Counterpoint: They actually MADE DLC classes lol
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Counter-counterpoint: With six talent tiers to choose from and no mix-n-matching.
VT2 also had a DLC that added an entire new faction around this time. Like, I’m not talking one or two enemies. An entire faction with its own enemies, own elites, a whole new mechanic (ranged enemies), and specials. Granted it wasn’t well received due to balance issues, but it’s great fun and varied now.
This may surprise many to learn, but a companies primary incentive to do anything is money. If they can get away with making FOMO rotations cheap and get profits off it, they don’t need to do any of that… and so they barely do. This relates to this topic as well. Nobody at Fatshark gives a singular hoot to please the solo player demographic. They probably don’t buy cosmetics anyway, and if they do, well, they’ve been doing it without solo mode 
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There are surely people who haven’t played because they are waiting for solo mode. And there are surely players who would only play solo but would still buy cosmetics. That’s actually one of the core reasons I believe that solo mode should have come out ages ago: I think it’d be good for the bottom line and definitely worth the investment.
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I only play solo and I bought all the career dlcs w/ cosmetics for VT2.
I haven’t spent a dime on DT (aside from purchasing the game) since I can’t play solo. I’m sure there are dozens of us!
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Firstly, happy cake day.
Secondly:
- playing if the queue is empty is a statistical impossibility
- private game w/ friends was added much later than the announced window, but I admit at least it’s in the game.
- booting a friend to hard lock solo is also possible but requires a friend and is basically telling the friend “I don’t want to play with you, so help me play solo” which isn’t very friendly.
- mods only work on PC and only one of them allows progression but requires an external website w/ copy and paste
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I’d work on phrasing on that point. “Hey, do you have a minute to help me get into a solo game?” shrug I see what you’re saying though, this can be rough for people not interested on being your standby mate.
My bottom line is always the same when it comes to Fatshark and content - we don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes or where the money is going. We can speculate all day on what we think is going on, but that’s where we should leave it: speculation.
It’s also crucial that we keep in mind that this is an entirely different game than Vermintide with completely different mechanics for the players.
Of course, but it’s also the same genre as Vermintide, Left 4 Dead, and the like. And of alllllllll the other “coop first” games, Darktide is the sole exception regarding being able to launch a mission without Randoms joining you.
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Fair point. It just leaves me to wonder what reason why they simply wouldn’t activate this feature if it were so easy to activate. I mean, it has to be. What would FS have to gain from not enabling the feature if it was as simple as flipping a 0 to a 1?
Well, I do remember there being an interview where a Fatshark dev use the line “we know what a player needs.” or some variant of that. I don’t have a source, I could be imagining it though.
Edit: found it.
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not only should they, but they BETTER do it. and if it isn’t “solo mode will be added, it just isn’t being worked on due to other things” or something BETTER than that, we withhold our funding until they decide that they will give us what we actually want, which is for fatshark to actually follow up on their promises.
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We need overpriced cosmetics and fomo shop rotations
Fatshark know best
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My favorite part of the cycle is when they finally fix the issue people complain about, but act like it was always intended to be replaced with a better system.
They did it with the talent trees, the crafting system, and I bet they’ll do it with solo mode.
“oh, of course our private lobby system was just a placeholder system to incorporate the true P2P system that allows solo play! We know what you need.”
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How are they acting like the class rework or itemization was always intended?
Come to Australia mate, we got plenty of empty!
All you griping about Solo Mode, we’ve had it for ages!!!
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With the class rework, it was always implied that we’d have unique subclasses with their own talent trees, then the rework happened and the stance became “yeah, the previous system was a placeholder until the skill trees were done.” and then they never brought up the “new class every quarter” promise again.
Itemization was always more of a stretch but they kept doubling down on the heavy RNG and lockouts, and now the remake is out theyve had a “we’ve been working on this a long time!” stance as if people hadn’t been calling for a rework since before day 1.
Iirc, crafting wasn’t even in the game at launch?
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you ARE remembering that correctly.
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I should probably add that I don’t genuinely believe Fatshark is malicious in any of this. I just think they don’t know how to take accountability for mistakes. They like to innovate and try new things, nothing wrong with that at face value. The problem lies in removing systems they’ve perfected in previous titles for inherently worse systems (if they replace it at all) and not admitting that it was a mistake.
In the Solo Mode case, having priorities shift with the state of launch is completely justified. But they should have communicated that clearer, and now that we’re well beyond launch issues we need a new update on if work has restarted or if they’ve scrapped the mode entirely. Just some accountability would be nice.
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I don’t remember them ever saying that the original VT2 talents system was a placeholder, and I don’t think the code really reflected that either. Neither did the announcement, I don’t think.
Yes, they pivoted from the archetype/classes structure, but what we got in the talent trees is loads better than the stale old formula.
As for crafting, it was meant to be in at launch and had big ol “coming soon” tags on everything but consecrate (iirc). They didn’t finish it in time. And they changed how blessing acquisition was going to work at the last minute. Major fumble. But they never doubled down on RNG, they systematically eased it before the rework: made traits deterministic, increased material drop rates, added Brunts instead of just the hourly shop we originally had, changed how the locks worked, etc.
The itemization update was a huge overhaul. They started talking about it in March of this year, put out a bunch of Q&As and seemingly changed systems due to feedback, and the overhaul was only just released. That’s a plenty long time to work on a feature, but I bet they were working on it before then.