I have read the replies and I think it would be easiest to simply explain my justification rather than enter each critique line by line. I originally had spent some time explaining my position on why content was more important than redesign, but I scrapped it to save everyone time. If you’ve gotten to this part of the thread then you’re invested now so its on you not me!
Fundamentally I think I have a core strategy difference from many of the posters in this thread. I understand what they (and many many players) are saying and I agree with almost every complaint they make. However as many PM’s know the solution to the problem is not always what the client thinks it is. I do not believe that the shortest road to success (and player retention) is a lengthy redesign of core progression systems, or reworks of systems and classes. Instead I propose amelioration of the most painful friction points by working within what is already there. Then the addition of new features where players are most interested. It is outside of my capacity to know what kind of resources fatshark has and how they can move them around. I do, however, recall listening to the developers discuss their architecture at one point. It appears they have created a highly modern modular system. The stated purpose of this was it would be easy (according to them) to add new classes, voice lines, maps, weapons, missions, cosmetics, etc. My proposal to divert more resources into content as a key priority over other things was based in part on this fact. Ultimately this was the purpose of a prioritized list. My objective is not just “more, faster” but rather to direct the available energy towards the highest priorities, preferably where they overlap with the lowest effort, first.
Alright, lets talk player profiles. By my research so far I have identified several loose player profiles. Though they aren’t :
Experientialists:
Such players are interested in specific experiences. They want to settle in to the story, characters and environments of the universe. They’re the players who ask “hey, can me and my friends be all 4 Guardsmen with lasguns? We’ve always wanted to play that game”. They get excited when they can. An experientialist wants to smell the roses or get those cool gameplay moments. They want to try out all the toys and see what they do.
Grinders:
These players are very interested in getting the best gear. The best endgame loot. Building up that stockpile of max level characters with perfectly rolled gear that suites the playstyle they want, especially when its the best meta build and/or the best possible off-meta build. These players are most driven by striving for perfect ‘endgame’.
Completionists:
These players are your achievement hunters. Their motivating drive is very similar to the Grinder profile except they may have more of an interest in bragging rights than perfect gear. This can, but doesn’t always, include unique cosmetics or paid cosmetics. “I beat all the damnation missions on hi-intensity”. “I got that really hard penance, I got this really cool frame for my character that almost no one has” and so on. Such players are interested in getting to the niche corners of the game and doing the things no one else has, this includes speed runners and your funny exploit finders.
GamePlayers: (I couldn’t think of a better name)
These players focus mostly on the actual gameplay mechanics. Running missions, swinging weapons. They concern themselves primarily with how the experience makes them feel and whether or not classes and weapons are fun and interesting. The gameplay being challenging and giving the player a fun and rewarding victory (or a frustrating loss!) is key.
Now this is just from my aggregation of comments and reviews that I’ve been collating during conversation about the game with various players and fandoms. But these archetypes are, in my estimation, reasonably accurate. I am aware that any player might embody one or more of these archetypal customer profiles but the point is that they are distilled abstractions. The value of these is you can better understand what your customers want. Lets display some paraphrased quotes from players and complaints:
“This game is an unfinished mess that prominently features a completed cash cosmetics shop but not a completed crafting system, effectively gating you from endgame builds”
“I already have fun weapons and love my character. But right now there’s nothing new to do. I’ve done lots of high intensity damnation. I want more maps, classes, weapons. Sure, a better crafting system would be great. Ultimately it counts for nothing if it means I’ll have to do the same things over and over again.”
“Well I got rank 30 in all 4 classes, 90% of penances done, now what?”
“Besides enjoying the difficulty, currently there is no incentive to play Damnation. If completing a Damnation run always results in earning a random purple rarity item, I would be much more inclined to play it”
"I really miss the red quality unique skins for the weapons from V2. They really felt like a nice end game grind to collect and looked epic. "
These are just a selection that I think is representative of common complaints. Here’s a concrete list of compiled complaints that appear actionable:
Complaints
- The Incomplete crafting/upgrade system prevents me from engaging with endgame
- RNG shop prevents me from getting weapons I want
- RNG shop mechanics make getting endgame loot a gamble
- There aren’t enough maps
- Mission variety is low
- Maps have a samey feel and are indistinct or remixes of themsleves
- I cannot choose which maps I want to play, especially when new content comes out
- I cannot choose which difficulty on a given map I want to play
- If a map I want to play has a modifier I do not like I am disincentivized from playing it
- My heresy/damnation games are often empty or take a long time to fill with players
- Many weapons are not viable in Heresy/Damnation
- VT2 launched with 13 classes and Darktide only has 4
- When I boot up the mission menu I often don’t feel like playing anything on it
- When I boot up the mission menu I feel no incentive to play the game
- There are no deterministic item or cosmetic rewards for playing the game
- There is no advantage to playing the game especially well
- The lack of an endgame scoreboard prevents us all from determining what is and isn’t working
- I am still suffering performance problems
- It takes needlessly long to load into the mourningstar/lobby
- The cosmetics don’t have enough of that over the top 40k feel and there aren’t enough of them
Priorities:
Alright, given all this background lets go to the first 3 items on my list:
- Finish the crafting system ASAP. Top priority.
