Chaos Wastes Feedback and Poll

I want to start with the fact that I’m aware that this is a free DLC and that I can completely skip the whole experience if I don’t like it. I wish to stress that this is not a “complaint” post, it’s just personal and highly subjective feedback. I’m not mad, I’m not but hurt, I don’t want to rant, I just want to provide my feedback and hear yours as well.

Maps

Apart from existing GW artwork for Chaos Wastes and some Novels which have depicted CW, the design and artwork is basically up for grabs. Given the magical and chaotic nature of that landscape you can really create anything and call it a part of Chaos Wastes. Which is good, because, as Fat Shark has shown us, it doesn’t limit them to only one type of map, terrain or weather.

From that standpoint, the maps are really beautiful and simply Chaotic, but as such, they don’t have a consistent theme except, ironically, chaos :D. While I was playing throughout the maps yesterday I realized that the absence of “theme” is something that is not appealing to me. I’d rather prefer streets of the Empire city, corridors of a spooky big castle or Halls of Dwarven Karak than Chaos Wastes. So although visually beautiful, I don’t really like the maps, or better yet, I don’t really “feel” them.

Weapons

The thing that bugs me the most is the fact that I’m not using my standard weapons with the traits I like. Oh, that was just waaaaay out of my comfort zone and it felt so unnatural, to the point that playing Pilgrimage was more suffering then enjoyment.

Campaign mechanic

I like the whole “campaign” system of pilgrimage, the way you choose which map will you play the next and the fact that the current status is basically transferring to the the next map. That’s definitely a refreshing way of playing a campaign, at least when we talk about Vermintide. I’d like to see more of that in the future.

Summary

I think I understand what was the goal with creating Chaos Wastes. In short, It brings a high level of replayability which a lot of players have asked for. I personally don’t want replayability, or to phrase it differently, for me this game already has a ton of replayability just on the fact that there are so many different beautiful maps that I can play again and again and not get bored. But, of course that’s me. I play Vermintide because of its atmosphere and the way it perfectly conjures up a lot of aspects of the Old World.

Then, there’s the extra challenge that the CW campaign brings. I understand that there’s ton of you who mastered this game and you find most of the existing challenges too easy or just boring. But, for me, this game is still challenging enough and far from boring.

Overall, I don’t like this DLC and I won’t be playing it. I’d rather pay for some content if that content would bring new pack of maps (dwarf themed maps for instance). As always, I’m sad that the time and resources spent on this DLC haven’t been spent on the things I like and the things I was hoping for.

But, given to my inclinations and reasons for which I play this game it seems that I’m often in minority. So for that reason I’d like to hear your overall opinion regarding this DLC.

Overall feeling about CW DLC
  • I like it a lot and I plan to play it a lot!
  • I like it and I will probably play it in the future
  • I like it but not enough to play it again
  • I don’t like it and I won’t be playing it

0 voters

3 Likes

It’s been out 2 days and the beauty of it being free is everyone has the choice to play it or not without it being behind some paywall or DLC only thing (liek WoM weaves).

It’ll get balance tweaks and changes based upon everyone’s feedback and whatever meta appears - for example I’ve decided there’s no point using any shrines for weapons, only the ones that temper what you currently have, meaning I keep a weapon I’m familiar with and buff it at the anvil shrine for quite a lot less coins.

MY current feeling is there’s about 2 or 3 early maps in a pilgrimage until you start feeling the effects of any buffs or boons and the crazy fun doesn’t start until maybe 2 or 1 map before the end.

1 Like

I’m actually in the same boat as far as motivation. I also enjoy challenging gameplay as long as it’s inherently skill-based and there’s room for self-improvement, so Verm1&2 completely stole my heart. I get your point about the environments. Some of them are simply put jaw-dropping right from the get-go, as for example that frozen bay area where you call a ship, especially if it’s cursed by Tzeentch, but I’m sure that all of them will grow on me over time, even if some are difficult to wrap around after just a few runs.

As for the issue with the weapons, honestly it’s not that big of a deal as it seems. It’s easy to forget that I’m running 60% BCR, sure, but I think that overall it’s a very clever and interesting way to shake up the crit chance + bcr + SS & power versus breakpoint chasing meta. These things actually matter very little, and my impression after doing a bunch of cata runs is that raw skill + blessings from your favorite deities are the things that actually make a difference. So far my approach has been to simply run umgak arms, save money and only acquire relevant boons until I find a red forge where I can temper my weapon straight up to veteran tier. It doesn’t even matter that much what it rolls in terms of properties and trait, as the overall boons and your own experience will be doing the heavy lifting.

All in all, for me it’s a very fun and refreshing experience and a very welcomed break from the adventure mode, where I feel like I’ve learned most of the things that would define an “average” player for a very long time now and I’m at the point where I’m making next to no improvements as I continue to play.

