Powered weapons

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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So i’ve written a lot of discussion in general discussion about how the powered weapons are way off lore compatible, and way off strategic usage. but i discovered some more wierd and interesting consistencies to the point it might actually be a bug or oversight in the design.
I want to posit some video to preface my point.

The TLDR version is powered weapons outside the powersword become less efficient when powered.

This includes the force sword, all chain weapons, the thunder hammer, shock hammer, shock maul etc.

They each have thier own problems.
The chain axe and the thunder hammer have taken some of each others stats … the chain axe should be optimally used against high health targets high toughness (if enemys have toughness too)
the thunder hammer should be for penetrating armor. I noticed a recent nerf to the chainaxe that slowed down its attack speed, i don’t think this is a good idea since the weapon should be good at managing mobs … the chain axe shoul operate as excellent against unarmored average+1 against flak and poorly against carapace but probably better than the power sword oror chainsword OFFENSIVELY, it should in trade have a defecit in blocking the majority of axe type wepaons in 40k are unbalanced and poor at parrying. The thunder hammer really needs higher penetration on carapace and it needs its damage pulled way down …it makes enemies like the beast of nurgle, plague ogryn and even to a lesser extent the daemon host a walk in the park because it has to have such high base damage to affect its carapace targets. It also should cleave when energized not hyper physics the first thing hit.

but now we get to the chain weapons which i now realize are in worse shape, lots of people love the eviscerator, chainsword, and chainaxe. at release i realized what was wrong with them right away and gravitated to the chainaxe because due to the way they work the chain axe at the time was the best weapon out of them and i put video up in general discussion to show how and why.

The gyst is chain weapons if “empowered” hit something, and if it isnt dead they activate the chain chewing effect and stop thier swing. Much like the thunder hammer this prevents you as the player from putting the damage where you want to.

The cleave damage of the chain weapons immediately falls off by 58-69 lower damage as soon as it hits a secondary target, this means that empowered it will generally stop on the second or third target hit and “Chainsaw” them … well what if my eviscerator has +4.7 targets hit on cleave … it stops at 2-3 enemies. but if i power attack without it revved it cuts 4-6 enemies.

Also please change the chainswords reposte from a fencing jab, you dont thrust with a chainsaw thats how you get it stuck.

My suggestion for all power weapons would be to drop thier damage but greatly increase thier penetration damage ratings, the thunder hammer doesnt need to do an obscene amount of damage if it just does 100% damage to carapace … Chain weapons need the chainsaw mechanic to ramp up on max health of the enemy struck and all of them need cleave + and higher cleave transferance numbers to actually benefit from thier cleave numbers or a rework of how and what decides when it stops and chainsaws in a crowd.

The problem with the powersword isnt its cleave targets its the INSANE level of penetration/armor ignore it has, powerswords are an all arounder jack of all trades type weapon … for reference in most other sources the thunder hammer has DOUBLE the penetration of a power sword. the force sword fits the current power swords state better in lore as its penetration is related to the psychers psy level.

All non-powered weapons should be slightly better than non-powered power weapons when they arent powered … otherwise they wont ever have a lasting place in players arsenals.

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Why does the activation HAVE to be an all-round buff? I’m perfectly happy with activation being a declaration of intent that I want to deal single target damage.

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The main reason isnt that it HAS to be a buff, its more that the weapons don’t do what they are supposed to do.

Because they chose to use large damage buffs to make the weapons operate in certain circumstances … enemy matchups are borked …

The easiest way to fix them is to put the reward on the harder way of fighting with the weapon … aka mixing in power ons in the middle of a frenetic melee…

not rewarding left click onry.

in its present state you can declare your intent all you want but if theres anything else on your screen you dont want to hit and even if you aim away from it theres a very high chance the game will force you to hit something you arent aiming at …

Which with the chain weapons is not only an animation lock that forces you to take damage but it can also force you to snap your screen sideways and disorient you…

And with the thunder hammer it creates a recoil and animation lock long enough for you to take several hits.

Its presently very bad gameplay, and poor risk reward … If every time i charged up my weapon the bonus damage went where i wanted it i would be on your side…

but im pretty sure from a development standpoint its a lot easier to just have these weapons travel through to thier intended target than it is to completely redo hit detection for them.

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Fatshark acknowledged the screen snapping to weird locations with chain weapon special activated hits. The rest feels good and I hope they don’t change it too much. Everything has its niche and players need to get used to what weapons do good at what along with how their attack chains function.

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Are you sure the powersword 2 shotting armored targets is ok ?

