We have had multiple weapons which are the “meta” picks in Havoc, because they basically ignore armour and/or have unlimited cleave. You have done NOTHING about it. Instead of addressing the basics, you keep pushing the gameplay into the direction of pointlessly overcomplicated ruleset.
So far Havoc difficulty modifiers development instead of encouraging weapon and build variety, has made those things worse. I appreciate your efforts in refreshing the class talent trees, as this improve things somewhat…but your direction with gameplay design in Havoc doesn’t help with the weapon balance. The game still has the same tired meta picks when it comes to weapons. Even more weapons have been pushed into “don’t touch it In Havoc or you will have bad time” category.
We have enemies which ignore stagger which undermines specific weapons and talents. Enemies which are extremely resistant to ranged fire, which p…off a lot of vet players to no end. Now apparently we have enemies which are extremely resistant to melee damage and whatever else. I start losing track of it.
Have you considered for 2 seconds, you should just address weapon balance instead of breaking the game’s basic design principles, and making everything overcomplicated. At this rate we might be using all the colours of the rainbow to reflect all the silly differences in enemy buffs.
Please ask yourself a question: how does something like Rotten Armour spam with Garden or Stims modifiers help to address weapon balance issues? They don’t. They reinforce the “meta” weapon and class build picks.
As a side note. You DO realise your game has terrible picture clarity / visibility issues thanks to all the VFX and number of enemies. Who’s “genius” idea it was to expect players to look at specific enemy’s eyes to identify what kind of behaviour we can expect from them?
Stop overcomplicating everything. Address the basics, like the weapon balance, and you might make the game puzzle slightly harder to solve by the SAME tired meta builds player have been abusing since day 1.
Doing something about the smite
What are your suggestions?
-Well, sir, we were on vacation here and thought that to solve these issues, we at least need to understand what’s going on in the game beyond the first mission, but we’re not eager to figure it all out. Therefore, we propose simply making the enemies even tougher and increasing their numbers.
+But then players will be unhappy, and our game could experience a churn, and profit and reputation will decline. Have you considered that?
-We’ve added new premium cosmetics to these changes.
+Basically, it’s a good idea, release the patch.
That’s pretty much how I see all the discussions in the FS office: they have no idea what’s going on in the game. I’m not at all happy losing a 40th Havoc just because you were simply overwhelmed by the masses, when the patch notes emphasized “enemies will feel like elites, not like a mob.” I can, of course, give examples and attach screenshots that are clearly photoshopped (SARCASM), when 32 shotguns come out in your face at the same time, and when in a 1-minute interval you have 15+ crushers on the map.Or even worse, when you’re fighting back, and then everyone crash, or some players start spamming enemies again, and you’re outnumbered, so the outcome is clear, I think.
Who is actually the design director of Darktide?
Even though Auric and Maelstrom already exist, instead of adjusting the balance, they went ahead and created Havoc mode.
While the meta keeps becoming more and more centralized, they ignore balance issues, and instead try to counter it by adding overly complex modifiers and strengthening enemies in Havoc.
The mission selection screen had gradually improved since launch, becoming very clear and easy to use, yet it has now been replaced with a UI that looks undeniably worse.
Does this mean the design director has changed? I can’t help but think that some talentless person brought in from another company is in charge.
Reworking the DS power - Nuke Uncanny from orbit capped at 40% Rending and no more synergy with DoTs. Swap Finesse Stat with Critical Bonus Stat. That should lessen it’s effectiveness in horde clearing without the boost in Weakspot power and Attack Speed.
Working on the plasma gun - “Infinite cleave” locked behind secondary attack, fully charged Secondary attack caps at 25% Heat and caps damage regardless of how long it’s held before release, Primary/Secondary both get minor splash damage on whatever target stops the Plasma cleave, finally primary fire Overloads after 100% like Secondary.
It would improve weapon variety against the Kings of Carapace - Crushers, potentially make them more dangerous on an individual level, and if so, would lessen the need for endless oceans of Crushers in Havoc.
That’s actually one of the more frustrating parts. The amount of resources they pour into things that nobody asked for instead of tackling more glaring issues.
Though to be fair, a difficulty like havoc has been requested by the top x%.
As happened with VT2’s Versus mode, years of development are spent on something almost no one wants, only for it to be discarded after six months. Knowing that time could have been used to add a large number of new enemies, maps, skins, and weapons to the game is truly disheartening.
This game has two types of fans:
Warhammer and 40K fans
Many of them are looking for cool-looking skins, weapons, and maps.
However, the game is filled with recolors and template-based skins, and players cannot freely choose colors. Moreover, everything is locked behind a FOMO store, so you can’t buy what you want when you want it. Despite many players requesting new Arbites skins, none have been added.
Character creation is also limited—you can only make drug addicts or bald characters. Even if you’re not trying to create handsome or beautiful characters, you can’t make a “normal” face.
Fans of Fatshark’s combat style
They enjoy high-quality combat mechanics and challenging, cooperative gameplay. They long for new enemies, factions, bosses, maps, and other features with unique mechanics.
Instead, what was added was a new Mortis map that almost no one plays. While the skill tree revamp was impressive, the balance remains poor, and most players still use the same weapons and builds. Can you really enjoy using the same weapon and build all year?
Instead of adding these things, time and resources were spent designing and implementing Havoc and Mortis Trials game modes, adding a party finder, and creating new modifiers. Who, exactly, is happy about that?
- Weapon nerf closes theoretically slightly the gap to other weapons
- some weapon buffs
- requested tree reworks
- new enemy type
The bad:
- the new havoc modifiers and the increased difficulty reinforce the meta instead of breaking it up
- lack of plasma gunner audio and visual cues
-
The ugly:
- performance
- leavers not being replaced bug
**Opinion and suggestions**
- for many there is no reliable sweet spot in regards to difficulty between high havoc insanity and easy Aurics: add a new tab above auric that offers auric HISTG with 1 to x common and havoc modifiers
- meta weapons get even more busted by an easy access to rending: Remove uncanny strike or limit stacks to last target from DS and make it not interact with dots. Flame staff should also be useless against carapace.
- multiple boss spawns in havocs are too critical for mission success: make multiple boss spawns not the baseline but a modifier
The dueling sword, combat knife, flame staff, plasma gun.
All this stuff needs to be nerfed at this point.
In fact i would argue assassin mobility profile needs to be deleted from the game completely and standard mobility profile should be baseline.
Entire problem is caused because instead of nerfing these, fatshark is BALANCING THE GAME AROUND THEM. Which is a terrible idea and honestly killed the game for me, i just see no fun playing the same meta for last 2 years.
The balance needs some drastic changes, game is so boring currently.
And funny thing, fatshark made vermintide, which they did have decent enough weapon/content balance.
I can boot up V2 right now, and beat twitch cata with almost any weapon on any class. But this game the balance is so ridiculously bad between the meta weapons i listed and everything else its not even comparable.
I would add to this Empowered Smite and golden toughness abilities. Smite should just be removed/replaced by something new. As it stands now, it is an antithesis of what Tide gameplay is supposed to stand for. Golden toughness is also problematic, but I’m not sure how it could be “fixed” without totally gutting VoC and Chorus as ability choices.
And/or stam regen buffs, dodge distance buffs, stronger impact on push attacks… these are all interesting temp buffs that could replace gold toughness on Shout.
Why does it need to stack at all? If the solution is to make it only work on single targets just make it 20% rending on weakspot hits and call it a day.
