It’s a bad analogue. Games are more eh…volumetric and multi-dimensional - they consists of every type of art and interactive also.
In terms of games - barely. Like i’m not a big fan of feudal Japan setting, still it wouldn’t be a negative thing for me, it’s just not a bonus. You still can expirience great game mechanics, music, visual stuff, narrative, community memes, etc. if you aren’t overfocusing on ICAN’T STAND one element, it’s kinda irrational to me.
Another studio with fewer employees (Arrowhead), located literally blocks away from Fatshark in Stockholm, released a 4 person coop survival shooter game a couple months ago (Helldivers II), that game is routinely getting literally 100x as many players online at any one time as Darktide, and that dev team has put out more content in the 6 weeks since release than Darktide has in 6 months, every week on the dot. They’re interacting routinely across all sorts of social media and on Discord and other platforms detailing design decisions, upcoming content, etc.
Meanwhile Fatshark was telling us that even a month after their long winter vacation, and several months after their last content update, they were still just getting back into the groove of things after the holiday and couldn’t possibly talk about anything for the year. We’re now into Q2 for 2024 and Darkside hasn’t received any new content since 2023, and nobody at Fatshark wants to talk about…anything.
The “it takes time” excuse doesn’t fly. The lack of communication doesn’t fly. This isn’t about excessivley working dev teams to death on crunch time, it’s about Fatshark producing an undercooked product from the start, literally not producing anything for months now, ignoring and not commenting on big obvious issues (like crafting, that’s been a major consistent front page topic across every social media platform the game is on, and almost all negative reviews), and not wanting to talk about anything be it design philosophy/future plans/etc.
Where other 4 person coop survival shooters like DRG and L4D2 and PD2 have increased their active playerbase over time, Darktide’s active playerbase has dropped every single month (with the exception of patch13), completely collapsing at this point and is now typically 3-4% of its launch peak, at least as far as Steam numbers go. There’s a reason for that.
The only big 4 person coop shooter I could find with a play-rate curve like Darktide’s is…Payday 3, a complete failure of a game by all accounts. Darktide’s online player count are much closer to this game’s than any of the other above titles, and there’s a reason for that.
The problem with games is that it’s an art form. Just like movies, you never really know what will hit or miss. It’s subjective, and there are a lot of elements to it. Of course you could offer better service, more updates, more content bla bla bla.
That’s no guarantee of success though. And as a business, I’m sure they’re factoring that in. How much do we invest, do we deviate from our initial vision, would a revamp of crafting bring anyone back or just make the couple of thousands playing, stay a little bit longer?
I think it’s extremely rare that games grow after their initial drop. Most games simply don’t. I don’t see that happening for Darktide.
This isnt a race, just because another studio is updating the game like crazy that doesnt mean others have to as well.
Im a professional artist as well, and i work slower then others. Some people vomit out 5-6 illustrations a month while i can only do 2 or sometimes even only 1. Should i be insulted and berated by my followers just because i do stuff slower then others?
helldivers vs darktide : the player % is identical so far, helldivers started out with 450 000 and lost half within a month, exactly like darktide which started with 100 000 and lost half within a month.
in the first place i dont see any point in comparing game player numbers? different people like different things, just because someone likes darktide that doesnt mean they’ll like helldivers and vice versa. There will always be a different number of people liking different games.
Back to main point. ALL im saying is, chill out, if you’re bored of the game play something else . Dont insult another human being just because they’re not updating your favorite past time fast enough
As for the lack of communication, do you honestly genuinely think insulting the devs is suddenly going to make them want to release more blogs? Like seriously.
It kinda means because it changes market standarts.
Bad example, cause Fatshark is a studio not a person, and they have managment/organization problems first of all, it’s not about natural artistic pacing.
DT lost ~40% of players in 1 week.
And who do you think creates those assets for those new updates? Think it just materializes out of thin air when the people in charge feel like its the right time? OFC not, its made by individuals like me. Some work faster some work slower, the speed of the update depends on who is doing the job.
And its not like fatshark being slower then a turtle is any news even if you’re new here. People that have been here from the start have been plenty vocal that this isnt anything new or different and always said this is just how fatshark operates.
Can i work faster? yes but it would literally cost me my sanity and health. Same thing applies to the people behind fatshark, they are just slow workers. Telling them just how god awful their game is isnt going to make them work faster IF ANYTHING it will make them work slower.
market standard mean nothing when a guy in his basement can make some masterpiece like Noita.
You know what affects market standards? The people who buy the stuff. Want to blame today’s AAA games? You’ve people that actually buy that stuff regularly to blame. Money is the ONLY thing that matters, if it sells, it will stay, if it doesnt, it will change.
Anyway, why dont we change the subject. Why are you defending cluttering of the forum with pointless trash like “this game is dead” “fatshark terrible” etc etc? Honestly. Cant you see reason?
What are you trying to say, that bad managment and poorely orginized working process doesn’t affect speed?
You can be fast, but if team A doesn’t know what team B is doing and vice versa it will be slow in the end anyway, even slower than in case when natural work pacing is slow but management is effective.
Nice joke, i’m here since Vermintide 1, yes they are slow, but the thing is their slow speed doesn’t translate to quality. And there was no improvement since V1 in that aspect.
It’s quiet an irony that shark must constantly swim to keep oxygen running through the gills, and our obese shark barely can move so choking a lot.
