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

[Froh]

Of course, it has the capacity to attract (and keep) more people. It’s just more work than “adding new maps and mutators” (summarising what people ask here). So they HAVE to actually try stuff in order for it to happens. Sometimes it will work. Sometimes it won’t. But their tries will be the only way to keep people engaged in the game.
And of course, they KNOW the release has flaws, because they kept us aware that they’re reading our feedback and that the patches will bring the game closer to what we like(d).

Proof are the last patches right after winds of magic that did reduce Weaves grind (still far from perfect), did put back the 35 talent row in the 30 side, where it should have been, did change back some enemies HP, stagger resistance and cleave resistance, change some talents, and did fix some bugs.
I mean, ok, in the past, they probably did’nt listen enough, but here we have actual facts that prove that they did improve their work.

I know that we all want them to be faster, we all want weaves to be better, getting better rewards, etc… but it’s still work, and it can’t happen magically in a day or two.
So if you really can’t play the game for whatever reason right now, then take a break, a small one, wait for patches, and come back. Or play the game, provide feedback, and also wait for patches.
Some stuff will be done. Some other stuff won’t. That’s not the end of the world either way.

[Silvah]

Funny thing is, I see alot of people who mention one of the faults of the new stagger system is that it’s difficult to understand how it works.

And here I am and I understand how it works just fine. And I hate it…
Besides, the biggest reason as to why there is an increase in players is for the simple fact it’s a new dlc. That is the only reason. I give it one month and atleast 80% of those new players will be gone doing something else.

[Professional]

@Froh

It’s just more work than “adding new maps and mutators” (summarising what people ask here).

There’s way more and in depth fixes that have been asked for, FOR A VERY LONG TIME.

@Froh

So they HAVE to actually try stuff in order for it to happens. Sometimes it will work. Sometimes it won’t. But their tries will be the only way to keep people engaged in the game.

No one asked for Stagger Mechanics.
No one asked for a complete redesign of the Talent system.
No one asked for a secondary grind mode with repurposed assets.
No one asked for a leaderboard for this meaningless mode.
No one asked to turn enemies into meat-shields and bullet sponges.

This isn’t them listening, this is damage control.

@Froh

I know that we all want them to be faster, we all want weaves to be better, getting better rewards, etc… but it’s still work, and it can’t happen magically in a day or two.

They’ve literally had since Vermintide 1 for fix these problems. Because I remember a good amount of current problems in the game, also in Vermintide 1. There have been countless posts depicting what the problems were and even potential solutions that could have been countless times better than most things Fatshark ever put out (at least on paper).

You can’t hide behind the veil of “Oh, it takes time to make these changes.” Because we’ve been waiting for 4 years.

[Drakonhammer]

@Froh

Every pvp game is alive.

Uhhh

[Froh]

@Drakonhammer

Uhhh

Well obviously not. That was a mistep

@Professional

No one asked…

People actually asked for a redesign of the talents, traits and weapons including shields. (I actually still want traits to be remade)
Because yeah, having stagger bonus damage is not ‘bad’ and it happens we can play shields now.
The rest (weaves) is them trying stuff (and they are right to do so)

@Professional

There’s way more and in depth fixes that have been asked for, FOR A VERY LONG TIME.

Apart from dedicated servers or/and host migration. I actually don’t know about what fixes you speak about.

[Drakonhammer]

@Froh

Uhhh

Well obviously not. That was a mistep

Ah, got it.

@Froh

No one asked…

People actually asked for a redesign of the talents, traits and weapons including shields. (I actually still want traits to be remade)

Missed this. Yeah, Froh’s right on that one, a lot of people wanted a redesign/redo of the talents as there were A LOT of bad ones. It came up a lot on the other forums at least (I didn’t know of this one at the time).

I discussed that point here.

[Professional]

@Froh

People actually asked for a redesign of the talents

No, people asked to replace meaningless talents with better ones, not scrap the entire talent tree and start over.

