Coherency is anti-teamwork and toxic

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
21

To put it bluntly, I think your complaint is wildly overexaggerated and I do not see how this might stem from any actual sort of constructive criticism.

I do think the effect radius could be bigger, or maybe have a drop off based on distance, but the coherency bonus itself is often so minor and so insignificant to whether you succeed or not that I’ve rarely paid attention to it or noticed it making a huge difference.

Is it a nice buff to have? Absolutely, especially certain ones in particular, but a brief lapse in that will not end a run.

Things don’t always go according to plan; you get pushed out of position, you go down somewhere inconvenient, or get launched off a railing and into instant death. That’s part of the experience.

Also, if the Sharpshooter’s bonus is providing you with more grenades, for example, then how does being separated from them and still getting those grenades make any sense?

22

I find it a good addition as many people are too stupid to realize that this is a team game and a reminder in form of positive reinforcement is a good solution.

23

It would be cool if it worked like it does in the tabletop game where coherency is a chain rather than an aura.

I.E. as long as all four players are standing within coherency range of at least 1 other player in a continuous chain, all of them are considered to be in coherency with each other.

24

The only explanation of this ‘coherency’ making any sense is in the form of some weird paternalistic attitude to encourage players to play in way which supposedly makes them safer.

That’s actually the case here for buffing players when they are in the strongest easiest position… is to make them stronger when they’re in their strongest easiest position, because you take you game so unseriously that you based your game design around new players playing it wrong and having some nudging of behaviour dog treat and then made that a fundamental mechanic for those seriously playing the game.

Basically that your entire game is treated as if it is some infantilising tutorial where you have actually introduced a penalty on players when they are in the most difficult situations, when they need to split up.

The only case for ‘Coherency’ is that Darktide shouldn’t be taken seriously as a game, instead it is a dumbed-down shallow experience with some weird tutorial mechanic making easy positions easier and hard situations harder and doesn’t care for the game actually being played long term.

Surely, if we take Darktide seriously as a game, then it should be the other way around. I don’t understand these responses about “make the range bigger” “make it last longer”. If we take Darktide seriously as a game to be played for more than a few hours, then rather you should receive buffs the further you are from your team and the longer you are away from your team.

25

Coherency may have some issues but that suggestion is even worse. Even if you’re trying to use it as a hypothetical to illustrate a point, suggesting the team split up individually and stay split up for what are assuming tiny little bonuses is so against the spirit of a team based co-op PVE game that calling it hyperbole is too mild and is on the verge of hysteria. If the bonuses are any bigger than what is gain from coherency, then it’s even more nonsensical.

26

I’m not talking about incentives. I can hardly get my mind into the frame of that you sacrifice the design of your game to instead “incentivise” players to play a certain way.

People play the game how they like, I don’t care, more power to everyone doing whatever they do with their fingers on their M&K, games should take themselves seriously and concern themselves with how it plays, not concern themselves with trying to Nudge players to play certain ways. If players are playing your game “wrong” then your game sucks and you don’t know how to make a game. There’s no such thing as playing a game in the wrong way.

So if we take Darktide seriously as an actual game which makes sense that is designed around playing well as a game then if the players are together then they’re generally in a stronger position and/or no one needs to break up to deal with a dangerous threat.

So that’s the easiest position where everything is okay. Why would you want to then place an extra buff on players when they are in the easiest position?

If players are split up then they’re in a more difficult position, they don’t have as much power from their teammates, they’re trying to do some high level of teamplay to pull enemies away and save their team, if they go back to their team then they will get their team sandwiched and killed etc.

In those difficult positions is rather where you want to give players something to work with. So, if Darktide takes itself seriously as a game rather than some paternalistic infantailising patronising tutorial, then if you had buffs based on proximity to teammate,s then the further away a player is from their team and the longer they have been away from their team then you would give them stronger and stronger buffs to deal with the more difficult the situation is. As you’ve balanced your game around playing as a team when the team is together.

27

Pretty sure it works that way.

28

Blockquote If players are playing your game “wrong” then your game sucks and you don’t know how to make a game. There’s no such thing as playing a game in the wrong way.

