Weapon Animation (switching weapons)

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
43

In a game that requires fast reactions, the weapons that matter most are slow.
They have repetitive animations in place for when they lumber up on to your screen and this causes massive issues with being able to deal with sudden occurrences, causing unfair end-states because in the 2 seconds it takes you to draw your gun, you got perma-staggered by enemy lasgunners, weren’t able to help your friend, and end up watching them die instead.

It doesn’t feel fun, that’s the long and short of it.
The enemies are already over tuned in a lot of situations and this only makes it harder on the team when they have to deal with them quickly.
Every enemy AI has pin-point aim, rips through your toughness like it’s not there, then proceeds to stagger you to no end while you desperately try to save your team-mates or get further into cover (which they can shoot through/ over in some situations anyway).

Being locked into lengthy animations for drawing your gun doesn’t feel good, especially when the gun already has a long reload.
They need more stages, and using ‘it’s balancing’ isn’t a valid excuse when the weapon it’s self is loaded, cocked and ready to go when you put it away.
A stage for empty, for partial full/ empty, and for totally full need to be implemented.
You need to be rewarded for being prepared, for having your gun topped up and already racked, and punished for putting it away when it’s empty. (which happens a lot when you’re swamped in melee)

They need more adaptive animations for situations they currently don’t account for, it would be nothing but a benefit for the fun-factor of the game.

Implementing extra stages for when your weapons are in different states would not be that complicated when they already have staged reloads, and it would only apply to ballistic weapons, as Lasguns are already in an okay spot, some just need more ammo reserves.

As I said.
Empty, Partial, and Full.
Full being you draw the weapon and have it ready, no re-racking.
Partial causing your reload to play at normal speed with no re-rack.
Empty being the full, already existing reload.
I would even accept the heavier weapons that hit way harder taking slightly longer to reload as a trade-off.

The Draw time should only be padded by switching the safety off if your weapon has ammo, and I would accept having drawing melee take slightly longer (half a second at most) as you switch the safety back on, so you’re encouraged to shove enemies away with your Gun before you switch or dodge back to gain distance (Weapons with flashlights should also be given a shove, making the flashlight a new hotkey akin to left 4 dead).

This would make it SO much more dynamic, more natural and fix the flow of combat feeling so melee biased.

2 Likes
44

I watched the new trailer today, and have to somewhat agree with this thread. I still think it should be possible to throw nades without the aiming mechanic, to clear some space if things go south, because of bad luck with horde spawns.

But they promoted fluid melee and gun gameplay, and we are not there at this point in time. It IS smooth from ranged to melee but not the other way around. I agree that heavier weapons should take longer to draw than pistols, but not like this.

You are playing a trained soldier expecially the veteran. So it should be expected to get your heavy rifle (bolter, Plasma, stubber, flamer) up and ready (If loaded) in .7 Seconds or so, the “normal” rifle (Las, autogun) in .5 Seconds, a carabine or Shotgun in .3 second and finally pistols almost instantly. Those values are just examples, but generally it should always be less than a second.

As a detriment longer reload animations dependemd on weapon weight and/or complexity would be prefferable maybe with some additional animations to “pray” to the machine god to get your gun into perfect shape and if you switch to a weapon with an empty clip, no bayonett or bash ability you deserve being killed.

I don’t think every gun should have flash light and bash, because it will take away from the decission which weapon to take on missions, so all guns still would have strenghts and weakneses.

2 Likes
45

Maybe another compromise could be to put the weapon swap time into the players hand, meaning giving ranged weapons a faster Swap Speed, but adding a multiplier for the eqiped melee weapon (depending on size/weight).

For example (and I’m just using values to Show my Point),
A power sword has a 3 multiplier for swapping, while the small knife has a multiplier of .5.
If a bolter has a base swap speed of 1s, you would need 3 seconds to put away your Power sword and draw your bolter as both are heavy, but taking the knife would reduce your swap time to .5 Seconds.

So in hindsight of balancing, you can limit the one kit does all builds and encurage Team Play and loadout planning.

You want to play supportive and Help trapped Team mates take a big rifle and a light melee weapon, or If you want to swap between ranged and melee in a flash Take a knife and a pistol. You want to play heavy hitter Take both heavy weapons but then you May be limited to one in certain situations and won’t be able to swap fast.

