Toughness already had such a tiny role, esp. in herasy/damnation, but it did have a role, and many traits/feats synergize around it.
This change to allow hp dmg no matter what from all melee is dumbfoundingly misguided. There is no temp-hp, there is no hp regen like v1/2. Your toughness management is your only thin-veil of protection. Even the entire core gameplay mechanic of cohesion revolves around toughness.
How could they come to the conclusion that this was the proper way forward?
This change goes against so many already developed core aspects of the game.
Agreed, it is really confusing how so many anti-player, anti-fun mechanical changes are popping up. I want the game to be hard, not miserable! Chip damage destroys so many of the gameplay decisions the rest of the game are pointing the player toward, and does it in a completely opaque confusing way.
I had to go to reddit to figure out why my level 30 character was just falling over with full toughness. That’s a pretty clear indication that you’re misleading your players.
Theres nothing worse than surviving with zealots cheat death mechanic, only to die with 140 toughness because a single pox walker bonked you from behind after spawning behind you.
And its a case where the tutorial lies, the tutorial says toughness protects from hp damage and must be depleted first.
i agree, i feel Toughness bleedthrough is so much counter intuitive and stupid, at this point just ignore having toughness, if you think that doesn’t exist you can accept the situation.
Every time I see someone else post one of these my heart warms a little. It’s such an awful mechanic and they have… less than a week to fix it and everything else.
I guess it was a little much to hope that Fatshark had at least learned from the gameplay design of their previous games, but maybe it was different teams that never talked to each other working on Vermintide and Darktide.
Overall, I think it’s a good mechanic and useful for maintaining the pace of attrition in the game. It makes medi-packs valuable and increases the need to dodge, block, and push.
However, Zealot and possibly Ogryn may need another tool to mitigate it so that they don’t feel too oppressed by it. Something like blocking all bleedthrough when above X% toughness, regenerating up to Y% health over time/when out of combat, or even allowing a regenerating pool of bleedthrough blocking.
That sounds like a pretty poor bandaid for a system that the TUTORIAL ITSELF tells you works one way, and then the game forces to work completely differently.
Sorry, but toughness bleedthrough needs to go. CORRUPTION is already an attrition mechanic. Pox anything generates corruption, and so do grimoires. It invalidates medi-packs as is. Taking damage because your toughness (which is already pathetically small compared to max HP), went down is all the incentive you need for medi-packs.
Having a double up on attrition-type mechanics isn’t good gameplay. It’s frustrating.
So glad I’m not alone thinking this was a dumb change. I swear, it feels like the devs are trying to convince me to refund or something. While the optimization is getting better, it feels like the game is getting worse/going backwards in all other respects . . . which, considering they have less than a week before launch, is incredibly worrying and depressing
Agreed, it’s awful. Try closing with a single gunner dreg with a melee weapon, you will get an epileptic fit as the screen shakes super hard because you take 2 damage to HP.
Toughness is a weird mistress. I’m not for or against bleed through.
on one hand, toughness damage doesn’t equal HP damage and regenerates quickly. if bleed through didn’t happen then it would be significantly much harder to die and players would see very little reason to use the tools at hand such as dodging, pushing, or blocking. This makes hordes significantly less threatening, and makes melee units in general less threatening. Taking out all tension of being low HP if you’re in a good spot and be less annoying to die due to a random melee swing.
On the other hand, Bleed through forces one to keep control of the area you’re in, using the tools you have to reduce/evade damage. It makes Low hp significantly more of an issue and pucker factor and makes melee units a reasonable threat to the point hordes can kill you fast. It forces a player to be on their toes at all times and not lower their guard, especially at higher difficulties. It’s annoying to think you’re clear and get hit by a rando poxwalker, but, that’s more of an issue of the game not giving you sound cues.
TLDR; there’s more pros for keeping the bleedthrough then cons. seems to me that Zealot and ogryn needs something in their kit to remove or counter bleedthrough.
Defending this mechanic by saying it’ll make melee easier is not 100% valid, IMO. There are other levers to activate to balance melee and ranged combat that do not involve frustrating, obscure mechanics that the tutorial doesn’t even tell you about.
(VT2 doesn’t have bleed-through-temp-HP damage and nobody on this forum has ever suggested adding that. That’s solved by enemies doing massive damage on higher difficulties.)
Maybe a good compromise would be to stop bleedthrough with higher toughness, blocking it fully if you are at max
That might be a lot less frustrating already, as I myself find it a bit obnoxious especially on damnation where it becomes too much imo
Are you seriously saying “bleedthrough is obnoxious i’d rather die in two hits from a random clanrat” ?
Zealot needs something to deal with it like a toughness threshold before they take HP damage, and they need to be a bit more subtle with popping enemies in your back out of thin air
i didn’t say it would make JUST melee easier, it would make EVERYTHING easier. it makes melee enemies less threatening overall. If getting hit doesn’t do anything to your HP while aiming a gun, then you’d ignore that one pox walker and just shoot some elites before focusing on the pox walker. By having bleed through, Pox walker suddenly is an immediate threat as it can kill you now.
But getting hit in melee while having a ranged weapon out already stuns you briefly… This is adding insult to injury, in a way. Melee enemies swarming would still be obviously dangerous. And having to bat away a mosquito in your back still wastes your time since switching isn’t instant.
What if Zealot had no bleedthrough when above X% toughness and with melee weapon out (but still take it normally if hit with a ranged weapon out)?
And Ogryn could have it tied to Coherence for example, if you have a minimum of 2 stacks of Coherence you take no bleedthrough damage with a melee weapon out as Ogryn.
