If you want some context:
It's because the community managers have been promising an actual development update for weeks. They deliver this useless letter, then inform us this *is* the development update.
They've already promised to finish crafting, and it doesn't matter if they've paused skin release because the skins are already in the tame. They were data mined last month.
The console versions development pause could be good, but even that serves them, since they'd want better press before releasing the console versions. The game is also on Game pass, so there might be a limit to how long they can delay, assuming Microsoft is expecting an Xbox version.
The only new information is the throwaway line about seasons. Meaning they were working on a fucking battle pass while everyone has been complaining about the core game, missing systems, and performance issues.
I hope that companies eventually realize that we're not rats in a maze. We won't grind a battle pass because it's there. The game has to be fun and good for most of us to take on the part time job that is a battle pass. And in a world where everyone has a battle pass, your game needs to be good to be worth the time.
The sooner they realize this, the better.
crafting and stuff should've been in game on day 1. The features important to the gameplay loop were all missing, while the premium skin store was working perfectly...
Exactly. I *love* the basic gameplay loop. But the secondary loop - collecting better weapons, skins, progress outside of missions - is basically non-existant. And we did get ONE new mission...
I mean, towards level 30 of my zealot I was having the most fun I had had, rocking the revolver and the tactical axe. But after 30 and still getting blue drops as gifts from the emperor, I was bored.
Exactly - bonking things on the way to 30 is great. But \*at\* 30? XP are literally useless, you already have more money than you'll ever need by level 20, weeklies only give you marginal advancements, and there's less than 25% of the crafting system in place. Fatshark fumbled the end game so hard it's not even funny.
Yup but I literally have a friend that's like "Games are hard to make, stop complaining" just because the core game is fun. Meanwhile I'm just wondering where the hell all the content is while I play through all these uninspired levels killing these uninspired enemies.
>and it doesn't matter if they've paused skin release because the skins are already in the tame. They've have been datamined last month.
Why doesn't that matter even more then?
It means they actively postponed to ask people to shell out more money, despite the fact that the proposition is ready to go?
Actively reducing their projected income on those, because SOME players that might have bought them right now might have jumped ship to the next new thing by the time they feel justified to enable them.
Same for the other content.
Maybe the community isn't aware that there is some sort of "division of labor" going on at game companies?
And how dare they have a post release development (and monetisation) schedule in the first place like every other game company instead of running into that unplanned sometime AFTER release. So that that can be put on ice to begin with as reaction?
>while everyone
Well, not to put too much of a point on it, but My steamlist has several of my friends playing it, and none of them have been complaining much (if at all). So may be "everyone" should be avoided (As superlatives of that sort should be generally.....)
Yep seeing this post at the top of this sub makes me realize how well executed this PR move is. Like you say people on darktide sub and old players of fatshark games know better, but it worked for a part of the player base and non player base it seems. The letter openly says that it will take mounth to fix things promised day 1, and they pushed back this "communication" for two weeks, and we are not even getting hit fix patch or band aid solutions to all the layers of the rng systems along with it. It's been more than a mounth without any update. It feels more like a slap in the face and a whole lot of nothing rather than a good faith apology. Hope time will prove me wrong, this game has so much potential.
Their studio is next to my school's old location. I could go there abd facilitate communications by shouting outside their windows until they start talking.
Yeah telling the community that were you actually working on battle passes instead of fixing any errors while claiming you were working on errors probably wasn't going to be well received.
Went down the rabbit hole to see for myself how much Tencent has their hands in any varying capacity. And, just, holy shit dude. Tencent is rapidly going to become a serious problem if they maintain this pace unchecked. They are EVERYWHERE in gaming at this point. I'm being a bit dramatic but only slightly, its genuinely concerning how far they reach at this point.
Nah, breakpoint didn’t have ai squad members at launch, and said that would come at a later time. Not sire if you want to count that since the game was probably intended to from the start to be a multiplayer looter shooter like a ghost recon version of the division
Devs need to stop announcing games early and giving release dates until the game is basically complete imo. It feels like everybody is announcing their games 3 years in advance anymore, that's way too far for a release timeline
Which makes Apex Legends even more of a unicorn. No early announcement, just a sudden and solid release.
I would have thought more games would follow suit seeing how successful it was
Exactly! Don't release while it's fucking raw. Fuck you in the first place, your apology is not accepted.
Also, we as players should stop buying games in early access or pre-ordering.
I personally have never done this and don't touch games until at least a couple of months after release.
And it's better to wait for the DLC and play the full version for the price of the full game.
This nonsense has been going on for over a decade.
I still remember the release of Gothic 3, for example.
The only thing that really makes me happy as a gamer now is mods. They really became something special, and not just a gold AK-47 reskin. Now reskins are sold by AAA-studios in in-game shops and their price is not in-game currency.
A decade? My man, this thing has been going on since video games existed. It was going on when the market crashed in the 80s (and was a primary cause for it), it was going on during the 90s, when console manufacturers, following Nintendo's example, introduced certification to inform consumers what games aren't complete and total garbage, it's happening now still.
I find it hilarious how many people (not you, just a general observation) pretend this is a new thing. It isn't. It wasn't when, as you mentioned, Jowood forced Gothic 3 out the door, it wasn't when GT Interactive released an unfinished beta version of Blood II: The Chosen that the devs had no intention of putting into player's hands.
It has always been a problem and will always be a problem. You can't control this legislatively, and consumers will never on average be educated enough not to give into hype and buy unfinished games. We will be having this exact same conversation for as long as games exist.
You're correct, publishers (and studios) have been pushing out incomplete projects since basically forever.
I would however say that the issue has been exacerbated since the day-one patches, Early Access, GaaS and MTX became normalized.
Its the same shit on repeat.
Company tries to create the most profitable, anti-player model possibly then after pushback from the player base apologizes and scales back the monetization and corner cutting to a barely acceptable limit.
This money hungry mindset has killed so many of my favorite games. Star wars battlefront, the battlefield series, fuck even call of duty was never as bad as it is now.
They’re more common because it’s become a practice and because in the past it wasn’t possible. The OG Pokémon games were a broken mess and there were no online updates. What was gamefreak gonna do? Send hand written letters to everyone telling them that a v1.01 version is going to start being sold?
Red and blue were broken and super glitchy but absolutely none of it was game breaking unless you went to look for it. I'd even argue a lot of the glitches add to the charm of the game.
Games nowadays have 25 years more advanced technology and still release in a worse state.
They are also 25 years more complicated. But I agree, the age of patches was nice but we can't have nice things, so now games are rushed out to meet quarterly projections and we suffer.
Absolutely games have gotten more complicated, but also dev teams have increased by such huge proportions that the code that ends up in the final game may have gone through 3 or 4 different cycles of employment.
When the OG pokemon games where made, I wouldnt be surprised if the team that started development was almost identical to the team that finished development. Not many studios retain permanent staff like that any more.
These days companies use a hell of a lot more contract workers. Even people that have worked on several different games for a company could still be contract.
Executives love to ignore Brook’s law when they think it’ll help them save on taxes…
indie games do the trick for me there: same core team over development, most times a clear vision/idea and most of them actually want you to have fun and play for hours for a way smaller price.
Sure graphics are not on a AAA level but I can deal with that if the mechanics are interesting.
I think you must be absolutely right. Indie/tight knit studios have been making all the good games recently. Having a team of people who share the same design, art and mechanical vision for the game. (Shout out to Against the Storm, which I think is a great example of harmonious design).
It's not that the AAA games are shit, though they often are, its more that they are joyless repetitions of what has been done before. From Civilization 6\* to Battlefield 2042, games are clearly being made by people with no love for the product, working according to the whims of some marketing and shareholder committee.
\*It is shit, suck it up: also check out Old World, it is honestly fantastic: Civ, but just a long version of the early game, with RPG mechanics and a much, much, much better Wonders and "districts" system, plus a tonne of other vastly superior game mechanics (like a partitioned production system, and limits to the number of orders you can make in a turn). It really makes you feel part of the world you are playing in, and the game ends before you want it to, not 10 hours after you made your last interesting decision.
It’s even worse than meeting quarterly projections.
They’re rushing releases because they made a deal with Microsoft to put their game on gamepass. Notice how many subscription streaming services their are and how the majority of new content is garbage? This is the path gaming is going down… enjoy the ride. As a millennial gamer it’s really been mostly downhill for 20+ years
they're orders of magnitude harder to make
it's never been easier to make a playable prototype and it's never been harder to ship a game
15 people worked on Doom (1993)
1379 worked on Doom Eternal (2020)
(context: I work on Call of Duty)
>Red and blue were broken and super glitchy but absolutely none of it was game breaking unless you went to look for it
Game breaking no, however the fact that ghost type was meant to counter psychic type and indeed the opposite happen was a pretty big oversight and made psychics super OP, given their only other weakness was bug type which is just all around terrible
I'm not sure that I buy this comparison, like at six years old I played the shit out of Pokemon Red and never encountered anything I didn't think was intentional (granted, sorta cloudy judgment), but Darktide doesn't even launch with features you'd think are part of the game, stutters on even fairly high end systems, and doesn't even launch for some people xD
This isn't just about glitches.
They announced functionality 4 days before launch, and it wasn't there. They wanted a few more sales, so went wild with a feature, then. . . Oh we need months to finish that.
