…
I haven’t bought anything. The way the shop operates: pricing ($10 for a skin?) FOMO, use of virtual currency with all its downsides for the consumer, a shop which doesn’t offer all its assortment do NOT help.
Make all items available in the shop, price in real currencies, price armour sets at $5 a pop, get rid off FOMO. THEN I might be more willing to drop a fiver from time to time, instead of a coffee and a treat at work.
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me, i do.
to my very own surprise i bought some cosmetics for the first time in 31 years of pc gaming.
that being said, if a game strikes my fancy and there’s a figure line (used to collect 1/6 scale until i ran out of rooms) i spend a good sum on them.
they usually go with a themed diorama sometimes filling half a room.
most expensive single figures so far were threezero’s fallout power armor figures, each at 500€ with shipping and taxes.
years back i was into ww2 theme so i got 1/6 tanks. last tiger was around 1400, had to store em in the basement, again space issues.
if i enjoy a hobby and got spendable income i see no point into saving until i’m an old disabled fart whos unable to enjoy anything due to bodily issues.
darktide was in fact the first title i bought some cosmetics for and the first game in ages that i’m sinking a lot of hours into, so why not spend here as well.
matter of fact i lost track of my figure collection of mcfarlane 1/12 in the meantime, cleaned my one room last week and “found” 6 space marines 
there’s a german saying:" das letzte Hemd hat keine Taschen" and if i’m forced to partake in that life draining hamster wheel, i damn well chose what i use the money for that buys the better part of my lifetime.
as for the opinion part of the question, drip aint no value in that regard.
as little as someone dressing in a fancy suit gets any smarter by wearing it.
what does matter is hours played as a class or with a particular weapon and in that regard nearing 1000 hours as an ogryn main with visible and documented progress from wet behind the ears at beta to carrying some auric maelstrom matches every now and then, yes i got some valid opinions 
Bought a lot of cosmetics
Won’t buy anymore
Do I think my opinion has more weight? no… cause I don’t care.
Do I think that they should change their cosmetic policy? absolutely cause they are running into a wall actually
Cosmetics don’t worth the price. If it would be me, I would advice people to just take maybe 1 or 2 set of things they absolutely love and want (as we cannot change any color, except via a mod and only for you, you should try to choose something you trully love).
But, actually the prices are ridiculous. The price of one armor at HD2 is far less than what FS asks us. And HD2 has more than 85k players while DT has 5k players at max. The HD2 armor give nice bonus and you still can get them for free as you can collect the money they use (super credits) in the game.
Frankly, paying the price of a big DLC for just one set of clothes… must say I am ashamed that I did it by the past.
The reason why I have bought cosmetics was mainly that I wanted to support them. But, the lack of new content, what modders have shown us that can be done in the game (for the drip and weapon customization by example), the lack of balance, the remaining problems (Brunt’s as an example), all this push me to new games…
So, it means that my voice has even less impact as I play DT rarely now. Must say that I wait for new content, and as I said I don’t consider penances patch as new content.
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Meritocratic systems have a bad rep for a reason. On paper the idea sounds good, sure, but how it plays out in practice is really not. Meritocracy in gaming results in the only voices coming from those with the most money & influence, biggest guilds, streamers etc., people who in no way represent the majority, nevermind much of that supposed merit in the first place where most of the game beyond their tiny scope is concerned.
And since that’s where the power is, over time whatever real merit may once have been involved will evaporate for corruption and favoritism to run rampant instead.
Most nerfs in games are needed. Even those that were executed badly at least attempted to address a real issue that had to be. Yet every single time something is nerfed, no matter how obvious and deserved it was, people will cry like they’re the victims of the greatest crime of the century.
People always think whatever class they main needs buffs and everything else needs nerfs. Whatever and no matter how obvious the reality is, this is always going to be the case. Like with the vet Survivalist nerf. Listening to vet mains is pointless, of course they complain. Listening to others is just as pointless, of course they’re happy because someone else got the stick. … Well, mostly. I know a few “the stubber is a horde weapon” oggies who’d very much like to have their walking & talking ammo bags around. 
