lol Worker satisfaction goes up, user satisfaction and quality assurance goes down. If the servers caught on fire are they legally not allowed to come assist until the country mandated vacation is over? I’m not trying to be glib, genuinely curious if something happened if everyone would just be out of luck.
I mean I am also from Europe and there is NO WAY that at my company (or any company) EVERYONE would be at holiday. Mandatory vacation are only if your employees didn’t, through out whole YEAR, plan to take their vacation with their employer/managers. And only if those are not used vacation days from PREVIOUS YEAR - then company either have to send you on holiday or pay you for it. Also it’s mandatory by law that each employee has once per year an uninterrupted 2 weeks of vacation. But company has whole year to make sure everyone go when time is right. You know, rotation. No company (at last sane one) sends everyone in same period, lol.
Like I have office employees and on-site specialists that make installations. So policy is that for each of those groups at least 3/4 of emplyees must not be on vaction, exluding June-September period where it’s 1/2 since everyone everywhere are on vacation.
So I have no idea if it’s true but it would be idiotic as hell that WHOLE company/studio is on vacation? What if servers go down, game breaking bug will appear or anything else? You also should at least manage minimum customer engagement, information, communication on daily/weekly basis just to keep things floating.
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Well, last Christmas they introduced the old hunting grounds and left it on for like 4 weeks so there was only hunting grounds. Make of that what you will.
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Jesus, no wonder this game was and is being managed like potato
Honestly bud, Iv yet to have a friend who likes Vermintide 1, 2 or DT.
Wall incoming. Im not attacking you, but Im heavy disagreeing in many ways.
The games just dont have mass appeal. I dont think the crafting system is the problem nor do I think are minor things like an extra press of a button to get in to the game or running around the mourningstar with no hotkeys, but it is in fact the core gameplay loop, the strange control system that LOOKS like a FPS game but very much doesnt play like one, is the problem i.e the game itself. Im in love with Tide games, so sod anyone who doesnt love em imo.
Even L4D plays very much like a standard FPS but in the Tide games, the heavy melee nature, the NEED to block and/or dodge and the intricate weapons systems at play are, in my experience, what puts all, every single one, of my friends off.
They all say unanimously that pressing the buttons over and over for melee is tiring, getting hit in the arse is tiring, constant vigilance and confusion within hordes of enemies, the unfair difficulty spikes, the unwieldy weapons with attack patterns that MUST be learned to play the game on any level above a boring difficulty and, as you mentioned, the grindingly slow progression are what puts them off.
Anyone that says running around the mourningstar or an extra button press or a slightly confusing map selection is putting them off is, imo, feeding excuses, perhaps they cant put their fingers on the problem, but if these things really caused people not to play then how come other games with these exact systems dont put people off?!
Destiny 2 is a good example of a game with all the bad systems at play from Darktide but which are actually WORSE.
The level selection system is atrocious and convoluted. You can turn on the game expecting to jump back in to the hub (which you cannot hotkey teleport around and is large and confusing to use) and instead of returning to where you left off, it pulls you, without choice, in to a completely new part of the game. The first 5-6 times I turned that game on, it pulled me in to a new DLC or storyline EACH TIME!!
I gave up trying to make sense of it and just thought “point and shoot”.
However the gameplay loop is tight and easy to get the hang of. The game is extremely enjoyable to all skill levels.
The Destiny 2 crafting system is atrocious, it wants you to farm the same weapons or mats over and over to min-max them and even wants you to spend money to progress as increasing light levels are tied to new DLC purchases which are also confusing as to what DLC you need to play with friends (hint: all of them). D2 would have died had they not made the base game ftp. I wish it had tbh.
The pay to win nature of D2 is actually real, whereas none of the Tide games are pay to win. You can win with grey weapons and skill in all Tide games, much like L4D didnt require heavy investment. D2 nerfs your damage if your light levels arent high enough and makes it outright impossible to access some difficulties without the right gear etc. Also, if you dont buy the DLCs it locks you out of Nightwaves and other game modes depending on that weeks map rotation. Scum. Total SCUM!!!
