Soundless specials (etc.) logging - I'm nearing my limit

[Elodie]

After leaving yet another game and losing 20min+ of progress thanks to a soundless burster from behind flinging me to my death out of nowhere in the open, I decided to finally make this topic.

Ever since release, Darktide has been first and foremost a skill-based game, even despite its many server side problems like hitreg, weapon swap, getting canceled out of slides & dodges etc. If you paid attention to sounds and your positioning, it was virtually impossible to get surprised. The number 1 reason for going down was always me: my skill, weapons or build wasn’t enough, or I made a mistake. This is the way it should be.

All of that chanced on Oct 3:rd’s class overhaul patch. While Fatshark has fixed many issues since then - such as the constant specialists spawning out of thin air on top of you -, the soundless specials+ has only gotten worse.

So about 2.5 months ago I started logging my downs to get a better picture of what was actually happening. Both to get a better picture of what was going on in general, and to eliminate any potential bias I might have felt for the soundless specials and how especially unfair and annoying they are to me. All of these are from Damnation Auric+ games. Here’s what it looks like now:

Some things that either affect the numbers or are otherwise worth mentioning:

• The list does NOT show how many soundless specials+ appear in general (dozens+ per mission), or the events leading to getting downed. If 3 soundless bursters resulted in my death, it only logs as 1 for soundless. If a soundless trapper put me on 1hp and 1 min later I fall to gunners, that would log as a personal failure.
• Bugs & Gameplay: These are also mostly new, since Oct 3:rd introduced unresponsive ults and issues like block not working, or push / push attack doing an attack instead (resulting in a trade and getting downed)
• Team failure: Oct 3:rd & cross platform release brought us many new players. This isn’t to pass blame, new people are more than welcome! It’s just to indicate that the reason was overwhelmingly team-related. → Even if I’m carrying super hard but fail, that’s my fault no matter what. But if a team ignores all loot, coherency, deployables, medstations etc. and finally stands idly by for 1min fighting 1-2 pox walkers while a dog is biting me right next to them, then that’s on the team.
• Personal failure: I’d guess ~1/5:th of these are from blowing myself up with a faulty autofire macro that got stuck in loop, along with risky Scrier’s build experimentations from before a month ago. I’ve fixed the macro issue since then. Thanks to my ADHD I also overwhelmingly play random experimental builds across all classes, rarely using established strong builds, so the risky tests and just me not being used to a different build every time also inflate this number. The point is that being the default option, every single death is going to go here and no excuses, unless I know something else was going on.
• Instant spawns: It can be impossible to tell these apart from soundless. The only way ofc is to actually witness the spawn, or knowing there was nothing behind you 1s ago and no way to get there from above or below either. But ultimately it doesn’t matter, they’re both bugs & cheating and shouldn’t be happening at all. The only reason I separated the two is because instant spawns used to be a huge issue since Oct 3:rd up until I started the log. But Fatshark fixed them just around then.
• Around 3-4 weeks ago I got into modding. I have Spidey Sense and Healthbars to help deal with the soundless specials. They are nowhere near enough to make up for the missing sound cues, and tbh I constantly miss Spidey Sense’s blinking lights in the heat of combat. But they do help, which ofc skews the statistics in favor of the soundless etc.
• Since the numbers represent the total over the past ~2.5 months, they don’t show trends. I didn’t date them back then either so I can’t see those. This ofc means two things: 1) The soundless alone were responsible for ~75% of my downs on the first month I started the log. 2) Since then I’ve done everything I can to bring that number down by slotting a hp curio on my psykers & vet, changing my gameplay and positioning and learned not to rely on sounds, even got into modding. So for the past month soundless are obviously responsible for less than 50%.
• Finally for the sake of honesty & transparency, I need to point out that a small part of these (max 5-10% by the looks of my text log) weren’t actually downs, as I left the game before it happened. In some cases I’ve left the game even when I was perfectly fine, because getting netted or dogged by 5 soundless specials in the first 3 minutes of the match was too much and I just needed a break.

To summarize:

For all the reasons above, the table is not 100% reliable. But it’s enough to clearly show that right now even a cautious estimate in favor of the game, would pass just barely over 20% of my downs on me (I didn’t log these before, but I’d guess this number was around 80-90%+ before Oct 3:rd). Meanwhile over 50% of the downs fall on soundless specialists despite mods to help me for the past month. In total, over 66% - or 2/3:rds - of my downs were caused by bugs & gameplay issues beyond my control, virtually all of them new since Oct 3:rd.