46

The developers shouldn’t be looking at this game as a balancing ouroboros because it’s a PVE coop game, not a competitive PVP game. For this reason fun and fluidity is most important, far more important then whether or not everything is balanced so every weapon has its pro’s and cons.

The game’s based off of 40k. Even without looking at lore, there are many weapons on the table that are just better then other weapons. There’s a reason you can only give the Sergeant in a squad of Guardsmen a Bolter, because if they all had Bolters, things would play out very differently.

Simply put, weapons like the Bolter, the Flamer, the Eviscerator, the Power Sword, and so on, should just be better then the earlier weapons below them.

Delaying how fast the player can ready a weapon, especially with an action that would eject and waste an unfired round, is silly. The Bolter already has a relatively low amount of ammunition and is interesting to control, fun to use when you’re shooting - and the reload is quite long. So from a gameplay perspective, it’s very powerful but it’s unwieldly.

I have started to reload the Bolter when I am done using it, switching to melee before I chamber the first round. The next time I need the Bolter, it comes out with a swifter finish of the partially completed reload. I’ve half started doing this just so what’s happening on screen makes more sense, but it does feel faster too.

Anyway, the game will only have true hybrid combat if the switch between weapons is not necessarily instant, but responsive.

Overall, I am very worried the developers will repeatedly nerf what is fun in the game chasing the dragon that is “balance,” when there is no reason to. They should focus on every weapon feeling fun, fluid, and responsive, weighty and interesting. Worrying about meta is silly, majority of players will gravitate towards what they find fun. Some players will want to optimize everything to pursue their own set challenges - and why throw a wrench in their plans? Speedrunners are quite popular nowadays. Let them nose around and “break” the game.

The game is quite difficult on the higher levels already and it’ll stay appropriately challenging if the players are allowed to have fluid fun.

I’ve typed so much here because I’m really worried the “balancing question” will eat this game entirely and what is currently satisfying will one day be satisfying no more. Please buff instead of nerf. If the players and their arsenal seems too powerful, give us stronger opponents to compensate…

2 Likes
47

I completely support that, for me it feels like the devs want to “Nerv” more powerfull weapons with longer switch times to counteract every veteran in more difficult missions running the bolter Powersword Combo and keeping other weapon types also viable. At least this is what I base my Input on.

It is a PvE Coop game so every teammember should have fun and feel “important” for mission success.

More so in low difficulty quickplay, it is not as much fun just trying to keep up with a “much to powerfull can do all, no weakneses build”.
Yes that player might just want to rush the mission for the extra currency but it also takes away from the Coop and Teamplay experience .
At least this is what I experienced while starting out with a new Charakter.

I think we can all agree for fun First, but that should also include new Players without good gear or a premade team.

This does not mean nerving DMG or Clip size, maybe instead of looking at the weapons, a look at the matching algorithmus for missions would be prefferable to match players close in levels.

48

@Bun @Gibtsnird @yayo
Hi!
i think your calling it to early, everything is new right now were in a state of reacting to the game all the time, as we get used to it learn its patterns and its tricks its audio ques i suspect this equipping delay will become a lot less of a problem.
unless you think right now is as good as your gonna get at working with this delay youve got nothing left to learn or improve?
But please bear in mind if you guys win and FS remove this delay it will also come hand in hand with a nerf to these weapons. they will be toned down to the same level as everything else.
Myself i think that would be a tragedy.

49

I’m not what you’d call a slouch and I typically do very well, even considering the delay. I know how to play the game effectively despite it, hence why I said I could handle it just being an alternate animation.
I’m not new to Tide games, I played a lot of Vermintide 2 and know how to read the environment for specials and their queues.

But as I said, making the reload work differently for the states the weapon is in (full, partial and empty to reiterate), making it so you can bash during the draw and allowing more consistent animation cancels would improve the flow by a lot.

My points about it being annoying are still valid, I’ve had some decent time with the Boltgun now along with other weapons, and I honest to god think that the main gripe myself and others are having is how laboriously long the animations actually are.
Speed up every gun’s draw if need be, but the heavier weapons need to still be viable tools for dealing with urgent threats out of melee range.

