Thoughts on Snipers and Ventilation Purge Feedback

Snipers idle at random doors across the map, and take up specialist spawn spots. This prevents anything else from spawning quite often in the new Ventilation Purge. While I have no insight on the complicated nature of the sniper’s spawn, I assume the director has a really hard time finding conditions in which it wants to turn the sniper aggressive and engage the players.

This unfortunately trivializes the Ventilation Purge mission condition to an insane degree, and removes almost all of the normal challenges players face in Darktide. While the reduction to visibility for AI is very welcome and makes encountering rooms of shooters bearable, there are some unique circumstances where this backfires.

Consignment Yard is a particular mission where enemies will exist inside the arena but won’t be “activated” and engage the players due to their reduced visibility. This means they remain idle, despite being required for purging in order to finish the mission objective. I initially assumed it was because of the snipers idling across the map, but eventually we encountered loitering scabs after a few minutes and were finally able to complete the mission. So far this is just anecdotal. I’ve only completed this map/condition combo once.

A unique sniper variant exclusive to the Ventilation Purge condition would be welcome, much like Hunting Grounds. My biggest interest in this variant is that they can’t be detected with veteran’s Volley Fire, effectively keeping them “invisible” and challenging as a result. I assume the complication here is removing their specialist classification so they can’t be picked up, much like scab stalkers aren’t considered “ranged enemies.” I don’t have any insight on how this works though, so I don’t know if it’s really a limitation or not.