Smokes need to be changed

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Shoutout to original post that gave me ideas made by @Nutgrinder where I took mine and others ideas with their mentions to bring some ATTENTION to this problem. I’ll mention everyone’s ideas that brought mine aswell to show Fatshark that im not the only one who would like to replace them.

So. Smoke grenades are good against ranged enemies except for snipers, grenadiers, flamers and mutants. Yes, they do block enemy vision pretty well - shooting enemies just randomly spread in smoke cloud or shooting one last spot they’ve seen characters at, trappers taking time to find you in smoke and attack, sometimes even making all of the melee enemies start attacking only people who’s not standing in smoke. But lets be honest - it sucks. It cant defend you from most dangerous enemies in game because of their insane damage, it blocks your and your team’s vision and practically useful only against one type of enemy - ranged soldiers, while every other class items have some use against ANY type of enemy. And the topic above is the reason why I wanted to bring this discussion here once more, with some ideas to replace smoke grenade or make it more useful, as I stated in that topic before.

I want to say from start that I can include some rare items that wasn’t seen to be used by more than one faction and can look like we have too expensive equipment, but lets be honest - Vet and Zeal using invisibility, probably an expensive to produce and maintain technology, or they’re both latent psykers/wyrds with very weak abilities. Plus, Darktide was made as “lore-enhancing game”, based on WH40K lore, and take a note that WH lore itself was made by community, so we can use our imagination, and whoever reads this - please, add your ideas aswell, maybe they’ll be appreciated by FS or community itself.

First, I want to try to Improve smoke’s abilities:

  1. Explode on impact: it would be nice if you could just throw it to instantly cover yourself and your teammates from enemy fire, without wasting your time behind cover or your health.
  2. Make. It. Useful. Against. All. Specials. Whats the reason of smoke grenade if it cant cover you from deadliest enemies in game? Literally. Both frag and krak grenade provide something against any enemy if its thrown, you can even kill sniper with krak if you throw it precisely. Yet, smoke doesnt save you from poxwalkers, at least by dragging their attention from you and your team, but also doesnt cover from some range enemies. And muties. How come that a mutant just rushing in smoke with perfect aiming at you or your buddies, when even poxwalks or hounds cant see you in it?
  3. Make it half-transparent at least. I understand that it “breaks immersion”, but people are not complaining because they just can. Smoke needs to be useful, and covering enemies from you and your team is not useful. It would be nice if enemies could slightly glow like in combat-standing vet ability behind smoke or just make it a bit transparent.
  4. Counter-Strike’s ability to take down fire with smoke grenades. Seriously. It would be VERY useful if any fire that was caught in smoke would just instantly blown out. Shoutout to @Magnus91 and @Rainman for this idea.

Now I want to cover this part I mentioned earlier, without making smoke an absolutely different weapon, because Fatshark can be lazy sometimes (for Darktide its always.) -

It cant defend you from most dangerous enemies…
…while every other class items have some use against ANY type of enemy.

So now I want to give ideas for that:

  1. Phosphex-alike-smoke grenades: on explosion, creates a half-trasnparent cloud in area. Every bullet that penetrated that cloud on hit casts flames on enemy. The more you hit, the more burning ticks enemy receive, just like bleeding with melees.
  2. Acid smoke grenade (can be smokeless, explode on impact covering enemies once, and maybe as a function make it cover more area with less effectiveness on enemies if its thrown on ground): once thrown enemies around gets covered in acid. If enemy doesnt have armor, they get low damage overtime. If they do, they dont take damage but instead their armor gets weakened, giving rejects more armor penetration to their guns or melees.
  3. Neurostun grenades (Zealot grenade rip): item that was used by Deathwatch according to Lexicanum. Creates a metallic dust cloud and electrocutes it, stunning enemies and damaging them with electricity (Neurostun Grenade - Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum).
  4. Hallucinogen grenade (Zealot grenade rip, almost same as previous): releasing a cloud of invisible hallucinogen gas that makes enemies paranoid (Hallucinogen grenade - Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum).

