Not common sense.
I wish that all weapons would be balanced. Not in term of damage (=power) but in term of utility.
However, here, the question is What, in your opinion, are the [ranged/melee] weapons that should be used as a reference for power level?
This means that weapons could get more power than this level if they have drawback and they could be less powerful if they have things that make them useful with other factors.
But the question is purely about the DPS of weapons and what you feel as something that should be the reference. So, not too strong, and not to weak.
And so, this is not the weapon you pick in missions (cause obviously, 90% of the players here will; use strongest/OP weapons).
as they should, the game throws at the players enemies by the thousands
the game is already silly as it is, where rejects are able to bruise trough hundreds of enemies like if they were nothing, if you ask every weapon to be viable it would just get even more silly
I disagree, because it forbids to use a lot of weapons. So it makes the game less interesting (and why I want a solo game mode)
And why we ask the question that you pick the weapon that should be a reference as power…
If you think that DS and PG are the references pick that. But not if you think they are too strong (last two polls).
Weapons are too good in all situations. Too « universal » by example DS must be good for stab unarmored, flak in weakspots but really bad for hordes… etc. When you change weapon you change your gameplay… You really need to mix your weapons.
With a boltgun and a relic blade I m more stuffed than a space marine Terminator. Why I can wear two two handed weapons…
That’s why 40K exist since all this time the wargame I mean because you have to do choice you can’t be a full team by your own you need all your models to win. Would love to got the same feeling in Darktide.
if a player (alegedly a new player) loves the game, he can just go back to Malice and Heresy to see how every weapon performs.
Nothing compells you to play damantion all the times, you already have your wallet capped, you can go back to the previous difficulties to see what’s going on there, and maybe pick up some dusty head hunter autogun mk 9 and see if you find a use
not all weapons need to do everything, the psyker especially that can just plough trough games with just his melee and his bliz, he can choose to pack a small punch with those overshadowed guns to kill that special or make a breathing room in an horde
i played with zealots in Havoc 40 who would bring their shredder autopistol and their mk2 laspistol, and since their class was melee oriented they were pulling their weight just fine
the only class that have problems bringing an off meta gun is Veteran, the underdog, he should be able to make due by having an off meta melee, but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way anymore since they nerfed survivalist, so now he has to learn how to melee
i’m not willing to discuss melee weapon balance, that is a matter on its own
One issue I have with the community is that some people here voted literary every single useful weapon, aside from bottom picks that maybe 1% of players uses on regular basis (shock mauls, chainaxes etc). Like, some weapons are ultra-specialized at certain tasks, and people still vote them, what?
I think people really have dramatic views on the balance in this game, more so than devs, which I don’t think should be the case. Everyone wants to be the gamedesigner nowadays without actually being one.
The game should be designed around basic Damnation. Auric, Maelstrom, and Havoc are all “harder than hard” modes that should be challenges above and beyond the base game. If there are balance issues in these modes, they should be handled within the mode’s framework, not by addressing the larger metagame.
As far as weapons go, the only one I feel that really needs a nerf is the Dueling Sword, it shouldn’t be capable of dealing with armored foes. It can be mobile, fast, etc, but dealing with armor should be out of its wheelhouse from both a lore and balance perspective. I’d throw the knife in there too on the lore/realism perspective, but that’s a different conversation, I don’t think a knife should have been an option as a primary melee weapon, mainly because a knife is really more of a grappling weapon, something you resort to when you’re too close to swing a sword.
Everything else is, within reason, equalized at normal Damnation. I don’t think one can make a good claim that the Plasma Gun for instance is monstrously overpowered there, the game just isn’t giving you the volume of targets and heavily armored enemies that make it shine at higher difficulty levels. I’m surprised at some of these other results…if Fatshark ever nerfs the Recon lasgun…no joke I’m straight up uninstalling this game the Recon is everything I wanted it to be, and I can’t recall seeing a game where recon lasguns just dominated everything.
your opinion… and that’s why I asked the first question.
For now, only you think malice is the difficulty to consider to balance the game.
Maybe you won’t be alone… but for now, the major part is divided around damnation, auric or regular.
Your opinion. But clearly not the topic.
Not wrong. However, why are we all using same weapons? because they are too strong, and that with something else you’re a spectator.
Even devs don’t really consider Damnation anymore, let alone players.
Most events they did focused on adding new modifiers and challenges to auric, not regular Damnation. Which means, Auric Damnation/Heresy is probably their target of game balance.
you need to understand not all players are scoreboard slaves, if they find their weapon to do the job regardless of what the scoreboard tells them i don’t see them as bad players
when you are down in the dirt with pubs you don’t need mods to see if someone is good or not, all you care is that he if he gets downed or not
I didn’t want to name any specific weapons not to target people who voted them, but let’s say Thunder Hammer.
Thunder Hammer has awful horde clear. It also takes multiple unpowered weakspot hits for almost all specials in the game. It’s a clunky weapon with a limited mobility that, ideally, should only be used with special activation, which means there’s roughly 5 second pause between each hit.
I’ve been running Thunder Hammer since the release of this game, at this point I have hundreds of games played with it, and it’s always been on the weaker on the side. Calling it “OP” is just insane.
I know there are weapons like Duelling Sword in the game, yes, they deserve a nerf, but saying that every other weapon is busted by itself and is not brought up by the player skill is pure insanity at this point!
If the devs are considering Auric as the baseline, I think that’s a mistake, particularly as it’s advertised as a “harder than hard” mode.
From my own experience, outside the forums, comparatively few are playing Auric and Havoc and whatnot. I only play with people I know, but I play with several different groups located in different places, sometimes thousands of miles apart, and between those groups nobody plays Auric or Maelstrom as anything but a “once in a while” challenge really, while I’ve yet to see enough parties in the Havoc Player Finder even at peak hours such that I wouldn’t have leftover fingers counting them on one hand. We see a lot of dev effort devoted to these things, but also a lot of questions as to “why”.
I think from FS’s perspective, if they have goals to push out content internally, it’s easy to add modifiers to sweatmodes, it’s harder to put out new general content.
I think Damnation is fine a transition point from Damnation to Auric Damnation. There’s enough difference in gameplay feel between them. Though allowing people to play Damnation under level 30 is kinda weird. I’m sure there are some people who can play Damnation at any level in 2025. But back in a day, most people were always overconfident and just ended up being a dead weight for the team.
Auric Heresy, on the other hand, I don’t really understand. Maybe Auric Heresy is harder than original Damnation, but if it’s not, than I don’t see the point of it. All it does is reduce the mission variety pool… in my opinion.
In the setting, the infantry laser gun is a model that can fire fully automatically, while the reconnaissance laser gun is a model that can only fire semi-automatically. Meanwhile, the description of the laser gun in the setting is that once it hits a key organ, it will surely kill you. However, the performance of the infantry laser in the game is just like that of a flashlight
the Recon is everything I wanted it to be, and I can’t recall seeing a game where recon lasguns just dominated everything.