Let's Talk About..... The End

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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End Game Content. The Holy Grail of design to ensure the game continues to squeeze cold, hard,cash out of the wallets of the players and continue to allow development and future projects for the Developers.

So what is the end game content for VT2?

For me, it’s to have got at least one character to level 30+, and to be playing on at least Champion level – although I think it should be legend level. This character will therefore be used to get “red chests” and hopefully improve the general level of power %ages due to getting red weapons and trinkets. The Okri Challenges offer opportunities to extend this end-game stuff a bit further.

This is the first target when a new player joins the game.

Once you have at least one or two (or maybe all) characters to level 30, the end game content is reached extremely quickly and things very rapidly become routine and dull. Opening chests to receive orange items after a full book run is pure frustration once you have done it dozens of times.

So, I’ve taken to handicapping myself to try and increase the challenge. I’m running Sword and Shield on Kruber at the moment to ramp up the difficulty.

Someone is going to mention deeds, but as someone who games at weird times (UK time, I usually start playing between midnight – 3 am) I don’t have solid team I can always join, so I tend to wallow in the mire of Quick Play.

Deeds are an immense missed opportunity really, as using the deeds to offer a “red key” towards your chosen red weapon would be a great way of giving limitless end-game content. Deeds are another whole topic, but are obviously going to be touched upon here.

So what’s the sensible solution for the end game content, without us flogging the whole “Red Dupes, Disconnects, Reroll Hell, RNG, Poor cosmetics, blah blah blah” to death. Sensible suggestions for utilising what we can see now In game, to reward end game players (like me) who are deliberately making their own life harder to try and regain the spark of enjoyment. Something other than the Lorebook as a suggestion would be nice too.

Of course you can discuss the chests RNG, and the dupe reds and the difficulty levels but can we leave the Hate Train in the station please?

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I agree. Lots of potential to move them more into the mainstream of play.

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Let us not forget the spicy, hilarious meme that was “they could even be small maps!”

Yeah, that was funny while it lasted. I can’t even begin to imagine how disappointing it must be for you people, because unlike us, you four were lied to straight in your faces.

As for endgame… I don’t honestly think there’s much that can be done about it. Whatever it is, it’s gonna be grinding. Playing X games under condition Y to get thing Z. And if we’ve learned one thing, it’s that the devs only got worse at designing the grind. The only logical explanation for what is going on with reds right now is that they hit a dead stop and have no idea what to do now, so they put in a system that’ll get a lot of munchkins tangled inside it for long enough until they come up with something.

V1 did it far better with way more things to get, and those things happened to not look like jedi lightsabers, but even then, all it boiled down to was checking the bounty board every day and hoping that an item you want but haven’t had a chance to roll shows up. It’s better than not even having that, but it’s more than likely the height of what shatfart can achieve.

Regrettably I don’t really think there’s anything that can be done to keep the game satisfying if all you’re interested in is loot, or, at least, if you need the loot motivation to continue playing. Increasing challenge isn’t going to work for the majority of players. I know it wouldn’t for me - I won’t even touch all the memey difficulty mods J_sat and co cream themselves over, for instance. It’s just wonky and weird. I’d venture to say most people prefer a legitimate, developer-tailored experience as opposed to mods that spawn a billion bosses every run et cetera. Even if those mods are going to be better thought out, balanced and implemented than if the devs decided to make them in-house.

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To me, endgame is trying out different builds and setups. For the time being, that is all I need and I fortunately have all the red items I need for that.

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It´s fun and not more… but i would like to see a better game with more players and a bright future.

  1. Rework the crafting system.
  2. Rework Red´s.
  3. Optimize the chests.
  4. New quest system.
  5. 2 - Week - Weeklies / Monthlies
  6. keep decoration / overall housing
  7. Rewards for continuesly playing
  8. Hard-caps for lvl 30 players on recruit / veteran

  • Get 2-5 Items per run, based on the books. No books = 2 items / 1 tome + grim = 3 items / 3 tomes + 1 grim = 4 items / fullbook = 4 items and 100% 1 orange item + chance on a red.

  • You can´t craft stuff anymore, you´re just able to collect dust etc. to reroll stats.

  • You can reroll only 1 stat per weapon, so you´ve to farm specific weapons more than 1 time and hope a lil bit for luck.

  • Normal rarity cosmetics should drop every 10 or 15 lvl after 30 for the specific character.

  • Normal chests won´t contain any weapon - skins. That´s up to the deeds. 1 - perk deeds contain random normal rarity melee - skins/ 2 - perk deeds contain normal rarity range - skins / 3 - perk deeds contain appointed red - skins.
    The glow is specialized on the difficulty:
    Recruit - green
    Veteran - blue
    Champ - yellow
    Legend - red
    The magenta glow could still be from challenges / weeklies.

  • Red´s come without skins, because of the new deed system. They should be really rare drops (like before the RNG buff) or available over 2-week or monthlies / mapquests on champ and above.