Why can you decide there’s no wrong way to play a game but the person responsible for making it can’t? This is nonsensical. Games have victory conditions that require you to do specific things to achieve them. If you’re playing darktide and not killing anything then you’re definitely playing the game wrong.

29

I agree, as a long time VT2 player. As is it just feels like a very cheap way of killing players for not being glued to the hip, which FYI isn’t and shouldn’t be the optimum way to play the game all the time in every situation.

Sure, most players don’t touch Legend, yet alone Cata and definitely not modded difficulties, but for those of us who do play on Cata+, this feels like a very hamfisted way of trying to make “teamwork” happen by arbitrarily punishing people who stray from their group slightly.

The worst part is, it doesn’t even work well when you consider the actual gameplay of some of the champs, for example the Zealot and Ogryn both have ults that will separate them from their team, so what, they’re just supposed to never ult, lest their whole team be screwed due to them using mechanics built into the game as a part of their champ’s kit? Likewise with Veteran and to a lesser degree the psyker, they generally don’t want to be in the frontline yet if they stay back, we’re in the same situation, the two frontlining classes get screwed over because the backline dares play in a way that is completely logical?

As an example that has already been brought up in this thread, when you’re the last one standing after your teammates fall. How can this possibly be seen as “lone wolf” behavior? Sometimes crap hits the fan and your team ends up dying, it’s something that is expected to happen, yet so far it seems like it’s IMPOSSIBLE to solo your way through a lot of situations due to you just being so squishy due to how toughness generation works. I regularly do Cata3 solo runs in VT2, yet I find myself struggling hard to survive even on Haz2 here due to how insanely squishy you are when you’re not surrounded by your team.

And ya know what the real kicker is? It’s not like VT2 didn’t have certain bonuses for “cohesion”, depending on some careers. Handmaiden stamina regen, Foot Knight has like 4 different Auras, Hunter Kruber has one or two, Bardin’s tank class has a bunch, Merc Kruber has some auras including his ult, WHC ult, Unchained ult and I’m sure I’m forgetting some others. But missing out on these auras didn’t completely gimp you and your entire team for not being within the radius, which allows you to still play in tight groups while giving you the flexibility of spreading out as the situation demands.

I dare you to tell me that the people in this video for example aren’t playing cooperatively or with a sense of teamwork. There’s a gigantic number of situations where they’re nowhere close to eachother, but on purpose as a kiting strategy. Hell, for most of that video they wouldn’t be in full coherency, and in a lot of situations they basically wouldn’t be in any coherency at all, like near the end where Saltz is kiting around the middle, Bardin is sniping specials alone somewhere, and the other two are fighting trash and keeping bosses preoccupied.

This video would be damn near IMPOSSIBLE to achieve in Darktide with how toughness and cohesion works, and I dare anyone to tell me with a straight face that that’s a good thing considering how frankly insane that video is.

30

Playing the game badly is not playing the game wrong. This is self-resolving of that you win or you lose. Say if there’s some game where simply to play the game well is to stay very close to teammates at all times then that is the reward in itself.

31

Just to note that you get the full Coherency from being the last one alive, so that little detail is not an issue here.

The main thing for me is just simply the premises are insulting and frankly pathetic and completely dumbing down the game. There is no serious reason to have coherency beyond this mockery of game design of “incentivise players to do what’s good for them!”, which is contrary to how Tide actually plays of the most desperate situations, where you want to create magic and have players fight their way out of it, is when all seems lost and the team has been torn apart by tsunami and elites, and where Tide shines of the highest level of teamplay in the most desperate situations of pulling a train of enemies far away from your team; your team is in a location where horde, boss, bunch of elites coming, 1 person is down, 1 person is low health, and you see another horde coming from the other direction and you realise the best thing is to leave the 3 with the amount they’re alreayd handling and pull the new horde/boss away from your team and pull it away from them so your team can save.

No one who takes their craft seriously as a game designer would debase and reduce their game to the dumbed-down level of basing it around something as trivial and tedious of “incentivising” them to play their game in a way that they’d be better off for doing in the most crude simple beginner terms. That’s taking your players unseriously and it’s taking your own game unseriously.