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Little thing i got to correct: It is more costly to do it that way, upgrading and/or swaping is half the cost, for example swaping to a random veteran weapon cost 160 coins and upgrading your existing one costs 320. On a character i’m okay with almost every melee weapon (Kerillian) i’d always go for random for the lower cost. The one thing you can do is wait with upgrading at least until you got an exotic shrine, so you have a trait on the weapon, then upgrade it later to vet if you have the coins.

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I really like the whole expeditions thing but not entirely sure i like the weapons system either, and some traits&boons are just silly overpowered to the point i question if anything was tested.

Bardin with flamethrower + lightning trait + some other trait can literally melt a troll into a puddle doing a whole teams worth of DPS and good DPS at that.

That said i think the mode has potential to be really good,i even like it now despite some stuff and it´s faaaar better than the weaves.

I have yet to get a group together and do any runs, so I can’t comment on the details. From what I’ve seen, it looks very fun and interesting to me. I have a feeling, though, that it’s going to remain a side activity for me. Adventure maps are likely to still be my bread and butter, and the best thing about this content update is the new weapons that I can use anywhere.

I’m a little disappointed that none of the really cool mechanics or pickups are to be found in Adventure mode. I’d love to see more variety of potions, the super bomb, cursed enemies, and such in regular maps. It seems lost potential.

EDIT: That I predict this may sound a bit daft; “how can you know until you try it?” But for me it’s a time thing. I am on-call most of the time, and so I often slip in one or two solitary games in a game rather than sitting and binging for an hour or two. Having a whole campaign I have to complete is just literally harder for me to do.

1 Like

I like chaos wastes but i haven’t been able to finish a citadel expedition because people keep crashing or disconnecting. Just now i crashed again after making it to the final level.
This is extremely frustrating.

It’s really a mixed bag for me. In general I like how the expeditions system works but honestly some of the weapon systems should have been left alone. Its absolutely atrocious to start the game with some of the slower 2h weapons. No block, No stam, no dodge and sometimes even the stagger breakpoints are absolute effed.

Traits/boons, it has way too big variance. Your run can be incredibly stupidly carried by one person who absolutely deletes the whole map or it can be an actual struggle and challenge with proper item management and playing around with the rolled boons. Or you can get absolutely dicked and only have super op bombs. Point is the swing is bit too extreme.

Finally the maps, and as much as I do like the new maps visually it honestly feels like I’ve seen them all by now.
They serve their purpose but apart from the citadel location I really did not care as much as I did for prior map releases.

Overall I like the mode and see a future for it but it definitely needs active changes to keep me interested for longer than month or two.

1 Like

I love how the Chaos Wastes is moving the story forward with the End Times timeline. I wonder if we’ll get an Auric Bastion DLC/FLC, maybe a Marienburg or even Altdorf one. There’s also how Talabheim fell (huge Nurgle presence).
And, overall, I just hope for more cosmetics, especially Grail Knight and bretonnian themed ones. I would like for Huntsman Kruber to get a Faceless/Herrimault skin, maybe. Bretonnians are know for their skill with the bow (longbow).

I am enjoying the CW a lot, but I agree that the lack of consistent aesthetic theme across all maps does break my immersion in the warhammer world.

I do like the upgrade/randomized weapon mechanic. You can choose whether to stick with a weapon you like from the start or to take a chance on a mystery weapon and save coins for other boons. It adds a nice element of risk versus reward to the game.

The campaign structure is a nice idea but the disconnects and hosts that quit can make it pretty frustrating.

1 Like

Yeah, but Huntsman career isn’t Bretonian, if you were referring to that.

I don’t want to debate, I just want the Developers to know that as a definitive solo player I cannot approve of artificially weakening bots. In fact, bots lacking power for breakpoints and vital traits / properties combinations are simply broken.

Like Quickplay Weaves, this Expedition into Chaos Wastes could be my favorite game mode, but it is artificially done against me.

It is doubly disappointing that the Expedition reward frames are very good, especially for two characters. But even at the Champion it will be very very difficult for me, if at all possible. I’ll postpone that anyway.

The maps themselves are very nice, I liked it madly. They are very close to my favorite Warhammer. Also pleasant nostalgic associations with Warhammer Online.

I especially enjoyed the use of actual modern Warhammer models to decorate the maps.

For example, Khorne’s flying spiked skulls is Judgements of Khorne - The Hexgorger Skulls. Or Slaanesh’s black mirror with segmental metal tail…


…based on Contorted Epitome.
Nice work!

2 Likes

My biggest problem with the game mode is that host migration is a complete joke. It doesnt work, even if u play with premade group or host your own game u can still dc, crash or host can just crash. This needs to be changed/improved asap. I just lost 1h of my time cuz host decided to ragequit after 1h of gametime and being near the finish. No save progress is a complete joke for a gamemode that takes over an hour to finish in a game where crashes, dcs and ragequitting hosts are so common.

