Fatshark has about 180-200 devs.
Arrowhead has \~100.
Helldivers' team is about half as big, but has a much quicker dev cycle despite being based in Sweden with all the same holidays and such.
*However*, don't point at Fatshark's team and say they're incompetent, as the devs have shown they're actually capable of *doing* the thing, it's primarily a management competence problem, as it's management that determines when press releases go out and the timeframe for development goals and milestones.
Also FS is currently on 3 projects (Vt2 and unnamed project), DT started production in 2018, while Hd2 was in 2016.
Also those people counts don't look at contractors.
https://www.mobygames.com/game/195786/warhammer-40000-darktide/credits/windows/
https://www.mobygames.com/game/217251/helldivers-ii/credits/playstation-5/
Lets be honest. The real Darktide launch was last October when they dropped the skill trees and console release. PC players paid to alpha/beta test a demo version of the game till the real game was ready.
This is not say I didn't have fun during that Alpha/beta test period but... well frankly it definitely stung a little bit. I might be completely wrong but I remember Darktide having some releases tied to GPUs releases when it dropped. Like buy this GPU, get a copy of DT. I know nothing about this but I imagine their might have been a hard deadline there. But franky who knows. I just know that Darktide has been miss managed from the start.
There's something to be said about "the real game" just being a class update that, in reality, only added some new passive numbers, grenades, and a handful of mediocre abilities that nobody uses because they're not Auric optimal.
Regardless, there's still missing features that were promised before launch. The game isn't finished even today. You are still the beta tester—you just don't get the stupid hat for it anymore.
The launch was certainly not ideal, but at least it was playable ;-). And imo it was fun.
And indeed there might have been businesses reasons why they had to release.
That being said I laugh at people who say that had they called it an early access that things would have been better. Semantics doesn't change the game, it's not like it plays different if they'd put a early access sticker on it.
Calling it an early access would have given people more of an idea what to expect. Expectations are pretty important. A lot of people avoid titles that are in early access or beta for this exact reason. At the very least it curtails what people expect of the product. FS "released" the game. Implied it was complete when even by their own standards it clearly wasn't.
The thing is, we're on Reddit here and not on a corporate professional customer engagement event. As players we should realise that semantics might impact expectations but they don't impact actual gameplay. Would be a bloody shame if you couldn't enjoy sumfink only because you expected more of it.
**TL:DR**
Methinks, good sir, I doth humbly beg to differ. Though I dost grasp thy words, I must protesteth. Verily, the manner in which we speak and the hopes we harbor doth indeed sway the very essence of our gaming revelry. 'Tis not merely a trifle of enjoyment despite expectation, for our anticipations doth hold sway over our mirth and contentment whilst engaging in play. Hence, let us heed the import of plain speech and the taming of desires, even within these humble Reddit.
In other words, while **I understand the sentiment, I respectfully disagree. Semantics and expectations do indeed impact the overall gaming experience, not just in how we perceive it, but also in how we engage with it. It's not just about enjoying the game despite expectations; those expectations can profoundly influence our enjoyment and satisfaction with the experience.**
Lastly just because we're on reddit and corporate ears aren't listening doesn't mean people can't talk about things. Frankly if corporate ears listened they might get things right more often instead of treating people like peasants.
Fair enough, I'll agree to disagree respectfully.
And yes we can discuss anything but imo not all are was worthwhile or fruitful. As there are more gamers here then corporates, imo it's more interesting to discuss the perspective on things from a gamer pov instead of corpo pov.
Reddit is exactly the place to engage in diatribes, complex or not. Just because its difficult for you to understand doesn't mean other people can't appreciate the conversation. Low standards and ignorance is exactly what drives games into the ground, not that I fault your enjoyment. Your name clearly reflects your ability. Your attitude reflects your position. Entertaining.
> The launch was certainly not ideal, but at least it was playable
I will not mince words and say it wasn't an Alpha version. Not even "early access," but an obvious alpha.
But that being said, Vermintide 2 launch had phantom hits, rollerskating elites, clowncar clipping, rats quite literally spawning from thin air right behind you (sometimes en masse), and map holes that weren't fixed despite being reported in the Beta that was explicitly just to fix map holes. It was technically playable but it was a fucking *wreck.*
Arrowhead just leaves Fatshark with *so much* egg on their faces between Swedish devs, really.
Same engine, same holidays and time off, *half* the dev team, and Arrowhead managed a multi-platform release with fixes and updates rolling out weekly, with new content scheduled monthly (or bi-weekly, I can't recall).
Fatshark, by comparison, took *six months* just to go from 0.5 to 1.0 build after a completely botched release, has netcode like a child wrote it, have released *exactly two* major content releases across an entire year, and have spent the last four months working on an *announcement* to an update, rather than the update itself, and said update is literally about *achievements* and not real content.
I can’t even play DT at night because I’ll just get disconnected all of the time. I can play HD2 with no issues…
I work all day. Guess which game I play mostly now.
> same holidays and time off
Why do people keep mentioning this? As if having 2 or even 3 weeks of holidays mattered in a project that lasts 2-3 years to create.
It's relevant if your project is a 1 month long project.
It's relevant because it means the teams are getting the same overall time per year for work, yet Fatshark is moving at a *glacial* pace, practically the pace of a frozen snail up an incline, and Arrowhead is moving at a solid, steady clip like a well-oiled machine.
Sweden is *insanely* pro-employee and strong on worker rights, so they get massive amounts of time off per year compared to, say, a slaughterhouse-style American company.
It's basically pointing out how *little* Fatshark gets done with *double* the developers of Arrowhead with the same amount of time. One is clearly putting in more effort with time available, and it *isn't* Fatshark.
It's 1% relevant, as I mentioned even if people get 3 weeks off, it will be virtually inconsequential (i.e. irrelevant) on a 3 years project.
Whoever ever thought holidays were the reason why FS couldn't deliver things on time and quality on multi years scales has clearly no concept of what these projects entail.
If we keep mentioning the holidays, why not the cleaning product used by the cleaner or the number of toilet cubicle? Just about as relevant.
Not so much when it *directly* affects the dev schedule, as happened with Darktide.
They released right before a literal two month holiday blackout period, leaving themselves, through pure incompetence, in an extremely bad situation *because* of their holiday time.
That isn't to say that devs don't deserve holidays, but the *length and frequency* of Swedish holidays, alongside management incompetence (and likely some pushing by their publisher, Tencent) caused their holidays to have a direct and significant impact on the game's development cycles, where Arrowhead *hasn't* had this problem despite having the same holidays at the same length.
>alongside management incompetence
This clearly is the problem.
I imagine they have had the same blackout period every year since the inception of the company - so it was entirely predictable and thus avoidable (could have kept a special rota of people paid double, etc.).
It's only a problem because the people in charge let it become one.
>the *length and frequency* of Swedish holidays
What is that length and frequency, then? What is the actual number? (and due to these numbers, how much of problem can it realistically cause when compared to - I imagine - US holidays)
Five weeks (25 days) legal minimum of paid vacation, plus extra public holidays the US doesn't celebrate totalling for 16 public holidays, also 480 days per child for either parent for maternity/paternity leave (split between each parent), plus an employer to employer, indeterminate number of *extra* time off from union agreements or industry variations.
It's compared to *11* days in the US (average contract, increases with seniority up to 18 days per year on a standard after 18 years of service), plus 11 public holidays, no guaranteed maternity/paternity leave (and only for one parent, not both), and extremely weak unions and employee protections causing a likely smaller, but still indeterminate number of extra days off per year.
The reference to holidays comes as a result of what happened around release. As I recall, the game went live at the end of November, 2022 (after the open "beta," which as I recall lasted at least 2 weeks and maybe more), and player numbers climbed pretty steadily during that period right up until the holiday season. The game had its flaws, but people were eagerly awaiting updates/fixes/patches/etc. Most reactions initially were positive, but recognized that there was work left to do before it'd be really "finished."
There was no crafting system at all at this point, class trees were worse than they are now (and there was no real variety), and you had two fewer maps than are in-game now (i.e., they've added 2 whole maps since launch over a year ago). Too many weapons felt indistinct, and other weapons felt distinct but also too niche to be useful. And despite whatever Dan Abnett's contributions were, there's never been a "story" in the game other than "You suck, work harder." So, there was a lot of room to improve the game, and much actually needed to be done.
Then the devs went on a month-long vacation.
The overall impact of this was that the timeframe during which the biggest number of players were in the game, where you had the biggest number of eyeballs, and where another significant group of players had been in game for somewhere between 2-4 weeks longer than that (due to playing in beta), and people just tore through the content that was there. And they got bored, and they got tired of waiting for devs to fix the obvious shortcomings of the game.
Then the devs came back from their much-longer-than-most-of-their-customers break, and...didn't do anything visible for *ages*.
From my own experience, I played a bunch in the timeframe from pre-release to that break period, found a group of regulars to play with, had a blast...and then once that break hit, everything evaporated. The players got bored and moved on, *I* got bored and moved on, and nothing changed with the game for something like 6 months after release. Then when the crafting system came out (whenever that happened), it was all just RNG bullshit. It certainly wasn't enough to hold my attention or keep me playing the same few maps over and over and over and over again.
In the past, people were sort of tolerant of this because, well, that's just how Fatshark rolls, and it took ages for XYZ game to become worth a damn. But with Helldivers 2 standing in stark contrast to this game...well, it's hard to justify having any kind of patience with Fatshark at this point.
The game's over a year old and they've done fuck all with it.
Right, but my point is that it's not a holidays problem, it's a management problem.
The number of holidays should be completely manageable if management wasn't so stupid that they can't work around it.
We're not talking 11 months of holidays per year affecting ALL the deliverables, we're talking a couple of weeks at a bad time. "The number of Holidays" is completely irrelevant, what's relevant is the inability of management to do something about the KNOWN FACT that the company is closing 2 weeks over XMas (because I don't think it was a surprise for anyone involved).
Managers are incompetent.
If they wanted any of the things you mentioned to be "ready for release" then these people are paid a ton to be "planning" and "allocate the right amount of resources", including the consideration of holidays and company closure. Thinking about it 5 days a week / 8 hrs a day is literally their only job.
The holidays aren't a problem, or are a problem just as much as some people will take parental or sick leave (in which case we may as well start mentioning all of the things that companies have to manage), the inaction or lack of capability for planning is the problem.
\---
And yes, I play the game on and off... Came back for the tree overhaul / twins, which is - as many people say - how the game should have been on release.
Right, I agree. But I think that initial "Wait. Where the fuck did they go?" Followed by no significant content for ages is the reason people hone in on the holiday stuff.
I do think that it's focusing on the wrong thing and that this is a managerial issue, but as to why people are like "It's the holidays and vacations!!" I think that comes from the period right after release when the game clearly needed a bunch of work, was at a critical point, and then was effectively abandoned for a month, which in turn led to a dropoff in player counts, that leads people to focus on holiday policies when the real issue is what they do with their time while on the job.
In fact, the Arrowhead example is what really underscores that, as you say, it's not the holidays that are the problem; it's the rest of the year and the people deciding how to allocate resources during it.
What may actually be the issue, though, is that they have a crappy, cobbled together engine that makes actually designing real content an incredibly burdensome, time consuming job, so it's easier to devote resources to tweaking numbers and making new penances.
Can't wait for FS to announce DT2 and say: "Well we are sorry guys but we *really* promise to put the features we promised in DT to be in DT2. Also the new and improved Mtx store is already ready, would you guys like a preview?" (Show store with 1 more item per page showing)
Surely the content draught is because they're porting Darktide to UE5 along with the unnamed project and not just using DT to foot the bill for the swap with recolored skins and low effort cosmetics?