I am so. Seriously. Absolutely. Unequivocally. Sick of this RNG gameplay experience. Please, fix it.

And to the community, I apologize for the wall of text and the rant.

Edit: Just realized I moved the log to google sheets exactly on 1.1.2024, so I can show the same numbers from the past past month only:

[RasMoti]

not sure this helps, because i never logged anything, but my experience is really much different more often.
It depends on the daytime i play, on servers and ping i’d guess and for sure on the team as i play pubg damnation only.

recently i die and die and die. My build is not min-maxed or meta, but 2 days before i did just fine with this build and had success after success and even saved some games, reviving everyone etc.
But for two days, and i had that a week ago it’s just terrible.
Pox Burster after Pox Burster, i even hear them, but they cannot get pushed far away enough or i cannot dodge them.
Same for Netter, Hounds, Flamers Combo.
I mean blocking a hound or dodging a netter is easy. I even mark them many seconds before, prepare to dodge, shoot or pushback and dead - it’s not fun if it happens for a day.
I even die to Hordes chip damage and i cannot say why, i use same wepaon, i know the pattern, i block, i dodge, i utilize the weapon like it should be and on some days i have zero issues with horde to then die to 3 Poxwalkers in my back over and over again.
Next game i cant see anything are surrounded by mixed horde with 5 Ragers and deal with it without getting a scratch.

First i thought ok i’m tired, then ok bad luck, then well team is bad, then well i’m just bad or that i need a break and played too much.

Its Ping and FPS i say!

My performance is so inconsistent, it cannot be me alone, it’s also the game, the FPS, Ping, Bugs and idk what else that causes that too.
And ofc i dont perform allways good, but i’m almost at 900hrs now and i know what i do.

[Bigpfeiffer]

Sorry if yo said this, but what servers do you play on?

I ask because I’m in the north American servers and I don’t think I’ve ever had problems with sounds…like ever

[Elodie]

(Btw: I edited OP to add the stats from Jan only to reflect changes after curios, mods etc.)

I’m north European. The sound issue is well known, has been acknowledged by Fatshark & they are working on it. I don’t know the cause but I do know it’s not on my end.

Many have noted that it correlates with the number of specialist+ spawns and apparently has to do with how the game’s sound engine gets overwhelmed. I don’t know which difficulties you play on, but this would mean it’s worst at T5+ like Damnation HISTG with the biggest spawns. I only play on those difficulties so that might skew the results for others depending on what difficulty they play with too.

[Jonboy]

Poxwalkers are the fastest thing in the game.

They can cover the distance between a door 20m away, to directly behind you for a cheap hit in less than two seconds. It’s Olympic standards of shuffling.

Even if you’re a knife zealot and you sprint away from them then slide… they can still hit you from behind during your slide. They’re pretty useless in front of you, but from behind they have deceptively long arms.

I’ve got a new gaming buddy and we’re farming sorry, endlessly repeat running Hab Dreyko, so I’ve not been playing on anything above T5 for a while. The games I’ve lost, I think maybe one, were more about players needlessly setting barrels off than game failing issues. Sure they happened, but not enough to end the run.

[Elodie]

Yee this is true. It took a while for me to really learn & accept it instinctively that melee in particular isn’t intuitive. It’s more like some turn-based RPG hybrid system.

Dodging against melee doesn’t work because you move out of the way of the blow, it works because it disables their tracking AND moves out of the way of the blow both. Meanwhile sprinting or even sliding out of the way instead, even if it’s far faster and moves much further, doesn’t disable the tracking. So the enemy will happily do a split-second 180 turn while magically sliding 3m after you and still hit you through the slide, where a slow 0.5m dodge would have evaded it cleanly. The animations can’t be trusted either, resulting in stuff like seeing something trying to hit you from like 3m off - and missing by a mile - … only to still get damaged by it. So even if every single cell in your brain says this stuff is just not possible and isn’t the way it’s supposed to work, you have to learn the RPG system and always use a move that counts as evading.

Same for ranged ofc, no matter how fast you sprint it isn’t going to do squat, unless you have talents that make it count as dodging ranged.

And idk any numbers but it’s obvious that enemies running after you clearly get a massive speed boost when you’re not looking. So there’s a lot of supernatural weird stuff happening in the background of the reality of the game that make it often look and act just “wrong”. Until you get used to it ofc.