Should the thunder hammer 3-4 peice monstrosities because it has a wierd unyielding damage buff instead of its armor penetrating properties ?

The game is filled with other bugs i think its quite fair to ask about this as well …

but i guess in every game forum you have the few that kiss thier feet and thats ussually enough to keep them from acknowledging the problems and let the game die in an echo chamber.

steam numbers say otherwise the release dropped off a cliff. and its because of a lot of ignoring details and the feel of the setting, the missing story theroetically by Dan Abnett …
so knight for the developer if you want to but i really want this game to recover and succeed. so i’ll take my shots where i need to and just hope they hit home. I do what i do because i care about game development, and i love the franchise they are presently trying to feature.

when you have a way out there number system where damages range from 35-1800+ balancing them is a lot harder … unyielding enemies have huge health pools rather than just enough to make them a cumbersome couple extra hits for high pen weapons.
nerfing the damage on the thunder hammer just 5% takes away 90+ damage on an unyielding enemy.

wouldnt it make more sense if the unyielding enemy just had 600 ish HP and the thunder hammer did a straight unreducable 200 … instead of requiring all kinds of wierd interactions with percentages to get a weapon to work … it would be a lot more clear to the player as well how and why targets reacted the way they do. you look at a thunder hammer and it has penetration so you think its going to pen well but it kinda doesnt because it has arcane damage multipliers instead of using WH40k’s famous armor v armor pen system.

if the weapons operated properly you could leave the thunder hammer at 200 damage in most cases it would be fine and balanced, the power swords stats are crazy even now post nerf, the chain axe is still a better elite fighter than an unarmored or lightly armored weapon… no idea why they thought slowing it down so much was a good idea instead of balancing its numbers now it closes in on worthless …

Then you have the psycher sword which should be what the power sword used to be before nerf, om the character that is supposed to be the glass cannon and it has no cleave and no real pen outside its empowered single target hit. force swords can in theory have the most pen of all the weapons we have available to us … depending on our psychers “Psy rating”.

The game play is intense … but its also pretty spotty on lore accuracy. Players will want weapons to operate how they expect them to. Thier tolerance for a company that doesnt care if they are accurate is very low thanks to so many bad releases ignoring the setting and ignoring the bulk of fans to a elitist minority that jumps in the ring to defend the developers. happened so many times. Additionally, the problems they have take away player agency and eliminate skill in a lot of ways so the player cant express skill. making my weapon hit targets i don’t want to is bad game design. The enmies at point blank range that take up your whole retical that you “miss” on spread while not moving, the times a bullet lands on COM and does 0 damage, when psycher projectiles which are already poorly balanced also pass through targets without damaging them (aggregiously so on pox bursters). The weapon system has problems on a swiss cheese has holes level.

Dow 3
Eternal Crusade
mobile games

im tired of watching great ideas go the way of the dinosaurs because devs dont listen at all.

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Yeah I don’t care about the weapons matching lore and I imagine most people looking for a horde shooter don’t care either. As for Warhammer fans this is still one of the more polished 40k games.

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They’ve already taken steps in the right direction since launch, i think they will eventually fix it up at this point.

I hate to tell you but a LOT of them did care: Warhammer 40,000: Darktide - Steam Charts

16% deflation since release and an even bigger deflation from BETA … less people played the full release than beta tested it.

so its great that you don’t care about things HUGE groups of fans do … but you might be playing alone soon if you keep spiiting vitriol at anyone offering suggestions to clean the game up…

Also you are projecting my observation onto me, I play the game … A LOT i will still play it if these changes aren’t made. but if the player base keeps freefalling off a cliff i wont have anyone to play with and the servers will close so it won’t much matter if im satisfied … the game needs to reach a satisfying place that draws in enough players to keep it alive long enough to get where it needs to go.

it is also NOT the most or even a highly polished game in the 40k genre.

it released with no story.
no crafting.
tons of optimization and crashing problems.
unusable weapons.
an entire class out of 4 (25% of playable classes) that doesnt function on difficulty 5.
Objectives that you couldnt complete because they didnt count up.
tons of weapon bugs.
tons of things not operating in a sensible way.
bugged secondary objectives and its still a problem that tomes and grimoires dont always spawn at all in thier levels.

They are trending in the right direction … the game gets better every day but it is by no means the most polished game or even a top contender yet.
I think what you are confusing is good graphics with polish. they are not the same though bad graphics can also drop a games percieved polish.

Im stopping my argument with you here … i dont waste time on copium huffing ostriches.

also you didnt really address the fact that the weapons due to thier properties are imbalanced and make encounters that should be a struggle incredibly easy. Nor the fact that they take agency from the player. Nor that they continue to make the game arcane and un-percieveable t the non 40k layman.

