Shotguns literally dumpster the ranged options for Veteran if you throw the Zarona and Plasma aside which we all should, there’s like 12 more weapons Veteran has access to in that slot. Columnus is great, but not on Bulwarks. Braced 8 is godly, but its basically a stubber and leaves you similarly out of options for ranged on Veteran like a no-rock gunlugger. The rest of the options are all eggs, being good at dealing with shooters with a big asterix on you having a suppression counter of your own. They’re literally all beans, or ammo wasting no range/cleave beams like the auto pistol. Seriously shotguns have it pretty good killing everything but mutie in one hit, and hit staggering everything else…
In VT2 ranged weapons had 10, 20, 30 shots, not 100, 200, 1000. Also we already have mobile ammo crates.
Weapons in V2 also had much lower fire rates in general. Plus Datktide is supposed to be some sort of “hybrid combat” evolution of Vermintide, so applying the same balancing philsophies isn’t necessarily reasonable.
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I mean, they can be, facing off with a group of like 12 of them while running a CIVI can get spooky at times
He has arrived!
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I don’t think there’s anything to substantiate that though…
Hence it’s only a theory. But we had it in the prvious game and it worked, so why couldn’t it work here too? Fixed ammo crate locations are also a possibility tho.
And high poxwalker/groaner cleave.
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How would that fix it considering they have power swords and shovels and chain axes and knives already that allow them to effectively melee heavy armor? Even chainswords will mess up crushers with the right talents. Krak grenades too, on a similar note. Veteran is probably the class with the most anti armor options that arent his gun in the game, except for maybe ogryn (which sorta makes sense)
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As Kambrin said there is already this available for Vet with a decent amount of options, although I would not be opposed to getting more cool options in the slightest.
This is still a problem.
Agripp bolt action is amazing with Marksmen focus vet (one of the only builds I would actually use MF on) and Lawbringer feels amazing with Weapon Specialist.
I lurk more than I post these days.
Point taken. What i really was trying to get at, however badly, is that the discussion about ammo is being harmed by a lack of clearly dedicated anti-armor melee feel weapons in vet. If melee wasn’t always the best choice into a horde, if anti-horde ammo were plentiful and anti-armor melee were more thematically and technically implemented, then we could have a nice division where we get ranged and melee options for both. Its almost like this but ammo is kinda in the way right now and shouldn’t be
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Yeah I think obviously there’s tension between people who prefer to melee and people who prefer to range. This is a game that has both. At least 3 of the classes have one or more dedicated ranged paths in their talent tree.
While the Survivalist nerf barely effected me personally, I totally get that what FS has done is simply to remove playstyles. They’ve done it before. It’s always thoughtless, and it’s always obvious that it’s done by someone who has never experimented and tried different playstyles at all. (Or alternatively done by the advice from their speshul discord server of influencers, which on the whole in my experience tend to have clear agendas, or don’t know half as much as they claim to.)
There’s also as some have stated the obvious fact that there are plenty of guns in the game that are obviously meant to be spammed into hordes. It’s literally the only thing they’re good for.
Edit:
On another note, the fact that a majority of classes have ranged paths, but no way to actually get more ammo (Ogryn doesn’t count, it’s barely noticeable), something like Survivalist should actually exist for those other classes too, so their build doesn’t suffer horribly if there isn’t a Vet in the team. Make it talents, not auras.
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Well than how would you suggest going about this than? I suppose you could have 2 different ammo types for normal and ap ammo, but I feel that would be hard to implement in a satisfying way. I believe Survivalist was overtuned for how they balanced high end gameplay with just spamming enemies, although that could’ve been fixed in a different but harder way.
And honestly I wonder how effective a horde clear ranged weapon should be. I don’t think 1 player should be effortlessly solo-ing hordes. It’s not even an “I want to melee” moment, but that I think hordes should require more than 1 person mag dumping a couple of times (or worse, Purg staff).
I do think a problem with horde clear ranged weapons is that they feel fairly ineffective against specialists, both in damage and stagger, alongside hordes not being a threat 95% of the time. It feels awful shooting a trapper with a peashooter and having them both not die or stagger, and outside of some specific scenarios ranged horde clear isn’t needed, and when it is most weapons will do it well enough without needing to be specialized into it.
And yet this can be done on countless builds with countless melee weapons. Why shouldn’t it be a thing for ranged characters?
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Because there is zero threat for ranged characters to solo hordes, and usually there is a greater time involved for melee-ing hordes. Additionally it is easier to identify and kill specialists while fighting at ranged as opposed to fighting in a horde.
Hordes being a bigger threat would go a long way to making the distinction feel better as well.
That’s highly debatable considering behind-spawns are a thing, and the game straight up ignoring special sounds or backstab sounds half the time.
I’m also dubious about meleeing a horde requiring more skill, even a mixed horde with specials in it. In the current balance of the game, there are several ways to make it completely trivial.
And since that is the current state of the game, arguments about ranged being ‘too easy’ fall apart in my opinion.
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I see your point now but I think that’d involve nerfing the powerswords, chain axes, folding shovels and knives horde killing capacities so you would have an actual reason to bring a gun for that purpose. Which would affect zealot in turn (thats its own can of worms, shared weapons were a mistake), and which would call about another negative review bomb on steam, so for both reasons probably unlikely
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More interesting, impactful and specialized talent trees would fix that. But yeah it would still be complicated by shared weapons and shared blessings. And would require careful and thoughtful balancing. Which, you know, ain’t happening.
I agree, holding left click down is truly the most skilled of playstyles.
Meleeing hordes isn’t hard. But it is certainly easier than shooting them.
Really the only argument for a ranged weapon soloing entire hordes is that if ammo is a large concern. It is a large concern for the bad horde clear weapons. However Psyker staff pretty much completely invalidates ammo balancing for horde clear.
Come on now you can’t really say this. With (most) melee having wide sweeps, huge toughness regain, actual dodge distance it’s way easier to do than with a ranged weapon. The only exception to this is probably ogryn which has an easier time due to huge healthpool, huge damage area and things like toughness regain while bracing/during ult.
Even with voidstrike the moment enemies get into melee range and start surrounding you it requires more skill than slamming around Crusher or Evis, probably even before that when you are trying to line up shots keeping enemies at bay.
This is also true with shooter where even a dedicated ranged build has a way harder time dealing them from afar than any even slightly hybrid build have in melee against them.
This whole “ranged play is easier than melee” haven’t been true for a long time.
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