Well From has yet to release a steaming pile of broken sht, whilst promising the world like Fatshark did, to lose that much trust. Twice, mind you. Vermintide 2’s release wasn’t exactly rosy either.
Thrice, if you want to count the burning pile of trash that was Winds of Magic
Bit revisionist. Hedge had a history of getting burned by accidentally throwing more fuel on to raging fires long before Darktide was a thing. Not the most desirable trait in a community manager, no matter how nice a person they are.
Edit: It occurred to me that I should specify I have no particular antipathy or animosity towards Hedge. All of my, limited, personal interactions with him were perfectly amicable. But since the man isn’t literally dead afaik I don’t feel the need to pretend he was a perfect angel either.
What’s really hilarious is associating Fatshark the company, with transparency and honesty.
More than anything else what has bitten the studio on the ass is being repeatedly unable to deliver new products and content at acceptable levels of quality in an acceptable timeframe.
You can either communicate often and screw up from time to time, or you can remain silent and release polished fun products.
You cannot remain totally silent while constantly screwing up on even basic things the players want.
And I find it incredibly annoying that something as consequential as ‘oh yeah we might not get the itemization on the 25th’ has to be communicated by an unpaid discord admin rather than said by any of the people whose job it is to communicate with us. Probably because outright admitting they might not get the update out before summer vacation would crater player numbers even harder than usual.
Meanwhile there’s AH devs on the Helldivers discord speaking their mind and not giving a single damn. It’s a comfortable world when you can just blame others for not communicating the way you want, but it’s not reality. Like I understand CMs INDIVIDUALLY can’t always say what they want, nor can devs, but as a consumer I don’t actually care who’s at fault, I just adjust to the style of communication that comes my way. It’s unfortunate if all the CMs can give is bad info, but I can’t suddenly start treating it like good info just because of the circumstances.
Like for example, the cosmetic store thing:
No they straight up chose to lie. They made up a blatant lie. It’s a choice. If it’s not the CM team that decided to lie it’s some higher up. I’m not blaming you and saying you lied or anyone else who ended up writing it chose to lie but the stone cold fact is that I had a blatant lie directed my way and I don’t appreciate the treatment and I’ll think twice about anything else sent my way. I don’t take it personal but I also adjust my expectations and scrutinize accordingly. This is how most people react to that kind of thing.
If that’s a problem with the system then it’s a problem with the system and not “unlucky wording”, it’s unlucky that someone decided it would be a good idea to make transparent lies if anything. You’re sort of covering for whatever system chose to direct a malicious lie my way by saying it was just poor wording, although I understand it’s not your fault in the first place.
“Worded poorly”. It’s funny how deeply PR speak can infest one’s regular manner of speaking if you get too used to it.
No, I’m just not an overly hostile person.
Truth is hostile now?
No. But your post history is pretty hostile, including bragging about me banning you. 
True but not exactly related to his point, is it?
I’d rather be hostile and honest than nice and tell lies
It’s de-escalating language. There are people who use that type of rhetoric privately and it’s not a bad choice.
Language reveals intent. Outspoken critics who are more conflict-friendly will also push forthcoming and direct language.
People who debate in a subtle way often choose more indirect language.
Both are legitimate ways of communication, but at worst the direct approach feels aggressive, while the other approach can appear withdrawn or emotionally detached from the subject matter.
On the upside, the direct approach can appear involved and spear-heading new thoughts. The more subtle approach can be seen as diplomatic or caring.
No that is the point. Hostile and critique are not mutually exclusive.
You seem to be laboring under a false dichotomy.
The reality of the situation is that even world class, gold star, top of the line communication from a dedicated team of CMs would not be enough to fix things. It would be so much wasted effort because CMs with nothing meaningful to report on, due to glacial development pace, would not be able to make the state of the game any less frustrating.
Would it be better if they said things regularly? Yes, it would at least feel like somebody gives a toss.
Would people cut them more slack if they peeled back the curtains and showed us work in progress stuff like some other studios do? Maybe. Though with Fatsharks rep and the general stare if the community: probably not that much.
Would any of it be worth the cost of spending the time producing that communication and the inevitable backlash/headaches/further content delays it would cause? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Would you rather the poor wording of the announcement hadn’t been elaborated on? You are kinda ****ing on Fatshark for doing the exact thing you just said you wanted them to do.
As usual there to explain the obvious no one has asked for. I didn’t ask for a semantic explanation. We all know the intents and purposes of different speech. I asked why propagating false statements is tried to be spun as being ‘nice’.
I’m annoyed because it’s not a CM, or an announcement, or an official effort made to clarify language that states to most people that the itemization would come on the 25th. Unless Fatshark is unable to speak English clearly - which is not the case - they should know how their words would be receieved, and they have not made the effort to clarify it in a clear and transparent way - having some random unpaid Discord moderator say something is not sufficient.
We’ve gotten more communication and transparency from a former employee and a Discord moderator in the past two days than we have from the people whose actual job it is to tell us things, and that’s karking disgraceful.
Yeah this one I understand, to be honest. Having been on the other side, I would take the announcement at face value and take they’re working on it, and not assign any date to it. Otherwise it’s a real easy way to upset people’s expectations. Fatshark will generally only give dates when they’re ready.
So new weapons and such: 25th
Itemization: TBD
^ This is how I would take it until official comms state otherwise (as in, from a CM).
This really does need to be emphasized.
Fatshark - maybe not the CMs, but absolutely Fatshark the company - chose to lie repeatedly to its consumers, both directly (‘we feel multiple pages would be a bad user experience’) and by omission (‘Solo mode is totally coming out in December guys’).
They deserve, as a company, every ounce of hostility from the players. They chose to lie to us repeatedly and consistently, and have continued doing so. They burned trust a long time ago and the only way that’s getting fixed is if they demonstrate actual care to the player base, profit be damned.
EDIT: To elaborate: Fatshark could fix its PR problems and get players back by killing off the most blatantly greedy stuff like the FOMO store, making Aquilas earnable, pushing out more balance and content updates alongside crafting, and adding actual communication that doesn’t insult the intelligence of its players or fail to address their problems.
These are not impossible tasks. Other studios, of similar size and smaller, achieve these things. It is a deliberate choice by the company that we have the situation we have now. It will be a deliberate choice of the company that rectifies it.
Truth hurts.
Ok. So will you be happy if the wording on the official post is changed next week for clairification? Because @Hank_jw didn’t post until well after the time when Fatshark employees would have left the office. If he hadn’t stepped in and stuck his neck out we would be in the dark about what was likely meant for at least the rest of the weekend.
Now this I’ll largely agree with. It feels very silly. I’m glad that my bile towards Fatshark has receeded enough that I just find it absolutely hilarious.
Honestly I half expected it was something left in by mistake. Nevertheless, I do find it interesting that earlier on in the thread @Hank_jw was a play tester who had some sort of actual authority over the direction of Darktide, but now he has been demoted to “some random unpaid Discord moderator.” 
Play testers give feedback but they have no control how devs action or don’t action on that feedback, if that makes sense.
Yes, I wasn’t trying to say that. It was said elsewhere in the thread.
Edit: Aw, thread closed. What a pity. Thanks for all of the fun @Exanimia @Hank_jw & @Incandescent