And now, a COMPLETE rework ideas:

  1. Mines or other remote-controlled explosives: what explosives do soldiers use except for grenades? Remote ones! And it SO HAPPENS that we have a Veteran class, that is basically a soldier in game. We already have a Rodin Karnak with his blight grenade-mines in game, I just dont see a problem to use something similar to veteran’s grenades, so he could use it for charging enemies, such as poxwalkers, poxhounds, ragers and crushers? We do have Krak, but its effective only against armored/ogryn types, while this one provides a good multitask tool. What about remote explosives - I personally think its hard to find another button that would be used to blow them and also used for other characters grenades, so, I dont know what to add to it.
  2. EMP items: it would be nice if you could use something to stun enemies that has electric-powered items such as trappers or gunners/snipers by turning off their vision, since they all using thermal or nightvision googles
  3. Veteran-support class things: while we have medpacks, ammo crates and stimms they’re not always a thing to encounter on your way through missions. We already have two abilities that allows us to either give everyone 1% of ammo reserve for killing special or instantly recover them from falling. So… maybe instead of one of these add small ammo packs or item that can instantly recover your buddy on use without using your ability, but make recovering way longer.
    Or Stimm grenades for your buddies (@STARSBarry, thanks to @The-Hat-Is-Cursed for mentioning him).
  1. Tanglefoot grenade (Zealot grenade rip): lore item thats made by Adeptus Mechanicus that creates a high-intense gravity field around it, making everyone in it suffer from its consequences (Tanglefoot grenade - Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum).
  2. Throwable weapon (Zealot item rip): IF VETERAN IS JUST A WORSE ZEALOT FROM NOW then just add new throwable weapon aswell. It would be at least useful against ragers and shotgunners when you have no ammo.

I want to hear as much critique or ideas as possible, so I ask you again to write your own ideas or judge mine/others so we can discuss it and make veteran a bit more useful and fun to play. Smokes was a good idea but realisation of them is bad, thats what I think about it, and it needs to be reworked.

6 Likes
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Stim grenades wasn’t my idea. I was supporting a post higher up than mine; I just didn’t directly reply to it. Think it would be very different and add some depth.

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i’ll remember that and mention the other guy aswell. yeah, i liked it when i first read it

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This gives me some Tech Adept Blitz ideas.

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I think the simplest solution to Smoke Grenade being so awful is, as many others have said, just turn it into Ranger Bardin’s invisibility field. The Veteran could use as many Get Away From Me buttons as he can get. I hate them because they’re useless at dealing with melee enemies, which are always by far my biggest problem as a Veteran. I don’t need more ways to defend myself from enemy shooters, because I can go invisible, or yell at them, or throw a frag at them, or just take cover like a normal person. Or yknow I can just kill them because I’m the Veteran.

As for the smoke being hard to see through, just fudge it and make the smoke visually stay low to the ground so players can see over it while outside it, and then have it go transparent for players who are inside it. It doesn’t obscure vision for the players, and we can accept that as a gameplay abstraction the same way we can accept that the same ammo pickup might contain fifty heavy stubber rounds or ten revolver bullets but not both.

I had this idea for a replacement. I envisioned it as a replacement for smoke grenade for the middle tree and krak grenades be moved to the stealthy saboteur side of the Veteran. I would like the Veteran to have the identity of being The Best At Guns. He is already, sort of, but I don’t really feel like he’s The Best At Guns the way I can really feel the Zealot being The Best At Melee, so this idea was envisioned to help push the Veteran towards that:

Sidearm
Sidearm replaces your grenade with an extra gun that you very quickly pull out with the blitz button. As the name suggests, it would be limited to small one handed guns; namely the laspistol, autopistol, or revolver. The Sidearm would be refilled by ammo containers instead of grenade containers just like the Zealot’s throwing knives, and it would probably have a considerably smaller ammo pool than if it were your regular gun, like half as much or something.

Being able to carry a second gun would drastically increase the Veteran’s versatility at ranged combat. If you have a shotgun, you could take a laspistol or revolver to use against distant enemies when needed, or carry an autopistol to spray into hordes when your headhunter autogun would be too slow, or maybe you just want to have another gun to fire while your plasma gun cools down or when your bolter runs out of ammo.

