Plans for content after Winds of Magic (definitely not a Roadmap post)

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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There was beta and we had the taste of what’s to come in August. I won’t get into feelings about WoM and discuss it here, there’s already bunch of topics and surveys about that. Instead, I’d like to focus on the future content.

I know that a lot of people (myself included) have been asking Fat Shark about the future for a long time. And I understand that Fat Shark have chosen rather not to speak about the future content, not wanting the flame and outrage if they promise something and don’t deliver it “on time” or at all.

I’m not asking for specifics. I’m not asking for dates or names. I would just like to hear some key points, a rough list of things, or just the direction in which you are thinking. I also understand that you want to surprise us, and quite honestly WoM was a surprise (both good and bad for me personally), but again, can you just say something like: “Our next big move will be new maps”, “New character” or “We will start working on creating more unique skins”.

You guys have read the posts. You’ve seen the surveys and polls. You have felt our pulse and seen our wishes. You know that you have the god damn best FPS melee hack and slash out there. In my eyes, you’ve completely nailed the Old World atmosphere and a lot of big names (Creative Assembly for instance) should learn from you. This game isn’t just a game for a lot of us Warhammer worshipers. It became a hobby, a style of life sort to speak. As I’ve said so many times before, with access to Game Workshop’s material and lore you have a gold mine in your hands, you can make Vermintide a game that will be remembered for decades to come :slight_smile:

To wrap it up, I think that a lot of players would like to hear about your next move and future plans. Please share a little bit of info with us :heart:

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Let’s go back to Bögenhafen lol.

Kidding aside, yeah. I think having some reassurance that something is always just around the corner with some rough deadlines in general would be nice. I think regardless of what direction they go, just having regular updates and reassurances that things are always around the corner is essential to keeping the game alive.

Like, I know that crunch time is huge for Winds of Magic, but the fact that we haven’t had anything besides the beta since May and no real content update since March (or longer, depending on your view of 1.5’s Ravaged Art/Weekly Events and 1.6’s limited time map as “content”) is a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge negative to the game that just makes it look really unprofessional in the current era of game development. Cancelling Sonnstill in the name of crunch really just makes me dislike Winds of Magic automatically because of the absolute “all hands on deck” nature of the update.

Being able to confidently say that the next Vermintide update is always 2-3 months max away really would help a lot, in my opinion. I don’t know how important it necessarily is to know what exactly they’re working on is versus having timelines on content updates. It lets there be some element of surprise when new stuff is in the works. Maybe release teasers at most, before updates.

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And I think the most important thing is to not get stuck on something and dwell on it for too long. Pump out content and keep chugging along.

You mentioned battle royales: look at how much Apex Legends tanked because they rested on their laurels about dethroning Fortnite in viewership and concurrent players, but they just did nothing for a while and lost it. Fatshark absolutely had a dominant position within its market on Vermintide 2’s release, but then they just did nothing. It took them several months to show the level of effort to try and entice players back, but many did not, even though the game has improved over time.

Look at Fortnite itself. Regardless of if you like it or not, it innovates and experiments with things in a season, but doesn’t worry about scrapping an idea if it gets stale. They don’t spend forever working on one idea, then obsess over the idea itself. They’ll make content, see if it’s cool and then drop it if they don’t think it fits. Do they add a lot of stupid crap? Yep, and people regularly quit because they’re fed up with it, only to come back when they read patch notes that something else cool was added and stupid thing they didn’t like was taken out. This idea is so antithetical with Fatshark’s current approach with the Weave game mode where they already seem to be preoccupied with the future of Weaves and all the little individual ideas they have planned out for it, even though we’re not even sold on it in the present.

Is it fair to compare Fatshark with these absolute titans with basically infinite resources? Absolutely not, but the truth is still there. Instead, let’s look at Overkill and Payday 2, a Swedish company with 75 employees developing a co-op FPS game that was released in August 2013.

