I have been VERY VERY patient on this issue. So, yes, I am at the point where… well I won’t change my mind unless they come here and explain why we don’t have the solo game mode promised in 2022. And they should at same time tell us that they have succeeded to bring us this feature… and not an Expedition game mode.
I must admit that I rage when I see that we have 2 game modes unasked while they have not given us this game mode that was promised for delivery in… 2022
Let’s remind to Fatshark that we are in 2026. I believe they had time to work on this, plenty of time.
There is currently a bug with pinging that has existed since before I stopped playing end of Nov. I think it came out with the rations event or the prayer totem event.
This is a bug that directly affects game mechanics for at least 2 classes that have talents tied to pinging enemies.
There has not been a FS hotfix for it and barely even acknowledgement.
When have you ever seen a game not run by a solo indie dev let an actual, honest to Big E gamebreaking bug go for that long. Even flucking AH patches the absolutely borked shite faster.
I’m thinking we got at most a couple janitors on maintenance mode and maybe a small team of more “talented” devs working on content no one’s asking for as testing for their new IP/game (that they’ll forget/ignore anyway).
I do believe FS is actively targeting casual players as the primary audience at this point because they have to. Anyone that gets more invested or that starts paying attention is only going to get frustrated and swear off future FS games, like me. This is my first tide entry and very likely my last, barring something unthinkable. I even came as close as I’ll likely ever get to buying funny money in this game because of the unbelievably solid base game for an FPS enjoyer. Then I noticed the pattern that many before me were well aware of.
None of this frustration comes from a place of hate. Very much the opposite. I want to love FS and give them more money. But they have communicated clearly they don’t want it.
Exactly like Ched said. The actual devs are making random one-off modes to satisfy testing for the next game and the rest of what we get is maintenance mode.
Nobody asked for Havoc, they wanted Aurics to be hard again, but it’s easier to make a BS rank-up climb-the-ladder ‘incentive’ mode if you’re approaching this from a ‘we’ll use these concepts on the next game’ approach as compared to trying to put in the work to balance this one.
Nobody asked for Mortis, but that lol-random modifier experience is getting tested here anyway.
I was about to say “VT2 is actually good now that it’s on maintenance mode if you don’t mind the more melee focus and the setting” but then I remembered you actually have been playing solo w/ bots in VT2 lol. It’s probably the only Tide game worth playing at this point imo. Fatshark just can’t figure out that innovation is fine, but only if you continue to learn from past mistakes. Instead they innovate and repeat the same mistakes they already fixed in previous titles.
Loot and crafting was a solved problem and they still managed to break it in Darktide, for example. Bots were “fine” in VT1, broken in VT2 (fixed through mods), and then fixed (still worse than mods, but servicable) in VT2, and then completely ignored in DT. No one asked for shoddy dedicated servers with no mission select option, people were fine with the P2P matchmaking in VT1 and VT2, now all we see are complaints about how bad the servers and backfilling are in Darktide.
The only thing they’ve done consistently right across all 3 Tide games is “combat feel”
I know it’s well beloved and I did enjoy my revisit playing solo with bots. But, as much as this may get me arbitrated, VT2 combat just feels less…elegant?.. after all my hours in DT.
There was another comment recently talking about some of the issues I had with it. Not least of which were the horde mechanic being a bit less polished with pushes not working evenly across the masses and less refined sound cues leading to lots of seemingly unearned hits. The weapon combos, or rather lack thereof, like in DT is also a real drawback for combat flow.
But I did like the slower pace of combat (not the slower movement mind you), and lack of “random bullshite go” balancing.
Oh, and fluck some ratling gunners all the way to whatever the 40k equivalent of hell is.
Definitely less polished than DT, still good fun though. The weapon combos are there, but they’re very basic compared to DT, usually trying to optimize sweeps/cleaves for hordes and precision hits for headshots. Some are as simple as “Spam light attacks w/ shoves for hordes , heavy Attack/block cancel for armored” to “2 Lights, 2 Heavies, then loop Light → Heavy”
The problem in V2 is that some attacks have hidden modifiers you will never know are there, like exe sword light 3 irrc has +5% crit chance. Once you learn this it changes would you go for heavies only vs elites or gamble for crit headshot after the first heavy, cause light 3 follows heavy.
Cause it’s harder to dodge through the mobs. But overall it’s tuned much better. You need to block, and to shove, cause dodge and attack speed aren’t so OP like in DT, mobs will find a window to poke you. You both need to mix offense and defense.
My issue with VT2 right now is the thrust/charge attacks get triggered way too close to you, and the spawns are all over the place, in many cases also way too close to you, and when that happens they spawn in already hitting you.
I bought Darktide the day it came out, because me and my brothers were going to play it. We had played a lot of VT2 before, but I had also played the solo mode of VT2 a lot. And I knew I would stick with Darktide more since I really like the 40K universe (painting minis for instance). And because they promised an upcoming solo mode it would all work out.
I have only 7.6 hours played of the game. I managed to play around 2-3 full rounds without the game crashing. I was in a group that got a lot of “experimental patches” to see if we could fix whatever was wrong. The last patch I tried disabled the avatars completely to see if that would help. It didn’t.
My specs was inside the recommended parameters, it was just one of those things that can happen. By the time I think these issues was fixed my brothers had moved on. They have kids, I don’t, so I have more time to play games. I was looking forward to play solo mode at least, I just don’t like playing with random people in any setting. Solo mode never happened.
So I essentially bought the game on a lie, only to be an unpaid beta tester to make the game work. If they add solo mode I am definitely still going to play it. Might even buy cosmetics. I really like the setting, and the few full matches I managed to play was fun.
But as it stands Fatshark is a developer I am going to keep away from.
Does this still apply? I bought the game about 18 months ago and have put in about 4 hours, didn’t even consider there wouln’t be solo. Like what game doesn’t even have the option? Insane.
What MeatShield said. You can request the refund through Fatshark Support. I got one even with 45h played (30 during open beta when I expected solo “to be coming at release” or a patch shortly after" *coughcough*
You always knew it Harry, the world is cold, cruel and mercyless. And so are sharks in the ocean of swedish lies. But you will endure through, as you always did. Revachol needs you Harry, the world needs you.
We know Solo Play had ~14k unique downloads, and the “all-time peak” for Darktide on Steamdb was ~108k (so basically we’re ignoring console players for this example).
Even using these numbers, which is not even close to being an accurate representation, we get a value of ~13% of players wanting solo mode. Which is 130,000x more players than 0.0001%
Math!
Edit: Obviously 0.0001% is rhetorical, but 13% isn’t an insignificant number of players. I wish we could see “recent downloads” on Nexus so we could compare to the 24h peak from SteamDB. It still wouldn’t be an accurate representation, but could be better than how I got that 13%
Interesting, didn’t expect that. But given that 14k already have a solo mod and only console players require this feature, we are probably still talking about a minority, or not?
for it and barely even acknowledgement.