For sure, the balance in official is whacky, just look at bw, trollpedo, sott etc.
What i think holds fatshark back from adding stuff like onslaught in official (and darktide) stems from the fact that the game runs a lot more demanding with it activated (because of the sheer amount of enemies) and also probably becuase it is readily available for those that want in modded.
I’m still hopefull they add difficulty for us tryhards, I won’t judge until I played it.
sounds like ranged main
so has anyone else notcied in the trailers with hud, there is something on the healthbars that i would describe maybe as decayed health?
it seems similar to curse, tho it wasn’t evenly distributed suggesting that is not a modifier based on a teampickup like a grim.
my first speculation: it could be, nurgle corruption, getting hit by nurgle infeced weapons maybe?
I think it is like trauma damage from Back 4 Blood, there are even stations with limited charges that players use to heal just like the medical cabinets in B4B
I did notice that. It however was only on some charecters and not all at once so either
1: mystery hp stat is affected by gear or something like curse resist or
2:it is in some way dependant on something happening to your charecter ie: getting hit by certin specials
@spatnack may be right, could be “trauma damage” trama resist stat OP? xD
I don’t mind the concept of THP, I mind how some careers literally roll in excess THP all game and can be played like a tank as a DPS class because of it while others suffer needlessly like BH playing a totally different game in terms of risk and punishment.
THP is essentially an extremely intelligent Band-Aid that cumulatively insulates against the technical shortcomings of the game, regarding: respawn locations, enemy spawning bugs, latency, slot system issues, visual bugs, sound bugs, input delay, host issues, client issues, talent/weapon bugs, Director/AI/behavior bugs, network errors, coding errors, and programming errors. It gives players enough agency to overcome any of the above, without getting rid of what generally makes the game fun for the average player (in my opinion). Deeds, weekly events, Twitch Mode, and Modded Realm provide the hyperpunishment environment that a THP-less structure would provide, without overly hurting the community and Fatshark’s bottom line. I too would like to see non-THP versions of VT2/Darktide existing in modded realms/deeds/weekly events, but not in the official realm foundations.
I’ll speculate as to why it would be bad to take THP out of VT2 right now, because it only becomes far worse in every category if iterated upon in Darktide. I think it’s an interesting suggestion, and that’s why I’ve tackled it genuinely, so I’ve tried to leave any judgmental/negatives out of it. I associate THP inexplicably with VT2’s success because it CAN be balanced, fun, and overcomes technical errors.
With the deletion of THP, VT2/Darktide would become orders of magnitude more linear and chess-like. It would also require a full rebuild of the entire game’s architecture, a full rebalance of all weapons/characters, a rebuild of all item spawn amounts and locations in all map’s segments/events, and lastly, it would also require the dev team to abandon much of their proprietary balancing knowledge/product differentiation that they’ve gained since VT1. This is also not taking into account what Fatshark’s historical customer base will be expecting in a next release. And this is also ignoring the fact you can get 3 friends to play VT2 right now while forcing everyone to only use the group heal talent on the 5 row.
Rebuild of game’s architecture examples –
• Latency, spawning bugs, slot system issues, visual bugs, sound bugs, and input delay will far more heavily affect gameplay experience than ever before. Critically, this would further isolate communities of people trying to play globally
• A mauler spawns 3 feet behind you and hits you for 75% of your health? You have no recourse, and have burdened your team until you find a heal. A slave rat runs up behind you with no audio, and hits you for max damage? Again, you have no recourse. Client bugs or host CPU issues become critical. Have you ever seen flying enemies, talents that trigger improperly, or issues with respawn locations? Hyperrealistic punishment requires hyperrealistic tools and programming/coding/networking consistency, which makes for a Simulator product. Simulation products are great, but that is an entirely different beast than a typical video game and its dev studio.
• A Chaos Warrior slides on his skates for 10 meters while phasing through enemies, terrain, and hits you at an impossible angle/distance? - the slot system and phasing and hyperdensity issues become game-breaking now. This starts to veer into the territory of what made VT possible to develop in the first place, why the game could even run on our PCs, why the AI director is so integral, etc.