One month later, September 2013? Diamond Store, free map. Month later? Halloween map. 15 days later? First paid DLC update, Armored Transport maps: kinda meh but still only took 3 months since all the first months were filled with bug fixes putting out post-release fires. 15 days later? New weapons. Same month, Christmas time? Free map. Next month? Infamy update (optional progression reset for levels past 100). 7 days later? More new weapons. Next month? Death Wish difficulty update. It goes on forever. This is why Payday 2 lasted so long and why it still has a player base (along with the whole free-to-play stuff). Did they make mistakes along the way that everyone hated? Yep, and they learned from it and moved on.

Now, it’s not exactly fair to compare Payday 2 to Vermintide 2 either. The complexity of developing new stuff that are faithful to the Warhammer universe is a lot more difficult. That being said, give us something to regularly expect. Something so I can say to someone “oh hey something new for Vermintide 2 came out, wanna play?” more than once or twice a year. It feels so bizarre that we’re sitting in what I genuinely believe to be the best co-op game out: the apex of co-op games, but it’s just stuck without regular content updates to keep everything continuing smoothly.

TL;DR: Release content regularly because it’s sad when I have to answer the question “why are you still playing that game?” with “I don’t know, it’s fun I guess?” because eventually I will stop playing it after asked enough times. I want to answer that question with “because they’re constantly pumping out content that’s fun and keeps the game fresh”.

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I’d be happy with them just telling us if we can expect new maps for the base game within this year. And, within the planned 5-10 year life span they put out for game, can we expect a new character?

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The following thoughts are just that, thoughts and theories, not a verified information:

They’ve released Vermintide 2 too early, it was an unfinished product. It has been released in March 2018… I think that they needed at least 6 more months to finish and polish everything up… But let’s take a look at the major updates timeline:

May 2018 - Okri’s challenges, not a big update content-wise but worth mentioning
August 2018 - Sanctioned mods and Shadows Over Bögenhafen
November 2018 - The big balance beta
December 2018 - Back to Ubersreik
March 2019 - Anniversary update (not a major update but I kept it on the list)

So, over the course of 9 months, from March 2018 to December 2018 we had 5 new maps and a big update in game mechanics.
We can say that from December 2018 up until now we haven’t had any major content updates because I really can’t say that the anniversary event was a major update. That brings us to the logical assumption that Fat Shark has been working on Winds of Magic throughout that time.
So, what are we getting in WoM? We are getting beastmen, now this is a major thing because a lot of us have been asking for a new race. But then, we are getting weaves, platform which should, in theory, extend the life of this game. But the problem is, although a lot of us have positive reviews about the concept of weaves, if you go through the comments and surveys, that’s not the content that the majority expected or wished for, at least not now.
So there was no new content for 8 months, and then finally when the big expansion is coming, we are getting something that we haven’t had asked for (bestmen excluded). I think that’s a great risk. Was it worth spending 8 months developing Weaves? I’m skeptic about that. We are yet to see how big of a thing will weaves be.
Would’ve been better if they had worked on beastmen and 3 new maps instead on weaves? I certainly think it would have.

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I don’t disagree with you that Weaves weren’t exactly the prime real-estate for the game, but I think it was a cool way for them to try and push the boundaries and likely pleased at least part of their player-base that was hungering for something like that. They’ve been less vocal, but I’m sure there’re some folks who are enjoying it, which is good. If it took less work than normal, I’m not mad paying for it because I’m happy to support FatShark to go on and make other great content; I want to see what they come up with!

Then again, I think there's gotta be some consideration for how to keep the lights on at FatShark HQ

If we are asking for a new map/balancing/bug fixes/new weapons/potentially a new character every 3-6 months, we have to imagine what each of those things cost to FatShark and what we pay for the work they do. Every new map has to be packing at least 1000 hours of work collectively (that’s what, 3 months of work for 2 people? 3 people? IDK) excluding any time testing it/balancing it/bug-fixing it.

If they made $15 per hour they have to make $15000 on that map alone just to pay dev-costs. If we expect them to support it for another 300 hours of bug fixing per map, that’s another $4500. Then they have to pay bills, promotion, etc… and that’d be a terrible wage for a skilled developer. I also doubt a new map can be made by 3 people over 3 months, so the cost only goes up from there.

