I make this post to express my feelings towards this mode. Appreciation, Doubts and Problems I still have with it after nearly a full year since release
Overall Experience
Versus has been the BEST VT2 experience I ever had. It feels like it DOES work, because the fun moments both as Heroes and Pactsworn have been amazing
The mode feels fluid, fast pace action is encouraged AND rewarded for both Heroes and Pactsworn, snappy choices and micro positioning are essential and things I love about it
There’s Caotic custom lobbies that forces all pactsworn player to be Rat Ogres all the time, and there has been lobbies where very experienced players come together and play with in-house rules to balance the experience better. Both of these extremes have been really great and truly a new breath of fresh air that I haven’t seen since I played L4D2
It’s amazing how despite the game being made PvE, works so well in PvP (with some minor exceptions, but I’ll call those “refinements needed” rather than flaws with the game being PvE)
However, this is where I need to start being more critical about the gamemode, especially the…
Quickplay Experience
Quickplay has been… a little bittersweet
Because while this is where I spent the most time, and where I had a lot of fun, it has 2 main issues, one of them extremely talked about, and the other completely silent
The obvious one is experienced players who play together to stomp easily. Most people who stopped playing quickplay is exactly because of this, period
There’s no fixing this sadly, however what we can do instead is actually try to balance the matches when the game begins. We don’t need “matchmaking” or MMR, but use the levels of each person as a balancing factor, and what’s even better is that we can use a mechanic that was added to help balance teams, the Vermintide
(This change would be EXCLUSIVE for quickplay). Instead of making the Vermintide favourable towards a team when they’re losing by a big magnitude, instead make it favourable ot the team that has the lowest Versus level. The bigger the level difference, the faster the underleveled team will charge the Vermintide
This is perfect, because it allows people to queue together with their friends, no matter if they’re all low levels or high levels, the game will ATTEMPT to give both teams a better time
There’s also other options like allowing the way underleveled team to have 2 boss triggers, or whatever, but that would be more experimental and I’m not so sure about its effectiveness and so, this is why I’d say to stick purely to the Vermintide change
The second issue is quite less noticeable by most, but instantly noticeable the moment good players are in a lobby, Playing Hero is too forgiving
This is partially a balance issue and partially a ruleset issue, so in this section I’ll cover the ruleset issue and then talk about balance later
Ruleset Issues
- Heroes have too many wounds:
Should be easy to understand, a hero needs to fall down 4 times with no healing (either healing draught or medkit) to die.
This is simply too much, having to essentially down people 16 times in the best of attrition cases (no healing used) is simply not possible to do, unless you tunnel people out by camping their disabled selves, and this shouldn’t really be encouraged (There’s a reason why it’s so hard to kill downed Survivors in L4D2)
The easiest change is by reducing it from 3 wounds to 2 wounds, this way a hero needs to fall 3 times in a row to die, and in the best of attrition cases (again, no healing used), needing to down people 12 times is a lot more reasonable
- Heroes are not rewarded enough for reaching the end:
The difference between a Handmaiden desperately rushing after leaving her team behind and reaching the end, vs a team that worked together and got all safe in the end, is only 30 points. The stage with the lowest amount of point per map progress is 120/130 (don’t remember exactly). That’s just 25% of the round progress in these low first stages, and it’s just 12,5% on stages with 260 points or so
In very balanced games, because of the balance issues I’ll comment in the following section, and the heroes having 4 wounds, games are decided by around 10 points or so, playing rat feels worthless unless you’re in a section of a map extremely favoured to them, which is where you’ll get most of your value
If the future balance changes, among the wounds change, are added to the game, we could easily change the current score per survivor reaching the end from 10 to 20/25
- Potions (Strength, Concentration, Speed) give the Heroes too much of an edge:
It’s very easy to understand that good heroes will save their potions for the boss fight, which ends up causing an avalanche of issues that I will explain later, but for the most part it just extremely buffs heroes
The solution is quite simple, remove ALL potions from spawning on the map (spawn and through the map). Potions should be locked behind class specific skills, which would be:
- Ranger Veteran’s Scavenger
- Grail Knight’s Virtue of Penitent
This will make GK’s value a lot better (considering he’s one of the worst if not the worst versus class), and force RVs to drop the extra ammo if they want to have potions
- Healing:
Both healing draughts and medkits are controversial to this mode
Of course removing them IS a horrible idea, however we kinda need to limit their effectiveness, and also make them more “standard” on each map
I will also tackle healing as part of the Balance section, but this will solely tackle the “Ruleset” (or how they’re placed in a map). It is required for the balance change to also be implemented for this to work
Because we’re removing Potions spawning naturally on point 3, we can make the following changes:
- Spawn 4 “Special” Healing Draughts (more explanation on what it is later) on the spawn room where the potions would normally be
- Spawn 2 Obligatory medkits at a specific, unavoidable point of each stage (For example in Against the Grain 1st stage, in the wooden door right after destroying the flags where there currently is 1 medkit, and in Against the Grain 2nd stage, right before entering the Windmill, there currently is 1 medkit. In both of these sections, spawn 2 medkits instead)
- All the other healing items that exist in the map, remove 2/3rds of them, and for the remaining ones turn them into the “Special” Healing Draughts (You could even randomize which spots would be used! Just so heroes can’t instantly memorize them and have a garanteed healing source, but rather risk it being there or not)
- Bosses do not stop the Heroes progress:
In L4D2, you can’t walk past a Tank because you can’t stun him and he will defenitely 100% stop you in your tracks, however a grounded boss can be stunned while the objectives get completed, which is very silly
This is why I’ll suggest a change that does seem crazy at first, but make sense in the long run
Make heroes NOT gain any progress points while:
- The Monster is alive
- The Monster is not in Ghost mode
- The Monster is at least within 80m (Number could change) of a Hero
- The objective at the moment is not a last stage hold (Because it would be too cheesy to stall their points there) (Examples of this would be Engines of War last stage, when waiting for the Boat to come)
- Heroes aren’t on the end of the map (safe)
If any of the previous conditions is broken, all accumulated points will be given to the Heroes in that moment
Just in case to clarify because it could be a little confusing, the last point means that if the Heroes go through the entire map, reach the end and no other condition is broken, all accumulated points will be given to them
This forces heroes to fight the monster if he’s present in the Arena and trying to engage, but if the Monster tries to abuse this and stays out of the fight, the heroes could easily get all their accumulated points by one way or another
- Mercy rule ruins the fun for a lot of people:
The Mercy rule is a mechanic that ends the game when the losing team has no possible way to reach the points the winning team has
This feels anti-natural for quickplay, with people leaving and joining, and people like playing for longer before being sent back to the lobby and queue up again, so just remove it entirely
And those are the ruleset changes, with these we made the mode:
- More dynamic by making heroes go down quicker, reducing their boss deletion potential and limiting the healing in a more consistent manner for both teams
- Allow for better comebacks by increasing the reward for each hero reaching the end
- Each rat attack will mean more because of the reduced amount of possible heals heroes can get
- Players can enjoy the game for longer, instead of being interrupted with a win/loss screen
Now for the Balance Changes!!!