The delay can still be there, but it’s currently just too long, and with a much too repetitive animation to go along with it.
All the Ballistic guns need is a quick flick of the safety, a 20 - 30% faster draw on all of the guns and the flow will feel significantly more snappy, more satisfying and fair when urgency is required.

Damage tuning on the automatics (Lasguns and Autoguns) needs to be slightly higher as well, they feel very weak and ttk is much too high on those for how much ammo they carry. Boltgun damage is perfect, it hits hard, but it’s tiny magazines make it very limited use unless you spec fully into reload speed. Which is fine, I’m perfectly happy with the Boltgun being a situational weapon, but it’s issue is the situations it’s needed for are often urgent, and your character lazily pulls it out which makes the urgent situation potentially EVEN MORE urgent.

You can’t 100 to 0 a carapace armoured Ogryn with one mag on the higher difficulties unless you get exclusively headshots, then your Magazine is empty, and that’s fine. I can deal with it being like that because it’s supposed to be hard, but when your gun doesn’t kill something in one Magazine when it’s supposed to be an armour killer, having that extra equip-time on top just feels lame.
Same with the Helbore Lasgun, that thing just feels like Butt to use.
Damage is fine, but the draw is so agonizingly slow that when you go to draw it, the enemy you were going to shoot is either already dead, has moved to cover, or is now so close that having your Helbore out is useless. Having made you waste time pulling it out in the first place when you could have just kept chopping, that just doesn’t feel good.

Firearms have their designated roles, you won’t be taking out heavy armour with a Lasgun or an Autogun, that’s fine, that’s how it’s supposed to be because they’re for other guardsmen, poxwalkers and the less armoured specials.
However when those enemies do show up and they’re mixed in a crowd of Poxwalkers or Gunners, it’s vitally important to kill them quickly, and with how the armour-killing weapons seem to slug themselves around, doing so is laborious when you first have to work through a crowd of unarmored trash mobs.

They’re not meant for clearing hordes, that’s not their job, hence why they don’t carry much ammo, but when you DO need them, they can’t be taking 500 thousand years to pull out just to do the one job they’re meant for.
This is why I suggested that Boltguns could even carry less ammo, to imply their rarity and the lack of actual ammunition available on Tertium. Course in PUGs you’ll have ammo hogs, you always will.
But in coordinated gameplay with a team (how this is supposed to be played), you’ll be encouraged to preserve that ammo that you do have for when it’s important (Specials and bosses).

This would also encourage people to take more Auto and Lasguns, simply because they won’t be reloading and having to find ammo so often.

I already find myself pulling ranged out almost only for specials and enemies at a distance just as it was in Vermintide 2, sticking exclusively to the power sword for hordes and even enemy gunners, anything closer than 10 meters is fair game for melee.
I choose to close the distance and melee more often than using my ranged as it is, even on Veteran.

But that’s how I play, I’m a special-killer, I focus them because everyone’s life depends on it.
This becomes difficult when your tools are unresponsive and you urgently need them to be.

Also just to point out, the Plasma Gun has no draw-time, and despite it’s lower DPS than the Boltgun, it’s the best feeling of all the heavy weapons.

1 Like
50

I said Weapons that already have Flashlights should be given a Bash, not that all weapons should have flashlights as well. Just to confirm :slight_smile:

51

Wouldn’t the buff for the vet ability to instantly Draw and ready the gun be enough?
Just shove with your melee weapon, pop your ability, while in a Horde fight, shoot what hounds your buddys and back to melee.

For the rest of the gameplay, as you yourself said, stay with your mates and coordinate who is on trash mob duty. Then the shooter can pick off elites and ranged enemies in peace.

Maybe your target gets smashed by an ogryn or zealot player, but dead is dead and no problem anymore. You don’t have to kill every enemy on your own, but it sure sounds like you would want to. :wink:

52

I just want the guns to be fun, plus that’s a level 30 ability, I’m not talking about just the Veteran.

As I said in my big post, the Plasma Gun has a .5 second ready-up with just as much DPS as the Boltgun and it feels perfect as it is.