Obviously I agree that expertise & experience correlates with the potential value of one’s opinions, but it’s by no means any guarantee.
You’re right, but it’s a complicated issue
Fans, or just players, don’t have a real stake in any of it unlike the devs. Most of them also have no idea what they’re talking about, and even when they do their goals are almost without exception selfish rather than focusing on what’s good for the community, the game, nevermind the developers themselves.
Fans are people who come to a PvP game and then demand the PvP be removed. Fans are people who barely finished leveling a psyker and don’t even grasp the bare basics of the class, yet with all the ego and authority of an expert then proceed to proclaim it weak and useless. Fans obsess over cosmetics clipping issues nobody else ever noticed nor cared about. Fans play the game exclusively on a specific difficulty / group of friends / class, thinking everything revolves around only that and nothing else. Fans are people who genuinely think nerfs are bad and there should only ever be buffs (which is literally unhinged considering the reality of software development & business economics).
I’ve been playing a lot of games over my life, and no matter the community the vast, overwhelming majority of those fans are comically clueless. But what’s even worse, is how they’re completely oblivious to their cluelessness.
Yet, it still doesn’t make those views worthless either. I mean, if 90% of your customers want something - no matter how silly or even damaging it might be -, then as a dev or any business practicioner you’d be a fool to not to at least try to comply. Then it would be up to you to interpret those changes in a way that at least minimized the damage, if nothing else. And even if 99.9% had no idea what they’re talking about, the few that do can bring valuable perspective.
The core issue here ofc is, how do you weigh and balance all that? The fans most certainly won’t do that for you, so it’s up to the devs to decide.
Some are also recycled and lack originality, most right now are a mish mash of original skins and original skins mixed with other skins sold as a bundle.
I haven’t paid a single euro for cosmetics and unless Fatshark does something that deserves it, I won’t ever.
I do not feel like my word matter more/less than anyone else. Just another random gamer.
Darktide is literally the only video game I play or have played in the last 2 years. I buy cosmetics because I want to enrich my experience and support its progress. Its simple business. Product fails to generate revenue = Product is discontinued. The game itself costs $40 and even less on sale dates. Its not sustainable to continue development with just this amount of money. They need a continued stream of revenue. If you play other games and casually bounce back to this one, having payed nothing but your paltry $40 (or less) complaining that there’s no new content, the problem is you.
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Well I’ll assume you’d be diversifying your data to cover as much ground as possible - Reddit, Discord, Official Forums, Emails, Steam Reviews, Youtube - in order to avoid listening to one singular source of feedback. Otherwise if you’ve only isolated yourself to one group for feedback, then it’s not really feedback, is it; it’s just an echo chamber. Additionally the context matters: percentage of players, level of discourse that such a discussion is generating, and so on.
I don’t really agree with your underlying premise that valuing feedback based on merit is a bad thing. Players who dedicate thousands of hours, even years, of their life playing a game tend to offer invaluable insights that simple data charts just can’t capture. These types of players are absolutely worth paying attention to. Again, these are the types of players that are more likely to spread word of mouth, get involved in volunteer projects, recommend the game to more people, do free advertising for your product, teach new players.
A game’s success is completely reliant on the passion its community has for it. Once you get past the marketing, initial sales, a community is what keeps the game going; if you’re making unpopular changes that negatively affect this subset of players, then you are only hurting your game.
Let’s take a look at Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines - a game that is over two decades old. Yet is still getting community support. Dedicated modders have spent decades of their lives creating unofficial patches, expansions, and adding new content based on fan feedback:
All of that has helped in increasing the game’s longevity and long tail sales.
I’m not really interested in arguing this point. I don’t play Darktide. I don’t follow its balance history. I really don’t care about it. In contrast though I have years of experience from following Fatshark’s balance history for Vermintide 2; and I have to say that they tend to miss the mark a lot. The only successful balance patch they ever did for Vermintide 2 was one in which they copied the work of a famous community led balance effort that had months of feedback from dedicated players - the mod nerfed things, but it also buffed other things, it opened up new playstyles, while closely, carefully, trimming down on over performing things.
