First off, I very much appreciate your response to me. Reading it left me with a good impression. You kept it civil and with nuance - thanks. More importantly you didn’t lower yourself to petty forms of dialogue to make a point. With that said, there’s a couple of things that I’d like to address in which I feel you’re woefully incorrect on:
Respectfully, this isn’t true. Vermintide’s melee system had multiple things going for it besides spamming light/heavy attacks. For starters it had: combos, ability to chain different attacks, weapon swapping, cancelling animations, parrying, ability to attack or hold a charge attack while dodging, chaining ranged attacks with melee attacks, and so on. These are just the things that came to mind. There’s more to list and talk about, but It’d be too exhausting for me to go over every nuance of the melee, however, that isn’t the point; the point is precisely that the melee system is indeed more involved than spamming left click.
However, that’s just speaking in general terms. From my personal experience I can attest to being able to pull off interesting combos. My favorite being the swap from primary melee to Executioner Sword:
As you can see I’m doing more than just spamming the left click. I’m cancelling animations, quickly swapping, then aiming for headshot. In practice it’s quite fluid to operate. Becomes essential when dealing with high value elites. I keep learning new things whenever I play Vermintide which force me to improve on my gameplay, it’s quite fun to me. I have over one thousand hours and that’s because of how much I enjoyed the gameplay.
To bring it back on topic. In higher difficulties the game encourages you to master the intricacies of the melee system. The game even rewards you doing so as you become more proficient with reacting to high value targets and dispatching threats from afar. Spamming the left click button probably only works on lower difficulties.
Right, let me make myself clear then: in Darktide we gained a slew of mechanics that either don’t work with each other nor do anything meaningful to the 'tide game design. So, sprint, first it doesn’t do as advertised which is to mitigate damage, second it doesn’t add anything of value to the game - you can’t out sprint a horde, what’s the point. Coherency, I think you know my stance on this (you can read my ‘pontification’ on it here); it ultimately doesn’t work with this type of game. A banal cover system, it’s a pop-a-mole regression. Can not forget Sliding either; it’s too hard to pull off and when you do, the effect is minimal. Then there’s Toughness which has many problems associated with its implementation that I don’t even know where to begin. Of course we shan’t forget the reworked stamina system that serves to restrict rather than empower the player. Lastly the over-emphasis on ranged ended up being a detriment , in my opinion.
Contrast this to Bloodborne where the additions Fromsoft introduced to the game ended up being innovative, fresh, and exciting. Being able to quick step, for example, added a whole range of options in how you approach bosses and enemies - it also wasn’t stupid hard to execute. Using ranged weaponry to break enemy guard or parry was also an exciting thing to perform. There was also weapon transformations which added some much needed variety to the combat. I can go on.
Difference from Fatshark and Fromsoft. Is that Fromsoft grabbed the design of Dark Soul and ‘innovated’ upon it. I have yet to play a game from them that feels like a regression. Even their recent game, Elden Ring, tries to add new things to the formula by adding a dedicated jump button and mount fighting.
It’s interesting that you say that because I didn’t feel any of that. Darktide didn’t compare to my Gold Standard of FPS - that being F.E.A.R - and the melee combat felt like a regression to Vermintide. The only thing it had is the 40k paint job.
As for this comment I feel the desire to correct you on this. Have you played above champion difficulty, no this isn’t a snide remark, the game is very much more involved than spamming left click on the higher difficulties. For infinite dodging I don’t feel you’re right on this either. If you dodge for too much you get lowered to a slow dodge then need to wait at least a second or so before you can do long dodges again. In practical terms it simply means you have to manage your dodges appropriately when avoiding a horde or elite enemies. Dodging too much can actually hurt you in those moments.
All in all. I respect you enjoying Darktide. All the more power to you.