People have been saying this, exactly this nearly word for word, since the game released. What was that, two years ago? Does anybody seriously think FS will “lock down what they’re doing” any time soon or is this just pure cope?
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1 year and 3 months.
And yes, they will. VT1 and VT2 are the evidence.
Fatshark is late blooming, always. Which begs the question why they didn’t go with Early Access. I still stand firm that this is what they should have done for everyone’s benefit, their own included.
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I mean it’s not like they don’t lock down on stuff eventually.
People complained about the mission board for tier 5 players often only giving one Hi5STG; they added auric giving tons.
People complained about the lack of shared resources; they added shared resources.
People complained about builds; they added the skill tree.
They picked out complaints, decided what they wanted to do to address them, and implemented that decision.
What else is there to say? There is a clear track record of Fatshark doing this. It just takes an absolute age.
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Evidance of what, lol. Both V1 and V2 were partialy fixed but never revived. Average online was laways the same during lifespan, no matter the content.
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What do you mean, not revived?
A game being actively played with some really decent numbers 6 years post-release isn’t the norm.
That’s post-release content and management well beyond a mere maintenance mode.
You may have a cynic view on those numbers, but they’re rather good actually. Especially for a niche title as janky as the Tide Franchise.
You see a reason to dunk on Fatshark.
I see a reason to celebrate.
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Evidence that the game will end up in a good state. It’s not that hard to understand lol.
Also Tide games just have dog sh*t player retention no matter what. Fatshark could fix Darktide tomorrow and the player retention would still be ass. See: VT2 free to keep weekend, years worth of content, 100k+ peak concurrent, then player count collapsing back to nothing in a few weeks.
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I mean that if the average online stay the same during year one after harsh release and during year two, despite you drop some content then there is something wrong with your game, cause people don’t stay.
Here is NMS for example, It was 1-1,5k online in 2016-2018 at the bottom, It’s 10-12k now, with constant spikes towards 20-40k. This is what comeback means.
Eh, obviously. And they made it even worse in DT. Noone stops them to bring an overhaul for crafting, gear progression, maps menu, etc.
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No, there isn’t something wrong with that. It simply means that your playerbase has a higher percentage cut of hardcore players, who get deep into the nit and grit, but also lower retention of casuals.
That happens. Not every game has the same cut of target demographics.
To me, a game that drops the soap this hard and then fixes itself up later retaining all the players inbetween is an incredibly good sign. It means despite all technicalities, your core game was so fricking good, it made people stay around.
That said, there was a general upwards move after Chaos Wastes release. But it wasn’t as big as your chosen counter-example. On the other hand, neither were the initial sales numbers to the game you chose for comparison here. It has it’s own scale. I don’t see the issue really.
No Mans Sky had peak launch of 212,612 players and dumped to the small 4 digits of a thousand or so.
Vermintide 2 had peak launch of roughly 80,000 players and dumped to the 2000’s. Now it’s at 3300.
Darktide had a peak launch of roughly 105,000 players and dumped to the 4500-5000.
They all show similiar patterns with the scale adjusted. In this regard, Tide games scored a higher retention from the initial drop than No Mans Sky.
The initial sales numbers from Darktide were higher and the player base retention is also higher numerically speaking.
Here’s Payday 3, Remnant 2, Darktide, and HD2 compared
perhaps more interestingly here is just Remnant 2 and Darktide compared. They are very very similar.
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Player peaks and what not aside, I feel like we’ve been through this before. The game will not get timely patches or updates, it will just slowly get tweaked to be more and more playable over a period of years. There won’t be good communication between now and then, we won’t get most of the things we want, and Fatshark will never address some of the core design flaws that people dislike about the game. They aren’t ‘abandoning’ the game, but having any expectations as to what future development will bring to the table is just a recipie for dissapointment.
It’s sad, but the only thing we can do is make peace with it. I think.
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Unless they drastically changed in-between titles, isn’t Remnant basically a single-player Soulslike with the option to reroll and replay different worlds? And one without the broader popularity of the 40k IP?
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How is it relevant for the game, that has different difficulty levels? Your game either aimed for hardcore niche auditory and being presented so, or not. In any game casuals is a majority.
and the player base retention is also higher numerically speaking.
Oh, are you sure so?
3,5k players from 80k = 4,4% for V2
4,5k from 108k = 4,2% for DT
12k from 212000= 5.7% for NMS. And this is minimum, with somewhat regular spikes towards 30-40k average online is 15,5k and it’s 7,3%
But my take was about that NMS devs increased online from 1,5k to 12k, means the did some work with their game to make it better. While with tides online is always was the same no matter what.
