The Conundrum With Lore First Balance (Warhammer: Darktide)
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- čas přidán 29. 08. 2024
- How Should The Tide Games Be Balanced: • How Do You Balance The...
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Quick note that this video isn't intended as a direct response to any recent events - I've had this video idea bouncing around for about a year now and it just so happened to be done at this time (Although I did add a section towards the end that is more of a direct response)
My big takeaway for balancing based off of lore, at least for 40k (or any warhammer game) is to understand that every bit of lore is propaganda that is trying to sell (both in universe and out) the power, skill, ability, or brutal nature of the characters, factions, and settings. It might be that in lore a single member of the guard has no chance against a space marine but that doesn't mean the fight should be impossible in a game. It just means that the fight has to be challenging because the idea is not actually "this is impossible" but rather "this is difficult for many reasons, but most importantly the difference between each characters equipment."
TLDR: Balancing off of lore is about ensuring vibes and experience not recreating what is written 100%.
ngl if Darktide was balanced by the lore it would be impossible for anyone to beat a single level 1 mission and the planet would have been detonated already
If Darktide was balanced for lore, the Beast of Nurgle would wipe the entire team by virtue of being within 50 meters of them.
Inquisitor Grendyl - "We have arrived, and it is now that we perform our charge. In fealty to the God- Emperor (our undying lord) and by the grace of the Golden Throne, I declare Exterminatus upon the Imperial World of Atoma Prime. I hereby sign the death warrant of an entire world, and consign billions of souls to oblivion. May Imperial justice account in all balance. The Emperor protects."
Yes, but actually no. Not necessarily
look its very simple, to spot the rejects who are immune to the plague you just see who comes back from the first mission, those are the ones who can get entrusted with better weapons, i think the game made a good job there
Tide games should always be fun first lore after it's why vermintide 2 was badass cuz of all the AU what if versions of all the careers
Agree with this wholeheartedly. This approach is what let's is have necromancer for example which lorewise is still a big possibility. Personally I hope we get a vampire knight or Rune priest one day.
Agree
If we are talking about lore, our ogryns are working for the inquisition, if the inquisitor wants to, the ogryn can be equipped with anything, even a heavy bolter. Yes, in the guard they wont going to get a heavy bolter, but the inquisition do what they want.
we rejects, not inqusition force.
@@GroBoiD7777 As i said, the inquistion do what they want, if they want to use prisoners to send in as cannonfodder they can, if they want to recruit from the hive gangs, they can, and arm them with anything they have. The player character is a reject first, but in service of the inquisition. The whole leveling up process is basically gaining trust and the player is awarded with access to services and better equipment. It doesnt matter what you are as long as you serve the inquisition.
In tabletop a few groups of guardsmen can kill a 10 thousand years chaos terminator
Even though this video isn't a direct response I still highly appreciate this kind of civil and respectful discussion between high quality content creators, be it through their own separate videos or in collaborative debate videos 🙂
if we are talking about the same creator than idk if that guy was exactly respectful. He liked a comment which was making fun of jtc. Maybe I'm looking too deep into it.
@@cultowner7207 Oh? Haven't seen that. I was going through miles of the comment section of Reginald's video just now, including JTC's own comments and the followinging discussion. It seemed quite wholesome and well mannered. And Reginald seem to have liked and answered alot of them, so I'm inclined to mark whatever comment you are talking about as an honest mistake (since I couldn't find it because of sheer numbers 😉).
@@cultowner7207 I looked more thoroughly again, and still couldn't find anything. Maybe you're talking about some other CC than Reginald?
@@cultowner7207yes. Yes you are
@@ClayInvictus ctrl+f "Assisted_living_dracula"
Darktide is in one of the better positions for deviations from lore as far as who can use what and what the gear or individuals might be capable of. Even though rejects, the player has proven their loyalty and value to work under an inquisitor in any capacity. Being in the highest bracket of authority, rules and regulations only really apply to them as far as another inquisitor scrutinizes. So the conscripts and their gear can have a nigh endless degrees of augmentation or modification to hand wave away a lot of possible discrepancies as still fitting in the lore.
