Hello everyone !
My name is FuPlaayz and i play this game religiously and stream it on the daily bases. Some might heard of me, some might have not. I have over two thousand hours in VT1 just to give you an idea of how much i love this game.
Couple of hours FatShark ago released the Patch 1.0.4 and here are my alarming thoughts about how “nerfing” Legend and overall difficulty will hurt the game.
One of biggest appeals of Vermintide 1 was it’s difficulty and how the game punished you for not sticking together.
Ambient trash mobs or the lack of thereof, made it very simple for me and my comrades to effectively “run through” the level.
No more Marauders, or Stormvermin in numbers. A lot of Armored units as ambient creatures is one of the reasons that made the game difficult. Numbers, numbers and more numbers, fighting for every street corner, for every corridor ! Five or Six Marauders or Storms at once with a Rothelm on top ? Bring it on ! Well … not anymore !
In the past hour i ran thought 4 legendary maps with all the books with around 12 to 15 mins per map, with no vocal or barely any communication. I was mostly running ahead using my left click just to prove a point, on how ridiculously “easy” the game has become since the patch. Ambient specials did not spawn or too few in number. There was so little in fact that i just assumed it was bug. I was running ahead killing everything with my friend while 2 picks where trailing behind…
Difficulty spikes will get your blood pumping with sudden specials spawns, kept you on your toes.
As i mentioned before, there were barely or any specials at all. And as everyone knows that specials are the ones that make Vermintide 2 challenging. And the challenge is what makes Vermintide.… Well, as of right now : There is no more challenge to put it bluntly. Legendary at the moment, is easier than Nightmare in VT1.
Bigger hordes don’t make Vermintide difficult, specials do ! When there is no more difficulty in the game, people will quickly stop playing since there is nothing to “work towards to” anymore…
With all that talk about how difficulty is at the “core gameplay” of Vemintide in the marking campaign. I find it ironic to have these changes to the difficulty…
For 3 weeks i enjoyed legendary and so everyone i knew… This morning i get dozens upon dozens of dms of people saying the same thing : “They destroyed Legend”… And myself i don’t even want to play anymore.
I don’t think difficulty was “nerfed”, it was adjusted. Difficulty for difficulty’s sake is moot. It is always possible to make a game more difficult by being unreasonable and not giving people a fighting chance. Spawning specials is fine, it becomes cheap when it is something like 2 packmasters, 2 gutter runners, 2 leeches and 2 blightstormers all at once or at very shot intervals, all during a horde and a boss. Argue all you want, I don’t believe in a week of tuesdays that you or any other team, no matter how skilled and well equipped, have a realistic chance do get out of a situation like this. When you have no way to defend yourself against certain specials once they grab you, or even before they grab you (like packmasters with their RIDICILOUS HP spawn almost next to you in a horde, yank you into the horde and drag you away), you need to limit these specials. Otherwise, difficulty does not stem from a fair challenge but from cheap, arbitrary and random design choices that do not add to an exciting experience, but feel more akin to some kind of entity deliberately deciding that you’ve played enough and the game has to end now. The AI directs just pulling the plug is not even difficult. Difficulty implies that you could overcome the difficulty. Incapping specials spawning right in your teams pocket is not something you can overcome, you just have to live with it. Of course, I’d rather see more specials because yes, they make the game difficult. But the game has SO many problem with certain design choices that I’d say at least for now, stepping things down is a good idea.
There are hundreds of people that deal with these situation relatively fine. Don’t believe me ? I welcome you to watch one of my past broadcasts or join me live tomorrow.
Even before the today’s patch i had to challenge myself to play with “pubs” on legend difficulty to make the game actually challenging.
If you can’t climb a mountain, it’s not up to the mountain to shrink to your size but it’s for you to try to clime it until you make it.
Yes some spawns were “unfair” but most of them are manageable.
Nerfing can be tombstone of this game if fatshark not gonna be careful
V2 game is type of game which must be hard and uforgiving.
If game become mindless wreck a mole hack and slash, it coud die overnight, beig dificult is soul of surival game, if game become easy it become worthless…
Since we are talking about Legend difficulty, the one that is supposed to challenge the game’s top players, that sounds like a good argument to me. Legend should, by no means, be a walk in the park.
That being said, I haven’t tried the new patch yet. I shall see how it is.
