Long-Neglected Issues: Common Melee Enemy, and Mixed Factions

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Happy to get big update and new class Skitarii next month. Considering new “disruptive content”(this is how some content get described) will come, it can be predicted that Fatshark Forums will be occupied by new wave of balance debates.

Before balance debates occupy the forums, Herein I’m poing out some long-neglected, never mentioned in forums issues, giving NEW and TRUE PATH toward balancing. The KEY ISSUE here: Too Weak Common Melee Enemy, is the root of many balancing issues in some ways. Unless it get fixed, any fresh content added to Darktide can cause endless discussions and arguments in forums, disturbs Fatshark’s content creation and balancing judgment. Any interesting gameplay can be seen as “disruptive content”, and then get removed. Any buffs or nerfs toward players will never achieve good balance. Over-buffings will ruin challenge and fun. Over-nerfings will turn Darktide into Hawking Battle Paralympics,destroy the core fun of DT: the intense and brutal combat.

Too Weak Common Melee Enemy

Fatshark wants to combine melee gameplay (Example: Vermintide 2) and shoot gameplay (Example: Left 4 dead 2, Helldivers 2, Payday 2, Deep Rock Galactic). However, Imbalance issue between melee enemy and ranged enemy long stands in DT: common ranged enemy(the dreg stalker and the scab shooter) can take near damage as melee enemy in a row, and they DO NOT get restricted by surrounding mechanic completely. Tens of ranged enemy can shoot players at close, middle, far distances, different positions TOGETHER, instantly clear players’ toughness, and then take deadly damage. All Players face threats from shooter enemy, and when difficulty rises higher, threats from massive ranged enemy get higher significantly.

Meanwhile, common melee enemy, the basic melee units in DT, keeps fragile, easy to kill, has no enough threats to players. They get severe restriction in attack ability:

*Some types of attack from them spend 1s or longer,even more than 1.6s, from wind-up to actually hit player. This is slower than a 80-year-old woman. Such attack always happens when they chase player. Though they have rapid attack models, they don’t unleash rapid attack at closest distance frequently.

*Most types of common melee enemy can be suppressed by ranged weapons.

*Surrounding Mechanic: When many melee enemies surround player, they do not attack player insanely together. Instead, they stop for a while after attacking once, or just walk around and do nothing. This looks like old action movie in the last century.

Restrictions above make common melee enemy too weak, causing lack of melee threats. This is the ROOT of many balance issues:

In shoot pure game, for example L4D2, if a survivor gets surrounded by hordes, he will get hurt or down soon. Survivors have to get advantageous positions, use push and melee to protect them from close hordes. In Deep Rock Galactic and Helldivers 2, Bugs (Enemy) can take severe damage if players are too close to them. Some skills may protect you from hurt, but getting too close to melee enemies is dangerous indeed. However in Darktide, hordes and other common melee enemy are too weak, even weaker than Vermintide 2, almost have no threat to players whatever they use melee or ranged weapons. A ranged weapon player using Inferno Staff, Flame Thrower, or any other auto-fire gun, can keep them never hit easily combining dodge(sometimes they even don’t need dodge, even though hordes are already very close to them). A melee build player can also do this using push and dodge. What weapon player use only decides how fast they kill hordes.

Too weak, useless common melee enemy lead such issue: Fatshark has to spawn mass of melee elites, to generate melee threat. That is how endless melee elites spawn gamemode appear. The melee elites replace status of common melee enemy.

That is why some weapons like Devil’s Claw and Heavy Sword are recognized weak, or just not so good. They are classic, cool, designed for hordes and actually perform well against common melee enemy. Devil’s Claw can easily kill hordes using parry. However too weak common melee enemy causes these weapon get ignored. When common melee enemy become TRUE THREATS, these weapons will be valued accordingly.

Therefore, common melee enemy needs buff:

Increase 15% move and attack speed, or more (Maybe 15 is Sacred Number of Fatshark? I’m not sure. At least they should be TRUE THREATS, especially against ranged builds)

Immune Suppression: Inferno staff not only kill hordes rapidly, also allow the teammates of psyker not to hit by common melee enemies. Yes, THE WHOLE TEAM do not need to worry about hordes! Some weapons(Combat Blade, Duelling Sword), designed not good at hordes, can completely bypass their weakness at hordes! This is the root why these weapons are too powerful. Just flame, even no need to dodge, common melee enemies have no threats, no one will get hurt against them. This problem also occurs when you use other gun weapons. In fact, killing efficiency towards hordes of auto-fired gun weapons is slower than Inferno Staff only in Havoc 30+. In auric or lower difficulty, they shoot from more far range and kill faster, without melee thtreats. That is what ranged gameplay Hive Scum does.

