VETERAN needs a big rework; its AMMO economy must change too

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Before talking about the main point, the old dear VETERAN, I need to say a few words about the ammo economy. These are two different topics, both with their strong own identity, but closely related

I want to start with the most controversial point: many will disagree but Darktide is not Vermintide. If Vermintide is indeed a melee-focused game… Darktide is not. Should not. I can come to you: maybe not 50% melee and 50% ranged? But at least 60/40

And we can see this from several factors. From how the game was sponsored in the first place. By how melee combat is easier. From how, at least initially, ammo was plentiful. From how the “mage class” has a more permissive handling of overheat

Instead we find ourselves in the paradoxical situation where, in Vermintide, ranged careers had enough ammo regen to shoot at every threat… in Darktide on the other hand, where shooting should have more space, you can’t do that. Not even with the Veteran: the RATIO ammo amount/special&ranged enemies’ number is more permissive in Vermintide

I might remind you that “melee” is NOT synonymous with “skilled gameplay” as “ranged” is NOT synonymous with “flat gameplay”… rather I often find easier beat everyone up in melee comfortably with a tank than to pick up a ranged weapon with a fragile character and watch out for the slightest threat… BUT, even before balancing, it’s a question of fun… of letting each player choose his own style

And, specified this, we can finally talk about the Veteran, because everything becomes more serious if we think how the Veteran is clearly the weakest class. And on this I think we all agree

But that’s not all: the most used kit isn’t even its ranged branch, it’s simply spamming Voice Of Command

This is a situation that absolutely must change. Now, I understand that pre-nerf Survivalist might have been excessive, that’s because it gave too many ammo even to careers that should be melee-centric, but we need to find a solution…

…and that solution should focus to its ammo economy. For me it’s a nice try to kill two birds with one stone: give a stronger and more unique identity to the Veteran and open up the game to more style and variety

One possibility is to replace Survivalist with something else related to ranged weapons, like reload speed or weapons swapping…

(which should be regardlessly a fundamental point: the Veteran continues to be too vulnerable and clunky in this aspect, especially on higher difficulties where you are constantly under pressure)

…and, at the same time, give to the Veteran something passive to REGEN ITS AMMO. Something that works only for it… but more effective than current Survivalist

In addition to making the Veteran more balanced and open up the game to more style… it would be an indirect nerf to those melee careers who may result too good at the shooting part too. So it’s important to note that this change is not aimed at shifting the melee/ranged balance too much towards the “ranged” side… but redistribute it differently: “more ranged” the Veteran, “less ranged” the others (those would lose Survivalist buff)

Thanks for reading

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Supporting the topic.

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If this would be the trade off, then I can support it. High risk, high reward.

What I don’t want to see is ranged tanks.

And the main reason melee is also braindead now is that you can hit trade and come out on top. That should never be the case and it’s a direct result of all the power creep. Being able to regen toughness like no bodies business and have weapons that can deal with anything without having to think about what you’re doing.

Give Vet a “scavenger” talent, inherent or as tax node, which will give him a tiny bit of ammo on each ranged enemy type (meaning gunner, shotgunner, sniper) killed.

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Play Helldivers, Remnant, Payday, or any other of the many coop games that focus on shooting and still require some amount of skill. DT doing its own thing great. There is no other game out there that fills this niche apart from its predecessor.

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I don’t get this.

DT is sold as an action shooter/‘hybrid’ game. What’s wrong with it having the 50/50 focus on shooting and melee that it was advertised and launched with?

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Play Vermintide 1 and 2 :person_shrugging:

You both are right that DT is its own thing. Yet those too tied to VT experience want DT to be just the same experience.

Vet should excel at shooting and ammo economy; otherwise, it offers no variety.

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It’s sold as a Hybrid game. Not as a “shooter/hybrid game”. Unless you meant to write “shooter/melee hybrid game”.

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Anyway, I got no beef at all with making Vet more ranged focus viable, but I see some people who think they should be able to go through games shooting everything and not taking out their melee weapon once.

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Vet’s tree needs to be laid out differently. There are good ranged nodes throughout but often require going through nodes that you may not want so we’re sort of pigeonholed into hybrid builds. The vet tree looking like Arbites probably solves like 85% of the issue.

The last fifteen percent is possibly ammo economy related. Lasguns have great ammo econ imo with the crit costs no ammo talent. Anything else requires being an ammo vacuum to keep shooting, which can be fine if your team is set up for it. Maybe a rework of the leftmost keystone could be a good place to incorporate a change.

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“John Darktide” is a Vet for that reason, yet the class didn’t offer any different playstyle from Zealot (for example).

While Zealot is far better with melee, it is not worse in ranged.

Vet is disappointing.

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Or… Each player can choose their own style without balancing being neglected. Revolutionary concept.

Yes.