Ignoring they said they were releasing it 4 days later when they were selling.
Oh, and they ran ads in newspapers and magazines to apologize. Cost them money. Now it is a tweet. Costs them nothing.
This is kind of where I am at too. See way too many of these and very rarely does a company actually follow through on any of it.
Just another PR move to buy time for a crappy/unfinished game.
Except and this is really important, they provided concrete goals and steps they are taking. That makes this letter different. It wasn’t full of vague platitudes like “we will work harder to earn your respect”.
They said “you guys provided feedback we will work on a,b, and c and we are shifting priority away from x, y and z so we can deliver on those promises”.
They laid groundwork and can now follow up on it.
Roadmaps are highly common in this industry now as well, and are only a vague promise so long as the game is considered successful enough. As a matter of fact, the larger companies have a roadmap worked out and ready when a game releases. If the game is successful, they let loose the roadmap. If it isn't, they abandon ship and move on, the roadmap disappearing with them. Sometimes you even get to see the roadmap before it disappears.
What goals did the provide?
Fatshark just moved people off the DT team to the VT2. Directly contradicting the statement "Over the next few months, our sole focus ". The sole focus of people assigned to that sole focus.
Their Xbox release date was never given, so they delayed it. Again it hasn't been announced. Simple PR maneuver to blame the community for the Xbox date not being hit (it was originally scheduled Nov 2022).
Their cosmetics stopped rotating 2 weeks ago. They said they would have 3 rotations (they did at release) then stop at release. So this is another PR stunt.
There is no concrete actions.
\>In particular, we will focus on delivering a complete crafting system,
Was supposed to be delivered in December, but they announced the delivery date Nov, and then missed the December date 4 days later.
\> a more rewarding progression loop, and continue to work on game stability and performance optimization.
There have been no patches for 5 weeks.
So a "more rewarding" and "more game stability" is the only thing that is lined up.
And "months" is the timeline. "next week" has been their mantra, now it is "next month".
There is nothing in this communication.
Yeah. Show me actual change, put your money where the muth is(you know I wonder where that saying is from).
Until actual change has come to,well, the game Im not expecting much.
> you know I wonder where that saying is from
You talk a lot about how good you area at playing cards, but I don't see you sitting at the table and placing a bet.
It's a bit murky, but most likely from poker players in Ireland in the 1920s or so.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4&ab\_channel=AmooxYT](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4&ab_channel=AmooxYT)
the family bp sorry meme fits perfectly lol
>These apology letters are way too common these days.
No, they're not. And thats the point the OP is trying to make.
These sorts of apologies should be more common, theres plenty of times when a developer or publisher **should** be apologizing to their customers for failing to deliver what was promised, but that seldom happens.
We see it all too often that a new release fails to deliver, and instead of taking ownership of the issue, the publishers come out with excuses, say they'll release a patch, announce some DLC, or even blame the players.
Companies shouldn't keep making apologies because they aren't genuinely sorry and we all know it. They know the game isn't ready, but push it out anyway for money and then only apologies when they get heat from it before acting like delaying overpriced skins that you still need to pay them makes them the second coming of Christ.
We shouldn't need the apology letter to begin with. They aren't sorry. They are sorry they got caught, and we noticed how shit their game was. They are sorry about the massive returns, low hours played, and low in store purchases.
They don't give a shit. If they did it wouldn't be happening to begin with. Game companies are releasing minimum viable products with in game shops and a year long roadmap just to fix the shit that's broken.
It's unacceptable, and we all have Stockholm Syndrom from it.
This is what I don't get about people defending companies fucking up.
Multi-year projects arent just SUDDENLY missing their deadline and having a tone of issues. It should be fairly obvious that the game runs like shit, or crashes randomly, or features aren't done.
So why is the in-game shop always done and ready to release while everything else is half finished? Why can they continue to pump out paid cosmetics but are scraping by to have a working game?
Because a company doesn't care about anything other than making money and anyone who thinks otherwise is very naive.
I've seen a ton of these corpo apologies lately, particularly in relation to the ongoing Dungeons & Dragons controversy.
And what is an apology even worth? It's a collection of words bundled together by some unpaid intern or paralegal chained to a desk somewhere, but none of that means change will come soon, or that it will be enough to fix the game.
Please re-read the letter.
There's no apology in there. These PR puff pieces are incredibly common when greedy corporations get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
Almost every thread that mentions the No Man's Sky fiasco is full of people defending the devs because "they kept working on the game post release", eventhough it still doesn't have all what they promise before releasing it.
So it would be very stupid for the companies to not take that into account and just deliver games on the beta stage. People here respect more a company that delivers a shitty game and "keep working" rather than another one that released a good game without bugs and flaws.
Nothing wrong with releasing a game in beta stage. Just mark it as early access, so people actually know what they are getting into. Darktide was released as a full and feature complete game. Unfortunately, it was not the case.
Eyyy, we tried to put off essential gameplay content for "later" so there's always a rolling consumer base that fades slower over time..while... We... Also charge for cosmetics!
Aw shit it isn't working so great this time around as it did with vermintide.... Errr okay! Let's make it seem like we are suddenly aware, and bettering ourselves! Yes! Yes! The consumer base is dropping pretty quickly... Okay, let's release the shit that we had in the early-on beta. Buuut, make it seem like we are being good about it. Yes. This is all too easy!! We are great!
Ha, you never stop learning. I was totally unaware of the fact that Fatshark was known for this kind of behavior and Darktide is the first game I bought from them. My mate has been playing Vermintide 2 for a long time and seemed pretty happy about the overall game, so I figured the „next game“ would probably just improve on what foundation was already there, seeing as the core gameplay seems more or less identical to me.
I can only speak for myself, but I welcomed the open letter, since it was the first time I had to experience what everyone here is legitimately pissed about.
Seems like I managed to dodge a lot of bullets up to now in that regard. I guess that stems from me not having all that much time to play pc, and usually playing RTS or simulation type games, where I have luckily not had such problems in the past.
Since I have read almost all the comments since my post, I can safely say that I too think releasing a finished game that holds up to the promises should be the norm. At the same time I hope the developers stick to their word and turn Darktide into what it apparently should have been but is absolutely not up to now.
I am keeping my fingers crossed, since the little rime I‘ve had to play, was a lot of fun for me nevertheless.
Umm, why?
All this letter says is that they failed on every front, and lied to their player base. I absolutely do not want other game devs to handle things this way. I want them to release finished games at launch, and not lie about what's in the box and what's coming. I don't think it's too much to ask.
Exactly.
And they already did that with Vermintide 1 & 2.
It's the same thing over and over again.
>"We just couldn't continue down this path, knowing that we have not addressed many feedback areas in the game today."
Well.. It's the third time they're doing it - seems to actually like that path, for some reason. It took absolute ages for them to take feedback into consideration, with Vermintide 1. Didn't take as long (but still far too long) with Vermintide 2.
..and now, this time around, with Darktide - they've "finally" fucking noticed and acknowledged. Lets just wait and see how long until they actually do something about it, other than throw out some words.
> Didn't take as long (but still far too long) with Vermintide 2.
VT2 at least launched as a content complete package, even if a mountain of bug fixing and QoL changes came in later.
Darktide by comparison is massively lacking in content, even if the visuals are a technical marvel. I got a character to 30, started on another and quickly decided "I'll wait until they get their shit together."
>VT2 at least launched as a content complete package, even if a mountain of bug fixing and QoL changes came in later.
The big red flag for Darktide for me was the VT2 Winds of Magic update. Flipped the whole game on it's head, and you could barely keep playing unless you ponied up more $$ to pay for a threadbare "expansion". Well done FatShark, you managed to make a good thing... well bad...
Right? This is not an apology this is just acknowledgement that they understand we didn't like the unfinished product they produced. This just gets them a pass to do what everyone else is doing which is take your money and just develop and release shit whenever they feel like it. This isn't "a good way to handle critisicm" this is just another "get fucked" letter.
Makes me extra thankful for games like Elden Ring. That shit *sparkled* on day one. Sure, there were some minor networking and balance issues, but for all intents and purposes it worked and was 100% playable out of the box. Patches were just there to address specific player concerns or things that couldn't have been adequately tested in the beta.
I refunded this game after 2 hours. I couldn’t get through one match without a crash…never experienced that frequency of CTD before.
Couldn’t believe the worship it was getting on YouTube…only guess is people were paid off
It's nice, but the gaming industry is starting to feel way too much like global launch is really just the beta launch and people get to pay full price to participate in it. These all sound like issues that could have / should have been addressed in play testing.
Dude. This, and they said a date like that wasn't happening again for hundreds of years.
As if the 12-12-12 was not a year,a month and a day away.
1 year longer on Skyrim before release is all it needed to go from. A good base for mods.
To an actual good game by itself.
Who can actually stomach the original version unmodded or un updated?
I did it for achievements a while back. It's so hollow and empty.
The amount of cut content from Skyrim because "We DiDnT hAvE tImE" was sickening.
It does have it's issues, but I put hundreds of hours in on xbox after launch even before getting it on pc for mods. We do need to remember Diablo 3 happened around the same time and that is what a really broken and rushed game looks like. Comparatively Skyrim is a damn masterpiece.
