A 4th column* of talents?

Let’s just say the devs added a 4th row of talents for every class in the game.

What kind of talents would you like to see?

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Not the question you’ve asked sorry, but I wouldn’t want to see such a thing at all. What a balance/power creep headache that would be. Maybe this is just a pure hypothetical to explore general talent design but felt compelled just in case to point out that an extra talent row would be an awful thing for the game at this stage.

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Cool, thanks for playing along.

It’s difficult enough to comment on the state of balance regarding existing talents without disagreement, but It seems baseless to assume there will be too many “balance issues” with an idea that isn’t even implemented unless you’re a game dev working on Vermintide. That just seems like a stick-in-the-mud contrarian view and you haven’t really given any reason for me to think this would be a headache for balance.

Adding new classes to the game adds 3 new rows of talents, with new passives and abilities. Adding more talents could grant players more flexibility. There are fun games that involve far more talents than offered in Vermintide; not saying that the game isn’t fun, but it’s nice to keep things fresh.

Defensive Talents and offensive Talents put into their own rows, instead of mixing it up, and making fun Talents not worth taking in higher difficulties.

E.g. Ablative Armour and Bombardier. Bombardier should be the most fun (and probably more balanced) on higher difficulties, but you just need DMGR or Piston Power to survive.

Removal of completely useless Talents, and for them to stop putting them in the game. If they’re going to add things like Ricochet or Soul Siphon into the game, I’d rather them just stick a flat 10% Power there instead.

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I’d like all the level 5 and 15 talents removed from the classes (as they limit weapon choice on classes) and added to the weapons themselves as extra properties available to everyone irrespective of class.

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There is already such a mismatch with most of the talents in this game that realistically I would rather just see them reworking existing useless ones before even contemplating a 4th tier.

I don’t think it would add much value to the current gameplay if 4th tier of talents were added when so many careers barely have 2 viable talents per row. 3 is almost a miracle.

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The feedback section of this forum is based on topics composed of the theoretical because 99% of the stuff discussed here will never make it into the game, so talking about never-to-be implemented ideas is all that happens around here. Also, there are no baseless assumptions when people have played the game for thousands of hours and therefore have a pretty good understanding for what is good/bad/balanced etc.

A 4th row of talents can be discussed, but there are so many things that’d need reworks/fixes that adding more talents is far from the top of the list of priorities. Make no mistake, I’m not trying to gatekeep you or what have you, it’s just that this topic is kind of tone deaf.

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That’s my point, I enjoy talking about ideas. Why then is this topic tone deaf? Because it’s not the same old ‘meta-whine’ that precedes most topics?

I’d like to see a reworking too, but I was hoping to talk about something more interesting to me than complain about existing meta. Fatshark still has a 4th class planed; at what point would reworking existing talents no longer take priority over adding new content?

I think both happen. They continue to rework talents, and they add new ones to the game (in the form of new classes). Yes, balance and adding new features are always a headache, but having options is what makes games fun for me.

It seems like the feedback forum has become a place where discussing new features is no longer welcome because the atmosphere is thick with people who’d rather fuss over existing problems that aren’t nearly as damaging to the game as letting it get stale.

CSGO every once in a while dropped a new competitive map or new weapon and it created a mess and destroyed the balance for a few weeks. Eventually, they continue to rework things into something competitively viable. This is not even a competitive game, it’s a co-op game, chill.

Yeah let’s just throw a 4th talent row between the already multiple useless talents to increase some semblance of variety because fixing and reworking the stuff that clearly no one uses would not achieve the same result.

Point is I’m not against the suggestion of increasing variety, I think there are just better ways to achieve this than throwing other 114 odd talents in to the mix that might or might not be game breaking, useful or even well thought out by fatshark.

You really cannot compare these 2 games even remotely. First the obvious reason, CS GO actually gets regularly updated which allows them to test out content and later (usually max month later) fix the issues that arise with these patches. Since you probably have not been living under the rock, you should know how often vermintide 2 in comparison gets patched, so any changes we get need to be pretty solid from day one. We don’t have to look further than SoTT to find an example of where **** has gone horribly wrong and even the hotfix patch was pretty much a meme at this point. You can just imagine issues with 100+ new talents being added and left unpatched for months.