Ahem… sorry Im still angry after how they treated us from D1. Fkin Scum!!!
So yeah, you are right, there are problems, but respectfully I dont agree with what the problems are and perhaps these are things that CANNOT be fixed. You cant make someone love a game they hate just because you love it (trust me bud, I feel that pain) so Im stuck with pubs or LFGs, neither of which Im in to but Iv learned to (read as: been forced to) love the pub chaos. I dont rage at people who make mistakes. Although Im less inclined to play higher difficulties until I can clutch and pull teams. It took me 3k hours to be comfortable in Legendary pubs on V2. Thats a me problem tho 
Im not saying the problems you highlighted arent problems, quite the opposite, they really are, but I dont agree that what you brought up are the issues that stop most normal people playing. They might make some people burn out after 1k hours, but Iv yet to have any of the 20+ people Iv tried to get in to Tide games stay for more than 10 hours.
If you made it thru this you get a pumpkin, you lucky bleeder!
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This is exactly what I like. My friends like it, even people who aren’t super gamers. Difference may be we find generic FPS shooters pretty boring and most of us play more RPGs.
I disagree though that you think everyone has misinterpreted their introspective capabilities in misidentifying the problem. Too many times I hear “core gameplay loop, great, everything outside of it… Sucks”. Whether it has “mass” appeal or not is debatable. It sold a lot. From the feed back we do get crafting is a huge pain point. The issue is no one likes to feel like they wasted time and effort. Gambling here does this. I actually just encountered a small amount of it in Remnant 2. You can get relic shards of varying quality. You can spend relic dust to RANDOMLY roll one you’re missing from a category. If you already have it, you get a third back. I spent 2,000 relic dust and got most. I spent another 600 relic dust for NOTHING. It’s an awful feeling. To watch resources to go down with nothing to show for it. It doesn’t matter WHAT game you play, that is an AWFUL game design choice.
Let’s say, fatsharks goal was 200 hours to get a perfect weapon as the average. Instead of doing it randomly, just make it deterministic. 200 hours is a long time but hey, if they REALLY want to draw it out at least make the progress iterative so people feel they’re chipping away instead of watching resources go away without any indication of progress.
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Agreed, this is what drew me to the game. Iv tried expressing the need to learn weapons and blocks and dodges but they all just say the a similar thing “oh weapons are crap and all the same you just spam melee to win”
Drives me insane, they wont listen to me, but oh well.
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I think the frustrating thing was that my friends did get that and were trying to make builds, good setups and learn their weapons but then hit the Great Wall of RNG, went “well that’s pointless” and went back to other things.
We tend to do a lot of harder and more complex games (Zomboid, Barotrama, Lethal, Arma, etc) but the crafting just drove everyone right off.
Same complaint “this game could be good if they just fixed everything that wasn’t the gameplay”
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A good build wont save you unless you can use it so yes, its desirable, but I think many people fall in to a trap as if its essential. All you need, even as a sub-par player, are some base weapons you are good with and a special power to clutch with. The rest is positioning, teamwork and either good blocking or dodging.
I think the power increase is very noticeable. Power cycler on power sword? Shattering impact and pinning fire in Boltgun? Hand canon and surgical on revolver? Warp nexus and surge on void strike? Even if a player could complete damnation with Grey’s some of these will make the game way easier. And for some players some of these builds will mean success or failure.
As well as synergy with classes. If I want lacerated on my knife to proc bleed to synergize with talents, it’s a specific setup.
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Oh for sure, its deffo noticable and Im not good enough to clear higher difficulties on pubs without the extra power oomf, but you really dont NEED synergised teams built around each other, especially to git gud.
I think its a trap that people think they cant do without when the most important thing is teamwork.
Most of the games Im in that lose are full of “good” players that dont understand some of the games intricate systems, like how and when to revive a player in a horde, what to shoot first, not staying behind drop ledges, how to dodge disablers and the golden rule, sticking within quick access to the rest of your team. Teamwork makes the dreamwork.