Not only the wargear can have a huge variety, but the inquisitors can take xenos, space marines and even daemonhosts in their warband. Inquisitors have the best potential for variety, but it's untapped in darktide.
I enjoy your long form discussions, keep up the good work!
12:07
The main thing about Ogryn guns is that they tend to use them as clubs. So they have specially designed weapons that can withstand the force.
In game terms, there’s no reason they can’t just have different guns they essentially do the same thing for each class. As in, I’d the humans get a boltgun that shoots lots of mini rockets very quickly, the ogryn could get a gun that shoots bigger ‘nades but slower.
Both weapons being a type of anti-armour, anti-boss, damage dealer with a little crowd control.
I think a better approach would be to balance for the "feel" and "power fantasy" of the weapon to guide them into gameplay niches that they can fill. Bolter feels like a powerful weapon, and is described so in the lore, so allowing players to fullfill that power fantasy (within reason, to not invalidate every other gun) should be the goal. At the end of the day, as long as bolter feels fun to use, people wont complain that its not 100% lore-accurate.
One of my favorite examples of lore informed design was in Eternal Crusade (RIP)
As soon as I unlocked the Rokkit Launcha for my Orkz I equipped it so I could see what they did with a weapon that’s supposed to be a very short range missile launcher.
It flew straight for a couple of feet… and then just spiraled off target and flew off into the sky.
How well did it function in terms of balance?
I’d say it’s low effectiveness was in perfect balance with the high degree of amusement it provided
It seems as though battlesector is the closest video game example of the tabletop game
Here are some lore friendly suggestions:
Khorne's bloodletters start manifesting.
Tzeentch sends in forces to thwart Nurgle.
Biomancy should be allowed for emergency healing at the cost of higher peril & corruption risks.
Mechanicum Volt Priests vs Dark Mech forces.
Fatshark needs to be more creative with their content.
I hope Fatshark is watching because you’re bringing up some really good points here!
They aren't rules they are more like guidelines imo.
I wouldn't mind having a heavy bolter for ogryn. We already have shit ton of power swords laying in piles, because they're the most common weapon for convict to wield and every member of adeptus mechanicus have seen the STC of power sword from the dark age of technology..
all weapons should (ideally) be equally balanced. a knife SHOULD be the same level of power as a thunder hammer or power sword. however, the lore informs the aesthetic of the game. and the game must adhere to basic aesthetic principles (IE, the thunder hammer special must be extremely powerful, and must self-stun, to match the intense visual and audio of the Empowered hit).
both of these concepts must be adhered to.
I'm not sure I actually agree entirely with that sentiment for a few reasons. all weapons should be neither unusable or so strong they negatively affect the play experience of other players (like the current plasma gun), but beyond that there should be a range of slightly stronger and weaker weapons as this is a PvE game. Having a variety in strength allows players to challenge themselves more or less given how they feel in the moment, and some weapons that are icon status should likely be on the stronger side to make them shine.
The boltgun is... fine... it has a lot of of uncomfy design to it and realistically it should probably over perform compared to most weapons not because of lore but because of it's icon status. It is THE 40k gun. Similar to how spells like fireball are purposefully designed a little stronger in dnd for the same reasoning.
I disagree. According to your logic, if fatshark added a wooden stick or a potato gun, they SHOULD be the same power as thunder hammer or botlgun.
You’re getting your lore wrong on Nork; he was unusually smart by natural Ogryn standards, and there is no indication if he ever received BONE augmentation. The Ogryn in Darktide are all implied to have undergone the augmentation process (one Voice type outright confirming it), so I think we can allow more complicated weapons like the HBolter or rotator cannon into the game.