Did you enjoy your vacation? 
Absolutely, but unless you’ve inside information, we dont know which one of those things is true.
I dont deny their leadership is absolute dogsh*t but that doesnt automatically say if they’re badly organized or just slow.
Best thing i’ve read in this entire thread.
What is this incident? What did I miss?
This was released on the 13th
This was on the 29th, which was when many people (myself included) thought we were going to get the full dev blog. FS is away for the Easter holiday now so I assume the earliest time we will get the new blog is April 4th.
I mean we don’t know exactly all problems, but it’s kinda obvious for anyone who has been working in any company that fails deadlines - they are bad at communication inside the studio first of all. Stuff like constantly reappearing bugs, v2 power scaling bug on release etc, are hitmarkers.
We have been working with and done our balance testing on a separate version from the release branch (as is customary) where we have access to debug options and can crunch numbers to verify everything. So on our end everything has been running as it should.
The issue in the live build is caused by a single two-line code change that was never brought over to the release version during the final days before the games release.
So the incident is pertaining to FS just updating the post with a screenshot, instead of actually dropping the announcement?
I really wanna applaud FS for once more failing to deliver on a schedule they themselves set.
Also anyone who still believes in anything FS says is beyond help imo.
I mean, if you want to maintain a playerbase it does.
All my friends who got me into DT at launch are playing HD2 and going back to DRG, and getting them interested in DT again is probably not going to happen, the game got it’s 2nd chance with Patch 13 and Fatshark just never followed up that momentum and that moment passed.
We’re talking about a consumer entertainment service produced for profit built around an existing gameplay model, and using a licensed IP (and subject to significant restrictions around such), designed to cater to a specific customer base. A game utilizing extensive 3rd party outsourced art assets and color palletes for MTX.
As you’re referring to “followers”, I’m assuming that you’re talking about producing stuff at your own pace that people follow because they like it for its own sake. In which case, no, nobody is justified at getting mad at you for anything.
I’m guessing this doesn’t involve people laying down money for a specific predefined thing, in which case, if you were late or slow to produce or didn’t complete the project or didn’t complete it to spec, and made communicating with you very difficult, then yes absolutely people should be mad at you and you should expect some spicy interactions.
Sure, but it also shows that effort matters and pays off.
Again, you look at Darktide relative to any of these other titles, and it’s objectively doing worse than all but the total failure title (PD3) and is closer to that title in all respects than any of these others, and continuing to lose players as many of these other titles gain them over time.
Yes, personal preference is a thing, but what we’re seeing here is that a lot of people were interested in Darktide and then quickly left.
I am, and so basically is everyone else given Darktide’s play rates. The problem is I’d really like to play Darktide again, but between my own frustrations with the game, and the fact that most everyone I play with lost interest and uninstalled and moved on, I’m not getting playtime in.
And that’s bad for Fatshark. That means I’m not in there to ensure queues are full, I’m not buying cosmetics, etc.
I’m not advocating being personally insulting, but there’s plenty of room to call out failure and a lack of accountability in a consumer-producer relationship. When Fatshark checks out and declines to contribute at all to the conversation or help shape it, the conversation is naturally going to go all sorts of places. The lack of comms on devblogs, the forum here, reddit, discord, etc is just a vacuum to fill with butthurt. What little we have gotten recently is mostly copy-pasta from previous statements and a vague screenshot sent out last minute after the office already closed for the holiday, that’s not fostering great respect for communication.
EDIT: this is way longer than I expected so I deleted a bunch of numbers related text that just felt distracting.
Same here, so far no issues, however I had some curious match making recently, including a player from China, but I suspect he was simply joining a different region.
I think part of the community tension and different attitudes towards FS comes down to some version of this:
We all love the core combat gameplay (for the most part). But…
Some of us want DT to be their “lifestyle” game that they feel good about playing consistently, that’s there’s always something new around the corner to look forward to and be progressing towards. We want it to be properly a live service game with frequent updates, events, etc.
Others of us, perhaps more accurately (and despite what FS says), recognize that DT won’t be that live service game. When they get bored or burned out, they just put it down and pick it back up when new content or updates drop. And then they are content to put it down again until the next big update drops.
The frustrating thing, especially for the former group, is that FS seems capable of developing the game to appeal to the first group and in doing so have a game that builds the core player base overtime (like with DRG or Payday 2). Yet FS seems to content (or otherwise structurally limited) to only delivering things on a pace that works for the latter group. It all just feels like a huge missed opportunity, so obvious that it leaves everyone perplexed as to why.
Fatshark set their own deadline for releasing the dev blog
Not the community
Fatshark should be very well aware at this point they can’t meet their own deadlines for the simplest things
Hey everyone we’re going do this thing by this time, be hyped
And then nothing happens
This is clearly the fault of the community they had gaul to expect fatshark to meet the expectation farshark themselves set.
I have no faith in Fatshark to make a good video game from the start - although my view is limited because I started playing in November '23, it looks like their track record isn’t great either.
@FatsharkCatfish, if you’re reading this, I’d like to ask you to drop the customer service facade and just tell us why what’s happening is happening - I’m starting to get sick of all the announcing announcements, and “I’ve forwarded this to the dev team”, with nothing really of substance. Darktide is a lot of fun but I cannot ignore the issues it has.
I support them.
