Now imagine five Vanguards standing there instead.
I’d rather take one Bulwark over that. Got plenty of ways to deal with that Bulwark on every class but Zealot that I’ve played. Krak Grenade with Vet, or Plasma Gun, or Recon Infernus. Hive Scum got Rockets, Chem Grenades or just dodge behind it and stab it. Arbites can grenade them, or shock mine them… or just dodge an attack and unload a shotgun in their faces.
And plenty more.
Imagine as I said five mini bulwarks instead. Now, most normal weapon tactics go out the door which leaves blitzes only if you wanna do it expediently.
It’s a lot of Havoc 40 players complaining about that enemy. I do not do Havoc personally… yet.
But what difficulty are you playing that you have time to “engage” with half a dozen Vanguards along with all the other stuff one have to deal with? Malice?
And as I said. It’s a trash mob. If it’s an enemy that needs more than one hit to kill, it should be labelled as an Elite… not trash. And it should probably look like a proper Elite as well.
Make it an Elite, change its appearance to reflect it’s status and maybe teams will treat them like a proper threat and not leave people to deal with them alone when there’s a bunch more horrible stuff closing in.
As it stands, their appearance, status and toughness contradicts their actual impact. And if you can’t see that much, you are just being obstinate.
And the derank, and the crashing, and the modifiers, and the party finder and the map restrictions…there’s plenty of people who play havoc who mald all the time about how garbeans it is. But Fat Shark should provide a difficulty in between legend and quasi-weaves again so the people who genuinely wanted that from havoc could get it and people who like the game and themselves could have an advanced area beyond auric.
And also the fact that I expect my hits to deal damage to the enemy one way or another, but there’s one single enemy you can hit without dealing any damage at all: the Bulwark
doesnt mean marginalizing every encounter to the point of being meaningless.
a solid <15 minute run should be earned by 4 exceptional players whereas right now its “race the scum for the exit” and try to get more kills.
whats havoc doing instead of requiring higher skill to pass? skew numbers and enforce mandatory hardcounters.
that aint rewarding game design, its keeping in check what ran rampant in lower settings to the point of making every match a speedrun.
doom eternal for example is fast paced, but every encounter can fk you up and ruin an ultra nightmare run in seconds.
still pros like zero master make it look easy, when in fact its the result of thousands of tries.
that should be the base for darktide balancing when it comes to “speed at a price”.
not throwing one screen full of thrash enemies after another for zero to little costs at you
nope, I prefer a run-stopper that demands attention and instant change of engagement method as well.
shows whos just clicking m1&forward and who has a grasp for whats at hand and acts accordingly.
hmmm I wonder which videos get more “clicks&likes”
“grow a pair and stop sucking” wouldnt resonate well with the “audience” i guess though
they read the room and adjust to the general mood, cant blame em but its hardly surprising
new enemy type is just out for a few days but its already the “worst that happened to darktide”… cause one needs 10 seconds more to proceed?
People are also jaded because FS have often left key aspects of the game inc. talents broken before then going on holiday for several months. Leaving unplaytested issues in for that long kills player retention and based on the bug where these guys’ shields can phase inside them giving them 360 degree protection, that is definitely also a problem here.
Yes, people do that. You also have people that defend every decision FS makes too. It’s just how it is. I’ve also seen this cycle a lot too of: why do you complain, it isn’t out yet → it’s just been x days, it’s too soon to judge, why are you complaining? → later it turns out it may or may not have been a problem.
It just contributes nothing to the discussion.
Yeah I agree with all this but it feels like FS are throwing bandaids that break their own rules, like having a non-elite have more hp than elites. They should nerf the overtuned aspects of builds rather than constantly having to raise the floor on everything.
Plus there is a difference between fun difficulty and unfun. I mean, you could just blanket-multiply every enemy’s hp by twenty and do nothing else. Would it be harder? Yes. Would it be fun? Probably not.
For those who’ve been around a while FS kinda tried that with the initial Winds of Magic beta and it was not well received. It unhyperbolically took minutes to clear a single horde in its first iteration and people complained then too. In that case, they were right.
If you bait their swings they are open to attack however. Yes, they’re a threat and a bigger one than vanguards, but the play around them feels intuitive.
This is just disingenous. FS could reduce boss damage across the board so individual bosses are not total pushovers and it’d also make it take longer to proceed, but I bet it’d be much better received.
Yes, some people will still complain, but you’re failing to see the forest for the trees if you think the complaints are just difficulty and never about if it’s fun.
