First let me thank you for giving me the privilege to test the beta.
Sadly when going through the threads and reading up on peoples opinions of the Darktide beta
there were some that couldn’t help themselves and became personal towards you, due to them having their expectations not met.
and while that can never be tolerated, i feel like you are to blame to an extent.
you see, you didn’t set any expectations!
without clear instructions on what your aim is for the beta, people will undoubtedly default to the industry standards.
and sadly the industry standards for betas aren’t what they used to be,
in the gaming landscape of today, Betas are little more that a preview of a perfectly polished game to generate as much hype as possible.
and that is what many people expected from this beta as well.
Im telling you this because im convinced, that a lot of negative feedback could have been avoided if you were clearer with your intentions.
What do YOU want out of the Beta test?
What is currently not part of the game?
-its okay to cut content out of a play-test so you have something to reveal later, but if the existence of an feature is in total obscurity, people will judge you and the game based on what content it has!
and lastly give us info on things you expect to NOT work properly.
-it helps us understand whats worked on and dismisses concerns
if you don’t do this, it feels like “this is meant to be like this” wich players will respond with “they can’t be serious?!”.
i hope you can understand where im coming from,
and don’t let any negative comment dishearten you, i can only imagine this moment of truth were the public gets their hands on your work of the last years. it sounds grueling.
The only thing that shocked me tbh was the confirmation that there would only be 4 classes of launch, and on top of that they feel almost like carbon copies from vermintide. Outside of that i expected the performance issues and other things, i thought since modding isn’t a thing now they would have a bit more QOL by this point and this close to release, but im not surprised it’s not there.
There is also the issue that people just don’t inform themselves, and just see “Oh open Beta” and then come vomit here on the forums.
Sadly i think to make your point, the only thing that would actually work, which probably takes like half a day to do anyway, would be an in-game prompt right when you start it everytime during the beta saying, things like theres only 4 of the (13,18?) idk levels in the beta, only 8 weapons of the (70, which i think are more like 40, cause theres like trench axe, combat axe, wtv axe) and maybe a small list of bugs they know of, because im sure that 90% the bugs we reported were already known.
But im pretty sure the devs were busy solving other bugs we didn’t see and didn’t have time to this, which is understandable.
Mate, this isnt even a fraction of what will happen when the game releases.
Most people who are interested in the game are not even in the beta or inform themself about the game but just wait until the game releases and i am pretty sure a good number of them are also pre-orderers and i can assure you that many of them will have the same expectations about the game as the beta people had before they know experienced a significant part of the game.
I guarantee you that Steam reviews will be in the negatives early on, leading with the prime reason that only 4 classes are available at launch.
To be honest, Fatshark has no need to please beta testers. It’s a CLOSED BETA TEST. People seem to forget what this means.
When you agree to play a CLOSED BETA, you are supposed to know what you are getting into. Beta access doesn’t exist to give early access of finished games to anxious players. It’s a development stage where we, users, give them our time to help doing some intense testing of their software and also we are supposed to give them constructive feedback about the experience. Thats what it is. It’s not a free trial where we only take without giving anything back. It’s not a demo version. It’s a testing phase of a software still in development.
You can have bad expectations for release version, you can have good expectations, but they are not certainty and BETA version is not RELEASE version.
So people should control themselves, stop with the hysteria attacks and save the “final user criticism” for the release version. Be reasonable, please.
maybe back in year 2005…beta have more expectation to a release version but beta testing has lost its meaning for more than 10 years…that’s why games have early access and build along the way.
100% true. We’ve been so inundated with early access “beta” titles on steam, most people have lost sight of what a traditional beta stage actually is.
They can consider themselves better educated now. Its just sad that the FS reputation has taken a beating because of this mass hysteria and ignorance.
Admittedly though a better communication from FS explaining what they hope to achieve with this technical test may have helped… but I think it still would have happened as recently most people have lost the ability to read or think critically.
^ The first 8 hour beta was a network test using an old build.
