It had been a long while before Darktide’s release since the last time I was socially active online. I mean like, in forums etc. outside of rl or social media. And doing this, posting here and on Steam forums has been a very sad, eye-opening experience of the world outside my own bubble of friends and close knit communities.
Things are rarely if ever black & white. Darktide and Fatshark certainly both certainly have their flaws and there’s nothing wrong with valid critique or personal opinions. But the tone and obvious intent of so many - far too many - people, is just nothing short of toxic, malicious abuse and bullying. There is no excuse for that, and no Fatshark & the devs certainly don’t deserve any of it.
It doesn’t matter in the least if someone is a community manager, a store clerk or in any other client facing position where they’re expected to deal with people. People should be held accountable for their behaviour.
Looking at what’s going on online and irl what with the wars & politics & eroding basic human rights issues and corruption and all… I just don’t know what to say tbh. Humans are a terrible, ugly, selfish, vicious and destructive species. No, not all of us of course not. But far too many. Just because a rotten apple has a few unspoiled spots left on it doesn’t make it not rotten.
always these hypothetical people who apparently litter every discussion with hate, but where are they?
how many people are actually toxic like you describe, and how much more frequent are they compared to any internet interaction?
idiots exist and always will, but how exactly is FS targeted MORE than anything else, i don’t see it
I totally agree with everything you said, I hope they enjoy their vacations and time off! I have always felt that if they’re going to be slow with the content the least they could do is have more communication with the community and to me, it feels like they’re doing much better in that regard.
As per Internet rule, there is several times more people complaining about “toxic hateful entitled reactionary gamers” than those gamers in question actually existing.
It’s like cherrypicking so-called “death threats” and using it to shield the company from negativity and make critisism look bad, which says about defenders being either unintelligent or having a specific agenda in mind. Or, most likely, both.
Yeah there are plenty of level headed and friendly people on these forums. The nasty ones are absolutely in the minority. To make a sweeping statement that the forums are toxic is very unfair imo. Don’t let the actions of a few define those of the many.
But another point on the heat that FS get… Have you seen how much they charge for cosmetics? That should act as a fairly good metric for their moral compass as a company and thus perhaps give good reason for people to have trust issues with them.
The cosmetics, often just recoloured and rehashed, are undefensibly expensive. That is a human decision by someone high up at FS.
I’m sure absolutely no one here is directing heat at the normal Fs employee (coders, artists, etc) but instead at the HODs who make the calls. It’s like when people throw shade at a country - obviously it’s directed at the government of that country and not the general populous. That goes without saying.
The artists and sound designers at FS are nothing short of genius imo, but dang some of the HODs need to be replaced.
Does seem Fs have recently begun pulling their socks up though and a bit of trust is being regained.
People are capable of doing an infinite amount of things that don’t seem to make sense. I’m not doubting what we are capable of something.
I am just making an observation that we seem to really enjoy this product, but it seems the general sentiment on the forums is we don’t like the product or at the very least, don’t like many aspects of the product.
I’m not commenting on whether we personally like FS and its employees. That just seems like a shallow stance to take either way…we don’t personally know them
where do you get this “observation” from
if public places tell you this:
what are you telling me here?
TBH it sounds to me that you project your own sentiments on the general populace and those opinions then get somehow opposed by this group of people who happened to have banded together here in the forum just to be unnecessarily negative.
maybe the forum and general player base ain’t all that different, a pinch of Occam’s Razor never hurt anybody
Because after two fantastic products from Crate, I feel obligated to like the creator. That is until they prove me wrong.
I liked the creator of Vermintide and Vermintide 2 because they made really great games and listened to the community. Then they dropped the ball on both game design and communication with Darktide and I’m not really a fan anymore and take everything they announce with a healthy dose of skepticism.
I also get your point about liking something despite the creator/actor. I think Tom Cruise is a jerk, but he’s a great actor. I think J.K. Rowling needs a reality check, but the Harry Potter books aren’t suddenly awful. Conversely, I think Nicholas Cage is hilarious, but the movies he’s in are just plain bad (imo) in most cases.
But the difference here is, Fatshark isn’t an individual. It’s a team, I don’t have any issues with the individual employees at Fatshark, I have issues with the design decisions and lack of communication by the company itself.
