Ranged enemies severely break the flow of missions

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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I love the concept of the hybrid combat in Darktide, and on Malice dealing with threats at all ranges is a lot of fun; it’s almost where it needs to be. However, I think the way ranged enemies are currently implemented, especially in Heresy/Damnation, is just not good for the game in the long term and is a significant problem that should be addressed. It drags the gameplay down so much, sometimes causing missions to almost take an hour to finish, and they don’t feel rewarding to clear out like hordes or specials.

It also severely detracts from the melee gameplay, and throws the whole idea of hybrid combat out the window when 80% of a mission is dealing with a shooting gallery. This all easily creates burnout and frustration for long time players. Imo, there are three contributing factors to this:

  • The damage and stagger is FAR too punishing. Trying to break into a group of ranged enemies just for them to 180, melt your health and stunlock you is unbelievably frustrating. I think the burst fire on mobs aggravates this even more. I don’t think ranged fire should stagger players at all, and the damage should be toned down quite a bit.

  • Suppressive fire and closing into melee barely works, and the ranged enemies are really hard to identify while in a heavy battle. It is incredibly obnoxious to get knocked out of a charged attack or sprint by a shooter you can’t see or who should have drawn their melee weapon.

  • The biggest issue by far is the sheer volume of ranged enemies creating a shooting gallery in every big area of a mission. It’s fine to have a squad or two of traitor guard attack you during a horde, but when the horde is the traitor guard it’s an absolute slog fest. Malice difficulty is much like VT2 in it’s momentum, where you’re more or less always on the move and slicing through hordes with some gunfights sprinkled in, but the high end content consistently forces you to stop and engage the troopers slowly as if it was a tactical shooter; completely at odds with the other half of the combat system. It just doesn’t feel good to play and makes for a miserable gameplay experience. It’s not challenging, just slow, painful and annoying.

The volume of ranged enemies should be seriously toned down, by like 50% at least, and I feel as though it would be a vast improvement (and more thematic) if they were treated as specials that worked as cohesive squads, instead of acting as normal, independent horde-type enemies. Each squad could have a sergeant that you can tag for your team to make being aware of shooters and dealing with them more intuitive and engaging. As it stands right now, playing the higher difficulties and dealing with the mobs of shooters is like pulling teeth, and it isn’t good for the long term health of the game as it will easily burn out endgame players.

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For a crit build zealot it’s not too bad on damnation. The resistance soaks a lot of damage, dodging is very viable, braced auto takes out scabs like nothing and you have the most powerful grenade in the game.

Playing more aggressively actually pays off when dealing with ranged enemies, and feels pretty great!

Can’t imagine how dull it must feel to play a low mobility weapon, I just avoid it!

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Games in Darktide easily take 40min to complete.
up to 50 for a high intensity.

Why? Because there is way too much caution to be observed when going from A to B

In VT, going from A to B is quicker, as enemies are melee, clump up, and die to cleave.
In DT, any ranged enemy needs to be dealt with one by one from a safe position.

And this is just talking about traversal.
Having to repeat the same minigame 4 times to succeed into a scripted event isn’t exactly fun and rewarding time spent.

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No, i am gonna be a prick and say the same as the Souls games guys says:
“Git gud”

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Like, i am alraedy looking forward to T6, meaning difficulty 6. No clue if fatshark has said anything about a higher difficulty than T5, but i really hope a dlc or smth comes for it.

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Upvote for visibility?

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100% agreed on this. For me, it’s not that it’s too punishing, it’s more that a single trash-mob enemy like a base Dreg can instantly melt your toughness, and its stagger is just as strong as a Reaper’s. I get it, you should have to take cover when someone’s shooting a bunch of slugs at you, but in terms of gameplay, it just feels like the most powerful enemy you’ll encounter is the simple Dreg with a rifle… and there’s hundreds of them. The stagger and the damage makes sense for the Reapers and Gunners, but man… It just feels out of whack. Plus, you can’t regenerate toughness with ranged combat, which I would say is one of the two things that really hurts the Sharpshooter class vs the others.

As for the rest of the post, personally I don’t mind the volume of ranged enemies. Really the only time I encounter an issue is when the team runs ahead and a bunch of shooters spawn behind us. As the rear security guy, I just get pinned down because poking my head out to suppress and advance is instant death, and whether or not I’m close enough to a corner to duck behind and wait for them to advance into melee range is a matter of luck. Being able to regen toughness with ranged combat would really fix that problem, along with the basic dregs and scabs only doing like 50% their current damage and stagger.

Edit, I actually really enjoy the more deliberately paced combat in Darktide vs Vermintide… I enjoy both, but I like how Darktide is a little unique from VT in this regard. It’s not just vermintide with guns.

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Sounds like you guys need to get good, tbh.