53

I would love a quick nade feature.

The trailer specifically mentioned seamless swapping between weapons, that’s the main point of this thread. Some animations do not feel seamless and instead punish the player.

A side on animations, Toggling the torch (Flashlight) while running causes the player to stutter step and also not trigger the toggle. I’d like to turn it on while running if entering a darker zone, or turn it off if retreating to a teammate so I don’t blind them. (I may post this side on bugs.)

1 Like
54

I am really not a fan of the current system. Having to re-rack the slide of a locked and loaded weapon after every weapon swap, after interruptions, etc etc is a clunky and poorly conceived design choice.

If you empty your mag, then have to swap to melee to deal with other mobs, when you swap back you have to rack the slide on an empty weapon for no good reason (you have no choice), then change the mag, then re-rack the slide before you can use your weapon. This is just farcical in practice.

It is not an insurmountable problem but it is highly irritating and breaks flow in a big way.

1 Like
55

Here is a post showing how sluggish the Bolter is compared to the Plasma Gun.
The Plasma Gun is PERFECT, it does not need to be changed at all, it has a long reload and the overheat mechanic keeps it in check, but the quick draw-time makes it inherently better than the Boltgun.

Finally, a clip showing an example of a Situation that the Boltgun would not be able to deal with NEARLY as well as the Plasma Gun.

Boltgun, Helbore, Autoguns and Lasguns all need to be less sluggish and the re-racking on equip animations need to be scrapped.
Plasma Gun is perfect, it needs 0 changes and it’s not Overpowered.

56

This will be my last piece of feedback on Darktide. I want to showcase what weapon swapping looks like on Vermintide 2 and why it’s so beautiful as a system: 1) It facilitates the ability to react more easily to special units 2) it doesn’t break the flow of action 3) It enables smooth gameplay 4) It promotes the player to pull off interesting combos with weapons.

War hammer + Executioner Swap:

Let’s say for a moment, your using a War hammer to manage a horde with the huge stagger effect of the weapon. Then an Armored Beastmen, Berserker, or Plague Monk start charging at the party. The Voice Actors of Ubersreik 5 call out the enemy as an ally tags them. You see them coming straight towards a vulnerable ally that’s too busy dealing with the overwhelming horde. What do you do? Well, you swiftly switch to your massive Executioner sword. Wind a power attack up. Hold it as long as you can so you can carefully aim for the head. Then let go of your mouse button as soon as the target charges within melee range. Hitting the target’s noggin in the process. Like baseball where you hit ball with bat. If done correctly the high value target would be immediately beheaded and dispatched.

Sounds cool, right? Here’s what it looks in practice:

Notice how there’s no unnecessary delay with the action. The swap is done instantaneously, so much so, it feels like water - hence it being “fluid” to operate.

Halberd + Handgun Swap:

Next example, so the above instance was with melee switching. How about melee to ranged. After all Vermintide has firearms too! Consider this, you’re playing as a class that is a ranged dps specialist. You’re carefully analyzing the battlefield for disablers that may spawn whilst also dealing with enemy melee units. You see a packrat off the corner of your eye. What do you do? You can’t risk this packrat advancing any closer towards the party. However, you need to act instantly lest it’ll ruin your formation and possibly result in a situation where members become separated from party, are unable to reposition, get overwhelmed, and end up losing the run. So, you quickly switch weapons, aim, line your shot, then fire once you have a good shot. If in the middle of a horde rush and can’t line shots easily, you pop your ult which will facilitate you to better line shots.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

For those saying that they need to add some balance for heavy weapons. Well, Vermintide 2 already had that figured out as well.

Melee to Torpedo Gun:

Notice how there’s a little soft animation delay when Bardin switches to the massive gun and brings it up. However, it’s not a hard delay, I can still fire as soon as I swapped to the gun. Meaning it’s not as restricting that it prevents me from reacting to a situation.

Melee to Flamer Gun:

Same thing here. There’s a little soft animation delay when Bardin brings the weapon up but I can still cancel it and fire. Additionally, with both Torpedo and Flamer gun there’s a balance where both weapons take a bit longer to reload/cool off. That’s terrific game design as it balances the heavy feel of the weapons. Which is a point I’ve seen people bring up countless times in this thread. So you wanted know how it’s done, well, there’s your solution to a very simple “problem” that can be addressed without ruining your combat.

