Some people said Vermintide 2 felt “arcady”. Ok, maybe, I can respect that opinion. But it was also smooth, crisp and responsive when it comes to: movement, melee dance and swaps. Everything felt like one smooth combo. Dodge left, push, swap to range hold right click already tracking enemy, headshop, swap to melee, dodge, melee combo. All smooth, all instant response, felt great.
Now, in Dartktide it’s just sluggish. No matter what the intent is behind it: as a player I feel the gameplay is not responsive, not crisp. Vermintide 2 gameplay was like hot butter through knife. Darktide to compare is more like trying to cut frozen meat with knife. The reasons for that are:
Absolutely frustrating mechanic of delay when switching to range weapon. That is just horrible design. If you make game that requires you to at the same time fend off horde of melee enemies while actively dodging elite enemies and deal with range enemies behind them and you deny me quick swap to range when I tried my best to give myself opening in melee combat to shoot range enemy who will kill me if I don’t take him out in this 1 second window I have: you just don’t understand your own game. Which is mind boggling considering you came from Vermintide 2.
Dodge reseting Stamina is idiotic. Stamina in Tide games was never assosiated with dodges. The whole core gameplay of your games is dodge dance what was always regard as the best First Person melee system in games. Blocking Stamina regen on dodges makes whole core fun loop of mele dance with pushes, attacks, push attachs etc. just worse. Why you try to make worse system than in V2. You already got it right in V2.
Reviving is way to punishing here. In V2 to pick someone up was worth the risk, you could be more aware of surrounding thanks to 3rd person camera and you could look around. In Darktide Reviving is way too punishing on higher difficulties risking two players being killed more than one player being revived. With my group we figured out in half scenarios it’s just better to leave downed player to die and draw some aggro than try to res him as it’s too risky. As always instead of tonning down the revives from V2, you went with your hammer approach to make it as frustrating as possible.
Overal the pushing, blocking feels less responsive than in V2. Same with weapons combos, like on Ogryn try to do some weapons combos like push attack into attach into power attack feels super sluggish and recovery time for certain moves are way too big.
Overall I have no idea why you took a perfect combat system from V2 and decided to mess around it. You already had the perfect recepie for it.
I will tell you anecdote Fatshark to sum it up:
There was a professional cook Anthony Bourdain (RIP), who was making a video about making a perfect Burger. And he was saying that over the years he saw chefs adding all strange stuff to burger, like avocado, pinneaple, chilli oil, potatoes etc. etc. While he was serving always a classic burger in his restaurant, becasue while he was messing in his restaurant with Burger at some point he asked himself a question: “Do I really make it better?” . Then he realized that the classic recepie was perfectly fine and he was messing with it to look like it’s more fancy or he knows more than most, but in reality he didn’t really make it better.
So ask yourself this question Fatshark: Do you really make it better?
Personally I dont mind the melee being a bit more sluggish - you have way less pressure in melee then you do in vermintide (no plague monks/berserkers for example), so I kind of get the change to a more deliberate systems that has higher animation commitment. However the way ranged weapons are handicapped is def baffling. If FS wants to promote a hybrid system they need to rework the weapon swap and dodges for ranged weapons - swapping weapons mid fight is ten times more risky then in vermintide.
That only leads to players favoring either ranged or melee (mostly the latter cause its safer) wich is the exact opposite of how youre supposed to play. Vermintide has legitimately better hybrid combat… Great
Um, what? Ragers? Armored Ragers? They are Berserkers. They have the same moveset of Zerker from Vermintide 2 and same high Stagger resistance. You can get absolute same pressure as in Vermintide 2.
TBH I agree with the thread, that it can feel muddy and unresponsive with a lot of weapon combos. Using the ‘new’ chainsword feels amazing and similar to playing V2 for me while using the flamer on the Zealot just feels awkward going to and from melee.
Not trying to nit pick here but berserkes do exists, its the Rager enemies and they are far far more dangerous in Darktide than they are in vermintide. They dont get staggered as easily, they track you better, and their first hit stuns you preventing immediate block like you could in vermintide 2. Personally I feel like because of the sluggish (honestly not even sure if its intended to be sluggish or if its just a ton of network lag making it feel this way) combat, its actually more pressure on the player in melee. Try having 4 maulers on you in this game vs in vermintide 2, its about 4x harder, and they slide attack far more
I agree with everything, but I also remeber that in Vermintide 1 your stamina did not regenerate while you were dodging, so there is at least precedence for this practice. That being said though - to revert it back to that in any form was a dumb descision, which I already gave feedback on in the closed beta and Fatshark didn’t care.
