Compilation of Evidence Regarding Controversial Launch

[boom]

So there’s been an ongoing dialogue about whether the game is ‘complete’, whether the devs kept their promises/owe the player-base anything, what ‘complete actually means’ (thanks Hedge) and who is responsible.

There is also a discussion to be had about some of the advertising for this game.

There is also a lot of evidence circulating that is directly relevant to these questions so I thought I would make a thread to lay some of this stuff out so we’re all on the same page.

I know the thread will inevitably be derailed but I do encourage anyone replying to include evidence of what they’re referring to if I haven’t already.

What is ‘Complete’?

I want most of this to be fairly objective however I think some discussion of ‘Complete’ is warranted.

From Hedge

So depending on what project methodology you adopt, the meaning of ‘Complete’ (internally) can shift. However, most of these abstract project management definitions of complete refer to acceptance of the product by key stakeholders. I would argue that project management methodologies should consider consumers to be stakeholders but this gets into a bog of ambiguity and should probably be discussed elsewhere.

Stakeholder acceptance is insufficient guidance to actually develop anything. Again there are lots of different ways to do this. We can’t see Fatsharks project management methods but lets take SMART Goals as an example.

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time bound

Big ones here are
Specific - We shouldn’t be asking ‘What is Complete?’ midway through development.
Measurable - We shouldn’t be asking ‘What is Complete?’ after delivery.
Time Bound - Game dev isn’t easy, give consideration where it’s due.

Some projects will add Evaluated, Reviewed - this is typical of modern project management and very dangerous territory.

Modern project management is all about iterative development and incorporating feedback. This is the intention of Evaluated, Reviewed.
Cutting features at the last minute to the distress of the consumers/stakeholders, to meet some arbitrary form of completion criteria is not Evaluation and Review… That’s wiggling out of admitting to an incomplete product. It takes some internal honesty and self control to avoid using these principles as a copout.

Advertising

I’m Australian so I’m just gonna drop to Australian Consumer Law information here. This is relevant to prior and current advertising. I’m not encouraging a legal case against Fatshark. There are however relevant complaints to make regarding pre-launch AND post-launch advertising.

ACL webpage: https://www.accc.gov.au/accc-book/printer-friendly/29527

So with rocky game releases there is always an argument over what the company “Promised” vs what they delivered. The important point here (at least in Australia) is that technical language is not important. Misleading claims or statements and conduct that is likely to mislead or deceive is against the rules.

Missing Content

Finally the subject at hand

Classes In Darktide: Warhammer 40,000: Darktide - Classes in Darktide - Steam News

Missing Weapons

Cosmetics

Veteran Gasmask and Ogryn armor from the splash screen and trailers.

Zealot and Psyker Cosmetics

Accessory Cosmetics Items (Like the book ^)

Edit: Devoted Rejects pack removed. It is available, it is a collection of tatoo’s, eye colors, hair etc
It is not shirtless cosmetics as I thought from the poster. (Rip Bare-Chest Ogryn #FreeTheNip)

Chaos Spawn

Crafting

Dev Blog: Crafting in Darktide

Shrine of the Omnissiah By now, many of you have fiercely proven your worth to the crew of the Mourningstar and have been rewarded with an ever-growing arsenal of weapons and curios drawn from Grendyl’s armoury. But how can you customise those weapons to better suit the demands of Atoma’s gruelling war zones? Hadron Omega-7-7, the Mourningstar’s resident Tech-Priest, is ready - if not quite eager and willing - to provide her technical expertise to those Rejects who have earned the warbands’ tr…

A central pillar of the game not present at launch. They did actually say this in the same blogpost so this is less about misleading advertising and more about the game being incomplete at launch.

Weapon Customization
See first comment.

End of Section

Some miscellaneous points

Design Intentions

There is also some debate about whether Fatshark forgot the lessons they learnt from previous games. I don’t believe this is the case.

