You summed it up perfectly. I didn’t feel like starting a daycare argument, but that’s essentially the reality.
I’d argue that offense score is the single strongest high-level metric for evaluating player performance. In an ideal run, every player should be hovering around ~100 offense. If you’re slightly under, fine—variance happens. But if one player is sitting at 200+ offense, that doesn’t mean they’re “tryharding”; it means they’re compensating for multiple teammates who aren’t meeting the baseline required for that difficulty.
At that point, it’s not unreasonable—nor toxic—to point out that someone clearly isn’t performing at the level expected. Difficulties exist for a reason. There’s no shame in dropping back to Heresy to improve fundamentals. In fact, it’s better to be informed than to quietly drag the team down while someone else does all the work.
The idea that damage doesn’t matter, kills don’t matter, elite and ranged elite kills don’t matter, boss damage doesn’t matter, or special/disabler kills don’t matter is detached from how the game actually functions. The player handling those responsibilities is reducing cognitive load for the entire team—creating space, stabilizing fights, and preventing wipes. When others fail to contribute, they’re not playing some enlightened “big picture” role; they’re shifting that burden onto someone else and forcing them to think more, react faster, and cover more mistakes.
That isn’t teamwork. That’s leeching dressed up as theorycrafting.
personally I do get mad at dudes turteling up at every chance, forming unnecessary pockets of enemies and fall either behind when they see themselves abandoned after the 5th failed attempt,
or costing needless amounts of resources getting them back out the 4 times before.
had my share this week of
bubble psyker
shield ogryn
tauntgryn
all three with the same pattern and in utter disbelief the rest wouldn’t stop anymore at one point and rather move on without em.
faster and more efficiently…
have they learned something from this experience?
and yet people love to claim the “supporting” role when, if everyone kept the same pace, used the momentum generated in the process and killed the small amounts of enemies spawned at a decent speed, none would be needed.
in fact “support” isn’t popping a dome or freezing enemies in place for usually you dont stay under there anyways in many engagements if you want to clear them asap and them twitching salt-statues aint gonna die from old age so someone needs to put in the damage to drop them.
if palpatine would have opted for something “killing” instead of going for his taser, this encounter would have ended in 10 seconds rather than 30 with less chances of re-spawns.
so “support” the team by getting stuff dead quick.
Supporting the team does not magically prevent you from dealing damage and killing enemies. That’s another of the gross strawmen anti-scoreboard people are trying to enforce
the agreement was forged way before through thousands of matches and the ever repeating pattern that borders insanity or at least severe warp-affliction
once in a blue moon I either fall prey to going against my own rule of thumbs by trying to get the bloke a 5th time, or the very same reason the normally “immortal” super mutants from fallout bite the dust, by going senile/bored and “wanting to see what happens”
though usually it’s a very simple equation if the resources spent exceed the worth of whats returned by either dps or other ingame tasks =
edit: someone quoted me a short while back as “very german”, which I took as the utmost compliment.
no matter how much I dislike ai and never use it, could someone meme a Peter Zwegat insolvency administrator in 40k ? that sht would be hilarious, pointing out the folks “in the red” why they ended up short
Exactly. “Supporting the team” doesn’t exist in opposition to dealing damage or killing enemies—that’s a false dichotomy. Effective support necessarily includes contributing meaningful damage, target priority, and pressure management.
You can run something like bubble Psyker and still put up massive, relevant damage with a flame staff while controlling space, deleting chaff, and softening elites. Those roles are not mutually exclusive; they’re synergistic. The idea that support builds are somehow exempt from performance metrics just doesn’t hold up in actual gameplay.
What’s really happening is that some players feel useful because they’re pressing buttons or standing in the right place, but the scoreboard tells a different story. Darktide is a systems-driven game: if you’re genuinely contributing, it shows up in damage dealt, elite kills, special control, and overall offense. If it doesn’t, then the contribution is either inefficient or nonexistent—regardless of how good it felt in the moment.
The scoreboard isn’t a strawman. It’s a reality check.
