Those who never played previous Tide games

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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… and you got Darktide just for the sake of being Wh40k. You are not aware of how Vermintide launched and how long it took for everything to get implemented.

Would you be happy with the state of Darktide as it is now or would you still see all the flaws and missing features?
Just forget for a moment that FatTuna had ample experience with Vermintide.
I myself never played previous Tide titles and can still see the sorry state this game is in.

Would you bail or wait for this game to get better not knowing if the devs will improve on it or leave it as it is?

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Let me ask you a question. Has this developer done anything thus far to earn your benefit of doubt. I want you to think critically on this and ponder on how they’ve managed the pre-“beta” to release state, the cash shop, loot acquisition, performance, and so on. If you feel they’ve took great stride in listening to community feedback while implementing changes that the community wants. Then by all means. Stick with the game. If not. Then you know the answer to your question.

I myself am only posting here because I’ve been reading some stimulating things that tickle my brain.

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I didn’t play Vermintide. I had no prior experience with Fatshark’s products going in. Being as bluntly honest as possible, the only reason I’m here is because this game gave the suggestion of playing more like a shooter, not a hack’n’slash game.

I’m not satisfied with the launch. I’m not optimistic about the future. I’m not going to be buying another Fatshark game, or anything from the cosmetics store.

The only reason I’m still playing is because the “new game smell” is still there for my friends.

If, somehow, Fatshark turns it around later down the line, I’d be willing to come back and consider changing my stance. Even then, I have severe doubts on whether that will actually happen. Many of my problems with the game feel like fundamental issues with core features. I’ve learned enough in my time playing video games to know that these kinds of things rarely - if ever - change.

Really hoping that new Hypercharge update comes sooner rather than later.

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I hear you. They haven’t done anything to earn the benefit of the doubt. And they won’t because every game that launched in a similar state got a hard pass and forget from me. No matter how much they expand on it over time.

I’m not sticking any longer, even had to force myself to log in and finish leveling a third class to 30, lack of weapons, no crafting, maps being repetitive, some penances are completely devoid of any reason, crashes, bugs, list goes on.
Don’t get me wrong, gameplay is satisfying, maps are detailed, atmosphere is right but the core of it, diversity is not there, sad really, considering 40k is a universe of endless possibilities. But it’s not enough.
Devs did a good job with what we have but somebody messed up big time by forcing them to release the game in a current state.

I only jumped the wagon because it’s an FPS and 40k, not going to count Deathwing and Firewarrior because, reasons. We have some other great 40k games but most are turn based, attempts of an RTS and what not. We don’t have a proper FPS, RTS, and TPS. We do, but those are relics of the past, Space Marine 1, Dawn of war 1. I guess 40k FPS will remain a dream for most. Hell, I bet we’ll even have Total War 40k before we have a decent FPS in this settings.

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I bought because I liek boltor.

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I haven’t been playing Darktide for several days now, waiting on updates and features. So yeah, if I had known that this game is actually early access I would not have bought it and had waited for later date, a bit triggered for the deception that it’s supposed to be a “full release” but then again, I don’t lose anything by simply waiting for the missing features.

Lying to customers however gives me a very low opinion of the company and totally will call out their bulls#it when ever I can rather than be understanding towards them or “defend” them to any capacity.

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I’m going to modify a prior reply on this topic:

On comparing Vermintide 2 launch to Darktide launch, there are some importance differences to be aware of:

VT2 had some straight up broken stuff, server disconnect issues and things like that. They were pretty major problems.

VT2 had other “janky and glitchy” behavior with the combat mechanics, AI director, etc. that were also issues, balance stuff, and some broken talents (feats). I’d broadly lump all of that into the “concerning but correctable” category. You could still enjoy the core gameplay and progression. This is the same lack of polish most games have on launch.

HOWEVER, the above issues were mostly obvious technical problems and so everyone was quite a bit more understanding (though still frustrated) about it. Moreover, Fatshark was communicative about their effort to get it all fixed.

What VT2 didn’t have - and that Darktide does - are major “design” catastrophes that affect the core gameplay loop and sense of progression and reward.

In VT2, the crafting system was fully implemented (if missing some QoL niceties, but at least all the functions were there!), you could pick any mission at any difficulty, there were private lobbies and the bots used your off-characters gear/level. You got a chest of rewards at the end of each mission that scaled up with difficulty and in-mission performance, etc.

