Addressing ammo greed - share ammo pickups when in coherency & more

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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One of the more frustrating things in the game is players who decide topping up their own ammo reserve is more important than making sure their teammates aren’t going to run out. I imagine it’s unconscious in most cases - the teammate ammo indicator isn’t terribly conspicuous, and it’s a gamer reflex to just autopilot spam E at containers.

Nevertheless, especially on Heresy and Damnation, it leads to situations where players are having to break coherency with their team to search for ammo - or have to take risks to grab it mid-combat, cause otherwise it’s gonna get hoovered up by that bastard sharpshooter - you know the type. Multiple people running to the same crates to try and snatch it first, while the one who acutally needs it is busy fighting the enemies. Stuff like that.

In missions where this is happening, the failure rate’s much higher in my experience. Depending on the character and equipment level, the players’ skill and experience, it can sabotage a run on any difficulty. Fortunately, it’s been the exception rather than the rule, but it gets the contents of my bladder boiling every time.

If you’re one of those people who just hoovers up ammo without thinking, my advice to you is to start paying attention to your teammates’ ammo status. If you’re the kind to be aware and do it anyway - I’d be really curious to know your thoughts. I imagine you’re failing at higher difficulties more often than not - increasing the chances at the very least, and this will be part of why.

No one class or player’s ranged weapon is important to the exclusion of others. A teammate unable to shoot cause of your own greed or negligence, is a teammate with less options when it comes to pulling your arse out of a bad situation. I’m making a point of it to never revive someone who’s greedy with ammo, unless I’m certain it’s 100% safe. Othewise, #packwatch

Distribute ammo equally - I’ve never played a mission where there isn’t enough across the map for everyone to have at least a full mag at all times, and that’s absolute worst-case scenario. If you all run out of ammo completely at around the same time, a lot of things had to have gone wrong first.

And conserve ammo crates. There’s always another ammo tin or bag around the next corner, and probably a bunch more you’ve wandered past throughout a mission. That’s if it don’t get snatched by the person who needs it least. Anyway, don’t waste them to resupply just one player, unless the other three are all psykers.

When people are checking and tagging ammo for teammates they know are lower than they are, getting wiped is a rarity - cause you know you’re looking out for one another, and you’re incentivised to play better than you might otherwise.

It’s a people problem at the end of the day, but mechanical changes can make a massive difference.

  1. Sharing ammo pickups in coherency

The person who picks it up gets the same amount as currently, and 10-25% of its value goes to each teammate. Greater incentive to stay in coherency, and if multiple players are so desparate for ammo that they’re rushing to the same crate, they at least all get something out of it. Ammo pickup spawn rates might have to be reduced a tad.

  1. When a teammate has significantly less ammo, change the action required to pick it up
    Instead of pressing E, it’s turned into Hold E.

This means players would have to make a conscious, deliberate decision as to whether they’re gonna pick it up. There’s those instances where you pick up ammo without thinking, then check to see your teammates needed it more - or you’re not paying attention whatsoever, and would’ve preferred to have left it for someone else.

This’d be another way for the game to communicate to the players that their teammates need ammo. It’d give them another opportunity to check the hud and reconsider. And for those that are being greedy bastards and don’t care - it’d also stop them spamming E as they’re opening the crate - but not the player who needs it most, so if they’re forced to compete, they at least have a leg up. Some will try get around that by spamming hold E as the crate’s opening - so let them, and they can deal with the consequences.

Deployed ammo crates with more than 1 charge remaining would be the exception.

  1. If the player still takes the ammo when a teammate’s in greater need, they receive a bit of corruption damage

Maybe proportional to the difference between their ammo reserve, and that of whoever needs it most. Not sure which of the dark gods gets off on greed, but I’m sure at least one of them enjoys it.

This doesn’t account for players who are the lowest on ammo, but decide a teammate should have it anyway. Maybe if the ammo’s been tagged and not picked up before the tag automatically expires - then it’s free for the taking. Perhaps it could be reserved for higher difficulties.

  1. If out of coherency with all teammates, the amount of ammo picked up could be reduced by some percentage.

Not sure how I feel about that one myself, just throwing it in.
Oh, and all the same applies to grenades as well

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Good suggestion. First two (or at least second one) should be put in, definitely. I always feel bad when I take that tin without thinking to then turn around and see a disappointed veteran walking away

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I have an easy rule of thumb, but as there are a Lot of other factors it is not perfect and you still need to think about team comp etc.

