Friendly fire , The missing ranged balancing mechanic

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
1

I am making an assumption here and that is that the design vision for ranged weapons in this game is along these line

Ranged is a powerful and versatile resource that is finite it is there to be used as the player deems but should be limited enough that a decision has to be made wisely to use or conserve.

If that is right then at recruit and veteran levels its totally not being realised and even at champ its still overly easy to spam.

attempts and steps have been taken to lower the ammunition and limit it that way. but i do not think this is the right way to go in this game.
I think the game will be better served by instead of just limiting the ability to spam make use require skill and judgement. and i think friendly fire would be a good tool to help bring this about.

play a vet game its just people spamming ranged through people often blindly often speculatively its just a boring spam fest. and yes Vet does matter so do recruit this is where players cut their teeth and learn how to play. its the new player experience and just surprise dropping friendly fire on them at champ is imo not a great idea.

Now im not suggesting we have people getting one shot on recruit but how about something along these lines

recruit: no damage but give players a mass (the cleave through mechanic) some weapons might be able to penetrate through a player but they will block a lot and make it a bad idea to shoot through people.

Vet : add some small chip damage to the friendly fire , just enough to demonstrate its hurting move it from sub optimal to actually negative.

champ: step up the ff a bit I’m thinking about 30-50%

legend: reserve judgement haven’t played enough to build a solid impression.

Could even reinforce this with a loot bonus give everyone a small flat boost to the die roll but take away from it for friendly fire. show players it’s a bad thing.

The Goal?
I’m not trying to tell people how to play here i think if they did this well they could make ammo infinite as the limiting factor will be player ability to pick targets and position. i just want to move the game play from what i think we can all agree is a boring no thought spam fest to something a bit more fun interesting and engaging.

2

Wait what? You can be hit for 80% of your hp with friendly fire with one goddamn mouse click.

3

Friendly fire shouldn’t be causing you a substantial amount of damage on any difficulty except legend. On champion, the danger is more around the point where people are black and white with no health left.

4

hey with great power comes great responsibility , if your going to b throwing that sort of damage shouldn’t you have to make sure it hits the right thing?

why not? are you disagreeing with the base point of range spam being too easy or do you think making it harder to use through ff is a bad idea and instead supply should be more limited? or something else entirely ? :wink:

5

Sadly its a little bit bugged right now. Sometimes someone is standing in your model and you cant see them, But you’ll still hit them.

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6

I think it is fine the way it is. The end game is Legendary, and Friendly Fire matters there. The other difficulties are training wheels

“legend: reserve judgement haven’t played enough to build a solid impression.”

yeah and you’re making recommendations on how the lower levels should be tuned. you aren’t informed enough about the whole game to say those things. If legendary didn’t exist I’d say sure introduce friendly fire in veteran. but friendly fire on recruit and stuff would just discourage new players.

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That’s why the team must be careful, on Legend you have no problem with people standing on each other. It’s about the skill of the player, if you want to win, play better. Be aware.

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range spam isn’t “too easy”. adding FF to lower difficulties is a real bad idea. and ammo supply is already limited as it is. there may need to be some reduction in some staves and bardin’s flamethrower/fire pistols as they can be used too much without overheating, and I think trueshot and head of flame should be nerfed or reworked. But other than that the ranged game is fine and you’re worried about nothing. Please stop spamming the board with this recommendation. I doubt you’re gonna find much if any support.

9

I definitely think there should be (very limited) friendly fire on Veteran.
Too many players come into champion and just don’t know. Or they sure act like it.

10

it is irrelevant dude. champion you are supposed to learn friendly fire. it does hardly any damage getting shot on champion. it only matters if you’re whitebar near death. unless your teammates are literally shooting you dead, I really hope you aren’t blaming any champion losses on “noobs friend firing you” or something like that. it really isn’t something to be worried about until legendary. champion trains you for legendary.

11

Yes everyone says that, and I think it’s a load of bull.
A) Teammates shooting me dead happens, and roughly every 5th game at that.
I certainly think friendly fire should actually be a bit stronger on non-AoE hits, in beta it was more notable, but currently - eh, that’d be frustrating.
B) Legendary is horribly balanced and barely played. I couldn’t get a single match so far excepting trying with a friend. So far it feels like a challenge mode for premades to me and not the logical conclusion of playing the game.

It also is irrelevant for how Veteran should be balanced, might as well say there should be no bosses on recruit. I certainly missed it when I was leveling through Veteran in early prerelease, and it’d be nice if it at least worked as if it did damage, without actually doing damage.

Edit: I suppose they should first fix some bugs and work over champion balance, and then this argument might actually make more sense. All I know is that I thought it was sad it wasn’t on Veteran when I played that.

12

Stepping up FF without having any cap is completely ridiculous.

Since V2 has very soft collisions it’s Very easy to have a Saltz or Kruber walk through you just at the time he’s shooting a volley/blunderbuss. Someone just instantly loses a chunk of health, up to 50% in legend.