I was talking about that earlier in the thread, but got flagged lmao
People think that “supporting” is standing with Smite or Deployed Shield in the corner or something. That’s lack of the fundamental understanding how the game works past begginer difficuilties.
i think you are reading too far into what i am saying and overlooking the entire point.
i did not say “i deal no damage” if i wanted to deal no damage and just do nothing but stun the hoard i would take a smite psyker that has no damage buffs and just focuses on negative peril generation, or i would use the crusher and do nothing but power up AOE attacks.
my arbitrator “gets things off the screen” all i was saying is that i am not “topping the damage chart” often, i am not dealing, warp rider, range spam, electrolytic staff, scriers gaze level of damage (unless i am running that build in which case, yes i am topping damage 98% of the time)
different builds have different strengths and weaknesses, so just simply looking at a single stat on the scoreboard does not tell you the full story, some builds can clear hoards really well, some builds are better at taking down specialists at a distance, some builds are better at dealing with big tanky enemies. some builds are just designed to keep your team mates alive because believe it or not “having alive team mates will be better then having dead team mates” now if you play in nothing but private lobbies, with a group of expert friends running havoc 30+ all day then good for you, you likely have competent team mates. but unless i am doing that, with a group of friends i know (my friends are competent but not havoc 30+ competent) i will run the build that gives me the highest chance of keeping my team alive, OR the build i feel most comfortable solo carrying when/ if my entire squad goes down around me. it is as simple as that.
as long as they are getting kills with that smite, using an inferno staff (one of the strongest weapons in the game BTW), placing bubble, using there melee to combo kill crushers near instantly, stunning groups of crushers, spreading soul blaze everywhere, knocking back groups of pox busters and dogs with the lightning, stunning trappers and groups of ragers with that lightning, i am more then happy to play with them.
this is like martyrdom zealot, i don’t think the build is 100% trash teir, it is just that, most of the time when i see a martyrdom zealot and i see them going down to 1HP, skipping med stations, at that point all i see is “them playing bad because there build is encouraging them to play bad” furthermore, taking a bunch of wound curios for that is absolutely garbage you are giving up so much toughness and by proxy making your % toughness Regen perks worse at the same time
build arn’t always inherently good or bad, it depends on how they are using the builds, how much experience the player has, how well the understand the strengths and weaknesses of the build, what they are doing to counter the weaknesses of the build. etc etc.
since I exclusively (with the every now and then company of buddy pirx) play with randoms and did so far every havoc 40, minus this one season cause meds really keep me down, the only thing I trust in is my capabilities to solve a situation.
in auric maelstrom I don’t even care who’s on the team as long as he’s doing a proper job.
since no one can rely on a stranger in a pinch it wouldn’t matter anyways.
havoc 40, randoms keep together at least so one looks out not the be the “stupid one” and usually that’s enough as well.
“if everyone thinks of himself, everyone is thought for”
well, without further context or gameplay,this was the info you shared.
based on the premise of “dps isn’t the most important thing” I took it as example to give you mine, which again playing with randoms of questionable skill happen all the time
4 proficient dudes and its a 20 mins or less run (as in literally running and fighting)
one or more of “them” and it turns into a slog with backtracking and wasted resources.
doesn’t take a board to see what’s more efficient
by the warp, where have you seen such a mythical creature?
yesterday’s sorry excuse for a psyker had a green dueling sword with a t3 blessing (one) and all he tried to do was palpatine his way until we left him to the nurglings where he belonged.
the usual playerbase drives towards the method of least resistance.
that in itself forms these proven stereotypes.
if 85% fall under the category and of the good players a fraction can make it work, it doesn’t disprove said stereotype and most dont even aspire to break em, being just happy enough in their little puddle
in the picture above, would you say a 26 offense score is suitable to continue playing at the current level? or do you think dropping maybe two difficulties would suffice and still give this player a challenge?
by the way I gave you a very moderate version of this, I have some 260-280 ones I could share with players closer to single digits than double for their Offense Score,
lastly, is this fair for everyone on the team? a question often not asked.
at what point in the mission did the person in the middle join?
personalty i couldn’t care less about there whatever score, my main concern is how often they are dyeing, how often they are spamming med stations, taking a bunch of ammo, shooting pox busters THAT I AM CLEARLY ABOUT TO PUSH.
defining someone by a metric is not a good thing to do, you become this “elitist ass$&#%” that no one likes.
if you are winning missions, and having fun at that point, who cares.
maybe that person is tired, maybe they are having a bad day, maybe they are trying out a new character or a new build, maybe they just got really unlucky, maybe the rest of there team was doing things that caused them to die more often then they should. maybe they are just simply a bad player, i don’t know. i don’t care. try to have fun with the game, and focus on yourself and your own self improvement, rather then worrying about every else’s self improvement, if your sitting there getting frustrated at the people you play with, that is not really a fun way to play?
if you can’t handle carrying your team mates, then stop playing solo, or drop your own difficulty down to a point where you are comfortable carrying people, or find a good party with the party finder and play havoc, or use the forums find a group section to find people, you have options, if you play random games, expect to get players that are still learning. you are “doing the thing that will cause that” if you don’t want that “don’t do that”