@Froh

Because yeah, having stagger bonus damage is not ‘bad’ and it happens we can play shields now.

There are better ways to implement shield play without overhauling the entire games mechanics. A lot of which, were discussed by me and many other people in the forums:

-Shields: I understand you just put in a new stagger mechanic in the game to incentivize their use, but I do not feel that this is the correct way to go about it, or perhaps, not the complete way. I’m sure that I’m not the only person who has mentioned this before but, Shields trade maneuverability for defense. Still there are certain attacks, like Chaos Warrior overheads, or monster hits that can either completely eat through your stamina bar, or directly damage you through your block if you don’t stack +%reduced block. This is a VERY simple problem to solve, imo. Remove the chip damage from boss monsters and give the shield bash a much greater threat counter. Also, prevent the ability to be grabbed Chaos Spawn as it’s impossible for the shield bearer to optimally keep threat and dodge the move effectively, OR, keep the grab, but allow Bardin to stick the shield in the Spawns mouth to defend himself. How cool would that be!? Bardin being grabbed by a Chaos Spawn while defending his team-mates but still giving the spawn hell as it tries to chew on him! Now that truly sounds like a valiant Dawi thing to do! If bosses break the shield bearers guard, the stagger on the shield bearer can last longer than usual, allowing the boss one direct hit to the player, unless they’re just far enough away to use their shorter distance dodge to avoid it. This way the shield bearer isn’t invincible to the boss.

What is your purpose, really, when you’re playing defensive? To give your teammates a better strike at the enemy. How does the current shield wearer do this? He (or she) doesn’t. Bardin is the only person who’s able to effectively taunt off any enemies from his teammates that might be in trouble, but even so, it’s on a HUGE timer, and otherwise, there is no reliable method of keeping agro from mobs. Well, if shield bashes and slams were themselves tiny taunts, this would make the shield a million times more valuable, and it wouldn’t be super overpowered because of the range and movement limitations. This would also give a reason to ever take +shield block/push radius. Say that, any mob shield bashed would keep it’s agro on Bardin (or whoever the shield bearer is) for something like 5 seconds, and could be reapplied so long as the player had stamina to shield bash. This would give immense utility to team oriented tank players, without making them too OP. It’s literally their role to absorb as much damage for their team as possible. The more mobs they pull onto them, the harder it will be for them to maneuver or keep blocking the enemy hits, but the less pressure there would be on his team-mates which would then have the freedom to dispatch the assailants, or snipe specials or elites. This can also work for a boss but on a smaller scale, for instance: 3 shield bashes or slams and you’ve got his attention for 5 seconds, giving your team the opportunity to deal damage to it, or to deal with other threats, once you have no more stamina, you disengage and let your team deal with the boss until you can pull it off again. If you stay on the boss too long, you face the challenge of your guard being continuously broken and the shield bearer becoming overwhelmed.

These could be inherent in the weapon themselves, the class, or be a selectable talent for more build options. You can choose which you think is the better option, but I think having it be inherent to a shield or class, is the way to go, and you can make shield enhancing talents to bolster their effectiveness. This is the basic tank/dps dynamic, but in an action team-oriented game! I understand this is sort of how it’s supposed to work, that enemies that are pushed are more likely to go after the person who’s pushing them, but I would wager to say that with a shield, it needs to be absolute, given the massive trade-off in power and movement that you sacrifice. Furthermore, this would create a really interesting build opportunity for +% stamina reduction to block, or can be combined with opportunist for more stagger builds. AND this would ALSO be a viable option against the Charging Beastman elite. Without that chip dmg protection though, this is a only a half measure. I urge you to consider these changes because I really enjoy using a shield, and can only see it becoming more fun to use with these changes.

@Froh

I actually don’t know about what fixes you speak about.

