If there’s a parameter that identifies how many commendation chests someone has, could the team not have simply given everyone 1x Commendation Chest per hero level minus the number in their possession? This would be the most logical solution. Since Commendation Chests didn’t drop reds and practically no one had cosmetics, the only additional boon would be in the form of a lil dust, which would still be good considering the green dust situation until now. This could be a case of hindsight being 20/20 though unless you can look at that data from before the patch launched.
Even if this is the only way you could do it, it would still ensure vets weren’t worse off than newcomers. I’m sure you’ve read the posts from other people saying the same thing: they’re disheartened/hurt/insulted or feel used over this.
I’ve a lot of MMO experience and what you’re describing isn’t like this at all. That only happens with vertical progression and while it’s similar, it’s not nearly to the same degree because the veteran players are using their already obtained loot to move onto the new content while the new players still have to get some/most of the old loot, it’s just a little easier with each stage of vertical progression. This isn’t a vertical progression game though. It’s a horizontal progression game with a firm ceiling, so the people who spent 400-1000 hours trying to hit that ceiling have nothing to show for it and people with zero hours will hit it faster. Also, MMOs have become pretty mindless skinner boxes these days… I’m not sure that’s a good comparison to draw as that’s just not what Vermintide is or, I hope, wants to be.
The few times a game does create a situation like this, they’ve given players a “Sorry for the inconvenience” bonus as a result. I’ve never seen the dev of a loot-based game not do this. It’s just good PR and customer service, even if it’s just as a gesture. Hell, Battleborn did this constantly and even when I had over 1000hrs in the game and the contents of the chest were completely meaningless to me, it was nice to know the devs were thinking about their players like that.
Obviously not… There’s a pretty major difference between hundreds or thousands of mahours for one person and having to re-craft an item. Plus if someone salvaged their only version of a weapon it was probably not a red. Anyways, this comparison you’re trying to make here is totally out of left field. It doesn’t equate at all.
The issue is very simply that thousands of players invested hundreds/thousands of end-game hours, each, farming for reds and cosmetics. Millions of combined manhours went into that and the reward value of that time has been retroactively flushed. That’s why people are upset. We bought what was supposed to be a full release, ended up as Early Access play-testers, and the game still isn’t where the ads said it was supposed to be when we bought it. FS created a situation where the best way to win was to not play until now.
But it’s not just in the short term. The longer someone played prior to the patch w/o hording, the greater the disparity, especially when it comes to cosmetics which is what motivates a lot of ppls’ endgame participation. For example, from a cosmetics perspective, the reward value of a player’s time who has 450hrs now will be <50% of that of a new player when the vet has 900 hrs and the new player has 450 hrs. Similarly, since the first 150 chests are simply way faster and easier to get than any that come after that, a veteran player’s time will currently never have a non-trivial disparity in comparison to new players.
Honestly, if someone had just said they’d thought about it, understood it was an issue, and apologized for the situation, that would have gone a really long way. Instead, what we got was in the opposite direction with the “you can open your chests now” comment. I know that’s not the intent but that’s how it feels. A lot of us have sunk a ton of time into this game and dealt with all of the bumbs and bugs along the way and I know I speak for some of us when I say that a healthy chunk of us feel ignored. Other companies just don’t act like this. I’d expect this from EA but not from you guys.
If I had to give you an honest answer as to what would be a really nice gesture for the people who’ve been around since before this patch (ie. the early adopters) it would be to just them a unique skin or frame or hat or something like that. Or just some friggin chests if that’s too hard. Anything that gives us the impression FS cares but the months of deafening near-silence until now have been excrutiating.
