As has been mentioned by CMs and obviously noted by everyone else, your Community Updates tend to be coordinated with news outlets. This is in part why they are often delayed. I would argue it is also why they are so tone deaf and dishonest about the actual pain points and grievances that your playerbase is experiencing.
The last thing this community needs right now is another PR puff piece that smooths over or barely hints at all the issues with the game. And there are many issues. Ranging from unfinished and completely missing features, to the crashing, to the siloing, the non-progression with the time-gated lottery shop, the RNG upon RNG, balance problems, talents and blessings not working or breaking other thingsā¦ The list goes on and on.
Iād argue that releasing a āCommunity Updateā that is meant for wider publication and thus filled with corpo PR speak in an attempt to create sales or further hype around the game would be one of the most damaging things FatShark can do at this moment. The customers that still care about the game, the ones that havenāt just left and written it off already, the ones on here, on reddit, on steam forums and on discord - the few customers you have left that still care about the game - we need something different.
We need an actual community update. Something meant for your customers. Not a PR puff piece. Something that talks about all the problems. The missing features. The RNG. The non-progression. About all the design intents of this game that are so actively bad and appears malicously designed. Something honest. Even if you havenāt chiseled out the solutions to all the problems, you need to at the very least admit that these problems exist. That the core design of everything that isnāt running a mission itself is deeply flawed.
Can you do that, please? Not just for us, but for yourselves. If the next Community Update, that people have been waiting on for probably a month when it actually arrives, is yet another tone-deaf PR puff piece, posted to news outlets at the same time as the forumsā¦
I donāt think youāre going to have anyone sticking around to see this one out.
Maybe I am aloneā¦ I donāt wait a community update cause, in my mind, thereās need none.
The game needs that they fix problems (crashes etc.) and add what they promised. WHEN, and I say WHEN it will be done, they will be able to start to think about the next steps for this game.
So I donāt wait a well written post that will try to explain me how this game will be wonderfullā¦ in the futureā¦ I want to know when they will give us what they promised (I think about crafting actually).
So what I wait is a firm date of when they release the patch that bring us crafting and fix technical problems encountered by people.
Yeah, obviously actually delivering missing content (like the crafting) is absolutely needed as well. A lot of people are desperate for any kind of meaningful communication, though. And letās not forget that the crafting, as planned, wouldnāt really help with the abysmal RNG. They need to rethink the crafting, which requires communication and feedback with us.
They filled the game with horrible, terrible ideas. The last thing I want is for them to lock themselves in their offices and work on fixes that are only based on their own ideasā¦
Actually it will. When I read the post made about crafting, I think that it is a way to create the weapon you want. In fact if you can collect blessing and make better and put them on the weapon you wantā¦ then you can have your dream weapon.
You just have to be patient, but thatās not different of any other similar game.
I donāt care of the RNG if I can create the weapon I want.
When Cyberpunk released everyone faced the harsh truth that it wasnāt ready. I started playing Cyber recently and itās working great now, knowing that most its issues are now solved. New players getting into Darktide not expecting the many bugs and problems with it now, are probably having a terrible first impression and donāt fully understand why. I quit Darktide since it has become unplayable for me recently. And went back to Verm 2 where iām seeing a lot of new players there. Anyways lack of honesty and transparency, Isnāt going to cover up anything to real players who discover the harsh reality the current state of the game is in. And itās going to give the game a worse rep among the actual users.
If you donāt care about the RNG, I would suspect you are in the minority. The crafting wonāt help you get a 370-80 version of the weapon you want, with the stats in the places you want. It wonāt help you find the blessings to move them to other versions of the weapon. Some blessings are so rare they are almost mythical. Finding 3 of each tier to combine and upgrade to T4 will take months if not years.
Actually what I want is a combat blade with shred +5% and mercy killer.
I have one blade I found that already has mercy killer +40%, is 364, has 74% finesse butā¦ executor as second perk.
I already have 2 weapons with shred 4%, 1 with shred 3% and 1 with shred 2%. So, yes I would have to wait a little, but it can be done.
Off course, if you search to get only the max and want only to get the best of the bestā¦ then you will wait a lot of time. But, if you can find what you want immediately, you would experiement all what the game can give you and quit just after.
Thereās a need of something you can dream of. Or, there is nothing to acquire, desire or try to get.
As a long time VT player Iām pretty concerned. All of the bug and stability problems and delays are par for the course with Fatshark. The ādesign intentā behind many of darktides atrocious systems, however, is an entirely new stumble of such magnitude that Iām not sure if it will ever be fully rectified.
There are so many layers of RNG baked into literally every system, Iām surprised weāre allowed to choose our operative. Coupled with systems that completely disrespect the players time (weeklies, progress siloing, shop reset, arbitrarily long boring gear grind) there would be a lot for Fatshark to have to admit dropping the ball with.
The other side of that coin is that making it so difficult to get the combinations of weapon and blessings you want, make it very difficult to try out different builds. If you have to sacrifice several weapons to take off and combine their blessings, lock down a property, and in general spend a long time gathering crafting materials and getting lucky in the storeā¦ What are the odds youāre going to try something new or different?
Itās also very different from how things were done in VT2, where trying out different builds was easy, and changing weapon properties was pretty easy. You could also always just completely craft which weapon you wanted.
Edit: Also, to give some perspective on RNGā¦ Iām glad youāve got a lot of the blessings you want. Others might not. RNG is RNG. I have seen Infernus exactly once in 250+ hours, for instance. I have never, ever seen an Evis with toughness on hit. Currently in the game, there is nothing I can do to get one. No amount of playing the game will bring me closer to what I want. The only thing I can do is check the RNG store. Thatās it.
I understand what you sayā¦ and I see where youāre coming from.
However, Darktide is not VT. It is not VT with new features. It is a different game.
I have, in my steam library, VT2. Guess whatā¦ I did not play it even 50 hours.
Darktide, I already played it more than 250 hours. Cause it is different, and frankly I prefer this game.
So, I think we should not compare.
The question is, does the crafting system described by FS can bring us enough customization and a system that permit us to really achieve something in this game ? I think soā¦
Except if they play it dumb and put restrictions that would make the system just be a disappointment (change for onl;y 1 blessing by example).
And thatās what made me upsetā¦ They yet need to talk about the problems ?
They saw them, and they have not found 5 minutes to speak about them since the launch of this game.
Reading these posts made me think they donāt know what they will do and have not, even, started to work on features likeā¦ crafting ?
They have lifted entire classes, weapons, weapon movesets and animations, talents, properties, enemy movement patterns, enemy animations and a lot more directly from VT2. shrug
Itās not a different game. Itās a game firmly in the 'Tide series.
Iām really looking forward to seeing their response to all this.
Iām reserving final judgement on the game as a whole until all the core systems are in place, but I will say that as things currently stand, with the game and information that we have our hands on right now, I am not feeling enthusiastic.
Back in the beta, I made a comment about how Iām concerned that the game wonāt be able to maintain a population in my region. So far my concerns have been justified. If there is one thing thatāll ensure I stop playing, itāll be that damnation continues to be a ghost town. Live service being what it is, that can be turned around with careful action from the developers, but that action is going to need to come sooner rather than later.
I donāt hate the concept, but I expect that itād be implemented in a very frustrating way here. I also suspect it wouldnāt fit the ādesign intentā.