I'm really not seeing much of a change in Legendary difficulty. It is as terrible as ever. Please, Fatshark

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
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(DISCLAIMER: Yes, I can and have cleared all Legendary levels except Skittergate and Halescourge, and I’ve cleared Chaos Patrols and I solo’d Cataclysm in V1, so please reserve your gameplay advice)

Apart from the boss changes and general bug fixes, the Legendary bs is still there. Just did Halescourge and got a MASSIVE rat horde (with ZERO Stormvermin inside it, so fighting it was just boring spam light attack) along with a DOZEN (at least ten) specials total in the FIRST room - they just kept spawning over and over during and after the horde. It wasn’t difficult it was just annoying, like let me move the hell on.

Then we get a boss stuck in a wall in the next room, rat ogre, dies easily. Then a second boss, chaos spawn halfway into the town takes forever and we get a horde on top of it, along with 6 specials, we nearly wipe but recover. Move on and get near the Final Boss, Bubblebutt himself, and a silent Chaos Patrol with 10 Chaos Warriors spawns on top of us and we wipe. Feeling like the game just decided to deny you completion after you triumphed over everything doable isn’t a good feeling, not something I care to repeat.

When a Chaos Patrol or even a SV patrol spawns on you and the audio is overwhelmed by them yelling and clanking around, and two specials IMMEDIATELY incapacitate two of your heroes and then 2 ratling gunners opens fire through a wall and horde starts spawning I really just don’t know what Fatshark expects us to be able to do here.

Fatshark: I thought this spammy stuff was supposed to be fixed, but it certainly is not, just slightly reduced in frequency of when it starts spamming you. I’M NOT ASKING FOR ANYTHING TO BE NERFED, I WANT ENEMIES BUFFED AS A MATTER OF FACT, I JUST WANT YOU TO STOP DROPPING THE ENTIRE ENEMY SET ON ME AT ONCE.

HORDES ARE WEAK - What happened to hordes full of Stormvermin from Cataclysm in Vermintide 1? Those were a challenge even with no special spam. Now you just spam light attack or flamethrower/beam staff. Legendary hordes aren’t even a challenge with two teammates down unless you also have to deal with a tide of specials or a Chaos Patrol. The Stormvermin mixed in with hordes made it hard to just cleave everything down, but not in V2.

SPECIALS ARE WEAK - Even on Legendary they don’t do much damage unless you take forever to kill them, or a gunner/gas rat is out of line of sight. And apart from the hookrat they all fall over dead to farts. They aren’t hard, just annoying, and I spend way, way too much time killing too them like playing whack a mole through the whole map. Anyone playing legend should know to stick together, and so long as you stick together even five or six successive specials aren’t a problem alone, just listen turn shoot listen turn shoot punch the double stacked leeches that spawn on you.

BOSSES ARE WEAK - Boss attacks are pretty easy to dodge when nothing else is around. And Shrapnel Bomb + Strength Potion with Potion Share Trait + Bounty Hunter + Sienna and bosses fall over. And you are usually fine blowing items on a boss so long as it isn’t a Halescourge/IntoNest/WarCamp. The only boss that is a real challenge on his own is Chaos Spawn if for some reason you don’t have any way to stun him and you just keep letting him heal by eating your dudes. The Big Bosses are in a pretty good spot now though.

ELITES ARE WEAK - Stormvermin’s heads fall off if you glance them with any headshot pretty much, even on Legend. The biggest thing to worry about with Stormvermin is if two or three are stacked on top of each other and you kill one not realizing the other is winding up his over head attack. Chaos Warriors are only annoying in huge packs and because they instantly stand back up after knockdown like a berserker. Otherwise ultimate powers make them disappear.

Everything is weak and easy on its own when just 1 of 4 are present, a bit interesting when 2 of 4 are there, a real challenge with 3 of 4, and “Delete this game from the timeline” unfair when the game drops the entire enemy set on your group. I am honestly mad at the developers personally when this happens, because you are responsible for this. I could solo Cataclysm in Vermintide 1 and it never felt so absolutely unfair, there were many challenging moments but you could do things like actually avoid Stormvermin Patrols at least. I’ll be dropping V2 and just stick to V1 if I need my Warhammer fix, and soon if nothing changes about loot or Legendary isn’t adjusted. I still have reds to collect in V1 and I actually trust the loot system to award them (That’s right I actually love Vermintide 1’s loot system over V2 because the odds are right on the screen and rerolling weapons is much easier and faster).

