Darktide is ostensibly a harder game than Vermintide 2. There are numerous and dangerous ranged enemies, elites (crushers, maulers, reapers, etc) are much more tanky and dangerous than they were in VT2 and self-sustain via toughness is alot weaker than temporary health in VT2. With this in mind, I don’t understand why melee has been nerfed so significantly compared to VT2. Not only does it make an already harder game even more difficult (when most players already struggled on the top two difficulties in VT2), but many of the changes simply make the game feel worse to play. I’m going to go over all of the melee changes that I am aware of and hopefully convince you that at least some of them should be reverted or changed.
The dodge lockout (time before you are able to dodge again after performing a dodge) is increased dramatically from VT2, and if I’m reading the patch notes correctly it is now a variable amount of time depending on the weapon. This is an obvious nerf to your defensive capabilities, but almost as important is the simple fact that this makes melee feel inconsistent and clunky. Even in its nerfed state, dodging is still arguably the most important defensive melee mechanic, and this nerf makes it much more likely that you will eat unavoidable damage. It also makes those weapons with longer dodge lockouts even less viable than they already are, with the most notable example in my experience being the brunt club on the ogryn. Dodges are already subject to the resource of effective dodge count, which is what makes it so that you can’t simply spam dodges and punishes you for mistiming a dodge by making you use up another effective dodge. Increasing the lockout and just forcing you to eat a hit or use up your stamina with a block/push is too much in my opinion. Revert this change back to the VT2 standard.
Enemies have significantly more delayed attacks than in VT2, have better tracking and the window to stop their tracking with a dodge is alot smaller. While this could be dismissed as a case of “get good” I really don’t think it is. The point of the generous dodge windows and quick attacks in VT2 was that if you didn’t have those things, it would effectively be impossible to dodge in most situations because you’re usually fighting a wall of enemies. Sure, you can “get good” and properly time a dodge against a single enemy or a small number of enemies, but it simply isn’t possible against a horde which is why VT2 was designed the way it was. Combined with the increased dodge lockout and there are many situations where you simply cannot avoid incoming attacks.
Dodging now halts your stamina regeneration. Even in VT2 it would be incredibly difficult if not outright impossible to just use dodging to avoid damage. Again, you’re fighting so many enemies that the different attack timings coming at you basically necessitate mixing in pushes and blocks, even with the more lenient dodge timings and lower dodge lockout of VT2. In Darktide this is effectively a limited resource, as dodging halts your stamina regeneration meaning if you need to mix in pushes to deal with the enemy you’re fighting, you’re on a limited time frame to kill whatever it is you’re fighting before your stamina runs out and you basically have to just take hits. Keep in mind that Darktide’s enemies throw long and delayed attacks much more often than VT2’s and the dodge windows are tighter, meaning that you will often have to resort to pushing even more than in VT2, which makes this nerf an incredibly debilitating one.
These three initial changes make melee combat lean heavily in favor of weapons with good cleave. If you’re using a weapon with good cleave, that means you’re staggering more enemies using just your melee attacks which limits the amount of incoming attacks, taking pressure off of your significantly nerfed dodging and pushing resources. Despite his large hitbox and sub-par dodges, an ogryn with a mk3 cleaver will have a much easier time fighting a horde than a zealot with one of the axes, as he simply doesn’t need to rely on dodging and pushing as much because of his good cleave. These three changes (increased and variable dodge lockout, more delayed attacks/smaller dodge windows and stamina not regenerating while dodging) are the most important changes in my opinion and are the ones that need to be reconsidered above all else.
You get stunned for a much longer amount of time in DT when your guard is broken compared to VT2. Getting your guard broken was a fairly rare occurrence in VT2, usually only happening when you block a big attack from a stormvermin or chaos warrior. In that game it stunned you for a split second before allowing you to dodge again. In Darktide, you’re locked in place and unable to dodge for exponentially longer, and you’re more likely to end up with your guard broken due to the aforementioned nerf of dodging halting your stamina regeneration.
Certain weapons don’t allow you to cancel your attacks with a block, and in general animation cancelling is inconsistent and clunky. In VT2 basically all melee weapons could have the initial portion of their swing cancelled into a block. This is an overlooked problem, but with so many enemies on screen and so many different attacks coming at you the ability to quickly cancel into a block when you notice something at the last second is extremely important. The time before you can block after your swing is also noticeably slow on many weapons, making block cancelling for optimal attack patterns and to quickly defend yourself after swinging very clunky. With the nerfed dodges and increased enemy tracking, if you’re using a weapon with low cleave there are many times where you’re in a no-win situation, being unable to dodge all of the incoming attacks and being unable to recover from a swing quickly enough to compensate with a push/block.
