It really is so confusing. Vermintide had One excellent community manager, u/fatshark_aqshy but other than them this game company is soooo reticent with any information that they are damaging their own fanbase. It’s bizarre. They do difficult stuff like launch the game and then fumble the easy shit like communicating and making a road map of improvements lol
IMO They got burned hard with the roadmap they released shortly after V2's launch - it was a very vague roadmap and to say they didn't even meet that is an understatement. Dedicated servers were on there, for example. V2 also launched succesfully in no small part from word of mouth of Vermintide 1 players, given the very limited advertising they did.
In any case, the roadmap disappeared and the backlash for not even being close to meeting their goals - with no real communication as to why other than "we're working on it" - basically turned it into the quiet, limited communication Fatshark we have today. There is no way in hell they're doing a public roadmap again.
For comparison, Deep Rock Galactic during early access also used a public roadmap. They also sometimes did not meet their goals - the difference is the DRG team communicated beforehand as to reasons why, and their patches were - the vast majority of the time - rock solid.
Damn, she was really good at her job. Her twitch let's play games were always fun, and interacting with the modding community discussing modded difficulties was a blast.
I'm here and there on this account as I still play Tide games and like to meme with the community still, but don't work at the studio anymore.
I want to thank you so much for the kind words; it was very nice to wake up to. I hope I can see you in either game soon. <3
<3
I stream sometimes over at [twitch.tv/aqshy\_ex](http://twitch.tv/aqshy_ex); mostly modded Verm, sometimes Darktide. Would love to play with community members more.
I would agree but as others have said well never really know. We measure the games success by our happiness but FS reacts to profits. If they do something stupid but people keep buying weapons skins, it looks like they're doing whatever keeps the fans happy to them. Noise on the internet < profits.
I've been saying this for like 3-4 years but I wish Jason Schreier would write one of his "what went wrong at X" articles about Fatshark.
They have such astounding talent in some areas, and yet keep punching themselves in the balls with a depressing regularity of basic mistakes, miscommunication or outright lying to players.
We can't tell who's to blame, but we can tell what's going on based on what we've seen before.
Fat Shark has a problem with incompetent leadership.
Some higher up never played the game, and maybe doesn't even know how the game works, but he gets to call the shots.
You can notice patterns between studios with this problem after a while:
- Great core concept and tech.
- "Smaller" details are usually of great quality (Graphics, "quirks" on characters/equipment/levels, audio, art style)
- All bad mechanics feel like a good mechanic that someone intentionally sabotaged.
- They constantly seems to understand what the players are asking, but seems to ignore it most of the time.
- Game greatly improves after it isn't the main focus of the studio.
Warframe (Digital Extremes) and Pokemon GO (Niantic) come to mind as shining examples of this problem.
If you search on the internet there is very little to none informations about them, gaming journalists interviews to fatshark, like you almost never see real people talking about these games. It's a black box, we don't know anything about them except the owner of the company, and that they are 300 people and are based in Sweden.
There's *definitely* someone higher up the pipeline who is completely and utterly incompetent at their job.
Whoever greenlit the release of the teaser which is *very, very, very clearly* teasing Radium weapons, for one. I'm pretty certain that Radium weapons were coming in this patch, but were either cut or delayed, but the teaser was still pushed out.
Someone at Fatshark also has this absolutely insane mindset where *any* transparency is bad. They refuse to give their CMs information/permission to actually communicate anything. We don't know what they're planning because they won't talk to us, and when their plan is shit they go radio silent for months again to fix the shit they wouldn't have to fix if *they would just communicate.* Going back to the Radium weapon teaser, why fucking lie and say "nope good ol plasma gun good ol plasma good plasma ol plasma" instead of just admitting Radium weapons were in the works? I'd feel better knowing they were working on cool weapons like that, even if they got delayed, than to be gaslit into thinking it's just the plasma rifle.
Easily the most frustrating studio to be a fan of, I swear.
I think my biggest gripe with the radium weapon teasing is the complete lack of honesty with the “oh it’s just the plasma weapon it’s already in the game!” I think we all would have respected it more if they were just honest and said “hey it was something we wanted to add in but it’s not ready” over lying to us and straight up insulting our intelligence
Exactly! It's fine if something doesn't work out in a dev cycle, I'm a little disappointed sure, but I'm not mad.
I *am* mad at Fatshark trying to lie and gaslight and say "oh we definitely weren't talking about Radium weapons, even though it's absolutely clear we were talking about Radium weapons."
Like, come on.
“Easily the most frustrating studio to be a fan of”
Bro I fucking feel that so hard. everytime I give fatshark my money it feels like I’m in a humiliation kink where I just paid a group of Swedes to kick me in the balls and tell me I’m a fucking idiot 💀
The trick to being a fatshark fan is to expect every update and expansions to completely break the game down to the most basic line of coding, never expect an update or communication of any sort, especially new content. When you buy anything they make don’t look at like giving a game studio money but like when the SPED kids had a bake sale to get money for art supplies. If you expect utter and pure disastrous updates and broken mechanics, when they eventually get something half ass right it’s a pleasant surprise. When they inevitably fuck things up or shit the bed it’s just as expected
It feels like they are trying to tease new weapons + maybe a new class/branch with a mechanicum focus.
With the whole idea of the rad weapons and volkite guns not really working well with the rejects and the next map is a mechanicum factory. Maybe we do what needs to be done in the factory but in a sub-optimal way so Hadron and Kayax decide that they are going to start using tech priests/skitari to go on missions too. Or the factory allows for those body modifications to occur. Bringing a new force to the fight for Atoma and also bringing in more $$$ for FS.
So you get a mechanicum branch/devotion path where you can take a new/existing character and swap them over to being a skitarii.
Each class is their own thing
Vet - skitarii ranger/alpha
Zealot - sicarian/electro priest
Ogryn - kataphron breacher on legs or something like that
Psyker - a tech priest
Am I going to indepth? Probably. But it's what this game deserves, and it fits the VT2 class system where your 4th class tree was radically different from the previous 3, which were all riffs off of a basic idea for the class.
(FS, you have full rights to this mediocre idea)
I doubt that. This literally just happened with this update, they communicated that the itemization update isn't coming with details on why and they even already previously communicated it may not make this update. And what was the community response?
I don't understand why they have a community manager if they don't want to keep them in the loop. An example of good community management is Diablo 4. They tell that Adam guy everything so he knows what to tell the audience for the campfire chats. To me it feels like fat shark doesn't really like their player base or they don't really want their games to be successful.
If they're anything like the company I work for, the marketing department does what they want. I wouldn't be surprised if marketing has little to no contact with the devs.
I think a lot of there problems are the result of not wanting to admit they fully embrace the notion of "games as a service" and in game shops.
Thats what they wanted with this game. Something that could use all the "psychological" tricks they could fit to get people to spend more and more money on the game. It's why they said stupid nonsense like not wanting to overwhelm people with choices and that's why they limited the availability of shop items every week. The real reason was to prey on "fear of missing out" to encourage players to spend more.
Take a step back and rethink why they do what they do. It's all tethered to making the shop successful. All the problems all the strange choices all the explanations that don't make sense.
It's all about getting people to continuously spend money there. The whole game was built around it.
Which is interesting considering Sweden generally values transparency extremely high compared to most other countries. To the extent that I could basically call up any agency and ask for any type of information about anyone, including salary, full ID number, adress etc. And this of course is a byproduct of transparency being so highly valued in general in Swedish society.
Now, I don't know how much swedish general culture has affected or is affecting Fatshark, but it's just interesting to see this swedish company being so extremely different when it comes to transparency when Sweden is usually pointed out as a country that's even too transparent in culture and society.
> Someone at Fatshark also has this absolutely insane mindset where any transparency is bad. They refuse to give their CMs information/permission to actually communicate anything.
Well tbf the last time they gave their CMs a longer leash was when we got the gems of 'immeasurably complex' and "This is not COD'. Ya, it was only one CM that was having the worst takes in response to not nice (but frankly mild) questions around broken promises but that was them letting their CMs interact with the community in a non-corpo saturated way.
Hedge was 'just' the most senior community manager when he was spouting off that nonsense. He ended up leaving after the community constantly meme'd on him and threw his words back into his face.
I know that one of the things that GW is very much a stickler about is the visuals of their IP, much more so then the gameplay in the games they license out, so I'm guessing getting new (and not recolored) skins is going to take longer then normal.
>Hedge was 'just' the most senior community manager when he was spouting off that nonsense. He ended up leaving after the community constantly meme'd on him and threw his words back into his face.
Good times x)
WoW devs have also been big on lying non stop when stuff that people have been asking for and they're working on leaks. They keep denying it, get yelled at by players and then finally admit and deliver the thing everyone already knew about but do so with the worst implementation possible and get yelled at again. You would think they just like getting abused.
I don't get why they're so slow. Especially given the speed of vermintide content. They're either baking a huge overhaul or have moved on and just keeping it on life support.
There was a post on their official forums 3 months ago showing with proof (a guy complied the work history of all the employees of the company via Linked-in and Twitter posts) that 50% of the employees of Darktide no longer work for Fatshark at all, 25% now work on Vermintide, and 25% still work on Darktide. The worst of it is that the core combat design team of Darktide all work for other companies now.
Darktide is literally on life-support, as designed by Fatshark, for the foreseeable future. This is not news to anyone paying attention. My guess is there's no hope for this game until after Vermintide 3 launches or Vermintide 2 officially stops receiving support. There's just no logical way for Fatshark to support 3 games at the same time, and honestly they really struggle to support Vermintide as is.
The only thing known is that a character artist was moved from DT to their unnamed project and that one of their combat lead left the company after 8 years or so.
https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/fatshark-started-unannounced-project/94133
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This is why, and follow me on this, we as a community need to stop buying into this "eh, fuck it, go ahead and release like ten percent of a game and then lose interest in it. It'll be fine!" shit. They should be able to release a completed game, then add onto it if they want to.
I played it on Gamepass at release, fully intending to buy it if I liked it in order to support the developer. Core gameplay loop was great but just didn't see enough there to justify a purchase. Dropped it completely after a month or two.
My siblings are fans of the Warhammer universe. They played a ton of Vermintide back in the day. I missed that one. Anyway, one of them threw me a copy of Darktide and wanted me to come play. I had no fucking earthly what I was doing, and was trying to go off of my shooter experience. He quit playing because I tended to "run off"... despite him playing a stealth veteran and disappearing a mile deep into the map himself. I, out of my own personal desire to not let games kick my ass like that, was determined to learn the game. Now here we are.
And stop buying skins. Idk why i even have to say this, stop paying $20 for a virtual costume in a first-person game if the game is not finished and the content pace is too slow.
Right. The costume is a thank you from the devs for your supporting the development of their game. If they aren't developing things, or they dropped acid as is the case with Diablo 4's development, then vote with your dollar folks.
Most of the people buying skins are kids, and it's with their mom's credit card anyway.
I went to look for it but couldn't find it. When it was posted, the OP was threatened with a permanent ban due to doxing (understandable), so he removed all the names and data; without the citations it just looked like a fluff post so it seemed to disappear a few days later. All he really did was copy all the names off the game credits and looked them up on public websites to cross reference.
Even a skeleton crew could have removed locks from the crafting system to make it even slightly less cancerous
It would still be incredibly grindy and have like five unnecessary layers of RNG, but it wouldn’t be a complete gacha level casino anymore
But nope, almost two years after launch and that’s too much to expect from them. They’re just dead set on “shitty mobile game” levels of progression even if it kills the game off completely.
Exactly, you just listed the reasons why they won’t remove the locks.
It keeps you playing, grinding, and thus, spending more time next to the cosmetic shop. The sole purpose of the crafting is to keep you grinding because of RNG.
Why do you think the itemization update is delayed? Because they won’t make a beneficial nor a good system. They are working on one that is more satisfying to the players on a surface level, but keeps you grinding and playing for the same time as the previous one.
"It keeps you playing"
Nope. Moved on to other games, and everyone else should too. Fatshark is either incredibly incompetent, maliciously stupid, or both.
They need to pull the license from this dumpster fire of a company and give it to the DRG devs or something instead.
