Dear Fatshark,
I love this game. I love the world you’ve created and the amazing gameplay loop that the 'tide games are known for. But, there are a lot of issues with how you treat the community. This game was sold as a LIVE SERVICE title. That means communication and frequent content updates. You service the game to give it life.
You said you would communicate more, you said there would be content, you said there would be bug fixes. There has been no communication, there has been no content, and the only bug fixes have related to premium cosmetics.
Please think about how long bugs like ‘elevator breaking if someone stands at the very back’, ‘plasma gun sound and visual effects breaking’, ‘inputs getting eaten when swapping from grenades’, ‘incredible lag when entering certain areas of certain maps’.
Look, your playerbase loves the games you make. Please treat us with the same love that we have for your products. Talk to us! It doesn’t have to reveal what the next map is or whatever just tell us what the company is up to. Please, it saddens me to see such a great title and community be left to starve under a lack of communication. WE HAVE COMMUNITY MANAGERS. IT IS YOUR JOB TO COMMUNICATE TO THE PLAYERBASE.
“Please think about how long bugs like 'elevator breaking if someone stands at the very back [or edge]”
I think this elevator feature is a good indicator to adjust your expectations.
Also, you can’t make people communicate with you. Maybe they don’t like you like that.
As far as community managers, I’ve come to view them sort of like the HR department: their job is to “be on your side against the bosses that pay and employ them.” Naturally. Didn’t they just sweep one away they broke the facade? Before my time.
The devs don’t communicate with the CM, all Catfsish can do is saying she’s sorry and she’ll forward our hate letters to the devs blablabla, she’s doign the best she can do with the few things she has at this point.
CM’s say they forward stuff, topics get discussed ad nauseum on here/discord/reddit, and…nothing happens. The CM’s basically appear to be there for police the forum for bad behavior and to deflect when things become critical, but not much else.
Since the end of October when the big class 2.0 overhaul came out, we’ve gotten a couple extra missions and shovels, and a 3.0 and 4.0 Vet rework after they weren’t ready for the 2.0 update and clearly didn’t spend much time looking at the 3.0 talent tree. We’re now in the middle of February and all the game’s big major issues (crafting in particular) haven’t gotten so much as a peep, and we’ve got no idea what the next year holds while the game still has a big ol’ “WIP” feel to it.
Which sucks because so much of the game is outstanding, there’s so much Fatshark does well, and has demonstrably done better in other games they’ve made and currently support.
These are good points. I may be putting too much pressure on the CM. I forget that there is not much comms between the CM and devs. I’m really just frustrated with the state of this “live service” title and feel tricked in a few ways.
I don’t understand why there is so little communication.
We don’t want to know 100% of what is planned for the future.
Not even 50%. We want to know at least 10%.
But they don’t tell us 1%.
when we ask, the reply we get is “when we are ready”
they only disclose information just before an update and that is not communication, its just a patch note.
One of the traps FS seems to put themselves in, is that when they DO communicate it’s often right before the patch lands (like 1-2 weeks) as you said.
The problem is that usually there is a high dose of the patch notes being “out of touch” with what the community expected or wanted. Changes are are oddly backwards. Nerfs that no one asked for. New features that don’t seem like a priority while priority issue go unaddressed, etc… It’s failing to meet already low expectations.
So they announce what they are doing, which immediately frustrates the community even more. And by the time they announce the changes it’s far too late to actually take in feedback and make adjustments.
Fatshark never genuinely says “Wr are thinking of doing X and are curious about your feedback.” Or here are some balances changes, what do you think? They never build in time for a community dialog and to make course adjustments, because they never want to talk about anything ahead of time enough. And frankly, I don’t think Fatshark is willing to listen to their community anyway, even if they did.
Either no feedback from CMs is ever considered by Fatshark, or no feedback is ever given from CMs. It doesn’t really matter which it is - if the CMs pretend to give feedback but don’t (because Fatshark has told them to pretend), or if they do give feedback, but Fatshark never considers it.
The result is the same. It’s not a CM role, it’s a pure PR role. They write patch notes, they write up dev blogs, do a stream every 2 years, and write up PR fluff for new features, DLC and so on. Under no circumstances will they ever say anything of substance in forums/discord, the sum total of their ‘Community Managing’ is to say feedback is being passed on, and to pass on the Fatshark double-speak back to the community.
This is May '23. SIX MONTHS after release, and at that point they were saying the damage control from their broken release was why there wasn’t communication (and even in a reply to you):
“I understand the lack of transparency in communications is a sore point right now. While turning things around, we are prioritising managing the communities expectations, so are not necessarily in a position to share answers to all the questions we receive right now. If I have information I can communicate on any of the top communities issues I will be sure to do so!
Hopefully once we are back on track, we will be able to communicate a bit more clearly, and it’s definitely a style of communication I would like to work towards”
Pay particular attention to the final part of that quote. “I would like to work towards” is about as meaningless a statement you will ever find. It’s designed to placate, while literally saying… nothing.
The CMs for Fatshark are 100% PR people, nothing more, nothing less.
I’ve never seen a game that is so brilliant in some ways, and so . . . not, in others. I genuinely mean this, it’s puzzling. Like, a slow turnaround factor - okay, I can kinda get that. But the way that old bugs are reintroduced every time there’s content makes me actually not look forward to big content updates.
Can you guys work on some internal processes to correct this in the future? You’ve been doing it for years . . .
And let me be clear; I (and I think most people here) love your gameplay. You nailed it guys! That’s great, and I hope you are proud of that.
If they do see our messages, then for some reason they can’t or are not willing to address them. Maybe it’s someone up the corporate ladder who has a lock on things and won’t let there be changes (or maybe multiple corpos doing it). Or it’s not considered cost-efficient. Or maybe the code is such spaghetti that every time they try to merge branches the game is broken completely.