If you take your game seriously and the players seriously then the starting point is that the team is naturally together and if they’re not together then there’s a good reason for it, it’s probably a bad situation, and so therefore if there’s buffs relating to teammate proximity they’d be buffs for being far away from your team.

32

Coherency is also a flavour nod to the rules of the tabletop game.

I get that some people dislike coherency for the the min-maxing of bonuses and losing that due to some other design decisions (charge abilities, losing team members, class design etc.)

Doing the inverse would be even worse, because even if it was for situation where you are last man standing, or need some degree of separation for an objective, there will be a lot of players playing to min-max any bonuses and try to lone wolf it all the time, which again, is against the spirit of this being a team-based, co-op, PvE game.

It’s also why the coherency bonuses are relatively minor, it’s certainly still faster to melee things to recover toughness, veteran gives a pittance of ammo, zealot’s toughness damage reduction is minor, and only small and situational damage bonuses from pskyer and ogryn.

I get what Fatshark was trying to go for, the implementation definitely can be better due to a lot of game design choices (abilities, passives, chip damage, corruption etc.)

Personally it wouldn’t bother me too much if they removed it completely but currently the bonuses are so minor that it doesn’t feel like it’s essential or particularly hand-holdy. It is certainly doing its job at incentivising sticking together, partially because of the expected larger audience DT is expected to draw and partially for the flavour of it. It’s not punishing like the Nurgle modifier in VT2 chaos wastes where you have to huddle together around Isha’s Torch or keep losing max life.

I feel like if you could maintain coherency at a further distance within line of sight it would help a bit.

33

This has to be a troll. If you don’t like the literal main mechanic of the game, it’s simply not for you. Everyone else that spent their hard earned money on this game do like it.

34

A game should be designed around how it is played by active players. In my ~1,500 hours of Tide games I’ve never really perceived someone “running off”, I don’t think it exists, but that’s largely my nature as a non-toxic respectful person I just go with the flow, assume the best, if someone is doing something they’re doing it for a reason, if someone is doing something unusual it’s interesting for being unusual and makes game more interesting.

In the game with players who play the playing the game as it is actually played, Coherency not only adds absolutely nothing to to the game but is simply a detriment. It’s nothing but an arbitrary pointless inconvenience.

To add such a thing to your game which is nothing but an arbitrary inconvenicne to how it is played by those who actually played it, is fundamentally taking your game unseriously and being an unserious game designer.

In this perceptionary world of people complaining about people “running off”, complaining about people “chasing kills”, IT’S STILL HAPPENING. They’re still complaining about it. I’ve read hundreds of people complaining about other players “not staying together” “running off” “just wanting to kill stuff”.

So IT DOESN’T EVEN WORK AS AN INCENTIVE. Of course, IT WOULDN’T because the beginner world that these perceptions exist in are beginners who won’t notice or be aware of or be concerned for such a thing, and those who really are all about ““LONE WOLF”” aren’t going to care for it either even if they’re aware of it. It goes both ways. Those who don’t understand why some are so slow and far behind don’t care about the coherency, and those who don’t think it’s some sort of slow paced tactical SWAT game don’t care about the coherency.

The way such a thing would make sense would be if on the first difficulty you simply went all-out and you had big flashing red letters and alarm noises on the player screen when they’re a certain distance from any teammate, you could even tether them together, have a big smiley face appear on the screen and text saying
“WELL DONE, YOU’RE NEAR YOUR TEAMMATES”
and then you can have a party cheer noise and confetti come down the screen. If these people exist who supposedly aren’t aware or need to be handheld then just go all-out and do it properly.

But of course the reason that it makes no difference, the reason everyone is complaining about people “running off” complaining about “COD kiddies just mindlessly kill kill killing!” is that no one ever “ran off” and no one has ever chased kills. It’s simply always been toxic players being toxic and talking badly about others for playing the game how they want to play it.

Fatshark has pandered to toxic players.