[RasMoti]

@Elodie

Dodging against melee doesn’t work because you move out of the way of the blow, it works because it disables their tracking AND moves out of the way of the blow both. Meanwhile sprinting or even sliding out of the way instead, even if it’s far faster and moves much further, doesn’t disable the tracking. So the enemy will happily do a split-second 180 turn while magically sliding 3m after you and still hit you through the slide, where a slow 0.5m dodge would have evaded it cleanly. The animations can’t be trusted either, resulting in stuff like seeing something trying to hit you from like 3m off - and missing by a mile - … only to still get damaged by it. So even if every single cell in your brain says this stuff is just not possible and isn’t the way it’s supposed to work, you have to learn the RPG system and always use a move that counts as evading.

that explains a lot to me and my failures.
I hate it when i fail and its incomprehensible.
Sometimes i ragewuit the game, because it “cheated” on me the way you described.
Just today heard a Pox behind a door, i waited until it would open and push back, like everyone does and it’s the simplest thing to do.
I got the Sounds, everyone is in the Elevator i just want to wait that 2 seconds because i dont want to be poxbursted the moment i turn around to go into the Elevator.
what happened. Door opened and explosion happened immediatly while the clock was still ticking. I got bombed into the elevator from 100% Tough and HP to 20% HP.
Thank you.
I mean you cant do anything then, and it has nothing to do with skill.
That are the most hated Situations for gamers imho, if you know what and why, but cant do anything, because of bugs or the AI cheating.

Another game i was on a sniper killing spree to then got 2 hounds, 2 bursters, 2 netters, a Crusher and a mixed rager horde all come for me in a tight space.
I didnt use Infiltrate this mission and it was completely unable to react to that, i blocked the hounds, i even pushed one burster away, got catched by the 2nd, dodged one netter, got catched by the 2nd and insta killed by the crusher.
TBH even if i had dodged the 2nd netter, what wasnt possible because out of stamina, the Crusher or at least one of the Ragers would have killed me, even with a Catachan Sword that can deal very good with mutliple ragers using it’s special.

With infiltrate or VoC i’d have survived, but i’m on a penance and use Executioner atm.
Hate it, but want at least finish the non-team based penances.

[MixedLetters]

Yeah, I’ll just second that if this isn’t on the priority fix list, it very much should be. It’s the number 1 thing making me hate this game more than trappers, to the point I need to completely shift how I play the game because if I don’t, I literally can’t have fun.

If I’m not playing ‘stand in the back and make sure all specials are dead all the time’ Psyker/Vet, the game just never feels like it’s in my hands to ‘carry it’. I know I can deal with a horde/deal with most things thrown at me, but the moment I hear the charge up noise of a trapper behind me that I had literally no indication of it’s existence, I’m just like ‘ohh cool, I just lose, great’.

And the problem is exacerbated that much harder when I’m playing Zealot/Ogryn and literally have to be in the wave to make my build work, but I got no ‘breathing’ indication a trapper is coming. And op sorry you didn’t know to get out of the wave so you could have room to dodge and now the trapper just hit you through it and you’re dead, gg go next.

Poxbursters especially are insanely annoying as well, whole lines of them with no sound stealthing up to your team and just wiping the whole lot of you in seconds or bringing you low enough that you might as well be dead as all your wounds have been consumed and your holy revenant just got popped 14 different ways. It’s just infuriating.

It’s to the point I have stopped playing Auric even with them being my favorite difficulty (and Maelstrom) because you just have no control over if you win. From the team not being able to function combined with it not entirely being within your control as to if you win or not, it just feels so bad and a 40-50% win rate just feels like utter pox when you know it could be 70-80% you just get cheated over and over and over.

I exclusively play Damnations now, because normal/low intensity engagements at least don’t run into this problem nearly as much with the not nearly as insane special spawns, and while it’s not nearly as fun, I sit at a comfortable 80-90% win rate (only losing 5-10% of the time due to my own error and 5-10% of the time because the team is just way to friggen heavy being made up of leveling characters that don’t know what they are doing or people in general that just have no idea what the map lay out is/should really be on Heresy) and can get the plasteel I feel earned at the very least. And can have a fun match from time to time in high intensity at least (even if that re-introduces the problems every so often if a line of trappers/pox’s show up, but haven’t had that in a while thankfully…knock on wood).

But I’d love this to get fixed so I can go back to Auric again and not just feel like it’s a detriment on my time.