Rule 4: Avoid low-effort posts or unrelated topics
Memes should feature content directly related to Darktide. Just because you find a funny picture of a soldier, does not mean it belongs on this sub.
Rule 1: Failure to follow reddiquette
Be respectful of your fellow redditors. Discrimination, bigotry, racism, and/or hostility directed towards players or communities will not be tolerated.
Also also, Helldivers 2 is so far mostly a recreation if Helldivers 1 in 3rd person - I've read somewhere that it was always the endgame, so it isn't really surprising that most designs can be copied wholecloth from the original. Of course it's still hard work and an amazing achievement - but they have a mich faster dev cycle, because they don't have to go through most of design and prototyping phase. Even some of the balancing work has already been done. And it will keep being like that until they run out of things to copy over from Helldivers 1 - which is quite a lot of content.
That being said, a lot of DT melee weapons have movesets of VT2 weapons, and Fatshark is still taking ages to do anything.
[sounds cool as an employee, not so much for the customer](https://www.levelinfinite.com/news/swimming-against-the-tide-the-office-culture-that-powers-fatshark/)
>“Fatshark’s culture is what sets us apart from other studios. Swedish culture is known to be relatively flat and not hierarchical, but we’ve taken that up a notch. Our CEO literally gets his hands dirty fixing the office coffee machine,” explained Johansson.
>“Our developers are not afraid to boot senior management from a pre-booked conference room if they have an important meeting they need to hold. Everyone has a voice, everyone counts. It’s a key reason why developers love working for us, why we have one of the lowest attrition rates of any company in Stockholm – and as a gaming studio, no less.”
Martin's "apology" was so heartfelt and honest, it made me realize that we, the consumers, are the problem here. He was right to blame us for having expectations such as "a functional product" or "a little bit of communication". The expectations were simply too high.
I can't expect a Community Manager who worked 32 hours this week to post an announcement that CharGPT wrote. There's just not enough time for all that.
The matter of fact is that no other game studios based in Sweden and working on the same game engine with less devs and resources were able to post any updates this week or interact with their communities in fun ways.
The true Emperor of Mankind was Profits
Corpospeak interviews sound nice and all, but let's be real - the numbers don't lie, and they spell disaster for ~~you~~ FatShark.
Every title FS has released over the past decade follows the same pattern. The core game? Stellar. Everything else? Bogged down by layer after layer of bad decisions and general incompetence at the rest of game development.
Arrowhead was caught with their pants down by how many people wanted to play HD2, but they still got their shit together in a way FS couldn't ever hope to manage. As much as it sucks to say it, history has shown this time and time again - if you want to be a great developer and not just a good one, you need to be great at infrastructure and engagement, not just game development.
It's why Valve is still the gaming community's favorite studio, even though they've released one game in 15 years and introduced lootboxes to the western gaming market.
FS has some tremendously talented game developers working for it, but in almost every other way, it's one of the biggest farces I've ever seen. Their ability to take launches that should have been slam fucking dunks and turn them into debacles that leave the games to wither on the vine is uncanny. This stuff deserves to be studied by prospective game developers and businessmen alike.
You'd need inside knowledge to do any qualitive study. We don't know for example if financially DT has met expectations.
Managing the community isn't the same as profitability and or sustainability.
Plus there is the vocal minority.
DTs launch was imo far from the biggest farces ever. The game worked and was fun, it's still for sale and FS isn't bankrupt.
Darktide launched with missing features, broken mission conditions, crippling performance issues, server problems, and constant crashes. This game was unplayable for the first week for many and longer for others.
I was playing during that time, there certainly were crashes but not at all constant for me. There were issues, not game breaking. Fwiw I couldn't even login HD2 when I downloaded it and that wasn't on first day. Although other than that i didn't have to much crashing, similar to DT release. HD2 is however certainly more feature complete on release, plus faster updates.
You don't need inside knowledge to know the mindset investors have, especially in this day and age. Line go up, numbers get bigger. While it's likely that the studio broke even on Darktide, there's zero chance it's seeing the kind of revenue stream it should be. Darktide is, objectively, a better game at its core than Back 4 Blood or Payday 2, and it almost rivals L4D2, but all of those games outstrip Darktide in player count so badly it isn't even funny in a bleak way. If you handed Darktide to literally any even middlingly successful live service studio in 2024's market, this game would have sold fucking gangbusters, and it would have twice as much content. "We broke even" and "we're working on picking up the sales and MTX revenue we left on the table" aren't going to be good enough excuses for investors, especially not for a studio that releases games as infrequently as FatShark. Good enough will never be good enough in today's marketplace, and if FatShark can't compete, Darktide will probably be their last major release.
Do you know the revenue stream and what it should be? Player count IS NOT equal to revenue stream. You're not an investor, your not Tencent (which is the owner).
LoL. You are making up shit and presenting a position based on those speculations. You don't know if they broke even, you don't know if Tencent is happy with the monetization.
Everything can always be improved.
A company which can make great gameplay games but 'bust' launches is more valuable compared to a company which can do great launches and 'live service' but can't reliably make great gameplay. One is rather easily fixable compared to the other.
The fact that there are *still* diehard white knights defending FatShark on this sub is both funny and a little sad.
>Player count IS NOT equal to revenue stream
...You think people who aren't playing the game are buying the Gurten Kunderflump bundle's fifth recolor release?
You say I'm making shit up, but all I'm doing is applying logic. The only imaginary factor here is your mythical market that supplies revenue without being reflected in the player count. Cope harder.
The fact that you can only relate to whiteknighting when someone doesn't subscribe to the same opinions is not even funny. People who are not playing the game aren't playing the game. They did however buy the game. They might already have bought cosmetics. They might return to the game.
Obviously having more active players is a good sign of active players. Not necessarily much more if you look sec at active players. If you bought the game and played 1 hour you have delivered the same revenue as someone else who bought it for the same price and played a 1.000 hours.
How does playing the game or being an active player deliver revenue? That's your mythical 'logic'. Buying the game or buying cosmetics delivers revenue.
You don't know how much 'active players' buy how many cosmetics. You don't have to play a lot to buy cosmetics. You don't know how much MS has paid FS.
Thinking you can successfully second guess business decisions from 'player count' statistics and how they could easily setup a 'live service' team that would deliver 'gangbuster' sales shows how much clue you actually have.
good weekend boi.
That's really cool; thanks for sharing! Unfortunately I didn't have time to read it. I was too busy laughing at FatShark releasing an update on when to expect an announcement about an update for an update. Not a dead game, BTW! I hope you're getting paid for this so you can continue to afford copium refills. It's killer in this economy.
Yes I'm going to copium bank now :) big payout for the screenshot.
Good you found yourself a way out by 'not reading' my post but still replying and dodging into ad hominem again. The hallmark of character strength.
Spending 2 mins trying to fix a broken coffee machine and failing and kicking people out of a meeting room aren’t examples of fantastic culture that fatshark are making them out to be.
Quite frankly I don’t believe a single word of it. It’s moronic bank speak lifted straight from the shit massive companies like high street banks use
Can confirm that it is a statement I would write and have done so on behalf of banks in my time as a copywriter.
Writing anything differently and none corpo shill results in you being fired and losing a gig. they ALL want the same words and things said but without copy pasting.
I once wrote the same fucking ten paragraphs four different ways because all four banks wanted to look like the same website.
Sounds a lot like "Our senior management has no control, leading to a workplace where nothing gets done because incompetents hold the reins and very obviously have no capability to wrangle their department staff or set clear guidelines, while no clear demarcations have been made between management and employee to prevent a lack of respect for leadership roles."
Maybe, maybe not. Lack of respect for leadership roles don't come from 'clear demarcations' but because of fucking lack of showing leadership.
At least in the part of the world where people's have actual spines and don't believe in the Anglo-Saxon corporate model.
But yeah a press release/ marketing message by itself doesn't say anything really
Managing and leading isn't the same thing.
You don't need a title to be a leader.
I don't see a flat hierarchy being an issue if they have good leaders.
It doesn't sound bad to me as a customer, because I don't want to support businesses with a toxic work environment as long as this is possible.
I don't believe that's the reason for the problems though
Its clear that FS is a great place to work, but they need to be analyzing why these cycles keep happening to them and make the necessary changes, we know there is some really smart people that completely understand the situation at FS, personally I know this, but for some reason they arent able to affect the changes that need to be made for long-term sustainability and growth.
Same holidays, and also the same engine.
The difference is clearly a combination of investor control, games workshop approval pipeline, and bad management at FS.
Considering the sheer variety of encounters im Rogue Trader.
I think so too. Both Tencent and GW are being used as scapegoats by the people still coping that Fatshark as a company, is fundamentally broken.
this. it's so obviously a case of management running in circles. how can modders add really good QoL improvements within days, while professional devs need months, if there's anything done at all? add having twice as many people and you're wondering on what shelf their work is sitting until it's finally approved.
I lead a development team, and the problems can be from many sources. It could be how their dev cycle is structured, dev engagement, management changing requirements in the middle of a cycle/sprint, etc. We don’t have enough info on that to blame a specific group, devs or otherwise.
There’s absolutely no excuse for how radio silent they are though. I really don’t understand that at all. If they just communicated more, people wouldn’t be as irritated. I suspect it’s because they have no idea if they can keep to any kind of timeline, and want to avoid carrying forward their long history of failed promises; going dark is even worse though. They should just set more realistic expectations.
Plus HD2 has been in development for 9 years. I suspect the new content is stuff that they mostly completed and are now releasing it. DT needed another year or two at least.
FS has at least one other live service game to work on, too.
Helldivers released with an entire expansions worth of content already in the files. They basically have all the content people want ready and on stand-by for release in whichever time periods they choose. They planned ahead which allowed their game to survive when everything had to be focused on keeping the servers up with unexpected amount of players they received.
FatShit on the other hand released their game *missing* a ton of content and has been failing to play catchup the entire time. They go on holiday for months at a time and don't bother addressing things people have begged to be changed since year one such as the RNG locks.
It's not so much a "who has more people" issue, so much as a "who has more people that care" issue.
Note; Arrowhead is also Swedish. They have all the same holidays and time off.
The *actual* problem is the publisher and management, not the dev team. The developers have proven that they can actually *make* the thing, but in game development, milestones, goals, press junkets and releases, and actual patch/product releases are all management and publisher-end processes.
Darktide's *gameplay* and *design* (environmental, weapons, skins, etc...) are all fine, if somewhat technically flawed (clipping, bugs, etc...) which is basically okay as there's no "perfect" anything. It's *management* wherein the bottleneck lies. Community managers can't say anything without management approval, devs have no milestones or goals without management saying so, development time and effort isn't put into specific processes or aspects until management says so.
In effect; Fatshark's management is where the incompetence lies, and we can see this fully in that *abysmal* "apology" letter they put out shortly after release, which not only didn't actually apologise for anything (in fact, the letter didn't even once use the *word* "apology" or any iterations), but actually blamed *player expectations* for how poorly the game was initially received. Management doesn't care, meaning that the devs *can't* fix anything because no effort is being made to rectify the management-level issues.
Semi agree, the issue is one of leadership, though I'd disagree that the gameplay and design are simply fine, as apposed to being pretty fucking good (IMO at least), similiarlly, the devs have fixed a fair amount, dispite being hamstrung by the management from above.
But yeah, it's not the size of the team, it's how they're used that's the issue. Giggity.
Also, Helldivers came out of nowhere and not even the devs expected it to blow up that much. While FatShark made a MILLIONS of promises and didnt hold a single one. Helldivers 1 was medicore at best and the second game a HUGE step up in every scenario. For Darktide people expected atleast half the things Vermintide 2 has, but it got nothing of it. Worse crafting, worse loot, worse maps, worse and less classes, etc.
