Reloading in this game is insane

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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PREFACE: The chat wouldn’t let me use the word for the animation of pulling back the slidey thingy on the gun after putting the clip in. xD So I called it ‘pulling back the slide’. Sorry in advance to any gun enthusiasts who feel offended by my lack of knowing another phrase to use. ^^;

I get that you need to reload a weapon. I get ammo has weight, and time needs to be taken to put the clip in properly. But the speed at which you reload in this game is ridiculous. And yes… I’m talking about all weapons.

I cannot imagine that weapons designed for use in these tense, high speed situations wouldn’t be also designed to just slam in a clip or cartridge and keep shooting. I also can’t really imagine that, over time, the warriors using these weapons wouldn’t gain some skill at reloading faster in order to not get whacked upside the head so often.

Right now, not only is reloading extremely slow in most cases, but enemies can disrupt you from doing it by hitting you. Considering the fact that they can spawn, from nowhere, behind you, at any time makes trying to reload a huge hassle and even a risk if you get unlucky. Let me repeat that. ‘Get unlucky’. There’s RNG in whether or not you can reload safely in a cleared area. Why?

There’s also the ‘pulling back the slide’ animation. In one case, I was forced to switch to my melee weapon to fight off some enemies while using the Bolter in order to defend myself. I then drew the gun… and for some reason pulled back the slide on it, before reloading it and doing it a second time. Again, WHY?! I feel like all that time spent doing that (which might not even be needed all the time, I’m not a gun expert, but I don’t think you need to do that with a gun every time you go to shoot it).

So here is my suggestion.

**Reduce ALL reload times by a bit. They’re just too long and often get anyone trying to use a gun injured needlessly.

Get rid of or reduce the time taken on all the ‘pulling the slide on the gun’ animations, or at least do some research and figure out if that is an actual requirement for firing a gun of that type. Also trim the fat on all those animations that don’t make sense, like doing it every time you draw the gun, loaded or not. Again, not really sure, but I feel like I’ve seen a lot of people saying that sort of thing isn’t even a required aspect of loading a gun.

Insert a feature in the game you can call ‘gun mastery’. This could be applied to weapons with triggering requirements as well. The more a player uses a weapon, the more Familiarity they gain with it. As they gain ranks in Familiarity, they can then handle said weapon better… and this would include swapping to and from it, reloading it, and maybe other aspects like accuracy and even damage, though right now I’m just talking about general handling.**

The way I see it, maybe as you start out, you’re being careful loading the gun so you don’t set off a round or something, or don’t want to drop the clip in the heat of the moment, but as you use it more and more, it becomes familiar. The Veteran should start with at least a few levels of this, as shooting is basically their entire background.

As it is, just trying to reload some weapons is such a tedious aspect of the game it makes some of the heavier weapons feel like they’re worthless unless you have a really good team to cover you, and perhaps you think people are playing like that, but sadly, they are not nearly as often as it should be happening.

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Something else I’d like to see in the game is Run and Gun. Maybe it can be a slower reload, but players should be able to reload while running. It shouldn’t completely interrupt the loading process.

I’ve also seen that in some instances, the loading animation is… cut in half? Like if you let it get half way through, then run, then try again, it starts from the middle and finishes quicker than it would normally. How does this make any sense? Either there is a complete, uninterruptible sequence to reloading where any other action stops and resets it, or it should just work while running, at least to some extent.

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Why are you harrassing me?

I’m just offering gameplay solutions to your problem, which is apparently due to you not knowing the game mechanics.

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run and gun is on some weapons, but its so you can sprint and shoot at the same time. Its on my autopistol which already reloads fast. Also there is a stage in reloading where you can animation cancel. The bullets appear in your mag about halfway through the animation, you can cancel at this point.

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So you’re nitpicking my words to ‘teach me about the game mechanics’? What part of my not being able to type a certain word into chat here has to do with the game mechanics?

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Why is it not okay that I respond to any other part of your post?
Are you feeling okay?

Please do continue to report and tell everyone you’re trying to abuse report function.

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You’re not the first person to notice this incredibly annoying and lazy implementation of a “balance” mechanic. The devs are committed to it though. You should at least be able to sprint while reloading I feel to mitigate some of this nonsense but here we are sadly.

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You can also avoid finishing boltgun reload to avoid pulling charging handle one more time on next equip.

A bandaid “fix” technique, but it works.

What’s awkward is that they infact did have two different animation, one for equip and one for reload, doing the same thing - pulling charging handle. So it’s not like they’re cheaping out on animations, just…spending time/effort very poorly.

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I think this “problem” speaks to a more fundamental design aspect, namely that this game is intended to be played as an organized team. The reloads are mainly a problem in two situations: 1) You misunderstand what ranged weapons are for or 2) your team doesn’t keep enemies off your skin.

The first point isn’t intended as just a snide remark, though I admit it is about 10% that. This isn’t a game built around ranged combat; it’s a game where ranged combat is one tool in your arsenal, but seldom the MAIN tool. If the enemies are in melee range, it is not the right tool.

