Trappers are Killjoys

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
1

I have over 1k hours in this game, and I’m trying to get back into after a long break. However the trappers are seriously making this game not fun. Losing a match because a trapper gets you with a trick shot through a dense crowd, or around a corner, and your team instantly falls apart cuz pugging, is seriously not fun. Getting launched into the abyss by a barrel is funny, going down swinging in a fight with a bunch of crushers and maulers is exciting, but getting netted because there wasn’t enough room to dodge slide as Ogryn is a lame way to lose HISTG Auric 20 minutes in.

Inb4 get gud

10 Likes
2

Honestly was debating on making another post like this yesterday when I just ran into this like 3 games in a row. You hit the nail on the head exactly.

Losing due to poor positioning or a lack of enemy control is annoying but you go ‘dang, I gotta get better at that next time’.

But trappers just aren’t fun, and so many runs that are just going so dang smoothly just immediately fail and lose just because they spawn to many trappers at once, or spawn one perfectly behind the wave, and you, the front liner, get immediately cooked and watch all the rest of your team that you thought were competent go down like flies as you realize ‘ohh, I was really doing that much huh?’.

And it’s just, so infuriating as you didn’t lose because you did something wrong or didn’t control the wave correctly, you lost because the game actively says straight to your face ‘the way you are playing the game is wrong’. Like, if you aren’t sitting 50 yards back constantly kitting the wave and having your head constantly turning 360 degrees you WILL get trappered by one that just spawned behind you you had no hope of reacting to, and then you just cry as your team doesn’t decide to help you and everyone just loses.

It takes all the agency away from the player and robs the game of one of it’s core gameplay loops. I heavily have to question myself every time I decide I want to play taunt/melee Ogryn or play Zealot as any playstyle besides gun/knife. If you don’t have the right weapon with exactly the right roll on it you physically don’t have the dodge half the time to get away from the trapper because you are actively pushing yourself into the wave to you know, control it? because you’re entire kit is designed around thriving in the carnage? Because you’d be totally fine doing that level of clear for a while and reacting to the other specials in turn appropriately but one single trapper and 5 poxwalkers got your number and you’re screwed?

It’s just, so friggen bad and I’ve made a hate letter post even longer than this one a while ago about them, and even at hour 800 I still feel this way.

Trappers are unfun game design, they are bad, there is nothing about them that feels good, and unlike dogs you can’t even argue the fact that this being a ‘shooter game’ makes it so that you can clear them off your team mates at any distance. If you are front lining the wave and get trappered you just die, and it never feels good. It never feels justified, it never feels like something YOU did wrong.

It always feels like the game is just actively ripping you out of it’s incredibly fun game-play loop just because screw you that’s why, and you just sob as you get kicked back to the long loading screen and get negative rewards just because you all died 20-30 minutes in just because the game decided you do.

No inherent mistakes, nothing to learn from, just ‘ohh the game spawned a trapper behind you mid swing and you lost, bad game go next’. It’s just such an immersion killer and there’s been so many nights I’ve either quite or gotten so close to quitting just because ‘ooh there goes another 30 minutes down the drain because this pile of actual waste just ruined another perfectly fine run, great, thank you, afheofhyeoah insert more colorful speech here as I throw my keyboard’.

Just,

  • Please just make trappers a mash to escape, this game is so fast paced now and so fluid in every other way, please please PLEASE just make trappers a mash to escape just PLEASSE stop making me feel like all you (fatshark) want me to do is uninstall because I’m once again on the ground flailing because I dare not pick Veteran/Psyker/Gun Ogryn and want to engage with your melee and dodge system with the tools YOU PLACED IN FRONT OF ME!
5 Likes
3

I actually agree. I made a post on the gameplay feedback board just a day ago saying that slide should count as a dodge to trapper nets and also trapper nets shouldn’t pass through dense crowds.

It’s unsportsman-like and damn unfun.

Trappers are good when the pace is slower or you’ve wondered off… But during a heavy battle they should be nowhere to be seen imo.

4 Likes
4

Very well said, it may be a skill issue but how trappers currently interact with other aspects of the game (they don’t) isn’t particularly fun or exciting after playing so much.

4 Likes
5

Untargetability is the only thing that makes disablers balanced in a horde shooter like darktide. Dogs and muties both give you untargetability. Even Chaos spawn and BoN do. The trapper is the only disabler in the entire game that doesn’t grant untargetability. This turns the trapper into an infinite cleave one shotting machine. Just make the trapper net behave like literally every other instance of disable in the game and it would be balanced, this isn’t be rocket science. What makes the trapper so different/superior from every other disabling unit in the game that warrants such absurdly preferential treatment? It’s so pathetic in all honesty, just a critical oversight that’s been discussed ad nauseum yet never addressed in any meaningful capacity.

5 Likes
6

Imho, trappers are basically completely fine since we can cancel their attack by hitting them with pretty much anything at the right time.
Also, their attack has such a clear sound cue, that you can quite easily evade it, without even looking at them (if you know their direction).

