Honestly, at this point I am asking the law firm who is handling the steam class action if they do anything else in the gaming world. Hitting them up.
^Going more for this approach. “simply to compel response.”
Go re-read the crafting blog that was posted a day or two before the official release (or see brosgw’s post for details). I was on the brink of refunding the game but didn’t, because of the crafting blog post.
I launched the game once since they released crafting. I opened it up, checked the crafting out and realized that I’d be forced to spend way more time managing my inventory than I’m interested in and shut the game down again. After that I asked around about the level of RNG in Brunt’s shop etc. and realized that, not only did we get an inventory management simulator but also an RNG-fest. Finding out about the RNG didn’t make me more interested in launching the game.
2 Likes
“The game has every feature that was advertized”.
Ah you mean these features ?
Game crashing every 20 minutes for 3 months, constant random disconnects still happening now,
hits not registering half the time,
having to gamble your entire lifetime to get an end game weapon,
installing 20 mods to get acceptable QoL,
70-90fps with dlss on with every lowest setting imaginable on a machine that can run, for example, doom eternal maxed out at 200+ fps on native resolution,
re-used content : no, 2 missions on the same map with different pathways is not cool or innovative, its just incredibly lazy, like the weapon variants,
full of bugs and glitches,
a story plot that a mentally disabled person could write in 5 minutes,
And so on…
9 Likes
3 Likes
In the old interface for Hadron, it had the Combine Blessing button where now the Earn Blessing button is. We can infer from that the new system replaced the old, they were never planned as both being in at the same time, although I agree that it would have made the whole process a whole lot less grindy while making Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 Blessings useful for upgrading into the highest Tier.
Well, it does say perfect playstyles, not perfect weapons. But you can argue that a perfect playstyle includes a perfect weapon and perfect talent tree, so you’re kinda right. Minus the part where you claim it’s false advertizing, because it turns out you can actually create perfect weapons. It just takes some initial investment.
You need to only get 50% on your weapon right. One of the perks at max lvl you want and one of the Blessings at max lvl you want. You can shuffle out the rest with full precision. And your talent tree which is also half of your playstyle is 100% what you want. That leaves you with 25% of randomness to your playstyle choice and it can be perfected with time. It has been done by many players before.
We are getting into real nitpicky territory here and word mincing, but that’s the nature of the beast, you chose this path.
No, they’re actually right if you approach it from their angle.
Take the gearing system alone. For melee weapons, there are multiple options that are viable this time around. VT2 had precisely one Blessing that was worth it, the one that gave you 20% attack speed on crit.
At one point there was Resourceful Combatant, too, but it got nerfed and people stopped using it.
That’s just for melee weapons.
Darktide offers a multitude of many different ranged options you don’t have in VT2. Just by the factor of viability you have from the equipment alone more choices in how to approach your playstyle. And that precisely increases player agency.
Name me one class from VT2, I will tell you their most likely loadout for that class in melee, ranged and talent slots. I guarantee I will be right and I will do it directly after waking from a nap. Because everyone was running the same stuff all the time. Here you have less classes, but the way you can play that class are much wider and I see different loadouts on the regular.
50/50.
You are right in that at current Darktide has more randomness to gearing than VT2 has and than Darktide itself could do with less.
Fatshark is right that you make more meaningful choices with goals behind them.
Again, not a full commitment. They wanted to reduce randomness from what was previously in Darktide (just the shop) which they did. Still it has randomness.
I’m entirely unpaid.
But here are two things:
A) Somebody has to play Devil’s Advocate. And I love a good discussion and I happen to have the time.
B) Many claims here are hyperboled and extremely outrageous. By overreacting and throwing a fit, emotional people make more rational sounding arguments less impactful. So I see it as my role to defuse it a little and put it in perspective, even though I run the risk of looking like a total shill and being “unlikeable”.
And I’m aware I do. I just don’t care because I like Darktide, I like AA devs, I like what Fatshark is trying to do here (even if they don’t always get it right first) and I don’t care how that looks like to third parties (i.e. You).
Good luck. If you actually go through, I’ll give you props for sticking to your word like a total madman.
Just one word of advice before you go ahead:
Put aside some money from your bad weather fund and transfer it over to a trusted person in your name. I have a feeling that could get very costly with slim chances of success.
I’m pretty sure you’d lose that case, since no fraud or scam in the occured. Most things you base your somewhat justified critique on are statements worded with uncertainty. They imply no full commitment nor a promise, a duty to fulfill them or a contractual obligation. They were statements of intent. You can intend something without following up and that happens all the time in business and private life alike. Again. Good luck.
