Ideas for improvement

** 1) twitch integration**

I have really enjoyed playing with the twitch mechanic.

it is great but would like more…

More options to tick every 5 minutes rather than the max being 90 seconds. Sometimes the groups are not strong enough to cope with that.

have some sort of boost to the buffs related to how many votes. Eg extended time to buffs.

have a wheel of fortune mechanic that watchers can vote on. A bit like a roulette wheel of options with the most votes getting a higher chance.

Have a boost only function if only one player is alive.

Allow twitch the ability to clutch save a failing group.

Make every buff something that a player actually wants. There is a few times when an extra potion is a bit anti climatic. So maybe a potion also grants a small health / stamina regen / speed boost. Or have monsters drop the buffs with a monster to kill. A buff could be to get someone revived?

  1. voice emotes with a cool down to avoid spam. Help! patrol! joke etc.

  2. it seems to me that slayers need a buff? in terms of helping themselves / the party survive. They seem very glass cannon which is not cool for a melee dps.
    Maybe they should get tougher to kill more bezerk the less health they have?

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I take it you don’t have very many hours in game? Most of these suggestions would break the game.

You can actually change it in your config file. That’s how people do hyper twitch, 10/10seconds or less.

That would be broken, they are already extremely powerful. The HP regen can completely top up your HP and keep it up. The speed, special and use no ammo buffs are very strong.

Again, that would be broken. And you would have people using twitch mode just because it’s so much easier. People play twitch mode to make the game harder.

Broken…

This I like.

Lol wut… he literally has a talent that halves all damage or reduces it to 10. Again, have you been playing for that long? Throw barkskin on his necklace as well for an additional 40% reduction. He already generates temp HP like a mad man with dual hammers. Take the pick axe and you can also 1 shot CWs. You can keep his special up 24/7 during hordes with the right build. That’s pretty “bezerker”

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All voices about “buff slayer, buff shade, etc.” come from that ppl don’t use survi traits. They only see +to crit, +to dmg,+ speed etc. This proves that they have not played much and know little about game.

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So parts of this seem like there were suggestions made where you were having a bit of a hard time (which is totally fine), and I think there were some folks who leapt on you pretty quickly for “not playing the game for long enough.”

The twitch mechanic, for all it’s goofiness, can sometimes shaft you pretty hard. I was kiting a Rat-Ogre when a horde hit us, and then Twitch insisted on a Bile Troll joining the fray. It was ugly and we wiped promptly.

If it’s alright, I’d like to address each of your points in turn!

Changing Twitch Timer

@SmokerT69 already mentioned that you can actually modify this by default! :smiley:

Number of Votes

Part of what Twitch mode is for most Vermintide 2 players is a sharp, double-edged sword. There is a potential for an awfully easy game, but there’s also the potential for a bloodbath.

In favor of keeping the sword double-edged, if we did extend the buffs, we would have to extend the Hordes/have 2 Monsters spawn instead of 1/spawn 8-12 specials. That would get a little… outrageous :stuck_out_tongue:

Wheel of Torture

This could be really cool, but it’s sorta already there (just behind the scenes). This system would be Vote on Large Grouping → Random Result

As opposed to the normal Random Grouping → Vote on Result. Effectively what we are doing already.

Boost while 1 Player Alive

Vermintide really touches on the finer points that being alone is supposed to be a 1-way ticket to failure. Providing them additional buffer could make things epic/cool, but They will only survive if they can already avoid the Gutter-Runners/Hook-Rats that are spawning.

If you can protect yourself from the worst threats, the buffs Twitch provides will only help you a little bit :slight_smile:

While I do agree that a lot of people do this, @SmokerT69, it’s not necessarily the point of Twitch mode. Twitch mode is meant to be a random, goofy, fun way to play… not just a tool for the Super-Legend players to make it harder.

It can fill both roles, but it is certainly not restricted to “making it harder.”

Clutch Save

Twitch sorta does that already. If the Twitch functionality turns on often enough, it will activate when you are failing: it is up to the viewers to make sure it is something that won’t wipe you!

Only Useful Buffs

Useful buffs are conditional and meant to be that way for Twitch mode. In all honesty, the only one that isn’t universally usable is the infinite ammo function, but that’s okay. Twitch gave you ammo; for the Slayer/Sienna, it’s like it never came up in the first place.

Free potions, on the other hand, are game-changers. If you already have potions… there’s a very good chance that using them will prevent your party from wiping, the only exception being a speed potion where the user doesn’t have an armor-piercing weapon! Make sure you bring a diverse pool of tools so you can deal with all kinds of enemies and every potion will help :smiley:

Emote Cooldown

100% agreed.