Legendary is just a troll difficulty. For the most part it is boring, sometimes the fun picks up, and then the game drops the entire enemy set on you and it feels unfair. It kinda sucks beating a few Legendary missions in a row and then getting wiped on your next one to everything at once. It just feels so random and it isn’t a learning experience other than learning “Stop playing legend, it a dice roll for a dice roll.”

Here is what I want to see done:

Just remove Chaos Patrols from the game to be honest. Don’t even bother trying to fix the pathing/sound on them or balance them, the game doesn’t need them and it makes Chaos Warriors feel like they’re aren’t unique. I’d rather have stronger individual Chaos Warriors than a dozen puny ones.

Put a damn limit on the number of specials that can spawn in a row and while a boss is alive The most enjoyable and rewarding experience I’ve had so far in V2 was Legendary Spinemanglr in Into the Nest. There’s a boss, there’s elites and a mini horde and guess what NO SPECIALS (at least until immediately after the boss, and this should be cancelled too, specials immediately after boss before you have any time to recover is stupid as hell). THE GAME CAN ACTUALLY BE CHALLENGING AND ENJOYABLE WITHOUT GETTING SPAMMED WITH SPECIALS.

PLEASE PAY ATTENTION AND TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY, FATSHARK. ADDRESS IT ASAP. STOP THE SPECIAL SPAM AND STOP LISTENING TO WHOEVER THINKS THAT CRAP IS A GOOD IDEA. Whatever changes you made in 1.04 aren’t enough to make me feel like Legendary is fair or challenging, except in certain moments like Spinmanglr.

BUFF ALL ENEMY TYPES

REMOVE CHAOS PATROLS

PUT A TIGHTER LIMIT ON SPECIALS THAT CAN SPAWN AT ONCE AND IN A ROW

FIX THE LOOT RATE AND REROLL SYSTEM

and you have made one of my top 10 games of all time. Otherwise I’m over Legendary, the difficulty isn’t that much more than Champion until the game decides to delete you, and the loot rate is identical because 0 isn’t greater than 0.

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Chapeau!
Its a ping pong of balancing patches left and right, probably will need a few months until they hit the golden spot.

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I noticed some pretty significant changes that make a majority aside from patrol issues feel a lot better, leeches for example no longer being able to damage from their teleport was a drastic step in the right direction, and bear in mind small tuning as opposed to be changes is often better since it doesn’t over nerf or change a difficulty setting that would either make it trival to complete or even more absurd in different areas.

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I found it to be easier. Area’s I’m used to seeing like 25+ stormvermin standing around in instead have had 1-5 and normal mobs. Less CW’s in general unless the director decides to be an a-hole, which is really where I think the difficulty can come from as sometimes it just decides to end your run.

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oh yeah the bugs and leech changes and stuff are good, but personally I was never really bothered by leeches, I just kept moving constantly when you hear a leech and you are ahead of them and out of punch range when they spawn. tougher for ranged classes though.

just died AGAIN to a silent chaos warrior patrol spawning on me. it isn’t good. my entire group is fed up and going back to v1

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The only change I noticed and which I appreciate is the Leech not taking 20% of your health by porting into your rear.

The rest is as OP describes…just too much randomness. Oh you’re fighting a boss? Well the last horde spawn was a whopping 20 seconds ago, let’s spawn another. Oh, no more specials alive? Let’s throw in 5 more and see how you deal.
Still alive? Bravo. I would shake your hand but I shall just send a Chaos patrol in there.
Wiped? Git gud scrub.

There is no fun to be had with so much randomness and zero space to breathe. The AI director doesn’t give two f*cks what’s currently going on, whether you’re fighting a boss or a horde or both, it still keeps spawning in things at such a rate that it becomes dull.

Cataclysm in part 1 was tough as nails, especially with randoms - and while I hated having to 2 shot clan skaven with my fireball staff it was still leagues above the bull we’re being given here. All of that for what, 2 blues in my Emp Chest? Yeah no thanks. Hell I’d be fine with some nice Illusions once in a while. But nothing. Just Trinkets and Charms I don’t need.

Lackluster rewards combined with the frankly insulting difficulty spikes throughout the mission and you got a punishing difficulty that is sometimes enjoyable and quite often just tedious.

