Tl;dr FOMO is a manufactured damper on customer satisfaction. Players would be more engaged with the item shop if you gave them they ability to buy whatever they wanted instead of forcing them to wait 2 weeks for new stock.
Since I’ve started playing Darktide last year I’ve had my eyes set on the Tempestus Scion helmet. Scions were my first set of tabletop minis so I’ve been wanting to play as one in an official 40k game.
The only problem is that I haven’t had the opportunity to actually play as one because Fatshark keep rehashing the same handful of cosmetics. So every other Thursday for me this past year has been “Darktide Disappointment Day”.
I understand that the developers don’t think there’s a problem because they can just grant themselves cosmetics whenever. But for players, this FOMO monetization is just an annoying waste of time.
TenCent money means they don’t have to worry about customer satisfaction, just that they have an ever-revolving door of customers. So they use the most iconic and marketable detachments to key jangle at the new players.
I wouldn’t be as pissed if there weren’t so many duplicates and reskins being rotated. But in the year I’ve been waiting for this one item to show up:
Not a single NEW cosmetic has been designed.
DKoK have been brought back 4 different times.
Vostroyans and Euclidian Starstriders have been brought back 3 times each.
Commissars, Steel Legion, Hive Gangers and Rogue Traders have all been brought back 2 times a piece.
There are currently 9 different skins for the generic “Goggles and Rebreather", not to mention the dozens of other Inquisitorial cosmetics with at least 6 reskins each.
The Tempestus Scion helmet hasn’t shown up once.
I’ve accepted the fact that the helmet will likely never be brought back to the game again, but the idea that there IS a chance will compel me to log in every 2 weeks like a conditioned rat in a cage. Which deep down just means that this Chinese "turn-everything-into-a-content-mill” system is working as intended. Dissatisfaction by design.
Unfortunately this is precisely the reason FOMO is being done and why it works. It’s not meant to satisfy customers, it’s meant to keep them invested in the store and to keep buying “until then”.
I also think it’s shortsighted but that’s the kind of business strategy corporations employ when the sole goal is having a nice number to show in the very next quarter.
I would love to have the entire shop (everything that Fatshark has released so far) available to me. I would spend lots of money that I don’t have! I love playing Pretty Pretty Dress-up.
If they want to keep the FOMO, they could have a sort of Christmas sale when everything is on offer with some discounts and do it once a year only at least.
Frankly, I will celebrate if institutions such as the EU actually step up and ban those kind of toxic practices in gaming all together. Full disclosure: I have spent real money in the store for things I visually liked, because I acknowledge the shop allows Fatshark to keep the lights on. HOWEVER, at lot of the practices we have seen with “micro” transactions border what the gambling “industry” is doing to vulnerable individuals. It’s unethical and scammy.
This game’s player base is literally under 8k concurrent players total worldwide, and has been for more than 2 years now. FOMO is absolutely not keeping people playing this game, lol. Each update is bringing in less and less players per cycle as well.
These devs should be giving players basically everything they want if they want this game to survive longer than another year.
One of the disappointments with the whole cosmetics situation is the obvious low-effort re-color of existing skins, and re-use between male and female models. How about this latest issue Desert camo style “timeworn” twink-coat, with inbuilt tit-suppressors?
Yeah, even paid cosmetics. Clipping, poor compatibility between sets, poorly chosen colour schemes, lazy patterns, armours with …no stomach armour. Pick one.
A lot of colour & patterns for free cosmetics are just criminally bad. It’s almost like Fatshark has intentionally chosen the worst colours and lazy patterns to push players towards the paid cosmetics. /s It’s frankly disgusting.
I get that Arrowhead has full freedom with what they can do in Helldivers 2, as they are not at the mercy of Games Workshop, but I doubt GW would take an offence because colours and patterns on free cosmetics. In fact I’m surprised GW hasn’t blocked the release of a lot free cosmetics in the state they have been released. 1980s sofas had better fabrics.
Fatshark has a lot to learn in the space of “live service”. This apparently also includes colour pallet selection. If I can see it, as a person who has ZERO artistic inclinations…its bad. This can be also extended to very bland colour selection in general, I have pointed this out before. Way too much greys, yellows and browns. All just blends together on your screen, and that doesn’t help during gameplay.
As a “customer” I don’t care who is to “blame” for this: decision makers, lead game designers, monetisation “experts”, or artists. Slop like this, should not exist:
It’s precisely because people buy it, while complaining about it, that they keep doing it. I’m sure FOMO Shop is up high on their list of “number of player complaints,” but why change it when people will continue to buy low effort skins that are on a rotation? I know there are many who complain about the FOMO Shop and refuse to buy anything out of principle, but can any of you honestly say that those people are the majority? Or even a significant minority?
Fatshark won’t change the FOMO shop or release higher quality skins/reskins until it stops making them money, which I would estimate would be around 75±10% of the playerbase not spending another penny on cosmetics until they change it. Which will never happen, because all they’d do is put in 10% more effort on a premium skin, and half the people boycotting the store would go “but that’s a nice skin, who knows when it’ll be back in rotation!” and buy it. Boycott over.
The only other option is legal action, and the store doesn’t break any consumer protection laws as far as I’m aware.
Not so long ago fatshark started to sell “packs” of recoloring items and even “patch” commissary shop to sell them - i mean “3 hats packs”.
It’s ridiculous, cause i almost didn’t see that recolor crap in game and very little times i found someone who bought something from the pack.
There is not a lot of new or original cosmetic in general, anyone can get cosmetic shop mods and look thru list of all items that fatsharks ever added in game: countless recoloring. Only headscarfs about 2 dozens.
Currently state of cosmetic shop clearly show us fatshark not in state to make serious and good cosmetic items regularly, so they just recoloring old and rarely adding some news.
Just think about “bolter” for exmp: do you really think any skilled game designer cant make a pair of dozens new models? Its a nonsense.
So i inclined they just have not any resources for that and recolor existing items not coz of greed, but of sheer impotence.
FOMO should die of course and forever, Its SCAM practice from cheap mobile sh!t…
But they cant cause otherwise they need to start to add really new items every mounth.
Agreed with op. The funny thing the way my mind works, this FOMO rotations prevent me from buying. Im not the trichest person but if i had stuff on display i would find a few i like most and bought them. With the rotation even if i see soemthing i like, i oalwys think in the next rotation might be something i like better, so i dont buy and wait lol.
In the past, I would have happily set up a $5 a month DT autopay, for nothing extra. But never one cent for FOMO cosmetics.
It’s more than my perception of value of the cosmetics: I’d hate for my support for the game to be interpreted as tolerance of the FOMO shop, and it’d most likely be taken as an endorsement of FOMO.
I have some paid cosmetics that I will not use due to clipping and quality issues that didn’t become apparent until actually seeing them in-game. It annoys me, it suggests a lack of attention to detail.
