Does FS actually look at suggestions on the forums?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
183

You guys might disagree and justify endless toxicity and venting as warranted all you want, and I’m not particularly saying the constructive criticism thread that pops now and then is unwarranted, but game developers have went on video to say why they stopped interacting with forums altogether, no need to believe me (not a game dev) or some other anonymous forum random, hear from a game dev:

AI summary for ppl who can’t/don’t want to watch:

Tim Cain is an experienced game developer who shares his background as a former active participant in online forums, including early internet platforms like Usenet and discussions surrounding the development of the Fallout franchise (0:42-0:57).

He is commenting on the reasons why he and many other developers have stopped engaging in online forums, identifying key issues such as:

  • Communication barriers: He notes the difficulty of conveying tone in writing compared to speaking, which often leads to misunderstandings (2:00-2:38).
  • The rise of negativity: He observes that modern forums have become “anger-driven” environments where users often prefer to vent or attack developers rather than provide constructive feedback (3:05-4:56).
  • Loss of productive discourse: He highlights a declining “signal-to-noise ratio,” where meaningful, actionable feedback is buried under waves of unproductive personal attacks (6:40-9:50).

This perspective is relevant given his status as an industry veteran; his departure from public forums illustrates a broader trend of declining communication between game developers and players, resulting in the loss of a valuable channel for collaborative discussion (9:18-9:47, 10:13-10:16).

184

Communication would be a lot more positive if devs at least aknowledged, or said something about what’s being said

Even if they just said “From the feedback we have seen, we think Hive Scum is not in the place people would like them to be, as ranged weaponry was the appeal for most and their main reason to play the class, thus we should probably move the class that way” and that would leave us sad, but not desperate, not angry, that’s the difference

Devs fear making anyone sad so much that they rather not make a single sound, but that ends up biting their butt since instead of sadness, anger is developed

185

You can’t even get a full list of comments with incompetent in it because there are too many of them.

There’s plenty levied at the actual game devs too.

I’m sure there’s multiple reasons. Not sure why we can’t at least try and fix the toxicity issue.

I’m not sure why people resist trying to be more respectful as a community. By excusing/explaining toxic behavior, they acknowledge it’s harmful but accept it because they don’t see it as severe enough to change.

186

I appreciate you bringing this.

I want to be clear that I am in no way, shape, or form saying that toxicity and vitriol is warranted by any means. No one old enough to buy their own video games should be immature enough to come in here with threats, slurs, etc.

I just think that FS has far too thin a skin for this business, if toxicity is even the reason they stay so quiet.

And I think it’s an extremely smart and professional decision for devs not to interact directly with players, full stop.
The nonsense that happened with Arrowhead letting their devs have blank check comms with players was a perfect encapsulation of why.

Because that’s what CMs are for.

If you weren’t here during Strawhat’s tenure, go look back at those threads and you can see much healthier attitudes and vibes all around. Hell just look at the appreciation we lavish Julia with because she acknowledges our existence (and much more).

FS has a product for sale but they aren’t selling it anymore.

187

TO @MeatShield01 's point a lot of the specificity seems to be lost or usually missing, so every “dev”, that is to say everyone at FS is targeted and I think it’s not only unwarranted but counter-productive and ultimately self-defeating and starts a self-fulfilling prophecy. It helps to be specific in criticism but gamers in general seem dumber than ever and communication skills lacking and diminishing vs decades past.

As I have before, I will point out that I’m biased as I have dealt in a limited fashion with the end-users when releasing freeware and even mods (and commercial SW at work). My limited interaction even decades ago made me want to run the hills and hide, or move to that CM farm upstate and chase squirrels all day with Hedge.

Devs (most) take their projects personally and are passionate about them, so feeling targeted can hurt and frustrate them as well, this on top of the regular corpo BS, unrealistic deadlines, lack of resources etc.

That being said, yeah, a lot of the frustration targeting management and decision makers seems warranted, I share in that frustration as a game AND a dev; welcome to late-stage capitalism.

188

I’ve been posting on game forums for over two decades. In almost every case, I’m doing it for its own sake rather than the .01% chance that my criticism or suggestion makes it in front of the eyes of a developer.

Compared to two decades ago, I would say that hostile negativity is just way more tolerated now and completely normalized as a way of communicating. There are a ton of reasons for this that I won’t get into but it didn’t used to be the case. For example, just recently there was a thread posted in the Bugs subforum called “Havoc garbage” that wasn’t a bug but just a rant towards FS. On the boards I got started out on 20 years ago, this user would have been suspended, the topic locked, a mod commenting that the OP should invest in a journal, and potentially banned if it were repeat behavior. Instead, the thread was just moved to Gameplay Feedback and remains open to this moment. Is the thread actionable feedback or useful as a springboard for feedback for others? I don’t really think so.

So on the moderation-side of things it’s tolerated and if you’re just a regular ol’ forum poster who takes issue with things like that you might just get bullied off the website for your position. The only solace is that 20 years ago blocking forum users and threads could only be done through some homebrew Greasemonkey scripts, at least now it’s built-in to the software.

189

I feel like we may have had an impasse on this before (or maybe someone else). But saying a manager is incompetent, especially with the evidence we have, is simply not toxicity to me.

Because I’m an adult that’s been online since dial up and I know better. And I’m not in a business with a digital facing front, let alone Gamers :trade_mark: :copyright: :registered: .

But I already conceded there are different emotional standards and maybe that’s a bridge too far for some.

I don’t often consider the feelings of the cavern when I scream into it for the echo.

Hand to the Omnissiah, I will become a digital champion for kindness if FS releases a blog post saying their hurt feelings are why they don’t talk to us.

190

Quite possibly, and that’s OK.

