But that does back up what I just said. “You can do only melee or only ranged if you want” means that it is clearly factored in with the Game Design.
The game has to be able to support this and clearly it does, because tons of players play that way.
Darktide allows you to play melee only, ranged only or hybrid, although the hybrid playstyle is clearly encouraged by Blessings, Items and Talents alike.
Well first off, the only guns with a semi-infinite ammo pool right now are weapons, that otherwise have an ordinary performance in line with melee weapons. Namely the Lasguns.
Secondly, why not? They could be. Balance in guns doesn’t have to center around the ammo itself, since there are so many other factors.
What makes Flamer and Bolter balanced aside from the ammo factor (that is currently present) is also their slow move, reload and wielding speed.
In the case of the flamer you have limited range, in the case of Bolter mediocre accuracy with weapon sway.
There are games out there where there is an infinite ammo pool to draw from and they balance their options entirely around such factors.
Thanks for linking this. I acknowledge that this seemed to be their idea at first. Interestingly, their vision must have changed then OR they compromised on their own ideas intentionally early on.
From the thread of the talent deep dive in regards to the Zealot, we got this tidbit here:
“The original class [The Zealot] was designed to showcase the melee gameplay and provide a familiar home for our Vermintide veterans. Equipped with a stun grenade and a charge ability, it allowed for an aggressive get-stuck-in melee play style that could bypass the ranged combat and lock the heretics in glorious melee combat.”
Source: Talent Trees Deep Dive
We get two interesting revelations from that post:
- The Zealot as a class was intended to feel familiar to Vermintide players.
- The Zealot was intended to work fully in melee without any ranged options.
It follows by logic, that a game with a full melee option also offers a full ranged option, unless you do have a brawler game on your hand to begin with.
Note the use of language, too. Bypass the ranged combat. To bypass something is a very strong indication of making something completely ignored, circumventing it.
I see what you’re thinking and I understand why you are thinking it.
This is down to the headspace you have (been encouraged to) create/d, by seeing a lot of media with melee fighters called warriors. There is also the historic use of the word and it’s association.
Back in the day, wars were mostly fight in melee. And warrior is an old term. Thus the suggestion of the melee warrior with a sword and shield pops into the mind. However, this is not the true meaning of the word, just the association by proxy with it.
This is really interesting. A warrior in of itself has actually no specialization. The term simply marks a person as a combatant, someone who fights, possibly in a war.
The base root of the term WARrior is contained within. It also has no further qualifiers.
A peasant, who defends his home as it gets invaded by a foreign army, becomes a warrior by association for he has now fought in the war, drafted or not.
Compare with a soldier, who must be in service of a lord or institution to be branded by the term.
There is counter-examples to the melee warrior staple. They come up more rarely, but they do exist.
Summary
TL;DR on this segment: Calling the Veteran a warrior is:
→ linguistically accurate
→ does not signal a specialization in any field of combat
→ signals that he fights in a war (which the Warhammer universe provides)