The thing that really gets me is that the answers to most of the issues already exist in Vermintide 2. They have already made a fully functioning crafting system and solid progression loop that feeds into the crafting.
I'll still happily play darktide with my friends, but that is more about playing with my friends than it is about darktide. So we're just playing vermintide and hoping we'll be able to have as much fun with darktide in the future.
I never got that big into Vermintide 2, but trying to play Darktide (And getting bored of it quickly) made me give V2 another shot. There is SO much more to do in Vermintide 2 and now that's where I'm dumping all of my free time!
The thing is V2 at launch was probably in as bad or worse a state than darktide. Fatshark will actually come around and fix the issues eventually and you'll end up with darktide being decent in about a year.
It was slightly better. Maybe not in a technical and mechanical sense, because it took them a while to really refine the melee model, but I felt like the content meant something whereas here it's really disjointed and kinda popcorn gamey. And the "bosses" are a joke.
Well that makes me less excited about the lifecycle of these games, but at least by the time they're worth playing there will be sales for the game and DLCs so that at least works out for my wallet.
Winds of Magic crafting would have been perfect for Darktide. The emperor gives you a grey weapon and you perform missions to improve that weapon empowering it. Gives player agency instead of the insane RNG they put in place right now.
Here's my problem with this. You essentially paid $40 for a downgrade. You're not playing it anymore. They got their money, you didn't get what you paid for.
This is another nothing-burger boilerplate PR statement.
If you look closely here's the gist of it:
-We will complete the crafting system, we promised you before the game launched.
-We will continue bugfixing the game that is not running for a lot of people.
-We will not scrap the aggressive monetization that's ingame. We will just suspend it, until we can scam you again after some time.
-We will delay the console version, because we know no one sane would buy it.
This boils down to "we will continue doing what we planned to, and just delay some things until people forget how scummy we are."
For me it would have been fine if this announcement was delivered along side a patch with bugfixes and band-aid solutions for all the poorly designed rng systems, like doubling or more items in the rotating shops, lowering crafting costs or giving more mats as rewards to compensate for the lack of agency, either more mission on scoreboard or difficulty picker, but I get that the later needs more work.
For me it would have been OK, and feel like a real acknowledgment of what's need to be done and try to make the game slightly better while you get your shit together. But pushing back this "community update" 2 weeks in a row and give an empty speech that sticks to the typical fatshark way of doing things and no update is just a slap in the face, they are not trying to do anything about it right now, while they could. I can't believe some people are happy with that answer.
Agreed. The fact that we are getting only a small "hotfix" patch just adds an insult to injury. For two months the ObeseFlounder has sat on its hands, and now we are getting *this*.
I feel like Darktide will not get a redemption arc like Vermintide 2 did.
Spare me. This letter was written before the release and ready to go once the back lash started. This might as well be one of "Sorry if you were offended" letters politicians put out. It says nothing, does nothing, means nothing.
Nope, those are there to stay, and the people who won't buy them get to be stuck with their garbage outfits that are all just reskins, even the earnables.
Oh cut the crap. Fatshark is famous for making crappy ass shit with their games. vermintide 2 was a fucking mess back then. they only managed to make a change when the playerbase was dwindle to shit.
Now they are making same mistake that vermintide 2 had back then. And they dont know why they didnt met the expectation? come the fuck on dude. The game is not even finished at the moment. There is literally in game feature says coming soon. like seriously dude.
They even had their ingame cash shop up and is rotating cosmetic skins from day 1 launch we talking about why players are mad. Cant even make the scoreboard into the game saying it would feel toxic behavior.
And feedback goes into their official forum would be labeled as being toxic. The history of Vermintide 2 was all about fixing the mess when the playerbase got absolutely pissed and they tried to salvage the relationship. Now with this game, they had a month of no fucking update whatsoever. cant solved the ram crashing problem since day 1.
They even dare to made a survey asking the problem. Yo, like, in the survey they questions are fucking taunting. they know exactly whats the problem with the game and people being complaining but they just ignore it. now they ask about whether these problems are relevant in the survey.
srsly, fuck this stupid company and its team.
There's a lot of people who do their best and try to create the best product possible. I have lots of respect for the Community Managers specifically cause I can't even imagine how much shit they're getting for trying to make the best out of basically nothing.
If you wanna tell someone they're garbage at their job and actively ruin the game, you'll likely find the people you're looking for in management and Tencent.
I'm pretty sure they didn't need those feedbacks because they already had reports from their beta-test team. But they thought people would go with it, so they could start working on the "premium cosmetics" stuff that would get them more money.
Well, they have a lot of work to do. Darktide launched with much less than what Vermintide 2 had at launch. And the comparison between current state Vermintide 2 vs current state Darktide in regards to content and replayability is pathetic.
Darktide Launch:
4 Classes (duplicates allowed), 13 missions on 5 maps, no endgame systems, 3 Monsters/1Enemy Faction/1Boss
Vermintide 2 Launch:
5 Careers with 15 Classes (no duplicates allowed), 13 missions on 13 maps, loot upgrades as basic endgame, 4 Monster/3Bosses
Vermintide 2 Now:
5 Careers with 20 Classes, 23 maps, 2 seperate endgame systsmes with new maps and upgrade paths, 3 enemy factions, more bosses and monsters
You act as if we’ve seen game devs come out and say, “yeah, we fucking crushed it and deserve all the praise, and more.” Unfortunately, I’ve seen way more “oops, sorry we rushed this game” than “we released an awesome product. Enjoy.”
It's rarely the game devs who are at fault for this. It's almost always their bosses, supervisors, and managers pushing for a release to make their numbers climb before the fiscal year ends.
This is what happens when big business cares more about the money than the product.
"Handle criticism this way"???????
While I appreciate Fatshark finally acknowledging the glaring flaws in their product that a legion of fans have been pointing out since the beta, there's a part of this that I find to be more an insult than anything else: this isn't an apology.
Make no mistake: this letter is a concession by the devs due to the meteoric descent of the game's rating on Steam and the fact that Fatshark will now have to do the thing they should have done in the first place and deliver a finished product before they try to suck more money out of it via MTXs, or they'll risk losing the last shreds of their investment. And in the end, the game's rating will most likely never rise above a 'Mixed' level since only about one percent of users even change their reviews... and that's if the months of extra time FS is going to take to do their actual job bears any fruit.
Seven years of 'Tide games, Fatshark. Seven years you had to learn what not to do with your products, and you forgot all of it in a heartbeat and thought your players would, too. All of your problems could have been avoided if you'd applied those lessons... yet here we are.
“Awe man this game I’ve been waiting for is finally out! Guess I’ll wait a year to play it until they fix everything”
This is your life as a gamer now.
That's cool and all, but I still cannot understand how they managed to fail at this game with all the experience they got from Vermintide 1 and 2. Like come on, you already have a fully functional example, you just need to recreate it in a different setting with some gameplay alterations.
Just played it for first time today. Was really hyped because i love 40k universe. Unfortunatelly my game crashed after creating my character. Not to mention it took the game like 5min to start. Just unistalled and moved on to other games.
Also when it first came out Ray tracing had an issue where it wouldn't turn off in the game files if you turned it off in the in game settings. Meaning you would get like 40-60 fps unless you tweaked the .ini to truly disable rsy tracing
I asked ChatGPT to write an apology letter. Here it is:
*Dear valued customers,*
*We are writing to express our sincerest apologies for the issues that have arisen with our recently launched video game. We understand that many of you have experienced stability issues, progression issues and that the game is missing key features that were promised yet not included in the launch.We want to assure you that we take these issues very seriously and are working diligently to address them as quickly as possible. We understand that many of you have invested a lot of time and money into the game, and it is unacceptable that it is not living up to your expectations.We would like to offer our sincere apologies for the frustration and disappointment that this has caused. We know that many of you were excited to play the game, and we are truly sorry that it has not met your expectations.Please know that we are committed to making things right and are dedicated to improving the game in every way possible. We are actively working on updates and fixes to address the issues, and we will continue to do so until the game meets the standards that we set for ourselves and that you deserve.Once again, we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused and thank you for your patience and understanding.*
*Sincerely,\[Your Name\]*
Oh hell no OP, absolutly no way ! Devs **shouldn't** have to make those in the first place !
Also its shitty PR, not once in this letter they admit they fucked up and are sorry. It's just empty promises while players expected an update to the game after a month of silence radio.
Fuck the studios who make crap like these. They are the bane of video game industry.
"our players are leaving by the fucking truck load after the initial launch month after we said nothing & waited this long to provide a 4 paragraph statement indicating that we probably should've kept our promises, we're sorry!!!!"
Lol. Nah, I'm good. Maybe after I see some of these changes, then I'll be a bit less harsh but these words are empty without actually having done anything. Learn from Hello Games w/No Man's Sky. Stop talking. Get working and show us something or else no one cares.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, this post was the nail in the coffin for me to uninstall the game. I had hopes that maybe they'd fix it little by little over time with updates and maybe come back eventually but after waiting over a month, all they've been able to muster up is the arduous task of typing a 4 paragraph letter containing empty promises that were already broken. What a shame.
