It effectively boils down to you feeling the need to chime in with an obvious fact solely to point it out despite my post even being one I actively said I cut short.
Tl;dr version: It amounted to you saying effectively nothing, by your own admission here. Yes, there is the option to do challenge runs. No, that is not remotely relevant for normal balance discussions.
Moving on.
We had that, we had a lvl 60 Ogryn join maelstrom. He had 6 wounds, and 60(?) max toughness. I just laughed and promised we will âfix his buildâ after that game.
If you make a game for everyone you make a game for no one.
The idea that you can cater to people that never played a video game as well as your average co-op mass murder enjoyer is not just insane but simply stupid.
Well I completely disagree. Its neither insane, which is really an extreme way of describing something that actually happens all the time in many games, nor stupid, because catering to a wide range of people isnt stupid either. It does come with problems and pitfalls ofc, like making it more difficult to create and balance things.
Also you dont need to make it for âEVERYONE!!!â
and I didnt say that. I dont think the lower diffs should be made easier.
I think Darktide already does a good job catering to a wide enough range of skills.
I went through the process of reading through what this all turned into, so I feel Iâd be remiss if I didnât toss some words here and add them to the pile.
Balance at the end of the day is called that for a reason, and games will pretty much always forever be in a dance with it trying to keep it as âlevelâ as possible, but by nature of humans being humans, we will always find the âmost optimalâ way of doing something and do that more often than not.
Some will branch out from this innate desire to see âwhat else they can make workâ (that tends to be what I do/keeps my interest in things), some will play only the best thing and then, should the game not have a proper âfinal tierâ that only the best works in, they will likely get bored. Challenge runs for speedrunning where born from this dichotomy, some want to do it as fast as possible any means necessary, some just want to find more reasons to keep playing the game that they enjoy the core gameplay loop of.
In a perfect world, all are catered to, and who knows, maybe Havoc will be the thing the âhard coreâ have been missing. Maybe it will need a lot of âhelpâ before it gets there, but, at the end of the day I will come at all this with this perspective.
I jumped back into this game more recently with the new update as a ârefugeeâ from Destiny 2, a game thatâs been running way longer than this one. That gamesâŚwell, a travesty is the lightest way I can put it. It fell into the âbasically only buff thingsâ montra, it would nerf things to, but it basically did and still does itâs best to placate itâs rapidly dwindling playerbase. This has resulted in the game becoming basically unplayable if you want to enjoy yourself, as power creep makes it so only the most recently updated things even feel good to play, as they demonstrably dwarf everything else to such a degree that trying to use said other things is actively detrimental to the people you play with. But, at the same time, the game is so incredibly easy, with enemies that havenât been updated since launch 8+ years ago, while the players have only gotten rework after rework exploding their power ten fold each time, that the game either literally doesnât even ask you to play it (just walk forward clicking buttons and you win), or the game 1 shots you from full through every trick in the book you have because there is no way to split the difference. (Warframe is a great example of this too, with build/mod ubiquity and basically no variance once you get to the top level, but thatâs more by design/they just gave up and embraced that a while back).
This, is what people that ask for nerfs donât want to see happen to darktide. Heck, for some, itâs already happened, which is why they ask for it more.
I know for me, the only thing that truly feels âbrokenâ is the Dueling Swords to me, as Agile just busted their balance wide open, as to me, dodge efficiency and effectiveness is the main thing that keeps a lot of things in line, and Dueling Swords just negate that while also killing everything.
I know other things have been brought up in here too, but most of them I feel are balanced around factors other than power. Plasma Gun and Boltgun are clunky, and need to be build around (either with knives or grabbing One Motion + Tactical reload my beloveds), and then feel rewarding to âuse them wellâ because of that. Staffs required quality positioning and player know how to get right, as their dodge potential is incredibly sparse. Heavy Evis is like, âon the cuspâ for me but the fact you have to sit there on the target to get your full damage off feels appropriate, though I COULD see specifically the newest one get tuned a bit. And smite is smite, same pitfalls as using staffs but you also need a functional team/at least one other functional member of your team or else itâs not going to have nearly the effect youâll want it to. You can stun the whole wave sure, but it still takes a decent while to die, and youâre not dropping anything above a gunner without help. For a class that otherwise doesnât really have a single other supportive tool beyond trauma staff, I donât see it being THAT bad, but that might be partly due to seeing the amount of bad smite players getting absolutely rawed in Auric Damnation I see on a day to day basis xD.
But yeah, my perspective is also as a âpretty much exclusively quick play playerâ, I see ALL kinds and I myself play ALL types of builds, so the game to me is still quite engaging and rather tough at times. Sure, Iâll get the âgod teamâ comp of everyone and me solo quality player extraveganza and we plow through in 22 minutes without losing a drop of HP, type âggâ in the chat after an leave. But Iâve had equally as many âHOLY EMPERORâ moments with pulse pounding âconstantly needing to react/sprint over for clutch full team revivesâ goodness when I get the greenies looking for a clear and Emperor be willing Iâm going to give it to them if it kills me.
I feel thatâs the intended experience they (FS) is probably looking for, and for a lot of people they are delivering on that. Any weapon not already mentioned here I feel is honestly very balanced/at least has a mark or two that can function in what is currently high level play, or is the combat shotgun. And coming from a game that has basically no variety in itâs endgame pursuits, being able to have 10-12 builds on 6 characters that I feel all are capable of walking in to auric with different playstyles attacked feels honestly incredible, and I hope they are able to keep that going.
To that end, if a nerf needs to happen, Iâll likely cry but Iâll get it. If a buff occurs (like what basically occurred to most weapons with all the various blessings given to them, but also boltgun my beloved especially, and thunder hammer my equally beloved) then Iâll likely like that too, as it means something is now hopefully going to be usable for more variety.
At the end of the day, I just hope they âkeep trying to play the balancing gameâ, and donât do what many live services have done before, and just buff into oblivion. I think the game is in a âgood/maybe could be a bit more difficult but then 3 pox bursters and a trapper wipe my team and I hate everythingâ spot, and I will just say I hope they keep at it, regardless of the continued âdiscourseâ.
(with that being said though, partial revert on Ogrynâs getting beaten up with their talents/give them other tools, they didnât deserve it! Love Empra why he forsaken them/the ones that donât wanna dump ammo all over!)
TLDR: Balance hard and will never be âperfectâ but I hope they keep trying as theyâve been doing largely well in my eyes, Dueling Sword withstanding.
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