I really have no idea what Fatshark is playing at with this crafting system

[brosgw]

@BrutallyCunning

I literally created an account here to throw my voice about crafting in, but after finding out that there is - hilariously enough - a literal memorial thread for those voices I’ll probably make one myself.

The Crafting Memorial; lest we forget

[image] Here lies **587** souls: brosgw CommanderJ Mezmorki ryshek nonsequitur Dripping JanZamoysky citizen_graves afriholioo …

You’re dedication has been commemorated. Welcome 435.

[Yellow]

Can we even call this crafting? its more like weapon tempering.

[Mayson]

@FASAStampede

After many months of hype, gitguddening, burnout, conversation in Discord, returning and then becoming completely apathetic towards the game, I’ve arrived at an answer that loosely fits this topic. And it goes something like this -

Everyone who plays DT and is in some way invested, even mildly, has it all wrong. This wasn’t intended to be so engaging… that part of the project, the one where the gameplay is actually solid, was a welcome byproduct of FS’s earlier works. As far as DT was concerned, the players were supposed to come in riding on some hype, level up a character or two, do a few higher difficulty runs, buy some skins from a few shop rotations. Maybe get one or two close-to-usable weapons…

And then move on. About 50-60 hours or so oughta get those purchases in. Maybe get all the penances etc…

New content then drips in eventually - new hype, same old marketing. Same old DT. Maybe get a few community members to test the game… New players come in. Repeat.
The fact that there are people theory-crafting, doing challenge runs and honing their skills in the game to a great degree is a side-show. A strange after-effect of the model. Aberrant behavior.

I cba to look for it now, but I remember some interview with someone from FS, who denoted that the game (VT2, iirc) being so addicting is seen as bizarre and surprising internally, and the team never figured that’d be the case. (If someone has a link handy, I’d appreciate it.)

So… yeah. The perspective of the gamer here is wrong. It’s been wrong for a while, and after nearly a year of forum activity and Discord socializing, this is the feeling I’m left with. We’re looking at it the wrong way, assuming what we care about is, was or has at some point been important.

While true (and I confirm that video exists), they also noted at that point that their games clearly do have a long-term shelf-life and that thus they change the way they develop their games.

Darktide clearly has more long-term elements put into it. I’d argue the crafting system is supposed to be one of these, although it unironically ends up being less engaging than the rest of the game.