Slayer Buff

I think that, given time and practice, you will find that the Slayer is one of the most dangerous characters in the game and is, in fact, a proper Berserker. Slayers are willing to throw their lives away to kill the enemy and any lore worth their salt makes a Berserker vulnerable. Glass cannon is the perfect way to describe someone who isn’t protecting themselves and only thinking about killing the enemy.

However, Slayer Bardin has many defensive talents that he can pick up to help with survivability. I know they are less appetizing than the DPS talents, but they are very potent.

The last thing is that, as you develop in Vermintide 2, you will get better and better about blocking. Blocking should be second-nature and will help prevent deaths on the team; they you will couple that with Shoves. Block a key hit, then shove the crowd.

Then you add in Dodging, which will help you kite Hordes. You’ll find that, between Blocking/Dodging/Pushing, you are nigh-unkillable in almost any situation (once you get good at it)!

There’s my infinitely long rant about it all :slight_smile: All of it is, of course, IMO.

I really hope you continue enjoying Vermintide 2. Don’t worry… with practice makes perfect. You’ve got this!

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thx for the info about the config file that will be cool.
I have noticed for certain groups there is an optimum time for the twitch proc.

All these suggestions are not to break the game and obviously that is a concern.

It is about the clutch save, when people are playing sub optimally. EVERY slayer I have met so far at a crucial clutch moment hits the ground like a rug.
It may be different at the min max 30 pro level but the experience in veteran / champion is a bit salty.

I have noticed that tanks are essential for lifting a failing group of low to mid level dps singes.

when I talk about twitch adapting to the context I am relying on years of experience as a GM. When you have spawned a gunner line on top of a rat ogre on top of a troll on a party that couldnt really cope with the troll. Twitch integration stops being fun. As a gm I would pull the punches if the group is failing. It is not about making it a face roll for people. It is about extra challenge to the point of testing the group then backing off a bit when they fall over.

Here is a video of me clutch saving a failed group as an ironbreaker. This would not happen as a slayer unless its at max gear max level and even then I would like to see it.

To be clear.

As a GM the job is to make things harder and easier. Harder if the party are walking in the park. Easier if the party are falling off cliffs and generally derping around / noobing it. The twitch integration to me is at its best a reflection of that GM mentality. Also the party needs to be rewarded for the extra effort to make it worth doing. At the higher end of vermintide 2 I imagine its just for the challenge. Low to mid game is a different experience to pro playing.

thank you for such a considerate response.

As far as I have checked editing the config file does not extend the timer any more than 90 seconds. So for parties that are a bit weaker and need more time between spawns / buffs editing the config does not seem to help.

I’m not trying to be mean when I say that you have obviously not played the game that much. Your suggestions would make the game too easy. The AI director already makes things easier, like only spawning 2 specials during a boss, stopping horde waves during bosses, slowing things down when you’re the last one alive if I remember correctly.

Now, you have to understand that the difficulty you’re playing on is a walk in the park once you start playing higher difficulties. And watching your video has reminded me what a massive difference there is in player skill between end game players and Recruit/Vet/Champ players. Most of that game play would of been a game over on legend. Just the first couple seconds when the BH went down and you didn’t give him your healing potion on revival. In legend you can only go down once before you’re on last life. Also, as for your statement of needing a tank, most would argue that would actually make the team weaker. A fully spec’d tank build isn’t going to be putting out as much damage as a dps build. And the best way to stay alive in this game is to kill everything as fast as you can so it can’t kill you.

Tank builds are not really worth it in my opinion. Slayer can tank and dps much better than the IB. Same goes for Merc compared to FK.

EDIT: Just jumped on to have a quick game with slayer, haven’t played him in a while. I was only out damaged by the shade with dual daggers. Still, I managed to out kill a Sienna with a flame thrower staff, which melts hordes. And of course I got the most Elite kills, cause it’s kind of hard to compete with someone who can 1 shot CWs all the time without an ULT.

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I will repeat myself.

There is a vast difference between high end play and low to mid level play.

I am talking about how to improve the low to mid end game play.

I am not talking about buffing dps. I am talking about buffing survival when things go badly wrong.

level 20 with level 200 ish item level.

I am not talking about being king of the dps tables with everyone being geared to the max.

I am talking about saving a party of quasi noobs that messed up. Carrying people who might be semi afk (looking after children / real life issues) or handicapped in some way / broken borked internet.

I am not and have never really interested in the bleeding edge “pro” scene where people get salty / wipe at a single mistake. Where everyone has to be max dps with their selective edited dps meters / screenshots / montage clips. I have similar experiences with Evolve and WOW. Where there was an accepted wisdom of min max builds with certain flavour of the patch builds even if other builds where just as viable with good teams.

