Happy 2nd Anniversary!

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Congratulations everyone! Some of you may be confused as to which anniversary I’m talking about, the game’s official launch is later in the year and the pre-order beta’s anniversary was yesterday. Some of you recognize me and know exactly where I’m going with this. The rest of you are in for a treat.

That’s right everyone, on this day two years ago, one day after the start of the pre-order beta, we were given the following announcement. This announcement was key, as many people were asking the same question and given the same answer: “it’s just a beta”, “they’re testing the servers”, “it’ll be available on release.” these answers were to the questions “how do I play solo?” and “are there no private lobbies?”

Boy was Fatshark quick to assuade our concerns, in approximately 24 hours after people started asking questions we got our official answer!

That’s right baby, solo mode and private lobbies were right around the corner! It’s so exciting, I’m going to repost the best part of that quote!

Gosh, those were good days. Playing some Darktide, knowing that within a month or two I’d be playing solo or in private lobbies with my friends and having the time of my life. No reason to cancel my pre-order after all! But… Something happened the astute of you already noticed.

Launch day rolled around. No solo mode or private lobbies w/ no information. That’s OK. They said there could be a patch in December. The patch in December rolls around, no solo mode or private lobbies w/ no information. Hmmm, that’s a bit odd… January, February, March, patches and bug fixes everywhere but still no confirmation on Solo Mode, at some point (I literally couldn’t find the patch, but it was before Patch 5) Private Lobbies were added, but they have the inane requirement of 2+ people in the lobby, leaving solo players in the dust.

Copying from The Book of Grudges we had these three responses in February, March, and October 2023 respectively.

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So Solo Mode went from “almost ready.” in November 2022. To “it could work, but we’re not happy with it and are actively working on it” in February 2023, to a single month later in March 2023 Fatshark’s first “it’s not a priority” followed by only “it’s not a priority” between then and now.

Fatshark has got to be held accountable for their blatant lies and misinformation. I, and many others, purchased the game under the promise that, like every other game in this genre including the two games previously made by Fatshark, I would be able to play solo or solo w/ bots. We demand answers to the following questions.

  • Is Solo Mode still being worked on?
  • When is it coming?
  • If it’s not coming, why not?
  • Why hasn’t Fatshark been communicating with us on this? (I already know the answer is, “we’re Fatshark and don’t understand what healthy communication is.” but figured I’d ask anyway.)
  • Lastly, why do you keep pushing the narrative that co-op games don’t benefit from solo play?

These questions deserve to be answered in an official capacity, in an announcement post, from either a dev or a CM. I welcome all Fatshark responses to this post, but an official announcement would reach people who don’t browse the forums except for announcements. You may even draw people back to your game! And then I won’t have to make click-bait titles like I did here to draw in people who aren’t interested in solo mode!

I’ll close with this poll for the community to share their opinion on official dev responses.

Should Fatshark Give an Official Announcement on Solo Mode (good or bad)?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Edit: fixed the poll

31 Likes
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I admire your tenacity. Great post.

@FatsharkStrawHat

12 Likes
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possibly solo mode means local host peer to peer connection.
so we can have some sort of modded realm with friends.

also a reason why having only dedicated servers is bad, it is that some people living far away from servers provided, located geographically far from them, can lag a lot, while hosting their game and inviting their friends living near it’s better.

l4d2 gave the option to play either with dedicated servers, offline, and local host (peer to peer)
darktide needs the same.

5 Likes
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I voted yes, although I know it probably won’t happen simply because it’s negative news and posting negative news is almost definitely going to end up being a net negative, all things considered, for FS.

But I still believe wholeheartedly that dropping solo mode would be the right move and would earn them some major cosmetics bucks.

Call it wishful thinking, call it “cope” (lol), but I think we will get solo mode eventually, and it’ll be better than the solo mode we can mod right now with the dummy bots.

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ahem

BOOK!

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another in the book, grimgi

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I highly appreciate you are still fighting the fight I gave up a year ago!

Thank you for your tenacity!

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Oh, I have absolutely 0 confidence in this post actually getting results out of Fatshark. Their M.O. Has always been the cartoon ostrich burying it’s head in the sand and hoping we forget about it.

I’m going to keep bringing it up to keep it relevant and in the zeitgeist of the community. Especially for newer players who had no idea it was promised.

I want to believe we’ll get it someday, it’s probably going to be VT2 Versus level though, where it’s one of the last major patches of the game.

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Me personally isn’t interested in a solo mode, but I think they should put out an official statement telling us if it’s a completely scrapped idea or if they have plans of releasing it in the future.
It would benefit them for releasing it, like you said there are many who want a solo mode and pre ordered because of the promise of a solo mode at launch or shortly after.

