Exactly. I genuinely feel like I could’ve played Damnation at Level 1 with my Arbitrator. Heck, I would’ve tried had the game allowed me to. No Curios, no Skill Points. Just fire and steel. Well, Arbites Shock Maul and Exterminator Shotgun.
You’re a content creator, right? Roll a new cop and grab some friends. I’d indulge if we overlapped time zones.
they dont want that because they like to feel invincible, knife zealots were annoying but they died if they messed up.
Arbites can tank damage like its no nones business and survive damn near everything even if you just mash buttons
Would the Difficulty Gatekeeping restrictions still be in place since it’s a new Character? If not, I’ll give it a whirl.
Just a random thought for us old people:
Remember when they tried to overhaul Huntsman Kruber with sure shot? They recognised this was to strong and backed off…
Good ol times
Sister of the Thorn anyone?
I don’t believe so. It never stopped sub-30s coming into Auric. Dunno why FS would gate lower difficulties harder. You just couldn’t do a full team of rookies, need 1 with access.
You could buy grey weapons, don’t upgrade, remove curios and take off all talent nodes. It will same as level 1.
Yeah, only one of us would need to be a Player with access to Damnation. They’ll just have to play with no Build, I suppose.
Sounds good, actually. I’ll message some friends and see if anyone’s on board.
For the true experience, you’d need to have not sold your default weapons since even the shittiest you can buy are better.
Edit: oh wow, it let me write “shittiest.” Finally got around the filter without shite.
I’m going to pop in here with my own perspective. I have hundreds of hours in this game since launch month in 2022, and have played all classes pretty equally. I play with a variety of several friend groups spread across different places, but never just play solo. I don’t play Havoc. I’m 0% interested in megasweat modes, and even less interested in the rest of the game being balanced around them. My peak twitch reflexes are back in the days of Quake III, CS1.5/1.6/ and Unreal Tournament days, and I can feel it.
With that in mind, there’s some stuff that really puzzles me in this thread. However good the DS4 or Rumbler or Gold toughness is, if somebody genuinely belongs in Heresy, it’s not going to carry them in Auric or Havoc, it’s just…not.
There’s far more to the game than just killing stuff and if people don’t know how to dodge, don’t know how what targets to prioritize, don’t have good twitch reflexes, and don’t know when to pop abilities, don’t have good awareness, etc, then having the worlds deadliest poking stick isn’t going to save them. I typically play Damnation, and find that to broadly be a good place for my skills, Auric is a definite challenge, and I’ve yet to find a weapon or build that will just carry me through games at these difficulty levels. Definitely a DS4 makes games easier, don’t get me wrong I totally acknowledge the reality that the weapon is painfully overtuned, but it’s not going to carry me through something I’m not ready for all on its own either. Me running a DS4 build with Shout on a Vet isn’t suddenly going to let me drop into a Havoc 40 game and do anything useful.
People also shouldn’t need to be putting hundreds of hours and external research into the game just moving between different basic levels of difficulty. Playing casually with different pals, we moved up through the difficulties as we felt like it, if we just repeatedly failed we bumped it down again, but also didn’t level every class and play for hundreds of hours just to start playing Damnation.
All this isn’t to say there aren’t valid issues with power bloat. There are, and there are many valid points in this thread. However, I think a lot of it is also just…player veterancy. For the people with thousands of hours in this game, with enough time sunk into Darktide to consider it a part time job (or in some cases a full-time career), that level of experience is going to exhaust the difficulty of almost any game eventually. We can see this with plenty of other games, playing vanilla World of Warcraft in 2004/2005 is a radically different experience to playing Classic WoW today because everyone knows where everything is and has optimized how to do everything and there’s 20 years of experience baked into the community.
Another issue with some of the power bloat is how enemies are spawned. Spawning 12 Crushers in a group right in front of the party ensures that every Cleave and AoE ability gets to shine. Spawing 12 Crushers from different points around the party coming in from different angles is a very different threat. That’s something I feel could definitely use some additional work.
That IS true. Hm… best way to do that would be to level ourselves back up to Damnation and never sell nor upgrade our original set of Wargear. We also won’t use our Skill Points or Curios.
It used to be better, it got worse.
Also:
Ogryn meta or Arbites meta likely will carry you through a mid havoc game easily - if the other players are not brainded (they dont have to be 1000h+ sweatlords however)
If the other players play Arbites meta too and are halfway decent… you can actually jump of the first ledge and still be carried xD
Yup if you roll new character you have to spend time to get access to damnation again. Gated by character level instead of account level.
I eagerly await this vid drop now. Do post/notify here once done.
It heavily hinges on me and my friends’ schedules, but it does sound like a fun little experiment to do. I’ll be sure to notify you if it comes to fruition.
Full agree (as opposed to FS apparently). That was to show the difference between this entitlement and “earning” my “right” to be where I got. It’s a difference in gaming personalities. I did that because I would have been ashamed if I didn’t and was just a burden on all my teammates in this, advertised as, co-op game.
I’m not afraid to call out people who have no shame being that burden (and also, somehow always seem to be soooo bad at taking constructive criticism(and “never nerf in PvE” types)).
I feel doing the basic amount of learning about a game, such that you can maybe see the new class is OP, isn’t too much to ask.
Pretty big qualifier for playing whatever the hell difficulty you want that most don’t have. More power to you and by all means.
I made it a solid 850 hours of not getting exhausted pre-arbites. Kind of weird that I would just all of a sudden get hit with a big ol’ tidal wave of difficulty exhaustion with a game I fell madly, deeply in love with (for better or worse) as a long time FPS enjoyer.
same here,
seems to be an “age thing” though, younger folks being brought up with the instant-gratification-mentality by weak parents.
the pattern shows.
back in the day of lan parties you really had to put your money where your mouth was and if you misbehaved you were treated accordingly.
now with the safety behind the screen half a globe away… people get cocky and complacent.
but the feeling of joining a game and being the laughingstock of your peers… i couldnt bear it, rather quit the game for good.
OR and thats something further “shocking” clench your asscheeks and put in the work to be a valuable team member or even carry the round.
one thing though is the “reward” scaling for resources.
ironically those good enough clearing the content half asleep dont need any,
those needing the resources are so far out of their league at the brink of a heart attack. 
speaking of which…
worry no more fellow quaker…
50mg cortisone + 2 cans of monster energy on an empty stomach
thank me later 
Yeah, I try not to be ageist or start generational spats (I’m not that old), but it just does seem like it.
When the young bloods know no world without horse armor, who is really to blame: them or us?
Casualization/access to the hobby is also a real big part. Gaming is the biggest ever, and, IIRC, the biggest entertainment industry out there now. So the rise of “c’mon drop the friction, dads only get 1 hour a week to game” hasn’t helped either. And can we really blame dev/publishers chasing those dollars?
Same here. I was only born in 2001.