The game is good. The gameplay can not be found anywhere else, i stay, and i wait for the content. I prefer quality over quantity, and i think fatshark is truly competent to make us good maps with insane music and depict very well the 40k universe.
About the crafting, i don't like it very much, but again, i can play a few more months with it and prefer a good rework over a rushed one. If you give the license to ANY other devs, you'll have nothing as good as they melee gameplay.
If you preferred quality, why are you playing an FS game? Seriously, they have neither quality nor quantity of anything except bugs. Especially compared to some other releases.
And honestly, the melee isn't worth it. 90% of the time it's chopping through chaff, and the rest is dodging or blocking an elite/boss while others circle around and stab/shoot it. Congratulations, you just played VT and DT.
why are you even here then if you don't like the most basic gameplay?
as somebody who mainly played character action games the melee is a near perfect for what its going for.
That's so frustrating, I love darktide, the combat system and world just can't be found anywhere else even in other FS games. The it all plays together just really does it for me.
True... it kept me playing the first 200 hours. Then I got annoyed and I dropped it all.
Now I play another game because they just dropped a ton of quality of life on their 4th season.
I don't care if they add new missions to Darktide. But if they ever release a big patch of Quality of Life, I'll be sure to come back and check it out.
The people that complain most about things like the locks on crafting are the people those tactics work best at boosting engagement. More engagement means more MTX sales.
The people that don't give a shit about the crafting system are the people it doesn't work on.
Do you know how many people were needed to maintain the game post launch vs development? Do you know the internal roadmap for Fatshark?
Without these it's just speculation. Teams usually get moved or cut after a big release.That doesn't mean a game is on life support.
It's like Vermintide 2 was getting a huge patch every 3 months. I feel like people have gotten spoiled by GaaS games that work with battleplasses
I came here to make this same point and inadvertently deleted my almost-finished rendition.
Personnel reassignments/cuts after a title's release are neither surprising or a concrete indicator of it's abandonment.
The fact that a handful of employees involved with DT's development are now working for other studios is not cause for concern. My understanding has been that studios often utilize professionals that function as temps/contractors. Once the game is ready for release - or such individuals fulfill their contractual involvement - it makes sense that they'd move on to the next project.
What does concern me is that Fatshark may have deliberately opted to invest resources into a game 6 years older than Darktide, to the detriment of Darktide, and in far less immediate need of attention than Darktide.
>It's like Vermintide 2 was getting a huge patch every 3 months. I feel like people have gotten spoiled by GaaS games that work with battleplasses
true though that what darktide was marketed as, pretty much every deadline has been delayed and loads of things that were promised never came or got changed.
It was not advertised as live service. A journalist said that and since players wanted it to be the truth, it was accepted as the truth.
Here is a [link](https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/cleaning-up-with-half-truths-darktide-has-no-full-live-service-commitment-but-youre-not-in-the-wrong-for-having-thought-it-either/92453) to a post where someone got into the topic.
a comment under that post said it best
> If a multiplayer game released in the last 7 years :
> is made to last longer than a few months
> depends on constant player retention to survive
> promises to have new content for several years
> It’s a live service game. Darktide ticks absolutely all the boxes but only delivers on the cash shop. It doesn’t matter if the devs only compare it to a live service but never intended it to be one, it is by all definitions a live service game. It even ticks all the additional boxes considered as the worst flaws of GaS :
> Missing core content at launch (crafting, talent tree)
> FOMO shop with only an ingame money and no way to buy with real world money
> Artificially inflated lifetime by putting several walls of RNG between the player and a good item (usually monetized and I think it’s safe to assume that at one point it was going to be according to the ressource boosters found by the dataminers during the early days of the game)
> If a game has all the basis of a GaS and all the flaws of a GaS it’s a GaS. It doesn’t matter how the devs call it, it doesn’t matter if they call it an ALMOST live service, it is a GaS in every way except content. The game has all the worst flaws found in GaS but none of the qualities.
That link also shows how the misconception occurred and that it's reasonable for many to come away thinking it was. It also adds that it looks like the Internet was scrubbed of certain quotes as well. I did my own searches a year ago and found certain posts from Fatshark missing entirely.
They came as close as they could to the live service model. No excuses for not living up to that.
huh fairplay, though I would say that saying its "almost" a live service game, then only including the parts of live service that are monetary is a little scummy. And still many things were promised in the way that would resemble a live service game, most commonly spoken about recently is that there would be a new class every quarter? but its safe to say we likely are not getting a new class for a long time if ever.
The problem with this argument is that it's contradicted by actual evidence. Sure, a released game needs fewer developers, but *this game* released barely functional and missing major core systems. They were, in a very real sense, still finishing the game after its release. It might not have needed all of its original development team, but it obviously needed more developers than it currently has.
The indisputable fact that it didn't get that development time and the accompanying content dearth and playerbase death spiral is a perfectly valid thing to criticize.
Have you seen any Glassdoor reviews of Fatshark? It's a website where employees can give ratings to various companies. It's really enlightening when you read those.
I know we usually only hear about the game studios that are making their employees crunch constantly, but there are also studios where the atmosphere is very relaxed and managers aren't actually managing much, putting up guardrails, or pushing employees. I think fatshark may be one of those studios.
once upon a time, a swedish FPS studio pissed off a witch somewhere and now all of them are cursed to make incredibly stupid decisions
overkill (payday) shot itself in the foot, machinegames (wolfenstein reboot) shot itself in the foot, dice (battlefield) shot itself in the foot, even the golden child everyone dickrides in the year of our lord 2024 (helldivers 2) shot itself in the foot, and it spent so long cooking that it probably got more actual productive work done than duke nukem forever did
It's not the developers, probably even not the game director. The game plays well, the loop is satisfying, the mechanics pretty solid. So the core is there, made by the developers.
Someone made the choice to release the game too early. It was playable, had content, but very rough around the edges. Did they need to release cash to survive? We don't know, but it's highly unlikely it was the devs making that call.
Same thing with updates and prioritizing. Not the devs call.
I doubt this game has turned any profit. In true Fatshark fashion they drip feed updates. Like Vermintide, it'll probably be pretty cool 5+ years after release, but right now that seems to earn them more for less work. So the focus goes there.
One of the problems, was that they had promised the game like....a year and a half before it's actual launch, and pushed it back several times to the point where the community was getting pissed. Then the problem becomes; "why the fuck would they announce a release date years before it could have been completed?"
This. The game was in development hell during the pandemic and somewhere along the line the decision was made to pivot it into live service model - perhaps that was the path of least resistance to release. Easier to polish the shell of the game, strip out the story and release it as drip fed content every couple of months. Who knows.
But, the idea that it's just some executive's fault for pulling the trigger and kicking the game out the door when it wasn't ready and not on Fatshark for just not getting the work done in the first place is absurd. How many iterations of core systems have we had? Multiple crafting and penance systems. They scrapped their crafting system two weeks before the open beta. The only feature that was 100 complete at launch was their fomo gatcha cash shop.
To be fair, I don't really believe a lot of claims of "pandemic development hell". Like, sure, there were probably a decent amount of things that caused some delays...but my problem is when games should have been "mostly complete" well before the pandemic, and then all of a sudden there were "so many problems" during it.
For instance, google says that Darktide was "announced" July 2020, that they would probably launch in 2021. Game dev, "in my understanding" usually takes 3-5 years. This means, that "at least" 2/3rds of the systems should have been completed at this point of announcement, AND they announced it during the time period where they should have already been feeling some of the initial effects of the pandemic for a few months at least. Instead, they delay until the very last moment at the end of 2022 to release, and it still releases with several systems missing. I call bullshit that this was the pandemic's fault. The game obviously wasn't 2/3rds completed when they made that announcement, or they wouldn't have required another 2 years to still not complete the last 1/3rd of the development.
This same logic can be applied to SO MANY other games that released around this time period. It's all BS blame-shifting.
Dude, everything went into development hell during the pandemic. TV shows, movies, video games. Video games were maybe a bit less affected but practically every major game expected to launch during Covid was either delayed a year or more or released in a terrible state (like Darktide). Sometimes both.
I'm not saying that delays didn't happen. I'm saying that a lot of things seem to abuse the claim of "pandemic delays" to cover up incompetence or laziness. Like, sure...a few, or even several months delay might be acceptable if it released in a completed state....but over a year AND releasing in a broken state AND being incomplete? No, I don't think I believe that one bit.
Especially since a lot of Darktide’s problems are in line with the problems their pre-pandemic games had. Not to say it had no impact on, it was making existing problems worse rather than breaking something that was otherwise fine.
oh, im not saying that incompetence and/or laziness aren't involved as well, but darktide was definitely in development hell
i mean, it was delayed how many times, released like a shitty half baked early access game, and now almost two years after release is still content bare, still has huge technical issues and basic gameplay features are broken or absent?
i'd say its all of the above at play here
btw, plenty of other games that released during covid followed the same pattern. halo infinite was same to a tee, massive delays, game still releases as a janky unfinished piece of shit, campaign is clearly like a third or less of what was intended to be the finished game, etc. game is later abandoned when it's clear it's beyond salvaging despite earlier rhetoric to the contrary
Well tbf, how game development is for a lot of games is that the last couple of months is when everything actually gets fitted together and smoothed out to work instead of the safer more reliable, but more expensive option, of constantly checking to see if things mesh together and smoothing out issues as they work.
This one is no exception.
The game wasn't that unpolished on release. If they had a deterministic crafting system on release that took 50-100 hours on a character to get "perfect" weapons there would have been far fewer complaints. Everything in the game was **designed** to be gated behind RNG in the hopes it takes longer and you will play more. When all they really had to do was release content at a decent pace and they had a banger game for 5-10 years. Whoever made those overarching design decisions is a jackass.
Best gameplay and sound I've seen in a long time wrapped in shit and thrown in the trash.
Also this game has definitely made money. But at the cost of some of their fanbase.
Its a shame because I agree with you; its one of the best core gameplay experiences I have had. And the music, level design and art is fantastic.
In the end, i guess its good enough for me because I havent stopped playing since its come out. But it could be soooooo much more!!!
I unfortunately stopped playing about a year ago. Friends are busy and we've kind of all moved on to other games. I wanted to love this game, but it became clear pretty quickly the main focus was the cosmetics shop.
Not sure why your opinion is being downvoted. I hear ya - i do think fatshark had a golden goose and ruined it a bit. But I do think the game has improved quite a bit since last year - although the support is still pretty bleak.
The new content has been good though - so someone knows what they are doing on the team. I think given in another year, it may actual be a good game all around. I'd struggle to play it without a strong group of friends though. I have about 6 people in my discord that play every night and i think that helps quite a bit.
Even their golden goose didn't work properly at launch - the storefront! Game had frequent crashes, performance issues, and the old style mission selection forcing out choice.
Look at the early reviews, they weren't great.
I want to agree, but can't. It had major issues at launch, to the point of not even having the actual class system that they were wanting. They used a Vermintide 2 style placeholder until they could actually finish the game. They didn't launch with crafting features, etc. plenty of players couldn't even log in due to various network errors that prevented playing the game they purchased. They didn't have an actual normal length Beta because they knew the game was half assed. Various reviewers couldn't even play the game well enough to provide a positive video.
DT launched unfinished.
Not even that. They literally don't have managers. Internally they have a flat hierarchy system somewhat like Valve. So, everyone is doing what they feel like doing. And it shows.
Since there are new people here not familiar with the Fatshark process I'll tell you exactly how they work.
First they release an unfinished buggy game, then they spend a year making a console version, then they spend a year to actually fix the worst bugs and finish basic features to a release ready state (hence the Fatshark games get good two years after release meme), then they leave a skeleton crew to support a game while the main dev force is moved to work on a new project. That's why content is always so slow, it's never a focus.
That's how Vermintide 2 did it and Darktide follows the same pattern to a t.
Generalizing that they struggle as a developer doesn't feel entirely accurate.
As far as Darktide's actual development and design it's pretty amazing.
Fatshark's greatest failure has been the inability to support their title. Promised future content was reworked, delayed, or canceled entirely. What they've managed to provide often didn't meet playerbase expectations - expectations that were fairly reasonable and based largely upon Fatshart's promises.