Veteran get’s the big ammo bag, the little tins go to the rest of the team, or vice versa in case the vet has a bolter, plasma or shotgun.

But I agree with you, the mopy voiceline AFTER a teammate took needed ammo is not enough.

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As a Veteran main, but who has levelled up all the other classes to 30 as well for variety’s sake, the ammo is something that people should be nigh required to understand based on their own equipment and class itself.

As I mainly play the Veteran on Heresy+ as the one that focuses mainly on Shooters and Gunners so they don’t rip apart the melee guys in seconds, I go through a lot of ammo, and don’t gain it nearly as much since I am not killing nearly enough Elites to make up for the ammo consumption, so obviously I need ammo in large quantities. I do, however, always have my eyes on my team and my own consumption. Even if I have, say, 200 “shots” left (As the Lasguns use different amounts of ammo, not 1 so that can be anything between 200 shots or around 60 shots), I am still gladly offering people the bigger bags if I note people have their ammo counts in the red or orange as I have confidence in my own accuracy to be able to take on more than a few squads of shooters before I run completely dry.

Just yesterday however, I had such a d-bag in my group that had the situational awareness of a blind goldfish. The Zealot was running ahead, taking every singe ounce of ammo he could get his hands on, for his Flamer, he whipped out roughly every 5 or so minutes for less than one magazine’s worth of shooting as he was otherwise whacking things with this Thunder Hammer. This left us in a funny situation where I physically ran out of ammo and could no longer actually assist my team in my intended role, and just had to cleave with the Power Sword.

Of course, this amusing situation bit the Zealot hard in the butt when he went down approximately 2 minutes later because he got, wait for it, gunned down the moment I could no longer take out the ranged guys. Of course, this did not make him stop his antics, so ultimately I had to keep rushing for ammo. Luckily my two friends with the Ogryn and the Psyker were able to compensate enough during those periods where I was nill on ammo.

When I was playing my Ogryn and Zealot, in both cases I always viewed my ranged weapon as the secondary option. I maintained my ammo by taking the smaller boxes first and foremost, but should I ever completely run dry or have at most one mag’s worth, then I’d take the big one, assuming our Veteran wasn’t at a low ammo count.

So many players definitely seem to not either realise or care about the fact that while the Veteran is the single most overpowered class in the game, for the sake of the team his ranged ability is nigh mandatory in high levels to take out the battalion’s worth of ranged guys that appear around every single corner.

You do make some very solid suggestions here. I would also like to add that they give the players ammo count the same colour code as the one on the side, not just the red one. Considering you can easily be switching weapons almost every mission and the ammo counts are inconsistent even within the same weapon itself, it is difficult for even me to keep track of my total ammo count, so I would like to know if I am at yellow or orange, not just red.

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So heres the thing, red is empty in this game, if you have 1 shot left you’re still orange…kinda stupid

The ammo problem would be better if red was 25% or less bc the human mind assumes orange is low but not desperate when in reality he might have 1 bullet.

Another way of fixing ammo is not allowing someone to pick up large ammo cases if they have 70% or more total ammo, it won’t deny them bc they can just waste ammo down to 70% but it gives a teammate who actually needs ammo that extra second to grab it b4 he can.

This way if everyone is good on ammo, sum1 can just waste ammo to top off, or if there is a ammo hog, he needs to deliberately waste ammo to keep stealing it and it might just buy enough time for someone who needs it to scoop it up first.

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Problem is that many vets just waste ammo on horde despite having a frigging powersword, and random melee stragglers - especially the ones already getting popped by a psyker.
If I see them doing that, I’ll spare them no ammo at all. IDGAF if someones out of ammo when they have been wasting it, I’ll use it myself for priority targets.

Everyone loves a good vet like you that takes care of ranged enemies, but most are not playing like that, they shoot at whatever target is closest with a 60 degree FOV.

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At least the game tells you when you are a greedy bastard.

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Oh yeah, I have a tunnel visioning vet in my group from time to time.

Absolutely delightful time to play the Zealot, rush into hold a horde, only to realise our Veteran is mag dumping either his Boltgun into the crowd or the Recon Lasgun, instead of handling quite literally anything else.

