I went back to 1.7 for a week. Here's what I learned

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
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In summary: There is not as much difference between 1.7 and 2.0 as I thought there was. The differences that ARE there, though, are absolutely key to the basic hack and slash gameplay.

I found that the majority of the things that annoy me about 2.0 were still there in 1.7. Apparently I had just forgotten about them. I suspect that the changes to timing, enemy speed, and so on, made me more sensitive to all the quirks of the game that I’d learned to tune out.

I found I actually miss the stagger system. The basic idea that stunned enemies get hurt more is really intuitive and hard to unlearn once you’ve gotten used to it. This is clearly NOT the source of 2.0’s problems.

Nonetheless, 1.7 is still better gameplay. It’s smoother, frame rate is better, enemies respond when you hit them, weapons have a satisfying heft to them and feel powerful. When my foes lie dead on the floor I feel a sense of victory! In 2.0 all I have is a sense of relief that the beatings have stopped. 1.7 is just MORE FUN.

Most of all, the absence of spawn bugs is SUCH A HUGE RELIEF. Being able to clear a room reliably again, or check corners and have those corners stay empty when I turn around, makes everything feel so much better. Situational awareness is a thing again. Combat feels fair. My actions matter; killing foes creates a brief moment of safety and lets me look at the battle, instead of leaving me vulnerable to a snap spawn behind me. Seriously, if this was the only thing fixed, 2.0 would be fine.

You know I’m not going to leave it there though. We can do better then just “fine.”

So what do I think made this huge difference in feel, in satisfaction, in FUN? A combination of tiny things that add up to big problems. No one change is responsible, and all the tiny fine tuning things affect each other and interact in a way that makes insignificant tweaks have a huge effect.

Suggestions to fix 2.0, based on what I learned:

  1. Fix the spawn bugs.
  2. Make weapons have heft again. Give them their cleave back, and reduce enemy stagger resistance, especially the cannon fodder. It’s so much more satisfying to hit things when the things respond to being hit. Also, Stagger is a really good mechanic, I suggest committing to it. Buffing it to a baseline 30/60% boost would do a lot to give weapons their heft back, and IMO would not unbalance things at all.
  3. Fix the spawn bugs.
  4. Slow the enemy attack and response speeds back down. So many problems seem to be tied to this - animations not lining up with their hit detection, enemies not being staggered long enough to followup, attacks that hit you from the wrong direction - I believe all of this is due to the enemy response time changes. The game just seems out of tune and the assets (models, animations) don’t line up properly when they are sped up.
    I keep seeing enemies being staggered, and want to move in to take advantage, and I think “Wow, that stagger thing was actually a really awesome idea, I kind of miss it.” Then I remember that in 2.0 the stagger durations are so short, that there are no openings to take advantage of and the whole system just doesn’t work. If the stagger system of 2.0 was combined with 1.7’s speed and pacing it would be amazing.
  5. Fix the spawn bugs.
  6. Reduce the horde sizes down to 1.7 levels. The reduced hyperdensity, improved frame rate, more room to manuever (for players AND the AI) and general feel of combat are just better with smaller hordes. Combat flows like water. It is good.
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I simply agree, but let me say one thing.

Everyone has his opinion, it’s fair, and some players could prefer 2.0 gameplay. “1.7 was too easy”, they could say too.
Other players could say “git gud”, wich is rather enough stupid, because people can have opinions regardless their skill (anyway I pretty completed every challenge, cata FoW included).

BUT an issue borns when we have problems that go beyond opinions.

If you add the stagger system, wich is a very good idea (finally shields and slow weapons are useful), but you reduce the time enemies are staggered until the point we can’t hit (in a consistent way) them, we have two mechanics that are in contrast with each other.

If you give to enemies a better reaction time, more speed, etc etc, but you don’t give them an appropriate animation or you don’t give us the possibility to see enemies clearly (hyperdensity), we have another problem.

If you nerf our dodge system and our tHP in order to force us to dodge only when we see an incoming attack (so no more spam)… but we can’t see that attack because it’s concealed between hyperdensity… well, you know, we have another problem.

I don’t want to seem rude… but it seems that Fatshark is quite undecided about the gameplay they want.

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Let´s not forget how the AI spawn director still goes crazy pretty often, sometimes hardly doing anything except sending in sparse hordes of slaverats for an entire run and other times it´s beastman horde+2X assassins+2x packmasters+2x banners+boss.