Increasing FF ratio also is just punishing who’s taking FF instead of that WS/Pyro the OP, and many else, are probably salty about.
Having a negative result in the end-game seems good, not sure about die rolls. Maybe just XP.
What I would really like was returning damage, so a share of the FF goes to the shooter.

13

Reflection, you mean. Aye, that’d be nice. Even if it was capped at one damage and often 0, it’s a good reminder.

14

I’m certainly not arguing that bad players exist and will shoot you dead, but if that happens then find better teammates; you can’t expect every random you queue into to have skills up to your standards, or to play their best every game. Sometimes you’ll have to carry people a bit, and deal with getting shot without getting salty about it.

And it is important to learn how to work with different people with different playstyles, not expect everyone to conform to your own. What I mean is you are responsible for staying out of the ranged line of fire as they are responsible for trying to not shoot you. Find places to stand where they can’t shoot you unless they’re trying to.

And if they keep shooting you, shoot them back to teach em a lesson. Be social and be a teammate and teach them how to improve. If they don’t listen then kick them.

The game has barely been out over a week. If you’re attempting Legend you are way ahead of normal players. And quick matching into it ever will probably be a bad idea for a long time. Your grind up through Champion was your time to make friends and find good players to form a squad to do Legendaries.

And no. Right now there is a solid and appropriate progression of difficulty from recruit to legendary, stepping up appropriately, except for some crazy stuff in Legendary that can just blow you away.

Recruit you can sleepwalk through and grind through in an evening. Veteran is where players start learning their talents and extra weapons and this IS NOT the time where you want to force them to learn how to avoid friendly fire on top of that. Just save it for Legendary dude. Teammates whining every time they get hit on Veteran is just going to drive new players away. If you aren’t able to make friends in the 100 hour grind through champion with enough players who wont shoot you to form good squads then you’re just going to have to handle

“A) Teammates shooting me dead happens, and roughly every 5th game at that.”

You’re either exaggerating, have incredibly bad luck queuing into terrible players, or there’s just something about your playstyle that is itself wrong. You do have a responsibility to help ensure your teammates have a clear path to shooting range. If you’re just constantly running in front of your teammates you’re playing badly. Keep track mentally of where they are. Position yourself when meleeing to be out of their line of site. If they go out of their way to shoot you then talk to them. If they don’t listen then find another game.

I play with incredibly good players and we’ve done 2 man legendary deeds on champion and speed run most everything. They still shoot me now and then. It doesn’t matter, We’re not so bad that a few friendly fire shots are ever going to cause a wipe. It just doesn’t matter dude.

15

@UnLimiTeD @birdman
If over 100 hours of Champion grind to 30 and 300 doesn’t teach someone how to handle friendly fire, then introducing it to them in Veteran really just isn’t going to make a difference. At some point the responsibility falls on you to just learn how to stay out of the way of their shooting or find better player to play with or lower your darn expectations - because if after 100 hours of grinding Champion you have made friends to form good premades then you’re just generally not a friendly person, or you’re not as good a player as you think you are.

Trying to use Fatshark’s quote about shooting being finite (it is except for some Sienna/Bardin energy builds) against them is really just kind of bad form. Fatshark knows what it meant and how they want the difficulty step up to progress. Putting friendly fire on veteran on top of players having to learn all their new weapons and talents is asking a lot of new players. You’re playing Veteran you level up and get a new ranged weapon to try out for the first time last thing you want to worry about is friendly fire, and you don’t want to have to go back to sleepwalking through recruit to test it safely. Veteran is when you acquire and get to test out all the different weapons, and it just shouldn’t force players to worry about Friendly Fire too. You don’t want new players to have even more stuff to get yelled at by their teammates over at that point.

16

Half the folks out there don’t seem to change their range spamming playstyle at all moving into champion and will gladly spend 90% of a match turning the map into a bullet hell shooter for their teammates. I’m not sure that a bit higher FF would cause them to suddenly care. If inflicting friendly fire damaged you instead of the person you hit, that would probably work, but this is obviously a very “videogamey” solution.

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17

( we need melee friendly fire so we can smack those ranged spammers back :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:)

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18

ha that would be nice.

19

Ranged is a powerful and versatile resource that is finite it is there to be used as the player deems but should be limited enough that a decision has to be made wisely to use or conserve.

Yes you have 30 or so shots while your typical horde spawn consists of upto 150 enemies and occurs more often that ammo boxes spawns.

Though remember that there are classes and traits who are built around skillful use of ranged weaponry like nerfed to ground huntsman. These classes with these playstyles need to remain viable.

20

Friendly fire become issue when better geared player hits you.
For example if you got 480 power level and someone with 580 pelts you u gonna lose like 30% HP

Solution:
Friendly Fire Overshield
How it shoud work: When someone hits you, with friendly fire for first time, u will take 80% reduced damage, he will get audio and visual warrning… 10sec cooldown… so basicly evry 10sec u will be able to soak one accidental hit from Friendly target

During my v2 play, i meet carefull people I must say… I also meet people who actualy do not care, and all they care is scoreboard in the end, thos guys will damage you more than enemies just to get their kill.
Its kinda lame when guy wipe 80% of your health and enemies not even 10%