Good day!
According to Steam I have 94 hours in Darktide, so I’m not the most experienced player, but I LOVE this game and figured I’d provide feedback. In my time played there are two classes that drive me crazy. First, the Ogryn. Due to his size he gets in the way a lot. It is what it is and I work around it so I’m not complaining.
Second, the Psyker. I don’t know if they’re overpowered or if their talents lend themselves towards a certain style of play, but when I play alongside this class there’s a 50% chance that I’ll leave because the match becomes unfun. Besides having an answer to almost everything, Psykers seemingly have infinite ranged attacks and if I want to actually play the game I have to speedrun ahead of them to get to enemies they haven’t killed yet. The only times I actually have fun with a psyker is if they’re new (and don’t know the “best” way to play yet, I guess) or if they’re trying out a unique build/playstyle.
I guess you’ve played with Assail psykers, the ones with the shiny blue strikes that kill everything.
It’s more a problem in lower difficulties than in higher ones, and the devs are aware of the problem this kind of gameplay causes and are trying to change it, but it will take time to get to a solution.
From a very bad psyker…
You could take fun with my build based on duelling sword and the use of scier gaze
As I don’t use anything that requires force.
Honestly, any class can be built to shred enemy units even in damnation. You’ll have your time to shine too, dont call for psyker nerfs because they’re shredding. You’ll get there too with anyone.
That’s the difference: the psyker only needs to get to level 5 to gain this huge power spike, which seems bigger than it is just because of how sudden it is.
But it’s just that - looks bigger than it actually is. I wouldn’t even attempt to accurately judge a class before level 30 precisely because of that. Also, the op says he’s around 100 hours in game and i’d judge most of that playtime was not spent playing the higher difficulties or spent with players of high-skill levels. Psykers feel like they can shred with minimum effort at lower diffs because of assail but the game will verify anyone attempting to do that in any situation that requires a modicum of game sense and knowledge later on.
He’s not judging a class: he is stating that playing with that class makes his experience of the game bad, and I believe him because I have the same experience.
Especially a new player that has this experience will most likely stop playing because of a perceived unfairness.
Since the last patches, that completely upended the balance when reworking the player classes, the game has supposedly been a bit easy - and just adding more enemies is not the solution.
Fatshark will get there. Eventually.
Other than that, even as a former Psyker Main, I agree. Having more than one Psyker tends to add a lot of visual clutter, and a spam of ranged abilities that kill everything that wouldn’t actually be all that dangerous, lulling everyone including the Psykers into a false sense of security, and boredom.
It’s not just Assail, but that is definitely a big part of it. The ability isn’t fun to play with on any difficulty.
Currently, Psyker has a remarkable combination of kit to be boring and stressful at the same time:
You can grab a Force Sword with deflector, a surge staff, and Assail, and top it off with disrupt destiny, and you get a class that can block almost anything in melee by holding rightclick while eating a sandwhich, a ranged option that can kill and CC everything, coupled with grating sounds and lag for everyone, a Blitz that can kill all the chaff without you even needing to aim, annyoing your teammates without being similarly strong when you’d actually need it to, and to top it all off, a semi-working ability that lets you feel constant time pressure while being annoyed at your teammates whenever you actually let them do their job.
That is a fallacy that has ended its share of games, and quite a few companies.
If the game isn’t fun for early players, they’ll never get to the high levels.
It’s like creating an RTS, that’s not part of an established series, only for E-Sports.
The game shouldn’t be balanced around low levels, but it needs to be fun there.
Also, most players do not play Damnation, so optimizing the game so its fun there is of paramount importance. No matter how Fatshark does it, they have to try.
Assail needs something to be done cause it ruins the fun of other player. The fact he is not playing high difficulty mission is irrelevant here. Damnation / Auric are not meant to be standard difficulty. Malice is.
I play only Auric, but let’s not forget that there is also players that don’t play such difficulty.
And if other capacities has also similar problems, then it needs also to be addressed.
My point is he sees a class performing well and deems it an outlier without realizing the potential of what he’s playing. If I were to see that in game i’d either go ''oh damn this is cool, i should try that some time" or “wonder if i can do something similar”.
But then again, I’m not the type of person to annoyed because other people in a coop game have their fun too - everyone gets their moment to shine. Everyone will get their moment of shame too, i know i fumbled plenty of games myself lol.
Where ever was it said that malice is the default difficulty? If you nerf assail to be ‘fair’ in malice you either make it useless on higher difficulties or create different power tiers of assail per difficulty, which doesn’t sound plausible at all.
By catering to the casual crowd you make the game less varied and interesting for anyone playing on a higher level and I don’t think that’s the right solution.
Besides, I’d say normal damnation is where most of the player base will average out - eventually you get decently rolled items, all of your skill points and some semblance of skill/blessing synergy that will make any player capable of clearing damnation quickplays with ease.
That’s not the problem with assail, the problem is that you run to smash some faces with your chainsword and a small glass passes through you erasing all the enemies you were ready to fight.
It’s not a “they’re more powerful than me”, it a “they won’t let me play”.
Also, I don’t know a single game where the standard difficulty is “nightmare”
Then, they need to rework it or remove it…
Tbh, I think assail is just click and forget, requires no real skill (ok that’s untrue, but no aiming skill at all is true). It is not too strong in high difficulties (even if I saw someone yesterday using assail from the start to the escape)…
But if it is not balanced for the normal difficulty, or they find a way to make it balanced, or they balance it for malice…
Also, I would say that every weapon is balanced from malice to damnation… maybe assail is a little too strong if this happen?
Horde clearing…
The problem is when someone kill things faster than you can hit them…
I can see that with ogryn kickback actually. Must say that psyker, often, do really high damages. But I have never think that their gameplay is so annoying that I leave.
At contrary of kickback… I have left a mission yesterday with 2 kickback ogryns… one is already annoying as we see everywhere ogryns with kickback… 2… I have given up the mission.
That’s the difference: the psyker only needs to get to level 5 to gain this huge power spike, which seems bigger than it is just because of how sudden it is.
So why even talk about sudden spikes when that doesn’t matter.
All classes can be very strong and if other players kill everything then increase difficulty. All Tide games are about finishing maps and not racing to kill enemies. People should try something new if they are not satisfied and not complain that something is fixed for them when they can fix this themself easily.
Problem is when someone has something OP that forbids someone else to play…
Assail, by example, has a problem. As it was said in the thread about it, the blitz regenerates itself too fast…
Because that’s what causes of the problem being discussed?
The fact that other classes have their power grow linearly while the psyker have this single ability that goes from 0 to 100 in 5 levels.
It does not mean it’s overpowered, but it does not follow the common growth of the other classes.
One way to fix it is make it become more grenade-like and have more shards shot at the same time with higher cooldowns, all without lowering the damage of the single shards.
There’s way more OP stuff than Psykers in the game. Their stuff just (usually) looks big and flashy with lots of color, so you notice it more than you notice what other people are doing.