One of the hardest things to do in games with a rich narrative background is capture that scaling of power without breaking balance. I don’t think there’s any game that truly reached that ideal, so my stance is gameplay with a deal of respect. Darktide is already in that position, given the copious amount of access to Boltguns, power weapons, exotic ammunition for stub weaponry, and the fact half the psykers haven’t been executed on the spot.
We really kills me is because of the lore you can't really give Ogryn much. Ignoring the Burst Limiter stuff all of their weapons have to be specifically made for giant cavemen, right down to their guns needing to survive being used as a club.
And on top of that we play as FORMER PRISONERS. So the range of weapons is reduced further cause I doubt Grendyl's gonna give Lascannon privileges to an Ogryn that got arrested for Sedition.
Fights about Lore I suspect are proxy fights for disagreements in philosophy. People don’t like to directly address the philosophy that goes into creating escapism (philosophy is a bridge into, yet also a hole in the wall of, immersion). If the philosophy of any IP is well understood by the creators contributing to it, the Lore and details of any project will come out close enough to feel true (understanding is like having a seed for a random element generator). Conversely, the energetic enforcement of the “Lore accurate details” functionally lessens the chance of mutation in the philosophy from the bottom up. It’s a proxy fight.
For my two cents, a lot of the wargear seems 25-45% too small. And the game’s bolter seems to function close enough to the lore of the bolt pistol. The game’s actual bolt pistol is what it is. The movement, gameplay loop, and level design are all pretty great in the game’s current iteration.
See you on the Morning Star.
The real jtcLIVE?
One thing I'd add about our ogryns is that they are unusually smart. Like almost-normal-human intelligence, especially the Slavic one. Those that have been classed as Auric-level operatives (whatever that would mean in the wider universe)? Not completely unreasonable for them to be issued a heavy bolter for desperate circumstances. However even if that's not allowed the autocannon would be functionally the same thing, in the context of "balancing based on speculative future content".
I believe all our Ogryns have their Bonehead implants
The other thing to remember about bolt weapons is that the ones used by the imperial guard are significantly weaker than the ones used by the sisters of battle who are humans in power armor, and the ones used by the sisters are significantly weaker than the ones being used by the space marines.
I also agree that for this format of game good against and bad against should not mean hard counter/ed.
Only War mentioned. Absolutely a dub. Only War is so great, I've got the PDFs and I love reading through it and making character.
So there are a few video games that play similar to and can be considered a tabletop adaptation for Warhammer 40k. Sanctus Reach and Battlesector both have a lot of tabletop elements including the point system and army building.
10:34 The flamer doing it all. Sound like The Ignis from Warframe.
Shipmistress Brahms is a Rogue Trader so she has access to non-imperial weapons. So it is no too far of a stretch for the players to get there hands non-standard weapons maybe even xenos weapons.
I would say, at least about ogryns and heavy bolters; that ogryns or at least the average ogryn is too stupid to use a complex weapon system like that, think about it. the ogryn weapons we commonly see are made so that there is not a complicated reloading system, at most they have to pull a bolt back or eject a spent casing like with the grenade launchers and it seems (to me at least) that there is no actual mag release on any of the guns so an ogryn probably would not be able to learn how to use a heavy bolter because the steps for reloading one would be too complicated.
At the current time of balancing I am enjoying the iconic lore born weapons: Bolt weapons, Chain weapons, Power Sword, Thunderhammer (Power weapons in general), Plasma Gun, Lasguns et al and even though im not a big fan of the mere Revolver and Knife category I have seen how it made sense a skilled fighter using such "mundane" weapons are swift and "assassin-like" pulling a "David vs Goliath" effect is kind of the plot armor in the balancing, much like the idea of a high recoil (and much of what metafans criticize) on Bolt Weapons and need to take another shot to kill big baddies is the balance that can still fit in lore senses.
