Malice is HILARIOUSLY overtuned

Difficulty: Malice
Condition: Less Hordes
Mission Type: Raid
Details:
IMAGINE if you will, the wording “less hordes”, describing “less” intense engagements, and “less” special spawns. Now have the AI Director do the EXACT OPPOSITE and throw nonstop waves of specials, elites and a monstrosity at the party. All in the span of 2 minutes. If THAT is “less”, I can’t even fathom a regular run, or one with the “endless hordes” condition.

What the hell kind of backwards logic does this AI director have? Every single Malice run has been the same insanity. I can’t even consider looking at Heresy or Damnation if Malice is literal hell on earth…

Jeezuss H. Christopher…

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skill-issue-hannibal

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Weirdly enough I’ve had Malice runs with no modifiers that are less enemy-heavy than “Reduced Hordes” runs.

It seems that those two modifiers don’t mean much more than “Give the AI director a suitcase of cocaine.”

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Yeah I figured there would be a troll dementedly saying “GiT gUd!” You contribute absolutely nothing useful to a conversation.

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Well to be fair I was being tongue-in-cheek, I don’t actually think you made this post because you’re a bad player. I do think you’ve overreacted quite a lot.

I agree the horde modifiers can be misleading, but you’ve identified this as a tuning issue with Malice, which I don’t think is right.

The varience in how the AI director behaves is very wide, and this modifier weights that - but if the AI director has decided to go fully mental, then the difference the modifier makes gets ‘swallowed’ by this.

I don’t really think there’s a problem here, I suppose you could make the case that the AI director is a bit too varied on any given difficulty, but I quite like variation of the runs.

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Seeing as you’re being rather explanatory and genuinely provided some information of your own, I guess I owe you an apology. I’m sorry for treating you like a troll and talking down to you.

On the note about my experiences compared to yours, I’m not entirely sure what drives the AI Director to do anything at all. It’s just… as if it’s huffing glue and drinking enough Redbull to make 20 hearts explode and going “THIS SEEMS LIKE A GREAT IDEA!” when it throws… I dunno… an entire Hive City’s worth of specials and elites at the players. There’s varied, and then there’s it asking us “how much do you want a spiked bat in the ass?” or “do you identify as a suicidal masochist?” The only thing we’re allowed to answer is “Yes.”

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From experience it does seem the AI director very much likes to spawn more stuff if you’re going slowly through a map and harder stuff if you’re rushing through the map.

It’s one of the big hurdles in each new level you have to not only deal with harder enemies but because you do it slower you get horded more and more. But when we ended up running lower level and rushing through them we would see considerably more boss spawns to slow us down instead.

It’s well designed and the difficulties are all doable there is just very much an adapting period especially if you are under levelled for those difficulties

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idk, I do malice with randoms pretty easily most of the time

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Here’s the problem I ran into though, Cr4zy. We barely started the map, were doing just fine until we got to the first checkpoint. We dropped down, and the waves of specials and elites were practically endless. Must have fought about 10 ragers, had 4 or 5 dogs thrown at us, had 3 trappers on us at the same time, LOADS of ranged elites spawned wave after wave after wave for like a minute and they were backed up by 2-3 snipers every time, then several (I didn’t count, but there were more than 4) mutants… and to top that off, not ONLY was there a Beast of Nurgle that we ran into, it was followed up by EVEN MORE ragers, elites and snipers.

That’s not “difficult”, that’s lunacy. We were forced to slow down solely because we didn’t have any way to advance without instantly imploding. In the end we failed because the AI director simply decided to say “You’ve been having too much fun. Screw you.”

Edit: I didn’t mention any bombers, flamers, crushers or reapers, but there were plenty of them too.

Yeah the Ai director on malice is too unpredictable, the difficulty is very spikey rather then a smooth gradient. Hopefully the devs tune it so it is more fair and balanced, like going from veteran to champion in vermintide 2 isn’t a huge leap, but in darktide it is because of how inconsistent the director is.

Haiboku, learn to read or don’t contribute. I don’t care which. You clearly have no concept of what’s actually going on. The adults are talking. Sit down and be silent.

Buncha casuals in here who havent played cata 3 dwons.

You’re barking up the wrong tree Haiboku. I’m gonna ask you nicely once. Contribute something useful or leave.