1 Like
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solo mode is a feature that any coop game has and should have.

never understood why they removed it as feature (since it was in VT1, VT2)
or the fact they keep saying that the game is coop “first and foremost”

i don’t know about that, when of “coop” there is pretty much nothing about imo (recently a bit more but still), hopefully with havoc there will be some cooperation for real.

also can’t force online when it’s a genre that was born with offline foundation since l4d2.
forcing online in games always been bad as thing for many players.

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they’ll add solo mode and private servers when they want to shut down the dedicated servers so they can host darktide 2

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Telling the truth and owning your mistakes is its own reward.

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Oh brother. Here we go moralizing again!

As I said, I think, even if it’s “the right thing,” it’d be a net negative for them.

But they’ve also had official spokespeople give us an update, as noted in the OP, and the update is…the latest update. Solo mode is not currently a priority. I know that’s not satisfactory to some people, and I know the delivery mechanism isn’t to some people either, but it’s official comms and a pretty clear statement.

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The reason I don’t consider it satisfactory as an answer, is that it’s not really an answer. No boss (because we are the bosses, we pay them to provide us content just like a company pays employees to do work.) would accept “it’s not a priority” when you haven’t completed a task you promised the boss would be done 2 years ago. And if you don’t like the boss analogy, here’s a better one. I work in government contracts, we’re hired by other companies to do work for them for their contracts, sometimes by the government directly. We refer to those companies/government as “our customers”, so they ask us how much it will cost to do it, and then hire us to do it. If we told them “it’ll be done by December.” and then 2 months later (let alone 2 whole years) they said “where is it?” and we said “it wasn’t a priority.” we’d never get work from them again.

“not a priority” isn’t an acceptable response in any other industry in the world, it shouldn’t be acceptable here.

Now “it’s not a priority because X, Y, Z” is an acceptable response. You’re explaining why priorities shifted. But as you said, a negative response will be a net negative for them. But they need to take accountability for their actions or we end up with companies like EA, Ubisoft, Bethesda, and Blizzard. Who had people excuse away their actions for years until we get the most downvoted comment with ~667k downvotes, a company mass producing the same game in a different skin, a company who releases worse and worse experiences while acting proud of the negative PR, and companies who say “don’t you guys have phones?” when people boo their latest mobile cash grab.

People need to stop letting companies get away with crap like this.

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you’re not getting peer to peer, fatshark was told it was awful with both vermintides and gave people the dedicated servers they wanted. go be upset at the community for all the good it’ll ever do, but fatshark made their choie and they chose to satisfy fan demand for servers.

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What we could get is private lobbies that can be launched with 1+, instead of 2+, player(s). The server can handle people using solo mods now, including one that allows you to run missions that are up to 24h past due on the mission board.

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Call it what you will but whatever it is, you seem to repeatedly refuse accepting it as a reason to do something. If doing things simply because they are the right thing to do is inconceivable to someone, it would make them lacking in integrity. I think the general consensus on that is that it is a bad thing. People, and by extension larger organisations of people, get the respect of other people by behaving with integrity.

You can be reductive and call it moralizing all you want, but I think if you consider FS coming out and planting their feet on the ground and telling the honest truth to their fans and customers somehow to be a “net loss”, the problem may just lay with you, rather than them. It’s an exceptionally cynical outlook.

I’m not being some crazy idealist here, people respect integrity and a sign of integrity is owning your mistakes and committing to doing better. In a business/customer context that still resonates. Every time FS has displayed even the smallest sign of contrition and acknowledgement of their mistakes (especially through actions, rare though they may be) the reaction is near universal appreciation.

It’s not moralizing to ask people to hold true to the things that really matter. It’s cynical to pretend they don’t matter.

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I get it, and I agree with a lot of the sentiment. It stings especially that it was promised before launch and was said to be so close. But I also see what a crapfest launch was and recognize how many other things could and have taken priority over solo mode between then and now. And I still cross my fingers that it’ll be coming soon.

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dedicated servers are good.
but not providing additionally the p2p is no sense, especially if one day the game would happen to shut down.

p2p connection will be able to host still games.

FS made the right choice but in a bad way, as in could implemented both easily. but decided to force the dedicated servers. while leaving the people that are not near to those specific servers regions, screwed because of the lag. in fact many people quit playing because of that.

l4d2 can run either dedicated servers, offline mode and local host game (p2p)
so you missed the point entirely

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Ugh dude, spare me. I can’t believe you’re implying I lack integrity because I think people shouldn’t be told to fix their moral compass because they buy MTX cosmetics or because I think there’s such a thing as PR.

FS have already come out and said it’s not currently a priority. And they’ve done that in press too. I just believe there’s not much else to be said on the subject (like, the justification is “look at all this other crap we have to do”), and so just reiterating the same thing again would be a net negative.

1 Like