Are we no longer being listened to?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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This is an honest question. This is the biggest and most constant question since the release of DT.

A few months ago we had a great period of communication from FS via Strawhat and changes that were overall a net positive. Sure, getting the perfect weapon is a little too easy now, but Darktide was never and will never be a looter shooter, so who cares? The locks are finally broken, we got a new timed mission, a party finder no one ever uses… not all hitters, but the ones that were important were there.

Now it feels like community clamor is falling on deaf ears again. The playerbase has been vehemently against significant randomness towards maps and modifiers all this time, and you have introduced a new mode that torques it up to 11 by making Havoc missions unique to every player for no sensible reason… look, just read this post. I agree with everything except the complaints about lightsout/fog.

You continue not to provide public beta tests to players, leaving it to your “trusted internal testers”, and resulting in wildly imbalanced and unfun game mechanics and modes that take months, if not years, to get fixed. Winds of Magic was out for nearly five whole years before players got the option to bring bots into Ranked weaves and use Weave weapon skins in standard gameplay.

FIVE YEARS.

For something that should have been a thing from the very start, and at minimum within a year of release.

What is happening in Fatshark? Across everything, the core gameplay is great, but it feels like once the game is made and ships, it should be given to another studio who knows how to competently maintain a game. It’s utterly ridiculous the complete different train of thoughts FS and the playerbase have.

I would understand if this were a design choice a la PoE2 intentionally being slower compared to PoE1, Balatro intentionally forgoing a score preview, or Hidetaka Miyazaki’s love for poison swamps, but these are just objectively bad things that get added and stay in for far longer than they’re supposed to.

I am going to continue to believe that it is mass incompetence rather than malice that things continue to be this mediocre. I am going to continue to believe that it is the fault of a few suits who only know the smell of money and throw a temper tantrum when they don’t get a pay raise weekly. All of this I am going to believe, but I am not going to excuse the actions of a studio clearly deaf to what its players want.

Something needs to change. It would make everybody so much less pissed off. Even the Steam forums users, and emperor knows they always find something to be mad about.

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I think in my opinion it is always better to wait and see how it will be the new game mode
(but i agree on the part of the boring special conditions regarding this)

maybe there is a delay in communication, or better, when they receive feedback they still have to commit in releasing content that they might have worked before. and this is what I think it may have happened. this game mode might been something they had developed very early perhaps and they just wanted to put it in, because of the efforts in creating it. and the general feedback they received, like removing fomo from the shop, introducing map selection etc. they obviously received and they are listening but it will take some time first to get those.

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this also very true sadly. ahah
my beloved weave weapon skins!

imo the most disappointment of that DLC, wasn’t about weaves as gamemode, cause was fine as game mode tbh for extra spice challenge (but the ability to not play old seasons and unlock past rewards also it is something that’s just weird by design, especially if they are still displayed there, and people paid a dlc for it)

but the major complaint of that DLC was also having Cataclysm (damnation) locked behind a paywall, which was the major culript for Winds of Magic not being well received. (along with the progression being reset from scratch on weaves, which was also another reason why people didn’t like much)

but i bet this Havoc mode will use our equipment and all, so there shouldn’t be issues :thinking:

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Hm. I’m curious to see how this campaign turns out, but can we just play standard missions if we don’t like it for any reason and don’t care about the associated bling?

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Reposting this to give insight to fatshark’s mentality:

I’d like to remind everyone in the Darktide team of this gem from the winds of magic post and how catastrophically it went sideways:

Since then you’ve proven on multiple occasions that you’ve absolutely no idea what people need.

So for the love of god, listen this time.

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Sure thing. But if only a handful of players like this mode or play it long-term, then it would be still frustrating that they allocate their resources towards it instead of something that players actually like.

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I imagine more people would play it than you’d think just because it provides more variety than Aurics and Maelstroms. Not the greatest variety, but it’s there. My concern is that there is a LOT within the proposed gamemode that has historically not been well-received at all, such as mass RNG and a lack of gatekeeping for what is supposed to be the ultimate challenge.

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Aye, it’s insanely awkward how some of this stuff carries on with DT.

This game has seven different credited people with managerial/leadership roles in Marketing and Public Relations. Not one of them appear to interact with the customer base or take a direct hand in managing the value proposition of the product.

Meanwhile, whoever is in charge of allocating Dev time appears to be nearly completely isolated from the outside world, including the rest of the studio. When VT2 solves a problem, DT recreates that problem several years later. When the playerbase was screaming about itemization, as reviews got savage and play rates tanked (and competitor studio within walking distance launched a similar product that blew Darktide out of the water in terms of sales and play rates), the dev team thought Green Bombers and more Revolvers were what was really important to spend time on.

Simultaneously, whoever is in charge of Dev efforts appears to also have a deep, abiding fetish for RNG at every possible level that they try to hamfist into everything, again apparently without any thought given as to how much the userbase is actually into their kink, and it’s really off-putting.

As is, with the new Havoc mode, even for the sweatiest of tryhards spending every waking moment in this game and desperately hoping for something harder, there’s plenty to not like. Decaying ranks is a concept that should have been left to the dustbin of MMO history back in World of Warcraft days, and I can already feel the toxicity from people failing 3rd runs and losing ranks from here straight through the monitor.

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Yeah I don’t really get it? I feel a part of it is definitely over designing stuff, but at the same time not telling anyone about it. Class Rework. Itemization Rework. And now an increased difficulty.

While I think the class rework panned out really well, Itemization Rework was a lot of work for something that could’ve been solved simply (or band aided simply until they finished working on it) and Havoc seems like an unsatisfying way to increase difficulty.

Moebian, which most people loved and want back in the normal rotation only being in this mode is also tone deaf and a bit of a slap to the fave.