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Eh, if you want some comparison then compare it with GaaS like PoE (constant online growth)
Or with 4 pve coop like DRG and KF2. New all time high for online less than in year. For DRG - pure uptrend, for KF2 - slight uptrend (was)
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You say that, but VT2 now is largely different from VT2 at launch.
My prediction:
→ Darktide will eventually have enough new maps, modifiers and rotations that the game will rival VT2’s content offering
→ Darktide’s crafting system will never be classically “fixed”, but reds will be introduced and cirumvent the system just like they did in VT2. At that point people will forget about crafting because it can be worked around
→ There will be a big Commissary Update 2.0 at some point, greatly increasing the selection of cosmetics for Ordo Dockets. That said cosmetic store will continue to be around
→ There will be a 5th archetype at some point, think 2025
→ When all is said and done, the average player peak will be up from the current 4500-5500 to something like 6500
Some work. lol
Can we appreciate for a second, that NMS devs went quiet for some odd 2 years and did an enormous re-release? Like yes, that honors them. But result and history not typical. You picked the absolute outlier in Gaming History for this one. A No Man’s Sky is so unique in it’s history, it has full-blown 2 hour documentaries on YouTube.
They also had a gigantic marketing effort front and center pre-release and Mainstream Media attention. Totally different ballpark. If you expect any dev studio to just replicate that, you will always set yourself up for disappointment on that front.
With Fatshark you can expect a “recovery” of a fraction of that. Some upward momentum, but nothing like a tenfold increase. That said they also didn’t fall as deep as NMS did at it’s lowest point.
As I said previously, they are different projects scaling completely differently.
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I did indeed, but that doesn’t change that fact both V1 and V2 wasn’t those games that have more players every year.
I don’t expect, cause they aren’t gonna get rid off dumb anti player mechanics probably.
I mean just as V1 and V2, DT probably will end as an ok game. Which is sad, cause all tide games could be much more than that.
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Reading through this thread and honestly feel like I can stop here. This is literally all that needs to be said. End of discussion.
More stuff added to the game (faster) = me playing it more.
Teasing future content = me getting hyped = me playing the game more now out of anticipation.
All the other complaints: bugs, mission variety, balance, enemies, and for me even crafting, while still being bad, wouldn’t stop me from playing the game.
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Hope you’re right.
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I was comparing games released in the last year or so, I could include payday 2 in there as well for games released at any time. For games in the last year or so It tells me that Darktide did not great (HD2) not terrible (PD3), but did decent in the middle ground and has a very close peer in Remnant 2 which used coop as a big (and successful) draw and is how most my friends played it.
What I get from your comparisons is that it takes a long f*cking time to start consistently growing a game’s player base after launch, like multiple years.
If Darktide wants to get on that road then step 1 is obviously get the game into a great state which Fatshark have slowly been doing. Step 2 is to figure out how to improve player retention. And step 3. is to figure out how to produce content at a speed so the next peak player count can build on dregs of the previous peak.
On the topic of step 2, am I wrong in thinking that Fatshark has made a go at addressing this?
Look how much shallower the slope is after the release of the skill trees compared to when the game first released as a brand new game. Even after the launch of the traitor curse when there was basically jack all new stuff added to the game the slope is… possibly better than any slope I have ever seen in a Tide game?
Yeah, but to continue that course they must bring some huge update like skill tree rewor in the near time. So it somewhat would be close to how most GaaS operate with seasons and leagues.
Maybe they will, maybe won’t we don’t even know cause no communication.
It is, however it seems their working process is still the same - they are slow on fixing crucial bugs, they keep revivng old bugs - like knokback was reintroduced for 3rd time or something.
Like they kinda failed with Orthus Offensive in terms of retention, it has 0 replayability value.
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I do think this is the one positive thing. It shows that doing something to increase build diversity (hugely more skill tree to explore in this case) does a lot to help with retention. We also had Patch #13, #14, #15, and #16 all within October - December timeframe. That sort of cadence helped maintain a keep cadence of engagement alongside the skill rework.
This is why fixing crafting and item progression in general is so important. If you dangle PREDICTABLE rewards in front of players (e.g. if I play for 10 hours I WILL have enough of X to craft item Y) it will give players a reason to keep grinding and vastly increase the amount of achievable permutations of builds you can work towards. Combine that with a regular shake-up of the balance and introduction of new weapons and other content, and it’s a recipe for growth.
So many of the success stories (DRG, PD2, etc.) what we see is the “lows” in between the peaks rising each time. New content comes in, a bunch of people jump into the game, and each time more of them stick around the ride the wave until the next peak.
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