I see similar comments (both quotes) all over the forum as an answer to feedback that is skeptical to what has been presented in the beta.
Did they state somewhere that it’s an outdated version?
Why would they ask for feedback on progression, character creation, weapons, etc. if the beta represents an outdated version that has major differences compared to the actual product?
an outdated build doesnt mean there are major changes. But it is probally a stable build. Some items maybe got tweaks and some bugs already fixed, but a lot also stayed the same.
I mean progression, weapon feeling and character creation are all subjective for everyone, thats why they want feedback to see if they are on the right track.
Exactly. Minor tweaks and bugfixes is not the same as “major differences”. If they release a build that reflect outdate game mechanics, the feecback would be for naught.
I mean if they arent effected by these changes then I would disagree.
But I think we might be talking past each other.
For me game mechanics mean the playstyle and maybe a change from that.
One example would be the lights out mission modifier where sniping enemies and elites from far away is not possible and flashlight actually comes in handy there.
“The reason for us running this is to try out and stress test some of our server systems on the back end and some of those techy bits”
FS made it pretty clear what their reason for the beta test was. I’ve seen a lot of people on this forum assuming that the beta test was to show off all of the content that Darktide currently has to offer. That was an assumption, falsely made, that led to higher expectations than what FS offered in the first place. This is the video that FS explicitly asked their testers to watch for the closed beta:
and this (ties into “smaller preview”/not all game content) from the official FAQ:
One reason is surely to test network related stuff as well as to keep stress testing the servers, but unlike the first beta test, there has been no indication whatsoever that the second beta was only to perform network tests. If you participated in the first beta/network test you’d surely see the difference between the two betas.
I think it’s fair that people enjoyed what they saw in the beta, both new players and people with bad experiences from e.g. V2 release/early development, but why insist that people should be quiet about their beta feedback when the devs, without a doubt, are asking for feedback - they even made a number of subforums in the Darktide closed beta forum to better be able to process the feedback.
Well one could argue that they selected him at random and then gave the privilege to test the beta.
It is kinda twisted to think that being asked to go to the restaurant kitchen to help the staff simmer some veggies on your night out is a privilege or indeed a good practice at all.
They messed up by not being clear what state of the game the Beta we played represented.
If there had been a line that said “The build you are playing is from July 2022. It represents an older build of the game but for the purposes of stress testing the network and not spoiling Darktide’s content, it will serve. You may notice bugs and obvious missing features; these will be addressed by release.” most of people’s concerns would have stayed mild instead of becoming alarmist. Then people wouldn’t be making valid assumptions like “there’s no weapon testing ground in this version. That will be in the full release right?..RIGHT?”
But since they weren’t clear, all we’re left with is assumptions. Which, if those assumptions are misfounded, incorrect or alarmist, it’s easy for a community manager to correct those in a beta feedback post.
Did we get that? No. What does that tell us then? It can mean a couple of things:
They’re literally too busy to even set the record straight.
The record is straight, and half of the things painfully noticed by Beta testers are, in fact, not sorted out.
The community manager has opted not to address anyone’s concerns.
#1 is the only even remotely sits well with me, and it still paints a picture of a disorganized studio coming up on THE deadline. After an extension.
Again, they can at any time choose to be transparent and it’s pretty obvious at this point we’re not going to get that. Maybe they’re cool with beta testers assuming half the game they expect to be there won’t by release. Maybe with the preorder beta so close now they don’t feel it’s even worth the time to explain themselves, the preorder beta will speak for itself.
All I’m saying is, they have the power to communicate some truths and facts to the fanbase and they are opting for radio silence instead. That’s 100% on them, and I won’t blame people for making assumptions in a total vacuum of communication. There is a fine line between being an ass**** fan to a game developer and holding them accountable for their end. But if they say nothing in their defense, then that says a lot.
FWIW, I think a dev on their Discord did post that the weekend Beta 2 was the press build. Be nice if someone took the time to make that post here on the forums too.