I suppose this isn’t so much an argument as opposed to me just trying to shed some light on how content must be released in order to maintain the game. While a lot of people might thing $15-$20 is a lot for 2 maps, I think it’s pretty darn reasonable even if they came with nothing else. I’m pretty satisfied so far and look forward to FatShark outputting more content; everything they’ve released so far has made me a happy camper.

Even so, I think WoM is a huge content update for gameplay and enemies and I am pretty sure I’ll be satisfied with how it encourages players to fight/play as a team, especially for the price. That’s all IMO, tho :slight_smile:

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Oh, absolutely! Pushing the boundaries is what makes a game interesting in the first place (the visceral first-person fighting game has been done, but never as well as in Vermintide IMO) and it would be… disappointing if they turned away from what might be the next big thing.

I think that the system they’ve put in the Weaves for “scoring” is impossible to maintain if the Weaves are random. I’d say that, perhaps, there could be 2 versions of Weaves: one set is the “Challenge Weaves” where a pool of 15-20 weave templates can be randomized and merged in every level (for all of the folks looking for grueling and diverse PvE combat) and then a set of “Competitive Weaves” designed for leaderboarding.

I think that if this route were pursued, we could still understand/support/enjoy all of the hard work they’ve put into the “Competitive Weaves” while still being able to satisfy the randomness that large parts of the community prefer.

Again, this is just me making stuff up as I go… certainly not gospel.

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Honestly, this is the ONE question I want answered. I love this game enormously, easily one of my favorite games of all time, and it will soon become my most-played game of all time. I can get it might take a long time, that there can’t (and shouldn’t) be a ton added. But I love the setting so much I want to experience it with more characters from the settings. I’m such an avid skink-monger because I know Fatshark will make it play super-fun and have interesting dialogue and just be an absolute blast to play and no one else can do it justice. Hell, no one else will literally ever even do it at all. Last best hope here.

If they say “no, we’re not going to add a new character”, well . . . I’ll be bummed. But at least I can know what to expect in the future. I’d still play the game, still love it. I just won’t torture myself with the thoughts of what might be.

And in general on future content; yeah, I get they don’t want to be specific and get anger for not meeting deadlines. Deadlines are tough and suck and reality loves to kick them aside. But just some idea of what would be really nice.

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Well, that’s a solid point but… More than 2 million players bought the game, and Tencent invested $56.3 million into Fat Shark (add DLCs on top of all that). Call me crazy, but I think that there’s enough money to pay the lights. Sure, they had to return some investments from before and a lot of money has probably been spent on marketing. But then again, they haven’t made any new expensive CGI trailers or things like that.

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Yea, but I don’t think that’s asking too much either. Are you planning a new character within the games life time? Yes, No, we’re looking into it but are unsure if we can implement it.

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Oh, I noticed that no one tagged the community Reps yet. So we’re kinda talking to ourselves right now. They’re probably extremely busy with WoM and mostly looking over WoM feedback threads. As I see they have been marking them as acknowledged. Just so they see this, @Fatshark_Hedge pokes

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They’ve mentioned in numerous interviews that it’s something they’re AWARE of, but not looking to activate on at this time (though they said this with PvP too haha)

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I feel like if they were to reveal any information about their upcoming projects, I would rather it be dates/timelines of announcements/DLC, rather than the specifics of the DLC. Let it build a little hype to see what they’re working on, and they can surprise us with on the releases themselves. I feel like if they said “we’re working on a new character”, it’ll make us hype up our expectations and potentially have them be undermined/subverted when they actually announce fine details of the character.

It also lets them underpromise and overdeliver with DLC if they just say “something is coming in December”, rather than saying that they’re doing a specific thing and running into unforeseen challenges with that thing then becomes a broken promise.

