Solutions for Long Term Viability

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
1

We were sold the game with the idea that it was going to be a live service game with free updates, monetized through the use of in-game cosmetics, but as has become apparent, this is not a healthy way to run a live service game, not for the game or the players. It’s fine to have premium cosmetics available, but that should not be the primary source of the game’s ongoing funding, as this only incentivizes the further focusing on cosmetics while, thus limiting the available resources for producing actual new gameplay possibilities such as new mechanics, maps, weapons, and (sub)classes. The lack of which will lead to stagnation and eventual decay, which means the death of the live service as the playerbase leaves for greener pastures.

In order to avoid this, there are some possible approaches to take. The most obvious is changing the monetization structure to favor paid gameplay expansions over premium cosmetics. This is easier said than done of course, as it is vastly easier to create a single cosmetic set than is it to create any of the previously mentioned gameplay expansions and selling said cosmetic sets for $11.49 a pop definitely rakes in the dough. However, if for example a DLC weapon pack were made with 3-4 new unique weapons in it and were sold for $4.99, I’m sure almost every single player would purchase it and though the profit per sale would be lower, the volume of sales would vastly surpass that of the cosmetic set, making more profit overall while adding to the actual gameplay experience.

So what are your thoughts? If Fatshark started releasing paid DLC expansions in addition to normal gameplay updates, how would you react? How much would you be willing to pay for such DLC items, if at all?

Edit: I’m seeing a lot of complaining in the replies and not a lot of ideas for moving forward. Remember, this thread is about SOLUTIONS FOR LONG TERM VIABILITY, not about balance, bugs, or berating the Fatshark management.

1 Like
2

With the state of the game as it currently is, absolutely not.

Probably one of the biggest issues with the game overall is that it tries to put the cart before the horse in trying to squeeze monetisation before the game was even completely baked.

Almost all of the problem systems (pretty much everything outside of core mission gameplay) exhibits some sign of sudden pivoting during development, feeling like barely any time was spent to design mechanically satisfying systems, usually cribbing systems from previous or other games without understanding why those systems worked (or in some cases, didn’t).

On top of that, layering on top of those systems are design choices that were blatantly centred around the monetisation (Mourningstar’s design with lack of hotkeys, store currency, store rotations, function/store placement, system “limitations” regarding changing and spawning characters, flipping social coherency) or trying to force retention through laughably badly tuned item systems with layers upon layers of RNG, hard time limited shops and acquisition systems and contract systems shows that almost everything outside of the core gameplay was initially supposed to try to get people to spend money through hard retention.

Another thing is that the systems as they currently are are almost completely immiscible to new content.

Maps - Complete RNG mission board, the chance of getting the mission on the difficulty with the modifier you want during the time you have to play is laughably low. They had to literally break their intended design to guarantee the availability of a new map for a certain period with also unfortunately served to lower the chance of any other combination appearing too.

Weapons - Complete RNG system, it can take you any time from immediately to 10s to 100s of hours to roll up a decent version of the new weapons. Additional weapons will keep bloating up the selection in the shops, and Brunt’s still require ridiculous amount of resources/time to get a decent base.

Archetypes - The levelling system is not mechanically satisfying to go through over and over, especially since you have no access to any resources (except blessings for shared weapons) from your other characters; you are starting from literal zero. Some people like to do that (and it’s certainly a choice) but having to levelling a new character doesn’t give you a choice to not start over completely.

Classes - Depends on how it’s implemented. If existing characters of the archetype you already have can switch classes, then there’s little issue except you still have to interact with the itemisation and crafting to get the class-specific weapons up to speed. If you have to create a new character to use a new class, then you have all the same problems of having new archetypes too.

All in all, I think they burned most long term good will very quickly from their audience (including but not limited to Warhammer 40k fans and previous Vermintide 1 and 2 fans) for a bump in quarterly numbers, metric chasing and whale hunting, while neglecting the game as they try to fulfil their over-promised obligations not to their audience but to their investors and partners (like Microsoft with the Xbox port).

In short, changing monetisation to gameplay elements would highly likely further sour perception from both their existing audience and people from the outside looking in if they don’t do something about the existing systems as they are now.