The worst place to get advice about a game is from the players who want to talk about other players. Generally this goes beyond games into life that you shouldn’t take advice from those who just like talking about other people. Fatshark may want to give me advice to stay near my teammates, perhaps I shouldn’t forget to wipe my bum, but I have some advice for Fatshark that if they want to make good games and they’re naive about things, they should avoid any advice from players whose main concern and criticism is how other players play the game.

Not only has removing scoreboards not changed how those who like killing lots of stuff still like killing lots of stuff - who would of thought it? It’s almost like it was just a projection by toxic players and Darktide will launch without the basic simple feature of a scoreboard ffs.

Not only has this asinine pointless “coherency” garbage not changed how those who are toxic control freaks still can’t control other players and that those who “run off” still play how they like to play - who would have thought it?

BUT the true poetry is that FUNCTIONALLY COHERENCY IS A PENALTY ON THOSE WHO COMPLAINED ABOUT OTHER PLAYERS “RUNNING OFF”.

Because other players, who are just as important as toxic players and who toxic players have no control over, still play how they naturally like to play, and all that has changed for these toxic control freaks is that now they’re also getting a penalty when other players are being the individuals that they are.

All that Coherency and removal of the scoreboard is, is simply pandering to the worst kinds of vocal minority toxic players.

35

Out of curiosity, what difficulty did you play in Vermintide? You have never seen someone run off? You are lying. Gonna need a link to your steam account for proof of any claims you make here or scren shots of rewards for cata or legend runs.

36

In my similar number of hours in VT2 I can say it didn’t happen much at all in Cata but happened genuinely all the time in Legend. Of course many factors lead to this, mostly people trying to farm loot efficiently, as well as numerous bored Cata level players hanging around in Legend trying to complete their red collection as quickly as possible.

If you didn’t see it much because you went to Cata ASAP and didn’t look back, that’s cool, but it was an extremely common complaint about Legend and even Champion difficulties, so I’m not even gonna engage on whether or not the problem existed in VT2. It very very very much did, plenty of us have seen it enough to be very sure of that.

Having a mechanic to discourage solo minded players is not inherently toxic, however you might feel about it. The system still needs tweaks and improvements, but so far my experience with DT is that people play more cooperatively than in the early days of VT2, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

37

“What difficulty”? there’s only one difficulty in games like this, the final difficulty is meta difficulty, the previous difficulties are tutorial difficulties.

“screenshots of rewards for cata or legend runs”??? So you’re coming from the perspective that completing a map on cataclysm or legendary means something?

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If you want me to brag I True Solo’d Cata on VT1 before it was cool. But, still, in my mind, my greatest achievement is beating Against the Grain on VT1 on the first week on the highest difficulty when the hordes were just non-stop, it was amazing and to today one of best experiences in Tide series.

I played Against the Grain on week 1 VT1 non-stop for hours, all frustration died, carrying teams like a machine so far into it but everytime couldn’t get those last few sacks, then eventually did it.

38

Did you ever pub? You know it means something, idk why you are so disingenuous. You are not getting your way. Again link your account.

39

I always feel like I’m living on another planet than people on the forums/reddit when I read stuff like this. Have I just been outrageously lucky in all my 1.5k hours in VT? I’ve had like 4 total “trolls” maximum, and even then they weren’t really trolls in the same sense that word would be construed as in other games.

40

I’ve always only ever really played public games, that’s always been the fun of it for me is playing with random group of people, new people, different people who are all unique in how they play, never know what you’re going to get. There’s no fun in playing with premades.

Similarly Killing Floor or Payday I’ve always played with randoms as that’s the true fun in these games. I remember the first time it developed around the time of Tripwire’s Killing Floor 1 release I found a group of friends and played for a few days and it quickly became incredibly boring for me as there was no unexpected events, no clutching, it was so unexciting.

I remember when Payday The Heist launched their new difficulty Overkill+ I had a group of friends who wanted to play and I said NO, I’m going to play with randoms, and it was almost the first try on every map and it felt so good, each map random team, and lorded it over my friends that I beat them to the new Golden Masks for beating every map on Overkill+ within first few hours of release before they did.

But this is not important to discussion and all you’re doing is talking about other people, making it about someone else.