I never claimed I wanted Legend to be easier. What I am getting at is that until the things that make the game too random and unfair, I welcome the balance changes until certain aspects are dealt with. I like difficulty when it leaves me in control of the game so when I screw up, I know it is my own fault. Games like Dark Souls or Cuphead are good example of what I mean, they are hard but rarely give you reason to blame the game’s randomness if you fail. VT2 works fine in this regard for the most time, but scenarios like the one I described where stuff just spawns in your pocket and yanks you without being able to react happens often enough that it is an issue in my book. Of course you shouldn’t be able to steamroll the hardest difficulty and you should need experience and teamwork. We don’t need to argue about that, that is a given. But there are so many things in the game that don’t feel like they work as they should that until that stuff is adjustes, I think it is reasonable to tone it down for now. Doesn’t mean that it will stay that way and I doubt it will.
Just did a few runs on Legend, and I honestly want to ask Fatshark "What the hell where you guys thinking? "
There are barely any enemies on the maps now, there is no challenge…legend should not be a walk in the park.
You are ruining your own game Fatshark.
Ill agree that certain specials needed a adjustment, like the leeches cheap insta scratch that goes through your block if he teleports next too you. But the reduction in overall enemy elites/numbers throughout the map was not needed this is ridiculous, there is barely anything to kill let alone be wary off throughout the maps now. Some groups used to force you to communicate and actually coordinate with your team, now its just another joke as you are casually waddling through the maps.
How is Legendary any different from Champion now aside from the extra damage taken and better loot?
Can you please leave your veteran players at least one damn difficulty with somewhat of a challenge ?
This has to be a joke.
Veteran players are a loud minority that want to claim monopoly on how the game should be played. Game developers act in their best interest as to not listen to them, as you don’t make sales by catering to a very minor and elitist group of players that complain the loudest, you make sales by making games accessible to everyone (and yes, that includes higher difficulties). Again, not saying that it should stay the way it is, buy claiming to be a veteran with thousands of hours and the ability to waltz through any difficulty without hinderance is a very poor argument to make. A little bit like pro-football players complaining goals being too small.
I’ll be the first to agree that the challenge of the game is super important, it is what makes or breaks the game on higher difficulties. The recent patch was not aimed, intended or engineered to nerf legend. I believe that variation is key in keeping the game challengin and most of the tweaks was aimed towards this end (for instance, we did not reduce the amount of specials, we just tuned down the bias for disablers to increase the variation)
If you guys are running through legend ez mode then we’ll need to take a look at providing a suitably horrible challenge in some way. (Halespluorgh included as rush prevention- deed anyone?). Regardless, running through maps unopposed sounds bugged.
In the meantime, happy gaming and ranalds blessing be upon you.
Legend before the patch a was challenging. We were running full book legend with twitch integration and winning all week. A few hours later you release a patch which reduces the difficulty to the equivalent of hard/nightmare in V1.
We’re talking about players who’ve put 100s - 1000’s of hours in to vermintide as a whole. Sure we’re a minority but we assumed legend was gonna be well, Legendary. And we’ve been here for the long haul promoting the hell out of v2.
Why should we continue playing and streaming the game when we can walk through the maps on the hardest difficulty? Why should we continue to put the time and effort in to playing a game we love when you’ve just ripped away a major part of it in a few hours?
It looks like you don’t even play your own game if you’re talking about we nerfed a few specials. The whole difficulty is gutted. There’s no elites any more, the maps are empty, there is zero challenge. If you think adding some slave rat hordes makes the game challenging then there’s something very wrong and you’ve suddenly become totally out of touch with an important part of the vermintide community.
Your reply came off as condescending and is actually pretty insulting to a lot of the older players in the community.
We’ve over looked a lot of the problems with the game and have had faith in you to fix the problems. About 60% of the game is non functional, buggy and broken right now. The majority of the new talents don’t work, there’s old bugs fixed in V1 back in v2, there’s stuff that was fixed in qol mod that hasn’t been added when it blatantly should have. There’s stupid stuff missing like see who is talking in a coop game that has been asked for since V1 beta.
We’ve been there reassuring players new and old alike that the devs are in touch with the community and we trust them. With this legend nerf and the above response to a pretty damn serious issue I can see this changing pretty damn fast.
Unless this is remedied in some way then we will just stop playing until there’s modding support. It’s that simple.
