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Having “tide” in the name doesn’t necessarily mean being a melee focused game. Things change, evolve, mutate… and luckily, otherwise Darktide would have been a Vermintide reskin!
Darktide is meant to be a melee and shooter hybrid. The shooter part is fundamentally as the melee part, for the identity of the game and its varietyBut I’m not the one saying this, the gameplay itself says it. If the game fills every room and corridor with dozens and dozens of ranged enemies, shooting at us relentlessly from every direction at every second, I need the ammo to return fire. That’s the character’s role. There was nothing more satisfying than activating the Exe Stance (although it’s certainly not the strongest ult) and cleaning up for your team!
Another proof is that any character has a more developed ranged component than Vermintide’s characters. Just think about Sienna vs Psyker heat management and how Darktide is so forgiving… rightfully so! Or again think about how much a Zealot con be “shooty”
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Instead I noticed there is a sort of bias: if you are forced to play melee = difficult and fun game; if you can shoot = simple game
It’s not so. The game can be hard also shooting. It’s simply a different gameplay and a matter of preference… if I play the veteran on high difficulties, I want a difficult game but I also want to shoot a lot (as actually was before the nerf)It’s not about being able or not to handle ammo… it’s a videogame and it’s simply about having fun. I enjoy shooting a lot on high difficulties
Let each player choose whether to focus on the melee or ranged part… so that we are all happy. Why force a choice? Why limit us?
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It’s important to note that the Veteran never trivialized the melee part. Melee combat has always been key
It has always been essential to have crowd control characters to withstand enemy pressure
Even when playing with the Veteran, it has always been essential to switch to the melee weapon in certain situations
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To conclude, what bothers me the most, is Fatshark’s inability to intelligently balance: if you have one good aura and two bad auras… buff the bad ones instead of destroying the good one.
Because now you have three bad auras… and still one it’s the forced choice. Compliments!And, if you really thought a nerf was necessary, do it carefully… you could have nerfed, for example, only the regenerated ammo that your allies received. Proceed step by steep. Do not overnef
An old favourite of mine, I remember hearing this way back.
And lucky for me, the Wiki had it in writing.
Take this Fatshark:
No, your take is wrong.
There’s more than enough ammo, but challenging difficulties means there has to be challenge. That means target prioritization and ammo conservation for those things you absolutely have to shoot.
Survivalist was ridiculous in its power; packs of specials were just ammo refills, PlasmaVets just spam at literally everything, even the enemies that other players are actively killing . . . it was actually HARD to run out of ammo. Hell, if I’m using my weapon efficiently (as should be expected!) then I literally was topped off all the time with a Survivalist vet in the party. That’s ridiculous.
Just . . . actually learn how to conserve your ammo, OP, I mean that with no malice. Or go down a difficulty.
EDIT: As for the bias about melee, it’s because the melee combat in this game is much more developed and rewarding than the ranged combat.
Neither it supposes to be shooting only game. Meanwhile kickback, rumbler, plasma, brauto spam. Oh no, now you actually need to pickup ammo and check boxes, tragedy indeed.
I just played with brauto vet in my team (i was bolter vet), guess what, he barely used his melee.
It was broken on higher difficulty in the first place, when you can regenerate ammo on dogs or mute waves, heck even on regular special spam waves.
And what was changed in that manner? Seriously stop playing Texttide, check how balance changes work in the game, not in theory.
I will die on this hill: having ammo =/= easy game
Just a stupid example: on Doom you shoot all time, still it’s a hard game
Instead here there is a weird prejudice: if you are forced to play melee = difficult and fun game; if you can shoot = simple game
It’s not so. The game can be hard also shooting. It’s simply a different gameplay and a matter of preference… if I play the veteran on high difficulties (as I do), I want a difficult game but I also want to shoot a lot (as so actually was)
It’s not about being able or not to handle ammo… it’s a video game and it’s simply about having fun. I enjoy shooting a lot (on high difficulties)
Before the game satisfied everyone (you could simply not choose that aura)… now nope, it limits gameplay choices
Okay, well die on that hill if you want but your take is still wrong. The slight nerf to ammo regen is good for the game.
Doom is a very poor example, incidentally, it has hitscan enemies you can’t dodge and no emphasis on melee combat at all . . .
EDIT: Also I said the challenge in higher difficulties was ammo conservation. That’s been a way higher difficulties increase challenge in shooting games for pretty much as long as they’ve been around.
You did regen more ammo, but you still needed melee characters to handle the pressure of multiple elites on you!
I agree about specials waves, they must not be a refill ammo moments… but it’s just a particular case
About the rest, I just disagree
It’s fair, you can say my take is wrong, as I can say your take is wrong
You’re interpreting it the wrong way. Darktide is meant to be a hybrid shooty/choppy game - in fact, the developers WANT you to be shooting more than melee-ing, but melee is still very much a core part of the game.
You shouldn’t be allowed to choose between the two, you should be forced to do both within the same relatively short timeframe. Many Veteran noobs make the mistake of shooting everything they see, even trash mobs, because “they’re playing the ranged class”. That’s stupid. Veteran’s role is to kill elites and specials. When there aren’t any, they should be up in front of the chaff killing things like everyone else.
