Put solo in the game Devs. You’re gonna get more sales like do you not want more money?

[Ralendil]

@Harridas

I don’t see how talent trees or bot power could factor into this. But not being able to customize bots might.

I don’t see what would forbid it. In solo mod there is a mod that allow you to use your own bots. So, I really don’t see a problem at all
And solo mod permits to play in local (you can even pause the game).
But if this point cause problems (because this is what is causing most of solo mod problems), then they should let it online.
I doubt that everybody would want to play only solo missions. I would not… but I would like to have the option, like it was promised before I buy the game.
Because, playing a solo game, at your own path, is something I want. I am tired to run behind players that always want to finish the map as fast as they can… and sometimes, I want also a fast gameplay where I don’t take my time to finish the mission.

So… sometimes I would appreciate a solo, and sometimes I would appreciate to play with several others players.

[Molonious]

@temp

And how does the SoloPlay mod work? On Darktide servers or on the user’s computer?

I believe it’s entirely offline (someone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here), and you don’t get progression/rewards as a result.

@alsozara

They were talking about it like it was pretty much ready to go for a while after game release. There’s no way they wouldn’t have realised the cost associated being an issue before then.

After working with large commercial distributors, government agencies, defense contractors, software developers, schools, restaurants, and mom+pop stores over the last 20+ years, you’d be shocked at how often this happens (or they just assume a cost without research)

Unfortunately, costs also often change after initial outlays on multi-year projects.

We can see solo limitations in other online games as well, World of Warships for example has a “Training Room” section where you can set up your own battles and play by yourself, and is the only way you can intentionally play solo (though you can end up in solo games under certain matchmaker conditions in the Coop mode), but it limits the number of Training Rooms that can be up at any given time. They also heavily incentivize players to play the most “player-centric” mode (Random Battles, with full sized and completely human teams on both sides) over the various PvE modes with much faster progression and greater event rewards.

@alsozara

they got solo mode most of the way ready then realised that the base game bots that were relatively passable for the early game state would be woefully inadequate for the amount of enemy buffing required by the talent tree update, and that releasing solo at that point would basically open up a can of worms regarding fully reworking the bots. That was too much work with everything else they were in the process of reworking so they put it on the backburner and it’s pretty much not been high enough priority to pick back up since.

To my mind, this would be a relatively minor issue if they wanted to do a Solo mode. The bots don’t have to necessarily be optimized or spectacularly capable, nor is it required that they have a diverse array builds or anything like that, they just need to be “good enough”. If current setup is fine enough with plenty of games running two players and two level 1 bots as is, shifting that to one player and three bots probably doesn’t require a ton of development investment to get over the finish line even if they want to spruce the bots up. However, running one player to three bots is twice as expensive to host on a per-player basis as a two-player/two-bot game is.

[Ralendil]

@Molonious

I believe it’s entirely offline (someone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here), and you don’t get progression/rewards as a result.

It is.. I have written it above.
This is purely local. You can pause the game.

[temp]

@Molonious

I believe it’s entirely offline (someone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here), and you don’t get progression/rewards as a result

So it turns out that basically everything works without the involvement of servers, and if you create a full-fledged single-player mode, the server load is only about how many rewards to give the player

[Ralendil]

@Molonious

However, running one player to three bots is twice as expensive to host on a per-player basis as a two-player/two-bot game is.

I don’t think it is a problem

They messed up so much quickplay that 90% of missions are not full players.
So, they made things that result in at least the double of games launched on their servers.
And they don’t seem to want correcting that.
So, I don’t think this impacts the server as much as you tend to think it is

[Harridas]

Like Vermintide 2

[TheyMikeBeGiants]

At least give us functional bots.

Lemme use my other Rejects as bots and lemme throw my game on Private, that’ll do enough for me.

But we’ve had these placeholder bots since launch. It’s time to change them.

