Twitch Mode Improvements + Additions

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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I really like Twitch mode in Vermintide 2. It’s one of the more whimsical and fun additions to the game, but it also really gives some extra potential challenge as well as viewer interaction. It’s a really well-designed mechanic that rightfully has a blog post featured on the Twitch dev splash page (scroll down to Stories from Our Community).

I don’t usually use it to link to me streaming unless I want to show off some stuff for friends, but I still enjoy just hooking it up and letting the options randomly choose themselves in “hypertwitch” mode, which can really push players with extra enemies in unexpected areas. Otherwise boring events get drastically spiced up by Twitch mode randomly. Having a Chaos Spawn in the burning building of the Pit, Ratling Gunners lining the roofs in the Brachsenbrucke finale shooting the person aiming the cannon, frantically looking for a dropped Tome/Grim during a horde, and more.

I feel good about leaving some books behind in Twitch mode just because the random extra loot dice outweigh the risk of maybe getting gunned down by Ratlings because you separated to go backtrack to grab a Grimoire that you were going to drop and forget about when it gave you a potion anyway. It’s made some otherwise uggggh maps like the Pit actually fun: I can skip Grim #1 and Tome #1 or #2 without worrying because there’ll probably be 1-2 bosses later on (although my other thread’s suggestions to fix it is still important, imo). Not having potential loot 90% tied to whether or not somebody died holding a book behind a point-of-no-return is a great experience, although I don’t really care that much about loot anyway.

That being said, it feels like it could stand to have some improvements down the road, since it’s been relatively untouched since release (probably because it’s really, really good).

  1. Sanction hyper-twitch. Allow some more fine-grained control over vote times, changing it from a drop-down menu to just a fill-in-the-blank field. Often I’m asking people what settings I need to change in my .ini file before I launch the game, because I don’t really want to restart every time I need to configure it. Or, if I get some randoms in the game that aren’t exactly 100% comfortable at something even like 5/15, I can bump it up in game to 20/20 or something still outside of the current bounds of what I can adjust it to. Maybe this can be accomplished by me learning how to mod and you approving a menu options mod. I can go do that too maybe, idk.

  2. Add an opt-out of Twitch mode for quickplay, like the “Choose Different Hero” matchmaking option. It mainly happens when our group is being lazy or just warming up on Champion, but there are some people that just really hate it for some reason. Maybe they can’t handle the intensity, maybe they get annoyed by the vote screen, or maybe they’re just really angry people. If I had some way to tell them how to not ever matchmake into my twitch lobbies, it’d be great. It shouldn’t be the default option because that would reduce discoverability and whatnot for Twitch streamers.

  3. Add configurability for the positive-negative ratio of votes. I don’t particularly like some of the mutators and I’d like to turn them off, but it seems like too much power to just disable them. Maybe adding some configuration to swing things towards more challenging votes would be sufficient. I know some people want just negatives to get the extra challenge. I don’t know if I would allow it to swing into the opposite direction with more positive votes significantly, since that’s cheating.

  4. Improve some mutators: Some of them seem weird and can be improved

    • Blackfurs on Parade and 'Eavy Metal - Instead of just peppering random Halberd Stormvermin and Chaos Warriors in the surrounding area, is it possible to just spawn a patrol? They’re not really “parading”. I don’t know how hard it is to affect the patrol code, but the boss spawns seem to work well in random areas where bosses don’t usually spawn.

    • Release the Slaves! - It seems like it randomly switches between rats and rotbloods, depending on the current spawn context. Is it possible to split it into different votes to see what type of horde is spawning? I’m not saying there should be more options, but at least renaming the horde option or picture based on what’s available.

    • Curse of the Rat - It seems weird with how it interacts with different careers and health pools, although it is hilarious to see people with single-digit health. I feel like it’d be better if the Curse was like blood loss where it affects one player that you have to protect, rather than being a vote competing against a boss spawn. It makes me sad when we get curse of the rat and I don’t get a boss spawn during a horde instead :frowning:

  5. Add new mutators to spice things up:

    • Ultra Boon: Basically Concoction except with boons. Make it have half the duration of the other boons as well. Having multiple overlapping boons occasionally in hypertwitch is really fun to cleave through a horde or boss. This doesn’t ever happen in regular twitch mode and it’s quite fun.