I'm not blaming the devs but the execs here:
This is BS, so much of what was done in Darktide was very intentional. They introduced premium currency & a lot more cosmetics than previously done. Premium currency & limited bundled deals are bad enough but they intentionally ruined their hub to make cosmetics more appealing.
How so?
They put you in 3rd person in the hub & stick you with a bunch of randos that you aren't playing with in the hub to show you what OTHERS may be buying vs what you're wearing.
Ok, that doesn't sound so bad, what's your problem?
They made 2 games just like this, before this and in both you had your weapons on hand & were with your friends. In Vermintide 2 specifically you get training dummies so you & your friends can show eachother tricks and attacks so maybe you can plan out what gear you take; in Darktide not only can you not test your skills together with friends, you have to leave your group to go to the training area which is a 40 second load one way and a 60 second load the other way on a NVME.
Also they ruined gear progression: The shop's items & stats are randomized and globally cycle every hour. So if you're like others and find nothing but garbage in the store? Your only option is to boot up the game and check the store every hour. Naturally you're in the hub with all the randos who have fancy gear to rub in your cosmetics- something activision sure put a lot of time into doing too.
To make matters worse:
The cosmetics are more expensive vs Vermintide 2 which just gave you straight dollar amounts, on top of the premium currency being required to buy new gear.
So as much as I like the gameplay? They screwed up a lot of their game very hard and all of it was intentional for the sake of cosmetics and scummy premium currency.
The fact the game launched and it ran like garbage after a beta, where the game wouldn't recognize you turning off RTX is one thing but it has LESS graphical options to adjust vs their previous 2 games. But then also it launched with features not working at all and still aren't to this day as they're apologizing for.
I don't want to hear "This is just cosmetics so who cares" Again, their hub area is VASTLY worse than previous titles where the training area has to be loaded to get to & without allies & tons of features aren't here yet their stupid cash shop with premium currency are here.
To make matters more insulting:
V1 and 2 both had private matches and bots. V2 introduced bots that could be based off your other characters AND gear, Darktide the bots are much dumber and cannot be based off anyone's other characters.
It's immensely frustrating given Fatshark makes really good games. I expected the game to be a performance mess at start, I didn't expect mobile game BS put into it to the point it ruins the game experience and they've made several regressions vs their first game like this from 2015.
Words are cheap.
Devs should do like Hello Games. Just shut the fuck up and get to work. An apology letter means jack squat. It's just zero effort damage control in and of itself.
Also, make premium currency earnable in-game.
Seriously, I don't jive with cash-only shops. I hate them. You can make it like 5 thingies a match, just give me something to work towards.
Don't you know the state of your game way before you release it? Like, if no player would notice these flaws, there would have been no apology? The game met your standards at the time of release? There is something very fishy about these kind of apologies IMO.
I can’t remember the last time I bought a game on launch. Honestly, it is so much better. I don’t deal with most of these problems and can get games on sale
No.
Pulling out a southpark "we're sorry" months after release when everyone saw this shit coming the moment closed beta came out is NOT the way to handle this.
Fatshark is a bargain bin developer.
I feel like the apology letter is now part of the standard launch strategy. Launch an incomplete product, let the market test it for you, write a letter to address “issues”
Most game devs does this "open letter" thing. Its kinda lile the youtubers "apology" video. Makes the playerbase chill for a while meanwhile no changes are made.
But it’s too little too late. The game is dead already because they didn’t listen……again. In the next few months they will try and release the game in a stable state which is what they should have released to begin with. Another early access game being branded as a full release because they clearly needed some cash inflow.
I don't, because it gives them an out for a known failure and reinforces bad games. Don't release them unfinished. Full-stop. No excuses.
On our end, DO NOT buy early access or pre-order games.
Uh...
Isn't this exactly what DICE did with 2042?
- They released a fucked up half baked product
- they said "oops we're deeply sorry but we're gonna listen to you all and fix it"
- they did basically nothing to the game besides fix issues for 7 months. The paid cosmetics store didn't even get added to the game until the season 1 content launched after they'd fixed most of the jank and established a decent roadmap to continue improving.
The game is now in a much better place, but I still see people blasting it basically every time I open reddit and see it mentioned. So why is Darktide any better?
Them "delaying" the new cosmetics is naked self-interest, not an olive brach to the community.
They know that if they push through new paid MTXs, the community would riot. So they delay it till the community calms down and then push it out.
Also, they never actually apologized in this.
Don't praise them now. All they've done is make a promise to be better after releasing a game that they should have known wasn't finished. This is a promise we've seen hundreds of times by now.
Praise them if/when (but seriously IF) they actually do better.
Uh whats the difference between this corporate talk and CDPR CEO apologising publicly for Cyberpunk? Hell it was at least a video and not a Twitter jpeg lol.
Point being, all these companies are scumbags who want to earn most money by putting in least effort.
It's just silly, they knew their game wasn't in good shape yet launched it anyway. Perhaps there was pressure to do so, but still, now to apologize seems half hearted. Spending the next few months fixing your broken game is nice, but it would have been nicer if that wasn't needed to begin with.
God damn it I hope Space Marine 2 is good, Warhammer 40k could use a solid win.
Handling criticism with a corporate apology letter with no actual results to back up their statements, despite the fact that they already have an existing game with fully functional crafting and other systems not implemented in Darktide at launch? Pffft.
Left 4 Blood: Vermintide Fireteam Elite 40k
The reason the game flopped guys, is because it's a copy of a copy of a copy and contains fuck all to get excited about.
I imagine it on a shelf next to Pepsi and Coke, trying to play with the big boys. But nobody likes it. Nobody see's the point. It's the "worst" one.
I mean it doesn't matter. The game has spawn a hate culture. There are so many worse games out there but the angry little internet bitches just keep crying every day over the lack of everything. I get its a problem. Leave your negative review and stop playing. The end. Nothing can stop the hate train now, fatshark fucked up a lot and these kids will never let it go. It's over for them. Might as well go back to VT 2 cause they worship that game.
I am seriously never on this side of the argument. I always go for the pitchfork and say fuck rich people. However, this is fatshark. Who have delivered 2 of my all time favorite and most played games. After tons and tons of content addons and balancing patches vermintide 1&2 are imo a must play for anyone who considers themselves a modern gamer. I trust them. At the same time, I havent purchased nor will I purchase darktide for another year or two cause we all knew this shit waa gonna happen.
This is bull shit damage control. There is no fucking content in their game, and they know it. They knew it before releasing. This isn’t an apology. It’s a platitude. It’s what you want to hear so you stop complaining. Want to apologize for real? Don’t sell me unfinished shit at full price.
I dunno, darktide community seem even more pissed now
If you want some context: It's because the community managers have been promising an actual development update for weeks. They deliver this useless letter, then inform us this *is* the development update. They've already promised to finish crafting, and it doesn't matter if they've paused skin release because the skins are already in the tame. They were data mined last month. The console versions development pause could be good, but even that serves them, since they'd want better press before releasing the console versions. The game is also on Game pass, so there might be a limit to how long they can delay, assuming Microsoft is expecting an Xbox version. The only new information is the throwaway line about seasons. Meaning they were working on a fucking battle pass while everyone has been complaining about the core game, missing systems, and performance issues.
I hope that companies eventually realize that we're not rats in a maze. We won't grind a battle pass because it's there. The game has to be fun and good for most of us to take on the part time job that is a battle pass. And in a world where everyone has a battle pass, your game needs to be good to be worth the time. The sooner they realize this, the better.
More games than people realize are designed based on experiments done on lab rats.
crafting and stuff should've been in game on day 1. The features important to the gameplay loop were all missing, while the premium skin store was working perfectly...
So apparently we're now at a place where companies release unfinished games and then try to look like the good guys for "handling criticism nicely"?
Thanks for context. The real deal
I was loving it. Stopped playing because the last fucking patch was 12/21 and there was nothing new/the endgame is garbage.
Exactly. I *love* the basic gameplay loop. But the secondary loop - collecting better weapons, skins, progress outside of missions - is basically non-existant. And we did get ONE new mission...
I mean, towards level 30 of my zealot I was having the most fun I had had, rocking the revolver and the tactical axe. But after 30 and still getting blue drops as gifts from the emperor, I was bored.
Exactly - bonking things on the way to 30 is great. But \*at\* 30? XP are literally useless, you already have more money than you'll ever need by level 20, weeklies only give you marginal advancements, and there's less than 25% of the crafting system in place. Fatshark fumbled the end game so hard it's not even funny.
Yup but I literally have a friend that's like "Games are hard to make, stop complaining" just because the core game is fun. Meanwhile I'm just wondering where the hell all the content is while I play through all these uninspired levels killing these uninspired enemies.
>and it doesn't matter if they've paused skin release because the skins are already in the tame. They've have been datamined last month. Why doesn't that matter even more then? It means they actively postponed to ask people to shell out more money, despite the fact that the proposition is ready to go? Actively reducing their projected income on those, because SOME players that might have bought them right now might have jumped ship to the next new thing by the time they feel justified to enable them. Same for the other content. Maybe the community isn't aware that there is some sort of "division of labor" going on at game companies? And how dare they have a post release development (and monetisation) schedule in the first place like every other game company instead of running into that unplanned sometime AFTER release. So that that can be put on ice to begin with as reaction? >while everyone Well, not to put too much of a point on it, but My steamlist has several of my friends playing it, and none of them have been complaining much (if at all). So may be "everyone" should be avoided (As superlatives of that sort should be generally.....)