[Molonious]

@Ralendil

I don’t think it is a problem

They messed up so much quickplay that 90% of missions are not full players.
So, they made things that result in at least the double of games launched on their servers.
And they don’t seem to want correcting that.
So, I don’t think this impacts the server as much as you tend to think it is

Perhaps, but ongoing expanded server cost feels dramatically more plausible to me than the one-time up-front development effort of getting Solo across the finish line (especially when previous titles handled it just fine and some capability exists with mods already) being the reason we don’t have a Solo mode yet. Sure quickplay doesn’t always have a full team, but having mostly 3 and 4 person games with the occasional 2 player match is a lot less server intensive than having lots of intentionally 1 player sessions. I still don’t think it’s a great excuse, but it does make more sense than the development of solo play just being too intensive on the programming end.

@temp

So it turns out that basically everything works without the involvement of servers, and if you create a full-fledged single-player mode, the server load is only about how many rewards to give the player

To an extent yes. There are other benefits of Fatshark hosting games instead of players, centrally hosted games can potentially be rejoined if the player has an issue or crashes (instead of just being wiped out of existence if the Host player fails out or decides to leave), the player doesn’t need quite as capable a level of hardware just to play the game, while cheating/shenanigans are also much harder if the game isn’t locally hosted, and if there are multiple players it’s likely to run smoother than user-hosting. But yeah in terms of just hopping in by yourself and blasting some faces, it can be done entirely locally as the previous Tide titles did.

[Ralendil]

@Molonious

I still don’t think it’s a great excuse, but it does make more sense than the development of solo play just being too intensive on the programming end.

then explain that

@Aqshy

Now we are confident in our Dedicated Servers, we would like to take the time and answer those recurring couple of questions that remain; “Can I play Darktide solo?”, “Can I play a private game with one or two of my friends?”.

The answers will be Yes, and Yes.

You should all stop trying to find reasons… you have no information that confirm that. This is just an urban legend that is building upon nothing

They said it that there is no problem with that… this is THEIR words.

[anon41016878]

That very same CM claimed that the store cosmetics are on a FOMO rotation because they feel too many things on the store at once would confuse consumers.
Sometimes corporate speakers do be saying whatever they think pleases consumers, or whatever the suits told em to say.

[Ralendil]

@anon41016878

Sometimes corporate speakers do be saying whatever they think pleases consumers, or whatever the suits told em to say.

Until they come here to say they lied… this is the only communication we have…
Not my fault… I try to make them speaking to us…

[Molonious]

@Ralendil

You should all stop trying to find reasons… you have no information that confirm that. This is just an urban legend that is building upon nothing

They said it that there is no problem with that… this is THEIR words.

I mean, some of these things are directly related are fields I work in, and have had some level of professional expertise with, along with having played Fatshark’s previous offerings. I’m not claiming to be perfectly clairevoyant or to know exactly what’s going on, only noting that development investment to tackle balance or talent-related issues for implementing bots and a solo mode probably aren’t the biggest issues next to hosting costs.

If there’s something about that you’d like to debate, okay, but otherwise if we’re just gonna rely on what ex-Fatshark employees posted many years ago for a product that was released in a half-baked state, then we should acknowledge that Fatshark has said a lot of things, things that later turned out to be not true or that they subsequently abandoned or changed, often without comment.

[Ralendil]

@Molonious

If there’s something about that you’d like to debate, okay, but otherwise if we’re just gonna rely on what ex-Fatshark employees posted many years ago for a product that was released in a half-baked state, then we should acknowledge that Fatshark has said a lot of things, things that later turned out to be not true or that they subsequently abandoned or changed, often without comment.

In fact I would like that they had the “corones” to come here and talk to us. But it seems they have none

About the solo, a solo game mod exists. A mod that permits to use bots exists. So all of this is possible.

[anon41016878]

@Ralendil

Until they come here to say they lied… this is the only communication we have…
Not my fault… I try to make them speaking to us…

That’s fair. It’s just kind of like this

In the end we can simply assume that there’s a higher up reason it got put on ice, and if they’re not sharing the reason it means it’s one that would lead to bad publicity, otherwise they’d share it. Among the “bad publicity” reasons there could be, like

• they dont want hosting costs to increase
• they don’t want people to play solo cause then they’re less likely to buy cosmetics
• they don’t want to bugfix talents on both client and host like on VT2

and more. we have to just pick whichever we like most. Barring leaks we’ll never get an answer unless they change their minds and will implement it after all.

