Shooters are so fast and accurate now that even one is a threat to anyone at any range. Pubs in my games don’t take them seriously at all even when they have the proper weapons for killing them. I feel forced to play practically only to kill shooters in solo queue now and it is thoroughly unpleasant, it is exhausting, it is not fun, it is not even practical enough - pubs often leave strays that become much like snipers at impractical distances of engagement.
The first thing I thought of today after 6/8 losses almost back to back is that my feelings of tedium spent watching every shooter, killing every shooter, only to have more pop up elsewhere far away and blast out my toughness if I dared to stop ice skating at all for anything is exactly what it must feel like for the poor souls who abuse meth to experience the illusion of bugs under the skin and for them to scratch at the formication in vain.
I don’t care about any of the other difficulty changes. Ragers are dangerous, sure, whatever. It’s nothing new to me to consider plague monks a threat, this is not my first tide. Aurics and Auric Maelstroms having their some of their older OG hyper spawn rates - again, not a big deal to me, you can’t pub them without the expectation of losing often to begin with. If they became too hard there are other harder games out there where I can take my time and have fun with them despite their challenge.
Shooters as they are right now, though, accurate at any range and faster too? I can’t think of anything else that has put such an oppressive shadow over all the things that make the game fun to play within Darktide itself besides the current crafting system. Even if I win, I don’t feel too good for it. Why? The path along which I would normally play the game from start to finish now often feels like a long path of chores with eternally persistent guns that demand all my attention.
I’ve won more than I’ve lost overall since the patch hit and I am so tired of shootermania already. Enemy Suppression is and will always be a useless game mechanic because the best form of suppression will always be Enemy Death.
End Rant.
Preemptive FAQ:
I run max gunner resist curios. This does not help with shooters specifically, for those not in the know.
I sprint-slide everywhere, have since public beta, never stopped.
I use walls and LoS as cover sometimes but obviously it’s not always possible or productive.
I run actual shooting weapons other than the double-barreled shotgun and the bolt pistol.
I play all four classes, not equally but they’re all roughly gatekeep level 250+ on average.
I have more than 2K hours playing. I play Damnation, Auric Damnation, sometimes Maelstrom and sometimes Auric Maelstroms.
I played VT2 more than 1K hours on Legend and Cata.
I don’t care about premades. I actually tend to like the chaos of random pubs. Usually.
This is just gut feel, but I thought that shooters started to be more annoying in the patch prior to this one, but then this latest patch has also increased their numbers.
Admittedly returning from a short break, I’d repeatedly step out in to a space and find toughness draining / drained very quickly. It is a bit tiring having to slide everywhere to “dodge” them - it’s a dumb mechanic.
I like them. They’re a real threat now. Before, you could just mindlessly charge them. It made them so unthreathening. The only real way youd die by shooters is if you got caught by a gunner out in the open. I hope they keep them like this. If you remember, vet’s main role before the class rework was anti shooter. Hopefully anti shooter vets make a comeback. We also have shield psykers too, so the tools are there to counter. The meta just needs to adapt and overcome
All for a new challenge. Better a few more shooters and trade off is fewer Crusher packs imho. Having to carry an anti-carapace option is maybe something that could be reserved for a modifier, rather than just as we Brits say, de rigeur.
It certainly highlights some balance issues, in my opinion. My psyker has a great time because its easy to get toughness back even when getting shot at. My ogryn on the other hand has been having a rough time. Shooters quickly delete my toughness and ogryns dont have great ways of getting it back unless you have a bunch of enemies around to heavy hit.
I honestly don’t notice much of a difference on auric maelstrom. They seem to be switching into melee correctly when approached (which wasn’t the case always, which made them much much more dangerous). That’s all I honestly care about.
The fact that they’re more accurate makes toughness curious a much more viable alternative to health on some classes, so I personally like that.
Quantity and frequency also seem fine to me. The actual issue to me is horde timers not working properly on all missions. Sometimes it’s just the elite spawns or specials but no horde mixed in-between, except for scripted ones in events.
Don’t know what to tell ya, I enjoy the balance changes. Step in the right direction making the top end of the game harder imo.
The worst parts about the buff are related to shooters that betray the usual gameplay flow. With them as strong as they are right now it’s not terribly uncommon for one random shooter to be hidden in shadows 500 miles away and suddenly break your toughness while you’re doing something else. Not to mention that there are SO many of them thanks to the current patch’s director changes that they overflow out of tried and true suppression radiuses, which means that correctly suppressing them all at once requires way more teamwork than a usual pub game can offer. Used to be the case that you could usually get up close to a pack of shooters and gunners and have them largely handled by yourself if need be, now the swarm is so spread out that if you try you’ll usually wind up gunned at by the droves of other ones that you literally can’t do anything about. One or the other wouldn’t be such a big deal but the two changes combined at once is definitely a bit much.
