70 urgent changes this game needs. Reasoning included

[NikKotovski]

I have a hobby of digging deep into games mechanics, not only video games, but all kinds of them. This gives me a special kind of pleasure, usually more than the game itself. Due to this hobby, I always have a special insight on the game structure, on its bad and good sides. Usually, I don’t care about sharing these thought with others, nor other people care about listening to them. However, Vermintide 2 got me hooked very much, and I felt sad and hurt, that such a wonderful game, with such a magnificent core gameplay, suffers so much from a set of minor snags. That’s why I decided to compose my thoughts into a meaningful topic. I understand, that with a 99% probability I just wasted my time for nothing, but I just couldn’t get past this tragedy. So here is the list of things, that according to my opinion need to be urgently implemented.

My English is decent, but very far from perfect. There is gonna be a noticeable amount of tense mistakes and some amount of overly complicated phrases in the text. Sorry in advance.

I only posted here those fixes, that I am sure about. EVERYTHING listed here is, imho, either a must have change, or, when it comes down to less important changes, something that will make the game better without any drawbacks. Of course I have a lot of ideas of how to make the game better, and I could double or triple the number of paragraphs, but those things are arguable and not as urgent. Before adding new content or tweaking gameplay, the holes should be fixed.

All the paragraphs are sorted by priority, which also takes implementation time into account. Though I can only estimate the actual time it would take to implement a particular change, so priority might be a little inaccurate, but overall should be fine. Also the most important changes are in the back under the “Big changes” section. Why so? Paragraphs under other sections are either something, that will make the game better without any drawbacks, or small little features, that are not in the game yet. Things listed under “Big changes” either affect gameplay in a noticeable way or, what’s even more important, affect economy. They’re the most arguable ones, that’s why I listed them in the end. But they’re the most needed at the same time. So you might as well jump straight to them.

SUDDENLY, other people also care about the game, and have similar concerns about it. So, knowing this, I decided to see what people think about the changes I am about to suggest. The result was more or less in line with what I expected, except for 2 things, which I am listing in the very end after “Big changes” section. In order to back up my words, I’ve added links section to each paragraph, so you can see what people think by yourself.
I will not be posting all the links, only those, that have a decent amount of views/likes/replies and only from the official forum. I would love to add reddit and steam links, but that would take too much time. Digging through one forum was exhausting enough.
Also when talking about community thoughts, mentioning this post is a must. This is a well-done job by wompaone1Mar composing feedback from reddit. It’s a little bit outdated, but still very viable.

All my suggestions can be download here in a single file for a more comfy reading, since the forum is not very well suited for this much text. There is also a linkless version, for even more comfortable reading. I recommend using Notepad++ for viewing it.

Let’s begin.

I. Easy important fixes:
Most of the stuff that is REALLY important and needs fixing asap is relatively time consuming, but things listed here are really easy to make, so they might be as well done first. With the exception of paragraph 1, which is the most important change the game needs right now.

1. Fixed in 1.1.0 - Implementing automatic substitution or leaving only one type of dust would have been a better solution, also easier to make, but a fix is a fix.
   Original suggestion: Let using higher tier dust as a substitute for a lower tier dust. This means allowing usage of blue dust for rerolling if lacking green dust, and allowing usage of orange dust if lacking both green and blue. (Clearly, you get much more blue dust than green dust as you play the game, and it feels very frustrating, getting so much blue dust that you simply can’t use. Not only that, but current dust system punishes players for good skills, which is VERY bad. Green items usually drop from lower tier chests, thus players who play well get punished by the game in terms of crafting. There is also a rumor, that character level affects item color; if so, then a keen player, who levels all classes, is put into even more disadvantageous situation, since they can’t open chests with low-level characters for green loot.
   P.S. I also read an interesting idea of merging green and blue dust (last link). This might be another solution to this problem, as good as the above.)
   Links: 1, 2, 3, 4.

2. Failed Do not fix the F2 F2 bug, or at least let skipping cutscenes! (This bug is said to be acknowledged and being worked on. However, the starting cutscene gets old very fast, and annoys players as much as chest animation and crafting speed (which will be mentioned later). There was even a topic created addressing the cuntscene skip, despite the F2 F2 workaround, and it has 700 views, which is significant. In addition, people are used to this workaround, and rely on it timing wise. Removing it will completely jumble early game timings everyone’s used to.)
   Links: 1, 2, 3.

3. Completely remove jewelry and weapon parts. (There is no reason for them to exist. Firstly, you never want to craft jewelry, so jewelry parts are worthless. Secondly, you get so many weapon parts while farming endgame content, that they don’t even matter. And if item parts were scarce, that would be even worse, because people would have tons of scrap they couldn’t do a thing with.)
   Links: no links.

4. Let players enforce and avoid being a host in quickplay. 3 options: host, non-host, whatever. (People might want to be hosts for lots of different reasons. They might want to be hosts because they have powerful PCs and they don’t want to get into a laggy game. There might be an AFK lobby they keep dropping into. They might want to be hosts because they want to play with their bots… or they might want to play with bots only by hosting a game and making it private. And the funny fact, that players already can enforce being a host, if they have a friend, by making a lobby together with them, so this change is not gonna break the game all of a sudden. Same applies to not being a host, although when playing with friends someone has to be host.
   The above feature can be implemented for solo players only at first, if it is hard to do it for parties. PS If I am wrong and something suddenly goes haywire, this change can be easily reversed.)
   Links: 1, 2.

5. Make tomes have higher priority for bots than heals. (Really easy to fix, really important. So many tomes lost, because bots decided to switch them for heals. However, with this change bots should also be allowed to pick up healing draught and heal even if they’re holding a tome (picking the tome back afterwards) if: a) They’re grey and no real player without Natural Bond is grey. b) They’re below 25%, no other character without Natural Bond is grey and the most damaged real player without Natural Bond has at least 30% more health. c) They’re the most damaged bot, no other character without Natural Bond is grey, no character has a free healing slot and the most damaged real player without Natural Bond has at least 30% more health.)
   Links: no links.

6. Also let bots switch healing draughts for medkits, if all real players either have medkits or tomes. (Medkits are much better on bots, since they can heal other players with them, and bots can’t usually give the draught to other characters later in the game, since the slot is usually taken by a tome.)
   Links: no links.

7. Show an icon of a character using voice chat. (When playing with random people and using voice chat it is hard to remember which voice belongs to which player.)
   Links: 1, 2.

8. Make ammo indication have 3 colors: yellow, orange and red for 50%, 25% and 0% ammo respectively (mb yellow should be even 60%). (25% is too low of a threshold for ammo indication. Usually you want to start searching for ammo at 50%-60% capacity. At 25% your ammo reserves are already critical, and you’re saving your ammo for emergency situations (which are bound to happen in Vermintide). And this ammo icon is very important, because communicating about each and every ammo bag takes a lot of time, even for a group using voice-chat. For random groups this is just unreal.)
   Links: no links.

