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383

False dichotomy. I can worry about break points on pox walkers and elites, and still have, and want, someone to focus down specials.

You’re making a claim based on… Nothing.

The premise: people are hyper focused on breakpoints in order to be self sufficient

The conclusion: the same people aren’t team players and hate being part of a team (why they’re being self sufficient)

You have a lot of missing dots to connect the two. Not that it matters, but having an honours Ba in philosophy helps with identifying premises and conclusions. I am familiar enough.

Tons of other possibilities.

A.) I don’t want to be dead weight to my team and I calculate breakpoints to ensure, as my role I take down hordes, specials, elites, etc

B.) I like stress testing things and seeing what a weapon can do.

C.) Testing out someone’s build.

D.) feeling efficient and not wasting ammo knowing what to expect for how many shots/hits it will take.

E.) to make interesting sacrifices. Do I two shot the mauler or the rager? Can’t choose both. What’s more important, and what covers the gaps in my other kit?

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384

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385

Sounds like something a crutch would say. Git gud.

On a serious bote though

I’ve played with plenty of the breakpoint nerds, although not very often, since most of the ones doing the calculating usually hing out in the modded realm. Can’t say I share your experience, but then again I don’t vreate stereotypical groups and claim to speak for them.

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386

Mostly people want breakpoints so they can express whatever target priority they want with their build. Like I throw Flak on my Thrust 4 knives so bull butcherk/krouk 4 can one hit kill a Scab Shotgunner before Slaughterer is up and while my heavy hitter stacks are at 0. Shotgunners wreck pub players for some reason even though they’re a simple enemy to deal with.

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387

The issue I have with the concept of “breakpoints” in Darktide is that they normally only apply to soloing, however in actuality, me and the other three players in the group will continually attack the same targets as each other, reducing the need for breakpoints.

Take Helldivers 2 for example.

I prefer to bring the 500KG Bomb stratagem because I enjoy both the sound and the atom bomb effect of ridding the screen of facist bugs, but I am not the only one in the group that chooses a large bomb and drops it during a breach/drop ship call-in.

So my thesis is: Can breakpoints be beneficial in Darktide? Yes! Do the benefits apply in ordinary gameplay? Probably not.

388

if two people do 50% instead of 45% they both have to hit once

same concept,
breakpoints just means reducing the number of hits needed to kill, often confused with oneshotting
and ofc people aim to hit breakpoints on their own gear its the only component you have control over.

the reason i don’t like breakpoints is because its a lot of theory and math for something that should be way easier, while occupying design space that could be invested for things that completely change the behavior of weapons instead of just numbers

example would DRG with its weapon mods, is the Fatboy better? no probably not but it completely changes the gun from a basic grenade launcher to frigging pocket nuke launcher

its way more interesting than having a bit more dmg if X

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389

Just having to shoot 1 less bullet saves you potentially massive amounts of ammo in the long run. Revolver hitting that 1shot breakpoint with crit/without makes massive difference on decision making. Etc

As pointed above the only reason many don’t care invest time and energy into theorycrafting this stuff is because its convoluted and ridiculously rng driven.

But just flat out saying it has no impact on ordinary gameplay is stretching it. Can you complete the game without it? Sure, but i would definitely prefer to play with the revolver i know can 1 tap enemies reliably instead of 50% of the time having to second pull it.

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390

This is only relevant for bosses and maybe crushers - and very few players try to hit oneshot crusher breakpoint - very few weapons actually can do that anyway.

And what has trying to hit breakpoints to do with solo or not? If I want to save team mates from specials and elites the fastest ttk will obviously be helpful - and that’s all breakpoint hunting is: the attempt to reduce ttk. And in an action game lower ttk is always worth, regardless of being a team player or solo player.

If I play lasgun vet I usually try to build so that I can reliably oneshot riflemen in the body and gunners in the head because I see my primary contribution to my teams success in clearing ranged threats to achieve freedom of movement for us.

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391

Depends on a game tho. I would say it’s a tide games balance problem that it’s prefered to have a build around damage than control or support.

392

But how do you suggest we assess its relevance, given that Darktide lacks live damage meters to test any of this in practice, as opposed to World of Warcraft, which allows us to gauge individual number contributions.

Wow only has counters for DPS and HPS and no additional inputs, so the system is not flawless.

