Karked if you do, karked if you don't

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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A discussion on how to turn things around for fat shark.

The sentiment around fat shark attempting to walk their own path of redemption is frustrating.

To me personally, I’m invested, I see a lot of potential in darktide and for what we have I’m enjoying it, but like many here - I am thirsty.

Fat shark’s pace for updates has been glacial slow. Their communication has either missed the mark or been tone deaf. Major issues have been outright ignored until the threaten revenue streams. The launch was probably one of the most abysmal I’ve ever witnessed - with basic systems absent and explanations of what happened unsatisfactory.

There is a fear that lingers here, and that is given fat shark’s history on projects they deem to be failed, that fat shark is on a path to abandon darktide, or at least to minimally support it going forward and to focus their efforts elsewhere.

Before anyone jumps in with vitriol, towards them, we get it, they were in the wrong - but you’re here, you’re invested, to some degree you want to see them succeed.

With all of that said, how can fat shark turn things around? If they are silent and just plod along and work on the game the community thinks the game has been abandoned. If they communicate about what’s coming up in a small degree they are met with absolute distain, battered with their current failings and insulted. We’ve got a book of grudges going on to currently draw from for that, and don’t get me wrong, it’s quite a justified testament. The question is, how can they turn it around and what can we do on our end to impact that.

Fat shark needs to rebuild community trust and confidence. What can they do that in your opinion would improve things greatly?

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Being actually sincere on the reasons why things went so wrong with this game and what they are going to do to fix it.
They won’t of course.
What went wrong? The crafting rng, the uninteresting bloated perk and blessings system, the overpriced low quality cosmetics that you can’t even recolor, the lack of frequent updates, the lot of skills that are useless, the lack of weapon balance, the performance issues, the server issues, lack of solo play, lack of decent bots, the careers we never got, the crappy gore system, Melk’s shop and contracts being useless, same for Brunt’s and the commissar. Oh and the “rush interruption” system that doesn’t interrupt speedrunners but normal players.

I’m sick of PR bs.

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Just keep making good ****. Big hopes for this itemization rework :crossed_fingers:, happy to wait a couple months. Got so many penances left to get anyway.

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I agree on the missing sincerity on their point. The open letter feels like a closed letter and it felt like a corporate non apology.

Is that what you’re waiting for to forgive them and cheer the game on?

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  1. Contrition to the point it’s seen as hurting their profits. Stuff like getting rid of the FOMO store, slashing cosmetic prices across the board, making aquilas earnable in meaningful quantities. Their greed is enormous and increasingly obvious - if they stopped publicly succumbing to it people would be happy to forgive them.
  2. Actual communication. Play things straight with us, stop acting like overgrown toddlers who think that because they don’t mention a problem it doesn’t exist, tell us what you’re planning in detail and communicate when plans change.
  3. More updates. More meaningful content, more maps, more balance patches, more actual bug fixes rather than whatever you could push out the door in time for a shop rotation.

These three are basically what needs to be done. I think a good start would be addressing the trust deficit by openly acknowledging their f*ckups, and demonstrating that they’re going to fix them via…well, anything. A free Aquila giveaway or something. If they put out an announcement chronicling the features they abandoned and explaining why, it’d at least help.

EDIT:

It took over a year and a half for me to lose all faith in Fatshark. They initially came off as a team that had put out an underbaked product due to investor demands and who would be working in good faith to fix it. Their behavior since then, most egregiously what they’ve done in recent months and in comparison to a living game like HD2, has removed any hope I had of this game improving significantly.

Fatshark wants the community to like them more? Fatshark needs to boot out the leadership insisting on the anchors around this game’s neck.

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An actual acknowledgement would be a beginning, yeah. Next comes meaningful changes.
It’s not just the open letter, they keep going at it. When they talked the itemization changes, they used the term “unpredictable grind”. Unpredictable? I can’t tolerate that kind of nonsense anymore.

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Getting pitch forks out and convincing everyone that failure is Fatsharks forte.
But seriously…

Asking these questions trying to make a whole discussion out of it is funny. Like wanting crafting and bugs to be fixed while adding a bunch of new content isnt obvious.
The motives of the establishment and the collective will very rarely fully align.
It’s like asking a bunch of priest what they can do to improve the lives of punk rocker wannabes.
Donate, preach and pray, donate, preach and pray.

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Forgot to address these bits.

Yes, and the solution to that is to fix their problems and communicate in more detail.

I mean, if they ever fix or address any of the problems in the Book of Grudges, I’m going to strike through each of them as they’re fixed. That’s all the ‘influence’ I have beyond the usual stuff anyone can do. I do keep saying more communication that’s substantive is good. The problem is that it rarely gets further than ‘this is a good start, do it more’ before returning to the same grey pattern of ‘we do nothing but release outsourced cosmetics every two weeks, pay up’.

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I’m not going to pretend that I’m enough of an organizer, a developer, or a person to figure out what’s going on at Fatshark or how to fix it. The fact of the matter is that we all are missing the information we’d need to make such an informed decision.

But, to those of you saying “We need them to come clean,” they won’t because the problems are involved in the decisions of people who are still there. The problems are still at Fatshark right now, as are the people responsible for them.

There’s no way they can admit it. The worst thing you can say about your boss is the embarassing truth when there is one.

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N mfs still do pay up :joy: :joy:

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So what you’re saying is we need to hope for some horrible herring-based tragedy to befall the C-suite when they go on their yearly two-month vacation in December. Gotcha.

But yeah you do have a point. I’m outlining what needs to happen, but so long as the same people are making decisions, that’s not what will happen.