Balance Changes
- Healing:
This will be A LOT shorter than the Ruleset section of the healing, but the changes would be as following:
- Medkits no longer heal your own wounds IF you heal someone else with it
- Healing Draughts will be essentially removed, instead a new variation of it will be added (Still thinking of a name for it) that will replace it
The “Special” healing draught will have the following properties:
- It will not heal wounds
- It will heal for 50 Permanent HP (instead of the 75 that normal healing draught does)
- It will also heal for 50 THP (To compensate for the loss of the perma HP)
- Visually, its fluid will be a lighter green, and the healing cross will be slightly scratched to indicate it’s old / not as good
All of these changes regarding healing (including Ruleset ones) gives heroes a FIXED amount of times they could go down, and forces them to pick when it’s ideal to heal (rather than waiting on the last wound)
- Bosses:
While I’ve added a special condition in the Ruleset to prevent Hero rushing, that alone is very little
I’ve made a post about Monsters in the past, to which I’ll just post the changes here. (Every change is explained better on the thread, I’ll just post the compacted changes here WITH minimal changes to accomodate for everything explained before)
- Classes:
I’ve also made a looooooooong thread in the past regarding Hero balance in Versus, but at this point that felt too arcadey and the heroes that are an issue are only few in between, those being:
- Footknight
- Warrior Priest
- Outcast Engineer
- Handmaiden
(Pyromancer also used to be an issue but she got shadow nerfed and now it’s a perfectly balanced character)
So let’s tackle each one
Handmaiden
The good news is… that she doesn’t need any specific changes! The changes done to the Ruleset AND the Healing should be more than enough to knock Handmaiden down to Waystalker levels, which is perfect. The reduced amount of wounds nerfs her main utility by 33%
HOWEVER, one Pet Peeve of mine that I still have is Gift of Ladrielle. This is not a “big issue” and it not being changed will not result in a detrimental experience, however this talent does feel really bad to deal with as a rat, as it gives too much safety to the Handmaiden for such a short cooldown ult
Footknight
This class only needs 2 talents changed, which are:
- Comrades in Arms: 50% resistance is ludicrous, reduce it to 25% instead
- Numb to Pain: Versus Tourney mod reduced this to 1s and it felt a lot better (But we could make it 1.5s if needed)
Now this class will still be one of the strongest anchors in the mode while keeping the most fun part of him (It’s Hero Time), yet the ability to make someone else immortal and himself immortal as well would be the things nerfed
Warrior Priest
Defenitely one of the most Frustrating classes, but luckily the changes should be easy:
- From Fury, Fortitude: Reduce the healing done from this talent by 50%
- The Comet’s Gift: Reduce the timer of damage taken from 3s to 1s
- Unyielding Blessing: Increase the timer from 5s to 7s (And make sure the stagger doesn’t affect Bosses)
Most of WPs issue is how much anchoring he can do, for such relative little effort, so now, alongside the Ruleset and Healing changes, he’s forced to time his ults better and his value is slightly reduced overall, however he can now be a complete saving grace by allowing a teammate to megatank for a considerable amount of time, very good in stressful moments
Outcast Engineer
Defenitely the most frustrating class ever, however the amount of changes needed are few
- Remove Trollhammer (Not a joke, just disable it on Versus)
- Reduce the amount of max carried bombs from 3 to 2
That’s it, 90% of the issues with Engineer is him drinking a str pot (which would now be rare thanks to the ruleset change), Throwing 3 bombs at the boss (now reduced to two), and firing the Trollhammer at the boss again (Trollhammer being removed prevents this), which results in the boss losing AT LEAST 70% of his HP instantly)
The most fun part of Engineer in versus SHOULD BE the minigun, NOT abusing bombs and Trollhammer
Final Notes
Fatshark, the dedicated Versus community has loved and most still love the gamemode, the experiences I had in it are just… something I wouldn’t trade easily
However, you gotta understand that this mode has been poorly mantained, poorly incentivized and the Quickplay experience is very very bad when some factors allign (4 +200 level players queueing together, abusing the OP classes and the game NOT helping the team in a clear disadvantage since the beginning) (And just playing pactsworn in general feels unrewarding even after good plays at times)
I believe these changes, all of them together, should make the gamemode a lot better, and even leave it in such a good state to the point that nothing would need to be changed mechanically wise