And if we are talking about all those gun animations when you switch weapons - I feel sorry for the person who had to painstakingly make those, but they are an absolute nuisance and they should not exist period.
Everything in combat feels sluggish and for everyone who thinks otherwise you have either not played Vermintide 2 or you are just straight up lying to yourself.
I am very saddened to see how the combat dev team is so perfectly fine with r*ping their own baby like this.
I don’t have much to add because people have already covered the points I have. Most, but not all, people coming from V2 are disappointed by how uncrisp and unfun the melee feels, and the hybrid combat not being what we hoped. Some people will argue that it’s a skill issue, that people coming from V2 need to get better, but I argue it’s a fundamental problem with how combat is structured. We’re not far from release and from closed to preorder beta, nothing has fundamentally been fixed. Some people are enjoying the molasses combat, while others are not. I don’t want to call it early, but between performance issues and gameplay being so far removed from what made V2 fun to play, I’m extremely tempted to refund the game, as I doubt I will enjoy it as it’s going now.
Thanks for the info, but i wasn’t courious, because you weren’t part of the discussion up to that point. It was about that it feels fine for me and someone was crying about the feels.
And if you think im trying to flex, you missed the point. Btw stop flexing with your playtime
This is an open forum though where everyone is free to partake in the discussions, which is why saying I wasn’t part of the discussion is a very antithetical to the platform/format. Hence me ramarking that your statement about weapon swapping is objectively falsifiable is perfectly valid. Lastly you don’t need to take a figure of speech literally this ain’t a contest about being witty.
Please reread my post. Especially the “up to that point” part. And my prevoius posts where i was saying that i just had a different experience and was not intent on criticising anyone. But somehow you took offense? Take your own advice and stay calm.
I love all changes (compared to VT2, which I’m a veteran of). I’m super glad it’s not just a reskin of VT2 and after initial shock I started to adapt, though most of the skill has transfered. Currently, about 20 hours in, I love the DT combat and all desperate choices with trade-offs I have to make every minute.
Don’t expect VT2 when opening DT. Enjoy what you get and learn.
And the classic dodge/block/push dance with hordes feels “off” as well.
That’s because of a few things, from what I can tell. One, they changed enemy attack patterns so that they do long delayed attacks much more often. Think chaos warrior overheads in VT2, or standard enemy running attacks they they would do if you kept backing up. These attacks will now frequently be performed even at point blank range, and this makes large groups of enemies come at you with wildly varying attack timings making simply dodging them significantly harder. The second thing that changed is that dodging now causes your stamina to stop regenerating, meaning that if you’re fighting a very dense horde that you can’t effectively dodge due to what I listed previously, mixing in pushes to compensate for the variable dodge timing will very quickly result in you running out of stamina, and since you’ll need to continue dodging to stay alive you’re probably not getting that stamina back until everything is dead. I laid this out in a thread I made, and while you can dismiss this as “get good adapt to the new game” I really think it’s a problem that needs to be addressed.
Oh yes, that as well. Gaming in general is supposed to give you pleasure and relax.
By the way, I cry seeing cohorts of people embittered and furious that the game they play is not what they imagined it to be, so much energy unproductively and stupidly wasted.
I’ve had zero issues with melee in this game. I’ve never had an issue with supposed animation lock and I’ve been able to cancel attacks into blocks very very easily. I do agree that switching from melee to ranged in order to tag a special or elite can be dangerous, but that’s also why you have three other teammates with ranged weapons and abilities. If you’re all getting swamped by hordes at the same time then it sounds more like a skill issue than anything.
Melee combat can feel far better, but I understand where you are coming from. In closed beta pushes were atrocious
I primarily favor lots of dodging and mobile weapons such as Catachan sword, Tactical axe, Chainsword. The mobility feels fantastic. You can really feel like a swordsman with the Catachan, Marks IV and VII
But then what about other weapons? Chainaxe has a supposed “defence” stat; indeed though it feels heavy and good on the offense it also feels too sluggish and dangerous to use
Thats a shame a lot of players feel the combat is sluggish vs V2, I’d interpreted it as they’d moderated the pace.
Everything feels deliberate, I havent had a problem dodge dancing and translating the vermintide frenetic gameplay to darktide’s tempo. Feels good so far, especially as ogryn.