• Specials shooting/casting through walls/debris? This becomes game breaking since you have no recourse for recovery in a situation that was out of your control. Castle Drachenfels is infamous for this, and melee only/short-ranged builds will be all but blacklisted in QP lobbies. If one stormer or gas rat isn’t picked off in certain areas/events, it could mean defeat for your team (think of Blightreaper events). Thus, melee-only careers will get flamed, or the 1 ranged person who was responsible will feel horrible/get flamed. There is a teamplay component solution to this, but when many people can do many roles OR survive others’ mistakes (role overlap) it cuts down on toxicity and the blacklisting of builds in QP lobbies. If you want a game to become popular (even for hyperrealism) it has to be approachable enough to get people to try it in the first place. If someone finds out they can’t play GK/WP/Slayer in QP lobbies without premades, they might not buy the game at all.
• Twitch mode may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is for a lot of people who want tougher content without having to resort to Modded Realm (where they can’t concurrently progress their accounts.) The amount of exacerbated issues from ^ above ^ that would result in this mode would just be nuts
• Twins modifier for example, also spawns enemies that are virtually pre-swinging. Essentially, you’d be making the game so incredibly ping/non-host unfriendly, it wouldn’t be feasible to play with anyone reliably who isn’t living in your basement.
• Cataclysm games can already take an absurd amount of time on official realm, and changes to THP would serve to drastically lengthen game session times. I can only imagine how long Twitch games would be, not to mention a Chaos Wastes Citadel expedition. This affects the accessibility of the game.
• Would this slower hyperpunishment version of the game be fun to play for the majority of current Fatshark customers? What about their potential customers? Would it be too boring and slow to watch on Twitch or Youtube videos? This could serve to hamstring the title’s appeal in popular culture, whether you agree with people’s attention spans or opinionative values.
Balance change examples –
• Currently, taking damage causes you to regain your ult charge faster. Deleting THP would cause a tempo and balancing issue here
• Would we need to get rid of Natural Bond? Would anyone use Barkskin? Is RV too OP with his duping passives, and what about dupe traits on accessories? Is Waystalker team heal too good now? Is SoT THP passive going to change? I see you thought about Zealot already, and these are just a few callouts
• Get rid of all temp health generating abilities/talents? Do Merc and RV and WP all lose insane value? What about GK quests?
• Now we need the devs to titrate the amount of healing items that we get on every part of every existing map
• Will Randoms in QP lobbies use faster characters/builds/move-techs to yoink and use all the healing?
• Many characters with invis abilities will become even MORE deadly to the rest of their team, further invalidating/blacklisting many career choices and combinations, reducing gameplay variety yet again
• Will everyone exponentially flame people who use healing items too much/unnecessarily now, since they are the most valuable things in the game?
• Friendly fire – Your Pyro/Waystalker ultimates malfunction or bounce off walls/ground/doodads unfavorably, and hurt your teammates…your teammate is now perma injured until healing is found. I don’t think this is going to help an already toxic environment, especially in Darktide where shooting will most assuredly be far more integral to the gameplay loops.
THP/Shields in Darktide -
• I think the THP system is already slightly addressed in Darktide, as you need to be next to your teammates in order to generate your small “overshield” or whatever (I think)
• Also, it appears that shields are your THP (which you can manually earn back) and that your Green HP can only be refilled with healing items/stations. I’m sure each character might also have different ratios of shields-to-GHP, but the THP system still looks intact via the shields in whatever proportion that will be
• Darktide is going to involve a lot more enemies that can shoot/bomb you, so taking no perma damage might be impossible, especially when your teammates are going to be shooting back at the enemies through/around you to compensate. Will nobody play Ogryns because of friendly fire? Again I hope that any version of no-THP that makes its way into Darktide would only be in the form of weeklies/deeds/modded realm, etc.
