Steam player count shows that people start to stop vermintide 2. Number became almost same as before WOM. With new game modes(Weave & Cata), Problems become worse and worse by combination of decrease and separation. On this week, it is hard to find +legend diff adventure mode lobbies in our region. Also, i couldn’t play weave either because i can’t get full squad on this week. I want to reach weave 120 but i see only darkness since none of my steam friends play vermintide 2 on 9 pm ~ 10 pm friday. I think Fatshark should do something before too late.
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Considering WoM was supposed to bring the endgame content, this is probably not going according to plan.
Maybe the game director misunderstood and thought he had to end the game.
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Yeah they need to change current game fast as they can. I saw old veteran players returning at first week, lots of 500 deed guys on kor, jpn and Tw. But now, they gone, new players from sales remained…
I just… can’t find even legend game lobby… we need change…
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The speed of bug fixes and Weave rework(?) can probably not be raised if we want quality behind it.
What they could do tho in my opinion is, to show us what else we can look for.
What is the outlook on the emporium and the deed rework?
What other content is lined up for the next 3-6-9 months - weapon/talent/property/trait balances, plans for the next DLC.
And to gain trust again, forget about the usual style of communication. Improvement was promised, but nothing is happening. We can no longer be satisfied with “in progress, we’re looking into it, we have ideas that will be awesome” and whatever witch lights we’re shown in the past.
You need to up your game, FS!
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If they fix barkskin and enemy dmg decrease per targeting on higher weave, i could bring back my guys.
But yet, they are still borken…
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New school year is beginning in most european countries and most player are between 12-2x so it s probably a big part of the explenation.
Otherwise, i ve stop playing 2 days ago because of the bugs. I cant stand playing more than 3 games in a raw. I ve tried some solo runs with bots on cata (mainly for fun) and the amount of specials spawn bug is just insane , playing solo just made me realise how clunky the whole game can be.
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The increase in interest in the game came after the 2.0 update. After a large number of players saw “improvements” and after the failure of WoM, the population is falling, which is a rather natural phenomenon. I think it will stabilize at 4-5k like before july.
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Hmm vacations ending and players count goes down hmmmm
You, sir, owe me a new keyboard. Well played.
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That’s nothing new, my friend. All games with expansions have a surge of new and old blood and then taper off back to the old stable levels.
Besides there’s only so many man hours you can thread the needle with before productivity ceases and you start moving and reverse
This was a post made on the steam forums as well and I’ll say the same thing here I said there. Its expected that the numbers will drop post expansion as hype dies down because many people are going to come check it out and leave. This has nothing to do with like or dislike of the game they may just play to see the content and that’s all they expect out of the experience.
What is important is does the player level drop to below that of pre WoM numbers. At this point the game is still up by I think a couple thousand players so if those are retained then you could say the expansion was a success. Anyway point is while its worth looking at we’re not there yet (though if you did want to speculate you’d need to look at BtU growth/retention from its release).
Edit: Wow, correct me if i’m wrong but the player count peaked higher for the one year anniversary event than Back to Ubersreik release by about 5k players. I didn’t really expect that. Though to be fair “A Quiet Drink” is one of the most impressive pieces of game content I’ve played, a wonderful culmination of game mechanics, level narrative and voice acting.
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This point as useful as the one that stated that userbase is at highest it’s been this year.
Regardless, I want to point out my opinion, time for rapid changes to address the complaints is over, irrelevant of what FS does now it’s no longer feasible to sway opinion of leavers and remainers. Those who left won’t be coming back until new stuff comes back and if game’s state satisfies them, they’ll come back, remainers will stay no matter what.
Eh I wouldn’t say no matter what for the remainers. As far as combat I don’t like it as much as the old combat but I think with some beastmen and weapon balance it will be in a state where I can still get the vermintide experience (just more at champion than legend). And I’m willing to stick around for the next content update. WoM is not a good expansion for me but the question is how does it guide future content? While I’m willing to stay now if the next DLC strays farther from what I want out of Vermintide then that willingness might change. Its more a wait and see issue for me right now than a hard commit or hard pass.
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I must be an outlier because I really like the current version of the game.
