I mean yeah you pretty much answered yourself there. I agree with what you said all the way. My personal theory is that they wanted this game to be much more MMO like, realized half way (or more) through dev time that was way too big a project for them, and scraped together the Darktide we got at release. I think the skill tree also fit rather snugly into that theory.
Major props to the mods that made early crafting more tolerable, such as reroll until rarity. Probably saved me from developing carpal tunnel.
Mods truly saved them for a not-insignificant chunk of longer time players, but I’m personally not happy with the state of the game until this coal mine fire of a “central pillar of gameplay” is ripped out and replaced with something that isn’t so player hostile.
Putting some more thought into it I think I get why more people are still upset with it. I have a ton of resources saved up, and although with the last patch and this patch have used most of them, I still have a nest’s egg to just throw away in the gambling machine if something takes my fancy. If people stopped playing, came back, saw all the new cool skill trees, came up with a build and couldn’t get a weapon they wanted to fit that? That sounds awful.
Not sure how that’s related to my post about not wanting to buy back into Darktide until crafting is made less asinine. Regardless, I haven’t touched Darktide since that catastrophic launch that left a terrible impression on me, so much so, it was one of my biggest disappointments in gaming. I don’t think anything else comes close honestly, except, maybe, Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager being an unpleasant buggy mess. Or Knights of the Chalice 2 causing frustration because it kept crashing and didn’t work half the time.
To answer your question: I love playing with random players. Every single Cata game I play in Vermintide 2 is on QP. All my Cata Chaos Wastes are on QP too. Did all my Cata 3 weaves with QP player that I held hostage and begged to play with me - just joking but it was really fun how chill some players were about Weaves; most people insta quit whenever I so much as mention Weaves. Fortunes of War were on QP too, though some players stuck around for DAYS with me just to play FoW because they really enjoyed the experience, made a couple of friends from it too.
It’s the chaos that I live for honestly. The type of situations you can get into in QP with random players is nothing short of adrenaline pumping excitement. Nothing beats that heart pounding rush I get from playing with people who are poorly equipped for Cata, accidentally trigger a Chaos patrol, while a boss is rushing us from behind, specials/disablers creeping on peripheral; even if we die horribly I died laughing manically - and that’s all that matters to me.
I’d love to play a couple of games with you in Vermintide 2. We can take it slow and easy, though remember, don’t get too frustrated if we die too much; the biggest mistake people make when moving from Champ or Legend to Cata is taking the game too seriously and or being arrogant. Play whatever you want. Use whatever build you want. Most of the games you play in Cata will be loses so try not to focus too much on the losses and instead focus on self improvement.
Sure, however, I disagree with this; you don’t want to impose too many artificial barriers on the gameplay. It’s not sensible for someone to waste hundreds of hours to get a setup going just to finally enjoy their build that they’ve been envisioning to play. Contrast that to my experience in Vermintide 2 where it takes minutes to get a setup going for all my classes whenever I want to play something else. It’s not unreasonable for me to not want to grind all over again just so I can get my setup rolling within an acceptable time frame. The first few hundreds of Vermintide 2 were pretty soul draining when I used to grind for reds; now that I’ve got lots of reds, I can focus on the gameplay and have fun the way I want, with the build I want, at any time I want; without anyone telling me to go sit at a corner for an hour until I can switch weapons.
Again, going back to Darktide, when I first played the game everything was a dice roll in terms of weapon acquisition: the weapon you want to play with, a dice roll, the quality of the weapon, a dice roll, the traits/properties, you guessed it: a dice roll. To quote my frustrated self on why that didn’t appeal to me:
That was back when it was a lottery ticket to even get the weapon you want to play with, never mind the stats. I’m aware it’s been improved somewhat, however, it’s ridiculous how anti-fun the whole weapon acquisition process was at the time. Going from a game where it was a seamless process to change builds within a quick manner to Darktide where it was a lottery to even play with a different weapon; and you can hazard a guess on how this quickly soured impressions for me. To this day I still can not understand why Fatshark thought Vermintide players were going to be okay with this.
The whole item locks controversy though is just a nice cherry on top a crap pie.
I don’t see myself coming back until Fatshark severely overhauls the crafting system in a way that respects my time - that means removing locks. I got all the time in the world. I’m willing to wait.
That is my bad, I assumed you were currently playing. However, again for me this sort of “barrier of entry” is overcome by:
This is the exact experience I get out of Darktide atm. Going into the meat grinder and getting chewed up and out, and on rare occasions coming out on top is amazing (although from what I understand DT Auric missions are easier than the highest tier of VT 2 missions). As for combat systems go and “which does it better,” I can’t comment on that and think that both have their merits.
I appreciate the invitation. However I feel going back into it I would get it a lot more. I’m saying when I played it, I didn’t understand or comprehend any of the stats, builds, what blessings or what their equivalent is called in VT, how to make a build, or even the basics for how weapon combos work. I distinctly remember at one point reading a steam guide at one point for how to get the Kruber Halberd horde clear pattern and I was too dumb at the time to understand it. I think if I went back into VT 2, most of my learning would be less basics and more what’s good and what is it: I’ve heard that everyone just runs Swift Slaying crit builds, is this still the case?
You’re right. I think I phrased it poorly: and is a poorly designed and unfun system. It is cynical and works on the same addictive behavior as gambling. So when you do finally get what you want, you get a flush of dopamine and want to get that “high” again. Part of me wants to believe that this isn’t malicious in any way: they said they wanted to give long time players something to keep grinding for. Maybe they thought everyone would just stop and play with passable weapons, and keep playing and be happy when a god roll came around in a very long time? But again it could just be cynical corp speak to justify the predatory nature of it.
It has improved, at least to some extent, which I’m sure you’re aware of. I stopped playing for awhile until they added the Auric mission board and allowed 2 changes to weapon blessings and perks, not only 1 of each. That has certainly helped item aquisition but it still feels horrible rolling up 50+ weapons at the Armory and not getting any above 350 (thank god for the bulk buy mod, I think I would’ve gone insane without it).
Hopefully for everyone’s sakes we get some changes there sooner rather than later.
I can assure you that I did not stop playing Vermintide after I got pages upon pages of reds to outfit all my classes. Once you got past the mind numbing gear acquisition in Vermintide and were finally able to tinker with your build without any contrived nuisances getting in the way, the game got even more fun because you could just focus on the gameplay. These games are not looter shooters. The loot doesn’t serve as a end game, but instead as a vehicle to the gameplay; playing the game while testing yourself on the harder difficulties is the end game; and it’s absurd to me how Fatshark wrote a blog about how they learnt from their past mistakes regarding this and how they were going to improve, only for it to be way, way, worse.
It’s fine. Vermintide 2 is apparently getting new contents after Necromancer. I don’t know when or what but it’s hype.
Yes, I believe FS said they were surprised that people kept playing after a certain point in VT 2, so I assume they wanted to give them something to “work towards,” but it came to them trying to reinvent the wheel and failing.
Those goes back around to my Darktide was originally more of an MMO game theory and why the loot system exists as it is.
Sadly the only reason they are even giving Xbox players that free currency is with the hope that those players with play for a longer period of time because they have access to more cosmetics thus giving them a reason to play longer.