I think a big factor in this is that computers can only play so many sounds at once. VT2 throws a lot less elites and specials at you compared to DT, even on Cata, so that issue isn’t as apparent - though the audio mixing is also just better.
These issues in my opinion comes from a more deep rooted issue, in what high tier mission balance is. I don’t believe the game was intended for the amount of enemies, specifically elites and specialists, to be thrown at the players. I didn’t play a ton of VT 2, especially higher or even modded difficulties, so I can’t comment on if it is able to handle hordes of unqiue enemy sound cues and vfx well.
Personally the current power level does make the game a bit boring atm, and I think more threatening but less prevalent enemies, specifically NON specialists, but elites, would kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Both the difficulty of end game content, and the cluttered nature of sounds and vfx.
That’s obviously a very hard change to get right, so in the meantime if there was a way to make stuff a bit more identifiable it would be great.
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V2 twitch mode without blessings is kinda close to DT Auric in ammount of enemies but a bit less i can feel (but maybe my memory tricks me)
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Written like a pro.
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Nah, they’re right. The presentation of map information is a mess. If you don’t make a point of studying it to figure it out, you can level multiple characters to 30 without ever really knowing what much of it means (especially if you mostly use QP), and that’s not even considering the apparently random way that maps are arranged on the board.
Yeah, this is a huge fun sucker for me. Unfortunately it’s part of the gaas design. They’ve got to show us a wide array of skins, you see, and that doesn’t work as well when you get to play with the same people for long enough to make connections with them.
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@Exanimia Our feedback from almost 2 years ago. I hope this response does not entail any malice or ill intent. The lack of awareness and the obvious proof that this post provides is alarming.
This OP proves that the people developing this game most certainly do not play or test. (no ill intent)
I do hope you find a new home here in forum among us REJECTS who consistently are ignored on valuable feedback to help grow the franchise.
It sucks but I’m not sure I see the connection to gaas or monetization. FS isn’t deliberately pushing people away to make sure they do not group together so they see more cosmetic skins.
Personally for me, it’s two things:
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It’s something active the player has to do. This will go into the second point, but by making it active instead of passive means most people won’t do it.
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Lack of a pre-mission and post-mission hub. In VT 2, I’m PRETTY sure that even if you quickplay, after you finish the mission you are brought back to the hub with everyone you beat the mission in. Even if that’s not the case, I’ll use DRG as an example that you go back to the same hub with everyone, remaining in a party. Not only is this passive, so many people will stay in the lobby instead of leaving, but it lets people bond in between missions.
Even if everyone automatically formed a party after a mission instead of being asked whether they wanted to or not could go a long way to keeping people together.
TLDR: I don’t think it is malicious intent, I believe it is simply a lack of features and requiring an active interaction that causes people to not be grouping up as much.
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You have the ‘how’ of it, but Tzcheese is talking about the ‘why’ of it, and I agree it’s not just some oversight, the design is deliberate and most likely to push towards soft-advertising MTXes.
They are definitely sacrificing quality of life and player experience for retention and MTX exposure. Just look at the Mourningstar despite the changes they’ve made to it. Just there being no hotkeys for the various functions in the hub is to me deliberately putting their nebulous marketing tactics ahead of player experience.
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Unfortunately that’s exactly what’s going on.
Cosmetic showcasing is a strategy for displaying purchasable items (in our case, skins) to players who might not have seen them before. Randomising the player pairing ensures that this method reaches a significantly wide portion of the playerbase.
In games with a population bigger than this one, developers can even make some skins appear more desirable by making sure people don’t see them too often, increasing their perceived rarity and thus their value.
There’s also the social competition angle, where players without premium skins are more likely to feel the urge to buy said skins in order to not feel like an outsider.
There’s lots of reasons that randomising teams after every game feeds into the GaaS monetisation flow.
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But we can’t buy like…80%+ of cosmetics we may see, right?
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That just feeds the FOMO more. “Better buy that skin that looks okay now because you never know if you can ever buy it or that skin that you thought looked really good that you can’t buy now again!”
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Maybe! It just annoys me.
I understand where both of you are coming from but personally I do not see this as any definitive proof that Fatshark is purposefully manipulating the playerbase to not join into groups so they see more skins. Even the concept is overly convoluted.
Even than I would argue that if you form a group with someone with premium cosmetics, that gives you more time to look at and appreciate them, and convince you to buy it.
It is my understanding VT 2 didn’t launch with hub hotkeys. And that’s not even to do with the party system.
Personally I think it is just certain things that were deemed unnecessary for the game’s launch, that will be work to add that isn’t a priority right now.
There’s a chance you are right, and that some marketing research somewhere showed that splitting people up is the way to make money, but as of right now I really don’t see that.
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As @zaygr says, that’s part of the plan. All of these little “features” that seem so innocuous on their own are designed to work together to push you to buy things.
They made a decision to make groups opt-in instead of opt-out. They did that for a reason.
That’s by-design too. The strategy works better if you can’t easily connect the dots without having some prior knowledge of it. It’s not even really that complex, but you do need to know what to look for if you want it to make any sense.
Vermintide 2 didn’t launch with the inability to choose the specific map on the specific difficulty you want. Vermintide 2 didn’t launch with a cash shop. What does what Vermintide 2 didn’t have at launch play into anything Darktide does?
It’s like the people saying Epic Games Launcher coming out barebones is fine because it only had what Steam had when it came out in 2003.
My point in bringing it up is that it was a deliberate decision to not bring the same concept of QoL that currently and has existed for years in V2 (hub hotkeys) to prolong your time in the hub.
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Having merged a few striketeams, I can say I found it to be a frustrating experience waiting for everyone to finish reconfiguring their builds and running around to shops. It’s an incomplete system as long as there is no ready up function.
I don’t feel confident asserting that this is how it is because of paid cosmetics.
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It was no different in V2, especially when leveling where people wanted to constantly tweak their gear and talents.
And I mean, it’s not even me asserting this. It’s literally part of a strategy built on top of decades of marketing and psychology research. And it’s not limited to this game, it’s in most games that use similar strategies. It’s also found in various forms in cases where physical items are being sold.
Paid cosmetics is a part of it, but it was also a consequence of how they handled the mission selection flow and changes to server hosting. They could have done it in exactly the same way as V2, or DRG or Helldivers 2, where the map is selected and then there is a ready system while you’re still in the hub, but instead they take you to a ready room with only half the functionality but 100% showing off other people.
Most of the QoL issues stem from designing around trying to show off other people’s cosmetics, because those issues have all been mostly solved elsewhere and even in their previous games.
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It’s true. The Lizard people controlling the world work by the same principle. It seems complex, but is so utterly simple at it’s core! The people need to wake up!
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lol, yes, I can see how what I said might give off that vibe.
Unlike the lizard people though, this is something that can be independently verified by doing a few youtube searches on videogame monetisation or whatever. There’s seminars on it, it’s taught in game development classes, there are scientific journal publications on it. It’s not like it’s a secret.
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