From time to time, games that get off to a rocky start are “relaunched” or re-released by their developers as a new enhanced version or 2.0 version or some other special edition.
Do you think Darktide is a candidate for this or should be considered for it?
How would you see that going over with the player base or you personally?
What would you like to see in a relaunch? What would appease you about this?
For discussion purposes, lets assume that existing progress/accounts would be transferred to the new version and that existing Darktide owners could get a free copy of the relaunched version.
Here’s my take on it:
Darktide has been a colossal missed opportunity in my mind, and the baggage the game is now saddled with (e.g. negative steam reviews) is going to keep it underperforming for a long time. And even if the dev’s did a bunch of things the community has been asking for (e.g. #breakthelocks) that’s a nuance that’s going to get lost in the greater gaming ecosystem.
So in my mind, a relaunch coupled with significant improves to the base game is what would be needed to get gaming media and others to actually take a look at the game again, and wipe the slate clean from a review standpoint.
Things I think the relaunch would need to accomplish:
Address major community concerns: Remove the locks, allow resource/gear sharing between characters, improve the mission terminal. This is the bare minimum that needs to happen.
Add two new maps (i.e. environments) each with 2-3 missions set within them. The game is starved for map content
Add one new class for each archetype - with the understanding that these will probably come as paid DLC (honestly, I think this is their plan all along) - but getting four new classes at once would be great.
New weapons accompanying the above classes as appropriate.
New monsters, boss fights, and mission tasks
Integration of many Quality of Life features found in mods
Solo play, true private lobbies, bots that actually use your off-characters and all their gear/skills.
Seasonal content - establish framework for quarter (3-month) long seasons with their own cosmetic sets, challenges, and fun things to work on over the course of the season (Deep Rock Galactic style).
The above would be what I’d love to see for the game and would make me supportive of a relaunch. I think people would get on board with it.
All said, I don’t think Fatshark will ever be able to get their act together to do this. I’d love to be proven wrong but Fatshark has never been one to overdeliver on anything.
Honestly they shot themselves in the foot by not launching into early access. That would have been an accurate description of the product we recieved and they wouldn’t have been taking NEAR as much flak over the state of the game. Remember the saying that a game that is released bad will always be bad? That isn’t AS true as it once was, but how many people are going to come back and change their review on steam? How many people played for 30 or so hours and then shelved the game permanantly?
As the OP stated, a relaunch would be necessary just to clean the review slate and get the youtubers and media interested in the game again. Then again, maybe they can just make DT2 and forget about this disaster, similiar to VT1->VT2.
The general sentiment I’ve been seeing among youtubers has shifted from “Darktide just needs a few more months in the oven” to “what is going on with Darktide?” so idk, seems like we’re reaching a point where the player base will just keep dying off unless they make some really big changes soon.
My biggest problem is still not being able to load into the g*ddamn game reliably, so fixing that would be a pretty significant improvement for me at least.
There’s so many structural problems and loop problems with everything around the core gameplay I would say so. Give me a no mans sky revival for this game.
FatShark is completely incapable of something like this. Removing the locks isn’t a lot of work, it’s something they choose to not do. They are beyond incompetent.
Moreover, they would rightly be dragged over the coals if they re-released the game as a seperate product and expected existing costumers to pay for content/subclasses that should have been in the base game at launch.
Fatshark is so incompetent they can’t even release a blogpost on time. Why would they be capable of releasing a fully featured video game? even on the second try?
No. What fatshark needs is to completely delete its leadership, immediately re-align their priorities and initiate aggressive content pump, removing player friction points aggressively (hotfix that you idiots), and get their damn xbox launch released. Whoever has this perfectionist streak in their ineffable design studio is going to bury their game forever in a year or so at the rate they’re going. Just like many games have. By failing to respond in a timely manner to player painpoints there will soon be no one to play the game and thus no one to spend money on it. Also maybe try playing your own video game. Not once in a while. Every day. Every night.
The person who deliberately designs obsfucation of mechanics.
The person who deliberately thinks RNG = game design.
The person who tried to slam monetisation design into the Mourningstar.
The person who manages version control.
All those and more should review their decisions… experience the end result of their decisions.
It sucks so bad that all of the passion that FS’s art teams obviously has for Warhammer is probably gonna go to waste because some suit decided to try to squeeze a few more bucks out of the audience chasing this failing business model. “Live service” might as well mean “dead game within a year”.
If they’re going to “relaunch” it’ll have to be at the same time as the console launch, but I don’t think they’ll do that.
I don’t think a relaunch is necessary (or wise) anyway. Better to adjust the game to address some of the issues that have pushed people away, then do a huge event + content drop to pull people back in.
I agree with giving them more time. But when you think about it what have they done in half a year? The game has been out for 6 months and they’ve done practically nothing. All they have done is added stuff that was already in the game just hidden. We give them another year at this rate we still won’t have anything new.
