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

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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I am on a huge french discord for Vermintide, which we promote a lot in order to have everyone in the same place.
Here we saw a HUGE increase of new players with the expansion, and thoses are players that STAY.
There’s a few difference with here/reddit/steam forums though.
Even if we’re disagreeing with some stuff (already listed a few times, beastmens being more difficult and a bit bugged than the others factions, grind for WoM, etc), we’re not “blocked” in an endless rant that prevent us to enjoy the game. And I really think that it worsen your experience a lot.
Understand me, It’s okay to rant a bit, but if you see only the negative without seeing the positive (which DOES exist), you become biased and every time something goes bad, you’ll remember it while staying blind to all the rest.
I think the game is in a better state right now that all the months before. And on my “community” side, it shows up as numbers.
(not only my side though, a lot of people DID come back to play https://steamcharts.com/app/552500?fbclid=IwAR2-lYKAKA477kk52Me9BDjyYFE72MdS7WzhqO8TAELM1RGdCroBcchcJBo#3m )

Now I can understand that your experience is somewhat flawed because it’s probably not the same as before. But staying in an endless negative rant will only prevent you from enjoying the game, and will probably not be constructive enough to make them change stuff. (which they are trying to do btw, we already saw some Winds grind changes)

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383

a bunch of vt2 players are apparently only happy when they are upset and ranting. go figure.

384

Expantion just hit the official realm, any numbers now are meaningless. They could do even more messed up build and numbers would still spike.

I’m sure you knew this kind of negative backlash was coming. Since bugs did not get fixed, basically all the major stuff got changed, things did not get properly tested, there was zero communication during beta… and they did not listen to major feedback. (for example: fixed weaves, grind, chaotic stagger system, op beastmen, imbalanced terror events, no rewards for Cata or weeklies… and they even decided on last minute to break more core mechanics like the temp HP. There is more but I’m lazy to write it all down again…)

In my eyes most of this is perfectly valid feedback and it played out exactly as expected.

Also to this day, they didn’t think like … maybe it would be good idea to create some introductory video to this new messy stagger mechanic … so people at least actually understand how it all works, without having to go to modded realm, getting mods and doing the science themselves, which hardly anyone will do.

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385
  • Fixed weaves do work (I’m writing about them atm), it’s not an issue.
  • Grind is an issue, I totally agree.
  • Chaotic stagger system is mostly linked to a lot of balance changes instead of a step by step chages.
  • OP beastmens (OP would mean they’re invincible or unfair, the only cataclysm map I had time to clear is Dark Omens, which would prove it’s rather doable though). They are more difficult though.
  • Cata/Weeklies rewards, I guess we’ll see how it goes, but we still have some frames to unlock.
  • Temp HP or rather Cleave HP has been fixed already.
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It doesn’t. I did close to 70 weaves in 3-4 days and than dropped it because I wasn’t able to keep the same group and grind sucked, we couldn’t switch players, it was such a pain… I couldn’t be bothered anymore to spend time sitting in keep and whisping people just to get answers like “I don’t do weaves” or “I don’t have the class you need now” or “I only have weave power 350” or “I want to do them in order not jump around” and other replies like this … horrible experience.

Than you have the “Hey I need 46/47/48, can we do that?” … like … no … I get nothing for doing it nad it’s not super easy especially when we were not all maxed out… I just don’t wanna do it… and it’s the same stuff I already played on top of no reward…

So basically it was dead in few days for me.

Will I do more ? Yes sure, if I even get people to play it with, because now that I am doing different stuff, people will finish the weaves and than they will be saying “Dude, I have the 70-90 done… I get sh-t for doing it again… I am not doing it again” :smiley: …

Ughr… so bad.

And majority of not so hardcore people will be done in 2 weeks max also, I don’t doubt about that prediction. They will just get into weave level they can’t beat anymore and they can’t get group, then they get different guy in group who is not used to that weave and it won’t work at all etc… and they will just drop it.

Yea, so … fail.

OP as relative to other two factions, and they are, especially archers, spearmen and lightning fast gors with their attacks.

This should have been solved in beta… another fail. That could have been easily avoided. When beta was ending there was still feedback coming that those are still not balanced.

Yea done that in one weekend. That is not solution to the bad reward policy. Imagine that they did same for Legend/Champ/Vet…

It sure is not fixed in terms of balance. Temp on kill is amazing, rest is very meh… unless you got specific combinations like shield & temp on stagger etc. Overall it’s far cry from balanced. They should not touch this at all right now. Considering all the frickin mess that is going on and needs fixing. This was soooo bad decision, it’s unbelieavable.

Again it’s the house is on fire and you go and set the garage on fire also, because why not, let’s make it more interesting.

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387

Isn’t it too early to say that the new players are going to stay? I mean they might or might not, I don’t know either, but the discount only ends later today and the xpac hasn’t even been out 2 weeks (and that after a long content drought).

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388

Usually new players (on this discord) comes and go in mostly 1 week of play.
I saw a huge increase of players that are actually staying more than a week. Of course, on thoses, some will also go in a month, or in 3 months, or so… But we still had a greater result getting new people than the previous dlc so far.
But this is not a statistic study getting several discords and comparing numbers, so no worries about dismissing it.
Saying that’s it’s the worse release of all time is wrong though. And watching the “negative review” increasing in numbers (while the positives ones also increase in numbers) only show a sign of more interest in the game that there was before. Which is mostly good news if you want new players.

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Except that, from what I’ve seen, most of the negative reviews are from long-time players who are considering dropping the game altogether, and the positive reviews are from new players. Most new players stick around for a while and then move on. If 5% of them stay long-term, then you need 20 new players who enjoy the game for every 1 longtime veteran who gives up on it.