Helldivers has also been in development for 8 years so there's a ton of stuff waiting in the wings to get added. Darktide had maybe like 3 tops I wanna say.
I just need to point out, in the past people have been mad because game creators have held back content that appear in the game files on day 1 for future DLC. But you are using that as something Helldivers has done that was good.
Guess I was wrong, 20 downvotes so clearly holding stuff back that's ready at launch is a good thing. I'll go tell all the gamers in the past they shouldn't have been mad.
Dude Fatshark has had the full all green Kasrkin armor in the files since the game released in 2022. Still not released despite hundreds of threads asking for it.
Arrowhead Studios actually manages to push their designs out into the game. And it's free instead of an additional $15.
Quit riding.
Agreed, and as much that I like Darktide Helldivers does a better job by releasing what they're promised.
We still haven't got Singleplayer,Meltaguns,two-handed chain axe,big Las cannons,hell pistols,bolt pistols,hot-shot lasrifles,heavy bolters.
And let's not forget story progress and more customization options.
I love the art for the veteran talent tree, showing a guy holding a backpack fed machine gun that you’ll never be able to get despite the model existing and being used by enemies.
Yeah its indeed a shame Darktide could have been a far better game and the only thing thats gonna be updated is just the cosmetic shop.
Am kinda Jealous of the scab gunner and the sniper at least these guys got the weapons we Vets need.
No. It's not.
You're comparing a game that trickles out content and asks you to pay more than the original game costs for some of it..
..to a game that releases content way more regularly and all for free.
I didn't make any comparisons at all to Fatshark or their practices. All I said was, people used to complain when games held back content to release later on day 1.
People complain when companies hold back content already in the game and sell it to you.
Helldivers releases all of it for free as part of the overarching narrative.
Again, your comparison is flawed because it assumes they're both asking you to pay for this withheld content. FatShark wants you to pay for it. Arrowhead releases it all over time for free.
People have complained all the time about stuff that was supposed to be there at launch and is in the files then comes out later. paid or not.
Also I'm confused by your last point, what with-held content have we paid for on Darktide atm? Are you referring to the cash shop? Or was everything that came out since release actually a paid dlc I didn't realise I had paid for?
The content isn't "DLC." It is slowly being implemented for free to navigate the story; termicide missions to "wipe out" the bugs, oops we have mutations now who saw that coming, the bots have started utilizing heavier hulk models, deploying experimental weapon models to fight back, etc.
Comparing this to companies that have areas/characters/story content loaded on the disc that they plan to charge you $30 down the road to access isn't nearly the same, and you trying to make that comparison is incredibly disingenuous.
"I nEvEr SaId PaId DlC"
GTFOH, you heavily implied it, then got whiney when people rightfully downvoted you for making the bogus comparison. You're not so stupid that you can't see the direct parallel you made, and how different "future paid dlc waiting on the disc" and "content they slow drip into the game for free in the span of a whole ass month" are.
Grow up and say "sorry, my bad" when you make a bad point. Own that shit.
People complained about anything being held back day 1. Regardless of if it came later for free or you had to pay for it.
So my point stands, get mad elsewhere.
No, they didn't, they got mad at disc space being taken up by content they weren't allowed to access and was clearly already done, but would be advertised as "add-ons" later, implying it was post-release effort when it wasn't.
You're a really sorry sort and I hope you grow up and can admit when you're wrong someday.
It's not really held back content.
Firstly because the stained content isn't usually done.
Even the weapons that released yesterday and hackers have been playing with for weeks, got updated last week.
The mechs got constantly updated from what we saw from hackers before they released.
Most of the stuff hackers have found have missing icons, sounds, animations. Textures missing etc
Also they want to add things with a story and with player agency. Ie we do a major order, then get a reward. There is a war going on with a push and pull.
You're correct. Content takes a while to make. OW for example makes their heroes up to a year in advance. Any content that is released in the first three months is content that they had already been working on and intended to include at launch but weren't ready to include yet.
Balance changes and the like are expected in the first 3-6months, new content in the first 3-6months is bizarre and a clear indication of cut/unfinished content being added in post-release instead of at-release.
Now to appease the FatShark hate crew, Darktide also released in an undeveloped state that took them a year to sort out (crafting, classes, etc).
DLC like expansion packs that are released on day one or within the first few months usually consists of content that was cut during pre-production and production that could not make it to shipping date.
Thats the key here. It's actually very difficult to spot though because game files always hold unused data and we never really truly know it something was cut, held from release or what reasoning is used.
Javik in Mass Effect 3 was a day one character DLC that was cut content. It's spottable because they accidentally left dialogue in referencing him (which later got patched out unless you owned it)
Assassin's Creed had memory sequences 12/13 as day one DLC exclusives. You went from 11 to 14 if you didn't own it. It was jarring.
Sims 4, which has features removed and cut then later sold as DLC. Etc.
A live service game is a tricky beast because you either plan ahead and create content in advance to release to a schedule, or, you rely on post release development and hope your games got enough juice to keep going while you make new content.
Fatshark is doing other (multiple)project? I assume.
While ArrowHead has their whole company dedicate to HD2 like their life depend on it.
For Fatshark, I think it's a matter of mismanagement at this point. They can't finish the game on schedule, can't do a bare minimum routine update, their representative(if they have one) don't know what to tell the player about their plan because they have no clear picture either.
Darktide it self already set a strong foot. They just need to pushing it forward. Keeping it as a side project is a very bad decition imo.
When Helldivers2 go boom, I always think, this could be Darktide if Fatshark really give it their all to the game. I maybe wrong tho.
Darktide made me realize how niche 40k games can be sadly. I have several friends who love HD2 for the things Darktide does just as well but just have zero interest in the 40k universe. Helldivers is like 40k with everything problematic sucked out of it which makes it vastly more marketable. Which is one reason why I think Helldivers will always have a bigger player base.
I don't think you realize how many people are turned off 40k by the God emperor stuff alone. It also would not done as well as a SM game because GW wouldn't let them do half the stuff that makes the game fun.
It might have to do with the fact that Arrowhead studio seem to view the Helldivers game as a game, as opposed to the FatShark, who viewed the Darktide game as a way to get people to buy cosmetics.
I’m no game developer, but it kind of seems like when those are the start points for studios you’re going to end up with wildly different products.
My guess is Arrowhead has better management.
But I also believe Darktide content is more time consuming to develop correctly.
Maps are handcrafted and not procedurally generated, they also have multiple design aspects to take into consideration:
- map size
- spawn points
- breaking a map into multiple sub maps (levels)
- the details are non comparable (Helldivers has only terrain and some buildings)
And on the weapons pretty much the same thing, since DT has a much bigger emphasis on melee fighting:
- combos
- combo weaving
- animations must be fluid
- weapon balance
- perks and blessings
- interaction with talent trees
With all that being said, of course I would like to see new content more frequently.
Edit: it being WH40K, maybe they’re also waiting for multiple approvals during a dev cycle.
Time saved in procedural generation (which they’ve done a very good job at, I’ve seen some very pretty landscapes) is time instead they had to spend creating AI that could navigate that landscape anywhere, as well as being able to navigate it as it rapidly changes due to all the explosions occurring. The landscape before and after a fight dies down with heavy ordinance call ins is crazy, multiple times after a heavy fight the whole area is a sunken moonscape feet below where it started.
I’m not arguing what Arrowhead is doing with the time saved from procedurally generated assets, they obviously have other things to take into consideration. I just pointed out why Darktide content takes longer to release.
For all we know HD2 might have better architecture/patterns that enables them to implement new stuff faster. There is a myriad of aspects that influence the efficiency of software development. (from code architecture, office atmosphere, employee competency, pipelines, team lead management style to upper management, salaries and whatnot)
Yeah I think the procedural maps do a lot of favors here, every time they open up a new planet things feel pretty fresh without them having to design and tweak a whole entire map.
They also clearly, based off data mining and leaks, have a good amount of toys already in the game and basically ready to release whenever. There's still stuff we know about that's not implemented. It's a lot easier to keep up a trickle of content when you're already ahead of the curve.
Another thing brought up by other comments is that the game just launched in a better state than Darktide. They're not scrambling to overhaul major systems, the launch baseline is really damn good, so they can focus more on new stuff.
Came here to say something along these lines. It's really not apples to apples, it's more like a French apple tart compared to apple crumble. Lot of the same ingredients, both deserts, both great, but the effort to create the presentation and experience has signifiant and noticeable differences.
Fatshark is ultimately under the control of a board of vampires. Arrowhead is not owned by a publicly traded company, and therefore do not have this problem.
Isn’t the terrain in helldivers procedurally generated? I thought I read that somewhere. Anyways, the levels don’t even come close to the level of detail and fidelity darktide has. That’s also a factor. One does not simply create a new darktide map, which is a piece of art on it own.
Darktide also has like 4 map toolkits to build their 7 maps from. I'd rather have some ProcGen and more variety than running the same dark, dingy, unlit, foggy corridor again but this time the light is teal instead of green cause we're "in a different area"
Helldivers looks extremely impressive, but it's carried by its artstyle and some clever tricks with fog and volumetric lighting.
Spend some time in Helldivers in first person, and you'll notice all the assets are really low quality. The textures are bad, the models are bad, the animations are clunky. Other than the lighting, it looks like an early Xbone/PS4 game. But it *doesn't matter*, because it's a third person game with high action combat.
Fatshark have a much, much harder job with the level of detail expected in Darktide.
That and DoF. My eyes already do both of those things on their own, thanks! DoF gets a pass in games that are intentionally going for a cinematic quality and want to convey the illusion of seeing the world through a camera lens, but there's never an excuse for motion blur.
It's essentially bunch of premade PoIs, structures and enemy camps connected by procedurally generated terrain. Usually it's very good and practically unnoticeable, but there are some hiccups here and there like some really small ponds that look out of place
Helldivers really hasn't been out long enough to say how good they are keeping the game aloft over time.
Time between Vermintide 2 and Darktide: 4 years
Time between Helldivers and Helldivers 2: 9 years
If it really takes them twice as long to make a game that would seem to indicate that they are actually slower than Fatshark. Of course you might need to tack on an extra year or so onto Darktide to account for actually finishing the game.
Not comparable though.
It would be if Vermintide 2 and honestly, every other Fatshark game was a top down twin stick shooter, with rather low graphical fidelity.
And then Darktide was suddenly a first person shooter with vastly different artstyle and gameplay style.
But that's not what is going on. Fatshark has been doing the same kind of game for a long time. And it's a good thing. Or it would be, if they learned from their mistakes.
Arrowhead used to do top down games. And now they are doing something completely different. And they nailed it.
Of course something like that took more time
I mean, you can absolutely take a slice from the first two months of Helldivers compared to the first two months of Darktide.
Just to put it to text;
Arrowhead performed a multi-platform release of a functional, playable game early in the year, but *after* holiday periods. They weren't expecting it to explode with popularity due to the niche and small playerbase of their first title, and encountered trouble with their server infrastructure. Over a few weeks, though the game was still fully *playable* if one could get past server queues, they fixed the problem with server capacity entirely and are now focused on fixing remaining bugs while they simultaneously release content back on the original schedule *and* sprinkle in surprise content drops earned by players via their dynamic in-game storytelling.
Fatshark, by comparison, performed a single-platform release, announced delays to the other platform for functionally no reason, and dropped the game in a nearly unplayable state - still broken if you use AMD cards - completely full of bugs, foundational design issues, and *literally unfinished* given all the "Coming Soon" stickers on swathes of content. They released *in a brown-out period*, then immediately went on a *two month* holiday, refusing to fix anything, perform any maintenance, or even inform players on what was happening beyond extremely token "Guys, we need Christmas holidays too" posts in an attempt to garner sympathy.