Or maybe you just want to pretend to be a cowboy and carry two revolvers.

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The simplest ways to improve Smoke:

  1. Stops ALL incoming enemy ranged attacks from the opposite side of the Smoke (including Snipers)
  2. Highlights the Specialist/Elite/Ranged enemies who are in the Smoke.
  3. Lowers the team’s threat level, even slightly.

It would be significantly better. I like your Sidearm idea a lot, too!

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i personally dont like idea of sidearm because grenades are perfectly balanced

grenades have only one problem - time. taking grenade in arms, cocking it and, additionally, aim at enemy and waiting for its explosion - takes lots of time to do, but also rewarding player with lots of damage or taking a small breath in a fight. most already dont like zealots knifes because they’re one of the reasons why people go playing solo, while this kind of thing copies practical use of krak grenade if it deals lots of damage for a shot. plus, many weapons designed to be used as mostly in emergency times doing lots of damage to attackers, be it a group of poxwalks or a tanky enemy. so you pick weapons to be specialised on certain enemy type (like a katachan sword for ordinary enemies and revolver for tanks), making it specialized on lots of damage or spread damage or something in between. 3 weapons will literally break the class balance, because it literally takes no time or effort to take your “situationally-needed” weapon and use it.
even zealot’s knifes are balanced because you need to aim and time the time knife travels in air to hit enemy.
balanced sidearm would be something that is constant, deals mostly additional damage like grenades, needs to be used smart and on same level of supporting tool as knifes. maybe something like a laser gun that on shot casts fire on targeted enemy? if you press grenade button veteran just takes it from holster, takes one shot and places it back like the same knifes. could be something like a hotshot pistol?

also, i like the invisibility field solution, makes lots of sense.

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Actually, I agree. The sidearm question, I’ve realized after some thinking, does raise the possibility of a few more issues. Which classes will have it? Is it a blitz or a 3rd weapon? What would be considered an Ogryn sidearm? Will it break builds? Et cetera.

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Unlike the “stealot is bad” topic, I actually think this one is definitely something that would be beneficial to the community (specifically Vets) to change. Smoke is a bad idea in a game where it’s already often difficult to see more than 40m, and that’s what deterred me from even bothering with it after seeing it in the skill tree.

Why would obscuring yours and teammates lines of sight on shooters ever be a good idea? Yeah, the shooters have a harder time seeing, true, but YOU DO ALSO.

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its not a bad idea to cover you and your team from enemies, but its a bad idea to cover enemies aswell, if you count fact that there’s no any other item in “grenade slot” that gives you penalty for using it.
its just a very bad realization of an idea. either fix it to be good to use for both you and your team or change to something better and more interesting if previous option is “gamebreaking”
thats the point of thread

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That’s why I think my suggestion that Smokes should highlight all the Specialist/Elite/Ranged enemies, prevent enemy Sniper shots and slightly lower the Strike Team’s threat level would work really well. With these reworks, the Smoke Grenade would become a really useful tactical tool for preventing incoming enemy fire and maintaining crowd control.

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I wouldnt mind if enemies in the smokecloud suffered from brittleness and higher crit chance or even just flat more damage, to simulate their disorientation making them more open for more damaging attacks.

That way it doesnt just force shooters to come into melee but also acts as a significant buff for you and allies in that melee… if nothing else, some sort of melee synergy would be nice for the blitz of the supposedly melee focused branch of the tree.

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You propose like a… choking mechanic? An interesting idea and one that would prove very useful.

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Why not simply not make the smoke visible and highlight enemies and make them vulnerable to melee attacks? Would be a perfect complement to the veteran.