Ogryn I think will get Autocannon but tmk no Heavy Bolter. Only think so for Autocannon bc of a glib made in a bio for the "Metalfab 97 Yeomen" Ogryn Cosmetic that had a welders face shield seen in Commodores Vestures as of July 12, 2024
tbh I don't think that the table top games are lore accurate, at least gameplay wise, given that Nork can kill Angron, the DAEMON PRIMARCH, in one turn with all his attacks and a headbutt if they all land and wound. As funny as it would be for the Ogryn in Darktide to grab a Daemonhost and kill it in one shot with the equivalent of a headbutt (so the bull charge?), that's probably not healthy for the game.
I do understand where people come from when they ask for "lore friendly" balance, if they don't directly put out the notion of "lore based balance above all" but I cannot agree with it.
There would be half an essay to say about this but it boils down to; we play games for many reasons but the only one that is consistent across every game is that we will play a game if the gameplay is enjoyable and desireable and won't play a game if it's either not enjoyable or not desireable to play. This is a long way of saying: "Gameplay is the most important factor and therefor gameplay is the most important factor to consider when balancing."
I'd love the boltgun to not be a precision and crit focused weapon and for it do deal with whatever is on my screen (in a non-OP way ofc) and anything more lore friendly which reduces how fun it'd be to use needs to be disregarded.
Allow me to disagree, I like the bolter how it is, as a precision weapon. It's not a horde clearing weapon, be it in lore or games. The only times you see bolters used stupidly to "clear the screen" is heavy bolter against Nids, Orks or renegades.
When it come to Darktide, I feel it's perfectly balanced. One taps every flak elite, one to three shots heavy armor depending on your build, and you can go full auto (if you handle the recoil, unlike Astartes would need), it's one of the best boss killing weapon.
The feeling of every shot having devastating impact is the charm of the bolter (at least to me, they nailed the recoil and sound design). Having it become a flamer.v2 is the worst I can imagine.
@@ipatchymakouli415 it just doesn't make sense that a boltgun needs to hit headhots or crits to be effective and it also doesn't make sense that hitting arms would allow the target to live.
What you're talkig about in DT are the old breakpoints. The very new, current ones are trash for such a slow-handling, precision weapon. It regularly needs more than 1 hit for the weakest enemies, and doesn't deal with elites effectively.
That satisfying heavy impact you're talking about was also nerfed out of the game very recently as it no longer staggers flak or carapace elites effectively.
Bro, Warhammer lore is REALLY squishy and frankly, campy as hell even though it's so "grimdark." - there is no discernible cannon. Have you ever seen the old collection of things from the original few releases? A bolter can be anything from a cannon to a pea-shooter depending on which amount of plot armor is currently being employed. You cannot balance a factual number-based game with lore where entire races are written off, wiped out, names changed, people live and die, the timeline is 10k years long. The list of "crazy shit that is accepted as normal" in Warhammer is too long to type out.
The 1 to 1 from Darktide and Warhammer lore exist, Warhammer is not just the miniature game, the pen&paper Dark Heresy / Only War rulebooks exists, with all the weapon included in Darktide
the table top miniature game rules needs to cover the whole scale of Warhammer and they are unfit for this particular videogame translation
Dark Heresy is based on Inquisitorial agents (acolytes) much like the ones in darktide, the rulebooks are there, and they cover perfectly all Darktide Weapons
this being said Bolter is very strong in this game, (compared to other Warhammer videogames), the problem with its balance is that it gets outshined by beaten up small arms that were developed for low levels and to give a sense of progression
the OG idea was that you would work to unlock stronger weapons to be able to beat the hardest levels, it was like this in the beta, at the time where most people bought the game.