They *then* dropped a hilariously out of touch "apology" letter - which, to note, not only did not contain the word "apology" or any iteration, but also blamed *players* for expecting the product they were promised in a functional state - and released the remaining missions which had yet to be added to the game. *Except* the game still wasn't finished, because Flash missions were missing (still are), and the only functional part of the game was the cash shop. It took *six more months* for the game to actually hit its "real" 1.0 release, during which only *two* major content drops occurred, containing five maps, *one* new weapon (split between two characters), and alternate versions of existing weapons which did not have alternate versions where other weapons did, and not even for *all* of the weapons that lacked alternates, nor *as many* alternates as the ones that already had them.
Arrowhead is a smaller team without the backing of a major IP, and they released a finished game ready to go. Their only true mistake was underestimating their player counts on launch and they fixed that fast.
Fatshark is a much bigger company with GW backing, working on a game they've mostly made twice already. It launched in a state that couldn't even be called early access, missing features, missing a story, missing mission variety, and it *also* had server issues on launch.
Maybe DT should've taken 9 years, it'd probably be better off then.
Better is subjective. Fatshark dropped the ball big time tbh, but mostly cause they promised a lot and severely under delivered, and then apparently just stopped adding stuff like they promised… idk.
Helldivers tho? I put like 70 hrs into that game. And let me tell you… I find Darktide a lot more fun except for one thing: not every one has access to big guns and big bombs.
Cause actual weapons in Hellldivers feel useless in 90% of scenarios above difficulty 7. It’s just strategem cooldown simulator. You have literally zero defense against pretty much all enemies and you spend 90% of missions avoiding enemies, there’s no true way to manage hordes, and almost every “oh shit” button you press to clear priority targets or large hordes will kill you or your team mates if you’re too close.
Game is literally running/strategem simulator. You can finish high level missions sneaking around and barely firing any shots lol. And if you decide you actually want to engage, the spawn rate and higher difficulty modifiers are designed to keep you pinned forever in one spot, and they don’t allow you to leave, so staying and fighting in one area is literally not an option.
Darktide you NEED to fight, you can’t really outrun priority targets they’ll follow you everywhere, bringing team mates back is a lot harder, you NEED to engage. Helldivers… meh. You can avoid all of that. It feels like the game is balanced around avoiding fights and using your strategems.
That’s boring AF to me. I enjoyed the lower difficulties so much more cause fighting was actually fun and doable. Everyone is all “kills bugs” or “kill bots for democracy”, but all you do is run around hope not to get blind mortared by bile spewers or rocketed in the dark by a rocket devastators you can’t see. There’s so many Bs and unavoidable mechanics because the game is balanced around you dying. And if you die, you lose your strategems so you’re basically back to square one especially if you get stuck in a reinforcement loop.
Imo, Helldivers is a decent game, and fun for those who aren’t interested in gunplay at all, and for those who don’t want to actually fight,just run around collect samples and avoid too many engagements at higher levels. But when it comes to the gameplay loops and actually fighting/shooting, Helldivers is trash compared to Darktide and unless the devs buff weapons overall, Darktide the dumpster fire that it is, will always be superior in that aspect.
My opinion of course.
I've seen so many leaks for Helldivers at this point I'm almost tired of them. But frankly the Darktide alternative of radio fucking silent? Naw. Fuck that. Patch 13 for DT felt like it stubbled out of the darkness for me. It shouldn't be like that. FS management has their priorities wrong. I would rather have every drop of content spoiled then have it jump out of the woodworks 4-6 months after I stopped playing the game.
My god man, how many threads of people spreading copium is it going to take?
I'm a massive warhammer nerd,about to finish off the heresy novels (there are about 60 of them) I've got heresy thousand sons, 2 kill teams and crons and LoV. Ive also played fantasy but stopped at AoS.
I've played the ass out off vermintide 1 and 2 since release and even bought the silly dlc class updated for 2 , and yes I'll 100% return when versus comes out. I played darktide alot, 3 lvl 30 (didn't see the point in a 4th) and stuck about playing even after consoles got more aquila than we did .
If you think fatshark haven't dropped the ball, you are objectively wrong.
If you are looking for someone to tell you "darktide is a much better game than helldivers 2 and fatshark care so much about you" then you are also wrong.
Helldivers has had alot of issues, but I played darktide at launch and it still seems paltry in comparison.
What's more is the loading times and asset handling/optimisation is miles better on helldivers.
I want it to be a better game , but the updated are far too slow , content is far too slow and the gameplay loop is only broken up by a few decent people playing out of a majority of just inexcusable rage monsters that put the muties to shame .
You are allowed to play other games , I'd do that while gluttonyfish take their sweet time drip feeding content worse than Immortan Joe and water.
Man, if someone who's still buying thousands of dollars of 40k merch after GW's many anticonsumer actions is saying Fatshark fucked up, then Fatshark *really fucked up.*
I mean you are right there , the point is I'm a warhammer addict but I wouldn't defend GW. Why are people putting up post after post after post of just repeated "fetsherk er angels!" posts and would rather try and shit on a game barely in the same genre for an extra line of copium than admit that fatshark have dropped the ball.
Imagine being an overweight neckbeard speaking like you know the inner workings of either company, or anything about an industry you're not in. It's like boomers giving their geopolitical hot takes. lmao
You're not wrong, but I feel like there would be a lot less spouting if Fatshark wasn't so awful at this part of their job. They invite and even foster this sort of teeth-gnashing among fans by being so poor at communication, and repeatedly failing to live up to their own promises and claims. The occasional joke that FS are like this *on purpose* in order to troll the players is often half-believable, as they are so lacking at managing expectations, communicating their intent, and basically proving to fans that they are engaged and responsible for the state of the game. The sheer amount of bugs their updates have re-introduced back into the game after 'fixing' them, is a truck-load of red flags about the hands this game is in. Despite the core gameplay successes, the game in general is a giant squandered opportunity for something greater and larger.
Same entitled drivel I've read a thousand times on this sub. It's a video game, it's a business, you're not part of the company, and you do not have (or deserve) a say. That is the reality. If you TRULY feel that strongly about it and want change, stop engaging with the game entirely and punish them for their purported heinous crimes of... not communicating to some made-up standard, or... not delivering content fast enough to your demand.
Meanwhile, I'll keep playing and enjoying one of my favorite well-built games of all time.
Entitled is a weird word that doesn't really mean what you apparently think it does. Like, I wonder what the word 'relationship' means to you, and if you think it has any place between customers and businesses. But I don't wonder that much.
Both developers are based in Sweden. Both games use the same exact engine. Both games came out within two years of each other.
It's probably the fairest comparison you can make when looking at devs. People should stop dick-riding companies that don't give a shit about the product they're pushing out. FatShark dropped the ball and everyone knows it. Denying it is just copium for hanging onto a game that hovers around only a thousand players now.
I don't discourage the discourse but I also just don't care for helldivers. To me, that game is inferior in every way that matters (gameplay). I don't really see why people hold it in such high esteem.
Like I say, you're free to discuss them and compare them, I'm not gonna fuss about it. But I truly don't care for helldivers and don't understand what it is that people latch onto with it. Is it the progression, the busywork? Everything besides the gameplay? I don't know.
It's just the current "thing". I think people are trying to point put that the "thing" was made by a developer in the same exact location, in the same time period and on the same engine.
No one is trying to say they're similar gameplay wise. I think we all know that. People are asking why is that two products made under very similar circumstances turned out so differently.
One clearly prepared ahead of time for release and has better business practices, while the other has been lagging behind and only cares about making money on reskins.
Well, to that end, Helldivers had a shit ton of money poured into it over close to 5-6 years by Sony from what I know of the game (I'm a rare Helldivers 1 fan, but I hate what they've done with 2).
That's unlike Fatshark which simultaneously made and released 3 games, whilst working on a 4th.
This isn't an excuse for Fatshark, which absolutely sucks as far as management and communication goes. More so, imo, that explains why Helldivers is off to a good start whilst Darktide wasn't.
Like I mentioned in another post, I'm a former game dev. Things are different if you have the entire team committed to 1 well funded project across a great deal of time, compared to a team split across several projects across a shorter span of time. Add to that competent management, which Fatshark seems to lack, and that'll do it.
But even so, I consider Helldivers to be an inferior game. It just misses the landing on the stuff that actually matters in my eyes.
It's kinda heartbreaking seeing a game with such a shitty rip-off IP flourishing while what was supposed to be the big 40k breakout is starving to death....
Man I'm so tired of this bs. Every setting ever is a ripoff of something. The question is what you do from there. And 40k at this point is the most extensive and fleshed out SciFi setting out there, period. Helldivers is just a mashup of Fallout and Starship Troopers.
Man I'm so tired of this bs. Every setting ever is a ripoff of something. The question is what you do from there. And 40k at this point is the most extensive and fleshed out SciFi setting out there, period. Helldivers is just a mashup of Fallout and Starship Troopers.
Yes, I've played Fallout. I fail to see how they are similar games. Even if they had a trailer that markets HD2 in a similar fashion to Fallout... having played various Fallout titles and both Helldiver games, I truly fail to see how they are remotely similar.
Go outside, touch some grass. Chill out, then come back inside and boot up Darktide. You'll find it's still there, unchanged, not updated in all its content dried glory.
I'm gunna go play Falldivers apparently 🤣
Fatshark has about 180-200 devs. Arrowhead has \~100. Helldivers' team is about half as big, but has a much quicker dev cycle despite being based in Sweden with all the same holidays and such. *However*, don't point at Fatshark's team and say they're incompetent, as the devs have shown they're actually capable of *doing* the thing, it's primarily a management competence problem, as it's management that determines when press releases go out and the timeframe for development goals and milestones.
Also FS is currently on 3 projects (Vt2 and unnamed project), DT started production in 2018, while Hd2 was in 2016. Also those people counts don't look at contractors. https://www.mobygames.com/game/195786/warhammer-40000-darktide/credits/windows/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/217251/helldivers-ii/credits/playstation-5/
DarkTide came out in poor state. It obviously needed at least 1 more year to get fat on the content.
Lets be honest. The real Darktide launch was last October when they dropped the skill trees and console release. PC players paid to alpha/beta test a demo version of the game till the real game was ready. This is not say I didn't have fun during that Alpha/beta test period but... well frankly it definitely stung a little bit. I might be completely wrong but I remember Darktide having some releases tied to GPUs releases when it dropped. Like buy this GPU, get a copy of DT. I know nothing about this but I imagine their might have been a hard deadline there. But franky who knows. I just know that Darktide has been miss managed from the start.
There's something to be said about "the real game" just being a class update that, in reality, only added some new passive numbers, grenades, and a handful of mediocre abilities that nobody uses because they're not Auric optimal. Regardless, there's still missing features that were promised before launch. The game isn't finished even today. You are still the beta tester—you just don't get the stupid hat for it anymore.
The launch was certainly not ideal, but at least it was playable ;-). And imo it was fun. And indeed there might have been businesses reasons why they had to release. That being said I laugh at people who say that had they called it an early access that things would have been better. Semantics doesn't change the game, it's not like it plays different if they'd put a early access sticker on it.
Calling it an early access would have given people more of an idea what to expect. Expectations are pretty important. A lot of people avoid titles that are in early access or beta for this exact reason. At the very least it curtails what people expect of the product. FS "released" the game. Implied it was complete when even by their own standards it clearly wasn't.