A good Veteran player will keep the mobs from advancing with proper melee and grenade usage while being situationally aware enough to back up and start shooting problem targets as soon as they appear.
Survivalist was meant to help facilitate this shoot-more playstyle, but the problem is that on the higher difficulties, specialists and some elites remain fragile as ever, while it also dumps loads more on you, causing an overabundance of ammo. Plasma gun is now only limited by reload time and heat. Revolver users never have to pick up an ammo kit.
Ogryns with explosive primaries can be a lot more trigger-happy. It trivialized the ammo economy, and by consequence, the game, because no longer are you forced to make the decision to use your powerful gun or comparatively weaker-but-still-strong melee - because the answer was always shoot.
My intent with wanting Survivalist to be nerfed was to make the ammo economy more forgiving and allow players to shoot a good bit more, whilst not being so comically overtuned that picking up ammo is a foreign concept. This nerf has done neither - you’re barely if ever getting compensated for the amount of ammo you’re using up shooting elites, and brings it back to the same, mediocre line Veteran’s other two auras do. A cooldown of two, maybe three seconds would have accomplished this, but not five.
no way you talking about plasma, maybe revolver, plasma has worst ammo calculation in Darktide, from first beta in September/2022.
lets put in the calculation:
Plasma Light shot → Costs 3 Ammo
Plasma Heavy shot → Costs 9 Ammo
Plasma & Scavenger
Plasma with Full Ammo Modifier + 25% Extra Ammo Talent (303 Ammo in total) gives pattern 1/2/2/1 Ammo per kill.
Which in reality its not even 1% of plasma ammo,
1% of 303 = 3 , which we should be given 3 rounds per kill, but as magazine in ammo dont count in overall weapon ammo, and plasma ammo is 50|50, plasma loses huge amount of its ammo pool due to this
no matter who you one tap, you always get less ammo than you shot never equal or more.
Plasma & Fully loaded
Plasma only gets 25% of reserve and not magazine, and with 50|50, in reality you only get 12.5% extra ammo.
Plasma & Ammo Pickups
Same thing, you get less ammo % from pickup than any other ranged weapon , weapons gets atleast 11%, unlike plasma gets only 8.5%.
I love the plasma, but i really cant use it, every game am fighting over ammo, especially that MK V Infantry Autogun “Columnus” is common with gun psyker, crit zealot and veteran.
All correct, in fact I’m the first to define it as a hybrid… the point is it was exactly like that even before the nerf. A good player perfectly knew that he should have preferred the melee weapon on more occasions
It’s still a huge amount of ammo returned over the course of a game, and even the lights have infinite cleave, which means you can and will kill multiple elites with a single shot. I’ve never seen a Plasma Vet run out of ammo for their crutch.
Well thank goodness you can support your completely unbiased opinion with such hard evidence /s
I’ve played with my Plasma Gun using the new Survivalist and the nerf’s… actually a lot less taxing than I thought that it’d be! I’ve only noticed one real difference and it’s that I can’t just spam a cluster of Shotgunners for 10% ammo back in an instant now. Apart from that, it still does its job fairly well and I personally still find it more attractive than the other Auras.
Understood. I as gun class will no longer mainly use gun.
Seriously, it’s the ranged tree aura, on the gun wielder class. the idea that you shouldn’t be able to rely on your firearms just because the game is a mix of melee and ranged feels absolutely zonked.
I understand why they want to tone it down. The other auras aren’t even close to being as impactful as survivalist. I was hoping they’d make the others more interesting, or leave the scavenger affect in play when another aura is selected.
In classic fatshark methodology they chose an awful way of nerfing it. This is far far more harmful to fast firing weapons than slow firing weapons.
The cooldown should be based on the rate of fire of the weapon. That makes this change apply more evenly across the spectrum of range weapons, and not heavily favor the slower firing weapons that were already fairly powerful.
I think the methodology is perfectly sensible. A cooldown stops unreasonable bursts of ammo especially from eg hunting grounds waves. The only thing they got wrong was overtuning the cooldown. Should be 2-3 seconds to my reckoning. Wrong methodology would have been just reducing the % to my mind.
Wait, how can slower firing weapon be more powerful if the TTK is slower than fast firing weapon?
Most of the time it’s Revolver or Plasma that pen through like 4-5 elites at once which doesn’t really benefit much from post nerf Survivalist either.
Also Columnus IAG is still crazy powerful and it’s fast firing weapon.
Although tbh, they should’ve wait and introduce the change along with weapon balance patch. They might get less backlash especially from player who use weapon with bad ammo economy like Recon las, or not because people just hate any nerf in general.
I agree.
How many times has it been nerfed in percentage? From the original skill tree, down when they released the tree rework, and then down again to the 1%. And now this.
Just remove the damn talent already and be done with it. I’m sick of having my Veteran just be an endless series of nerfs to ranged. If ammo is the issue then maybe removing the talent entirely will make balancing easier for them.
I’m not gonna say those are all equally impactful but MF changes and OfB changes are pretty noticeable buffs for ranged builds. Like come on now