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For another example: behold Fallout New Vegas. A game so beloved that people went and made a massive mod re-voicing a massive chunk of its cast to compensate for the limited number of actors.
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That may have been the case in the 2010s, but not for games that are exclusively online. Games such as Warhammer: Age of Reckoning and Warhammer 40k Eternal Crusade, both from the Warhammer Franchise, completely died off when their respective companies abandoned the projects. No amount of modding will bring them back.
A Passionate community will never carry Darktide if they decide to abandon it. It will be a ghost game in your steam Library. Money is what keeps it afloat.
This depends on a lot of factors.
For Dragon’s Dogma Online, even though it was shutdown by Capcom, is currently being brought back by its passionate fanbase in a massive community led effort, see:
Modders have also brought back Private Servers for Dragon’s Dogma Online as well.
Last I checked though there wasn’t that much content on offer, but the modders were making an active effort in listening to the community and adding, balancing, things based on feedback.
For Warhammer Age of Reckoning last I checked its community managed to set up private servers for people to play, see:
https://www.returnofreckoning.com/about
If you buy cosmetics, you are sending them the proof that the current game + direction is good enough for them to make money with. If you don’t buy cosmetics then they’ll be inclined to change things.
Forget who “should” have more say, the simple reality is that you vote with your wallet and this is the effect it has.
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They’ll be inclined to change cosmetics, possibly. But other than that, they’ll abandon development. There are less than 10k people playing at any given time, the studio needs a consistent stream of revenue or they’re out of a job. How do you think they make money?
this is a totally useless statement, it’s long been known that cosmetic MTX purchases are common among low-investment players (those kids that buy a game and give up playing it to move on in several months regardless) so “vote with your wallet” is never going to work.
Yeah, they can bring back the games now, but they always end up being a shell of their former glory. Really for the sake of nostalgia. It doesn’t feel as good playing when the studio isn’t officially backing development
Vote with your wallet works 100%, those people are voting too and games are marketted towards them as a result. That’s exactly why the industry is in this sorry state.
See above. For them to market something, there has to be a market that buys it. If people were more discerning in what they buy, then products would change to meet that criteria.
That said it’s not going to happen, I’m laying out things that would require massive changes in how consumers think for sure. But it’s reality nonetheless. It’s a more fundamental change than “everyone stop buying cosmetics now!” I’m proposing, I’m proposing that people should get some self control and stop buying MTX in games whose business model they don’t like. If they do this, then they’re directly acting against their own interests. This is the only working approach that changes how a dev will design their business model.
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So what’s the problem with say charging £15-£20 every x months, for new maps, all new cosmetics, missions and features?
Rather than charging one £10 for one skin for one class?
Like I have said through out this thread. I am not against developers making money, they need to make money, to pay staff, to make new content. Micro-transactions is pure greed, minimal effort for maximum profit as everyone is chasing after the whales and other games that make millions/billions every year.
One of the reason why Hollywood is dying, is because of the greed in film making. No film should cost 200 million, 300 million to make… The numbers are inflated due to greed… Then you look at Godzilla Minus One and it cost £15 million to make and it just tells you a really bloody good story that is enjoyable to watch, rather it being another ruined franchise shoving insane woke agenda down your throat.
Gaming become a money making scam for investors to fleece gamers. It is all about greed.
More over, they have spent more time fixing the game they released 18 months ago, than adding more content. They have added one new map with a new boss… In 18 months…
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Yeah that would be a subscription model. Many MMOs employ this kind monetization to support development. It also gives developers a consistent revenue stream that they can rely on.
And that model sucks for players who can’t/won’t pay $10-15/mo for a single game every month. Personally, I’ll have to be dragged kicking and screaming back to game subscriptions.
Non-functional cosmetics, overpriced or not, are (imo natch) the best solution for monetizing niche games like the Tide series.
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