What's The Weakest Link?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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I think that often times in discussions about difficulty and competitiveness, there tends to be a focus on personal responsibility. It tends to be seen as bad taste to blame your performance on you allies or even your gear. More often than not, I think it’s a fair perspective. But Darktide is a team based game, and the saying goes that [a team] is only as strong as its weakest link. There are bound to be times where the “weakest link” isn’t you.

I wanted to ask the community, what are some in game faux pas that you feel like you see a lot, and that are an active detriment to the success of the team?

I don’t necessarily mean things like purposefully waking a Demonhost, but more so issues more subtle in nature. To provide an example, an idea I like to use is that of a Player’s Kill Circle. The short of this idea is that every player has an area of space around them where they will draw the aggro of nearby enemies. The thing I think is a detriment is players failing to properly clear their Kill Circles. So many players, even into Auric 5s, will only kill the enemies directly in front of them, leaving their slower allies to clean up any threats left behind.

I’m sure many players that do this see themselves as highly skilled, considering they dispatched an elite or special quickly, before using a knife, invisibility, or a charge to rapidly engage their next target. But when I’m playing a slower build, all I see is the small hoard of basic melee and shooter enemies they left in their wake, the elites and specials that they missed, and all the enemies that they’re drawing attention from up ahead while the space to retreat and deal with tougher groups is clogged up by the aforementioned enemies they missed.

There are other things that I personally consider to be just poor play, that lead to more problems for the team as a whole than less, but again, I’m interested in things that other players consider to bad.

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Players not healing for no damn reason. And I’m not even talking about a zealot with damage multiplier…I see psychers and all sorts running away from a med station when they have 1/4 health.

I have to stop and type “heal” and stand next to med station, only to be ignored or told they don’t need it…then rescue them not long after.

I’ve had to do that a lot recently. Drives me mad.

Like…just heal?!

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This looks to be a spicy thread. I’ll bring the popkark.

A big one for me is players not policing ranged enemies or specials. The lack of them makes life so much easier and I feel obligated to bring throwing knives or a revolver on Zealot because nobody else deals with them ASAP.

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•lacking proper map knowledge by the time they “grace” teams in auric maelstrom

•over-committing to useless/endless rear-fights when the forward momentum has already been paid for in health and ammo

•total cluelessnes about their surroundings aka de-net / get dog off

•clinging to ressources and rather die with them than use em to reach the next room.

•come an open large area everyone scatters in the farthest possible and opposite direction despite ping

bed time now, tomorrow after a good shuteye i guess i can think of more :smile:

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TARGET PRIORITY PEEPS!!! This matters so much… for every veteran who says ranged is weak in this game, I have a flashback of every time I wish I had a dedicated shootie-killie on my side… (as an Ogryn with bad knees it’s a lot)

For me it’s not having an immediate reaction to the flashing red yield sign that means a player is in trouble.

I don’t mean that you have to drop everything and assist (gotta take care of numero uno), but you sure can tell when a player is oblivious to the fact that you are right there next to them playing with Fido… Often I gotta gently remind them via team chat that I am in a spot of bother! Throw me a bone why don’t you!!

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The community’s morality, intellect and range of skill is so broad I have no idea what most people think tbh. But for my part, my focus on personal responsibility is simply because of how the game is.

It would be different if we were talking about MMO highest-end raids, where the fights are literally designed so if even a single member fails to pull their weight, the whole team will fail. There it’s a simple question of maths, no amount of skill on behalf of the remaining members can overcome the limit of simply not having enough DPS / resources.

But Darktide isn’t like that. Were it not for the broken bugged specialists, a single extremely skilled player could repeatedly carry & clutch an entire mission on their own. Outside of barrels or rare random luck like someone suddenly dodging your way just as a trapper & dog & crusher is trying to hit them only to catch you instead, there’s really no way for others to cause your own death.

So the weakest link isn’t only not constructive, it’s almost always irrelevant: If you die, it’s because you failed. You weren’t good enough, and made a mistake. That’s it.