The psykanium is ineffective as a test area because it cannot simulate a group of four, and “saving ammo,” especially such a little amount, is irrelevant for most builds.

I understand what you are saying, and I am not trying to cause trouble, but i disagree with some of your arguments here . Darktide is not a complicated game which involves rotations and burn phases to meet enrage timers while dancing around the AoE’s.

In my opinion, the most effective Darktide builds are tanky, can counter most enemy kinds, and have some sort of support ability (smite, Shout, Bull rush/Taunt/Blessing).

My favorite Quorin build is my knife melee Veteran build, which keeps the knife in melee range 95% of the game and only uses the XIV Revolver in very particular scenarios.

In addition to everything else, you have three more members in your squad that assist you and provide their own damage who will “meet the breakpoints” together with you.

393

While I still believe that reducing TTK is something to strive for in any action game I agree with you that in other games there may be other stuff that is worthwhile a well.

But in a horrde game where the enemy will always try to overwhelm you by numbers whatever reduces those numbers fastest will always be the winning strategy. Crowd Control builds are absolutely possible in DT bat damage builds outperform them because they reduce the threat faster. I don’t know any horde game where this would be diffrent though.

In games that with fewer enemies and a more tactical approach crowd control, suppression and mobility can all be as important as damage. But in this games you’ll profit from reducing ttk :wink:

So I think it’s less of a DT and more of a genre problem ^^

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394

Yes, but let’s say you will increase crushers and maulers move and attack speed. But their hp and dmg will stay the same (or slightly increased), aswell as player dmg will not be changed. In that case control will play more role because you will just have less time to react and smaller window to deal your damage while enemies will not become sponges.

And if you will heavily reduce ammount of healing supplies you migh want to have some healer-support role.

395

Why would you need live testing? The enemy health values are set depending on the difficulty you play at.
If your weapon hits a certain damage mark then you can always expect scenario A to at least play out. What your teammates do for you are out of your control. They could be targeting the same enemies you are targeting or they might be distracted fighting/kiting a boss etc.
You pick breakpoints on the idea that you know what your kit is capable of and its limits.

Let’s take this hypothetical scenario here where 4 people are dpsing crusher. If you know your shovel has 1 hit breakpoint on that crusher (possible breakpoint btw) then what does it matter that you got 4 player combined dps here? You can always presume the crusher dies and move on.
If you got a trapper about to trap your teammate and you know you can 1 shot it, then you can quickly tap it and move on.
If you know your weapon 2 shots that trapper then maybe you need to disengage a bit and takes those 2 shots. Or maybe you see that trapper gets actually shot by someone else and now you know its 1 shot.

This sort of decision making IS important the higher you go in difficulties. It has impacts on marcro level even on stuff such as positioning (where i need to be to take that 1 or 2 shots) or risk management (can i take these shots before these other things hit me) etc.

Wow also has enemies and bosses that generally take 5-10 minutes to kill with 20-25 man parties. The dps/hps numbers are so different to darktides where i don’t understand why this is relevant?

It is a simple game with complex decision making which you can streamline by knowing exactly what your kit can do for you.

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396

I only play Auric Maelstrom.

Regarding the decision making of not risking getting hit; all my builds are quite tanky. Less so on my poor Psyker, but Quorin is really the only character I play.

I have tried high DPS builds in the past, but I prefer to"swim" in hordes without having to worry too much personally, so that’s why Quorin is running a “high mobility - high durability” melee build.

Give me a sec as I am at work and i’ll read your reply properly and give a better discussion.

@hgjw Ok, sorry for that.

I’m sitting on the toilet for a break now xD

@weeping.moon mention a lot of my talking points that I was going to make: Darktide is reflex based and not so much numbers based.

One way to kinda gauge this argument is to take a decent white quality weapon into any Auric Maelstrom modifier and preferably, using a build that you fee"at home" with and you’ll quickly see that you will play more or less just as good with the white quality weapon as you would with your crafted weapon.

To continue on qith @weeping.moon 's statements and something i agree with: Darktide is not really a decision making game because with all the modifiers in AM, you sinply do not have time for individual decision making and after having played the game for awhile, spawns starts to become predictable.