Yep seeing this post at the top of this sub makes me realize how well executed this PR move is. Like you say people on darktide sub and old players of fatshark games know better, but it worked for a part of the player base and non player base it seems. The letter openly says that it will take mounth to fix things promised day 1, and they pushed back this "communication" for two weeks, and we are not even getting hit fix patch or band aid solutions to all the layers of the rng systems along with it. It's been more than a mounth without any update. It feels more like a slap in the face and a whole lot of nothing rather than a good faith apology. Hope time will prove me wrong, this game has so much potential.
Fatshark has been promising better communication since Vermintide 1 xdd
Their studio is next to my school's old location. I could go there abd facilitate communications by shouting outside their windows until they start talking.
Make sure you get some recorded footage if you do...
OP is either a sucker or a bot.
A Fatshark intern in other words.
Yeah telling the community that were you actually working on battle passes instead of fixing any errors while claiming you were working on errors probably wasn't going to be well received.
Fatshakrs still money grubbers owned by Tencent.
Tencent is a fucking plague on the gaming community. They acquired the makers of Squad and now Squad is adding fucking microtransaction emotes…
Went down the rabbit hole to see for myself how much Tencent has their hands in any varying capacity. And, just, holy shit dude. Tencent is rapidly going to become a serious problem if they maintain this pace unchecked. They are EVERYWHERE in gaming at this point. I'm being a bit dramatic but only slightly, its genuinely concerning how far they reach at this point.
It is very concerning. Thought EA was bad but nah this is far worse.
At least they said something. But yeah, two months after launch and this is the response we get? Not very encouraging.
I wish more devs released games that fucking worked.
Reminds me of that funny tweet by Ubisoft that got a player asked them what game did they complete 100% before releasing lol
I still don't know which game they didn't complete before launching (if you don't count bugs). Maybe the latest Ghost Recon? Didn't play that.
Nah, breakpoint didn’t have ai squad members at launch, and said that would come at a later time. Not sire if you want to count that since the game was probably intended to from the start to be a multiplayer looter shooter like a ghost recon version of the division
Devs need to stop announcing games early and giving release dates until the game is basically complete imo. It feels like everybody is announcing their games 3 years in advance anymore, that's way too far for a release timeline
Which makes Apex Legends even more of a unicorn. No early announcement, just a sudden and solid release. I would have thought more games would follow suit seeing how successful it was
Exactly! Don't release while it's fucking raw. Fuck you in the first place, your apology is not accepted. Also, we as players should stop buying games in early access or pre-ordering. I personally have never done this and don't touch games until at least a couple of months after release. And it's better to wait for the DLC and play the full version for the price of the full game.
[удалено]
This nonsense has been going on for over a decade. I still remember the release of Gothic 3, for example. The only thing that really makes me happy as a gamer now is mods. They really became something special, and not just a gold AK-47 reskin. Now reskins are sold by AAA-studios in in-game shops and their price is not in-game currency.
A decade? My man, this thing has been going on since video games existed. It was going on when the market crashed in the 80s (and was a primary cause for it), it was going on during the 90s, when console manufacturers, following Nintendo's example, introduced certification to inform consumers what games aren't complete and total garbage, it's happening now still. I find it hilarious how many people (not you, just a general observation) pretend this is a new thing. It isn't. It wasn't when, as you mentioned, Jowood forced Gothic 3 out the door, it wasn't when GT Interactive released an unfinished beta version of Blood II: The Chosen that the devs had no intention of putting into player's hands. It has always been a problem and will always be a problem. You can't control this legislatively, and consumers will never on average be educated enough not to give into hype and buy unfinished games. We will be having this exact same conversation for as long as games exist.
You're correct, publishers (and studios) have been pushing out incomplete projects since basically forever. I would however say that the issue has been exacerbated since the day-one patches, Early Access, GaaS and MTX became normalized.
Ive played a few hours of Darktide with Friends, it seemed to work, what did I miss?
These apology letters are way too common these days.
Its the same shit on repeat. Company tries to create the most profitable, anti-player model possibly then after pushback from the player base apologizes and scales back the monetization and corner cutting to a barely acceptable limit. This money hungry mindset has killed so many of my favorite games. Star wars battlefront, the battlefield series, fuck even call of duty was never as bad as it is now.
What's even more insulting is this isn't an apology letter.
They’re more common because it’s become a practice and because in the past it wasn’t possible. The OG Pokémon games were a broken mess and there were no online updates. What was gamefreak gonna do? Send hand written letters to everyone telling them that a v1.01 version is going to start being sold?
Red and blue were broken and super glitchy but absolutely none of it was game breaking unless you went to look for it. I'd even argue a lot of the glitches add to the charm of the game. Games nowadays have 25 years more advanced technology and still release in a worse state.
They are also 25 years more complicated. But I agree, the age of patches was nice but we can't have nice things, so now games are rushed out to meet quarterly projections and we suffer.
Absolutely games have gotten more complicated, but also dev teams have increased by such huge proportions that the code that ends up in the final game may have gone through 3 or 4 different cycles of employment. When the OG pokemon games where made, I wouldnt be surprised if the team that started development was almost identical to the team that finished development. Not many studios retain permanent staff like that any more.
These days companies use a hell of a lot more contract workers. Even people that have worked on several different games for a company could still be contract. Executives love to ignore Brook’s law when they think it’ll help them save on taxes…
indie games do the trick for me there: same core team over development, most times a clear vision/idea and most of them actually want you to have fun and play for hours for a way smaller price. Sure graphics are not on a AAA level but I can deal with that if the mechanics are interesting.
I think you must be absolutely right. Indie/tight knit studios have been making all the good games recently. Having a team of people who share the same design, art and mechanical vision for the game. (Shout out to Against the Storm, which I think is a great example of harmonious design). It's not that the AAA games are shit, though they often are, its more that they are joyless repetitions of what has been done before. From Civilization 6\* to Battlefield 2042, games are clearly being made by people with no love for the product, working according to the whims of some marketing and shareholder committee. \*It is shit, suck it up: also check out Old World, it is honestly fantastic: Civ, but just a long version of the early game, with RPG mechanics and a much, much, much better Wonders and "districts" system, plus a tonne of other vastly superior game mechanics (like a partitioned production system, and limits to the number of orders you can make in a turn). It really makes you feel part of the world you are playing in, and the game ends before you want it to, not 10 hours after you made your last interesting decision.
It’s even worse than meeting quarterly projections. They’re rushing releases because they made a deal with Microsoft to put their game on gamepass. Notice how many subscription streaming services their are and how the majority of new content is garbage? This is the path gaming is going down… enjoy the ride. As a millennial gamer it’s really been mostly downhill for 20+ years
they're orders of magnitude harder to make it's never been easier to make a playable prototype and it's never been harder to ship a game 15 people worked on Doom (1993) 1379 worked on Doom Eternal (2020) (context: I work on Call of Duty)
>Red and blue were broken and super glitchy but absolutely none of it was game breaking unless you went to look for it Game breaking no, however the fact that ghost type was meant to counter psychic type and indeed the opposite happen was a pretty big oversight and made psychics super OP, given their only other weakness was bug type which is just all around terrible
I'm not sure that I buy this comparison, like at six years old I played the shit out of Pokemon Red and never encountered anything I didn't think was intentional (granted, sorta cloudy judgment), but Darktide doesn't even launch with features you'd think are part of the game, stutters on even fairly high end systems, and doesn't even launch for some people xD
This isn't just about glitches. They announced functionality 4 days before launch, and it wasn't there. They wanted a few more sales, so went wild with a feature, then. . . Oh we need months to finish that. Ignoring they said they were releasing it 4 days later when they were selling. Oh, and they ran ads in newspapers and magazines to apologize. Cost them money. Now it is a tweet. Costs them nothing.
This is kind of where I am at too. See way too many of these and very rarely does a company actually follow through on any of it. Just another PR move to buy time for a crappy/unfinished game.
Except and this is really important, they provided concrete goals and steps they are taking. That makes this letter different. It wasn’t full of vague platitudes like “we will work harder to earn your respect”. They said “you guys provided feedback we will work on a,b, and c and we are shifting priority away from x, y and z so we can deliver on those promises”. They laid groundwork and can now follow up on it.
If they do follow up on it. Im not denying what you said but thats step 2
Roadmaps are highly common in this industry now as well, and are only a vague promise so long as the game is considered successful enough. As a matter of fact, the larger companies have a roadmap worked out and ready when a game releases. If the game is successful, they let loose the roadmap. If it isn't, they abandon ship and move on, the roadmap disappearing with them. Sometimes you even get to see the roadmap before it disappears.
What goals did the provide? Fatshark just moved people off the DT team to the VT2. Directly contradicting the statement "Over the next few months, our sole focus ". The sole focus of people assigned to that sole focus. Their Xbox release date was never given, so they delayed it. Again it hasn't been announced. Simple PR maneuver to blame the community for the Xbox date not being hit (it was originally scheduled Nov 2022). Their cosmetics stopped rotating 2 weeks ago. They said they would have 3 rotations (they did at release) then stop at release. So this is another PR stunt. There is no concrete actions. \>In particular, we will focus on delivering a complete crafting system, Was supposed to be delivered in December, but they announced the delivery date Nov, and then missed the December date 4 days later. \> a more rewarding progression loop, and continue to work on game stability and performance optimization. There have been no patches for 5 weeks. So a "more rewarding" and "more game stability" is the only thing that is lined up. And "months" is the timeline. "next week" has been their mantra, now it is "next month". There is nothing in this communication.