Which brings us to the second point. If you’re getting hit while reloading, something has already gone wrong. There are two major reasons for this. First, you might be the long-range eliminator who isn’t being protected by your team. Secondly, you’re not that person.

This is the kind of problem I predicted in the closed beta. Teamwork is not optional in this game. Unfortunately, teamwork is also not usually happening in public groups. Oftentimes it’s because the entire team consists of Psykers and Veterans and no one wants to play the “tank”. The rest of the time it’s almost entirely because the Zealots and (especially) Ogryns succumb to bloodlust and lose track of the big picture, ie. the rest of the team.

But I can tell you this: Teams are playing better than they were 2 weeks ago. In some time, they might actually get it. Or they might not. It’s a gamble that Fatshark took, quite obviously intentionally. Only time will tell if it pays off.

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Everything you say makes sense, but in the end it all comes down to balancing the game. Maybe in “reality” it takes just as long for a bolter to reload as a handgun, but for the sake of gameplay balance this isn’t the case here. You’re over-thinking this, it’s that simple.

There’s a chance that Fatshark will improve or decrease reload times by improving or decreasing the speed of the animations in the future, balance tuning the game more.

I admit that preparing the bolter shouldn’t have the roostering (:rooster:) of the gun animation. Again, the animators simply needed to fill the time before that gun should be able to fire without it becoming overpowered. Instead, they should’ve just have the character take the time to let the heavy weapon properly settle in their hands and on their arms.

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Hey I like this idea.
Weapon swap speed, reload speed and stability could all benefit from such a stat.

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If they so adamant on long reloads and need to fill animation with something, they could use safety switching instead of сocking a gun.

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this popped out to me first so before i do anymore deliberation. you can call it “charging the slide”. its another term we can use

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This again…why I cannot easily kite enemies, why reload is so long? The game is build around the core: melee combat. Even as a backliner you will be forced into CQC from time to time.

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I don’t think the reload/ready animations are there for balance, because I don’t think FS care about balance as much as we think they do/should.

But also, just because you have “Sharpshooter” in your class name doesn’t mean you should have your gun out all the time. If you’re getting hit while trying to reload, that’s your own damned fault for playing the game incorrectly. You have an ability to instantly bring out your gun, so you should keep it loaded and focus on melee until you need to shoot something.

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To me, weapon reload times and draw speeds feel perfectly appropriate to the pace of the game.

Cycling the action on the Bolter each time you draw it doesn’t make much physical sense - especially if it’s already empty, it’d be great if it could skip straight into the appropriate stage of the reload. Assuming it feeds like a regular closed-bolt, mag-fed anything. Maybe a pair of tiny servoskulls pull the round back into the magazine. But then, who are we to question the inner functions of His blessed tools?

All that’s beyond the point anyway - I do really like the concept of weapon mastery for faster reloads/transitions, but I’m not sure how I’d feel about it in Darktide. If you could pull out and/or reload the bolter any quicker, then it’s missing drawbacks necessary to counterbalance its overall power, and makes the other weapons even less compelling in comparison. They already need all the help they can get, cause it’s a Bolter, and easily the best in any 40k game to date.

I have a Rippergun with just an 8% reload speed boost, and it makes it significantly more effective, cause I can complete a reload more often in situations where I might’ve otherwise had to switch to melee. It’s that much less downtime between horde-demolishing fusilades or being able to delete specialists, that there’s less of a chance I’ll end up in such a situation to begin with.

Beyond that - the game wants you to be deliberate about your positioning, movements and timing of all such things - it’s a big part of why it’s fun. If you’re just standing still or holding S while reloading - instead of dodging, ducking to cover, or switching to melee to create space - yeah, you’re gonna get hit and interrupted a lot. Not saying that’s the case, but it is what it sounds like.

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It’s really weird, because this game does have staged reloads, so that if you interrupt the reload it remembers the state of the reload either at not started, old magazine out, new magazine in, press button/pull slide. It’s just that the pulling out animation sometimes supersedes the reload animation but it’s not very consistent.

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I agree with this to a point. As any class, I find that if you can manage your reload, and snap your gun around to aim and shoot where you need to, then you can keep your gun out all the time. I’ve gone through hordes by popping heads in close proximity many times without taking a hit because I can target heads quickly and effectively and measure my shots to not dump the clip blindly. It’s not easy, but it can be done.

Now if you’re thinking of the type who have their gun out all the time, wasting ammo by blindfiring in the general direction of enemies, then yeah, they should use their sword more at close range and practice sniping and learning the timing of the gun swap. But even there, the various guns have that seemingly unneeded pulling the slide animation that has to be compensated for. If someone has loaded their gun and slung it in a ready position so they can draw it quickly, they shouldn’t need to do that when they go to grab it and fire.

Try it with the Bolter sometime. Load it fully, put it away, then pull it back out again. Every single time, you’ll draw back the bolt before you can shoot, even though the gun is loaded. This just wastes time and makes it so you can’t fire as quickly.

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