Then, on top of all that, there’s these cool little combos you can do with fluid swapping. See:

Doesn’t that look cool, doesn’t it look fun, doesn’t it make you want to do the same thing too? Think of the type of combos a player can pull off with this mechanic if they practice at it. I for one can attest that in my 1k hours of playing Vermintide 2 I got very good at reacting to Blightstormers, Packrats, Leechs, and special units because of this feature. I can also pull fun little combos too.

This is in part why I feel Darktide’s combat is such a regression to Vermintide 2.

The flow of action is predicated on how good it feels to switch between weapons on the spot. You can’t break the flow with these unnecessary delays that don’t add anything of value to the game, except for making the combat more clunky. It has to be snappy to switch weapons. It has to feel natural doing so. It has to not ruin the flow of combat or get in the way of it. This is essential stuff to understand when designing an action game such as this. It is bad design to create artificial mechanics which impose upon the flow of action; it’s bad design, in my opinion, as it prevents players from truly enjoying your fast paced game. Devil Mary Cry and Doom Eternal are perfect examples in this regard, as they showcase what good design looks like for fast games such as this.

Devil May Cry 5 facilitating different combos with weapon switching:

Doom Eternal’s snappy swapping:

Closing thoughts: this is of course just my opinion, as with all things, I’m not claiming to be an authority on how game makers should design or create their game. That’s for them to do so, after all, they probably have more experience at it than I do. In that regard, my opinion can be disregarded and thrown into the trash for all I care. However, it’s just how I feel about this issue and I so love sharing my opinion with other like-minded individuals who may appreciate it. I also very much enjoy reading their opinions too. It’s super stimulating to my brain when I do so. I hope the rest of you enjoy Darktide.

4 Likes
57

False dichotomy. Fatshark should just come to their senses and focus on making all the weapons fun and responsive to use. They should stop nerfing and start buffing. It’s that simple.

But they hate fun, I guess. “Player-centric.” Yeah, right.

1 Like
58

well fun is subjective, but i think they all have that capacity, and responsive i guess were looking at that differently. reloading doesnt seem to count but its the same unresponsive pause.

buffing everything will just trivialise the game thats not fun, and why buff 90% of things when lowering 10% gets you to to the same relative place and doesnt destroy the game

im gonna need some help here , how is it a dichotoamy and why is it false? im not taalking about opposites im talking cause and effect , you clearly cant just take one of the strongest weapons remove its only current real drawback and expect it to retain its current power. that drawback is the only thing letting it exist.

1 Like
59

best part of the trailer was when the voiceover said "“players will need to master both melee and ranged combat SWITCHING SEAMLESSLY between the two as the need arises” and almost immediately showed switching from melee to ranged with a long ass lasgun animation lol

2 Likes
60

Malice difficulty as a baseline? Sure. Lets balance towards a difficulty that lets you calmly pull out your gun and shoot stuff while getting eaten alive by a Rager.

Just choose a weapon that doesnt have the weapon swap animation. Playing with Revolver, Machine Pistol, or Shotgun gives you exactly what you want.

If you want a bigger weapon, you gotta deal with the drawbacks. There never was range weapons as powerful as the arsenal we got in Darktide. And the ones that were, like the Trollpedo, always were, and still are broken OP.

1 Like
61

The Plasma Gun has a .5 second draw and I’ve demonstrated this on-video in a previous post.
The Boltgun takes 3x the time to draw.

You can push Ragers in this game, push and shoot lol.
You can’t do that with the Boltgun outright.
Plus the rager in the video wasn’t hitting me :B He was hitting the Ogryn and got misplaced.
I was taking hits from the Poxwalkers.

For the unarmored ones that you can’t usually stagger with a push, you’ll just have to get used to killing them with Melee.

Also charged shots on damnation, 3 shot Crushers.

62

My favorite thing about these ‘balance’ switch animations was when I switched to a boltgun with an empty clip, but I still got the cocking animation, followed by the reload itself. Wtf was my sharpshooter cocking? :smiley:

1 Like