Fat Shark needs to work faster, and a lot of people are complaining that after six months all we really have is a gas grenadier and a gas environment. The next big update should come in June, and we can expect to see new weapons, new game modes, or new classes.
1 Like
Aye, Pennances and outsourced cosmetics assets aren’t a major fix for anything, it’s largely just getting that feature to the point it should have been at release 18 months ago. Neat for newer players, but not something that’s going to draw people back in most who uninstalled or moved on. Nobody in my gaming group seems to be at all interested in this update the way some were when Patch 13 dropped.
A new mission condition and variant enemy are a week or two’s worth of release pipeline for a similar sized studio a 20 minute walk from Fatshark’s front door making another 4 person coop shooter with the same core game engine, not nearly half a year.
From what Steamchart traffic is showing, this latest update managed to get traffic back to up to…January levels of average player counts for a couple days and it’s already dropping back down, just like with previous updates. There doesn’t seem to be any impetus at FS to maintain momentum once they generate it with releases, nor any acknowledgement that the market bar for their product has been raised by a studio just across the river from them.
Fatshark has largely chosen not to acknowledge crafting/itemization/end-game progression problems (aside from recently reposting some earlier vague crafting copy-pasta) despite it being the single largest point of contention in reviews and discussion platform topics. Other than pulling the frustrating slot machine lever for gear, there’s not much to do at 30 and while characters continue to generate XP it does nothing. Features once prominently promised, like Solo play, are basically dead. Half the gear in the game is in a wonky state as-is, the grind to try different gear is painful, and new gear is introduced only rarely, while new play content appears to only come every six months or more. The story is a mess without little in the way of coherency (despite playing this game since 2022, I don’t have any idea how the missions fit together or what the larger narrative is besides “6th rebelled, Wolfer bad, underhive scum are also fighting, and the cosmetics vendor was a secret cultist”.
We’ll see if future updates actually address any of these issues, but the track record hasn’t been particularly compelling thus far.
3 Likes
Ya, this update feels more like a fixing this to be how they should have been than anything else. But I’m glad it’s there even if it’s not something that will bring me back.
2 Likes
I will do a mini devil’s advocate here on DT being beholden to GW approvals for content. They do have to submit their desired changes and additions to the game to GW for approval, which depending on how well the system is managed and set up could add days to even months to even small changes like how weapons/tech works, what can be worn, and how characters interact.
Do I think this explains the very slow pace of development? Not at all, but it is a factor.
Yes ? I think they knew that, same thing as the Itemization update
It’s not here to bring new things, but to make the drop softer/slower, and hopefully make the plateau rest higher than 3k
1 Like
It shouldn’t affect it at all though.
Its logistics. You plan for the time things take, and work accordingly. Just because things have to be approved, shouldn’t make a difference to their work rate. It could theoretically pile up on GWs desk, but that doesn’t seem to be what we’re seeing is it?
2 Likes
Like I said, I do not believe this factor explains FS’s slow pace. I’m just saying that this is one thing Arrowhead does not contend with that FS does. GW determines when they get around to requests from FS, so even if FS had perfect logistics on their end they cannot guarantee GW will have the same on theirs.
Once more, I do not believe this explains FS’s pace.
2 Likes
On some level perhaps, but I can’t think of another title licensing GW’s IP that has such major issues, or why stuff like variant enemies using existing assets would warrant such delays.
1 Like
GW does this to some extent with just about every game licensed off their IP. In typical fashion this fact is regularly obscured, not talked about, or downright denied. While I can’t prove it, I also suspect some games are given extra leeway in this process while others are simply not. The Dawn of War series in particular seems to be given slightly more leeway. Especially with flipping terminators and prepare for knight-anfall knights.
This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.