Instead of getting rid of THP, which is synonymous with the Fatshark title at this point, why not just get rid of player respawns? This would equally punish players for non-teamplay, while also keeping the expected “insulator” system of THP in place to combat technical aspects. (I’m really opposed to this too but in all fairness, here it is.)
At the end of the day, the deletion of THP would require an entire rework of the game, and for these reasons I personally doubt it would be profitable nor enjoyable for the historical and future Fatshark customers. This shift would also require the dev team to be able to skillfully rebalance every weapon/talent/character combination accordingly, which is effectively in opposition to all of the experience and wisdom they’ve accrued since VT 1. Some people like the insulation that THP brings to the table in resolving technical issues while keeping the game “fun.” And some people like to be rewarded for clockwork consistency with absolute teamplay. I think VT does a great job of covering both bases, but I can see where you’re coming from. Personally, I get my THP fun fix from Official Realm, and I get my hyperrealism fix from the Modded Realm.
i have to say i disagree on most sentiments taken here.
most of what your argument seems to be structured around, is the hypothesis that darktide will be the same game as vermintide 2, that might be true for core principles, but might not even remotely true for supporting gameplay systems.
therefor extrapolating any vermintide2 situation onto darktide is irelevant.
your second thesis is that THP is a bandaid fix for technical or lacking player performance, and therefore necessary to conceal these.
again this stems on the extrapolation of V2, you don’t know if darktide will be a a technical mess as is V2 and neither can you guarantee that the darktide gameplay will be needing THP based on vermintide 2 expierences.
and lastly you seem to claim that the shields shown in the preview is essentially fullfilling the same role as THP, wich i also have to disagree on, all information i could gather about the shield system seem to indicate that their function is to alleviate enemy ranged fire specificly.
all the points you make about THP, could be changed to sustain, and have the same message.
and i agree that sustain is part of the vermintide success formula,
but THP exclusively is not at all, the only solution to a sustain based gameplay
(as even Vermintide 1 had a different system)
I’m using VT2 as a basis for comparison because that’s what the developer has been making in the past, and I recognize a ton of reused gameplay features and mechanics from all the gameplay videos that they’ve published for Darktide thus far. I think it’s more probable that Darktide will be more similar to Vermintide, rather than assuming Darktide will be incredibly different than Vermintide. Some things are copy-pasted outright, such as the exact attack patterns of the chaos cultists/lunatics, the Ogryn hammer overhead attack, the 2H Hammer attack patterns, the Ogryn/Kruber charge, the block/push mechanics, the warp perils/staff modalities, the assassin/warpfire/gunrat specials, which is all just surface level. I’ve also heard feedback from people who have playtested Darktide, as well as looked at all the exclusive magazine/dev responses regarding Darktide. Sure, the bullets-to-melee ratio and core gameplay elements could be incredibly different in Darktide, which I think most of us veterans would be welcoming of anyways…but again, imho, I think it’s safer to assume there will be more similarities with Vermintide than not. I don’t have playtesting access so there is a chance I’m 100% wrong on all counts though, full disclosure 
I would love for Darktide to be developed perfectly with no bugs, and for all players to have perfectly functioning PCs/consoles, and for everyone to live in countries that have perfect ISP infrastructures. In that world, I would see no “need” for THP to exist principally, but I would actually still attempt to make arguments in favor of it being in the baseline experience because I believe it enhances the overall experience for most people.
I think THP allows people to have chances at redemption in games if a mistake is made, without concurrently devaluing the player’s ability to avoid damage. This allows skill to matter without making the game far less accessible
I think THP cuts down on team/community toxicity in a game where you rely on your teammates just as much as yourself, if not more in many cases. If I get hit in a horde while frontlining, it’s easier to stomach responsibility and grow. If I get hit from behind, I can continue regaining THP while complaining/teaching my teammate. If THP is removed and I get hit from behind purely because of my teammate, my only recourse now is to complain about my teammate/spend time teaching them/get annoyed and quit. The interaction context here is much harsher because I have no recourse for a teammate’s actions, and I’m now less capable of my own future actions. Thus, THP can allow a good enough player to compensate for teammate shortcomings over time and prevent an otherwise unproductive “hostile work environment.” Teamplay is not devalued and player agency and interactivity are increased.
