I am just trying to log in and grind out the weeklies at Heretic. Ocassionally play some damnation and maelstrom with friends. Here is the problem though. The amount of specialists are killing PUG runs. Someone who doesn’t know what they are doing joins they die, they log whatever, then your terrible bots show up etc. then it’s a downward spiral. I don’t think that the lower difficulties, meaning heretic and damnation are currently appropriate for the skill level of people joining PUGs. I’m not sure what the point was, it’s just too much crap. It’s getting really hard to try to carry. I don’t play those difficulties to try to get the A-team together. They are grind difficulties. It’s getting frustrating and I don’t like it.
Could they not just play a lower difficulty?
Even auric is too easy for many of us who’ve played a lot but there are lower difficulties for people who want less challenge.
12 Likes
Or they could not keep tuning up basic difficulty levels. I feel like damnation and below shouldn’t be such a sweatfest. Not sure what they did recently, but it’s getting kind silly. Maybe toss in more incentives for levels above them? Or some new tier of weapons ypu can only get at those levels? IDK.
1 Like
There are still lower difficulties below those though, so at least try them before saying a particular difficulty level is too hard.
I think, in general, the difficulties are too easy because you hardly see anyone playing the lower levels.
If FS have increased difficulty then this is a good thing and people just need to try dropping down a level of they feel too challenged.
10 Likes
Yeah. I don’t really agree. I think the bloat is getting old and unless at least a couple people on the team are paying attention and prioritizing targets it goes from being reasonable to sucking. Whereas the lower difficulties are too easy. So. No. I still don’t like it.
1 Like
they are skill checks to see if you understand the concept of denser enemy hordes, more frequent disabler spawns and overall shorter reaction time to what will evolve into an overwhelming situation.
“grinding” implies people simply want to skip the mechanics the game’s trying to teach them, just going through the motions and not paying attention to whats going on.
there’s malice and below for that.
even if the “reward” for finishing damnation is higher, the very fact people fail at this level should light a lamp overhead that certain skills arent there yet and should be trained at lower levels.
plus whats the payoff for failing damnation matches compared to winning malice and heresy consistently? you want raw numbers, 10-15 minutes heresy win x-times a day gets you more xp than say 1 damnation won and 7 lost, no?
the only thing thats making playing with randoms as tedious/chaotic/face palming IS randoms not putting in the effort to actually make them fit for the threshold they attempt to perform at.
i did havoc 40 with randoms and without any voice chat, so there are people skilled enough and able to read a room/the whole match based on experience and logic decision making.
all skills that can be learned while climbing the ladder.
one way to get there would be by not committing to a “lost cause”.
sometimes its easier to write certain members off and pick em up at a safer point in time rather than to waste ressources and put you into a disadvantageous position.
oddly enough its even easier to “clutch” having these chaotic factors off the board and creating a “tabula rasa” before you continue through the map.
so one piece of the puzzle to consistent carries/clutches i learned over time is accepting the uselessness of certain teammates and work around it rather than trying to keep them going by any means necessary.
else it creates a chain reaction that very quickly spirals into failure.
12 Likes
I appreciate the tips etc. but I’m saying that the bloat is the only direction to go minus nerfing character power levels. I felt like it went recently from manageable, ocassionally frustrating to regularly frustrating. As in I was enjoying it and now it has tipped over to the point of I don’t like it. I’m sure that very high difficulties can be done with PUGs. I don’t like frequently having a run go to trash though finding the pearl in there. I am sure that I know what I like and don’t like. Thanks for the advice, but I don’t like the direction the game is going. I think it’s probably a bit too subjective to really say much else.
2 Likes
Stay out of damnation and maelstrom thanks.
2 Likes
Welcome to pugs in literally any game ever 
Unfortunately just making it so less specialists spawn won’t make people magically better at the game. You can go onto Malice & under and you will see the exact same thing happening because people just refuse to learn.
3 Likes
You or the others using Quickplay and inadvertently or unknowingly joining “Shock Troop Gauntlet” missions?
STG, High Intensity, and Low Intensity are map modifiers that allow FS to override your difficulty choice. Sorry, I mean they allow FS to “delightfully vary your play experience.”
(Personally, I always like HI. Sometimes I get tired of STG. I find LI annoying.)
Huge balance patch is needed. They are ignoring horrible balance state for how long? Half a year?
1 Like
Yes… I know, I have about 700 hours now in DT. But I do subscribe to the idea of something being better or worse over time. The amount of specialists are a problem/ average skill level of players x number of runs. The game currently plays like trying to fight my way out of a crusher sammich with a poxburster crust.
Yeah, I usually do quickplay, I think the problem is that recently, by turning up the number of everything, meaning modified or non modified maps, it increases the number of disablers. Crusher spam, okay.. gunner spam, okay… sniper spam, meh but okay.. trapper + mutant + poxburster spam? Naw dog. I get they are in a vicious cycle now of adjusting the game to player power creep, but it feels like they are just turning everything up by a scale and the average pug can’t cope. I realize this is quite subjective, but I just want to drop into the vanilla difficulties and not have to go through 3 games of sadness trying to grind my weeklies. It wouldn’t be a problem, but everyone is playing mostly heretic it seems like. Damnation queus are slow recently, so another cycle is happening where I think less people are engaging out of frustration too.
Damnation and heresy are filled with people who suck at the game who are really low intensity malice players disguised as heresy and damnation players. If youre playing hi int or hi shock missions that are tier 4 or 5 you have to be capable of hard carrying teams or you will lose. The problem in lower difficulties is everyone hitd 30 and runs to quickplay heresy and damnation because they want more resources even though theyre horrible at the game and most of them are playing the game blind which is also a problem. Why do all these noobs rush to damnation or auric qp or maelstrom to go play havoc if they lack fundamentals and dont even know how to craft god roll weapons? What you have in the lower difficulties that regularly bleeds into auric and now maelstrom due to havoc requirements is a bunch of people who cannot consistently win hi int/hi shock missions trying to do just that with other players that suck at the game just as much as they do so its just a mess of noobs who refuse to take the time to learn about the game in order to get better.