As someone who I believe Havoc mode is being advertised to, it falls flat of a lot of things I would want out of increased difficulty.

These things are:

  • Fix/Increase horde spawns on most maps. Right now the only maps I really want to play are Chasm Logistratum, Excise Vault, Enclavum Baross and Gloriana. And these maps still have problems, with some of the mid/end events being depressingly low on spawns (looking at you end events for Gloriana and Baross). Archivum Sycorax has such abysmally low spawns across the entire map it’s considered the best map to learn/try to do solo runs (this makes me sad as aesthetically it’s probably my favorite map).

  • Remove progression based hordes, return to timer based hordes. It’s incredibly lame to know exactly when and where a horde will spawn, and it removes a lot of the variety of playing through the maps as well as making maps easier. This was such an absymal change and I’m suprised people haven’t talked about it more (probably because FS never mentioned it).

  • Let me choose what map and modifiers I want to play with. Everyone has said this so I don’t feel I need to go into it more. But instead of looking for a random seed, I would love to get a group of 4 people and say, “Alright let’s play High Intensity Shock Troop Excise Vault, with Monstrous Specialists, Moebian Hordes and -30% toughness replenished.”

  • A significant balance pass. Won’t mention specifics but if you have people who know what they are doing even Monstrous Specialists is a face roll with the amount of dps you can put out.

I probably missed something else important but that’s my personal wishlist. I want this game to justify 4 good people playing together, and I doubt I could get 3 people to even log on if I told them my Havoc seed for that week has Hunting Grounds or Pox Gas in it.

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I can’t believe this is my first time seeing that quote. Was that dev ex-Blizzard? Because that has serious “don’t you guys have phones?” energy. Or at least an EA employee after their “most downvoted comment in reddit history.” which earned them a Guinness World Record.

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Fatshark have always been like this. I call it Sweden syndrome.

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We can use bots in weaves now?!?!??!?!

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Wait, were people listening to cobaltninja? I thought that was a joke.

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They’re still listening… just at their own pace. My complaints about trappers aside, I do think they’re trying.

They’re a relatively small studio working with proprietary software that was developed by the same studio, but probably by guys who are happily retired now. They have to work with swedish labor laws which means they have a relatively light schedule.

I don’t presume to know their size or operations, but I would guesstimate based on labor laws and when they drop updates, it feels like they have 3 or 4 small teams that rotate, 3months on, 3months off, 30-40 hour work weeks, or something like that. Helldivers honestly had the same problem until they readjusted for it. I at least give fatshark credit for trying under the circumstances, and for making the only first person melee combat that actually FEELS good, imo.

Now, if you really want to feel ignored by devs, try playing Elite Dangerous :rofl:

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All my friends stopped playing Vt2 by time weaves came out, and I was swamped with contracting work, so I never got to experience it AT ALL because I couldnt take bots.

I am tempted to buy my gf a copy and reinstall it now :eyes:

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Unfortunately I think there’s more to it than just that. Arrowhead studios is walking distance from Fatshark’s front door, operating at a similar size, with using the exact same underlying basic game engine for both of their 4 player coop PvE “orbit/extraction” shooters.

Looking at the volume of content they’ve put out for HD2 this year vs what we’ve seen put out for DT, it’s…painfully awkward. DT reworked Pennances and Itemization, added Green Bombers, Pickaxes, Bolt Pistols, a new Revolver variant, and two missions. Most of DT’s big releases this year were reworking existing systems that weren’t properly fleshed out. That’s the sum total of nearly 11 months worth of releases. HD2 launched in Feb, and has put out all sorts of new enemies from flying harpies to giant strider factories with a grip of genuinely new weapons introduced every month or two. Arrowhead manages its community in a far more cohesive manner and reacts to feedback much faster, even if not always perfectly, and gets updates out far more regularly.

The comparison is rather stark (and one sees it in active playrates with HD2 typically sporting several times as many people online as DT at any given time), it really illustrates what appear to be deep internal divisions between teams and with management at FS. Lessons learned and systems developed for one product need to be re-learned and redeveloped seemingly from scratch on the next project. Reviews and community platforms scream about critical issues for years and FS seems to allocate resources to just about everything else but that issue. Nobody in truly senior positions ever seem to be involved in anything or communicate with anyone.

Most awkwardly, some C-suite at Fatshark has a deep and abiding infatuation with RNG, building it into almost every feature of the game’s ancillary mechanics at every level from Mission Selection to Rewards and Itemization, in a way that the userbase constantly tells Fatshark it doesn’t like and that competitor titles typically studiously avoid.

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HD2 has 3 new enemies, a new tile set, and an assload of new weapons with many nerf passes until people stopped playing then they started buffing things.
In the same time, Darktide has 2 new enemies (Tox Bombers and Infested Mobeans), several map reworks (btw, THANK YOU Fatshark for cleaning up the Hab Dreyko end event), a whole ass new handcrafted map with a new gamemode, several system reworks, and a half dozen new weapons.

Sure, helldivers has more new weapons, but that’s far less time intensive for the art department and coding department than all the other things fatshark has done. Otherwise, I think fatshark has put in far more work than Arrowhead in those same 10-11 months. That said, fatshark is definitely a lot slower at responding to feedback than arrowhead currently, but AH did have to restructure in order to get into the better place they are in now.

I’m with you on RNG. The older I get, and the more games I play, the more I just get tired of RNG replacing progression or difficulty. It’s not fun, nor engaging. I don’t have a gambling addiction, and I have ADHD so my dopamine production is crippled, so RNG just completely doesn’t work for me at all. Card games only really work because of the social aspect, and the decks are at least smaller known variables compared to “here’s this effectively infinite spread of weapon variations, good luck finding the one you want”.

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