9. Remove boss barriers. (Right now boss barriers serve no purpose, except for preventing players from completing a level when a boss bugs out. Or even worse they prevent players from reviving their teammates, making bosses de facto unbeatable as soon as 2 characters die. Barriers are otherwise purposeless now, since progressing through a level with a boss on your tail equals suicide on champion and legend, and although it is doable on veteran and recruit, it is much much easier just to kill a boss, then to let them chase you. Not to mention, that they will catch up to you at the final stand and make you regret everything.)
   Update: turns out actually boss barriers do have a purpose - they prevent speedrunning missions with mobile characters. But tbh I am not really sure how viable speedrunning is in terms of rewards. If it is not, then there is no reason to have those barriers at all, if it is, then how much? Because if not too much, then it’s still better to remove barriers to not punish the vast majority because of the few speedrunners. And even if boss barriers are needed, they still need to be reworked not to punish normal players. Simplest solution - make them disappear in 3-5 minutes. This will hinder speedrunners, while not affecting normal players.
   Links: 1, 2, 3.

10. Allow players blacklist one map they don’t want to play. This way a lobby could exclude a total of 4 maps from quickplay (4 maps they would suicide-skip anyways).
    Links: 1, 2, 3, 4.

11. Improved in 1.0.7 Barrel still needs a 30% blast radius increase. (Explosive barrels still don’t see that many use. They have the same explosion radius, as bombs, but bombs can be aimed much more precisely and still sometimes it’s hard to land them where you intended. Aiming barrels is much harder, because they roll, because they do not explode instantly, because they can explode mid-air. And not only that, but they’re bulky and can backfire. That’s why they need to be more powerful to be viable. I think a 30% blast radius increase is the minimum, required to make them at least somewhat useful, but they definitely need more than that to compete with oil barrels.)
    Original suggestion: Increase explosive barrel damage and radius. I suggest 100% damage increase and a 20%-30% radius increase. (Exploding barrels is an interesting mechanic, a little fun feature that makes gameplay more variable. But while oil barrels have their place in game and are being used by players, explosive barrels lack effectiveness to take their place as an ingame tool. And it’s sad that a nearly finished mechanic is not being used just because it needs a minor value tweaking.)
    Links: 1.

12. Make it so Victor could also be a bot. (I feel bad for Viktor for being pushed around like that. Also Victors’ Witch Hunter Captain career has one of the best passives a bot could have (no light attack block cost) and one of the best talents (Justice’s Bounty).)
    Links: 1.

13. Add a button for skipping chest quality determination animation. (After completing your 100th mission or so and getting your 100th chest, this animation gets “a bit” of annoying.)
    Links: 1, 2.

14. Fixed in 1.1.0 Speed up crafting. (or implement paragraph 1 of “Big changes” section). (Crafting takes a small part of play time overall, yet to craft something you need to spend a considerable amount of time doing repetitive actions. And that might be annoying as hell, especially when you’re not getting the rolls you need. Crafting should be fast but not instant though, to prevent possible mistakes. Also immersion.)
    Links: 1, 2, 3, 4.

15. Make illusion extraction for basic 5 power items free. (There is a lot of illusions in game, and it’s hard to remember the look of each and every one. Applying them to basic weapons just to see the look consumes scrap, keeping illusions on actual weapons is not an option either, because this would trash your inventory. Thus, something needs to be done, to allow players see the illusions before applying them. The easiest way to do this is to remove scrap cost for illusion extraction from basic items.
    Also ideally illusions should be extracted and applied for free after the first extraction, but implementing this would require noticeably more work.)
    Update: now, after 1.1, applying illusions should be made free, instead of removing them, but the idea stays the same.
    Links: 1, 2, 3.

[NikKotovski]

II. More complex important fixes:

1. Show talent and passives stats like ammo bonus value, Slayer power buff value and such. Also knowing actives cooldowns would be nice. (Vermintide is like a session based MMO with a shooter/slasher gameplay, and stats mean a lot in MMOs (and games in general). The closest game to Vermintide would be Payday 2, and they have all the stats open there. They didn’t have them at the start, but they quickly realized they need them. Same thing happened to TES Online. Why? Because players actively demanded them, because these are not some casual games – they’re difficult and require very precise gear optimization. Also there is zero reason to hide any stats.)
   Links: 1, 2, 3, 4.

2. Add character stats: crit chance, HP, damage reduction, movespeed bonus, attack speed bonus, power bonus (percentage or flat - doesn’t matter). (same as previous.)
   Links: 1, 2, 3, 4.

3. Add enemies’ stats: via wiki, as they did with payday 2, or some pdf file or ingame encyclopedia. (same as previous.)
   Links: 1.

4. Make it so charged attacks would not slow down regular attacks. (Right now if you make a regular attack after a charged attack with most weapons, you get a rather high delay on it. I think it happens because weapons (most of them) have a swing delay after a charged attack. This delay is sort of a hack. With it while a time between charged attacks is set to one value, the first charged attack is made a little bit faster. This allows a player potentially outspeed an enemy attack when charging his weapon. This hack also makes charged attack-block combo slower (which is a good thing). The problem is that this delay also works for regular attacks, and it shouldn’t be applied to them in any way, because this delay makes a charged attack-light attack combo horrible on most weapons. Why is this bad? Firstly, it makes combat more primitive, since the most effective way of fighting becomes regular or charged spam, without making sick combos or adapting strikes to current situation. Secondly, lots of weapons have a reactionary charged attack which is bad for spamming. With these weapons when engaging an enemy you want to make one charged attack them and then switch to your light attack, until you get a chance to charge again. But because of the delay, charging an attack actually puts you into disadvantageous postion, because you’re left exposed for so much time, your next regular attack becomes almost as slow as a charged attack and your dps might even drop down. So with most weapons you only use regular attacks, using charged for armored targets only.
   Btw there is also a reverse effect that also needs fixing: a charged attack usually takes less time after a regular attack. But this effect doesn’t compensate for the problem, because: a) you want to charge attacks during openings, hitting with regular attacks for the rest of the time, so a charged to regular delay is more important than the opposite b) speedup doesn’t matter, slowdown does, since it brings a window where you become vulnerable, because enemies aren’t getting hit and staggered. But yeah, for most weapons Normal Attack -> Charged Attack -> Block is currently a viable combo.
   Affected weapons: 1h axe, 2h sword, halberd, Kerillian 1h sword, sword and dagger, spear, Sienna mace, rapier. Possibly affected: Executioner sword (weird pattern, hard to test.), two swords, fire sword, falchion (hard to tell because of charged attack animation) and 1h sword and mace/1h hammer (too fast to be sure). Kruber Longbow is also affected by this problem. Oddly enough, Great Axe does not have this problem and 2h hammer seems to have the reverse problem - after the first light attack charged attack is slowed a bit. PS I could test the weapons that I am unsure about, but that would require a decent amount of time analyzing hit sounds.)
   Links: no links.