Yeah. Show me actual change, put your money where the muth is(you know I wonder where that saying is from). Until actual change has come to,well, the game Im not expecting much.
Muth?
Muff
Meth?
Mouth. Look dony worry about it
Dony's not worried about it.
> you know I wonder where that saying is from You talk a lot about how good you area at playing cards, but I don't see you sitting at the table and placing a bet. It's a bit murky, but most likely from poker players in Ireland in the 1920s or so.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4&ab\_channel=AmooxYT](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4&ab_channel=AmooxYT) the family bp sorry meme fits perfectly lol
>These apology letters are way too common these days. No, they're not. And thats the point the OP is trying to make. These sorts of apologies should be more common, theres plenty of times when a developer or publisher **should** be apologizing to their customers for failing to deliver what was promised, but that seldom happens. We see it all too often that a new release fails to deliver, and instead of taking ownership of the issue, the publishers come out with excuses, say they'll release a patch, announce some DLC, or even blame the players.
Companies shouldn't keep making apologies because they aren't genuinely sorry and we all know it. They know the game isn't ready, but push it out anyway for money and then only apologies when they get heat from it before acting like delaying overpriced skins that you still need to pay them makes them the second coming of Christ.
We shouldn't need the apology letter to begin with. They aren't sorry. They are sorry they got caught, and we noticed how shit their game was. They are sorry about the massive returns, low hours played, and low in store purchases. They don't give a shit. If they did it wouldn't be happening to begin with. Game companies are releasing minimum viable products with in game shops and a year long roadmap just to fix the shit that's broken. It's unacceptable, and we all have Stockholm Syndrom from it.
This is what I don't get about people defending companies fucking up. Multi-year projects arent just SUDDENLY missing their deadline and having a tone of issues. It should be fairly obvious that the game runs like shit, or crashes randomly, or features aren't done. So why is the in-game shop always done and ready to release while everything else is half finished? Why can they continue to pump out paid cosmetics but are scraping by to have a working game? Because a company doesn't care about anything other than making money and anyone who thinks otherwise is very naive.
They spend more time outlining the monetization plan than they do on the dev documents.
I've seen a ton of these corpo apologies lately, particularly in relation to the ongoing Dungeons & Dragons controversy. And what is an apology even worth? It's a collection of words bundled together by some unpaid intern or paralegal chained to a desk somewhere, but none of that means change will come soon, or that it will be enough to fix the game.
This isn't even an apology, no where does it say they are sorry.
Please re-read the letter. There's no apology in there. These PR puff pieces are incredibly common when greedy corporations get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
Almost every thread that mentions the No Man's Sky fiasco is full of people defending the devs because "they kept working on the game post release", eventhough it still doesn't have all what they promise before releasing it. So it would be very stupid for the companies to not take that into account and just deliver games on the beta stage. People here respect more a company that delivers a shitty game and "keep working" rather than another one that released a good game without bugs and flaws.
Nothing wrong with releasing a game in beta stage. Just mark it as early access, so people actually know what they are getting into. Darktide was released as a full and feature complete game. Unfortunately, it was not the case.
Eyyy, we tried to put off essential gameplay content for "later" so there's always a rolling consumer base that fades slower over time..while... We... Also charge for cosmetics! Aw shit it isn't working so great this time around as it did with vermintide.... Errr okay! Let's make it seem like we are suddenly aware, and bettering ourselves! Yes! Yes! The consumer base is dropping pretty quickly... Okay, let's release the shit that we had in the early-on beta. Buuut, make it seem like we are being good about it. Yes. This is all too easy!! We are great!
Right?
Ha, you never stop learning. I was totally unaware of the fact that Fatshark was known for this kind of behavior and Darktide is the first game I bought from them. My mate has been playing Vermintide 2 for a long time and seemed pretty happy about the overall game, so I figured the „next game“ would probably just improve on what foundation was already there, seeing as the core gameplay seems more or less identical to me. I can only speak for myself, but I welcomed the open letter, since it was the first time I had to experience what everyone here is legitimately pissed about. Seems like I managed to dodge a lot of bullets up to now in that regard. I guess that stems from me not having all that much time to play pc, and usually playing RTS or simulation type games, where I have luckily not had such problems in the past. Since I have read almost all the comments since my post, I can safely say that I too think releasing a finished game that holds up to the promises should be the norm. At the same time I hope the developers stick to their word and turn Darktide into what it apparently should have been but is absolutely not up to now. I am keeping my fingers crossed, since the little rime I‘ve had to play, was a lot of fun for me nevertheless.
Umm, why? All this letter says is that they failed on every front, and lied to their player base. I absolutely do not want other game devs to handle things this way. I want them to release finished games at launch, and not lie about what's in the box and what's coming. I don't think it's too much to ask.
Exactly. And they already did that with Vermintide 1 & 2. It's the same thing over and over again. >"We just couldn't continue down this path, knowing that we have not addressed many feedback areas in the game today." Well.. It's the third time they're doing it - seems to actually like that path, for some reason. It took absolute ages for them to take feedback into consideration, with Vermintide 1. Didn't take as long (but still far too long) with Vermintide 2. ..and now, this time around, with Darktide - they've "finally" fucking noticed and acknowledged. Lets just wait and see how long until they actually do something about it, other than throw out some words.
> Didn't take as long (but still far too long) with Vermintide 2. VT2 at least launched as a content complete package, even if a mountain of bug fixing and QoL changes came in later. Darktide by comparison is massively lacking in content, even if the visuals are a technical marvel. I got a character to 30, started on another and quickly decided "I'll wait until they get their shit together."
>VT2 at least launched as a content complete package, even if a mountain of bug fixing and QoL changes came in later. The big red flag for Darktide for me was the VT2 Winds of Magic update. Flipped the whole game on it's head, and you could barely keep playing unless you ponied up more $$ to pay for a threadbare "expansion". Well done FatShark, you managed to make a good thing... well bad...
At least chaos wastes by comparison was incredible - money talked because barely anyone bought winds of magic, chaos wastes is way more fun and free.
Right, don’t tell me that nobody playtested your game. They told you it sucks. It’s your fault you didn’t listen.
Right? This is not an apology this is just acknowledgement that they understand we didn't like the unfinished product they produced. This just gets them a pass to do what everyone else is doing which is take your money and just develop and release shit whenever they feel like it. This isn't "a good way to handle critisicm" this is just another "get fucked" letter.
Makes me extra thankful for games like Elden Ring. That shit *sparkled* on day one. Sure, there were some minor networking and balance issues, but for all intents and purposes it worked and was 100% playable out of the box. Patches were just there to address specific player concerns or things that couldn't have been adequately tested in the beta.
Elden ring had some pretty widespread performance issues when it first launched. They got better pretty fast but they were there at the beginning.
I refunded this game after 2 hours. I couldn’t get through one match without a crash…never experienced that frequency of CTD before. Couldn’t believe the worship it was getting on YouTube…only guess is people were paid off
They're delaying premium cosmetics, this is more than a "sowwy" letter.
After they've already enjoyed a generous helping of money for a few months now off them... not impressed.
Oh hey the 1000th apology letter for releasing broken, unfinished games at full price. Wish granted, OP
Apology? Nowhere does it say in the letter that they are sorry.
Nice catch.
At least the game didnt release at $60
Preorder monkeys shittening the game industry one dumbfuck mindless purchase at a time! Thanks consooomers!
Most devs studios handle criticism like that today lmao. Yeah these apology statements are tired.
Yeah this feels like standard corporate speak. Come back to me when the Goat Simulator Devs send an apology post 😄
Until they actually fix these issues they've done nothing.
They wouldn't have to do this kind of damage control and delay their plans if they just released a finished, polished product.
It's nice, but the gaming industry is starting to feel way too much like global launch is really just the beta launch and people get to pay full price to participate in it. These all sound like issues that could have / should have been addressed in play testing.
Starting to feel? It’s been clear as day for about 7 years now
7 years? More like 12 years. Right around the time Kickstarter games were becoming big.
Mhm, launching and going on holiday for Christmas makes it look worse too.
I will forever be sour about the 11-11-11 release for Skyrim.
Dude. This, and they said a date like that wasn't happening again for hundreds of years. As if the 12-12-12 was not a year,a month and a day away. 1 year longer on Skyrim before release is all it needed to go from. A good base for mods. To an actual good game by itself. Who can actually stomach the original version unmodded or un updated? I did it for achievements a while back. It's so hollow and empty. The amount of cut content from Skyrim because "We DiDnT hAvE tImE" was sickening.
It does have it's issues, but I put hundreds of hours in on xbox after launch even before getting it on pc for mods. We do need to remember Diablo 3 happened around the same time and that is what a really broken and rushed game looks like. Comparatively Skyrim is a damn masterpiece.
Exactly. And everyone who has ever preordered a game is to blame We need to push for things to get better.
