It’s been at least a couple months since a bunch of huge issues started coming up - everyone knows about the silent poxbursters, which is absolutely unbelievable that it exists in the first place, and there has literally been zero communication on what’s happening. We got a hotfix the other day that changed some cosmetics and is still somehow several gigabytes large.
People don’t like being left in the dark. Not communicating with the players tells us that you don’t even play your own game, and that you don’t care. At least say SOMETHING along the lines of “expect it within the next month or so”.
fatshark’s always been slow with community messaging, get over it. it’s fixed when they fix it. just be glad they didn’t say “we need to do minor fixes on the backend first.”
I mean we can all scream into the void but this is the same gap as last year where they literally weren’t there. I’m pretty sure the VS beta was just withheld until the new year (and even that had issues I hear because Sigmar doesn’t love me like the God Emperor does to invite me to play).
Let’s all take solace in the fact that they didn’t leave dogs on (with 1900 HP and broken stagger resistances also space dogs) for 40 days like last year…the worst is gunner hit stun, which is only ‘omg why’ from reapers. And the memory leak which is aggravating but hey shorter sessions avoid it. So shorter sessions I will play…
One of the rumors I’ve heard is that the employees are encouraged to brainstorm about new ideas, improvements, etc. over the winter holidays and then they spend the first while back at work sorting through and figuring out what sounds good and then what can actually be done.
So it kinda stops them for a month or two while they figure out their new plan moving ahead.
Honestly, it’s been pretty much the same a year ago.
They were gone for the holiday and went radio silent for 2 months(not really, but felt like it).
Now I think it will be for a month more, they are not in a hurry now that the game is mostly fine.
Also, comlinks are pretty much gone and will be no more, maybe teasers and stuff, but not that
that’s not a rumor, that’s something fatshark themselves said last year. admitaddly it’s not great if you’re trying to sell a game model of live service, but i don’t think the exec that had them call it that knew what live service means.
Whatever their reasons - the fact remains that I don’t think Fatshark sees how you can use communications to sustain player interest and engagement in your product.
You always want the “next thing” dangling out there for players to be looking forward to keep them interested in the game and where it’s going.
Fatshark had a lot of momentum going into the end of the year and their continued radio silence has led to players wondering what if any thing is happening next and hearing nothing they just wander off to something else. We’re back down below 10k players on steam charts again.
Exactly - games like the classic Dooms, Valve products, Skyrim, and Slay the Spire are exceptions, and not the rule. We still talk about them today because they were massively unique experiences that shook up the industry and were executed well enough to still be shining examples of the best in the genre.
Vermin/Darktide is not like this; it’s another horde shooter in a sea of them, and while it’s a very good horde shooter, people are gonna drift away to other things if they think the game is stagnant and they’ve gotten bored of it.
When you take a look at Deep Rock Galactic, a similar live-service game, you see how Ghost Ship Games is constantly posting updates about the state of the game with their community, and openly stated that they’re going to delay Season 5’s content to work on other games in the now-franchise, but still managed to release a maintenance update that really improved the quality of the game. It didn’t contain any groundbreaking new content, it just fixed what was broke.
This is the main thing I think game devs nowadays need to realize: sometimes I’m not looking for new features. Sometimes I just want an honest-to-god patch that makes the game Less Sucky and I’m willing to accept a delay in the new content if it means I get to have more fun playing the game in the meantime. Not having these fixes, and ESPECIALLY not being told why we don’t have these fixes, is aggravating.
This game desperately needs a major update before the 8th Feb (Helldivers 2 launch). Including a ton of fixes, crafting overhaul and ideally some new content drop too (new penances and rewards/weapons/maps/modifiers/whatever)…