They had a golden chance to widen the audience, gain new support and continued support from their existing fans and flushed most of it away for blatantly obvious yet somehow incompetently implemented continued monetisation and that’s also something they need to fix before a lot of people will even look in their direction again, not to mention to spend any more money or time on them.

10 Likes
3

Hah. No.

The monetization model certainly isn’t the main problem with the game right now, not by a long shot. Trying to change to things like weapons and maps being paid would be a fantastic way to make it the main problem though.

People are certainly purchasing cosmetics, especially 40k fans. The problem is they’re too busy driving away literally everyone with the absolutely painful number of core design problems. Just off of the top of my head:

Effectively no classes.

Servers are absolutely terrible.

Netcode is equally terrible on top of that, resulting in a mess.

Enemy variety is lacking, particularly since they already reuse a ton of enemies from VT2. (Pretty much every melee unit is a remodel)

Balance is a mess. (Wanting to charge for weapon packs when the current weapons/blessings aren’t even close to balanced? Hah.)

Maps are very same-y and heavily reuse assets in many places, entire tiles in others.

Events are very bland and pretty much reuse the same few events over and over.

Crafting is not crafting and is just a slot machine in a dress. An ugly dress. With holes in it.

Resource siloing. I don’t live on a farm Fatshark. And pretty sure even people who do are fine with mixing their delicious plasteel varieties together, I think the zealot plasteel can learn to coexist with that icky witch plasteel.

Mission board and everything about it makes me sad.

5 Likes
4

I agree with your points here, but my point is that addressing these problems is not feasible unless Fatshark is earning money through it. Making a new map under the current system is not directly profitable, nor is making a new class. Again, I agree with your points on having to rework the current game framework in order to accomodate the proposed changes, but it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility. Payday 2 is a perfect example of that. They had an identical map selection system to Darktide’s (which is still available, though hardly used), but has since transitioned to allowing players to choose their own maps and modifiers (with public matchmaking available) in a separate system altogether.

5

Then they’ll have to make do with revenue from the 2 million+ copies they sold and the money they save on server costs by not having all those customers be playing the game and the rest of the contractual funding from finishing the ports and any other obligations they have hanging over their heads.

They already profited, they just want to profit MORE, by cutting corners and squeezing their remaining audience. It’s their own folly for not making a good game first (or a good game that doesn’t repeatedly keelhaul the player experience) and then trying to maintain a long tail with a large audience to get that continued revenue as opposed to dumping every other thing they worked on for a quick buck and fishing with ham-fisted tactics and then somehow try to convince people that they can’t finish or improve the game without people to continue to pump money into them.

7 Likes
6

Solutions:

  1. Break the locks
  2. Upgrade to 400 modifier power “red” state.
  3. Unsilo the resources and shared weapons
  4. Give us new classes, even if it’s just talent trees for now.
  5. Balance the weapons. This will probably involve buffing chain weapons and kneecapping the antax axe and all of the +power blessings.
  6. Remove randomness from mission select
1 Like
7

I would rather pay subscription monthly or annually (preferably hidden within a sort of “Steam” subscription for all games I bought and play on the platform) instead being harassed by microtransactions on every step (In case of Darktide just mocked, there is only one place, Thank The Emperor, to spend real cash in DT and it’s not essential to the gameplay).

And this monthly “subscription” (plain Darktide) should not be 5 EUR/USD - mind you, something closer to price of a cup of coffee and no, not Starbucks. More like 1 USD. If you’re subscribed through platform it should not exceed 5 EUR/US for all games (with multiplayer) you have.
[Needs Analysis, market research and realistic financial targets].

Let’s say, for starters, you pay half / quarter DT price, get single-player campaign with great story and 3/6/12 months’ worth of multiplayer. After that “multiplayer experience” is chargeable. You subscribe to keep servers running and developers inclined to add content to the game.

If you’re not paying subscription you can still play campaign, LAN with friends or missions with bots, but no updates for you, and by that I mean no new weapons, challenges, cosmetics, maps, NPCs, community events (like with WH Sculls, but you know - made with visible effort, plan and something resembling a reward for participating players - not a medal made from potato, like that dreadful helmet).

Of course “unpaid” updates, will also be there: hot-fixes to bugs within assets you already paid for like campaign or maps that came with purchase.
That said if it worked like that Fatshark would get nothing within a month after official release from me.