- Change the item shop. MVP - display one of every weapon available to the player at their level.
- Find a way to tie the difficulty of missions to greater item and/or cosmetics rewards. Incentivize taking on the challenge. Give players something to work towards.
#1 Everyone agrees that endgame is suffering from the inability to (on a reasonable time scale) get good or great or best quality loot items. As a consequence players are stuck interacting with low entertainment systems like random item shops and a general feeling of the game not being complete while the cash shop is. This can and should be addressed first. Before anything else. Implement what was already planned and then lets review it for needed changes after. I would expect this done by end of January.
#2 The item shop’s key friction points for players are in two areas: the first is not being able to get any of a given weapon class due to RNG never displaying it. Some players have reported reaching level 28 before seeing a weapon that unlocks at level 8, for example. A friend of mine wanted to try a voidstrike staff but hadn’t logged on much. Despite around 10 hours of game time he only finally got one as a random emperors gift and to this date still has not seen one in the shop. The other is the feeling of not being able to get good quality weapons you want, due to RNG, thus feeling like you’re standing at a shop doing nothing and you can’t go play missions until you get what you want. Thus adding friction between you and the best part of the game, the gameplay. My proposal here is to take the shortest road to ameliorate the problem. Don’t redesign the shop and everything around item acquisition. Reduce the friction of the shop. Elminate problem 1 by always displaying at least one of any unlocked weapon type a player might have. An even better MVP would be to display one of every possible weapon type a player might have, divided into melee and ranged weapons, and allow the player to see the locked weapons. This would give players a feeling of progress, something to work towards, and knowledge of the scope of options. This doesn’t fix the second set of problems, but it improves it by eliminating the risk of never seeing a weapon of the type you are looking for. Thus shortening the RNG grind. This could be done within a sprint and thus should be done immediately before any redesign of progression and acquisition is attempted. The game is live, FS doesn’t have time to redesign the system while leaving the current one as horrible as it is. Aim for tolerability first.
#3 Finding a way to tie difficulty of missions and their completions to cosmetics and item rewards makes sense. Players often describe getting to the mission board and not having any impetus to click on a mission. This is because once the novelty has worn off a user psychologically needs some push to go bother doing something they feel like they’ve done before. Regardless of the fact that once they start playing they’re going to just have a good time. I didn’t propose anything here because I am not an expert in this particular area. But I might propose something similar to the emperor’s chests. Picking up special items like grimoires, successfully rezzing players, and loot dice/icons dropped by monstrosities are all tied directly to of generating a better emperor’s gift. Emperor’s gifts by default may not even be an item, just more cash. But once a threshold is cleared they generate an item. For example.
Please note none of these proposals are content. They are fixes. They are the minimum of making the game feel “not broken”. But what about making the game feel complete? What about attracting new players and retaining old ones? As a business fatshark needs players to sell cosmetics to to make money. How do you keep those players around? The answer is clearly content.
Content Priorities
Maps and Missions and the Mission board.
#4 I prioritize this next as the key goal of any game (for the players) is to play it. Right now there is a lot of friction in wanting to play. As identified earlier many players don’t find interest in playing the same map over and over again and feel they are very samey which only compounds this feeling. At the same time when new content is released many players cannot play the new content because it isn’t pinned anywhere. Furthermore the current mission board prevents players from playing the difficulty they want to play. In some cases there have been 0 damnation missions to play for example. All of these difficulties have lead players to ask for the system familiar to them in other Tide games - missions select.
However, there’s a key problem, which is splitting the playerbase. Right now DarkTide has 14 maps. Vermintide 2 had 13 maps and now has 24 with all DLC and expansions. I already have trouble getting full missions in Damnation, let alone what would happen if players were distributed through 13 maps at all times, even moreover when there are 24 darktide missions or 36 darktide missions. The mission board compresses the player base by only offering some missions at some times. I propose here two things directly and one to indirectly improve the darktide experience. Always have at least 2 missions of each difficulty available. Release more missions to keep things fresh. Reducing the run time or otherwise simplifying getting to “play game” will help reduce player friction with the somewhat unfinished experience of the hub. Its clear the hub is just a stem of some pretty cool ideas that were cut for time. But the game itself is great. Playing to the strength of the game should be the goal while those elements are added some day. So make queuing for a game easier and faster. I did neglect to mention this but I think a function that pins new maps with a difficulty select on release would resolve the irritation with the mission board that happened when Coms Plex was launched.
