What struck me weird about that comment, linked here (and also in the Back to Drachenfels post) was how they said how the time it took for them to develop the art and content for a new map pack was about 9 months, which is why they switched to the WoM content model. They wanted to increase the pace of updates.
At the same time, this year was the largest content drought in V2, from my perspective. They also went through the effort of making a really good map, A Quiet Drink, and then took it away almost immediately, which seems like it goes in the face of that comment that the level of work done for that map was not enough to bother them about only keeping it in the game for such a short period. It was the only really substantial content released for the game in the first half of 2019, unless you count ravaged art and weekly events (I don’t).
I feel like that comment really hasn’t been proven correct so far and doesn’t really align with how I measure the success of the older DLCs like Drachenfels and Karak Azgaraz as opposed to Winds of Magic. However, I can only compare by reviews and overall reception to the DLCs, not sales numbers like only Fatshark can internally measure.
I just truly don’t understand the idea behind Winds of Magic itself or why it was chosen as a content model. I guess the idea behind it is that it’s an initial large investment that pays dividends by not requiring as much effort for subsequent seasons, but at the same time, I can’t really point to many players that like the model itself.
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Casual players don’t want to spend $20, almost the cost of the entire game, for a DLC.
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Casual players don’t want to grind out a challenge ladder mode that they won’t be able to progress through to experience a large portion of the content they paid for.
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Casual players don’t want to spend money on a higher difficulty that they’ll never play.
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Returning players who got bored of Legend don’t want to spend $20 and grind out 4 maps to see if Cataclysm is fun and worth playing.
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Casual/returning players don’t want to spend $20 for each person who wants to try out the largest selling point in the content update, unlike every other DLC in Vermintide.
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Hardcore players don’t want to grind out a separate progression system that doesn’t build upon the progression in the base game that they’ve invested time in.
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Hardcore players don’t want to be bored with the initial Weaves where they’re splashing around in the kiddie pool until they finally reach the Legend/Cataclysm Weaves. I got that far in the beta, but I can’t be bothered to in the release.
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Hardcore players that enjoy grinding for loot don’t like not being rewarded for their efforts. The rewards for Cataclysm and much of the update as a whole don’t seem enticing to me as a player, especially when I can have a blast on Twitch Legend for free and get more rewards than Cataclysm.
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Hardcore players don’t usually want to have their progress reset involuntarily. They should’ve added a “prestige” system like Payday 2 did, if they want to toy with a level reset concept.
It seems like the update revolves around some overlap between Vermintide 2 players and Diablo/WoW players who enjoy this type of content and grind. I don’t know how much overlap there is between those games and this one, but it doesn’t feel like a lot.
TL;DR i don’t get it.