Player count seems to be settling down but is still a bit higher than pre WoM
Yes, things need to be ironed out:
Traits
Some weapons
Some talents
Beastie boys spear boys
Deeds
Skins for WoM weapons
More cosmetics
SLAYER
The list could go on
And yeah, a quiet drink is friggin epic. Gotta load into modded and see if it can be played on Cata.
As others have said this is normal. For pretty much any game like this with regular updates, a large amount of players are around for the update, but that starts to trickle down a little as they go off and play other games or do other things.
I personally have been playing a lot of VT1 recently as while WoM is an improvement over pre-WoM, I am reminded of what I loved about VT1 and what is lacking in VT2 - the slower, precise gameplay and consistent theme.
Whether new players climb to cata & weave or not is what i afraid. I understand that Experienced players will be bored quickly even though new dlc released. If New players can climb up to cata & weave, i am fine. But even legend before WOM was hard to new players. Post WOM legend+ is definitely hard to new players and what i fear is there will be less players whom i can play cata or weave with. Europe and north america won’t suffer from small base of players but other regions will suffer from it not far future
Was it? I’m unsure.
I have the opportunity to go to 1.6 due to me being on two platforms (PC and console), and it’s weird how fast I can clear maps on 1.6 legend in retrospect. 2.0 gave me some context on why things were so strong and why some talents were removed in this iteration of balance. I think with any difficulty, ease comes with time (that time being variable). Do people struggle in Legend? Sure. Do some people find 1.6 Legend too easy? Absolutely; which is where 2.0 came in.
Cata and Legend are most certainly doable for any player, given enough time. I am not good at video games in any way, shape or form, particularly FPS–so if I can do it given enough hours, I think anyone can. 
A lot of 2.0 Legend difficulty comes from special spikes and being caught in some sticky spots, but taking those out makes the adaptation to Cata more of a gap. If you make something too easy, it also causes boredom, much the same way make something too difficult, people get frustrated and leave.
I’d wager leaving isn’t coming from just legend being too hard now, so much as a culmination of these factors:
- Frustration due to changes in play (it’s different and the knee-jerk; mine included were “I’m sorry, but I hate it all.”)
- Frustration due to events that were previously easy being tuned to scale with difficulty (Cata/Fort/Righteous stick out to me here)
- Beastmen doing bizarre stuff and causing frustration
- Lack of interest in what the DLC offers
- Culminated by the fact these adaptations make loot much harder to farm
I think a lot of people in Cata and Weaves are in pre-mades, which means you’re suffering from the same problem my home platform (PS4) does, where you sit a lobby by yourself for a bit.
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I’m not unsympathetic to this line of thinking but there are multiple ways to have addressed difficulty concerns that didn’t involve alienating half of the core base by completely changing game feels of existing difficulty.
Given that FS isn’t shying away from creating new content with no tangible rewards that directly looped into player power it’d be just as easy to have created another difficulty on top of cataclysm that maintained rules of spawning, ai, dodge ratios, and various other adjustments so that players could have continued playing the game in the way they originally enjoyed.
As i’m sure you’ve at least heard, there is an entire community that have either refused to update or are now playing other games. Was 1.6 easy. Sure why not. Was it fun? Lots of people seemed to think so or we wouldn’t be having this conversation
As for "you just need to adapt?"
Frankly I can’t even stomach the idea of even humoring the “scorched earth” policy to balance given that it’s the same recorded pitfall that has quite literally damned entire mmos (and a few mmo fps hybrids) before. Much like a divorce, separation from players and game are due mostly to a game no longer exhibiting the qualities a player fell in love with.
Back to my previous statement, you see the difference isn’t if something is clearable or not. It’s if somebody is having fun while doing it. Fun is an abstract word that means absolutely nothing and can have different interpretations. The only real metric would be measuring the worth of pre 2.x. Was pre 2.x a good game?
If it was: Then why was it necessary to change what players already knew and loved?
If it was not: Then why did the community generally have positive responses to the game as a whole?
One of the biggest thing I and others I know wanted was an extra difficulty level. A bit tuning to the overall game here and there and a rebalancing of some redundant or otherwise useless traits. This was not that.