5. Make Sienna vent 50% overcharge when getting downed. Or even 100%. (First of all this would fix a “cool” “feature”, that happens when Sienna gets downed by damage, as soon she hits max overcharge. When she gets revived, she instantly explodes due to overcharge. This is mostly Unchained problem, since you can easily get max overcharge and lose your remaining HP with one charged hit from an elite. Not only that, but Sienna with full or near full overcharge is much weaker as a combat unit. And most of the time when you fall down and get helped you’re needed by your team. So other characters can help their team right away when revived, but Sienna has a very big problem with that.)
   Links: 1.

6. Make weapon switching, charged attacks, push and push attacks more reliable. (Weapon switching feels much better since 1.05, but it is still not reliable for staffs, zoomed/reloading crossbows, and Kruber’s bow. Now for other stuff. As far as I understand the push problem comes from the fact, that right click does not register until the animation of the left click is finished. So if you press right click and keep pressing left click, you’re going to keep doing regular attacks, not push or staff charged attacks. And it seems to be true not only for attack animation. When being staggered regular attack button seem to have higher priority than charged attack button. So if you press RMB and LMB while being staggered, you’re will make a regular attack when it wears off, not a push.
   There are also instances, charged attacks refuse to work for no reason. This might be connected to fps drops, but even that doesn’t fully explain the problem. Same is true for weapon switching, even though it is much more responsive now.)
   And push attacks simply do not work from time to time. Actually very often, up to 20%-25% of the time in real combat.
   Links: 1, 2, 3, 4.

7. Hits taken from mobs should not interrupt weapon switching. (They might delay, but not completely cancel the switching action. A character should continue switching weapons after a stagger, unless it was a long stagger like Stormvermin push, chaos warrior charged hit or boss toss. Otherwise often times when you get caught by a crowd, it becomes impossible to switch to your melee weapon, and you die because you can’t block.)
   Links: no links.

8. Fix mobs face-spawning, at least for PC, which is not going to receive performance issues because of an extra dozen of rats. (There is a map where you can instantly get affected by “face spawning” - Against the Grain. You see how the field gets instantly swarmed with enemies the second you drop down the fence. And this is bad. Firstly, it ruins immersion so much. And secondly, it makes the game “unfairly” difficult, because it throws a threat right in your face, with you barely having a chance to react. It is especially “fun”, when patrols or waves spawn this way. I understand, that this system is meant to save resources, and I understand, that it works by just spawning mobs when a group passes some control points. Control points are usually located at the points of no return. However, what needs to be done, is the addition of additional control points on some of the maps, most noticeably on Against the Grain and Fort Brachsenbrucke. Festering Grounds, Screaming Bell and Into the Nest also need some control point tweaking. And most of the maps need tuning for mob spawn points, especially specials spawn points.)
   Links: 1 and all the links from the next paragraph.

9. Improved in 1.0.7, Worsened in 1.1. Fix patrols. (Face-spawning patrols is a very big issue. But stuck patrols might even be a bigger issue, especially on Convocation of Decay and Hunger in the Dark. Other maps also have narrow spots, where it is really tough to deal with a patrol. Righteous Stand also deserves a special mention, because there is a spot there after the lift, where patrols literally drop on your head.
   Stealth patrols are also very “fun”. Not only the silent stuck ones, which wait for you behind the corner, but also those, that march at you in complete silence. Sound also needs to be fixed.)
   Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

10. Being worked on. Make all talents, passives, item traits work. (The most important thing, invisibility, has been fixed, as well as some other stuff, but there is still plenty of talents that do not work. I tried creating a complete list of broken things, but I might be missing a few things still.)
    Links: whole bugs section.

11. Fixed? Fix the game freeze when switching characters. (Many times while playing the game you end up with a group of people you’re comfortable playing with right now. Then you switch a character, you get this bug and you have to leave the party. And you have to start gathering up a decent group from the start. Of course you could try adding some of them as friends, but that’s a hinder, such a thing usually becomes a catalyst for a party to fall apart and it also makes you scared of character switching, which is no fun.)
    Links: 1.

12. Buff incendiary bombs. There are different ways of doing it. a) Increase incendiary bombs fire damage. I can’t suggest exact numbers, because I lack data on mobs’ HP, but the damage should be 50%-100% that of a barrel to make these grenades effective. b) Alternatively, burn damage (damage that mobs take when set on fire) could be increased up to a decent value, but less than fire damage (damage taken when standing in fire). This way enemies would take longer to die (compared to the 1st option), but this would make incendiary grenades stand out, cause this would result in a unique gameplay: throwing a bomb and kiting enemies till they die. c) Another option would be to make burning enemies more prone to other sources of damage. That’s another elegant way of making these bombs useful. I prefer options b and c better. (Right now incendiary bombs are almost useless. They’re usable only for clearing waves, and even then they can clear one subwave at best. At best, because they’re only somewhat effective in tight spaces. In open spaces enemies just walk around the fire, barely touching it. And even if they catch on fire, the fire is so “strong”, it can’t kill even pink slave rats, only paint them black. Incendiary bombs need a buff, so they can at least be useful against regular enemies, for example at least help clear shieldbearers from a chaos patrol. Alternatively they could serve as a source of group buff.)
    Links: 1, 2.

13. Restrain kicked players from joining back into the lobby. (Firstly, this joining-kicking process usually takes a lot of time, as kicked players usually get straight to the lobby they’ve been kicked from. And not only the kickers don’t wanna play with the player in question, but the kicked player usually doesn’t want to get into the lobby they’ve been kicked from. Secondly, people might purposely join your game and start griefing, because they feel aggrieved. The latter thing happened to me only once, but the potential problem is very huge, since it is really easy to get back into the game you’ve been kicked from via lobby search.)
    Links: 1, 2.

[NikKotovski]

III. Easy less important fixes:
Unlike important fixes, these changes are more cosmetic-focused. Since they do not affect gameplay that much, their implementation can be deferred a little bit, in some cases a lot.

1. Redesign bomb icons. (It is very hard to differ one bomb from another in inventory. Compared to Vermintide 1, Vermintide 2 bomb icons are basically indistinguishable from each other. I have a minor visual impairment, and maybe healthy people have no problems differing them whatsoever (which I highly doubt), but I bet less sighted people can’t distinguish them at all.)
   Links: no links.

2. Let players apply illusions not only to weapons, but also to careers. If a player applies a weapon illusion to a career, then this illusion overrides all individual weapon illusions. There should also be a checkbox for overriding/not overriding red item illusions. (Some weapon illusions fit particular weapon careers, while looking bad on others. So if a player wants a weapon to visually fit the style of all 3 careers, they would need 2-3 weapons of a type with different illusions (let’s say 1 skin might fit 2 careers). And that is true for every weapon. And you might want to have weapons with different stats for different playstiles or for different difficulties. The resultant number of weapons is not only unreal to get, but even if you farm them out, they would completely trash your inventory. And the suggested change deals with both of these problems. Also I think it fits into the game logic, since in Vermintide we have illusions, not skins, and illusions can be very well applied to characters (depending on the nature of the illusions).)
   Links: no links.

3. Make Huntsman Hunter’s Prowl description and Shade Infiltrate description clearly state, that it increases damage (I didn’t know these actives increased damage, until occasionally reading that on the forum. And I didn’t even try these careers, because from the description they seemed useless. All my friends also didn’t realize this and ignored those careers, and I bet lots of other players experience the same problem. The majority of players do not read any forums, they just play the game.)
   Links: no links.