In short, the “systems” in VT2 were designed and mostly implemented well, and they got even better over time. In DT, all of these systems are either poorly designed (mission terminal, times RNG shop rotation) or just entirely absent right now (solo mode, configurable bots, full set of crafting items, decent rewards from missions, etc).

People point to VT2 as “the same problem”. Yes, VT2 had issues on launch. Yes, DT has technical and balance and quality of life issues too. However, DT’s issues are ALSO far more fundamental to the way they’ve designed the game. Moreover, how much of DT’s frustrating design choices are “working as intended” and in line with their design intent? This is the part that worries me.

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Vermintide 2 also didn’t launch with a day one cash shop with obfuscated content gated behind it.

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That is exactly it, people who did not play VT and VT2 don’t know and don’t care about what the company has done before. All they see is an incomplete game with a mess of time wasting RNG mechanics.

They come and then leave with a negative review.

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Yeah, that goes without saying.

I think Fatshark’s vague references to “design intent” are vague because they don’t want to own up to the fact that the rationale behind many of these systems are to maximize the amount of time spent running around the hub, and specifically past the MTX shop, as a way to extract more money out of players.

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After the recent controversy that happened yesterday which I won’t elaborate on, but you can see the thread here since it hasn’t been deleted but is only locked thus you can still read it: Leaked cosmetics proving yet again, that there's alwasy content ready for the Cash shop - #27 by nemy123

I am very cautious with this developer now. Not enough to boycott them or anything though.

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I loved VT1 and bought all the DLC.

I loved VT2 and bought all the non-cosmetic DLC and even a fair chunk of cosmetic ones too.

I do enjoy DARKTIDE combat gameplay during missions. EVERYTHING else about Darktide is horrendous in my opinion, and many steps backwards from VT2 (which itself wasn’t very good in the scheme of things).

Darktide’s systems are designed as if it was a free to play mobile game striving to get you to spend money on MTXs. It’s amazing in a way that core gameplay is a good as it is, considering the state of everything else.

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So this going to be a bit harsh, but it’s something I’ve been mulling over:

That Fatshark’s communications haven’t owned up to or acknowledged the many design and gameplay issues the community is super frustrating by can’t be a coincidence.

Reading across everything from pre-launch PR messages to more recent community updates, there is clearly a motive to not speak to, let alone acknowledge, these issues and change in design diection. In many cases the community/fans/prospective buyers were told one thing and given another.

In short, the community is being gaslighted and it’s pretty obvious, and clearly intentional at this point.

Here’s my contention: The kind of behavior on display - lies, gaslighting, avoidance of issues, false claims, retconning their own statements, etc. - to me feels cut from the same cloth that authoritarian regimes use to bully and deceive their own populations. Authoritarian regimes never admit fault, show weakness, own up to mistakes, etc. It’s all part of the plan they say (look at any number of active worldwide examples of this on display).

I am NOT intending to say that the developers or even the management at Fatshark are authoritarians (please don’t take this this way!) - but it does make me wonder about how much influence and weight Tencent has over what Fatshark does and says. Tencent is of course deeply imbedded in a particular authoritarian regime, and these patterns of behavior are not unexpected for actors operating in that type of political environment.

Ultimately, I do feel badly for Fatshark as a development studio. We’re likely to never know what actually happened behind closed doors - why a touted weapon mod system or unique character customization/class system was scrapped for the bare-bones systems we have today. Why we have a MTX shop but crafting and core progression systems were missing on launch.

Fatshark claims to have had autonomy in design decisions. Fair enough. But they may very well have been forced into a corner in order to meet certain financial obligations of their investors (aka Tencent). Money isn’t given out for free, and the bill always comes due.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter whether Fatshark had design autonomy or not, they were forced to play the hand that was dealt to them. It pretty much sucks for everyone - developers, players, and community alike - that we’re in this situation.

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Careful. You’re treading a thin line. We might risk censorship.

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They’ve made some design mistakes, some of them very frustrating, but admitting fault won’t help which is pretty standard across all businesses. At best, it validates consumers outrage without actually solving the problem. Even if a customer is mad that you gave them Thing A instead of Thing B and you go ahead and say “Our bad, here’s Thing B instead!” the general response is “Well I should have gotten Thing B to begin with, what is the matter with you.”

Add to that that this is both the internet AND the Tide community is already volatile and I have to think, why the hell would they want to keep regular communications open. The game is a mess and the situation is still fluid. Some of the main systems aren’t even fully implemented yet. When they squash one major bug another major bug usually takes its place. DT has a lot of basic systems that need fixing before it can move on to QoL.

