Another week goes by with neither update nor info on whats being worked on

[BrokenClock]

To begin with, I am going to preface this, by stating that you’re a boob. Sir you’re an undeserving boob that does not deserve such a nuanced response.

Now, let us address your points shall we?

For starters, I hope you never operate under a leadership within an organized company. Otherwise you will cost your own company capital.

If your entire argument boils down to this,“Hurr durr, you got hundreds of hours of fun out of the product.” Then you, my friend, are engaging in something called a strawman.

Strawman: an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent’s real argument.

In this case you are intentionally misrepresenting an entire community’s grievance, to such a narrow point, that you might as well engage in ad hominem instead.

Of course if you forgot what the community’s grievances are. Allow me to illuminate your thick cranium.

1. They took down the roadmap prematurely, and never bothered updating it. Effectively leaving everyone in the dark, regarding the games development. A roadmap, in general, outlines the teams priorities, expectations, and milestones. Basically, it fleshes out a projects goals. It also informs the playerbase of timelines, and what to expect for the future.

This is what the roadmap looked like before they took it down: https://i.imgur.com/uGkx9b0.jpg

We were supposed to already have dedicated servers, DLC, and new maps. However this never came to be

2. The company, Fatshark, has instead chosen to further increase tensions by not communicating with everyone; or instead choosing to favor one social platform over the other. What this causes instead is confusion and agitation.

3. Drop rates for certain items also proved to be a huge issue for the community. What I mean is that cool skins, hats, and rare items; proved to be ludicrously difficult to obtain. The community raised much concern over the months, but were met with dead silence for months.

4. It takes the company forever to address concerning issues. For example, it took them months to address the scarcity of green dust. A problem that affected every player, on all difficulties

5. Fatshark Robin passive aggressive addresses to the community, didn’t help one bit; proving only to agitate matters.

6. Lastly, the community discovered that the game has content that is being withhold for future DLC.

Review each item on the list, then carefully self reflect you boob.

Secondly, if you’ve been paying attention at all, no one is saying that they hate this game, you boob. People legitimately love this game, and see the potential that the product has. Not one person has come to regret the hours that they have spent on the product. People are just frustrated by the utter and sheer incompetence that the company has displayed recently.

But of course, this most likely will fall upon deaf ears.

[Yzneftamz]

Sigh. This is starting to develop into an “are too - am not” -argument.

@Darth_Angeal has a point, in that we already have gotten a game played for hundreds of hours by each of us, for half the price of a big title. I, and I suspect nearly all here, wouldn’t put that much time into a game if I (or rather, we) didn’t like it - mostly, at least. Angeal’s style of communicating seems quite aggressive and confrontational, though, and that doesn’t help in making a point. And that we like this game is one reason we want it to be better still.

It doesn’t mean people have no right to be unhappy about the game, though. While I personally disagree on the “practically Early Access” opinion some people have here, there certainly has been a lot of problems in the game, and still are. No one likes that, least of all the developers. They are being fixed, though, even if things go slow (or feel like it). During the first ~two weeks, Skittergate was broken enough to be unplayable, Deeds were broken, and other stuff made the game occasionally unplayable. Now Skittergate works fine, Deeds give rewards as they’re supposed to, and troubles with hyperdensity and other stuff have been reduced too. Even if times have been rough, we’re getting a better product with every update, and those updates keep coming, even if they’ve slowed down somewhat because of summertime and the XBox release. I wouldn’t say the same about some major releases (how long did it take again to get Arkham Knight in a playable state for majority on PC? 6 months or more, iirc, and the price dropped extremely low fast). It’s still right to want a better product.

I would love more dev communication towards us. Unfortunately, as can be seen in here, Reddit and especially Steam, the positive responses to stuff get drowned in the unhappy noise. People have a tendency to voice their opinions far more strongly when they’re against something, and the relative anonymity of the Internet only strengthens this. It also leads to many people presenting their opinions in a very rude and offensive way, even up to threats directly to the devs. When most of the responses the devs get is hatred and discontent no matter what they do, it’s unlikely they want to be very open in their communication. Also, as the (vocal and active) community is relatively large and diverse, many decisions made by the devs are of the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” sort. They focus on bugs, the people wanting balance are unhappy. Focus on balance and the bug crew start getting antsy. Direct more staff back to PC side, and the XBox crew (and possibly Microsoft) starts raising noise. The fans as a mass cannot be pleased, and it is a thing that cannot be made (significantly) better with more open communication.

On another topic also touched in this thread, it is indeed strange that the official forum (admittedly just one fifth of the communication channels between fans and devs) seems to be quite ignored much of the time. While Hedge is relatively active here (when they can), the other devs, the ones working more directly on the game, seem to direct their communication to Reddit, a third-party platform. There haven’t been any mentions here about streams until after the fact, and even then only by forum members, same with the recent interview with FS CEO. Often, not even afterwards. Reddit posts may or may not be linked or referenced here, again by cross-platform users. I think these forums should honestly be the primary channel of communication (possibly shared with Steam, as that one’s likely to reach the widest audience), and significant stuff from Reddit and the streams at least mentioned and linked here officially. These forums are the one channel exclusively associated with this game and its devs, after all.

I feel like there’s still more stuff i could talk and comment about, but I think this rant is long enough already.

[BrokenClock]

To expound upon this, it is very frustrating to be met with silence, when the community raises legitimate concerns.

I’m not asking for much, all I want is a simple,“Heya, we are aware of x y and z, and are working to address this issue.” While pinning it so all can see it, thus eliminating any redundant threads on the matter.