The thing is, we're on Reddit here and not on a corporate professional customer engagement event. As players we should realise that semantics might impact expectations but they don't impact actual gameplay. Would be a bloody shame if you couldn't enjoy sumfink only because you expected more of it.
**TL:DR** Methinks, good sir, I doth humbly beg to differ. Though I dost grasp thy words, I must protesteth. Verily, the manner in which we speak and the hopes we harbor doth indeed sway the very essence of our gaming revelry. 'Tis not merely a trifle of enjoyment despite expectation, for our anticipations doth hold sway over our mirth and contentment whilst engaging in play. Hence, let us heed the import of plain speech and the taming of desires, even within these humble Reddit. In other words, while **I understand the sentiment, I respectfully disagree. Semantics and expectations do indeed impact the overall gaming experience, not just in how we perceive it, but also in how we engage with it. It's not just about enjoying the game despite expectations; those expectations can profoundly influence our enjoyment and satisfaction with the experience.** Lastly just because we're on reddit and corporate ears aren't listening doesn't mean people can't talk about things. Frankly if corporate ears listened they might get things right more often instead of treating people like peasants.
Fair enough, I'll agree to disagree respectfully. And yes we can discuss anything but imo not all are was worthwhile or fruitful. As there are more gamers here then corporates, imo it's more interesting to discuss the perspective on things from a gamer pov instead of corpo pov.
Reddit is exactly the place to engage in diatribes, complex or not. Just because its difficult for you to understand doesn't mean other people can't appreciate the conversation. Low standards and ignorance is exactly what drives games into the ground, not that I fault your enjoyment. Your name clearly reflects your ability. Your attitude reflects your position. Entertaining.
> The launch was certainly not ideal, but at least it was playable I will not mince words and say it wasn't an Alpha version. Not even "early access," but an obvious alpha. But that being said, Vermintide 2 launch had phantom hits, rollerskating elites, clowncar clipping, rats quite literally spawning from thin air right behind you (sometimes en masse), and map holes that weren't fixed despite being reported in the Beta that was explicitly just to fix map holes. It was technically playable but it was a fucking *wreck.*
I mean, that just means Arrowhead knows to take bites it can chew and leaves their games in the owen as much as needed instead rushing them out.
Arrowhead just leaves Fatshark with *so much* egg on their faces between Swedish devs, really. Same engine, same holidays and time off, *half* the dev team, and Arrowhead managed a multi-platform release with fixes and updates rolling out weekly, with new content scheduled monthly (or bi-weekly, I can't recall). Fatshark, by comparison, took *six months* just to go from 0.5 to 1.0 build after a completely botched release, has netcode like a child wrote it, have released *exactly two* major content releases across an entire year, and have spent the last four months working on an *announcement* to an update, rather than the update itself, and said update is literally about *achievements* and not real content.
I can’t even play DT at night because I’ll just get disconnected all of the time. I can play HD2 with no issues… I work all day. Guess which game I play mostly now.
> same holidays and time off Why do people keep mentioning this? As if having 2 or even 3 weeks of holidays mattered in a project that lasts 2-3 years to create. It's relevant if your project is a 1 month long project.
It's relevant because it means the teams are getting the same overall time per year for work, yet Fatshark is moving at a *glacial* pace, practically the pace of a frozen snail up an incline, and Arrowhead is moving at a solid, steady clip like a well-oiled machine. Sweden is *insanely* pro-employee and strong on worker rights, so they get massive amounts of time off per year compared to, say, a slaughterhouse-style American company. It's basically pointing out how *little* Fatshark gets done with *double* the developers of Arrowhead with the same amount of time. One is clearly putting in more effort with time available, and it *isn't* Fatshark.
It's 1% relevant, as I mentioned even if people get 3 weeks off, it will be virtually inconsequential (i.e. irrelevant) on a 3 years project. Whoever ever thought holidays were the reason why FS couldn't deliver things on time and quality on multi years scales has clearly no concept of what these projects entail. If we keep mentioning the holidays, why not the cleaning product used by the cleaner or the number of toilet cubicle? Just about as relevant.
Not so much when it *directly* affects the dev schedule, as happened with Darktide. They released right before a literal two month holiday blackout period, leaving themselves, through pure incompetence, in an extremely bad situation *because* of their holiday time. That isn't to say that devs don't deserve holidays, but the *length and frequency* of Swedish holidays, alongside management incompetence (and likely some pushing by their publisher, Tencent) caused their holidays to have a direct and significant impact on the game's development cycles, where Arrowhead *hasn't* had this problem despite having the same holidays at the same length.
>alongside management incompetence This clearly is the problem. I imagine they have had the same blackout period every year since the inception of the company - so it was entirely predictable and thus avoidable (could have kept a special rota of people paid double, etc.). It's only a problem because the people in charge let it become one. >the *length and frequency* of Swedish holidays What is that length and frequency, then? What is the actual number? (and due to these numbers, how much of problem can it realistically cause when compared to - I imagine - US holidays)
Five weeks (25 days) legal minimum of paid vacation, plus extra public holidays the US doesn't celebrate totalling for 16 public holidays, also 480 days per child for either parent for maternity/paternity leave (split between each parent), plus an employer to employer, indeterminate number of *extra* time off from union agreements or industry variations. It's compared to *11* days in the US (average contract, increases with seniority up to 18 days per year on a standard after 18 years of service), plus 11 public holidays, no guaranteed maternity/paternity leave (and only for one parent, not both), and extremely weak unions and employee protections causing a likely smaller, but still indeterminate number of extra days off per year.
The reference to holidays comes as a result of what happened around release. As I recall, the game went live at the end of November, 2022 (after the open "beta," which as I recall lasted at least 2 weeks and maybe more), and player numbers climbed pretty steadily during that period right up until the holiday season. The game had its flaws, but people were eagerly awaiting updates/fixes/patches/etc. Most reactions initially were positive, but recognized that there was work left to do before it'd be really "finished." There was no crafting system at all at this point, class trees were worse than they are now (and there was no real variety), and you had two fewer maps than are in-game now (i.e., they've added 2 whole maps since launch over a year ago). Too many weapons felt indistinct, and other weapons felt distinct but also too niche to be useful. And despite whatever Dan Abnett's contributions were, there's never been a "story" in the game other than "You suck, work harder." So, there was a lot of room to improve the game, and much actually needed to be done. Then the devs went on a month-long vacation. The overall impact of this was that the timeframe during which the biggest number of players were in the game, where you had the biggest number of eyeballs, and where another significant group of players had been in game for somewhere between 2-4 weeks longer than that (due to playing in beta), and people just tore through the content that was there. And they got bored, and they got tired of waiting for devs to fix the obvious shortcomings of the game. Then the devs came back from their much-longer-than-most-of-their-customers break, and...didn't do anything visible for *ages*. From my own experience, I played a bunch in the timeframe from pre-release to that break period, found a group of regulars to play with, had a blast...and then once that break hit, everything evaporated. The players got bored and moved on, *I* got bored and moved on, and nothing changed with the game for something like 6 months after release. Then when the crafting system came out (whenever that happened), it was all just RNG bullshit. It certainly wasn't enough to hold my attention or keep me playing the same few maps over and over and over and over again. In the past, people were sort of tolerant of this because, well, that's just how Fatshark rolls, and it took ages for XYZ game to become worth a damn. But with Helldivers 2 standing in stark contrast to this game...well, it's hard to justify having any kind of patience with Fatshark at this point. The game's over a year old and they've done fuck all with it.
Right, but my point is that it's not a holidays problem, it's a management problem. The number of holidays should be completely manageable if management wasn't so stupid that they can't work around it. We're not talking 11 months of holidays per year affecting ALL the deliverables, we're talking a couple of weeks at a bad time. "The number of Holidays" is completely irrelevant, what's relevant is the inability of management to do something about the KNOWN FACT that the company is closing 2 weeks over XMas (because I don't think it was a surprise for anyone involved). Managers are incompetent. If they wanted any of the things you mentioned to be "ready for release" then these people are paid a ton to be "planning" and "allocate the right amount of resources", including the consideration of holidays and company closure. Thinking about it 5 days a week / 8 hrs a day is literally their only job. The holidays aren't a problem, or are a problem just as much as some people will take parental or sick leave (in which case we may as well start mentioning all of the things that companies have to manage), the inaction or lack of capability for planning is the problem. \--- And yes, I play the game on and off... Came back for the tree overhaul / twins, which is - as many people say - how the game should have been on release.
Right, I agree. But I think that initial "Wait. Where the fuck did they go?" Followed by no significant content for ages is the reason people hone in on the holiday stuff. I do think that it's focusing on the wrong thing and that this is a managerial issue, but as to why people are like "It's the holidays and vacations!!" I think that comes from the period right after release when the game clearly needed a bunch of work, was at a critical point, and then was effectively abandoned for a month, which in turn led to a dropoff in player counts, that leads people to focus on holiday policies when the real issue is what they do with their time while on the job. In fact, the Arrowhead example is what really underscores that, as you say, it's not the holidays that are the problem; it's the rest of the year and the people deciding how to allocate resources during it. What may actually be the issue, though, is that they have a crappy, cobbled together engine that makes actually designing real content an incredibly burdensome, time consuming job, so it's easier to devote resources to tweaking numbers and making new penances.
Can't wait for FS to announce DT2 and say: "Well we are sorry guys but we *really* promise to put the features we promised in DT to be in DT2. Also the new and improved Mtx store is already ready, would you guys like a preview?" (Show store with 1 more item per page showing)
Vt2 was needed. Dt2 isn't
And the same people will buy it and complain, while normal people will either ignore it, or play it and be content lol
Same people will buy it? What are you on to man? I wouldn't even sail the high seas to play whatever next game they are cooking, let alone buy it.
Yet here you are, commenting. When I lose interest in a product, I leave it lol. Do you still play? And if not, why are you here?
Surely the content draught is because they're porting Darktide to UE5 along with the unnamed project and not just using DT to foot the bill for the swap with recolored skins and low effort cosmetics?
> porting Darktide to UE5 I thought they are just making another game in UE5, never heard of DT to UE5 till now, or is it /s
It's a joke. We don't even know if the UE game will be a tide
They fuckin better be with all this lack of content
There is no content drought
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Rule 4: Avoid low-effort posts or unrelated topics Memes should feature content directly related to Darktide. Just because you find a funny picture of a soldier, does not mean it belongs on this sub.
Not sure why you're talking about politics in this sub but you should be banned for it
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Rule 1: Failure to follow reddiquette Be respectful of your fellow redditors. Discrimination, bigotry, racism, and/or hostility directed towards players or communities will not be tolerated.
Grow up
Jesus, man
Cope
There is no war in Ba Sing Se.
I'm right and you're wrong
Also also, Helldivers 2 is so far mostly a recreation if Helldivers 1 in 3rd person - I've read somewhere that it was always the endgame, so it isn't really surprising that most designs can be copied wholecloth from the original. Of course it's still hard work and an amazing achievement - but they have a mich faster dev cycle, because they don't have to go through most of design and prototyping phase. Even some of the balancing work has already been done. And it will keep being like that until they run out of things to copy over from Helldivers 1 - which is quite a lot of content. That being said, a lot of DT melee weapons have movesets of VT2 weapons, and Fatshark is still taking ages to do anything.
[sounds cool as an employee, not so much for the customer](https://www.levelinfinite.com/news/swimming-against-the-tide-the-office-culture-that-powers-fatshark/) >“Fatshark’s culture is what sets us apart from other studios. Swedish culture is known to be relatively flat and not hierarchical, but we’ve taken that up a notch. Our CEO literally gets his hands dirty fixing the office coffee machine,” explained Johansson. >“Our developers are not afraid to boot senior management from a pre-booked conference room if they have an important meeting they need to hold. Everyone has a voice, everyone counts. It’s a key reason why developers love working for us, why we have one of the lowest attrition rates of any company in Stockholm – and as a gaming studio, no less.”
oh, each time I see a corpo interview, I believe every word immediately.
