Who are those “we”. DT is built like a live service game
mtx shop with questionable prices right from the release
scammy player retention mechanics - timers in shops, mission board, all those metrics “look how long our players stay loged in”
Destiny 2 alike social hub where players flex with their payed cosmetics, and can’t access anything with hotkeys, but need to manually interract with npc’s and mission board
remember 2 years of perks and blessing locks promotes grinding?
DT isn’t a proper live service, cause FS is unable to execute live service right. Gaslighting people into thinking it’s not a live service doesn’t work.
I’m sorry but I’ve spent half of my life loving (to hate) Swedish games. Mainly Battlefield and Tide games. Swedish studios aren’t known for bug-free releases or fast content delivery *
/* This is an urban myth, and as such immune to ANY reasoned argument.
They might have said that, but it’s not necessarily optimal?
There’s such a thing as momentum. When you release something new, you iterate quickly on it and iron out enough kinks so that it generates a net positive growth to the long term player base.
FS seem to dump new content, then go on holiday for 2 months. In that time, new (and old) players return, give it a go, but then (let’s say) 90% decide it’s half-assed, and move on to another game. Which leaves the overall game population not only quite volatile; but also full of quick-quitters.
tl;dr – would DT benefit from more casual players playing for longer?
hypothesis: yes : more players = more casual spending and better overall match filling
I wouldn’t be so quick to support their strategy, no matter how much I love the game!
We may want more, but what is optimal for FS is what they can actually deliver and what actually meets their goals. They’ve been on this content/release cycle for years at this point. Average player counts aren’t going down in the long run. They say they’re happy with how things are going. As long as they can keep putting out free content for years to come, that’s optimal imo.
Tbh I’m starting to think that a trained PR/CM person needs to chaperone any FS dev etc when they are in a room with a journo or streaming or communicating with the public in any way. Preferably with a spray bottle to squirt them when they start to say something naive.
The message is never in sync between any two members of staff and every time a dev gets excited about the possibilities their system could enable it just becomes a multi year entry in the grudge book.
Edit: it’s more charming than a pure corporate approach but boy does it backfire. Like they’re in the goldilocks zone of too big to have all the staff in sync but not big enough to have their commissars stamp it out.
So yeah your thread is far outdated. Darktide’s a live service now, they explicitly said the words.
And that term comes with expectations that Fatshark seems incapable of actually fulfilling.
I’m not going to give them leeway here, most of the time it’s managers and execs talking to the press about cool features that then are dropped with zero explanation from the company in the finished product (like weapon customization, specific contracts with Melk, Solo Mode, etc).
That is not a ‘dev getting excited’, it’s an executive either lying or refusing to provide further information.
Maybe it’s not a full on Swedish cultural thing, but watching AH continually bungle HD2 comms over and over made me think so.
Both these companies have a stable of CM employees that don’t really seem to do any CMing.
Why have CMs if comms don’t absolutely flow through them or at least get vetted first?
IDK, maybe strawhat was the only CM really good at the job or had enough pull to keep the toe-munching to a minimum. Proficiency in professions cannot always be expected to be top notch.
To FS’s credit, they don’t place feet in mouth at near the rate AH does and it seems mostly limited to management, unlike the devpocalypse interactions from AH. But it always confounds me how uncommon a virtue common sense really is in the business sphere. Maybe less so in the “outlaw” “wild west” world of video games?
I’ve also seen allusions to some nefarious event(s) of the past, post-beta but before I came back, of some very damaging community interactions that made FS withdraw to the level we know now, but I haven’t looked into it much.
Considering that there are comms complaints dating back to 2018, it’s less that FS withdraws due to anger and more that they almost always just categorically refuse to answer players on pain points.
Whenever there’s a genuine problem their first resort is always ‘pretend it doesn’t exist’.
Hold up, what are you talking about? I play Helldivers 2 and love what they are doing over there.
That being said, it has been a couple of months since I played, so has something bad happened over at Arrowhead within that time? I am a bit outdated here it seems.
