Nerfing the DLC after over a month of it not working properly would be… something.
Nerfing Arbitrator isn’t an inherently negative thing at all, especially with how busted it is. No, the only crime here would be that it wasn’t working properly. In fact, if it’s THIS busted while a chunk of the Skill Tree isn’t even working, LOGIC dictates that nerfing Arbitrator should be a HIGH PRIORITY.
To suggest that the game should be subjected to the continuation of this disgusting, pulsating Balance blemish for longer than it has to just because “wahhh, it wasn’t working properly when it dropped, wahhh” is nothing short of, well, short-sighted whining.
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They say, whining non-stop about arbites. Begone, malice enjoyer.
You may call it that if you want, but you can’t call it short-sighted. Our complaints have a long-term goal for the betterment of Darktide. My complaints aren’t even Arbitrator-specific as they go WAYYY back to Patch #13.
They come from a place of frustration with how excessive Player Power requires the AI Director to throw spam tantrums of Enemies that shouldn’t need to be spammed in order to pose ANY kind of threat to Players in the current Gameplay flow.
Once upon a time, Enemies were sufficient threats to Players as individuals. Now? Enemies need to be spammed so hard that it breaks the audio. This allows the AI Director to kill you with silent Crusher overheads, multiple simultaneous Trapper nets, et cetera instead of your own mistakes. Your own mistakes aren’t enough for the AI Director to reliably down you anymore.
I don’t get the “if you think this game’s too easy, you definitely play Malice!” logic that misguided Players love to spew. If I was a Malice Player, why would I complain about it being too easy instead of just increasing the Difficulty? The game’s too easy on AURIC, for crying out loud.
And no, I’m not playing Havoc because Havoc is a cacophony of artificial Difficulty Modifiers whilst being basically dead in my region most of the time due to its excessive reliance on the Party Finder.
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Nothing shows a management’s arrogance in the games industry quite like the belief that they don’t “need" a fully funded QA team.
QA is absolutely essential, especially on a “live service” game.
At this point I’d be surprised if they even had 2 full time QA testers in-house.
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We are the QA team. What better way to test for bugs by thousands of players to report in addition to a handful of people in the office. 
We even pickup typos and little things nice and neat stacked into bugs subforum.
Back in the day with console cartridge games. Devs had serious QA teams or face hefty physical recalls worldwide. Probably why SNES and N64 games used to cost £60 in 90s.
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light - I promise I’m not purposely withholding anything!
Ey happy cake day!
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The best birthday present I could ask for at this moment in time, is to be able to share a 1.8.5 release date 
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Bless you, Julia. I hope you have a wonderful day!
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DW we can, surprisingly, be understanding about things being jammed up.
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I mean it’s either next week, or the week after. So we don’t really need a time frame, now we just need an exact date.
I can say it’s happening next week. I’ll let you know if I can be more specific!
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Tuesday! 1.8.5 is happening on Tuesday. Thanks for your patience, all!
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Please don’t call patches hotfixes. Thanks.
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Hot fixes are called hot fixes in live service titles because they don’t require the entire service be taken down in order for them to be applied. Patches are larger systemic code base changes that require the service to be taken offline before it can be fully updated.
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A hotfix is a quick, targeted update to address a critical bug or security vulnerability, often released on an as-needed basis, bypassing normal release cycles. A patch, on the other hand, is a more comprehensive update, typically including multiple fixes and enhancements, and is often part of a scheduled release cycle.
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No, that’s not the definition of a hotfix and never was.
A hotfix is very fast for an important issue that can not wait until the next patch.
Whether the entire service needs to be shut down for a hotfix depends solely on whether the error needs to be fixed on the server or client side.
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