  • Mapquests contain about 3 random quests for every map IN the runs. This could be:
    Capture the flag or escort someone till the end of the map. (Into the Nest)
    Save a daughter from someone and bring her back to her mother. (The Pit / Blightreaper)
    A special Lord can appear on every map, kill him. (like the 3 available, just a lil bit nerfed)
    Find Oleysa´s Runebook - (5 possible spawnlocations and captured like a grim without any debuff)
    Stuff like that could be random every run and triggered through 1 NPC or “Finding XY” at the start. Every complete run with it will grant 1 black dust on legend and 1 red dust on champ.

  • 5 red dust can be traded for 1 random melee - weapon or trinkets at Lohner… 7 for a range weapon. (Based on your actual carrier, so even no double-axes if you trade that as RV)

  • Black dust is “the better red dust”. 3 are needed for melee´s / trinkets and 4 for ranged weapons at Lohner.

  • Red dust is containable from normal weeklies too.

  • Dailies will offer deeds, crafting materials and weapons.

  • 2week / monthlies will be hard / longer questlines and will grant you an 100% appointed red with white glow or/and keep decorations.

  • Keep decorations can be rare random drops from Lords or Sackrats too. That would make the overall “harder” Lord-maps more viable and the Sackrat useful. Make the dice´s become random Housing-stuff.

  • If someone or a grp finish 3 runs in a row, they should get a special random chest. This chest will contain 1 deed, 1 random crafting material (5 green, 5 blue, 2 orange or 1 red dust, no black dust) and a chance to get a skin.

  • Cap the Hero LvL if some max. geared lvl 30 player go for recruit / veteran. Especially if they farm deeds for glowing red skins.

Yes it´s a bit RNG again, but it´s not that bad with more drops, based on your books. So the players won´t get max. gear immediately and the books get more attention. You would get rewarded for bigger challenges too.
The customization would be much better and every unlucky one is able to get his stuff from quests / lvling.

Yes it could be too late to change especially the drop / crafting system, but FS just have to increase the Hero - Power to make that happen.

These are just my lil thoughts about a better endgame with much more variety, customization and fairness. Everyone would even be able to get red skins. Better players / challenging players are getting rewarded with a faster climb (black dust) and special glow.
The players would´ve more to farm and more to do, more variety through randomized map-quests. Harder maps would become more rewardable too. And everything of the actual game-design would be used more “useful”.

EDIT: And maybe add a trader for cosmetics. So some dailies / weeklies could obtain cosmetic shards.
If you´ve a specific cosmetic, you´re able to buy that again in another color at this trader. (Maybe Oleysa?)

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Umm, a tasteful return of The Last Stand mode? I liked those in VT1 (as well as L4D2).

I’m not talking about any kind of a Versus mode though - it is both unsuitable for the general righteous gist of the game, and frankly, I think only Valve could pull it off. It was a blast though.

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So the solution for over powered players is to drop even more goodies as an end game solution? Seriously?

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That’s not how I see it. And while I’m frustrated that a lot of the untapped potential in Vermintide 2 remains so 8 months after launch, I remember how long it took VT1 to truly come into its own. Life is too short to spend it being bitter about voluntary pastimes.

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I really would like to see some kind of combination of the contract board, and the deeds.

Every red weapon and cosmetic is available as a blueprint, some of the most flashy skins are god knows how many keys to get, with keys being rewarded for completion of levels.

Recruit level skins are gained by obtaining keys via recruit level deeds.
Veteran level skins are gained by obtaining keys via veteran level deeds.
…and so on.

This would give players a reason to complete deeds, would prevent the RNG nature of getting reds in the first place, and could convert current red duplicates into red keys. This would also mean players who are legendary would gain access to the juiciest looking skins for weapons and armours.

Obviously it could be incorporated into events, okri challenges and also you could have Keep themes as earnable via the red keys.

@Licious-D I’m doing that and trying to make all builds work, but it seems like it;s my own choice to do something silly like using a 2h sword on Elf as a means of enjoying endgame content.

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I see what you mean. I am also trying to make most things work and have had some surprising revelations when doing stuff “off the meta” and it turns out to work really, really well (ohne of my most run builds atm is dual sword shade with temp health on crits and attack speed. Really fun and an absolute powerhouse). But I guess that’s how it goes after a certain point, you have to make your own challenges.

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You’re right, it gets dull quickly once you’ve leveled everyone to 30 and have tried most/all loadouts. In part, it’s because there’s no real goal. There’s really no point to playing other than for the gameplay or creating self-imposed challenges.

Other games provide endgame progression by adding theory/build crafting or loot. And, by “loot,” I mean anything that meaningfully changes gameplay – so not cosmetics. However, there really aren’t that many interesting build combinations for each subclass right now (because of how the trees are designed) and loot is primarily cosmetics or red items (which are just slightly better oranges…). Removing red dupes and adding red crafting isn’t going to fix any of these issues for me.

