That’s a good point actually. Without better bots adding solo mode would just mean people would complain about the incompetent bots and how impossible it is to win certain maps/events. For example the phage tree. Can you imagine trying that puzzle on damnation+ and having to rely on the current bots as support?
And since fatshark would have provided the possibility for playing solo, they would have an obligation to make it feasible (it’s definitely possible for the best players out there).
IMO solo mode without a major bot overhaul is not possible.
Still tho, I miss the possibility we had in V2 of starting a round with bots and having friends just trickle in when they finish their previous mission, dinner,…
Having to stand around in the mourning star for 10 minutes+ waiting just sucks.
I was unaware that saying “Hey, y’all said this feature was going to be in the game, said it was nearly finished a month before launch, and then have refused to talk about it since.” was toxic.
Saying “Fatshark are bad at their jobs for not giving us some kind of info on a missing feature that was promised.” is not toxicity. Its the truth.
Toxicity are the asshats who send death threats and harrassment DMs and stuff like that. No one here is being toxic.
Plus, nearly every other game in this genre has solo play with bots. Both Left 4 Dead games, both Vermintide Games, even Helldivers 2 lets you do solo missions. Those are all marketed as “online co-op games.”
There are even PVP-only games that have solo play with bots. Counter-Strike, one of the largest esports games in the world, lets you play it with bots.
“Its an online-focused game” is not a valid excuse to not include solo play.
This community is pretty tame, there’s nowhere near the e-rage, butthurt, and insanity one can find with a casual perusal of boards for things like League of Legends, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, etc. The Darktide community is overall pretty easygoing and constructive as far as fandoms go.
Solo mode is a pretty standard day-1 feature on every competitor title Darktide has in the 4 perspn coop action game space, including previous Fatshark titles. It’s a feature Fatshark promised before people slapped down money for the game…and then just flubbed.
Plenty of people don’t want to play with randos, if I don’t have close friends online to play with, I don’t play Darktide, simple as, if there was a solo mode, I’d be playing a lot more Darktide when my friends aren’t on.
There’s plenty of reasons for FS to work on it over more game modes that most of the playerbase won’t interact with as we’ve seen with Havoc.
Didn’t they already say solo mode is no longer being worked on?
Does there need to be clarification on why they keep a FOMO store around?
you’re looking for explicit confessions, not info. You already know the state of these things. Would a confession change your course of action? Vote with your wallet
The reason this is an issue, is that 1. Solo Mode was originally a promised feature, something outright said would be in the game. and 2. was stated in November 2022 as being “in its final stages of testing” in November 2022 here with the promised launch period being December 2022 at the latest.
After missing that December 2022 deadline, Fatshark was radio silent on it until 2023 where we were told this:
and then that became the October 2023 statement above, and then silence.
I can’t speak for the others, but all I personally want to know is how the hell the mode went from “Ready to go live next month.” to “Still being developed” to “Not a priorty.” in the span of a year, and why were we not told what was going on?
At this point I literally do not care if they outright say “Solo Mode is cancelled, here’s why.” If that’s what it is, that’s what it is. I just want an acknowledgement that SOMETHING happened to it, and them to tell us what it was and why.
As for “voting with your wallet” - I already bought the damn game before launch because I was under the impression I’d be able to play alone even if my friends weren’t online or willing to play. Because that was a feature the developers promised. A feature they said would be coming at most a month after launch. And by the time they failed to deliver, I’d already exhausted Steam’s refund window.
But hey, two months after the missed deadline, they’re at least still talking about it, I thought. And that waiting led to here.
I don’t buy the microcurrency, I don’t buy the cosmetics from the store. I spend the literal minimum amount of time and money on this game possible specifically because the reason I bought it still does not exist, despite being a promised feature.
All I want is an official statement about whether or not solo mode will eventually arrive, and why it was delayed for so long despite originally being, in FatShark’s own words, “in its final stages of testing.”
Well, my point is just, that’s your answer as for where solo mode is. “Not a priority”, or when reading between the lines, “not coming”.
Just for the record I’m not saying you’re not reasonably upset, just that you already had your conclusion to this problem. You learned they didn’t deliver on the promise. Thus:
Next time, don’t buy before the stuff you want is in. I’m not blaming you, I’ve made the same error. It is true though: Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
I’m just saying this whole solo mode business has concluded. People portray it like Fatshark won’t communicate, but they did straight up come out and say it’s “Not a priority” despite what they promised. This unfortunately conclusively answers the solo mode question. The only part that comes after this is what you do when a Fatshark game comes out in the future.
And the point is that that isn’t an acceptable answer, and shouldn’t be treated as one. In no other industry, no other business, is “its not a priority.” an acceptable response to missing a deadline.
