Thanks for sharing! This was a fun read. It’s always nice to get insight into where other people’s thoughts are coming from. I’ve done some small amount of data analysis in the course of my career, but nothing as rigorous as what you do!
The data I strongly suspect FS is capturing strikes me less as sales data and more as usage data though. And I think that might provide more, and more powerful, insight than one would get from data around sales.
And I totally agree that direct customer feedback is super valuable (and often hard to get!) for any business. But we don’t have to wonder if FS sees, collects and considers direct customer feedback from here on the forums, because Catfish said as much.
Let me reshare the exact words of what Catfish said:
You ask why can’t it be something inbetween, a “better” or a “worse” vs a “solved” or “unsolved”. And that’s fine, you can ask for a gradient. How happy are you with the crafting system on a scale of 1-10… but that’s not what was asked for.
Catfish asked for a SPLIT. Into those who like crafting now post 12, and those who do not. You cannot split it effectively any other way. It wasn’t asked for a gradient, it was asked to split people into two camps, specifically related to patch 12.
It isn’t their style, but maybe it should be. I guess that’s where you would have to do analytics on how much involvement you want from customers and how successful they end up. For example, Baldurs Gate 3 players had a large influence on the shape of that game. Even post 1.0.
We don’t have just that. The pc gamer articles, the play dark tide blog, the dev blogs and announcements on the forums talking about “hidden potential”. The earlier iterations talking about each change to perks would iteratively increase the cost. The outcry about locks as soon as they were brought up! I agree there’s assumptions but you can definitely read into things.
“Why are you poking me? Stop it” they don’t stop
“Hey, did you hear me? I said stop”.
“Oh yeah I head you”. Continues poking
“Can you stop then?”
“I will eventually. In some regard, Maybe lighter pokes”. the poking continues for over a year
It’s also why if they are secretly building some crafting 2.0 release it would be better if we could engage and actually provide feedback.
My interpretation of this is that Catfish was looking for a clear delineation in the data. One possible use of that clearly-delineated data could be to say, “look here are all the people who are still saying the crafting is crap after the update.” It doesn’t strictly have to mean that she was looking to disregard or downplay the pre-patch complaints.
I wish they communicated more too. But I wonder if the positive/negative effect of that (on sales, sentiment, etc.) could really be quantified. They’ve got a lot of baggage, which is clear to see on just about any official announcement. I’m sure it’s a consideration.
If they’re doing Crafting 2.0 – and I strongly suspect they are, based upon nothing but Catfish saying there are likely more changes coming, the weapons appearance page redesign and my dreamhopes – they’re probably going to drop it like the talent trees, which have largely been a great success. Besides being the preeminent experts on Tide games, FS has also seemingly acknowledged that they need outside input, which is why I believe there was a group of players involved along the way with the talent trees.
If by players you mean content creators, then yeah. Which is a fantastically bad idea. No useful feedback can be gathered from that, ever. It’s simply a PR move to ensure said creators post videos about “Here’s this new system, and I helped test it!”
In other words it has nothing to do with improving whichever systems were being tested, but just about getting youtube videos about a game that was, and is, otherwise completely dead among content creators.
this thread is like 5-7 dudes circlejerking about how much they hate the lock system, which happens to every single announcement on here. of course lardflounder doesn’t respect the demands when the demands come from the circlejerk constantly.
stop pretending there’s anything keeping you from enjoying the game with the weapons you have besides feeling entitled to what you heard about from someone else.
You’re right, of course. It’s not 400+ people on this tiny forum alone. Certainly nothing about this on Reddit, or the steam forums. There certainly haven’t been multiple articles on gaming review sites about how horrific the system is. Nor have there been videos on youtube and elsewhere about how bad it all is.
Literally just go play the game. No one is interested in hearing you repeat the same point which you have 0 data to back it up nor does anyone share your weird desire to handicap yourself because your bored and the game lacks a true end game.
Calling a wall of over 400 “the same 7 people” makes you look like you don’t understand how math works.
they’re telling her that they can’t make moves because of the players who haven’t made any feedback. I don’t see how I misrepresented it. Don’t be tryin no gaslightin on me now.
I mean that argument is also nonsensical from logical point of view @FatsharkCatfish . We would never act on anything in real life becasue statistically “only 9423 people have stated their opinion about X in this city of 500,000.00 people so we don’t know opinion of silent majority”. That’s not how statistic works! Also if you are not sure - make a poll on Steam, ask questions about Crafting and there you will have it. Majority of players never give feedback.
Also - your current player base according to Steam Charts is ~13k. Accepting standard 5% statistical error margin - you need 370-380 people to “vote” in a poll, apply 5% error and you have accurate result to represent whole playerbase opinion. We had a poll about crafting as @Rainman said on forum and if enough people participated in it and we had result of around 90% people being dissatisfied with crafting - then even applying 5% error margin - those are accurate results since statistically this is more than one-sided, even if we count the fact that people that don’t like it are more likely to participate on forum poll - that’s still hell of a one-sided curve. However a proper poll made on Steam or on forum + reddit + steam would give you 100% accurate data. You can easy make your own poll to confirm that. Stop running away from problem, start acting.
How do you think Larian made such amazing game as BG3? They listened to very limited community of Early Access players (like we were on release state of Darktide) who were invested enough into game to identify issues, write about issues, sacrefice their time to point those issues and ask for changes for the sake of the game. “Silent majority” simply don’t care enough. If Larian was to follow your philosphy they would never make such a good game as Early Access playerbase was nothing compare to full release. But those people were most invested into game success.
Why do you think DRG is more succesfull than your game? Becasue they actively listen to feedback on their Discord where also only small portion of playerbase participate. But those are the most invested and those who understand game the most. Together they forged one of best co-op games.
Your problem Fatshark is that you are way too stubborn. And it’s the same with every single of your games. Start listening to community, you will make better games.
If you want to find out if your “silent majority” even exists (silent majority doesn’t even function in statistics), make a poll. But I can bet you are afraid of that becasue if polls confirmed what we are saying here (and it would) - you would be forced to act and you prefer ignore issue as long as possible. Less work, eh?
Had a crash due to my inventory being stuffed with weapons locked with garbage perks that I’m hoping will one day be fixable.
Please just pull the bandaid off already, people are engaging with the game because it’s fun, not because of this garbage system whichever copium-huffing designer insists that RNG keeps people playing.
Better than jerking in the mirror and acting like your have a moral high ground because you can’t handle people pointing out the system being deeply flawed.
Sorry that it takes priority over your weirdo vanity project of wanting to run with level 1 gear but that’s probably the smallest minority out of this whole community.
They couldn’t understand it since VT1… “but how can you all play just becasue gameplay is good? Our excel shows its impossible!”
“Have you heard of Tragedy of Fatshark the Stubborn?”
“Some studios could even make games that people were playing becasue they… liked it”
“Where one can learn such power?” slowly turning head
“Not from a Fatshark”
I think it’s true they want to make more changes, but with the feedback online they were discussing the silent majority/loud minority with that comment. Speaks much more loudly than what I was referencing:P