As always, I would rather them do more things to buff the underperforming melee enemies (Admittedly not quite in the way they seem to want Ragers) and/or add mid-ranged foes; keep the long ranged ones in a state where they’re threatening but not so oppressive that a single one will easily kill you if you don’t spot and neutralize it when you walk into a room.
Considering that, the itemization update most likely is going to entail a spike in player power
they might start to ease in enemy adjustments preemptively to acclimate players, rather than having a huge increase in enemy lethality all at once.
Ok, so I play Ogryn, and shooters and anybody that is ranged have been my weakspot since the release, and to counter this I have adapted the most aggresive playstyle imaginable
(to me).
I have manifester my hatred for these filthy gun-wielding HERETICS and turned it into my playstyle. The amount of JOY I feel they I see them scramble around in fear when 2 ton TRUCK moves in their direction is unfathomable.
So what I did was:
Stack max toughness (all curios + all resist talant point)
Remember the times they shot you, the amount of bullets connected and return it ten fold
Get in their comfort zone, get into their homes, threaten their lives and lives of the loved ones
Give some time for players to adjust to the new improved shooters… then buff them again!
Shooters received too many nerf throughout the game’s lifespan while the player’s defensive powers also improved. I’d like to see shooters slowly starting to get dangerous again. I mean they are still a bit too weak, but we are getting there!
I realise this is you being a vet who wants more ammo to do shooter-y things but … ( )
seriously; unless you have a horizonal view of 360 degrees with some weird mod, it’s just impossible to see that one shooter who magically teleports in behind you (when that area was cleared), shoots a 0.5second volley, and totally wipes your toughness.
It’s a nonsense. Magic doors and all.
I’m hoping these are part-changes on the way to something else for the game. I think it is: but for long periods of time we’ve seen this cheese-y difficulty created by simply spawning silent enemies in behind you all the time.
Darktide ranged enemies are the most frustrating thing in the game, the fact that they have 100% accuracy is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in any game.
They don’t even have 100% accuracy unless you’re stationary and they will hit cover youre using.
I didn’t even notice the change for my first 5 games and when i did notice I was happy. The real issue i have is still gunner spam. Its awful. Especially with their buffs to spread and continued ranged stagger locking.
Thankfully the game has sound indication that you are getting shot at so you can just slide situations like this.
I played a lot of Zealot back in the day when shooters were an actual threat and gameplay was way more enjoyable where there was actual danger coming from the shooters, instead of them being just regular trash mobs.
Having more dangerous shooter have so many positives in the game that it’s even hard for me to list them, but I’ll try.
Shooters being more dangerous makes on-edge, heavy engage melee gameplay a lot more fun.
Having to pay more attention to your surrounding and positioning is a good thing, recently it wasn’t the case sadly.
It incentives cleaning up instead of just rushing ahead mindlessly slowing down gameplay in a good way.
Increases the value of anti-shooter measures including (but not limited to): Using blitz against them, Suppression, Smoke nades, Psyker shields, Anti-shooter specialized ranged weaponry etc.
Makes trash and (melee) bruisers more dangerous in a way, which is welcome. They won’t be more dangerous by themselves, but bogging you down has a more powerful effect.
And also yes:
Giving a job for shooter Vet or other anti-shooter specializations and weaponry (Gunlugger ogryn with stubber is also pretty good at this) is also good change in many ways, although that wasn’t my first thought.
Lasguns need shooters to be dangerous to be a desired pick. If melee is the better way to deal with shooters (which still kinda is, that one of the reasons I want more buffs to shooters) anti-shooter ranged weaponry just becomes useless.
Shooter specialist can concentrate on shooting down threats instead of going into melee without the melee specialist feeling they are taking “their targets”. More shooting for those who want more shooting without drawback for others.
Take it from a zealot main with 2.5k hours in the game then. He ain’t wrong.
For much too long now, shooters in Darktide have basically been melee bait. They spawn in a group all clumped together, and the most effective way to kill them was to simply charge in and engage them in melee before they have time to react. Improving shooters is necessary to make them a threat, period. That it has the downstream effect of creating a niche for veteran is just gravy.
Ideally I would like to see groups of ranged enemies already set up (i.e. having already taken cover) being a relatively common occurence in Darktide. If you wanted, you could even play an audio cue when they spawn to let players know what they’re walking into. Shooters have been neglegted for the majority of this game’s lifespan. It’s time that we actually got some real ranged combat.
).
)