Community feedback (aka current state of the VT2 subreddit)

Does FS even understand why people leave?
Only those stay, who are hooked on the gameplay, everyone else is only here when there is “something to do”.
With their current record, I don’t believe that they would be able to produce enough “content” for each season. I don’t count here achievements, because those are usually boring and unimaginative.
I mean maps, skins, helmets, weapons, weapon skins, new units or even factions, new mutators, new winds, whatever.

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They build a lego castle, stamp on it and then say “hang on in there while we rebuild the castle as new content!”

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I have three hypothesis for this.

  1. FS is run by a clinical narcisissist, who does the opposite of what everyone asks him to do out of compulsive need. This breaks everything. Then he goes away, because mere patches and updates aren’t flashy enough to bother taking credit for, leaving the devs free to actually fix things.
  2. FS is not run by anyone, but is actually a commune of artists. They collaborate, inspire each other, and are very dedicated to their game, but sadly lack the discipline and leadership to make the hard decisions that are required to take their artistic vision and make it a commercial success.
  3. FS is simply incompetent, and V2 ever being good at all was just dumb luck.

I can’t narrow it down more then that since I don’t know enough about them, but #2 is the one that I hope it is, because that’s something that can be fixed. As time goes on though, I’m leaning more and more towards #3.

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Idk I think it may be more nuanced than that. Fatshark says selling map based DLC is not an effective way of selling the game. And that might be right. But the game that sold and reviewed so well was built on those maps. So is it the maps themselves that don’t sell, is the DLC pay model isn’t effective, hell i’ll say it- is this game a better product as a set experience than as a games as service model. Are the hardcore players are living a lie in that the right infrastructure would ever get this game to work as a long term product with high retention like a lot of us believe it can be?

I know a lot of us can come off as being overly negative towards Fatshark but for me its because I believe this game is close to being that really great game. You play the combat you hear the dialogue and you experience the End TImes setting in the most immersive way possible. But the infrastructure is so bad. And maybe Fatshark is right, maybe the DLC map model isn’t working. But WoM wasn’t it. And that would have been less of a problem if Fatshark hadn’t gone in on it so hard. The crafting, essence, the set nature meaning multiple seasons all of it so separated from the main game that its a all new problem. So a game where so much of it is a mess now has, well more mess.

And so its difficult because I can point failures within the map based DLC that point to the DLC model not being the issue. But its just as likely that they’re right and its not the model they’re looking for. Idk I’m trying to stay positive about the cosmetic selling idea but again that’s not a core gameplay feature that is very much an infrastructure thing and Fatshark has done poorly with that aspect of game design. So when the beta releases I’m gonna give all the feedback I can, but its of limited usefulness unfortunately.

This isn’t true. The steam stats doesn’t show such decline, but just a nearly costant trend with some upper and lower peaks. I think the correct answer is the work which is needed to make new maps is too much respect on the sales.

Anyway coming back to the topic, I think the worst problem in the management of the game is they have perhaps some good ideas but they completely fail to see that their implementation is just badly done.
They remind me the interview with Frank Zappa about music. They are the young guys who think that they know what’s good.

To beat the dead horse again here they are some complains.

Beastmen
Apart leaving them in an OP state for months they are still a bad conceived faction:
They are still instantly spawning from our pockets, they have the annoying archers (which spawns either in number of 0 or in number of 30 at once), the Bouncing Ball Bestigor (charge should be straight).

Specials
Why should a blighstorm hit so hard? At legend, once you are caught, it’s nearly 60 HPs of unavoidable damage. It should do just some light damage and staggering you.
The spawning of disablers is broken, they spawn too near and ready to attack.

Combat flow
Aggro change for enemies is too fast. This brings the problem of 180° turn of bosses but also the instant hits you get when your stealth ends.
Higher difficulties means just more of stronger enemies, meaning most of weapons have no place. How can I use a 2handed sword with so many armored foes?

QoL
No way to enter a friend’s game, like in VT1. No way to cancel a QP once started. No way to change a character when you have started the QP (I mean when you are still in the keep).
In general VT1 even before the Shrine’s update had better QoL features.

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October 2015 - 25 000 players, Now - 140. It does show a decline in players. It’s indeed a constant trend, but it’s an heavy decline. And this is despite QoL and Maps DLC. So I do not see how it is not true.
And yeah, you’re right, the answer which I did speak about is that the work on maps being too slow (because ressources heavy) to be really impactful on the sales.
tl;dr: Maps and QoL alone won’t retain players, they need to try new stuff.

“How to lie with statistics 101” :smiley:
First of all you are comparing the peak players which is a poor stat because it’s heavily influenced by sales, events, and so on.
Moreover you are taking in account the launch (which has the “new game” effect) and the present days when there’s VT2 to cater the old players and VT1 is no more supported.

If you compare the period after October '16 which is after the launch and after the hiatus for the console porting, up to the launch of VT2, you’ll see that VT1 averaged about the same players, as I told.