They know exactly what we want. They just chose not to do it…

Weapon Modification
Some players have been complaining about weapon modification being absent. I remember having the impression that weapon modification would be a feature before launch but I can’t recall where I got the idea from. This might have just been speculation from the community?

There is a picture of a lasgun with no sight floating around but that is not sufficient evidence to me.

Edit: See first comment. Weapon Customization was explicitly advertised in May 2022(This year).

This is just what I can recall. I know I have probably missed things. Haven’t combed through any of the old videos. Although they are significantly less relevant than recent devblogs I think they do reveal that the game designers intentions a few months ago and what we have now are very different.
Again I encourage providing evidence along with any arguments in the comments if it is not present here.
I will edit this post if I have missed anything big.

[AsukasHeadphones]

@boom

I can’t recall where I got the idea from. This might have just been speculation from the community

Actually there was an interview where the developer talked about it. See:

And:

Citations of those two items:

1. Weapon attachments were not added to the game because "[Darktide] isn't COD, nor was designed to be COD." - Fatshark Hedge

2. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide to Have Customizable Characters, Left 4 Dead-Style 'Director' AI | TechRaptor

[derpherp]

It’s great that you made this and all, but this game was advertised as a LIVE SERVICE game, which means that almost all of what you pointed out can be said to be part of the live service element of the game, and just hasn’t been added yet, if it came to court.

There is nothing misleading about showing live service stuff early if its not explicitly stated to be in at launch. It’s only really the stuff they explicitly promised during the beta fore release and didn’t manage that might be considered a problem legally, and even then that’s a reach.

[AsukasHeadphones]

@derpherp

There is nothing misleading about showing live service stuff early if its not explicitly stated to be in at launch.

That’s great and all but it’s still going down in my Book of Grudges all the same, a Dawi never forgets past grievances.

[boom]

As I said I’m not encouraging legal action. The point is that advertising can be misleading and anti-consumer without the advertiser explicitly stating “I promise x…”

[Imp0815]

Really good post and i knew i was not dreaming this up that weapon customization was talked about in the past.

[Mike_Rotch]

It’s misdirection by omittance then. The technical legality isn’t the issue. It’s the obvious attempt to mislead customers.

Besides, it’s was never officially stated the game is a live service.

“The story and missions will expand and develop after launch” Fatshark said, “Practically like in a live service”.
“Practically LIKE in a live service” makes it pretty clear it is NOT a live service. Yet another technical lie they can throw around- for one argument they have a live service, for another they have something LIKE a live service, but not actually live service.

Warhammer 40.000: Darktide "will practically be a live service"

[Cella]

In the end all that matters are the informations on the selling page, or on the box.
It was the same thing with No Man’s Sky…
If you have your own expectations on what the game should be and are too lazy to do even the smallest amount of research before buying, you are enabling bad business practices and are a main part of the problem

[TheVoidDragon]

What about showing off items in marketing only to remove them from the game to sell? It seems the Imperial Edition Backpack (at least, it looks like that) was shown being worn on the veteran in the December 2020 gameplay trailer, and then at release the only way to get that backpack (or any) is to pay extra.

[derpherp]

Live service is just a buzzword, it has no legal definition. If they say “The story and missions will expand and develop after launch” before launch then they are in the clear. You know you are buying a game with an extended period of time gated content.

"Practically like in a live service” is more than enough for a court.

[absolutely]

I think if you’re going to do a game as a service, you should have enough content/features at launch to justify the wait and the price tag. The way it is currently, I don’t think Darktide is worth $40, but that’s my opinion. I’m just glad it’s not $60.

Vermintide 2 had content in spades before the first expansion, Shadows over Bogenhafen, was released. 15 different careers, each with unique talents and abilities and weapons, an entire campaign you could complete in any order you wanted at any difficulty you wanted, with Deed modifiers and Twitch Mode for players wanting to mix things up. Feature-wise, it rewarded completing missions at higher difficulties with increased chances of getting Veteran-tier loot.

Obviously, it wasn’t perfect by any means, but after the patches (quickly) rolled out to fix the instability and weird bugs, you were left with a solid $40 title you could sink your teeth into for almost a hundred hours before any additions to the game were even mentioned.

