Reading the replies i got curious. Could you make another poll to check how many people play with a premade team and how many people play with randoms? Also how many people play with voice chat and how many without.
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brief butchering of proper spelling aside, it was meant as an argument FOR the poll just focusing on those playing auric maelstrom and not those below.
these iâd categorize as the âaverage joeâ and often times inept when it comes to joining these diffs.
like i said, leave everything (gunners on steroids included) from damnation and below, your proposal seems to aim the same direction, give us options above auric maelstrom 
aint proper concentrated right now, roof/chimney leaking at the moment, repairs gonna cost some aquilas 
Game director is the goat, when it breaks, making rain of specials and elites.
Nothing can get you so much adrenaline as hearing 15 specials spawning, just when you engaged crushers patrol in the middle of a horde.
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that, sah, might be difficult 
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For me its about hitting that sweet spot between being too much of a mess that weâre stuck in 1 place for far too long, and being just enough of a mess that you constantly have to be on your toes to make it through but make clear and constant progress.
Before the update (for me at least) the difficulty on auric high gauntlet was just right.
Now things got SLIGHTLY too out of balance. Simple high intensity doesnt provide enough challenge and the high gauntlet now provides too much challenge.
I can still play and enjoy it no problem. (except the new mission) But i enjoyed it more before the update.
What i think would make everyone happy is to make a new difficulty thatâs so unbelievably ridiculously difficult unfair and just downright mental. That only the most hardcore players will ever attempt to play it.
That way the hardcore players that can solo a maelstrom mission will stay away from affecting the average auric players and everyone will be happy.
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donât you often find one game to go unbelievable smooth, with barely anything threatening, and then the other ending in an ownage not far from the start?
imo it depends mostly on how well the team works together. a team of 4 good players eliminates any threat before it can actually become threatening, hence the âsmooth rideâ.
on the other hand, 4 people that scatter like chicken the moment they enter a larger room, whack zombies instead of pulling a net off their mate NOW and go alt-f4 the moment they hit the dirt for sake of their karking auric ASS is a recipe for disaster.
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Finally a poll with choices that arenât immediately biased. 
Imma offer my explanations below too:
Difficulty: âItâs fine as is and doesnât need major adjustingâ
This is a bit tricky. The game can definitely afford to be a lot harder, but the harder it is the more it pushes us to specific powerful builds. Especially if youâre a solo player and need to carry pubs (something thatâs very noticeable with each patch that buffs enemy spawns). Thatâs not what Darktide has been about, for me at least. The better you are, the more options you have for trying out other kinds of builds. That discovery is a huge part of the gameâs appeal.
Thereâs also the issue of how Fatshark tends to increase the difficulty through bigger spawns, and what repercussions it has. More spawns means even more frequent bugged soundless specialists on T5+, which are just an RNG instant kill mechanic that has nothing to do with skill. All they do is make the game worse while forcing Fatshark to spend valuable time & money on fruitlessly hunting out the bugs and patching what they can (as they have so far). Increased spawns also constantly messes with the weapon & build balance, emphasizing AoE & cleave weapons more and more while leaving single target weapons further behind.
How should difficulty be increased, if it was: âNerf players / Buff enemiesâ
I mean itâs the same difference. I think peopleâs shortsightedness about why nerfing is inherent to a balanced game as well as their lust for constant power creep is why weâre in this mess. If Fatshark canât nerf the players nor buff the enemies (bc that always gets an outroar too), then increasing spawns is the only way they can go. Either way, the balance must be maintained so they do what they can.
But buffing the spawns comes with so many issues it just isnât worth it. Personally Iâd do whatever it took to push the spawns down to a level where the sound cues worked again, and then rebalance the enemies & players around that. Going forward Iâd keep those spawn levels the same, or focus more on larger hordes or more elites instead of specials, special modifiers etc. Basically work around problems like the sound engine getting overwhelmed and simply nerf the OP weapons early no matter how much some players cried about it.
This way theyâd fix most of the current balance issues like hammers, helbores, and other single target weapons (instead of having to start tweaking each and every weapon individually, and keep doing that over and over as the spawns increased) at once. The only thing that would change really is that now even a few crushers would be a serious threat instead of having to spawn 15+ all at once and in your face to envoke anything more than a yawn.