I understand you like to support FS, and the fact you have faith in them but using poor arguments to state your POV is just detrimental.
VT1 new maps has mantained the fanbase active till the last moments.
They said the contrary, IMHO, because the work on new maps is not so profitable.

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It’s a constant decline, as you pointed out, that either maps and QoL did not stop. That’s all there is to it.
The fact that you don’t want to understand for some reason, or that you’re saying I lie does not prove anything. We’re in the same decline on V2, and, if no new “end game” mode appears, we’ll see the same numbers. It’s okay for a normal game lifecycle, but if they want to follow Payday 2 path (which is actually very interesting), they have to take risks.

I’m simply telling you took the “peak players” data which are the worst kind of data to demonstrate your point.
Check the average players from October '16 onward then look how they increased.

BTW how much did you play to VT1?

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But they didn’t increase, there are peaks of returning on each map dlc (we see the exact same on VT2) but there’s no retention. This is the issue they face, and they have to solve.
VT2 is far from dying, but it sees a constant decline, which against, is on par with the others games’ usual lifecycle. It’s just that in the long plan they have to support their game, they need to come up with new ways of attracting/retaining players. Versus is one of thoses tries (and it was asked by a lot of people, even if I’m not a part of thoses), Winds of Magic were another (kinda like the “Deep Dives” you can see in Deep Rock, an end game who aims at retaining players around goals). Not defending them here as you seems to think, or saying Winds of Magic are awesome as they are currently. I’m just saying that maps and QoL alone won’t reach the goal to retain players.
Also note the alone, which I already precised twice, which mean that they still need to add them.

I played VT1 way less than VT2, I’m around 50 h or so.

Ok, perhaps I was a bit too aggressive. I’m sorry about that.
I’m just a bit angry because I really like the game and I’m sad for the evident management mistakes

I think what you are saying is true but I also think that QoL and Maps can help at the very least to mantain the current playerbase.

Having more game modes is certainly a plus (I’m not against the Versus di per sé), but even the best built house cannot endure if it’s founded on the sand.

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Of course, and I do totally agree on this.
But the general new direction does seem to indicate they also understand that (post WoM, which is unfortunate, but it happened). They did spend a lot of time getting back the experience “great again”, and the latest patches show this.

The WoM mode show that they understood what they need for the game in the long term. They did mess the execution here, and I think I don’t need to point it more. But the idea itself, is not that bad. Hence the “We don’t do what players want, we do what they need” (which was quoted by Fatshark dev, but isn’t theirs to begin with, it’s kinda Game Design 101).

There’s this bias called Survivorship Bias, that could possibly apply here.

The vocals here tends to ask for more maps (and weapons) as new features and drop support for mostly everything else, but the players that do not play anymore, who actually are in majority, possibly stopped for others reasons than the lack of maps.

Froh
Maps and QoL alone won’t retain players, they need to try new stuff.

We don’t know this to be true at all. You can make a case that maps aren’t enough, but no one knows the impact QoL improvements would have on this game since THERE HAVEN’T BEEN ANY!!!

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Wait what ? Did you play V1 at launch ?

No, I never touched V1. I bought V2 in March 2019 to play with some friends and got hooked very quickly. I never saw any of the Big Balance changes firsthand. I have heard about them on the forums, and judging by my own Shock at how the game changed when 2.0 came out, I think I understand what players went through.

But I am not talking about Vermintide 1. In the 9 months I have been playing this game there hasn’t been a single QoL improvement that I can think of. All my QoL improvements have come from Mods. Please correct me if I am missing something. Were there substantial QoL fixes prior to 1.6? All my UI/QoL complaints from when I first hit endgame are still present and unaddressed.

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Your entire “argument” or “point” as you might call it is rendered entirely moot considering that dust conversion was in the game well before 1.6. That’s arguably one of the biggest QoL changes they ever made. There are others too, but I’m not going to sit and dig through old patch notes just to find them.

Well we were speaking about V1 on QoL Feature and the decline of players, that’s why.

One could easily say that QoL fixes were the only thing that kept V1 alive at all, though, and that even more players would have left if they hadn’t done that.

That’s the problem with building models based on anecdotal experiences. You can’t know what would have happened in a different circumstance because you only have one data point.

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Again, I do not say QoL (or maps) doesn’t matter. I do say there were not enough to actually attract more people in the game in the number needed to keep the game going. Btw, I’m only paraphrasing what the devs said about their own game.

Yeah, I remember that post. I just think they’re wrong. Maybe they needed to release one map at a time, but more frequently. Or maybe maps really are the answer and they needed to figure out some way to improve their tools or process so it’s not 9 months of work for one map. And maybe QoL won’t grow a player base but is necessary to retain them, so you need to have at least 1 dev and some interns just on cleanup duty all the time fixing up the broken bits.

Going all-in on this shift to weaves was IMO a massive gamble and one unlikely to be well-received by players. Once we learned what it was, most of us knew without playing it that it wouldn’t work. And I really do not see how weaves were less work than just making maps…

VS Mode I think is also a gamble, though that one at least I could see maybe working for them (though I do not intend to ever play it).

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