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Can’t agree more with the OP. One straggler can melt down your toughness instantly, ranged mobs shouldn’t have 100% accuracy unless you dodge, and the shear volume of them should indeed be decreased. The absolute worst is the stagger. The times I’ve exclaimed frustration at a friend of mine because of the goddamn cancellation of my sprint…! Another fix that would really decrease player frustration: Have the ranged enemies switch to melee WAY sooner – screw this point-blank bs!

It has nothing to do with “git gud”, as the OP himself states it’s not that it’s too difficult, it’s just boring and severly slows down the pace; it’s simply not fun.

I swear to god these “git gud” people must be so incredibly insecure…

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Edit, I actually really enjoy the more deliberately paced combat in Darktide vs Vermintide… I enjoy both, but I like how Darktide is a little unique from VT in this regard. It’s not just vermintide with guns.

I actually prefer DT’s combat to VT and I do enjoy the slower, more methodical pace and having firefights to break up the horde slaying, but when it constantly forces these ranged engagements in stead of melee hordes, and a single ranged mob can tank your toughness/HP, it’s just too much imo.

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I’ve said that many times. We really should spam the forums with topics like this so the devs can actually understand it and do something about it. It’s the number 1 issue for me gameplay wise right now.

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You guys are complaining about a core mechanic of the game because it causes you to have to do something other than press W and spam M1/M2?

Work as a team to break up a squad of heretic guardsmen before trying to bum rush them as if your IQ has a hard time going above 2 digits.

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If you know how your class works and you have a decent team the game doesn’t offer any insurmountable challenges. Damage reductions, charging, high damage output. Don’t let the enemy put you on your heels, keep the pressure on THEM.

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You can be good at the game and still find mexican stand-offs upon entering every single room boring. Whishing for more opitions for aggressive gameplay is not wanting the game easier, it shows people dislike having the pace throughout the map bein broken all the time. Whining about: “Git Gud S*ckas!” Everytime is not gonna change that. Sure you can say, that if such people do no like the game: “Nobody forces you to play it”, but it is equally viable to voice criticism and help shape the game into a direction more to your liking if enough people agree with it.

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It only really breaks up gameplay if your IQ sits somewhere at the temperature of an uncomfortably hot room and don’t have the capacity to go for option C when “bum rush the enemy” and “cower in the corner” don’t work.

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Hahaahha, both rude and wrong

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Rude, sure.

Wrong, no.

Rub those two brain cells you have left and come up with option C. I believe you can do it if you really believe.

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You sure do have fable for being insulting for no reason whatsoever, but go ahead, you do you.

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I’m just calling a duck a duck, pal.

Don’t like it, improve or stop quacking.

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Well this is 40k. You ARE supposed to use ranged weapons. It sounds like you’re talking from the perspective of zealot where the kit heavily encourages you to go melee.

You first of all don’t have to go melee, but going melee into a ranged squad is extremely rewarding for your team. It’s also the consistently successful strategy since you can’t trade your toughness vs ranged like a vet. You can do this pretty safely actually, but as people have mentioned, you must have the crit perk for damage reduction and bleed. You can use these perks with any melee weapon because your ult gives you a free crit, and the bleed buff stacks 3 times to give you +30% extra crit chance which is enough to keep everything refreshing. If you’re getting knocked out of your attack, then I’m also assuming you’re not using “thy wrath be swift”, which also works for ranged attacks.

I do this on damnation with an eviscerator. My ranged weapon depends on my mood. Sometimes revolver or autogun, sometimes boltgun or flamer, but I’ll always default to ulting into a ranged squad vs trying to use my ranged weapon, regardless of which ranged weapon I picked.

If I was wrong about my assumptions, or sound like a d@#$ I apologize, it’s not my intent to come off as hostile. But to your points, from my perspective of zealot gameplay, I think that ranged enemies in their current power/quantity adds a lot to the melee gameplay, and lowering their power would detract from the experience greatly. Nothing has been a better gaming high in Fatshark’s games than flying into them in Darktide. There’s a lot of things that can happen, from specials showing up to say fk you, to there just being more and more and more shooters that keep getting aggro’d. In all the chaos there’s a lot of awareness that you have to have to make both micro and macro decisions.

So yes, someone not having a good time will get burned out on trying, but what’s important is how representative is your opinion compared to the rest of the community. I am here mainly to say I have had a very different experience, and thus the opposite opinion.

The only issue I see is the reliance on extremely specific build choices. From perks to blessings to feats, you basically have to go for crit.

A little off topic, but if anything, the specials are the most BS thing vs melee right now with their bugs such as silent spawns, or immediate spawns from doors you happen to be next to which doesn’t give you any time to prepare or counter. They can get stuck and never show up for a whole section, leaving everyone thinking the rest of the team got them. Suddenly 3 hounds and a trapper crash in with crushers/ragers/maulers and a horde.

I don’t want to deflect to that issue, so I’ll just leave that there and say that I enjoy the challenge presented by ranged enemies. A lot.

1 Like