Malice is HILARIOUSLY overtuned

I honestly think that it’s “less, but tougher, fights”.

Guess I triggered you eh? For the record I have 800 hours on Vermintide but that doesn’t matter really. Malice is absolutely a breeze to go through with any modifier.
The only thing that is overtuned right now is regular heresy, which is bugged due to no modifier maps having endless horde for some reason. I reckon you and your friends might either level a bit, get some better gear and your act together. Try to improve instad of whining that things are too hard after 3 days.

Dunno about Malice, I had fairly normal games there, but recently on Uprising with less hordes modifier we had AI director spawn quadruples of elites and multiple specials simultaneously on several occasions. As such I doubt this problem is Malice specific, but instead the AI director itself just kinda forgets what the game settings were and does its own thing at times.

I would maybe agree in the sense that Heresy difficulty doesn’t feel that much harder. There’s definitely a bigger gap between 2nd and 3rd difficulty than there is for 3 to 4.

It feels like there are sometimes groups that spawn stacked together. We’d see a crusher, start shooting it and then suddenly there are 3-4 ragers, a whole squad of rifles with gunners and shotgunners spilling out of the ogryn.

Tbh malice is for me the perfect difficulty it is sometimes intense and some moments are chill.

quick tip: get higher lvl and better items.

Pro tip: You need a team that stick together because the toughness is really key against the ranged enemies.

Excusing anomalous AI behavior in maps with modifiers defeats the point of the modifiers: to give the players a reasonable expectation. The ultra-wide gamut of behavior could be exclusive to maps with no modifiers.

Cleared Malice twice yesterday with a 4 man. Two zealots, One Ogryn, One Psyker.

One zealot and the Ogryn were below level 10.

It was tough, but we cleared them.

to be fair when you made this thread you had to have known the “git gud” guys were gonna come out in full swing.

Speaking as a V2 vet that played Cata a good bit, I do agree that Malice can get pretty crazy when you compare it to, say, Champion difficulty from V2.

I also think that its difficulty as it is can be attributed to a lot of things being broken/missing from the game at the moment, like Feats that don’t trigger properly, ranged enemies that don’t engage in melee when they should, gear power levels, etc.

We’re all forgetting that what we’re playing now isn’t the entire game, nor the “final” result. Things are absolutely going to be changed within the next week or so leading up to launch.

Gandalf you’re assuming that I have not got levels or gear. As a VT/VT2 player who has had plenty of time to play/practice, you’re insulting my intelligence. Our gear and levels are fine. What I’m running into is infinispawns of specials/elites. The more we fight, the more the craziness spawns. It makes no sense whatsoever, and it is mentally draining to move 20ft and be totally overwhelmed the entire time we move… without a break, without being able to use the medicae stations and take a breath. We had SWARMS of enemies from a medicae station to the end of the room, after just dealing with a horde and a bunch of rampaging specials.

It’s like people can’t read. Allow me to write it in a more legible fashion.

ahem

THE. SPAWNS. NEVER. STOPPED. NOT. ONCE. EVERY. SCAB. SPECIAL. SPAWNED. MULTIPLES. EVERY. TEN. SECONDS. ON. TOP. OF. HORDES. SQUADS. OF. ELITES. AND. A. MONSTROSITY. WE. COULD. NOT. MOVE.

IT. IS. NOT. A. SKILL. ISSUE. IT. IS. AN. A. I. DIRECTOR. ISSUE.

Clear enough for you?

Dear Baklavah,

It wasn’t intended that i insulting your intelligence. Sry for that. I really thought u have no experience with “Tidegames”.

I can only talk about my experience so far with Darktide and i never had problems with the A.I Director in 40h gametime.
It must be a bug or something for you.

Today i started to play on difficulty “4” and had also no problems to finish a mission with good teammates.
Also played a lot with Endless hordes on difficulty “3” and sometimes there are 2 dogs, 1 mutant, 2 flamethrowers or more at the same time but that only happend with “Endless hordes” and we still figured it out to managed that, it never felt unfair for us.

