You are only safe from snipers for a certain part of the slide and do not get 100% uptime on that sniper safety.
Snipers can start charging their shot at you, while you slide and depending on when it happens, the sniper will fire just as you are getting up after your slide, in which case you will not be able to do anything to avoid getting hit.
Sliding around all the time is a bad idea, because it takes a while to get back into a “dodge enabled” state, which limits the speed at which you can react to things.
This is true. While the “never stop sliding” meme is funny, it’s not accurate. Even the Zealot, who has the best built-in dodge mechanics, has downtime on his dodges / slides. The others even more so. Sometimes the terrain also doesn’t allow or impairs sliding, for instance when sliding up or down stairs. You can get stuck on other geometry, too, stop sliding and then be a sitting duck surrounded by enemies.
And I’m pretty sure slides are affected by max dodge count, too. It’s just the recovery time is often faster than it takes to slide all the 3 / 4 / 5 times before the reset hits.
this is with vet, so you’re not taking advantage out of TWBS (which is relevant for perma sliding since mobs that can spam you out ie gunners and reapers can hit you while sliding and break your pattern). mobs that fire single fire you can slide under an arbitrary number for an indefinite period (you can see when he takes hits it’s when he has to reload which breaks your slide).
sliding is absurd and i am not meming or kidding at all. if you use it as your default movement the ranged threats in this game totally change.
nah, totally does. i think if you are sliding at any point in the aiming animation the sniper misses. if your timing is tight they will miss you over and over - on the mission where you have to defend the train if my team is struggling with snipers and i’m running flamer or something i’ll just do little slide loops on the top of the train to draw fire and let the team drop it.
very occasionally you get ping shenanigans or much much riskier a melee hit on a non TWBS character which is doomsday but it’s quite quite rare i get caught out. i think the last 5 times i was hit by a sniper 4 of them were midair or if i was stupidly typing, lol, and i do this all the time.
If that is the case, i might have just been sliding around in front of a teammate that the sniper was aiming at (or the servers were messing with me), when i thought that this is what was happening:
I still think that “always sliding all the time” is not a great idea, because melee enemies do not really care if you are sliding, so you can run into this problem:
The best adrenalin moment I had in this game is when I see 4 - 5 sniper red beam…this is so fun…
With normal ping (shown as green with the right mod), you hear for the sound. It gives you time to dodge it. I use to dance with snipers with my zealot. You can continue killing hordes, you just have to dodge the red beam(s)
Tbh, I hate more trappers that launch their net through 152 groaners…
Not gonna lie, I think snipers are my least favorite special of any L4D-like game I’ve played. They’ve got a lot of design issues, from how heavily punishing they are compared to any other special for a single hit (doing massive damage, ignoring toughness gating, and deleting your toughness entirely, with a dash of knockback for flavor), their lack of spawn cues, their sound cue when moving is similar to the bomber and very quiet, possibility of their laser to never even appear in your LoS before being shot, their issues with latency (combined with the aforementioned punishment), laser sight blends in with other enemy fire very easily, they tend to easily abuse the despawn/respawn mechanics due to the ranges they fight at (always fun running up to where one was and finding out it despawned and having it show up 30 seconds later ahead of you), combined with another disabler of some kind and their ability to fire through a 1 pixel gap they love shooting you immediately when pinned or some such, probably other things I can’t think of off of the top of my head.
When the game cooperates and you’re given a chance to be aware of them, sure, it feels slick to dodge around their lasers while doing other things. A lot of the times it’s not like that though. They definitely need some changes to make them more fun if nothing else. It’s just annoying as crap going through 3 hordes, 6 special packs, a patrol, and a boss, and then losing more health to a single sniper when you never saw its laser or even knew it spawned because you dared to breath for 1 second during its wind up. Extra salt when your character likes going “SNIPERRRR” as you’re flailing backwards from the knockback. Gee, thanks.
Also fairly certain there’s a problem with them firing more quickly after starting their wind up than intended. Good luck with stuff like this shot offline, let alone with latency added. (And as a non-psyker class)
I had a match where a mutie grabbed me, sniper instantly shot me before I got slammed then he shot me again while I was being thrown. MF flicked hard to hit me in the air and downed me from full health. That crap is unfair.