Damn things have ended multiple runs already. I’m on Malice trying to level up my Psyker, and we’re getting completely erased at the start of the map. In the exact same spot, too.
if fun means to beat certain enemies easier then no, there shouldn’t be any “fun” because where’s the achievement in doing that?
besides that definition is pretty personal because instead of breaking an enemy with an easier option “fun” defines for me as breaking myself and improve in the face of the new challenge.
which the new shield guys hardly even are to begin with.
right now i got a personal hunch that a lot of people, who got comfortable with their bubble and yellow toughness, struggle at a mechanical obstacle, the very one i like to see more often instead of the havoc number crap.
and if said people fail to do their one-trick over and over, its a good thing,so screw “fun”
this aint boltgun where im the only guy in the game, 3 others claim content as well and it should go to the most adept and able to read an engagement correctly.
not stand at the backline and hold ult or tries to keep his rampage stack up.
hardly, from the very beginning im a strong proponent of physical skill above all else.
if an enemy would serve as skill check for a certain level of aim quality, all the better.
let there be fast moving weak spots that need to be hit on point. invulnerable to anything else, negating yellow toughness in return when attacking and passing through bubbles.
here we have a small obstacle in the form of circle strafing and placement, and yes that sometimes means to retreat and reshuffle the mixed horde you’re struggling with.
peoole gotten used to forward+m1 for far too long.
having one roadblock that needs circling around seems a major bummer then.
and no, its not the point that they aint got a weakspot on their backs or not to kill em easier, its to keep YOU moving and on your toes.
so a movement and awareness check for your surroundings is another bonus for me as well.
no more turret mode and press button 1 until enemy dies.
so far mixed hordes where a non-threat, rather a toughness regen-station.
back in the day you’d die to a poxer horde if left unchecked.
the new enemy isnt hard, it enforces a new approach:
get in, do some damage, try to circle as long as its safe and, most important of all, disengage if the wall closes and use a better angle or place to fight it again.
that seems to be too tedious for people that joined mid-way and never new beta/release status of the game, only the smooth breeze through chaff.
well, make chaff dangerous again and enforce spotless awareness instead of “ult goes brrrt”
that would be “fun”
ps: balancing is still off. and thats on the decision makers schedule to not change stuff all in one fell swoop.
up until heresy (to a point) it should be a steady increase but still “kiddy pool”.
as masozi says “way up the spire” though, checks should be in place that go for movement, aim, etc not what a talent a player is currently using.
and honestly, minute as they are, those shield guys agitate people the right way and hopefully act as catalyst to rethink their approach at certain situations.
the way it was before everyone was buffed to dreadnought level
aint got no beef here personally, just seeing the direction of the game since release from pure quake-ness to semi-mmo makes me angry
Yes, exactly, it is personal, so the idea people should not complain because some people find it fun is nonsense.
I also like enemies being more difficult but in terms of move sets or us just not having weapons/builds that are totally out of whack in power compared to others. What I don’t like is just giving non-elites higher hp than elites or counterintuitive mechanics.
So you agree.
Honestly they should’ve just taken the mauler model and given them the elite tag if they want them to be this much tankier, make them stand out a bit more + make it intuitive for new players that this is a threat.
Also fix the shield holding bug.
Yes, that is a factor too, but there are skilled players complaining about this enemy too. People want difficulty in different forms.
Bulwarks already do this though and imo better implemented.
We usually just kite them while moving and wear down the packs.
Yeah the powercreep is an issue but there are different ways to tackle it. The lazy way which I’ve also seen mmos do as you mentioned them is to just pad enemies with hp instead of giving them new mechanics. It’s easy, but it generally turns off a lot of the player base across all skill levels.
It also ignores the fact that the issue stems from player power being so out of whack by now in DT. Even if you introduce one new enemy to alter the dynamic, it doesn’t change the fact we melt elites, bosses and so on in no time flat. These guys don’t really fix the problem. They aren’t making the non-meta weapons less viable, either.
Once the shield breaks, they should be as easily killed as any other trash enemy.
I am perfectly fine with them being harder to kill while they still have access to their shields.
But like, as it is right now, they just have too much HP with or without their shield.
I don’t see any trace of the original intended difficulty design with Vanguards. Their bloated health and excessive spawn rate are textbook power creep.
This , and for those that really do not want to engage with the Vanguard’s, there are unfortunately several OP solutions to “the problem”, or you could run something like Arc Maul and clobber them to death.
You can also shoot them.
There are many ways to deal with a a pack of Vanguard’s and I really do hope that Fatshark are not going to nerf them because lowering their hp, increasing weak spot damage and etc will just break them and make them a non-threat.
They should be opressive towards you and force you to engage with them instead of how the game has up to his point where you could stand behind your Ogryn and snipe stuff in peace which was boring.
Could you record a clip and show us how you deal with vanguards (with a crowd of elites spawned simultaneously) in a fun, engaging way? I’m genuinely curious to see it in action – would love to learn from your approach.
Vanguards have not changed how I play the game in a meaningful way and I’m surprised to see people talk about them like this. They’re just regular enemies that take more hits to kill and replace some of the Bulwark spawns in the mix. You don’t have to do anything special, just keep hitting them until they’re dead. If they really are as oppressive as a lot of people make them seem then they would’ve slowed the game down in a measurable way, but missions take the same amount of time as before.
I do understand that the fun factor maybe isn’t there, and there is some jank going on with their shield hitzone priority, the high weakspot DR and the high stagger resistance after their shield breaks, but they’re not a big deal at all. So I wonder where this disconnect is coming from?
I don’t understand why people think they’re oppressive? They’re not especially difficult to manage, nor do they present a big threat. They’re just health sponges. I get that they’re supposed to make hordes more difficult to cleave, but in my experience they just pause the game while I murder them. It’s not super engaging and disrupts the flow of the game imo.
, and for those that really do not want to engage with the Vanguard’s, there are unfortunately several OP solutions to “the problem”, or you could run something like Arc Maul and clobber them to death.