4. Turn private/public checkbox in TAB menu into a switch, or make the inscription statically say “private”. (Short reasoning: this checkbox is misleading. But to explain why it is so, I have to go deep into details, that might not be worth reading.
   Checkboxes are supposed to be used when you turn on some option. For example, if your game is public by default and there is a checkbox that allows to make it private. So checkboxes do not show current variable state, but show what will happen if you check them. Toggle switches work kind of opposite to checkboxes. They show the current state of an object, but they do not tell you what will happen after you switch them. So for checkboxes you got to guess their default state, for switches you got to guess their future state. Though it is possible to make a switch, that denotes both of its states, by writing text on its sides. Here is a good short article about checkboxes and switches.
   As for the private/public toggle, that is present in game, it behaves like a toggle switch, although it looks like a checkbox. And this is very misleading.)
   Links: no links.

5. Make Return to the Keep button at score screen inactive, until all players are done getting their chests. (People sometimes don’t even get to see the scores, since other player with a powerful pc/good connection can potentially get to the screen really fast and press the skip button.)
   Links: 1.

6. 2 second damage immunity for those, who join active games. (This is not a cosmetic change, but the situation this fix addresses happens so rarely, that it makes the change very very unimportant. So when you join a game, you often end up in a middle of a fight, and if you forget to press block, or if it gets delayed, you might take a lot of hits, possibly die (your HP are also not full in most cases). And even block does not save you sometimes, since you might just get overwhelmed the second you join the match. So some protection for joining players would be nice.)
   Links: no links.

7. Make it so that damage done to level bosses would count as “boss damage” in the after-game statistics. (no comments)
   Links: 1, 2.

8. Add friendly Fire stat. (Would be nice to have this one too. ;-))
   Links: no links.

9. Write down Map name, difficulty, win or lose, # of tomes and grims at the stat screen. (Sometimes you want to screenshot yours or team stats, and it would be nice to have all that data. Not that important, but not that hard to add.)
   Links: no links.

10. Show ping. (Having more information is always nice.)
    Links: 1.

11. Allow turning off bots. (Sometimes bots can be a hinder, sometimes u just wanna play solo to test some stuff.)
    Links: no links.

12. Make weapon traits, that apply buffs, have their own ingame buff icon. Use a weapon icon for the buff icon. (First off, this will show that the buff actually works, because so many things do not. Secondly, it will help to realize how the buffs work. Trait text is rather small and objectively can not contain all the details on the trait mechanic. Thirdly, it is just convenient. Despite being a very important change for traits, I don’t give this change a high priority, because weapon traits that give buffs are almost useless now.)
    Links: no links.

13. Remove fall damage for mobs. (They’re dumb. They follow you. They fall. They die. This doesn’t happen too often though, thus low priority.)
    Links: no links.

[NikKotovski]

IV. Things to do last:

1. Balance careers. (Career balance should undoubtedly be done at some point, because so much of the game content is underpowered right now and needs buffing; few things also need nerfing. But firstly, balancing this stuff might take a lot of time, and there is a lot of more important things to do. Secondly, balancing characters can actually make things WORSE, and since the game is not in a perfect state, a large balance mistake can potentially be fatal.
   While this paragraph is clearly a game changer, I did not put it in Big changes section, because it lacks any precise suggestions on the changes. Career balance is a very big topic, and can’t be fit in here. It requires a separate topic, probably 5 topics - one for each career.)
   Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and much more.

2. Balance weapons. (Everything that is said about career balance, is also true for weapon balance, but there is more to say. Let’s start with melee weapons Any melee weapon (except 1h axe) can be more or less successfully used on any difficulty up to Champion. But on Legend one can only use weapons, that are both good against a group of enemies and against an armored target. It’s because there is so many enemies, that often times you can rely only on yourself at dealing with both armored and unarmored threats. Also time to kill is higher at Legend, and your teammates can’t always clear all the armored foes for you, even if they wanted to.
   As a result, imho, only 8 of 26 weapons are playbale at Legend (31%), 10 of 32 if we ignore duplicate weapons, with the rest being far inferior. Some of them can be used with mixed success, but that doesn’t help the fact, that the balance is off.
   As for ranged weapons, they’re much more balanced, and EVERY weapon has its usage. I’d say 12 out of 19 weapons are playable (63%). That’s a good number, but still some weapons are noticeably weaker and are being used much less often, thus need buffing. And even some of the more decent weapons, like bolt staff, need some improvements.
   Important note: Some might not agree on the exact number of good/bad weapons, but I think everyone will agree, that most weapons in the game are significantly inferior to the few decent ones, and need buffing. And there is 1 or 2 weapons that probably deserve a nerf.).
   Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and more.

3. Make deeds’ rewards fair. (Completing most deeds is harder, or at least as hard, as completing a level with 3 tomes and 2 grims, yet most time they don’t even offer the top tier chest. Yes, you get a deed reward and a level reward, but deeds, that provide more or less decent rewards, make getting all the grims and tomes suicidal. Thus, you get a decent reward from a deed, (the same you would get for completing a level with books), but a negligible reward for level completion. And you spend more time and effort doing this, which makes deeds completely worthless. There is also easier deeds, but the reward for them is so not worth any extra efforts.
   Imho deeds should give next difficulty chests, except for the easiest ones, which should give decent chests, not commoners. As for Legend deeds, I wrote my thoughts on that one in paragraph 8 of “Big changes” section.)
   Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and more.

4. Add deed achievements. (This could be a non-item stimulation/pleasant bonus for completing deeds. The achievements should be worked on, though. Not just generic “complete 50 deeds”.)
   Links: no links.

5. Make weapon illusions equippable as 5 power weapons. (I’ve already listed a fast workaround fix for illusion preview in paragraph 15 of “Easy important fixes” section. But it is very slow, since a simple illusion switch requires so much actions from a player: putting a weapon in inventory, removing illusion, adding illusion and reequipping the item. If there was a separate tab with illusions, and if you could equip them straight away as 5 power weapons, it would be so much faster.)
   Links: same as paragraph 15 of “Easy important fixes” section.

6. Give players XP when host leaves. (Lots of hosts leave on wipe, or disconnects happen cause of bugs, and not only it feels bad to lose and not to get endlevel chest, but it feels even worse when you eve don’t get any XP for your efforts.)
   Links: 1, 2.

7. Fixed in 1.0.8. Make all attacks work on dummies, even dots. Or there is an even better option - make separate dummies for dots. This way dots numbers won’t mess with hit numbers on regular dummies. (As I mentioned before, numbers are super important in these types of games. So if weapons have no stats on them, players should at least be able to find them out this way. Also, because so many things do not work on dummies, it is impossible to tell, whether they don’t work at all, or just on dummies.)
   Links: 1, 2, 3, 4.

8. Fix Predator’s Draich longsword skin. Kerillian holds it so the blunt side is pointed outside, while the edge is pointed at her body. (no comments)
   Links: 1, 2.