[Bigpfeiffer]

Oh yea I’m not saying you’re wrong or anything. I just don’t know what is different about my game, besides the servers? Idk🤷‍♂️

[Elodie]

@RasMoti

Just today heard a Pox behind a door, i waited until it would open and push back, like everyone does and it’s the simplest thing to do.
…
what happened. Door opened and explosion happened immediatly while the clock was still ticking. I got bombed into the elevator from 100% Tough and HP to 20% HP.

That’s been an issue for a while sadly. I’d recommend standing clear of those doorways. Just look at the door and be ready if it pops out, but keep moving into the elevator fast as you can.

The doorways have always been risky between it exploding instantly on its own, teammates firing in there, or sometimes it just jumps out & closes the door behind it, so you won’t have time to get enough distance before it stumbles down and explodes. Same with knocked down bursters: shoot them, never get close. There’s no telling what will happen once they get up.

@MixedLetters

Yeah, I’ll just second that if this isn’t on the priority fix list, it very much should be. It’s the number 1 thing making me hate this game more than trappers, to the point I need to completely shift how I play the game because if I don’t, I literally can’t have fun.
…

Same. My ‘ragequits’ (though usually they’re more like “sigh” quits than anything) have gone absolutely through the roof and into the heavens with this problem.

For me, between the soundless specials and the gameplay bugs Darktide sits well below that fine line between “it’s fun” vs. “it’s such a complete waste of time literally anything else would be better”, and the only reason I haven’t moved on is the nostalgia of what was, habit, and the few fun build ideas I have left. I am honestly not enjoying most of the time I spend playing this game.

Spelling it out like that… I really do need to take a break until they fix it, and for good if they don’t.

[Ol_Jakal]

hey OP, the special spawn sounds have a range. if the team is too spread out you won’t hear some spawns, even if they decide to run across the map and target you instead of johnny speedball who’s knifedashing across the map while you’re stuck fighting through the enemies he riled up.

[CobaltNinja]

This isn’t about spawn sound cues. I can HEAR the poxburster spawn but while it’s running up to me in the middle of a bunch of trash mobs it will literally not tick a single time, hell, even in the MIDDLE of a jump it won’t make a sound, and then it explodes and I’m so confused.

Notice how in this video the first burster makes ticking sounds as normal, but the second burster is completely and 100% silent. This is absolutely unacceptable.

[NihilistZealot]

@Elodie

Dodging against melee doesn’t work because you move out of the way of the blow, it works because it disables their tracking AND moves out of the way of the blow both

Except that dodge doesn’t even do that consistently… you can tell with enemies with longer windups for attacks like crushers and walkers/groaners as well as the flak mob enemies.

Crusher overheads are inconsistent presently and sometimes track you through a dodge. Particularly prevalent when they perform rushing overheads instead of the standing overheads since the attack animation is longer.

All trash mobs have a long windup and should lose tracking when dodging, yet these also remain inconsistent. Instances where players dodge (after dodge reset) and still get hit by an attack because the animation is so slow and instead of breaking tracking it continues as though no dodge were performed.

[SlenderBarracuda]

There’s a mod for this. Spidey sense. Lot of people think it’s too strong, but it’s basically closed captions for specials.

[Elodie]

@CobaltNinja

This isn’t about spawn sound cues. I can HEAR the poxburster spawn but while it’s running up to me in the middle of a bunch of trash mobs it will literally not tick a single time, hell, even in the MIDDLE of a jump it won’t make a sound, and then it explodes and I’m so confused.

Not sure if this was intended for me but yes, this is what I’ve been talking about. Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I don’t even care about the spawn cues, mostly. There are so many things spawning everywhere all the time on T5+ it wouldn’t even matter.

I’m specifically talking about bursters, trappers, dogs and muties waddling over to stand on top of you from anywhere without making a single sound! So you have no idea they are even there until it’s too late. It’s not just specials either. I’ve even been instantly killed from full health & toughness by things like groups of ragers or a crusher without a single warning. This is why I’m so frustrated and tired.

Darktide is designed and balanced around those sound cues in every single way! It assumes you know the enemy is coming if you just pay attention, and it’s up to you with all your tactical options and skills to prepare for it and deal with it before it’s too late. That’s why they can disable or kill you instantly, and shoot through walls and 50 other enemies to hit you! If you take away the whole part about being able to prepare and defend yourself before it actually hits you, then it’s literally tantamount to the AI just pressing “I win” and that’s it.

The gaming experience on T5+ rn is beyond cheaty, RNG, and just absolutely broken. This is why I made this post!

