QUESTION 1:
Why does Fatshark want to completely bury this game?
QUESTION 2:
Why is the character progression system so weak?
QUESTION 3:
Why the crafting system is so poorly designed?
I played this game 473 hours! My last session was in 19 FEB 2023.
I was watching my friend play today. It’s worse than I thought.
95% of my friends have abandoned this game. It’s worth considering. Nothing happens without a reason.
Can you explain what you mean by this? Sure their post-launch support certainly hasn’t been amazing, especially in the vein of a Live Service GaaS or whatever, but I’m not sure if they’re trying to “bury it.” There are still forums, discord, offical reddit, servers are still up, still purchasable, and semi-consistent communication all point that at least on some level they’re not seeking to abandon the title at the moment.
Speculation on my end, but since we know FS scrapped and restarted development of Darktide at least once, and with all of the different systems currently in the game I believe that DT was planned to be a more MMORPG type game, with the hub, bounties, better skill trees (Remember them saying that the archetypes are way more expansive than VT 2 careers, even though they clearly aren’t?) and loot to coincide with that.
While lots of people will say to artificially inflate playtime, and that might be part of it, I have a different theory. FS has said they were surprised by the amount of time people played VT 2, so I believe they wanted to create a system where you can keep experiencing late game progression even after lots of playtime. In practice this failed, as it was done in a questionable way, but I do believe there were good intentions behind it.
I think what they’re saying is that FS seems to do the wrong thing every time they try something.
Their dreams were bigger than their wallet, would be my guess. It’s obvious that this system is just a reskin of VT2’s, which is fine, really, but the early dev talk did make it sound like they wanted to do something more.
Same as above, most likely. They’ve said they’ve had to redesign it all at least once and they didn’t even have the current version complete at launch. What we’re working with now was obviously a last-minute change, and those never really go so well.
If this is true, it shows a massive brainfart on the part of the devs. It might be true that people wanted more late game progression in VT2, but the fact that people kept playing for hundreds+ of hours after the gear progression nearly ceased entirely should’ve hinted that gear grinding isn’t what people were playing for.
My guess is that we will see actual development after the console release.
Answer 1:
Error 3001
Answer 2:
Error 3001
Answer 3:
Error 4008
Error 3001
And would that be in any way uncharacteristic at this point?
Basically chose to try new stuff, some didn’t work, so they have been working on stability and fixing stuff instead of introducing QoL and content.
Same thing happened to VT1 and 2, so the game will survive.
Same way VT2 does it, the narrative/cinematic when leveling are quite bad, but they aren’t really needed anyway
Because they don’t really care about the crafting.
In short, the game as we have seen in since Mid December was in life support, next patch will show if life support will continue or if we will start to see Live Service
I have a few counter-questions for you.
Question 1:
Why are your questions so inflammatory?
Question 2:
Why are you claiming the character progression to be weak, when the forum is full of people bemoaning the “slow progression”? Sounds to me like the progression system is TOO strong for many to handle.
Question 3:
Why can’t you accept a few simple rerolls in Darktide, but easily accept hundreds of random drops in other looter shooters, that are by the way completely unmodifiable?
Game is already buried and everyone knows what they need to do to dig it out of tbe ground.
Its not even that much to dig it out of the ground but they are just letting it rot for no reason.
5k active players every single day is not buried, my good sir.
the worst part is
even if this game eventually becomes amazing, it’s left a stain on fatshark’s reputation
and on the perceived viability of 40k ganes
Like VT1/2 did ?
i really don’t get how V1 gets a bad rep, the release was quite solid
I think this is because other looter shooters have more to offer and are better balanced in comparison to DarkTide’s crafting system. Destiny 2 has it’s god rolls and it’s trash rolls but even having 3/5 perks you want is fine as long as you play competently. Playstyle is emphasized more on Class, Choice of Exotic Armor, and Abilities and Breakpoints aren’t that necessary to be concerned about unless you play PvP.
