Part 3: The Solutions
Not one to offer complaints without a solution, I have drafted several suggestions that, if implemented together, should preserve the original balance and design philosophy of Darktide while encouraging players to engage in less passive playstyles. With few exceptions none of these changes require new systems, simply new applications of existing systems and tweaks to different values.
- 1.1 Make Cover Matter
Since enemy attacks appear to be randomly spread hitscans with arbitrary visuals they need to represent enemy attacks hitting cover more reasonably, either by making collisions much larger for enemy fire and/or by introducing an accuracy system for enemies.
One way to do this would be by rigging several points of the player’s body and having enemies ‘check’ which they can ‘see’ whenever they plan to fire a shot, proportionally having a higher chance to harmlessly miss for each point they cannot ‘see’. Enemies suffering suppression, but not reaching any thresholds (or that do not have reachable thresholds like Shotgunners), should also suffer reduced accuracy under this system by having their maximum accuracy reduced accordingly.
- 2.1 Penalize Ranged Enemies Shooting Into Melee
Melee Locking represents one part of WH40K’s rules about shooting while in melee, but what is missing is the representation of the difficulty involved in shooting into melee seen in many editions of the game.
Whenever you are within 5m of 2 or more enemies you now gain the “Soft Cover” buff, which reduces incoming Ranged Toughness Damage by 50% (after other reductions).
Additionally, Zealot’s “Enemies Within, Enemies Without” (1-3) increases the benefit of Soft Cover to 70% for the Zealot. Ogryn’s “Towering Presence (3-1) expands the radius of Soft Cover’s check to 8m for the Ogryn.
This should reduce the excessive danger ranged enemies pose in many situations, especially ones where you are already striking them at close range. It would also alleviate the frustration many players have about being shot directly through other enemies.
- 3.1 Reduce Enemy Ranged Disruption
Many steps have already been taken to reduce the overwhelming displeasure of being stunlocked by overlapping attacks, but a few small changes can still help by removing hitstun and knockback’s presence from inappropriate areas of gameplay.
Hitstun will now no longer interrupt Sprinting or Sliding if you have Stamina remaining. Dodge speed and distance is now unaffected by the slowdown from hitstun. A player’s movement speed can never be reduced below their crouched walk speed solely by hitstun slowdown.
In addition, all enemies have had ranged knockback or ‘push’ effects completely removed. This should resolve issues where players would become locked in place when they should otherwise be invulnerable or uninterruptible.
- 3.2 Give Tools To Counter Ranged Stun
Class abilities being overwritten and snuffed by hitstun feels very bad, and classes would benefit from more options that would allow them to move aggressively. Some classes are disproportionately affected by hitstun, especially ranged hitstun, and need options or accommodations to cope with it.
Ogryn is now completely immune to the effects of hitstun. Ogryn’s “Lead the Charge” (3-2) now grants Ogryn’s immunity to hitstun to all allies for 4 seconds, in addition to its other effects.
During the effects of Zealot’s “Chastise the Wicked” they are now completely immune to hitstun and knockback.
Psyker’s “Kinetic Shield” (5-2) now grants complete immunity to ranged hitstun, so long as the Psyker possesses at least 1 Warp Charge.
- 4.1 Cleaving Damage Buff
Currently, almost all melee weapons in the game have a dramatic falloff on consecutive targets. These weapons are directly competing against ranged weapons that hit faster, harder, and more safely than they can. This should be changed to give them more value and efficiency for their heightened risk, especially slower weapons which struggle to cleanly dispatch consecutive enemies.
Cleaving damage now falls off at a much slower base rate, from 100% → 45% → Minimum Damage to 100% → 90% → 60% → 30% → Minimum Damage. (This is a simplified example but demonstrates the level of change I am looking for.)
In addition, all Blessings that buff “Cleave” now apply a portion of their effect to the Cleaving damage.
- 5.1 Melee Locking Consistency Improvements
To combat the inconsistency of Melee Locking that makes it so frustrating, a series of important changes are needed.
First, all scaling of intimidation resistance has been completely removed; the enemy behavior regarding Melee Locking on Malice difficulty will now remain consistent from Malice onwards.
Second, ranged enemies struck by a melee attack will immediately cease any readied or ongoing shooting and prioritize switching to melee combat.
Third, ranged enemies intimidated into melee combat now have a minimum period of 6 seconds before they can switch back to their ranged weapons. This weapon lockout is reset each time they receive damage from any source.