Listen, it would be hard for anyone to summarize the entirety of the Vermintide suggestion and feedback information. The only solution I can offer you is to go back and read some old posts either here on on reddit. There’s a lot of them, and many of them go into great detail and theorycraft about the core aspects of the game. I made a post that escaped the beta info purge which, I believe, brings up a lot of valid criticisms of the 2.0 mechanics (barring the changes they did with the latest patches). If you can look past my “crassness” and have the patience, I recommend you read through it here:

WoM Beta and current live version problems and theory craft

I have been playing Vermintide 1 + 2 for a very long time. My total hours nearing somewhere in the 2,250 mark. I have been an avid gamer for as long as I could hold a controller in my hands, or have a PC available to me. I love the universe and the characters you’ve created, which is why I’m going to tell you exactly how I feel about the current state of the game, and the soon to come expansion. The majority of criticism you’re about to receive has been building up ever since I was able to crit…

[Froh]

@Professional

No, people asked to replace meaningless talents with better ones, not scrap the entire talent tree and start over.

The talents that were scrapped were either totally awful, not providing any interesting build, or vastly overpowered. Yeah I kinda miss my Waystalker killing all the map with infinite ammo hagbane. I also miss my ironbreaker-grudgeraker that could get ammo back with a right click. So that’s what balance is. Sometimes you have to scrap stuff.
Hearthstone did this months ago for “core cards”, that was not easy to accept, but in the long term, it’s better for everyone.

@Professional

There are better ways to implement shield play without overhauling the entire games mechanics. A lot of which, were discussed by me and many other people in the forums:

Stagger was always here. Only damage bonus was not. The mechanic, as it is, and BY ITSELF does not have any negative point.
So there are not better ways to implements shield play, there are only alternative ways. This is not what they chose to do.
Now on your ideas, Staggering ennemies does aggro them on you since launch, Chaos Spawn not grabbing shield would be too specific to make the weapon worthwhile, Having a special attack while grabbed would be too much development for an edge case, and shields can now block thoses “heavy attacks” from boss since WoM.
But it was already discussed heavily. Having a very tanky player that does nothing else than staying alive is not that great. The fact that he can bring damage to the team is what makes it great. Which is why they now have some “damage” aura. And which is why the stagger mechanic is now there.

@Professional

Listen, it would be hard for anyone to summarize the entirety of the Vermintide suggestion and feedback information.

Well I actually do see feedback a lot, but you were kinda specific about some stuff that is not fixed since V1, so I guessed you had some sort of specific issues.

On your topic though, I did read it, and I think there’s a line between what you want for the game, and what can be added to the game. You kinda disliked everything here.
I did an extra feedback topic about this specific issue right there in the forum, you’ll see that even if I don’t dislike them as you are, I see some negative points and some positive points in it as well. I don’t try to change their view of the game, or I don’t try that they operate a 360 on what is already there (it’s too late). I try to improve what they thought as a great idea (which can be or not, we’ll see).

[Bankrotas]

@Froh

Yeah I kinda miss my Waystalker killing all the map with infinite ammo hagbane.

Still exists and works when your ult doesn’t go full re****. That said, it works properly maybe 10% of the time, which is also annoying. If I could mark manually multiple targets instead of relying on Ranald to hit what I want when trying to hit multiples, it would be better, but yeah otherwise Hagbane is perfectly fine currently.

[Drakonhammer]

@Froh

No, people asked to replace meaningless talents with better ones, not scrap the entire talent tree and start over.

The talents that were scrapped were either totally awful, not providing any interesting build, or vastly overpowered. Yeah I kinda miss my Waystalker killing all the map with infinite ammo hagbane.

Actually Professional does have a point there. The talents that scaled with OC on Pyro instead of just activating above a certain threshold (like the new power one) got gutted (all but one, the AS one), when FS could have kept the theme of that tier and instead rebalanced the talents they weren’t happy with.