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Dodge was too powerfull, shields were shiet, some classes didnt do anything special (FK for example), still god hit through block and bs spawn but fight when you use more than just dodging didnt change that much

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How does one go back to 1.7? I’m asking for a friend…

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https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/cnhbdg/guide_how_to_play_version_17/

You can access “old versions” on steam. Be careful, as WoM did a lot of change, it can mess up your characters levels a bit (and possibly others things as well)

It’s also worth noting that your + levels have disappeared. A 30+100 character turned into a regular 30 character. I suspect that this has something to do with the level 35 grind in WoM, as some of my characters were 30+2 or 30+5.

This way of play is not supported by devs, and I strongly recommend to be careful if you’re too attached to characters, challenges, or/and equipement. As any new server change could possibly cause some new issues to arise (even if I THINK versions are taken into account for now)

Also note some issues with EAC that are detailled in the first comment, so read them =p

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What Froh said, + get the ‘talentless’ mod to remove the 6th talent from all your characters or it will crash.

Don’t get too attached though. FS will probably kill it at some point. It was really good to see the real difference between the two game versions though, and cut through the myths and complaints.

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Side note: there was never a 1.7…

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Whatever arbitrary number the last one before 2.0 was then. /shrug

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whats 1.7?

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Exactly, I was thinking wtf, what 1.7, last one was 1.6

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  1. Fix the spawn bugs.

(you mised this, very important point)

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Hahaha, amazing, you kinda describe VT2’s entire problem in comparison to VT1. Just tiring en masse beating.

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I think it’s funny you mention the two versions being fairly similar. I had found 2.0 Legend to be easier due to the extra 50 power and talent changes(like playstyle ones), plus stagger. Health was increased in 2.0, but the bonuses more than compensated. The one notable thing is events are actually a challenge instead of being a walk in the park.

I think some people remember pre-WoM better than others. Playing through the beta through their myriad of changes, I would sometimes go back to live so I was kept fresh. The end result (post 2.0) was a much more finely tuned iteration than what was experienced during the beta. Stagger, enemy health, and other things were brought to a much better spot. Beastmen were eventually tuned down post 2.0 to a much better spot. If the bugs were fixed, this game would be so much more enjoyable to play.

Fortunately, this was told to us:

Sounds like a lot of stuff. And a beta branch also sounds really nice.

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Keep in mind I play without beastmen on live because I never bought Winds Of Failure, so any problems related to those I won’t know much about.

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Oh so many issues are made worse by beastmen and beastment issues.

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They add another dimension of issues to the scope then.

After disabling WOM I actually managed to complete a couple of bot legend runs. Still have the same problem of the AID occasionally forgetting to stop spawning things though (never had this as a problem pre-WOM).

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Sadly certain Beastmen’s behaviors increase the problem… spear guys mainly.

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Blockquote Let´s not forget how the AI spawn director still goes crazy pretty often, sometimes hardly doing anything except sending in sparse hordes of slaverats for an entire run and other times it´s beastman horde+2X assassins+2x packmasters+2x banners+boss.

you know what I call that when the game goes into super hardcore mode. Full R-tard… you never go full r-tard :slight_smile:

I had a run yesterday, had a really good group. Legend run, all the game did was maulers in literally every part of the game, if there was one group a mauler, they weren’t hard to kill but it was interesting to see that the game spawning relentless hordes. I mean is that not what a deed does, add more challenge. Why does the game do that with the regular difficulty runs. We were victorious but we all knew something was not right.

I think FS needs to look at the difficulties in a different way
4 basic difficulties, then you have added bonus difficulties which are deeds so that is another set of 4 difficulties, then you have one that combines pretty much everything into insane mode which is CATA

Then within that you have grimes which am sure creates added bonus difficulty not just losing health, am sure it triggers the game to add more spice to your current run. which is fine.

I think FS needs look into its RNG spikes and clearly sort that out a bit better
then when that is cleared up, you then change the dynamics of the games environment.

rats/ rats with shields rats with super heavy armor
chaos minions/chaos giants/chaos giant heavy armor
monsters
rat ogre/choas spawn/Giant troll/Giant rat gaser/minotaur

then you got the dem beastmen ugggh.

but really, it is just beatmen that is making the game feel really out of whack.

playing with beastmen on champ difficulty… its all good and fun
turn it on Legend, very hard to near impossible win rate. Am sure it would make a bit of a difference if I had red weapons but the game is so damn stingy that it takes forever to get 1 red item
not only that, you need 5 to craft the dlc weapons. like come on, fix that drop rate

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What specifically are you struggling with, beastmen-wise?

I know what you mean about the DLC weapon crafting. It’s annoying each time a DLC comes out, players have to burn 5 reds just to make 1 DLC red. I mean, you could always just craft oranges and roll for perfects, but that’s no more enjoyable than burning 5 reds.

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