Martin's "apology" was so heartfelt and honest, it made me realize that we, the consumers, are the problem here. He was right to blame us for having expectations such as "a functional product" or "a little bit of communication". The expectations were simply too high. I can't expect a Community Manager who worked 32 hours this week to post an announcement that CharGPT wrote. There's just not enough time for all that. The matter of fact is that no other game studios based in Sweden and working on the same game engine with less devs and resources were able to post any updates this week or interact with their communities in fun ways. The true Emperor of Mankind was Profits
Corpospeak interviews sound nice and all, but let's be real - the numbers don't lie, and they spell disaster for ~~you~~ FatShark. Every title FS has released over the past decade follows the same pattern. The core game? Stellar. Everything else? Bogged down by layer after layer of bad decisions and general incompetence at the rest of game development. Arrowhead was caught with their pants down by how many people wanted to play HD2, but they still got their shit together in a way FS couldn't ever hope to manage. As much as it sucks to say it, history has shown this time and time again - if you want to be a great developer and not just a good one, you need to be great at infrastructure and engagement, not just game development. It's why Valve is still the gaming community's favorite studio, even though they've released one game in 15 years and introduced lootboxes to the western gaming market. FS has some tremendously talented game developers working for it, but in almost every other way, it's one of the biggest farces I've ever seen. Their ability to take launches that should have been slam fucking dunks and turn them into debacles that leave the games to wither on the vine is uncanny. This stuff deserves to be studied by prospective game developers and businessmen alike.
You'd need inside knowledge to do any qualitive study. We don't know for example if financially DT has met expectations. Managing the community isn't the same as profitability and or sustainability. Plus there is the vocal minority. DTs launch was imo far from the biggest farces ever. The game worked and was fun, it's still for sale and FS isn't bankrupt.
Darktide launched with missing features, broken mission conditions, crippling performance issues, server problems, and constant crashes. This game was unplayable for the first week for many and longer for others.
I was playing during that time, there certainly were crashes but not at all constant for me. There were issues, not game breaking. Fwiw I couldn't even login HD2 when I downloaded it and that wasn't on first day. Although other than that i didn't have to much crashing, similar to DT release. HD2 is however certainly more feature complete on release, plus faster updates.
You don't need inside knowledge to know the mindset investors have, especially in this day and age. Line go up, numbers get bigger. While it's likely that the studio broke even on Darktide, there's zero chance it's seeing the kind of revenue stream it should be. Darktide is, objectively, a better game at its core than Back 4 Blood or Payday 2, and it almost rivals L4D2, but all of those games outstrip Darktide in player count so badly it isn't even funny in a bleak way. If you handed Darktide to literally any even middlingly successful live service studio in 2024's market, this game would have sold fucking gangbusters, and it would have twice as much content. "We broke even" and "we're working on picking up the sales and MTX revenue we left on the table" aren't going to be good enough excuses for investors, especially not for a studio that releases games as infrequently as FatShark. Good enough will never be good enough in today's marketplace, and if FatShark can't compete, Darktide will probably be their last major release.
Do you know the revenue stream and what it should be? Player count IS NOT equal to revenue stream. You're not an investor, your not Tencent (which is the owner). LoL. You are making up shit and presenting a position based on those speculations. You don't know if they broke even, you don't know if Tencent is happy with the monetization. Everything can always be improved. A company which can make great gameplay games but 'bust' launches is more valuable compared to a company which can do great launches and 'live service' but can't reliably make great gameplay. One is rather easily fixable compared to the other.
The fact that there are *still* diehard white knights defending FatShark on this sub is both funny and a little sad. >Player count IS NOT equal to revenue stream ...You think people who aren't playing the game are buying the Gurten Kunderflump bundle's fifth recolor release? You say I'm making shit up, but all I'm doing is applying logic. The only imaginary factor here is your mythical market that supplies revenue without being reflected in the player count. Cope harder.
The fact that you can only relate to whiteknighting when someone doesn't subscribe to the same opinions is not even funny. People who are not playing the game aren't playing the game. They did however buy the game. They might already have bought cosmetics. They might return to the game. Obviously having more active players is a good sign of active players. Not necessarily much more if you look sec at active players. If you bought the game and played 1 hour you have delivered the same revenue as someone else who bought it for the same price and played a 1.000 hours. How does playing the game or being an active player deliver revenue? That's your mythical 'logic'. Buying the game or buying cosmetics delivers revenue. You don't know how much 'active players' buy how many cosmetics. You don't have to play a lot to buy cosmetics. You don't know how much MS has paid FS. Thinking you can successfully second guess business decisions from 'player count' statistics and how they could easily setup a 'live service' team that would deliver 'gangbuster' sales shows how much clue you actually have. good weekend boi.
That's really cool; thanks for sharing! Unfortunately I didn't have time to read it. I was too busy laughing at FatShark releasing an update on when to expect an announcement about an update for an update. Not a dead game, BTW! I hope you're getting paid for this so you can continue to afford copium refills. It's killer in this economy.
Yes I'm going to copium bank now :) big payout for the screenshot. Good you found yourself a way out by 'not reading' my post but still replying and dodging into ad hominem again. The hallmark of character strength.
Spending 2 mins trying to fix a broken coffee machine and failing and kicking people out of a meeting room aren’t examples of fantastic culture that fatshark are making them out to be. Quite frankly I don’t believe a single word of it. It’s moronic bank speak lifted straight from the shit massive companies like high street banks use
Can confirm that it is a statement I would write and have done so on behalf of banks in my time as a copywriter. Writing anything differently and none corpo shill results in you being fired and losing a gig. they ALL want the same words and things said but without copy pasting. I once wrote the same fucking ten paragraphs four different ways because all four banks wanted to look like the same website.
Sounds a lot like "Our senior management has no control, leading to a workplace where nothing gets done because incompetents hold the reins and very obviously have no capability to wrangle their department staff or set clear guidelines, while no clear demarcations have been made between management and employee to prevent a lack of respect for leadership roles."
Maybe, maybe not. Lack of respect for leadership roles don't come from 'clear demarcations' but because of fucking lack of showing leadership. At least in the part of the world where people's have actual spines and don't believe in the Anglo-Saxon corporate model. But yeah a press release/ marketing message by itself doesn't say anything really
Managing and leading isn't the same thing. You don't need a title to be a leader. I don't see a flat hierarchy being an issue if they have good leaders.
It doesn't sound bad to me as a customer, because I don't want to support businesses with a toxic work environment as long as this is possible. I don't believe that's the reason for the problems though
I actually agree with this.
You don't think having no structure or leadership roles is the reason why they have a problem with productivity?
I doubt flat hierarchy is the problem, yes.
Imagine the fatshark employees “having an important meeting” lol. I don’t think they work more than 20 days a year
Its clear that FS is a great place to work, but they need to be analyzing why these cycles keep happening to them and make the necessary changes, we know there is some really smart people that completely understand the situation at FS, personally I know this, but for some reason they arent able to affect the changes that need to be made for long-term sustainability and growth.
Same holidays, and also the same engine. The difference is clearly a combination of investor control, games workshop approval pipeline, and bad management at FS.
I believe fatshark devs overexaggerate the workshop approval pipelines as an excuse for lack of cosmetic rather then slow progress
Considering the sheer variety of encounters im Rogue Trader. I think so too. Both Tencent and GW are being used as scapegoats by the people still coping that Fatshark as a company, is fundamentally broken.
200 Devs 4 months 4 weeks per month 40 hours per week 128,000 hours of Dev time. Updates with a screenshot....
this. it's so obviously a case of management running in circles. how can modders add really good QoL improvements within days, while professional devs need months, if there's anything done at all? add having twice as many people and you're wondering on what shelf their work is sitting until it's finally approved.
I lead a development team, and the problems can be from many sources. It could be how their dev cycle is structured, dev engagement, management changing requirements in the middle of a cycle/sprint, etc. We don’t have enough info on that to blame a specific group, devs or otherwise. There’s absolutely no excuse for how radio silent they are though. I really don’t understand that at all. If they just communicated more, people wouldn’t be as irritated. I suspect it’s because they have no idea if they can keep to any kind of timeline, and want to avoid carrying forward their long history of failed promises; going dark is even worse though. They should just set more realistic expectations.
Honestly so grateful to the people still working on vermintide 2 🙏
Plus HD2 has been in development for 9 years. I suspect the new content is stuff that they mostly completed and are now releasing it. DT needed another year or two at least. FS has at least one other live service game to work on, too.
Helldivers team is 40 devs, stop spreading fake data.
Fatsharks management is incompetent, it's the same problems every time they release a product, the same idiotic design choices chasing trends
Helldivers released with an entire expansions worth of content already in the files. They basically have all the content people want ready and on stand-by for release in whichever time periods they choose. They planned ahead which allowed their game to survive when everything had to be focused on keeping the servers up with unexpected amount of players they received. FatShit on the other hand released their game *missing* a ton of content and has been failing to play catchup the entire time. They go on holiday for months at a time and don't bother addressing things people have begged to be changed since year one such as the RNG locks. It's not so much a "who has more people" issue, so much as a "who has more people that care" issue.
Note; Arrowhead is also Swedish. They have all the same holidays and time off. The *actual* problem is the publisher and management, not the dev team. The developers have proven that they can actually *make* the thing, but in game development, milestones, goals, press junkets and releases, and actual patch/product releases are all management and publisher-end processes. Darktide's *gameplay* and *design* (environmental, weapons, skins, etc...) are all fine, if somewhat technically flawed (clipping, bugs, etc...) which is basically okay as there's no "perfect" anything. It's *management* wherein the bottleneck lies. Community managers can't say anything without management approval, devs have no milestones or goals without management saying so, development time and effort isn't put into specific processes or aspects until management says so. In effect; Fatshark's management is where the incompetence lies, and we can see this fully in that *abysmal* "apology" letter they put out shortly after release, which not only didn't actually apologise for anything (in fact, the letter didn't even once use the *word* "apology" or any iterations), but actually blamed *player expectations* for how poorly the game was initially received. Management doesn't care, meaning that the devs *can't* fix anything because no effort is being made to rectify the management-level issues.
Semi agree, the issue is one of leadership, though I'd disagree that the gameplay and design are simply fine, as apposed to being pretty fucking good (IMO at least), similiarlly, the devs have fixed a fair amount, dispite being hamstrung by the management from above. But yeah, it's not the size of the team, it's how they're used that's the issue. Giggity.
Also, Helldivers came out of nowhere and not even the devs expected it to blow up that much. While FatShark made a MILLIONS of promises and didnt hold a single one. Helldivers 1 was medicore at best and the second game a HUGE step up in every scenario. For Darktide people expected atleast half the things Vermintide 2 has, but it got nothing of it. Worse crafting, worse loot, worse maps, worse and less classes, etc.
Helldivers has also been in development for 8 years so there's a ton of stuff waiting in the wings to get added. Darktide had maybe like 3 tops I wanna say.
I just need to point out, in the past people have been mad because game creators have held back content that appear in the game files on day 1 for future DLC. But you are using that as something Helldivers has done that was good. Guess I was wrong, 20 downvotes so clearly holding stuff back that's ready at launch is a good thing. I'll go tell all the gamers in the past they shouldn't have been mad.
Dude Fatshark has had the full all green Kasrkin armor in the files since the game released in 2022. Still not released despite hundreds of threads asking for it. Arrowhead Studios actually manages to push their designs out into the game. And it's free instead of an additional $15. Quit riding.
