Please fix the powercreep (RANT)

Ahhh… casuals. And I don’t mean that overly disparagingly, it’s an expectation thing I reckon.

I think the value prop and therefore expectations of Darktide are substantially different to most games offered on console. Most of the time you are offered difficulty up front, and complete the game on one setting. Not so in Darktide – heck there wasn’t even a campaign to “complete” until very recently. So the game is much more about personal progression than extrinsic progression.

Not everyone has completed Halo on legendary, but most everyone has completed it, for instance.

And it’s something I’ve seen cause a lot of frustration in gamers. It’s a matter of changing yourself, rather than changing the game. And some people are very resistant to that, unfortunately.

As my ma always said, “you can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead” :grin:

6 Likes

well, that’s exactly the kind of attitude i mean when ranting about unreflecting players who seem oblivious to anything happening around them. i linked that reddit thread somewhere: i told them that they don’t have to camp in front of that elevator at the scanning event in oblivium just because they’ll ride it later, and they downvoted me a lot and even defended their playing on autopilot. clueless and proud of it. and with the omg power creep, the safest way to still snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is having a bunch of people who won’t take any hint or turn off their autopilot for a second.

9 Likes

I learned pretty early on that… hold on, I suck at visualising things in text. Okay, so let’s say you’re facing the direction that puts said elevator at your back? There’s a room in front of you to the left with three entry points.

Anyways, I learned pretty early on that room was a much safer option on higher Difficulties than the front of the elevator. However, I still see a lot of Players camping the front of the elevator when I go over to that room most of the time.

If you’re making Redditors mad, you’re doing something right. :hot_beverage:

8 Likes

yep, the one we coined “witchhouse”

lets none ranged get a good hit on you and forces anyone into melee mode.

some rather duke it out in the open, we usually pick em up after the elevator joy-ride :smile:

6 Likes

I could write essays on the casual vs hardcore debate. It’s ruined too many games I’ve played.

The most interesting bit of hard data I saw was from the in-house analyst at SWTOR. “Casuals” played six hours a day after any update.

There are dads with jobs etc etc but that has nothing to do with being a casual. What casuals don’t do is analyse, optimise or log in with clear goals for their session (instrumental play).

I’ll stop there. The urge to write a novel is too strong.

10 Likes

I’m curious as to why? It’s kind of a coincidence, but me and the other Player who figured out the “Witchhouse” was a good spot at the same time? We were both playing as Psykers. Witches, if you will. I like that, it’s snappy.

1 Like

because there’s not much range to be shot at from. they use to come over the fence on the left and are forced into melee. contrast that to camping the elevator (and even planting a med pack on it, now you’re tied to the place if you want to use the pack) and 7-8 snipers far in the back will shoot you to pieces, while the horde keeps you pinned.

reddit defended this as “but it’s obvious that you have to take the elevator”. yes, and it’s also obvious that you can wait a bit farther away.

5 Likes

two story shack, moldy, corpses around… seemed to fit at the time :smile:

sometimes you got some standard stuff over the years you use as map-legend every so often.

as for doom/quake we had our
beissvieh,
kackvieh,
öger,
scharminkel,
bösarsch

…good times :smile:

:thinking:

if it still refuses to drink…
kill it

1 Like

not to forget the lowly Pimpf

2 Likes

over 3 decades now the ever re-used argument was :dollar_banknote: , their breadboxes coming at a 1/5th of what gaming pc’s start at,
totally oblivious that for a good 20 years they pay more for games as a unit and happily feed the roadside brigant that charges “online service”

add these up over the cycle of a console “lifespan” and you got your pc.

whats more prevalent though, and i met (and still do due to my job) roughly a 5-600 consoleros over the years in person is this “cheech and chong” mentality, push button–>play.

config, framerate or emprah forbid mods are outer space quantum physics.

remember back in the day arguing for a proper pc and showing skyrim modded videos on youtube.

"buuut it doesnt look like this on my playstation..
. :sob: "

no sh!t sherlock, maybe its cause you cant be bothered spending 2 hours modding and your little console costs 3 times less than my gpu alone :man_shrugging:

how could any sane person expect a 500€ rust bucket perform as well as a 500k€ porsche on the highway?
but in some warp-addled minds it needs to, cause console=oh so “optimized”

speaking of which, you wanna melt some brains/eyes at the same time, show them 30fps lovers a 240hz oled with well… 240 fps.

