NEW Topic - CONTINUED discussion - Fatshark needs to LISTEN to customers

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Vermintide 2 - Feedback
#152

This is incredibly flawed… That’s like if FS added an energy source to Bardin’s hammers which you can turn on via alt-fire to instead have a WH40k power hammer and people complained they were OP, then someone turns around and is like: c’mon guys, the hammers have been in the game since BtU, it’s not like it’s anything new or different. You can ignore them.

It’s not a minor damage buff either. You could always ignore THP in the past too, doesn’t mean the AI director isn’t designed with it in mind. Ignoring mechanics by definition makes your play less optimal and that cannot be avoided.

Yes and yes, but for a lot of us from the beta forums the concern is not increased difficulty, it’s the balance implications of the mechanic and which weapons it promotes. Again, blanket mechanic, not great when weapons work in different ways and thus need individual balancing.

In fact back when FS did the 1st beta where enemy HP was increased to ridiculously insanely high levels the problem wasn’t that people weren’t able to beat the game then, it was that it took almost 2x as long and the enemies were tedious meatwalls. It was the tedium that was the problem, not the difficulty. Hell, most of us wanted Cataclysm and wanted it to be hard.

Anyway I’m glad they made elites tougher. On hordes I’m neutral, I kinda like hewing through the heretics and having the main goal be not to take damage from them, having them give too much THP for their strength was indeed a problem.

I don’t like that combat changes so much between the lowest and highest difficulties and with hero power (cleave, damage for the latter, enemy stagger resistance for the former), I like consistency, but at this stage I’d worried that if they took that away it’d become too easy.

I do wish you got more enemy variants and enemies (namely bosses) had more moves on higher difficulties instead though.

2 Likes
#153

Are blade and blunt weapons not more equal now than they were before? I have never used blunt much.

#154

I think stagger is getting a bad press more as a result of everything feeling a little harder purely because so much other stuff is having an impact on the difficulty too. Some of it intended and some not.

Increasing the terror events, changing up the special spawning rate, spawn positions and routes of enemies and altering the talents are all intended tweaks to difficulty that have nothing to do with the actual mechanic in game - although talent lines do add stagger talents.

Unintended changes; Beastmen. Magical teleporting headbutt. Telescopic arms Ungors, Bannerboi’s in a corridor in the distance behind a bunch of indestructable Gors. Weird damage attacks not changing depending on whether they’re horde or solo. Ultra-ninja Gors silent sneaks to shank you.

Completely broken talents on many classes simply not working, or not working as intended, or not giving accurate figures for damage and things like slayers leap just plain not-working and BW fire walk straight up failing half the time, and you get very skewed perspectives on difficulty that are being almost completely blamed on Stagger.

Back to the OP, Fatshark are reacting to the emotional responses of players by patching the stagger mechanic and fixing the Talent Unlock that caused much gnashing of teeth. The patch 2.0.5 is the first time since beta 1 I’ve seen such a direct change as a result of feedback.

Problem is, there has been weeks and weeks of feedback by some well researched people on the fundamental problems of the WoM/2.0 build that wasn’t acted on for the whole of July - or that’s how it feels to many.

I think they probably should be spending MORE time fixing class-breaking bugs or having a good look at whether Beastmen are overtuned (they are,) and how to fix the dozens of big bugs, but they’re reacting to the customers plague-monk screeching about the Stagger and Difficulty.

Let it be known I really don’t like the current state of the game(and have done more than my fair share of screeching), but it’s here to stay by the looks of it.

HOWEVER;

It is a vast improvement over the 110k damage EACH player did on Legend runs in Beta 1. Doesn’t make it lovely now, but by dint of a horrible slog we might actually end up with something people are more comfortable with by Christmas. IF there’s anyone left of course.

8 Likes
#155

Can’t comment on the latest versions, but the problem is that weapons that already dominated (exec, dual hammers) got even better, so shielded weapons weren’t really getting taken over them and the 2h hammers anyway.