9. Make an enemy pushed of a precipice count as a kill. (no comments)
   Links: no links.

10. Let players rename items and/or create item sets. (Different traits and stats are often needed for different difficulties and different careers. If a player likes to switch between different careers and different weapons, they might find it hard remembering which weapon/jewelery belongs to which career/difficulty. Item sets would solve this problem, but a simple renaming would help a lot too. This problem is not that important right now, because people in general don’t have much items yet, but it will be soon.)
    Links: no links.

11. Make bombs explode after being lit, even if a player gets grabbed or downed afterwards. (If a player lights a grenade, but the throw gets interrupted, then the grenade does not explode. Firstly, this behavior seems rather unnatural. Secondly, this kind of stuff usually happens with a last resort grenade you REALLY want to go off. While this change is a rather minor one, addressing a situation that does not happen very often, it would be nice to have it, since it would create some more cool critical situation moments, which we all love this game for. P.S. Rarely in the above situation you don’t want a grenade to go off, and you’re glade that its behavior was programmed the way it is. But you can only choose one behavior.)
    Links: no links.

12. Add host migration (non-deed). (Losing progression when a host leaves or disconnects feels bad. Please fix, if possible.)
    Links: 1.

13. Add an interface for bot loadouts. (Although this game is multiplayer, not single player, and bots is not the major part of it, still they’re being used quite a lot, just because some players might leave during a game. And bots need some specific items to be effective. Thus, you have to constantly switch careers and items just to choose a loadout for bots. And you always forget doing this, after playing a character. And that’s a little bit of annoying and inconvenient.)
    Links: no links.

14. Rework the inventory (including deeds tab). (Right now the inventory does it job more or less effectively, but as players will get more items, its going to be more and more clear, that it needs a rework. Better do it in advance, before it causes lots of frustration.)
    Links: 1, 2.

15. Fix bugs. (It is important to fix bugs, but it is very resource-consuming. The hardest part is reproducing bugs and finding them in code. The game is rather stable now, and there is only a couple of bugs that need fixing asap. So I thinks bugs should be a low priority for now, since there is so many urgent things that need to be fixed or changed. There might be serious bugs, that I am not aware of, or other significant bugs might appear later. But generally speaking, imho, as little time as possible should be spent on fixing bugs.)
    Links: 1.

16. Allow joining to deeds, at least for friends. (When doing deeds sometimes someone might disconnect or has its game crushed. And all the time spent playing becomes waisted. Moreover, if playing with friends, you also end up having a moral dilemma: either continue playing without a friend, or start over and lose progress too. And that’s very annoying. This change is of very low priority, because deeds are worthless now.)
    Links: 1.

[NikKotovski]

V. Big changes:
I think the main problem of this game right now is not bugs, balance or gameplay. The bugs do exist, but the game is in a very playable state. A lot of game content is not very well balanced to put it mildly, but A LOT of content works great, and the latter part is more than big enough to make Vermintide a great game. Gameplay… well, gameplay also has its good and bad sides, but two things are for sure: it works and there is no any other game with such gameplay.
So while being far from polished, Vermintide 2 is already a great game worth playing… would be, if it wasn’t for one thing. Details matter, and one little detail completely ruins otherwise great game, imho. I am talking about progression system, end game progression system more precisely. I think it needs an improvement as soon as possible, and a significant one. Why? Well, right now people are leaving the game, and leaving quickly. According to SteamCharts the game has lost 40% of its playerbase in the last 30 days! And some people quit before that, so in sum it might be 50%-60% quitters already. And according to the forum, most of the frustration is caused by the end game progression system. So the more people get to end game, the more people leave - that’s completely logical. Another logical thing, is that if nothing is going to be done with it, the game will become completely empty in a month or two.
So paragraphs 1 to 10 of this section address exactly this problem, and they’re the biggest and most important changes the game needs right now.
Links: SteamCharts, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and more.

1. Let players choose an item trait for x5 dust, and choose properties for x10 dust for green items and x50 for blue, orange and red items. Values are still randomized. (Item traits and item properties rolling is a subject to the law of large numbers, so there is zero reason to randomize such things. Not to mention, that rolling this stuff takes a lot of time. In addition, although item rolling is a subject to the law large numbers in general, it is not when rolling properties or traits for a particular item. Sometimes you’ll have to reroll stats 100-150 times, and this can be very frustrating. VERY frustrating. Yes, sometimes you will get lucky fast rerolls, but they can not compensate for the frustration. Why? Well, it’s because of how psychology works. I can’t prove it, but you might search the forum for topics on crafting randomness to see that I am right. And this change can also deal with crafting speed problem, without actually changing crafting speed or any animations.
   P.S. Item drop does not fall into the law of large numbers, at least when it comes down to orange and red items. So while the above change will not affect gameplay at all, except for easing stuff, it cannot be applied for chest drops, without drastically changing the game experience.)
   Some links are duplicates of paragraph 14 from “Easy important fixes” section.
   Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 AND MORE.

2. (There should have been a letter based set of paragraphs here, but since the forum does not accept them for lists, I had to switch to numbers only. That’s why this paragraph kind of doesn’t fit the whole picture.)
   Right now Vermintide 2 endgame reward system is completely broken in a bad way. I made some calculations, and it turned out, that it would take about 4100 hours on average to get at least one instance of red color of each weapon in the game prior to patch 1.0.5. And this is the MOST OPTIMISTIC number for A VERY SKILLED player. What does optimistic mean? Well, there are two different numbers for red item drops: one comes from data mining, another comes from a cheater opening 3k chests. They differ by about 3 times, with the latter being lower, and the pessimistic evaluation is 14,5k hours. And don’t forget “a very skilled player” part. The number should be increased by 2-3 times for an average player, if not by 10 (by my estimations it’s a 5-6 multiplier). You can see all the calculations with comments and play with the numbers here. In addition I made a separate topic addressing this problem.
   Also the drop rates are said to be DRASTICALLY increased at 1.0.5, but this could mean both 3% or 300% percent increase. This word means nothing without the numbers. From my evaluation it’s about 100% increase, but that’s not accurate in any way. And even if it is 300% percent (which it is not), that still not good enough, because a) That’s still 2-3k hours for an average player at the very least. b) We still don’t know the basic numbers. In case of pessimistic numbers even a 1000% drop rate increase is far from being enough. c) The problem can not be solved by increasing drop chance alone, a crafting system is needed.
   But why is increasing drop rates not enough, and why is a crafting system needed so much? It’s because of randomness. Because the drop system is completely random, you’re not guaranteed to get any item at all. You might spend hundreds even thousands hours farming for a particular weapon, and still not get it. You might get it first try though, but what are the chances, especially if you need more than one item? And the 4k hours mentioned above can (and will) very well turn into 8k, 12k or 20k hours for some players.
   So I insist that a full set of measures should be adopted to speed up red item farm and compensate for bad luck, rather than just one. Here is a list of my thoughts on how to deal with the red item drop situation.
   Unlike other sections, links in this section might overlap a little, because people address multiple problems in the same post, while I try to split them.
   Links: all paragraphs 3, 6 and 7 links plus 1, 2, 3, 4. Start with paragraph 7, since it’s most related.

