Mission Board and Auric Changes

This post is structured into 3 clear parts. Part I pertains to Sedition and Uprising, Part II pertains to a new modifier, Nurgle’s Chosen and Part III pertains to the other modifiers that would exist on Auric missions.

This is just a rough idea based on much feedback I’ve seen through the community that advocate for Auric modifier changes, changes to Elite density, and general Mission Board changes. I’m open to suggestions and look forward to reading feedback.

PART I

1. Sedition and Uprising Remove them from the Mission Terminal, keep them for Mortis. Make Mortis Trials the focus for newer players. It will teach them Darktide’s main objectives and the value of Coherency. It’s a more forgiving environment to learn the game in due to the boons and close proximity to teammates compared to the bigger maps of the Mission Terminal.

2. Malice - should still exist for learning the levels themselves and the locations of chests, drop downs etc. Malice should even reveal these chest locations to players somehow, so newer players can begin memorizing their locations instead of scrambling to find them on higher difficulties and breaking Coherency with nothing to show for it.

3. Damnation and Heresy - with the extra server bandwith freed from hosting Sedition and Uprising on the Mission Terminal, host 4 Damnation and 4 Heresy missions at a time instead of 3. 2 missions should be Normal and 2 missions should have high intensity at all times, to gradually grow players accustomed to Auric enemy density.

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PART II:

Add one more Heresy Mission to Auric, for a total of 6 Damnation and 4 Heresy Missions.

Both Damnation and Heresy should be split into 50% high intensity missions, and the other 50% of hosted missions should have a modifier called: Nurgle’s Chosen at all times.

Nurgle’s Chosen - Fewer Heretic Elites present, but remaing Elites have been blessed by Nurgle with unholy abilities. Expect more frequent hordes of Poxwalkers, Groaners and Moebian 21st regiments.

Crushers, Ragers, and Maulers would be B
blessed with Final Toll - Elite enemies fall into rage under 50% HP left, increasing their attack speed, damage caused and rendering them immune to crowd control.

Bulwarks, Reapers and Shotgunners would be blessed with Rampaging Enemies - Enemies in this sector are rampaging. They gain increased defence against attacks upon witnessing the death of an ally.

Trappers would be blessed with Encroaching Garden - Marked Enemies, blessed by the Lord of Pestilence, will heal affected allies in proximity. If these enemies are not dealt with quickly, they will rapidly regenerate the enemy forces.

Because they are Specialists, the healing of Encroaching Garden would not always be present on the battlefield. That said, they would become a much bigger threat due to their ability to heal enemies along their travel path and around a netted player. Still, with their low health they are easily knocked out and they will be unable be heal other Trappers.

Note: If further adjustments are needed, Elite health could be tweaked in Nurgle’s Chosen alone as an addition to the modifier

The purpose of Nurgle’s Chosen is two fold:

First it would provide a solution to players who want Elite density returned to their original density and feel as though more Elites present at a time puts higher stress on the game engine. Changing Elites this way throughout all of Auric would require lots of Talent Tree adjustments so they don’t become too easy and is much more complicated as a result.

Second, it would assist in players gradually becoming accustomed to Havoc modifiers in a more foregiving environment. This could help the players that do move on to Havoc to be better prepared for what lies ahead.

The other 50% of Heresy and Damnation Missions would remain High Intensity.

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PART III:

All Auric missions - both Nurgle’s Chosen and High Intensity - would be subject to these roatating modifiers. All missions would have one modifier from each category, with equal percentage between all of them for appearing.

Category 1: Environmental -
Pox Gas, Lights Out, Ember, Ventilation Purge, None

Category 2: Enemy Composition -
Brute Conscripts, Scab, Shock Troop Gauntlet, Sniper Gauntlet, Hunting Grounds, Heinous Rituals

Category 3: Unholy Blessings
Pus Hardened Skin, Mutated Horrors, Nurgle’s Blessing, Moebian 21st, None

Note: Heinous Rituals would replace triggered bosses, but not end of level bosses.

Note: Scab modifier would replace BoN, Chaos Spawn and Plague Ogryn with Rinda and Rodin Karnak, who would each make one appearance alone before a 3rd appearance together later in the mission.