    • Fire in the Hole: Spawn a wave of Suicide rats like in that Weekly challenge and the Weaves. They’re annoying as a constant wave of enemy, but it’d be a nice surprise to see them occasionally.

    • Nyctophobia: Turn on the spooky darkness temporarily like the Weekly Event, Hunger in the Dark, or Blightreaper. Also maybe drop a torch at one of the party member’s feet to encourage them to pick it up and continue through the level close together for the period where it’s up, rather than just holding up until it passes.

    • Banner Brothers: Spawn a bunch of Wargors to spam like the first day where we complained about them.

    • Karma Chargers: Spawn Bestigors at a distance where they want to charge everyone.

    • Raging Bull: Spawn a Minotaur boss, duh

    EDIT: Added more in a post below, putting them here too.

    • Pestilens Party: Spawn a group of Plague Monks

    • Frother Frenzy: Spawn a group of Chaos Savages

    • Blot out the Sun: Spawn a group of Ungor Archers

    • Bulls on Parade: Spawn a Beastman patrol, like the update suggested for Blackfurs on Parade. It also just made me realize that Blackfurs on Parade probably already is a Rage Against the Machine reference lol

  6. Add co-streaming votes as an option for hosts. Rather than having twitch mode be functionally useless if you’re not hosting, have an option for Twitch like “Allow Votes from Client Twitch Streams”. So, if you have Twitch mode on and you join someone with Twitch mode on, it combines your two chats for the purpose of scanning for votes. This way, Twitch mode streamers can still have user participation without having their chat switch over to the host streamer.

  7. Add lobby browser filters to look specifically for Twitch lobbies. It should be one of several additional filters added on to the lobby browser, like filtering by if your hero is available and filtering if it has a Deed active (assuming a rework which enables matchmaking in the first place). Currently, you kinda just bank on the host having the word “TWITCH” or “DEEDS?” in the username for lobbies.

  8. Add Okri’s Challenge rewards for playing Twitch mode. Give the mode a little extra visibility and encourage people to try it out. Add some skins or hats for completing X games of Twitch mode as a certain hero. Add some portrait frames for completing 10, 25, 50, 100, 200 rounds of Twitch mode. Add a Commendation Chest, Emperor’s Chest, or Emperor’s Vault for completing a round of Twitch mode on Recruit/Veteran, Champion, or Legend for the first time.

  9. Add some Twitch Prime loot to the game. Why not add another skin to the starting careers as Twitch Prime loot? Purple is sexy as hell and matches the Bögenhafen skins well. Maybe you’ll sell some more copies of that DLC because people want some fancy purple weapons to match their purple suits, eh? It’d also bring back a ton of people to the game after you’ve done all these cool content updates, right?

Here I took five minutes to poorly edit things in Photoshop to show what I’m talking about for some:

Working off the Champion skin for Kruber, replacing the Red/Yellow motif with a Purple/White motif on the cloth parts. He’s got those slimming purple/white stripes on his legs, he’s very fashionable. Pay no attention to the red/gold stripes in shadow that I couldn’t get shifted over and was too lazy to brush.

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Working off the blue Bögenhafen skin for WHC, shift it to purple. I’m too lazy to get it correctly to the right purple, you get the right idea. It should be a little darker.

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Okay I was really lazy and just shifted the red over to purple again and rolled with it. It’s way too bright I know. I like Green/Purple as a combo more than the Champion elf skin’s Christmas red/green combo anyway.

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Okay I actually didn’t edit this at all, I just wanted to point out that Ranger was the only one who got a purple skin in Bögenhafen and it took me way too damn long to get the purple skin for him so I was pissed. It took me 76 Bögenhafen Strongboxes! You could have it be closer to the darker Twitch purple and change the red/gold trim to be white/black/silver. Maybe I’ll do it later, I don’t know. I’m not an artist, okay?

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And then for Sienna, uhh, just do what you did for the Collector’s Edition skin. She didn’t want to wear green so she re-dyed her clothing. Same principle, too lazy to edit. You get the idea.

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TL;DR

Let me do hypertwitch without just changing an .ini file, let people opt-out of Twitch mode in quickplay, let me make twitch mode have more negative votes, add some Okri’s Challenges + cosmetic rewards for Twitch mode to make more people try it out because it’s one of the best parts about the game imo, and also consider adding Twitch Prime skins to draw some attention to the game.