They took out a number of decent talents like +25% HP and Crunch! on Slayer, THP back on tagged enemy kill on WHC (this one was bloody marvelous), +15% power at the cost of 5% AS on HM, heat buildup reduction scaling with OC on pyromancer and a couple of others.

In other cases eg ammo back with WS regen they replaced it with rubbish (the two health talents for regen should be merged imo they’re so weak), bomb drop on Bardin got merged with potion drop and replaced with a talent that is flat out worse and more encourages more selfish/lazy play than 30% ammo per drop, heat reduction for drake weapons on Bardin got replaced with one that makes them produce so much more heat you might as well take Grudgeraker or another ranged weapon if you want higher damage per shot - I’ve yet to find a meaningful breakpoint with it on the drakefire pistols and it doesn’t help them anywhere near enough vs armoured specials on cata.

And we still have +25% power on 0 ammo on RV and BH.

Infinite ammo still exists, you just take all the CDR talents for her ult and then ammo back on ult. Hey presto, it’s back. I imagine Ricochet is pretty devastating with hagbane otherwise too, but I dunno, I never liked hagbane. Also despite getting rid of passive ammo regen on WS for some reason FS decided to add 10% ammo on special kill on Huntsman which is insane AND BH doesn’t even need to conserve ammo anymore, if he runs out he can just kill an elite or special and get 30% back. So much for consistency.

Don’t get me wrong, I like that there are now often 2 viable choices in a talent tier instead of merely 1, but I’m not going to pretend the inconsistencies in FS design/vision and new bad talents aren’t there.

@Froh

There are better ways to implement shield play without overhauling the entire games mechanics. A lot of which, were discussed by me and many other people in the forums:

Stagger was always here. Only damage bonus was not. The mechanic, as it is, and BY ITSELF does not have any negative point.

I don’t think it’s conducive to the discussion to conflate the two. Pretending it doesn’t have a different function now (damage booost) to before (pure CC) is like pretending shielded weapons aren’t any more mobile than before the patch, despite getting 100% dodge range and 2 dodges instead of 1 ‘because they’ve always been able to dodge.’

@Froh

now on your ideas, Staggering ennemies does aggro them on you since launch,

I thought it’s only pushes that are guaranteed to divert enemy aggro to you.

@Froh

But it was already discussed heavily. Having a very tanky player that does nothing else than staying alive is not that great. The fact that he can bring damage to the team is what makes it great. Which is why they now have some “damage” aura. And which is why the stagger mechanic is now there.

Except you get it on all weapons equally as it’s a blanket mechanic so it’s not like having a shield is an advantage when you can take a 2h hammer that has better offensive capabilities or another weapon entirely like executioner’s

The only real advantage is the cleave that shield bashes have (and longer CC time, but 2h hammers got the latter too), but unfortunately as shield bashes are part of the heavy chain and not an alt attack you gimp your own damage vs a 1h non shielded weapon. If your teammates are good they can take advantage of it, if they’re bad you’re never well off taking a shielded weapon.

Shields are imo an amplifying weapon, and already were (even if not meta). If your teammates are decent, they can literally stand back and never worry about getting into trouble because you’re there in the thick of it tanking everything and shieldbashing enemies. Your lower offensive capabilities aren’t a problem as you can kill priority targets while your team capitalises on the advantage. If things go badly you have your tankiness and pushes/shieldbashes to rescue downed teammates.

If your teammates are bad, you have a hard time dealing the damage needed and if they go down, even if you get them back up, chances are they down again, which leaves you on weapon with bad attack speed and offensive capabilities.

I really wish shields ate enemy cleave so you could actually protect the teammates behind you with them. It’d help to at least keep bad teammates alive through good positioning and play, and would address imo their biggest weakness, bad teams, as you would actually be able to influence whether or not they survive. That might actually make them competitive with the rest of the popular weapons (on top of the mobility increase they got with WoM launch), without taking away the pure DPS niche of the 1h non shielded variants

[Froh]

@Drakonhammer

Infinite ammo still exists, you just take all the CDR talents for her ult and then ammo back on ult. Hey presto, it’s back.

