Hi there,
Notice : Please don’t talk about increasing FoV, or taking meds, or whatever ELSE than using third person here. It’s really the only way to play games without puking all over the place for some people.
I’m not used to post on community forums, but the matter at hand should be expressed sooner or later, so I might as well share my experience and give my opinion and suggestions right away.
Some people can’t play FPS because of motion sickness. That’s a plain fact, you can read about them all over the internet, and even on steam forums talking about mod support prior to the 1.0 release of V2. However, most of these can handle third person without discomfort.
A tale of friendship and rat slaying
On Vermintide 1, the third person mod allowed them to play with us and that was great. I personally have some friends that can’t handle FPS view, and we greatly enjoyed countless hours of fun and rat slaying thanks to this mod, rekindling my interest in the game.
As soon as Vermintide 2 was announced, our first question was “will we be able to play it third person ?” and we were thrilled to see that mods were going to be supported, and even encouraged.
Mod support however was not present at release, but we didn’t care that much, we understood that it needed additionnal polishing, the roadmap showed us mod support for april/may, and we learned that most V1 mods will most likely get adjusted for use in V2, so those of us that can play FPS went ahead to get the feel of the game a bit.
Now that mod support is there, we could gather the whole crew again ! Yipee ! Unfortunately, because of the modded realm not giving away loot and exp, I won’t surprise you by telling you that the game is way less fun, not being rewarded for runs and all.
I know that in summer (or up to this winter for the pessimistic ones) we will have sanctioned mods that allow progression in official realm, but the process of selection is going to be a very arcane and subjective one.
What if third person view is going to be considered too big of an advantage and refused in official realm ? Why can’t my friends and I not share the fun as before ?
Why isn’t third person view not that big of an advantage ?
Let’s review all the arguments I already read
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This gives an unfair environmental awareness advantage : I agree that it does give an advantage, but I won’t call it unfair : this comes at the expense of being able to easily target head, most importantly on close combat. So I’d say it’s a trade off between seing your surroundings and being able to clear armored enemies efficiently.
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The game is less immersive : True, but that won’t get the immersion out of your game if another player is using third person. This can and should be left at the player’s discretion if he is willing to reduce his immersion by playing third person.
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Having third person players in PUG will ruin it as they can’t handle armor/can’t aim : Might be a fair point, might not be. I’d guess that the environmental awareness VS loss of headshot capability might be somewhat balanced, as the third person might take less damage from unseen rat backstabbery i nexchange of taking extra time to kill armored enemies… As for the aim with ranged weapons, it is as precise in third person as in first person, except if you’re trying to use ranged in close combat.
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The game is meant to be played FPS / The character looks clumsy : Well that’s just not an argument. We’re talking about modding a game, so please don’t go on “it’s not vanilla”, that the whole point. And yes, I’ve seen this argument quite a lot…
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Just increase FoV, ny aunt did that and it even cured her from all illnesses / Take motion sickness medicine : Again, not real arguments about the topic at hand. For some people, increasing FoV don’t work, and taking meds to play a game seems a bit off anyway.
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You will get used to FPS anyway, just keep on playing : Having someone puke on his keyboard barely 2 minutes into the game is not an experience I’m willing to renew anytime soon. Having it done regularily until this player can handle FPS better is not how I will enjoy the game.
Suggestion 1 : Have a separate progression save on modded and official realm
Progress will be enabled on modded realm, but progress on both realms will be distinct and will never converge. This way, people playing with mods can still progress, but people only playing vanillia will never have to worry about those “god damn cheater that got this red item with a hack when I spent 1000 hours into getting it”.
Now I know that may not be that easy, and that would most likely mean additionnal running costs for FS (up to twice the amount of data to keep for accounts), but at least that would get both parts of the player base happy.
Suggestion 2 : Be very open about the process of selecting sanctioned mods
This one is not really open to discussion between players I’m afraid, it’s just a friendly reminder to our devs/community managers that players don’t handle very well one-sided decisions affecting their gameplay that are not thoroughly argumented/explained. This was seen as the constant ramble of the feedback section at every patch.
So please, when you get to sanction mods, keep in mind that for some players that may be the difference between playing the game or not. Whether you sanction a given mod or not, open a topic explaining the reasoning of the dev team. Better then, before making the decision, let players give you their point of view.
Suggestion 3 : Let host choose if he allows mods or not
While some people may still whine that players will be able to get cosmetic items easily and “that does not reflect player level anymore”, I think many more don’t care.
If the host had the ability to allow mods or not, and still get the loot/xp for the whole party, that may solve the issue without much additionnal cost to FS. It will certainly solve our problem, as we’re only playing between friends anyway.
TL;DR : third person will be the only way to enjoy the game for some players. We should do something so they can play and earn xp/loot too.