That is not to say that you can’t be screwed over by those 5 Trappers that just spawned, but Darktide doesn’t have the loadout decision making of Helldivers 2 for example or Monster Hunter where you have to specifically and tactically switch up your gear dependant on what you are up against.

You will become very good auromatically at Darktide if you play for a couple of hundred hours and practice (means just playing) solely in Auric Maelstrom by tailoring your reflexes and game knowledge.

After awhile spawns and where to look qill become second nature and you will get screwed over now and then. That’s a part of the game, but it’s not like in Helldivers, Helldive difficulty where you specifically have to play a certain way and know when to hold on to Stratagems and pick the correct ones or you’ll be dead in the ground.

397

Then the better you should understand why even milliseconds could make a difference.

Anyways patiently waiting for the rest.

@Wahid

Oke if the argument revolves around the idea that you are better off learning mechanics like dodging, ability usage, enemy types, special abilities, etc the laundry list of core mechanics.
Then i 100% agree that you will most likely be better of with these skills. Like I’m not even going to debate that.

Like for full context i barely do breakpoints math for my weapons.(The crafting is already driving me nuts as it is)
There are few edge cases where i go see if there is something to be gained from perk or two, but thats it.
But i would still argue that yellow weapon with 2 strong blessings and really good damage will probably still serve you better than whatever white 300 trash that you happened to pick up on the ground.
The impact of that weapon really is dependant on what type and level of a player you are.

That’s where i would have to disagree a bit. While i agree that in the minute to minute combat gameplay you are probably more focused on just killing the next and biggest looking enemy there is still some basic decisions you have to make.
On auric the players usually make these decisions instantly already, but you see it constantly in lower level games where something simple as plague ogryn is being fought in the smallest corner possible when you could easily just kite it to some open place.

The decisions might not be in the ballpark of helldivers like “lets bomb this factory area”, but you should be constantly making some micro decision on stuff like where to position and fight.
While breakpoints might be a minor thing to consider, i do still think its important thing to wonder if you can 1 tap something or not. If you are healthbars mod user then even this is made infinitely easier.

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398

You don’t realy think and plan in milliseconds, you just react on reflexes and musclememmory, the evidance of that is that with time you can faceroll higher difficulties, if there was some heavy thinking involved then your gaming skill wouldn’t go so parabolic with time. Knowledge check isn’t taht big in DT, neither resource managment. Quite rarely i have an inner dialogue with myself that i need to keep 1 nade or ultimate incase i will be swarmed by 10 ragers. Or i don’t think what i should kill first, i just know cause of expirience.

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399

You don’t have those “oh it did not die to this shot or hit” moments? Good player adjusts by dodging or something while worse player gets hit.
Like I’m not trying to pretend that the game is extremely hard or something with my reply here.
But i do think these sorts of things can make your gameplay easier.

Or it could if the rng crafting didin’t make this pretty much pointless.

400

I mean it can be hard for someone, sure, but hard and complex are different things. For complexity game should have gazillions of knowledge checks, side systems and variables. Like tekken and poe are complex games. Tides are mostly about training reaction and not having tunnel vision.

The game doesn’t punish you if you haven’t learned how some stats work or synergised, you can do it for minmaxing, but don’t rly need to, you mostly need just to have a high APM rate.

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401

I mean i guess. Like i can agree on the point that hard and complex can be different things, but there is definitely different kind of complexity. Like poe is definitely complex game, but i would not call its necessarily hard one to figure out if you just have time on your hand.
Tekkens is definitely hard and complex for having to understand ideas like frame advantages while still learning gazillion moves.

No but you definitely can make your life easier if you can 1 shot stuff instead of 3-4 shot. If you can combo melee weapon attacks fluidly and understand ideas like animation cancelling, etc etc.
Like i don’t agree the APM is the only core factor that you need to succeed in the highest difficulties. It certainly helps if you are cracked. But generally if you run stuff like true solo you probably understand bit more about the game than just how to most effectively smash that mouse 1 button.

402

Yeah it can. But it’s like more about ratio. Overall person that lacks some knowledge about breakpoints or has a bit crappy gear can outperform person who knows every weapon stats, like how much targets it can cleave etc, but have a bad movement, too slow on weapon swap, forgetting to use nades/ultimate, etc. It’s not like 50/50 you need to be equaly good at game’s inner wikipedia and at pushing buttons.

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