Also make sure you let the Beastie Boys come to play in Twitch mode for Winds of Magic owners.

EDIT: Added two more points: Hosts should have an option to enable votes from other streams, so that Twitch mode users can join each other and have both chats contribute to the votes. Also, there should be a filter to search for Twitch mode lobbies in the lobby browser, instead of counting on people to put “Twitch” in their name. The same should also be done for Deeds if those ever get reworked to allow matchmaking.

EDIT 2: Added a few more suggestions for votes in the OP suggested below.

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No.

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Yeah, i second OP in almost every other aspect, but to that one i can only say the same:

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Care to elaborate more as to why other than you don’t have Amazon Prime, or otherwise respond to the other content of the post? If Fatshark went to the trouble of including such a robust Twitch integration to their game on release, I don’t really see the conflict of including further stuff with Twitch.

I’ve never really had an issue with them in the past for other games.

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Oh yeah, and I forgot another obvious one that I could add to the OP.

Allow multiple streams to contribute to votes, as an option for hosts. Basically to allow co-streaming for groups that have multiple streamers. Doesn’t really affect me or my group, but I think it would be important if it was to take off with bigger streamers playing the game together. They shouldn’t have to switch between chats to vote.

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I especially would’ve liked to be able to opt in/out of twitch lobbies since they’re not restricted in the same way deeds are AND (the QoL) being able to change twitch intervals in-game instead of the ini file. If your party is new to twitch it would be amazing to lower the intensity a bit without going full 30/30.

There is a line in the .ini called Twitch difficulty but as far as I know it doesn’t do anything. Would be golden to reduce the number of boons in favour of more punishment. Masochists unite!

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Personally I would like having mutator(s) to spawn berserkers, especially Plague Monks.

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Don’t have Amazon Prime, don’t need Amazon Prime and I don’t want Amazon Prime. I would rather just buy the skins on steam.

I’m not really a fan of the whole twitch/amazon prime rewards in general. What’s next? Netflix skins? ISP specific skins/rewards?

EDIT: Almost forgot. Yes, twitch mode could use an update to allow more customization. I think most of your post is very reasonable, it’s just the prime stuff I don’t agree with.

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Oh yeah I forgot about that. Hey, so it looks like they have something resembling the idea in the code itself, it’s just not yet implemented. At least it’s a good starting point.

That’s a good idea as well. I wonder, with the Cataclysm update, if Release the Slaves will spawn the mixed hordes that have elites on the higher difficulties. It’s good to have 100% coverage of all the enemy types.

I think the only ones not mentioned would be the Ungor Archers for WoM owners, so the poor little goats could get one as well.

Frother Frenzy - Spawns Chaos Savages

Pestilens Party - Spawns Plague Monks

Blot out the Sun - Spawns Ungor Archers

I think these variety of options are good, so that way the “spawn enemy type” vote options aren’t basically just Stormvermin v. Chaos Warriors, Globadiers v. Blightstormers, or Ratlings v. Warpfire. It allows a lot more permutations of vote combos like Horde v. Special, Elite v. Special, etc.

I wonder if they could make it so 4 spawn options can sometimes compete instead of 2 options for the vote, like the votes to give items or blood loss to people. I worry that the Twitch votes might get a little too clogged at some point, where you may not get fun ones like Treasure Hunt, Boon of Speed, or a Boss Spawn as often. Seems inevitable when they add more options, but still.

That’s a fair perspective, I guess. A lot of the point for Twitch Prime loot, however, is to promote the game to a different group of people. Having Twitch Prime loot that’s available to go along with some big updates would draw some people in that otherwise might not be following or aware of Vermintide 2 at all. I’d say it would be considered more part of the advertising budget than just being a set of new microtransactions like the skin DLC from the first game.

I’m not sure the logistics of Twitch Prime loot itself if it has to be exclusive to a Twitch Prime offer or if it can be acquired through other means as well. I would assume the former, so Fatshark can’t go off selling the skins or putting them as an in-game reward through Chests or Challenges.

Even then, I’d wager you still wouldn’t need an Amazon Prime account: you could probably get away with asking for a key from someone you know doesn’t care about V2, lol. Even then, they’re only a set of little cosmetic items, not a big deal. You probably have a rarer one that you’d want to show off anyway, unless you’re like me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2gA_kWieYE

Eh, that’s a little bit silly of a comparison to use as a slippery slope. Twitch is a content platform designed specifically for gaming. It makes sense for users of that platform to have rewards associated with games.

