Haven’t seen this discussed yet. They now explode whenever you push them once.
I understand they have been a cause of frustration for a long time because how unreliable they where, but I feel this is not the solution. Pushing them at the right time always felt good and satisfying, and was one of those things that contributed greatly to the awesome “gameplay dance” Darktide has.
Now you just run/walk towards them and push them once. Done.
I hope this is a band-aid and they are looking to make them more reliable in general.
I feel like that’s how it should work. Burster getting a second chance to bomb ya from reacting to the push by sliding along the ground felt like an inconsistent bug.
When the ticking became higher pitched (or they launch at you) and you pushed them, they fell back and exploded. If you pushed too early, they just fell back and flopped on the ground. That’s how it was intended to work before the patch, problem was they would sometimes still flop around on the ground after you got the timing right.
I would prefer the way it worked, but with more consistency.
i personally had a lot of fun pushing them before they let go of the button, that way you could push them into your team or move them off ledges or into a poxhound wave. pretty gimmicky but it was fun
i can see why people might be annoyed at it not exploding you push too early but that was kinda meant to be the timing element so it kinda dumbs interacting with them down a little. maybe for the better, maybe not, idk yet
thematically it made more sense before, they let go of the button when they jump you so they wouldn’t explode if you just randomly push them (since they’d still hold onto the button)
Yeah I agree. It’s weird. The original way they behaved was a lot better, added a sense of unpredictability. New change only serves to make the game easier for noobs lol.
for what it’s worth i never felt it was unpredictable. you can hear when they pull the trigger so it felt consistent to me.
it created situations where if you’re just panic pushing into a crowd, it’s not exploding the poxburster. it created the dangerous situation of having a poxburster behind the stuff you’re fighting that is not exploded because you messed up the timing.
the new dynamic doesnt have that anymore you can spam push into a crowd and they pop.
not sure this particular special needed to be dumbed down in this way. i found the old way compelling. i might change my mind though, maybe it feels good
We definitely did lose a fun minigame in poxburster hot potato. Spamming pushes on a stunned burster passing it around was hilarious.
But at the same time pushing them when last alive and them not detonating made no sense and really added a lot of randomness to something already fracked with randomness. Let me deal with all the other nonsense, this on top could really kark you over at the worst times (like in chokepoints).
One weird quirk of the change is that they seem to switch targets less frequently than I’m used to. They’ll target a teammate but I’m closer/in better position to deal with the burster and go to push but the burster never aggros to me. Because I don’t get aggro either I’m unable to connect a push because the burster is just moving too quickly away from me or the push becomes awkward to do because I’m shoving into teammates.
This is 100% a good change and one that has been asked for many times. Poxbursters very often just target random people and then run past you to get to them. That behavior is probably a glitch but it is extremely uninteractive and usually results in someone eating the pox burster because it will just get pushed into someone. Though bursters just in general are probably the most broken and weird part of the game. Not that they are hard to counter 90% of the time, but then they can pull some things that are completely unreasonable. Examples: Fix frustrating and unfair elements with pox bursters (and also barrels)
This is just a good change that makes them more consistent and far less annoying. Its not like they took much skill to deal with in the first place anyways. Honestly I didn’t even know you could push a pox burster too early, that has literally never happened to me.
I respect your opinion on this topic, but in the 2 videos you linked you can clearly hear them before they explode.
That’s not to say they don’t/didn’t have their issues. Ideally I’d like to see all the bugs and unreliability (the random targeting like you said, and them not exploding when they should as examples) fixed and this change to be reversed.
This feels more like a band-aid than a good, well thought-out change.
For pox bursters attacking around corners, Yes you can hear them but by the time they are visible pushing them is impractical. You can technically push them through the wall but it depends on what angle they are approaching from and how far away you are from the corner, overall its usually pretty uninteractive.
For pushing them while they are behind a crusher hoard the issue comes into play with how close you need to be to push the bursters. If you dodge back without pushing them they just hit you, and if you are trying to fight a bunch of crushers who will instantly kill you if you dont dodge at exact moments it becomes a problem. Bursters being able to just walk through enemies and hit is pretty unreasonable when fighting certain types of enemies. Its not usually impossible but with very bad luck on enemy attack timings it can be pretty close to impossible.
Yeah ideally they would just fix the targeting issue and always have pox bursters go after the nearest player to avoid the issue. But I imagine its a issue with how enemy targeting works in general and is probably hard to fix without a complete overhaul of the system. I don’t know exactly what the issue is, but if it was simple to fix I imagine they would have fixed it by now considering it has been a issue since launch and has been reported many times.
As it is id rather they do this then nothing basically.
Fair points, and I don’t know why I started to defend the bursters behavior in those videos. I’ve seen them do unfair stuff myself. Wanted to edit it out, but you replied already haha. Apologies. Guess my train of thought about it was that that behavior is not limited to bursters, dogs and nets also ignore collision. But yeah, doesn’t make it okay.
Good? Not sure, I don’t like that they cant be pushed through objects now.
It’s probably a side effect, or intentional to them not jumping around corners.
Currently the changes are negative because I’m used to push them through objects.
I guess I’ll adapt.
Edit: In meatgrinder I can push them through the pillars. I don’t know then. I’ve been unable to push poxburster a lot since patch, not sure what specifically changed, but the patch has not been an overall improvement in their behavior.
I feel like the change made them feel more counterintuitive again, it’s a lot easier for them to go off in a bad spot now. At least that’s my impression.
It also hasn’t addressed the main issue which is when they lock on to a target that isn’t the closest (or worse, a bot) and stay locked on and you can’t push or stop them at all despite being closer.
i also noticed this, specifically when you hit them with a cleavey attack they used to just fall to the side, since they didn’t light the fuse yet. now they also fall to the side but explode immediately, making it extremely hard to react at times.
it alos feels like they messed with their audio priority. i used to hear bursters very consistently but when they don’t target me i tend not to hear them anymore. it made me blow up bursters in teammates faces quite a few times so far