Finally, enemies will no longer flee from the effects of Suppression if they are within or come within a 5m radius of a player, instead choosing to cower in place until they regain their composure or engage in melee combat.
- 6.1 Suppression Improvements
Suppression is currently poorly communicated and ineffective. To reduce instances of Suppression being unclear or harmful, the following changes should be made.
First, a new, optional accessibility feature is introduced where all enemies suffering from meaningful amounts of Suppression are now outlined with an intensifying soft white highlight. When Suppression expires the outline vanishes, and the highlight visibly fizzles out to signify that the enemy is now a threat again.
The visibility of this highlight at minimum and full intensity can be tuned in the settings by a slider bar.
Second, Suppressed enemies will no longer treat doors to AI-exclusive areas as valid retreat paths, and will prioritize routes that do not involve jumping or climbing when able. Suppressed enemies can no longer use teleport triggers, such as those inside monster closets.
Third, Suppressed enemies will no longer alert other enemies until their Suppression expires. This should subdue situations where exceptional Suppressed enemy activity, and not player actions, would immediately wake and chain other ambient spawns from large distances.
Fourth, Suppressed enemies that are fleeing will not recover from Suppression naturally until they reach their destination (unless interrupted, such as being staggered or locked in melee) or are forced to cower in place. Enemies will begin to cower in place if they cannot reach their destination after 3 seconds of travel.
Finally, Dreg Shooters now have normal Suppression Resistance again.
These changes should also be followed up on with bugfixes and buffs to the area and effectiveness of Suppression for most weapons, as well as Blessings that invoke Suppression (ex: Terrifying Barrage).
- 7.1 Mobility, Evasion, and Control Changes
Currently, player movement and evasion are too limited and enemy mobility is too excessive. These changes will rectify this without significantly disturbing the existing balance.
First, attacks made while sprinting no longer subject the player to forced slowdown but maintain the additional ‘lunge’ gained during sprinting melee attacks. This includes all melee attacks and ranged attacks made with the “Run ‘N Gun” Blessing.
Second, the base speed of Sprinting is increased by 13%, and the friction of Sliding is reduced by 30%.
Third, all weapons and held items (including Brain Burst, grenades, deployables, and optional objectives) can now dodge ranged attacks normally.
Fourth, melee weapons now have a small window (0.33s) after Dodging or completing a Slide, during which they will continue to evade ranged attacks. This should allow evasive actions to be properly chained to avoid ranged fire.
Fifth, the first dodge performed will no longer stop Stamina from recovering. Consecutive dodges performed before they reset will stall stamina recovery as normal.
Sixth, the movement speed of Zealot’s “Chastise the Wicked” and Ogryn’s “Bull Rush” have been increased by 25% and 15% respectively.
Seventh, enemies performing or preparing ranged attacks now move 50% slower.
Additionally, multiple keybinds should be allowed for individual commands, especially ones such as crouching or sprinting, to make inputting complex movements more comfortable. “Toggle Sprint” should also have an additional toggle for if the player would like remain in the Sprinting state after completing a Sprinting Slide or not.
- 8.1 Toughness Melee Regeneration Improvement
Currently, all enemies give the same static amount of Toughness back. This disproportionately puts more importance on Toughness feats and starves some classes, like Zealot and Psyker, of much-needed recovery during pushes and events.
All Toughness gained from killing enemies in melee now scales based on the type of enemy slain.
Horde enemies (Groaners, Poxwalkers) give 5% Toughness.
Midgrade enemies (Brawlers, Shooters, Stalkers) give 8% Toughness.
Elite enemies (Maulers, Ragers, Shotgunners, Gunners) give 15% Toughness.
Humanoid Specialists give 12% Toughness.
Non-Humanoid Specialists give 18% Toughness.
Ogryns give 20% Toughness.
In addition, Zealot’s “Purify in Blood” (1-1) now grants an additional +50% Toughness Regeneration on Melee Kills to herself and all allies in Coherency, doubling its previous effect for the Zealot.
Final Words
I believe that with these changes Darktide’s core gameplay loop can continue to flourish. Each of these suggestions is relatively small and based on existing design decisions that I’ve observed, but when combined they ought to relieve many of the most frustrating interactions with the game’s systems while promoting the smooth and satisfying gameplay that you’re trying to deliver and that we so desperately want. And I know that I’m not the only one that is feeling this way about how combat is developing.
There are certainly some bumpy months ahead for the game’s continued development, but I appreciate anyone and everyone that took the time to read this and would love to discuss any feedback you have on my breakdown of the issue and these suggestions.