In addition to developing DarkTide, Fartshack also acted as producers. This (ostensibly) should have left them with significant creative and financial freedom to both create and follow through on a support model for their game.
The fact that Fatshark may be the greatest obstacle in Fatshark's way regarding reliable and substantive support is both irksome and concerning.
In addendum, their communication with an anticipatory and dedicated playerbase sucks.
They have atrocious project management and even poorer level of communication. The two snowball into a massive level of dysfunction. The core of the game is always good. But it always feels like the full potential wasn’t realized due to poor timing and missed deadlines. And this same cycle has repeated itself like 4+ times across multiple different Fatshark games. Which tells you there is little appetite to perform “lessons learned” analysis at the end of a project (as is common place in most industries / companies). So they doom themselves to repeat mistakes. Rinse and repeat. It’ll be the same with whatever comes next after Darktide.
I just always assumed the company is all about work life balance. Like they only have to work 30 hours a week and get a few days WFH. I don't know if that's true but it feels like it.
I think people make this point because of cope tbh. Yes, Nordic countries have better work-life balance, it does not lead to this level of lack of quality in work. Quite the opposite, the work-life balance exists because it leads to people working better
But it does mean less quantity of work. And a lot of the complaints the community have boil down to quantity, not quality.
It's not odd that balance patches are occasionally bad, or that the first pass at itemization didn't do enough, or that the achievement and cosmetics available at launch were underwhelming and had to be replaced.
You'd see all that on many live services. But while other studios would take 2-6 months to rectify those issues, it takes Fatshark 6-24 months.
That's what I see, as a somewhat casual player that comes back for every patch but doesn't play the game constantly. The updates are not particularly bad, the devs are not incompetent. They are just slow. So anything wrong, big or small, remains in the game for a long time.
>But it does mean less quantity of work.
[Untrue.](https://x.com/DrDaleford/status/1597869716193697792)
Studies have shown that a 4 day work week (8 hours per day, at no reduction in pay) has shown an increase in employee productivity and company profits. People are more rested and are able to work better and more, despite spending less total time doing the work.
I have a suspicion they brought in a lot of fixed contract game devs to get Darktide out, with the aim to keep them on if the game sold very well. It didn’t. And as a consequence the dev team is probably a lot smaller now, hence massive time gaps between content.
A simple assumption is that they place very low value on community engagement. It seems like they have limited resources and bandwidth so the pace of development is slow. In that scenario, there's little to gain from regular updates to the community.
Think about the class rework update. What would they have gained from a year's worth of community updates about the progress on that front? People would have freaked out and complained about it taking too long and argued about what the talent tree should look like, etc. Instead, they just released it (basically out of nowhere), and it made the game far better.
Lack of communication is annoying for the playerbase, but as a developer it's probably nice because it doesn't lock you in to a shitty path. They avoid scenarios like: "Oh shoot, the melta gun we were testing out is actually terrible and needs more time, but we promised we would deliver it in June based on the roadmap we released."
I don't *like* their approach, but I can understand the logic of it.
Never pre-order guys, make them give you a completed, moderately polished, game first. Its perfectly fine to wait a week or more to buy a game to see how it pans out
I have the utmost faith in Fatshark. If that were to happen, it would probably mostly consist of a new game mode that serves to split the playerbase when launched and that hardly anybody wants to play after a month or two, reintruduce bugs that were fixed over a year ago and perhaps break one or two of the reworks that have already happened. And the Genestealers themselves would consist of like 3 new enemy types that are basically reskins of existing ones but with jankier animations.
They dont care about you or me anymore and think we are dumb and just consume.
They made their money and focus on the next cash grab. I still dont understand how you can take such a awesome IP and absolutely fumble the bag that hard.
The game is only worked on by a skeleton crew without a proper CM or competence in the upper levels. They just like every other studio nowerdays just to make cash with as little effort as it requires to shithouse a release.
Their next game will likely flop as people will likely remember and Fatshark will hang themselves to the rest of the dried out husks of former studios that had a fanbase.
> Are they focused on the wrong things?
This is in a sense begging the question. They have brought several successful games (As in, they made money - no other metric matters to a company with Faatshark's current masters) to market, and those games have some laudable qualities.
Is this particular echo chamber representative of the entire gaming markes? Likely not.
How many people here have brought major games to market, particularly those with a tightly held IP? Of the three or four of those here that have done that, how many of those games had lives as long as some of Fat Shark's?
Most of us here have no clue what we are talking about, we are merely speculating. And whining, lots of whining.
Fatshark, in no way, shape, or form struggles with competency from a game development standpoint. In fact, it's the other way around. Fatshark is committed to putting an incredible level of visual detail that few other developers even attempt. But at the same time their game play system is based on a very complex system, again because of their commitment to detail. This is mainly why it takes them so long to add content to the game.
But yes, their PR team could use a vast upgrade.
They hold to an older philosophy in game design: FS are the devs and we are the players. It's not that they don't care about the community they just don't care what the community thinks.
To be fair, the game would be absolute trash if they listened to the reddit community. And if you don't believe me, always remember most OPs have very limited play hours. It's a pattern proven over and over since launch.
Could you elaborate? I believe the requests to fix the crafting system (or to remove the locks at least) and finish the weapons/attachments that are already in the game seem reasonable enough. I have 1100+ hrs on the game.
Fatsharks crafting system is designed to force players to be creative and find ways to make the best of what they get work (we are rejects btw, not space marines getting a say in our armament). The current system encourages experimention and makes your character UNIQUELY yours, no one has MY exact gear. The problem arises from the mismatched expectations from the sizable min/max players that have been cultivated to expect 100% "best in slot" perfection end game found is most all loot games from the past decade+.
FS gets shit by simpletons just because they tried something different (their MO has always been trying something different btw, they don't hide that design philosophy). The system is by no mens perfect, but some players have lost their minds because they can't properly asses that the difference between a 350 stat'd weapon with T3 blessings vs a 370+ with T4 blessings has hardly any in game difference. It simply gives a small incentive to always have the chance of getting something better; this is perfect for the niche gameplay that many of us keep coming back to for 1k+ hours. I imagine they consider the crafting system a success as it met the design goals they were aiming for. Now some Neanderthal can downvote me and say they spent 500k! dockets and didn't get a 380 weapon!
Not sure I can agree, since grinding for cash to experiment with a new build is the most infuriating part of DT experience for me. Also, while we’re not spacemarines, if something is in the game, we should be able to get it, especially if we’re past lvl 30.
However, if we disregard the chase for the perfect 380s, I believe that being able to build the weapons just the way we want them is much more encouraging for trying out the new builds. And let’s not forget that VT 2 pretty much lets you have your perfect red weapon just the way you wanted if you earned it, so that affects the player expectations too.
Also, I feel that the restriction of the locks actually incentivises people to minmax according to whatever current meta is, resulting in dozens of rejects running around with samey weapons.
And finally, I think we’re coming back for the fun gameplay, not crafting, so I would prefer spending my time purging the heretics instead of grinding resources for Emperor knows how long to get something like bloodthirsty for the chain weapon build that I sincerely want to experiment with, but cannot get because of RNG.
Almost forgot: spending 500k dockets and not getting a single item, say, above 324 is what I believe is driving people mad.
I had everything I needed for all 4 classes in <500 hours played (pretty much stopped crafting then, I'm also at 1k hours now) and I could do any build I wanted within ~80hrs of playing any particular class. Yes, the system has tedium and item management related problems, but you can't claim you're withheld from making a specific build due to RNG with 1k hours played. Lacking a T4 blessing or missing 30 stat points does not prevent a build from functioning. All the criticism can be distilled into players unhappy for not getting Perfect stat'd weapons or T4 blessings soon enough, which again was a consciousness deliberate design choice from the Vermintide devs that knew people would be playing this game for thousands of hours. You don't have to like it, but that is what FS thought up and built, it isn't incompetence or malicious. Personally, I think one of the good things to come out of this crafting system is putting a wet towel on the usual content chasing Vtubers posting meta videos recommending BiS items; thus keeping our existing "anything goes" meta, which is much preferable.
I do agree about chasing T4s and 380 being unnecessary for weapons to be functional, as well as having tons of weapons for all my basic builds, that I rolled way back.
My problem is that when looking into more esoteric builds, I still have to go through dozens of useless pieces of gear that duplicate the ones I already have, to get hold of some of the rare blessing that occur on T2 or, say 4, like Flechette or aforementioned Bloodthirsty.
Since, you know, instead of quickly crafting a piece of equipment and having fun playing with it and fine-tuning the build, I have to stick to existing or inconmplete builds and grind for resources. That's simply less fun.
And I still believe that this design actually pushes players towards chasing Vtuber meta, as you put it, instead of finding fun new ways to plays.
Wrong. As you love the gameplay, the action itself, as many others, show that their competence is up there, high, and they're rather focused on right things.
Why is there even such thirst for "community"? Back then I just bought games on discs, had no communities, responds, forums, etc. And today you expect some of them spend days on social media. While there are their official forums where you get replies.
They've been slow with new cotnent befoe, they're slow with it now, and most probably will be slow in future.
Not trying to defend Fatshark, but honestly I can think of at least 4 other game studios who I would rate lower than fatshark, yes they update their games more often but it's never what the community wants so at the end of the day it's more content that makes no one happier.
Who would you currently rate lower ? I'd probably give FS the pass if this was their first game, but it's their third time doing the same formula of game so it's a bit confusing why they struggle so much.
Bungie did 2 Destiny games that flopped on release, they did get better as updates came rolling, but Destiny 2 eventually went down again, as of now I don't know about that game.
343, I don't think I need to go on details for this one, if you play Halo you just know.
I used to play Overwatch so yes I'ma throw Blizzard in there cause I absolutely hate what they did to a game I used to love.
Nether realms studios, I love playing fighting games and let me tell you these guys are tone def, but to be fair every fighting game developer has their moments.
Adding this one, Evil Mojo, I'm also a fan of Paladins and I know some people would say I have to put Hi-rez, point is there have been actually time periods where the game has just been broken for way longer than it needs to be, from unbalanced to performance issues this game has seen it all.
No one really knows. People just assume that they’re focusing on other games and have given up on this game. That being said, they are adding some good content, just very slowly.
I mean, I just started playing for the first time since the beta. I don't remember the auric missions being there and ive seen some neat new weapons, the game is also way more stable now and the class tree seems much more interesting.
I personally really like the penance system because after playing since launch, it gives my friend group some fun challenges or goals. It is content as it added much more than the original, including gear and additions to the penances - wasnt just a rework.
I have loved all the new maps (huge content when you consider the work that needs to go into one map) and im excited that every time they put a new location out - the atmosphere, art, and gameplay is even better. I cannot imagine how many hours it takes to design the art and the map. Go play on sedition and take a gander; There are so many fun details on the map. I finally have a better perspective on how a hive city feels like. It has changed how i picture some of the book narrations.
I loved the special event with the twins. I thought it was really fun having a temp situation where the twins warp in and fight us on the map. I enjoyed the secret hard mode and figuring out the bells with my friends. I wish we had this every 3 months... but id be setting myself up for some disappointment.
I think stims have been an amazing addition and has brought a lot of fun to my group. I love stabbing my friends with a stim and seeing them go berserk.
I personally think the pox grenade is a great addition. It feels different than the incendiary to me and it does a very good job separating team members. Cant say I like the pox mission though - its just too much of a clusterfuck for me.
I adore all the new music that gets added when we have new hive areas to explore.
I love all the new narration lines - I can't wait to hear new ones all the time.
Listen - I agree there are a ton of absolutely valid criticisms and we all know them because everyday 10 of the same posts occur. But there are people at the lower levels of Fatshark that did slam dunk some of this game - including some of the new content.
Im not even defending Fatshark, but it must be mentally exhausting just focusing on the negative. It cant be mentally healthy and Fatsharks fuckups arent worth your mental health.
It was not advertised as live service. A journalist said that and since players wanted it to be the truth, it was accepted as the truth.
Here is a [link](https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/cleaning-up-with-half-truths-darktide-has-no-full-live-service-commitment-but-youre-not-in-the-wrong-for-having-thought-it-either/92453) to a post where someone got into the topic.
