Please Keep an Eye on Balance - Excited For Rework

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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The talent trees look awesome, can’t wait to try them out! But there are a LOT of new options here, so please please please Fatshark be on the lookout for balance outliers.

Your game is at it’s best when all four players are contributing equally to the teams success. There are currently several balance outliers that are so effective at quickly killing every class of enemy with no drawbacks, that they render team-play obsolete. They’ve been discussed ad-nauseum in the forums already, and I’ve seen a few addressed in the patch notes, so I’m cautiously optimistic. But PLEASE be quick with the changes to any emergent hyper-effective builds.

The Relics of War DLC in Vermintide is what I’m afraid of here. Absolute best-in-class synergies with no real competition, that even years later haven’t been tweaked. It makes for an incredibly stale meta seeing the exact same builds in nearly every match. And makes playing off-meta builds feel anemic and unsatisfying. The best options are too far ahead of the rest.

You guys have a good track record of releasing fun DLC that brings a lot of novel gameplay to the table, the quality and creativity shows. But frequently the power-scale is off, and isn’t changed for almost a year as with Sister of the Thorn (9 months) or not at all as with Relics of War (2 and a half years and counting). Balancing isn’t easy, but it is the number one best thing you can do to keep your game engaging and re-playable over its lifespan.

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Wow.

Are you seriously asking for nerfs before the update even dropped?

That’s new for me…

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Reading comprehension is hard.

Here is a clue: He is asking for quick nerfs if they become necessary.

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Eisenfaust is right, though. There is a lot of unnecessary anxiety and concern about the patch before it even dropped.

Now if one doesn’t like changes or shifting metas in general, the patch will probably rustle that person’s jimmies. But I see a lot of people afraid of something that should be reason for joy.
This gigantic patch will improve Darktide in a multitude of ways. I cannot wait to get my hands on that.

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Farshark: Due to many complaints from Zealot mains about Veterans. We decided to do the following class balancing.

  • Veterans
  1. Now shoot Nerf darts at the rate of one shot per minute
  2. Have pillows as melee weapons.
  • Zealot
  1. Now has a selection of one-shot kill guns that hold 10000 mini nuke rounds per magazine, and shoot at a rate of 1000rpm
  2. Wield Emperor’s sword that also one hit kills anything within the field of vision per swing.
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There’s a lot to unpack here

Feels like you’re intentionally misrepresenting my meaning, you know that’s not what I’m asking for. I don’t know what the meta is going to be anymore than you do, and what I’ve read of the update I’ve LOVED. My fear is that IF something is broken, its not going to get fixed for ages, because that exact situation has happened before multiple times. Nerfs and buffs are simply tools to achieve balance. Balance is what I want, but balance does not mean parity. It does not mean that Class A-Build 3 == Class B-Build 5. It means that whatever Class X-Build Y may be, it can not stand alone and still succeed, it requires the greater whole of the team to succeed. That’s what I want, those are the matches that I find the most fun, and that is not what we have in the current pre-update build, in my opinion.

First line of the post, and included in the title, I express my excitement for the changes. My worry is this - Fatshark has never released this large of a change to its playable careers all at once in the history of the Tide series. Its awesome and I want more of it. But they’ve struggled to balance single careers effectively in the past, much less eight at once. Now, they have done it correctly more often then not, which is why I’m not too worried. But when they did get it wrong, as with SoTT, it took nearly a year to fix. For me, that was a very boring period to play Vermintide, and I’d prefer not to repeat it.

This feels like a whole other thing is going on here. Why zealot and veteran? My guess is that Veterans and Zealots are regarded as the 2 classes with the most potential? If you think I’m obliquely referencing those two in particular, all I can do is assure you I’m not. The balance outliers I reference in the main post are in every class. Each career has an anti-everything with little to no resource cost build. But there are loads of discussions about all of them already, and I didn’t see anything productive in rehashing them right before a new update (hopefully) shakes it all up. I suspect that veteran and zealots are brought up more often because their problem builds were discovered early on, but that by no means makes them unique.

If you wanted to, you could take my top played builds across all 4 classes and just delete them from the game. I’d be THRILLED because it means I get to uncover a brand new meta! Obviously that’s a terrible idea, variety is the spice of life and all that. So instead change the balance, make players find the new best build, then once its entrenched, change it again! If you somehow find that perfect combination where each and every weapon, perk and class are used equally, great, but that’s nigh impossible. Better to make changes in an attempt to approach that state, because if nothing else, you’ll at least give players something new to explore rather than let the meta fester.

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There was a whole s*show going down a few months after the game’s release when players were pretty new. Mostly Zealot players who haven’t learned yet how to deal with shooters crying about how OP vet is, and how much Zealot can’t deal with shooters at all.

This was back when PS had infinte cleave and Zealot still had the absolutely bonker 75% crit DR. Some of the animosity still remains.

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Bro pretending pinning fire hasn’t existed for 10 months already :skull::skull:

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To my knowledge FS has also never had player testing to this extent nor given said testing anywhere near as much breathing room as they have this time around.

On the example of SotT half the issue was that they iterated on tester feedback in a large chunk all at the end. We had testers outright say SotT was released completely different to what they got to play with (previously a vastly less damage oriented character, testers said “hey this is kinda weak and not very self sufficient” then the abomination we got was rushed out without further testing).