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thats a good option, but i and many others got many unique ideas to replace smoke. i already listed 4 options on how to just improve it to make it useful, but wasting potential on getting something more original than smoke is not a good idea

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actually, re-reading your suggestion i’ve got a buff idea: making smoke explode (probably on contact) covering veteran, give speed boost + always dodging bullets (or "confuse enemies who targeted him once he left smoke) for 5 seconds for user (and make lower buff if he stays in smoke), so once he threw grenade covering his teammates he can close up with ranged enemies and use his melee to kill them, plus making him more of a threat for melee enemies in smoke, also making some use for smoke upgrades, also making it transparent
it actually makes reasonable for flamers and grenadiers to be able to look through smoke for target, maybe even make smoke targetable by them so they take their attention from team to try burning someone in smoke cloud
and, for the rest of the team, make enemies react slower on them

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Well I did suggest it as a Blitz for the Veteran, so, for the original idea I posited, the Veteran would have it, and nobody else would. And as a blitz it would be mutually exclusive with frags and krak grenades, so instead of having those situational resource limited damage boosts, you would have a third gun.

I mean I did literally say “Being able to carry a second gun would drastically increase the Veteran’s versatility at ranged combat.” Like that was the point, letting the Veteran bring something to make him much more versatile at ranged combat at the expense of his grenades. I’m imagining it being the first laspistol by default and you can spend an extra skill point to change it to the autopistol or to the new revolver, and they might not have any blessings or perks on them, and they’d only have a fraction of the ammo you’d normally have. The laspistol is a backup gun that can sorta fill in for other roles no matter what your primary gun is, and the autopistol and revolver are more specific role fillers that are better at their job than the laspistol would be.

Though honestly, I’m not terribly attached to the idea of the Sidearm being a Blitz, because I would much rather it be a new type of melee weapon. Veteran exclusive melee weapons in the style of Victor’s Rapier And Pistol; a one handed melee weapon in one hand and a one handed ranged weapon in the other.

Left Click: light attack with melee weapon
Left Click and hold: heavy attack with melee weapon
Right Click: block with melee weapon and brace ranged weapon at the same time
Left Click while holding Right Click: shove
Left Click and hold while holding Right Click: shove and counter attack
Special Attack: Fire ranged weapon from the hip
Special Attack while holding Right Click: fire ranged weapon accurately

As with Sidearm, the ranged weapons would be limited to laspistols, autopistol, and revolvers. Additionally, they would have lower accuracy, greater recoil, longer reload times, and, again, considerably smaller ammo pools than their main ranged weapon counterparts.

Melee weapons would be limited to the knife, tactical axe, devil’s claw sword, and possibly chainsword though I’m not sure how one would rev the chainsword without it being the Special Attack button. Like the ranged weapons, they would be slightly worse than their normal versions; they would do less damage on heavy attacks, and maybe have lower stamina, and of course they would be lacking their usual Special Attacks.

Personally I’d want some kind of system for selecting a one handed ranged weapon and a one handed melee weapon and combining them, even though that might be a bit high concept, since otherwise you’d need like forty new weapons.

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Can I mix the Slab Shield with a Shovel? :wink:

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well, after some thinking on my post i had some thoughts and added a concept of sidearm that wouldn’t break the “support” role of it

just having three weapons, for me, sounds both impractical and too generic, as it just the same firearm/melee you have but from different slot. having something that has absolutely different way to work with makes it more interesting to use and has more team-practical potential, plus making gameplay a bit more exciting and more focused on your weapon management with that. grenade gives you an opportunity to clear (or helping clearing) its affected area fast and way more effective than any firearm/melee can, or focus one enemy that has lots of health without using any good firearm/melee against him. giving a third weapon actually takes that opportunity from you, making you a simpler target for enemies and less team support for you because mostly it helps only you.
zealot’s knifes are as example. we could have a sidearm that can add debuffs to enemies and do damage them but it should make it easier to clear spaces, and not giving you the very same damage maker
have to say, i would actually love to see a function to use a sidearm gun+melee combo at least in a way of pressing a button on mouse to make one swing/shot with your second arm instead of using some gun that has knockback special on mousebutton5. that would be interesting

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Well I suppose I would prefer if the Zealot’s third blitz was an inferno pistol that worked the same way as Bounty Hunter Victor’s dual shot.

Here’s an idea, do Guardsmen have any wargear from the tabletop rules that’s like a flare gun or something? Deals a significant but not huge amount of damage to a single target, ignites that target, and then makes a lingering big flashy zone that highlights enemies near it, possibly increasing damage they take, or suppressing them, maybe igniting them too, or some combination depending on whether you have the Grenade Tinkerer skill.

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