Why is Fatshark's design philosophy to nerf players instead of buffing enemies?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

I’m just making an observation here. I’m a Veteran main, so I’m eating good still, but my buddy is in SHAMBLES after playing the Pre-Release Beta’s iteration of the Zealot. After playing a few games with the nerfed ult and toughness regeneration, it straight-up made him hesitant to continue playing at all.

And you know what? I don’t blame him.

Why in god’s name is it the presumption that you should blow off the player’s kneecaps if you think they’re having too easy of a time with the game, rather than tuning up enemies to match their perceived power level? This is game design 101, especially for a co-op game; if you’re going to alter player abilities, it should either be a buff or, if you HAVE to nerf it, it should be gentle and for the most part negligible, just enough to prevent a class from outshining the others. That said, nerfing a player class should still be a last resort, and the focus should instead be placed upon bringing the other classes up to its level.
I genuinely can’t imagine how upset I’d be to have such a blast playing my class in the Closed Beta and then come back to the absolute SHELL that Zealot (and Psyker) has been reduced to. Why? For what purpose? It feels outright hostile to the players.

And all this without even mentioning the nerfs to dodging and stamina regeneration, not to mention chip damage. I just don’t understand what the devs’ philosophy is here. It is almost never the correct choice to gimp your players this way, it drastically weakens the experience for people who would otherwise be enjoying themselves. Make it make sense.

11 Likes
2

I agree with this. Game isn’t fun with nerfs.

3 Likes
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Balancing nerfs with buffs is a precarious act.

Buff too much and you risk betraying the original vision and intended design, as well as entering a kind of “arms race” between content difficulty and player power.

  • Well, now the player can kill 5 enemies a second. We’d better increase spawns to 10 enemies a second so that the game isn’t too easy.
  • Players are finding it kinda hard to keep up with ten enemies a second, so we’ve buffed the player so now that they can kill 8 enemies a second instead.
  • Metrics show that players are clearing games a bit too frequently. So we’ve upped the enemy spawns to 17 enemies a second instead.

Rinse and repeat until the player is killing hundreds of enemies a second.

Nerf too much and you risk aggravating the playerbase and homogenizing the experience.

1 Like
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Simplest answer is that it is way easier to nerf a specific weapon than to buff all enemies to catch up. Even so, I agree that alot of the nerfs are misguided. However, if weve learned anything from vermintide (cough release state SoTT cough) its that nerfs sometimes are neccesary.