First off, those aren’t features. These are mostly performance issues. Which the game has because it has georgious graphics. You can play the game fine if you got a very decent rig. Maybe not 200 FPS like Doom Eternal. But then Doom Eternal doesn’t throw 100+ enemies at the same time on your screen.
Apples and Oranges, my good sir.
As for bugs and Glitches: They are part of software development. I hate to make dismissive statements, but here goes: Get over it.
If you want to eat delicious fish, you’ll have to watch out for some bone in there.
As for the interface, yes mods give you some Quality of Life features. But just like mods add QoL, they also add some new issues, bugs and dependencies of their own. Many also outright clutter the interface like it’s nobody’s business.
If Fatshark released the same content the interface mods did, you’d critiqueo the “unintuitive interface” being “too complicated / cluttered”. And rightly so. They may just have kept what’s currently in just because it looks cleaner. Only point of contention I will give you with the QoL stuff is the rerolls in Hadron. That’s just something else.
But for the most part:
The interface is as sparse as it is because that’s cleaner.
Additionally, I really like using mods. Currently the dev team is open and friendly towards the modding community. For all our’s sake I would like you to stop using mods as a potential tool to be so hostile or make a mockery of the game. It doesn’t take much to block modding support. And Fatshark also doesn’t have to upload the game’s source code of their own free volition to the internet (yes they do that) - Which is half the reason all those mods are out. Because Fatshark gives easy access to their code and helps modders actively mod (there’s a dev who jumps into the modding discord on the regular and gives advice and such).
TL;DR: Just calm down a little, relax, don’t take the game so serious you get a heart attack over it. This isn’t healthy, my good sir.
No, Darktide is just not optimised at all.
There are a ton of games, with more going on and more “georgious graphics” that are running way more stable and just better.
This is just you stating that people are having too bad of a PC to run Darktide, which is not true.
5 Likes
That is also a true statement. For starters, Darktide could use occlusion culling more effectively.
But still, you can run the game 60 FPS+ easily. Any GPU that is 2070 or higher will do it. Especially Full HD. With DLSS I can play the game at 55 FPS during hordes in 4k. And I have a 3070 and a CPU from 5 years ago (i9-9900k).
The game is poorly optimized, but it’s more than playable. Seen better, seen worse. It’s not excellent. But it’s serviceable. And that’s all it needs to be on that front, even if as Gamers we do like the juicy stable 120 Frames Per Second throughout the entire gaming session.
As for games with “more georgious graphics” (hey I made a typo) well - Arguable. What looks better and runs better? And then define better? Because I’m pretty sure when it comes to many things going on at once, all the Tide games top the list for having the most fully active combatants in a field onscreen at once.
It doesn’t look bad but its pretty average even for last gen standards. Vermintide looks way better, has more attention to details, environment looks more handcrafted than darktide’s souless industrial setting where every map looks the same. It wouldn’t surprise me if they used some kind of AI generation to speed up the creative process.
They were also part of it in the 90’ where software development was immeasurably more complex yet I can’t name you a single ps1 or n64 game that I played having game breaking issues like in darktide.
No ? If they didn’t exist I wouldn’t be playing the game anymore. These basic QoL features should be in the base game period.
5 modders did more work to save the game in 2 months than a 180ish employees company did in 6 months. They know blocking mods would force them to fix the game so they let some people do it for free. I’m not blaming fatshark’s dev team because they have incredible talent, but all their management team is full of sh*t.
We’re all fed up with these ultra predatory business practices.
It’s healthy to complain about it, most people nowadays are brainless consumers with no self esteem, fine. But at least let us defend ourselves so they can think about it twice in the future, maybe.
2 Likes
I wanna make it expressly clear that I don’t think the slow updates are that big of a problem. The problem I have is lack of communication. I played almost 1k hours of vermintide 2 which I know isn’t exactly top 1% but it laid the groundwork for my excitement and hope for Darktide’s release. side note, whether you care or not i’m also autistic and my interest in VT2 and Darktide is inexplicably emotional for me and I think that matters a lot for now much I care about the development of the game and a lack of communication from the devs.
