Who am I kidding, nothing will change, this company will go under in few years. Maybe it already did, and what are we seeing is waking corpse.
How could you waste so much potential? It’s mindboglling. Shame.
I should start by saying that i don’t know anything about it but these are my thoughts.
They have talent for sure and i think they can make this game better but i don’t know how much they are allowed to work on it considering stocks and Tencent etc.
VT2 was a really hot mess the first year aswell and whilst i agree it sucks that they have go and do many of the same mistakes again there is nothing we can do. Sometimes i wonder if they even read this stuff.
The main issue i have is their silence but i can understand their decision to be silent considering the attacks they got in the beginning.
I do not think it’s the right decision but i can understand it.
I don’t recall VT2 ever having so many technical issues, and I played it since day 1. And with every “patch” it gets bad again. Don’t they test stuff before they release?
I don’t mind the silence to be honest, I learned to judge people/companies by their deeds, not their words. Them sugarcoating would have made things even worse.
It is sad to see this game in a downward spiral, but Fatshark has shown time and again it does not want to cooperate with their players. They decided to do their own thing no matter what and this is the result. I don’t think there is anything we can do about that.
Vermintide had some poor performance and bad networking issues, with frequent dsync’s that would drop players. It got sorted out and improved reasonably quickly.
People often point to VT2 as having a similarly bad launch as Darktide. Darktide was (and still is) immeasurably worse. VT2 had far more content on launch for one. And while the core progression systems (i.e. crafting) in VT2 weren’t anything amazing, they also weren’t actively undermining people’s enjoyment of the game to the extent that it is with Darktide. You could pick whatever mission + difficulty you wanted, resources were shared between characters, there was solo and private play, groups stayed together after a mission, etc. It was just a much better designed game.
Even if Darktide sorts out all it’s technical issues (and it does seem better for most people overall), there are some fundamental design issues that unless Fatshark is willing to walk back are going to be an albatross around the game’s neck until someone decides to just pull the plug.
LFD2 is ancient by gaming standards. People still play the crap out of it.
DRG is the poster child (IMHO) for doing a “live service” game right. Except they didn’t even bother to pitch it as a live service game. The trend line continues to creep upwards on this game.
Payday 2 was ostensibly dead years ago when the developers chose to stop working on it to pursue other projects. Then they decided to go back to PD2 and it’s still going strong.
EDIT: I know Dying Light is a little bit of a different gene, as a sort of open world horde shooter (but it does have co-op play). I think it’s interesting that DL’s peak player counts are less than half of the Vermintide series and yet still has more than double the number of people playing it.
Someone should do a case study on how to alienate an entire player base!
Yea all these charts showing the success of these games still to today. Deep rock is literally the model that all of these newer live service titles should follow. I hope darktide gets to deep rocks level one day. I feel like 40k shooter’s are cursed at this point.
I remember making a similar post comparing DT’s charts to other games in the genre in the first couple weeks after release and it’s literally only gotten worse for DT since then lmao
It’s so disappointing, FS was sitting on a goldmine and I don’t think I’ve seen anybody blow it quite this hard.
I dunno, Redfall looks like it really wants a run at the title for blowing it
I had no expectations for Redfall so it hits different.
I looooved their previous IPs so I sadly had high hopes
Dishonored was great but after Deathloop it seemed like Arkane started losing whatever let them make those older games so good. Redfall just kind of confirmed my suspicions that they were going downhill.
One thing Fatshark did, which was really sneaky and I remember wondering if this was their plan all along, was how they handled the beta’s leading up to the launch.
They allowed Steam reviews/ratings during the pre-release beta, and they were communicating and updating the game quite heavily pre-release. They also made a lot of very carefully worded promises ("we’ll have the crafting system implemented over the next few weeks, etc.).
A lot of people assumed that the actual release would have a few more surprises and additional content. Or if nothing else that more content and updates would be coming swiftly thereafter. People gave Fatshark the benefit of the doubt and reviews before launch were, I think, like over 80% positive right at launch. So of course people saw that as a positive sign and bought the came. 3-4 weeks later the ratings absolutely tanked along with the player base.
Anyway, I have no doubt that it was all carefully engineered to drive initial sales of a game that Fatshark knew was short on content and lacked polish.
At least with Redfall it looks like the reviews are tanking almost instantly 
there is no arkane studios anymore, its bugteshda.
prey 2017 that was developed when arkane was independed was on good engine, you could move all objects around, had great perf an pretty much none bugs
deathloop on the other hand, once bugtrshda acquired them, the game maps and story were still ok (i presume coz they were designed before acquisition could be fully materialized) but engine was shifted forward their id tech 6 modified engine which does not cope well with large open worlds, nor with custom object physics, so movable objects were no more. for person loving world simulation it was horribly pajnfull to get used to.
i love deathloop but it was regression from perspective of what you could do in game compared to prey
now redfall videos look like some candy crush game with gun having similar physics to old machingens mechanis from quake… and fpv enemy kill animations from doom 2016, despite running on unreal engjne… looks like some cheap glue code made to milk us
Ah yeah, I totally forgot about Prey. Couldn’t really get into that one personally but I could definitely see that it was a stronger game than Deathloop.
I’m not super up on game industry lore but wasn’t Bethesda also the publisher on Dishonored?
you are right with the acquisition, since 2010ish all companies were under parent company of zenimax, but then in 2017, after prey was released arkane ceo resigned and since then it was downhill ride
have you tried playing prey mooncrash? its a loop like in deathloop just with exception that:
all is based on one hub-spoke map with some ways of moving from spoke to spoke as well, randomly having areas and passages blocked due to pregenerated accidents or loop time based corruption, its pretty mindblowing what they did there being just a dlc
having all said that darktide map system could use something like this as well. maps are inside a cube so prey mooncrash map generator could be used to connect random sections and/or cause random accidents in areas forcing to use different passageways
Making their games in their main studio and not out of their Austin TX studio.
Honestly I think the forums and TALKING about the game have become more popular than the game itself. I am more invested in the “behind the scenes” action at fatshark than I am playing Darktide at this point.
Darktide Release Dumpsterfire has been my real hobby for 6 months. The upcoming May content patch is definitely going to be a big make or break moment IMO.
Not just the bugs that will obviously break a bunch of stuff, but the content. I look forward to s*tposting about it when it comes out.
