No, it’s because the game rewards them for their time by spitting in their face with RNG BS.
Where as HD2 rewards players for their time and effort with being able to earn in game currency to buy premium weapons, skins and everything else they want.
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It makes you wonder though. When the developers do say stuff, how much of it is out touch, and has to be filtered in a way that won’t upset the community. For example, the developer who told Hedge to say: ‘This isn’t Call of Duty’ or ‘Muh Design Intent’.
Hedge is out of the picture but that developer who gave us awful systems like Crafting is still very much employed at Fatshark and is probably pushing against any significant reworks - as is evidenced by Fatshark dragging its feet in those areas. I feel like the CMs are kind of in a weird position where the news they get from developer is not necessarily things that the community would want to hear.
This is all just my personal interpretation of the events of course.
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You’re right of course. It’s not like the CMs tell the suits what to do. They can bring in feedback till the cows come home, but if there’s a suit stomping his feet saying “my precious Design Intent! My precious gacha RNG retention system!” there’s not a whole lot they can do.
Of course the honorable thing would be for FS to come out and say yeah, we’ve designed a horrific system because we think it will retain players and we’re not changing it, but of course they won’t do that. They just go quiet and hope it blows over. Which it doesn’t, and they lose most of their players.
Yet there’s still a suit or more stomping their feet, thinking they’re right, the customers are wrong. It pretty much has to be that, otherwise crafting would have been fixed ASAP after release, when it was obvious 95% of the players weren’t sticking around.
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I think the main reason they didn’t address anything after release was likely because they were probably contractually obligated to put out that xbox port asap. I know other devs have contracts like that with microsoft relating to gamespass.
I really feel with the devs and designers in some way.
First of all the game was completely undercooked on release and not ready yet even after year long delays. If it was up to the devs themselves surely they wanted to delay it more. Yet eventually financial interests said “sod it, release it now no matter what” which is what usually happens and that’s what they did. Game releases and it’s CLEARLY not finished.
Then they couldn’t even fix it up majorly post release due to microsoft contracts.
Then the xbox port is over with (I guarantee they had severe complications, it took extremely long) and they lost most players so by now development has been scaled down. So now the updates are slow and far between and relatively small in scale.
Not specifically trying to say it wasn’t their fault, just that the financial interests aspect of the company really really kneecapped Darktide. It’s unfortunate that game dev has become such a severely profit oriented business nowadays. Can’t blame a company for aiming for the maximum amount of profit of course but it still sucks from a hobbyist angle
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Well yes, everything was on fire after release. It was completely unfinished and also completely broken, being unplayable for huge amounts of people (including me). And yes they had an xbox port to make.
But in any reasonable and sensible world the crafting should have come with the xbox release, or right after it. As soon as possible. That someone, somewhere, thought the penance trash update was more important than crafting is incredibly telling.
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I don’t understand why this would be the reason we got penances before crafting. The only thread I can follow to that is if they had some reason to believe crafting would have less of a potential impact on player numbers than the penances.
I don’t think that’s a completely unreasonable thought, but who knows.
It really seems more likely to me that the crafting rework is substantial (like the talent trees rework) and taking longer than the penances system. There surely must be enough devs on the project to have multiple teams working on different things. And I would hope FS know how beneficial it would be for them to stick the landing on crafting.
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One can only hope you are right. The alternative is very bleak indeed.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the talent tree rework has given me tons of enjoyment and hope for future system improvements!
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This needs to be stickied to Darktide forums for all the flak that FS gets for various reasons.
One possible reason is that there aren’t enough people voicing discontent about it. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t a demographic. I’d like to see the justification(s).
I think that would honestly put a lot of animosity to rest. Players can disagree with the justification, but at least they wouldn’t have any leg to stand on with “Fatshark doesn’t care” “Fatshark this” “Fatshark that” where it’s just an all you can throw diss fest while still be based on subjective speculation at best.
It sounds to me like they heard you on the last part. And have now adjusted to reflect that. I’m still reading to catch up, but.
Given the choice which would you rather have?
A):
Even when she was communicating, it was… carefully curated statements that said absolutely nothing. That might be the ‘right’ way to do it, given the devs don’t allow the CMs to say anything at all… But to anyone paying attention and actually reading, it can feel pretty condescending when someone tries to give the impression they’re saying something, but is in fact saying nothing at all.
or B?
There’s zero communication happening at the moment though, and it’s been that way for… a really long time.
Maaan. You really haven’t been around these forums, have you.
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If it were me, I would be more careful when thinking about things like this. Because based on one observational fact, you’re building a narrative that is just conjecture. A sort of “if this, therefore that.” Or, a post hoc ergo propter hoc. So, your second and third paragraphs are focusing on the conclusive thought of paragraph 1. (At least that’s what I think I’m seeing.) This is why we should instead of pushing for crafting redesigns, or game designs, push for more transparency? Not trying to stir the pot here, but trying to redirect the angst into something more constructive (by constructive, I mean something that is more likely to yield results.)
We’ve been down that road. Well traveled, no one’s minds changed anyone’s.
Everything on this forum is conjecture, because, as the point of this entire thread is, Fatshark has zero communication and there is zero transparency into any of their plans or thought processes.
For instance you’re also making a conjecture when you say my conjecture is based on one observational fact. A conjecture you probably know is wrong, if you have actually been on this forums for a while.
Shall I break it down for you, and for your GPT?