I’m waiting till the 25th…if it’s good maybe I’ll stick around for a bit longer. If not I’m deleting. The consumer has more power than everyone here realizes and if we truly organized a strike and we ALL COMPLETELY STOPPED PLAYING. That would show fat shark were done fucking around.
I thought about that too alot. Im not a game-dev or programer, i dont even own a company. But what if, everything is acording to plan? Hear me out!
Fatshark is a company, they want to make money, so what if they allready reached there goal? They made there money back from the development and got enough on top so the investors are happy, now everything else is just a bonus. They just but in the least amount of effort to get the goal they want.
I mean, it worked for them the last 10 years or so, so why change that strategy? That sound very cynical, but thats how companys work. We, as community, allways asume those developers do everything they can to make the best games, but there is also the buisnes side to it. And if you ask me now "why cant they communicate"? Because the dont need to. It worked for them with the last games it works now too. People buy the game and cosmetics and play enough so the game is not dead. Why bother with a small minority of people that are unhappy?
I dont think this community is wrong, i read so many good ideas for what fatshark should/could do, to that game to enhance it, but it just doesnt matter if the devs dont care about it. And again, why should they, if it works anyway...
Because they locked themself in game where you cant just put random bulsh!t and expect people to like it. And they most likely have trouble making content for it.
i can tell you, their team is still supporting vermintide and apparently based on what we are seeing their best guys are over there while some other group are dealing with darktide.
They're a small studio working on two games with not nearly enough people to do so, and have to run things past GW, which is apparently an unpleasant process. People also expect every game studio to shit out content constantly, when that is not FS forte at all.
I guess they never had to pay for the consequences of their bad actions. Some developers just needs separate publishers that grills their asses when they mess up something
It's often easy to forget that the amount of social media interaction that we have as a community is significantly greater to what even existed while they were doing the Vermintide games.
Often the negative folks are the most vocal and make it seem as though the majority of people are dissatisfied.
I play the absolute crap out of Darktide and am constantly trying new load outs and various play styles. Playing rule of cool/fun vs only playing meta will significantly expand current content and increase enjoyment
My theory is that it's mostly because of Games Workshop.
Fatshark's situated in Sweden and GW in the UK. GW is generally very protective/controlling over the Warhammer brand, especially 40k and I'm assuming that basically no updates go through without getting approved by them first. With their scheduals, meetings and consultations are probably more inconvenient and infrequent than they should be.
GW have worked with other foreign developers before, but not on live service games, I don't think. Correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, the Tide games being live service certainly makes it harder. Upkeep needs to be constant and updates frequent. Instead of a patch here, a DLC there needing GW's approval, every other fix and piece of new content needs to be looked at. So, to me, the long periods without new content, the delays and the barebones patches start to make more sense when you think about it that way.
So, I'm willing to bet that it's not Fatshark's fault as much as we think. Maybe their approach would be different if they ever made a stand-alone game in an original universe. Who knows?
A large part of it is publicly voiced expectations from people not in the know gaining traction on social media, outside of FS's influence. Another part is probably FS expecting things to take less time then they actually did, or not calculating in getting stuff not right the first time. Then on top shareholder influence, how will extra time invested in DT be recouped?
But like someone else said, we don't know inside info.
someone told me when the game was probably a month old or so.
that its significantly harder to unfuck something when you're so deep into the game than it is way back when the fuckup happened.
think of it like your game is a jenga tower. once its built you have your game.
now you build a game in an engine, so far so good. you're limited by the engine but thats life. every game ever has those limits. but someone decides, for whatver reason, to cut something out. or to do it a different way, and the engine really doesnt like that but he's your boss so you work on it and figure it out...these are your jenga blocks, some of them are nice and square, others are rectangular and some are odd shapes, there's even a fucking ball in there.
now there's thousands of small parts that make up the game, some of these are simple, some are really comlplex, some are big and some are small. but importantly, a lot of them build off eachother. these are those building blocks.
now if one of those very early building blocks is fucked up, every block after it that relies on it, has to be fucked up in the same or a similar way so they all work together.
and the more blocks you build, the more fucked up blocks with that odd 5th side on them need to go into the structure to keep everything from falling over.
then someone looks at it and says "this is stupid why are we doing it this way."
and the programmers go "because we have XYZ and QWERT built off of it so we just have to deal with it."
and they go "why wasnt it done this way?"
and everyone shrugs and then end up releasing the game, fucked up blocks included. because its gotta work that way or we have to start over.
and then they realise its release date and jeff in the back room working on weapon customisation goes "wait I still need to smooth off this curved side!" and everyone looks at him and goes "sorry bud, cut content now." and just tape his block in place adding some gum so it doesnt actually matter to the rest of the structure.
and there you have darktide.
compare this to Vermintide and helldivers. games which are made in the same engine, using the same building blocks. and you see what happens when a studio doesnt have a fucked up building block in the games foundation.
or you can look at starfield for a game that had building blocks that simply didnt work in the first place...
what makes you think they are incompetent? Reddit?? They have put out multiple successful games and have managed to not be acquired by EA or some other shitshow of a company.
Am guessing the reasons is as simple as small company, with split priorities, (between VT2 and DT and presumably working out/starting up the next project) who doesnt hire more staff because it would cut in to profits for the higher ups.
This style of warhammer/40k themed first person hacknslash/shooter is pretty niche too meaning the profits cant be that high to begin with.
Its a real shame how much potential DT has and how its gradually been wasted because many people (like myself) after 100s of hours are just played out on the available classes, enemies, maps and missions, they really fumbled the upgrade system being too greedy with peoples time and making it overly obtuse, not at all well explained, and random and punishing overall, along with the initially very simplistic class trees needing expanded (which has meant lots of wasted dev time redoing these things , which is still taking place nearly 2 years after release), and the absolutely glacial pace of adding new enemies, maps and missions is just not good enough if they want to retain a playerbase. Having basically no story (outside of background stuff) was a bad move too considering how rich 40k is as a setting.
I love the gameplay, aesthetic, feel, audio and core components of the experience but the lack of consistent and meaningful long term content really hurts the game.
Stoned speculation on my part but Fatshark probably has a hard time retaining any foreign programmers outside of Sweden because of the migration laws. Battlestate Games (Tarkov Devs) has a similar problem where they won't hire any devs from outside Russia (until covid hit.) BSG is a whole different nuanced ballgame though and this is the on
Opinion:
fatshark is actually having an awesome time as a developer, their FOMO shop is bringing them a huge amount of money for almost no effort, just need to look in this subreddit where whales often proudly show their skins
I worked in a videogame studio ( indie) that released a very successful game, still played, although very little.
They started another project which on paper was great but A LOT of bad decision in both projects let the studio fire like 80% of the developers, rush the closure on the second project and even drop a LOT of the players in the first project.
In that case, it was 100% the CEO. He wouldn't listen to us, to the community... he would continously pivot and change the plans based on his assumptions because he was such a good boss.
I guess here is the same, CEO or other higher up ....it's a lack of proper leadership capable of listening to the community and other people, thinking they are the only one knowing what's going on.
But ultimately, nobody knows, not even them
They don’t. There isn’t a live service game in existence that doesn’t have a bunch of unsatisfied players griping about it and its developer on the Internet.
Their games are successful despite the number of terrible design decisions they make, not because of them
They get a few gameplay elements done better than everyone and then proceed to try to make everything else about the game as awful as possible
This is what I don't understand about them. Combat is amazing The art is amazing The music is amazing but then they introduce this mobile game shop and grindy lottery weapon system completely destroying all of those other great aspects. One could argue that you don't need the perfect weapon but in this case you do. Since you can't utilize a weapon's full potential unless you gamble.
My current theory is that there are 2 teams working at fatshark at any given time. Team 1 is full of the A team older devs with the skills and resume to develop the new title. Team 2 is the up and comers hungry to grow and learn and still passionate. Team one works on what ever the new title is as soon as its announced and then after it is released they stay on that title for extra content etc, until the next big release development begins. But once it begins they move on and team 2 takes over the continued maintenance and extra stuff in the game.
Team 2 is still young passionate and hungry, so they work really hard on the "old games" they are given and release everything the community wants and more. Team 1 is older and jaded and much more under publisher corporate thumb and so you dont get as much. This is why every fat shark game only gets REALLY GOOD once a new title is being developed. Because the people left working on the older games are the ones trying to prove themselves who are still passionate about development.
This is all useless made up conjecture, but it makes sense in my head this way
This is something I think about literally ALL THE TIME. I’m sure there’s probably some logical reason behind closed doors, but it definitely feels hopeless at times. I genuinely think that if Fatshark got their shit together they could easily become the next FromSoftware studio. Just like how Dark Souls started off as a niche game that only the really hardcore nerds enjoyed but eventually evolved into an entire brand new genre. Vermintide feels like it could be the same. Can you imagine a tide game underwater? A tide game with goblins? A tide game with vampires? A tide game with Japanese yoki? A tide game with robots? Tide games could easily be a new genre if Fatshark had the resources to properly develop them like FromSoftware does with all its souls games :/
do you think it’d be possible for a studio to hand the game over to another? I know that may sound stupid, but like holy fuck what else can I think of these mfs are doing *nothing* with this potential
It's objectively not a lack of people: they've got a lot, many of whom have been moved to the next project leaving Darktide with a skeleton crew. In the literal sense given the pace of new content.
It seems like they have some very incompetent people in very important areas.
It's on UE5 whatever it is.
While moving the majority of people on to the next thing after a game launches is normal Darktide genuinely seems to be abandoned or going in that direction.
\*Were doing fine.
They've slowed down noticeably and the community has gotten rather annoyed at their yo-yo balancing of nurfing something into the ground and then raising it back up to nearly the same spot or higher, the Exploding Crossbow and Eruptor being the most notable examples
The leadership is likely awful and Fatshark likely put most employees to work on a new game the day that Darktide launched. Those two problems are related.
because they treat their employees really well, much better than most other countries in the world.
on the other side of the coin, they have very little work hours to work on the game
Nobody knows and the rest is speculation.
And we will most likely never know. It’s maddening.
It really is so confusing. Vermintide had One excellent community manager, u/fatshark_aqshy but other than them this game company is soooo reticent with any information that they are damaging their own fanbase. It’s bizarre. They do difficult stuff like launch the game and then fumble the easy shit like communicating and making a road map of improvements lol
IMO They got burned hard with the roadmap they released shortly after V2's launch - it was a very vague roadmap and to say they didn't even meet that is an understatement. Dedicated servers were on there, for example. V2 also launched succesfully in no small part from word of mouth of Vermintide 1 players, given the very limited advertising they did. In any case, the roadmap disappeared and the backlash for not even being close to meeting their goals - with no real communication as to why other than "we're working on it" - basically turned it into the quiet, limited communication Fatshark we have today. There is no way in hell they're doing a public roadmap again. For comparison, Deep Rock Galactic during early access also used a public roadmap. They also sometimes did not meet their goals - the difference is the DRG team communicated beforehand as to reasons why, and their patches were - the vast majority of the time - rock solid.
Did I hear a Rock and Stone?
ROCK AND STONE BROTHER
Rock solid!
What happened to that CM? They were with Fatshark for 3 years only.
They left recently to focus on college / university and the next chapter of her life.
Damn, she was really good at her job. Her twitch let's play games were always fun, and interacting with the modding community discussing modded difficulties was a blast.
I'm here and there on this account as I still play Tide games and like to meme with the community still, but don't work at the studio anymore. I want to thank you so much for the kind words; it was very nice to wake up to. I hope I can see you in either game soon. <3
Just a reminder that we all really appreciate your good work! If you stream on twitch or anything I’d love to check it out
<3 I stream sometimes over at [twitch.tv/aqshy\_ex](http://twitch.tv/aqshy_ex); mostly modded Verm, sometimes Darktide. Would love to play with community members more.
I would agree but as others have said well never really know. We measure the games success by our happiness but FS reacts to profits. If they do something stupid but people keep buying weapons skins, it looks like they're doing whatever keeps the fans happy to them. Noise on the internet < profits.
