I’ve been thinking about this same question for a little while. Here’s my thesis:
From my end user perspective, I see three overarching “bad practices” at work that explain Darktide’s current status: Bad Design Decisions, Bad Product Management, and Bad Technical Delivery. Each of these has any number of underlying reasons that we can speculate on as to why the bad practices are exhibited, but it doesn’t alter the outcome.
Digging into this more:
=== Bad Design Decisions ===
Much of Fatshark’s efforts (that we can see publicly anyway) resolve around fixing bad design decisions -specifically everything NOT the core combat mechanics and gameplay. We’ve spent nearly a year now trying to get “core gameplay systems” like crafting implemented (and locks removed), the mission board improved, resources to be shared, etc. We’re finally getting some improvements here.
But it’s important to point out that many of these issues were problems for the community in the first place because somewhere along the line a design decision was made to implement systems that artificially inflate and bloat playtime. And it was probably made late in the hour so what we got was a half-implemented system that was already headed in the wrong direction.
WHY these decisions were made we might never know. Was it a CEO that drank the gacha-game cool-aid and went all in on mobile game tactics (timers, MTXs, slot machines etc.)? Was it Fatshark’s investors/owners (Tencent, cough cough) putting the screws to the studio? I don’t know. But I WILL say that this sort of anti-player design was cranked up to 11 in Darktide, when all indications based on VT2’s trajectory (i.e. Athanor/Weave crafting system) was that Fatshark was headed in a more player-friendly direction.
But we veered way off course.
Unfortunately, and per all the discourse around Baldurs Gate 3, the bad decisions are increasingly the norm for larger studios, especially ones owned by an IPO. If an investment company owns a development studio, I think the tragic reality is the passion for making a good player-centric game experience is simply not there. Raw profiteering fills the void.
Quick digression:
Also, I don’t actually buy for a moment that line that Fatshark has been “putting all this content on pause to address core design issues”. That’s a convenient excuse to use, and they can blame it all on the player base instead. They’re working on the console port and despite all this still had the cash shop up and running that whole time and even got the FOMO rotations going again. They’ve continued to push out new paid content and haven’t done anything substantial in the free content department (and certainly not up to “live service” standards). The balance changes and other quality of life features would not be a heavy lift, and it is inexcusable that it’s taken so long to get improvements.
=== Bad Product Management ===
Fatshark doesn’t really know how to manage their products relative to their audience. Even back to Vermintide #1 they’ve been seemingly mystified about why people play games in this genre (“we never thought people would play this for more than 100 hours!!!”).
The major whiff with Darktide was two-fold.
#1 was hyping up the game by saying “how much we learned from VT2” but in reality delivering something that was almost the exact opposite. All the lessons learned from what made VT2 successful were seemingly acknowledged and then thrown out. These “bad design decisions” set the community on edge.
#2 was not releasing the game as early access. It was evident by all accounts that the game was not only short on content (and still is) but woefully underdeveloped in many of its systems. The game released with effectively ZERO crafting system and a dearth of quality of life features that are still absent (and only partially resolved by using 3rd party mods).
What Fatshark spectacularly failed to realize is that IF they had released in Early Access, the community would’ve cut them so much more slack. IF Fatshark could muster up the gumption to be honest and level with the community during an Early Access period, they wouldn’t have immolated all the goodwill they built up from VT2.
Fatshark over-hyped, over-promised, and grossly under-delivered. This has been a spectacular failure to manage expectations and the perception of their product. Fatshark is sitting on a potential goldmine between the core combat system, the IP, and all the places they could take this game. But they’ve really squandered the momentum they had.
As for WHY the bad product management? I don’t think the lead decision makers are willing to stick their necks out and take the heat stemming from their decisions. I think they’d rather let their community go at each other’s throats over it. Its sad, but that’s all there is.
=== Bad Technical Delivery ===
Last is the reality that Fatshark is just slow and sloppy when it comes to delivering. And it’s just always been this way for Fatshark.
Patches routinely break stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with the current changes. A new patch will RE-BREAK something that was previously fixed patches ago. Optimization will continue to be a shell game of kinda-sorta improvements. Fatshark has always suffered from this.
I don’t know what workflows and version control protocols they use, but clearly something is off. And this bad technical delivery does unfortunately impact how long it takes for them to develop new content. Things should go faster the more you do it, not slower.
How can we expect them to design and deliver new sub-classes when it took them months to get Feats on many classes working properly, let alone balanced, in the first place? How can we expect new maps at a regular cadence when it takes them ages to push out a new map despite claiming their modular map system would make it quick and easy to generate new maps? We have weapon variants with broken hit box priorities. Changes that are clearly not QA’d sufficiently, and on and on.
=== CONCLUSION ===
I want Darktide to be a successful game. I don’t have a lot of gaming time these days, yet despite all the complaints this is the only game I still play regularly since it came out, much as it pains me at times.
Of the three bad practices above, its understandable having one rear its ugly head. Two is a serious case of going off the rails. All three at once is a royal cluster krak. The miracle is that there are still some of us left hanging on and wanting this to turn out good in the end. Maybe we’ll still get there - but it’s a grim road ahead still.
