Feedback - Request for a Roadmap

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Hello FatShark, @FatsharkCatfish ,

While I’d like to summarize and categorize the multitude of grievances often aired on this forum, I believe there’s no need - a quick glance of the popular topics should suffice for all but the most obtuse reader.
Instead, I’d rather point this thread in a different direction and from a different perspective.

Please consider this formal feedback from a customer: the amount and quality of your communications towards your community is severely lacking. We are fans of your games and the franchise they’re based on, but on this forum we are primarily consumers of your product. As such, I personally feel dissatisfied with how you handle feedback - as in, you seem to ignore and avoid it.
So, I’d like to suggest the following improvements: firstly, an increase in Community Polls. We’ve had one (so far as I know, I could’ve missed some - feel free to point me to any others) questionnaire in six months. This is neither reflective of the change of direction you informed us of post-launch, nor is it conductive of any meaningful feedback.
Secondly, I’d suggest and strongly stand by a Roadmap. It’s borderline insulting, and at least disrespectful to us, your customers, that a game touted to be Live Service has no semblance of a communicated plan for development. I’m honestly tired of speculations on “what FS are working on”, and believe that for this kind of game a Roadmap should be mandatory. I’d like to have an idea of when and what to expect from you, the producers of the product I’ve chosen to spend my money and attention on. As producers, I think it’d be common decency to show respect for our time in such a way.

I’ve tagged @FatsharkCatfish, since I recognize her as the Community Manager for DT. If there are others, please feel free to @ them as well. As stated above, I don’t mean to vent with this post (I’ve responded to and created plenty of topics for that). This is from a well paying customer and I expect a response to my above requests in this thread.

For all the backlash and negativity surrounding the game and this community, I’d enjoy nothing more than to see this game thrive. With that, I look forward to any response you may have.

Sincerely,

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Would be nice but how far into it do you think they’d get before they have to do a “Hey, looks like we have to readjust the entire road map for mysterious reasons, sorry!” Comms link?

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“Due to unspecified technical difficulties we will be unable to post the new updated roadmap for a month!”

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Sticking to what’s been presented as the plan/path forward is on FS. It would amount to some accountability, instead of what we have now.

In this, I think a Roadmap is actually an expected element of the game.

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Hello, @FatsharkCatfish

In light of the recent patch and the issues that followed, I understand if responding to every loose thread and Discord chat has been challenging.

I’d still appreciate a response to the original topics of this thread. As I said above, if there are any other @s I should add, do let me know. Additionally, if a forum topic is not suitable for such a request, I’ll be more than happy to engage whomever and however is needed.

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Hey,

Thank you for your feedback.
I’m sorry if i’ve given the impression at any point that I don’t see and pass on as much of the feedback as I can. Right now with a lot of the internal discussions i’m not in a position to be able to share the information that players have been requesting. As soon as we are in a position to share anything in this regard, (especially on the major pain points) we will do!

I understand your desire for a player facing roadmap to give some extra clarity and while we may revisit the idea in the future, it is not something we are currently planning on making.
Before enacting a roadmap we need to work on our consistency, and while we are still working on getting the game to a better state a static roadmap doesn’t offer us the flexibility we need to be able to shift priorities as needed. I’ll be sure to raise this with the team though and see what we can do.

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Thanks for the reply, but I’d like to offer up one suggestion: the road map doesn’t need to be static, and the community shouldn’t expect it to be.

What’s important about a roadmap as a communication tool is that gives players a sense of where Fatshark intends to go. If priorities shift or issues come up that require adjusting, delaying, or modifying the roadmap, the community will be understanding of that, so long as there is a communication explaining the change.

The key in managing this is being proactive in shifting the roadmap as early as you think something might need to change, not waiting until the day or week before a milestone and pushing it back. Be conservative in the estimates.

So much of the community’s angst and frustration right now is because we have no clue what the actual priorities are for the game’s future. So we speculate and end up assuming the worst - which is damaging both to the community and to Fatshark’s brand.

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"So the team has been looking at the feedback and giving it serious thought. We’re discussing what we’ve read and how to solve it, what the priorities are, and how we’re moving forward with those priorities.

We genuinely want a game players can be happy with, and know there are pain points; so we’re sitting and figuring out which community-flagged points we should focus on solving. These discussions take a bit of time, so with everyone back in; we’ve been heads down focusing on these points and their solves."

This is your predecessor, six months ago.

At some point you can’t just keep saying you’re talking about things internally and unfortunately you aren’t ready to share anything yet.