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I don’t think you know what vitriol is.

They set the stage with the world, the NPCs and a short prologue of the characters gaining the trust of the Inquisition from level 1 to 30. Anyone expecting a single player style narrative from Darktide was expecting too much there. They’ll likely continue to drop story nuggets with new maps and videos like they have been so far.

There is crafting, it’s not finished, but it exists.

Optimization is crap, but coming along.

I haven’t run into an unusable weapon yet.

All classes function fine on all difficulties when you learn them.

Not sure what you’re talking about with objectives, maybe a bug? I haven’t encountered that one after a lot of playtime.

Not really running into a “ton” of weapon bugs, or really any. Maybe you’re getting it confused with input delay losing actions?

For stopping your argument you sure are adding onto your post a lot via editing more.

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They HIRED AND ADVERTISED a story BY DAN ABNETT.

literally the biggest 40k author around right now.

didnt say there wasnt crafting i said IT RELEASED without crafting. and it still isnt all in.

Heavy sword for zealot on difficulty 5 have fun, most of the psycher weapons outside voidstrike purgator, and trauma.

Psycher absolutely does not, you need to take a trip through the forums. Some people actively dodge diff 5 runs with psychers.

i put up video of them in general there are tons of examples. I could easily record more, like the last bullet in the mag on a bolter not doing anything on a hipfire. The aforementioned thunderhammer doing 1800+ damage, enemies walking inside your wireframe and being untargetable, enemies phasing through a braced ogryn with his shield up, Theres so many remaining bugs.

It isnt input delay you can clearly see the hitscan succeed and show blood spatter then the enemy just “pretends” to not be hit.

sometimes singleshot spread is outside the potential reticle at point blank range … another agency killer.

you are intentionally pretending they don’t exist its literally impossible they are so common.

Lol i also forgot that like 3 feats didnt work at release either … and toughness had a 100% bleedthrough bug on melee hits at release …

The eviscerator i showed LITERALLY states it cleaves an additional 4.7 targets and can only hit 3 total 4.7 > 3. Either the tooltip is wrong (which is still abug) or the cleave is wrong. it literally has to be bugged one way or the other.

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4.7 cleave does not mean 4.7 enemies hit. Different enemies have different “mass” and that mass is deducted from your cleave value as you cleave enemies until it is depleted. Of course it would be nice if enemy mass was actually stated somewhere in game but pretty sure cleave in general is working as intended.

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For those that cannot accept reality:

in Psycher video he should have died when i tapped F but it doesnt matter.

You can kill an unyielding and a carapace ogryn in the time it takes to kill one enemy with brainburst … sharpshooter has powersword for melee which is more efficien horde clear and elite killing than the entire psycher kit. It als has hitpshot bolter, scoped bolter, or a flamethrower whicha ll operate better and more efficient than psycher horde clear. in diff 5 4-5 of those level enemies can blitz your team at the same time … you cannot have one player sitting back and taking three channels to kill one with brain burst.

Pause the eviscerator reveal on second 8, it literally states at the bottom in grey text the more cleave the more enemies hit in a single swing.

presumadly this is either added to the default targets (1) or is the final number multiplied by the 1 (4.7 targets) the reason the decimal is there is because other effects can modify this number though the one i can think of on hand is the ogryn infinite cleave melee feat. Additionally, what weapon is it we are considering to have a higher cleave than an eviscerator which is a chain, power greatsword ? presently cleaves less than the power sword …

Additionally, when the mass limit is reached the weapon stops swinging …and rebounds or stops. it has nothing to do with cleave targets if the weapon doesnt stop in flight.

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I completely disagree with the the power swords game play.
I played a ton of zealot with all the power/chain weapons and now got a level 30 sharpshooter to.

Power sword is strong but it also sucks and the main reason is the base weapons not good but powered up its great meaning you have to have it powered and every hit that it’s not is a waste.
Makes it feel like a chore rather than a tactical choice to take out a high health threat or lock down a rager.

Every other weapons got a down side of TH single target and recoil and chain weapons lock in slow you and the explosive club just ragdolls or staggers everything but spreads them out hard.
But you get big single target damage in exchange for been venerable.

Thing is they are all pretty good base weapons the power swords not.

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Heres some more diff 5 footage.

Well if you think the power sword has weak stats while unpowered you must hate almost all of the other weapons in the game for that class because outside the heavy axe, it has the hardest quick attack. And honestly due to its high cleave and heavy damage due to wierd math its really easy to just power up chop chop on heavy and that will clear enough space to power up again.

