As title states, I am curious if Fatshark actually interacts with these forums. Over at Steam, everyone says to type here for “Fatshark to see”. See they might, but looking at other threads I only see two types of interactions. 1: Closing of threads. 2: Re-opening of threads.
So do they interact here?
Used to be more frequently. They have gone a little more silent in recent times. I chalk it up to increased workload at the office.
They’ve stated clearly in the past that they feel responding taints and biases feedback given here and thus they try to avoid directly responding as much as possible. I think it’s a pretty reasonable approach, and wouldn’t be an issue if comms links were being released more regularly.
They respond very rarely, and when they do, they never give direct answers, except when it’s about technical trifles. For everything else, especially for what is closest to the community’s heart, they remain silent or give vague and equivocal answers. And any justification for this type of behavior is pure copium.
The times they’ve given direct answers, they haven’t delivered or backpedalled. Like when they promised us over a year ago they’d add a scoreboard to promote teamplay.
Never heard that before, but, it is understandable. 
To be fair, we do nail them really hard for their statements and hold them to it.
Giving harsh scrutiny and little margin for error leads to defensive communication tactics generally speaking.
Remember Hedge? I know he wasn’t the most diplomatic and he made 2 PR blunders, but the hate he got for some mild roasty moment-to-moment one-liner was something else.
He never lived that down and had actual detractors and he was a totally chill dude.
Part of the problem is something I call “Dev Enthusiasm”.
When you’re “in the moment” as someone who is creatively working, you see all the possibilies and you have the tendency to gaff on when questioned - Because you have a vision in your head.
Then when you actually have to put this vision to reality, things change. Maybe it’s corporate re-priotization. Maybe it’s something not so easy after all. Or after an internal discussion you realized it maybe wasn’t a good idea.
The “they promised us” problem is a mix of devs being too open with their ideas when these are not ready for the public yet and people enshrining their words in stone and gold-plating it when it was just an idea not yet fully put in motion.
Kind of.
Catfish responds whenever FS loosens their grip on their gag orders for a sec.
Fatshark, anxiously, tugs at her leash whenever our Community Manager feels like actually Managing the Community.
Fatshark does not trust in, and is not proud of, the game they’ve built and they’re proving it with a lack of communication.
I’m pretty sure they are. I mean, there’s nothing quite like it out there. But we don’t treat them exactly nice, we can’t expect niceties back.
This is something I dislike with gaming communities. The excessive negativity towards the creators for whatever reason. Critique is always welcomed, in my opinion. But, it should try to be constructive. Just bombarding hate comments will pretty much yield these results where they take a step back and stop interacting.
Agreed. I won’t say I’m not disappointed at times when things aren’t added. But there are no doubt reasons for it.
Maybe a bit controversial, but I think the “solo mode” is a dud. I don’t think there is a lot of players who would play it compared to the rest of the player base. Would it be nice if they had it? Absolutely. Can I understand why they didn’t add it in their ‘always online cooperative game’? Yes I can.
I 100% believe they are proud of the game they’ve made. How could they not be? The game itself is amazing. The art, style, sound, voices, gameplay, it’s all top notch. Would I like more variety? Would I like additional crafting features and upgrades? Darn tootin’ I would.
It was just unfortunate how they had to launch it. And now that it isn’t very played, I can understand from a corporate perspective that they don’t want to invest a huge amount of time and effort into it.
That’s fair, but at the same time, I don’t think it’s ill-warranted. We’ve been lied to pretty considerably by this dev team throughout the lead up to this game, and so far they’ve yet to make up for it. You could make the case (and justifiably so) that the difference between what they advertised and what we have are Fatshark running into the gulf between what they wanted and what they were capable of accomplishing as the realities and constrictions of gamedev piled up relative to the nearness of the game’s release, but you could also (justifiably so) state that there were definite lies of omission when those changes were forced to occur.
I would feel kinda bad if I had to examine the difference between what I wanted to make and what I made, especially if I get called on it constantly by most of my community and by plenty of the ongoing reviews.
Thanks! I’ll check it out.
This argument has been repeated ad nauseam and honestly it doesn’t convince me. Even the stones know that gaming communities can reach stellar levels of vitriol, and it is true that «harsh scrutiny and little margin for error leads to defensive communication tactics», but this does not mean that these tactics are effective: far from it. Locking yourself in an ivory tower makes the community even more hostile: it is communication that reduces hostility, not radio silence. Naturally, I am talking about open and effective communication, without unrealizable promises, vague answers, embarrassing blunders.
There are the CMs who (should) take care of this. And if there are no CMs, or those who are have other jobs due to lack of staff, new ones should be hired.
Notwithstanding that, if someone is passionate about their work or is proud of their product, communication comes naturally. In this case we have neither one nor the other.
This really.
The remainder of this NICHE COMMUNITY is clearly in love with their game. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here. Not only that but those of us who ramble around the key feedback point are like 90% nice and fair minded most of the time. Patch 13-15 were all met with heaps of praise. But since we can’t ever trust anything fatshark says, nor do they say much at all any more, there’s a lot of screaming into the ether. Its just a weird dynamic that is negative for both customer and business.
What’s also important to learn is looking past the rage and assmad people post to find the valid criticisms within. Even a post made by someone on an angry rant has value - stuff your pride and figure out which criticisms are valid, and which might be the result of someone who needs to COOL IT.
I really do try to stay polite and constructive on the forums, but I also need to voice my frustrations and lack of faith in FS. Darktide still needs work, a lot of work, and the lack of communication only makes me angrier.
@FatsharkCatfish said they’re trying to work on getting the devs to start posting devlogs and just generally communicate more with the community, which I appreciate greatly, so that at least means that we’ve been heard. The rest of it is just idly waiting for someone who works on the game proper to say something.
And instead of making a meme of it by themself, FS react like a child.
What they should’ve made is to keep Hedge silent till there will be what community was asking for and release Hedge with devpost, memeing:
“It was immeasurably complex, but we heard your feedback and here is your weapon customization. Do you think it would be immeasurably complex to implement a color palettes for items? We’ll see wink-wink”
Whenever you made a mistake you apologize, fix and shitposting a bit after to chill enraging crowd. This mentality “they are silent cause scared” is soy and pathetic.
Company has its personification in the eyes of customer, and right now it’s not a sigma gigachad persona for Fatshark. So people will feast on such behavior intentionally or not.
You’re generally correct but bringing Reddit terminology into here is cringe Jack.
