It still doesn’t change the fact you need special and elite enemies that provide a treat level via quality. We are close to the situation where bosses are horde enemies almost. As i already mentioned, if you kill players only with hordes, aoe/cleave/no target cap weapons and builds will be the only viable.
Increase the ammount of crushers even more and you will need for Thammer to have aoe like crusher or attack speed like tactical axe, maybe both. Because such weapon can’t exist if there is no solo target threats and a free space to use it.
I’ve watched few Mr.E recent videos and the take he’s pushing “give ganger a tool to blow a pack of crushers”. This is such a delusional take coming from a big DT youtuber.
Killing Floor 2. Except the level design (arena alike maps and waves) that doesn’t ask for disabler enemeis to exist, it’s much closer to DT with leaning towards strong range weapons, ability to sprint, etc.
There are ways to balance that, and I am sure Psyker will get a lower cap on flames for example, and the dueling sword will almost certainly see changes as well. Perhaps carapace enemies in general will be adjusted. All I am saying is that there are points I agree with, points I do not, and some ideas that are simply impossible to implement in this game.
Your ideas are great, that is not where the issue lies.
Perhaps. But the interesting thing there that my ideas about enemies are there already, just implemented poorely and lazy.
Crusher can enrage, but it’s not interractable. They just suddenly glows red and you as a player can’t counter it, and so you are forced fight a pack of stronger enemies wich leads to a certain balance points. Like deleting them with strong range rather than dancing with 20 red ogryns.
If there was a proper animation and sound cue for enragement there would be an additional angle for balancing - how long is enragement animation, is there any resistances during that animation, how many crushers can go enrage animation at the same time, etc.
The same thing with purple haze should have been an enemy psyker or something.
Vermintide 2 had the Chaos Warriors play an audio cue that was communicating to the player that they are being targeted by them (it was a deep thump, don’t know how else to describe this sound). On top of that, they also played a voiceline directed at the character you were playing as (for instance, a Chaos Warrior targeting Victor Saltzpyre would say something like: “I’ll gut you, Sigmar’s dog!”).
Crusher could have a similar mechanic implemented. They don’t even have to say any voicelines, personally directed at the reject a person is playing. A simple distinguishable audio cue, that communicates to the player that the Crusher is locked on them, would suffice, like that deep thump sound that VT2’s Chaos Warriors used.
There’s still a fair bit of potential for the class/archetype-unique lines though, in fact, they could even use the same nicknames that playable Ogryns use to refer to the others, e.g.:
You’re right, but I actually just do not believe that FatShark would want to put in so much effort as to record entirely new voicelines for the Crusher. Chaos Warriors speaking in VT2 was an addition they didn’t need to do, and yet they did.
I think that’s what separates Vermintide 2 from Darktide in the end, and also what makes it so sad as well.
Vermintide 2 had passion in it. Darktide has almost none. No matter how much I praise the quality of the game’s art, music, voice acting etc. I can’t deny the fact that it’s a product almost solely made to make money, so we cannot expect FatShark to make additions to them game that won’t be purely profit based. They gave the Plasma Gunner’s new audio cues because, that enemy made the game very difficult and a chore. It definitely showed in the game’s numbers and player retention dropping.
Why should we expect them to do more for a Crusher enemy who, by the way, is not even well-designed despite the fact that he’s just a Chaos Warrior copy and pasted from VT2 to DT. He should have a weakpoint, just like Chaos Warriors do, and yet he has none, which makes a lot of weapons useless against him. He’s much more susceptible to stagger mechanics that he falls over explosions and shout. It all feels like such stupid oversights, all while enemies that were created more than 7 years ago are much better designed than Crushers could ever hope for.
And Darktide has so many of such issues that the devs didn’t fix years after the release. So In the end, it all just gives off the impression that the devs only work on Darktide because they are told to, not because they want to. It’s their job, not their passion.
V2 has more soul. Take the hub - Taal’s keep, cosy vibes, interesting to explore, visiting characters’ rooms. The ambient sound makes the keep almost a living entity, sometimes there heavy rain outside, you can decorate it with arts, trophies.
DT hub despite there are more people just feels dead.
And that’s just heartbreaking to be honest. It feels so sad that, despite also having it’s fair share of issues, the game that is 7 years old has more passion and effort put into it than Darktide does.
We always say that we’re so hard on FS because we want love Darktide and want it to become a great game we claim to know it can be. But the problem is that we’ll probably never feel satisfied with it because no matter how much issues will be solved, Darktide will always feel like it lacks something.
Imagine if Mourningstar had Open VoIP. Now that would be funny and lighten the mood.
Many times I’ve screwed around with randoms in VT2 in Horn Keep. I think like half an hour hitting training dummies, carry them around and start throwing them off cliffs speaking to strangers.
Darktide - Each EU, NA West are servers, but when loading in you are put into much smaller instance of like 20 players in mourningstar.
More players can make it feel more alive. More chance of interaction.
Bar, to sit, ask people to play minigames like noughts and cross, use dockets to buy them a drink which acts as transfer too
Mercenary area. i.e. Ogryn players can hang out, interact which auto groups into match making. Pay them dockets to be your meat shield hire.
Dynamic changes to environment based on monthly/seasons. Glass windows to show like different planets each time, movement of astronomical objects. Interior wise could be different viewscreens in public displaying random content of the wider lore, which also changes per month/season or prison guard variation of movement patterns. So the world doesn’t feel so static.
Real vendors that actually move and over time change way they speak, respond or conversational rather than just a terminal.
Any elements to encourage social interaction for the sake of it out of humour, chit chat, mini games, acts of kindness like giving away resources etc.
I want to be able to throw plasteel around on the floor whilst running and see people follow me like the pied piper.
Imagine if Darktide would have many NPC rejects around the Mourningstar that you could interact with. Maybe when you walk past them, you could trigger a conversation, either one that’s happening between your reject and the NPC reject or between the NPC reject and the worker on the Mourningstar. Could you imagine an argument between an NPC reject and Hadron, where they want her to bless their weapon, but she doesn’t like that they haven’t been taking proper care of said weapon, so she’s refusing to bless it?
Many of such little additions would definitely help to breathe a lot of life into the hub area, but as we already know it, FatShark won’t implement things that are not entirely motivated by maximizing profit gain.
i would like mobility to be more committal but more unique/impactful. the big instance where this is obvious are sprint jumps. they cost iirc 25% stamina default but don’t do much? increase the forward momentum on them and a tiny bit of vertically and extend ranged dodging frames & angle during the first part and suddenly you have an avenue for making slides not the single load-bearing ranged dodge while moving maneuver in the game. let slides carry a small amount momentum when you go down slopes (the game doesn’t need to be Apex, but it would be nice to interface more with the terrain/level design) and then we can start finding a balance where they’re still good enough to rely on into Havocs but there’s a little more thought behind them.
