Crouching and Shooting

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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So I was doing the Outcast Engineer challenge yesterday where you have to get 20 consecutive headshots on elites with the Master Pistol (actually, only 5 headshots are needed; the description is wrong). As most of you have noticed this is quite difficult as the moment you are close enough to the enemy that you can do a reliable headshot (due to its medium spread) they start moving. After playing around a bit, I found - to my delightment - that the spread of the Master Pistol reduces if you are crouching.

Why was I surprised you may ask. Everyone who played a single FPS in his live knows that crouching equals higher precision. The point is that I tried this in the past and had a different experience. So I went back and looked at some weapons (not all) and their behaviour using them normally, with alternative fire and while crouching (I leave out change of precision while running). Here some observations:

Handgun
Handgun has a small spread if you shoot just normally. Using alternative fire mode is using the ironsights and as such the precision increases largely. On the other hand if you are crouching you are loosing precision in contrast to just standing and shooting normally.

Repeater (Kruber)
Has a medium spread which is the same for alternative fire. Crouching though increases the precision slightly.

Blunderbuss
Has a window which does not change while crouching. RMB is just slapping Skaven around.

Crossbow
Has a ridiculous small spread while shooting normally. If you use alternative fire mode precision increases yet again. If you are crouching it is also increasing, yet not as much while using RMB (which is different to Handgun).

Dual Pistols
Well, this one is really odd. Shooting normally they have a normal spread. If you are crouching you lose a bit of precision. If you are using RMB, you are using more precision reaching a medium spread. If you are crouching AND using RMB your precision increases again up to the level of normal firing. So two effects which decrease your precision have a positive effect if you combine them.

Repeater (Victor)
Shooting normally has a medium spread which stays the same while crouching. Alternative fire mode changes it to the “Window” spread of shotguns.

Volley Crossbow
Using just LMB you have a small spread and a precise weapon. On alternative mode you lose much precision while on crouching nothing changes.

Master Pistol
Shooting normally you have a typical spread which changes to “Window” mode for the alternative fire. If you are crouching, your LMB gains precision.

So, overall the changes between just shooting normally and using the alternative fire mode seem reasonable in the context of what they want to achieve (Handgun using ironsights to have higher precision, while Victor’s repeater is a burst shot decreasing it). However, the effect of crouching is completely inconsistent from the weapons I checked best observable for the Dual Pistols. Even within game logic it seems odd to me. Is there some higher logic at work I just don’t get or is it some kind of programming artifact? Or something else? Feel free to give your input.

Sidenote 1:
If you are doing the Master Pistol challenge use crouching. It will ease your pain.

Sidenote 2:
Sniper weapons like the Handgun and especially the crossbow should have a far higher spread if you are not aiming as they currently have.

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They are a weird weapon. Saltz reloads them despite clearly dropping pistols when he fires them, and somehow they have recoil. Results of balancing.
I think the idea here is that it’s easier to aim while standing to make precise shots, but while using the alt fire the pistols are ‘harder’ to control in a sense, which is mitigated by crouching to make yourself more stable.
Doesn’t make sense considering it’s multiple pistols but nor do the aforementioned quirks.

I hope I don’t see any WHCs spamming BoP’s alt fire while dodging around and crouching now.

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Wait, you think people would do idiotic behaviour just to gain some dps advantage over other people? I would have never suspected this.

Don’t know. I think some more consistencies on the effect of crouching would be nice. But it isnt needed in any way. I was “surprised” though to see it helps for the Master Pistol. Hm, maybe that is the reason for the challenge. So people test around and find this out.

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Similar to this some melee weapons(if not all) have more reach when crouching allowing you to hit a target a little farther away than just standing up