The next logical progression would be Alienware skins or MTN DEW® AMP® GAME FUEL® runed weapons ayy lmao. Maybe the Witcher 3 can get a Netflix skin to go along with its new series though lol.

Thank you, feel free to throw out more ideas, anyone, since it’s nice to just get the ball rolling with some different perspectives on what’s necessary for configuration or fun as mutators.

Yeah, I think the Twitch Prime stuff probably has some bias towards it on my part, since I know the content would be freely available to me as an Amazon Prime user. For non-users, I could understand being upset having in-game stuff tied to an external platform they don’t use, even if it’s just cosmetics.

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I’d be alright with Twitch skins as long as there’s another way to obtain them, be it on Steam or in game via challenges, maybe ones related to Twitch mode, (or Lohner’s Emporium). If not, I don’t like the idea of locking some of the limited cosmetic choices we have behind prime membership.

Other than that I like your ideas. If FS really wanted to spice the mode up and they added a bunch of new mutators, they could make it there’s a different pool of possible mutators to vote on each run (so they don’t all always appear) and also vary the existing ones based on the map.

For example instead of Blackfurs on Parade and 'Eavy Metal on Into the Nest, we could instead have two different skaven compositions as possibilities - one could have a handful of ratling guns spawn close together in a real firing line (like gunline but not spread out) with a bunch of shielded stormvermin ahead of them as meastshields, the other could have a mass of halberd stormvermin and packmasters charge in.

Please no darkness mutator, the darkness from Blightreaper specifically already makes me want to gouge my brain out. If you at least wielded torches in your off-hand while still using a main-hand (if you’re using a 1H weapon) it’d be less of a pain to be the torch carrier and I could actually get behind having more of it.

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Yeah that’s fair, I don’t know what the precedent is for Prime loot. I don’t know if it’s against the terms of the deal to have the content available through other means. I suppose it probably isn’t, since games are often free with Twitch Prime but still sold elsewhere.

That being said, I worked hard in the five minutes it took to photoshop those skins, and I really really want that purple Merc skin to match a purple Executioner Sword. That skin looks fire, if I do say so myself. Having that be a skin through Okri’s Challenges would be fine with me as well. I don’t care about the exclusivity of the skin, but the idea of promoting the game through Twitch seems like a good idea to me.

EDIT: Now that you say it and I think about it, if they made the Lohner’s Emporium update where you can purchase skins with some in-game currency, that’d be a really easy compromise. Have the Twitch Prime loot contain those 5 free skins plus some quantity of the currency to use for other skins/hats. I’m hesitant to mention Rockstar, but their Twitch Prime stuff is just in-game currency and a free apartment that’s otherwise available in-game. I’m not suggesting in-game currency as like a thing you buy elsewhere, but I’m saying like if it was the Essence from Winds of Magic that you get from playing the game. Maybe that’d be a good link for WoM where Essence is used to get skins instead of just leveling Weave weapons lol.

Some good ideas. I’m not sure if I like it more where Twitch can spawn weird, unexpected enemies on maps like Chaos Warriors and Blightstormers on Into the Nest, or if it should bias towards Skaven votes.

Hey, I don’t like having Blightstormers head-glitching to cast a tornado behind cover, I don’t like dying because I got Curse of the Rat + Blood Loss back-to-back, I hate the suicide rats when I’m playing Slayer, and I have PTSD from Wargor spam in the beta, but I still suggested it.

We have to accept that not every mutator is going to be one that we want to get lol. There has to be some mutators that throw everyone off their game, instead of just giving us free loot by spawning a Chaos Spawn that gets shredded by 4 people with Guns Blazing and Boon of Strength.

And that torch suggestion is probably better suited as another suggestion for my fixes for the Bogenhafen maps lol. It’s annoying getting the Blightreaper in quickplay and the host Alt + F4s instantly. Maybe the darkness would be more palatable if the torch was buffed such that it was a weapon with decent stagger so you aren’t completely helpless with it. If a Slave Rat can take half my health poking me in the butt with a torch, a Slayer should be able to do the same lol.

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I guess as long as the difficulty is about equal it wouldn’t be too bad.

I imagine FS wouldn’t do this as it’d require a whole new special limited to Twitch-mode and one map: but, if we got a Ruin gray seer with Howling Warpgale to replace Blightstormers on Into the Nest, that’d be pretty sweet.