“hUMaN eyezz kan only see xxfps”… and age old bogus comes jumping out of empty mouths like a well studied script :smile:

funny that at the same time they are perfectly taken aback by the ridiculous gap in performance, so they DO see the difference at face value.

back in the day when consoles had proper survival horror games like resident evil (not the modern emo-crap) or silent hill, good beat em ups etc i had quite a few of em.
modded :rofl: in terms of running jap/us versions uncut and sometimes at 60hz, i had my money’s worth.

at no time did i expect any first person shooter to be properly played with a controller :scream:, stuttering at 30 fps with what would be even below pc minimum settings

(still use the dying light joke as an example as to how far left into “minus” the bar would have had to be taken to match the console “max” :joy: )

so yeah, you mix all of that together, usually a “generational thing” since daddy only had a snes, cook and stir it for some 20 years, and you see some “stuff” whenever a xbox or ps5 logo pops up on the "who are you " mod

in 1200 matches i’ve yet to witness a consolero clutch auric maelstrom.

go figure :man_shrugging:

5 Likes

There’s nothing so expensive as being poor.

8 Likes

Well reddit is a hugbox, they can’t take criticism even when it’s fair. If we disagree I could argue, keep quiet or maybe even call your a slur, but downvoting is dodging the issue, getting to choose what’s on top and what gets read. It makes for a “nice” place I guess? (like social media giving you exactly the content you want) but when there are issues it’s all so fake and deluded.

5 Likes

Just did a duo Hi-STG game in which both of us only used the dog and we did it pretty easily without ever dodging or sprinting. That’s a lot of video game mechanics to ignore while completing an Auric Hi-STG.
Very normal, very balanced class. Yet ignorant fools insist we buff the other classes to the same level. :upside_down_face:

4 Likes

One the more disastrous consequences of powercreep is a disturbing amount of people have developed a habit of dependence of using busted stuff. Once they reach a state in which they can’t they become extremely agitatated and start whining about the game being unfair or too hard or how we need more buffs with any counterargument being “oh you’re a elitist!!”
That’s not necessarily the game’s fault, to be honest. They’ve been conditioned to use shiny build they found online rather than develop personal skill. Darktide isn’t supposed to be first person shooter, it’s a looter shooter with first person elements- with really little evidence otherwise. It’s only until they reach something hard around heresy or damnation in which the game actually starts demanding you to respect its mechanics…

Or, At least some of them.

I often hear people say “It’s impossible to player psyker without bubble” or “You need chrous to survive in havoc”, both statements being very wrong simply on the face of it. “You just need to position better!”, I say. But that’s the big thing, people never learn the layers of player Positioning or exploiting enemy behavior since they never had the chance in pre-havoc games when one guy can just nuke before there’s a chance to learn. They probably didn’t even know positioning is even a thing, just shoot the badman with the gun until it dies. No further thought required.

Yeah, No snot bubble is necessary for psyker when you’ve spent the past 300 hours develop the habit of standing in the open infront of gunners. Yeah, Arbities isn’t OP when the thought of sliding to dive gunners never approached your mind. Yeah, no shot the rumbler isn’t OP against crushers since all you’ve known is destroying caprace in one shot, so taking 4 is actually super balanced and weak. Hell, I remember people bringing dome to C-I-VI of all things simply because that’s the only way they’ve played the game despite it near useless there.

6 Likes

Yet ignorant fool

Yet ignorant fools refuse to accept how badly designed other classes are. Or, to be presice, their skill trees and talents, their weapons.

After playing arby for some time i think i have to say pretty simple truth that people either don’t understand or ignore. Arbites is more powerful, first and foremost, because arby is DESIGNED BETTER, and only then this thing is amplified by some overtuned talents.

It’s a vicious cycle on dependence. I first use busted stuff, game rewards me with no skills or micro gameplay actually learned.
I move onto the next difficulty, game becomes a lot harder all of a sudden. Use even more busted just to keep a float. I get rewarded, still knowing very little about the game but if I stop using busted stuff for any reason I can’t past that difficulty anymore (in which i now feel obligated to win bc i won before)
I finally reach the limits in which I can’t just busted stuff alone. What then? I’m supposed to learn how to play the game? I didn’t sign up for this!

buff everything plz, never nerf.

5 Likes

I don’t think it’s ignored. On this forum I think the people you are talking about are generally in favour of keeping the polished design but dialling down some numbers.

From what i saw: Some people here would deny that 2+2 is 4. I’ve argued too much with such people already.

Speaking about numbers… Probably yes. but it has to be done very carefully without making talents non-viable.

For example: If you nerf “Walk it off” from 15% toughness over 3s seconds to 10% over 2 - it will be still viable tho generatil less amount of stamina genreally.

But if you nerf, for example, the DR of suppression protocols to even 10-15% talent will be questionable at best, useless at worst.

And the next problem here that most of the forum population that i’ve seen, doesn’t know what exactly to nerf and what exactly to buff, neither they know when they are going too far.

2 Likes

Design and powercreep aren’t mutually exclusive, other classes can get better designed talent trees without becoming much stronger than they already are.

7 Likes

Now you’re making sense.