Whatever caused the Versus alpha test delay is likely eating some resources too.
There’s a portrait frame in the game’s files for a Valentine’s Event (along with Easter and Halloween). We didn’t see it last year, obviously, but I was hoping we’d see it this year. Seemed like it would be a good transition out of the current special assignment with the Twins. With only a week, though, I’m thinking it’s not too likely. We’ve only had one event so far and it’s been pretty “meh”.
Anyone else experiencing some irregular game freezes since the update?
Also, the big freeze when the 4th person readies up before a mission?
I don’t know what i quite expected, but still disappointed.
Perhaps when you released a nothing hotfix last week, and saw the comments asking for several glaring game affecting issues to be fixed.
(Which btw, were put there by previous updates)
That you could at least have a sentence acknowledging the music being taken away, silent specials, and ghost firing guns, and that they are being worked on.
I think that’s what has aggravated people. They are not waiting for new content or sweeping changes, well we are but in this instance, but just to fix the stuff you broke.
Nah, not rly. Any proper GaaS game with seasons and leagues has a date when new content will arrive.
Look at PoE online, every 3 monthes there is a new league, people clear all content then stop playing, then come back for a new league, and average online is growing.
Now look at other PvE 4 coop games, that are not GaaS - DRG and KF2, it took less than 1 year after release for them to take an all time high players online. Then it was only uptrend for them.
In 1 year with DT we have this
Considering DT is a GaaS game, it’s better to have a big update soon, as big as skill tree was, so player online graph will look more like PoE. Either way - yeah, game is dying.
Noone even knows what DT support is gonna be, cause there is no communication.
Yes great work I’m sure, now take your time fatshark as I prepare to hell dive into the super earth and don’t plan on looking back.
Hunt:Showdown’s relatively recent event-based cycle seems to be working for them too. I can’t say I’m a fan of their progression system either, but it’s miles ahead of darktide’s. Tbf, I’d much rather play darktide than hunt though, mostly because the gameplay is a slog.
I’m not joking or trolling at all, this is my actual impression of the game as much as I enjoy playing it. It would be nice if they gave some kind of vague announcement about how they’re thinking of updating the game this year rather than working under silence so absolute that even a graveyard is more noisy by comparison. Fatshark never actually recovered from the psychic trauma of the Vermintide 2 Roadmap. They seem to have forgotten that it is possible to show the community the devs and management are actually still interested in the game with more vague forms of announcement.
Beyond my feelings about their silence there is a much more pressing reason I’m looking for some kind of meaningful communication about Fatshark and Darktide. Tencent, owner of Fatshark, recently became aware of a pretty vast but vague threat of regulation aimed at all gaming companies in China. Tencent are often publicly called “hands off” in how they treat the companies they acquire but I would expect a potentially sharp loss of revenue to cause them to start treating the companies they own in a different way than they used to which may mean execs at FS start looking at Darktide differently too. The future is more uncertain.
The trauma is self-imposed.
The key thing to remember is that gamers are, above all else, fickle. If you do then wrong they will scream from the rooftops about how awful XYZ is. If you then turn things around and do well, they will sing your praises to the heavens.
Fatshark had a bad experience with their VT2 roadmap for sure. And then Winds of Magic was a further knock against it.
Through each bad experience, instead of reflecting as a company on what went wrong and how it could be better next time, they just become more insular and non-communicative.
At the same time, them seem to be unable to make communications that are hopeful and positive. Usually because when they do announce something in the eyes of the community it’s often going in a “wrong” direction or giving us things we didn’t even ask for (I still have never seen anyone use an emote in Darktide except for an occasional Ogryn sitting in the corner).
This makes the player base feel like they aren’t being listened to at all and that the devs are out of touch. We’ve had three hot fixes that haven’t fixed the most glaring issues we’ve been screaming about for nearly two months.
All of this is a management and ego problem in my view. Leadership is unwilling to reflect on what went wrong and genuinely work to do better, and even if they wanted to do better they are too egotistical to listen to the player base and make good on what the community wants.
Couple that with glacial pace of work and reintroducing old bugs and it’s no surprise the community is frustrated.
I don’t get it. "Tide games have the best visceral FPS combat gameplay of any game. It’s incredible. They are sitting on an evergreen goldmine IP in 40K. That they can’t get their Kark together and figure out how to effectively communicate, maintain player interest, and GROW their player base is mindboggling.
DRG started from nothing with a new IP and each season and release has seen their base of players grow.
Payday 2 was on the brink of death and they brought the game back. Then they stopped development on it and later decided to bring it back again. Base player counts continued to rise and it still has 30-40K players.