Pretty much everyone is aware of this and agrees it’s silly, but I feel the need to point out that attacking after a push without using your actual dedicated push attack is very slow in many cases. It has been improved since the closed beta test, but how the hell is this even a problem in the first place? There was no delay between the push animation and beginning an attack in VT2, what changed that this is something that can’t be fixed in 5 minutes?
I put 1400 hours into Vermintide 2 because its melee combat was incredible and let a sufficiently skilled player handle basically anything the game could throw at you, even in modded difficulties. Darktide is not Vermintide 2, and it shouldn’t try to be, but it should bring the best parts of VT2 with it, and in my opinion the changes to the melee combat have made the game worse than it otherwise could be. The inherent changes to the formula that come with the new enemy designs and shift from fantasy to 40k make Darktide stand out from VT2 enough as is without needing to make the melee combat worse. I am still enjoying Darktide, and I will still almost certainly play it for a long time compared to most games, but I can’t see myself putting in 1400 hours when the thing I care about the most and the thing that sets the Tide series apart from others, the melee combat, is simply inferior to Vermintide 2. I’ll end this with a summation from Trix, a very skilled VT2 player on Youtube:
“Vermintide 2’s combat is designed in such a way that if you are able to manage your resources properly (i.e. dodge count & stamina) you would always have an option available. Whether it was a defensive or offensive move, using all of these actions in tandem with one another allowed the combat to scale with any amount of enemies on screen if you were skilled enough. This is not an easy feat for most melee games to pull off, and it is why there’s a dedicated competitive community (Onslaught Series) for a PvE Co-Op game no less. Lets not forget about all of those grinding out true solos as well…Fatshark managed to pull off such a robust gameplay loop with Vermintide 2, which makes it all the more painful to not see it return in all of its glory.”
In VT2, if the push attack on a given weapon is not good for horde-clear, you can just follow-up your push with the first Light attack instead or charge a Heavy, with minimal delay.
Here, doing that with 95% of the weapons sucks hard. Try charging a heavy after pushing with the 1-handed chainsword, or using the Light 1 instead ; it takes forever. It basically forces you to go through with the push-attack stab.
I agree this kills the casual player experience cuz not everyone is a hardcore incel. I don’t understand why FS caters to a small group of players. In V2 they killed dodging and it made the game worse in higher difficulty.
I appreciate the time you put into creating this and going in depth with it. Ironically, I actually really like the melee combat in dark tide, but I’m not thrilled with the ranged combat. I main Zealot and I think it’s my favourite because of the melee, also being a VT2 player for around 600 hours or so. I also really like challenging games, so there’s that.
I haven’t tried damnation yet, only up to heresy as I only just got to level 30, so perhaps my opinion will change with more play time.
I haven’t run into an issue with dodges yet, though perhaps that’s due to weapon choice, though I think less dodges/slower recovery with a larger weapon makes sense. A combat knife should allow you to dodge much quicker and further than say a chainaxe.
From a gameplay standpoint, stamina regen being paused while dodging does suck for the reasons you mentioned, but realistically it makes sense, dodging would take your stamina just as a block would. Maybe instead of halting it, it should just slow it down as a dodge would be less straining than blocking a heavy attack.
I wonder if in some cases this isn’t a bug / balancing issue, such in the case of the tactical axe. Push / attack combo on it opens you to attacks, it just feels broken.
I read your whole post and while I agree on the finer points, I’m not yet certain Darktide is 100% harder than Vermintide 2. It’s different for sure, and in many ways that make melee more challenging or frustrating if you’re played VT2 and have to relearn some melee mechanics. I’m at 1800 hours in VT2 and going between the 2 games can be jarring.
In Darktide, I don’t know anyone who has Veteran red items and equipment is a lot more powerful than your character’s talents/abilities. I think once more players have Veteran items with good double traits and proprties, you’ll see it might not be as difficult as it is now, but it certainly will be a long grind to get good items. In the meantime with orange items being the best I’ve found and not usually having ideal properties/traits, it’s harder than Vermintide.
I’m not yet certain Darktide is 100% harder than Vermintide 2.
Perhaps it’s not, but on paper at least it is probably harder without taking into account build possibilities. We’ll see how things play out, but I’m less worried about the game being harder and more worried about mechanics being inferior, increased difficulty or not.
