Does fatshark Actually Listen to any Feedback?

Like the title says.

Or to clarify, it’s not that I don’t believe fatshark doesn’t listen to the community’s feedback but rather, it seems like they honestly don’t give a second glance at anything unless the entire community is in such an uproar they have to go on red alert about it. e.g. the Executioner Sword previously sharing same code as the Glaive when it got nerfed.

There have been so, so many issues of assumedly relatively easy quality of life fixes that have yet to be implemented. Hell, most of them not even publicly recognized as actual problems that I’m sure the majority, if not all of the community already recognize or agree with. For example:

  • Weapon switching is not always accurate. Inputs are either delayed or eaten, especially when done swiftly. Which is extremely important for this kind of game. I’ve met players who’ve had to make specific mouse or keyboard macros to get this to not be a problem, which not every person is privy or able to.

  • Chaos Warrior hurtboxes, more specifically their overhead strike. Multiple times have I been on the flank of them as they go to attack another and end up taking a hit intended for another when my character seemed to be reasonably out of range. There are a million and one .webms of this happening.

  • The absolutely insane charge/lunging range attacks certain enemies get, them being both extremely fast and unpredictable while also homing onto their target. Even in the midst of hordes where you literally cannot even see them. Not sure if this is intended, but regardless I think most agree that it’s a bit ridiculous at times.

  • Huntsman’s ultimate leaving the screen in the darkened ult state even after he’s finished. Which I know has been said that it’s been dealt with… months ago. Why is it still not implemented?

And those are just a few of the tippy top of the iceberg when it comes to the massive floating frozen debris the S.S. Sigmar is slowly sailing toward. Don’t even get me started on class and weapon balance.

But listen, I get that there are more important things to focus on, I do. Especially with the reveal of Vermintide II being ported to consoles and the giant time and effort sink that must be. But honestly, in my opinion, it feels like the devs aren’t communicating at all and leaving everyone in the dark about too many things. I can forgive and hold out regarding the myriad of issues plaguing this game that I love if I actually knew they were going to be fixed. That things were going to change.

At the moment the game just feels stagnated in mediocrity when I know it can be something better and it’s upsetting that there are currently zero or very few signs of that happening.

10 Likes

Not going to happen.
When stuff really went down the drain, the community manager was active for like two days and also after people found out about red shell.

But besides that, basically nothing happened in months. Most of the problems persist since early versions or even beta. Green Dust got fixed and crafting in generall but just half baked.
This is the final.

Guys, you need to understand, that Fatshark is a small developer, apparently without a management, and they are obviously overwhelmed with everything right now. They have a few small teams working on several things at the same time, so give them some slack.

It certainly doesnt help, that the community is always whining about everything, expecting their wishes to be done immediately, or else they call Fatshark a scammer or claim they dont listen. The community obviously expects some kind of Blizzard-like Support here.

You want those things to be fixed, others want other things to be fixed, the next ones want the dlc now because the game gets repetitive, they want the dedicated servers, they want new content in form of weapons, careers, heroes and whatever. Everyone wants something now and Fatshark tries to please everyone but also has to deal with their own problems as developer.

Could all of this run better? Certainly. Does Fatshark make mistakes? Certainly. Do we have to wait a Long time until the game gets finally fixed to be the game we all expected at release? You bet.

But all of this doesnt mean, that Fatshark is slacking off and doesnt work to come to that point eventually. So just wait. They know about everything important that is mentioned here and they are in contact with popular streamers who better know the game than anyone of us.

4 Likes

Dunno where you’ve been.

It is however important to make sure to give credit where credit is due, but it seems to me that a lot of the people who are actively calling out bad decisions and slow, or just wrong priorities and fixes are people who played the first game alot.

Criticism = wanting something to be better
it comes from a good place, really

1 Like

While I don’t agree completely with Fatshark’s work ethic and decision-making, mostly trying to port a game over to consoles when it’s pretty fairly described as a large clunky mess ( a completely playable clunky mess, but a mess regardless,) I understand your points. Their decisions are their own in that regard and nobody can change that, nor will I try to.

I don’t think Fatshark is slacking off either, rather that their direction is lacking. Or at the very least it’s difficult to discern their direction because of how little they communicate their actions to the community — my main point of concern and issue. Just small things like public acknowledgement of critical issues, whether or not certain things are intended (like incendiary bombs doing literally zero damage.) and the like would be nice.

Like you said yourself, they are a small developer. And with a group so tiny with a rather large following, I think communication with the people who love and support their game is extremely important.

How much times people will use this “argument” to justify Devs. 60(or how many?) people isn’t small. But ok, leave this. If you have a poor proccesses and bad descision making any team size doesn’t help. Why they want port their early access game with a lot of problems on consoles? Who is made this descision? Only for get money. They just fix several crashes and maps problem, throw in people “content patch” to boil down a temperature and this all.
So answer me, if you have a “small” team and a lot of problems in your game, why you should port it on consoles? And provided that every their patch was with huge problems. That says only about lack of their skills.

They need to make the console port, because they advertised it since the beginning. Ist already three - four month after pc release, do you think they should wait a year before the console release? That certainly wouldnt get them a better reputation. Of course they make it for money, Vermintide is currently their only big source without being stable. The game is extremely cheap, ist only 20 bucks, many of you might have forgotten and the dlcs wont cost more than 10 bucks each.

But they still have to work non-stop to get everything fixed and to release new content. They already do a way better job than to release of V1, where they went on a Long Holiday and let us play an actual mess with gamebreaking glitches. I dont know what kind of crappy pcs you guys have, but i usually dont have any problems at all when playing V2.

