yea you can say that tbh
if you can blast everything with a gun, why bother engaging in melee with MELEE elites, rending is a horrible mechanic that shouldnt have ever been brought in this game
staves are also problematic where they just clear the whole screen in seconds
It’s optional, a good team will just blast most everything to pieces before they ever get to melee range. A purg psyker alone can delete everything by itself if given the chance, same goes for a bolter vet or a lugger.
The only class that that has to melee to be efficient is zealot.
I understand now, i thought you meant melee was just completely unviable.
On the room clearing, especially with purg, i completely agree. It makes the game such a snooze fest. Enemies just die before you get a swing in.
It’s also the reason why aurics can be so volatile, most of the players have no clue how to melee, because the game never forced / taught em how to. It’s all a cakewalk until crap hits the fan, when most of your teammates will just fold in half without basic knowledge of how to dodge, slide and melee your way out of trouble, where to position, how to herd enemies the way you want to. It’s just shoot until it fails, than die and hope the zealot can clutch.
Why bother, when you can just abuse one of the dozen mechanics put in place to bypass fundamental game aspects such as armored elites.
I’d go with new enemy types that are tough so instead of sending a horde of 10 shotgunners, just send 2 of those for less clutter.
Second, stacking modifiers on private games for people who feel auric maelstrom is not enough.
the mentally taxing part is if you start to play it again and now you have stutters out of nowhere and get a “disconnect” cause of the stutter but you play 60 fps the whole time… Gotta love how awfull this game still runs on high end pcs. Shadercache might be the reason as it was resetted but that happens like everytime they update that game. Sm2 0 issues for example which I arguably takes more to run on ultra than darktide on high…
Just play Auric Damnation/Maelstorm with randoms. We don’t need “no ammo pickups” mod when someone is already stealing every single pickup (but doesn’t kill a single special/elite)
How? People constantly say there’s power creep but as soon as they nerf everything it’ll be right back to people complaining about weak weapons. These changes are great because they don’t just turn enemies into bullet sponges and second they reduce the need to have so many Elites/Specs on the screen at the same time potentially improving game performance.
Great idea private game lobbies with adjustable/stacking modifiers would absolutely reduce the workload on the devs to address balancing issues. Most of the casual players that would run public matches aren’t the ones calling for nerfs, so this could have solid potential.
Something else that should be adressed for sure. Not sure if the Advanced Tutorial covers this information, I learned by watching Telopots, Mr. E, Tanner etc but most casual players aren’t going to be familiar with them
by game design, a game should be in the highest difficult, challenging but at the same time not frustrating.
it is possible for sure introducing new mechanics to enemies while also considering the fun and balance of things overall.
most of these ideas imo are only frustrating than anything
( but no offense, i also think it’s nice to express new ideas anyway)
i will give my opinion on your ideas in the specific one by one to be more specific.
this i don’t think it would be fun, it would be way harder to spot them when they are simply aiming at us by deploying a smoke screen.
maybe a smoke screen when they are going to change position but i’m not sure if any new mechanic/addition to snipers is needed as in they are still a nice specialist that sometimes can be tricky in certain situations. regarding the AI in moving nearby to group of gunners i’m not sure, since gunners may defend snipers and making even more difficult.
snipers i always seen them as a lone wolf, being alone and sniping at distant, and most of the time they are like that. which makes them unique.
anything that is ranged, it can be suppressed, and suppression it’s also a core mechanic of the game. stagger it is also important to deal with these type of enemies, even frag grenades help staggering them to either ranging them or meleeing them. along with other things.
this also not very fun, getting blinded and punished for meleeing enemies! or ranging them, if you happen to be near to someone meleeing them, you get the malus as well.
instead of this, i’d say that buffing them more like it was time ago, or in the beta, was in the right spot. but they nerfed them sadly.
not sure about this, but they are for sure easier than the berserkers in vt2.
when paired with bulwarks, crushers etc, they can be honestly still challenging though, especially with certain weapons that struggle at staggering ragers.
this also not fun, and also because beside suppression, another mechanic is,
(shown and explained in the tutorial of the game) that when you go near to enemies, they will do melee rather than using ranged.
this also is good for zealots (but not limited to zealots) charging ahead and aggroing enemies in melee and drawing the attention to themselves while others can go ahead as well and melee/range.
