Yeah, I wonder what big-brain guy at Fatshark thought that this RNG fiesta will have players retention. Maybe it would have in 2000s-2005 in era of early MMOs when kids had time after school for that but today people prefer to not play games like second-job. And best is that in Vermintide 2 (which had bad RNG at release, albeit still way better than in Darktide) RNG on loot was also one of most heavy criticised features in game but they learnt nothing.
Whoever at Fatshark is still keep trying to push that RNG into their games should be fired and hired by Bungie in Destiny 2, as he would feel at home there.
Yes, they did. They added option to craft red rarity weapons, so you could actually get min-maxed weapon you want (since we already could craft white-green-blue-orange rarity weapons) instead of having 10x red-rarity short bows in your inventory due to idiotic RNG (simillar problem like in DT: couldnât get specific red-weapon you wanted). So after change we could salvage those and craft red-rarity weapons we wanted/were missing. So it was step into right direction. The next one was the Shrine like in Vermintide 1 (which was also added in V1 after negative respond to RNG in Vermintide 1) which allowed you to reroll/upgrade every single perk/trait on weapon and eventually min-max even below red-rarity weapons.
Sadly Fatshark was still dense and cash-grab hungry and after ignoring our feedback (again) they released Shrine but only as part of seperate paid mode that was Winds of Magic, which was one big fail obviously since they didnât listen to community at all.
In short: in V1 there was obscene RNG, after negative feedback they evnetually added Contracts + Shrine so you could min-max every kind of rarity weapon without much issue, which gave game second breath, albeit as always too late.
In V2 they added ability to craft red-rarity weapons after negative feedback so we could min-max builds and get best weapons way faster that way. Plus they said they will add Shrine again, but they tried to paywall it and it failed.
So in Darktide they learnt nothing and made even worse RNG than in V1 and V2 combined.
Result? Negative feedback and one of many reasons players leave negative reviews.
Who would have guessed that result, right? If there were only some games before DT where they could learn thatâŚ
thanks for detailed reply.
i have to say i agree on âthey failedâ from a players PoV, but from a business PoV they seem to have done it right and itâs maybe even a strategy?!?
I know FS since Krater and mainly for failng with War of The Roses and War of the Vikings - iâm a Chivalry player since Age of Chivalry HL2 Mod .
They didnt go go bankrupt with these âfailsâ, they even got a deal with Tencent and sold 36% first and more later and got something like $316 Million in total (source Wikipedia) and had i.a. the funds to develop Darktide.
I dont want to imagine the worst, but maybe thats their philosophy and way to go.
And with DT announced as a GaaS, what you you think we will get for the next paid content?!?
Reworked Crafting, and until we will get the crafting only completed like planned.
Then we will also get higher difficulties maybe you would need these 380 BR and best T4 blessings you can only have with more luck than you need in the lootery or buy the DLC with the Omnissiah 2.0
Seems they get away with it for 10 years at least, since WoR.
Their business âstrategyâ only worked casue they were unknown studio. The WoR and WoV were small games that had suprising success for them. Small games. V1 was they major breakthrough (Warhammer is big IP) with bumby road and V2 was they biggest title but also the moment (becasue of how bigger it was) where people started to see pattern and where big audience saw tons of flaws and problems with their game. Obviously Darktide was their most hyped game and they failed spectaculary and in my opinion that was their chance to show they can actually make a full game. It was their chance, since in interviews they promised tons of improvements from V2 (none are in game). Becasue now those that were with them in V1/V2 will think 10 times before buying their next game so they did failed their own fans. But whats even worse they falied to capture new players that didnât play Fatshark games before.
Darktide was their biggest project and thus their biggest fail. As they say âtwice the pride, double the fallâ
In short, in future their next game will have to be bloody perfect on release or itâs finito for them.
I think they decided to implement some âbig brainâ game design that is supposed to be cutting edge and provide lots of player retention and thus people spending money on the cosmetics shop.
Letâs be real, it exploded in their faces. The community says a lot of things, but at the end of the day people arenât sticking around, meaning they blew it from a player retention and financial perspective.
Whoever is in charge of over arching game design screwed up.
It would have been so easy to just copy from another game which has done weapon acquisition and a hub successfully. Monster Hunter, Warframe, Destiny, DRG, VT2 etc etc. But they chose not to because they thought they had something new and better, except they didnât.
It really super sucks for everyone at Fatshark who has to deal with the fall out, and the players too, as we want a large player base to help find games and to ensure the game gets support.
Sigh, I think at this point the game is going to need a soft relaunch to be saved.
So hopefully something is in the pipeline, but unless theyâve overhauled the production pipeline from VT2 thereâll be a lot of twists and turns to get there.
Steam reviews just canât be taken seriously by many due to their overuse as a method to lobby for specific changes people want rather than an actual review.
The game absolutely deserves mixed. Mostly negative? Come on. Looking through the list of reviews a very large portion are people who have played 200+ hours for a game they spent $60 on.
I donât think the âsteam reviews are just a binary yes/no recommendationâ really covers it either. Caveats donât mean the product isnât worth it holistically. After all Iâve already gotten over 200 hours out of the game and for the vast majority of that time I have been having fun. I think if a lot of the people who gave negative reviews while breaking the 100 hour mark put aside their bitterness over specific aspects of the game that are missing or they donât like were asked if they, overall, got their moneyâs worth out of the game the honest answer would have to be yes.
Iâm glad people are trying to hold FS accountable for their missteps. Theyâre clearly moving now to try and get things in a better place. Itâd be great if people could stop review bombing at least till we see what the next few patches bring. That last patch was legitimately great.
Except thatâs what steam reviews explicitly are â a binary question, âdo you recommend this game, yes or no?â The content of the review might offer more room for nuance but at the end of the day Steam measures their reviews based on that yes or no question. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people wouldnât recommend this game to other people in its current state, and their reviews reflect that.