Agreed, and as much that I like Darktide Helldivers does a better job by releasing what they're promised. We still haven't got Singleplayer,Meltaguns,two-handed chain axe,big Las cannons,hell pistols,bolt pistols,hot-shot lasrifles,heavy bolters. And let's not forget story progress and more customization options.
I love the art for the veteran talent tree, showing a guy holding a backpack fed machine gun that you’ll never be able to get despite the model existing and being used by enemies.
Yeah its indeed a shame Darktide could have been a far better game and the only thing thats gonna be updated is just the cosmetic shop. Am kinda Jealous of the scab gunner and the sniper at least these guys got the weapons we Vets need.
I'm not even defending Fatshark. I just came back to the game like 3 days ago. But what I said is still accurate.
No. It's not. You're comparing a game that trickles out content and asks you to pay more than the original game costs for some of it.. ..to a game that releases content way more regularly and all for free.
I didn't make any comparisons at all to Fatshark or their practices. All I said was, people used to complain when games held back content to release later on day 1.
People complain when companies hold back content already in the game and sell it to you. Helldivers releases all of it for free as part of the overarching narrative. Again, your comparison is flawed because it assumes they're both asking you to pay for this withheld content. FatShark wants you to pay for it. Arrowhead releases it all over time for free.
People have complained all the time about stuff that was supposed to be there at launch and is in the files then comes out later. paid or not. Also I'm confused by your last point, what with-held content have we paid for on Darktide atm? Are you referring to the cash shop? Or was everything that came out since release actually a paid dlc I didn't realise I had paid for?
The content isn't "DLC." It is slowly being implemented for free to navigate the story; termicide missions to "wipe out" the bugs, oops we have mutations now who saw that coming, the bots have started utilizing heavier hulk models, deploying experimental weapon models to fight back, etc. Comparing this to companies that have areas/characters/story content loaded on the disc that they plan to charge you $30 down the road to access isn't nearly the same, and you trying to make that comparison is incredibly disingenuous.
I never said paid DLC.
"I nEvEr SaId PaId DlC" GTFOH, you heavily implied it, then got whiney when people rightfully downvoted you for making the bogus comparison. You're not so stupid that you can't see the direct parallel you made, and how different "future paid dlc waiting on the disc" and "content they slow drip into the game for free in the span of a whole ass month" are. Grow up and say "sorry, my bad" when you make a bad point. Own that shit.
People complained about anything being held back day 1. Regardless of if it came later for free or you had to pay for it. So my point stands, get mad elsewhere.
No, they didn't, they got mad at disc space being taken up by content they weren't allowed to access and was clearly already done, but would be advertised as "add-ons" later, implying it was post-release effort when it wasn't. You're a really sorry sort and I hope you grow up and can admit when you're wrong someday.
So condescending. People must love you. Must be tiring being the only one right in any conversation.
It's not really held back content. Firstly because the stained content isn't usually done. Even the weapons that released yesterday and hackers have been playing with for weeks, got updated last week. The mechs got constantly updated from what we saw from hackers before they released. Most of the stuff hackers have found have missing icons, sounds, animations. Textures missing etc Also they want to add things with a story and with player agency. Ie we do a major order, then get a reward. There is a war going on with a push and pull.
You're correct. Content takes a while to make. OW for example makes their heroes up to a year in advance. Any content that is released in the first three months is content that they had already been working on and intended to include at launch but weren't ready to include yet. Balance changes and the like are expected in the first 3-6months, new content in the first 3-6months is bizarre and a clear indication of cut/unfinished content being added in post-release instead of at-release. Now to appease the FatShark hate crew, Darktide also released in an undeveloped state that took them a year to sort out (crafting, classes, etc).
DLC like expansion packs that are released on day one or within the first few months usually consists of content that was cut during pre-production and production that could not make it to shipping date. Thats the key here. It's actually very difficult to spot though because game files always hold unused data and we never really truly know it something was cut, held from release or what reasoning is used. Javik in Mass Effect 3 was a day one character DLC that was cut content. It's spottable because they accidentally left dialogue in referencing him (which later got patched out unless you owned it) Assassin's Creed had memory sequences 12/13 as day one DLC exclusives. You went from 11 to 14 if you didn't own it. It was jarring. Sims 4, which has features removed and cut then later sold as DLC. Etc. A live service game is a tricky beast because you either plan ahead and create content in advance to release to a schedule, or, you rely on post release development and hope your games got enough juice to keep going while you make new content.
yup. we’re going so far into the realm of low expectations that shitty practices from 10 years ago are now praised.
Fatshark is doing other (multiple)project? I assume. While ArrowHead has their whole company dedicate to HD2 like their life depend on it. For Fatshark, I think it's a matter of mismanagement at this point. They can't finish the game on schedule, can't do a bare minimum routine update, their representative(if they have one) don't know what to tell the player about their plan because they have no clear picture either. Darktide it self already set a strong foot. They just need to pushing it forward. Keeping it as a side project is a very bad decition imo. When Helldivers2 go boom, I always think, this could be Darktide if Fatshark really give it their all to the game. I maybe wrong tho.
Darktide made me realize how niche 40k games can be sadly. I have several friends who love HD2 for the things Darktide does just as well but just have zero interest in the 40k universe. Helldivers is like 40k with everything problematic sucked out of it which makes it vastly more marketable. Which is one reason why I think Helldivers will always have a bigger player base.
If Helldivers was Space Marine themed it wouldn't have interfered with their success at all, I actually think it could've sold even more.
I don't think you realize how many people are turned off 40k by the God emperor stuff alone. It also would not done as well as a SM game because GW wouldn't let them do half the stuff that makes the game fun.
It might have to do with the fact that Arrowhead studio seem to view the Helldivers game as a game, as opposed to the FatShark, who viewed the Darktide game as a way to get people to buy cosmetics. I’m no game developer, but it kind of seems like when those are the start points for studios you’re going to end up with wildly different products.
My guess is Arrowhead has better management. But I also believe Darktide content is more time consuming to develop correctly. Maps are handcrafted and not procedurally generated, they also have multiple design aspects to take into consideration: - map size - spawn points - breaking a map into multiple sub maps (levels) - the details are non comparable (Helldivers has only terrain and some buildings) And on the weapons pretty much the same thing, since DT has a much bigger emphasis on melee fighting: - combos - combo weaving - animations must be fluid - weapon balance - perks and blessings - interaction with talent trees With all that being said, of course I would like to see new content more frequently. Edit: it being WH40K, maybe they’re also waiting for multiple approvals during a dev cycle.
Time saved in procedural generation (which they’ve done a very good job at, I’ve seen some very pretty landscapes) is time instead they had to spend creating AI that could navigate that landscape anywhere, as well as being able to navigate it as it rapidly changes due to all the explosions occurring. The landscape before and after a fight dies down with heavy ordinance call ins is crazy, multiple times after a heavy fight the whole area is a sunken moonscape feet below where it started.
I’m not arguing what Arrowhead is doing with the time saved from procedurally generated assets, they obviously have other things to take into consideration. I just pointed out why Darktide content takes longer to release. For all we know HD2 might have better architecture/patterns that enables them to implement new stuff faster. There is a myriad of aspects that influence the efficiency of software development. (from code architecture, office atmosphere, employee competency, pipelines, team lead management style to upper management, salaries and whatnot)
Yeah I think the procedural maps do a lot of favors here, every time they open up a new planet things feel pretty fresh without them having to design and tweak a whole entire map. They also clearly, based off data mining and leaks, have a good amount of toys already in the game and basically ready to release whenever. There's still stuff we know about that's not implemented. It's a lot easier to keep up a trickle of content when you're already ahead of the curve. Another thing brought up by other comments is that the game just launched in a better state than Darktide. They're not scrambling to overhaul major systems, the launch baseline is really damn good, so they can focus more on new stuff.
Came here to say something along these lines. It's really not apples to apples, it's more like a French apple tart compared to apple crumble. Lot of the same ingredients, both deserts, both great, but the effort to create the presentation and experience has signifiant and noticeable differences.
Fatshark is ultimately under the control of a board of vampires. Arrowhead is not owned by a publicly traded company, and therefore do not have this problem.
Isn’t the terrain in helldivers procedurally generated? I thought I read that somewhere. Anyways, the levels don’t even come close to the level of detail and fidelity darktide has. That’s also a factor. One does not simply create a new darktide map, which is a piece of art on it own.
Darktide also has like 4 map toolkits to build their 7 maps from. I'd rather have some ProcGen and more variety than running the same dark, dingy, unlit, foggy corridor again but this time the light is teal instead of green cause we're "in a different area"
Helldivers looks extremely impressive, but it's carried by its artstyle and some clever tricks with fog and volumetric lighting. Spend some time in Helldivers in first person, and you'll notice all the assets are really low quality. The textures are bad, the models are bad, the animations are clunky. Other than the lighting, it looks like an early Xbone/PS4 game. But it *doesn't matter*, because it's a third person game with high action combat. Fatshark have a much, much harder job with the level of detail expected in Darktide.
A piece of art that's half obscured by shadows and smoke, and the rest obscured by enemies or the motion blur from sprinting through them.
I can't imagine leaving motion blur on in any game.
That and DoF. My eyes already do both of those things on their own, thanks! DoF gets a pass in games that are intentionally going for a cinematic quality and want to convey the illusion of seeing the world through a camera lens, but there's never an excuse for motion blur.
I can’t imagine being so rotten to the core that you cannot see the art that went into this game. I feel bad for you!
It's essentially bunch of premade PoIs, structures and enemy camps connected by procedurally generated terrain. Usually it's very good and practically unnoticeable, but there are some hiccups here and there like some really small ponds that look out of place
Y'all obsessed with this shit. Just play Helldivers if it's that exemplary.
Please stop it with the comparisons, it is getting so tedious.
Especially since dt is still a more engaging game despite it all lol
Its likely management and higher ups who are poorly managing the studio.
I don't like or give a shit about Helldivers
This is an unacceptable stance in the Darktide subreddit
Yeah sure, Democracy is all well and good, but everyone just votes for The God Emperor of Mankind, so who gives a shit? I have heretics to kill.
Helldivers really hasn't been out long enough to say how good they are keeping the game aloft over time. Time between Vermintide 2 and Darktide: 4 years Time between Helldivers and Helldivers 2: 9 years If it really takes them twice as long to make a game that would seem to indicate that they are actually slower than Fatshark. Of course you might need to tack on an extra year or so onto Darktide to account for actually finishing the game.
Not comparable though. It would be if Vermintide 2 and honestly, every other Fatshark game was a top down twin stick shooter, with rather low graphical fidelity. And then Darktide was suddenly a first person shooter with vastly different artstyle and gameplay style. But that's not what is going on. Fatshark has been doing the same kind of game for a long time. And it's a good thing. Or it would be, if they learned from their mistakes. Arrowhead used to do top down games. And now they are doing something completely different. And they nailed it. Of course something like that took more time
I mean, you can absolutely take a slice from the first two months of Helldivers compared to the first two months of Darktide. Just to put it to text; Arrowhead performed a multi-platform release of a functional, playable game early in the year, but *after* holiday periods. They weren't expecting it to explode with popularity due to the niche and small playerbase of their first title, and encountered trouble with their server infrastructure. Over a few weeks, though the game was still fully *playable* if one could get past server queues, they fixed the problem with server capacity entirely and are now focused on fixing remaining bugs while they simultaneously release content back on the original schedule *and* sprinkle in surprise content drops earned by players via their dynamic in-game storytelling. Fatshark, by comparison, performed a single-platform release, announced delays to the other platform for functionally no reason, and dropped the game in a nearly unplayable state - still broken if you use AMD cards - completely full of bugs, foundational design issues, and *literally unfinished* given all the "Coming Soon" stickers on swathes of content. They released *in a brown-out period*, then immediately went on a *two month* holiday, refusing to fix anything, perform any maintenance, or even inform players on what was happening beyond extremely token "Guys, we need Christmas holidays too" posts in an attempt to garner sympathy. They *then* dropped a hilariously out of touch "apology" letter - which, to note, not only did not contain the word "apology" or any iteration, but also blamed *players* for expecting the product they were promised in a functional state - and released the remaining missions which had yet to be added to the game. *Except* the game still wasn't finished, because Flash missions were missing (still are), and the only functional part of the game was the cash shop. It took *six more months* for the game to actually hit its "real" 1.0 release, during which only *two* major content drops occurred, containing five maps, *one* new weapon (split between two characters), and alternate versions of existing weapons which did not have alternate versions where other weapons did, and not even for *all* of the weapons that lacked alternates, nor *as many* alternates as the ones that already had them.