I’m not pissed at anyone, I’m not saying fatshark is a terrible greedy awful company. I’m simply saying that my experience with the game from beta testing to present day has been wildly emotional and of late, quite painful. I’m expressing my frustration as someone that has a deep emotional investment in an experience that could be changed and fixed and yes I’m upset that it’s not fixed yet but I’m 1000 times more upset that I’ve gotten no indication that fatshark is even aware there’s a problem.
I don’t think that’s asking too much. I don’t think that means I need to “touch grass”. I think that means I care about something and I want to share it with people and it’s very frustrating to feel so powerless in the current circumstance.
6 Likes
yall need to stop feeding the troll
That is reasonable and I understand you. I also wish the game was even better and no, I don’t think you need to touch grass. It’s fine.
Some pretty crazy standards you have there, but I don’t know what else you’re playing. I don’t remember any game having the visual fidelity Darktide had. Certainly not Vermintide 2. It looks great in parts, but the texture quality wasn’t on par and neither was the lighting.
I can compile you quite a long list if we count all the “>Program XYZ< has run into an issue and had to be terminated” errors Windows 98 and Windows XP were producing at alarming rates on specific titles.
Lots of hard crashes when being on an outdated driver version for your GPU. A lot of incompability issues.
Might be different for you, but I remember having to trouble shoot countless of games, from big AAA titles to small indie titles released for free. I had constant PC uptrades every 3 to 4 years. And yes, many games also had bugfix patches back then, too. But you couldn’t just straight up download them before Valve populized Steam, often you acquired them in Gaming magazines on discs or from the publisher’s website.
You wanted a list, so here goes:
Summary
->America: No Peace Beyond the Line had performance issues on some up to date systems at release. Also a number of bugs that were patched out with the Gold Edition / Expansion
->Dungeon Lords was an absolute mess. Technically, in terms of content and in terms of story and gameplay presentation. It was lowly rated everywhere and yes, it crashed an awful lot, too.
->Enclave Despite being available on Steam, it crashes on anything not Windows XP randomly out of the blue, mid level, with no option to have your in-level progress restored
->Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver on PC was plagued with nightmarish issues, among them input methods not getting recognized by the game. Even the Gaming journalists back then wrote articles about it. The game was made by Crystal Dynamics, which was +100 man strong at the time
->Metal Gear Solid, I remember there was bugfixes for that one
->Midtown Madness had some crashing issues on Windows
->Need for Speed II, III and Road Challenge had crashes on some systems and EA offered updates on their website
->Nox, an action RPG by Westwood studios, had a number of bugfix patches despite being quite well produced. I didn’t notice anything major, but it had 4 bugfix/balance patches
->Temple of Elemental Evil (Dungeons and Dragons game) had severe performance issues and even does on modern systems
->The Spirit Engine crashes on late Windows XP installations and anything higher randomly because of some sound issue conflicting with the music files and the ingame sound mixing system. Only fix is to turn off the music, which is the best part of that game.
->Vampires: The Masquerade - Troika Studio’s last game that made them go bust due to an ill-timed parrallel release with Half Life 2 (you know which got all the attention). The game was unfinished and plagued with countless issues. A guy named Wesp5 on Steam spent years making content restoration and bugfix / crashfix patches.
And then there was a whole other level of evil around that luckily died eventually:
Summary
Incompabilities caused by early DRM solutions from terrible third-party companies, that literally made your bought games incompatible on new Windows OS installations. In example Shade: Wrath of Angel was coupled with StarForce. It made playing the thing impossible on any Windows platform after XP, despite the game running on common Direct X structure. Just because the DRM prevents the thing from starting. Another great example of outright evil DRM was Games For Windows Live. It was discontinued by Microsoft and drowned entire libraries worth of content bought by people with it.
It’s users were all absorbed by Steam.
These are all just examples that immediately come to mind. Gaming never was perfect. You have been had by a well-crafted illusion. Since there was not much of an online culture then, problems went right past your attention if you weren’t affected. Now you see others being affected online, because they can (luckily) raise the issue.
You remember how Games shipped with handbooks and they always had a customer support hotline attached? Now you know why that was a thing…
Can’t really determine if you’re serious with that. I personally never dropped a game I liked over the lack of QoL features, if the core gameplay was good.
But yes, the mod do make things easier. Some are adding heavy clutter, though. Thinking specifically of the Quick Info Card mod.
No. 5 modders were able to mod the game because the baseline leg work was already done. Adding LUA code to a fully functioning game is not entirely easy, but it’s also a lot easier than doing something from scratch. Most of those mods hook into well-established variables and code and “just” attach a new interface to it or activate already existing code by hooking into it. Sometimes they make a function call that also refers to already established function calls.