This is where I start to get into
Monetization:
Companies need to make money to keep making content. On an ongoing basis. A single set of sales is not enough to keep a studio going forever. Cosmetics is the new subscription model. (I’d prefer subscription models personally). By releasing interesting cosmetics that attract buyers the studio keeps their art team employed and rakes in cash to work on gameplay and other functions. This isn’t a bad arrangement for players despite all the complaints of predatory practices. As long as the developer never forgets that it is fun gameplay content that attracts their playerbase and underpins their cosmetics sales. When a business forgets this, games die on the vine and no one gets what they want.
#5 Its impossible to escape the comparison of this game to previous titles. A lot of negative reviews and even positive reviews make this comparison. Vermintide 2 had 15 careers (classes) on launch within 5 characters (archetypes). A lot of people feel like content was simply withheld from the final darktide product to be later drip fed with low effort. Others feel this was simply incompetence. I have no opinion here, my point is what players believe has reputational aspects to it. Especially when players are complaining about the cosmetics store being available at launch while so much content appears to be missing when compared to the last release. This negative press AND lack of class playstyle options are inevitably going to harm the game’s player base both in recruitment and retention. It is for these reasons I propose a priority be given to releasing new classes and as quickly as is realistic. Eschewing any kind of planned drip fed system or if at a minimum clearly stating that no such methodology was applied to the game design.
#5B I also propose what I consider to be a focus on classes that are both low hanging fruit and will be visually (cosmetically) distinct. A Death Cult assassin should be within the development tribal knoweldge, just steal Kerillian Shade. Weapons might be harder. Give such assassins a power blade (powered dagger) and a 2H mono sword and 2 daggers/knives and maybe a crossbow and hunting rifle, needle rifle and pistol if you’re feeling frisky. But why this class? Because it is very visually distinct. Cosmetics I have seen for such assassins range from skin tight bodysuits/catsuits (for men and women) to hive scum clothing with chameleoline cloaks. Such a class would be unique in play style AND in cosmetics. Allowing Fatshark to attract a broader base of players to pay for things.
#6 I propose new Archetypes within which classes could be generated. I do not think classes should be paid content. I also do not think slots for classes, assuming they aren’t like Careers, should be paid either. However Archetypes should be. Archetypes should be bigger departures from other classes where voice packs, cosmetic armors, new weapons and more will all be required to be built. This extra level of effort to initiate the new archetype, from a business perspective, likely requires some measure of cost recovery. However new classes within that archetype should still be free and thrive mostly off of cosmetics sales.
The Adeptus Arbites: Enforcer is the lowest hanging fruit. They use classical equipment similar to the other characters. Shotguns, Autoguns, lasguns, etc. Most of their cosmetics are already in the game from the shield to the armor. Enforcer also most easily fits the scum-to-acolyte story we already have. While other archetypes are better suited for more of a level 30+ experience.
The Adeptus Sororitas: The poster girls of the chamber militant of the ecclesiarchy and frequent allies of the Ordo Hereticus. Such an archetype and classes all make sense at the level of Acolyte and beyond. The equipment of a Sororitas is not so far outside the bounds of what our acolytes might expect to use at the levels we are at. Bolters, Flamers, Chainswords, Power Swords. The main advantage would be in power armor (tankiness) and whatever faith powers are used as class abilities. Godwyn-Diaz bolt guns, according to my Dark Heresy book, have 30 round magazines rather than the 24 round magazines of the bolt guns we current have access to. Classes could include Sister of Battle, Repentia, Celestian, Sacrescen or even Hospitaler. I would avoid Seraphim. Radical movement changes really can harm a games look and feel.
The Adeptus Mechanicus: Scitarii or Explorator (or other kinds of low ranking tech priest) are known to work with the Ordo’s and not just as consultants and administrative officials but even as cell members. It is easy to imagine the inquisitor’s retinue requesting a member of the Scitarii or Priesthood (level 30+) to assist in defense of the hive and its sacred manufactorums.
But the biggest reason for these last two is because every conversation I enter on the subject of Darktide always has someone going “Man I really wish they’d add tech priests, or scitarii or sisters of battle. They’re so cool!” Everyone wants them, and everyone is probably willing to shell out money for them. That sounds like a win/win.
Alright. I hope I’ve adequately explained my thoughts on these matters and how they tie in to a monetization system that gives both the players and fatshark what they want.
I might come back and try to edit this for brevity but that’s enough time on this for now.