3. Increase weapon drop rate compared to jewelry drop rate by several times, at least for red items. (Thanks to data miners it is known, that right now there is a 55% for a jewelry to drop from a chest slot (3 slots in chest) and a 45% chance for a weapon (not counting deeds, only comparing items). The problem is that all the jewelry is the same (inside its type), while there is about dozen different weapons for each class. There is an average of 10.8 weapon types per class (let’s round it to 11), which means that there is a 4% chance for a particular weapon type to drop from a chest slot, while there is an 18% chance for a particular jewelry type - a 4.5 times difference. This numbers mean that while rolling for 1 unit of each weapon type for a single character, you will get 4.5 instances of each jewelry, and that’s ONLY if you get no duplicates. But you will get them. On average, you will need to roll a number of weapons, equal to 3 times the basic weapon pool, in order to get each and every one of them. Calculations can be found in the second sheet of this spreadsheet. Yet again, the actual number if highly dependant on your luck and might be significantly bigger or smaller. But on average you will get 4.5 * 3 = 13.5 of each jewelry type or 50.5 jewelry in total while farming an instance of each weapon for one character… and there is 5 characters… and you only need 2-3 jewelries of each type, which you will get long before you’re done rolling weapons for just one character.
   On the bright side, there is a crafting system, which makes this whole situation A LOT better. You can always craft the last 2-3 weapons you’re missing. Also, your need a lot of dust for stat/trait rerolls, and you don’t care if it comes from weapons or jewelry. But when you start farming red items, the numbers kick in, and grinding becomes completely ridiculous, since there is currently no red items crafting.)
   Links: 1, 2, 3, 4.

4. Fixed in 1.1 Increase red items drop rates. (Even after implementation of a crafting system, it would still take thousands of hours for a player to get all red items, just because they drop so poorly. If the drop rates will be left unchanged, the crafting system will mostly speed up the whole process by about 3 times, depending on the exact implementation. And, imho, that’s no enough. I feel that getting all the items should take 1500 hours max for an average player. But that’s a max number, I would prefer it to be 2-3 times lower. To be fair since I don’t know all the numbers, reds drop rate increase might not be necessary after implementing all the listed features.)
   Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

5. Allow crafting red items for 500 scrap and cosmetics for 1500 scrap. (Right now scrap is 100% useless in late game. You can only convert it to dust by crafting items, which in turn takes a lot of time. Allowing players to get a few more red or cosmetic items would be nice, and it wouldn’t break the system for such a cost. And both reds and cosmetics crafted can even be random, as long as they don’t give duplicates (if possible).)
   Links: no links.

6. Allow players scrapping red items for 1 red dust. Allow crafting red items for 3-5 red dust (and possibly some scrap). (No comments, since I already explained the significance of crafting system.)
   Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

7. Add a bad luck compensation system. (This is a standard practice, and this system is implemented in many games nowadays. It has 2 possible implementations. #1, after not getting a rare item x times in a row, a player is guaranteed to get one. This system, for example, is implemented in Hearthstone for legendary card drops. Implementation #2: every time a player does not get a rare item, a chance for getting that item gets increased. Such a system is implemented in Rainbow Six for loot boxes. One system is enough, and I like the second one better.)
   Links: 1, 2, 3, 4.

8. Add progression to a guaranteed red item for slaying bosses and completing some deeds on Legend. (Add a progression bar, which when filled, gives a chest with 1 guaranteed red item. This progression bar should be filled by completing boss levels on Legend and some of the deeds. Progression for quickplay should be twice the progression for custom games to prevent abusive farming. Progression should also be affected by tomes and grims, otherwise taking them might be pointless for both boss levels and deeds. Champion bosses might also give some progression, but it should be very low. Btw bosses might be powered up a little to turn them into a real challenge for a real reward.
   And I want to say a couple of words about dices dropping from bosses. Basically - this is a joke. If we assume 1 dice per mission on average, than 2 boss dice increase emperors chest drop rate by 28%, from 45.5%, to 58% (you should divide one by another), or giving 0.125 more emperors chests per level on average. You can see that yourself using previously mentioned spreadsheet.)
   Links: 1, 2.

9. This is the only paragraph I am not sure about, but it might be a nice addition to the game crafting system.
   Add red tokens: melee, ranged and jewelry. Tokens can be used to craft red items (with some scrap). Tokens should make about 10%-15% of all red items drops, and weapon tokens should be 3 times as common as jewelry tokens. Also if taking paragraph 6 into account, then tokens should be scrapped for 1.5 dust, making even jewelry tokens to be somewhat decent drop. (Players might not get red weapons they want at first, and they might not want scrapping few weapons they have already gotten, because it is very hard to get red items overall. Later they will get excessive red dust from duplicate weapons and from jewelry, but at first these tokens might help a lot to compensate for not so lucky drops.)
   Links: no links.

10. Open up exact drop chances for red items. (Lots of the most played and successful games like WoW or Hearthstone have their drop chances open (although the latter one has them calculated by fans, not given by devs.). When those things are unknown, it makes players nervous, makes them come up with different theories, suspect devs in intentional promotion of grind. This is especially true when there is no bad luck compensation system, since then a lot of players do get bad drops. And opening these numbers help a lot will all the possible negative reactions. Also I se no drawbacks in opening drop chances, only positive things, unless of course you want to promote microtransactions or prolong gameplay to 1k+ hours purely by grinding.)
    Links: 1, 2, 3, 4.

11. Improved in 1.0.8? Enemies should not lunge at approaching or stationary players. (I understand the lunge mechanics and what it was made for. Lunging is needed to stop players from indefinitely kiting the enemies. Without lunge attacks a player could potentially kite any number of enemies if given enough space. But enemies should lunge only when a player runs or dashes away from them. When a player moves away from an enemy, lunging takes a reasonable amount of time and can be reacted to without any problems. Otherwise, an enemy gets close to the player very fast, and it is very hard to react to that, sometimes impossible. However, that’s not the main problem. The worst part is that an enemy can lunge through a swarm of other mobs, and often times you can’t just see them. Even if you notice that move, you can’t stop that lunge, because you can’t pierce the mass of enemies, and you’re forced to block or dash away. The latter is not that important, though, as stealth lunges through a mob.)
    Links: no links.

12. Make Stormvermin shields breakable. Maybe having 2, 3 or even 4 times more durable than regular shields, but breakable. Alternatively stormvermin can be made to not unstagger, when taking damage. At least make it so they’re not pushed back when staggered. (Shielded Stromvermins are ridiculously strong, especially in numbers or in tight spaces, or when supporting a wave or some other group. In these situations, they are even stronger than Chaos Warriors, because you can at least kill the latter. These guys on other hand just protect everyone with their bodies, since all the hits get stopped by their shields, and as soon as they open up - they’re pushed backwards, so you can’t get em through other enemies. So the only thing left to you, is to accept their existence and deal with other enemies first. And that’s a very hard thing to do, when all you swings get stopped by armor.)
    Links: 1.

