While I agree people ( And I have been one of them) are simply so p!ssed about the awful launch that they’ll pretty much moan about everything, there needs to be a No Man’s Sky level of effort to get DT to be anywhere close to redeemed in the opinion of hundreds and thosands of players if not a million people.
Either FS need to significantly increase the speed and frequency of smaller updates, OR drop something pretty damn impressive to change public opinion at this point.
Oh… but… they already got my f*cking money with their botched launch so they’re not particularly bothered.
Yet more virtue signalling. You even mentioned death threats to really up the impact, in an attempt to tarnish anyone with a valid complaint as some kind of rabid, hateful person.
Look, there are some total loonies on the internet, and I’ve seen some even appear on here, and they get flagged and removed within an hour or two. (Hedge is really good at this actually, he very quickly responded and dealt with a pretty nasty situation I reported on here).
I also understand the desire to be supportive of Fatshark when there is so much negativity (well deserved, mind you).
French workers are probably the ones that work the least in Europe. 35 hours weeks, retirement age at 62 (it has just been increased to 64 but will possibly go back down near 2035 with the end of the baby boomers when the demographic curve re-balances between workers and retired ppl). That being said, the hourly productivity per worker is greater than other countries (Germany for example), which means that we work less but harder leading to a similar result in terms of productivity. Now, most of well paid jobs with high level of responsibilities won’t be at 35 hours, but higher.
In the UK I fairly regularly get a bollocking for going over 40 hours a week. I guess the US aint the only place where killing yourself in a job for cash is considered a good idea but it seems like working 50-60-70 hours a week to hustle is something Americans aspire to. Baffles me.
Having said that, the way things are going no one is going to be able to afford to retire anyway without slowly starving to death or freezing in your own home, so might as well enjoy your money now as working like a MOFO for … maybe … 10 years relaxing at the end of your life feels like a bit of a waste tbh.
So cheerful. You can go back to kicking FS if you like.
Bottom line: regardless of staffing, hours worked, and vacation time, the content released since Darktide launched is pretty abysmal. They made a lot of promises that I’m not even sure they ever intended to deliver on. A new subclass or class or archetype or whatever you wanna call it once a quarter? Not a chance.
I’m new to the fatshark gaming train, I didnt play vermintide 2 despite one of my best buds putting over 2000 hours into the game and consistently asking me to come play. I told him I’d play Darktide with him, but i do regret buying it at launch. I’ve never had a company erode my trust as fast as fatshark. Even EA took a while with false promises and failed deliveries. Fatshark has basically delivered on almost nothing they promised and have inexplicably drawn a line in the sand regarding wasting the players time with poor RNG systems that only serve to artificially extend playtime. A system which is failing the game horribly but stays in place because mismanagement.
Personally, i wont buy a game from Fatshark again unless i hear from credible sources all is as it should be visa vie state of the game. I suspect a lot of people feel the same way as me.
They’re almost certainly still all hands on deck for the XBox port, with a skeleton crew doing the patches and rolling out things that were near-completed or needed urgent fixing, like fun, continuously going one step forward, two steps back because they simply don’t have enough manpower on the skeleton crew to make sure it’s done properly or they are still limping along with processes that have some pretty hilarious structural issues that they can’t change (looking at you, version control).
I’ve worked in places in a similar situation. The case of ‘more people instantly equals more productivity’ almost never happens. It often takes quite a few years for productivity to catch up with the larger workforce.
The business’ existing processes are built to manage the smaller team. You have to throw out the old book and write a whole new one whenever you have growth like this.
I try to remember to ban myself from posting here but i think your post caught way too much uneccessary flak and i support the devs having their vacation. The low and poorly prioritized output is its own problem and the vacation is exacerbating it but its not a source component of the problems darktide has. Its funny low hanging fruit to say “and then they all took vacation!” But its more accurate to just criticize their volume within the context of the fact that vacation is a normative business reality. Thats why the six months date was a key milestone. Did they make enough of a difference to feel good heading out for vacation?
I wouldn’t have been proud of what we’d accomplished if it was me running the show. But i am sympathetic to how hard gamedev can be. It has been an improvement objectively but the pace and priority has been pretty iffy.
I mean, yeah in Sweden they have a certain amount of vacation days they need to take off during a year, but standard business practice is to coordinate the vacation time in a way that will make sure that there are still people in the office.
Im not sure what going on over at Fatshark, but its such a weird thing that everything just gets shut down for some kind of collective summer vacation, especially when their product is as flawed as it is.
First time I’ve heard of a business run this way. Even if it is culture if me and my colleagues know the business is at stake at crucial time we just wouldn’t go on holiday, as it would create bigger problems upon return. We would have “lets deal with it now, not later” attitude. Real work ethics.
Some of them are laughing all the way to the bank. Then there will be those thinking “I took a holiday, why is there a business problem. I done my part, so why am I at risk”. Well it’s a team effort. Just isn’t there.
107k on steam launch, 85k was in December and then 25k in January, its normal to loose players after launch but down to a fifth after just 2 months? that’s bad
but yeah calling the situation a train wreck would be sugarcoating it