Its actually more powerful than any other sword or knife that isnt powered while its unpowered one of my biggest gripes. Along with it SHREDDING armored targets.

As fun as this is though ide appreciate it if you guys would provide evidence instead of just making baseless claims.

Most of what im explaining is testable in 30 seconds in the meatgrinder for yourself.

I could also get into the concept that even if they fixed the eviscerators cleave, it would still have a diagonal slash path and can only weakspot 1 enemy at the beginning of its swing the power sword has a flat swipe that lets you weakspot a whole crowd while also doing insane bonus damage.

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Heres some proof that cleave works as i suggested.

took me a try or two to get 6 in the swing path but it struck 5 targets in total.
Same eviscerator same diff 5.

now for some hit mass:

When you hit something that exceeds your hitmass, the weapon stops … most weapons just drop down and allow you to block or swing again. chain weapons bite in some even when not revved causing a slight delay and the thunder hammer thonks and recoils.

Hit mass is only related to physics it CAN stop you from hitting the appropriate amount of cleave targets but only if you see that indication as you saw the weapon didn’t stop when it hit 6 poxwalkers … it just didnt damage one of them.

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Sorry worded that badly.
The base weapons good but the base weapon is trash when compared to powered up swings.
Meaning the base weapon feels bad if unpowered.
Meaning it’s not a decision it’s a chore to use the weapon.

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Because of giving the player a choice. Currently Thunder hammer’s only strength is it’s amped up single target damage, that’s about it. It has quite a limited amount of crowd control, always stops at an armoured enemy that you hit in a crowd amongst other enemies. Single target left clicks don’t even one shot pox walkers on the head ¯_(ツ)_/¯. It’s amped attack only hits the very first target, now considering how much time it takes for you to amp it first, then perform a fully charged swing only to some rando zombie get in the way and take all of that force into his stupid head. You only want to use TH’s amp when it’s not crowded, imo left click amped attack doesn’t justify the time investment. There is no choice or decision making, with it’s amp attack. Further more blunt weapons have stopped being effective at dealing damage to armoured targets, for some reason. Why is that? How come a 1h Axe with a clear edge doesn’t get blunt in a couple of hitswhen you hit it over a Crusher’s head against carapace armour, instead dealing quite the damage, but a freaking two handed hammer does about 20 or 30 damage on a fully charged swing with no amp? I honestly despise every weapon with an activation, except maybe chain weapons. It’s always press the button and kill faster, you don’t need to time it, you can’t use it mid swing or when your weapon gets stuck in an enemy, it’s duration is either for 1 attack or for a couple strikes (power sword). There is no interesting mechanics like say a blessing that powers your sword up after a parry for like 5-6 strikes, or anything that involves some kind of interesting way of player involvement. It’s always press the button and then hit. There is no deeper layer to amping your weapon, you can spam it all you like, there is no cooldown timer, nothing to manage, no built in combos or purposeful animation cancel say if you activate it between the swings (if it hit a target). Lame design

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There’s a bug report on this post, but most of your post is about feedback. Why didn’t you separate?

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Because they don’t understand the game and they’re mad and blaming it on bugs.

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Because i was responding to the internet trolls that came here to do everything they could to push thier feelings as facts.

ive placed the proof i need. im done with them.

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Yeah thats why i have recommended to them to have the powered w eapons default state be powered for X swings and they recharge swings over time, but you can exceed thier charged swings and have to restart them. I too agree it is a very tedius gameplay loop not even to mention that many times when i energize the weapon it doesnt actually energize or im forced to block so long i lose the energize and have to do it all over again.

It would give them another dial to balance the weapons around, so you could easily run in with the thunder hammer with say 3 swings and put down some serious HELLO damage and crowd control but then you get into a state where your weapon is ponderious and you need to make openings to power it, making far more interesting than strong swing 10 times until the horde is gone then empower it and bonk the thing you wanted to to begin with.

All arounders can occupy a space where they have a few more swings before stalling 5-7 (chain weapons and the power sword). but in order to achieve a good place for that the powersword has to stop bieng the galaxy splitter, and chain weapons need to not be a liability while on… they are literally stuck in the same place as the thunder hammer due to them sticking to targets you arent aiming at. We don’t use a chainsaw while its off to saw the tree first … it ALWAYS cuts better while running. In game it cuts worse while running, the revved chainsword itself has a reposte that almost guaruntees you get hit when a reposte is meant to quickly counterattack safely. There is so much player agency lost in chain weapons its rediculious.