Thats due to humans being the most relatable and therefore highest likelihood for players to resonate with. Chaos is the 2nd most represented faction beyond Imperium. As such it has a high chance to resonate with players as a enemy option. The problem comes into the subfactions. Nurgle fits what every co-op L4D clone or hack n slash has done before.
Adding multiple subfactions rather than always just Nurgle would add more replayability and far more broad spectrum satisfaction. Khorne and Nurgle are by far the most popular chaos gods. But just keeping to 1 gods followers for a game feels lazy, and as a point re xenos, provides much less storytelling problems compared to xenos.
Xenos races tend to be superior to standard humans, Chaosā¦well chaos are human too. Therefore from a storytelling perspective less ass pulls are needed and more human stories can be told, which as can be seen from Black Libraries catalogueā¦ yeah human sells. Xenos doesnt.
Theres no irony, its just playing the numbers game of pander to the largest audience for maximum positive resonance and feedback. Zombies are an easy out as it is what is expected and more importantly easy to animate. Which means higher chance of GW signing off on it and lower production costs.
what are you talking about, Darktide is a product made by fatshark with a license of 40k interlectual property, not a GW funded outsource project, all decisions mades regarding production cost are done by, and paid by Fatshark. GWās only concern is how true the product is to the scource material, how much leway they are willing to give Fatshark. and get paid either a cut of the profits of the product or a upfront payment for the rights.
and "āzombiesā are the easiest to sell OUTSIDE of the core fanbase. sure u might dont like it but its the econimicly best choice, considering the upsurge in 40k interest via the youtube animation channels (RIP).
most 40k fans with gaming intrest will buy darktide anyway regardless of what enemys they chose, (just like you probably). but think about how many people outside of the fanbase would buy a coop shooter were you fight eldrich enemys you never heard of or xenox who run around in mecha gundam suits.
You clearly have never watched any streams from any game dev working with GW. For many many aspects of game development when implementing things they have to get permission from GW on what can be written or used as material in the game. Fatshark get to choose costs and what style of production obviously, but exactly what they produce is something they need permission to use.
Eternal Crusade developers were very open about this particular facet of working with GW in that each relic item or represented unit in game had to directly receive permissions from GW before hand. Relic said the same regarding Dawn of War games.
Also look at the success of action RPGās like Path of Exile o look at success of shooters with more varied enemy types like destiny, which is just a horde shooter with some bullet sponge enemies here and there.
Enemy variety is a huge boon for a game however look at the failure that is Back4Blood, pure zombie game trying to clone l4d and its widely agreed to be a boring zombie shooter.
Space Marine was a famously successful and well liked 40k game and it had you fighting Chaos in the later 1/3rd of the game and it was a fresh experience compared to the boring ork hordes which may as well have been zombies due to the AI just meandering towards you all the time.
I know many who are looking for fun shooters where it isnāt just fighting zombies, because that market is already saturated. Games need to have a niche and a 40k skin on a zombie shooter is a pretty bad niche. It will sell well, but longevity will be questionable at best. Vermintide used skaven and was widely praised for variance. VT2 added chaos as a nice mashup but many agreed they were very zombie-ish. Beastmen arrived, were implemented poorly but at least added another variable which was not akin to that of zombie like enemies.
Enemy variety is a huge boon for a game however look at, in my opinion, the failure that is Back4Blood, pure zombie game trying to clone l4d and I think itās a boring zombie shooter.
who run around in mecha gundam suits.