4 Likes

We dont need havoc modifiers on the regular mission board for any reason and they wont ever get rid of sedition and uprising because why would they? Why wouldnt you want players getting used to maps and resource locations in lower difficulties? Theyre The same maps that you play in higher difficulties. I also dont agree with this sentiment that lower difficulties that arent malice just for some reason shouldnt exist. If you are brand new to tide games like I was when I bought this game uprising difficulty is where you learn to play the game. The jump from uprising to malice is a bit extreme if youre new but thats neither here nor there. I personally dont ever see them changing the mission boards outside of adding new modifiers but they dont for any reason need to be havoc modifiers because if you want to play havoc you can just go play havoc. People who dont want to play havoc shouldnt be forced to play havoc modifiers its already bad enough havoc further splits the playerbase as is.

1 Like

Read the post please, before making comments. I specifically said Malice would stay on the Mission Terminal to teach newer players the map layout, and even suggested Fatshark add prompts to the Malice missions that tell players where the crates are at to further help them learn.

I never said get rid of Sedition and Uprising completely. I said get rid of them for the Mission Terminal. Sedition and Uprising would still exist for Mortis Trials, gameplay fundamentals can be learned there in a far more forgiving environment with close rescue proximity. They’re wasted server space on the Mission Terminal with Mortis Trials being a much better option for new players.

They wouldn’t be forced to play Havoc. 50% of the available Auric missions would always be the standard High Intensity missions they already are, with a better modifier rotation. Again, read the post.

only the most engaged few % of players visit these forums it might be giving a very skewed view on the player distribution.

Managed to find this old thread its about player distribution on difficulties, it references a FS post on Facebook which i dont want to find.

i wouldnt be at all surprised to see similar things in Dark tide

Sorry, I don’t understand the logic behind ignoring the forum posters who are often active on the forum and likely have many hours invested into Darktide. Is it better to get feedback from the sporadic players who only pickup Darktide when a major update hits?

I understand the forums may give a skewed view on player distribution, but nothing is stopping the more “casual” players from giving feedback on the forums, so the point is kinda null. :man_shrugging:

4 Likes

hence why their experience is so infinitely more valuable than the “me not like” from one off tourists that skip games faster than i do my underwear.

when i want an opinion or advice i seek out a professional, not a layman :man_shrugging:

3 Likes

New players shouldnt be thrusted straight into malice or trials that makes little to no sense. I would say malice is probably jarring for the average noob considering you dont even see crushers in uprising. If anything uprising is too easy relative to malice. I know what the noob experience is like because I was horible at this game when I first started playing and I cant imagine how awful it would be to get thrusted into quickplaying malice missions and youre playing darktide blind. What youre suggesting makes absolutely no sense and you are suggesting removing sedition and uprising if youre suggesting removing it from the regular board thats exactly what you said. Mortis trials is nothing like the base game and it plays completely different from the base game. Why should people be forced to play mortis trials before malice when they can just play sedition and uprising? I genuinely dont understand why peoppe continue to insist the lower difficulties cease to exist. Playing in the Mortis trials arena is not going to teach you what playing on the regular maps will. There are medicaide locations and resources and yellow crates everywhere to learn and you arent going to learn any of that playing mortis trials.

Why doesn’t trials make sense for new players?

Sedition in Mortis Trials???

Because they’re sparsely populated and take up server bandwith.

It does play different, which is why Malice would still exist on the Mission Terminal. But if a new player is to the point they know the combat mechanics from Mortis, they’ll be just fine in Malice. Malice doesn’t have much enemy density without modifiers.

Yeah having players first experience of the game outside of the tutorial being mortis would be silly

One it’s clearly not the game advertised to them and 2 it gives them false expectation of what the game actually is.

As much as I want the mission board to stop being terrible this ain’t it.

1 Like

True… if you consider all opinions the same :slight_smile:

This being say. I tested several times the condition elite resistance these days. In solo, so with my bots, and when you change their weapons, it changes also their efficience. In short, they can kill things and by weak hits close to all time everything that comes at 20m of us.
As a result, they can deal as many damages as I can do. This to say that I had to try also without.
Let’s say that the condition is good… however with all the power creep I would say that without a general HP increase of all enemies, the elite die fast.

So, yes to Nurgle’s Chosen, but without the ugly green layer on them (immersion breaker). And tbh, they seriously need to up the HP of all enemies, not just the elite.
I would say something like this:

  • hordes : +50% HP
  • lesser enemies: +100% HP
  • special: no boost
  • elites: +150% HP

I’m not trying to ignore casual players’ opinions. but honestly, i think the feedback from people who only come back when there’s a new update isn’t as useful as the feedback from players who play regularly and care deeply about the game.

these dedicated players have spent hundreds or even thousands of hours playing. They know the game well and truly want to see it get better, so their opinions are really important.

