Eons from now many will have crumbled to dust… but not us… Not we Thousand So— err… Strike that from the record.
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Yep. It took Fatshark years to implement bots for weaves and the ability to finally use our weave skins in the base game, so, uh, yeah. Probably going to take them another few years to fix GK’s bugged grim quest for weaves too.
Meanwhile this studio has been working hard to fix performance, address balance issues from community feedback, quality of life changes, etc; all within weeks of Early Access release:
^ this is their second big patch that address community concerns.
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One last thing about this topic and then I’m going to stop talking about it:
I wanted to tell you all a bit about how the playtesting program works because it does consist of a group of people who want the same things for the game that you all do, and it is not a group of yes-men that would e.g. gladly let Fatshark rush a halfbaked itemisation update out the door just because “oh boy content for YouTube!!” Even the people in there that are content creators (I’d say less than half) have a strong sense of obligation to the game and the community and are themselves players first and foremost. Everyone wants this update to be good because we all have to play with the damn thing too.
I know the whole process seems opaque and maybe there’s nothing I can say that will inspire any confidence in here at all, but based on the attitudes of everyone involved, I’m optimistic. We have Fatshark themselves who say that they won’t release the itemisation update on June 25th if it isn’t good enough, and playtesters who are determined to hold them to that if it comes to it. Everybody understands that this is critical and they have to get it right.
See you on the flipside, fellas. 
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You mite be breaking slight nda with that itemisation bit because I dont think they mentioned that anywhere unless I missed it 
The insight is appreciated.
Not your fault one way or the other. It’s Fatshark’s bed. They’ve chosen to farm mushrooms rather than learn how to cultivate their community to foster understanding and trust.
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It’s what Strawhat meant with this bit from the announcement post:
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide releases its next update on June 25, 2024, on PC and Xbox Series X|S. This new update features (but is not limited to):**
- New Mission: explore a derelict Mechanicus research station in Atelium Foundryplex Omega V.
- New Weapons: introducing the iconic Bolt Pistol, Ogryn’s first two-handed weapons, the Pickaxes, Shockmauls and a new double-barrelled Shotgun.
** We are still working on the itemization part of the update as mentioned in the Vision Statement. We are currently in testing and we are working on a dev blog to share with everyone.
Translation: “the itemization part of the update might come with this June 25th content drop, but it might not – it’s currently in testing and needs to pass this before we want to release it.”
I know that this is what it means because I pushed for this information to be included myself, and Fatshark agreed and wanted to be transparent about it as well. I think that, in and of itself, also says something about the current mindset from the people responsible for this update.
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Ah that’s pretty crazy badly phrased then cause it basically reads as “itemization will be a part of the update on the 25th, but we can’t show it yet”. Unfortunately that means chances are good we’re getting the itemization rework in october
appreciate you clearing it up though
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I don’t know man. It’s hard to trust a group of people that none of us have seen on the forums or spoke to in the years most of us have been here since the inception of the Darktide forums; it’s hard to throw blind trust into such a group of people that most of us haven’t interacted with before who’ll be responsible for privately testing a critical core system that has been a major sore point for this community; of course we’re all going to be super critical of this group.
Comes with the territory of hanging out in discord and never setting foot here.
This doesn’t apply to you but some CMs often make the big mistake that their fans will be in multiple channels, Reddit, Discord, Steam, etc. Which really isn’t true. I’ve seen a CM from another studio who automatically assumed fans would be on Reddit. The reality is that a chunk of us pick one place to hang out in and stick to it - for me it was steam for Vermintide 2, and here for Darktide. So I take great caution towards other communities having a huge influence in testing, giving feedback, on something that this community doesn’t even have privilege to.
In an ideal world there’ll be an open beta, like in Versus for Vermintide 2, where anyone, of any community, can sign up, participate, and give feedback without any esoteric requisites.
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Aqshy explained earlier why the GW approval process makes private private testing necessary for unreleased content that is still subject to potential big changes.
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Also another thing to consider: this forum went through a handful of CMs over the years. Hedge, Catfish, Aqshy, that other gal who left shortly, Strawhat, and all of them didn’t really do much to build relations with this community as they constantly left us in the dark and barely communicated to us. Kind of sets the tone when the people responsible for fostering relations barely participate with us.
