I’m coming at this from the perspective of having played VT2 for 1400 hours almost entirely in normal gameplay situations. Hardly ever played deeds, did not do any modded difficulties and avoided event quests and the like. 90% of my playtime was quickplay on legend and cataclysm, which is why I say I’m “casual” despite having 1400 hours. I have not put alot of time into formulating these opinions, but they are what immediately stand out to me as things that are potentially bad and possibly in need of change. Feel free to add your perspective, I could have my mind changed about many of these things.
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Dodge dancing seems significantly harder compared to VT2. I believe this is due to two reasons: one, enemies have alot more long delayed attacks that require a delayed dodge, or at least they perform more of them. In VT2 these attacks did not happen very often once you actually closed distance with a horde, and you would generally only see them if you were dodging backwards alot. I liked that system as it was a punishment for you dodging backwards and not left/right, and made it easier to dodge enemies if you were properly engaging them as well as made dodging in a rhythm to avoid attacks from enemies you can’t see more effective. It also looked better, as the long delayed running attacks cause enemies to “ice skate” which looks especially silly if they’re doing it point blank. The second reason is that dodging causes your stamina to stop regenerating, which makes compensating for these more variable timings by mixing in pushes/push attacks a much more limited option as once you run out of stamina you’re probably not getting it back if the horde is sufficiently dense. All of this is compounded by the fact that you now also have to worry about ranged enemies shredding you while you’re engaged in melee. These are all changes that I dislike, though undoubtedly I could adapt to them over time and this may be preferable for some players.
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(EDIT: I’ve been told that crafting isn’t actually gone and simply isn’t implemented yet, so this point may already be addressed) Crafting is gone. Crafting in VT2 was effectively a way to take excess resources from getting RNG gear and using it to circumvent RNG, which was a good system. As it currently stands there is effectively no way to circumvent RNG at all, which is going to make the grind in this game extremely long. Crafting doesn’t need to come back, but some sort of system should be added to fulfill the same purpose that crafting had (bypassing RNG using resources gathered from extended game time).
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Pskyer probably shouldn’t build up peril on his extra warp based attacks such as the push attack and the shove on weapons like the las pistol. You already give up stamina doing these things, it seems overly punishing to also cause peril buildup and just lessons the effectiveness of the weapons that make psyker unique. Other than that, no real issues with psyker (Sienna was my most played character in VT2).
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I do not like that quickplay missions can have difficulty modifiers on them like limited visibility or endless horde. This is entirely personal preference, but again in VT2 I played standard quickplay missions because it was predictable, you knew what you were getting into, you could get good at it and you could relax. With these difficulty modifiers (especially endless horde) you can go into a difficulty that you normally would be able to perform well on and end up getting absolutely destroyed as it’s randomly much more difficult than normal, or I think you can even get a modifier that makes it easier which gives you a false sense of competence. This also makes the preset missions you can select that have modifiers on them less unique, as you can get the same modifiers in quickplay. Again, I know this is personal preference and people may disagree with me here, but I really wish that there was an option for quickplay with no modifiers. I like consistency.
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The new mission selection menu is silly. This isn’t DRG, the missions are not randomly generated so I don’t see the reason why you have pre-determined missions that you must play on. Give us the ability to just choose what mission we want on whatever difficulty we want, this is a change from VT2 that makes no sense to me.
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This is just a general complaint about alot of things, but the fact that Fatshark still doesn’t explain the majority of its mechanics is absurd. Alot of people have pointed out how weapon stats are effectively gibberish, and thankfully Fatshark has said they will be addressing this, but to me of equal importance is how basic game mechanics are not explained at all. How dodging works, effective dodge count, block radius, etc, there are tons of extremely important fundamental mechanics that are not explained in the slightest. I have a pessimistic view of player competence and I think there would still be plenty of bad players to go around, but Fatshark could alleviate alot of the bad habits that players develop by actually explaining how to play the game properly. You should not have to look up a guide or intuit the mechanics through extended game time to figure out that dodging works by stopping enemies from tracking you with their attacks, or any of the other hidden mechanics.
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Some elites and specials may need tweaking. Perhaps I simply need to adapt, but maulers and the fully armored ogryns (crushers?) are extremely tanky if you don’t have the right setup to kill them. Sure, this makes class/weapon diversity more important as single target killing abilities/weapons are dramatically more effective against these enemies, but I think other weapons are doing far too little damage. If you’re using the knife or one of the catachan swords or any weapon that doesn’t have good AP and you don’t have a ranged weapon or ability that can compensate, then it takes an absurd amount of hits to take down a heavily armored enemy.