13. Allow giving medkits to teammates on Use button. (There is no reason medkits can’t be given to teammates. Unlike grims, you can exchange them between teammates, you just need to find a healing potion or a tome on the ground to be used as a “buffer” and make a bunch of manipulations. This change will just make players life a little bit more comfortable. Right now, the inability to swap medkits between players feels like an artificial difficulty raising.)
    Links: no links.

14. Allow swapping tomes and healing items between players. In order to receive a healing item a player must be holding the tome in hands. (Same as previous.)
    Links: no links.

[NikKotovski]

There is two more things I want to point out in addition to all the paragraphs. They’re not paramount, they are arguable and impactful, that’s why they don’t fit into the list, but they deserve mentioning for important reasons. I stumbled upon them, while searching for links and communicating with people at the forum. The first one is a subject, which unexpectedly for me people cared about very much. The second one is a very controversial topic, people have diametrically opposite opinion about.

Firstly - people demand cosmetic items. I was surprised how much people cared about them - not an insult in any way. It seems the majority of people concerned about cosmetic droprates are VT1 players. Seems like it was a big part of that game. As for me, I do not have time to care about skins, since the red items droprates is such a big problem now.
But overall, I think cosmetics is an important part of the game. In the future, there needs to be a system for veteran player motivation: a set of skins and keep decorations, which you can only get by playing on high difficulty for a long time. Let me emphasize - high difficulty. It shouldn’t be given for time spent in the game, the way it works now. And it should be obtainable only by playing the game - no real money involved. There can be a separate set of real money skins, but there should be a decent amount of progression-only skins, and they should also look decent.
The rarity of cosmetic items should be that of current red items rarities, so even the majority of vets should not be able to get all of them. This will make them more valuable. The system should be either non-random or semi-random. Offhand, there could be tokens for Legend and Champion chests, that could either be used to a) to craft these items b) roll character skins, weapons or some keep decorations. In the latter case, there should be no duplicates, or the crafting system should also be present.
But first things first. I think there is more important stuff to be taken care of.
Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and more.

Secondly - there seems to be a disagreement between players on current Legend difficulty. Talking to people in the topic about Legend melee combat and going through the forum later on, I was surprised by one fact: there are two diametrically opposed opinions about current Legend difficulty. A lot of players say it is way too difficult, while other people, and there is even more of them on the forum, are confident, that Legend should be made even more harsh. And almost no one is satisfied with Legends’ current state. All that makes me think, that one more difficulty is needed. Champion currently can be viewed as Normal difficulty, while Legend seems to be something between Hard and Nightmare, and it fails at both.
I think another difficulty should be added, to meet the demands of the veteran players, and Legend should be made a little less punishing at the same time. This should not be achieved with straightforward enemies’ HP or damage reduction, but rather by other things like lowering stagger resistance or adding a delay on regular mobs attacks… or fixing melee combat, at least to some extent. The new difficulty level should also be made harder not by simple stat numbers and bigger hordes, but by other fun things, like sudden minor waves, waves that come at you from all sides, groups of specials, double bosses (2nd boss comes, when the first one is brought down to 50% HP) and other fun things. But these are just offhand ideas.
Pro easying: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
Pro hardening: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Finally:

Criticism is welcomed, but with some reservations. I am pro constructive criticism, so please first and foremost focus on specific suggestions, not on details. Details can be argued upon indefinitely: wrong priority, poor argumentation, unsuitable links - there is dozens of them. However, all this stuff doesn’t matter, if you generally agree with the suggestion you’re arguing about. This way you’re only wasting my and yours time and flooding the topic.
And even if you do not agree with something, please focus on the important stuff and suggest something in return. Criticism for the sake of criticism is just waste of time; I am not going to take part in it.

Your suggestions are also appreciated. Although I should warn you in advance, that I do not intend adding any additional paragraphs to this topic. Coming up with a list of changes, selecting the most important things, their substantiation, translation, edition, fact checking, link searching and doing other less important activities took me more than 100 hours. I am burnt out. I don’t have any desire or energy to polish this topic anymore. I am not going to distance myself from it though, and If there are going to be any decent urgent suggestions I’ve missed, I will gladly take them into account. But I will add them to a separate topic and will not work on them as thoroughly for sure.
Also, when writing suggestions, please don’t be very specific, unless that’s really important. For example, if you suggest adding 5 damage to 1h sword, that is very specific and there is a very big field for arguing here. Saying that all 1h weapons need a damage boost is less specific, though it’s arguable that some do not need any buffs or need non-damage buffs. But saying, that most weapons need buffs, like stagger power, attack speed, cleave and others, is ideal, since it is hard to not agree with this statement. And the exact numbers should be discussed in the separate topics, if at all. Maybe it is better to leave them to devs.
Though some things need to be very concrete, like green dust problem for example. It is a part of the crafting problem, but I had to emphasize it, because that’s one of the most important problems of the game right now imho. So when you need to be specific - do it. Post one, maximum two options, you’re confident in, not over 9000 ideas how to make 1h axe great again.

[valicious]

I completely agree. Thank you for taking the time to put all of this together.

[tarek_hariri]

FS, please listen to this man.

[Revy]

Good read, thanks for taking the time to post.

[Licious-D]

Agree with almost anything and the stuff I don’t is minor, so I won’t bother writing something up. Good work and thanks for all the effort.

[Storeslem]

will be a tradegy if fatshark dont read this. my only disagree with this list is i think deeds should reward cosmetics.

[kay3]

I have no idea why I received this thread notification through email but I am so glad that I did.

I probably agree with everything written down except for the lowering legend difficulty part but it would really depend on how exactly.

Thank you so much for writing these posts down here and I really hope the Dev team can take the time to read it all and consider a lot of these aspects.

I like this game so much but there is certainly immense room for improvement, to be honest.

[Abysswalker]

@NikKotovski

Make all talents, passives, item traits work. (The most important thing, invisibility, has been fixed

Im sorry to say it, but its still not. If any mobs started an attack sequence they will follow, and hit you in stealth, and you wont be albe to run through them(with shade) while this lasts.

• Its the most noticable on shielded stormvermin, which has a 4 attack chain combo, and they also block your stealth attacks 300degrees+,so its a suffering to hit them from behind even in stealth with a side slash attack.
• Other honorable mentions:
  1, when a horde stacks up around you, and you get hit by 20+mobs at the same time while your ability is active, and stealth not helping at all, your character wont ignore unit collision while they are in their attack chain animation, and you cant block all attacks, so you literally spend 8 seconds downed while being invisible…
  2, this is my new favourite: when you shoot a gasrat, and it goes allahu akbar, and it runs at you from across the map, and followes you while you are already stealthed and trying to dodge…

And im not talking about bosses here just the more common mobs, they have other issues, ill mention only one for now: rat ogre has a ridicolously large knockback radius. Its okay on the front, but it also knocks you back from a spear range at its back, and even if it does it on a different level(for example Convocation sewers: if it does the knockback on a wooden platform in the sewers, you get knocked back under the platform in the water)

[Argonaut14]

TL;DR

You don’t think Fatshark have got a plan so you’ve drawn one up. As this is URGENT list you don’t think they’re going to change SEVENTY aspects of the game quick enough. You can’t see the irony of repeating and linking to various posts that the dev’s have seen from all over this forum including linking to the Community Suggestion Compendium.

