Too many overpowered screen wiping builds

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
41

Thing I play nowadays is Arc Raiders… have been killed yesterday by behind while I was busy fighting a machine :enraged_face:

When I return Darktide, I play no more than one game before thinking that this game is now in an absolutely wrong state.
The problem is not only these builds too strong. This is also all these weapons that have no purpose. And the fact that monstrosities last few seconds, elites (and specials) are insta killed and that bring bonus to players…
There’s a lot of time that this game has lost its spirit. And, sorry for this, I really have no hope that they can correct the situation because it has gone way too far.

42

The game absolutely needs rebalancing, but frankly I don’t think they will bother to do it. We’ll see a few nerfs, a few buffs, to bring things closer together in power, but to actually reduce player power? Nah. It would be a massive amount of work for the devs, it would absolutely cause backlash by a segment of the community who will feel like it sucks now. And it won’t bring in more revenue. The game made NEED it, but it’s not in the interest of the devs.

If we can just get a few targeted nerfs to the things that demolish everything, we’d be in a better spot. Flame Staff, Tox, Rampage, Kraks, and Boom Bringer. My suggestions would be (and this is where to start):
Flame Staff - Reduce how long it lasts and reduce range. If necessary reduce burn stack rate.

Tox - Severely cut its DPS and reduce it significantly against at least SOME armor types. Unyielding, Carapace, at least.

Rampage - Bring back the downsides of the ability after it ends. Perhaps when activated you get a debuff to take more damage if hit. Reduce its function against armor, because it just seems to shred everything regardless of armor type.

Kraks - Reduce max count by 1, reduce odds of getting one back when an Elite dies.

Boom Bringer - Reduce max count by 1, make it so grenade boxes refill only 1 use.

Dueling Sword - Just reduce its damage multipliers so its headshots are good but not busted.

I doubt these would solve all the problems of these weapons, but they’d be a start and I think are more reasonable to expect.

I would frankly hope that we get more enemies as well that are designed to make the combat scenarios more complex and counter some of our tools. Like . . . please just bring daemonic enemies into the game. Plaguebearers, Nurglings, etc. It’s honestly weird we haven’t seen them yet. We ARE fighting Nurgle, right? We’re already seeing and killing Beasts of Nurgle and giant sand daemons that can infest entire factories.

Quote for truth. Skill trees really don’t belong in a game like this.

43

In order to not unnecessarily punish lower difficulties I’d probably go the survivalist route and add a brief (like 2-3 seconds) cooldown. Mostly so you’re not overly rewarded for a Psyker in your vicinity chain killing 10+ elites with a perilous combustion cascade or a Scum boom bringer shot or any other mass elite killing equivalent.

44

Yeah, you’re right, that’s a good suggestion.

45

I think I want a modifier which ignores all players’ Blessings, Talents and Perks. If one mission was always available at the mission select screen with that modifier I would play it often, though probably not at high difficulty levels :), and be happy.

(I also think Smite should be an ability, not a blitz, with a short duration and long cool down.)

46

That does happen to me periodically in Auric, although on Western EU servers, at the times I usually play, it is quite rare. But just yesterday I had a Rampage Scum on my team (I was playing IJ Zealot with dueling sword) who must have had at least as many hours as me, and boy was it a race to get a kill, he was so fast at deleting everything.

The strength disparity between the “best” builds (meta stuff and all), and the average run-of-the-mill stuff is so enormous, your Auric experience can go from walk-in-the-park to unbearable slog depending on your QP run. It’s unpredictable, that’s for sure.

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I always love this scene…

49

epic coal when can’t solo clutch anymore in auric due to people using broken things and nobody going down since the game is just trivialized by broken and trivial things

50

I had the exact same thing happen in multiple games yesterday - the same Rampage Hive Scum, who rushed ahead of the team. He was skilled, he would come back to help downed people. But he killed everything. For the first 30~ seconds of actual combat I did not get a kill because I would hit something, and then he would zip in and finish it before my Ogryn could even get a second attack off. This class is the single most broken melee class they have ever made. Even Zealot at its peak was not this extreme. Yesterday I also started to see MULTIPLE Rampage Scum in games more often. People are flocking to it because it does do melee combat, but it’s also insanely good at it.