14:30 this part is nonsense, Darktide is a Left for Dead surrogate, it implies that Grendyl's rejects are immune to the zombie virus, even if it could just be a trial by selection and we are playing the 1 in a thousand that came back from the first mission on Atoma
Iirc, there was a port of the TT minifig on pc. Though, it would probably require dosbox to run. So, yeah.
i kinda like darktide. but ive not experienced alot of "poor communication". well in some major cases people don't always notice stuff and so on. But i have alot of fun just smashing and bashing heretics and poxers. But what i kinda find funny is how they say "Chaos space marines would be too tough for the rejects" and i just think back to vermintide 2. as in vermintide the characters easily take on chaos warriors of nurgle who are also in lore " as strong as 3 men, 2'3 meters tall, does not require food or rest" and mind you they are nurgle chaos warriors so they are tough as all hell wearing chaos plate and to see them be butchered is kinda just weird. but i mean a Plague marine could be killed by the rejects. i mean an Ogryn is about the size of a space marine and actually in raw brute strength a fair amount stronger then a space marine, however space marines are dangerous due to their tactical prowess and sheer combat experience. so a Plague marine could be a type of boss, cause while we can face off as against Plague ogryns, chaos spawns and demon hosts (who are insanely dangerous) and even square off against 2 powerful renegade imperial guard captains who are empowered by nurgle. then yea the rejects might be able to square up against a chaos space marine from the death guard.
but for weapons that could really be a monster killer for the ogryns could be a "Plasma Cannon" as ogryns who are smart enough have been able to use these plasma cannosn, i mean it would just be a much bigger version of the veteran's "Plasma gun" but i could imagine that the plasma cannon just fireing off that explosive charged shot and pretty much delete whatever is in an area apart from monstrosities and i guess either outright kill Crushers on direct hits and kill bulwarks (even if their shield is up) if you hit their shield due to well it is a massive cannon shot of super heated energy/plasma and a slabshield ain't really gonna be able to handle that
As for heavy bolters, I've always just assumed that they are used as mounted gun emplacements by baseline humans, because only a space marine could realistically lug one around in a combat situation and still be effective on the battlefield, especially with all the ammunition required - something an ogryn would be woefully inept at.
An average ogryn is actually larger and stronger than an average space marine without their power armor.
@@Epicmonk117 Yeah, but that's basically comparing retard strength to life-long regimens of combat indoctrination and training, stem enhanced reflexes, and high intelligence.
I know this isn't "a response" but I do want to say while I actually agreed with the other video on... pretty much everything over your initial balance change suggestions, I found the idea that the lore should be the primary tool used to decide on balance not just a patently terrible idea for *any* video game, especially a multiplayer one, but also obviously long since abandoned. Darktide would not exist if the games balance followed the lore to *any* degree; four random losers would not be able to pull off a fraction of a fraction of what you do during a single game of Darktide (well... maybe some psykers, I know they can get strong, but the presence of psykers in Darktide at all is already kinda contentious with the lore.)
It especially throws me off when people DO fall back to the tabletop wargame as the "true" source of lore. First... if we're being that pedantic it's not, the original Rogue Trader was the origin of 40k and from what I can tell is much closer to the newer TTRPG's than it is to the wargame. And secondly... every edition of the wargame messes with the balance in ways which is contradictory with the lore. We shouldn't use wargame rules to determine what weapons are good against what armor because all of that stuff has varied to an extent from one edition to the next! Honestly I don't think there *IS* one single comprehensive "lore" for 40k anymore, it's too messy to work that way at this point. If we are considering lore (which I think we should, as a very much *secondary* criteria after game balance) I'm really not interested in the finer points of "well, flamers were bad against X armor back in 4th edition so they should be nerfed" because those are arguments which really have no end-point.
Edit: OK he ended up saying pretty much this but still.
"All hail GW" is about right.
FWIW, gw COULD give the ok for ogryns to have a heavy bolter. They could also give the ok for ogryns to have the (very much lore approved) autocannons or any of the underhive gang weapons ogryns use in their spinoff TTG Necromunda.
anyway I don't know how to agree or disagree with this video because the cool sci-fi weapons all underperform compared to the not-cool-normie weapons and the game is so poorly optimized that 90% of my thousand hour game time was spent waiting for crap to load.
