Games usually meant for this, yet these two words together also have innuendo lol
If anyone knows anything about bureaucracy and project management in a business office environment and collaboration of companies (i.e. licensor and developer), there is what is called “hard deadlines” and “soft deadlines”
“In project management, a “hard deadline” is a fixed date that must be met exactly, with no flexibility, while a “soft deadline” is a more flexible date that can be adjusted slightly if needed, allowing for some leeway in completion time; essentially, a hard deadline is absolute and needs to be adhered to strictly, whereas a soft deadline can be negotiated depending on the situation.”
Much of what I read from forum members is the expectation of a “hard deadline” when there are times we have to go with the “soft deadline” as there are sometimes those last minute fixes to the programming prior to release
Conglomeration also has much to do with things as bureaucracy, licensor-to-developer directives, and memo logistics. We don’t always know how much work the devs are actually doing, yet I can tell that its very busy with the Dev Team that work on upcoming, next, and further DLC Patch content – alongside the Maintenance Team
Then learn the concept of ‘hedging your bets’ and have the deadline you give people extended out well past the point where you should be finished. You’d think they’d learn that at some point.
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Haha
Fatshark, learn
Fatshark management is the embodiment of you can’t teach an old dog new tricks
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In Project Management it is called Buffer. Dependent on variables outside of control you add time and/or cost.
Personally I add 20% for IT projects. But if it ends up being less then I charge accordingly. If I go over, that’s my loss for not judging correctly and I lose money.
Hell sometimes I tell people double the time so when it is done sooner they seem more…happier.
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So, I work in a field with hard and soft deadlines. But the quote you are replying to has nothing to do with deadlines lol.
Fatshark is notorious for changing something for the worse (loot from VT2 to DT is a prime example), and when people complained about it. There was months of “nah, you guys just aren’t used to the new system!” gaslighting (if they responded at all). Then, when the outcry got loud enough and player numbers dwindled the response was “hey guys, look at this awesome loot rework that we’ve been working on for over a year!” or something along those lines. No acknowledgement of “hey, the players were right the new loot system was really bad and we decided to fix it without copying the system from VT2”.
Fatshark: “new subclass every quarter!”
Players: “these talents kind of suck, when’s the new subclasses?”
Fatshark: “don’t know where you heard subclasses, we said talent tree rework!”
Players: “but you said we’d get a new subclasses every quarter?”
Fatshark: “did we though?”
Edit: I could have done solo mode to stay in character, but honestly that fruit is too low hanging. We’re also 2 years in with 0 new playstyles after the skill tree rework
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“Archetypes and classes are totally different to characters and careers, totally” comes to mind. There’s something happening behind the scenes, whether structural or managerial, where what could have been an appreciated status update take on the tone of backpedaling, gaslighting or outright lies due to timing or omissions.
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This makes me think of an idea: if they were to allow us to have a in-game mechanic (code not person) created in the missions to commandeer or activate a turret, artillery, or fixed position (or immobilized) tank to fire at a horde.
Make it either where you control the movement and fire of the fixed position weapon, or make it where it activates and autonomously fires off
Ideally this would make some of those Demolisher Cannons on the Leman Russ Demolisher Tanks somewhat useful for at least one shot instead of just being a scenery props lol
The minigame of a tower or turret defense is a great idea
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Yeah I’d be less salty if it wasn’t outright lies so many times. Even Strawhat has been forced into that with the whole ‘good old plasma gun’ line that’s been memed on.
Rather than acknowledge whenever they’ve screwed up directly they’ve always tried to force terrible systems on us and lied about them, then pretended they never said those things.
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This. This is just insulting to us players.
What they did here came from pure desperation and in that desperation, they spread outright lies as if we, the players, were taken for literally being dumb, because we all see the truth so clearly and it would be better to as you say; just own your mistakes.
Horrible, I say!
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FS is slow and silent and has fumbled plenty of things, but I don’t believe either of these things ever happened. Further changes to the crafting system were said to be coming pretty much all through 2023 and 2024, up until U&L. And I don’t recall FS ever acknowledging the switch from quarterly classes to the talent rework, let alone pretending that was always the plan.
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You don’t remember those situations exactly as I wrote them because I was being hyperbolic. Fatshark never explicitly said “you guys just aren’t used to the new system.” but for over a year of people complaining about the Loot system and wondering why they changed it from a system everyone was happy with (remember, missions only had a small chance to even give you a single weapon when we would get a minimum of 3, possibly 6, in the same amount of time in VT2) it was radio silence. Crafting launched and people were like “finally” until the realization that the crafting system was an absolutely garbage RNG fest that no one was happy with. Radio silence for months while people complained, then we get “hey guys, we’ve been working on this update to the crafting system for a while!” instead of “hey guys, we hear you. We dropped the ball and we’re fixing it.” or something to acknowledge the systems the implemented were not good.
Same thing with the skill tree rework, they still haven’t acknowledged the “new subclass every quarter” claim considering we’ve had 8 or 9 “quarters” since launch and no new archetypes/subclasses. I was playing off the fact they reworked skill trees as their “we never said that.”
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It’s shocking that their upper management doesn’t realize they are burning out their most dedicated playerbase.
I don’t think they are only constricted by resources forcing to only focus on certain projects and ignoring their community’s concern. I have seen this issue with a lot of startups that pretend to know where they are going but lack of fundamental understanding of what their customers need, and want.
Any respectable GaaS trying to make money in the long run knows you must generate excitement and renew the passion through com. Here we have dull blog posts about mobs they created two years ago+, with no teaser, and in a way, no hope for what is coming next.
It is insane they didn’t learn from VT2 because they should have understood they will milk a core playerbase over years of activity, yet Darktide’s content is grim and we’re fed pointless events for currency we all have already, to use in maxed out weapons…
I hope Tencent finds better directors for FS, with a real view of what a game’s lifecycle should be from a customer’s standpoint.
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I think your post really highlights the issue with GaaS models. If it’s not a hit (Fortnite’s Battle Royale or PoE for example) then it’s going to flop. There’s no real in between. Darktide has been trying the GaaS model since release and it’s basically been on life support since release. Same thing happened to Last Epoch and Diablo 4 is only surviving because of Blizzard pumping infinite resources into it from its other IPs
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They acknowledged it sort of indisrectly in dev blogs where they talked about how they did it
There were early prototypes of a squad leader subclass based on the original release format lying around, so scavenging some abilities and the odd Krak grenade implementation was a solid start.
I think the word choice is interesting because to me it really does feel like they just scavenged the leftovers from 2 more planned classes that didn’t make the cut on release to make the tree, which in my view is what they did to cope with not having finished the other classes.
Talent trees sure added a bunch of content, but I can’t help but wonder what the game would’ve looked like if they were allowed to dev it for another year. Probably would’ve released with 12 careers and far better systems. What a shame
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any updates on this?
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Hey!
Yes, the Darktide 101 blog came out that day. Darktide 101: Enemy Character Art - Dev Blog
And the other dev blogs for this update are moving along well! More Next Week 
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Fun fact, you can shortcut ™ by pressing Alt+0153
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