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i mean the tone was pretty much set by every interaction they had being the community constantly shitting on them for not making fatshark change things to the “public” demands. even though all their social media is visited by maybe 7% of the playerbase, tops.
the forums are less stupid than the discord but like 400% more toxic. reddit’s worse than both though.
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I wonder why 
when they do talk their message get scrutinised and any apparent error is thrown back to their face
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Aw man. The discourse on here is so much more tamer than Steam. If anything, people on these forums have been very restrained in their criticisms.
Also negative feedback kind of comes with the territory of letting people down. You seriously can’t expect people to be nice after burning them multiple times.
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Chicken or the egg? Respect is mutual and someone has to start giving it. Statements like “we think having more than 3 pages of the cosmetic store would uh, CONFUSE people!” are the main reason they enjoy all this scrutiny. People tend to look closely and not trust people who are proven to have lied like that.
There’s other things too. If I was the fatshark CM team and I actually respected the communities concerns and wishes I would answer when they ask where solo mode and bot improvements are, even if the answer is “on the backburner”. They don’t though.
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Man going through the old threads I participated in:
It was an absolute clown fiesta with how Fatshark handled the game’s “Beta” and its launch.
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Well that atmosphere is a direct reaction to FS ignoring feedback and pretty much promising without delivering time and time again. Not to mention all the bait and switching and all the technical issues.
Everyone wanted the game to be great and improve upon vermintide 2. Instead it was a giant step back with a hefty dose of MTX added to the mix.
And despite that a lot of people defend them, hoping they’d fix stuff. Instead they disappeared for months on end leaving the game broken. And that was just the after release period.
And you wonder why people scrutinizes their every word? Gamers are the most stockholm syndromed battered wives. It takes a lot of dev f-ups to get them to this point.
And even then the forums are pretty civil. People still want the game to be great, because the core is indeed special. It’s just that fatshark is so inept you can’t help but get mad at them fumbling literally every single thing.
It’s like watching an amateur driver bump a Ferrari repeatedly into walls and scratch it all up. It hurts to watch.
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Yep. Some people were very patient during “Beta”. Giving feedback, reporting bugs, and holding out. Then the game released and it turns out the “Beta” was actually representative of what the full version was - an incomplete early access product. It, justifiably, made people upset. Throw in that awful interview with the CEO about MTX, FOMO, and monopoly money as well as Hedge’s comments post release and you had a clown fiesta.
Reminds me of that legendary thread that detailed the community sentiment at the time:
^this guy was patient early on, he gave feedback, did bug reports, then became disillusioned post release.
I’m not really sure how someone is supposed to be nice when they give you the time of day by writing feedback, sending bug reports, and being patient with you throughout the process only to then get an awful gaming experience that they, I might add, had to pay for. We’re not testers we’re just players who wanted a good time. Testing a product comes secondary to having fun. Darktide, at the time, failed to deliver on the fun component.
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Agreed!
Darktide is a fantastic game, and Fatshark’s talent is evident throughout the game, however managing the game after release is something Fatshark is unable to handle.
This is my first Fatshark game, so I have no experience with Vermintide 1 & 2, Lead and Gold, or War of the Roses other than watching trailers for them when they were in development, but I can’t understand how a small developer like Ghost Ship Games can produce constant content and seasons for Deep Rock Galactic while the vastly larger studio Fatshark can’t keep up.
I also don’t unserstand why they never talk, including having interviews with content creators to build hype.
How can they justify selling pricey MTX skins when they do not support the game thus do not increase the user base?
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Unfortunately with the FOMO shop and the RNG implementation, signs point towards their business model being hooking a (relatively) low number of whales who will spend absurd amounts of money, rather than appealing to a wider percentage of the playerbase for purchases. It’s straight from the gacha / free to play playbook, and we know Level Infinite from Tencent is deeply involved.
Further, even before Tencent was involved, the company showed signs of going in this direction. No doubt Tencent was a perfect match for the C-suite of Fatshark.
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