ive extensively played Darktide and there if there is just 1 thing i can give as feedback (from the many things that bother me), its this:
Ranged (for both sides) is way too powerful and Peek-a-boo playstyle is ultimate NOT fun.
Psyker brain burst is the epitome of this. You literally look out behind a wall every 5 seconds hold leftclick while pointing in a general direction to win. Who playtested this? Who thinks this is fun and engaging? Who would unironically play this for thousands of hours?
Peek-a-boo is by far the strongest available strategy which means barely looking out from behind cover so that only 1 enemy can barely see you and you jsut kill that 1 enemy. This is reinforced by coherency bonuses making this strategy even better when its 4 people doing it giving substantial toughness regen and other coherency bonuses. Ohh and btw psykers can shoot through ogryns holding shields LMAO!
But its BORING! Its incredibly dull. Its basically an on rail turret section over and over.
HOW TO FIX IT:
BEST FIX: Make running with stamina remaining give permanent iframes against ranged fire!
MORE FIXES:
spam armored melees on high difficulty (A LOT, so you cant just kill them all with 4 psykers before they even get close)
no more huge spawns of ranged trash that turn entire corridors into a deathzones the second you dare to be in sight
Make ranged trash dodging more consistent - it works for snipers (sound queue) but for trash dodging on muzzle flash does NOT work
NERF RANGED. The fact that Mutants are supposed to rush people down on high difficulty but cant even close the distance against 2 gunners casually aiming in their general direction is really sad.
Did i mention how absolutely silly brainburst is? You can even precast it on audiocue before you even see the disablers LMAO!
Remove the knockback/stun/slowdown on all incoming ranged hits! Seriously! Why does this exist?
Addressing counterpoints before they arise:
“But OP, there are other coop shooters that are super popular where people just shoot lol”
NO! There arent. All of them focus on enemies being on top of you/swarming, being able to consistently dodge ranged fire or a combination of the 2.
Case in point: Borderlands 2 and 3 - ALL projectiles in this game have travel and are dodgeable in various ways - peekaboo is good but you lose absolutely nothing by being in the open if youre good at the game.
Case in point 2: Left 4 Dead - Everything in this game is designed to rush you down - there are almost no pure ranged enemies and never enough at the same time that they lead to insanely long stalemates with peekaboo playstyle.
Case in point 3: Killing Floor2 - Everything in this game is designed to rush you down. Same thing as L4D.
There is nothing more boring than hiding behind a wall for hours.
Please for the love of god DO NOT make an overproduced Turret shooter.
It sounds like you have another game in mind you want Darktide to be.
As it is, the shooting is quite fun and balanced. Yeah two sharpshooters can shoot down mutants, as could two Ogryns at close range, if you do spot them before they’re in your face.
It’s quite doable to be a Zealot and run/slide from cover to cover to break down ennemies firing squads.
The “peak-a-boo” you mention is called “cover-based shooting”, and as it stands it’s new to the -tide games, and an absolute blast.
Not saying there could be some tweaks, but people shooting at you and making a death-corridor is absolutely the design goal: go around, rush with zealot, use covers and dive-slides, use ogryn shield.
Some of the points you bring are interesting, but too one-sided and single-focused.
I very much agree with this. I’ve posted the same sentiment in comments elsewhere, but the core gameplay with ranged spam is a complete turn-off for me.
I don’t mind that the Sharpshooter can shoot his way through a level if that’s what you find fun (that was possible in Vermintide on some careers as well) as long as I don’t have to. Melee combat is why the Tide games are unique and fun, but facing several execution squads every step of the way (at least on Malice and above) makes melee combat excruciating. It feels like the game has inverted the ~80/20 split between melee and ranged.
Your fix to make running with stamina give iframes is the most ridiculous fix I’ve ever heard of. You know sliding gives iframes? You know you can dodge shots aswell?
And a very valid strategy is to engage the rage combat and then hide behind a wall a bit further back to make the ranged enemies come to you and engage you in the more suitable spot you chose, and will be in range for you to lock them into melee combat if needed/wanted.
Another strategy is to have your Ogryn shoot at them to Suppress them and make them take cover, both Ogryns and Zealots can also easily charge into combat, especially with the patch we got today (an hour ago) and locking them into melee combat too if needed.
There’s probably alot more strategies you can adapt and use here but it really isn’t a peek-a-boo game as badly as you make it sound, atleast not in high diffs where you’re tied up with specials every couple of moments aswell as hordes thats very frequent and big to their numbers.
Have you played on Malice or higher (genuine question - not deriding you)? Because the amount of ranged enemies is ridiculous.
Cover-based shooting is fine, I guess, if that’s what you want, but it’s half baked here. Cover often doesn’t work, and there’s no leaning. There’s also rarely one direction of engagement - in fact, you’ll often be surrounded, and then where do you find cover?
The solution is typically to advance at a snail’s pace with your ranged weapons/psyker abilities, and it’s so, so boring.
I don’t disagree that Darktide is a different game, and that it certainly feels like it’s not for fans of Vermintide who wanted more of the same.
i have already addressed this - other games push ranged gameplay and honestly im a huge fan of borderlands and L4D. But those games - like i pointed out - have a MUCH different gameplay loop.
I have 1000+ hours in Vermintide, my mates I’ve played with aswell has similar or more hours than me, one dude also has 5k+ hours in Vermintide 2.