Secondly, pve games require in someways even more of an delicate balance than competitive PVP game. If you simply keep buffing and buffing stuff, then eventually the difficulties lose any meaning, class balance won’t matter, weapon selection will be for style points and you lose the general core of what makes this game unique. It is not competitive game, but it still does not mean I should not care about it. Also this is just general comment because I see this argument way too often thrown around, I don’t necessarily believe a 4th row of talents would completely brick this game but i also did not expect supposed support career to put out more dps than shade.

But anyways, If this is all about talents, then just last month there was discussion about those.

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There are a few talents I don’t use, but I’m not a meta-slave either. I play around with builds that might not be the best just to keep things fresh. I can only think of a few talents that I might avoid entirely.

Why would adding a fourth row of talents mean nothing else gets fixed? I don’t think anything in this game is horribly broken. Even SotT is a minute problem to me. Fatshark does keep adding new stuff and fixing existing stuff. I think it’s unfounded to assume that getting more stuff means you won’t get fixes either. The game may not update that frequently but Darktide is in the works. I’m guessing it’s a small team working on Vermintide; doesn’t mean I won’t think about what new things might improve the game.

I think you’re all caught up in an echo chamber shaped around meta and it’s not helping improve the game.

I’m not even talking about “meta slaving talents” stuff such as ricochet, Fervent huntress, Piercing shot, Unbending purpose, Last resort, No Dawdling!, mainstay and many others I can’t be arsed to listed are absolutely useless or simply too niche to ever be relevant.

I want actual talents that change how I play my character instead of these ones that sound good on paper but do literally nothing/ have alternatives that do the same but flat out better.

Because its development time away from fixing stuff. Look if you really believe fatshark has the development power still to make content, fix bugs and do balancing then great, but the last 2-3 years should be pretty evident that its either content, balancing or fixes that we get, not all 3.

And that’s just some high horse attitude right here. “Yeah I don’t play meta builds so” pla pla. Yeah I have in my 1500 odd hours played pretty much everything there is to this game, from running zealot, to bombardier bardin, to machinegun huntsman and anything between. Just because I disagree with you does not mean I’m part of some echo chamber that’s just spouting out meta non sense. Funnily i actually disagree with a lot that’s said on reddit for instance and i don’t even want to get started on steam forums.

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Were just going to have to agree to disagree on the severity of any issues with the current meta and Fatshark’s capability in regards to balance. I hardly doubt talking about adding new talents to the game is a huge threat to whatever fixes you deem appropriate.

I’d say go start another topic to whine about existing talents instead of derailing this topic because you’re not convincing me, but given the 10 replies or so, I’m not sure I have any interest in discussing it with you guys.

Well clearly you are in the wrong place if its not the discussion you are looking for. Maybe reddit or steam will serve you better and its more than likely to get the same dev attention anyways.

Maybe, but that’s how echo chambers are made. I don’t mind sticking around people I disagree with, but I’ll know better than to share ideas in a space where no one is open to them. Steam or Reddit will probably be better for finding a more general audience if I want to share ideas, but I’ll stick around just to be the occasional reminder that not everyone is on the same page.

I would rather just have them completely rework the current set of talents we have as they’re either completely useless, vastly underpowered compared to another option even if you play really well/have high headshot rate(Flense vs Deathknell, Exquisite Huntress vs Cruelty), or a complete meme/joke pick.

Some talents only truly shine the higher the difficulty you go because of higher frequency in elite and special spawn which I do like(Deathly Dissipate, Shot Crafter, Hekarti’s Cruel Bargain, etc).

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Because you appear to have zero clue as to how absolutely f*cked this game is in terms of balance and the myriad of bugs if you think that discussing this is worth your time.

Correct. We’ve seen what Fatshark does whenever new stuff is discussed. It gets ignored. Months after months. Years after years. The number of game elements Fatshark has nailed are hugely outnumbered by the ones they’ve somehow butchered in an attempt at implementing. Wouldn’t revamping deeds help a lot? UT99 did mutators better 19 years before V2 was released. The crafting system? Turn band-aid solution talents like Abandon into passives to allow for actual build variety on UC? Turn down the game-ruining power creep?

Are we even playing the same game? What part of Sister’s kit is synonymous with word, balance? Same question for GK and the most recent weapons. They are completely nuts and trivialise content.

You clearly haven’t been around long enough if you think those that post on these forums see eye-to-eye on the meta and how to go about nerfing the power-creeping shenanigans.