[ComradeHX]

I bet the scopes are just going to be attached to skins(most if not all of which you have to pay for, kinda like destiny 2 where you can get alternate scope appearance or even extra range from skin making the gun longer).

Currently revolver already has a change in model with the ordo-purchased skin

[se05239]

Have a like and a bump for a well-made post.

[Kovalsky]

I don’t uderstand what happened in the developpers brain when after creating a SHARPSHOOTER (in game the french translation is “tireur d’élite” which is litteraly a synonymous of sniper) they thought it will be fine that we could not add a scope in our guns…

I don’t need a hudge weapon custom like we could have in the Battlefield or Call of duty series but the basics features like selecting the optics (scope / Ironsight) basics accesories (torchlight / laser ) and possibly handgrips for the recoil controll (even if surprisingly I love gunplay with the abusive recoil of AR, i’m sure a lot of ppl will be happy to have less kicking rifles).

[SirGoober]

thats a backpedal from your original statement though, you said it was advertised. if the “buzzword” can be advertised for and stated in a way enough to communicate how a product will look. how is that any different than promising X core features of a live service?

furthermore. how is any of that an excuse for fatshark talking about things that are pretty clearly meant for the core of the game on launch? i expect when a game that tells me that there will be a customization system, well… for there to be one when buy the game, thats straightforward and what i as a customer should expect

[SirGoober]

uhm… we did. and thats why we’re upset

game has x things mentioned to be in the game

game doesnt happen to have them when it launches

company tries to deflect and say its not part of the games vision when it literally was in advertizements and interviews

we bring it up

“lol do your research”

???

[FixyourgameFatShark]

Fatshark developers are truly the embodiement of chaos cult, commited to their one true chaos god tencent.

[Kumori]

That section about “Classes not the same as careers” is baffling to me.

They work exactly the same and both of them can work synonymously to each other and is often picked based on what word fits best for the setting of the game.

What exactly is the difference? Careers in V2 have plenty of customization, you have your ultimate ability based on Career, some specific Career traits and then talents on top of that.

Meanwhile with Classes in Darktide you have customizatoin (though lacking atm), you have your ultimated based on Class, some specific Class traits and then talents on top of that.

How will calling them CLASSES help them expand on the user experience? Either this is intentionally misleading, OR they actually had big plans for it but got scrapped during all the delays i’ve heard about. In fact, CLASSE in Darktide has made the user experience worse because we don’t have shared inventory anymore. Only cosmetics are shared within the same class, but why should you create another character with the same class? There’s no reason to.

[derpherp]

It’s tomato tomatoe to a court because ‘practically a live service’ is the same thing legally, i.e a statement of intent.

The fan community also perfectly and evidently understood it as “this is effectively a live service game meaning more content will come after purchase”.

how is any of that an excuse for fatshark talking about things that are pretty clearly meant for the core of the game on launch?

Unless you have explicit evidence for this then you are up sh*t creek without a paddle. The only things we have evidence for that was supposed to be in at launch is things like the 70+ weapons promise from the pre-order beta.

I think even the crafting was explicitly and clearly stated as NOT being fully functional at launch.

And things like the chaos spawn from the trailer have nothing showing that there was any intent for it to be in at launch and not a ‘season 1’ or whatever.

We will just have to see how the live service element plays out and if Fatshark can redeem themselves, or collapse as a company I guess lol.

[SirGoober]

regardless. if there isnt a delivery on the features they gave us the expectation of. be them implicit or explicit. there will be consequences, i will make sure of that- and you should too. we as the customer base absolutely have a say in what happens to the game we payed our hard earned money for. and its very clear that most of us came with the expectation we could change our weapons to our liking in terms of what actually is on the weapon model, and that we’d have the ability to manipulate the weapons specs through those attachments or parts. so keep making these threads. keep telling Fatshark to deliver on what we expect, if there is no dissenting voice loud enough then there will be no change.