Any blame game is almost guaranteed to be nothing but excuses to pass the blame of your failures on someone else. Sure it’s not black & white, one can’t expect newbies or casual gamers to have the kind of skill to carry, they need to rely on their teams too. But to blame someone else in that situation is at the very least morally questionable and hypocritical. After all if you’re inexperienced yourself, you should hardly blame others for being the same.

There are exceptions ofc like obvious trolls, resource ninjas or ppl just obviously not even trying to pay attention or helping their team out of spite. But generally speaking I believe looking for weak links - especially in a game like Darktide - is a steep slope that quickly leads to a mentality of avoiding personal responsibility and growth to push that on others. It doesn’t improve yourself, or others, or the community, but instead simply drags it all down into a worse place.

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The two main ones I see are:

  1. Not sticking with the team. Wait… Let me clarify. Not sticking with the team IF they cannot handle being solo. It doesn’t bother me if someone strays from the group; so long as they can generally handle themselves and know how/when to work back towards the team. Having someone that sort of ‘orbits’ the group can be helpful with finding supplies. When the person in orbit can’t handle themself, constantly gets downed/trapped… then it becomes an issue.

  2. Poor target selection and prioritization. Truly the bane of quick play groups. Prioritizing wrong quickly leads to situations snowballing out of control. Teams (and individual players in general) that make an effort to immediately kill Specialists (even if that means momentarily ignoring Elites, Monsters, and Trash) fair much better. Its the simple secret sauce that makes success in auric missions easily achievable.

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Players who are committed to staying out in the open on the train fighting the endless shooters and gunners where you need to deliver the power cells inevitably being downed rather than covering the people getting the power cells

So many auric damnation runs ruined by this

Honestly just players breaking off from the group pointlessly and getting downed.

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I appreciate your input, as well as you concern, but I also don’t think you quite understand the intent of the question, or the importance of asking it. I agree, players should self reflect on their own failings and missteps instead of being quick to shove the blame on others; remember, I lead w/ that. I also recognize that a single skilled player can carry an entire match on their shoulders. Trust me, I know.

But here’s the thing. I, as a player, am very aware of the limits of my skills, and not only do I not want to do more work than necessary, but if I have to clutch multiple times in a match because my teammates are constantly making bad plays, the gaming experience goes from fun, to stressful.

The idea is that by highlighting specific areas of poor play, anyone who isn’t aware of the problem will be able to see how other people feel about. Not everyone is capable of self reflection, and even if they are, they aren’t necessarily knowledgeable enough in other areas of the game to understand why the thing they’re doing is problematic. Ultimately, yes, I want players to reflect on their own play and improve in areas they can, but at the same time, it would be nice to be able to rely on my team more than not at all in the four person co-op game. Otherwise, I would just run solos all the time.

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the W+shift Zealots. the combination of not checking on the team because “go faster” combined with the rest of the team not being able to close the gap due to Zealot hustle bonus is usually the last bit that pushes a sudden bad situation into a wipe. the Zealots are oblvious though so they don’t notice the problem until the team is screwed and assume it’s the other guys fault.

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It really gets annoying when there’s duplicates of classes in a match and rather than take a build that makes up for shortcomings of a specific weapon archetype (like TH, PG, Revolver are going to be blasting elites and specials) to help round out the group, they’ll double down on picking the same or similar builds.

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there’s a stat tracker in the scoreboard mod for how many times you’ve used a medicae, so they’re probably paying way too much attention to stats rather than just playing the game.

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The weakest link are players who play way above their skill level but refuse to acknowledge this fact while simultaneously plaguing the games of others with this egotistical mentality and then to add even MORE insult to injury they leave as soon as they go down. Every. Time.

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No, they aren’t. I am absolutely sick of this witch hunt mentality among the anti-scoreboard crowd. You guys literally cope on your own supply by creating these completely fairy tale like scenarios to reinforce your own viewpoints. Seriously. How is it you associate someone not healing with a tiny stat that is tracked on an entire scoreboard? I have seen tons of people do exactly what the other dude said and its SOLELY because they are in the midst of a sh*tstorm and are no where near ready for a lot of the situations they put themselves in.