Sure you have my money and sure, I’ve had 350 hours out of the game already but I was personally planning on playing this game a lot more as were a lot of other old school v1 players.
Yeah I just completed War Camp on legend solo and it felt relatively easy throughout (compared to legend before). I fought a stormfiend and four hordes throughout. I was able to take care of any specials by myself, and I feel this is because their spawn rate was reduced.
That being said, I didn’t go for any grims. I’m sure it will be harder when I do so, and I will probably bring friends along for that.
I’m glad you guys are working on balancing the game and I hope you have a nice day. I will continue slicing rats in two.
I don’t think any enemy type should become over-represented on higher difficulties, since this skews up the weapon balance. If half of the ambients are stormvermin then armor penetrating weapons become much stronger. Optimally they’d balance the difficulties in a way that all weapons remain relevant. I think this was a bit of problem earlier if you got a “stormvermin seed” for the map. I have not had the opportunity to play the 1.0.4 version, though. Maybe they need to make it harder in some other way.
Yet here we are playing Legend with a reduced amount of Elites and enemies throughout the maps thanks to the recent patch which makes the maps feel desolate and empty.
The adjustment to specials and their spawn rates is fine, but the reduction in the amount of elites (Storm Vermins,Chaos Knights) throughout the maps was unnecessary and makes some of the maps feel like a barren wasteland.
That’s cute and all how would YOU make it harder and balanced ? Armored units are harder to deal with and offer quiet a challenge.
Legend difficulty wasn’t perfect but it was reasonably “balanced”, worked and challenged even the vets (sometimes)
If you didn’t had arm pen you can always use charge attacks or aim at the head. Arm pen is really for lazy pips such as myself.
I don’t have an answer ready and it’s not my job to balance the game. VT1 did not make maps populated solely by stormvermin and it was decently difficult on cata. Maybe make normal enemies have more health, less prone to stagger or make them more mobile even. I remember having to hit clan rats multiple times in VT1. It does not seem to be the case in VT2 for some reason at least no the same degree.
But I don’t really want to get into a debate on how the difficulty should be done. I just think some weapons become pretty useless if majority of the enemies are armored, while others become disproportionately useful. IIRC two handed swords for instance have a very low headshot damage against armored enemies.
So you want to balance weapons or the enemies around the weapons ? What you are suggesting is pretty much an impossible job. You can’t balance every weapons and unit in Legend so EVERYTHING becomes viable, it’s not achievable…
Pre Patch legend wasn’t perfect but it was interesting and challenging… Now it’s a wasteland that can be run through with bots.
Also, each weapon has it’s role. Making every weapon viable in every situation is simply pointless.
I would make skaven hordes slightly tankier. I can wipe out an entire horde by myself without issue. Then again, that can probably be attributed to the great damage of the beam staff’s shotgun, which could probably use a damage reduction (but lets save that for another thread).
I think skaven hordes need to be more of a problem than they are now. I am delighted when a skaven horde comes, because I know that means my healthbar is going to be filled with temporary health. They pose absolutely no threat right now, which I think is unfortunate. That is why I would make them harder to kill. I think they would feel more overwhelming at that point, which I think is what they should feel like.
I disagree, and offer a different opinion. My team and I played through vermintide 1’s cataclysm as well, and while that mode was difficult as well it was far more fair than what legend was prior to this patch. Enemies were more deadly, yes, but if you and your team were good you could make it through almost every encounter.
Spawning six specials unnanounced at the same time in the middle of a horde or boss fight sucks. Getting wiped randomly throughout the level from the game director freaking out and deciding ‘hey time to end the game’ isn’t fun to most people. You claim that most of the spawns were managable but nearly every legend spawn I fought was either unfair or unwinnable, be it multiple gunner rats shooting through a stormvermin patrol, several disablers spawning in the middle of an attacking horde with no warning and yanking you into it, or out of sight blightstormers making a boss fight in a narrow map literally impossible.
I’d be fine if they were to boost enemy health & damage even more to compensate for toning the special & ambient spawnrate down, but old legend was imo one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had with this game and made my group (which found champion too easy) consider dropping the game.
If you want ‘unfair’ challenge for the sake of difficulty, do legendary deeds, or play the game mode with low power gear or using the ‘underpowered’ classes or whatever. Don’t lock off an entire game mode to a super minority of players.