Better tutorials/onboarding for newer players?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Patch 13 has brought a fresh and honestly much-needed injection of new blood into our game’s community. We may complain about unready newbies diving into Auric games and blowing up poxbursters in our faces and whatnot, but in the long run, as these players (hopefully) get better, whatever frustrations we feel now will likely be worth it.

However…

It’s also true that -tide games have a very high skill ceiling compared to a lot of other games out there, and it’s also true that -tide game combat systems are unique. Just because you can 360 no scope on CoD doesn’t mean you know how to properly prioritize taggable enemies or dodge-dange a horde, and frankly a lot of gameplay elements are unintuitive (why is pushing a suicide bomber who’s jumping at you the best way to deal with one?). I am all in favor of newer players trying out higher difficulties, but I also would like for the devs to help ease those newer players into more advanced gameplay concepts. I’d like for the game to more organically get newer players ready to move beyond Difficulty 2 and 3.

While some additions to the Psykanium’s tutorials wouldn’t hurt, I also don’t think you need to stick every little advanced gameplay element into a tutorial, either. For one thing, creating tutorials takes a good amount of dev labor and time. For another, forcing newer players to slog through tons of long-winded tutorials wouldn’t be very effective.

I feel like maybe an advanced tutorial, where a player is given a horde-clearing weapon (a catachan sword, or a Mk3 cleaver) and has to kill 20 poxwalkers in the Psykanium without taking any health damage (toughness damage is ok), plus some tips about weaving dodges, pushes, and push attacks into your combos, might be a good start. We could also have penances that push players towards good gameplay elements, like “kill 50 poxbursters by pushing them [for this nice hat]” or “rescue 50 teammates who have been netted by a Trapper [for this nice pair of boots]”, etc.

I very much appreciate members of the community stepping up to make video tutorials on advanced game concepts, but in an ideal world we shouldn’t need to have such things, and I’m not sure if a lot of players will bother to look at those videos either. That’s why I think better in-game tools to teach newer players and help them more smoothly transition into playing higher difficulties would be win-win for newbies and veteran players alike.

And no, I don’t think gating higher difficulties behind levels and/or gear score will really solve the problem. Many players will play hundreds of hours without really learning more advanced concepts, and levels/gear score requirements simply make reaching those higher difficulties more inconvenient.

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It might be a good idea to have a bunch of “training exercises” that reward you with mats.

You would unlock them every few levels, and completing them could reward plasteel and coins depending on your performance.

You ranked B? You get the rewards for D, C and B thresholds (now you do not get those again).
If you do the exercise again at a later time, you can try to get A or S rank to get the bonus mats for those thresholds.

Either the players have to choose the weapons they bring, or they have to use a specific weapon that they are given for the task.
Either way, they would learn that certain weapons are good for certain things.

Having a certain rank in all training exercises, could be a requirement to enter the auric playlist.
If players do not know the basics of the game, they have no reason to be in there.

Clearing all training exercises with S rank could come with a special cosmetic (clothes, portrait frame, dongli for weapon,…).

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I’ve been working on an extensive “git gud” guide to moving up to damnation difficulty. There’s so much newer player dont know and I’m trying to get it all in the same spot.

If anyone has any pro tips they want to highlight, feel free to post them.

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My character:

burster! Shoot it, shoot it!

Me:

i’m gonna push this explosive and then take two steps back. I will then be safe.

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Voice lines could be used to help train too.

Like if you get hit by an overhead, someone saying you need to dodge them instead of block them.

Shooting a burster and having it damage someone else should get a scolding.

etc.

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I think some of the most important things newer players should be aware of, that the game doesn’t very clearly teach you, are the following…

-How to manage a horde with your melee weapon while taking minimal damage. Tide game melee combat is a complex art, and it’s difficult to explain how it all works since there’s a lot of subtleties and snap-decision making involved. Still, if we can somehow get new players to understand how to manage a horde with any melee weapon while taking little to no damage, they’ll have a big leg up in tackling harder content.

-Encouraging newer players to keep their head on a swivel. Situational awareness is a vital skill for this game, both for detecting incoming dangerous enemies and being aware of map resources. There are a depressing number of inexperienced players who ignore tagged med stations and ammo until I actively type such into chat.

-Target prioritization. While newer players will have some inkling as to how dangerous disablers can be, it might not really click for them to prioritize them and to prioritize teammates who are disabled by them. I’ve found that runs most frequently end when one guy gets disabled and starts a domino effect causing other teammates to get corned, also disabled, or simply lack firepower to clear enemies in time to deal with other elites and specials.

-General knowledge of roles and what tools are best suited for them. What weapons and abilities are good for horde clear? Special deletion? Destroying chonky armored targets? Monstrosities? Etc.

-Dealing with Monstrosities, either when Monstrosities are alone and when there’s also a horde to deal with at the same time. I think a classic newbie trap is for players to focus overmuch on killing the Monstrosity while ignoring the horde and/or elites and specials that spawn alongside it, when it should be the other way around.

-Poxburster pushing, avoiding aggroing demonhosts.

I think newer players practicing the above will put them in a solid position to properly tackle regular Heresy and Damnation. Auric missions might require knowledge of more advanced elements, like map knowledge (enemy spawn points, location of med stations, etc), knowing what places are good to hold vs places the team should get out of ASAP, and so forth.

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Please no. Tutorials in games as a requirement for progression is a sin against god and country.

I’m working on one too but my tips are:

  1. Dodge, dodge slide, sprint (avoid damage)
  2. Target priority heirarchy (list of rough priorities in any situation)
  3. Warning queues and their meaning
  4. Rescue, Rez and Abandon. (Roughly how and when to do these)
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That said…again, in an ideal world, folks like you should not be the ones putting out guides to basic gameplay elements. Ideally, new players should be picking up these skills from just playing the game regularly, and the game should be designed to organically get players to pick these skills up. Alas, players in Heresy and upwards still seem to struggle with a lot of these basics.

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Expecting Fatshark to explain anything at all is wishful thinking. There are players with hundreds (or even 1k+) hours that still don’t know how dodging works. If you recall, DT launched with no explanation on what any of the stat bars for weapons meant, and even today most perks require you to google what they do exactly. Fatshark gets off on obscuring information.

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Probably not a bad idea at this point to make the tutorial bit more relevant now that the game has matured.

I actually really like the idea of some basic combat exercises that could be difficulty based, so newer people have some idea what to expect before even hitting their first heresy/damnation games.

I would not go too heavily into any “special” topics, just focus on things that will most likely have an impact for newer players survival like damage avoidance, threat priority and understanding why they are so dangerous when ignored, and maybe toss in some map knowledge and commonly used tactics in some of the harder events.

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Hello all. So I finally got this posted. If you have suggestions, comments, edits, please let me know. Happy to add to this overtime!

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Thanks for making this!

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