Considering the aversion against power creep in Fatshark Forums, repeat again: Buffing common melee enemy will not enhance power creep. Instead, this is the TRUE PATH to stop power creep. Only when common melee enemy becomes TRUE THREATS, endless spawning melee elites can be stopped. This also allows Fatshark to add more new content, no need to worry on unintentionally adding “disruptive content”, keep Darktide gameplay healthy and persistent.

Mixed Factions

Dregs and Scabs, the native hive scums, scavengers, and the traitor moebian 6th regiment guard, are the two main factions in Darktide now. They perform two types of combat style:

Dregs lack armor, use low-quality weapons, but strong in numbers. Attack from them is insane and rage(imagine a group of Dreg Rager gets close to you rapidly, and then start dancing). Scabs are less numerous, but they have high-quality armor and weapon, with higher shooting accuracy.

Dregs, Scabs or BOTH can be spawned randomly in most missions without special modifier. A new player who has no knowledge on any enemies may encounter all in single mission: Including 5 dregs common and elites, 8 scabs common and elites, 3 ogyrn, 10 specialists from different factions, 2 more shield next month. Darktide has no in-game encyclopedia. Too many types of enemies appear in single game just confuse new players.

I don’t want to explain too much toward this. I do not think people hope that Terminids, Illuminate, and Cyborgs all spawn in one signal mission in Helldivers 2, and they work together just for killing players. Yes, Helldivers 2 is a good example: “Dregs Only” and “Scab Only” modifier should be applied to most missions, especially low difficulty. Mixed factions could be reserved for sure, but should be known before mission beginning. With game updating, More types of enemy even new factions are added, factions isolation is necessary change, to avoid mess from too much types of enemy.

I’m Darktide dedicated player, enjoying intense combat fun in Darktide. Hope Darktide gets better with updates. Some change in this post may be helpful for solving some issues, keep Darktide gameplay healthy, convenient to add more content.

Thanks for your viewing

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Rare machine translated post that actually has good opinions, we love to see it! First off, fully agree with your assessment of melee horde enemies not being meaningfully threatening enough. Enemies attack slower than in vermintide, yet we regen toughness faster than we gained thp in vermintide, and we also have Iframes in our dodges unlike vermintide. One thing i appreciate about vermintide is that a few melee elites surrounded by a horde is actually enough of a combat puzzle in that game to take seriously. But in darktide it’s pretty trivial even using off-meta builds. Upping the threat of melee hordes would definitely be a great option as part of the overall balance changes the game needs to bring down player power, and increase the threat of induvial elites so that the game’s difficulty doesn’t solely rely on hyper-density. I also appreciate you recognizing heavy sword and devils claw aren’t actually weak, though

I disagree here, parry is not very efficient at killing hordes, you’re better off just fighting them normally. Devil’s claw is still great into hordes though with wrath and the parry does serve as great defense utility if you get overwhelmed, which means your overall point still stands about them being better options in the overall meta environment if hordes are made a bigger threat. Just a minor nitpick.

As for the topic of mixed factions though, i think your point falls a little flat. I’m not particularly convinced of the necessity of creating such a divide, but the new player experience with the campaign missions that all new players have to complete to be able to do normal missions already segregate the early missions by dregs and scabs. So this is already implemented to a degree, and id rather them not force that more because i think in higher difficulties (havoc especially) that dreg only missions or scab only missions that the game can already roll now get pretty grating. I find mixed faction more fun than either single faction only missions.

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Perhaps Fat Shark deliberately made the long-range enemies of Dark Tide pose a higher threat. After all, they had to make Dark Tide and Vermintide have obvious differences in gameplay and performance. The enemy has powerful long-range attack methods, and the player also has more ammunition and stronger long-range weapons.

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I agree that mixed Factions are supposed to be remained in high difficulty. Except for future update and new player, factions isolation may allow some low penetration weapons can be used more at Dregs Only environment, no worry about mass of armor. Reduce importance of weapon penetration.