By all the love for modding, but what you’re saying is a bit much.
Yes, the released mods are helpful and the modders did a good job. I’m also greatful for their work. But claiming they did more than the company that made the entire game is just dishonest even in your selected timeframe. Especially when those modders do get help from the devs in their freetime. They also have the raw code handed to them by the dev team, every single time a new patch drops.
Stop this silly attempt at using mods to shame the company. You are driving a wedge between modders and devs with this and we don’t need that.
Predatory? You use that term way too loosely. Having some randomness in your loot system is default baseline to add a tiny hint of excitement and difficulty into the mix.
How excited would you be about an all Tier 4 Blessing, Tier 4 Perk weapon if you could assemble it with 4 clicks any time you wanted? - No randomness, no challenge and no cost attached?
Or maybe scratch the Tiers entirely and have only the strongest version available to begin with.
There’d be no real gearing system or grind in the first place and then you’d ask what you’re playing for here.
Grinding for gear has been a staple of Gaming since tapping the W key moves you forward. In fact, the good old games we talked about earlier were much grind heavier than a game like Darktide is. What’s more, they were also more gear dependend. You can go right now and clear out Damnation+ with all White gear if you know your dodges and your positioning. It’ll be a bit harder, but perfectly doable. Pros have done it in 4-man groups in less than 30 mins. All Whites. No upgrades.
If you don’t even really “need” the gear to succeed in the game, how is the gearing system predatory?
I really dislike how language itself is losing all it’s flavor here. People nowadays use the strongest hyperbolic language for the mildest of inconveniences. “Brainless consumers with no self-esteem”? Try outraged loudmouths instead!
You know what the term predatory was used for just some odd 20 years ago? Sexual exploitation of people in compromised situations. Unpaid labor via contractual exploitation. Black Mail used to exert power in political office. Unfair contract clauses binding unknowing constituents in helpless situations! Abuse of authority over minors. Domestic abuse.
That’s where the term Predatory comes from. The vilest stuff that is not outright murder, manslaughter or attempted mass extinction of living organisms. But sometimes it also concludes in the aforementioned.
Then some populist YouTubers came along and called everything they didn’t like under the sun predatory.
Look at someone too long because your mind wandered? PREDATORY.
Use a sales pitch that’s unpopular? PREDATORY.
Inconvenience someone for not doing their work properly? PREDATORY.
Too much YouTube grifting called out by other grifting YouTubers? ALSO PREDATORY.
It’s all predatory now, the entire world, we’re all predators. You, me, they, them! Holy Jesus, someone save this poor planet and the innocent little fur baby dogs from all those predators!
At least it was somewhat defensible when they talked about those loot boxes targetting children. Now that did have predatory elements. But this game doesn’t even have that.
It has a bunch of random factors to your upgrades in a category of games known for their random item aquisition elements. Mildly inconvenient and hardly a challenge. It doesn’t even incentivize to spend money, either. It’s just a thing the game does so there’s more game for you later (if you want more game to begin with).
It’s a joke. A tiny hurdle to your enormous growth so you don’t immediately jump to maximum power. And you don’t even need it to begin with, because if you have the expertise you will dab on the entire game regardless, Hi-Intensity modifiers and all.
You are committing the fallacy of strawman by misrepresenting the initial poster’s argument. They are not arguing against the existence of a gearing system or the concept of grinding for gear. They are expressing their frustration with ultra-predatory business practices, which is a real issue in the gaming industry.
Moreover, your argument about the term “predatory” is a classic example of the fallacy of red herring. The initial poster is not talking about sexual exploitation or other serious crimes. They are specifically addressing the business practices in the gaming industry, which can indeed be predatory in nature.
While I agree that we should be careful about using strong language, dismissing people’s concerns with irrelevant arguments is not productive. We should have open and honest discussions about these issues and work towards finding solutions that benefit both the players and the game developers.
May the Emperor guide us towards a brighter future.
3 Likes
Personally, I adore the fact that the word “predatory” has been so widely associated with modern game design. It shows that people everywhere feel the same way about the way the industry is going as a whole.
It should be applied to most of modern society, but hey, small steps right?
7 Likes
Not really. First sentence I quoted from that part of his post was “We’re all fed up with these ultra predatory business practices.” and the rest of that post was context. Then he called people who don’t feel that it is brainless consumers.