It’s only compounded by the fact that every Rampage Scum seems to run Needle Gun and either Tox Bomb or Boom Bringer. During that same match yesterday with my Ogryn, I at one point was face to face with a whole wave of a horde coming over a wall, by myself. I was happy because I’d actually get to bonk to my heart’s content . . . and then a tox bomb comes sailing in and killed all of them in a second or two. Meanwhile, he was off soloing another wave in melee.

51

You didn’t get the sarcasm

I’m not questioning the efficacy of melee builds, i’m pointing at the garbage Fatshark servers

52

when scum came out, people complained that boombringer was lackluster compared to chem bombs that disintegrated anything.
so instead of bringing chem bombs down to zealot’s fire grenade, fatshark buffed boombringer to the level of chem bombs, and we could wipe 10 crushers in 1 shot.

it’s like people refuse to understand that either you reign in such power, or need carapace spam to counter it.

53

Boom Bringer was pretty sub-par at first, but I think it’s power is okay IF it’s properly limited. Otherwise I don’t think it’s really differentiated enough from things like Kraks. The problem is only compounded with the talent that lets you carry +1.

If I were balancing DT, I’d leave its damage as-is, reduce the base count to 2 and remove the +1 'nade talent. Then make it so grenade ammo pickups only restored one use for it.

54

I had an idea (unlikely feasible), but logical. Let’s have 5 BBs by default. 6 with talent. And 8 with a +2 blitz mission. Basically, a lot. But they shouldn’t be replenished with grenade crates. Seriously, it’s a small crate with grenades (yes, even ogryn nuke fits inside, because it’s just one). And the bazooka is a huge disposable tube - it drops to the ground after firing. I never thought that this corresponded to the meaning of “grenade” in the game, but more like a full-fledged ultimate weapon

55

well, yes, either make it less powerful per shot but keep the amount, or keep the power but limit the amount of shots. the latter should make people think more when to use their precious resource.

56

I think the best way to tackle the OP build issue, and the balance issue at the same time would be to make armour types way more resilient to non-catered weapons/nodes/blessings. A total overhaul with how armour works, so that you have to make genuine choices (and sacrifices!) on builds.

So when building your character skill tree and weapon build you would have to decide which armour types you want to either focus on or be kind of meh against all of them. But the armour types need to have much bigger impact than they currently do for this to take effect.

I know the game tries to do this already but it doesn’t actually manage it at all.

e.g. Like hitting infested armour should be almost like hitting through carapace if you didn’t have any blessings or nodes at all. Whereas someone could cut through them like butter if they had the right perks, but then perhaps they had to sacrifice flak which makes flak enemies much scarier to that individual.

Essentially, make armour type meaningful. So the threat of an enemy type can be totally altered by skills/blessings.

It would force more teamwork at higher difficulties but that’s kinda the point of a co-op game right?

Make it so no 1 build can be good at everything.

Player defence could also be woven into this - where you could choose which enemies can’t hurt you as much, but it would really increase damage from enemies you’ve not chosen.

Make skill trees meaningful. Tailor your character and weapons with true consequences.

57

The game isn’t and shouldn’t be more complex than it is - the armour/health types already are simplified enough where there is design space for balancing certain things more-or-less if necessary, and the armour system to “make sense” based on visuals of what one is seeing appended to a breed (enemy) of sorts.

And even then most builds will gravitate toward enhancing damaging capabilities against enemies the weapons are typically strong against: Infested and Unarmored have universally good damage modifiers on most weapons - and are appended to relatively weak (health or mass-wise; or both) - so most weapons don’t need to specialize in them - and I would wager that’s working as intended, since Unarmored and Infested are the “lowest” tiers of armor in the game; Flak and Maniac being “medium”, and Carapace/Unyielding being “heavy”. It is why rending only affect the latter four - with varied ADMs across all weapons - but not the “lowest” types of armor, against which - again - most weapons are effective, unless it’s enhanced by other higher-type armor.

Breeds with “low” armor types aren’t meant to be dangerous by themselves, but their danger factor rises quite significantly when their mass is covered by something bigger and/or harder to cleave and individually more dangerous. It is also why complex combat situations are fun to tackle - there are decisions to be taken what to take out first to disarm a group of enemies.

All of which doesn’t matter if we consider weapons with infinite cleave alongside high damage output, like flamer-type weapons or certain explosives, or effects (Soulblaze, Chem toxin).