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390

I’m not dismissing it, that’s great for you guys, I just think it’s too early to know if WoM’s effect on the long term stable playerbase will be a net positive or net negative.

Short term it’s certainly going to do well, it is after all a whole expansion with new content (whereas the previous DLCs were either 2 new maps with no new enemies or one with new maps (but from the first game) and weapons). I’d’ve been surprised if this fact was reflected in any way other than well on player numbers, regardless of what happened in the betas.

Again, content drought. If the ratio of positive to negative doesn’t improve long term I don’t think that’s a good sign however.

Maybe the new players like it more than the veterans do.

FS at least has time to improve on things either way.

Aye, it all comes down to this.

Another problem is if the newer players are enjoying recruit/veteran they don’t necessarily know what it’s like on the higher difficulties yet, it may turn out they enjoy the new Legend less than they would have the old one. We won’t know this until the long term however.

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391

Interest is raised because the game is trending again. BfA isn’t particularly the best expansion ever and even that had a stellar week 1 turnout because it was “new”

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392

And if you set your chart to see “All time” you can clearly see that interest is waning for the game in general. Each spike correlated to a DLC that was released and with each DLC more and more people left. The previous DLC were considered to be “good” or at least “neutral”. Each of the previous DLC’s spiked the interest rates as much, if not more so than this current one. Given the absolutely abysmal reception WoM got, I can almost guarantee that there will be even less people in the concurent months than there were before.

Compare this with a chart for a similar game: L4D2 (set graph for “all time”)

You can clearly see that while there are dips in it’s popularity, the game almost NEVER hemorrhages their player base unlike Vermintide 2. This only goes to show that the people who are the dedicated few are slowly being driven away by Fatshark’s incompetence. The exodus that’s going to occur because of this blunder is going to be considerable.

This isn’t about being “perpetually negative” just because. These are legitimate problems that have persisted since the game’s conception, were thoroughly documented in innumerable posts, and were ignored again and again. Please don’t mis-characterize these problems as people just being negative for negative’s sake.

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393

L4D2 have a versus mode. Compare it to Deep Rock Galactic if you want a fair comparison. Or another solo/coop pve game (assassin’s creed or far cry comes in mind).

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Vs. mode is irrelevant. The game core mechanics are what matter. Because the core mechanics are being sabotaged, adding a vs. mode to Vermintide wouldn’t change anything.

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395

Vs. Mode is not irrelevant at all. It keeps the game alive. Every pvp game is alive. Every pve game see a drop. Just compare it to Deep Rock. And you’ll see.

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I don’t know what kind of game Deep Rock is, so I can’t compare, but I know the type of game that Vermintide 2 can be, and I can definitely see a future for it without relying on vs. mode. The devs keep making bad decisions and alienating the player-base by not creating meaningful content or solving the innumerable problems they’ve had from the start. It’s as simple as that.

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397

Deep Rock Galactic is a “mining game” with space dwarves in generated levels.
You can choose 1 of 4 dwarf, each with its own weapons and skills. You progress in objective based maps where you must mine or kill stuff.
It’s actually close to Vermintide 2 as its a coop 4 people class based where you level up. And it also have no pvp (like V2). Which is why, like in EVERY non-competitive game you see a drop in players who consider it “finished” at various time (like all maps completed in legend for example, or finished all maps, or played a good evening with friends and then move on)

398

Dude, you can’t expect me to have a good understanding of the internal mechanics and feel of a game without spending a considerable amount of time in it. Maybe you’re right about them being similar, but maybe that game just doesn’t have good content and so the comparison wouldn’t be fair. I don’t know.

I do know L4D2, and Vermintide 2, and while the vs. mode may play a part in the L4D community, it’s the underlying mechanics that make both game modes fun. Vermintide 2 is actively destroying the one fun thing it had going for it. Therefore, even with the addition of a vs. mode, the game will still perform poorly.

You don’t have to take my word for it. I’m confident that, unless Fatshark pulls a 180 and starts making some good decisions, time will show the game spiraling into obscurity.

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399

Well it happens that I do know.
But we have a misunderstanding here. I don’t say the game is perfect. It have flaws, and we did feedback it. I just say it’s USUAL for a pve only game to see a drop in players.
In the “L4D”-like pve only games, there’s only 1 game that successfully up its curve after seeing the exact same curve than Deep Rock, Vermintide, and the like, it’s Payday 2. And they did it by having several “overhauls” of the game after years and years of work, DLCs, advertising and bug fixing.

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Versus mode is going to be a massive catastrophe when Host-Quit restarts the match out of spite and no one gets any wins/rewards etc.

New players don’t know any different, so it’s highly likely they’ll stay as they only know what’s on offer now - this is no surprise really. I suppose it’s still got the wow factor if you’re new, but the grind in Weaves and the quest for Reds when Legend is too hard for most will get rid of many many new players fairly quickly.

@Froh is probably right, in that getting completely invested in being miserable is something of a choice. I’ve had some time away from the game and have decided that it’s simply not for me any more. I’m still annoyed how it’s gone down but hey - I remember VT1 was lost in the wilderness for a while - something like 500 concurrent players at one point. I’ll probably be back if this can be recovered. Sigmar knows how though…

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Sure, and I’m saying that Vermintide has the capacity not to. That’s something I haven’t been able to say for a long time about most game.

Whether an overhaul is necessary or not, this current version of the game isn’t going to move it to the right direction, and the numbers will soon reflect that. They’ve already started reflecting in the reviews, and the people’s outrage is well and justified given they’re working on this abhorrent DLC, instead of what really matters in this game.

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