Yes, WoM shielded weapons are in a better place than pre-WoM shielded weapons right now, but I’d argue this was due to the mobility/boss defense/stagger duration buffs to them directly and not the new CC damage bonus.

1H axes have at least been addressed directly but again, FS could’ve just buffed the underperforming weapons specifically rather than make 1h axes terrible then need to buff them back up to being good again.

Meanwhile, while the 2h hammer is in a good place now, the 2h axe has completely fallen by the wayside.

Again, blanket mechanics to balance diverse weapons aren’t great. THP can bad enough at times, even ignoring that certain professions (like Zealot) always had way too much of it, Crowbill is by default gimped on BW as BW has THP on stagger and THP on cleave but no THP on kill, despite the fact the weapon lacks both stagger and cleave.

3 Likes
#156

It’s just two of us and two BOTs, of course we are trying to cover different angles whenever we can in order to not get surrounded. With 4 decent players we’d simply probably split 2-2 most of the time.

And I am absolutely 100% taking advantage of stagger damage with every single push-stab. For cleave and to save stamina I cycle between charged and quick attacks so after each charged cleave everything is staggered, then I stab a priority target (who is also staggered), then cleave again against already staggered enemies…

#157

Ok. I’m awake. Let’s go back to the topic you created and was locked.

Let’s go with @Nilter 's comment which you instantly dismiss. And you’re being called out entire thread for it too down to it being locked.

And before you start, you not agreeing with him, doesn’t make his points any less true.

3 Likes
#158

I second and third that

The bottom line, we all have different likes or dislikes of the 2.0 changes…

I am saying something I think is true. Overall, the ‘fun factor’ is less than it used to be. EDIT: I should restate that I believe the whole stagger-to-damage model is the sole culprit

As I stated at the beginning (whether anyone likes it or not), is that I have no answers. I am just the consumer. All I know is the game I used to enjoy SO much is now nowhere near as fun to play. I am not equating fun with difficulty, though, difficulty at every level has gone up a notch as a result… I am saying that it dosent feel right. Stagger to DAMAGE? I love the idea of staggering to stay alive in a tight situation, and honestly the dodge tracking going down is a GOOD thing. How much? I dont know. I DO know however, that pre 2.0 the game felt right. I know thats not what you want to hear. You want to hear a viable solution. I dont have one. All I know is that 2.0 (no matter how many revisions of it you get) changes the core game experience. In a BAD way. At least for me. Though I am willing to bet that I am not the only one.

Listening to people complain about 2.0 in a game is a common occurrence. Unfortunately I am now among them

Is it steam reviews that will get Fatsharks attention? I dont know. But something WILL be done about it when people start vocalizing all this… and… it hits them in the bank account

1 Like
#159

But by this argument you could always say “Hey, look, sometimes, it’s fine so … we’re good”.

This time it’s not fine, it’s big messy change to core combat system and it comes among many other huge changes.

Yea, but that is highly unlikely. I mean I said it before, I do think that this could get balanced somehow, but since history showed us that they wasn’t able to balance easy system in year+, than chance of them being able to balance properly this … is virtually zero. (not even talking about 100 other things that needs tweaking & balancing) And we can already observe how it’s going in past weak. Where they dropped the stagger resist massively in hopes of fixing this whole problem, just to break the game completely and render the system even more useless.

It’s big signs saying “Man, drop it finally” everywhere, but they are blind.

Yea, but it has never been tested, so here it’s the “Yea, maybe it would be good, maybe it would turn out to be crap also” situation. Here we really don’t know since we did not test it.

Yea absolutely, you don’t want people with close to zero knowledge of certain issue, deciding about it.

But this is not just mob rule, I’m not clueless about how this works and I did test it pretty extensively.

Plus we never tested running WOM with all the other changes, without this stagger mechanic, which is also mindblowing considering the terrible feedback.

Yea, but we got “Fapple” here, even without the democratic system :joy:

It was genuine question on one side but on the another I felt like there is only one right answer anyway.