There is no need to complicate the armour system at all - it serves its purpose rather well for what it needs for creating complexity in mixed-armor combat situations, but is completely ignored by certain weapons or abilities, which is where most of the issues lay.

58

Sorry but I strongly disagree with almost all of this.

Whats the point in armour options if only 1 armour type is a “must have” perk. Everyone picks Carapace because the others are all but meaningless in comparison. The game is practically binary in it’s current approach…does enemy have carapace? yes or no? Of course i’m over-simplifying but really, not by much at the end of the day.

As for making it “complicated”…lol you must be kidding right? The game is already immeasurably complex, but with very little pay off after all the hours of tinkering. What I am suggesting is simply giving weight to the existing choices - a system that gives reason to that tinkering.

You’re not understanding my point. I don’t think cleave necessarily needs to affected. When I used infected as an example, I meant purely in ‘effectiveness’, rather than an identical reaction. Just think of it in terms of HP pools on enemies that you get to adjust depending on your loadout choices. In simple terms that’s all it is. You’d just be choosing which enemies you are good against…which is what the game already does but with barely any real consequences (thus making carapace the essential option…meaning no real options at all).

So in short, the armour system already exists but it’s practically pointless in it’s current form.

These things WOULD matter if suddenly the soullblaze was much less effectual agaisnt some enemies. If the psycher had to choose which armour types their character was effective against then yes it would be a drasticly different scenario.

59

Which clashes with the design of the devs - they do compose gameplay elements and story-telling elements together, and if you would suddenly have a common enemy type with near-impervious skin unless your weapon is thrice blessed, without a certain explanation, you would not be fulfilling certain design goals.

I don’t know what these are in specifics, but I seem to have a good guess at they might be; say by one of FS directors - Viktor Magnuson - answering on his interview with Jeficus - i.e., that they - FS - want to make the best melee-combat based game on the market, and that statement has some implications to what’s in the game and what the devs have already worked out.

And let me use a more graphic example - if your thrice blessed Power maul on Ogryn is not wallopping a Groaner - a basic enemy - across the room with a power attack by the virtue of the maul being thrice-blessed-but-not-specifically-against-weak-as-heck-dudes, then you are not telling a story Fatshark wants to tell. That is why I’m disagreeing on the “complication” front.

I don’t see this holding ground with people frequently picking between Flak and Unyielding, rarely Carapace and sometimes Maniac; with ranged weapons following largely the same rule, only with Carapace being rarer - on top of most ranged weapons being trash against Carapace unless rending is involved. Which means that basically 4/6 options are usable; and I could see someone making an argument for taking Unarmoured on certain weapons (easier bomber kills) or Infected (easier dog kills over distance; albeit very niche/dogs are weak to melee attacks). Let’s expand on this in the next take:

FS will not do it, because the current values were tailored to the game since the very release (even with “old” enemy health values in mind; some of these are, dare I type it, weaker than they should be right now /nsrs). Changing it now - alongside many other things that would involve certain and possibly many things being weaker against certain types of armour according to your idea, is risky. Very risky. Fatshark doesn’t do risky - they or any other company cannot afford losing people playing their game to risky changes and reworks. Pissing off potentially a huge portion of Psyker community is not ideal.

Also, what would you do with weapons that inherently do not support Soulblaze - which is basically any weapon that isn’t Inferno staff? If you don’t have a solution for that, making soulblaze weaker on say, Voidblast staff, is also very risky, because you may just kill an entire playstyle - this is an effect enabled by a blessing, and weapons only have two of those.

People are sometimes also taking Carapace on Flamers - and this alludes to another frequent balance dispute, about Uncanny strike blessing passing its global rending value to other effects, such as DoTs, which ignores the only inherent weakness of DoTs (bar Chem toxin).

Say you make the base damage or the ADMs of Soulblaze weaker - it will not matter if people will exploit Uncanny strike still, unless that is also changed; and changing just US is fairly smaller in scope and very impactful, but also very necessary to reign in the silliness of Inferno’s power at present. It seems more appropriate than fundementally reworking one of the Damage-over-time effects that defines an entire playstyle of a class, no?

My reply also has limited scope of which parts of your idea it debunks, but the two main counter-arguments to it I have already brought up indirectly - massive reworks are unlikely to happen due to consequences for the game’s lifecycle and/or support, and story-telling elements will be fundamental to the practical design; which unless satisfied, probably won’t happen, either.