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Again, perhaps a skill issue, but I feel as though ranged enemies also need some tweaking. I think a slight damage reduction/accuracy reduction is in order, but more importantly I think they need to switch to melee from a greater distance away and need to stay in melee mode once activated (unless you get very far away from them). This is especially the case if you’re playing ogryn, as his large hitbox, inability to hide behind certain bits of cover and general lack of accurate and precise long range weapons make him get absolutely shredded by ranged enemies, and even if he charges into them they will continue to shoot him from surprisingly close distances. No, the shield does not compensate for this (in my opinion).
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Certain specials may need tweaking. The audio queues for them spawning are not as good as VT2, and the audio for them moving around and attacking are definitely not as good as VT2. Certain specials like the gunner and the bomber are very difficult to spot both visually and from a lack of audio queues. The bomber especially is basically silent outside of his spawn audio and his attacking audio. The mutant, hound and pox suicide bomber also need mechanical changes in my opinion. All three of them are too tanky, and the counters to hound and the bomber are not consistent. In VT2, assassins staggered on pretty much every single hit no matter what the hit was, they stopped in place before pouncing, they were very fragile and they could be shoved with 100% consistency even if they managed to pounce you due to latency. The hound is none of these things, with being unable to consistently push it being especially annoying (if it pounces you, you’re pounced even if you only got pounced due to latency). The bomber is similar, but I think it only needs one of two changes: either make it able to be pushed away from you even if it is diving, or make it less tanky so you can more easily kill it at ranged. The mutant is the least troublesome of the bunch, and it’s not a true disabler like the hound so perhaps I just need to adapt, but I do think it’s too tanky and should get a health reduction.
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Please for the love of God remove 90% of the explosive barrels that are littered around the levels. Barrels were an annoyance in VT2, but the explosive barrels in this game are simply oppressive. I can’t count how many times I’ve had a teammate or myself get blown off a ledge by some random barrel. Doing damage is already enough of a punishment for these things, if they are going to stay then they need to not throw people around like they’re a ragdoll.
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This one is almost certainly going to make some people angry, but please make sure the scoreboard you eventually add in shows damage dealt and damage received. Yes, I know that there are other factors in a mission that determine the success of it and I do not mind there being extra stats that show off teamplay associated actions, but damage dealt and received are vital statistics that need to be displayed. If you boil down the game to its most fundamental level, it is a game about getting to the end of the mission without dying, which is primarily a function of damage dealt vs damage received. I do not insist on this so that I can make fun of bad players or anything of the sort (half of my VT2 friends list is people I gave advice to), I am insisting on this because I truly believe it is an important metric for a player to be made aware of. I am even fine with this being a personal stat that isn’t broadcast to the rest of the team, as long as it is shown as a comparison with the team (example: “You did 36% of the total damage”). No, I do not believe that the presence of such statistics will negatively influence player gameplay or behavior. In case you didn’t notice, there are already tons of players doing stupid things even without a scoreboard, and I do not believe a large amount of extra players will do stupid things they otherwise wouldn’t do just because there is a scoreboard. As someone who got the majority of the green circles in the majority of my games in VT2, most of the stupid players I encountered were not people going out of their way to get green circles, they were simply stupid.
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The psykhanium is an excellent inclusion and I want to thank Fatshark for implementing it. I don’t want to sound entitled as this type of training mode was not in VT2 and it is a dramatic improvement, but I do wish you could set it up so you could actually fight enemies and not just test out damage on them. Certain enemies like ragers and bosses are very deadly if you don’t know how to fight them, and being able to practice against them would be very beneficial. EDIT: There should also probably be a base weapon for each of the different weapon types so you can test things even if you don’t have one of those weapons.
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Zealot’s charge is needlessly clunky. The lock on function it has is actually very powerful as you can charge enemies from a surprisingly long distance away, but the fact that the charge is abruptly short if you don’t utilize the lock on makes the ability feel very clunky. It should have the same range as the maximum range if you use it without a lock on and it should be cancellable using block just like the zealot charge in VT2.
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Weapon balance is a pretty obvious factor that is undoubtedly being tweaked constantly, but I feel the need to point out that the ogryn’s weapons are incredibly lopsided in their quality. The mk 3 combat knife/cleaver (the one that is nothing but slashes) is leagues better than his other melee options and the grenade gauntlet is leagues better than his other ranged options. Pretty much everything else needs to be buffed/tweaked in some manner. I’m only bringing it up because it is actually that bad.
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Ogryn’s grenade is funny, which I appreciate, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s just not very useful. It either needs to open up and cause multiple explosions by default instead of needing a talent for it or it needs to do something else. Perhaps make it drop grenades that your team can pick up and use if it hits something? I don’t know, but I do know it’s not good in its current state.
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The grind is pretty bad. This was actually a problem in VT2 as well and eventually it was changed so that all difficulties gave the same experience as the top difficulty at the time (legend). The fact that most of the unique class weapons are gated behind hitting certain level thresholds only makes this grind worse. This is entirely subjective of course, but I think the amount of EXP you get needs to be increased by a decent amount, probably 20% or more.
Thank you for your time.