Regardless of opinions on balance, there’s a lot that can be agreed upon with darktide’s approach to content. Expeditions seems to have fallen flat, mortis trials is just an abandoned game mode for now and ever, and the main game mode/adventure mode content has had little to no content, the base game classes themselves have received little to no content (most likely in favor of content being designed for the current dlc classes and the future one[s]), and balance is incredibly stale. The dlc classes seem to be receiving no appreciation whatsoever in cosmetics, and that’s only the surface level series of problems that the game has.
The recent balance discourse was over a mere cdr change to a couple abilities that everyone recognized to be incredibly potent, and that inspired people from an entirely different part of the world from the majority of people common on the forums to go out of their way to engage the community.
That, I think, is healthy. Two completely different parts of the world in the same game with completely different opinions on the outlook of the game. We rarely get that type of engagement, and I hope fatshark doesn’t see the initial reaction from this and assume that it would necessarily repeat itself, and continue to instead invest way more time into critically designing the game with these multitude of opinions in mind rather than just what development has felt like, ignoring the current state of things while moving forward to new ideas that seem extremely rushed or unfinished when released, weaving a complicated web of problems that plague the game, and just touching one strand ensnares its players.
The HK community has given us a great chance at the moment to make a statement, and give the game an honest review with our opinions of what we think about not just this development cycle, but the current state of the game. The devs listen to the numbers and the feedback, we know this from launch when they issued an apologia, and we know this kind of thing works from looking at helldivers 2, or Total War. You don’t get much in results from just going with the flow or arguing on a forum, even big names in both the test servers and on youtube largely go ignored, but this is a wonderful time to make a big impact on the game as a community worldwide.
If Fatshark wasn’t so scared of negative reviews we would have had a better game by now.
I already changed my review to negative. Instead of bolstering the base game they keep adding game modes. Fact is, people who like Darktide like the original game mode. Fatshark should have given us new biomes and maps.
All we get is power creep, game modes which ruin any chance on balance and pay to win DLC classes.
This new DOA game mode isn’t gonna change my mind.
Thanks for all the fun. I hope FS is never in charge of a tide game again.
Dude, I hate to break it to you, but this game already has Mixed recent Steam rating, and has had it for a while. For comparison, when HD2 was review bombed over horrible performance and bad design decisions last year, when their ratings dropped to Mixed, their CEO spoke up and promised decisive actions. As you may guess, FS just didn’t care.
This game has been released for three years but still lacks a scoreboard and any feedback on the remaining number of ammunition boxes? Okay, maybe Fatshark is really working hard, but they clearly chose the wrong direction. The beginner’s tutorial and bot strength are still like rotting and fermenting septic tanks. Have you ever tried playing the first level with a new level 1 character and only using the initial weapon? Even experienced players find it difficult to handle a platoon leader with a shield under these conditions, let alone a true novice. The bot has no meaning in existence. If the bot of Vermintide2 is a group of players with basic experience and using Autoaim, then the bot of Darktide is a group of activity targets.
Steam reviews need to be deleted. This sort of thing has robbed them of any value or point.
That was a deliberate choice (and a good one), they have stated they will not be implementing one, though they were open to the idea of some form of feedback if they could find a useful way to implement it.
I think fatshark must surely have an understanding of the flaws of the game and an idea of what “darktide but good” would look like, which makes their continued neglect of the game’s problems even more frustrating
What makes this even worse is that they could’ve probably fixed a lot of the games major fundamental problems in the time that it took them to make this game mode that 90% of people are going to completely ignore. Makes you question how they haven’t shut down yet, but I guess the average gamer is happy with their brainless power fantasy
Steam reviews are pretty much necessary in the modern era of videogames and how each and every single patch can release or completely change content from previous updates. I doubt any major publication is interested in writing about the controversy in the darktide community over the like 10 second cooldown change on a couple abilities and nerfs to other things, especially ones that aren’t just outsourcing their articles to AI right now. This is pretty much the only way for people to keep track of information on live service games that have a relatively low interest in the public eye. A cursory glance on the news page on google is pretty much a series of articles that summarize what is known about the update from the blog they posted, nothing about the current game state.
I don’t think there’s really a better way for consumers to make points anyway. You have youtubers, whose audience are people that already play and own the game, you have forums, usually navigated by people that own and play the game, and you have websites and reviews, places where people that don’t own or play the game would probably first begin to find information about the game. It’s pretty much the only place where you can actually effect sales, short of a youtuber telling their entire audience to review bomb a game, which would more likely make a difference than anything posted here.
I don’t personally suspect that there’s enough interest to make a significant change on this forum. I would like if we managed to move the needle far enough that it goes from mixed to negative, (or even the overall score as mixed or negative instead of positive) as that is more likely to hurt sales with an upcoming new class that is most likely in the next update, and therefore get a reaction from them, but I doubt that’s going to be possible. It’s still a better chance than hoping that the big youtubers that have the big audiences somehow magically change the opinion of fatshark from the inside (or even the playtesters) especially when all of which have voiced the fact that fatshark simply does not want to listen or make those changes, or the other conjecture that I do not believe the changes those groups have in mind are in my interest.
The point and value of reviews is they tell you if the product is of quality and functional , calling for reviews to be changed to negative because a tiny fraction of the games population got balanced and dont like it is pretty weak sauce.
And how is any company supposed to pander to every group? how about we all threaten to review bomb unless they balance the game to our own personal choice.
I dont see being ruled by the vocal minority being a good thing for any of us
Anyone can post a review of darktide. If you like a game, you give it a positive review. If you don’t like a game, you give it a negative review. If future content makes a game you like less enjoyable, you can give it a negative review. If future content makes a game you hate much more fun and impressionable, you can give it a positive review. I don’t see why you should treat it as a “vocal minority” when it is very easy to do in any way whatsoever.
For instance, I have had my darktide review bounce from positive to negative and back basically every other major patch. I even removed it for one patch as I didn’t feel particular one way or the other around it. The system is very dynamic and kind and accessible.
And “threatening to review bomb the game” isn’t the goal, here. It’s that if you don’t like the game, and the direction it has taken, for however long, you should, in fact, leave a negative review. That’s the point of reviews.
Currently it feels like they abandoned adventure mode for mortis trials, then abandoned mortis trials for havoc, and now, who knows In the future, whether they’ll abandon havoc for this current expeditions game mode or drop expeditions and go back to havoc because havoc at least has a playerbase that cares. Hell, it honestly feels like they’ve been giving up on havoc either way.
I personally don’t like that because each time they abandon a feature or game mode that’s time they could’ve spent reworking or fixing any of the multitude of problems with the game or listened to QA more. That’s why I made my negative review this time around.
The game is simply not making quality content, and the amount of bugs they refuse to patch or manage in a fast or delicate manner so as not breaking anything else absolutely qualifies as hurting the functionality of the game to me.
Of course you can, its just this behaviour makes steam reviews irrelevant now. if a game wants to score highly it now has to be non challenging it must be as mainstream as possible any attempt to make a non standard or niche game gets instantly punished.
you see 50% on steam score does that mean its a pretty bad game that half the people that want the game found acceptable. No it might mean someone’s overpowered gun finally got balanced.
Sorry my bad, it looked like you posted on a forum asking people to change their reviews. you were just reminding them it was possible i suppose.
now thats an interesting idea, punishing people for things they didnt do or might do in the future. were not reviewing the game that launched were reviewing the game that might of been.
i am curious how many hours you have in DT and if you hold games with much less time to so high a standard.