Yeah I don’t know. Either their community managers are doing a poor job of managing community feedback and upper management is getting nothing to work with; or they’re focusing on the wrong feedback, or they’re simply ignoring us. It is a mystery on the machinations which rule over Fatshark. All this isn’t really necessary. If Upper management were to spend at least a day on forums - official channels at least like the official forums - getting involved in the discussion. They’d get a feel of the situation and what players want from them. Sure, debating with people isn’t for everyone, but it can be fun if you don’t take it personal and learn to address the substance of a user’s points rather than their rhetoric. This is how discussions turn into productive forms of dialogue that result in positive change.
Reality though is that they see us as a bunch of rabid dogs who’d attack them for existing. That’s why they have community managers. It really isn’t for our benefit. It’s to shield them. From my point of view though it isn’t really working out so far. You have to get involved in the discussion. You have to respond to criticism. You have to dialogue with your community. That’s the first step in understanding your community. Not through data metrics and definitely not through PC Gamer journalist or some third party site.
They have some sort of understanding about the community judging from This PCGamer article
“We want to be fair—it’s so disappointing to see [those posts],” Fatshark co-founder Martin Wahlund told me in an interview with PC Gamer on Thursday. “That’s the last thing we want to be”
-Martin Wahlund, FatShark Cofounder
You’d think the CMs would be feeding this back but all they do is sit on discord and enjoy the brown-nosing they get there. It’s absolutely awful. People could say the forums are negative but at least it’s real.
Game dev is hard? PEople get paid to do this job, and we as paying customers expect the product they are marketing. What else do you call incompetancy when the tasting of the pudding is raw and not even remotely finished. FS already delayed the game a clearly didn’t use that time wisely so as far as practises go, incompetancy is all you are able to call it.
If I didn’t do my job i’d be sacked… if FS don’t do their job… they double down on microtransactions… make a good game and the whales will come (I am a whale in a lot of games so I can confirm I am more likely to drop wedge on a game that functions as marketed not some wishy washy version of itself because somebody can’t do basic maths and make toughness work)
The in-mission gameplay isnt fun (or stable) enough for me to want to play anymore. I’ve played ~50 hours, had my fun, but now im waiting for the systems within the mourningstar to not be so RNG infested and unfun. Horly shop with god awful selection, randomly rolled stats on weapons, weekly challenges that just suck, the map menu with 0 real agency or reasonability, and a still missing “crafting” system. Oh and dont forget currencies character locked instead of account so every character is a full fresh start from 0.
Half of my friends still constantly crash once or twice an hour, commonly during mission escape sequences so they just lose entire missions of progress. I want to like and play this game. But jfc does FS make it hard. Ill just play V2 or DRG instead because those games have fun systems and satisfying feedback loops.
Way to alienate and patronise the entire audience and players base in one fell swoop.
I do enjoy paying for a game that clearly needs to admit it’s faults and flaws, work WITH the community not passively patronise.
Unfortunately for Hedge, he is nowhere near respected enough to get away with edgy answers and remarks nor does he represent a community that actively engages and makes changes based on feedback given by said community. None of us want this game to fail, which is why the feedback is so openly given. use the resource and engage with the community that will inevitably make or break the game… FS wanna get paid right?
Am I the only player who doesn’t care about the cash shop either way?
As long as it’s just cosmetics, I think it’s fine. My concern is the lack of content and systems. We don’t have a loot system, the number of classes and maps is incredibly limited, and a host of other great things we see in VT2 somehow didn’t make it into this.
I think we should be talking about content and systems. The cash shop isn’t gameplay, and all the heat around it distracts from (what I consider) the far more important gaps.
If you’d read the thread you’d notice the cash shop is seen as a symptom pointing to lazy development. The anger is that not only is it implemented in a poor way but also because it has come before, and possibly at the expense of, actual game content.
As long as it’s just cosmetics, I think it’s fine. My concern is the lack of content and systems. We don’t have a loot system, the number of classes and maps is incredibly limited, and a host of other great things we see in VT2 somehow didn’t make it into this.
For the most part people are not upset about the existence of the mtx shop. As you have already mentioned, people are much more upset that such a system is in place while gameplay features are not.
It’s not a good look for the game nor Fatshark. Sort of gives the impression that launching an incomplete poorly performing game is ok so long as there is a facet of monetization in place, even a predatory one
People realise there is actually nothing to do in this content light “live service” game post lvl 30 and the arbitrary grind with the promise of gear re-rolls before the end of the year isn’t enough to keep people.
I’m curious to see what numbers will look like in a month. It was to be expected. Not to be an elitist, but I severely doubted that a huge chunk of people will stick with Darktide, since most of them won’t really know what’s so appealing about this type of game; to me 'tide experience is about practicing at the higher difficulties and improving at your skills. The whole loot and level progression is just a barrier to that. Once you get past it, that’s all there is: trying harder difficulties and improving until you can consistently win with randoms.
Maybe. Maybe, but you’re assuming the cash shop was made by the same devs who would be responsible for level design, class design, the loot system, etc. That seems unlikely, at best (though it is possible that the bottleneck is in shared resources, such as QA, Art or UI).
I think the assumption that “they did this instead of that” is considered common sense, but without any evidentiary support. So maybe we shouldn’t assume it to be true.
I guess by that logic, we shouldn’t assume that we could play a finished game after having paid AAA price, closed and open beta along tons of feedback…
The game is still overarched by decision makers going “yeah lets put the shop in even though we have sod all else to offer, maybe if we keep peddling skins people will just forget that they want to do missions and just look at their characters on the cosmetic screen”
Wholeheartedly disagree with your statments here my friend.
Just heard in-game dialogue referencing somebody called Commodore Hallowette. Initially thought “oh maybe they are adding some future content” but no it’s actually just a reference to the woman that sells you skins. They gave you dialogue in the game between the characters to talk about how cool the skins woman is. FS you absolute losers.
