Competetive or Cooperative

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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If i read the hot topics i think a lot of FS playsbase want or aproach a Coop Game in a competetive way about skill mastery.

Me petsonally came for a immersive, cooperative game to socialize.
But the competetive and skill based mindeset of many players drived me away.

What do you think FS should go for?

Imho it makes not much sense to go for more competetive Skill Masters, because every PvP Game is far more better for that.
I play the chivalry games and the combat is more complex and the PvP gives me endless competition and challenge for skill mastery a PvE game can never do.
Even games like Dark Souls cannot be more challenging than playing versus real players and a complex combat system.

This said i dont get why cooperative Games Like DT dont try to be more into socializing, storytelling, immersion and sandbox adventure like for example the PvE aspects of Sea of Thieves.

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At the moment you cant even keep a good group together when you finish the mission feels like something’s missing there. Maybe they expect us to all be on discord or something. Have met some friendly people but never tried to look them up after a game just didn’t occur to me I suppose. I don’t think those social things work in the game atm anyway? I’m not sure.

Got to admit it feels a bit weird that hardly anyone talks on the mourning star too lol.

I think we are all instanced into small groups when on the mourning star and its part of why it feels kind of dead.

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you have a problem.

you have no evidence that competition is bad.

all you have is an opinion, that it is bad, an opinion that you are moral for opposing it, and that everyone else needs to be forced to play the way you want them to play so that they are not bad people.

you are basically a tyrant, and a bully who flags peoples posts and argues in bad faith.

you should learn to let people play how they want to play. if someone is competitive it has nothing to do with you, and its severely wrong of you to campaign against them like you are doing.

you have the right to play the game the way you want.

you do not have the right to tell anyone else how to play.

period. end of discussion. who do you think you are?

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Take a breather, Sir. No one in this thread told anyone how to play or how to approach the game. The thread has been opened to discuss where and what folks think we could focus on in regards to which audience to serve. At no point did OP make demands on how people play.

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maybe its because english isnt my motherlanguage, but i dont get where you get this from.
I dont think competition is bad i play mostly PVP games like Chivalry and played a lot of Mortal Online 2 what is a hardcore ffa PVP Sandbox with full loot. I played Sea of Thieves for 3 years and its a PvEvP Sandbox with full loot.

But for a coop game i have the opinion that competition amongst team players is the wrong aproach and this is why Games like L4D, VT and DT end up as niche games, because they promote competition within a team.

i havent flagged you r post, i saw it was flagged by the community already, i was not part of that, but keep suggesting.

why you feel so attacked - look in the mirror please, you are attacking people without any evidence, but only your suggestions and are so upset and attacked that like i said in the other thread i think all you do is projecting your own habits onto others.

thanks, maybe you can tell him i have not flagged his Thread he made about he’s upset about people with different opinions, because i just have not flagged anything of what he posted.

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It would be nice if there were a few more co-operative types of events where multiple people have to do things simultaneously to achieve something, but I understand that the design has to be achievable by a single person because you want to maintain pacing, not force the team to split (because that can be very detrimental, and there’s a big difference between forcing a team split and a team voluntarily splitting) and try to avoid trolling or griefing.

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Dude your fine I read your post and there is nothing wrong with it. I think the other guy is just angry and has been arguing with some guys here maybe.

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This entire genre of games (EG: Left 4 Dead, Back 4 Blood, Vermintide, WWZ, Aliens: Fireteam, lolAnacrusis) has specific connotations that come with it. There’s generally what you’re looking for in the lower difficulties to mid difficulties, while the higher difficulties tend to be more intense. The previous -Tide games in particular have had some of the more hardcore communities in general due to the fairly high skill cap to truly master the game with the involved melee combat in conjunction with regular gunplay.

You don’t have to go for one or the other in the first place. This is something -Tide games get right. I heavily lean towards the hardcore crowd but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the character conversations and world building. (Or just messing around; earlier tonight I was reading elf hag Kerillian a bedtime story as warrior priest Saltzpyre while we waited on people to group up at a chest of trials in Chaos Wastes) I still find myself just looking around levels and whatnot for details I haven’t seen. (In both Darktide and Vermintide) The issue is trying to make it all about one or the other. I enjoy the character and world building and find myself looking things up since I’m not a particular fan of Warhammer on the whole but find it interesting enough as the background for both VT and DT.

And this is likely going to come out wrong/come across divisively which is not my intent but it’s still an observation I feel the need to make: 40k fans are extremely finnicky about ‘their’ franchise from what I’ve seen. They very much want the game to match exactly what they expect, from an outfit not being exactly the same as a tabletop model, to weapon balance, to general character balance. Far too many posts open with “This is the first authentic 40k experience and…” or some such and then proceeds to make a criticism/complaint wanting it to further match what they want, and the game balance/design/intent be damned. I’ll leave it at that because I already know this is going to annoy somebody who will nitpick it. Again, just a general observation, not literally everybody will match that.

