Ah seems like the squad appeared in full force. This is going to be fun.
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One can say whatever one wants about HD2. There’s a lot to say about HD2. Regardless, none of what one says about HD2 takes away from any of Darktide’s issues enumerated above. Pointedly, for all the problems HD2 has faced (in particular the PSN disaster), that doesn’t keep it from maintaining an active online playerbase an order of magnitude larger than Darktide’s, with more people playing HD2 even at its slowest than Darktide has seen any day except its initial launch. It’s what my gaming groups have chosen to play over Darktide for months, and this thread was to highlight the issues at the root of that player retention challenge.
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Agreed.
You aren’t wrong.
Of course, not speaking regularly is a choice. As it’s said throughout history itself, inaction is itself an action. However it is important to keep a neutral bias on this as we don’t know their specific reason for not communicating at the times we desire. It’s fine to speculate, but we shouldn’t base conclusions on those speculations, or fall under the pretense of pointing to the correlation and incorrectly labeling it as causation.
It’s also worth noting the promises they have kept. They redesigned the classes for us, gave us more maps, introduced new enemies, new weapons to use (with more reportedly on the way) and implemented a new penance system. Additionally, they revamped our weapon options to allow modification of blessings, fixed our perks, and ensured access to all of them. We can now modify our curios with two perks each. Some of these changes are smaller than others, some have been wishes of the community, and some are quality of life adjustments. Not to mention the balancing efforts made to weapons, class talents, and continuous bug chasing and fixing.
While content release has been slow, the game has consistently moved in the right direction, leading to recent reviews shifting to very positive, even though all reviews are mixed. It’s worth noting that at least 70% of the reviews since last year have been positive. That’s improvement. All of this indicates that they aren’t doing nothing. They are still working on it and are continuing to do so, as evident in the upcoming content drop and the potential update to itemization.
It is clear that content is coming slowly, and we, the players, don’t know why. The fact remains, whether or not we like it, it is coming slow. But it is moving. They have communicated to us before each content drop that the update was coming. To me, this indicates that they are only communicating when they are sure they have something nearly ready to release. It seems they have learned their lesson about promising too early and have consistently avoided bug-ridden releases, barring a couple of minor ones. This is indicative of quality over quantity.
Unless I’m missing something, the board game was developed by Games Workshop and had nothing to do with Fatshark. The way you bring up the boardgame makes it sound like Fatshark was distracted with it. I could be mistaken though.
As for your last paragraph. I would hazard a bet they’re sticking to their guns about secrecy as what I imagine is now company policy. A sort of “better safe than sorry” approach.
Wishing you the best of luck in finding the communication you seek. There’s been many threads on this topic already.
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And it’s a shame that they’ve opted for this route over simply being a bit less opaque.
If there’s been one consistent thread across the various Darktide communities, it’s that a liiittle more communication would go a looong way. We’re a bunch of nerds who love to analyse stuff, use that. If we weren’t dedicated and somewhat idealistic we wouldn’t be here, use that.
Instead we get an emoji crumb trail pertaining to map design, which isn’t a particularly fertile area for theory crafting without more detail to support it. How about showing off some assets instead? That would get the gears pickin’!
I don’t think people are ignoring the wins either — you can see positive sentiment across almost every thread. And the highest praise is that we’re still here.
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Fatshark,
We need to continue this discussion it seems.
This is not communicating the value of your updates to users.
This is not building hype.
This is not informing users about the new features of your product.
This is someone trying to look cute on Twitter while fundamentally failing to accomplish the functions of their role in generating interest in your product.
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No, but it’s cheap to have a random intern post an emoji once a week.
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At least we know they’re still alive.
But what if it were Abominable Intelligence?
Big news in 4 person coop shooters today.
Deep Rock Galactic’s June content patch (roadmapped some time ago and constantly discussed and hyped):
New mission
New difficulty level
Multiple new enemies (not just one)
New weapon overclocks (sorta like DT blessings) for every weapon.
An entire tree of cosmetics to grind through.
DLSS3 Integration
Tons of cosemtics/emotes/dances/etc.
–
Helldivers 2 update (while they’re slated to slow after this, they’ve been dropping releases every two weeks since Feb) delivered with extensive community interaction:
New warbond with new gear and weapons
Rebalanced two dozen existing weapons/abilties
Rebalanced enemies, particularly heavily armored ones, and added a new big guy
Improved recoil stances
Reworking/removal of strongly disliked mission modifiers
Added invite-only lobbies
Plants and vegetation now reduce player detectibility if taking cover in them
Tons of bug fixes.
–
Result:
Deeprock Galactic right this moment has a bit over 40,000 people playing, HD2 over 80,000. Darktide has…~3,700
The spikes in both of these games outmatch even the bump Patch 13 gave Darktide with the new talent tree system, with online players peaking at a bit over 33k for a brief day. Will bolt pistols and a single new mission bring anything like this interest to Darktide? I don’t think it’s terribly controversial to suspect not.
Fatshark, your competition is showing the way both in terms of communication and content, and isn’t going to close that distance.
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can you guys stop posting cope threads? you shoulda figured out by now darktide is not being run the way those games are.
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That’s because their competition actually cares. Whatever bits of Fatshark actually gave a darn are apparently absent or unable to communicate about the state of their game, while the executives, whether Fatshark or imposed by Tencent, demand more and more player-hostile mechanics.
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You’re free to not read or contribute to them, nobody is forcing you to interact with such discussions.
you shoulda figured out by now darktide is not being run the way those games are.
Yeah, that’s the fundamental problem we’re trying to highlight here.
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I don’t get how ‘Darktide isn’t being run like these more successful games’ is a debate-ender.
Like…what do we get as benefits from a lack of communication and content? It’s certainly not polished, bug-free experiences. It’s definitely not things the community wants being delivered honed to perfection.
Darktide is being run badly and it isn’t benefiting the game or the community.
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You know… I figured the map was actually long done, since they put a date on it. I figured Fatshark is so wary of constantly screwing up, that they wouldn’t announce anything unless it was actually already finished.
But then… a tiny video showing tiny portions of the map… then emojis (???) and nothing else. Zilch. Zip. Nada. Dev Blogs still not here.
I’m starting to think the map wasn’t actually finished, and now they’re struggling to get it done for the 25th, let alone the item update.
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Gotta agree.
I now doubt whether or not the update will even include the things they say it will.
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Also let’s not forget to never hope for anything. In the past when they have said “the update will contain, AMONG OTHER THINGS!!! XYZ” then the update contained XYZ and some bugfixes or minor balancing. They weren’t like holding back weapons to surprise us with or anything.
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puts on conspiracy hat
They’ve actually delayed the shop rotation so the tiny bugfixes can be removed and repackaged for the new map so they can claim that they actually did something!
takes off conspiracy hat
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Get ready for Secrets of the Machine God part one
I pointed this out a bit ago and lets say GW got really unhappy and said “No more wip updates, you can only post things that are actually done”. Lets say their big reveal that was supposed to be at skulls was actually content that wouldn’t have really been done till late September or even October.
If they are really sticking to that “you can only show complete content” mantra i don’t got a lot of hope for what’s upcoming, this is especially with the FS summer vacation coming up shortly after that so if anything does get released then good luck getting it fixed any time before September or even November.
Edit: Map aside I actually think it’s even weirder out that we have heard like no extra details and not even a screenshot of the weapons either actually? You would think that if you make a big deal about teasing new weapons you would want to like, show them off, at all? This is especially after missing the window at the skulls event.
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I mean…
It’s blatantly false that GW forbids anyone from showing unfinished stuff.
There have been plenty of PTS servers for Warhammer games.
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