I agree that might not be a great system if itâs all youâre looking at to determine whether or not you should buy a game, but itâs generally a bad idea to use a single source for information anyway, which isnât really steamâs problem imo.
The funny thing for me is if you look at a lot of the reviews labelled as positive, they often list the exact same problems that the negative reviews do, so the steam score would probably be even worse if you were to aggregate the reviews on content instead of the binary recommendation question.
Again with the extremely dubious claim that the game is being review bombed despite no evidence of any sort of mass coordination to do so. A game getting negative reviews doesnât mean itâs getting review bombed lmao.
Did you even read the part you quoted? I didnât say Steam reviews arenât that, I said that still doesnât justify the rating the game currently has when you look at it holistically.
My point is that a lot of people are letting details that annoy them and they want changed cloud their review. Itâs simply mad to get 200+ hours out of a game then turn around and say you havenât gotten value from your $60, and you honestly think itâs so improbable other people will get value that itâs a blanket thumbs down.
For sure some people played and the peripheral systems ruined their enjoyment so much the superb core gameplay didnât matter. You know what those people did after posting their review? Stopped playing. Yet a lot of the negative reviews have conspicuously high play time. That is pretty classic entitlement when you get hundreds of hours of entertainment for $60 then turn around and say âtrash game, donât recommendâ.
TBH it looks downright comical.
Sure, probably the wrong term to use. Is disingenuous reviewing better? What about review lobbying? Where thereâs a clear objective to make the game be what you personally want it to be? Regardless the idea this game is worth like 30% positive is ridiculous.
But now youâre doing the same disregarding peopleâs reviews and experiences based on play time.
2 hours - âYou didnât play it enoughâ
200 hours - âYou canât put out a negative review because you got your moneyâs worth out of itâ
Youâre disregarding a lot of peopleâs opinions because of your personal bias too with what youâre saying there.
Reviews are subjective, peopleâs tolerances for bad systems and frustration is different. Who are you to say they didnât have issues, or that theyâre playing despite the issue but those issues make it unlikely they will recommend it to others? Moneyâs worth? Thatâs also subjective.
What good is a nice colourful floating balloon if lead weights attached to it just drag it down? Whatâs a barrel of wine when you throw in a cup of dirty water? Dirty water.
It reads like you think the reviews are unfair because they had fun/âgot their moneyâs worthâ but if you read most of the reviews they are a lot more nuanced than that. Thatâs what happens when you sandwich âfunâ around rubbish systems that care more for retention than player fun, agency or satisfaction.
I like parts of the game, but I wouldnât recommend it because of the rubbish thatâs in it.
Sure, and the handful of people in here acting like this is in any way the majority of the negative response this game has gotten are being just as ridiculous.
Even so, those people arenât wrong to say that the game is bad or that they wouldnât recommend it to others because of the performance, or the cash shop, or the lack of basic features, or on a wider scale the fact that FS seems to have not learned anything from their past mistakes, regardless of how many hours they personally have spent on the game.
Weâre going on what, three months since release of what is advertised as a feature complete game and crafting is still âCOMING SOONâ? People are right to feel burned by that. Thatâs a completely reasonable thing to give a negative review for.
I honestly donât get what the people coming in with this argument want to happen. Should people just stop reviewing the game until the next content drop?
Sure, Iâm not trying to say itâs impossible to play the game for a significant amount of hours and still generally not recommend the game, and I agree the YMMV with how much the peripheral systems cloud the overall experience. I strongly dislike pure RNG systems because they are by definition prone to huge swings in either direction that are guaranteed by their nature to hard screw over a certain % of players. Iâm just dubious of Steam reviews generally and do see them frequently wielded as a weapon against developers over being used as an actual review.
Mostly just trying to balance some of the inordinate amount of hate and say that Steam review % on its own is not always a great metric. I do enjoy the game overall and want to see it succeed, and Iâm pretty sure given enough time it will. The last patch was absolutely a step in the right direction to my mind.
Thatâs it really. If you think the game genuinely deserves as negative a score as it has obviously thatâs your prerogative. To me the hardest things to fix, the core gameplay, is very good. That very solid foundation and the current move towards fixing other things in the game leaves me generally pretty hopeful for where itâs going. I hope the overwhelming negativity doesnât leave the game with basically no players by the time it does get there (please note I am also not absolving FS of the state they released the game in).
Youâre attacking a straw man, Iâve yet to see someone claim they played 200+ hours and didnât get value from their money. If you can provide evidence of a handful of instances, you might have some semblance of an argument, but you canât. You just constructed something to attack which doesnât really exist. If you actually read the proper, non-meme reviews, youâll see that they rarely recommend, even amongst the blue ones.
30% doesnât mean this game is a 3/10. It means that 3/10 people recommend it, and 7/10 people donât recommend it. The community itself decides this, not you as an individual. Sure, you may not agree, but to accuse others of disingenuous reviewing and lobbying? Thatâs just a poor attempt at rationalisation.
The person who decided that it was better to be honest now and deal with the tantrums than promise something that wouldnât happen.
At this point Iâm pretty sure Fat Shark has figured out that Steam reviews are pointless. People on Steam and here are just stupid brats who are going write something negative no matter what because theyâre emo little shits who are angry that the world wonât give them special treatment.
Me Iâll be around a while enjoying the game play at my own pace. Since I donât care if every mission is done in under 20 minutes I donât mind if my gear isnât super Uber min-max optimized. I pull my weight (and then some) and have fun. So I can wait for more options to come out as the game improves.
And when all the bandwagon riders come back after the big patch I can look down my nose at their crappy gear on a crappy character with zero experience in the new maps and modes and taunt them. Karma is a fun.