The real issue that everyone seems to ignore is the why people play way above their skill level.
This seems to be the crux of the issue and it’s not really discussed much.
Imo it seems pretty clear that the balancing is to blame.
FS think that less enemies is a good way to balance but that’s trash. No one wants to play a tide game with barely any enemies. The lower difficulties are ghost towns with extremely easy enemies.
Soooo…I think everyone is playing the top difficulties, regardless of their skill level, because the top levels are the only ones that actually have satisfying and expected volume of enemies. They’re FUN.
If balance kept enemy density much closer throughout all difficulties, but greatly scaled enemy hp and damage, then I think people would feel much more satisfied at staying within their (reasonable) challenge limits.
And oc, dockets/material rewards need to remain same in auric as normal damnation to mitigate the push for resources.
Alternatively, it could work the other way where enemy hp stays the same throughout difficulties and their density greatly scales…which would lead to more meaningful abd intense 1-1 combats and make hordes way more terrifying at lower levels…but I think the huge density and scaling hp would make the most people happy. Hacking through huge crowds is unbelievably satisfying and it’s that satisfaction that could allow people greater contentment imo.
I’d actually prefer fewer enemies with more individual challenge. Slower gameplay would greatly benefit the game because at the moment everyone just zooms through all of the maps. Consequently, they miss out on the amazing atmosphere and level design. It’s very sad.
In MY ideal Darktide, only 1 Crusher would spawn at a time, but it’d be just as deadly as the current Crusher packs. Squads of Gunners would be able to lock down an entire area and force you into a retreat. Shooters would actually be a threat rather than glorified Poxwalkers with Lasguns… I mean they’re trained Traitor Guardsmen for the Emperor’s sake!
It’d also help with Darktide’s egregious performance issues.
Dont know about anyone else but i played above my level because i wanted to beat it. I never cared for higher rewards or penances or whatever. I lost damnation matches like 20-ish times before i finally beat it for the first time, now i only play high gauntlet auric with around 60-70% win rate.
I guarantee you the same deal happens for alot of “people playing above their skill level”. They will get better eventually, but they cant get better at the game if their access to heresy/damnation is gated or if they’re scrutinized. Leave them be and maybe give them some tips/advice instead.
As for your idea to keep the number of enemies the same across the board. I think this is a bad idea because some people prefer there to be less enemies. I’ve heard fair amount of opinions that damnation level number of enemies is migraine inducing (paraphrasing). Not everyone enjoys being constantly bombarded with elites and specials.
Suddenly uprooting the people that prefer a more “walk in the park” experience would be quite… Not nice (cant think of a right word -_-).
Yes playing a challenging difficulty where you die is fine…but I we’re talking about people under level 30 playing damnation etc. the obvious cases where people are playing many difficulties above what they should be.
My point is that it’s not the players fault and I’m not shaming anyone for going for a much harder difficulty but rather I’m thinking of why it is an issue and why it occurs and how it could be fixed.
People quitting after being downed because they couldn’t even handle a horde on auric is very common and pretty unfair to the rest of the team. If this can be helped and those players can have as much fun/rewards in lower difficulties then it’s a win-win.
Playing underleveled on max difficulty isnt that big of a deal, by lvl 25-ish you pretty much have every talent you’d need on almost every build. The last 5-ish are just the fruits on top of the cake you can put on anything to make your life easier. Besides, i saw underleveled people on auric so rarely i can only think of only 1 instance where it happened to me (because i was also leveling my psyker along with 2 other people on damnation lmao. We won that round btw) (I think i started going to damnation at like lvl 23 for my psyker (my 3rd class, i was already an auric veteran at this point))
that is very real but a completely different unrelated multi-layered problem that deserves its own thread.
Personally i think its a mentality problem.
And also the after-effect of the “pro” players alt+f4-ing to let bots save a match and then joining back in.
Another reason for people leaving during those downed moments is because they dont want to spend 3 minutes in the screen of shame. Thats the reason why i leave doomed games early sometimes. Why do i have to wait and look at nothing for 3 minutes when i can just leave early and join another game immediately?
Another reason is the penance chasers. Easily fixed by completely removing streak-wins from the game entirely.
And finally we have the good’ol rage quitters, there’s no fixing that, you just have to live with it.
I dont think things should be changed to the difficulties themselves address quitters. But rather penalties should be put on the individual accounts.
For example, want to leave a game early? Pay a toll, cough up 100 platsteel diamantine and 1-5000 dockets. the more people in your squad that are downed the less of a penalty.
Only you are downed? pay full price, only 1 person is left alive? dont pay anything.
Something like that.
Can also invalidate contract progress if you quit, that might work on some people.
This is what horde enemies are for. There is nothing special about specials, and nothing elite about elites, when they spawn in huge blobs. They become another trash enemy to farm toughness and ultimate CD reduction.
Specials and elites should test your personal aim, melee dueling skills and movement, reaction, etc and all your team aswell, not just your skill to spam nades, ultimates, or mashinng lmb.
In DT you don’t die from ragers or maulers, even from most of the specials. It’s some combo of disabler and fire, like net+fire nade. You can reskin those elites with fat poxwalkers and nothing will be changed.
Back in the days 2 shotgunners were an alarm moment for the team, cause if you not focusing them they will delete your teammate.