Ultimately the game still is within the “L4D” genre (It doesn’t really have a name, oddly, likely because there haven’t been that many specific to it over the years, even souls-likes have had more clones) and part of that is having a lot of replayability along with harder difficulties to challenge the player. If you’re looking for a purely story focused, immersive experience you’re barking up the wrong tree. It’s simply not the genre Darktide already is. You can get elements of it, Vermintide does it a lot better than Darktide does so far IMO, but ultimately the game is designed around having a challenging PvE ‘endgame.’ Even this topic is indirectly calling for the game to be something it isn’t on some level.

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i more and more think FS was ahead of all of us me included when they created penances that require teamwork.
And we are all so into competition in videogames that we couldnt see it.
I was the same!
We all say its anti teamplay, but in reality it’s anti performance play and ask the whole team to work together and some of the team step back in favor of their teammate trying to do a penance.

The Munitorum Monstrosum - in every mission i saw a shield ogryn i asked everyone in preparation screen if it would be ok that when we have a DH that the Shield Ogryn tanks and team let me kill it alone to do the penance.
Some games team disagreed and i was fine with it, because they said they dont want to waste time, one team i had somone not agreeing by shooting the DH and i was pissed a little.
The team i finally got it was like 2 supported me and one said no, but could be convinced when he knew what it was about, he said no because he didnt know the penance and when i explained him, he said ok do it.

Recently someone i know from gaming for many years said. The game is really fun with friends to play, but pugs and with randoms you have a hard time to find likeminded people.

I agreed and i maybe want or expect too much, i want to have varied teams, play pugs and find more likeminded people that work together and have fun foremost, not rush - except for someones flesh wound penance i have also asked politely in pugs for - not go for kills and your performance only.
In premades i have mostly a good experience, but then i miss the variety of teams.

I actually take a break and maybe need to overthink my aporach and expectations playing the game.
The core game i still like, but pugs too often dont work for me.
I may play it not on a daily basis and maybe find a team for premades the one or the other day for only 2-4 missions.
This way i wont be able to do weeklies or have good chance to improve my gear in the shop, but so be it.
FS hopefully can improve the game and it lives on, i still believe DT does not deserve the bad reviews and hate it gets although a lot went wrong or was too early to release.

And i really dont want to attack VT players who play competitive and skill mastery orientated.
But imho if FS want the bigger audience and earn money with cosmetics what i’m totally fine with they need to turn around and make it more cooperative and about socializing, immersing and attract people with a less competetive aproach.

But thats just my opinion and i dont say this is the only and right one and i also dont say how anyone should have fun or play the game.

All have fun i’m also trying to and only giving feedback and some ideas to discuss.

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I don’t like a lot of the penances because while you had to prepare and it helped, the opportunity was so RNG it was a pain.

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They finaly did it so you can add people from previous runs via steam

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good point, but the problem is that the difficulties do not prevent the more cooperative and socializing players to go for higher difficulty and more important the more competetive players farming and speedrunning lower difficulties because of min maxing time and effort.
Crafting and RNG work against that and that is what we would all agree on the most important asspects FS needs to work on.

agree!!!
also with the rest of your post.

Well i’m maybe too good for playing Malice only and can do Damnation, but still dont have this performance or skill mastery orientated aproach when playing Darktide and are more into socializing and cooperation than any form of competition.

I can imagine the game has different PvE modes and Events and heavily supports teamplay without any form of competition within the team and amongst players, but only versus Environment/ AI.

I said it some days ago, maybe this isn’t possible with the gaming culture we have and how games of this genre are made. I’m not sure, but its interesting to discuss and think over it.

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Most people in random games don’t speak much. Ive started saying hello in the dropship every game as a sort of litmus test. If people say hello back they are alright most people say hello or some variant of it.

When I first started playing I thought everyone was hostile but I think I was just really unlucky. To be fair people did say the community was friendly for the most part and they where right.

Not sure how we go from hello at the start and gg at the end to forming guilds clans or friends lists though :slight_smile:

True but after the recent decimation of all the other good ips easy to understand people being a bit wary.

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Yes, i think partialy it is so because how matchmaking and lobby are done in DT. It force people into mentality “we are here only for one run”. In V2 we got a cosy keep where we almost visiting each other like guests and can stay if we want.

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Yeh agreed. If everyone was using one hub (keep thinking of orgrimmar from WoW for some reason) then I think people might form groups and get talking or more likely arguing lol

Even with a small population the mourning star would get a bit busy though :smiley:

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You keep making this point but I’m not sure how you’d go about that other than not disbanding the group after a missing, like VT2 did. Most people left in VT2 groups anyhow, a one and done. Keeping the group together would be a good thing, you can stick to your good group if you liked it. The catch is that if 3 of you really didn’t care for the 4th, you’d likely have to votekick them and people tend not to votekick even when it’s called for.