One small point here is the subject of forcing people to play aggressively/melee/(ranged in Darktide?) in order to maintain THP. Tweaks can be made to THP generation rates, decay rates, generation triggers, decay triggers, separation of HP and Shields, and more. There are so many dials that can be tweaked here, without us having to delete THP as a Sustain framework.
Can THP be abused by the average community members to reach artificially higher levels of difficulty than they deserve to defeat? Absolutely. However, because of what THP accomplishes on the hardware/software/network equation, I can’t see why it should be deleted from the game. The game difficulties offered and the THP generation avenues should just be balanced accordingly. I don’t think scrapping the framework is warranted because someone feels like their favorite character is underpowered, or because someone can’t brag about being one of the few who can beat the highest current difficulty on official realms. All that needs to happen is rebalancing of THP generation, hero talents, and greater game difficulty avenues should be made available on official realm (whether that is through Campaign difficulties, Weekly Events, infinite deed modifiers if deeds exist in Darktide, etc.) I’ll not bring up Modded here cause I’ve made another annoying wall of text but I think you get the point 
Shields fulfilling THP role? - I was only speculating on what I’ve seen and heard thus far. I’ve seen melee attacks delete the entire shield, I’ve seen Zealot melee attacks replenish the shield, I’ve seen the shield regenerate while near teammates, and I’ve seen the shield absorb many ranged attacks whereas it got 1-shot by a melee attack with overkill damage spilling into Green HP. I’m unaware of all the healing items/stations/abilities in the game that can potentially heal the Green HP, and the Zealot’s shield regeneration via melee seemed identical in terms of mechanics to THP generation. I’m really not sure what you mean here, or where you think I asserted that Darktide shields are going to be the entire THP mechanic copy-pasted. The systems seem very different but very recognizable in terms of the THP framework, but idk, I’m unclear here
Overall, I think we agree that there still needs to be some mechanism for “Sustain” in their success formula. And I will not disagree: it is possible to accomplish it through the deletion of the THP framework, where you instead add tons of healing items/abilities/passives/stations/buyables/event mechanics in the game to compensate. From my point of view, THP is a great tool and the better Sustainability option because of consistency regarding player skill and teamplay, consistency regarding hardware/software/network issues, and even consistency regarding game dev balance. I can see how a “10 healing items per map on XYZ Difficulty” could appear to solve the Sustainability issue at face value, just as I can see how the “no healing items and no healing abilities for any map difficulty” conditionality could be just as valid. At that point, I would say that it’d be easier to reorient the entire conversation; delete all healing items and THP. Just beat the map with melee, bullets, and non-healing abilities. This becomes an incredibly different product and development effort, but like you said, we technically don’t have Darktide in our hands to play and confirm. I really feel that THP offers so much more to the players, community, and devs as a whole, all in addition to tackling the Sustainability issue.
We could exchange THP for a marginal Green HP Sustain system, but this changes the melee/ranged/urgency dynamics, which would also change how teammates rely on each other. People would also see the game slow down exponentially from what it currently is, with less enemies and things to worry about. I think the majority of PVE team horde games capitalize on the fantasy of a small team fighting tons of enemies, experiencing chaos, and seeing large numbers on the scoreboards. A slower, quieter, marginal Green Health sustain game would be going against the industry standard for this genre, whereas a few dials can be manipulated to achieve this in customizable augmentations to the Official Realm difficulties and events being offered. However, Darktide could be the first to perfect this style, and I would have absolutely no problems with it if done properly. I want to continue enjoying Fatshark products, so I want them to be financially successful. I think that realistically that route would be riskier, considering G.T.F.O., and the success/circumstances of games like Back 4 Blood, Aliens Fireteam, etc.