Again, you are correct. You are going to find a far more receptive audience on reddit/steam because you’d be bringing this topic to the casual audience. We are more than willing to discuss ideas but let’s keep it realistic, shall we?

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You sound more salty than objective, I’ll just reiterate that the game is nowhere near as broken as it’s made out to be on these forums. You just constantly throw the most extreme examples in my face, things I agree need some tweaks, but it’s not so severe. The game is still the best co-op hack’n’slash ever made.

Just because you all can’t agree on how to balance the game doesn’t mean you haven’t fallen into an echo-chsmber. It’s still the same meta-whine. Ive already agreed several times that moonfire bow and sott do need a nerf and I get tired of hearing it from everyone. The game is still being worked on, doesn’t mean they can’t still add new features. Not like I’d trust anyone here to balance the game more than I would the devs.

Eh, it’s just not really necessary. Fatshark struggles enough as is with just 3 talents per row. Like someone else said, it’d be 114 new talents added to the game, which I severely doubt most of them would be any good, fun or balanced. There’s already lots of room to work with, lots of talents to change, replace and rework, and giving too many choices to careers could generalize them too much.

Sadly that’s not an opinion that I hold. The best balance patch we’ve had was derived from a mod made by the community, not the devs, and basically all instances of power creep (Moonbow, Sister, Pistol, broken talents like Mist Shade, broken early-WoM Battle Wizard, and so much more) all come straight from Fatshark. They’ve also been unable to make good and fun talent rows in multiple instances, and have completely thrown balance to the way side for like 2 years now. Even now, the Tourney Rebalance mod has made a lot of good changes to fix a lot of that, which, once again, made by the community. I do give credit for Warrior Priest though, best designed career they’ve probably ever made.

I dunno man, there’s a LOT of OP stuff out there that’s pretty much unavoidable in any lobby you go, and the meta is really stale currently. Quite a few careers have obvious pick talents with no variety to choose from, boring talents that aren’t interesting or do basically nothing, to the point that picking them is like having no talent at all, or talents that I can’t force myself to take even if I want to go really off-meta.

Sure, the game is being worked on, but it’s getting relatively old by now. I do agree that development probably won’t slow down any further, although that’s not saying much sadly. I’d rather Fatshark fix current systems than just add more bloat to the game.

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I would argue that Foot Knight is at least equally well balanced. And there are a few careers where a similar state could be achieved with some minor tweaks.

I would also say that some (not all) issues are not as severe as decried like some of the talents claimed to being useless or non-competitive (despite being being good choices) or some talents being mandatory or should being a passive (despite this clearly not being the case). Ovrepowered weapons are the greater issue currently followed by specific build set-ups and to short career skill cooldowns.

As for the opening question: First off, I will be nitpicky and say that you probably mean column (vertical) and not row (horizontal). Because horizontal would just mean more powercreep and even Buffshark by now should now that the systems need a global cooldown however they want to do this.
As some already said, it would mean a lot of work as there are “soon” 20 careers with six talent rows which would equal 120 new talents. At least on paper as in reality it would be far less due to 5 and 15 being similar across all careers. Would still mean about 80 new talents. The issue you would run into here is twofold. The first one is overlap. With more talents the chance of different careers overlapping more in their role is higher. While careers are usually set-up rather broad, Fatshark has shown that they lean more into specialization than in generalisation (although “recent” changes and releases have damaged this intention heavily). This overlap is already an issue while the new careers which are being released (and also a very likely reason we won’t see fifth careers).
The second issue is “combinations” and synergy effects. Obviously, synergy effects are wanted and something good. However, if the stars align to perfectly (looking at you Fire Sword Battle Wizard with unlimited THP, DR, Attack Speed Bonus and increase fire damage) it causes balance issues. The chance for this to happen is the higher the more combinations are possible. If we ignore the THP and stagger talents than we have 4 rows with 3 talents each leaving a total number of combinations of 3^4 = 81. All of these combinations have to be weighed against each other so that none of them end up overpowered. Ideally, they should also be balanced against each other but that is not really reasonable and I think there is some merit to the idea to present talents which are better on different difficulties. If you add now a fourth column you would end up with 4^4 = 256 combinations. The total number of combinations tripled which obviously makes balancing and avoidance of potentially broken combinations more difficulty.

Let’s concentrate on re-doing the broken releases from the last year, followed by some global cooldown by changes in at least one of the global systems.

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