EDIT: Also how the hell do I properly quote someone? No clue how to get the quote to actually show someone’s name and icon.
When you select text in a user’s post, the option to ‘quote’ pops up next to the highlighted text. With the text box up, it places the quote at the location of your caret.
Also, I think Darktide’s mechanics are currently pretty rough and janky. I’m sure it’ll get more fluid and refined over time.
Fatshark this is a really well thought out post and brings up solid points that most people have been talking about, please consider some of these changes as they would be for the best for the games lifespan. The reason vermintide 2’s combat is so beloved is because of how smooth and good it feels, not because it feels “easier”. Its exactly what makes Vermintide 2 almost have an infinite skill ceiling as OP pointed out.
If the worry about the game becoming to easy because of changes like these, then there is always the option of adding even higher difficulties. You removed modding support, so the community expects the upkeep on your end and add things thats the game needs over its lifespan because the community itself cannot do that anymore.
Touches on a lot of good points, as the regression of melee combat from Vermintide 2 is also my biggest grievance with the gameplay so far.
One additional, if only tangentially-related, point I’ll bring up is the fact that whereas Vermintide 2 had a melee weapon for every task, and it was on you to pick the one you wanted to use based on what role you wished to play in the party. Darktide seems to suffer from a lot of superfluous or simply downright inferior options, with only a small handful being “the good ones”.
Part of what made Vermintide 2’s arsenal so engaging were the options, even if many of us longtime players (also 1400 hours, whattup) favored a smaller selection of them: That had more to do with the role within the group we liked to fill than the weapon itself, I’d argue, and it was always fun to now and then play with something we hadn’t in a while. After 80 hours of Darktide, there are already some melee weapons that, without rework, I will likely never touch again.
The push delay is interesting, since I’ve noticed Evicerator uniquely goes straight into its second heavy attack after a push (not a push attack, just a push), so they’re clearly plenty aware of people chaining push into things other than push attack.
Of all the issues you’ve raised, the ones that resonate with me are the extended dodge fatigue cooldown, and stalling stam regen while dodging. This combo affects certain weapons much worse than others, some of the one handed axe variants that have both low dodge range/count and low cleave as well sometimes feel like you have no option but to eat some hits in dense crowds (though this can probably be mitigated with stam regen curios etc that’s not a great solution on its own). Having dodge and push competing for the same resource can lead to dull gameplay where your best option is to just push every 2-3 attacks on rotation and the systems aren’t so much blending as fighting each other.
I’ve been running the mkV combat axe on my zealot for the last 2 days to try something different and it’s become probably my fave moveset in the game - incredible single target and good enough for hordes on damnation with skillful play - plus it works very well with chastise the wicked and is really satisfying.
I have a decent mobility roll on it, but as you should be working push attacks and pushes into your general rhythm, managing stamina whilst dodging and pushing feels exactly like you say - two systems fighting each other. I’m not a fan of having to take a +2 Stamina curio but it feels absolutely necessary with this weapon and that’s even with +3 stam on the weapon itself.
Not exactly ideal since with a +1 wound and +20% max health curio that leaves me without a toughness boost.
The problem with the axe is actually one that I mentioned in the OP, comparing the horde clear of zealot with an axe vs ogryn with a mk3 cleaver. Low cleave weapons in general really struggle with the current melee nerfs.
It was actually exactly the MKV axe I was using recently that pushed me further into this thinking.
However @ToLazy4Name besides the stamina management issues I honestly think it’s a really solid weapon. Kills every enemy type very quickly, nice moveset, feels good to use. The one I have has “ignore enemy hit mass for 3 seconds on weak point kill” which honestly feels pretty godly as you get borderline infinite cleave with good uptime in hordes. If it had the reach to make better use of the cleave the stamina management wouldn’t be as much of an issue, but as it stands even with a pretty godly blessing, it still feels defensively challenged.
Yeah if you could properly mix in pushes to compensate for its poor cleave then it would be fine, just like the 1H axe in VT2. Low cleave weapons are hit the hardest by stamina not regenerating while you dodge.
Bumping this thread one last time as I’ve decided to quit playing Darktide and have returned to VT2. If Darktide makes the appropriate changes then I will play it in the future, but for now I’m getting almost no enjoyment out of the game in its current state. I expect bugs to be patched and performance to get better as time goes on, but the game is fundamentally flawed with so many of its gameplay systems that I don’t have high hopes that it will ever be as good as VT2.