I understand and agree with most of what you say but I don’t understand this part.
Sprinting & sliding are very important and they serve actual purpose in allowing you to dodge shots and approach enemies simultaneously, it’s also important for kiting. All that besides the function of simply moving slightly faster.
What do you mean when you call sprint & slide to be largely meaningless?
Most of your post comes across as “I want DT to be V2 in space”, which is fair, I’m not going to tell you what you should want, but that’s not what this game is. If someone wants that melee-heavy experience where you can mostly just ungabunga into an area and not really worry about anything that’s not part of the blob you’re managing, V2 is definitely the game for them.
Nah, it’s just something you naturally do with experience. It’s no small part of the reason that changed breakpoints mess people up when they’re learning a new difficulty.
This sort stuff just doesn’t happen to me with any meaningful frequency. I’m talking once in 20 runs. I mostly use a columnus II at close/mid range, so you’d think I’d notice if my breakpoints were constantly changing due to hitreg failures, but I don’t. Within the range where my shots all hit (ie, before the spread really kicks in and some shots legit miss), it’s rock solid. I don’t even remember the last time I had a melee hit not register. Like, it happens, but it’s not a constant thing by any measure. Like I said way back, that it’s hitting some people so hard and I’m not feeling it at all makes it sound like a location/isp/internet/network-type issue.
Anyway, I’m not arguing that it isn’t a problem. It obviously is an issue for you or you wouldn’t have raised it; But the context of this thread is “should I get the game”, and it’s definitely not a deal breaker in that regard.
It can be a deal breaker. There’s a lot of factors involved and while it’s not entirely just an issue with the servers, the reliance on server acknowledgement on each and every action makes it way more sensitive to dropped packets/lost inputs than equivalent games. But the problem is that they won’t know until they play for themselves.
I take it you haven’t played for some time if suppression is meaningless. Literally only the sniper isn’t completely invalidated by it. I also think elites are great for not cowering every time someone shoots a shotgun or bolter. But ungor archers spawn out of the play area still and never move towards players in a game where there’s 3 melee classes. And with the lesser sources of hit stun having one that can come literally out of left field is far worse in that game.
You even get toughness to not take damage…
This looks to be the unfortunate truth.
Still, unless it’s happening a bunch every run, I don’t think it’s something that’s going to hurt a new player too much.
Yeah, it works fine. It’s quite strong for giving people a moment to get to cover when a reaper or gunner lines up on them.
The whole hitreg thing is something that affects everyone, but to differing degrees depending on their ping and network type because for some reason Darktide’s hitreg issues can be improved by using a VPN for some people (it could be that Darktide still doesn’t properly support IPv6-only networks but idk).
I don’t believe they add much value, if any, to the gameplay. There is already a button for dodging things and that is the actual dodge button. The additional button presses feel superfluous and performative. Worthless complexity that does naught but slightly add to my RSI issues.
Especially when how the mechanics actually play out is so dumb. Hard to bloody use the sprint to dodge gunfire when the player is always out of stamina because they want to move quickly between engagements and sprinting while having no stamina confers no dodging benefits. Also pretty stupid to use the same stamina resource for approaching into melee that the player might need to survive in melee, especially if their weapon is balanced around consistent pushing for control.
In my experience with the game I only ever had stamina after I had been combat for a period of time. Either because I couldn’t advance due to the plague of cockroaches with lasguns infesting every other corner or because a horde was physically preventing me from moving. And I do not believe that’s how the system was supposed to play out at all. Which makes the whole thing come across as degenerate gameplay.
And sliding… As I recall it sliding has two functions. The player can slide while sprinting forward, in which case it is an extension of the sprint that just doesn’t use stamina, except that it’s a pitiful distance and rarely makes a significant difference. Or it can be used to the sides while dodging to extend the distance of the dodge. But the player can easily get most of the benefit from slide dodging by binding the two actions to the same stupid key and saving themselves the bother. So I have to ask why weren’t sprinting and dodging just made slightly more effective instead of requiring the extra slide input?
It boils down to the whole existence of sprinting & sliding comes across as very inelegant to me. Sprinting’s entire purpose could be obviated by giving players a forward moving dodge. And sliding exists entirely to supplement sprinting and dodging. Therefore it follows that the gameplay benefits of both sprinting and sliding could easily have been just rolled into the bloody dodge button. But instead movement in the game comes across as a damn awkward mess that merely apes other modern FPS games for little to no practical gain.
I think it’s fair to want a sequel to be an additive improvement over its predecessor. Instead the trajectory of the -tide series is looking more like Assassin’s Creed, where quality is extremely inconsistent across the board.
Sprinting is just for moving quickly, it doesn’t reliably help with not getting hit when enemies are already shooting at you, at least not on its own.
Sliding is often used to avoid gunfire, since enemies generally shoot at your center of mass. You can literally slide underneath the shots while running directly at whatever is shooting at you, without slowing down and while pausing the sprint-induced stamina drain, or do the same while sprinting towards cover. In the same way, it can be used to cover longer distances of open ground or move between multiple cover spots to close to melee range, with relative safety, while preserving your stamina for whatever is waiting for you at the other end.
Then there’s dodge-sliding (which you mentioned), which extends the range of your dodges and allows you to slide from a standstill. As for the difference between just dodging/sliding and dodge-sliding, the difference in range gives you more flexibility.