Yes. Give Vet intrinsic ammo regen on Specialist/Elite kill or have ranged Elites drop ammo pickups that only Vet can grab, let that be Vet’s unique niche.

Keeping it focused to Elites/Specs should be sufficient for ensuring Vet always has ammo to deal with dangerous threats, yet not enough ammo to spend the entire mission ADS with high cleave Graia/Colomnus mag dumping into trash hordes and ignoring melee completely.

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Except it is, becasue melee gameplay is more mechanicaly rich in Tides.

DT guns have no complicated recoil patterns you need to learn or train, or meaningful ballistics, no enemies with fast or tricky movement that hard to track. Nuanced special attacks? Like what, torch? Buttstock hits?

My aim is bad on average in fps games, but i have no problems with guns in DT. There is nothing about guns in DT makes you think “oh yeah i need to practise it in shooting range more”

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action shooter and hybrid game. Both of which are things that were advertised, according to others on the forums.

This is also part of the problem, but good ranged gameplay is about target priority and precision in a fast-paced environment. I personally think ranged weapons shouldn’t have the lazy copy-paste but hey, that’s what we got when they killed weapon customization.

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Yep, indeed removing Survivalist would be an indirect nerf to melee careers’ shooting ability

Yep, sounds cool, something similar

I mean, I respect your opinion, but this isn’t constructive… I could just reply “Play Vermintide”… but anyway my intention isn’t make Darktide like Helldivers. Just the Veteran needs a rework

Well, to be honest, by “hybrid” I think Fatshark meant that… melee/ranged… there are not many other alternatives :S

Anyway I see your point, I’m not one of those people, melee remains fundamental, but at least the Veteran should be able to shoot more (imho)

For sure. The entire tree has serious problems, I agree

Well yes, I had taken it for granted, but I don’t think a Veteran able to shoot more is a problem… then, of course, it is just my opinion

I respect your opinion, but I do not feel I share it… even at the highest difficulty, I find melee combat to be very forgiving, definitely more so than Vermintide; whereas, playing with the Veteran and holding your ranged weapon, you have to be much more careful with everything

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It so for melee also, shove this one, hit that, turn back an finish the first one, etc.

I genuinely don’t think you can make gunplay challengin and still keep is somewhat arcady in PvE game. Or atleast not in the game where you have only one gun equiped.

In Doom you need to swap weapons and weapons modes on the fly, so there is that element of deccision making and being able to adapt on the fly, it has depth. But like, you barely can have a thing with stuff like reccon lasgun, or braced auto or even flamer. Many “fun” guns in DT are just spray guns.

Yes. but it asks more than guns do still. When there is a new melee weapon released you go in psykanium and try chains, to find horde clearing and solo damage combos, what it’s special, push-attack. Then you see some of attacks are diagonal, or vertical, and you think how would it be inefficient to have during combo, can you skip some animations with block cancel or something, etc.

And all that stuff will affect on do you “feel” that weapon, is that combo rythm fits you.

You don’t do much research with guns, you just try damage, reloading and swap speed.

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Certainly, the Veteran is a class that specializes in ranged combat rather than melee, and I do believe it should be focused more on shooting.
However, having too much ammo available can also create new problems. In my experience playing Veteran, I rarely find myself running out of ammunition outside of Havoc missions. And unless your party composition is extremely unbalanced, there is usually enough ammo to go around.
The people complaining about ammo shortages in Auric missions are probably facing one or more of the following issues:

  1. Inefficient use of ammo
    They waste bullets by spraying at mobs unnecessarily or have poor accuracy—essentially, they’re not managing their ammo well.

  2. Ammo-hungry classes in the party
    If your team includes classes using builds like Gunlugger or Gunpsyker, which burn through ammo quickly, then ammo shortages become more likely. In fact, whenever I’ve felt short on ammo, this was usually the reason.

  3. Missing chests and ammo spots
    Observing other players, it’s clear that many don’t know where chests or ammo drops are located. These aren’t always on the main path, you often have to take detours or deliberately check certain areas to find them.

If ammo becomes too abundant, it can lead to a situation where you just mow everything down with weapons like the Bolter.
I remember when the Bolter got buffed and became meta, I was playing Ogryn at the time, and Crushers or Maulers were being wiped out in an instant by Veterans with Bolters. Skilled players using something like ES + Bolter were basically able to clear out every elite and gunner in the game.
Especially in a game like this, being able to eliminate enemies before they can even get close with melee is undeniably the safer approach.

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Tho more on a topic theme - i think they made a mistake when refused to make vet about guns. Talents for specific weapon tags could give him identity.

Imo, it’s expected for a guard veteran to be good at weapon handling and provide a specific role fantasy.

Stuff like:

Heavy support - if you have plasma or bolter in your loadout, you have +“XX” to HP and Toughness, but -“Y” to sprint speed.

Breacher - while shotgun is equiped you have +“x” TDR during sprint, or restore “x” toughness per 1 stamina lost.