Exactly, so it’s wrong in terms of proper decision making.

Yea, I would understand this.

Well, I guess it depends on how poor the implementation was, if it was complete garbage than he probably needs help.

But here we saw from the start how bad it is, and they kept “fixing” it, but never really fixed it and didn’t want to test out other options or removing it.

It’s just crazy, no A/B testing at all, on such a major change. And keeping it thru all the negative feedback and not addressing valid criticism. And there is no way of opting out of that.

It feels sort of like what youtube is doing now with their f*cking super annoying large thumbnails on homescreen on some “lucky test” accounts. It’s complete crap… from checking feedback on it, most of the people hate it… but there is no way of opting out of it.

4 Likes
#160

It is not, it is exactly the same. People are not significantly changing their playstyle in terms of positioning because of that new dmg multiplier. The FOW Cata run @BizarreSalp mentioned is great example of that. It would look exactly the same without the dmg buff on stagger as it looks with the damage buff on stagger. The mechanic plays zero role here, in terms of teamplay or anything else.

Good teams are not rewarded more than they were before, they are still doing well. They still do the same thing, no matter if there is dmg multi on stagger or not. They might just switch to more stagger/avoidance meta friendly weapons and that’s about it.

I don’t understand point of the video, Legend is still doable solo. It has nothing to do with stagger mechanic bringing nothing useful to the game and just creating needless problems.

We could clear Cataclysm in beta 1, does it mean that the beta 1 Cata was great and had no issues ? No, not at all, it was horrible.

Which is big part of why the mechanic is pointless in this regard, in hard to crazy difficulties, there is always crapload of stuff everywhere and ppl need to control those, while handling specials, taking down banners, kiting boss… nobody is getting the bonus from other players especially when they most need it, in critical situations. This point should be extremely obvious to anyone who watched some hard content.

yy, push meta… and also … spear staggers f*cking crazy hard. That is top tier weapon currently.

3 Likes
#161

Aye, it’s meant to be a team mechanic but at the end of the day people use it to empower their own attacks and that’s about it 90% of the time.

Even if you try to take advantage of your buddy’s CC, eg using a high damage low CC weapon yourself while they take a high CC one, like some of the people defending the mechanic often argued in the previous beta forums, most of the time it isn’t practical to do so, you’ll get surrounded by the other half of the wave of enemies. Also what if you end up next to another teammate using a low CC weapon? Combat can get unpredictable and with the AI director at times you have to take bad engagements as they are, next to whichever teammate is nearest.

Even FS realised this on some level, else they wouldn’t have put in the talents that partially bypass the mechanic, but again, why take those when you can just run a weapon that does well with the new meta, be it one with decent CC that you can buff to have an even higher damage boost or one that’s been buffed up individually to still be good in spite of it.

5 Likes
#162

It’s funny, I tried HM on 2.0 release with spear and it barely did anything. If it wasn’t a headshot, normal attacks didn’t faze fanatics and push only lead to stalling rats and letting others come in and you ended up fighting double amount.

1 Like
#163

The primary reason for the stagger-damage mechanic wasn’t promoting teamplay. I’m paraphrasing what FS said here, but they introduced it to add a way to increase difficulty without simply upping enemy hitpoints, and to create another mechanic - another “dial to turn” - to affect gameplay / balance in ways they couldn’t earlier. The buffing of underused weapons and the potential for more teamplay was merely a positive side-effect. (And I admit the strategy if having one stagger while another damages has some practical problems, as stated anove.)

FS also obviously saw how some weapons would be disadvantaged by this, so they added a row of talents to either take more advantage of the mechanic, or ways to avoid it for a big part.

So, if you take FS’s self stated primary objectives of the stagger-damage mechanic in mind, the current iteration actually succeeds in that somewhat.

Now, here’s an honest question I have, because I haven’t had time to try a lot of different stuff yet: Which weapon - that used to be good before 2.0 - is now in now in no way good / viable anymore?

