Selfish players – about poorly thought-out expedition design

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

Yesterday, I had the misfortune of playing in Expedition mode with two selfish players from the Microsoft platform; specifically, they were running around the map collecting only salvage, completely ignoring “Tech-Remnants,” even when they were right next to them. When I asked why they weren’t collecting them, they replied, in a very rude manner, that they didn’t need them and that they didn’t care that I and another player were collecting them, after which, upon reaching Zone 3, they immediately began evacuating. This whole unpleasant situation, however, led me to reflect on just how poorly designed the expedition concept is.

We all know that Darktide is a cooperative game, and yet you can always find someone who, for various reasons, ignores this fact and plays without regard for the rest of the team. This is a problem that can be encountered in every available mode, but Expeditions are particularly prone to it. In every other mode, every player shares the same goal: to finish the level and complete the mission objectives. The “Havoc” mode, in particular, encourages cooperation because it lacks distractions like resources, books, and grimoires that might tempt players to break away from the rest of the team. In the case of expeditions, one might think in theory that the design would encourage players to cooperate, but I know from experience that this is not how it works. The timer and the many locations to check mean that it’s more common for the team to split up to explore more places at once, which at higher difficulty levels often leads to a situation where they all find themselves surrounded. Another problem is assigning found Tech-Remnants to the character who collected it—again, this should encourage cooperation to protect one another, but in practice, it often happens that one person collects the loot while the rest fight the mobs, after which that one player wanders off, dies, taking with them the loot that the entire team often worked to collect.

Now I’ve also experienced something else: the cynical attitude of players toward the rest of the team, all in the name of pushing forward meaningless numbers of completed penances. I don’t think I’m the only one who finds the amount of salvage required to complete a penance absurdly high, which, as I’ve had the chance to see for myself, instead of encouraging a collaborative effort, promotes an approach of mindlessly pushing the stat at the expense of the rest of the team.

I believe that developers should seriously reevaluate how expeditions work to better encourage teamwork—for example, by distributing collected loot among all team members, so that players who cooperate aren’t unfairly punished for the misdeeds of a single kleptomaniac. Let players, before dispersing to several points of interest, first have the opportunity to “vote” on whether to activate a given point or not, to encourage staying together rather than splitting up. These are, of course, just my suggestions; perhaps someone will find a better solution, but I am certain that expeditions should not remain in their current form.

2

The feedback is sound but I don’t think it’s realistic to expect some of the fundamentals of the game mode to change, like:

Which is what occurs in Adventure maps, too. Only there is no “timer” of direct sort; but there is a figurative timer that ticks the longer the mission runs, since the longer it runs, the more occasions there is for the game to throw a couple of things at you that will kill you.

Which seems deliberate, still - in Adventure you are also dropping whatever items you were carrying on you. This notably doesn’t apply to scrap, but that’s because it’s a global currency rather than a “score” of sorts - if Tech remnants can be called that.

This will not stop bad actors from finding ways to exploit the system to their own benefit, since any voting system would be prone to probably follow the same principles as the kick-based one, so it would have to be majority of people voting for a particular objective (so above 3 players); and then the problem would be more pervasive in lobbies where there are 3 premade players and 1 random one (i.e., people will be reporting bad experiences with 3-stacks instead of 2-stacks).

And then you’d also have to come up with solutions that would account for people not wanting to engage with the voting system at all - would the majority (that votes) still get to decide what’s right for the rest of players? What if the sole player doesn’t like the decision? It creates friction where none is needed - Expeditions are fine if you give people all the freedom to do whatever they want - you will meet some bad people once in a while - but it’s not uncommon in other game modes, either.

The only real solution to dealing with bad apples in your lobby is to just leave; and block them if you’d had a bad experience with their playstyle/attitude; and I get that your experience is mainly based off of that, but if the solution is to restrict people engaging with the mode through:

  • reducing stakes of engaging with the mode by distributing Tech remnants evenly across all players,
  • implementing a voting system for Points-of-interest that will reduce player agency for individual decision making - even if they are wrong.

Then I do not agree it would be the best course of action to consider any of those, since I care about both.

3

I feel you and sorry you had this run.

We all know that Darktide is a cooperative game, and yet you can always find someone who, for various reasons, ignores this fact and plays without regard for the rest of the team.

Many such cases.

Now I’ve also experienced something else: the cynical attitude of players toward the rest of the team, all in the name of pushing forward meaningless numbers of completed penances.

The funny thing is, these cosmetics and rewards are so ugly in Expeditions, who in the right mind is going to farm them, exploiting the gamemode in a way that it makes it a complete chore.

I feel like the whole point of this gamemode is to go almost roleplay mode in it, all tactical and stuff. Sniping builds and stealth finally have a purpose in this game, because on adventure maps these playstyles feel counterintuitive.

If it wasn’t for low amount of content and some design blunders like timer, it could be a really fun gamemode that just pushes players to use different loadouts.

Expeditions are not really engaging otherwise, because of how repetitive every game is, and how it looks exactly the same every run, even if you compare it to the early days of Darktide where we had less maps.

This gamemode would have been decent if it had 3 distinct unique zones tile sets on release, and not in 2 years from now… (apparently there’s 2 more map types mentioned in the files, a “red” zone of sorts and “manufactorum” or smth)

I believe that developers should seriously reevaluate how expeditions work to better encourage teamwork—for example, by distributing collected loot among all team members, so that players who cooperate aren’t unfairly punished for the misdeeds of a single kleptomaniac.

Yes just give the same amount of scrap to every person, and if somebody loses their portion, the rest of the team doesn’t suffer from it.

4

You can’t optimize co-op mechanics with degenerates in mind.

Assholes will always find a way to be assholing.

5

This just gives the two players who were refusing to play the points even more power. Can’t even activate points if your team doesn’t agree.

6

thats a polite way to put when havoc castrates the individual capabilities to the point one needs to yellow each other, when in other modes you wouldn’t give em the time of day if they f-up.

enforces rather by artificial means, not encouraging as in “damn those dudes really click together, this is fun”
rather than “aw crap, guess we need to bring “that” along as well”

the difference is if its voluntary or shoved down your throat.

7

That salvage penance is a nonsensical grind, poorly designed as the explosive barrels one was.

8

I’m pretty sure like Mortis they’ll overhaul it very slightly and then abandon it. Hopefully its enough to fix some inherent issues, like a lack of scaling. But the assignment was intended to be long term, so don’t feel obliged to do it, just chip away at it periodically. Especially if you get a negative experience, even after pulling all the current penances from the mode I still play it to get as many remnants per run as possible and kill pack masters. Maybe I’m old enough to just want to see large numbers even from repetitive runs, but I think this comment is a bit tone-deaf on the rest of the game. Is playing through the same exact levels, in the same fashion, doing the same mid level events, not as repetitive if not more so? There are at least 3 (maybe 4 but the actual differences are minor) set ups of this map, with different objectives that rotate and randomize from a list of 19. Some of those could be improved, and unmarked points of interest should be more obvious (there’s a dumb climbing one I swear everyone just assumes is a regular gully, no you can climb it and find 100 remnants every time). But mostly its just bumping the timer and spawns and scaling scrap/remnants to difficulty…not like mortis where I wish they would have done more to motivate me to actually play long enough to finish the assignments. I’m like 22 runs in and totally done with that mode forever its so dull even with bots.