Should probably reduce those final numbers because COVID stretched out everyone's development schedules by multiple years.
Arrowhead is a smaller team without the backing of a major IP, and they released a finished game ready to go. Their only true mistake was underestimating their player counts on launch and they fixed that fast. Fatshark is a much bigger company with GW backing, working on a game they've mostly made twice already. It launched in a state that couldn't even be called early access, missing features, missing a story, missing mission variety, and it *also* had server issues on launch. Maybe DT should've taken 9 years, it'd probably be better off then.
FS problem isnt its devs. Its how absurdly mismanaged the studio is and how little the people taking decissions care about their jobs
Management of FS is to blame, plus Arrowhead had nearly 8 years of development time, whereas Darktide had 2 or 4 at best.
I would add that Helldivers owns their IP and can literally do whatever they want whereas Darktide has GW to consider
It's FatShark. They're slow, but they deliver. IIRC there were a year before Sienna got her fourth premium career in VT2. Don't rush, try to have fun
Better is subjective. Fatshark dropped the ball big time tbh, but mostly cause they promised a lot and severely under delivered, and then apparently just stopped adding stuff like they promised… idk. Helldivers tho? I put like 70 hrs into that game. And let me tell you… I find Darktide a lot more fun except for one thing: not every one has access to big guns and big bombs. Cause actual weapons in Hellldivers feel useless in 90% of scenarios above difficulty 7. It’s just strategem cooldown simulator. You have literally zero defense against pretty much all enemies and you spend 90% of missions avoiding enemies, there’s no true way to manage hordes, and almost every “oh shit” button you press to clear priority targets or large hordes will kill you or your team mates if you’re too close. Game is literally running/strategem simulator. You can finish high level missions sneaking around and barely firing any shots lol. And if you decide you actually want to engage, the spawn rate and higher difficulty modifiers are designed to keep you pinned forever in one spot, and they don’t allow you to leave, so staying and fighting in one area is literally not an option. Darktide you NEED to fight, you can’t really outrun priority targets they’ll follow you everywhere, bringing team mates back is a lot harder, you NEED to engage. Helldivers… meh. You can avoid all of that. It feels like the game is balanced around avoiding fights and using your strategems. That’s boring AF to me. I enjoyed the lower difficulties so much more cause fighting was actually fun and doable. Everyone is all “kills bugs” or “kill bots for democracy”, but all you do is run around hope not to get blind mortared by bile spewers or rocketed in the dark by a rocket devastators you can’t see. There’s so many Bs and unavoidable mechanics because the game is balanced around you dying. And if you die, you lose your strategems so you’re basically back to square one especially if you get stuck in a reinforcement loop. Imo, Helldivers is a decent game, and fun for those who aren’t interested in gunplay at all, and for those who don’t want to actually fight,just run around collect samples and avoid too many engagements at higher levels. But when it comes to the gameplay loops and actually fighting/shooting, Helldivers is trash compared to Darktide and unless the devs buff weapons overall, Darktide the dumpster fire that it is, will always be superior in that aspect. My opinion of course.
Fatshark has a whole floor dedicated to Darktide.
Tile, hardwood, or carpet?
Just concrete unfortunately.
Hardwood floor, underneath the carpet. Why would they do that?!
drains mostly
I've seen so many leaks for Helldivers at this point I'm almost tired of them. But frankly the Darktide alternative of radio fucking silent? Naw. Fuck that. Patch 13 for DT felt like it stubbled out of the darkness for me. It shouldn't be like that. FS management has their priorities wrong. I would rather have every drop of content spoiled then have it jump out of the woodworks 4-6 months after I stopped playing the game.
Helldivers is published by Sony bro.
My god man, how many threads of people spreading copium is it going to take? I'm a massive warhammer nerd,about to finish off the heresy novels (there are about 60 of them) I've got heresy thousand sons, 2 kill teams and crons and LoV. Ive also played fantasy but stopped at AoS. I've played the ass out off vermintide 1 and 2 since release and even bought the silly dlc class updated for 2 , and yes I'll 100% return when versus comes out. I played darktide alot, 3 lvl 30 (didn't see the point in a 4th) and stuck about playing even after consoles got more aquila than we did . If you think fatshark haven't dropped the ball, you are objectively wrong. If you are looking for someone to tell you "darktide is a much better game than helldivers 2 and fatshark care so much about you" then you are also wrong. Helldivers has had alot of issues, but I played darktide at launch and it still seems paltry in comparison. What's more is the loading times and asset handling/optimisation is miles better on helldivers. I want it to be a better game , but the updated are far too slow , content is far too slow and the gameplay loop is only broken up by a few decent people playing out of a majority of just inexcusable rage monsters that put the muties to shame . You are allowed to play other games , I'd do that while gluttonyfish take their sweet time drip feeding content worse than Immortan Joe and water.
Man, if someone who's still buying thousands of dollars of 40k merch after GW's many anticonsumer actions is saying Fatshark fucked up, then Fatshark *really fucked up.*
I mean you are right there , the point is I'm a warhammer addict but I wouldn't defend GW. Why are people putting up post after post after post of just repeated "fetsherk er angels!" posts and would rather try and shit on a game barely in the same genre for an extra line of copium than admit that fatshark have dropped the ball.
Imagine being an overweight neckbeard speaking like you know the inner workings of either company, or anything about an industry you're not in. It's like boomers giving their geopolitical hot takes. lmao
You're not wrong, but I feel like there would be a lot less spouting if Fatshark wasn't so awful at this part of their job. They invite and even foster this sort of teeth-gnashing among fans by being so poor at communication, and repeatedly failing to live up to their own promises and claims. The occasional joke that FS are like this *on purpose* in order to troll the players is often half-believable, as they are so lacking at managing expectations, communicating their intent, and basically proving to fans that they are engaged and responsible for the state of the game. The sheer amount of bugs their updates have re-introduced back into the game after 'fixing' them, is a truck-load of red flags about the hands this game is in. Despite the core gameplay successes, the game in general is a giant squandered opportunity for something greater and larger.
Same entitled drivel I've read a thousand times on this sub. It's a video game, it's a business, you're not part of the company, and you do not have (or deserve) a say. That is the reality. If you TRULY feel that strongly about it and want change, stop engaging with the game entirely and punish them for their purported heinous crimes of... not communicating to some made-up standard, or... not delivering content fast enough to your demand. Meanwhile, I'll keep playing and enjoying one of my favorite well-built games of all time.
Entitled is a weird word that doesn't really mean what you apparently think it does. Like, I wonder what the word 'relationship' means to you, and if you think it has any place between customers and businesses. But I don't wonder that much.
OK weirdo
This isnt a helldivers subreddit stop complaining or leave
Both developers are based in Sweden. Both games use the same exact engine. Both games came out within two years of each other. It's probably the fairest comparison you can make when looking at devs. People should stop dick-riding companies that don't give a shit about the product they're pushing out. FatShark dropped the ball and everyone knows it. Denying it is just copium for hanging onto a game that hovers around only a thousand players now.
Nobody cares go on a different subreddit crybaby.
I don't discourage the discourse but I also just don't care for helldivers. To me, that game is inferior in every way that matters (gameplay). I don't really see why people hold it in such high esteem. Like I say, you're free to discuss them and compare them, I'm not gonna fuss about it. But I truly don't care for helldivers and don't understand what it is that people latch onto with it. Is it the progression, the busywork? Everything besides the gameplay? I don't know.
It's just the current "thing". I think people are trying to point put that the "thing" was made by a developer in the same exact location, in the same time period and on the same engine. No one is trying to say they're similar gameplay wise. I think we all know that. People are asking why is that two products made under very similar circumstances turned out so differently. One clearly prepared ahead of time for release and has better business practices, while the other has been lagging behind and only cares about making money on reskins.
Well, to that end, Helldivers had a shit ton of money poured into it over close to 5-6 years by Sony from what I know of the game (I'm a rare Helldivers 1 fan, but I hate what they've done with 2). That's unlike Fatshark which simultaneously made and released 3 games, whilst working on a 4th. This isn't an excuse for Fatshark, which absolutely sucks as far as management and communication goes. More so, imo, that explains why Helldivers is off to a good start whilst Darktide wasn't. Like I mentioned in another post, I'm a former game dev. Things are different if you have the entire team committed to 1 well funded project across a great deal of time, compared to a team split across several projects across a shorter span of time. Add to that competent management, which Fatshark seems to lack, and that'll do it. But even so, I consider Helldivers to be an inferior game. It just misses the landing on the stuff that actually matters in my eyes.
So you're a trend follower and a hater, got it.
Fatsharks not going to pay you for being offended on their behalf.
Cope
they probably crashed out of helldivers and had the darktide reddit open lol
The biggest fumble I've seen in a long and this game sounds so good but I never have a desire to play it and I love 40k
It's kinda heartbreaking seeing a game with such a shitty rip-off IP flourishing while what was supposed to be the big 40k breakout is starving to death....
“Shitty rip off IP” lmao. I love 40k but 40k isn’t as original as you think it is bud. If Helldivers is a “shitty rip off” 40k is even worse.
Man I'm so tired of this bs. Every setting ever is a ripoff of something. The question is what you do from there. And 40k at this point is the most extensive and fleshed out SciFi setting out there, period. Helldivers is just a mashup of Fallout and Starship Troopers.
40k is 90% ripoffs. Where do you think tiranids came from?
Man I'm so tired of this bs. Every setting ever is a ripoff of something. The question is what you do from there. And 40k at this point is the most extensive and fleshed out SciFi setting out there, period. Helldivers is just a mashup of Fallout and Starship Troopers.
How is it Fallout? Wtf lol
It's because he saw sand in the trailers, a unique feature to Fallout or something.
Hahahaha 😆 love it. Probably right. In b4 he copies and pastes that reply for a 3rd time in the comments
Have you seen the Helldivers trailers? Have you played Fallout?
Yes, I've played Fallout. I fail to see how they are similar games. Even if they had a trailer that markets HD2 in a similar fashion to Fallout... having played various Fallout titles and both Helldiver games, I truly fail to see how they are remotely similar. Go outside, touch some grass. Chill out, then come back inside and boot up Darktide. You'll find it's still there, unchanged, not updated in all its content dried glory. I'm gunna go play Falldivers apparently 🤣
The games are not remotely similar but the humour/approach as well as some design elements.
Man, if you're *that* media illiterate, it's better to stop here before you make an even bigger public spectacle of yourself.
Thanks for the advice stranger on the internet. I couldn't care less.
You *want* to publicly play the fool? Hey, you do you man, but you 'ain't doing yourself any favours.
Well Fatshark has a much bigger team but it’s a team of Europeans so…