Give Us Mission Lobbies With Host Controls

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Right now, the only difference between quickplay and choosing a mission is you get to pick the map. That’s it. You have no control over pacing, objectives, or who stays in your game. If you want any say over how your mission goes, your only real option is to wait until a friend gets home and will play Darktide with you. It is amazing how easy it is for randoms to sabotage things, and too many people seem to turn off chat and mute voice the moment they boot up the game. You can’t even negotiate.

I’m aware the game has dedicated servers, not peer-to-peer. When I say “host,” I mean the person that started the mission.

The Problem

The game is designed in a way that random people that join can often impose their will on you, and you have almost no recourse.

Pacing conflicts. You want to explore the map? Nope, John Random just joined your game and he’s going to speedrun. The bots are random in who they follow, so if he rushes ahead, they might teleport to him and now you’re alone dealing with constant dogs, mutants, and trappers. Or maybe it’s the other way around and you want to take the elevator, but John Random wants to farm more kills for his weekly, so you’re stuck.

Objective conflicts. You want to pick up the books? Nope, John Random thinks they’re dumb and will purposely destroy them if they’re grimoires and 100% won’t pick up any scriptures. You want to do an expedition and extract at zone 1 or 2? Too bad, it’s a group vote whether you want it or not. This works the other way around too, maybe you want to get tech but the others just want to farm missions. You got a penance you want to do? TOO BAD. They got a penance you want no part of? Also, too bad.

Vote kick is nearly useless. You could TRY kicking someone, but that means the other random or two need to agree with it. Even when the player is AFK or outright dying on purpose, it still hardly ever passes.

The Solution

Let us create our own mission lobbies with optional host controls. The host can set lobby preferences before launching: open or closed slots, kick authority, maybe objective priorities so people know what they’re signing up for. Matchmaking flags these lobbies so joining players can see that host controls are active. If someone doesn’t want to risk being kicked, they don’t join.

This is about letting players set expectations before the mission starts so everyone’s on the same page. The current mode should stay the default. This should take a few button presses to set up, not be the norm. But the option should be there.

3 Likes
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This won’t happen due to technical constraints

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Yeah, sure — as if I needed bosses in a game

1 Like
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FS: “Best I can do is Party Finder”

As this sounds suspiciously close to a lobby browser with customisable modifiers, I’m for it? I think VT2 has this, or at least a variant? I’ve seen screenshots of what looks like a lobby browser, but maybe someone can clarify.

Sure it’s p2p but it’s not like hosted games can’t have this feature.

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Not that I would complain if we had the choice of map and conditions, but I think the reason why Fatshark game designers refuse to give us the choice is because some modifiers would never, ever get played while others would get played constantly.

Would you ever play Lights Out if you had the choice? Or Mutants Waves? I sure would not.

And if I had the choice I would always play with Monstrosities and High-Intensity.

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What technical constraints? They already have functional kick. They already have party finder. What constraints are you talking about?

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That has nothing to do with the topic. I am discussing how I cannot start my own mission and then play it how I want. The moment another player joins they can now tell me, ‘I don’t care what you were doing, I am doing my thing and there is nothing you can do about it.’

Which is really bad for a game that doesn’t even have an LFG function outside of discord

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Sorry, I must have misunderstood.

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Party Finder would be really offended if it could read.

1 Like
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is a premade with truly like minded people.

options are good and should be there but don’t believe for a second that yourself isnt being the john random to the next guy joining the lobby, tags or not.

unless you know people from before and that you get along with each other based on playstyles, no button in the world will prevent dudes doing their solo stuff.

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If this is anything close to the official e̶x̶c̶u̶s̶e̶ statement on the issue…:joy: :joy:

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The game doesn’t give you tools to find those people unless you already know them or use Discord. There’s no in-game LFG. You can’t even make a one-person squad and wait for people to join.

I could be John Random in someone else’s lobby. That’s exactly why the system should be opt-in with visible tags. If a host flags their lobby as a grimoire run or a speedrun, I can see that before I join and decide whether it matches what I’m doing. If it doesn’t, I don’t join. Nobody wastes anyone’s time. If I join a lobby that says ‘grimoire’ and then try to destroy or ignore them and get kicked by the host, that is on me.

I understand Fatshark might not to allow solo due to dedicated servers but having zero options outside from bothering a friend or bothering random strangers is not good for this type of game. There are many four player co-op games and pretty much all of them have these basic QOL of features in some way.

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The main issue with party finder is that you need a 2nd person to even start a party. I don’t think it’s reasonable have to bother strangers or wait for friends to come online to do something as simple as a scripture run or ‘mission farm speedrun’.

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I agree the party finder system was bad design, yet another example of fatshark trying to reinvent the wheel unnecessarily and to the players detriment.

Wish we could just host and leave a lobby open with a few descriptors so anyone browsing lobbies from anywhere in the world could join (you know, like every multiplayer game from the 00s-10s ever), would make it so some regions with smaller communities unite more.

2 Likes
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People asked for player agency in defining their mission parameters, so they can escape the silly state of both Auric and Havoc forcing on them maps and modifiers players don’t feel like playing right now. Instead we got quicker rotation of missions, which broken backfill on missions when people leave them for whatever reasons. “GENIUS” level of game design.

3 Likes
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The quitting is weird, sometimes people quit when SOMEONE ELSE dies, not even them. I understand there is a penance for it but if they’re that desperate for it then they use party finder (even though it sucks) or the discord, or any other method of getting a group.

Though I do somewhat understand people that quit upon joining. Sometimes I join an auric to find out I am at 10% hp and with almost no ammo and I am like ‘wtf’. It tells you that quickplay ‘may’ put you in a game in-progress but the only thing that changes when picking from the mission board is you get to choose the map and mission type.

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I like this, similar to deep rock galactic. There’s a ‘server name’ field in settings that you can type anything into and it would appear in the server browser. Seen it be used to warn about modded games, enforcing comps like engineers only, banning specific classes(no drillers) or just silly server names like (rock+stone)^bone

1 Like