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Everyone is talking about all the things that are broken and how that’s really bad that they put it out in that state… and ive crashed as much as the rest of you guys. But ive still played a ton of hours and had a great time. I’ve been thinking about why they put it out before it was ready.

At first I thought they had money troubles and need to get the cash shop going to continue dev work. But it could just as easily be they wanted to give us something to play while we are all off work or school or whatever.

Who knows.

I’ve stopped crashing now (almost) the hotfixes stopped that and while there is still a whole pile of stuff that need fixing or changing I’m still having fun playing the game so I think I will wait and see. When I get bored ill move on to another game :person_shrugging:

I don’t normally play fps games and ive never brought a game made by Fatshark before and I did buy it because I’m a 40k fan.

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One of my working theories is that the game suffered through some serious development troubles. Then had a production nightmare as producers were working with the mess the game is at, trying to figure out how to sell the damn thing. So they concoct the best trailers, marketing, advertising blurbs they can muster to make the game look better than it actually is. They probably had to work real hard to sell this thing to Vermintide fans. It must have been a very hard sell to work with indeed. So they obfuscated it through various means. For example, misleading us about careers and the customization as well as the crafting. Meanwhile, the developers are strapped for time and the CEO needs this to release on Christmas to make up for the resources spent and for those quarterly financial reports. So with Tencent being their parent company. They request for help.

Tencent sends them a board of advisors who specialize in live service models. They give suggestions, advice, and general feedback. Not even understanding what kind of game 'tide is or if it’s a mobile game. Only that Fatshark has a live service model. Fatshark takes it to heart not questioning anything even though they know full well their Vermintide community won’t like these systems, but since these guys are experienced industry veterans, they trust their advice more. Fatshark then implements said suggestions. Thus we’re in this hot mess.

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I have a feeling that Darktide’s development goes back further than we think - like maybe the code was forked out of the original Vermintide 1 code base (or early VT2 code), which might explain why random bugs and glitchy stuff that was eventually fixed in VT2 had a resurgence in Darktide.

I think Fatshark also has bad version/code management methods. Many times even during VT2 development bugs would come back after being solved in an earlier update.

I also suspect the switch to dedicated server model, using an older self-made game engine that was originally designed with a peer-to-peer networking system ended up taking way more time than anticipated to get working - which would also explain why dedicated servers never showed up for VT2.

Another theory I have is that when the game was first envisioned, I think it was meant to have more story and fixed characters, ala VT2. The first actual gameplay trailers that showed off combat with the “box cover” characters we see drove people CRAZY. At the time, there was no discussion about customizable characters. I think the whole reject/customizable character thing was actually added later on because people were so negative about the characters shown in the early preview. I think Fatshark did the calculus and realized that most people didn’t like how these fixed characters were showing and decided to take a totally different course of action. Hence the “customizable” characters with the irrelevant backstory choices and “ugly” face/hair combinations. Silver lining for Fatshark being they can sell more faces/hairstyles/colors down the road as MTXs.

I don’t know, but I’d like to believe, that somewhere along the way there was a better designed vision for what this game was supposed be that got totally derailed by a combination of bad code management, big and late-stage changes in design direction, pressure to release after 3 delays, financial pressure from Tencent, and ultimately a re-focus on MTXs as a revenue source to at least have some financial success despite working on a sinking ship.

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I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but that first trailer of Imperial Guard was very cool to watch.

I was hoping the game was going to focus on a preset group of Imperial Guards - like Ubersreik - until they showed that second trailer. Which didn’t have the same tone as the first and was, quite frankly, weird:

^it’s like a whole different game. First one was grim and interesting. Second one is strange.

It’s plausible. The other alternative is that this developer is so incompetent that they wasted all those years being unproductive. Which, all things considered, I sincerely hope this isn’t the case.

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I’ll never buy a launch title from this studio again. Leaving behind the lies and the fact the game isn’t finished and barely playable for me since last patch causes me to crash regularly. The utter failure of messaging from this studio has just been pathetic.

The CMs barely interact anymore let alone actually address the rampant complaints of the fanbase, to which most are valid and a minority are baying for blood. The leaks don’t really help change my opinion that Fatshark saw the 40K brand as a money grab and wanted as much as they could get before it blows up in their faces.

All in all, My most anticipated game of the year is a shell of what was promised, barely lets me play, and is apparently run by people that don’t even care.

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