Maybe they can do little teaser trailers leading up to content announcements, kinda like what they did with Versus except with a shorter definitive timeline. If something comes in February, release a teaser January to let people speculate/hype before releasing more information and releasing it that month. Knowing that they’re working on a specific project with a Soon™ release date is less enticing, to me, than seeing an unknown project with a specific release timeline that I can expect to watch the news for and be prepared to return to the game for.

Like, Versus looks cool but I’m not necessarily going to follow V2 news for a whole year or however long it takes to actually become realized, if I’m not actively playing the game. A hype train announcement like E3’s Versus announcement needs some tracks for that train to ride beyond “sign up and you may get in the beta once we get to that content update eventually”. A lot of the content updates for existing games at E3 felt like they were more timely like the content update was coming that week or month, to give that spike in interest at that moment.

If they did a new character/career, I think I’d want a teaser trailer with “more information on X date this month” where they can allocate a stream time to officially announce and showcase some of the details, as well as a release date in a shorter timeframe, rather than saying “we’re working on a lot of cool things like X, Y, and Z that are really cool and coming eventually”. In that regard, the Winds of Magic streams showcasing some stuff were cool, but they ran into issues with the distant timeline for the update itself.

Also, as an aside, if you community mods are tagging them on stuff like this, can you tag them to get an “Acknowledged” on my Bogenhafen post? Lol… only half kidding. I think it’d be a pleasant surprise to just see the content get adjusted, not told that they’re considering it eventually.

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Release a Map Editor so the community can make up for the content drought Vermintide 2 is suffering under.

Communicate more with news updates showing art or bits of what is being planned for. Have twitch stream not only showing gameplay but also artistic creation while devs answer questions in chat.

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Haha I imagine that’s exactly a question they won’t answer however, if they say yes people are going to be poking them until they really do, if they say no people are going to be disappointed and won’t have that to hope for anymore. I imagine if it happens it’ll be like Versus, a surprise.

Until then I think their response to it’ll continue to be more like waves fingers this is not the question you’re looking for.

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Vermintide 3 is only thing which they shoud NOT do… it will only divide comunity, they need to evolve V2 as much possible.

Why World of Warcraft is one of most succesful game in world? Answer is simple, stuff which you earned 15 years ago (titles, cosmetics, mounts) can be weared today, and some of them become legend according to rarity and prestige. People stay with WoW only because their work is not deleted.

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As much as I agree with the sentiments of this post I don’t know that now of all times is the best time to ask for something like this. WoM is the focus, they’ve gotten a ton of feedback from that and are now working on the polish for it. They also mentioned seasons, which I think indicates that more weaves will be one of the next goals. But this is a pretty major expansion coming up, and I think its reception is going to be a big determining factor of where they go next. Statements about intent before the expansion my have the same negative effects that the roadmap did where they may change their mind while having given expectations to the audience they no longer want to keep.

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I asked about this in the other thread. And to be honest, this has me really worried. So I have to disagree… I really want to know if more maps are in the works. And I’m sure a lot of other people want to know as well.

I’m not asking for a time line or roadmap. Can we expect new V2 maps within the end of the year, if not, within the next year, longer? Can we expect a new character within the the 5-10 year life span that was given for the game. These should not be hard to answer.

As someone who isn’t excited for weaves, are weaves all that’s really coming for the next 2-3 years with these seasons? Along with Versus mode I guess? What can we expect for the core game, the adventure mode. The bread and butter. Throw us a life line.

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People stay with WoW because they are slaves to habit. A lot of people still play WoW because it’s just “something to kill the time”, it became a side activity basically. Mechanically, the game is so dumb at the moment that even Blizzard admitted that.
I left WoW back in Cataclysm, and I will be back in Classic because for me personally, that was the best version of WoW (for PvE).
Same thing with Vermintide - I will be always back for that classical thing, running around beautiful maps and killing bunch of enemies with other players, as simple as that. Sure, Weaves are nice, but can we first get some new maps + skins and then we can talk about the weaves.

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They already did state that they’re not stopping new maps to comes out (on reddit) don’t know if you see the message from robin.

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