Well I think I’ve worked out what fatshark are trying to do and finally race towards
Finish their originally planned vision of darktide
As said we all know darktide was delayed multiple times and pushed out the door well before it was ready
Because of this many systems in darktide are placeholder
Skills system, placeholder starting out as the exact same system as v2’s eventually overhauled into a full skill tree system this is something they brought up in the first pc gamer magazine about the game and was said they were working on skill trees before launch when they announced the update.
Penances well this system is still currently pretty basic and barebones and has a few things that show it wasn’t what they originally intended to to be
First is penances having points related to them which were utterly worthless didn’t do anything and couldn’t be seen by other players.
Secondly cover art cosmetics these have been in the game since launch and have been unavailable all this time
The upcoming update is addressing both of these with points being able to be spent on cosmetic rewards and the cover art cosmetics being made able to be obtained apart of these rewards.
Finally crafting and itemisation the third and what I think final meta system overhaul to be coming to darktide.
Now we know they are working on an overhaul for it but what that entails we don’t know yet
What leads me to believe the current system is a place holder is
It launched with coming soon stickers on it for about a month as if it was something they cobbled together last minute when they were made to wrap it up
Secondly 80% max weapon values. If 80% is the max value the current max weapon stat a weapon can roll with that implies they was always something intended to go beyond that to 100%.
As said with vermintide 2 post launch support it never had any sort of major overhauls to its existing meta systems especially ones that were very obviously planned to be different from the beginning
With the next 2 major updates being these meta system overhauls we can hope that what ever team they have working on dt can focus their efforts after the game system are finally finished on actual new playable content more consistent and quickly composing of more maps, new weapons and hopefully eventually new subclasses. The first 2 being claimed to be coming sometime this year.
Honestly, I do genuinely hope this is the case, and in that regard I hope it shows the idiotic suits who make decisions that releasing too early is just terrible. I’m tired of paying to Beta Test a game that isn’t an indie early access title. Seriously it’s actually ridiculous. Maybe have a Playtest week to test things, work on issues for a few months, playtest again, work on more issues, release. What that crazy strategy does is it A) Let’s people test your game systems to see where they break. B) Let’s you market your game completely for free as people get to see it being played, then they can go test it themselves.
But no instead we get paid early access to see how unfinished a game is and then it launches in that unfinished state… YAY.
even if you’re right, you’re leaving out a fairly large detail. they originally had planned to have maps be generated per-mission out of map “blocks” instead of the set maps we have now. if their plan is to finish what they started, that’s likely taking a large portion of the team’s efforts.
I get running out of budget and salaries and such for developers and stake holders… But the big issue is releasing with issues, getting reviewed bombed, and then not nearly selling as well as you could have.
Helldivers 2 has definitely proven that live service is fine
That it’s more than possible to provide an actual consistent life service from the get go.
It’s just that most publishers push their live service games out before they’re ready for launch let alone provide a live service in that the base game isn’t even finished let alone any post launch content in actual being in development or even ready. so the first year to year in a half is spent playing recovery and finishing the game and by the time the game is ready for live service it’s too late and the players are gone.
So another potential year wait before we get to actually gaining proper content so the team can finish what was actually supposed to be in the game. Fantastic, thanks suits.
I would mostly agree… except for the ‘crafting’ system. Their ability to give the bare minimum of ground and pretend they changed stuff points to a lot of that mess being something they fully intended to keep around.
Other things weren’t even spoken of until they were ready to drop - like penances and the class overhaul. Crafting has gotten ‘adjusted’ like three times now with this apparent upcoming update (and the changes there I am deeply skeptical on), and very much feels like it was outright intended to be the way it was at launch as a horrid slot machine, and only changed due to the players just refusing to accept it.
Regardless, theory crafting elaborate reasons for Fatshark to have failed as hard as they have with Darktide strikes me as… largely irrelevant? It’s not like they’re going to admit anything even if it is true. The most we can accurately say is that development is either in skeleton crew mode or utterly dysfunctional due to how little gets produced, the reasons for that don’t matter unless the CEO climbs off his money pile and cops to it.
Definitely hopeful! I really love this game. It’s easily the best 40k universe game imo and oodles of fun.
I think the fact that the mourning star has loads of empty “stalls” is telling enough that the game isn’t where the full and final intended product is in current state. They obviously have left lots of room to expand and add.
A few more distinctive maps is what I crave the most but very happy to see how the new tox bomber changes play until then
