So, Fatshark’s claim about having a silent majority who’re fine with crafting? Time to gather data to disprove it. Reddit is my first stop. I’m leaving two polls, one about item acquistion and one about upgrading, and we’ll see what the actual majority has to say.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/18og6dx/information_gathering_opinion_on_item_upgrading/
EDIT: Preliminary results from the first few hours have been collected.
Don’t get me wrong, crafting is a blight on this game that should be changed, but collecting unbiased, useful data is a lot more complicated than people tend to think.
The ‘silent majority’ aren’t here or on reddit. They don’t engage with these types of platforms. They log into the game, play and log off. By sourcing your data from these platforms, you’re already not getting a representative sample set of the player base. I was not aware that of Fatshark’s claim that people are fine with it, but I would equally question what their evidence for such an assertion is.
The real question is, “where did Fatshark make this claim?”
Wait a second. Where, exactly, would Fatshark have said that the Crafting system is fine as is? And where did they talk about a silent majority? Are you perhaps referring to Catfish’ response to the Crafting Memorial? Because it seemed to me that she was saying something else.
She basically said ‘I collate information but despite it being nearly unanimous, my bosses believe that there’s some huge number of people who don’t comment we should take into account and they’re definitely pro-this-system’.
It’s a classic silent majority argument.
Here’s the actual post from Catfish: The Crafting Memorial; lest we forget - #705 by FatsharkCatfish
lmao if the silent majority dont care either way why should we or anyone care about what they think? FS is just deflecting the issue of this awful game design. I dont know if its their stubborn ego or what at this point, but this is not at all a useful poll because of response bias.
I honestly dont know what itd take for FS to actually fix crafting the way most (sensible) players would. They havent done anything beyond the tools of war update, and im starting to get stockholm syndrome (both being swedish cannot be a coincidence).
Voted.
The existence of Catfish’s response is proof enough that FatShark will never do anything, because they have a C-suite that is hardcore believers in dark design, frustration design and RNG.
No one in the history of the world has said “but but we don’t know what people who don’t say anything think!” without actually meaning to say “We are wrong, and we know we are wrong, but we’re going to pretend we are right. Please pretend right along with us.”
In before they do anything…
At this point, after overwhelming feedback on forums, reddit, steam, YouTube videos, reputable PC gaming review sites…
…after losing hundreds of thousands of players, who did not return for Patch 13/15…
There is no longer any credit to be had, when and if they do something about it.
Ah so they will do something buuut it won’t matter. Got it!
Sorry, it’s just hard to keep up sometimes!
Shrugs they have already lost 2/3s of the players who did return for Patch 13. But hey, go ahead and spread your love for their ineffable design.
This is fuc**ng disgusting!
First of all, since this majority is silent, how does Fatshark know they are happy with the current crafting system?
And then, many of this “silent majority”, are those classic players who join in, play a T1/T2 map with the single character stuck at level 24 after who knows how many months, and who don’t have the slightest idea of what to look for with the crafting system… they just use random stuff
It’s obvious that they aren’t complaining (but don’t get it wrong, these players are doing absolutely nothing wrong, everyone is free to play as they prefer)
That’s a very common way to say “fk off” in IT working culture.
Like “we don’t have that data”, while there are no meaningful ways to get it (how to get data from those who never provide it?!).
Seems like some of the decision makers (most likely the producer) don’t believe that the current crafting system needs changes, and successfully use such moves which help “to do nothing”.
That’s the thing about FatShark’s “silent majority”-- there’s no way for us as players to disprove that. Whatever the vocal component of the community (eg us, reddit, steam forums, etc), FatShark can and likely WILL always claim that there are a larger majority of players who do not engage with their game like that… the thing is, they’re probably RIGHT.
But that’s also the point: they’re not engaging with the game at the same level. Developers should be working in collaboration with the players in a “Live Service;” there is no ONE part of your community that should impede another, particularly if that part isn’t providing any feedback positive or negative.
By claiming any sort of “silent majority” and being slow to implement changes via feedback, what Fatshark is telling us is that they’d rather do the least amount of work possible for their GaaS title.
Seriously, what NEGATIVE effect comes from tweaking the crafting system to favor the players? What POSSIBLE blowback could they have for the game actually rewarding people’s time?
Well, preliminary results are in!
@FatsharkQuickpaw @FatsharkCatfish @FatsharkStrawHat you may find this useful for information gathering purposes.
For Item Acquisition:
14/149 (~9%) say item acquisition is fine
40/149 (~27%) say that weapon base ratings from the shops and gifts are not high enough as their biggest problem
13/149 (~9%) say that blessings available in the shop’s aren’t good enough as their biggest problem
Roughly the same percentage say that Emperor’s Gifts not providing enough are their biggest problem
6/149 (~4%) say that there’s not enough options in the shops as their biggest problem
63/149 (~42%) say that they have all of these problems equally.
For Item Upgrading:
20/195 (~10%) say it’s fine
12/195 (~6%) say blessing/perk types in upgrading are too random as their biggest issue
14/185 (~7%) say blessing/perk tier in upgrading is too random as their biggest issue
58/195 (~30%) say Locks are their biggest issue
27/195 (~14%) say that upgrading being too expensive is their biggest issue
64/195 (~33%) say that all of the problems listed are equally bad to them
What can we conclude from this?
Acquiring items mostly just needs number buffs for the RNG on bases and blessings - people don’t seem to hate the RNG nature of it so much as they are irritated with the low ‘floor’ of what they can get from the shops. Comments mostly express frustration with low base ratings from Brunt’s and Emperor’s Gifts.
Upgrading items has ‘break the locks’ as the runaway winner for single issues, with the expense of upgrading items coming in stronger than I’d have thought. Comments mostly express irritation with the locks as their sole pain point, with a few commenting about the expenses.
This remains in line with the pain points expressed by the community in the forums - that locks are bad, that crafting is expensive, and that RNG in getting base weapons is bad but could be adjusted to be more rewarding.
Gonna be honest, out of all the players…you really do want to engage with the ones on your forums and subreddits and the like. Filtering out…certain types of individuals is of course necessary, but if people are coming up with detailed ways to improve the gameplay loop that feedback should be looked at because while passion may not substitute for experience it can definitely show you the kind of thing your players want.
Yep. Exactly. It’s why FatShark choosing to ghost most of the time is so absurd to me, particularly when so many other GaaS titles at the VERY LEAST communicate with their playerbase on a frequent basis to set and maintain expectations. FatShark just doesn’t communicate with their players in an effective manner which only serves to further sow discontent because we feel like they’re not listening, couple that with minimal action on sorepoints that they know have existed since the game’s release and you have… well, US.