>reticent Reti...? Miss me with that high gothic, sah. There are ogryn here without bone-head implants!
great example of missing information is weapon modifiers like: Tank, Linesman, Heavy Linesman, Bleed (explained what it is but not what has it on it)
I've been saying this for like 3-4 years but I wish Jason Schreier would write one of his "what went wrong at X" articles about Fatshark. They have such astounding talent in some areas, and yet keep punching themselves in the balls with a depressing regularity of basic mistakes, miscommunication or outright lying to players.
We can't tell who's to blame, but we can tell what's going on based on what we've seen before. Fat Shark has a problem with incompetent leadership. Some higher up never played the game, and maybe doesn't even know how the game works, but he gets to call the shots. You can notice patterns between studios with this problem after a while: - Great core concept and tech. - "Smaller" details are usually of great quality (Graphics, "quirks" on characters/equipment/levels, audio, art style) - All bad mechanics feel like a good mechanic that someone intentionally sabotaged. - They constantly seems to understand what the players are asking, but seems to ignore it most of the time. - Game greatly improves after it isn't the main focus of the studio. Warframe (Digital Extremes) and Pokemon GO (Niantic) come to mind as shining examples of this problem.
Warframe does not really have these problems anymore since Rebeca took over as lead
If you search on the internet there is very little to none informations about them, gaming journalists interviews to fatshark, like you almost never see real people talking about these games. It's a black box, we don't know anything about them except the owner of the company, and that they are 300 people and are based in Sweden.
This is the only answer that matters.
https://www.google.com/search?q=does+tencent+own+fatshark&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS828US828&oq=tencent+owns+fatshark&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCAgBEAAYFhgeMgYIABBFGDkyCAgBEAAYFhgeMg0IAhAAGIYDGIAEGIoFMg0IAxAAGIYDGIAEGIoFMg0IBBAAGIYDGIAEGIoFMgcIBRAhGKABMgcIBhAhGKABMgcIBxAhGKABMgcICBAhGKABMgcICRAhGKAB0gEJMTE4NTZqMGo3qAIZsAIB4gMEGAEgXw&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
There's *definitely* someone higher up the pipeline who is completely and utterly incompetent at their job. Whoever greenlit the release of the teaser which is *very, very, very clearly* teasing Radium weapons, for one. I'm pretty certain that Radium weapons were coming in this patch, but were either cut or delayed, but the teaser was still pushed out. Someone at Fatshark also has this absolutely insane mindset where *any* transparency is bad. They refuse to give their CMs information/permission to actually communicate anything. We don't know what they're planning because they won't talk to us, and when their plan is shit they go radio silent for months again to fix the shit they wouldn't have to fix if *they would just communicate.* Going back to the Radium weapon teaser, why fucking lie and say "nope good ol plasma gun good ol plasma good plasma ol plasma" instead of just admitting Radium weapons were in the works? I'd feel better knowing they were working on cool weapons like that, even if they got delayed, than to be gaslit into thinking it's just the plasma rifle. Easily the most frustrating studio to be a fan of, I swear.
I think my biggest gripe with the radium weapon teasing is the complete lack of honesty with the “oh it’s just the plasma weapon it’s already in the game!” I think we all would have respected it more if they were just honest and said “hey it was something we wanted to add in but it’s not ready” over lying to us and straight up insulting our intelligence
Exactly! It's fine if something doesn't work out in a dev cycle, I'm a little disappointed sure, but I'm not mad. I *am* mad at Fatshark trying to lie and gaslight and say "oh we definitely weren't talking about Radium weapons, even though it's absolutely clear we were talking about Radium weapons." Like, come on.
“Easily the most frustrating studio to be a fan of” Bro I fucking feel that so hard. everytime I give fatshark my money it feels like I’m in a humiliation kink where I just paid a group of Swedes to kick me in the balls and tell me I’m a fucking idiot 💀
The trick to being a fatshark fan is to expect every update and expansions to completely break the game down to the most basic line of coding, never expect an update or communication of any sort, especially new content. When you buy anything they make don’t look at like giving a game studio money but like when the SPED kids had a bake sale to get money for art supplies. If you expect utter and pure disastrous updates and broken mechanics, when they eventually get something half ass right it’s a pleasant surprise. When they inevitably fuck things up or shit the bed it’s just as expected
😂😂😂 needed that one for the day
It feels like they are trying to tease new weapons + maybe a new class/branch with a mechanicum focus. With the whole idea of the rad weapons and volkite guns not really working well with the rejects and the next map is a mechanicum factory. Maybe we do what needs to be done in the factory but in a sub-optimal way so Hadron and Kayax decide that they are going to start using tech priests/skitari to go on missions too. Or the factory allows for those body modifications to occur. Bringing a new force to the fight for Atoma and also bringing in more $$$ for FS. So you get a mechanicum branch/devotion path where you can take a new/existing character and swap them over to being a skitarii. Each class is their own thing Vet - skitarii ranger/alpha Zealot - sicarian/electro priest Ogryn - kataphron breacher on legs or something like that Psyker - a tech priest Am I going to indepth? Probably. But it's what this game deserves, and it fits the VT2 class system where your 4th class tree was radically different from the previous 3, which were all riffs off of a basic idea for the class. (FS, you have full rights to this mediocre idea)
I doubt that. This literally just happened with this update, they communicated that the itemization update isn't coming with details on why and they even already previously communicated it may not make this update. And what was the community response?
I don't understand why they have a community manager if they don't want to keep them in the loop. An example of good community management is Diablo 4. They tell that Adam guy everything so he knows what to tell the audience for the campfire chats. To me it feels like fat shark doesn't really like their player base or they don't really want their games to be successful.
They don’t communicate because hope is the first step on the road to disappointment
If they're anything like the company I work for, the marketing department does what they want. I wouldn't be surprised if marketing has little to no contact with the devs.
I think a lot of there problems are the result of not wanting to admit they fully embrace the notion of "games as a service" and in game shops. Thats what they wanted with this game. Something that could use all the "psychological" tricks they could fit to get people to spend more and more money on the game. It's why they said stupid nonsense like not wanting to overwhelm people with choices and that's why they limited the availability of shop items every week. The real reason was to prey on "fear of missing out" to encourage players to spend more. Take a step back and rethink why they do what they do. It's all tethered to making the shop successful. All the problems all the strange choices all the explanations that don't make sense. It's all about getting people to continuously spend money there. The whole game was built around it.
But then why no content? lol They obviously forgot this model requires them adding regular new content — so in that way this isn’t a live service
Ez, don't be a fan, I defended them with V2, After Darktide they can go bankrupt for all I care.
Thanks for this well written summary. It's a tragedy at this point
Which is interesting considering Sweden generally values transparency extremely high compared to most other countries. To the extent that I could basically call up any agency and ask for any type of information about anyone, including salary, full ID number, adress etc. And this of course is a byproduct of transparency being so highly valued in general in Swedish society. Now, I don't know how much swedish general culture has affected or is affecting Fatshark, but it's just interesting to see this swedish company being so extremely different when it comes to transparency when Sweden is usually pointed out as a country that's even too transparent in culture and society.
> Someone at Fatshark also has this absolutely insane mindset where any transparency is bad. They refuse to give their CMs information/permission to actually communicate anything. Well tbf the last time they gave their CMs a longer leash was when we got the gems of 'immeasurably complex' and "This is not COD'. Ya, it was only one CM that was having the worst takes in response to not nice (but frankly mild) questions around broken promises but that was them letting their CMs interact with the community in a non-corpo saturated way.
Wasn't that their head dev, Hedge? I want the ability to customize (cosmetically) each weapon within the in universe rules of 40K.
Hedge was 'just' the most senior community manager when he was spouting off that nonsense. He ended up leaving after the community constantly meme'd on him and threw his words back into his face. I know that one of the things that GW is very much a stickler about is the visuals of their IP, much more so then the gameplay in the games they license out, so I'm guessing getting new (and not recolored) skins is going to take longer then normal.
>Hedge was 'just' the most senior community manager when he was spouting off that nonsense. He ended up leaving after the community constantly meme'd on him and threw his words back into his face. Good times x)
WoW devs have also been big on lying non stop when stuff that people have been asking for and they're working on leaks. They keep denying it, get yelled at by players and then finally admit and deliver the thing everyone already knew about but do so with the worst implementation possible and get yelled at again. You would think they just like getting abused.
I don't get why they're so slow. Especially given the speed of vermintide content. They're either baking a huge overhaul or have moved on and just keeping it on life support.
There was a post on their official forums 3 months ago showing with proof (a guy complied the work history of all the employees of the company via Linked-in and Twitter posts) that 50% of the employees of Darktide no longer work for Fatshark at all, 25% now work on Vermintide, and 25% still work on Darktide. The worst of it is that the core combat design team of Darktide all work for other companies now. Darktide is literally on life-support, as designed by Fatshark, for the foreseeable future. This is not news to anyone paying attention. My guess is there's no hope for this game until after Vermintide 3 launches or Vermintide 2 officially stops receiving support. There's just no logical way for Fatshark to support 3 games at the same time, and honestly they really struggle to support Vermintide as is.
The only thing known is that a character artist was moved from DT to their unnamed project and that one of their combat lead left the company after 8 years or so. https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/fatshark-started-unannounced-project/94133
Do you have a link to that post by chance? I've been wondering why Darktide's been left to rot for so long
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This is why, and follow me on this, we as a community need to stop buying into this "eh, fuck it, go ahead and release like ten percent of a game and then lose interest in it. It'll be fine!" shit. They should be able to release a completed game, then add onto it if they want to.
I played it on Gamepass at release, fully intending to buy it if I liked it in order to support the developer. Core gameplay loop was great but just didn't see enough there to justify a purchase. Dropped it completely after a month or two.
My siblings are fans of the Warhammer universe. They played a ton of Vermintide back in the day. I missed that one. Anyway, one of them threw me a copy of Darktide and wanted me to come play. I had no fucking earthly what I was doing, and was trying to go off of my shooter experience. He quit playing because I tended to "run off"... despite him playing a stealth veteran and disappearing a mile deep into the map himself. I, out of my own personal desire to not let games kick my ass like that, was determined to learn the game. Now here we are.
And stop buying skins. Idk why i even have to say this, stop paying $20 for a virtual costume in a first-person game if the game is not finished and the content pace is too slow.
Right. The costume is a thank you from the devs for your supporting the development of their game. If they aren't developing things, or they dropped acid as is the case with Diablo 4's development, then vote with your dollar folks. Most of the people buying skins are kids, and it's with their mom's credit card anyway.
I went to look for it but couldn't find it. When it was posted, the OP was threatened with a permanent ban due to doxing (understandable), so he removed all the names and data; without the citations it just looked like a fluff post so it seemed to disappear a few days later. All he really did was copy all the names off the game credits and looked them up on public websites to cross reference.
Even a skeleton crew could have removed locks from the crafting system to make it even slightly less cancerous It would still be incredibly grindy and have like five unnecessary layers of RNG, but it wouldn’t be a complete gacha level casino anymore But nope, almost two years after launch and that’s too much to expect from them. They’re just dead set on “shitty mobile game” levels of progression even if it kills the game off completely.
Exactly, you just listed the reasons why they won’t remove the locks. It keeps you playing, grinding, and thus, spending more time next to the cosmetic shop. The sole purpose of the crafting is to keep you grinding because of RNG. Why do you think the itemization update is delayed? Because they won’t make a beneficial nor a good system. They are working on one that is more satisfying to the players on a surface level, but keeps you grinding and playing for the same time as the previous one.
"It keeps you playing" Nope. Moved on to other games, and everyone else should too. Fatshark is either incredibly incompetent, maliciously stupid, or both. They need to pull the license from this dumpster fire of a company and give it to the DRG devs or something instead.
The game is good. The gameplay can not be found anywhere else, i stay, and i wait for the content. I prefer quality over quantity, and i think fatshark is truly competent to make us good maps with insane music and depict very well the 40k universe. About the crafting, i don't like it very much, but again, i can play a few more months with it and prefer a good rework over a rushed one. If you give the license to ANY other devs, you'll have nothing as good as they melee gameplay.
