Darktide should have been launched as a F2P title

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Darktide seems to have been taking the live service approach to their launch. Like Anthem, Fallout 76, and others who have tried this unsuccessfully at launch, it requires an extremely optimized content delivery pipeline. Even then, in many cases, companies with fast pipelines often run a free to play model to capitalize on it.

Launching in a broken and unfinished state is one thing, and there are many other threads on that topic. Fatshark has decided on a live service approach by launching the shell of what it aims to be, without the velocity required to deliver on this promise, combined with a cash shop that only works around a high velocity content schedule. Additionally, that same content cycle is priced in a manner not consistent with a paid offering.

It seems to me as if Fatshark has attempted to draw from the systems of paid , live service, and f2p games but only succeeded in taking the worst parts of each system, and executing them poorly.

A Free to Play time limited content game, optimized with consistent updates would be a good game (a la fortnite)

A live service that launched with a stable foundation, with monthly meaningful content updates would be a good game.

A more expensive, optimized and higher cost experience, with yearly DLC would have been a good game.

Instead, we have a hodge podge of all of the above, each executed terribly and often in a conflicting manner. I have no idea where the game will go from here. Vermintide 2 improvements were measured in years, and the method of building for this game would only succeed if they could condense that to months.

The game has an identity crisis, and in my opinion isn’t worth playing until it figures out what it wants to be. I regret having pre purchased the game after seeing the free to play monetization, I’ll have to own that I suppose.

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No. F2P is garbage.

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What’s the difference between that and what we have now? $40 is all the changes. The end product is still the same.

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What makes F2P garbage that isn’t in this game?

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How dare you speak about tf2 like that

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was not launched as a free2play game, as my Orange Box will attest

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F2P is garbage, but it’d be tough to argue that actual F2P with F2P monetisation wouldn’t be better than a full price game with F2P monetisation.

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I don’t think it’s in a conflicting manner. I think it’s in the exact manner that they want it to be.

The cash shop rolls over every 10 days instead of every 24 hours like F2P time limited content, so it doesn’t need as much in there because of how limited the shop itself is.

It’s location is placed to be right on route between spawn and the in game shop that we’re going to be checking every hour to see if it has the RNG weapons that we want, so we’re going to be constantly reminded of the limited time that the limited shop has left.

The crafting is designed with RNG for the skills and will be incrementally more expensive with each roll. So we’re going to need to buy new high RNG base stat items when the RNG crafting gets too expensive to continue on that one item. This again funnels us to the in game shop, which pushes us past the FOMO driven shop.

Can’t also forget that they went with the too common tactic of cash shop currency bundles not quite lining up with the bundles in the store.

The whole thing is to hook us with their admittedly fantastic gameplay loop and then use everything else to push us to the shop. I’m just surprised that they don’t have a pop up or something when we first log in to tell us about the “Great Deals that are about to leave!!!”.

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Yeah, that’s kind of my point. Said succinctly

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I would poke at the cash shop comment, in that they probably don’t have enough cash shop content to roll over on a 24 hour window, otherwise they probably would. Hence the velocity bit.

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You’re probably right about them not having that amount, especially since they take a long time to create and sell outfits even when it was just VT2. There’s no way that they have the volume needed to make people actually feel the pressure of FOMO in a 24 hour cycle.

I’m pretty sure they do have the volume for that FOMO when it’s both a 10 day cycle and we’re running past that shop every hour while also seeing people standing around right next to the shop accessing the in game shop for equipment.

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Yeah. It is a core profit center for the game though. Equipment sales should more than enough fund an entire team of artists, riggers and animators. I would love to see a non FOMO version, with folks cranking out consistently awesome sets every couple weeks. That would be phenomenal.

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Well said OP, and I’ll be amazed if Fatshark can suddenly pump out enough content to even match their “1 class every 3 months”. Unless they did the underhanded tactic of intentionally holding back content to release it later as a paid item.

Either way, the next quarter will be very telling for the state of the game and it’s longevity.

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No no no no no!

Having an entry price helps alleviate hackers and botters.

$40 is an EXTREMELY REASONABLE asking price in 2022.

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I don’t think “it should be paid to avoid hackers” is a great take. That’s like asking for money and not doing your job.

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Dude. Do you know nothing about the hacker community?

“Doing your job” isn’t good enough. As soon as one exploit is patched the hackers find another. You have hundreds, sometimes THOUSANDS of people working against a relatively small team of security experts and bug fixers. Games are huge and complicated and it’s not within the realm of reason to expect them to be 100% exploit-proof.

Your opinion smacks of someone who has never written a line of code in their life.

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no. I want malicious people to have to spend money every time they get banned because then at least in some way, they are positively contributing to the game.