With that in mind, there are probably a few things that would help add more endgame content and some sense of progression. This is my opinion, of course.

  • Fixing talent trees to add more build variety. Almost every tree has something like 7/15 or 8/15 useful talents. A couple have closer to 4/15 IMO. For this purpose, I’m defining ‘usefulness’ based on regular group legend play.

  • Fixing redundant or useless properties and traits to add more build variety.

  • Adding unique traits, properties, or trait/property combinations to red items or a new item class.

  • Adding a new loot tier with unique effects or set items with unique set rewards. This can come with downsides to compensate.

  • Convert deeds to a voluntary mutator system, assign challenge values to the mutators, and scale up the rewards based on combined challenge rating.

  • New difficulty tier with new loot rewards specific to that tier. Could be this or an overhaul of the mutator system above. Or both.

I can already hear the “purists” screaming about adding loot progression and related balance. It would be a real shame for someone with 500+ hours playing at the highest difficulty to have better and more unique gear than you… (/sarcasm). You know, just like every other RPG created since the dawn of the genre. And balance can be tweaked. These aren’t new issues.

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Why do I play this game?
It’s warhammer. I love warhammer. I live and breath warhammer. Books on my shelf - Warhammer novells. E-Pubs and PDFs in my phone - Warhammer novells. I’m running a WFRP campaign for three of my best buddies. Desktop wallpaper, keychain, T-shirts - Warhammer themed. I like lifting weights and pumping iron, and I’m planning on making some custom made warhammer themed weights because… HOLY SIGMAR BLESS THIS RAVAGED BODY!!
I have been deep into this universe for the last 15 years. Fu*k, I’m even planning on doing at least 2 warhammer themed tattoos, that’s how big of an impact Classic Warhammer had and still has on me.

That being said, I personally don’t need the “end content”. The game itself is enough. The atmosphere, the characters, music, the very essence of the grim and dark world of Warhammer - this game has managed to achieve that. Yes, the game is far from perfect, but that’s not the topic of this thread. I get in, I get my fix of the warhammer world for an hour or two and I get out. As simple as that.

I understand that you don’t play this game for the same reason I play it and vice versa, but I simply had to comment.

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What I considered endgame for Vermitide 1 at least was reaching post-loot where I had to gear/resources to just do a completely new build and shake things up a bit.

In 2 the only reason I strive for more loot (or at least in this case reds) is to ironically take out some of the RNG involved with rerolling properties, but that is blocked by the loot systems almost complete lack of copy protection or pity systems or even (at this time of writing) any alternative to the RNG.

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i’ve posted lots on this topic, but anyway here are my key points for end-game revamp:

  1. they need a endgame loop system to keep things fresh for returning players.

  2. one option is ‘seasonal resets’ (diablo3 system) where you have the option of making a new profile with all your progress reset to a fresh account, then you have to attain some goals like getting x character to 30, or killing x number of bosses, before you are eligible for a reward (like a red item) that can be used in all of your profiles, including future seasons.

  3. trading system. this doesn’t just mean trading that’s limited to items, it could be currency, cosmetics, other stuff which i’m sure game designers can have a ball with. basically you want to give players a REASON to farm. we love farming for achievable stuff. give players a reason to farm, we love the game.

  4. social system in game. right now all chat and stuff is done externally, in discord and other places. make it official and in-game, let players rage on chat or form groups inside the game itself. make it a global chat for people to spend time in while jumping around the keep. it’ll help newbies grow, maybe some fatshark sanctioned moderators, or a ranking system for players, which can be something to farm for too.

of course, all this stuff is terribly hard to implement, but i believe it will add a lot of value to the game. as we know, crazy good patches do revitalise games and bring new players.

in any case, i’m already ready for vermintide3. bring it on!

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Overall good idea´s.

Just the trading - system is not possible / neccessary as long as we just got that low amount of good stuff.

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@mookanana as your point about the social side, I miss being able to see which of my friends are currently playing through the lobby browser and joining them in-game rather than using the annoying steam overlay.

@Angerblaze I think that possibly people like you and me are the comparatively few people still playing because we’re Warhammer Nuts. I played Dark Omen over and over and over and over again I loved that game so much.

Love of the franchise or setting has kept people playing rather than good end game content.

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Yeah, I agree. It feels like a total crap shoot to reach out to people via Steam Overlay instead of being able to see if they’re already on a mission vs. chilling in the Keep. That part worked far better in VT1.

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You can press ESC and go on “friends” at the bottom left hand corner. But the Steam - overlay is probably faster.

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I was going to mention that.
It just shows whos online or offline. Does not give you any further info.

I use the in game friends list most of the time because sometimes when I open Steam overlay and then go back to game I am hard lock to 30 FPS until I restart the game.