In my opinion, we have reached a point of too many enemies at once, too fast. I don’t want long periods of nothing (like the old level 1 difficulty before it was removed lol), but having massive waves of like 8 crushers, 7 snipers, 6 reapers, 7 heavy gunners, 3 trappers, a dog, and some shotgunners, bombers, and flamers, combined with tons of poxwalkers are other grunts, just seems… a lot. Like there isn’t time to time my dodges or time my perfect blocks, I can’t really riposte because there are 9 other attacks coming at me and 12 things shooting me. Or I’m trying to backstab the Big Boy but I’m blocked by 12 enemy ogryn, 17 regular grunts, and there’s a horde of poxwalkers overrunning us. It just makes anything that isn’t an AoE attack feel wasted. Psyker’s head pop move is too slow to kill anything because someone else will one-shot the target instantly in an AoE, while the head pop has to be cast 3 or 4 times on the same enemy. Maybe I’m charging up a railgun attack on a veteran but, again, someone else one-shot all the targets with their instant shot gun or melee spam.
I guess I would like to see combat be a little more careful and thought out on the player side instead of “omg hectic stress stress aaaaaaaahhH!!!” once you bump up to Auric and higher, while still keeping the four rejects vs the massive horde of darkness feeling. Do I know how to do this? No, no I don’t. I’m not an experienced game developer. I’m just a huge fan of the game and would love a less stressful/hectic combat experience that’s still challenging (i.e. just turning down the difficulty setting in game isn’t the solution for me).
I think the game’s needed that ‘endless hordes’ modifier added back since forever ago…there was also a period when the game had broken tempo resets on certain events, so you could get endless horde scenarios going in some levels. Dunno why the catharsis of just chopping meat can’t reign supreme, I’d rather see dozens of hordes appear than just constantly dealing with the same 8 specialists half of which 3-stooges style sabotage each other on spawn (even more hilarious is a wave of bursters just exploding in a spawn location they can’t path in from out of bounds).
but we’re already at critical mass with game modes it seems. I’ll point out Damnation as the T5 that has regular tempo, but its almost too little tempo like the events are a snore. Really hard to find the balance I guess. But fighting hordes we had on launch, and I don’t know why that got retired in favor of introducing things like sniper fog and dogs…
part of what drew me into darktide is the doom/quake like pace I use as benchmark of my abilities.
the faster, the better.
and even at 46 I manage to get into the “zone” when everything clicks like john wick on crack and its an absolute bliss.
I can’t overstate how much I hate slow paced/tactical stuff, counterstrike was a running gag for the movement-impaired back in the day whenn we were competing in quake and unreal tournament.
and that dopamine must flow, if it wouldn’t, 40k alone wouldn’t keep me playing.
what should change is balance overall in terms of clown cars of once respectable enemies.
I’d have no qualms slide dodging and 180°flick shotting 3 harder crushers instead of 30, as long as the player speed keeps on this level and tickles my buttons enough to remind me of the good ol q3 osp days
said “stress” is very relaxing to me for example to the point anything slower becomes boring
I think all enemies should be reduced except for hordes which could perhaps be increased, but the other enemies should be reduced by half and made much more threatening and tougher. The mess of the giant horde should be the chaotic aspect.
This all needs to happen with a big balance pass but who knows what FS are thinking.
We don’t know what difficulty you play, but just avoid Havoc and high intensity game modes with extra special / monster spawns and you should be fine? The new event might be also giving you a perception of elites being everywhere.
In Vermintide 2 you have to actually block because you can’t just dodge-slide your way out of the attacks. Another thing is that dodging protects you from both melee and ranged while blocking only does that for melee.
So, while the ability dodge-slide in Darktide may be fun, but it also makes blocking almost useless. Just spam-dodge or dodge-slide away from the threat and you’ll be fine.
I’d love that but I’m not seeing it. They’ve confirmed another DLC class and that DLC class is going to have to upstage Hive Scum somehow. Power levels are most likely going to keep trending upwards until they stop running out of class concepts to implement
I feel you man. I hate enemy spam with all my heart, but I also love Darktide. As to what can you do, you could try to get a bit creative with the difficulties and the power of your character.
To get away from enemy spam, I, for instance, have been trying Darktide’s lower difficulties but also deliberately not utilizing the entirety of my talent tree, like leaving 10 points unused.
I also am pretty selective about what missions I play aka. I never play missions with a high-intensity modifier. Not using overpowered abilities like Shout with Golden Toughness buff also helps greatly. On top of that you can also deliberatly use low power weapons and not upgrade them fully (you can also give them low level blessings and perks).
With all that together, you can play on difficulty like Heresy and have it feel pretty challenging without enemy spam plaguing the gameplay 24/7.
Other players can get in the way of giving you a challenge by killing everything. Though at the same time I’ve seen 30 level psykers with Dueling Sword and Flame Staff get downed and die at the beginnign of maps. In other words there are a good amount of players who still struggle at Heresy despite being at full level and it only helps you with making the game feel challeging.
It’s not perfect in any way, I know. But if you would like to keep playing Darktide and avoid enemy spam, you could try doing what I do and see if it works out for you. It certainly have been working out for me.
Two options: It will either happen in another update like “Bound by Duty” that’s focused on balance, since FatShark said that they are not done reworking the classes so they definitely will do that type of update again. They also have already stated that they do want to have fewer enemies in-game, at least on the side of the Scabs, to make them feel more elite compared to the Dregs.
Or it will never happen because ever since Hive Scum’s release, it feels like FatShark is going the ArrowHead route on this class. Little to no nerfs and anything that seems like it tries to be balanced, like Rampage, gets straight up buffed.
So we might never get any balanced experience in Darktide, and they will just continue to increase the powercreep until this game arrives at the stage of Warframe. Fun? To some, definitely. Warframe does have a pretty sizable playerbase. But for those who want a balanced experience where the gameplay has flavor and challenge? It will not be fun at all.
This is true to be honest. Go play normal damnation and there’s plenty of downtime between surges.
ERM Technically melee is gated by attack slots while ranged attacks are gated by LoS and specialists layer on top of that for overwhelm.
However your main point is correct. The game suffers from enemy overload pretty frequently. This was why I originally supported the crusher health bump and spawn reduction. I dont want to get zerged by a wall of uninteractive metal every 12s. I want to actually have a fight with my enemies. A bit of a 1v1 but its more like a 1v5 but not a 1v90 of crushers and maulers all throwing overlapping hidden overheads.
Anyway, the crusher HP spike exacerbated some balance issues but the spawn numbers did come down (arguably not enough). But now it’s oops all ragers instead.
Unless one deliberately makes themselves weaker, Damnation will be more boring than watching paint dry. The powercreep is just too big for decent players to not fall asleep at these types of difficulties.
ERM Technically melee is gated by attack slots while ranged attacks are gated by LoS and specialists layer on top of that for overwhelm. 
Also red Crushers stuck in overhead loop 