“casual player” can mean different things, but I don’t think we should balance the game based on people who only play once in a while. Of course, they should still be welcome, and their opinions matter too, but right now, even the hardest difficulty, Auric, is full of low-level players. The game has become way too easy because it’s being adjusted for beginners, and that just feels wrong.

1 Like

they will never remove those difficulties.

Sedition and Uprising they exists just to have different type of difficulties. not all new players want to stick to malice, or improving to go in damnation.

other people just use sedition to check new maps where there are less enemies cause more chill than malice and you can check the new maps in peace.

3 Likes

I think the idea for removing sedition/uprising and making them purely for mortis trials is a good idea. As it stands those two difficulties should be reserved for training purposes/ learning the game - people should be required to progress through mortis trials at least a few times on the lower difficulties before even being able to que for a malice mission on the actual mission board. In terms of lore this would actually make sense considering we are random rejects being tasked with exterminating hives or nurgle worshippers - going into a dream version to fight enemies and prepare us for the actual mission makes sense.

disagree totally
It would be boring as hell to do that if I was starting a new character.
Mortis trial is not a good reflect of what is the game.

I agree with Amelia… they won’t remove these difficulties, and they should not.

1 Like

Interesting takes, I must say I didn’t expect Sedition and Uprising staying in the Mission Terminal to have much support, but perhaps I was wrong.

What about the modifier changes to Auric in Part III? Curious what people think about categorizing modifiers and stacking them as a means to get more modifier appearance in Auric.

But he’s right, that you want Malice to remain doesn’t change the fact you want two other lower difficulties (Sedition and Uprising) removed. What harm do you even see in keeping them? If people are playing it means there is demand, and since those are already implemented there isn’t any dev cost for just having them stay.

Firstly, by removing it from the main mission board you would be obfuscating them and I do not see a reason to do that.
Secondly, I disagree with the statement that Mortis Trials are a much better option for new players - they work on entirely different rules than normal missions in many regards, including powerful perks that simply do not exist in the base game and additional 200% HP scaling. Not to even mention that new players could be overwhelmed by the amount of systems in Darktide proper (between talent trees, weapons, penances, Melk, psykhanium etc.) and you’d be piling the in-game Indulgence selection on top of that. You’d be likely to scare them away, if the presence of just two maps didn’t do it already.

It’s already often difficult to play the modifiers you want on Auric Board if you don’t like some of them. Say you dislike Pox Gas, Ventilation Purge and Lights Out. Your selection is already meager at this point, and you’d be diluting the pool even further which I do not see a reason to do, especially given that Havoc modifiers do not have the best reputation within the community.

Your continued pleas to “read the post” strike me as odd here. The points raised by @Thermaal are clear even if he’s using mental shortcuts to express them and you’re arguing semantics as if you didn’t understand what he meant. Or perhaps you really didn’t?
But I find it unlikely that you somehow failed to associate removing difficulties with the part of your proposal where you want Sedition and Uprising to be unavailable for normal missions. I read it entirely, understood what you want to do with them and if I was to raise that point I would also call it “removing lower difficulties”.

Definitely is boring as hell which only reinforces the fact they completely wasted their time and resources with it. At the same time current new players cannot be trusted to actually learn the game on their own which is why we have more posts about sub-par players in the last 8 months or so than the entirety of the games life cycle.

I think it would be a better system than what we have now especially with some tweaks and more thought put into it. I don’t like being pessimistic but I highly doubt fatshark is going to make adjustments to the board unless we get the entire forum complaining about it similar to the crafting update.

Trials dont make sense for new players because trials is not an accurate representation of the game. Trials is incredibly easy for one and two its filled with cheesy power ups like get a free grenade every 20 seconds. I also dont believe getting rid of sedition and uprising is the solution to fix servers and at that point why not scrap mortis trials? Isnt that taking up space somewhere and many of us wont ever play that either outside of penances. Sedition and uprising serve a purpose in this game I dont see how you can refute that. Also what has sedition and uprising difficulty done to you? How did they hurt you? Also why are you trying to reinvent the wheel? Getting rid of two beginner difficulties is not going to benefit darktide in any way. Its not going to give you player agency when picking maps and modifiers, its not going to fix server instability, and its not going to fix silent specials. There are a myriad of things fatshark should be working on and making two difficulties vanish from the mission board isnt one of them.

It’s not that deep, nothing personal. They just seem hardly populated, that’s all.

Fair points, I can agree on those.

It would still be grrat if Fatshark considered some of the changes to Auric that are listed out in Part III, as the modifiers that often appear in Auric are but a fraction of the modifiers that have existed in the game.