This time we have testers saying what’s there feels to be in a good place and FS have iterated very well off their feedback. It also seems they’ve been tinkering with this for ages and the testing period has gone on for a good while.

All these things lead me to believe a balance disaster like SotT should not be on the cards here. Perfectly balanced? Probably not. Balanced enough till more tweaks and rebalancing can occur? Probably.

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That’s awesome to here, I didn’t know they had more thorough player testing now, or about SotT getting rushed changes. A repeat of that scenario is really my main concern, but knowing it was down to a rushed release is reassuring. Warrior Priest especially was, for my money, really well done. Fit in seamlessly with the other careers.

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That’s years in the past, too.
I recon Fatshark has gotten more sensible with adjustments to gameplay changes.
Compare the changes in VT2 with what we got in Darktide and it’s much better now.

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Yes, The non-stop crying from Zealot players. The game was already quite boring and nerfing veterans kills the game for me. Returning to “Back 4 Blood” made me realise how bad the Darktide is.

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I actually seem to remember the inverse, where for a time Zealots with the dagger were literal GODS of dodging and killing and everyone wanted them nerfed, mostly due three reasons:
→ Dagger crits used to not bounce off heavy armor types and go through Bulwark shields
→ It was possible to make any enemy type bleed, even when hitting the metal armor pieces
→ They used to have lower dodge cooldown and infinite dodges

Ah that was fun, seeing Zealots zoom around the place like they’re rabbits on drugs. I mean they still do, but it used to be way more excessive.

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You are wrong.

What you are talking about was the specific hatred for Knife Zealots not because it was Good/OP, but because it was Anti-Teamwork and Bad.

Taxe and Caxe (Antax) were much better, for both you and the team even back when 75% DR and Knife through Shield were still a thing. You could do the same with axes, but actually kill the enemies instead of fighting them until a dog pounces on you.

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No, I absolutely disagree.
Zealots were for a long time called OP. To be fair, same with the Vets. I specifically remember Ogryn players making threads on how they’re supposed to be the tankiest, but go down the fastest because at the start nobody knew how to cope with being a gigantic meatshield.
But that said, Knife Zealots weren’t bad at all and I saw many people make it work. It was never a bad playstyle, people just called it bad to add more weight to the “nerf it” argument load.

In the early stages of Darktide Knife Zealot gave you:
→ 100% guarantee to ignore shield and carapace armor and melt these enemy types away fast (bug)
→ Vetern’s Bleed grenade trait for free, because attack modifiers applied to your grenade types (bug)
→ Infinite dodge count, like Force Sword (feature, got nerfed)
→ Massively increased speed via movetech dodge-cancel (bug)

Only with all of these things being fixed or nerfed did the Knife build become a meme. Before then it was god tier and it worked. Wasn’t the strongest, but was the most survivable, agile and versatile.
Now it’s a laughing stock.

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Let’s put it this way: Vet got basically hate threads, while specifically Knife Zealot was hated. Big difference.

I played Zealot back then and believe me knife was 2nd grade compared to the axes. It was hated because it was anti-teamwork and compared to Axe, Knife had very long TTK.

Maybe some godly players made it work, I’ve never seen them and I played alot. I’ve seen Psykers doing crazy before the buffs, Ogryns blowing up the map with the bugged Fire Frenzy III ripper gun, never seen an OP Knife Zealot.

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Yeah well I played Knife Zealot, so I don’t have to take your word for it. You were able to zoom around the map a lot quicker and saver than anyone else. Scab and Dreg Shooters were like street pylons and you the sportscar drifting around and into them.
Big piles of enemies were easy to shredder and I reguarly clutched with it. This was on early Heresy, when it was bugged and would spawn infinite Hordes (but individual enemies also had less HP).

Knife Zealot got a lot of hate because many players used the build to rush ahead or elsewhere in general like, aggroing everyone. The rest of the team couldn’t match their survivability and died.
That said the build itself isn’t anti-teamwork. Or to be precise, not anymore than a Combat Axe Zealot or an autopistol Shredder Vet is.

Fast melee classes currently just don’t mesh well with the other archetypes. And it’s easy to see why.
The Zealot has an entirely different rhythm to the game than all the other classes.
Veteran, Ogryn, Psyker - They all move slower and usually seek a steady advancement.
They all also have different preferred engagement ranges.
A Zealot is upfront in melee. An Ogryn is midrange. A Veteran is mid to long range and the Psyker usually is also long range.

The anti-teamwork never came from the knife. It came and still comes from conceptually different playstyles being pushed into the archetypes.
An all Zealot team has no teamwork problems.
Neither does an all Vet team. Or an all Ogryn team. They match speed and strategic approach to battle.

You get different classes into one team and the group stretches out like bubblegum. Not sticking together is the number 1 reason runs end in a loss. That said, the P L A S T E E L greed is a contributing factor.

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I feel this is personal so I won’t push further.

I was trying to say this. This was the overwhelming majority of knife Zealot player.

I disagree but, I don’t want to derail the thread further.

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Seems balanced.

(@19:34)

(@01:43:23)

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