So I’ve played about 65+ hours since the preorder beta, mainly ogryn and zealot, dab of psyker, and majority done on malice, so I’m just gonna say what changes/tweaks would be nice to see. These are my opinions on the game so far and if something needs to be booted/copy pasted to another topic just let me know. Also have over 600+ hours in the Vermintides so comparisons will be made, co-op horde shooters kinda have some similarities no matter the game and made by the same company.
Big one first: Bleed through damage or what me and my friends call chip damage. Please get rid of it, it’s bad. We have toughness for a reason and if it does basically nothing for a melee hit then why have it? I understand it’s to incentivise people to shoot/clear enemies and there’s an algorithm, but there are a lot of enemies and not enough ammo, or we need these melee kills for weekly contract, or we prefer melee, the little buggers that spawn from nowhere, whatever the reason it’s just bad. Have melee do more toughness damage, playing at low health is stressful because even though you have full toughness just one hit kills you. Saw many a teammate killed by lone pox walker coming out of nowhere and slapped him to death with one hit. Most of the damage I’ve taken is bleed through damage, roughly 70% of it is. It’s bad and please get rid of it.
Talking about little buggers: Please stop having things spawn behind us after we’ve cleared a zone. I’ve legit stood for over a minute at a fence watching walkers tumble over and down it after we cleared a zone. All that chip damage is because these guys smack backs because they spawn behind us. Just put these guys in front of us.
Special spawns: I’ve had on many occasions a box burster spawn from a door with no sound until it’s blowing up right next to us, same with mutants…and trappers. Make it so they spawn X amount of distance away. Also only spawn a set limit of specials, as in only x amount of a special type ie pox bursters, trappers, etc. Had 4 pox bursters spawn and insta kill a teammate in less than 5 seconds, 4 mutants spawn during a boss fight, 3 trappers spawn during a horde event… you see the idea. Variety is better than 3 teammates getting netted simultaneously.
Mutants: In my mind there are three categories of non-flak enemies: elites (maulers, ragers, ogryn…), Specials (trapper, bomber…) and mutants. They get they’re own category because they are both. They’re too tanky for what they do and mess up runs with the CC they do. They also pull off the stupidest turns while charging. So much jank with them, they turn more than 180 around a corner to get someone and that is not okay. Been stuck in a charger loop because by the time it take for me to finish the animation to get my gun out they charged me again, repeat until the 3 bullets I can shoot each time kills it. Less health and much much much smaller degree of turning while charging, and increase the time between charges.
Pox hounds: These are crack dogs that run and jump on walls, only one who can confidently kill them are psyker brain pops. Please lower their speed or a single melee hit or beefy enough bullet staggers them like assassins in Vermintide.
Gunners: Being pushed back by a gunner like it has a fire hose should not happen. Please fix that.
Specials (bombers and snipers): These guys are annoying because you get close and they run away at the speed of someone after twenty bucks of Taco Bell. Lower their speed.
Bombers: Annoying when they can throw bombs from where you can’t see. Please lower their range and give them more glowy bits so they’re easier to spot.
Snipers: They do their job just fine, just increase their time between shots by a second and make them have a set up time. Seen many snipers spawn and almost instantly shoot.
Shooting enemies: These guys have hit scan weapons and when there’s a dozen or so, that sucks. I know it’s massively different from vermintide but the ungor archers had like a 1/20 chance to hit you, so maybe tweaking the numbers to maybe a 1/4 chance instead of every shot hitting. Also make them enter melee sooner. It’s better than day one but still happens.
Stamina: Making it so stamina is used for blocking, pushing, and sprinting feels worse than stamina in Vermintide. We sprint everywhere, it’s what happens in free to sprint games. So running to a zone and then having to melee people right there with zero stamina sucks because they hit through the little recovered or your melee weapons need that push attack for a good horde clear rotation feels bad. Maybe auto regaining a flat 15 stamina after sprinting for 5 seconds or something, make it so it can’t be used for sprinting. Just that little bump.
Barrels: More annoying than helpful, cleaving through a horde and hitting a barrel sucks. Please lower the amount or have an invincibility timer so you don’t chain hit a barrel before realizing.
Cover: been shot at and taken damage even though I’m crouching behind cover on even ground as enemies. Please make cover just slightly taller and give ogryn some ogryn cover. Been stuck at a hallway with two reapers and two gunners without a slab shield. Crying ensued while teammates had cover.
Skull breaker/ogryn tweaks: Noticed I can get hit out of rescuing a downed, respawned, netted teammate by pox walker and the like. Just look into it.
Also ripper gun animations should be changed. Holding alt fire/full auto and then reloading should just put the handle down instead of resetting the reloading animation if you let go of it. Stubber does that why not ripper?
Preacher tweaks: Don’t know if it’s intended or not but charging stops at enemies even while not looking at them. I know Saltzpyre zealot runs through enemies and that can be a get out of trouble card for him, would be nice on the preacher. Maybe hold the button down or only on specials/elites.
Psyker tweaks: Noticed that when you charge the staff and hit the quell button then release the charge button you keep charging the staff, leading to many explosions, please fix that.
Increase the time stacks stay on for. Getting max stacks then having to quell so you can do anything with a staff sucks, makes me want to pick guns instead of their exclusive weapons.
Shop tweaks: Sucks that if you don’t look every hour that you could Miss a weapon. Have it so that the shop (both regular and Melks) have multiple instances that have their own time. Like have the main shop with 4 lists and a list lasts four hours, just cycles in and out a new one every hour.
Melks shop should have the same but 2 lists every 12 or 24 hour cycles. Also more items in it with more variety. Had one of his shops have 3 axes. I don’t need 3 of an item I need variety. Maybe put in a hold system for a single item you don’t have enough tokens for, you really want it but have to wait a week for the next round of contracts.
Contracts/currency: Please make it so the weekly contracts can be shared across all characters along with the currency. Having to complete a total of 60 possible missions across 4 characters in a week is nigh impossible for some people’s schedules. Even 15 is rough for a friend of mine unless he wants to make the missus angry. Also needing two weeks worth of tokens (forgot the name of them) is rough with all the things in the shop being expensive and cycling out constantly.
Have an in game contract tracker so we know what to get for melee/ranged kills, because sometimes I get kill dreggs with range and scabs with melee confused…or just make it non pox walker kills so we don’t have to completely overhaul what we’re doing mid mission to suit the enemy type.
Can keep dockets to individual characters.
Grims: This gets it own bullet because grims suck. They suck. Flat health reduction, fine. Continuous health degradation, screw that and a bag of chips. That’s 10 pounds of messed up in a 5 pound bag. Just make it like in Vermintide, that was fine. But now if you’re getting bogged down with hordes and the like you’re on your last wound without even getting downed. Change it to flat health reduction please.
General tweaks/fixes: Please have hotkeys for mission select. Don’t want to run all the way across the Morningstar to get into queue. If we can go anywhere on ship after selecting mission then should be able to select any mission anywhere on ship.
Noticed sometimes when I hit an enemy with melee they don’t get staggered or damaged. Don’t know if that’s a bug or just models aren’t interacting correctly.
I’ve been writing for the past hour or so on a phone so I’m just about wrapped up. These are the things that are most prevalent to what I think would improve the game and what I can remember. Mostly gameplay but rereading looks like some bugs. Like I said up top if I need to copy and paste something and throw it in the bugs forum just let me know. Anyway this has been my TED talk and thanks for reading.