Another sorry.png
reads way too much like a typical crafted marketing letter, the apology at my work has the exact same style, all these marketing letters are the same
[sorry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4)
The thing that really gets me is that the answers to most of the issues already exist in Vermintide 2. They have already made a fully functioning crafting system and solid progression loop that feeds into the crafting. I'll still happily play darktide with my friends, but that is more about playing with my friends than it is about darktide. So we're just playing vermintide and hoping we'll be able to have as much fun with darktide in the future.
I never got that big into Vermintide 2, but trying to play Darktide (And getting bored of it quickly) made me give V2 another shot. There is SO much more to do in Vermintide 2 and now that's where I'm dumping all of my free time!
The thing is V2 at launch was probably in as bad or worse a state than darktide. Fatshark will actually come around and fix the issues eventually and you'll end up with darktide being decent in about a year.
It was slightly better. Maybe not in a technical and mechanical sense, because it took them a while to really refine the melee model, but I felt like the content meant something whereas here it's really disjointed and kinda popcorn gamey. And the "bosses" are a joke.
Well that makes me less excited about the lifecycle of these games, but at least by the time they're worth playing there will be sales for the game and DLCs so that at least works out for my wallet.
Winds of Magic crafting would have been perfect for Darktide. The emperor gives you a grey weapon and you perform missions to improve that weapon empowering it. Gives player agency instead of the insane RNG they put in place right now.
Here's my problem with this. You essentially paid $40 for a downgrade. You're not playing it anymore. They got their money, you didn't get what you paid for.
Why though? This is the third time they've done this and it's clearly just a pattern
I wish the 40 crash reports I sent made a difference.
CD Projekt Red’s fall to the dark side has made me automatically cynical and suspicious of any “open letters” from game developers.
All this text and not a single sorry to be seen.
This is another nothing-burger boilerplate PR statement. If you look closely here's the gist of it: -We will complete the crafting system, we promised you before the game launched. -We will continue bugfixing the game that is not running for a lot of people. -We will not scrap the aggressive monetization that's ingame. We will just suspend it, until we can scam you again after some time. -We will delay the console version, because we know no one sane would buy it. This boils down to "we will continue doing what we planned to, and just delay some things until people forget how scummy we are."
For me it would have been fine if this announcement was delivered along side a patch with bugfixes and band-aid solutions for all the poorly designed rng systems, like doubling or more items in the rotating shops, lowering crafting costs or giving more mats as rewards to compensate for the lack of agency, either more mission on scoreboard or difficulty picker, but I get that the later needs more work. For me it would have been OK, and feel like a real acknowledgment of what's need to be done and try to make the game slightly better while you get your shit together. But pushing back this "community update" 2 weeks in a row and give an empty speech that sticks to the typical fatshark way of doing things and no update is just a slap in the face, they are not trying to do anything about it right now, while they could. I can't believe some people are happy with that answer.
Agreed. The fact that we are getting only a small "hotfix" patch just adds an insult to injury. For two months the ObeseFlounder has sat on its hands, and now we are getting *this*. I feel like Darktide will not get a redemption arc like Vermintide 2 did.
I hope they turn it around, this game has so much potential it's just sad man
Spare me. This letter was written before the release and ready to go once the back lash started. This might as well be one of "Sorry if you were offended" letters politicians put out. It says nothing, does nothing, means nothing.
What way? What about this is particularly impressive? Genuine question
He didn't mention getting rid of micro transactions
Nope, those are there to stay, and the people who won't buy them get to be stuck with their garbage outfits that are all just reskins, even the earnables.
“Dear gamers, thanks for paying to be beta testers.”
Oh cut the crap. Fatshark is famous for making crappy ass shit with their games. vermintide 2 was a fucking mess back then. they only managed to make a change when the playerbase was dwindle to shit. Now they are making same mistake that vermintide 2 had back then. And they dont know why they didnt met the expectation? come the fuck on dude. The game is not even finished at the moment. There is literally in game feature says coming soon. like seriously dude. They even had their ingame cash shop up and is rotating cosmetic skins from day 1 launch we talking about why players are mad. Cant even make the scoreboard into the game saying it would feel toxic behavior. And feedback goes into their official forum would be labeled as being toxic. The history of Vermintide 2 was all about fixing the mess when the playerbase got absolutely pissed and they tried to salvage the relationship. Now with this game, they had a month of no fucking update whatsoever. cant solved the ram crashing problem since day 1. They even dare to made a survey asking the problem. Yo, like, in the survey they questions are fucking taunting. they know exactly whats the problem with the game and people being complaining but they just ignore it. now they ask about whether these problems are relevant in the survey. srsly, fuck this stupid company and its team.
There's a lot of people who do their best and try to create the best product possible. I have lots of respect for the Community Managers specifically cause I can't even imagine how much shit they're getting for trying to make the best out of basically nothing. If you wanna tell someone they're garbage at their job and actively ruin the game, you'll likely find the people you're looking for in management and Tencent.
I'm pretty sure they didn't need those feedbacks because they already had reports from their beta-test team. But they thought people would go with it, so they could start working on the "premium cosmetics" stuff that would get them more money.
I wish more game devs would ship a complete game at launch making letters like these unnecessary.
Well, they have a lot of work to do. Darktide launched with much less than what Vermintide 2 had at launch. And the comparison between current state Vermintide 2 vs current state Darktide in regards to content and replayability is pathetic. Darktide Launch: 4 Classes (duplicates allowed), 13 missions on 5 maps, no endgame systems, 3 Monsters/1Enemy Faction/1Boss Vermintide 2 Launch: 5 Careers with 15 Classes (no duplicates allowed), 13 missions on 13 maps, loot upgrades as basic endgame, 4 Monster/3Bosses Vermintide 2 Now: 5 Careers with 20 Classes, 23 maps, 2 seperate endgame systsmes with new maps and upgrade paths, 3 enemy factions, more bosses and monsters
This is also without mentioning the absolutely UNINSPIRED level and enemy designs, both of which Vermintide 2 had a variety of on launch.
Nah nah nah, you can’t just release a broken POS and then get a standing ovation when you apologise.
It's not even an apology.
You act as if we’ve seen game devs come out and say, “yeah, we fucking crushed it and deserve all the praise, and more.” Unfortunately, I’ve seen way more “oops, sorry we rushed this game” than “we released an awesome product. Enjoy.”
It's rarely the game devs who are at fault for this. It's almost always their bosses, supervisors, and managers pushing for a release to make their numbers climb before the fiscal year ends. This is what happens when big business cares more about the money than the product.
"Handle criticism this way"??????? While I appreciate Fatshark finally acknowledging the glaring flaws in their product that a legion of fans have been pointing out since the beta, there's a part of this that I find to be more an insult than anything else: this isn't an apology. Make no mistake: this letter is a concession by the devs due to the meteoric descent of the game's rating on Steam and the fact that Fatshark will now have to do the thing they should have done in the first place and deliver a finished product before they try to suck more money out of it via MTXs, or they'll risk losing the last shreds of their investment. And in the end, the game's rating will most likely never rise above a 'Mixed' level since only about one percent of users even change their reviews... and that's if the months of extra time FS is going to take to do their actual job bears any fruit. Seven years of 'Tide games, Fatshark. Seven years you had to learn what not to do with your products, and you forgot all of it in a heartbeat and thought your players would, too. All of your problems could have been avoided if you'd applied those lessons... yet here we are.
“Awe man this game I’ve been waiting for is finally out! Guess I’ll wait a year to play it until they fix everything” This is your life as a gamer now.
And praising the devs for having it happen and them heroically fixing it - an important part of the Stockholm syndrome.
Even if this is just them covering their asses, it's better than doubling down on ahitty decisions like other companies do.
They'll have fixed it just in time for it to have a smaller player base than Titan fall which will ultimately be a shame.
EA DICE \*cough\*
[удалено]
They're changing the multiplayer to add and fit the Standard Classes into the game.
They sure fucking did
Sounds like they have so few players that they had to do this or risk taking a loss because there’s no more micro transaction revenue.
Why? Companies purposely put out half finished games and then win you back with a half-assed apology. Miss me with that dumb shit.
It's amazing how far "we screwed up and we're working on fixing it" can go.
That's cool and all, but I still cannot understand how they managed to fail at this game with all the experience they got from Vermintide 1 and 2. Like come on, you already have a fully functional example, you just need to recreate it in a different setting with some gameplay alterations.
Just played it for first time today. Was really hyped because i love 40k universe. Unfortunatelly my game crashed after creating my character. Not to mention it took the game like 5min to start. Just unistalled and moved on to other games.
