This is going to be a long one, but I hope you’ll bare with me. After playing exclusively on Damnation with Ogryn and Psyker, I have come to the conclusion that ranged enemies in this game are probably its biggest issue, and I entertain that this issue can only be handled with serious reworks.
I think we can all agree that ranged enemies, for a major part, are not working as intended when it comes to the ranged-melee-interaction-loop. This IS a part of the issue, but as I will show, even it that did work, the ranged combat mechanics and the way they are implemented are deeply flawed on a conceptual level, not only in their execution.
Now, before I start laying out my bona fides, just for the few people out there who might want to throw this one out at me to simply “Git gud lol”, like I’ve stated, I play Damnation exclusively, and only with randoms at that, and we are getting to the point where the vast majority of people that QP for Heresy and above will have both the equipment as well as the skill to handle themselves on higher difficulty. While the game forces teamply alot more than VT2 (“clutching” is alot harder, mainly due to wonky mechanics and some questionable design choice, but that’s beside the issue), I’d go as far and say that for a reasonably well-coordinated team, Heresy is, by and large, no more difficult than Legend difficulty on VT2. I win the absolute majority of my rounds, with the game pulling its infamous antics accounting for the losses.
Part of those shenannigans are, apart from those good old 360° Mutants, Hounds or Trapper nets, the way ranged enemies behave and interact with the player, especially ranged mobs. It is not, I cannot stress this enough, a matter of “getting good”. You can get good at a bad game, you can adapt to its quirks and weirdness, and the artificial and unnatural increase in difficult that results from it. Being able to “deal with it” is not the mark of a good game.
Like I’ve stated, I think I have identified some key components as to why the ranged combat in this game is not only objectifiably bad, it is so on a very core level. These components are as follows:
I. Ranged Enemies shooting into Melee
Let’s address the biggest elephant in the room before anything else: Ranged enemies shooting you in melee range. I think we can agree at least so some extent that this aspect is, at least in some degree, not working as intended. Ranged enemies are very often outright refusing to engage you in melee combat, even though they are standing right next to you. That is an issue that still needs fixing, but even if fixed, the way ranged damage works, it would still be a very flawed design, for this very reason: Ranged enemies have perfect accuracy, a SINGLE ranged enemy can drain your toughness in seconds, and ranged damage staggers you. A single ranged enemy that pops up out of nowhere can disrupt your ability to defend yourself in melee combat while engaged with a horde, multiple hostiles or a bunch of bigger enemies, before you can do anything about it. You are stuck in a horde, doing CC and clear, and a stray grunt draws the bead on you from the other side of the map. Weapon deployment is, even for classes that are not Ogryn, atrociously slow. Using your ranged weapon while engaged in melee is also ALOT more dangerous than it is in VT2 - and that single burst that just depleted your toughness not only leaves you open for punishing melee damage from the horde you are dealing with, it leaves you defenseless because of the stagger. It disrupts your defense, your dodge, and your attack at the same time. All that from a single regular enemy. Having this capability to pose a danger of such magnitude should be reserved to special enemies, not mobs. The meme that the true boss enemy in this game is a bunch of regular ranged enemies is very much true.
Remember how hated Beastmen Archers were when WoM dropped in VT2, because you could only block their projectiles with a shield? People complained that a single stray arrow from an archer could result in their demise, because it staggered you for a moment, interrupting your melee flow and your ability to defend yourself. When the game spammed you with archers, you had to dispatch them as quickly as possible, which is someties easier said than done due to their positioning. This is still an issue today, but at least you can now block their arrows with any weapon.
So, this was also an issue in VT2. You could see pretty quickly that ranged enemies like this needed to be handed very carefully with their implementation, or you’d risk disrupting the flow of your whole combat system. Archers didn’t and still don’t blend well into the mix. Being hit and staggered for half a second is still frustrating and, quite frankly, still too harsh a punishment considering these are weak mobs, but you can deal with them.