I don't think its just the lore that causes balance problems. Was bolter not considered strong in the hand of zealot cause of Chastize the Wicked ? That one ability made some bad weapons somewhat viable. The last 2 major patches killed some interesting playstyles that was in the game for over a year. Even if it was not intended its a bit late to remove them this late into the game. I'm not interested in playing the game anymore to make a perfect roll for a specific weapon only for it to become useless when the next big patch drops.
Look in the table top a guardsman can kill Angron with the right rolls and commands so all I'm saying is its clear in warhammer anyone can be a badass if they have enough balls.
In lore guardsman have done crazy shit you guys are more decked out then a guardsman therefore people need to just understand that.
But the Bolter should be stronger agreed the gun is appearantly easier to handle in lore then the game portrays and the gun isn't nearly as good its a 75 cal rifle with an explosive payload I think AOE damage being buffed on the bolter would help sorta if you land a crit or something the explosion of the enemies body turns them into shrapnel that will effect people around them other then they stagger when half of em should be dead from all the bone shards
40k as a whole has always been lore flexible with the common phrase everything is canon not everything is true
Finally someone understands that GW is the end all, be all for what goes in this game. The number of times reddit people told me I didn't know what I was talking about lol
As for other times GW has quashed weapons, I swear Hedge confirmed that GW wouldn't let Warrior Priest have a single flail, but shield and flail was fine
@@Prophaniti I couldn’t remember if that was part of one of my NDAs so I didn’t mention it in the video LOL, but GW did indeed take issue with single flail on warrior priest
8:35
This is the most androgynous voice I think I’ve ever heard, no offence intended.
I’ve spent the entire video so far trying to figure up whether it’s male or female.
I’ve finally decided, I think it’s a feminine male voice.
( 10:31 and I’m already second guessing my guess…)
(Finished the vid and have changed my mind again. I’m pretty sure it’s a female with a husky voice and an accent I’m not used to. What a roller coaster! 😂)
Lore should inform the general direction and theme of the weapon. Balance though, should trump Lore. It's much more important to keep the game balanced.
This is kind of a nothing burger video. I get it need to produce content so people can consume content. I hardly see anyone go THIS SHOULD BE LIKE THE TABLE TOP. So almost every point in this video is generally moot. I also do not understand what the point of this video is? Just to say hey stop saying this game should be like table top?? Which I do not think ever really happens?? People just reference the lore that they know of or the common understood principles from mainstream content for 40k. When people want "Lore accurate" they want the weapons to do generally what they feel like the should do. A bolter pistol should be able to outright kill a enemy DESIGNED to explode in one shot. OR the Locke Boltgun should be able to kill a clump of groaners in one shot etc. I am not saying the game should be balanced by LORE, it should play a part but gameplay/fun/balance should take the lead. Lore is all over the place by design, making it so you can have wiggle room, hence the retcons galore etc. If you follow the books, different authors say for example the common Lasgun, (not variant or modified ones) can sometimes melt armor, punch holes straight through Flak/some vehicles, while other times it tickles flesh needing repeated hits to the same spot to cause damage... Also the flamer absolutely kills everything outside of crushers right now.. so not sure what that point was..
I have seen people argue that revolvers shouldn't be doing so much damage since revolvers in 40k lore aren't really all that powerful, yes
As someone who has spent years in Academia, one of the first things pounded in your head is “What is obvious for me may not be obvious for you.”
Sometimes people need to step up and talk about something that some consider to be “obvious”, because to many it simply isn’t that obvious.
40k lore has no retcons. Only a collection of unreliable narrators.
Warhammer has so much lower it’s bound to contradict itself because there’s so many different people right and creed and stuff for the franchise haven’t played the game in a while so I can’t really comment on the balance. I wouldn’t care if the Ogren had heavy boulder or some sort of equivalent.