This is obnoxiously recurring sight to me as well. It also shows a lot on success ratios when I am not playing the Veteran vs when I don’t have a Veteran that does what I do in a mission.

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In general it does seem like something could be done. I wonder if they could implement ammo-rules voting before a match starts. Everyone could vote on full/half/no penalties systems or something.

Without getting into the weeds of those ideas, I think it’s important to include an option for Strike Teams to opt into or out of these extra rules/functions. If my team and I are talking in Discord and I’m in the middle of a clutch while outside of team coherency, I don’t want to get stuck holding E on a red Ammo and take corruption damage and die.

Great thoughts, and it can be a huge issue in pubs right now.

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This gave me another thought - the HUD icon on top of ammo bags and tins could be colour-coded depending on your relative ammo status.
Green - You’re lowest, take it
Yellow - Someone else is significantly lower, but not critically low
Red - At least one teammate is critical ammo, or multiple are lower than you
White - Your ammo supplies are roughly equal

And yeah, the sort of case you describe is why I’d hesitate about #3. I can’t think of an elegant solution. Having variable rules around this per-lobby would make things inconsistent - maybe if you’re in a strike group together, it doesn’t apply.

As I imagine it, the corruption damage would be relatively minor. I’m under the impression that corruption can’t outright kill you anyway. Maybe corruption damage would increase a bit each time.

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It’d be much better if the ammo icon actually showed numerically how bad the ammo situation is. Since the mod workshop won’t be a thing, it’s up to chunkyfish.

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in vermintide 2 there was a sanctionned mode that would show icons on pick up telling you who need it the most in your teams. Something similar could be nice.

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Would help with numbers…
yellow/orange/red doesn’t tell me much.

I’m playing mostly vet and I got around 1100 ammo, I have no shortage of it and picking up any small ammo is around 100 a piece.

I’ve had zealots and Ogryn signaling for me to get it because they are yellow probably around 50% with 10-50 bullets left(depending on weapon), meanwhile I’m at orange with a 300+ left and I’m using a slow rate firing Las gun. That’s plenty for me to last until next ammo pickup.

Gives us % that will be more accurate than colors, make our own ammo the same color as our teammates sees it. So we know our relative ammo count to theirs. Or just give us a straight up number. I understand just having numbers everywhere can be overwhelming and is often frowned upon, so the other stuff helps.

There’s plenty of solutions in this thread and I like the sharing ammo through coherency, but even that can be weird when someone is at 90% and I’m at 10% and need all of it.

I like the idea of color coded cirlces on the pickups. Though I’m also aware this is leading to less and less teamwork, or rather communication / interaction which you have to be careful to remove.

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If I see them doing that, I’ll spare them no ammo at all. IDGAF if someones out of ammo when they have been wasting it, I’ll use it myself for priority targets.

if they don’t play as i want i’m playing like an { insert random insult } on purpose…
yeah much better congratulation

you all have eyes?
use them and look at the color of the ammo symbol
use them to look at the ennemies not on your teammates (if you have time to look at what the others are doing maybe you are not doing your job well)

Don’t ask fatshark to fix the players or add something because people are stupid
if the listen you will have a HUD with symbols and colors everywhere maybe you want a map? a compass? some point of interests too?
go and play some Ubisoft game

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Ammo being low is part of the design I think. Ammo crates and pickups in VT2 became largely pointless as there was so much ammo-regen skills that there was no point and this resulted in a ranged-meta in a melee game.

The characters also call out who needs the ammo…

“Ammo here big man!” prior to picking it up. Doesn’t always happen though.

Could it be that players in PUG’s are often just… bellends?

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i do agree in principal , but i think ogres and psykers are an issue right now if you ave 2 vets and a couple of melee your swimming in ammo not pickig up half of it.

1 vet , a bolt spamming zeal, a ripper addict ogre and recon las psyker yopur fighting over scraps

i can see a situations where some builds /classes wotn be that welcome jjust because there ammo sinks

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Thank you, do I get the gold star as well?

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The problem was solved years ago, now they are withholding the numericals out of spite is my guess.

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That’s the worst about darktide for me, it is lacking two years of QoL update on Vermintide.

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I have a similar thread about healing. Too often in pub games people top off their health when others are desperate for it. They activate a health station and cause it to close before others more needy get any.

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