Boy it is sure as hell enjoyable to play non-tanky characters when you aren’t the host. Have 100 ping? Well, good luck. It takes 100 miliseconds for the information that yes, a rat is indeed striking at you, to reach your computer. You see the animation start up, and press block or dodge. It takes another 100 miliseconds for that information to reach the server. Not counting the amount of time it takes for both computers to process information and render it. In that time, you got an impromptu large intestine surgery by the courtesty of a plague monk, your throat gnawed on. And, ah yes, and the skavenslave that spawned behind you out of thin air shanked you for 60 HP, because by the time its sound cue got through the convoluted paths of the internet, the rusty fork he had in his paw was already tickling the inside of your ribcage on the server’s side. That is, if his sound cue even played at all, because it still doesn’t f***ing do half the time, not to mention that the little shits should not spawn out of thin air behind you to begin with.
100 ping is not another continent. It is Britain, or France. I’m not expecting to play smoothly with someone from Australia. But even within Europe, the delay is ridiculous. Even if I play with someone from a country next to mine, ping is rarely lower than 40 and that already makes itself felt. This is with a 1 gbs connection, I dread to think about the poor SoBs who have worse.
Clearly, in a co-op game designed in such a way that the tiniest fractions of a second can and often do mean the difference between life and death, server-side hit detection is the absolute epitome of f***ing GENIUS game design that just HAD to be implemented. Heaven forbid that the players don’t have to do everything with half a second foresight unless the server is hosted by their neighbour, it wouldn’t be fair to the mobs, and they too, are living, feeling beings. Oh wait, they aren’t. This way we can enjoy the moments of getting hit straight through our guard stance, getting hit by mobs with a meter of phantom range, getting hit by the enemy we clearly dodged by a wide margin. And did I mention getting absolutely destroyed by the skavenslave that spawns right behind your back, because by the time his sound cue announces him, his attack has already landed? And finally, oh, the parries. Meant to be an integral part of the game, a flourish of finesse and sharp reflexes that would allow one to multiply their effectiveness while battling the enemy. Now reduced to yet another prediction game, for obvious reasons.
Who the f**k thought this was a good idea? Why is it still like this so many years after the release, despite the constant development? Did it occur to no one, that just MAYBE, hectic combat and trusting finnicky netcode to be the dealbreaker don’t go together? For PvP games, it is unavoidable, but why in Vermintide? Why can’t the game use client-side hit detection, ffs? But hey, at least the bad word censorship on the forum works well. Priorities on point. A game full of blood, gore, and mangled corpses is ok, F-bombs are not, though.
Rant over. The game is great. But that just makes such a glaring turd in it all the more disturbing.