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Imagine if they gasp EXPLAINED WHAT THE PAIN POINTS ARE??? Imagine if we werent left screaming into the void about the biggest gripes with the game and they at least let us know they’re working on a solution for said gripes

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Yeah, they’re so cagey that they won’t even say what they’re talking about internally. Just ‘pain points’. They give out no actual information, and make no statements that would count for anything or could even begin to be seen as letting us know what direction things are going in.

The mismanagement on display is truly record-breaking.

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Thank you, @FatsharkCatfish ,

You are yet to disappoint in the way you handle your role. I’m completely certain you do what you can with the space you’re allowed to operate in.

I accept the reality of the roadmap, as shown in your response, and can put this idea to rest. I can’t rightly express how helpful it is to know what the teams in FS are currently focused on, allowing us to correct our own expectations and find an approach to the game that works for us individually.

Can you also expand upon the idea of additional Community Polls, as outlined in my op. I feel there’s a great value in those and was left with a good impression from the last one you conducted some months ago.

As several people have already added to this thread: no community-facing communications or information need be static or permanent. I think what’s most needed is a consistent and regular approach, whether it be a roadmap, expanded comms-links, polls or a vetted dev thread.

Keep up your efforts, they are greatly appreciated.

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So in less words:

  1. Fatshark is stuck in a state of uncertainty. And will communicate anything only when it’s certain enough about the thing they can communicate.
  2. Fatshark are improvising constantly and it’s not compatible with a roadmaps.
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So you’re afraid to commit to a roadmap because your office is physically incapable of reaching a deadline?

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Despite the things we learn are quite disheartening - at least we got first meaningful communication in months. That’s the good start :slight_smile: I’m grateful for that.

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I’m actually curious what you found meaningful about Catfish’s post? The first paragraph says, as far as I can tell, nothing. It says… the devs are talking about unspecified things. OK?

The second paragraph just explains that they are unwilling to commit to anything, to plan anything or to let us know their plans at all, therefore no roadmap.

If you found it meaningful I’m happy for you and jealous, because I found nothing of substance, value or significance in that post.

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Catfish’s response is very telling of the culture and experience at Fatshark. Roadmaps don’t need to be handcuffs, they can be a living document that connects with your community so they can understand and support your direction with the game. The fact that we are still getting the nothingburger responses about not being able to commit to anything or not ready to share anything, after 7 months post-launch is really troubling and worrisome about the company’s competency and capability. Good communication is a cornerstone of good business and the current way of doing things only draws frustration and vitriol from your customers.

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Well you said it all. From that post we learned - that we should not expect communications (until their internal situation improves). And current impossibility of commitment.

Before that post we only theorized about that. Now they said it.
It’s something for a start.

So keep expectation as low as possible, and endure trickle of content and changes that they can currently manage to produce if you can. (I can’t temporary - cooling off from game burnout).

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are in any way locks part or internal discussions?

i am referring to as locks:

  • locked resources between characters
  • locked behind rng map modifiers
  • crafting locks on perks and blessings
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I’m sorry if i’ve given the impression at any point that I don’t see and pass on as much of the feedback as I can. Right now with a lot of the internal discussions i’m not in a position to be able to share the information that players have been requesting. As soon as we are in a position to share anything in this regard, (especially on the major pain points) we will do!

I understand your desire for a player facing roadmap to give some extra clarity and while we may revisit the idea in the future, it is not something we are currently planning on making.
Before enacting a roadmap we need to work on our consistency, and while we are still working on getting the game to a better state a static roadmap doesn’t offer us the flexibility we need to be able to shift priorities as needed. I’ll be sure to raise this with the team though and see what we can do.

Or in few simple words:

  • Cannot share anything
  • Cannot share roadmap because we don’t have any
  • Having a roadmap does not allow us to bait & switch

Apparently whole fatshark development team never heard words such as “Agile development”, “Sprint” or “Backlog”.

image

Because its so hard to publish something like this and let us know if something changes, rather do a silent bait & switch.

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image1000×1942 313 KB

EDIT: Or publish something like this. Jesus there are tools to help you manage your milestones in the roadmap. Just make a freaking Trello account FFS.

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I think people at FS are still traumatised by the PvP and other event they announced for Vtide and were never able to conduct (and you can still regularly find people pointing that out after five years so I can’t fully blame them on this). But if we can’t get a roadmap I would at the very least appreciate “developper com” where one of the dev would do a com link to speak about the studio mentality and priority for the month to come.

“The lock were introduce to push people into trying apparently sub optimal build. But the frustration from them seems to overcome the interest. we are working on this but haven’t decided yet on a change that match with everyone vision of the game and its weapon versatility. In the meantime we are working on the next career and we hope to tell you more about it in two week”

isn’t too much of a commitement but it would feel great and more honnest I think

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