Now it’s - “oh yes, a blob of crushers and chaos spawn on our 2 mates, they should be fine, will cast the dome/voc for them, oh they killed it already, nevermind” and “yeap, vet just deleted a line of 8 shotgunners with plasma”
Most players vastly overestimate their own skill.
Many players want to play multiplayer games on a high difficulty, because playing on a lower difficulty, would mean to acknowledge that other players are better than they are.
Wanting the better rewards might also be a factor, but combating the greedy people by not giving players better rewards for beating more difficult content, is not a necessarily good idea.
Neither of the above would be an issue, if players were required to complete certain training missions, before they are allowed to enter the higher difficulties.
Yes.
There is no scoreboard telling people otherwise.
Also, there is no built in gatekeeping that keeps low lvl/low skill players out of high difficulty missions, aside from Auric being locked behind lvl 30, which is not a very high requirement at all.
If a difficulty is available, players will probably access it.
Unless the game tells them that they are not supposed to (by locking them out until they meet a reasonable requirement, or by showing them everyone’s stats at the end of the mission), or unless they constantly get kicked.
More enemies require more awareness.
Awareness is something that needs to be learned. New players have to think about almost every single input they make, and have terrible awareness.
Maybe there are too few enemies on the lowest difficulties, but the lower difficulties need a somewhat low number of enemies in order to be accessible.
That’s your personal opinion. They are just different types of enemies. It’s a fight of attrition between the players and the spawner, each enemy individually is just a trash mob, but a tide of them is coming at you trying to overwhelm you.
That type of challenging fight you can find it in PvP games.
That said, ofc there are some things in need of nerf.
No, that’s just how it works, increasing the ammount of specials an elites reducing their individual treat, means they are horde enemies now too. They are not scary anymore.
That’s why them being called as they are, that’s why there are audio cues, you need to pay attention to the individual enemy by design.
If there will be a new difficulty, what then should we have like 40 snipers at once? 200 ragers? Should we have cues for trappers wave now, lol? Like the ammount of snipers running around is just commicaly stupid sometimes.
I mean…no? Basicaly every l4d type of game was like that? Including DT at the start, till they buffed players so hard, the only way to counter balanced it was the ammount of enemies, cause enemies have no advanced combat mechanics like crusher aoe, or bulwark charge, ragers fury/possession mode, etc. Or there is no new enemies, like enemy psykers and witches, that would protect melee enemies with magic shields or something.
I personally do think less is more but with the current player power its pretty much impossible to make singular elites threatening without bloating their HP numbers to some stupid extreme which in turn hurts weapon viability.
While i agree that the first 3 difficulties are mostly ghost towns I also don’t really like how many specials/elites this game has to spam on the higher mods to make any dent in good parties progress.
Some extra abilities or variants would probably be welcome which are tied to certain difficulties.
This is exactly why I don’t like shock troops.
However, it seems that there are different opinions on this.
A lot love this condition, I suspect it has also a link to the talents that refresh your abilities while killing elite / specials (but not only).
This is exactly what I would want. A special should be… special!
I agree with you here.
I am tired of these 85 gunners… I would prefer 5 that are a real threat. Now you need to see 10 of them to be somewhat dangerous. And yes, with this quantity, they are a threat.
Honestly, I was one the guy that wanted the too strong things nerfed. It seems that Fatshark doesn’t agree about nerf. So now, I want that they buff everything to the power of a void strike staff or a zorona revolver.
I believe they should nuke CDR farm. That dependency of how the more enemies the more you spam ultimates is just unhealthy. There is no place for mistakes and risks currently, you don’t need to decide is it rly a perfect moment to use your ability.
Like you can almost use taunt vortex on ogryn, cause how shoves and stagger on hits farm it. Same with vet VoC - i just pushing bursters with it, cause too lazy to do it manulay, who cares, will farm it on the next wave. Same with relic or dome. Game can’t punish me for mindless spam.
They do, however they should admit they don’t like the idea of specials and elites in it’s core.
And the problem we will have - is why do we even need +dmg and dmg resist vs specials/elites? It will feel like something artificial. Cause all enemies are samey now, slightly different in attack patterns sure, but overall they are just killing with numbers, not cause you don’t know their special abilities, mechanics, timings and counterplays.
You will stop interracting with them on a deeper and closer level cause you can’t dodge 20 nets at the same time anyway, so spamming nades or ultimates will become the most efficient tool and the game will end in that spammy moba/mmorpg combat loop.
At the very least, traitor guard in dug-in positions should hold those positions and play as defensively as possible. Throwing grenades and staging partial retreats to positions further back (during which other traitor squads cover the retreating ones) as the players close in would be as rage-inducing to powergamers as it would be delightful for me, though I doubt we’ll ever get that. Right now, they, like the regular cultist shooters, are all too happy to abandon their positions and bayonet charge players around corners the moment the party just backs off and moves out of sight for a while.
Yeah cos it took up a mod slot instead of being a new difficulty. Other problem was that you couldn’t test anything cos no psyc.
It’s like if we would only have Heresy and Elite Resistance would make it Damnation, but it’s just normal damnation. Well, yeah Heresy STG is a lot harder than normal Damnation.
BTW, FS could just make a new difficulty with higher breakpoint and more damage. Breakpoint could be pushed a bit higher and precision and heavy weapons would still feeling alright, but that wouldn’t fix even half the stuff that makes the game easy now.