A simple weekly, or even monthly, dairy of what the devs are currently working on will go a long way in establishing good relations between players. People despise being left in the dark for so long, it wont take long until the community becomes hostile towards you. The longer you knowingly leave your community in the dark, the more aggressive that the community will be towards you.

Is asking for simple engagement really going to cost you thousands? Is it worth it, to force your loyal player base to consider boycotting future Fatshark goods? How long until the community implodes upon itself, and becomes a cesspool of toxicity?

One of the most vital things that a company needs is good will. You are destroying the good will you worked so hard to establish over the years.

People can be understanding and helpful, if you but just talk to us. Address our concerns, copy and paste your answer to all social platforms. Keep us informed, if you happen upon a hiccup, let us know. One of the biggest criticism that all communities have, reddit, official forums, and here. Is that we’re left in the dark regarding the games development.

[Guziol]

Who cares? I care.

[Argonaut14]

The Roadmap(and the communities reaction to it) is the reason why we’re NOT getting updates with possible information in them.

FS posted the roadmap prior to launch, went through beta and then discovered they had made a glaring error in the cleave/stagger and traits upon release. We can wax lyrical about “this should never have happened” but it did. It is my personal opinion that several people at FS offices got the most drawn-out,scathing, downright nasty reprimand for not spotting this glaring error, and they then had to work an idiotic amount of hours to get their base game “working”.

And they deserved the bollocking and the extra hours for making such a big mistake. - @Fatshark_Hedge has already accepted they made a grave error and this at least convinces me they’re not EA and they are human beings who have ballsed up.

As a result of having to put hundreds of hours into fixing that big problem, the roadmap went out of the window. >> Cue community mass hysteria.

As a result of some of the things said in the twitch streams, the community take conjecture and discussion
as rock solid truth and expect things to be delivered immediately. If not >> Cue community mass hysteria.

Some people will read this and think “Oh that Argo guy loves FS too much to see their bad side” well, No. I am a big fan of Vermintide 1 & 2 and want this game to be as amazing as it can be, but this doesn’t mean I have disconnected my brain and cannot see they have failed their loyal customers and early adopters quite badly.

I can also understand why there is so little communication when the reaction to almost any post is vitriolic. I am not surprised they are guarding their words because everyone here and on Reddit and the steam forum are hanging on every word simply hoping to have something great come out of the RNG mess - whether thats hats, no-dupe reds, bad luck protection,no more dancing-on-ice Chaos Warriors etc.

If someone started foaming at the mouth and their eyes rolling back in their head because I’d made a statement they might not like, I’d be a bit guarded with my words too.

[Licious-D]

@Argonaut14

I can also understand why there is so little communication when the reaction to almost any post is vitriolic.

I get where you’re coming from, but they kinda screwed this one up themselves to even get to that point at all.

[Argonaut14]

I’m not saying the whole thing hasn’t been one big fiasco after another exacerbated by FS being in panic-mode, but I can see why they are completely tight lipped.

One single statement, well thought out with accurate and effective information might mitigate some of the damage done, but my gut feeling is that the community are turning so hostile they could give everyone who adopted the game early an exclusive red weapon and people would still vomit anger worse than a bile troll.

[Licious-D]

@Argonaut14

my gut feeling is that the community are turning so hostile they could give everyone who adopted the game early an exclusive red weapon and people would still vomit anger worse than a bile troll.

Probably true. But hey, it’s not the end of the world!

[KrazyKruber]

@Aisolon

The only thing that came out recently was xbox, and according to this post there are only three people involved with consoles.

Yeah but they only have five programmers at the company total lol. No I don’t know, but I wouldn’t expect anything to get fixed anytime soon while they are working on console versions, and console versions probably won’t be released anytime soon. Probably a real bad idea to even bother with console.

[KrazyKruber]

@CommanderJ

FS are doing a lot of things very, very wrong, and despite selling an unfinished product to PC players, they laugh at the very idea of giving us FREE compensation to gain any goodwill at all.

I remember when I first picked up Vermintide 1, it was during an event and I got free hats I thought hey this is cool.

[KrazyKruber]

I just came across a player who had SIXTEEN REDS. ONLY ONE WAS A WEAPON. And I was like that up until about 6 weeks ago. I only had 2 red weapons, but since then got a ton. This dude was playing since the drop rate increase and hasn’t gotten squat.

Fatshark is shooting themselves in the foot here and it is truly mindboggling how self-destructive their decisions are. I don’t benefit in any way from this dude having no red weapons while I have 4 boppity sticks and 3 red templar volley xbows.

[KrazyKruber]

So where’s the balance patches of late? Where’s anything but very basic bugfixes?

This is why we should be VERY worried. The people still working on PC must be the junior folks and they’re just taking the easiest to fix bugs to lessen the big stack, or if there is some emergency game crashing bug or the community riots about something they all hop on that and fix it pretty quick.

The big problems with patrols that are still there after months and several attempts to fix them we can safely assume WILL NEVER BE FIXED. Fatshark just doesn’t know how, and they refuse to remove patrols from areas where they get stuck repeatedly, so it is just like you are arguing with legit crazy people.

“Do you want my money?”
“Yes.”
“Well could you please just remove this dumb broken thing that you are incapable of fixing?”
“No.”
“Well then you won’t get my money.”

[Mojo]

I pretty much gave up hope. Decided to wait till 2019 so that maybe by then I get the game I believed I was buying.

Visiting forums every week or two to check for patchnotes, but lo and behold there usually aren’t any and if there are they’re almost meaningless, especially with the “we fixed x” - “x” isn’t really fixed routine.