dunno about this, but poxwalkers are indeed weak, it’s rare to even get hit by them unless not moving and not blocking. i think they just function as bodyblock objects.
in fact most of the time, when getting grabbed by hounds or trappers, it’s because of them. therefore i think they are fine, and also because often mentioned as trash mobs. because it’s just the horde which is often not considered a threat, unless they bodyblock you.
this also not fun, and technically it happens already, if they are about to throw a grenade, they will throw it even if they will die. so it’s there technically, but at least not everytime as suggested.
also because wouldn’t make sense to put this with no counter. and if the counter is fighting them with ranged only or moving away after meleeing them, it’s not good design imo.
time ago they were kinda spammy just like tox bombers, and their flames could destroy instantly toughness, but now they have been nerfed.
why I like the idea of new enemies, I’m not sure about an enemy that constantly targets a player disabling their ult, and reducing their vision. players don’t like much tox bombers nor lights out/fog modifier that much because of the vision reduction. adding something similar would be already too much. but i’m ok with adding new enemies.
this I like, but DH may be too much, especially if it kills 2 people instead of 1, like it was used to be before but it got nerfed. I think instead of DH, would be fun if it was a regular boss, it was something similar like in chaos wastes with eggs. where if not disrupting the eggs, they would have spawned a boss. and most of the people were letting to do that to get more coins/to have fun with bosses.
it is true there is power creep
but i’d rather see devs balancing the game around tweaking players than enemies. also I personally don’t think are great! while interesting and all, not seeing much attraction from people on these ideas either.
regarding about bullet sponges enemies, they currently aren’t but if you meant that the only way to buff enemies is adding hp, etc. making them bullet sponges, there are also other ways to tweak balance, for example nerfing weapons or players in term of blessings, talents or even mechanically, such as movement (mobility), dodge distance, etc.
one of the nice things of darktide to me, is the quantity of enemies, and adrenaline you can get with so many specials and elites. feeling very alive. i know this is just subjective in the end. But I like in this way. also honestly I personally don’t have issues with performance in higher difficulties. 120 fps steady at all times even during hordes. sometimes few stutters but it happens due to the many things, for example grenades and explosives but not being a constant issue.
It was the case time before, but it was so annoying, that they removed it.
May be worth revisiting now that fire doesn’t evaporate your toughness bar, assuming that’s the order. As long as there’s enough time after dropping the bomb to skedaddle!
That said, I think if you want to make bombers more challenging then just tweak the AI that makes them run headlong at you. Why is the long range grenade lobber compelled to run directly at the nearest reject, even if it means strolling through their own fire?
I’d rather scabs get emplacement heavy weapon teams that are static obstacles to clear, or if you clear out a nest cleanly, you can use the heavy weapon temporary. Or even sensible spawning, like the bunkers at the entrance of Magistrati Oubliette. Do you know how many times I’ve seen an enemy shoot out of them? Once.
There should be a sense of effort and reward when fighting, whether it’s a literal material reward, a technical satisfaction, or progress. Not everyone is into CBT.
I mean… sure, that’s what they do probably 70% of the time… the remainder they’re taking advantage of their ability to fling explosives from what may as well be a completely different room right into the group, and keep flinging them from cover where there’s no possible way to reach without pachinko-ing your own grenades to their location
Oh I wasn’t complaining lol
Feels like a gift from the Emprah when one of those flamey boys waltzes through the fire and into my open arms 
they do need to have some sneaky feckers just hanging around the map like Elites… just a static trapper hangin’ around the corner waiting to net an unsuspecting Reject… or bombers hiding in rafters so that when a wave triggers they can rain down fire from on high.
Granted, for trappers to do this while still having the ability to just shoot through geometry, that’d be pretty crap honestly…
Yeah, it’s something I hope they’re looking at fleshing out with the spawns. I’m optimistic that the move towards progress-based spawns includes curating the spawn locations and hey even making AI improvements since you have more context to work with, rather than simply RNG + time.
I’ve seen a lot of experienced players just gun it for known spawn locations to camp them while they drop in when entering a new area. Stunningly effective at times, but also a little gamey if you know what I mean! Like the good ole piñata doors 
A smarter bomber probably wouldn’t yell GRENAIIIIIIIIIDE at the top of his lungs either
My 5 cents: