete.
The game would be significantly more difficult if we nerfed a couple of problematic mechanics:
Smite being a forever stunlock on every non-boss enemy
Gold toughness providing full invulnerability
Certain weapons being excellent at anti-armor, dealing with ranged enemies, and crowd control all at once
Agreed, some weapons like Dueling Sword could use some adjusting so they’re not completely dominant at everything. Part of that is Dueling Sword was originally designed for one specific class…
Never said that. Even Zealots can use ranged weapons, believe it or not.
And make talents or blessings pointless in the process? No thanks.
Cool ideas but imo the only way these things could be added without basklash would be in a 6th difficulty. Because as we saw with that small time when the shooters/gunners were buffed. The playerbase doesnt want the already established difficulty to be changed.AKA all of these things would change how the gameplay is now (making current difficulties harder), and change what is known causing backlash as everything they have already learned will all mean nothing and they will have to relearn the mechanics which is what happened with the shooters buff. It changed what people were used to. Therefore it would have to be introduced in a 6th difficulty to keep the established difficulty how it is. Not disturbing what people know and are used to.
People will complain that T6 is to hard but it wont matter because 5 and below exist and the way they play hasnt been tampered with.
), partly because of balance (CDR abilities mainly), and partly because more interesting AI and tactics would imo be great.
) and helps alleviate the need for precision weaponry. Meaningful gap-closing for Ogryn for instance – firing a salvo to interrupt a shooter squad setting up so you can sprint across a room and get to beatin’. If anything I think suppression should be expanded!