I do hobby work that often involves buying made-to-order items. If I ordered things from a supplier and one of the items needed to be delayed to a time period, and if they missed that, told me they were still working on it, and then after months of waiting they just told me “its not a priority.” I’d be absolutely livid. I doubt anyone anywhere wouldn’t be at least frustrated and upset.
Just because Fatshark is a video game company does not magically make this an acceptable response to missing a stated deadline.
It’s pretty standard corpo speak. It’s not missing a deadline either, “not a priority” means it’s not being worked on.
They’re telling you that the gamemode you want, and bought the game based on, is not being worked on. If your reaction to that is shaking them by the shoulders and going “WHY WON’T YOU TELL ME THE STATUS OF THE GAMEMODE?” then you have an unhealthy amount of faith in them.
If that isn’t a conclusion to you, your problem is with the tone. If your problem is with the tone then there’s no solution to this either. This is the tone they pick with you. Vote with your wallet going forward
So, idk who you work for, but if they’ll happily accept “wasn’t a priority” with no further clarification when you don’t complete an assigned task then you’re working for the one company in the world that thinks that’s acceptable. Hell, I bet if Strawhat told her boss that something she said she’d get done for them “wasn’t a priority” and never explained more she’d be fired faster than I could ask where Solo Mode was.
I’d also like to emphasize that “not a priority” is not definitive like “it’s canceled” or “it’s coming next week” are. “Not a priority” by definition means “there are more important things to work on at this time”. Priorities change, everyone understands that, so why is it that when we’re asking Fatshark for an update on Solo Mode to see where it lies in the priority queue after we were given two new game modes, that were developed from the ground up and that no one asked for (and when we have an entire book full of things people have been asking for they completely ignored), people come in and say “not a priority means it’s not coming!”?
Fatshark CMs dont work for us. They didn’t aim that at their superiors, it was a front facing PR statement.
By all means though, bury your head in the sand then, it’s not really my concern. They gave an answer, it’s corpospeak, it says it’s “no longer a priority”. Just because you don’t like the answer (I don’t either) doesn’t mean it wasn’t an answer. It’s pretty clear. It means it’s not planned or worked on. Sure, plans can change, but they told you “yes we promised this but we aren’t planning on adding it atm”. Is that not an answer?
If you want to know WHY it got dropped, good luck getting them to elaborate on something that they only stand to lose from. Whatever reason they could give will be negative PR. You can’t force them to selfharm even if you deserve an answer.
Your literal sole course of action is when making future purchases or thinking of it, considering what sort of company this is first. That’s really what I’m telling you. If you don’t like the way they treat you, stop throwing money their way.
Some of that, though its really a general problem with humans. As a group we tend to ignore or actively resist any indication of problems, unless they directly and immediatly affect us, until the whole situation is so bad that it literally affects everyone. Personally and right now. Just ask a contractor how many of their jobs result from what would have been a one-day fix being put off until it becomes a “fix this or we condemn the building”. Heck the USA has been infamously terrible throughout its history for just that sort of “it will all work out” magical thinking as well as actively attacking the people who pointed out the issues.
Now does Obesetuna have that issue? Obviously. Along with a huge helping of egomania. Can the situation be fixed? No. Its like getting someone with sociopathy to accept treatment - the biggest hurdle is that they literally see nothing wrong with their behavior, instead seeing everyone else as the problem. And like a narcissist being forced into treatment, once the proverbial gun to the head is removed they revert right back to their old ways. In the same way that Fatshark only “improved” when Darktides Steam ratings had tanked into the overwhelmingly negative. Then once said said ratings were back into the “mixed” range they went right back to stony silence and letting their white knights/ shills/ sock puppets handle policing the forum.
Fixing this game is going to require fixing the entire studio. Something that won’t happen without a massive overhaul at the top then working down. Which I doubt we will ever see.
The CMs don’t, no. But as the liason between the customer and the company: they’re the only people we can interface with and the company has a responsibility to the customer to provide clear information on the status of the product they’re providing.
I work in an industry where my company is contracted either by the government or another company to complete a task. We refer to them as our “Customers”, as they’re coming to us and paying us for a product. We would never tell one of our Customers that we only did 80% of the work they paid us to do because it “wasn’t a priority” without clear information as to what happened. I’m in a CM style position where I’m the liason between the program/technical teams and the Customer. I’ve been in Strawhat’s position where I’m expressing “they’re asking where X is” and having to relay that information to the Customer, and I’ve had to press the technical team with “that’s not good enough” (though sometimes the information is classified at which point they’ll go through secure channels around me as I don’t have the “need to know”) because they weren’t giving clear enough information, and when pressed by the Customer for more information than what was provided, my company doesn’t just pretend there’s no complaints and ignore the Customer for a year and a half.