Yeah, that’s about the type of response I expected. Ignore everything else I said, just say the equivalent of “skill issue” and think that’s a valid point. (Ignore that I typically have no issues with snipers on the whole, barring bugs or latency) You can deal with something while not liking it.
I think the lack of reliable spawn cues or call-outs are the only real issue with snipers. Sometimes you’ll be neck deep in a narrow corridor dealing with a mixed horse and suddenly you hear their wind-up sound without any indication they’d spawned or having saw their targetting laser.
You might be low on dodges or in the process of making space to reset them, then suddenly you hear the audio queue and you’re mashing the slide/dodge keys, praying that it’s not aimed at you, you have enough space to dodge, you’re dodging in the right direction, and your inputs go through in time. Hell, sometimes you’re in a slide as the sniper starts to shoot, and coming out of it as they fire. If you get unlucky, there’s sometimes no time to even react.
There are situations I’d never put myself in if I knew there was a sniper on the map, just as I do with other specials. I think it’s fun to play around them; more interesting than having to react to something split second you didn’t know was there. I just wish the indication that they’ve spawned wasn’t so I reliable.
A spawn audio cue would go a long way to making them less of a pain in the ass to fight. “Adjusting sights…” / “Lining up a shot.” / whatever loading/charging/activating their sniper rifle would sound like / etc. Audio cues/warnings are incredibly important to this style of game. Even now, the various L4D special infected stings still immediately warn me that one of them is spawning in and lets me get prepared to deal with one despite it being years since playing it.
It’s not a ‘get gud’ issue when you just fought a horde and dared to take a sip of water only to get blasted in the face with zero warning but the half second wind up sound. That’s just stupid. Not to mention the various scenarios like you mentioned, getting blasted abruptly without ever seeing a laser while you’re fighting a patrol, a trapper, a mutant, and a poxburster is not fun. You can’t be expected to always be 100% on guard to always react in under a second to an audio cue from a direction you might not even be sure of during a 25+ minute mission, that’s asinine.
Actually i did consider your post but your complaint boils down to netcode and not liking that snipers are dangerous. I like that snipers are dangerous. I do not like that snipers are buggy
The lack of spawn queues is desirable and thematic. You’re just here complaining because you got shot by a sniper and didn’t like it. The enemy is supposed to be dangerous. Stop nerfing damnation. Stop weakening the enemy. Stop casualizing the game just because you lost.
Or, stop making assumptions about the difficulty level of the game I desire. Wanting a single enemy changed to be less of a frustration doesn’t mean I don’t think the whole game overall isn’t too easy, kindly don’t put words in my mouth. Thanks.
You’re just here complaining because you got shot by a sniper and didn’t like it.
No, I’m here because I dislike their inherent design as it stands. Something can be dangerous without relying on cheesiness like being the only special enemy of any L4D-like to not have an audio cue. Again, stop assuming I’m just knee jerk going “waaah, stupid sniper shot me :(” when I bothered actually extrapolating why I dislike their design. It’s fine if you disagree, but just disregarding it entirely without actually addressing it while going for the personal attacks? Lol.
Damnation needs to be more difficult, I’ve pretty much stopped playing due to various issues/bugs/crappy servers along with the mission board being a PITA when I just want to do high intensity at a bare minimum, preferring HI5SG. Difficulty and frustration/annoyance are not one in the same, though people many times can conflate the two. Leveling out the primary threats goes a long way, right now the things that are difficult in the game are generally massive outliers or rely on massively swarming you to achieve results. Lord knows if they actually got their servers together so that a solid portion of shots/hits weren’t having hit reg issues the game would get even easier. I’m not going to sit here and write a dissertation though when I’m just trying to talk about one enemy.
But sure, go off about casualization, I guess. Not like I’m someone who plays these games on the highest difficulties and then usually tries to make them even harder in some manner, like doing true solo runs. (Which I’ve done in L4D, VT, and B4B)
No. you are correct. I mishandled this conversation badly. I apologize.
I will say this instead. I don’t agree with you and I am deeply frustrated that the game mode that is supposed to be the most challenging has been continuously nerfed. I do not find snipers to be especially deadly in particular and I don’t want to see them nerfed either. So far the things that have been nerfed include:
all enemies have had their radius of detection for players reduced, including for gunfire. You can now literally see packs of enemies standing around picking their noses while the ogryn fires off rumbler shells on the other side of the street.
bulwarks no longer deal any damage with their shield bash
bulwarks have had their shielded radius reduced (this was a positive change)
ranged units deal less damage
Muties have had their turn radius nerfed and now engage in aggressive powersquats as an added bug
toxflamers no longer deal corruption
scab flamers are no longer regarded as a horrifying corrupt unidentifiable monsters by veterans (this is a nerf, change my mind).