I mean, if he was talking about FOMO shop rotation that was initially in maybe he’d have a point, but he wasn’t. He was talking about the randomness of gear mechanic, which is baseline gearing stuff.
And the rest of my post is not strawman either. If you use language and use such words as predatory and the like, you have to be ready to be taken serious. Because they are serious words with serious implications. I was explaining where the word comes from and in which context it has historically been used. Even in the Gaming sphere it was related to scandals of sexual misconduct and exploitation of workers.
Predatory is a vicious word. It implies:
->Exploitation of some form in execution with intent
->The intent of malice and to inflict harm in the process
Don’t claim misrepresentation when I’m clearly on point. “oh he didn’t mean it like that you misrepresent him”. NO! He meant exactly what he said. You call someone predatory? Fine, but now you have to go ahead and explain what is predatory.
You call someone brainless consumer? Fine, but you better have a good reasoning for it all. And you better line that reasoning up perfectly, otherwise you prove yourself to be just a sensationalist dude throwing big words around.
I’m tired of it. Our beautiful language is losing all sense and meaning, one word at a time, because people can’t stay disciplined when getting things off their chest. It’s not a good thing and I won’t stand for it.
I’m also not dismissing any concerns, I reacted to the full post and gave everything an honest counter-points that are fully valid.
Parts of modern society definitely are predatory, but other parts are not. Which is why being linguistically accurate is important.
For instance, demanding people work for their societal benefits such as wealth or luxury is reasonable.
But making people work ever harder while giving them less and less ever year by use of currency inflation on purpose is predatory. There’s a good use example of that word. :3
Your response seems to miss the point of the initial poster’s argument. They are expressing their frustration with the business practices in the gaming industry that they perceive as ultra-predatory. It is important to understand that the term “predatory” can have different connotations depending on the context in which it is used, and in this case, it refers to business practices that exploit consumers for profit.
Your attempt to explain the historical context of the word “predatory” is a red herring, as it does not address the issue at hand. Additionally, your argument that the term “predatory” should only be used in cases of sexual misconduct or exploitation of workers is not accurate.
By focusing on the semantics of the initial poster’s argument and dismissing their concerns as sensationalism, you are not contributing to an open and honest discussion. Instead, we should be working towards finding solutions that benefit both players and game developers, while addressing the issue of predatory business practices in the gaming industry.
In the future, I suggest engaging with the initial poster’s argument directly and addressing their concerns, rather than getting caught up in the semantics of language.
May the Emperor guide us towards a brighter future.
2 Likes
Agree.
For example:
11 Likes
Thanks for pointing this out, I missed this gem of just pure, unfiltered BS. lmfao
I know Mayson loves playing devils advocate but this is just outrageously wrong.
4 Likes
Thing is, this thread was really in the context of the crafting system and such. It also was what we were talking about right before, even with the same poster. So obviously I took his entire comment in that context.
Look, I really appreciate that you try to stand up for him. But if someone goes that far with his commentary, of course he should accept being judged on that ground.
Of course I’m also against psychologically manipulative practices such as FOMO, paid lootboxes and other such shenanigans. But again, it wasn’t the context to this discussion.
And no, etmology isn’t a Red Herring. It is important to understand what the language we use implies (and for the record, I also gave examples of other predatory behavior not related to sexual misconduct or worker exploitation). Predatory is just a very strong word. I think it should be recognized and used cautiously.
Also because you want the word to pack a punch when you use it. If we use words like these inflationary, they will lose the oomph they are supposed to have.
Inaccurate language leads to weakening of ones own bargaining power. That’s an important thing, since most discussions are negotiations really.
Funny meme response. But I still don’t see what’s so wrong with it.
Your argument about the historical context of the word “predatory” is irrelevant to the initial point being made about predatory business practices in the gaming industry. The focus of the discussion is on how these practices exploit consumers for profit, not the semantics of language. Therefore, your argument about entomology is a red herring.
May the Emperor guide us towards a brighter future.
5 Likes
Couldn’t have put it better myself.
What’s wrong with this? You cannot be serious right? Surely you see the irony in those 2 statements coming from the same person. Not only that but what makes this downright hysterical to me (and likely many others) is the fact that even a single soul would call the progression systems “fine”. They are not. They are, for the lack of a better term, f*cked. It’s RNG gambling within RNG gambling, within more RNG gambling combined with near mindless grinding for resources and the only thing that keeps you going is how susceptible you are to the dopamin release of the gambling involved.
3 Likes