In an ideal world maybe. A CM is getting paid by Fatshark, not by you. I think it’s far more realistic that their more pressing concern is not upsetting their superiors by acting out of order.
Ask yourself, could any of the CMs even get the green light to provide info on why the solo mode is not in the works given that it’s surely just negative PR in effect? Even if you assume they could somehow leak the info through, I think that would have consequences.
Really just employ occams razor.
It’s reasonable to assume that the CMs did ask devs to explain the absence of solo mode, given how often concern is voiced. We can assume they did bring it up. (We know this basically for a fact since they said it’s no longer a priority, so exchange happened)
If we assume they did bring it up and ask for explanations, it’s most reasonable to assume they got answers they can’t share, for various reasons outlined above. We can assume they can’t share a detailed explanation.
If we assume they can’t share the explanations, it’s reasonable to assume they’re not something we would like to hear. I’ll leave this part up to your imagination. No point speculating and we’re leaving the realm of truly reasonable assumptions if we do.
Given all these reasonable assumptions, what question remains? The reason we’re not getting an answer is in all likelihood that the answer is “it’s on ice, if we change our minds it’ll be later, deal with it”. This is your answer.
In my mind, that concludes the question. What you want is public humiliation. They’re not going to publicly humiliate themselves, grow up. That isn’t how the world works. When the company benefits from saying nothing, they’ll say nothing, but you still know why they’re saying nothing.
You know how the benefit from saying nothing stops? The way to change this calculation? When the sales seal up as a result. Without accusing you, ask yourself how many cosmetics you bought, and ask yourself wether you’re going to pre-order their next game with this treatment in mind. If you do buy and do plan to buy, then you’re making sure they’re getting away with saying nothing. I’m not childish enough to suggest a boycott, but to consider the impact each person has.
I expect exactly that.
But I ask them to honor their promises. It was clear that there would be a solo game mode. We had to be patient to get a full crafting system (march if I remember well) and a lot more time to get something we all enjoy (crafting update).
I think that we have been patient especially when you consider that there is absolutely NO UPDATE on this topic. And tbh, to permits us to go solo they just need to change the limit to 2+ for private party. They let us go private and we can play solo.
To allow us to use our bots, I really would like a true solo game mode and with the possibility to choose a loadout between all our characters. About the code, they could use what was made by the mod that allow that in the solo mod.
But really, if this game had the same possibilities of the solo mode, I would be happy. I don’t even need that they make them better. I use my 2 zealots with a martyr build, a bolter, and a combat axe, the bots are pretty good.
Yeah by all means I think it’s good to keep a grudge over it, and have it in the book of grudges, and to keep bringing up solo mode as a promise that was not honored. I just don’t agree with the premise that they’re being radio silent about it. They basically told us to buzz off. I’m not defending them, but that should make you more angry than them saying nothing lol.
Ball is in our court, not theirs.
You seem to think I have an issue with the CMs specifically and are focusing on that. Nothing I’ve said has been targetting the CMs, they can only share what they’ve been authorized to share after all. My issue is that Fatshark, the company, is not sharing information that should be shared with the consumer. Also, who do you think pays Fatshark to pay the CMs? It’s not God, The Giving Tree, or The Emperor of Mankind, or a magical money box. It’s the consumers and investors, and no one would invest in an already established company with no consumers, as they wouldn’t get a return on their investment.
It wouldn’t be public humiliation to give something like:
"We want to take a moment to address the community regarding the anticipated Solo Mode feature. We sincerely apologize for the lack of updates and information surrounding its development. While we recognize that Solo Mode is a promised feature, it was temporarily sidelined as we prioritized higher-impact tasks to enhance the overall user experience.
We are pleased to share that we are now in a strong position to refocus our efforts, and we expect development on Solo Mode to resume this quarter. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work to bring this exciting feature to life. Thank you for your continued support!
For further updates, please stay tuned to our official channels."
Literally written by AI to prove that even an unthinking/unfeeling algorithm can write something thats not “humiliating”, and just in case solo mode still isn’t being worked on:
"We want to take a moment to address our community regarding the anticipated Solo Mode feature. We sincerely apologize for the lack of updates and information surrounding its development. While we recognize that Solo Mode is a promised feature, it has been temporarily sidelined as we prioritize higher-impact tasks to enhance the overall user experience.
At this time, we are not actively working on Solo Mode, but we want to assure you that it remains on our roadmap. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we navigate our current priorities. We are committed to keeping you informed and will provide updates as soon as we have more information to share.
Thank you for your continued support!"
Such humiliation!
Edit: and the longer we go without an explanation, the worse any response is going to feel. “I’m sorry for breaking your toy” is a lot more impactful when said the day-of or day-after than after 15 years of pretending you didn’t break your friends toy.