The stuff Darktide needs to fix game system wise is comparatively easy to address - yet they don’t prioritize it for some mystifying reason.
It also doesn’t help that they are near-pathological liars, which obviously makes people negative towards their communications - which they then use as justification for not communicating. They published a game that was maybe 25% complete and utterely, 100% broken… and then went on record, in interviews, saying “there was no way we could have known the game was broken.”
They will, without irony, put out blog posts where they say things like “We know RNG is a big pain point and can ruin creativity and hinder experimentation, so here is how we are introducing 27 layers of more RNG than you could have ever imagined, time gated and limited rewards, and no chance whatsoever to experiment with builds.”
They will also, rather than admit their mistake, make obvious lies like “Oh boy, technical issues means we need to postpone these news to completely coincidentally coincide with a major Warhammer event.”
Nevermind all the FUD and false marketing before the release of the game, which talked about features they hadn’t even BEGUN to design or implement, and knew would not be in the game on release.
And then they feel sad about how the community doesn’t like their communications.
TLDR they don’t know why their games are popular, since they don’t know why they desperately cling to RNG and dark design retention, they have no plans which means there is nothing to communicate, and they can’t stop lying, and then justify not communicating because players feel bad about how they openly lie.
Edit: All of which can undoubtedly be traced back to weak and poor leadership, flat management structure, siloed teams (which have no knowledge of what’s being worked on by other teams), bad pay which makes people leave, and so on and so on…
For the record, bad pay, siloed teams, flat structure and poor management is all documented on glassdoor, and not something I’m pulling out of thin air.
I’ve looked at some of the more recent reviews too - not surprisingly unfortunately.
For reference:
Pros
Cons
Advice to Management
Please start listening to your employees concerns and actually act to improve. Train your leads, or hire people who already have leadership experience. Foster inter-team communication. Not only employees but customers as well can see that things can’t keep going the way they are if FS hopes to still be on the map down the road.
Pros
Good attitude towards personal needs. No hassle in getting time off when you need it.
Management is genuinely interested in games.
Lots of freedom within strict boundaries (working with external IP 100% of the time)
Yearly bonus. It’s based on a percentage of profits though, so some years it has been 0 kr.
“Hack weeks” a couple of times per year, week long personal development time However these are frequently cancelled due to “regular work” needing to be done.
Cons
Low salaries and no effort in making them more competitive. Very little chance to improve them.
Poor production and planning often leading to chaotic and stressful working conditions.
Officially no crunch, which is very good. But some people still do it on their own initiative without interjections.
Much of management are internal recruits, leading to high craft knowledge but lacking management skills.
No clear vision of seniority levels. Many different interpretations of this within management group, leading to difficulties to grow in the company.
Pros
Nice office.
Skillful and passionate developers.
Cons
Overscoping.
rapid and irresponsible recruitment.
Poor talent retention.
Pros
Company employs smart and respectful people who love what they do
Cons
Salaries aren’t very competitive which leads to good people leaving.
Advice to Management
Look to keep good people in the company long-term, they are a huge asset.
These are the most informative of the recent reviews in the past couple years.
All it seems to be missing is a senior audio programmer, to fix this mess.
I’m not here to defend them. But Glassdoor is a poop place to find out if somewhere is good.
Finally, someone else beat me to it for once, ha!
STILL BUGGED, 8m typo fix affecting ALL close range stuff still bugged since Oct '23.
This and the gunner knockback…oof.
Close range change is not a deliberate balance cahnge ? I don’t think its a bug because it’s fukin hard coded value… Furthermore blessings only starting close range not 15m range, it might be a bug if we had a mismatched description but that’s is not the case, so im still no convinced it’s a bug… A deliberately retharded (golden throne preserve me a malicious) undocumented change at worst…
Another scenario is that it could have been a test change that got accidentally merged into production. Not like that hasn’t happened before…
I don’t think so… Vet (and a handfull of other feats as well) has the close range criteria in it… If im correct… My bet the devs changed the value globally because they dose not wanted to maintain 2 different set of close range definition… (One of blessings one of yhe feats)
The defines melee range range and close range. Up until a recent patch, melee want was 8m and close range was 15m. Then randomly with no patch note close range was set to 8m and melee range is also still 8m. It’s broken and makes any blessing that used to apply at close range massively less effective.
Maybe, but since we know without doubt there’s major problems, this might be a good way to find out what some of them are.
Glassdoor offers people a way to anonomously talk about their current or former employer, without fear of retribution from current or future employers. As with all self reporting or ‘review’ type sites, data may be skewed.
Even so, I am deeply curious to know where and how one would find better inside information on an employer. Clearly there must be a way, since you claim Glassdoor ain’t it.