In the end it’s a matter of differing opinions of what people want. You are satisfied with this new game and others are frustrated
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I’m a little confused. How is my statement scored earth? I didn’t think my statements were so drastic sounding, but maybe my tone didn’t translate well through text. Genuinely curious to hear where I went wrong.
Further, I’m not saying your opinion is any more or less valid; it’s just that–an opinion. We’re allowed to express differences, that’s what makes this community so vibrant. Wouldn’t be a discussion if everyone agreed. 
My stance comes from skill development, I suppose. As for me, personally, I find fun in improvement and satisfaction in “wow, I finally did the thing!” 2.0 has a bit more nuance than 1.6. It took me some time figure them out, but I got there eventually and hated 2.0 less. That’s not to say 2.0 doesn’t deserve some changes, but I think the direction it’s in is fine (not DLC wise, as I’m torn on weaves at them moment and don’t like Cata locked behind a paywall. I don’t enjoy how absolutely HARD beastmen hit in comparison to the other factions either).
I’d be curious to see how opinions would change on upping greater reward drops in say, Champ-Legend, as Legend doesn’t seem to be viable farming/carrying difficulty according to the community right now. This, in turn, would allow people to set goals for development while still achieving something tangible instead of trying to grab books in a difficulty that they’re relearning.
Only FS has the data on why these changes were made; we can only speculate.
Just my opinion, of course, no one has to agree with it.
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Ah. To begin with, I’m not talking about anything you have said, just a bit of a sledge hammer approach to this expansion. Especially after this no longer remained true. I’ve seen the phrase adapt be tossed out in vain at players who would sooner just wash their hands of the entire affair. That’s not their responsibility.
As for skill development. I’m all for the series of process improvement and the feedback look of player development. These things are a combination of the tools you use based on the situations that present themselves for the player to explore. And using preparation as well as previous instances to express player freedom through knowledge of the game. I have both written and apply the wheel to quite literally every game. But this isn’t the conversation about that. People liked the old Legend, it’s not the Old Legend and in fact the =<Legend experience has completely changed. Nothing changes that core fact.
That I or others dislike the current gameplay because it’s “hard” is a bit of a silly statement. (all created for this post specifically 3 tries, 3 wins) I and others who were at least at a competent level before, remain at one. There’s not much to get there.
Alongside the returning of bugs that influence delightful AI behaviors like ghost and phantom hits, lovely things like this where you get taxed, and others such as the combination AI for specials and other such what not regardless of the beastmen, the game stagnates skilled expression by introducing a new design philosophy in that they want players to huddle together. And without doing that, you’re now guaranteed to take large amounts of damage. L4D Expert Realism encourages group play, and sure you’re going to get hit, but if you die, it’s your fault and nobody else’s. Not the games, not the director, not bugs, not your teammates, not the situation. Your fault and only your fault.
Meanwhile the new AI director can do absolute beautiful trash such as spawning 4 disablers all targeting the same player. I’ve talked at length, about this topic too. Admittedly on another website. That actual no response situations or ooh response situations are unhealthy for this game. That the current air in the game where players expect to be disabled by a gutter runner in cata and that people assume that if they die anywhere it’s going to be from a special during a horde or a mino is just complete bananas.
But hey some people love that now, so that’s just a different in opinion. And to be fair, I’m fine with it too despite the initial look of these misgivings. But I sure don’t approve of forcing these changes down other players throats. This isn’t’ the game they bought.
People would still lament the differences in difficulty. Because Champion just as always is a huge drop in quality from even on Legend and it still remains just a mind numbingly boring.
I personally am fine with Cata. And I have talked, at length, about the small things about it that could be changed to increase enjoyability. What I and many detractors dislike is the fact that the core gameplay up to that point was completely changed.
The only thing I’m more interested in is what the numbers of our population lie at once the hype dies down. Because only then will it actually be possible to stop making assumptions on just how well received these gameplay overhauls were.
As for opinions?
Well as I just finished saying in the post you responded to.
Though now that i’ve had time to reflect, admittedly there’s nothing that’s going to be said here that’s new to either of us. So I’m sure you won’t mind if I abscond.
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