I have seen plenty of people join games and have no clue where the medi station was. I have seen plenty of people have to avoid healing because they can’t fight a single horde alone and rely on an entire team to carry them to the healing station.

The scoreboard is a MOD and has absolutely no influence on real in game content or achievements - you saying someone isn’t healing because it would show up on the scoreboard mod? That is some insane levels of cope you are achieving to try and make the scoreboard seem bad. Just stop my guy.

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Calmness my friend. No one was suggesting the mod was to blame. I’m a user of the scoreboard myself; I love the extra information and context it provides. But despite the scoreboard itself saying that it’s not perfectly accurate, I am sure there are people who misuse (the mod) and mismanage (their play) based upon it. It was merely suggested that maybe players trying to maximize their score board result was the cause for them refusing to maximize the resources available to them, considering that otherwise, it’s very hard to understand why someone would refuse to heal. That’s not to imply that the mod is at fault, but instead suggest that perhaps the player using the mod is not understanding the benefit of it provides. Chasing a score in a game that otherwise does not have an inherent score system is as plausible as any other reason for someone to make such an obvious misplay, is it not?

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I would blame the implementation of the mod rather than its existence, mainly the arbitrary score system that is on by default where the scores are weighted in a completely subjective, non-intuitive and biased way.

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I’ve seen a lot of answers here I agree with. Things that more or less boil down to poor target prioritization, management of resources, and positioning. And all of those make sense, considering that as you get to higher levels of play, those mistakes become far more impactful. While it edges on nitpicking, I have a few that I can mention about specific classes, both when playing as a class or when dealing with them. This is a long one, but it’s also my last planned post on this topic:

[Veteran]
When Playing As: It’s hard for me to get frustrated by much when playing Vet. I’m a passable shot and I’m not terrible at ammo conservation. That being said, even I need to grab ammo a few times a game. So I always get a bit worried when I see a Gun Ogryn. Most are fine, and more than willing to use their melee to mix thing up and conserve ammo. But then you have the ones who always grab, never share, and spend, spend, spend.
When Playing W/: I’ll warn now, this might make it seem like I hate the plasma gun, but it’s quite the opposite. The PG is an extremely powerful weapon that I hate to see used poorly. And there’s no poorer play than wishing you had someone to clear long range shooters while there’s a Plasma Vet on the team busy using their weapon like it was the Hacker Shotgun.

[Zealot]
When Playing As: There’s honestly very little that another player can do to rub me the wrong way as a Zealot. Part of that is that I’m a Zealot Main, but another reason is that the class is just built in such a way where they’re very self sufficient. But the one thing that always bothers me is when I have my chain weapon in the neck of an enemy, i’m a fraction of a second from getting the toughness on kill, along with any other benefits of my build, and then BAM. Plasma Gun Vet has decided that the target that need to die next isn’t the sniper taking pot shots from afar, or the gunner lighting up our backline, but the Shotgunner who was about to die regardless. I’m not sure that “Anti-Synergy” is a thing but Vets who exclusively use the Plasma Gun to kill what you’re engaged w/ make me believe.
When Playing W/: People have already mentioned this, but Zealots who can’t stick w/ the team but also can’t stay on their feet are always a headache. When playing certain zealot builds, I like Orbiting around the team, but some people just charge forward, pissing off a hoards worth of enemies, only to go down in a bad place far away and blame everyone else.

[Ogryn]
When Playing As: I saw this one pointed out as well, but as someone who very much isn’t an Ogryn main, and therefore am very much so not comfortable trying to clutch w/ their tool kit, I hate when clearing out shooters is left to me. My brother under the emperor, that is a sniper 60m out and I am using a Rumbler. Can you please deal w/ the problem?
When Playing W/: Ogryns have the special passive where they can’t be knocked out of things like the pickup animation unless they go down or are netted, pounced on by a fog, or mutant charged. So I will never understand why so many do make better use of that. I understand not wanting to pick someone up if you’ll go down or get hit by a specialist, but sometimes Ogryns will just continue attacking into a crowd even when it becomes obvious that they are the only ones capable of getting someone before they die.