I don’t have any love for the individual employees at Crate, but I love their design decisions and communication by the company itself and will insta-buy new games from them on the weight of their past work alone.
I will never insta-buy a game from Fatshark again based on how Darktide has been handled.
Reputation IS important. Even if it’s not everything.
It’s the observation that we are all here talking about a 2 year old game still. I haven’t talked about RedFall since it released. You know what I’m saying? The observation is definitely speculation but I think it makes logical sense that we like this game and that is why we are still here.
I’m telling you exactly what I typed. Clearly we all like this game or else we wouldn’t be here, but our topics on the forums are predominantly negative and sometimes even mean.
I don’t think I’m projecting anything, but just so we are on the same page…I have a very neutral attitude about FS and this product when it comes to discussions. DT is one of my all time favorite games and FS could improve on some things. I don’t see the need to go more than that
Steam forums, for one. It’s pretty tame and low volume (amount) here.
Just this evening I was checking the steam page for the itemisation dev blog and the number one comment was your average idiotic lose-a-little-faith-in-humanity-tier response. I scrolled a bit out of morbid curiosity and there were plenty of replies that made my skin crawl.
These forums may see their share of negativity, cynicism, and off-topic nonsense but it’s mostly above board. The moderation helps, but so does the community and long-form discussion format.
I get you’re not saying they don’t exist. And I’m sure there are worse examples, but there are also far better ones. It’s possible to foster a mostly positive community on the internet, specifically as a game studio. It’s just that the way fatshark tried… was a failure that they are still clawing back from.
honestly, is only “above board” here because you can get thrown out for that here unlike the steam forums. this place is just as negative, but it does that thing where someone goes “i’m trying to help , you’re doing it wrong!” to cover the fact they’re just bitching about things they don’t like about the game by framing them as objectively wrong.
Its not our job to feel pity for a bunch of devs half way across the world we dont know and have no personal relation to. It is our job as consumers to critique the game we all paid for and put countless hours into playing. Also in my opinion even the title of this post is hilarious because why would they deserve any more praise than what they get? This game plays like an alpha and the content releases are painfully slow and when we do get them they arent significant even though apparently this is a live service game. In my opinion they deserve all of the criticism and more and until they fix this game and it is in a more than playable state I could care less about all the criticism because they deserve it. This game is a train wreck mess of a game and has been since day 1. They should fix the game and they should release content faster. I mean for christ sakes it took them months to fix the stim bug on console and that existed since the day carnival and warren released ages ago. If anything They need to get their priorities straight.
This games been basically unplayable on console for more than 90 days straight at all difficulty levels and you actually think they dont deserve all of the criticism theyre getting? They have barely even acknowledged us console players since mid april and you think we should lay off criticizing them even though they just went on another scheduled vacation while the game has been on fire and burning to the ground on console for more than 3 months at this point? Fatsharks care for this game is beyond unacceptable and they are lucky anyone plays this game at all whatsoever.
People on both platforms have been crashing since april and ive seen complaints all over reddit and these forums here about it and it hasnt been fixed. Obviously the problem is far more prevalent on console but this has plagued both platforms and particularly people who use amd drivers. Unfortunately that includes anyone on console cuz guess what xbox uses?
am i supposed to care about reddit? most of them are tech-illiterate goons, if you fix your settings the game runs fine. i haven’t had a crash from darktide this year.
I dont care about their feelings, nor do I know anything about game development, nor is it my job to care about how complicated it could be to fix. It is beyond unacceptable to say the least. Also this game has been out for almost two years and plays like an alpha so im really not the guy whose going to act like they deserve all this praise because they dont. Have they made an amazing game, yes, but they should release content faster and they should fix their game because this isnt even the only problem with this game its just one massive glaringly obvious thing they desperately need to figure out how to solve. Also they get plenty praise for the things they do right but the things they dont do right are so absurd that people are going to mention them. People are always going to remember the negative before they remember the positive. Also the people who have hundreds of hours like me are the first people to give praise where do because we are the ones who play the most and understand the little nuances of this game more than some random who plays 4 hours a week and doesnt even remotely know the half about this game. The reason we critique this game to the degree that we do is because we know how good this game can be and the potential that it has that is exactly why we say the things we do regarding the game.