191

For sure.

I find it a bit funny/sad some people read my words and assume I’m against criticism. Criticism is great and there’s a lot that needs work.

But can we try:

Hey there are serious performance issues with AMD GPUs, how can I be helpful, log files, is there a beta branch to test, here are some results from messing with settings...

Instead of:

Hey there are serious performance issues with AMD GPUs, You mewling excuse for a used-wagon-salesman

192

The reason FS gets the latter is because they don’t respond or take action on the former.

It doesn’t matter how helpful you are, how clearly you lay out the problem, or how nice you are. Bugs that are five minutes of work to fix will persist forever, feedback will be ignored, and Fatshark will refuse to say anything.

This environment is one FS has made itself and it is fundamentally their job to man up and deal with it.

193

if they would really cared about the game or its own community, they would have communicated with us regardless of anything, but it’s a company that works just for the paycheck and doing the bare minimum most of the time

most of the times just scripted blogs, following strictly hotfixes schedules (never doing hotfixes as emergency when needed right away) for example when frame gen was not working, we had to wait 2 hotfixes before it was finally fixed when it should just been fixed simply right away in the first hotfix if not instantly.

plus they don’t address real problems presented by the community, community that, by the way, is main source income of the company. it is normal that there is frustration coming from the community, but it’s not that they are going to doxxing developers or do weird things, it’s just that having the feeling of being heard is more impactful than feeling ignored which is just toxic when there’s no communication.

DT is one of the live service games that doesn’t really feel like it’s a live service game.

194

17769204049384751045281705112694

The problem is not with the staff, but with the organization.

It’s always amusing to read posts like yours and then look at what GSG is doing; a super small dev team that creates banger after banger: Deep Rock Galactic, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, Rogue Core (in May), and they not only create bangers, but they also interact with reddit posts, discord posts, and even the STEAM forum of all places.

Furthermore, if you look through a lot of Rogue Core feedback videos on YouTube, even those made by small YouTube channels with only 20 subscribers, you’ll notice that GSG developers are responding to them.

I love Darktide, but I’m not particularly fond of how Fatshark is operating the game.

What I would like is for someone else, not Fatshark, to get the rights to make the next Warhammer Tide game and see what they come up with.

Heck, let Saber make a Guardsman Tide game.

195

That’s a really cute spin you’re putting on things. Fortunately those of us who have been around long enough to know better are immune to such tactics.

Not that I disagree tone of criticism matters, but drawing a correlation between these in the specific case of Fatshark is a laughable endeavour.

196

image
image560×367 56.3 KB

image
image700×374 27.1 KB

197

You do understand that’s not helping your argument, right? DRG has one of the nicest, most welcoming communities in gaming. The DRG devs interact with their community a frequently because the community treats them with respect.

198

If only there was some book of, oh idk, grievances or some other word starting with “g” that keeps track of them.

What’s that? There is? Maintained by you? And one of the earliest entries to be added and stricken much later was a thorn at my side? Well paint me green and call me Bardin; you can never have too many Grudges dawi, or delicious paint brushes.

But holy kark as the regulars here know, those 5 minutes fixes chafe me and a few others like a wet bathing suit covered in sand. The whole “close range” typo and more recently the somehow rose power weapon activation bugs, then partial fixes, then more partial fixes, then fixes with gaslighting replaced some early childhood memories for me and I may have forgotten how to tie my shoelaces. If someone finds the 1-line typos or omissions, fix 'em for all that is holy!

Again, the ire isn’t directed at everyone at FS, but c’mon guys, let’s do better on this front.

199

where do you even see the disrespect in the forums towards developers individually?
ive been in the forums for a while and i never seen direct personal attacks towards devs, just pure normal criticism towards the company.

if you have been there since 2018 you would already know fatshark isn’t known for their transparency… and communication since vermintide 1…

201

And please tell me how you think that came about.

Could it have been due to… gasps …GSG’s communication???

They informed us that the current season would be maintained by another firm because they did not have the means to split developers between Rogue Core and DRG development long before the season happened.

What happens next for Darktide?

Will they continue to work on expeditions?

What did Fatshark learn about Expeditions’ original release, and what changes do they want to make in the future?

Is Havoc feature complete?

Will we ever get new cosmetics for Hive Scum in the store? Not even Julia and Quickpaw know or can discuss this. Julia said she’d notify me/us when it happened, but that was many months ago.

Furthermore: GSG have also not shied away from responding to both videos and reddit posts that basically reads as; “Rogue Core is trash and GSG is trash”.

What happens next? A new class (will that class get cosmetics)? New weapons? New Fatshark game?

Who knows!

Fatshark never tells us anything.

The goal of communication for a studio is to promote and sell their product, but Fatshark does not even do that and when they do is like one week before release of those features .

Furthermore compared to most games Fatshark doesn’t hold real beta’s/EA where regular people (not playtesters) can sign up and give feedback and it shows.

Do you now understand why Fatshark games never became widely popular (although they should) and remained niche and while DRG while being a much smaller game, IP and studio has a much bigger playerbase?

Why would anyone unless they are diehards like me stay around when Fatshark doesn’t do jack to make people interested in their products?

202

wrong.

it’s the DRG devs that treat with respect the community. and therefore the respect is mutual and the developers are praised because of it.

for example by not being greedy and predatory, by communicating and showing a roadmap of the development progress, like it was for the seasons in drg and what was coming. and they also officially supported mods.

203

IDK, if I may play devil’s advocate for a sec, there may be a chicken-egg thing going on there and DRG has a different player base and a very different and wider (simpler) appeal, not to mention WH40K fans are infamously…well ya. It’s not quite an apples to apples comparison but not apples and oranges either IMHO.