In fact you have suggested a change to almost EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of this game, which is utterly bonkers to expect it to happen quickly, especially as you see things a URGENT.

I have faith, based upon Fatshark’s historical activity that they’ll continue to address all of the BUGS currently causing issues - then they’ll address BALANCE changes, then minor stuff like crafting, chests and cosmetics and whether you can break a SV shield.

What you have suggested is attacking the game with a battle axe to carve it up and make a new better game, whereas it needs a scalpel to fine-tune much of what is in game and working.

[debito20091993]

I agree with almoust everything. The only thing i don’t like, is the idear to make shields of Stormvermin breakable.

I think enemies with shields in generall need a few changes.
There is no reason to implement new enemy types, if you fight them the same way as all the already existing ones.
Right now you just smash their shield until it either breaks or the enemy gets staggered. Thats just boring in my opinion. Stormvermins are at least a little bit diffenrent, because you can score a hit from behind.
Making their shields breakable wouldn’t make any difference.

I think there are some other easy solutions, to make fighting them more interresting.

1. Reduce their generall block angle.
2. Reduce their block angle even futher when they are attacking. They should only be able to block attacks during their attack sequenz, if they come direclty from the front.

How would these changes improve fighting these enemys?
It would be easier to assist other players. You wouldn’t need to get directly behind the stormvermin (what is often impossible) to help them. Additionaly if you are able to realize, that an ally is under attack by a shieldvermin, you could take advantage of that and get some easy hits in on them. this would reward good awareness of the sorounding or good communication. Futhermore in situations where you have to face them alone, you could try to dodge their strikes to the side and get an attack in.
In my opinion this would make fighting them much more interresting and a bit unique.

[NikKotovski]

@valicious @tarek_hariri @Revy @Licious-D @Storeslem @kay3 @debito20091993 Thanks guys. Writing this I was afraid that I am doing some overcomplicated stuff, that no one’s gonna read this, but I am glad that this forum is full of people, that care about the game. And I am glad, that my work was met so nicely. Thanks again.

@kay3

I probably agree with everything written down except for the lowering legend difficulty part but it would really depend on how exactly.

That’s my fault. I somehow messed up the line about adding another difficulty level. Thanks for noticing. I’ll make that part more clear.

@Storeslem

will be a tradegy if fatshark dont read this. my only disagree with this list is i think deeds should reward cosmetics.

They should, but:

@NikKotovski

As for me, I do not have time to care about skins, since the red items droprates is such a big problem now.

@Abysswalker

Im sorry to say it, but its still not. If any mobs started an attack sequence they will follow, and hit you in stealth, and you wont be albe to run through them(with shade) while this lasts.

I don’t play stealthed characters a lot, but I noticed that level bosses might sometimes ignore your stealth. When fighting Skarrik, I came close to him, and he made his AOE attack, though no one else was near.

Also i think Shade stops blocking for 1 second, when entering the shadow state despite the animation.

But overall it works fine imho.

[Toonec]

Before any suggestions, good work for summonsing posts about problems of the game. Though i would prefer more of a “here is problem in two words and link to the post about this problem”
Now, 1st of all, most of your suggestions of fixing game, are, basically, adding/changing features, that most of them should be from the beginning.
2nd you prob bad at understanding how hard to implement new features, even though they should be in first place. Im saying it because in your “easy suggestions” features requires a lot of coding and designing(1.1, 1.2. 1.3(removing is easy, but if some crap would happen because of that, then there is gonna be ton of work clearing it), 1.4 and 1.9, 1.10, 1.12(maybe it’s intended, maybe not),1.13,1.15 (1 is stated for post) Imagine following. You’re hired to create a banner for company. You did it, it looks great, has everything that company requested, gives all information that needs to be given. Then, manager comes and says that you need to add more details, more features, more things. And you dont have time, manager desperatly wants it and you have to put it no matter what. Great example, search for “Company Hilariously Mocks Stupid Client Requests”
So, what do i mean by this? Easy change is changes of some numbers. Adding feature is never an easy thing. As well as fixing bugs, witch has higher priority over features(like skipping scene or seeing who’s talking). Gamebreaking bugs have higher priority.
Higher can only be resolving unintended gamebreaking features and balancing gamebase parts like drop rate, difficulty, heroes(only if other game-main-parts are stable and dev-desired meta is achived) and progression.
so if you’d ask me, fastest and easiest changes should be 1.5-1.8, 1.11, 1.14, 2.4, 2.12, 3.3, 3.6, 3.10, 5.3, 5.4
Then, about main problem of the game. I agree, end game is a cross-game-problem. Many games have it.
-Previously i’ve played Warframe, which only now, has a proper endgame content. Previously it had Raids(faild due to unexpirienced game-designer), pvp(failed due to totally non-pvp-friendly gameplay), open-world(failed due to not-dontstarvelike genre)randomized mods(failed due to still achiving to fast and losing interest in game after that) big-boss-fights(somewhat achived,especially since its easier to make bosses, than whole new high skill maps) and endless missions (like deeds in v2, but better reward and endless).-
I don’t say “do as WF did”, rather “watch and learn;be smart”. Relying on one end-game element is bad decision, but not at cost of doing two mediocre elements. Currently farm elite item is main endgame element, and i think FS needs to perfect it and then start to work at another one.
But about anything else, i mostly agree. Some changes not in right category, some need testing, some need dev’s vision, not ours.

TL;DR. Those are not fixes, mostly suggestions to add features, which any game should have. And while not having them hurts the game, they do not hurt gameplay as Bugs and poor design. i’d prefer devs firstly fix bugs and balance features to make playing it rewardful, while add some easy changes, Then, after steady meta and as little bugs as possible, add hard features.

[Mojo]

Good job putting this all together @NikKotovski but I feel it might be a wasted effort.

If they manage to implement half of these (if they even consider working on them at all) in a year, then I’ll be shocked.

DLC seem to be in the works and they’ll not only slow down/stop any work on QOL changes and bugfixes, they’ll also introduce brand new bugs and problems.

Maybe,after all the DLC and “season pass” cycles are done and a year+ work is put into polishing it, VT2 won’t be a hot mess anymore. Fingers crossed people will still be playing/start returning by then.

[NikKotovski]

I don’t get it, they could double or triple the playerbase by qol updates alone. Now, when the playerbase is gone, who’s gonna buy their DLC?

Anyways:

@NikKotovski

I understand, that with a 99% probability I just wasted my time for nothing, but I just couldn’t get past this tragedy.

[Avar]

I’m reluctantly changing my steam review to negative for the time being for all these issues. Makes me sad.

Them working on certain add-on content for the game when the vanilla release feels like a pre-beta feels like a slap in the face. I would never have imagined a developer could collectively forget every lesson they learned from their original and virtually identical title.