I’m sure I have forgotten some. All of these changes I argued against or were entered by surprise and all of them were adopted. Except #3 which I argued for. Every time I see a thread complaining about xyz I fear a further reduction in the challenge of an already otherwise (relatively) easy game.
Well, points for that. Don’t see many apologies on the internet.
I think you’re overall mistaking my point. I don’t necessarily want snipers to be less impactful, if anything I’d rather see them be more of a noticeable special, as it stands right now they generally amount to either something you quickly backhand or it just shoots at you out of the blue while you’re otherwise preoccupied. The vast majority of the time it’s more of an annoyance, and the times it does chunk you it rarely feels warranted or feels incredibly cheap due to happening abruptly. The impact from taking a shot also feels vastly disproportionate to anything else, removing your toughness, ignoring toughness gating, dealing heavy health damage, and damaging you. As to how to make them more impactful but less frustrating? To throw out an off the cuff idea:
Reduce their health damage heavily, to make the direct hit less frustrating.
Ensure they always spawn with at least 3 regular shooters. (Or however many feels right, “Sniper squad in position”)
Have them apply a slow on hit, to synergize with the knockback and making it more difficult to get into cover.
The hit player is marked for the duration of the slow, increasing their threat to enemy shooters. (Making them more likely to get targeted/shot)
Those changes already make them more focused on displacement and debuffing the player to put them at a disadvantage, more in line with other specials over pure damage while having some of its own flavor still. They still delete your toughness and put you at risk of the shooters following up (or another special, or melee units, etc) but most importantly there’s still player agency to respond or prepare. That’s huge for making an enemy not frustrating to deal with, and again, there’s a difference between frustration and difficulty. In the above examples, you could choose to focus the sniper, clear out the shooters first, and/or set it up so you get knocked into a spot that still has cover. All of those are valid options to reduce the punishment but require handling it properly, particularly in conjunction with whatever else is going on enemy wise.
I’m not saying that’s what I think should happen, just the sort of thought process I have. I am not wanting to just make the game easier. I do want the game to feel more fair.
Beyond that:
Until they get their servers together and make dodges/slides more reliably knock enemies aim askew, I don’t see this as a negative.
No arguments there.
I mean the issue of Darktide’s current difficulty is a bit of a mixed bag in general, a big part also comes from the players’ power level. They desperately need to get on top of nerfing things like slaughterer/pinning fire/brutal momentum along with things that way over perform like Veteran’s toughness damage reduction. I’m not going to try to address every single bit of it while just discussing one enemy, there’s just too many moving parts to try to cover along with extenuating circumstances like server quality (or lack thereof) and general bugginess causing issues. For example, I messed with doing true solos but things like the mess that is hounds and explosives getting eaten by the world or other things like poxbursters getting shove immunity from flamer fire (bonus ice skating common) just make it not fun due to being, frankly, BS.
i think snipers are fine, actually almost perfect. they should be a hyper dangerous unit and can only be oppressing once the players have royally fked up. honestly, the last thing we need is more nerfs to mobs. look what they did to our poor muties… that guy is actually jus broken now
Hell no.
They should buff underperforming stuff to be better instead.
Using the stuff that you claim is in desperate need of a nerf, feels good.
Using some of the other stuff, feels just bad.
If everything feels good to use, the game is more fun.
If nothing feels good to use, the game is garbage.
Currently, there is no weapon in the game, that obviously dominates damage output in practice.
None of the things you mentioned are an issue in any way and nerfing them would mostly punish weaker players and make the game less fun for everyone.
You claim that certain things overperform massively, but when you play a lot of pubs (using the scoreboard and a mod that shows you the exact loadout of your teammates), you will notice that in the hands of >95% of the players that you see on damnation difficulty, this is not the case.
Those who play damnation tend to be the better players and it is quite likely that the large majority of the playerbase does not even play damnation.
So you would nerf something for “overperforming” in the hands of probably less than 1% of the playerbase.
