Dev Blog: Chaos Warrior with Mace & Shield

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Announcements
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Game Designer Teodor tells us a bit about the design and thoughts behind the new enemy: the Chaos Warrior with Mace & Shield.

Hi everyone! My name is Teodor, resident game designer on Vermintide 2. While I have been at Fatshark for a while now I am still fairly new to the V2 team, joining just last year. And so, this will be my first ever dev blog for the project. Let’s get straight into it!

This latest update saw the introduction of our new Chaos Warrior variant (and his big shield). Players coming from Darktide might feel right at home when looking at our newest enemy, but he does function slightly differently than his Bulwark brother from across the studio. We’ve been looking at adding a new Elite enemy for a while, especially one that makes room for some heavy-stagger-playstyles, so here he is in all his shield-wielding glory.

Chaos Warrior with Mace & Shield
Chaos Warrior with Mace & Shield1080×1080 106 KB

The first thing you’ll notice is that this new Chaos Warrior is heavy, but he does have an exposed weak spot in the form of his big, green swollen stomach (safely tucked away behind his shield, of course). We set out with the mindset of always promoting multiple ways of dealing with this new threat, so while waiting and sneaking in weak spot attacks during openings is entirely possible, you’ll find that heavy swings work just as well. Landing repeated heavy blows on his armor or shield will slowly knock down his stature. Once breached, the Chaos Warrior will stumble and open up for damage. Getting teammates in on the action is worthwhile as well as these stagger values do stack, ‘opening him up’ much faster. But try not to lose focus of him, as he’ll start recovering his poise if left alone for too long!

The second thing you’ll notice are his shield attacks. Being a bit of a scrambler-type enemy, the new Chaos Warrior’s role (on top of damaging the players and being an all-around menace) is to push the heroes away from each other, separating them. While a shielded Chaos Warrior might be less of a threat by his lonesome, he should amplify the threat of any horde he’s in pretty drastically (especially if there is a regular Chaos Warrior somewhere in the mix). We wanted to build something that jams well with other, more frantic, enemies, and hopefully, this new Chaos Warrior will accomplish just that.

Introducing a new enemy to an already well-rounded roster in a game like Vermintide 2 is always going to be an interesting time, so please let us know how you feel about it. I’ll be monitoring the new Chaos Warrior’s performance and sentiment over the coming weeks so that we can continue to develop the experience together and turn him into a more natural fit if need be.

Cheers!

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I’ve been wanting new enemies for a LONG time so thank you very much for this update. The more things that can be brought in from DT the better (except the itemization system).

Can we start seeing more new enemies being added? Especially for BEASTMEN who are desperately short on specials and elites. Dark Omen was such a disappointing level because it’s the one Beastmen level…but despite the level establishing a rivalry between pactsworn and Beastmen, after the initial encounter you start seeing Ratlings, Lifeleeches, assassin’s etc. all fighting side-by-side with the Beastmen in that level that was supposed to be the Beastmen’s time to shine.

Give Beastmen Bray Shaman, warhounds, tuskgors, harpies, etc.

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I like the new enemy.

I don’t claim to be of a game tester material but my experience is that alone the shield+mace Chaos Warrior is less dangerous than the 2h Chaos Warriors.

In groups however the s+m Chaos Warrior is more dangerous than 2h Chaos Warriors because the s+m is more harder to land blows on and gives alot less openings. A group of s+m Chaos Warriors also comes even more into their own when there’s lesser mooks around.

So that’s my comments on the matter at this point in time. May well change in the future.

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I was terrified of this new enemy upon hearing about him, and still am after encountering him. I think he’s a great addition to the game. Like other shielded enemies, he prevents you from just chopping through the horde, but UNlike those guys, he doesn’t get knocked back as easily, forcing players to back up or move in a separate direction, succeeding in your design goal of splitting the heroes up.

The shield doesn’t feel like it has an obscene hitbox like Bulwarks used to have, and the stomach weakspot is an interesting choice that lends itself very well to baiting out a swing or just hammering away at him. While threatening, I agree with @Slayerkin above about how the two heavy elites fare in hordes.

My only real complaint here is that the shield bash attack does damage when it doesn’t feel like it should, as it functions like a push other enemies do. I understand it’s a giant slab of metal, but it doesn’t look like an attack to me, and feels unfair to get hit by.

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I like the ideas behind chaos bulwark.

I see their role as preventing movement, blocking escape for heroes, so i like that they’re not super aggressive, and are slower.

Though they should be more common, they’re too rare to formulate more feedback on them (been playing Legend). But spawn no more than 2-3 of them, per wave. And i don’t see them much on map events.

Also, i’d like if they were not so easy when focused by the team, and not so difficult to fight them solo. Smooth out the curve how much stagger or amount of teammates contribute to the ease of winning. When their guard is broken, you shouldn’t be able to staggerlock them for so long (usually they die before recovering). Hitting them should still extend the window of opportunity, but for a lot less time before bulwark regains his poise.

As for fighting them solo, its either reducing the stagger threshold a little required to break their guard, or allow for hitting them around the shield more easily (when you go around them and clearly hit the bulwark and not his shield).

GrailKnight’s ultimate kills them through their shield, but FootKnight ultimate doesn’t do anything at all, kinda unfair.

Greataxe hits against bulwarks sound muffled and glitched.

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I think this addition is perfect. It suits insanely well into the current enemy roster, feels balanced but still tough and has a nice skill curve when learning to fight it.

also, the charge just looks awesome and the fact that it doesnt seem to do damage by itself makes it easier to appreciate it even when being hit by it as you can still fight your way out of the situation it got yourself into

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Look at that shoddy umgak armor…I told you these kuzaki-dum were all bark dawi. Great artwork. Please make more Beastmen.

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They should show up/be part of Chaos Patrols, have seen a fair share of said patrols since patch release, none of them had shield CWs.

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Yes, Beastmen definitely still need some love.

They still feel like they hit from a mile away, their telegraphs still feel weird, and while I don’t expect their mass to change I do feel like their high mass makes them a lot less fun to fight (you just have to spam pushes to not get stabbed by some backliner of the pack).

Variety in their units and specials so it’s not just banners 24/7 would go great lengths in alleviating the disparity they have compared to rats / rotbloods.

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So i played kruber and had the charge talent that let me charge through everyone, no matter if blocking stormvermin, chaos knights, bile troll. BUT this new enemy didnt move a single cm and stopped me right there

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  • The shield bash hitboxes are bigger than the visual animation of the bash attacks; this is unintuitive and, with how far the bashes knock a player, feels comical in an out of place way, as though the Bulwark were an airbender.

  • The shield covers more of the Chaos Warrior than it covers visually; this discourages basic teamplay such as someone taking aggro and someone else hitting it in the back, which is already made more dangerous because it requires the backstabbing player to expose their own back to the next rank of enemies. If the concern is that players will easily solo Bulwarks if the Bulwarks have accurate shield angles, then the Bulwark could be made to turn faster to compensate. It covers the Bulwarks back currently.

  • The experience of fighting Bulwarks would benefit from there being visual indicators of the progress in breaking the Bulwark’s block. Something like the Bulwark flinching more and more as its block gets closer to being broken; by flinching, I mean a body animation that shows a reaction but doesn’t interrupt the Bulwark’s attacks.