Well not as “infinite” as the old one. You can’t spam as much. Far from it.

@Drakonhammer

when FS could have kept the theme of that tier

Here, the issue is that your build needs to have a theme, not a tree tiers where you can’t chose everything. If you theme different options availables but mutually exclusives ones, that doesn’t really bring anything for your character.

@Drakonhammer

don’t think it’s conducive to the discussion to conflate the two. Pretending it doesn’t have a different function now (damage booost) to before (pure CC) is like pretending shielded weapons aren’t any more mobile than before the patc

Not sure I’m understanding everything here. I do pretends that you can now takes the shield and be useful whereas before you weren’t. Not only you had the least defensive weapon there was (because of lack of dodge and the non efficient block), but you also didn’t bring damage to the team. Now you can actually defend better, and also get some damage out of stagger. (which is, indeed, applied to hammer as well)

Stagger mechanic (which was criticized here again, as if it were the cause of everything), by itself, is nothing wrong. It does not cause any issue at the moment, besides getting heavy weapons and shields a bonus that they didn’t have before

[Bankrotas]

@Froh

Well not as “infinite” as the old one. You can’t spam as much. Far from it.

The only thing you’re worse at is monster elimination. Not only can you spam as much or more but also faster if you go for headshot talent. Seriously it’s 30% per elite or special killed. You can restore 100% ammo with 4 elites, which isn’t necessary.

And that’s only one of her 3 fun builds along bleed lmg and sniper AR.

[Froh]

Did I miss something since the beta ? I though there was only the talent were you ult and regain ammo if you hit a special oô

[Bankrotas]

Every special or elite killed by her trueshot volley restores 30% of her ammo and her ammo pool is 100% bigger that other classes, heck it’s biggest bonus from all ranged specs and even single kill restores 10 ammo.

[Froh]

Ok so I did miss the elite part.

[Drakonhammer]

@Froh

Infinite ammo still exists, you just take all the CDR talents for her ult and then ammo back on ult. Hey presto, it’s back.

Well not as “infinite” as the old one. You can’t spam as much. Far from it.

Aye (although on LB which is my preferred choice it effectively is, especially with the new increased ammo pool), but again, why take away WS’s infinite arrows when you’re going to give it to other ranged classes (like huntsman)? That’s not consistent.

@Froh

when FS could have kept the theme of that tier

Here, the issue is that your build needs to have a theme, not a tree tiers where you can’t chose everything. If you theme different options availables but mutually exclusives ones, that doesn’t really bring anything for your character.

I think you misunderstood that point of mine there.

The BH talent tier that is all oriented around Blessed Shots would like to have a word with you. That tier is epic and I can’t think of anyone who has ever had a negative thing to say about it (since they got the balance right on it months ago).

I’m not saying you need to theme your entire build, every tier, around eg OC on pyro, that’d be brokenly OP and stupid. I’m saying it’s neat when FS has themed talent tiers like that, and it helps make the talent system feel more consistent and with a clearer sense of class design in mind.

@Froh

don’t think it’s conducive to the discussion to conflate the two. Pretending it doesn’t have a different function now (damage booost) to before (pure CC) is like pretending shielded weapons aren’t any more mobile than before the patc

Not sure I’m understanding everything here. I do pretends that you can now takes the shield and be useful whereas before you weren’t. Not only you had the least defensive weapon there was (because of lack of dodge and the non efficient block), but you also didn’t bring damage to the team. Now you can actually defend better, and also get some damage out of stagger. (which is, indeed, applied to hammer as well)

My point is as every weapon has it that ‘buff’ to shielded weapons is worth a lot less relative to other weapons, as you can still take other weapons and benefit from that. I’d argue the mobility buff has done way more for shielded weapons in WoM than universal stagger has.