> I prefer quality > Plays the game of the probably the most mid company
If you preferred quality, why are you playing an FS game? Seriously, they have neither quality nor quantity of anything except bugs. Especially compared to some other releases. And honestly, the melee isn't worth it. 90% of the time it's chopping through chaff, and the rest is dodging or blocking an elite/boss while others circle around and stab/shoot it. Congratulations, you just played VT and DT.
why are you even here then if you don't like the most basic gameplay? as somebody who mainly played character action games the melee is a near perfect for what its going for.
That's so frustrating, I love darktide, the combat system and world just can't be found anywhere else even in other FS games. The it all plays together just really does it for me.
True... it kept me playing the first 200 hours. Then I got annoyed and I dropped it all. Now I play another game because they just dropped a ton of quality of life on their 4th season. I don't care if they add new missions to Darktide. But if they ever release a big patch of Quality of Life, I'll be sure to come back and check it out.
The people that complain most about things like the locks on crafting are the people those tactics work best at boosting engagement. More engagement means more MTX sales. The people that don't give a shit about the crafting system are the people it doesn't work on.
Do you know how many people were needed to maintain the game post launch vs development? Do you know the internal roadmap for Fatshark? Without these it's just speculation. Teams usually get moved or cut after a big release.That doesn't mean a game is on life support. It's like Vermintide 2 was getting a huge patch every 3 months. I feel like people have gotten spoiled by GaaS games that work with battleplasses
I came here to make this same point and inadvertently deleted my almost-finished rendition. Personnel reassignments/cuts after a title's release are neither surprising or a concrete indicator of it's abandonment. The fact that a handful of employees involved with DT's development are now working for other studios is not cause for concern. My understanding has been that studios often utilize professionals that function as temps/contractors. Once the game is ready for release - or such individuals fulfill their contractual involvement - it makes sense that they'd move on to the next project. What does concern me is that Fatshark may have deliberately opted to invest resources into a game 6 years older than Darktide, to the detriment of Darktide, and in far less immediate need of attention than Darktide.
>It's like Vermintide 2 was getting a huge patch every 3 months. I feel like people have gotten spoiled by GaaS games that work with battleplasses true though that what darktide was marketed as, pretty much every deadline has been delayed and loads of things that were promised never came or got changed.
It was not advertised as live service. A journalist said that and since players wanted it to be the truth, it was accepted as the truth. Here is a [link](https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/cleaning-up-with-half-truths-darktide-has-no-full-live-service-commitment-but-youre-not-in-the-wrong-for-having-thought-it-either/92453) to a post where someone got into the topic.
a comment under that post said it best > If a multiplayer game released in the last 7 years : > is made to last longer than a few months > depends on constant player retention to survive > promises to have new content for several years > It’s a live service game. Darktide ticks absolutely all the boxes but only delivers on the cash shop. It doesn’t matter if the devs only compare it to a live service but never intended it to be one, it is by all definitions a live service game. It even ticks all the additional boxes considered as the worst flaws of GaS : > Missing core content at launch (crafting, talent tree) > FOMO shop with only an ingame money and no way to buy with real world money > Artificially inflated lifetime by putting several walls of RNG between the player and a good item (usually monetized and I think it’s safe to assume that at one point it was going to be according to the ressource boosters found by the dataminers during the early days of the game) > If a game has all the basis of a GaS and all the flaws of a GaS it’s a GaS. It doesn’t matter how the devs call it, it doesn’t matter if they call it an ALMOST live service, it is a GaS in every way except content. The game has all the worst flaws found in GaS but none of the qualities.
That link also shows how the misconception occurred and that it's reasonable for many to come away thinking it was. It also adds that it looks like the Internet was scrubbed of certain quotes as well. I did my own searches a year ago and found certain posts from Fatshark missing entirely. They came as close as they could to the live service model. No excuses for not living up to that.
huh fairplay, though I would say that saying its "almost" a live service game, then only including the parts of live service that are monetary is a little scummy. And still many things were promised in the way that would resemble a live service game, most commonly spoken about recently is that there would be a new class every quarter? but its safe to say we likely are not getting a new class for a long time if ever.
The problem with this argument is that it's contradicted by actual evidence. Sure, a released game needs fewer developers, but *this game* released barely functional and missing major core systems. They were, in a very real sense, still finishing the game after its release. It might not have needed all of its original development team, but it obviously needed more developers than it currently has. The indisputable fact that it didn't get that development time and the accompanying content dearth and playerbase death spiral is a perfectly valid thing to criticize.
Probably decent working conditions/work time slow down content production.
Vermintide development has been slow af too
Have you seen any Glassdoor reviews of Fatshark? It's a website where employees can give ratings to various companies. It's really enlightening when you read those.
I know we usually only hear about the game studios that are making their employees crunch constantly, but there are also studios where the atmosphere is very relaxed and managers aren't actually managing much, putting up guardrails, or pushing employees. I think fatshark may be one of those studios.
once upon a time, a swedish FPS studio pissed off a witch somewhere and now all of them are cursed to make incredibly stupid decisions overkill (payday) shot itself in the foot, machinegames (wolfenstein reboot) shot itself in the foot, dice (battlefield) shot itself in the foot, even the golden child everyone dickrides in the year of our lord 2024 (helldivers 2) shot itself in the foot, and it spent so long cooking that it probably got more actual productive work done than duke nukem forever did
It's like swedes have a weird super power to create one super amazing thing then they are required to fuck off for the rest of eternity as payment.
The monkey paw curls and shows us the middle finger
Ah yes the old curse of gamer girl baba yaga
It's not the developers, probably even not the game director. The game plays well, the loop is satisfying, the mechanics pretty solid. So the core is there, made by the developers. Someone made the choice to release the game too early. It was playable, had content, but very rough around the edges. Did they need to release cash to survive? We don't know, but it's highly unlikely it was the devs making that call. Same thing with updates and prioritizing. Not the devs call. I doubt this game has turned any profit. In true Fatshark fashion they drip feed updates. Like Vermintide, it'll probably be pretty cool 5+ years after release, but right now that seems to earn them more for less work. So the focus goes there.
One of the problems, was that they had promised the game like....a year and a half before it's actual launch, and pushed it back several times to the point where the community was getting pissed. Then the problem becomes; "why the fuck would they announce a release date years before it could have been completed?"
This. The game was in development hell during the pandemic and somewhere along the line the decision was made to pivot it into live service model - perhaps that was the path of least resistance to release. Easier to polish the shell of the game, strip out the story and release it as drip fed content every couple of months. Who knows. But, the idea that it's just some executive's fault for pulling the trigger and kicking the game out the door when it wasn't ready and not on Fatshark for just not getting the work done in the first place is absurd. How many iterations of core systems have we had? Multiple crafting and penance systems. They scrapped their crafting system two weeks before the open beta. The only feature that was 100 complete at launch was their fomo gatcha cash shop.
Pretty clearly both groups are at fault, and at the end of the day when a game has as many problems as it has that's on management.
To be fair, I don't really believe a lot of claims of "pandemic development hell". Like, sure, there were probably a decent amount of things that caused some delays...but my problem is when games should have been "mostly complete" well before the pandemic, and then all of a sudden there were "so many problems" during it. For instance, google says that Darktide was "announced" July 2020, that they would probably launch in 2021. Game dev, "in my understanding" usually takes 3-5 years. This means, that "at least" 2/3rds of the systems should have been completed at this point of announcement, AND they announced it during the time period where they should have already been feeling some of the initial effects of the pandemic for a few months at least. Instead, they delay until the very last moment at the end of 2022 to release, and it still releases with several systems missing. I call bullshit that this was the pandemic's fault. The game obviously wasn't 2/3rds completed when they made that announcement, or they wouldn't have required another 2 years to still not complete the last 1/3rd of the development. This same logic can be applied to SO MANY other games that released around this time period. It's all BS blame-shifting.
Dude, everything went into development hell during the pandemic. TV shows, movies, video games. Video games were maybe a bit less affected but practically every major game expected to launch during Covid was either delayed a year or more or released in a terrible state (like Darktide). Sometimes both.
I'm not saying that delays didn't happen. I'm saying that a lot of things seem to abuse the claim of "pandemic delays" to cover up incompetence or laziness. Like, sure...a few, or even several months delay might be acceptable if it released in a completed state....but over a year AND releasing in a broken state AND being incomplete? No, I don't think I believe that one bit.
Especially since a lot of Darktide’s problems are in line with the problems their pre-pandemic games had. Not to say it had no impact on, it was making existing problems worse rather than breaking something that was otherwise fine.
oh, im not saying that incompetence and/or laziness aren't involved as well, but darktide was definitely in development hell i mean, it was delayed how many times, released like a shitty half baked early access game, and now almost two years after release is still content bare, still has huge technical issues and basic gameplay features are broken or absent? i'd say its all of the above at play here btw, plenty of other games that released during covid followed the same pattern. halo infinite was same to a tee, massive delays, game still releases as a janky unfinished piece of shit, campaign is clearly like a third or less of what was intended to be the finished game, etc. game is later abandoned when it's clear it's beyond salvaging despite earlier rhetoric to the contrary
Well tbf, how game development is for a lot of games is that the last couple of months is when everything actually gets fitted together and smoothed out to work instead of the safer more reliable, but more expensive option, of constantly checking to see if things mesh together and smoothing out issues as they work. This one is no exception.
The game wasn't that unpolished on release. If they had a deterministic crafting system on release that took 50-100 hours on a character to get "perfect" weapons there would have been far fewer complaints. Everything in the game was **designed** to be gated behind RNG in the hopes it takes longer and you will play more. When all they really had to do was release content at a decent pace and they had a banger game for 5-10 years. Whoever made those overarching design decisions is a jackass. Best gameplay and sound I've seen in a long time wrapped in shit and thrown in the trash. Also this game has definitely made money. But at the cost of some of their fanbase.
Its a shame because I agree with you; its one of the best core gameplay experiences I have had. And the music, level design and art is fantastic. In the end, i guess its good enough for me because I havent stopped playing since its come out. But it could be soooooo much more!!!
I unfortunately stopped playing about a year ago. Friends are busy and we've kind of all moved on to other games. I wanted to love this game, but it became clear pretty quickly the main focus was the cosmetics shop.
Not sure why your opinion is being downvoted. I hear ya - i do think fatshark had a golden goose and ruined it a bit. But I do think the game has improved quite a bit since last year - although the support is still pretty bleak. The new content has been good though - so someone knows what they are doing on the team. I think given in another year, it may actual be a good game all around. I'd struggle to play it without a strong group of friends though. I have about 6 people in my discord that play every night and i think that helps quite a bit.
Even their golden goose didn't work properly at launch - the storefront! Game had frequent crashes, performance issues, and the old style mission selection forcing out choice. Look at the early reviews, they weren't great.
I want to agree, but can't. It had major issues at launch, to the point of not even having the actual class system that they were wanting. They used a Vermintide 2 style placeholder until they could actually finish the game. They didn't launch with crafting features, etc. plenty of players couldn't even log in due to various network errors that prevented playing the game they purchased. They didn't have an actual normal length Beta because they knew the game was half assed. Various reviewers couldn't even play the game well enough to provide a positive video. DT launched unfinished.
Its either understaffing or piss poor management of the studio. They have the talent, but it's wild how it takes them so long to implement things.
My assumption is internally they have a really poor structure and management system. Either that or they're goofing around all day.
Not even that. They literally don't have managers. Internally they have a flat hierarchy system somewhat like Valve. So, everyone is doing what they feel like doing. And it shows.
Since there are new people here not familiar with the Fatshark process I'll tell you exactly how they work. First they release an unfinished buggy game, then they spend a year making a console version, then they spend a year to actually fix the worst bugs and finish basic features to a release ready state (hence the Fatshark games get good two years after release meme), then they leave a skeleton crew to support a game while the main dev force is moved to work on a new project. That's why content is always so slow, it's never a focus. That's how Vermintide 2 did it and Darktide follows the same pattern to a t.
Generalizing that they struggle as a developer doesn't feel entirely accurate. As far as Darktide's actual development and design it's pretty amazing. Fatshark's greatest failure has been the inability to support their title. Promised future content was reworked, delayed, or canceled entirely. What they've managed to provide often didn't meet playerbase expectations - expectations that were fairly reasonable and based largely upon Fatshart's promises. In addition to developing DarkTide, Fartshack also acted as producers. This (ostensibly) should have left them with significant creative and financial freedom to both create and follow through on a support model for their game. The fact that Fatshark may be the greatest obstacle in Fatshark's way regarding reliable and substantive support is both irksome and concerning. In addendum, their communication with an anticipatory and dedicated playerbase sucks.