@NihilistZealot

@Elodie

Dodging against melee doesn’t work because you move out of the way of the blow, it works because it disables their tracking AND moves out of the way of the blow both

Except that dodge doesn’t even do that consistently… you can tell with enemies with longer windups for attacks like crushers and walkers/groaners as well as the flak mob enemies.
…

I can’t refute your experiences nor do I intend to, but for my part dodge has worked fantastically well. The difference you describe, to my experience, is because the wind-up and attack itself are two different parts of the same animation. With slower animations the “attack” part starts later, yet dodging only disables the tracking after the attack has started, not before.

So for example dodging crushers when they’re just slowly hoisting the big hammer up won’t work, but dodging just after they start swinging it down & before it actually hits will. Naturally with several enemies around, each doing different attacks & at different speeds, this often means a single dodge won’t be enough. And ofc dodge also won’t help if you happened to dodge back into a previous swing, or in front of one intended for a teammate instead.

But like I said, this is just my experience. While I’m confident in my amount of experience in the game, we all know there’s so much weird stuff going on that it wouldn’t surprise me at all if what you describe is true and they really can keep tracking no matter what… but it’s just something specific to region, server, connection etc. so only some people have it and others don’t. The sounds don’t seem to be an issue for everyone either, so it’s often not as simple. So believe me, I’m not trying to downplay your experiences just because mine differ.

@SlenderBarracuda

There’s a mod for this. Spidey sense. Lot of people think it’s too strong, but it’s basically closed captions for specials.

Yes, I know the OP is long (sorry, just wanted to be accurate there) but I did mention using Spidey Sense precisely because of this issue. It helps ofc, but it’s far, far from replacing the missing audio. I’ve tried to set it up as best as I can, tracking only trappers, bursters and dogs (99% of the problem imo) with custom colours. But in the heat of combat with everything else going on and fabulous effects all over my screen, I just can’t spot the tiny blinking lights at the bottom of my screen.

That said, there were settings on it I hadn’t tested yet so I’m glad you brought it up! I moved the indicators as close to the crosshair as I could and tweaked with the detection distances etc. some more to avoid false reports. I hope this’ll help so really, thanks. :>

If the mod would let me put those blinkers into the top half of my screen, made the visual indicators MUCH more obvious and scaling with distance, and let us use different colours and distances for front & behind, I think it would work much better for me. The soundless are often as much of a problem in front of you but out of view behind a corner or 10 oggies, as they are from behind.

[muscarine]

I’ve been telling myself that for months now, the game isn’t difficult, it just eventually effs you over with one too many broken BS

Number one reason for me for a while was the “nuh-uh you can’t swap your weapon” problem resulting in free damage which adds up (very quickly as a Psyker), but as you observed it has long since replaced by the Silent Special problem

Also, Spidey Sense is an okay temporary measure, but it’s delayed, and often the game will spawn a silent special so close to you the mod doesn’t even have time to pick it up

@CobaltNinja

Notice how in this video the first burster makes ticking sounds as normal, but the second burster is completely and 100% silent. This is absolutely unacceptable.

Also sometimes you do hear them, but they sound far away when they’re in fact right in your face

So you get lulled in a false sense of security thinking you can deal with more immediate threat, and boom half your hp

And you video also incidentally showcases a silent trapper

[CobaltNinja]

I don’t want a mod, I want to express my skill via my own personally developed situational awareness!

[SlenderBarracuda]

@CobaltNinja

I want to express my skill via my own personally developed situational awareness!

Fat chance when the director just spawns baddies into the corner you already checked. (And I don’t mean a door, or a roof/floor hole, I mean soundless teleport.)

Not that I disagree mind you… because I agree so very, very much.

[Jonboy]

Just me, or is this just getting worse?
I’m obviously more attuned to the incidents. What in the past I’d just not think about, I’m now making a mental tally. But I would say that in the last 2-3 weeks I’ve had loads of poxbursters just explode next to me and I’ve had no idea they were there. Missed spawn sound cue. Missed approach sound cue. Just boom.

?

[AlphaOmegaMan]

I can’t make heads or tails of it either. Sometimes it’s like you say, they’re just there with no audible warning. Sometimes, I can hear the sound fade in but it starts ramping up from 0 volume to max once they’re maybe 10 meters away or so. When there’s nothing going on and just a sole burster coming, I can usually hear it, albeit at a lower volume than it had before this issue even started, I think. It’s all very strange and seems somewhat circumstantial, at least from my experience. That being said, a friend of mine can never hear them (or so he claims, possibly to avoid possible skill issue roasts) so there you go.