Because as I see it, the stagger-damage system is not nearly as influential on the game as some people make it out to be. The game has changed a lot in 2.0, with tweaks to a lot of game mechanics and the introduction of new enemies. That’s why it feels generally different, and for some a lot more difficult as well. People just seem to attribute all of that - unjustified - to the stagger-damage mechanic.

My hypothesis: If FS would disable the stagger-damage mechanic (with talent row) altogether (and lower moster HP a bit to compensate), and change nothing else at all:

  1. The meta would only narrow; some weapons would still be great, some weapons would be less good than now, while no weapon would suddenly go from bad to good.
  2. The game also wouldn’t feel much different than it does now, and not a single bit easier for the people currently having difficulties.
4 Likes
#164

This is personal opinion, but damn axe and great axe on Bardin feel bad, like really bad. Been trying to do 100 games as RV and I’m running into more disappointments with them every time I try them.

4 Likes
#165

Alright, interesting. I had some succes with 1H axe actually, and I remember @Flisker saying the 1H axe is actually really good even. (On Elf though, but it’s basically the same weapon…) I can’t say I played much with greataxe, so I believe your word for it.

Here’s the next question though: Why would the Greataxe (or 1H axe) be better in the hypothetical scenario stagger-damage is removed? Is the problem with stagger-damage, or with the Greataxe (that was always outshined by the 2H Hammer anyways) itself? I mean, it is a heavy stagger weapon after all…

1 Like
#166

This topic is getting abit tedious to be honest with you all but I just wanted to point out one thing and mainly flisker saying the stagger system is somewhat pointless.

Did you try and look at it from a different perspective. I don´t know which level talent it is from the top of my head but there are talents that benefit you as an individual giving a massive damage boost to you when enemies are staggered which could pontential mean that not the whole team has to stagger constantly.

You could split the mechanics of first hit counting as staggered and adding damage to the talent where dmg is being increased solely on staggered enemies by a big amount, splitting the option 2 by 2 on teammates.

Also stagger means by bombs or bosses themselves when they charge attack and stagger nearby elites.
Important to note enemies that are climbing up a ledge count as stagger if I am not mistaken and have increased damage taken by 40%

I am just saying, maybe we should wait for mods to be updated so we can test and investigate thoroughly.

#167

Great axe is actually my favorite weapon on Slayer at the moment. Can’t really say why, I would say it’s mostly because of the slayer talents that buff him for using two handers and charged attacks and not the weapon itself but still.

#168

It needs a voice. 2.0 has NOT had a positive effect on the game. The point here (and my hope) is that FS just READS this and considers that this direction was not the way the game should have gone

Stagger to damage = a BAD thing - simple

Wait for mods? Just voice your experience with the current game, and let them know. Thats a GOOD thing

2 Likes
#169

Why is it a bad thing? Can you say with absolute confidence that it is a bad thing or does it just feel bad to you?

As I said there are more mechanics to it then just stagger to damage, bosses that overhead for example stagger them, enemies getting into blightstormers cycle and thrown out get staggered.
It just puts emphasis elsewhere then it was is all I am saying.

I still believe people are to hasty on their decision making

3 Likes
#170

Assassin stagger talent (the headshot/crit one) is also pretty solo oriented I would say.

#171

Since the update from yesterday, the game feels much better.
The main problems was that all, - even skaven - hordes were able to put displacement pressure on you due to the stagger threshold that was reset yesterday.
Most of the bad feeling came from “why is this rat third my size ignoring my hit with this weapon? Why can I no longer stop the skaven/chaos horde in it’s track and why are the gors constantly in my face like a meat wall and hitting them is futile?”
Now trash feels and more importantly behaves like how it should.

As for the 1H axe, I played it on RV and it one headshots a gor with charged attack and I used the 7% power talent. 2 light attacks - with one HS - dispose of any 2nd tier unit. SV and mauler die also fast, the stagger avoidance mechanism is working correctly.

2 Likes