Unless ofc we got Gray Seers on other maps (with other spells ofc) and they made the Howling Warpgale ones a variation that only appears on Into the Nest/future skaven-only maps.

Beefed up SVs (like Krench and Skarrik but between the strength of regular SV and CWs instead of bosses) would work as CW replacements.

The problem I have with darkness is mainly that the torch hits like a wet noodle. Combat is the basis of VT and torches make it into a slog, hence why I mentioned Blightreaper as opposed to Hunger in the Dark, I actually prefer Hunger in the Dark’s darkness as it’s short but ups the ante.

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See, it’s not the problem with the darkness mechanic in and of itself, it’s moreso just a problem with the torch sucking too much and the Blightreaper being too damn long lol. I’d probably want them to do my other thread’s fixes over this Twitch stuff, if they were to prioritize. At least Twitch mode right now is fun without any changes, but Blightreaper is not fun at all.

And besides, I imagine the darkness mutator wouldn’t last more than like 30 seconds, like all the other Twitch stuff. Shorter than the dark section in Hunger in the Dark. Spawning a torch at your feet lets you at least negotiate the darkness and move forward, if you’re not 100% familiar with the map layout where you can go through the Blightreaper without a torch.

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Perhaps, but with the absolute flustercluck that is today’s games industry it would not surprise me if it happened. That’s a bit off topic though I suppose.

More on topic, options to customize the twitch vote ui is at the top of my list of things I’d like to see for twitch mode. The way it currently is it’s just a massive blob hiding sneaky Skaven filth for far too long.
If I could just see the winning vote with a timer off to the side or something that would be great.

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I think the big UI is one of my quickplayers’ biggest complaints about the Twitch mode, it’s just so obtrusive. I’ve gotten significantly fewer complaints since I reduced the vote timer to 5-8 seconds and mainly just play with the vote cooldown to affect intensity.

I personally think that shrinking the vote UI to fit in the bottom right corner would be great. Maybe have it show the initial vote pop up front-and-center as it does now, then quickly fade off to the side for the duration of the vote? Then, show the result in the center again, as it does now. Basically, after 3-5 seconds, have it show in the bottom right-hand corner where the Twitch logo currently resides on the screen.

It’d definitely have to be an optional feature, since some streamers may not want to significantly reduce the UI feature that boosts viewer interaction. For people that are just playing it for fun, it would be a nice feature.

I also think a mod that entirely removes the vote UI and just lets the game surprise you would also be interesting, but not within scope for Fatshark to do. That’d actually be pretty cool to turn on a “surprise twitch mode” that just lets the votes roll out with no UI whatsoever on your own screen.

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As to the other point I didn’t address but thought about, how would you feel about the Twitch Prime loot being a kind of “starter pack” that gives players some stuff that they can otherwise get in-game, instead of being skins completely exclusive to Twitch Prime users? Kinda like what Rockstar does for GTA Online’s twitch prime loot, except Rockstar is a terrible company that uses microtransactions.

Like, let’s have a Twitch Prime pack that has:

  1. Commendation Chests x 10

  2. Emperor’s Chest x 3

  3. Essence (Winds of Magic currency thing) x 15000

  4. The purple skins for the starting careers

Then, have those skins either be unlocked through Okri’s Challenges relating to Twitch mode or maybe even let us use the Essence currency as a way to buy cosmetic items in the Lohner’s Emporium update, since it doesn’t have a usage outside of leveling up in the Weaves, to my understanding.

Would that be an acceptable compromise? Giving some loot for Twitch people to incentivize coming back or giving new players some basic loot to start off with. I’m not sure if your issue with the Twitch stuff was more intrinsically just the “corporate sponsor” angle or the exclusivity of the items tied to something outside of the game mechanics.

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Yes. A Prime pack like that would be great, wouldn’t mind it at all. My issue is just with the exclusivity.

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Why not have it in the middle up top, beneath where the map objectives already appear? Seems like a natural place to have it to me (it’d still need to be considerably smaller ofc).

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Twitch options are extremely late for an update. Doesn’t even really need much, just actual control over vote times since the community is already going into the game’s files and changing the vote times to 5, 10, or 0 seconds on our own.

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Fun fact: Vermintide 1 had razor trinkets for limited time

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