40k fans were waiting for THE 40K FPS game that would take the community by storm. The fact that DT had a heavy emphasis on Melee/Range Hybrid combat was the clincher for many. I guess this one just missed. I for one was hoping that FatShark would learn from their mistakes and not repeat them from the Vermintide 2 days.
You’re joking, that is 5.5 hours a day, if played from release until the the 19 of FEB.
What are your expectations? 8 hours a day so you can also claim benefits?
And you watch others play the game on top of that?
I know people hate these posts pointing out game time but I love them.
FatSharks development of this game is literally this:
Vermintide 2 kept 4 thousand more players over the course of a year than Darktide has 6 months after release.
No, not if you compare the same time windows right after post-launch.
Vermintide 2 plateaued at rougly 2.5k players a day concurrent. This was 1 year after release with very little support (much less than Darktide got) and absolute dead silence.
Darktide is plateauing at double that at around 5k players a day concurrent and it still receives support despite the focus being clearly in the console port.
Darktide will be fine. It has a great future ahead. There is also more content coming and some of it will address the crafting complaints, I’m sure of it. Just it hasn’t dropped yet.
But you can clear out Damnation+ with all White Gear and 0/2 Perks 0/2 Blessings. I’d argue Destiny is actually more gear dependent than Darktide, just by the way it’s design as an MMORPG.
If we were talking Vermintide 2, it’d still be different because power level of items determined everything, including cleave values.
But in Darktide you absolutely can compensate everything with skill.
As for the crafting, I don’t know about Destiny 2’s crafting. I haven’t seen it.
I could have told you right from the start the game would be going the way of the “Niche game”. Even without the technical launch issues, without the performance issues, without the bugs and full modular crafting (no locks) in at launch the game would have never maintained much higher player numbers.
Yeah, maybe it would not have dropped down to 5k concurrent, but rather plateaued at 10k or something.
But you have to see how it is: Tide games have something in their combat, that turns the mainstream off. That little magic word is J A N K.
Jank is something hardcore fans and lovers of an IP like you or me game can ignore, but it ruffles the feathers of mainstream gamers who are used to AAA polish.
The jank in Darktide funnily enough reminds me to another type of jank I have seen before: Spiders Games Studios.
They developed the Mars: War Logs / Technomancer / Greedfall games.
It’s in the combat. You have this focus on dodging at the right moment, because enemies lock onto you and then hit or miss solely based on the timing / block of your own dodge. The distance to the attack or if it would connect at all don’t matter - You are “targetted” like in an MMO like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy 14. However, this isn’t communicated to the player and casuals often don’t understand it.
It leads to animations not always fully lining up and sometimes you also get hit when logically speaking the attack shouldn’t connect or you dodge successfully when you should get hit instead (iFrame). It gives you a weird mix of MMO-Tab targetting combat that also tries be “free flow” but it’s actually not. It’s honestly hard to describe, I’m doing my best. But it’s this somewhat unusual and weird gameplay that can be classified as a very specific a type of jank. There is no name for it yet, maybe we should come up with one?
In any case: it’s this type of jank that will turn the broad mass of gamers who expect pixel perfect accuracy and animations lining up with hit detection behavior off.
They will as a result buy the game, praise whatever other good content the game has (Mars: War Logs / Technomancer / Greedfall all got praised for their story and presentation), but then they will call the combat janky or hamfisted or such.
And they will promptly stop playing after completing the game or when they run out of steam to participate, because they feel the combat system is tiring, unpredictable, unfair and not accurate.
It wears them out because it defies baseline logic and because they don’t understand it or don’t like the feeling it gives them. That’s how I’d describe the actual real player retention problem for both, Spiders Games and Fatshark.
The way of the jank attracts the hardcore niche and repels the casual masses. It always leads to something unique, but the unique thing is only appreciated by unique people.
Huh? That’s not correct.
Darktide isn’t even out for a year and I’m pretty sure the playercount will be around the same number which is sad, as 40k could attract a much larger playerbase.
Vermintide 2 had pretty much the same numbers as Darktide half a year after release. With numbers between 4250min - 6700max (Sept. 2018) daily peak even a little bit more than Darktide.
You do know they gave the game away for free in November 2022?
