Atmosphere and Art Direction kiss, as usual top shelf stuff. Give the folks responsible a raise. The layout is meh, I was hopping for more Chasm Logistratum, less Torrent. Not a bad thing, i like both. That’s where the good ends.
Personally, I hate the arena portions in all maps. Sh^t just doesn’t make sense to me even within the context of this game being based on a hybrid combat system. Ranged combat is pretty heavy in this game relative to other -Tide games, why don’t the devs take advantage of this and put us through proper sieges, or being forced to defend a position from multiple directions that make sense, instead of just spawning everything from everywhere within 8m to 15m of each player? It’s not even that hard, just annoying. Force us to storm a strongpoint/safehouse, etc. and the be besieged by the enemy QRF, blah,blah. . .
Seriously, this entire map feels like a personal attack against me, lol, never have I loathed a map in a videogame so much. A FS Dev must’ve seen or overheard me saying that I hate the arena portions at some point and been at the pitch meeting like: “YO, BRO! You guys see this dude, f^ck this guy, what if we make a map that feels like a never ending arena section the entire time?” (insert-roll-safe-meme-here)
I was looking forward to hellish room-to-room fighting, but instead I got the Hourglass battery arena section, cranked up to 11, and (the one arena i personally h8 the most) made into a map sized cluster- Like, what is up with just having us within 8m to 15m of any and nearly all spawn points, all the time. All encounter points seem scientifically designed to deny the team fallback or anchor points, and maintain the team at unending CQ engagements from start to end, like wtf. Map designer be like: “Positioning? Lol, LMAO even.” At this point they might as well just drop the pretenses of trying to design a map, and should just spawn us in the middle of an empty arena and spam us with a wall of ragers and crushers from all directions. Playing this thing in Auric is, unironically, exhausting. Haven’t even tried it in Auric Maelstrom yet, prob won’t even bother. Played it twice and I feel like I’m about to have a migraine for the rest of the night. . .
That’s the double whammy about it to me, it’s not even that difficult, even in pubs. Issue is that playing through it just feels like ass, and is the first time ever in a videogame where I’ve been close to sensory overload, like, in the medical sense, not metaphorical. Like bro, I’ve fired crew served weapons in pitchblack with an without nods, been hit with flashbangs (accidentally). and jumped out of airplanes. Those got nothing on the T5 Auric spawn patterns in this place, it’s literally disorienting.
Haha. It is what it is. I get you hate it and I’m not gonna lie the change in map has been challenging to figure out but it isn’t a bad map by any means just a big FRICK YOU to melee focused builds on this one which is fine. The game can have maps where it wants you to adapt to some missions and play a little more conservative. oGryns are probably going to have it the toughest having to bring a combat shield or stubber.
It’s funny cause me & friends so far are loving this map and think it’s the best Darktide map we’ve seen yet. The way the map design keeps you in combat all the time is really fun, I love it.
And that’s without mentioning the soundtrack which we also love.
That’s the thing, I main vet. Haven’t tried it with my zealot yet, prob won’t. The place feels like it was designed to troll anyone running any ranged or hybrid ranged builds. Even the run I tried with one of my melee commando vet builds made me feel like a frothing, panicked dog running in circles.
Also, not really trying to convince anyone of anything here, I’m just venting. I’ll probably just avoid this map like I already do with anything set in the Hourglass while spamming chasm logistratum and torrent.
I agree. And it’s a new map so people are gonna be distracted or clueless in the beginning. Not knowing where the Meta positions are to fending off waves etc.
Really? Hmmmm. Granted my first 2 playthroughs Which we totally failed. Because of butt hurt people and one unfortunate disconnect at the last battle. I felt like I was struggling because I was a zealot with a flamer on the arena portions and I might set up a rifle to deal with those arena segments.
But then again my friend who was ranged build at the time is saying the exact same things you are. Really struggling with the layout and the threats seemingly being everywhere and being able to shoot you at all times.
Like I think it might just come down to it being a very build/ load out specific map and I just got to get used to it. But I do get what you are saying.
The heart of the issue to me are these bits i noted previously
Usually if you’re being overrun, your best bet is to track back where you came from as a group in a fighting retreat, whittling down the wall of crap as you do. If teams have more than one decent player, this is what will usually happen. Not so much here, there’s a few sections where you can, but most of the map seems designed to box you into killboxes with little to no way out since alot of the primary front and rear spawns seem to be set in a way as to block or restrict movement out of the box.
If you can’t retrograde, you find a spot to make a stand with the team, a spot to anchor, this also happens naturally with decent players in a team, even in pubs. But again, engagement ranges relative to spawn points are literally at bayonet range more often than not, so it’s incredibly hard to anchor, never mind transition to one (I’ve found some spots, but they’re out of the way, and spawn patterns seem designed to herd you AWAY from them on top of it.
Big open areas to punish melee and spawn points everywhere to punish ranged. The only points where you don’t have enemies spawning at you from all sides is usually the airlocks.
To me the standard hold your ground set up finales really ring flat and this isn’t much exception. Darktide is at its absolute best with objectives that incorporate moving through an area. Even just breaking the stashes of stims would have made this arena more fun to play. I hope there are more variations of the waves then what I’ve seen because it just seems to be gunners. Had one run with a few ogryn enemies at the start, but the rest have been just scabs. Which for story would make sense, but remember scabs have melee elites too!
While I am over the moon ‘Warp Traveler’ was finally used in game I was a bit disappointed to hear ‘Imperial Advance’ again. Could have easily broke out ‘Nightsider’ for that.
Uh, yeah? I know? But most, even those set up to be killboxes in higher diffs, often still have sensible, and tactically useful layouts. Some even manage to have some really good spots to set up a base of fire or allow you to lock down avenues of approach if you know what to look for (anyone who’s played an FPS probably knows at least the basics). The layouts and designs here feel like someone took Hab Dreyko and min-maxed it to get as close as they humanly can to just turn the whole affair into an arena section. To me these will never make sense when it comes to designing an engagement, even in a videogame. They’re just glorified near ambushes designed to be near-unwinnable, or feel like it, conceptually. Those are ok for scripted game set-piece scenarios (e.g. the stereotypical CoD last stand). But for games like this one where you’re just replaying the same stages and depending on the internal systems to create dynamic and emergent scenarios? Yuck, arenas in all of this game’s maps feel like a time and patience tax you have to pay to enjoy everything else in the run. If you have a big d*ck map designer that is good enough to get away with it, maybe, but FS has me unconvinced so far.
My point here though is that these principles feel cranked up to 11, to an extent that goes beyond challenging, and is just vexing at best, taxing at worst. It’s just annoying, period. It feels like it emphasizes everything that sucks about arena sections. Especially it’s final arena, open areas may be intended to punish melee specialists, but trust me, the sweaty aimbot vet main next to you is just as miserable. This whole map reeks to me of adversarial map design, the bad kind, like whoever made it said “Fine I’ll let you win, good luck having fun going through it though!”
TL/DR, my big gripe with this map, and by extension, arena sections in general is that these seem to be designed to herd the team into the center of the kill box inside a small room, and force you to stay there because the script says you’re supposed to be fighting against all odds. This is something, that even if this game were purely a melee combat one (which it isn’t), just doesn’t make sense. All combatants will always seek to get the most out of the terrain around them, to the best of their ability, during battle. In the context of a videogame, the designer should reward you for figuring the best use of the terrain during an engagement to win it or at least survive it. Here though? It feels like it’s designed to synergize with the coherency system in way that disincentivizes intelligent play.
“You will sit in the middle of the arena! And you will like it!”