100% against any lowering of difficulty until the game has had time to settle, unless you count making the AI less resistant to swapping to melee when you close distance, but I’d consider that more of a bug fix for now.

Remember this game will not have mods or any way to tweak difficulty unlike VT2, so for the sake of longevity it’s better that climbing difficulties is genuinely challenging.

Of course if there are any genuine spawn bugs or similar those should be fixed. Otherwise though it just feels way too early to be making a solid call on difficulty levels.

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Hello,

A few good replies to this so far. I would like to touch on group skill vs individual skill. I, for one, firmly believe that Tide games heavily rely upon how well the group, that being the three other players besides myself(yourself), works as a team.

Difficulty 3+ really stresses this fact in Darktides. Now while in VT2, I’ve seen plenty of very skilled players successfully clutch out a last-man-standing situation, the overall percentages of success will forever be, in my opinion, in favor of well coordinating and cooperative groups.

The difference between pick-up groups and pre-mades really shines forth in tough situations since before the days of L4D. While operating as an individual I can usually be consistent with solid plays… but as part of a solid group of 3 other gamers who call tactics/share resources/respond to stress points, my performance accelerates due to the help my fellow premade teammates provide.

This is due to familiarity with my teammates; their habits and tendencies. Vice versa, their familiarity with my habits, tendencies, and (shocker) my shortcomings.

I am by no means insinuating you do not have a solid group to play with, but if you do not perhaps difficulties 3+ would provide you the opportunity to seek out folks either on discord/steam/etc to start forming that well-rounded/well-coordinating team that I simply have not seen in pick-up groups via matchmaker.

In closing, while memes are funny and individual skill contributes to overall success -in part-, the overall coordinated skill of the group should perhaps be the focus in conversations such as these.

Thanks,
Gunship

Malice is pretty fine, just this morning i couldn’t find players so i ended up doing multiple scriptures runs with triple bots on malice

It went perfectly well

(In fact it went better than with some players)

I find the real challenge starts at Heresy, it only goes well with cool headed teams that work together, nobody tries to be a hero, we move slowly and steadily forward, and people protect each others

So Heresy is much, much harder sure, but that’s 50% because of your random teammates

I can’t imagine even trying Damnation right now in a random group

There needs to be a solid LFG system for random players

It’s like no one reads that I specified “my friends and I”. We know how to play together. That’s NOT the issue. For goodness sakes.

Malice feels just right since it is a gear check, and fundamental gameplay check.
HERESY ON THE OTHER HAND… I need some 450+ with good rolls or something lmao

I’m not gonna downplay your issue though, I haven’t seen tons of hordes and specials just absolutely annihilating the entire run in a heartbeat often, they DID occur though.
As you said it could be a AI director issue, feels very similar to Back 4 Blood’s horrible spawning.

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My two peanuts, the less density thing is a mind trick of the heretic. I get a P. Ogryn or a nurgle slug, Bombers, few trappers and an arse sniper in the first 4 mins of every map on when I pick it. Honestly, I think its them social engineering if people are specifically choosing a less density map at the mission select but in reality its the same if not worse than just a regular mission without the density reduction.

It’s fine. If you can’t deal then stay in 2s. Why do you insist on making the game worse for the majority of players that have zero issues with it. No one is coming on here to say 3 is perfect because that’s just the nature of complaints and i pray to the emperor fatshark sees this comment and understand happy players don’t complain. The illusion of social cohesion brought by reddit and forums is destroying modern games.

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Then that is a horrendous bug and needs to be dealt with. Because “special conditions” stating “less intense engagements” and “less special spawns” should be doing EXACTLY that. Not the friggin opposite.

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While I would not join the party of people who “soloed the whole map alone on lvl 1”
I’d say that D3 is a very good real introduction to the game.
Coherence is a very important improvement: C4 = Live; C<4 = You’re screwed.
Stay together or die alone is as important now as in V1