But ofc, Iâm just a nobody. I donât have to worry about pesky stuff like reputation, public reception, sales etc. So itâs easy for me to say.
For all I know upping the spawns despite its issues could have been a completely conscious decision. Maybe they simply did the math and realized a few bugs in T5+ earning the ire of a small handful of high endgame players was a small price, if avoiding the nerfs and giving casuals easy OP builds instead brought in 10x as many new & returning customers?
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The devil is in the detail!
Damn Auric Maelstroms vary hugely in the modifiers, to the point I just donât do some. I donât do many to be fair because I donât have a group of mates who want to do them, and theyâre just a real lottery in pugs in terms not only of skill, but team composition, âstickinessâ when things go bad, etc.
In addition, I like to play all four characters in a week, but Iâm probably only at this level on one of the four avatars, the rest being somewhere between 5^ and 5Auric. Pretty much means for me that Iâm happy with where things are.
In terms of your bonus polls; I find things charging me from 5 different directions hard work. Mentally Draining (c) - youâre right @CobaltNinja , thatâs a nice summation. Would I want them changing? Not really, itâs what the game is now at high levels. I mainly leave it to others as itâs just a step beyond fun - I donât need that extra challenge to enjoy it. And I probably have more fun just winning more often than I would losing badly more often.
I do find large packs hard to deal with because I choose not to take things that can! 6 crusher packs are hard with a knife and pistol. Sure thatâs my own fault, but itâs just what I like to play with, and I donât like what might be a better choice in (say) the evisc + boltgun. Are 6-packs hard to deal with in general though? Not if youâve a team mate whoâs packing anti-carapace, but one on one, yeah.
Rolls round to the first poll really. Itâs all a bit pot luck on the team composition.
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If Iâm running Ogryn, the teams compliance is welcome, but not necessary for the completion of the mission.
Infiltrate, Venting Shriek and Fury of the Faithful forever!
Someone has to be toughest, strongest and meanest.
The issue with difficulty in this game is itâs dependant on a team that can cooperate properly, and thatâs at most like 8 percent or so of the population. And thereâs no real way to convey the importance of thing like maintaining awareness of your teamâs actions to a player, they gotta bring that in with them.
Auric is fine with a good team but i donât play auric anymore because there will ALWAYS be some useless dead weights in the team trying to grind penances for a handful of words that mean nothing to me.
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ye you mentioned the most fun way to play them, they donât make it easy mode like the ones iâve mentioned still
Yep! Itâs the volume that should be worked around instead making everything into bullet sponges.
There was something about quantity being itâs own quality, but canât find right meme at the momentâŚ
âŚso I will leave you with this disturbing fact instead!
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Itâs a hard one for me to answer because I think the current difficulty would be perfect if the trapper and dog issues were sorted.
They are bugs and/or straight up cheating and donât feel like part of the balancing. They turn the game from enjoyably difficult to impossible in the blink of an eye due to their issues.
So current difficulty with those issues remaining unchanged: too difficult.
Current difficulty if those issues were addressed: perfect and I wouldnât want players or enemies nerfed or buffed. Netters not cheating is not a nerf but a fix.
The âbuff enemiesâ is the worst solution
You buff cause there is a problem, then there is 10 more problems that comes from the buff. And it would break lot of weapons and it would take time to adjust again.
Unless I have not understood what it means behind this choice⌠but canât believe that players would prefer breaking the game than adjusting what is too strong.
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Im an Ogryn main, pal.
The game is actually ridiculously easy with 4 talented players.
With 3 you can drag the 4th along usuallyâŚ
With 2 youâre going to struggle.
Given the PUG community that exists for the game Iâd say that difficulty is fine where it is right now. Itâs balanced to the point that the true difficulty modifier is your team mates.
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yes⌠i quoted myself.
I realize that the question can be read by two waysâŚ
I have read it through the prism of the first question, so a question that should be summarized by this sentence: Game is not enough difficult, what should we do to correct this?
However, the question could also be read like this: If we want to increase the actual difficulty, what should we do?
But, honestly, for both, I think that it is the player that has to be nerfed. Several builds (talents + weapons blessings) have problems and permit insane damage output. These builds trivialize difficulty,
Always has been, but now more true than ever.