Althoung unique enemy in these two factions is still not enough, future update may truly change this and Darktide will be better.

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I guess Fatshark do it too extremely. Hordes in Darktide are even weaker than hollow in Dark Souls III. They act like shooting/melee targets, just waiting for killed.

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i agree with the premise, but i dont see what sort of buffs could make common enemies more threatening when things can remove them as fast as they can now. immune to suppression is a decent step, but the guns and many things like grenades, dots can still kill them too easily.

move speed buff is a good thing probably though. one of their issues is that they can be kited too easily

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Move and attack speed, their attack action should go faster. Rapid killing hordes is ok. But if hordes dont get removed by ranged before they are too close (this frequently happens when hordes come from 2 or more directions, and you don’t hold advantageous position), they should start insane attack instantly like infested in L4D2. ranged characters should use dodge more cautiously because hordes attack fast enoug, or switch to melee (Devil’s Craw will be good in this situation), start melee combat with hordes.

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The obvious answer is “nerf the things that remove them so fast”. Like, just nuking purg staff from orbit instantly like triples the threat posed by hordes on average, even with rumbler, flamer, et al going untouched.

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yeah even though the rumbler and flamer are both extremely problematic balance wise, they are quite limited by the nature of costing a resource. I think it’s good if hordes are threatening enough that you would want to bring ranged weapons good at specifically killing hordes (but not a requirement, just worthwhile having someone in the comp dedicate a ranged weapon slot to that). But i don’t think it should be viable for that to be your comps’ primary or only solution to hordes. 4 dueling sword comps that get by with inferno staff and maybe flamer for horde clear is very unhealthy for example (even though thats a bit of an outdated example). The bigger problem with the current horde focus weapons of inferno staff and flamer is that they’re too good at also killing elites, so instead of being weapons that clear the chaff and soften up the elites so your team can handle them smoothly, you just incinerate everything in front of you and run over it.

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inferno staff issue is prominent in Havoc 30+, especially in Havoc 40 exactly. Keep discussing balance around this gamemode is not a good idea, and never touch root of issue. In fact, I think combine Havoc, Expeditions, Mortis into a new gamemode will be much better.

In auric, there are too much build remove elite faster than inferno staff. Flamer is similar to inferno staff, but costs ammo, kill elites faster. Rumbler is powerful but costs too much ammo. But I just don’t understand why Fatshark give point-blank barrage 50% ammo return, this is the issues, this change gives rumbler too much ammo.

These typical aoe weapons perform actually well in auric, but not necessary. Auric has no extreme mass enhancement. Killing efficiency of melee and gun is not lower than these aoe weapons (Maybe except for rumbler. Poing-blank barrage ogryn has too much ammo now, it should callback). You can equip DS with flamer or inferno staff, use ranged weapons kill hordes, this is ok, just a type of gameplay, ranged shooting style gameplay. The core issue is what I described: You can kill hordes fast, but when hordes are close to you, their slow attack cant threat you at all, even just suppressed. Weak melee enemy causes this gameplay too safe too brainless. When this situation changed, gamebalance will be better.

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what i would worry about here is that when the melee enemies get TOO fast, it will instead become much more attractive to just remove them from the playing field before they can reach anyone. which means the meta would shift even more to use the ranged weapons capable of doing so, and the game would ultimately become less interactive

dreg ragers sort of have this issue on havoc. i agree with you that havoc shouldnt be the focus point, but in this case we can see what the buff to speed and attack frequency and aggression causes. in the case of dreg ragers on havoc which got these buffs you suggest, nobody even bothers meleeing them anymore, people just focus on using the op removal tools they have from range when dreg ragers appear

this is my worry when solely buffing enemies. there is a point where it just becomes extremely hard to justify ever engaging them in melee when such competent “kill from range” options exist

i think the more reasonable adjustment to balance would be heavily limiting how much players get to just rid the entire playing field of every common enemy at range. guns need cleave or damage adjustments to ensure you can’t solo a horde with them. or if that feels bad, then steep ammo limitations to ensure people can’t remove all common enemies from afar. then things like explosions, grenades, damage-over-time spreading abilities would need the same treatment

eventually you would be left with a balance where the common enemies can reach players again, but are still fun and fair to fight in melee, unlike the sped-up dreg ragers.

