As for Solo Mode, we are actively working on it. While it technically could work now, we are not happy with its state yet, and we want to ensure the solo experience lives up to your expectations. Right now, it does not, and we would do the game a disservice by implementing it.
from a blog post by Aqshy in december 2022
Personally, the main reason I want a solo mode is because when im levelling a new class or new weapons i play on lower difficulties but often times the team is too good and I dont get any chance to play the new class, the team just kills everything too fast and its basically a 30 minute walking simulator to the extraction, its extremely boring. If I instead go to a higher difficulty, then im useless and cause the team to wipe. It’s lose/lose on levelling new class/weapons regardless of what difficulty you pick. I want to be able to play on a lower difficulty to level my new class or weapons without human teamates speedrunning the mission. The bots arent good and thats actually what I want, so i can actually play the game.
I’m like ~90% the only reason we don’t have single player is because then player files would need to be stored locally, and then people would do such dastardly things as mod in aquilas so they don’t have to pay for the cosmetics!
Of course they could add online solo play. But I imagine they have determined that making people play with others increases player retention compared to letting people play the game with horrible bot companions. And since you need to be connected to the server anyways just go play with other people!
Or something like that. Either way at this point it’s like 90% certain it’s just not happening.
Which would be fine if that’s the case, but they won’t say it. Which is 75% of my crusade: “get them to admit they canceled it.” The other 25% is genuine desire to have solo mode added. It was the other way around at first, but the longer we go the more cynical and jaded I get and the more it shifts to “just tell us you canceled it ffs.”
It’s really just annoying to me how hard it is for them to straight up admit things.
Like yeah we know the FOMO shop is the way it is to exploit whales, just admit it makes them money and don’t bother with the marketing guff. We can all be adults here and acknowledge the reality that Fatshark needs to make cash to please investors and that if the numbers say scummy FOMO will do it they’ll go for it.
Yeah. I do think amongst people who actually play the game, if fatshark was just honest about making these sorts of decisions most people would be more happy and understanding in the long haul.
But also I know that if they do come out and say something like that, there are going to be 20 YouTube videos and random Reddit posts talking about how scummy of a company fatshark is and how bad Darktide is, probably leading to a review bombing. So just from a PR perspective it’s too risky for them to give a straight up answer.
If they are going to do something they will say yes and confirm it. If they aren’t going to do something they just aren’t going to say anything about it. Silence is basically as good as a no when it comes to stuff like this.
Would be nice if they changed that and were completely open and honest about all aspects of development. I do think that would be a way better move in the long run. But that is all about building trust and good will and currently fatshark has neither, so it would be a extremely uphill battle.
I think the problem is that they nuked all goodwill from day one with the series of cockups that were the game’s launch and refused to properly fix things quickly, often salami-slicing the issues at hand rather than openly committing to a full rework.
The correct way to regain goodwill is to do a bunch of things that the players want really quickly. HD2 is actually a pretty good example of this in a way - despite the ‘hostile DM syndrome’ of the core developers, when users start getting salty, the warbond pace eases up, free content starts dropping, and they start making mouth noises that aren’t apologies but sound enough like them to ease up on people. This usually gets the players to (largely) quiet down.
Fatshark instead persists blindly on a course that everyone hates then gets ‘confused’ and stops talking when pressed on it. If they wanted to pull an Arrowhead, it’d be simple. Start running aquila-giving events, give out free outfits, make a bunch of mouth noises about how they’ve internalized xyz feedback, maybe drop some sizeable discounts on the merch as a ‘test run’, something to show they’re willing to burn money to keep people playing, that buys enough cheap goodwill that people will ignore massive game-breaking problems.
The fact that FS doesn’t want to communicate openly with its customers is, let’s just say, a bit disrespectful. And we know that FS could do better. If I recall correctly, there have been surveys on more than one occasion that could be launched from the game’s main menu. That would be enough for me to start with, as long as something like that were done regularly with the right content. I think that would be a good compromise that would help players and devs connect better. That way, they’d get consolidated feedback and would know what the majority of players want and which direction to take—without having to spend a lot of time sifting through forums only to end up with scattered bits of feedback.
But it seems to me as if everything is already set in stone. The only deviation from the plan is the removal of certain features, and even that is being kept from us.
And if this behavior continues, I’m already seeing a bleak future for the new IP.
They receive a ton of feedback, but the head honchos very clearly are of the ‘we know what to do rather than what the players want’ school of thought.
Crafting? A consistent, 100% dedicated push to drop the random dogsh-t took actual irl years to be addressed with constant ‘oh but if we just change the randomness a little they’ll learn to like it’ attempts at changing it before they finally gave in.
The store? Beyond the extra pages (added with insults to our intelligence along the way), nothing has really changed beyond what I can only call cosmetic shrinkflation as they pare away the charms and weapon skins to sell them at higher prices separate from the original bundles and start selling hat packs that’re even more overpriced. This despite complaints about the FOMO nature being continuous.
Hell even the modifier stuff being well-received and people consistently asking them to not dumpster their own work doesn’t seem to affect their intentions to keep doing so.
What I meant was that then people who aren’t active on the forums would also weigh in, and that might help hammer a little more enlightenment into the decision-makers’ heads.
But yeah, I’ve been playing since the beta and know what you mean.
It’s also a shame that right now everything is revolving around the new class again, with nothing about the existing classes or features.
Let’s just hope that Darktide is the Cinderella of FS and ends up blossoming. xD
Yeah I would never claim that fatshark has handled Darktide’s development with anything above “slightly below average competency”. They know how to make a DAM GOOD combat loop and that is exactly where their expertise or even general competency as a company begins and ends lol.
I however would personally not reference Arrow Head as a “more competent company”. They have perhaps better crisis control but their dev team seems hell bent on practically intentionally causing a crisis with every single possible update.
Yes but Arrow Head is dead set on a course everyone hates, intentionally and knowing they are doing it, and then continuing to do it anyways because they “know better” and have openly said so multiple times.
I personally find unintentional incompetence less annoying then intentional incompetence. Arrow Head definitely feels like intentional incompetence, I don’t know if they are chasing tax breaks or something but it definitely feels like intentional sabotage sometimes.
But anyways I don’t have any real stake in the comparison, I just find it a bit funny.
Yeah, the promblem with AH is that they are making a completely different game in their brains than what HD2 actually is.
They always say that HD2’s goal is to be a realistic mil-sim, but the actual game that we can play is nothing like all the buzzwords the developers like to toss around.
HD2 is not realistic, not a mil-sim, and not really a grunt fantasy either.
Starship Troopers: Extermination is much closer to what AH is talking about.
Furthermore; AH’s whole stance on cosmetics and other QoL makes no sense, either.
Wow. That’s so surprising I had to go look it up: “A milsim at its core.”
I guess I can see it. The realism does make the weapons more interesting, and it’s not like you’re penalized for taking a tactical approach. But between the AI and respawning, the next guy over is probably YOLOing into a base while calling fire from the sky. Damningly, they’re doing it without wiping out half or all the team with FF, like you would in HD1 or AH’s “Magika” titles. Everybody screaming as everybody killed the team with FF was what made those titles great.
HD2 may have a milsim’s bones, but not the flesh or soul.