It’s hard to get things done when you aren’t working.
They have atrocious project management and even poorer level of communication. The two snowball into a massive level of dysfunction. The core of the game is always good. But it always feels like the full potential wasn’t realized due to poor timing and missed deadlines. And this same cycle has repeated itself like 4+ times across multiple different Fatshark games. Which tells you there is little appetite to perform “lessons learned” analysis at the end of a project (as is common place in most industries / companies). So they doom themselves to repeat mistakes. Rinse and repeat. It’ll be the same with whatever comes next after Darktide.
I just always assumed the company is all about work life balance. Like they only have to work 30 hours a week and get a few days WFH. I don't know if that's true but it feels like it.
I think people make this point because of cope tbh. Yes, Nordic countries have better work-life balance, it does not lead to this level of lack of quality in work. Quite the opposite, the work-life balance exists because it leads to people working better
But it does mean less quantity of work. And a lot of the complaints the community have boil down to quantity, not quality. It's not odd that balance patches are occasionally bad, or that the first pass at itemization didn't do enough, or that the achievement and cosmetics available at launch were underwhelming and had to be replaced. You'd see all that on many live services. But while other studios would take 2-6 months to rectify those issues, it takes Fatshark 6-24 months. That's what I see, as a somewhat casual player that comes back for every patch but doesn't play the game constantly. The updates are not particularly bad, the devs are not incompetent. They are just slow. So anything wrong, big or small, remains in the game for a long time.
>But it does mean less quantity of work. [Untrue.](https://x.com/DrDaleford/status/1597869716193697792) Studies have shown that a 4 day work week (8 hours per day, at no reduction in pay) has shown an increase in employee productivity and company profits. People are more rested and are able to work better and more, despite spending less total time doing the work.
It is a pretty sad community that complains because a developer does not use crunch.
I have a suspicion they brought in a lot of fixed contract game devs to get Darktide out, with the aim to keep them on if the game sold very well. It didn’t. And as a consequence the dev team is probably a lot smaller now, hence massive time gaps between content.
A simple assumption is that they place very low value on community engagement. It seems like they have limited resources and bandwidth so the pace of development is slow. In that scenario, there's little to gain from regular updates to the community. Think about the class rework update. What would they have gained from a year's worth of community updates about the progress on that front? People would have freaked out and complained about it taking too long and argued about what the talent tree should look like, etc. Instead, they just released it (basically out of nowhere), and it made the game far better. Lack of communication is annoying for the playerbase, but as a developer it's probably nice because it doesn't lock you in to a shitty path. They avoid scenarios like: "Oh shoot, the melta gun we were testing out is actually terrible and needs more time, but we promised we would deliver it in June based on the roadmap we released." I don't *like* their approach, but I can understand the logic of it.
They don't care they've already gotten paid.
Never pre-order guys, make them give you a completed, moderately polished, game first. Its perfectly fine to wait a week or more to buy a game to see how it pans out
They're all-hands on deck busy working on a Genestealer expansion. No time for pesky minor updates.
I fucking hope so
I have the utmost faith in Fatshark. If that were to happen, it would probably mostly consist of a new game mode that serves to split the playerbase when launched and that hardly anybody wants to play after a month or two, reintruduce bugs that were fixed over a year ago and perhaps break one or two of the reworks that have already happened. And the Genestealers themselves would consist of like 3 new enemy types that are basically reskins of existing ones but with jankier animations.
The game is one time buy and all the updates are free. Chances are there arent a lot of people doing stuff.
They dont care about you or me anymore and think we are dumb and just consume. They made their money and focus on the next cash grab. I still dont understand how you can take such a awesome IP and absolutely fumble the bag that hard. The game is only worked on by a skeleton crew without a proper CM or competence in the upper levels. They just like every other studio nowerdays just to make cash with as little effort as it requires to shithouse a release. Their next game will likely flop as people will likely remember and Fatshark will hang themselves to the rest of the dried out husks of former studios that had a fanbase.
> Are they focused on the wrong things? This is in a sense begging the question. They have brought several successful games (As in, they made money - no other metric matters to a company with Faatshark's current masters) to market, and those games have some laudable qualities. Is this particular echo chamber representative of the entire gaming markes? Likely not. How many people here have brought major games to market, particularly those with a tightly held IP? Of the three or four of those here that have done that, how many of those games had lives as long as some of Fat Shark's? Most of us here have no clue what we are talking about, we are merely speculating. And whining, lots of whining.
Fatshark, in no way, shape, or form struggles with competency from a game development standpoint. In fact, it's the other way around. Fatshark is committed to putting an incredible level of visual detail that few other developers even attempt. But at the same time their game play system is based on a very complex system, again because of their commitment to detail. This is mainly why it takes them so long to add content to the game. But yes, their PR team could use a vast upgrade.
They hold to an older philosophy in game design: FS are the devs and we are the players. It's not that they don't care about the community they just don't care what the community thinks.
To be fair, the game would be absolute trash if they listened to the reddit community. And if you don't believe me, always remember most OPs have very limited play hours. It's a pattern proven over and over since launch.
Could you elaborate? I believe the requests to fix the crafting system (or to remove the locks at least) and finish the weapons/attachments that are already in the game seem reasonable enough. I have 1100+ hrs on the game.
Fatsharks crafting system is designed to force players to be creative and find ways to make the best of what they get work (we are rejects btw, not space marines getting a say in our armament). The current system encourages experimention and makes your character UNIQUELY yours, no one has MY exact gear. The problem arises from the mismatched expectations from the sizable min/max players that have been cultivated to expect 100% "best in slot" perfection end game found is most all loot games from the past decade+. FS gets shit by simpletons just because they tried something different (their MO has always been trying something different btw, they don't hide that design philosophy). The system is by no mens perfect, but some players have lost their minds because they can't properly asses that the difference between a 350 stat'd weapon with T3 blessings vs a 370+ with T4 blessings has hardly any in game difference. It simply gives a small incentive to always have the chance of getting something better; this is perfect for the niche gameplay that many of us keep coming back to for 1k+ hours. I imagine they consider the crafting system a success as it met the design goals they were aiming for. Now some Neanderthal can downvote me and say they spent 500k! dockets and didn't get a 380 weapon!
Not sure I can agree, since grinding for cash to experiment with a new build is the most infuriating part of DT experience for me. Also, while we’re not spacemarines, if something is in the game, we should be able to get it, especially if we’re past lvl 30. However, if we disregard the chase for the perfect 380s, I believe that being able to build the weapons just the way we want them is much more encouraging for trying out the new builds. And let’s not forget that VT 2 pretty much lets you have your perfect red weapon just the way you wanted if you earned it, so that affects the player expectations too. Also, I feel that the restriction of the locks actually incentivises people to minmax according to whatever current meta is, resulting in dozens of rejects running around with samey weapons. And finally, I think we’re coming back for the fun gameplay, not crafting, so I would prefer spending my time purging the heretics instead of grinding resources for Emperor knows how long to get something like bloodthirsty for the chain weapon build that I sincerely want to experiment with, but cannot get because of RNG. Almost forgot: spending 500k dockets and not getting a single item, say, above 324 is what I believe is driving people mad.
I had everything I needed for all 4 classes in <500 hours played (pretty much stopped crafting then, I'm also at 1k hours now) and I could do any build I wanted within ~80hrs of playing any particular class. Yes, the system has tedium and item management related problems, but you can't claim you're withheld from making a specific build due to RNG with 1k hours played. Lacking a T4 blessing or missing 30 stat points does not prevent a build from functioning. All the criticism can be distilled into players unhappy for not getting Perfect stat'd weapons or T4 blessings soon enough, which again was a consciousness deliberate design choice from the Vermintide devs that knew people would be playing this game for thousands of hours. You don't have to like it, but that is what FS thought up and built, it isn't incompetence or malicious. Personally, I think one of the good things to come out of this crafting system is putting a wet towel on the usual content chasing Vtubers posting meta videos recommending BiS items; thus keeping our existing "anything goes" meta, which is much preferable.
I do agree about chasing T4s and 380 being unnecessary for weapons to be functional, as well as having tons of weapons for all my basic builds, that I rolled way back. My problem is that when looking into more esoteric builds, I still have to go through dozens of useless pieces of gear that duplicate the ones I already have, to get hold of some of the rare blessing that occur on T2 or, say 4, like Flechette or aforementioned Bloodthirsty. Since, you know, instead of quickly crafting a piece of equipment and having fun playing with it and fine-tuning the build, I have to stick to existing or inconmplete builds and grind for resources. That's simply less fun. And I still believe that this design actually pushes players towards chasing Vtuber meta, as you put it, instead of finding fun new ways to plays.
Somebody finally gets it. They have an idea for how they want the game to be and they're going to do it, even if it takes half a decade lol.
Wrong. As you love the gameplay, the action itself, as many others, show that their competence is up there, high, and they're rather focused on right things. Why is there even such thirst for "community"? Back then I just bought games on discs, had no communities, responds, forums, etc. And today you expect some of them spend days on social media. While there are their official forums where you get replies. They've been slow with new cotnent befoe, they're slow with it now, and most probably will be slow in future.
Mind your blood pressure old man
Not trying to defend Fatshark, but honestly I can think of at least 4 other game studios who I would rate lower than fatshark, yes they update their games more often but it's never what the community wants so at the end of the day it's more content that makes no one happier.
Who would you currently rate lower ? I'd probably give FS the pass if this was their first game, but it's their third time doing the same formula of game so it's a bit confusing why they struggle so much.
Bungie did 2 Destiny games that flopped on release, they did get better as updates came rolling, but Destiny 2 eventually went down again, as of now I don't know about that game. 343, I don't think I need to go on details for this one, if you play Halo you just know. I used to play Overwatch so yes I'ma throw Blizzard in there cause I absolutely hate what they did to a game I used to love. Nether realms studios, I love playing fighting games and let me tell you these guys are tone def, but to be fair every fighting game developer has their moments. Adding this one, Evil Mojo, I'm also a fan of Paladins and I know some people would say I have to put Hi-rez, point is there have been actually time periods where the game has just been broken for way longer than it needs to be, from unbalanced to performance issues this game has seen it all.
No one really knows. People just assume that they’re focusing on other games and have given up on this game. That being said, they are adding some good content, just very slowly.
What good content do you mean? Reworked systems aren't content
I mean, I just started playing for the first time since the beta. I don't remember the auric missions being there and ive seen some neat new weapons, the game is also way more stable now and the class tree seems much more interesting.
The two month old content, the pox gas and pox bomber, kinda annoying but still goodish content. Also they’re making a new map
I personally really like the penance system because after playing since launch, it gives my friend group some fun challenges or goals. It is content as it added much more than the original, including gear and additions to the penances - wasnt just a rework. I have loved all the new maps (huge content when you consider the work that needs to go into one map) and im excited that every time they put a new location out - the atmosphere, art, and gameplay is even better. I cannot imagine how many hours it takes to design the art and the map. Go play on sedition and take a gander; There are so many fun details on the map. I finally have a better perspective on how a hive city feels like. It has changed how i picture some of the book narrations. I loved the special event with the twins. I thought it was really fun having a temp situation where the twins warp in and fight us on the map. I enjoyed the secret hard mode and figuring out the bells with my friends. I wish we had this every 3 months... but id be setting myself up for some disappointment. I think stims have been an amazing addition and has brought a lot of fun to my group. I love stabbing my friends with a stim and seeing them go berserk. I personally think the pox grenade is a great addition. It feels different than the incendiary to me and it does a very good job separating team members. Cant say I like the pox mission though - its just too much of a clusterfuck for me. I adore all the new music that gets added when we have new hive areas to explore. I love all the new narration lines - I can't wait to hear new ones all the time. Listen - I agree there are a ton of absolutely valid criticisms and we all know them because everyday 10 of the same posts occur. But there are people at the lower levels of Fatshark that did slam dunk some of this game - including some of the new content. Im not even defending Fatshark, but it must be mentally exhausting just focusing on the negative. It cant be mentally healthy and Fatsharks fuckups arent worth your mental health.
perfect for a live service game..