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I think something important to mention is also additional mechanics that heavily trivialize the current enemy design and generally make the combat much easier for us that didn’t exist in Vermintide 2:

  1. Pushing staggers every enemy close to you. Whether they are in front or behind you, they will get pushed. In Vermintide 2 you only pushed enemies in front of you and to be able to do what Darktide allows us to do normally you would need to invest into your weapon and give it higher push angle.
  2. Mobility - running and sliding. These two things fundamentally underline just how outdated the current enemies are (the enemies that were carried over from Vermintide 2). Unlike in that game, Darktide allows you to just turn around and run and with that no melee enemy can get you. And sliding is a mechanic that is badly implemented since it essentially allows players to indefinitely dodge ranged attacks. There’s no substance or tactic to it, you just spam-slide when you see a ranged enemy and you’re fine. The only enemies who can deny you this invincibility are Elite Gunners since their never ending volley of shots will still damage you when you are spam sliding. If sliding would have a limit to how much you can do it before it becomes ineffective (like dodges) ranged enemies would suddenly pose a much bigger threat than they ever could. Maybe making it so doing a slide takes away some amount of stamina and when stamina runs out your slides no longer protect you from ranged attacks could be the solution to this issue.
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I’ll keep the sliding immunity as long as Fatshark is unwilling to pay for servers that don’t take a full second to register that i am, in fact, sliding, and not just standing there eating a full Gunner clip

I already get hit through blocking and dodging, if it’s a Crusher call it killed

At an average of 30-40ms on a 1GB connexion with 0 packet drops to Fatshark sh*t dollar store servers

The netplay in general is way too garbage to accommodate for most of the suggestions in this thread

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To me that’s an interesting point but not because I agree. The thing is while you have this issue, and it affects your gameplay experience, I never had such problems. And it makes me think, how many people have issue that you’re describing and how many don’t. It’s a bit like seeing posts and threads on the Forums saying that they have this issue, but you don’t know how many people just don’t have it and because of that do not make posts about it on the Forums. It’s a bit like Survivorship Bias if you know what I mean.

So I cannot really say that you’re correct or incorrect because I have no idea how many people actually have this issue that you’re describing compared to how many people don’t. So I do not know if FatShark actually needs to focus on fixing that first before tackling the issue with game’s mechanics trivializing the current enemy design.

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Everyone has the issue, it’s just up to the individual to be aware enough to notice it

You even mentioned yourself that Gunners shoot you through sliding

Well, it’s not a mechanic, it’s the sh*t servers taking forever to understand you are sliding

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Dreg Rangers are different with hordes. They have high hp(2000 in auric), strong stagger resistance. Strong stagger is the main factor that cause players are hard to melee them. When they start attacking, many melee weapons cannot stop and stagger them, whether attack or push.

Of course, too fast attack speed also has effect on this, but impact less than stagger resistance. These features are why dreg rangers are threatening melee elites. Hordes don’t need to be buffed so fast like them, rangers are melee elites after all. Moderate buff will not promote players escape melee combat, as long as hordes can be push and stagger.

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Ragers are a problem not because they have high stagger resist but because the game is utterly void of any form of proper lag compensation and it’s impossible to know if you’re in their melee range or not while they flail around

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Do you have video evidence of that issue in your gameplay? Because honestly we have reached a point where we can just say the same thing to each other over and over again.

“I never had this issue.”

“Well you also have it, you just don’t see it.”

Are you sure? They shoot an unending volley of shots and the time it takes to perform the next slide after the first is just longer than their rate of fire.

But again we can just claim these things without evidence given just our feelings. So I don’t know how we can continue this discussion. Has anyone already done research on this thing?

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There’s tons of clips made by other players all over the forum, most people have just stopped reporting it because it’s clear Fatshark will just slap an “acknowledged” tag on it while they have no idea how to do anything about it

I always tell myself “should have recorded that” but also i’m unwilling to larp as QA for an incompetent studio who plays pretends

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I suggested this on reddit, but an enemy I think they should add is tougher hulking poxwalkers. They could perhaps a bit slower and come at you in bigger swarms wielding polearms or other heavier hitting two handed weapons. I’m picturing just a slowly approaching suffocating wall of these guys.

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