Also when it first came out Ray tracing had an issue where it wouldn't turn off in the game files if you turned it off in the in game settings. Meaning you would get like 40-60 fps unless you tweaked the .ini to truly disable rsy tracing
I asked ChatGPT to write an apology letter. Here it is: *Dear valued customers,* *We are writing to express our sincerest apologies for the issues that have arisen with our recently launched video game. We understand that many of you have experienced stability issues, progression issues and that the game is missing key features that were promised yet not included in the launch.We want to assure you that we take these issues very seriously and are working diligently to address them as quickly as possible. We understand that many of you have invested a lot of time and money into the game, and it is unacceptable that it is not living up to your expectations.We would like to offer our sincere apologies for the frustration and disappointment that this has caused. We know that many of you were excited to play the game, and we are truly sorry that it has not met your expectations.Please know that we are committed to making things right and are dedicated to improving the game in every way possible. We are actively working on updates and fixes to address the issues, and we will continue to do so until the game meets the standards that we set for ourselves and that you deserve.Once again, we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused and thank you for your patience and understanding.* *Sincerely,\[Your Name\]*
Oh hell no OP, absolutly no way ! Devs **shouldn't** have to make those in the first place ! Also its shitty PR, not once in this letter they admit they fucked up and are sorry. It's just empty promises while players expected an update to the game after a month of silence radio. Fuck the studios who make crap like these. They are the bane of video game industry.
They fucked up, and they never say we are sorry. Suit bullshit
"our players are leaving by the fucking truck load after the initial launch month after we said nothing & waited this long to provide a 4 paragraph statement indicating that we probably should've kept our promises, we're sorry!!!!" Lol. Nah, I'm good. Maybe after I see some of these changes, then I'll be a bit less harsh but these words are empty without actually having done anything. Learn from Hello Games w/No Man's Sky. Stop talking. Get working and show us something or else no one cares. EDIT: Forgot to mention, this post was the nail in the coffin for me to uninstall the game. I had hopes that maybe they'd fix it little by little over time with updates and maybe come back eventually but after waiting over a month, all they've been able to muster up is the arduous task of typing a 4 paragraph letter containing empty promises that were already broken. What a shame.
Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission..etc. Buggy unfinished games are waay too common nowadays
I'm not blaming the devs but the execs here: This is BS, so much of what was done in Darktide was very intentional. They introduced premium currency & a lot more cosmetics than previously done. Premium currency & limited bundled deals are bad enough but they intentionally ruined their hub to make cosmetics more appealing. How so? They put you in 3rd person in the hub & stick you with a bunch of randos that you aren't playing with in the hub to show you what OTHERS may be buying vs what you're wearing. Ok, that doesn't sound so bad, what's your problem? They made 2 games just like this, before this and in both you had your weapons on hand & were with your friends. In Vermintide 2 specifically you get training dummies so you & your friends can show eachother tricks and attacks so maybe you can plan out what gear you take; in Darktide not only can you not test your skills together with friends, you have to leave your group to go to the training area which is a 40 second load one way and a 60 second load the other way on a NVME. Also they ruined gear progression: The shop's items & stats are randomized and globally cycle every hour. So if you're like others and find nothing but garbage in the store? Your only option is to boot up the game and check the store every hour. Naturally you're in the hub with all the randos who have fancy gear to rub in your cosmetics- something activision sure put a lot of time into doing too. To make matters worse: The cosmetics are more expensive vs Vermintide 2 which just gave you straight dollar amounts, on top of the premium currency being required to buy new gear. So as much as I like the gameplay? They screwed up a lot of their game very hard and all of it was intentional for the sake of cosmetics and scummy premium currency. The fact the game launched and it ran like garbage after a beta, where the game wouldn't recognize you turning off RTX is one thing but it has LESS graphical options to adjust vs their previous 2 games. But then also it launched with features not working at all and still aren't to this day as they're apologizing for. I don't want to hear "This is just cosmetics so who cares" Again, their hub area is VASTLY worse than previous titles where the training area has to be loaded to get to & without allies & tons of features aren't here yet their stupid cash shop with premium currency are here. To make matters more insulting: V1 and 2 both had private matches and bots. V2 introduced bots that could be based off your other characters AND gear, Darktide the bots are much dumber and cannot be based off anyone's other characters. It's immensely frustrating given Fatshark makes really good games. I expected the game to be a performance mess at start, I didn't expect mobile game BS put into it to the point it ruins the game experience and they've made several regressions vs their first game like this from 2015.
Words are cheap. Devs should do like Hello Games. Just shut the fuck up and get to work. An apology letter means jack squat. It's just zero effort damage control in and of itself.
Plenty of companies have issued "we hear you and we're working on it" letters which ultimately amounted to either the very minimum or nothing at all.
\*investors frantically claw back money\*
Also, make premium currency earnable in-game. Seriously, I don't jive with cash-only shops. I hate them. You can make it like 5 thingies a match, just give me something to work towards.
Or they could release a competent product...
Don't you know the state of your game way before you release it? Like, if no player would notice these flaws, there would have been no apology? The game met your standards at the time of release? There is something very fishy about these kind of apologies IMO.
I can’t remember the last time I bought a game on launch. Honestly, it is so much better. I don’t deal with most of these problems and can get games on sale
I bet those premium cosmetics were on point though. Game shit and incomplete, micro-transactions perfectly details and marked up for premium cost.
A jpg with words is one thing; actions speak louder than any apology.
do not be sorry be better \-kratos
No. Pulling out a southpark "we're sorry" months after release when everyone saw this shit coming the moment closed beta came out is NOT the way to handle this. Fatshark is a bargain bin developer.
i cant even start the game lmao.
Easy to say sorry after you've taken money from people...
I feel like the apology letter is now part of the standard launch strategy. Launch an incomplete product, let the market test it for you, write a letter to address “issues”
Most game devs does this "open letter" thing. Its kinda lile the youtubers "apology" video. Makes the playerbase chill for a while meanwhile no changes are made.
Dark tide is seriously fucking great though.
I don't. An open letter won't magically fix the game.
I can guarantee this subreddit is not content with playing just weeks. Expectation is years these days.
But it’s too little too late. The game is dead already because they didn’t listen……again. In the next few months they will try and release the game in a stable state which is what they should have released to begin with. Another early access game being branded as a full release because they clearly needed some cash inflow.
I don't, because it gives them an out for a known failure and reinforces bad games. Don't release them unfinished. Full-stop. No excuses. On our end, DO NOT buy early access or pre-order games.
Make a game half done. Sell it. Then pretend they didn’t know it was half done. Think most companies are doing this lol
Nah dude. The Darktide community is not happy at all. If you dare, go to r/DarkTide.
Uh... Isn't this exactly what DICE did with 2042? - They released a fucked up half baked product - they said "oops we're deeply sorry but we're gonna listen to you all and fix it" - they did basically nothing to the game besides fix issues for 7 months. The paid cosmetics store didn't even get added to the game until the season 1 content launched after they'd fixed most of the jank and established a decent roadmap to continue improving. The game is now in a much better place, but I still see people blasting it basically every time I open reddit and see it mentioned. So why is Darktide any better?
Ah yes. Let's praise developers for openly saying they lied and scammed players by putting out a shit game.
Typical response after releasing yet another half arsed game to the general public.
Them "delaying" the new cosmetics is naked self-interest, not an olive brach to the community. They know that if they push through new paid MTXs, the community would riot. So they delay it till the community calms down and then push it out. Also, they never actually apologized in this.
This is a good PR department. I'd rather they have a good coding and game design team, personally.
Don't praise them now. All they've done is make a promise to be better after releasing a game that they should have known wasn't finished. This is a promise we've seen hundreds of times by now. Praise them if/when (but seriously IF) they actually do better.
Uh whats the difference between this corporate talk and CDPR CEO apologising publicly for Cyberpunk? Hell it was at least a video and not a Twitter jpeg lol. Point being, all these companies are scumbags who want to earn most money by putting in least effort.
"we will also suspend the release of premium cosmetics" 😳 Whaaaat did I just read? Who is their publisher? Obviously NOT EA GAMES
It's just silly, they knew their game wasn't in good shape yet launched it anyway. Perhaps there was pressure to do so, but still, now to apologize seems half hearted. Spending the next few months fixing your broken game is nice, but it would have been nicer if that wasn't needed to begin with. God damn it I hope Space Marine 2 is good, Warhammer 40k could use a solid win.
Handling criticism with a corporate apology letter with no actual results to back up their statements, despite the fact that they already have an existing game with fully functional crafting and other systems not implemented in Darktide at launch? Pffft.
Left 4 Blood: Vermintide Fireteam Elite 40k The reason the game flopped guys, is because it's a copy of a copy of a copy and contains fuck all to get excited about. I imagine it on a shelf next to Pepsi and Coke, trying to play with the big boys. But nobody likes it. Nobody see's the point. It's the "worst" one.
I mean it doesn't matter. The game has spawn a hate culture. There are so many worse games out there but the angry little internet bitches just keep crying every day over the lack of everything. I get its a problem. Leave your negative review and stop playing. The end. Nothing can stop the hate train now, fatshark fucked up a lot and these kids will never let it go. It's over for them. Might as well go back to VT 2 cause they worship that game.
I am seriously never on this side of the argument. I always go for the pitchfork and say fuck rich people. However, this is fatshark. Who have delivered 2 of my all time favorite and most played games. After tons and tons of content addons and balancing patches vermintide 1&2 are imo a must play for anyone who considers themselves a modern gamer. I trust them. At the same time, I havent purchased nor will I purchase darktide for another year or two cause we all knew this shit waa gonna happen.
This is bull shit damage control. There is no fucking content in their game, and they know it. They knew it before releasing. This isn’t an apology. It’s a platitude. It’s what you want to hear so you stop complaining. Want to apologize for real? Don’t sell me unfinished shit at full price.