After the nth “host migration” / “level restart” incident, when I wonder should I just kill the game and restart it completely, I started to think: what is the bloody point of that behaviour? Is it how to create some kind of low level evil frustration among the players, where the arsehole host who quit / unfortunate host who crashed or lost his connection is supposed to be hated?
What is the benefit of this hugely unwanted behaviour, at least IMO, instead of just returning the players to their keeps?
I’m not that expert but I will try to explain the situation. Every “online match” (from a Call of Duty deathmatch to Vermintide) must have a “place” where be played.
This place can be developers’ servers or, in their absence, directly the PC and the internet of who hosts the match.
Obvly the best option are developers’ servers… because their don’t depend on players. But they have a cost and this is the reason why Vermintide hasn’t any server. This means that a player (the host) must “keep” the game on… the game and its progress.
So, if the host crashes or leaves, the match hasn’t anymore a place where “exist”… so it simply gets lost. Progress included.
Think about a bottle on the table. If the table disappears, the bottle falls and destroys.
TL:DR: there isn’t any benefit… it’s just a forced choice because there isn’t other solutions (until they buy the servers).
I am well aware of this. However, the behaviour is extremely frustrating and I’m frustrated because I cannot understand the logic behind the decision to try “host migration” or to restart the level when the host leaves.
I mean, from my perspective, when the host leaves there is the option
a) to return everyone to their keeps
b) to try the host migration
c) to restart the level (it might be the same as b), but the player experiencing it has been chosen as the host)
Since everything is lost anyway, including a team member, I don’t get the point of options b) and c), which are time consuming. During all the considerable time that I spent on this game (the amount of actual days is depressing, when I calculate it), I have never, never, never (and then some) been in a b) or c) situation that resulted in anything but everyone leaving or ending the game as soon as they could. Usually frustrated by the extra time spent.
I might, just might, consider it acceptable if the game just paused to switch to the new host and resumed from the last state, but if that has been the intended but unimplemented behaviour (where I would also prefer the option “return me to my keep”), why keep it instead of a)? If the idea is “let’s keep whoever remains in the party together”, it’s pointless.
Apparently just pausing and selecting new host is not something they can do with the current implementation. There was pretty lengthy reddit post explaining the topic in more detail.
So tldr, we should probably not expect anything major to change in vermintide 2.