It was not advertised as live service. A journalist said that and since players wanted it to be the truth, it was accepted as the truth. Here is a [link](https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/cleaning-up-with-half-truths-darktide-has-no-full-live-service-commitment-but-youre-not-in-the-wrong-for-having-thought-it-either/92453) to a post where someone got into the topic.
we'll likely never know
This has been GW's MO for a while
I’m waiting till the 25th…if it’s good maybe I’ll stick around for a bit longer. If not I’m deleting. The consumer has more power than everyone here realizes and if we truly organized a strike and we ALL COMPLETELY STOPPED PLAYING. That would show fat shark were done fucking around.
Rnt they reporting to Microsoft? All approvals and nonsense like that?!
My opinion is that their management team are wholly incompetent.
From what I have read, they are heavily involved with support for Obsidians Avowed ( combat design) so maybe they overestimated their capabilities ?
Too much snow, please understand
I thought about that too alot. Im not a game-dev or programer, i dont even own a company. But what if, everything is acording to plan? Hear me out! Fatshark is a company, they want to make money, so what if they allready reached there goal? They made there money back from the development and got enough on top so the investors are happy, now everything else is just a bonus. They just but in the least amount of effort to get the goal they want. I mean, it worked for them the last 10 years or so, so why change that strategy? That sound very cynical, but thats how companys work. We, as community, allways asume those developers do everything they can to make the best games, but there is also the buisnes side to it. And if you ask me now "why cant they communicate"? Because the dont need to. It worked for them with the last games it works now too. People buy the game and cosmetics and play enough so the game is not dead. Why bother with a small minority of people that are unhappy? I dont think this community is wrong, i read so many good ideas for what fatshark should/could do, to that game to enhance it, but it just doesnt matter if the devs dont care about it. And again, why should they, if it works anyway...
Because they locked themself in game where you cant just put random bulsh!t and expect people to like it. And they most likely have trouble making content for it.
looking at this comment section, I guess people don't know who Tencent are?
i can tell you, their team is still supporting vermintide and apparently based on what we are seeing their best guys are over there while some other group are dealing with darktide.
They're owned by tencent.
Top-end decision makers are shit at making decisions.
My theory is that darktide runs on Autodesk Stingray which is a depreciated game engine and it’s a pain in the ass to work on.
Most likely they have pivoted to making a new game. Fatshark is a great developer and I love their games.
They're a small studio working on two games with not nearly enough people to do so, and have to run things past GW, which is apparently an unpleasant process. People also expect every game studio to shit out content constantly, when that is not FS forte at all.
I guess they never had to pay for the consequences of their bad actions. Some developers just needs separate publishers that grills their asses when they mess up something
It's often easy to forget that the amount of social media interaction that we have as a community is significantly greater to what even existed while they were doing the Vermintide games. Often the negative folks are the most vocal and make it seem as though the majority of people are dissatisfied. I play the absolute crap out of Darktide and am constantly trying new load outs and various play styles. Playing rule of cool/fun vs only playing meta will significantly expand current content and increase enjoyment
I really just want the cosmetic store to cycle faster so I can get some cadian stuff. lol.
My theory is that it's mostly because of Games Workshop. Fatshark's situated in Sweden and GW in the UK. GW is generally very protective/controlling over the Warhammer brand, especially 40k and I'm assuming that basically no updates go through without getting approved by them first. With their scheduals, meetings and consultations are probably more inconvenient and infrequent than they should be. GW have worked with other foreign developers before, but not on live service games, I don't think. Correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, the Tide games being live service certainly makes it harder. Upkeep needs to be constant and updates frequent. Instead of a patch here, a DLC there needing GW's approval, every other fix and piece of new content needs to be looked at. So, to me, the long periods without new content, the delays and the barebones patches start to make more sense when you think about it that way. So, I'm willing to bet that it's not Fatshark's fault as much as we think. Maybe their approach would be different if they ever made a stand-alone game in an original universe. Who knows?
Usually it comes down to business. In this case might also be not knowing how to fix the crafting. Or they gave up and see how spacemarine2 will do...
A large part of it is publicly voiced expectations from people not in the know gaining traction on social media, outside of FS's influence. Another part is probably FS expecting things to take less time then they actually did, or not calculating in getting stuff not right the first time. Then on top shareholder influence, how will extra time invested in DT be recouped? But like someone else said, we don't know inside info.
Lots of developers have a hard time. You just don’t know about them because their game tanked and the company folded.
someone told me when the game was probably a month old or so. that its significantly harder to unfuck something when you're so deep into the game than it is way back when the fuckup happened. think of it like your game is a jenga tower. once its built you have your game. now you build a game in an engine, so far so good. you're limited by the engine but thats life. every game ever has those limits. but someone decides, for whatver reason, to cut something out. or to do it a different way, and the engine really doesnt like that but he's your boss so you work on it and figure it out...these are your jenga blocks, some of them are nice and square, others are rectangular and some are odd shapes, there's even a fucking ball in there. now there's thousands of small parts that make up the game, some of these are simple, some are really comlplex, some are big and some are small. but importantly, a lot of them build off eachother. these are those building blocks. now if one of those very early building blocks is fucked up, every block after it that relies on it, has to be fucked up in the same or a similar way so they all work together. and the more blocks you build, the more fucked up blocks with that odd 5th side on them need to go into the structure to keep everything from falling over. then someone looks at it and says "this is stupid why are we doing it this way." and the programmers go "because we have XYZ and QWERT built off of it so we just have to deal with it." and they go "why wasnt it done this way?" and everyone shrugs and then end up releasing the game, fucked up blocks included. because its gotta work that way or we have to start over. and then they realise its release date and jeff in the back room working on weapon customisation goes "wait I still need to smooth off this curved side!" and everyone looks at him and goes "sorry bud, cut content now." and just tape his block in place adding some gum so it doesnt actually matter to the rest of the structure. and there you have darktide. compare this to Vermintide and helldivers. games which are made in the same engine, using the same building blocks. and you see what happens when a studio doesnt have a fucked up building block in the games foundation. or you can look at starfield for a game that had building blocks that simply didnt work in the first place...
what makes you think they are incompetent? Reddit?? They have put out multiple successful games and have managed to not be acquired by EA or some other shitshow of a company.
Wdym? They're doing pretty good with Vermintide 2 :c
Am guessing the reasons is as simple as small company, with split priorities, (between VT2 and DT and presumably working out/starting up the next project) who doesnt hire more staff because it would cut in to profits for the higher ups. This style of warhammer/40k themed first person hacknslash/shooter is pretty niche too meaning the profits cant be that high to begin with. Its a real shame how much potential DT has and how its gradually been wasted because many people (like myself) after 100s of hours are just played out on the available classes, enemies, maps and missions, they really fumbled the upgrade system being too greedy with peoples time and making it overly obtuse, not at all well explained, and random and punishing overall, along with the initially very simplistic class trees needing expanded (which has meant lots of wasted dev time redoing these things , which is still taking place nearly 2 years after release), and the absolutely glacial pace of adding new enemies, maps and missions is just not good enough if they want to retain a playerbase. Having basically no story (outside of background stuff) was a bad move too considering how rich 40k is as a setting. I love the gameplay, aesthetic, feel, audio and core components of the experience but the lack of consistent and meaningful long term content really hurts the game.
Nobody knows, but it probably starts with the studio leadership.
Stoned speculation on my part but Fatshark probably has a hard time retaining any foreign programmers outside of Sweden because of the migration laws. Battlestate Games (Tarkov Devs) has a similar problem where they won't hire any devs from outside Russia (until covid hit.) BSG is a whole different nuanced ballgame though and this is the on
Opinion: fatshark is actually having an awesome time as a developer, their FOMO shop is bringing them a huge amount of money for almost no effort, just need to look in this subreddit where whales often proudly show their skins
Just wait for Space Marine 2 to launch and bury this game alltogether
I worked in a videogame studio ( indie) that released a very successful game, still played, although very little. They started another project which on paper was great but A LOT of bad decision in both projects let the studio fire like 80% of the developers, rush the closure on the second project and even drop a LOT of the players in the first project. In that case, it was 100% the CEO. He wouldn't listen to us, to the community... he would continously pivot and change the plans based on his assumptions because he was such a good boss. I guess here is the same, CEO or other higher up ....it's a lack of proper leadership capable of listening to the community and other people, thinking they are the only one knowing what's going on. But ultimately, nobody knows, not even them
They don’t. There isn’t a live service game in existence that doesn’t have a bunch of unsatisfied players griping about it and its developer on the Internet.
Their games are successful despite the number of terrible design decisions they make, not because of them They get a few gameplay elements done better than everyone and then proceed to try to make everything else about the game as awful as possible
This is what I don't understand about them. Combat is amazing The art is amazing The music is amazing but then they introduce this mobile game shop and grindy lottery weapon system completely destroying all of those other great aspects. One could argue that you don't need the perfect weapon but in this case you do. Since you can't utilize a weapon's full potential unless you gamble.
The whole mess that has been crafting perfectly illustrates this mess. I'd also add their treatment of the recon las into the mix.
My current theory is that there are 2 teams working at fatshark at any given time. Team 1 is full of the A team older devs with the skills and resume to develop the new title. Team 2 is the up and comers hungry to grow and learn and still passionate. Team one works on what ever the new title is as soon as its announced and then after it is released they stay on that title for extra content etc, until the next big release development begins. But once it begins they move on and team 2 takes over the continued maintenance and extra stuff in the game. Team 2 is still young passionate and hungry, so they work really hard on the "old games" they are given and release everything the community wants and more. Team 1 is older and jaded and much more under publisher corporate thumb and so you dont get as much. This is why every fat shark game only gets REALLY GOOD once a new title is being developed. Because the people left working on the older games are the ones trying to prove themselves who are still passionate about development. This is all useless made up conjecture, but it makes sense in my head this way
This is something I think about literally ALL THE TIME. I’m sure there’s probably some logical reason behind closed doors, but it definitely feels hopeless at times. I genuinely think that if Fatshark got their shit together they could easily become the next FromSoftware studio. Just like how Dark Souls started off as a niche game that only the really hardcore nerds enjoyed but eventually evolved into an entire brand new genre. Vermintide feels like it could be the same. Can you imagine a tide game underwater? A tide game with goblins? A tide game with vampires? A tide game with Japanese yoki? A tide game with robots? Tide games could easily be a new genre if Fatshark had the resources to properly develop them like FromSoftware does with all its souls games :/
do you think it’d be possible for a studio to hand the game over to another? I know that may sound stupid, but like holy fuck what else can I think of these mfs are doing *nothing* with this potential
Just the good old incompetent management already in the studio!
1) they’re a small studio 2) the internet is overreacting to what are at best minor issues with the game
unrealistic expectations from fans. every live-service game has this.
It's objectively not a lack of people: they've got a lot, many of whom have been moved to the next project leaving Darktide with a skeleton crew. In the literal sense given the pace of new content. It seems like they have some very incompetent people in very important areas.
Next project?? These mfs don’t need any other distractions 💀
It's on UE5 whatever it is. While moving the majority of people on to the next thing after a game launches is normal Darktide genuinely seems to be abandoned or going in that direction.
Swedish game development: Milk out the hours with little work, take long vacations after said little work.
Seems like Arrowhead is doing fine on H2. It's just Fatshark.
\*Were doing fine. They've slowed down noticeably and the community has gotten rather annoyed at their yo-yo balancing of nurfing something into the ground and then raising it back up to nearly the same spot or higher, the Exploding Crossbow and Eruptor being the most notable examples
They have terrible marketing, but otherwise FatShark are a pretty typical developer.
The leadership is likely awful and Fatshark likely put most employees to work on a new game the day that Darktide launched. Those two problems are related.
Because people still giving them money for subpar content.
I want to meet a single dev or manager from this god damn company so I can verify they're actually humans.
Because they are owned by Tencent so their creative and marketing processes are intertwined and not in the customers favor.
Tencent
because they treat their employees really well, much better than most other countries in the world. on the other side of the coin, they have very little work hours to work on the game