[Durandal94]

One must imagine Sisyphus happy…

[Ralendil]

@anon41016878

reasons there could be, like

or just this

@Ralendil

In fact I would like that they had the “corones” to come here and talk to us. But it seems they have none

[CH3DD4R_G0B-L1N]

[raizing]

@Molonious

To an extent yes. There are other benefits of Fatshark hosting games instead of players, centrally hosted games can potentially be rejoined if the player has an issue or crashes (instead of just being wiped out of existence if the Host player fails out or decides to leave), the player doesn’t need quite as capable a level of hardware just to play the game, while cheating/shenanigans are also much harder if the game isn’t locally hosted, and if there are multiple players it’s likely to run smoother than user-hosting. But yeah in terms of just hopping in by yourself and blasting some faces, it can be done entirely locally as the previous Tide titles did.

this was already addressed by fatshark ~3-years ago (scroll to the top to see the full post) - solo mode would be locally hosted, and was supposedly in its “final stages”.

unless local hosting solo-mode was scrapped for dedicated hosting (blatant speculation), the “server costs” argument is a moot point.

[Ertylert]

I made an account purely for being able to finally, (after years of lurking!) be a part of this conversation.

I want solo. it was promised in the early days and I bought the game because of that promise!
Playing with others is all fun and games… until it isn’t. being reliant on other players is no fun when it is mandatory.

I have friends I play with. but our schedules do not always match up.
it is mind-boggling how FS keeps up the radio silence on this.

I am not a fan of recurring fees or additional sums after I’ve already bought a product.
but heck… I’d be willing to PAY for a solo mode, or even… in fallout76 style, pay for a subscription to access the ability to play ALONE.

I’d prefer with bots. I find them decent enough for right now.
if they worked like in VT2, even better!
but even if it was purely solo, no bots. only enemies.. I’d be up for that too. Won’t be as chill, but I’d be able to truly hone my survival skills in the game.

I have held out hope for years. My patience is still holding up, but cracks are showing.

This game is beautiful, I wanna look at it all at my own pace. I don’t want to rush and I don’t want to be a bother to other people by preferring to take it slow or to try out new and weird builds.

I wanna be able to grind up a new weapon without essentially sabotaging for random people by not being able to keep up, damage wise.

It’s not too much to ask. it really isn’t.
and ADDING things, OPTIONAL things, will not take away anything for anyone. more options are good.
There are so many reasons, neurodivergent or otherwise to add a solo feature to Darktide.
and there are so few, if any, ways this can hurt the game or other players.
making changes to better the experience for some, can only be a positive for others.

For those who are opposed; okay.. so… don’t utilize the mode? or.. maybe try it?
but truly, it won’t affect you.
it won’t make you lose players to play with.
We likely never would have played in public matches anyway.
I know I haven’t in nearly 2 years.
I only play when my friends can.
but I WANT to play so often.
and if I could practice, in my own time. I might feel confident enough to dip my toes back into the public pool…
By the Emperor how I long to purge heretics…
(And no, mods are not a good solution. they shouldn’t have to be! what is this.. a bethesda game?!)

just.. my two throne gelt on the matter…

(edited real quick to fix some typos.)

[Molonious]

Thanks for clarifying that, in which case, I’d agree they’re moot, I’d been under the impression Fatshark’s solo would still have centralized server use in some form unlike the existing mod, clearly I’d befuddled myself, not sure where the confusion came from on my part there, I play too many games to keep them all straight these days. That said, I’d still stand by the assessment that given the studios clear ability to deliver things like functioning bots and teammates in previous titles with varied backgrounds and talent/gear setups, that the difficulty or investment of doing so in Darktide shouldn’t be significant factor to the degree that the entire effort derailed at the last minute into ignominy next to other costs and things the game has accomplished.