Party Finder Improvements

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

Party Finder is one of The Four Horsemen of the Havocalypse

And so far the only one not yet at least partially addressed*

(*I’ve been told Ammo Scarcity’s been improved somewhat, but I’ve not tested it, because why would I? You know who isn’t affected by Ammo Scarcity? Staff Psyker.)

So here’s my beef.

Party Finder makes getting into Havoc, much less an ideal Havoc match, take waaaay longer than it should for someone with low-no standards.

Consider this, you’re a player who wants to play Havoc. You don’t care what level, you don’t care with whom.

Party Finder requires you to either constantly send out invites/refresh the party search.

Or, wait around either in the PF menu or constantly swapping to it in order to accept invites, if you’re hosting.

When things are good, it’s barely passable. When things are NOT good, it’s annoying and wastes your time. Frequently. Constantly.

Suggestions:

I believe there should be an “Automate Finding a Party” option, which when clicked, will send invites to all parties that match your provided parameters, and automatically refresh the party search. So you can go do other things. Once an invite has been accepted in this manner, all other pending invites are canceled.

And for hosting, it’ll automatically accept invites. If you really want to appeal to discerning folks, you could also have “Player Parameters”, such as Player Level, Havoc Assignment level or current operator. That’ll only make your party visible to folks who meet them, and spare both host and players from having their time wasted rejecting/sending invites that won’t be considered.

In addition, having a way to accept an invite without going into the PF menu would also be a boon.

Lastly, if you’re in a party you listed, and some dude joins and leaves, please don’t make us relist the party. There’s 100% no reason you can’t just relist the party automatically.

Alternatively, you could also have the Automate Party Finder button both host a “Party” and look for valid parties. So if you’ve got really tight parameters, you’ll double your chances. Automated Parties automatically accept invites, but only once it has 3 invites ready to accept. It’ll cancel the search/invites it sends once it has 3 invites, or delist the party once one of its invites has been accepted.

So from an end-user perspective, you can’t really tell whether you’ve been invited to a group, or hosting one. Because does that really matter?

2

there’s one easy improvement that is making the use of the party finder (which is a useful tool by itself btw) optional instead of mandatory, so anyone can have their preferred way of assembling a party.

3

It matters for what shows up in the PF for the mission, right?

I agree that there should be a mechanism to cancel other invites when you join a group (maybe just a third button on the pop-up), but I think it would remain imperfect either way. There are certainly going to be instances when you blast out requests, get accepted into a group and seconds later get accepted into the group you actually wanted to join. Or you join a group and everyone is unresponsive and you have no idea when they’ll come back.

As far as quickplay from a party leader or joiner perspective goes: I think it’s fine as is. Wanna join any group? Spend 30 seconds blasting out those requests. Want to accept anyone? Accept all those requests. Now that rank won’t be lost for playing on lower Havocs, I intend to do this quite a bit.

Super agree on this. Very annoying!

4

When things are good, yeah. But when things are bad it often takes me 30-45 minutes of refreshing the PF to even get a group to appear. Or 30-45 minutes of waiting to get invites if I’m hosting. And that’s when my standards are low, if I actually want to play a specific level range, it could take several hours. At that point I don’t even bother with PF.

I don’t like being at the whims of Havoc’s Current Popularity, relative to the time of day, my region, The Emperor’s disposition and the position of cosmic bodies in our solar system.

It might work for thee, but not for me.

I want to be able to set my parameters, click a button to start looking for a party, and then go do other things. I hate having to constantly refresh, constantly enter and re-enter menus, I want an automated process for this!

5

Damn that sucks. What range are you starting missions in and what region are you in? I haven’t waited more than 2 minutes when starting or joining a mission. Seems like there are a lot more people looking for groups than starting groups in my region (US…west?), so if it’s looking thin, I just start one up and get several joins in seconds.

This makes sense, and I agree with this. It’s a reasonable use case, and there’s definitely a technical solution, but I think it’s probably a bit harrier than it seems on its face. Hopefully they’ll add a mechanism like this. It might even be possible to do it as a mod…hrm…

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6

I’m in US West too! I can never find anything 35+, and sometimes I can’t even find any range (I swear, some days Havoc’s crazy popular, and other days its a ghost town). Maybe I’m just cursed. Or unlucky. Maybe everyone starts their match as soon as I start looking, and finish them after I stop.

7

I’m playing mid-Havocs right now. It suspect (and fully expect) that the player pool operating at the highest level is very small.

8

Exactly why I turn to begging on discord instead.

9

Well if/when I get up that high, I’ll drop you a line! :wink:

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10

Thanks! Maybe some of your luck’ll rub off on me.

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