When this game was crashing every day on xbox i had to play damnation and i had to hard carry teams and if i ever got trapped or dogged the runs would instantly fall apart because 3 noobs in damnation cant even collectively kill one crusher or manage two crushers and a mauler. Maelstrom is filled with noobs who suck at the game who want to go play havoc even though they arent prepared for end game content so even maelstrom has the problem now. Everyday in auric hi shock missions i play with people who have no clue what theyre doing and they usually just end up dead all game or they die twice and leave and alot of that is just people wanting auric penance points which is also a problem. There is a massive difference between someone who only plays hi shock missions and maelstrom and havoc occasionally and a noob in damnation who never mastered the lower difficulties before trying to play higher difficulties. If you dont think most people who play darktide suck just go inspect builds in the mourning star and look at how awful the average players build is.
Casual darktide players have a fomo problem so as soon as they hit 30 they run to damnation as fast as they can and they lose constantly but because they feel left out they stay there and that plagues every difficulty in the game. If you arent consistency beating malice hi shock/hi int missions you shouldnt be in heresy and if you cant do that in heresy you shouldnt be in damnation so on and so forth. When i played damnation i had to hard carry regular damnation games because the lower difficulties are filled with that many overzealous noobs who refuse to learn in lower difficulties who are all wearing 4 wounds and constantly go down and dont know the first thing about a proper build or the core mechanics of the game.
It was so bad when i played damnation i figured the average damnation player is probably losing atleast 90% of their games and yet they all play damnation and heresy and theyre horrible at the game. You cant even learn anything from your teammates in damnation or heresy because if you arent hard carrying them youre just constantly losing becaude youre playing with people who constantly go down. If you try to go play a hi int heresy/damnation mission your mission will fall apart almost instantaneously because the average teammate there is that bad at the game. Darktide doesnt have a problem because they increased the difficulty darktide has a noob problem period.
That’s the most honest and objective answer I have seen. Thank you.
Yeah it’s been like this for ~1.5 years, and even some before that but more since the A.S.S. title and cross-play.
It’s not so much a game or difficulty problem as it is a people problem, people feeling entitled and sometimes encouraged and enabled to dive straight into the deeper ends of the pool before they can even do a doggy paddle or tread water. IDK what it is about this game but it really attracted a lot of people who are unwilling to make the least bit of effort to contribute to a team win, the expectations and bar are set bot-low but even that seems to get a “nah, I’m good” from so many.
I get the frustration, many of us do, it gets real old real fast if you’re solo or even duo. But, if you’re playing Damnation with your buddies, it might be better if you play it solo too for the off chance that the players are better there vs Heresy.
Anecdotally (I can’t confirm) I’ve head bad things of Heresy in the past but people were saying it was better on Damnation, it may be worth testing the waters to save your sanity. The alternative is to only play with at least 1 buddy on so you have someone who can watch your back.
Pugs can really test your patience and I stopped playing solo a while back, even even in public games shortly after it had gotten unbearably bad and frustration had built up.
Hel, you might find playing private matches with your buddies easier than pugging it even with bots filling a slot or 2.
In the meantime, you can suggest that FS have some reasonable gating like some of us have done in the past (and gotten our heads bitten off for it).
5 Likes
Ah shi, wrong thread
I’d be down with something where there’s rollback to lower difficulties if people die enough or something. Heresy is unfortunately where most of the people seem to be at, usually damnation pugs are better in terms of players and the density doesn’t seem that much different, although I kind of miss when 3 crushers was both concerning and a lot to deal with. 70% of the time, there’s either one person who won’t stay with the group, gets downed, someone goes to save them, they get downed, everyone in an elevator, someone running around for 10 more minutes looking for I dunno what? Usually they find a poxhound or trapper, or there’s a couple people making some last stand completely ignoring the objective markers. That one really drives me crazy, when you gotta power that bridge? It seems like every. single. time. there are like 2 of us going to get the batteries and 2 people commited to getting killed by the hoard up top for no reason at all. The objective markers should be like some flashing weird dollar sign or something really hard to ignore. Or maybe in all seriousness, leave some sort of large goody chest at objective points? People just ignore them and try to have a forever battle with the AI director, who has recently been having manic episodes. Idk.
The main concern isn’t puggers can’t handle, imo. Because they will not be able to do it even if challenge was implemented in a different way.
It’s that gameplay was degraded heavily.
Your typical high level Havoc is - nades and abilities spam, unlimitted ammo, dome and golden toughness spam, infinite cleave clearing (purgatus, flamer), DS for mobility.
Those enemy recolors don’t even matter, cause noone want to engage 10 red crushers, and there is no need, the most effcicient way is to throw everything at waves and move with dome/relic.
Game was in a helthier state before #13 patch.
2 Likes
Should see difference on Asia/Hong Kong servers. I’ve been hopping between.
Pretty much all PC players. They all have real team awareness, if someone trapped, instant 1 sec response, completely move as a group, share ammo, move forward and not pad back spawn kills.
EU and NA - Console players more mixed in, go ammo hunting, see Crusher, shoot with autogun and kite back to team mates, ignore objectives, pad out back spawn kills, suck medstation dry.
The playerbase is completely different. Just not feasible to play on Asia/Hong Kong with latency and disconnect.
This isn’t me saying console players are bad. It is because the accessibility of console attracts a less mature demographics mixed in with good players. Crossplay should really be a toggle because that option is available on console.
2 Likes