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A valuable lesson to learn when doing customer service is to know when to drop the cheery “I-can-help” attitude and just say honestly why it won’t, or can’t work in natural language.

Even a simple off-hand comment from a CM explaining who the problem is would be so much.

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Trust is an expensive commodity. And I don’t believe Fatshark has the pockets to rebuild very many of the bridges they’ve burnt.

So let’s not speak of trust on focus on confidence, which has a very simple answer. Above all else Fatshark needs to produce goddamn content of acceptable quality at a reasonable and regular rate. Everything else is secondary; the games entire business model is predicated on either keeping customers engaged or routinely bringing them back to pay for MTX. Both things that don’t happen without new stuff at a regular cadence.

Fatshark also needs to learn that producing “new stuff” is different from, and generally more important than, fixing old stuff. It is utterly abhorrent that the crafting and itemization changes are taking so ****ing long to produce. Bandaging the current system into mostly acceptable shape would not be that goddamn hard. Regular minor balancing adjustments to shake up how stale the metagame gets would also be very welcome.

Of course, this should all come with the other big thing Fatshark sucks at: communication. Of what is going on, what we can expect, when we can expect it, what’s gone wrong that means something will be delayed, etc. All of that has been done to utter death recently though so I’m feeling disinclined to elaborate.

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Honestly just put out some banger updates. If itemisation update is actually really good and they can chain that into a few good content updates, even if it’s a slowish pace in between I think general sentiment would turn pretty favourable.

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I understand that everyone is hoping that Fatshark will create a better crafting system, but in my perspective, a better crafting system will not solve the biggest pet peeve I have with crafting.

In my opinion, a “improved” crafting system (easier to aquire good items) does not make blessings and perks more appealing.

The perks will remain the same boring old% damage towards, and the blessings will remain obvious choices unless Fatshark completely reworks crafting from ground up and I am doubtful that is going to happen anytime soon if ever.

Alternative fire on staffs, for example, will remain a melee attack rather than a special skill that does something cool, such as hurling an AoE lightning bolt after you’ve built up charges with the Surge staff by killing things.

If we take Psyker as an example, Fatshark could have simply ported over all of Sienna’s staffs, including Kerillian’s, and the Psyker would have been greatly improved by just reusing ideas already in the company with some paint to make it fit into Warhammer 40k, but as is customary, Fatshark never wants to reuse things that work, even if it makes sense.

Regardless of whether the crafting system is improved or not, Fatshark will stay glacially slow, communicate badly, continually missing the mark, and keep working in the dark unless they change the way they manage their company.

Although I may sound very negative, I am looking forward to the new map and weapons, but I am aware that if Fatshark continues to do as they do, this is the best we will get.

I enjoy the game and will continue to play it, but that doesn’t mean Fatshark can’t improve in a variety of areas; nonetheless, I don’t believe they will ever change their approach.

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Substantive communication on a regular basis.

It should be about state of game, even things they might want to do in the future etc… It doesn’t have to be (or more specifically shouldn’t be) promises. Bi-weekly, monthly, every 2 months, 6 weeks into a patch on a regular basis… I don’t think the frequency really matters, but regularity does.

Fix easy Bugs damnit!

  • Close range should be at 15 meters and it’s at 8 since forever.
  • Bolter jitter feels horrible, fix it! It’s also a really damn old bug, older than the one above.

It might not be a priority problem, but sheesh. If a bug is a feature say it! I’m at the point that I suspect Close Range is just a balancing feature, because there is no other way it haven’t been fixed yet. If it is, tell us!

They get a pass from me for needing 2 patches to fix plasma “misfire” since it probably was a complicated latency issue.

Better communication on balance front.

Don’t avoid touchy subjects. They didn’t even give a reasoning behind the greatest balance change last patch, the Survivalist nerf, while starting Ogryn changes with a write up. I want to hear the reasoning behind it.

Apart from the balance patches giving some of the balance team’s take on certain things that a large part of the community discusses or sees as issues would be more than welcome.

Examples:

  • Is Thunder Hammer okay?
  • Is Close Range at 8 meters a bug, or a feature?
  • Does the balance team thinks the hardest difficulty is in a good place?
  • Do they think there is an issue with 4 players playing solo in a co-op game or is it overblown?
  • Loner?
  • Rending?

Again I’m not really asking for promises for fixes, just their thoughts and maybe directions what could be made better, and where are we heading balance wise. It’s also easier to give feedback that way.

Stop balancing with a hammer! Do follow-ups!

Nerfs and buffs are way too big. Even if something needs a huge adjustment there is always an opportunity to do a follow-up. You crushed something with a nerf? Give it a slight power boost. You over buffed something? Give it a slight nerf… And put some reasoning behind it, even if its just one sentence.

I’m kinda tired of seeing weapons rise and fall like this. Op/useless of the season isn’t a good balancing method.

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For me I want more Special Assignments that take you deeper into the hive. There is so much of the Hive City left Unexplored and want to do the mission that is, in beginning menu of the game where door won’t open and Chaos Spawn kills the four veterans. We need the Traitor Curse II and DLC like Vermintide II has. The boss fights were amazing in the DLC and missions were a lot longer. I want to explore a zone completely infested with rot little nurglings so, forth. Inquisitour-Martyr did a great job of showing the strength of Nurgle and his Army.

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People just want to obtain blessings more easily whether it’s because they don’t have time to play much but still want to accomplish what a no life can, or to test weapons out.
Saying otherwise would lead you to be called a gambling addicted corporate shill.

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It will not solve ALL problems.
Claiming that it won’t solve any, is just peak ignorance.

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Do we consider Vt2 to be fixed ?

Cause I do, and the way they did fix it was by not speaking to avoid controversies and release updates when they could

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