Will Macros be allowed in Darktide?

Basically the title.

I play with a macro that lets me spam left-click by holding down a button on the side of the mouse. I haven’t seen enough of Darktide to tell for sure whether melee attack speeds can get as high as in V2, but I’d like some clarification on this because I really don’t want to start up the game and then get banned 2 minutes into the first map.

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I’d like to see them add a keybind for “auto attack” into the base game (primarily to help with unnecessary Repetitive Strain Injuries), but I’m not sure about anything beyond that. Maybe there are some good reasons for overall accessibility or handicaps for some people’s IRL situations that I can’t think of right now. Anecdotally, I’ve really only observed macros giving players gameplay advantages, which in the long run serves to undermine rebalance complaints.

For example, let’s say the 2H Hammer might normally receive balance complaints from high level players. If a macro became all but necessary to use the 2H hammer/Q-switching in the highest levels of play, we would see players abandoning or abusing the weapon. The would-be-complainers will have adopted macros that allow for 300% more Super Armor Dps from “Q-switching L1 attack spam,” and the Devs might not get enough feedback to warrant rebalancing the weapon for the majority of the community (the people trying to use the weapon at lower levels of play, and those who would like to be using it at higher levels of play.) I’m not sure about the “300% more” statistic, but this actually happened and it got the devs to slightly rework Q-switching in some instances. The issues are still rampant overall.

I typically see people abusing macros/Q-switching to move-tech/attack/shoot faster, which to me has always felt like a problem when it comes to game balance. Was the crossbow meant to shoot 100%* faster when spamming “R” between reloads? Was a Kruber meant to get +30%* movespeed from Q-switching and L1 spamming his Sword and Mace? Is a Dwarf supposed to be able to Q-switch and attack 100%* faster with the Greataxe? Is Sienna supposed to be able to shoot 200%* faster with Conflag/Coruscation staffs with Q-switching? Maybe these are issues that should’ve been lodged as balance complaints to the devs, and the changes should’ve been incorporated a long time ago for everyone, instead of letting a portion of the community abuse these mechanics heavily. The specific Light 1 attack pattern spam can be game changing for many weapons, like Staffs/2H hammer/2H axe/Bret Sword/Spear/Halberd/Hammer/etc.

These are a few examples, and I’m not saying that this issue is “literally killing the game!” or anything close to that really, but I do think it hurts the game balance longterm for the community as a whole when the highest level players are abusing mechanics instead of exposing mechanics for rebalancing. Q-switching and internal/global cooldowns and input delay/buffers are too complicated for me to come up with a perfect solution off the cuff, and at the end of the day this is just a PVE experience. I just think that macros allow balance issues to linger, while also making me feel like I’m “not helping the team as much as I could be” by not abusing them.

INB4 “your name is Makkro tho” - I only use autoclickers in Idle games, that’s my super dark secret :cowboy_hat_face:

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Yeah, I agree with this. It mainly comes down to what your group wants the playstyle to be. E.g. my group tries to limit playing Shade and Zealot due to how stupidly OP and solo they can be.

Not against an auto attack macro at all, due to RSI. My friend has to take long breaks from V2 because pain in the nerves of his arm and certain Weapons cause this more. DD, Rapier, etc.

I think there’s a conversation to be had about Movement Speed increasing tech too, since it literally improves the feel of certain Weapons, but I think the Sprint function of Darktide will fix this. The fact Mace and Sword is Dual Wield and so versatile and strong, but also gets a Movement Speed tech is a bit frustrating though.

Certain 2H Weapons will never benefit from Movement Speed tech, and can’t compete with Dual Wield too.

At least we’ve moved on from DK and Beam Staff wobbling though.

I don’t mind this kind of tech being in the game, but if people are doing it on lower difficulties and unmodded QP, where players don’t really get a chance to decide on if you’re making the match too easy or forces them into a confrontation they shouldn’t need to be in, it’s a problem.

E.g. people doing the old Beam wobble and getting 10 Ults in 5 seconds as Sienna, spamming FF and killing everything from 100 miles away.

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^This I’d love to see. It’s why I use the left-click macro in Vermintide. I highly doubt it’ll get put in though.

As for the rest, I agree with the sentiment overall, but I’d personally hesitate to refer to QQ-cancelling and such as abusing mechanics. Although, that is an altogether different topic and I highly doubt we’d find consensus in a game like V2.

You certainly have far more faith left in Fatshark than I do. The moment Fatshark starts fixing this game without introducing new bugs every patch, I’ll start reporting bugs again. 'Till then, I will not waste my time reporting something that isn’t ever going to get fixed.

Also, I don’t know if you’ve looked into V2’s source but here’s a bit of clarification on how much effort the whole QQ/animation cancelling thing would require to fix. To “fix” one weapon, would require FS to change a few numbers. No need to write new lines of code or anything. Literally change a few numbers.

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