Right now I’m still clinging to hope they will gradually add all promised elements from Devs Diary and marketing campaign…
I really hope people will return to Tertium like in case of No Man’s Sky.

1 Like
8

Paid expansions basically killed the game in my region. Hard pass on that idea.

Making cosmetics cheaper would be my suggestion, alongside reworking a bunch of the seriously unpopular design features.

9

On one hand I understand, but there is a problem with hard price across all regions. 5 euro is not something that can be shrugged of monthly in some places, on the other hand if one “localization” is cheaper, there soon will be people with VPN abusing “kindhearted” (heh) adjustment to local economy.

And that’s why base game should be cheaper, as incentive to players and whip for developers.
Because once dev got your cash, what is there to incentivize to keep players around?

“Everything becomes more expensive if you want to live well”, as one of my Psyker friends likes to say.

1 Like
10

It works well if done right. There’s a simple set of rules that need to be abided for it to work though.

1.) The game needs to be good/fun.
2.) New content must be released regularly.
3.) The cosmetic content must be of adequate quality and quantity with reasonable prices.

3 Likes
11

There is not a snowball’s chance in hell of a subscription model, even a cheap one, working for Darktide. Plenty of people are (were?) purchasing cosmetics from what I could see when playing, which weren’t cheap, on top of the up front cost of the game. The issue is all of the core design problems driving away players. Adding all of these tangential price points won’t make people want to play without actually fixing the game.

Not to mention how incredibly insulting it would be to add that to support ‘server costs’ when I don’t even want their garbage servers. Just give me back my P2P. Going back to Vermintide is night and day in terms of responsiveness. Gotta love them going with the cheap option, AKA Amazon’s crappy ‘gaming’ cloud service. (Or at the least it’s been terrible every game I’ve seen it used in)

2 Likes
12

This is NOT a live service game.
Never was.
Never will be (probably).

Selling weapons is a terrible idea. We all know that the paid weapons would be OP to help with the sales and this would only alienate more players. In principal: “never sell power”.

They could introduce seasonal content and battle passes, but the velocity at which FS is able to produce new content doesn’t allow that.

Ideally, this game should be F2P and then monetized with said content, but if they don’t plan to release this content at the required pace, then selling it upfront for a fixed priced and half-assing the rest of game’s lifecycle is the best option for them.

2 Likes
13

Woah, woah, woah. Let me rephrase “spirit” of the idea I was trying to sell here: S.S. “Darktide Live Service Game with Subscription-Model Remuneration” has sailed away looooong time ago. It was more of “what if” or “when you wish upon the star” kind of idea. I agree, now the only option is to fix the game, if they wish to get back on players good side.

As for Amazon and servers, I am not touching that subject with 6 foot Pole named Michał. I have no experience with that.

4 Likes
14

If Fatshark wants live service money, first it needs to deliver live service content.

6 Likes
15

*Fatshark exec eating his own cake and getting angry that the cake is gone: :rage:

4 Likes
16

FS long terms viability in two words : more sh*t

FS answer : Wrong number.

1 Like
17

Is this a joke?

Fatshark had the opportunity to farm a lot of money. Darktide could have been a huge goldmine.
But they f**ked it up and by now don’t seem to put any work into improving the game at all or rework stuff the playerbase is asking for since the beta. Instead they are working on the console port, which will have the same disappointed playerbase in the long run.
They are so ignorant and deaf to their playerbase/customers that I don’t see a bright future for them, Darktide or any future project.
If they would work on the main painpoints and added A LOT of additional content for free at first, then, maybe then, they could think about monetizing some little DLCs or something. But not in the state the game is in right now.

5 Likes
18

Minor correction: It would be 500 modifier with all 5 stats at 100. Call it a relic class or whatever.

1 Like
19

naw naw naw. i have the perfect solution for long term viability trust me. check this. how about no doo doo water maps like dogs, low int and all that trash. nice challenging fast paced maps. thats a good idea for long term. a good map system.

1 Like
20

like right now lights out is coming up. fog is coming too. there is way too large of a group of ppl dreading that waiting for hi int shock troop that jus went off rotation. jus wasting time to have fun again

1 Like