From what I can tell we all seem to enjoy the game ALOT, I find the game absolutely amazing, the ranged combat is a BLAST to play and there’s alot of strategies you can adapt and use for different scenarios. I’m currently playing Damnation maps as it’s the most engaging ones and the ones that are the most fun with suboptimal team comps and meh weapons. Can’t really say we’re moving at a snails pace nor do we really sit behind cover all day either.
Do you have an Ogryn? Does he have a shield? You just made a cover anywhere.
Does he not? Can he charge in and get the enemies locked into combat?
Do you have a Zealot? Have him throw a Stun Grenade and rush in with him to engage the ranged units. Is he capable of Sliding between covers and using his Ability to get in range?
Do you have a Veteran Sharpshooter? If they’re not trolling they should be running Camo Expert as it’s borderline broken feat, they don’t have to take cover while you’re nearby and doing so, and can quickly dispatch ranged units in the matter of seconds.
Do you have a Psyker? Do they have a lightning staff? Use it, it Crowd Controls the enemies hard.
Do they use another staff? Can they use the explosion of the Voidstrike or the Conflagration-like staff to hit them and CC?
They can use their Blitz to pop enemies heads too.
You have MANY options in how to engage ranged enemies including engaging them from a ranged and falling back to a position more suited for your team and have them come to you, which they will, even if it takes some time.
Games still in Open Beta and there’s alot of fixes and changes coming most likely which probably will address some of the issues currently with the game but it will also probably add new and funny strategies to discover and utilize.
I have not yet had the occasion, my characters not being strong enough, to play on the higher difficulties, no. Only 1-2.
Leaning would be quite nice indeed.
Being surrounded, I feel enemies’ shots should be able to hit you so much: shouldn’t they also have “friendly fire”, and block eachothers’ shots?
I do feel you should be cautious and use sharpshooter/psyker to pick out stuff from afar, and have zealot/ogryn force melee engagements.
I feel Darktide should stand on its own rights and not solely pander to Vermintide fans. They should find something to be liked, some similarities, but Darktide should push new things and needs to answer to the W40K mythos, which is much more ranged-based engagements.
The ranged gameplay in Borderlands feels absolutely arcade-y and the level design doesn’t serve/encourage cover-based tactics, whilst Darktide’s levels do.
L4D has essentially no ranged assaillants, so the point is moot.
Both of these games don’t have the level of ranged engagement seeked in Darktide, as is my understanding.
As a Zealot, sliding from cover to cover, switching weapons constantly to dispatch who I ran past (which I can see from the sides of my cover, or behind me) and using grenade/ability to engage shooters is a BLAST and a gameplay loop I only ever DREAMED of <3
I’m glad you enjoy the gameplay. Some of us don’t, and I think it’s going to take a little bit to accept that fact and move on, since this has been such a highly anticipated game.
In all honesty, I do feel this has the same vibe as the Tide games and genre tho and feels very similar to other games such as like Back 4 Blood and such in the way you have to tackle things as a team and move in similar ways, combining close range and long range fights and choosing which is better at the current moment, something you do in Vermintide aswell atleast in the higher diffs where ranged is aboslutely needed to even survive the threats thrown at you.
I think Darktide is a bit different fundamentally and might offer a broader way of doing things but I do think it’s mostly a getting used to, I struggled quite a bit in the start but now when I’ve gotten used to it I can’t really say I find it THAT different from VT2 in the general aspects tbh.
Sorry to hear you don’t enjoy it and I hope you might come to do so with time and it’s real release
I’ve engaged with it, but also happen to be pursuing a PhD in video game studies, which you can imagine take quite a lot of my time…!
I’ve spent every last bit of available time I’ve had playing the game, only now having a character lvl10, barely enough to do a malice-lvl mission. After playing it, I can better see what ya’ll are talking about, but the sheer amount of stuff thrown at you doesn’t relate to “peek-a-boo” gameplay so much as being constantly overwhelmed.
There sure needs to be some balancing, and the experience can be a tad frustrating as is, but the suggestion of this post that cover-based shooting is at all fault seems a little exagerated.
Heresy is currently bugged and sending endless hordes, so its bad frame of reference. But Damnation feels fine, a few tweaks to make Zealot and Ogryns slightly more tanky, is probably needed, but even playing Vet on Damnation I find myself in melee fairly often, just with enemies dropping down, or small corridors. Or just engaging armored enemies where a powersword is going to be more effective than a las rifle.
I think the biggest issue is the range tied to coherency. It needs to be broader to promote, people offering suppressive fire, while melee centric heroes engage. As it stands some reasonably tactics get limited or become useless all together with how high enemy damage scales, and how important it becomes to retain coherency on higher difficulties.
So you say, yet here you are making lengthy posts on things you really havent bothered investing any extended amount of time into.
Besides - the point is not how much of your “valuable” time you spend on what.
The point is if you CANT or DONT CHOOSE to spend your valuable time on something then you dont go around TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT THINGS YOU DIDNT HAVE TIME TO SPEND ON.
Period.
You literally try to talk balance based on freaking recruit difficulty. Jesus. F. Christ.
You need to chill out. You’re being way to aggressive for no reason over someone having a different opinion.
Besides you seem rather clueless yourself of actual high diff in Darktide so I’m not sure why you’re speaking like some elitist who knows it all when you’re clearly showing that you don’t.
Also the games you keep bringing up for refrences are completely moot and bad examples to compare to. It’s okay to have an opinion, we all do, we all have our own unique ones, but here’s the thing, if you get to post your comment and opinion, others get to aswell.
No one here was really disrespectful or telling you to shut up, but you did just that to others, gotta chill out more.