So total rng/missing sounds/bugs with some classes(like Huntsman’s F or UC passive stacks if you are client)/broken weapons and just trash weapons(no balance)/fail with their promises/no proper host migrations/poor p2p connection/even freaking grenade not working get them a better reputation? This game event not in normal state, just in more or less “stable”. An they choose port this game to consoles insdead fix all this problems in first monthes and get game in normal state.
I’m pretty sure they got a lot of money from PC version to fix problems and make a great game. There is no needed to wait “one year”. And some titles get console versions even after 3-5 years after release, when they got a good reputation and stable, playable game.

I have a decent pc and i meet a lot of problems. And if you don’t face them that not mean that this problems doesn’t exist. A lot of players complain about it.

1 Like

If you advertise a product with features that are not actually at all present, you will have a sour perception of yourself and your ability to deliver by your consumers. It doesn’t matter if it is “extremely” cheap or not, which it isn’t by the way.

The rng part doesnt matter at all, i dont care for the People who complain about it. The weapon balance is quite fine, but wouldnt have been balanced in a couple month anyway. The host migration is also not a problem, V1 used the same system two years long and it was fine. Not perfect, but fine. I dont quite know what Fatshark promised to you or anyone else, but i dont recall any promise. Only the advertised dedicated servers. But still i dont have any problems with connections at all, since i dont have a crappy pc or crappy Internet.

The only things worth mentioning by your examples are the bugs and the missing sound and they will be fixed eventually. Only because alot of people complain about something, doesnt automatically mean they are right.

They listen, sometimes to the wrong feedback, like when they nerfed the Huntsman too much.

I’ve also had several of my posts “liked” by fatshark employees. So that at least lets me know they are looking through the forums and reading what we post. They also recently hired another community manager who starts sometime this month if I remember correctly.

You can see they mark most of the bug posts “acknowledged” and for the most part, they do seem to fix a lot with each patch. You can go look back through the patch notes for the last few months and see that most of the stuff that got fixed was what people were complaining about and posting bug threads about.

Bugs are not feedback tho. I agree that its very nice that they show you the bug is acknowledged, but to the best of my knowledge, zealot passive “uninterruptible heavy attacks” doesnt work, has been acknowledged since release and hasnt been fixed.

About the feedback part and the huntsman nerf in particular, they didnt do it because there were a handful of people that demanded it. They did it because they themselves had a close look at huntsman performance after they saw up the gargantuan thread about it. And, no offense, but the people against the nerfs were as responsible for the nerf as the people that wanted it, because they helped alot to blow up the thread so it would get noticed by fatshark.

If you don’t care it’s not mean that for others this is not a problem. And these others are likely more than people like you who don’t care. Something “fine” to you, not fine for a lot of other people.

Weapon balance? When people use only 1-2 types if weapon it’s not balance. There are a lot of trash weapons like shield+someting/some 2H swords which not viable and etc. Glaive/halberd/1h and 2h hammers/falchion/crossbow/bolt and beam staffs 90% of games. No diversity. And it’s not about people, it’s about balance. If you play on recruit/veteran ofc you didn’t see this problem, but on higher difficulties these weapons just overpowered.

It’s fine when host just drops at the end of map and progress just lost? Why you try to shift the explanation of the problem on the customers and not on devs? When you buy a semi-working product you will fix it by yourself of just say “it’s fine to me” because it’s not devs responsibility to deliver a qualitative product?

Fatshark promises dedicated servers/dlc/mod support(+) till the end of may. One of three, not bad. They already recognized that this was a mistake to make promises.

I don’t try to blame you mate, but want to understand why you want to defend them in way of “small team” and “it’s fine to me”. This is not a decent way to argue.

Edit:
About rng. RNG is big part of the game and a lot of people want to get something to try new builds and etc without spending thounsands of rolls on the items. But for this you must grind dust and reds. If you try to get a good(not even perfect) stats on oranges you will be frustrated. It depends only on you “luck”. This just makes people upset.
And devs said that they want to people try new builds but it sometimes unreal cause of rng.

Fatshark has a choice, the more money they invest in requested features the more money they will make from the PC market. It is safe to assume that all video game developers are motivated by profit alone. The community has the power to deny such profit by choosing not to purchase a game/DLC. They likely won’t develop something that they don’t think they can sell. Communicate with the devs and tell them what you will buy. If they choose not to make it, move on, they are choosing not to profit from the PC market. Their obligation to us only exists if they need our money and they may not anymore.

It should be noted that this game was released on consoles. The console market is a behemoth compared to the PC equivalent. It is also largely devoid of any organized critique of video games. Vermintide 2 can remain profitable without the addition of meaningful content to the game. Console gamers are very simple-minded and can be kept happy with high-profit, low effort content like skins, slightly different weapon versions, etc. Fatshark, like most businesses in this industry, will likely ignore the PC market once their sales explode on the XBOX One. It may sound depressing, but this happens often and the dedicated community must plan for this eventuality.

This game has workshop support and that can save whatever vision we had for this franchise. The modding community is free to develop this game to their hearts content. If the fan base wants something to happen, they can make it happen with or without the developers. Skyrim is an example of the community taking up the flag that was dropped by the developers. The amount of work in man-hours put into that game by modders far exceeded Bethesda’s effort. As a result, Skyrim can be pretty amazing when modded heavily despite it’s pitiful state on release. Vermintide 2 can be improved, maybe not to the extent that Skyrim was, but every little bit helps.