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The faux-Deathwish mass Stormvermin mutator had to go, it made the difficulty completely unapproachable. But as the OP suggested, the Legend difficulty is just a dice roll for a dice roll for a dice roll. You spend 15-20 minutes hoping things go perfectly (you die really fast, you never know how and when a boss could spawn and with accompanying horde you have to have specific setups to deal with) to get the RNG rolls for a box which is then RNG rolls…

The difficulty isn’t fun. Champion, before and after, is fun. Perfectly balanced like V1 Nightmare and you can actually use more than a few classes to good effect. But jumping to Legend is meaningless aside from getting the Skittergate achievement because of abysmal unique rates (reds, headgear) and by the point you’re even playing on it, you’ve probably got a good set of oranges on your main character so…what is there to gain but disappointment and getting owned repeatedly? Legend isn’t fair and balanced like V1 Cataclysm is, and the problem now is there’s much more things to consider for the experience. I think it will get there, but it’s pointless right now.

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I enjoy legend a lot, only annoying thing is the face/silent patrols but those are quite rare and most of the time doable. For seasoned players, legend is a pushover 95% of the time if ur group plays broken stuff like beam pyro or volleybow BH and only pretty much can wipe to the bs ur describing but playing without the most overpowered stuff the difficulty is really quite fun, imo.

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In the meantime, other people are losing it and screeching like mad rats that the game’s dead and legendary is too easy and ruined forever. Mmmmm.

Feels good not being a dev.

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You need to understand that games like Vermintide 2 MUST be hard and unforgiving.
Ask yourslef whats point of surival game, than survive. Whats point of surviving somehting if this cannot kill you? Enemy must feel like enemy…they must feel dangerous, ready to kill you a same second you do mistake.

There is group of people on this forum who wish to turn V2 into luna-park wreck a mole game, where anything just lay down before slash their sword… for that you actualy got Casual and Veteran Dificulty, legend must be hard, or game will lose its purpose, it will become pointless game, not worth of playing, ask youself…whats point of honing your skill, whats point of gear if you can easy complete legendary, what woud drive you to play this game once you kill anything with ease?

If game become easy, people will have no purpose in this game, they woud just complete legendariy several times, then stop playing FOREVER. In games like V2 people always must have purpose, carrot on stick and stuff beyond their reach, its driving force to hone your skills and gear. Because only by this way you will finaly feel satisfaction when you complete something.

no other way around !

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I think the spawn position and sound of the specials is more important than the amount. The issue in my runs that feel “unfair” (I feel this term is misused and too often just means “too difficult for me to manage at all”) is when disabler specials appear to spawn behind your group either due to no sound cue playing or very close spawns.

Things that are intended to be avoidable or involve some reaction should not spawn on top of you, obviously, so I would consider anything spawning on the player (patrols, some specials, etc) a bug or, if intended, completely misguided.

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google “artificial difficulty”. There is a reason for all the whine, the game in its current state is not always fair and please dont try to deny it. Yes there is j sat doing a truesolo run, but there are times with thousands of players online and only 1 legend lobby is open with a lvl 16 host… if you get what i mean.
People enjoy and embrace difficult games, but the game offers too many unfair situations combined with a droprate of 3% its simply not in the right place at the moment. Most people playing legend are maxed out on gear, so thats not a point. Skill is arguable, and i try not to close my eyes; there are a lot of new players to vermintide. What we are whining about are the unfair runs, the ones that kill your motivation. The -assassin- chaos patrol at 2/3 of the map before the endevent. There is a reason why FS was trying different spawn numbers in the beta and still is trying to find the right amount, it is damn hard to build a fair difficulty.

wut? Most of the veterans in V1 were doing truesoloruns or were capable of carrying a solo cataclysm game with bots. These players had thousands of hours in the game and they had the joy to help newer players learning the game / getting achievements.

Thats exactly the point, its not a question of skill or gear in many runs if the basic soundnotification dont work, enemies spawn in your face, specials spawns are off the charts.
V1 was amazing because with “skill” and a lot of experience you knew the spawn of a special, you turned instantly around and oneshot it. V2 is not there yet, thats why ppl complain.

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I’m not calling for anything to be nerfed. I want Legendary to be very difficult. Right now Legendary is easy easy easy boring boring then oh look the Director sent all the possible enemies at us at once and we all wipe in a few seconds just trying to get a handle on wtf is going on. Boss stomping around horde spawning silent Chaos Patrol drops on you from nowhere all audio channels overwhelmed, then specials incapacitate half your team and it is gg.

For experienced players, Legendary isn’t a challenge up to these points and at these points the difficulty spike is just too much. We want everything else buffed and a more consistant difficult, not 20 minutes of boring before the game deletes you.