At the most, its nice to have gold equipment for the power boost and that will easily let a half competent team that works together clear Heresy with no real issue, in fact its too easy unless you get bad luck. Thats why pubs are harder than a proper team. Malice becomes a minefield of easy games and desperate clutches or fails.
Im not really talking about the hardest content, but thats beyond most players getting in to the game.
edit:
For very few, at the top of the hardest content. If a build not being perfect or near perfect causes one to fail on Heresy or lower, then that person isnt actually as good as they think.
And then next patch they nerf them. Back to board with RNG. Gosh, how I hate that
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Which is really saying something, because it was way worse in the early days.
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Honestly i would argue it’s less about pure performance and more of the principle of it.
If the crafting system was more reasonable and didn’t require such a dumb time and resource investment for honestly jack in return i don’t think it would be as much of a problem that gets brought up repeatedly.
I wouldn’t say my friends were even really hardcore players but it’s still something that put them off. These are people with expirence playing Diablo 3 or Warframe for reference. I think it’s the fact that when a system stinks like rotten fish it doens’t matter how many air fresheners you add to it after the fact, it still smells like you dumped a pile of rotten fish first.
As a note all the things that seem to get people irritated are completely divorced from gameplay .
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On principle yes, they should absolutely fix the crafting system. I get why its brought up and why its a pain and I agree completely. Remove the locks Fatshark!!! It doesnt please anyone, casual or vet.
I have over 3k hours in V2. I have like, 5-6 reds. Im not in it for the loot or the crafting. None of my friends stayed in V2 despite the “better” system (its not really better imo).
I also have over 3k hours in Warframe and crafting is not why Iv played the game so much. I play it because I love the core game and trying new frames and weapons is icing on a cake.
I totally agree that DT should have icing on the cake, not smelly rotten fish.
Even tho V2 crafting is “better” that DT crafting, its still a pile of poop imo. Unless you have spammable amounts of resources and reds, the crafting is crap and suffers (admittedly to a lesser extent) from the same problem people complain about in DT, but instead of spamming the shop you spam the reroll. I got adaquate weapons in V2 and gave up on that rerolling borefest and just enjoyed smacking rats around. Iv not made the same mistake in Darktide. I found weapons I like, golded them, and smacked heretics around. Sometimes I come across a better version, awesome! Mostly I ignore the crafting. Regardless, they should improve the system! Its not, imo, why people leave though.
If they remove the locks in DT and sort the item power levels so its not a gridfest, then DT crafting will be far superior. The ability to choose what goes on gear is actually a good system if not for the stupid locks.
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Well, even blessings are RNG dependent to get them in the first place, there’s practically no progression there either, just churn enough items until you get lucky on a pool 2-3x larger than the VT2 trait pool ever was.
The only good feature is perk selection, but is also hamstrung by locks.
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Indeed, content drop happened, we got a new map (based on tile-set of the one we just got), two new bosses (but they are limited time only and you can’t kill them so what’s the point), new weapon variants (of things we were not really asking for), and the biggest positive of the vet tree now isn’t full of talent taxes and is in-line with the other classes in terms of points required to get to the bottom.
But it isn’t what they did do it is what they didn’t do: Crafting? Nope, in fact by adding new weapons they arguably only made that problem worse. The next patch had better include at least some sort of crafting change or promise of a crafting change in the near future (as in when they return from the winter break they are about to go on) or we will see that 8-14k players drop to 10k max players.
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Whenever a new map comes out it also chops down map selection choice for anyone not playing Auric by 33% for two weeks and throws quick play out the window, so that’s not a great experience there either.
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I think it’s been pretty clear through the interactions with game designers under shadow accounts that they will never fix the crafting system as they are in complete denial of it being a failure.
If this wasn’t a 40K game bringing in 40K fans, I suspect it would already be long dead. And that’s a shame because even if everything else around it is garbage, the artwork is great and the core combat gameplay is a lot of fun.
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Sorry, I was using sarcasm 