Ok. There is no longevity in a game that is too easy. Difficulty is relative to different people. Malice is not hard

No one is asking for easy. Can you not read? I’m asking why the 3rd difficulty of 5 with any kind of modifier is pure insanity that prevents any advancement whatsoever. If you’d been in the same runs, you’d be whining something asinine like “My TeAmMaTeS aRe TrAsH”, but probably be that dingleberry that runs off alone and gets themselves killed at the same time. After that happens and we try to get to (and revive) you, everything I’ve described gets thrown at us, and even if we were to get you up, you’d die right along with us.

After all that, you’d be whining that we’re trash and to git gud, not even realizing the irony in your statement because you’d be thinking you’re better than us… and yet you still failed with us. So tell me, Captain Ego. Do you believe you can take on several snipers, gunners, shotgunners, firing lines, ragers, bombers, dogs, mutants, flamers, crushers, reapers, trappers AND a Beast of Nurgle alone, back to back to back to back within fleeting moments (we’re talking 10-20s apart) of each other? Because I’d pay money to see you try and get through all that in one piece and not be completely bewildered.

Malice is absolutely fine. Me and my team where doing consistent runs starting at lvl 16.
You can also easily do it with randoms if you coordinate a bit. Most people when getting to Malice the first time stick to the perceived “archetype” of their class, as in Veterans not ever using Melee and Zealots not sniping specials. It definitely is a skill issue. At lvl 20 and above most Malice runs are rather smooth and at 30 it’s basically a breeze with randoms.

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This “insanity” you talk about is exactly the things im hoping this game sends at us. Your insanity is fun for me. Maybe if you played vermintide 2 and got good at it then realized that the base game offered no challenge at the highest difficulty you wouldnt be complaining about level 3. Its sad to see because i dont want to have to use mods to make a game fun and if many people complain its too hard then they might nerf stuff. They just need to make everything work properly like audio and zealots talents.

lmao… you’re joking right? I have nearly 300 hours in VT2 and I’ve NEVER seen this kind of lunacy even after the changes, expansions and free updates. I’m plenty good at VT2. I’ve had lots of practice with the style of play, my friends and I aren’t morons who “believe that archetypes are to be followed to a T” (you people make many assumptions without knowing a thing. You really haven’t got a clue, do you?), and we expect a challenge. But what I’ve described isn’t fun. And I’m calling you a liar, here and now. Had you experienced what I have at Malice level on every single run with “Less Hordes”, you’d be bitching right along with me. So stow the attitude.

I also appreciate the difficulty spikes in Malice as a nice feature. FS will probably keep tuning it.

But so far it has been very doable from lvl 10-15 characters (is has been very hard) and a group of 20s can usually go throught it smoothly, given there’s proper teamplay and coordination.
Team composition has obviously also a significant influence.
And I’m not an expert V2 player by any means.

Some missions can also be more difficult than others on average and that’s something FS is listening to (the cryostuff mission final event has been one, in the CBT).
I have no idea what you’ve encountered that was so insane but it can certainly feel unfair.
In a tight space it’s possible to get two doggos, a mutie and a flamer, sometimes at trapper nearby or about to join the party.
Imho, at this point, it’s still early in the development and many things will be tuned over time.

Still, it’s been wild but so far I found Malice very enjoyable and sometimes very difficult, indeed.

You’re welcome to your assumptions. Your opinion is noted, however wrong it may be. You’re misguided if you think “1000 hours makes you a good player”. I play on my off time. I have something we call a LIFE in the real world. 300 hours got me all the characters subclasses to max, 2 characters completely decked out in Veteran gear (with a 3rd missing a Veteran melee weapon), roughly an 80% success rate on max difficulty with full Tome/Grim runs, and half the time we’d wait around for hordes to see who would rack up the highest kill count at the end of the run. THAT, we (my friends and I), consider fun.

You think I’m trash? Good for you. I think you’re full of BS. You talk tough, but all I’m reading is “I’m a Keyboard Warrior! I’m soooooooooo gud.”

Good. I’m just as done with you. I’m going to bed. I have to work tonight. You do know what a job is right? Or are you unemployed and all you do is rack up thousands of hours in games and consider yourself “good” by default?

Don’t bother “contributing” again. All you’ve managed to do is irritate me and bring absolutely nothing useful to the conversation.