Etc.

About economy - i don’t beleive you can have a good economy with such different guns like rumbler, flamer and brauto are using the same ammo type. The one who has a bigger DPS gun will shoot more and grab all the ammo.

The same thing happened in V2 with troll torpedo release. Bardin yelling at mates to not take his ammo (all ammo on the map)

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It so for melee also, shove this one, hit that, turn back an finish the first one, etc.

Except it’s not. Yout block works at 360 degree, so is your push. In melee you don’t worry about map awareness, because you don’t care about suppression since you can infinitely and safely slide into anything and be protected from enemy fire by enemy horde(Gunners can’t pen other enemies. At least some of them, so horde give you protection vs ranged fire), and if you made a mistake and got a hit - yo can always regen toughness from killing enemies(Making it possible for ranged requires talent). Also melee weapons don’t have drawbacks. In vermintide using something like halberd of two-handed sword in tight enviroment is harder, since you will be hitting walls, ceilings, doorways… the map, instead of enemies and it will stop your weapon.
In DT the size of yout weapon means nothing but your reach.
Also with melee you don’t care at all about weapon swapping, because it’s swapping to ranged leaves you exposed to random attacks of sneaky or forgotten groaner, not vice versa.

Hybrid, Saltspyre-like, as i call it, gameplay if also possible and even some vet talents are suggesting that whipping out your pistol for a single quickshot before going back to melee if foreseen and designed purposefully.

Just as as exetutioner stance(ex volley fire) was designed with the idea of only(Or mostly) ranged opition of gameplay.

UPD: Also it’s pretty symbolyc how even melee-focues weapon spec vet still needs ranged weapons to function at full efficiency, which also designates vet as ranged class

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There is plenty of ammo on the map - Problem is sharing. I’ve seen people often dip into ammo box halfway through their reserve before even nearly finished or pickup big ammo to refil +1.

Sharing is very rare. Some courtesy but mostly none. People don’t speed run just for the kill stat, it’s the resources as well.

There are solutions but I doubt they would change this. It would mean pre-allocation of resources, refill restrictions and lose concept of sharing.

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I’m not sure what do you mean, like shove and block is not that nessecary in DT like they are in V2. But you still use them occasionally. Melee has more techs, the fact balance is currently tuned so you just spam aoe and spray guns against meatwalls doesn’t change the fundamentals.

You do, to not stuck in some obstacles or boxes, to vault on them during kite or just dodgin around cause bosses can’t do much around boxes.

To not place yourself near barrels and hit it accidentaly, to not be near the cleafs.

Vet doesn’t care too. Ogryn also. Flamer? Psyker staves?

No, lol. There is a visual effect when you hit some obstacles, but you can kill mobs through textures and walls. It’s a basic strat when holding houses for example.

Those are balance things anyway, not design fundamentals. Again, melee weapons have more techs and actions. It both have offensive and diffensive moves. What have brauto or reccon?

Reccon is just a dumb weapon, laser beam, no recoil. There never will be any depth, some ammo management and that’s it. Rumbler? What are you gonna do about it, like increase a fuse time to make it harder to predict? Take damage from your own explosions?

I don’t mind for guns to be dumb and fun, just don’t pretend they take time to learn or understand.

You can watch new players gameplay, and see them struggle with movement and melee much more then with aiming a gun.

Like SOME weapons have techs like cutting reloading animation for plasma with weapon swap. Bayonettes potentially can be something interesting. But there is nothing much you can do without bringin recoil patterns you need to learn and making enemies faster and tricky.

And it doesn’t matter cause how toughness is forgiving. Again, you go on H40 and what you see is range spam, and especially aoe, flame spam.

Melee has more depth, sometimes depth means challenge, but not nessecery. There is just more stuff to learn about melee than about range in Tides.

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Yeah it’d be nice if survivalist could be moved to a Vet only thing, most of its problematic interactions have to do with other classes’ ranged weapons.

Could either be made a passive or you could probably even build a keystone around it (I and a few others like MF but I’m pretty sure most people would be happy for it to be replaced with an ammo regen keystone). Since it only affects Vet and thus has had its total ammo generation cut to a quarter, the cooldown could be reduced significantly (down to like 1 to 2 seconds). Probably keeping a small cooldown is wise so high ranged cleave weapons don’t get to benefit disproportionately.

IMO just fill the now empty aura node with +10% ranged damage aura. Then change Fire Team to something more unique and suiting that branch. Best idea I’ve come up with is an aura that increases the whole team’s coherency radius by 2m (effective +25% radius). Coherency regen itself is fairly weak but quite a lot of effects would get to apply more broadly with higher coherency uptime. Born Leader works when you’re on full toughness these days and is based on coherency, and most notably duty and honour works off of coherency range. Could also be combo’d with charismatic for funny big coverage. Oh yeah and Demo Team is also coherency based, so I think that would be a neat aura.

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