“Socializing” in these types of games is not really the focus, it’s not an MMO; it either happens organically or it doesn’t. I think you have unrealistic expectations for these types of games if you want more “socializing”.

The co-op aspect should be enough to drive co-operation, clearly it doesn’t 100% of the time because you always have a segment of the player base that’s “chasing circles” to the detriment of the team. You see this anti-team behavior on Damnation too, it’s not much better than Heresy in that regard; much more than you did in VT2 Cata.
The DT player base is weird as it has a broader appeal than VT did, it may get better or it may not.

If you want “less competitive” then the lower difficulties are where you’ll find it, you shouldn’t feel compelled to do the hardest difficulties just because they’re there.

That being said the situation is likely to change a ~year from now as many of the early have left, many already have.

P.S. Sea of Thieves had it’s moments but let’s not forget it was a small scale open PvP, ganking and pirating was a core goal.

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i really miss the button to make the team stick together from pre-launch beta.
It should be improved and maybe have 3 buttons, one for each team member you can ask to stick together and play further in a team.

you could make the button i mentioned above also only to end up in the same Morningstar instance and then reach out to them via a list of players in your instance and write them personally or via main chat with pinging.
Like you had a good match and liked one or two players you mark them to get into same instance after mission, then you can list all players in your instance and write them with @XYZ and ask for teaming up.

maybe this is right, i said so later in the thread myself.

i agree and i hope it gets better.
i like that @Fatshark_Hedge said they want to implement a Scoreboard about cooperative stats rather than personal glory - i think this is the right direction that i was also allways promoting.

i cannot agree here, tbh it was or is vice versa, because the higher difficulties are more penalizing to play a lone hand.
It’s far more happening in Malice difficulty.
The problem with PUGS in Damnation and even on Heresy more often is that people arent good enough and the mission fails. I dont say i’m good, but i have done Damnation with premades and pugs without going down and i dont think i was carried all the time. Someof these missions i picked up others more often than i needed to get picked up and that as a psyker, who is really vulnerable.

cannot agree on that, i did forts with my crew and we sank 5-11 different ships aproaching. I remember even doing a FotD with a galleone crew and we had 2 galleones and a sloop coming for us at the same time. That was 4 versus 10 with kegs, boarding and all that and they all sunk and got nothing :smiley:
I dont say we have lost to some nasty pirates, oh we did for sure, but i had a very competent and fun crew. One of my teammates was close to win the sloop Arena Contest. I was the best helmsman you can imagine, i outmanouvered briggs in a galleone at shipwreck bay and other locations :smiley:

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No arguments here. Putting crafting materials in the levels was a huge design mistake IMO, I’ve said already they really need to go back to having utility items scattered through, I really feel the lack of the potion slot in Darktide. (Where’s our stims or whatever you want to call them?) It both makes it less interesting to explore while encouraging the aforementioned speedrunning/farming. Similar for weeklies. Personally I can’t stand farming mindlessly like that because if I’m not enjoying the challenge then I’m not having fun but it’s definitely a problem.

Throw in the mission board giving missions people have already been doing/dislike (The final straw before I started taking a break was getting nothing but Excise Vault as my only non low intensity damnation option for like a week straight) and you have a recipe for disaster in terms of general player hostility towards one another. If you go into a run wanting to finish a weekly for scriptures or some such while another player is just trying to nyoom through at light speed for plasteel run number 14… well. No surprise friction happens.

Part of it is also the actual event design IMO. One of the main events that heavily encouraged people to work together (Albeit possible to do alone, though it was much easier to do by working together) was the various forms of “Carry the exploding barrel to X point” where any damage taken by the person carrying the barrel would make it explode. It’s very satisfying to have that moment with random teammates where you flow together to get it to the objective as fast as possible. Darktide has the power cells/cores but they feel… much worse on the whole. A lot of due to the fact that they just kinda flop when thrown (So no passing things off) and the lack of any real downside besides having to pick them up again. I don’t think the barrel event would work 1:1 in Darktide by any means, just commenting on how the events are less interesting in that regard.

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I think there may be a language issue here, we seem to be in agreement on some points but you’re saying you don’t ?

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I think these two guys summed it up pretty well here

and here

I think because this is the first type of game like this I have played I came into it with the wrong expectations and it works ok with the current system maybe we are just missing old games that dont exsist anymore :man_shrugging:

Apparently they have fixed it so you can reach out to people you recently played with if you want via steam

But I have not tried that yet and probably wont ive got used to just meeting random people for a game and moving on now :slight_smile:

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