[Psyker]
When Playing As: I can understand it when i’m trying to headpop a target and someone just gets to the kill first, but I’ve been in a few games where it seems like someone is doing it on purpose. Headpopping a sniper? Bang. They get shot in the head by the guy who was just in melee. Headpopping a rager in an upcoming group of 5 of them. Bang. The rager I was specifically targeting, as opposed to any of the others. Headpopping a random pox walker behind the group. You guessed it. Bang. It happens rarely, but when it does I just don’t have words.
When Playing W/: Smykers. Smykers give Psyker players who actually understand the use of Smite a bad rep. When used correctly, it’s a powerful tool that can stun lock groups of enemies long enough for the team to dispatch them at minimum cost of resources. When used poorly, it attracts more problems than it solves.

And here’s a hodgepodge of random complaints that aren’t class specific but that I haven’t seen yet:

  • People who shoot Pox Bursters when you’re about to push them. Why? You can literally push them through a hoard, so shooting should never be an option unless they are far away from the team.
  • Players who quit out as soon as they’re down, even if you are picking them up. I understand that sometimes the connection is bad, but this happens far too consistently, without people ever reconnecting for it to always be blamed on the server.
  • Ping on Scrollwheel. I don’t think I have to explain how annoying this one is, and how little it makes sense, especially on Veteran.
  • Anyone who starts a hold out even without the rest of the team. This is just poor manners, and more likely than not to get any teammate who isn’t yet in position killed.
  • People w/ poor communication skills, specifically in multi-objective situations. The maps that come to mind are the Smelter Complex, Consignment Yard, and Chasm Logistratum. If someone pings a direction, and everyone in the team moves in that direction, why would you go the opposite way?

And for my last one, and this is very specific to a one map:

  • People who refuse to engage w/ the mechanics of the final arena on the Carnival map Mercantile HL-70. Fatshark, at this point, have added an entire drop off point to try and get people to interact w/ the gate mechanic of the arena and I still occasionally deal w/ someone refusing to, insisting that the upper stands where there’s little cover is a much better place to fight…only for them to go down a few minutes later from one of the six snipers that spawn during the final hold out event. Holding the gates is not that hard. I’ve done it by myself in a maelstrom run. What are you trying to prove?

[EDITS: Cleaned up my typos, formatting, and added a warning regarding my loquaciousness.]

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Ammoblind b**chers i call them. The biggest for me is not the ones who shoot everything but the ones who shoot everything and 100% ignore any and all ammo pinged in a 100 mile raidius of them and then spend the remainder of the mission screaming at everyone for stealing all the ammo.

Had a guy in an Auric…an Auric who was with me (staff psyker) and two other staff psyker go ballistic on voice for us stealing all the ammo like a$$holes

Other then that i suppose it would be when three of us are moving at a resonable speed but one guy wants to speed run ahead as fast as possible and keeps dieing over and over and blaming the team for not “keeping up” running ahead of the team is the same thing as lagging behind the team. If you cant handle it by yourself dont do it…8 times out of 10 the “team speed” sets itself naturally and only occasionally needs a “hey lets go” nudge. Running ahead is 100% the same thing as lagging behind…your own bad for better or worse and some people seem to not realize this.

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The idea of a “satellite player” that orbits the group is something I hadn’t thought of but that perfectly describes how I play, and I really like the idea. Might be worth putting down in a “taktiks” book somewhere.

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A lot of issues have been mentioned already.

Here is one more:
People do not tag enemies.
You can get a scoreboard extension that tracks tags and it is ridiculous, how little the function is being used.

Did you see a disabler that you are not gonna kill within the next two seconds?
Tag it.

When ever a boss is alive, it should always be tagged. Make sure that the others know where it is.
Instead, people regularly run around like headless chickens, with the boss running after them. Meanwhile, nobody else knows where the boss is.

Same thing, when a group of elites, like a crusher patrol is engaged.
A player split off the group and finds a crusher patrol. Instead of tagging a few crushers to alert the team, the player will usually run further away from the team, where the elites will down and kill them.

Especially in the lights out condition. Just tag the enemies, so that everyone can see them better.

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