They claimed the game would not have RNG, even talked about how RNG was bad, then put in as much RNG as possible. This is an obvious bait and switch move, a transparent attempt to make it seem like they were doing something good, when they were in fact doing something really bad.
After thousands of instances of crafting feedback from these forums, reddit, discord, influencer and partnered YouTube videos, articles on renowned review sites and Steam reviews… when it came time for ‘crafting changes’ the CM felt the need to say changes are coming, but you’re not going to like them.
It is therefore incredibly reasonable conjecture that someone, one or multiples, of suits at Fatshark looked at all of that feedback, from a great many sources, and said “Nah. I want RNG.”
If you have even remotely looked into the ‘player retention psychology’ that some games and some devs use, you will also know that the system in Darktide is transparently one of those systems, where it is deliberately anti fun in a (in this case) failed attempt to make people play longer.
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Darktide could have been something so much greater than it is, and Fatshark’s insistence on keeping quiet and leaving us in the dark is part of that problem.
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Yet there seems to be no thread or dedicated petition to demand more communication in these forums which are said to be the best place to reach them, according to Reddit and their Discord.
I see, I should have included what context I was working from.
What makes you think this was GPT? I’ve been responding to you without any tools. I have said in the past that I use chat GPT in some responses. Can you not tell the difference? Your response sounds hostile.
Not to dismiss the angst that this would cause you or others, but as I’ve said before. It’s over. It’s done. Why are you still dwelling on something you can no longer change? And, as others have pointed out, not likely to change barring this upcoming craft “rework” (whatever that means.)
It’s certainly a possibility. I can understand why cynicism would come into play. However, I like to give the benefit of the doubt; innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Have we ruled out that they needed to slap on a quick system because of deadlines that were needed to be met? Evidenced by the extremely unpolished, rocky, glitchy launch it had? And since, it’s been a slow recovery process since? Given that, how easy is it to swap out entire segments of coding/development that goes into these systems and interacts with others, with a completely new system? We could armchair it, and guess, but I really don’t know the answer. It could be perceived as easy, but nothing is as ever as it seems, is my point.
Deliberate? Yes. I mean, you don’t code a system like this by accident. Anti-fun? Maybe for you. I mean, if we’re using absolution statements, failed is a bit strong. Because plenty of people still play it and that base has remained consistent, despite its small number.
So my question is this: While many people are upset at the lack of communication, have we tried to ask FS what goals can be made together between the community and studio that brings the desired level of transparency? Make an itemized list?
Under context, I see a forum thread for Crafting. I see one for Mourningstar upgrades, but I do not see one as focused, with nearly as much attention as the other two forums, as one should be for the express intent to open lines of communication. While there have been some new threads within the past week, nothing is as focused or dedicated with its sole purpose being to negotiate communication.
You should check every thread in the announcements section.
There have been calls for more communication from FS for about a decade at this point. FS has promised try to do better for at least as long. Ignorance is not a basis to make an argument on.
With this attitude no one should ever bring feedback to anything. With this attitude nothing at all, anywhere in the world, would have changed. It’s a kind of defeatist, status quo, there is no hope attitude to life and the world that is beyond all comprehension.
This is not a court of law. Further, if an action is bad enough, and the action is repeated enough times, intent becomes entirely meaningless. If damage is being done it does not matter if the intention was good.
You just said the system could have been put in as a rush job, quite by accident. You used it in your innocent until proven guilty defense.
At some point you have to actually form an opinion and try to stick to it. If you shift the goalposts, hell even shift your entire thesis from discussion point to discussion point you are no longer engaged in worthwhile conversation.
Many people have. In many threads. The forum is filled with examples of communication, from other devs. It is filled with lists, with asks for more dev blogs, for interaction with actual devs. Once again ignorance cannot make the basis for an argument.
What? Even if we ignore your false argument of “I am blind and cannot find any instance of communication being a problem because it doesn’t have a 10.000 post momument thread”, this makes no sense.
What on earth are you talking about. Why would we negotiate for communication with Fatshark? No, seriously. Explain it to me. In detail.
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I’d like to address this point specifically because there seems to be a failure at communication here. I think you misunderstand my point. It’s perfectly acceptable to protest, rant, etc. I’m pretty sure at this point the message has been received. But… It’s been two years now. What do you hope to gain out of this effort that is causing insanity? You’re doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. I could understand doing so for six months. But twenty four? That seems… Like a waste of energy. I’m actually more concerned about the players at this point.
Courts have nothing to do with it. It’s simple logic, something the critics of FS and their rocky launch claim to have. The assumption of guilt leads to bias and unfair judgement. Additionally, these biases can cause more flawed logic based on the faulty conclusion at the start as well as a heavy impact on future discourse. That is, once you finally talk with them, can you guarantee everyone is going to talk with a level head? Why would you submit an employee to abuse? Don’t tell me that it’s their job. Because suffering abuse is not anyone’s job.
I’m not criticizing you or anyone else. I just fundamentally do not understand this line of thinking.
“You just said this isn’t a court of law.” Look, I get it. I don’t have an opinion because I don’t have all the facts. And I can’t form one until I know what went on in there. It’s that simple. I feel that if I developed an extreme opinion without all the facts, that would reflect poorly on my moral compass. I would feel gross.
This forum is my process of elimination in doing everything in my power to exhaust all options, and then I MIGHT have an opinion.
Important contextual information that I"ve already learned is FS was getting death threats.
EDIT: Sorry, wrong forum.