EDIT: After host ragequit we had host migration and I waited cuz I didn’t want to lose 1h of my time. I joined new host… in his keep.

3 Likes

I think the mode is basically very well done. It’s fun and all in all feels like a good Rogue-like implementation. Balancing, especially with respect to the boons, I consider not so problematic, since it is basically the nature of the concept.
What bothers me is the fact that it is not possible to see your boons and weapons in the votescreen. For reasons I don’t understand, this is only possible during a mission when you often don’t have the time to get an overview. This might change over time when you have memorized everything new, but it would still be a welcome QoL feature. Another extremely welcome QoL feature would be if someone would finally think about the inventory slots… all this unnecessary art, which is just copy-paste of existing works anyway, frames and the skins and hats just take more and more…

About the maps I think similar to others who have already answered here. The Citadel of Eternity is very well done in my opinion, but that was also the only location where I really felt like I was in a new environment. All other “locations” I found not really fascinating, they look funny at first glance, but still have the bland aftertaste of the old familiar, because they are largely assembled from existing elements, arranged a little differently and with a few new effects, but that’s it. I also find the Nurglemaps much better designed than those of the other gods. On the one hand, this may be due to the non-existent (if only optical) adjustments of the enemies, but the maps of Khorne, Slaanesh and Tzeentch also seem so bright somehow and all in all not really - corrupted - … Maybe the lore says so, but I’m just missing that “Grim Dark” feeling. It’s just all too bright and colorful in my opinion. But that’s a tendency I already noticed in the Drachenfels reworks (the maps are great no question) but they really aren’t that atmospheric and dark (especially compared to V1). But maybe it’s because FS is just better at nurglifying than khornifying or slaaneshing.

What I continue to not understand is why a new section in the Keep was created specifically for the CW? What’s the point of the shrines there for which apparently new models could be created, even if their function is just to provide a 5-line of information or serve as a gong… not that the fact of their existence bothers me, but I don’t understand why resources are spent on such things but new enemy models have been an absolute no-go for years. It’s obvious that the rebuilding of the Keep is not finished yet, so I hope that we still get a unified Keep in which Weaves and CW don’t appear as somehow, somewhere, arbitrarily placed objects and that the new menu layout from the CW - matchmaking/lobby browser, etc - will also be adopted into the main game.

1 Like

I think it may actually be due to the filter that is applied when one of the gods is present. If you don’t get a god around, the environments can look a bit bright and flat, but this completely changes if you do roll one. Khorne maps get bathed in red tinge, while both Tzeentch & Slaanesh get these very deep and inky colors that I’ve been missing ever since the Bogenhafen maps. To me all the maps look way better when cursed.

Creating a new enemy is probably more involved than just booting up Valaya from Verm1 and scaling her down to table size. I don’t mind the Athanor bit, actually I think it’s quite cool to have that there, but I was surprised that the CW hub takes you through a loading screen. Given that there’s what looks like an underground lake down there, I guess it’s all the way under the mountain? Boga, that’s a lot of stairs.

Honestly it pisses me off. Simply because like WoM, it splits the playerbase we have into groups even more. Some will play chaos wastes, some will play WoM, and some will play the main game.

With the small band of heroes that are left playing the game, SPLITTING everyone up is bound to end in ruin. Even longer wait time for games, now add versus later on and we might have a dead game soon after.

That aside I love everything else about it, from the maps, to the boons and stuff. I have to agree that the weapon system sucks, just like WoM complaints: make it work with the main game. Add to the weapons and talents we have so we have backward progression where possible.

The blessings and stuff are great fun though, and opening chests creating a boss spawn is fun as well. It sorta feels like twitch mode but different, and the best part is you can still add twitch mode lol.

Unfortunately for me personally this parade is rained on by the sheer fact that it is yet another seperate game mode that the game shouldn’t have since the player base is small. It is just painfull to watch a potential doomsday come closer where no games can be found in a few minutes :frowning:

2 Likes

Far too few people play weaves for this to be an issue. New season comes out, people do weaves up to 120, 160 or whatever and they’ll come back next season. It’s literally a seasonal gamemode as the weaves are so badly implemented that nobody wants to touch this if there is no reward attached to it.

3 Likes

I actually meant exactly the case when a passage is corrupted by a god. Maybe I expect too much Realm of Chaos in the Wastes, which might be a wrong expectation on my part. On the other hand, this desert doesn’t seem really desolate because of all this twisted “reality” from other map parts that runs through the map design and therefore doesn’t really seem like a tundra region or northern wasteland. The map design reflects neither the one nor the other and I simply do not like it, but that’s ok, it was just a personal opinion. In the end, it is a matter of interpretation and as far as I know, there is a large creative leeway on the lore side with which this interpretation of FS can be justified.

Yeah right! I got Warhammer Online vibe as well on one of the maps… I think it’s due to some shapes and color combinations.

“Host migration” has been a joke on us since forever.

1 Like