Dodge, sprint and slide are all tools for different jobs that can work together.
V2 isn’t really a predecessor though, at least in the sense that DT isn’t a sequel. It’s more like an offshoot. Like, it really is a very different game to V2 and playing it like it’s supposed to be V3 isn’t going to take you to good places.
First off, BongoSkagg, your rebuttal was fantastic. I enjoyed reading it. Great job!
Second off, it’s not just modern FPS games. Darktide feels not that great compared to my gold standard of FPS which is F.E.A.R. You already touched on the mechanics of slide, it’s awkward on how little movement it facilitates. In contrast F.E.A.R’s slide was far more impactful as it allowed the player more movement. This was key in repositioning to better places in order to fend off against enemy flanks - stimulating stuff when enemy AI used flanking maneuvers. Anyways, another thing that bothered me, and still bothers me, is that there’s no function to lean out of cover. In a game where cover utilization is used to defend against heavy enemy fire: you can’t peek out of cover to line shots. F.E.A.R, a two decade old game, had this. As have multiple First Person Shooters that use a cover system to defend against enemy fire.
Vermintide 2 at least had the good excuse of granting certain classes the ability to stealth in order to quickly line shots up during horde rush. For instance, Huntsman and Ranger.
On a slightly different path, I don’t know why there isn’t a demo.
They could just limit demo players to level 10 or Malice diff or something.
That’d be nice. Would encourage critics who refuse to buy back into Darktide an opportunity to revisit the game and see if their criticisms has been addressed.
That would just spread them even thinner, and usually demos don’t get updated to the same level as the main game.
The absolutely can though. Even as far back as vanilla WoW, demos for online games were just the regular game with a cap on how far you could progress.
I mean they definitely should have waited a year or more to sell it to us, but that’s assuming the work would have gotten done.
I don’t think it would have. I think the deadline forced Fatshark to actually produce something, anything, they could get out the door from the bones of the failed systems they couldn’t finish.
Those are mutually exclusive.
[quote=“BongoSkaggs, post:67, topic:81946”]
As I recall it sliding has two functions.
(sprint slide and dodge)[/quote]
They add a ton of fun and engaging movement based gameplay. They allow you to dodge incoming shots, slide into cover or discard the cost of momentum eating manuevers. Combine this with vaulting and you can do a lot more to manuever in interesting ways. My only complaint is that there are time where sliding and dodging to avoid incoming fire is far more effective than effeicient sprinting and I’d like that changed out so I didn’t have to button mash to avoid damaage.
This isn’t a problem for zealots I guess due to quick recovery. Meanwhile for Vets you’re just shooting everything anyway, psyker too. I’ve never had this problem on ogryn either. I just rush in while sprinting and sliding and hit them. or shoot them if the grouping is too dense.
I’m sorry but I literally favor one of those pushing control weapos, chain axe, and this just isn’t a real problem. Hell just the other day I played half of an entire damnation game entirely in melee as a veteran and I didn’t really have stamina issues either.
Horrendous and unpleasant. I hate nothing more than watching someone crab walk like this is vermintide to get around.
I really just don’t understand your position so perhaps I’m the wrong person to judge it. But to me the movement system is leaps and bounds better than the weightless and monotonous movement in Vermintide which felt like a rail shooter for how unengaging actual movement tech was. Meanwhile Darktide succesfully implemented vaulting and sprinting and sliding into useful mechanics that I leverage for effective manuevers into difficult situations all game long.
The game is well worth its 30$, and will give you a good 100 hours of fun gaming time. After those, things will start to go downhill
Why even anyone want to do this, when you take 0 toughness damage from shots during slide, and for zealot it works both with shots and melee hits
Cause dodge-slide eats 2 points of your dodge limit, when regular dodge just takes 1? It is a tool to use in a specific situation.
Because there is a purpose for them, you just don’t know how mechanics work it seems, not your fault so, they should put mechanics descriptions on a loading screen, instead of cool quotes and add a glossary. Games are about pushing buttons.
Since I run triple stamina curios and the Chaxe has great sprint efficiency I actualy do use this functionality on occasion to cover long gaps while running parallel to gunfire. In many cases you take little to no toughness damage and can reposition effectively. Add a few slides to preserve stamina and throw off any especially nasty shots and you can really manuever effectively.
Eh the only thing that really matters is slide on a good input. If you do it literally as your linger dodge frames end you can perpetually avoid a gunner’s fire while standing in it, which I don’t actually agree with. They could stand to make movement actually matter. And not annoy you for using pushes and dodges, which the game does currently if your set up does not have many dodges. Like running bigger chain sword or a thunderhammer, you just spam slides instead of dodging because using both you’ll be without dodges all game. C’mon man. They always lean into making one action no effort and spammy, like current slide in Darktide to old VT2 dodge that had no cooldown. And dodge still if you play Victor or Elf that have 6 dodges on most weapons + 25% bonus dodge range. I actually kinda miss the old dodge functions of this game (the extra 0.2s you would be avoiding gunfire out of dodge, and not just slide).
And yeah sprinting with stamina should have a wider acceptance angle for avoiding gunfire, as it is with the current map layout its a mostly pointless function. Raise it closer to 30 degrees.