@Froh

Stagger mechanic (which was criticized here again, as if it were the cause of everything), by itself, is nothing wrong. It does not cause any issue at the moment, besides getting heavy weapons and shields a bonus that they didn’t have before

Yes it’s not the cause of everything, buuut, it caused FS to change enemy HP to keep kill times relatively alike, FS has had to readjust many weapons individually based on it being in the game and it’s got an entire talent tier dedicated to amplifying it, ignoring it or bypassing it. Don’t give me that ‘it hasn’t changed anything’ line, it’s disingenuous to the discussion and you know it.

@Froh

Did I miss something since the beta ? I though there was only the talent were you ult and regain ammo if you hit a special oô

@Bankrotas

Every special or elite killed by her trueshot volley restores 30% of her ammo and her ammo pool is 100% bigger that other classes, heck it’s biggest bonus from all ranged specs and even single kill restores 10 ammo.

Does it grant 30% per elite/special it kills too? Or the only the first one?

Many of the ult talents are bugged atm so it’s per x instead of once you achieve x, eg BH’s doubleshotted is 40% CD per HS instead of if you land at least one HS with it, and WHC’s 40% CDR is per 10 enemies hit instead of activating only once after 10 enemies are hit by it.

[Bankrotas]

@Drakonhammer

Does it grant 30% per elite/special it kills too? Or the only the first one?

It works fine for me and 4 rats restore ammo to full. If Ranald graces me with quad kill that is, that is biggest caveat with it.

[Froh]

@Drakonhammer

I think you misunderstood that point of mine there.

The BH talent tier that is all oriented around Blessed Shots would like to have a word with you. That tier is epic and I can’t think of anyone who has ever had a negative thing to say about it (since they got the balance right on it months ago).

I’m not saying you need to theme your entire build, every tier, around eg OC on pyro, that’d be brokenly OP and stupid. I’m saying it’s neat when FS has themed talent tiers like that, and it helps make the talent system feel more consistent and with a clearer sense of class design in mind.

Point taken. The easy way would be to use a class feedback topic in order to get thoses old builds again.

@Drakonhammer

My point is as every weapon has it that ‘buff’ to shielded weapons is worth a lot less relative to other weapons, as you can still take other weapons and benefit from that. I’d argue the mobility buff has done way more for shielded weapons in WoM than universal stagger has.

Also agree with this.

@Drakonhammer

Yes it’s not the cause of everything, buuut, it caused FS to change enemy HP to keep kill times relatively alike, FS has had to readjust many weapons individually based on it being in the game and it’s got an entire talent tier dedicated to amplifying it, ignoring it or bypassing it. Don’t give me that ‘it hasn’t changed anything’ line, it’s disingenuous to the discussion and you know it.

I do disagree here. The weapon balance was something that we knew was not really there yet for a long time. The “big balance patch” did adress a lot and saw a lot of readjustement without any new mechanic. And we would have this other “big balance” coming, stagger bonus or not.
What stagger does atm is only opening more design space about thoses weapons.

On the HP, they were readjusted for a lot of reasons, including the new talents and the new max power. Stagger was far from the only reason here.

On the “tiers of stagger talent”, I do regret it to be on every character, it’s generic, and I don’t like it. Opening design space means to provide more option, but I think it’s not fit to every character either way. I can understand though that they couldn’t really find new talents at the same time they redesign the entire trees. Let’s keep thoses awesome new options for the 40 level.

[Bankrotas]

@Froh

On the “tiers of stagger talent”, I do regret it to be on every character, it’s generic,

They should be weapon traits I tell you!

[Froh]

@Bankrotas

They should be weapon traits I tell you!

Well I would go on the road on making them available to some melee class to turn them a bit support.
But indeed, I’m waiting for traits remake (stagger traits or not, we seriously lack real options there). I would also argue that a property remake could also be good, but who knows.