On a side note I have noticed that the true pro players have learned to chill out and not be so obsessed with being king of dps / kd ratios as long as the team wins. eg penguin, king george, various other pro rainbow 6 siege players and even grubby in warcraft 3. The ability to chill out and not get so emotionally invested.

I am happy for people to do that stuff just not with me around.

I am not talking about dps buffing I am talking about survival buffing when things go wrong.

Also on the tables of stats at the end there should be more stats on how people helped / healed each other. As some people can only see the world in terms of the metrics they are given.

I do not know if you have experienced this but there is something deeply satisfying about joining a broken dysfunctional group and smoothing it out into a happy win. Its a bob ross feeling of making the world a slightly better place.

There must be a way to help low to mid level players have the heroic happy clutch times without making it too easy for the max geared pro players at the top of the apex.

One of the reasons for the large skill differences between players of different difficulties (though not the biggest one by far) is large jumps in difficulty when moving from one to the next. If there were additional crutches (like Twitch mode being more merciful) on the lower difficulties, those gaps would be even larger.

Also Twitch mode isn’t meant to especially help or hinder gameplay - its purpose is to change up things a bit, and to bring in interaction beyond mere commenting between streamers and their watchers. It’s true that it often ends up upping the difficulty (especially with mischievous minds of Twitch followers), and when crap gets stacked on top of an already difficult situation it can easily add up to wipes, and high-level players do use it just to increase the difficulty (and their interest in the game) a bit, but that’s not what it was included for.

Third thing is that if there are additional crutches to help on tight situations, the players will learn to rely on those, and suffer when they’re not available for one reason or another. Part of getting better in the game is learning to handle those difficult situations - clutching, stacking of threats, and so on. Giving additional help in these situations isn’t conducive to getting the players to improve.

All of these apply even if these changes were effective only on the lower difficulties - in fact, even more so. I do think that Twitch mode should be a bit more adjustable from in-game, if only for the timings, but employing limited (or weighted) effect selections will partially defeat the purpose of the mode (I think), and programming situational behavior for a mode that’s already somewhat niche is likely way too much work for very little gain (and bumps into the problems mentioned above too).

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One thing that has crystalised for me with this discussion is that twitch integration should have 5 random options as standard a b c d e. So people watching can have more choice in how to help or hinder the party.

Slayer is an interesting class, it’s tough to play well… not because it’s difficult, but because slayers are inherently suicidal and when playing one it’s always a temptation to leap into the middle of certain death left clicking like a maniac xD

Level 30 min/max doesn’t have anything to do with it, people just have to learn to calm down and play tactically and then slayer is a beast. He’s basically a mini tank with insane damage output.

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the 5 minute counter for twitch does work at 300 seconds in the config file.
It had to completely restart the game to kick in.

twitch mode is not just to make things harder. It is to provide a sense of audience participation. That can be harder or easier depending on context. It is like being a games master. You make things harder or easier depending on how the party is doing. That is why i think 5 options per tick is an idea to give the audience more contextual choice. Perhaps combining boss monsters with a health potion / ammo drop / 1 loot rat.

i love the living bomb mode can I have that with twitch integration?

At the moment, no. The weekly mutator and Twitch mode are currently mutually exclusive.

The weekly mutator is pretty much brand-spanking-new, so I don’t think they have any intentions of merging it into Twitch mode. It might be a nifty thought, but I think both the mutator and Twitch mode serve the same goofy and exciting purposes.

Are you sure? I ran both the previous weeklies with twitch. Haven’t tested this one though.

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Wait, really? I was not aware! For some reason I thought that they were mutually exclusive.

Thanks for enlightening me :smiley: much appreciated!

You should try it out. As I said, I haven’t tried with new mutator.

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I highly recommend playing Slayer without “Oblivious to Pain” every now and then to get a feeling of how absolutely frail of a carreer he is when he doesn’t have that one talent. I mean, I thorougly enjoy Slayer with that talent, but considering we might actually see a change to how this talent (and Zealot’s counterpart) works, get used to the idea that Slayer might become bottom tier. While everyone seems to point fingers at Legend being too easy with the whole dodge-window and whatnot, strangely enough, you never see a high-performance Slayer leave the keep without this one talent (even though it should be irrelevant since nobody’s getting hit anymore due to the dodge count… right?).
Slayer could use some minor tweaks and to be honest, I’d like to see the movement speed buff from level 25 to be there to begin with. It’s just that important to balance out his lack of ranged to have high mobility that no matter what they will throw on level 25 as alternatives, nobody would ever bother with it. Slayer has the distinct disadvantage of essentially having only a choice of talent at level 5 (and I think I am one of the few people I’ve seen that actually ditch the dodge-distance in favour of crits). Everything else is so important to his overall playstyle that it might as well be already a passive ability.

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