You know why you can deal with them? Because a.) They don’t have perfect accuracy, quite the contrary, they will miss more often than they hit, and b) you can actively engage them in melee combat and force them to stop pelting you with their projectiles. Not only is their switch to melee very reliably and quick, they will opt out of any shooting animation they are currently in and switch to their melee weapon. This not only gives you an incentive to charge them to diffuse the situation, it gives you a fair chance to use the game’s mechanics to your advantage. The weapon switching is somewhat longwinded, locks them in place and leaves them open for a free hit - and they are also very weak in melee combat to begin with. That is, at least given the overall circumstances, good game design, because it gives you a very clear mechanical instruction how to solve the problem: Ranged enemy is dangerous from range, but weak in melee, so find a way to engage them in melee and the game rewards you for your initiative by making them alot easier to deal with in melee and even giving you some “free shots”. After all, that’s what they had when they engaged you, too.
Now imagine Beastmen Archers having perfect accuracy, hitting every shot they take. Imagine them shooting one arrow every two seconds, and each arrow eats, let’s say, 20% of your health. If you engage them in melee, they will still shoot one last arrow at you before switching to melee, staggering you and thus, making you incapable of capitalizing on their weapon switching. Oh, and of course the other archers standing 10 feet away would still be shooting at you. Lastly, the thing with you being able to block their arrows with only a shield is back again!
People would have been outraged if archers worked like that. Rightfully so! It disrupts the flow of the game.
Oh, I hear your say, but this game is a different setting, with much more of a focus on ranged combat. You are not supposed to charge into every group of enemies with your swords drawn, you need more of a methodical approach. Cover, flanking, all that stuff.
Maybe so, but these mechanics are, likewise, not capable of providing this gaming experience.
II. Perfect Accuracy, Cover and Hitboxes
Simply put: This game does not have a cover system. It has nothing. It has enemies that can either hit you or they can’t, which is simply determined by whether they have line of sight to your hitbox. If they do, they hit you. If they can hit you or not, you can only find out once it is too late. This results in too many situations where you can hardly see what is hitting you (or can’t see it at all), because you are ducking behind what you thought was cover, only to find out that a ranged enemy hits you through a miniscule hole in the geometry. They can also hit you through solid objecty very often, which results in almost comical situations where they start their shooting animation while you are still “in cover” and the moment you poke your head out to engage them, you get blasted in the face.
Them having perfect accuracy over ANY distance the game considers a fair engagement distance also means that they are not only much more capable than your characters are, it also means that cover often works against you. If partial cover does not reduce their accuracy but hinders your vision, you might as well not be in cover to begin with. It also doesn’t help that your hitbox is ALOT larger than what your field of view would suggest. If one inch of your body pokes out, they can hit you for full damage. Distance and how much of your body is actually visible to them is irrelevant. In open areas, this is an absolute nightmare, because you need to have impeccable map-knowledge to know (or at least guess) what cover MIGHT provide you with protection in the given situation, relative to your own position and that of your enemies.
While we are at it: there are also simply too many parts in some of the levels’ geometry where you are mechanically incapable of shooting enemies, while they still can shoot at you. A good way to test this out is with Psyker: If you can’t lock on with BB, you also cannot shoot them (most of the time, anyway). This is often the case when there is alot of vertical distance between you and your enemies. They can shoot you through scaffoldings, stairs, fences, but you cannot hit them from where you are.
III. Visibility
Speaking of not being able to hit them, one last aspect is indeed their lack of visbility in front of most backgrounds. Sometimes, it is very hard to see ranged enemies ducking behind cover (from which they can hit you with perfect accuracy, mind you), and many times, you need to wait for the red “incoming damage” indicator to even know where they are.
Overall, the ranged combat is just needlessly frustrating and clunky. I don’t really know how one can redeem it at this point, but if it stays that way, I don’t think people will stick around. It is simply very poorly designed.