For the most part Legendary is easier than V1 Catacalysm, except for the massive difficulty spikes when director hits you with everything.

The special spam here is the biggest offender, because even 10 Chaos Warriors during a boss or horder are doable, I’ve done it before. But if I lose I want it to be because we made mistakes not because a Chaos Patrol spawned on us and specials took out half our team without warning.

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Yeah yesterday I had a ratling gunner literally appear before my eyes and start shooting me. Director just dropped it right in front of me didn’t even try to hide it behind something. I had a split second to react and shotgun it and only took one bullet from it. Director is just too buggy.

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I’ve read this, see your points, appreciate the feedback! We will be tweaking and fixing both on a near and a far horizon - and the balancing of individual strength vs combination of threats vs peaks in spawns is something that is very much in focus regardless of difficulty. The 1.04 patch had some issues and did not take care of things to our full satisfaction (or yours either apparently). We are working on it and will continue to do so.

In general, we really want to remove the gimmicky “director says no” moments where the spawns feel cheap and instead present sufficiently challenging combinations of threats with prolonged peaks rather than higher peaks for the higher difficulties. Apart from this, there will be a time for power balancing aswell, this goes for both hero loadouts and enemy capabilities. V1 Cata and max power Legendary does not match in inidivual enemy fortitude, it is a change that we are very much aware of and it is our starting point for the game. We’ll see where we go from here.

Otherwise, pure bugs or glitches that specifically remove interface compontents that are imperative to surviving the higher difficulties, in combination with tweaking and tuning specials and behaviours is another focus that we need to maintain. We will.

Thank you all for discussing and contributing to us finding stuff we may need to look at.

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Thanks for the acknowledgement, Ratherdone! I just want to add that I think you’ve done an incredible job on the maps and the enemies and the feel of the classes, and the boss fights too. Beautiful exciting stuff that stays cool after hundreds of playthroughs. And definitely good on you for all the work you’ve done patching stability problems and crashes that is definitely important.

The leveling experience is also great and I’m leveling up all the characters before moving back into Legendary (or back to V1 to wait for a change). Your team has a tough job but you’re doing great and the Vermintide series is one of a handful I actually look forward to buying the DLC for.

Also, if you’re looking for skin ideas I would love to see something like this for Bardin, it is from Season 3 of Channel Zero.

butcher
butcher736×519 197 KB

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With such difference of opinions on legend,maybe just add one more difficulty mode as well?

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I don’t think there’s that much of a difference in opinion. I think the people who think Legend is too hard are referring to the moments where the director deletes you, and the people who think it is too easy are referring to the long parts of levels where it doesn’t delete you and is roughly on par with Champion except for damage taken. I think it is possible to satisfy both group’s criticisms without needing an extra difficulty, which would probably just look something like Vanguard deeds.

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I agree 100% with the observations of KrazyKruber - currently there are situations which aren’t just hard or challenging (as they absolutely should be on Legend difficulty!), but outright unfair.
Boss along with a seemingly endless horde plus multiple specials including 2+ disablers at the same time… sometimes also in a tight packed space with no possibility to move around and dodge… I just don’t see how these situations can be reliably and successfully handled. 90% of the time, they result in a wipe, so every Legend run includes praying to sweet Sigmar that the AI/spawn director doesn’t decide to drop the full arsenal on you at once.

Thanks for acknowledging this issue, Ratherdone! Otherwise it’s an awesome game.

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A boss isn’t dangerous by itself. In fact they are quite trivial if not accompanied by at least a couple of specials or a horde. Its not an unfair event by any stretch. There are certain boss spawn locations like the storeroom in Righteous Stand which are problematic when combined with Chaos Spawn. Other bosses are very fair even if a horde happens to come over. You can kite a Rat Ogre literally in place, Stormfiend is a joke, Bile Troll has been adjusted so he aint too bad either. You dont need an open field to control&kite a boss.

Bosses spawning with hordes is not “director taking a dump on you”. Its a normal event that should be prepared for. Either burst the boss down with DPS characters, or start kiting while others deal with the spawns.

Also what exactly is this thought process that everyone should be running Legend? If you feel like its unfair, drop the difficulty. Or if someone at Fatshark reads this post, consider adding a fifth difficulty for veterans? Heroic Deeds isnt enough at the moment and it’d be nice to have a difficulty that would truly force to abuse all the gamebreaking stuff just to survive. One Down in Payday 2 was great fun.