The only thing that should be looked at, is their ability to shoot through ogryn and through some walls.
Basically, instances where we have no way of shooting back at them.

When they are in a horde, we can still shoot them in the head, in order to cancel their attack, even if we have no space to dodge.
But when they are behind a bulwark or some other ogryn, we can not.
Why they should not be able to shoot through walls, i think is quite self explanatory.

9 Likes
7

This is all true for dogs as well. Again, what makes trappers deserves such absurdly preferential treatment to another disabler that does the exact same thing but is 100x less threatening. Just because?

1 Like
8

I would really like to see you spotting and instant killing a dog that is walking around in the middle of a horde.

1 Like
9

Kill? All you said was cancel their attack. A stiff breeze can cancel a dog leap.

3 Likes
10

by now the only annoyance trappers pose is in fact being amidst a horde without any wiggle room to perform a dodge, even if your muscle memory tells you exactly what window of opportunity you got.

not all weapons go through a horde to punish him from range, fair enough.

by now i kinda developed a “premonition” of when things can go south with a 60/40 chance or worse, so everytime i delve into a horde my ogryn brain plays a few frames ahead :“what if trapper appears here/there”

and like clockwork when she spawns its in the most inconvinient angle you can imagine whilst being literally stuck knee deep in heretics.

again, my gamble didn´t pay off, fair enough. from players perspective though it´d be quite rewarding as an ogryn to at least push them an inch to the side while dodging.

i mean mass-wise big meaty guy should push them by even letting him drop on the floor, so them being an immovable wall feels kinda odd having send them flying bullrushing a few moments ago.

2 Likes
11

Forgotten technology of the old ones. Dunno how they missed it considering ogryn is what Bardin is - class with a different model size
изображение

Imo, ogryn ability to farm toughness should be tuned down a bit and compensated with barge-alike passive archetype ability.

6 Likes
12

Let me tell the tale of How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Trapper:

get Spidey Sense
The End

1 Like
13

if someone finds a use for it, kudos.

personally saw it in a stream, looks awfully cluttered for my taste.
if anything i want to get rid of most ui stuff that takes away immersion not add to it.

sound cues are fine, not that i dont here them, so visually i wouldn´t do any different horde approach be it by sound or colored thingie on my screen.

if i could customize my ui freely (yep using a mod already) i´d have a tiny shortcut for team health as well as my own and be done with it. playing totally without one makes choosing medpack/ammo drop much more inefficient.

1 Like
14

I’ve quite often run around a wall, come face to face with one, and found a heavy overhead dagger strike to the head doesn’t stop them firing! You’d think that would make them blink, but no. That’s my main gripe with them: that at point blank you can’t dodge the net at all, so if you’ve got a knife in your hand at the time you’re done for.

But in general I agree with you. I also think they’re fine. I hear the spawn sound cue, and I’m instantly scanning the area ready to take them out. As a mechanic, it’s a good team check: are you near enough so your squad can pick you up? It takes less than a second to do, so if the squad go down, they were too spread out.

3 Likes
15

Is this really specific to trappers, or just going down in general? There is no way you are going to free the trap when the crusher overhead has already begun. At which point, the trapped disable itself has already been bypassed and it’s just a regular ol down. It turns out dying itself is a pretty good team check. And trappers force death, go figure.

2 Likes
16

The job of a disabler in darktide isn’t to instantly cause death, it’s to either temporarily or indefinitely remove player control over the character until dealt with. For this to be possible, you need to be alive and in control in the first place. Disablers literally can’t perform their intended function if the target just dies. We have hounds, mutants, and literal monstrosities all abiding by this exact design philosophy: they make you untargetable while dealing chip damage and preventing you from freely playing. Why does the dude that shoots a net do such a poor job as a disabler in comparison?

3 Likes
17

I don’t mind Trappers shooting through crowds because if they couldn’t, the enemy would be completely trivial without a complete redesign.

Shooting through solid objects is total horse**** though. If a single pixel of that net hits a wall, it should disappear. But no, 90% of a net can hit a wall or pillar and it’ll continue just fine. Nothing less than complete obstruction stops it.

2 Likes
18

Try this little trick and just do a lil side-dodge when you hear the “I’m tossing my trap-net” sound.
now you never get trapped ever again.

Other tricks, tag them so rest of team sees them.
Or just kill them before they even becomes a threat.

2 Likes
19

Come on now, they are not worse than barrels. A barrel throwing you 6 meters away (and over a railing) when you were not that close to it to begin with is just worse.
Being unable to dodge away from it would apply to the barrel situation as well.

20

I agree with your initial premise here (disablers disable), but not your ultimate conclusion that the trapper does a poor job as a disabler. I think each of the disablers fits nicely into a niche, including the trapper.

Dogs do significant and continual damage but can be easily knocked off a player at range. Muties do significant but limited damage, are somewhat harder to interrupt at range, and they also can disrupt positioning. Trappers do negligible damage and don’t disrupt positioning, but they cannot be “undone” at range.

1 Like