Player count is going down

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Vermintide 2 - Feedback
#32

:thinking: I swear.

Secondly, specials are working as intended? With all the actual examples of Gutter runners being able to blink strike again, the sound profile of teleports being blotted out by the placement of a flagbearers placement, the screwy AI on two specials in general (with its own topic and examples including an entire envelop of video footage) and sackrats still just being loot pinatas because their spooked AI is back to 1.2 levels of idiotic. I can’t believe anybody could make this statement. Ghosting, sliding and skating, bugs such as jump and walk being unreliable in the same locations of every map 100% of the time, etc etc.

For the umpteenth time and I guess I’ll have to say it an umpteenth time more

This is not a difficulty thing. This is a game feel thing. 4 specials being able to target the same person is icing on the cake. Legend played the “correct way” is boring and mundane. Cata is great. Legend is awful, directly related to bugs and balancing. But more than that, given what’s happened to builds, for at least my career in particular, it’s also frankly boring.

Here have some more games I quite literally just did just for you

Quite literally in Legend and a quarter of the maps in cata I feel confident no matter what that I’ll see a clear. But it’s not fun. Difficulty =/= fun. Hard =/= unfun. Frankly I don’t think I can break this up any more than I already have.

Oh and a tiny footnote
Game feel and dwindling numbers are neither mutually inclusive or exclusive. It follows trends. An expansion came? Old players peaked their heads in. There was a sale going on? New players peak their heads in. Afterwards they either mesh with the game or don’t and go away. There’s absolutely nothing that I or anybody else can draw from any community numbers because there simply isn’t enough information.

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#33

Anecdotal point…but here’s my situation right now…

I’m not good enough to solo legend (never was), but a the monent if I’m playing without beastmen (WoM disabled or no playing into the nest) I can clear legend WITH ONLY BOTS pretty easily. If I add beastmen and bots, I can do it but it’s 50/50. When I QP I have about a 1 in 5 chance of winning, maybe less.

I hate to suggest that the average legend player is worse than the bots, but that’s what I’m feeling right now. People run off and the AI director WILL SPAWN diabalers almost immediately, which can cascade into a wipe really easily.

Yes, for people at my skill level, legend is absolutely harder than it was. It’s harder to carry and mistakes are more unforgiving. Beastmen change the gameplay and it’s a much harder thing to adjust too. But on the other hand, if the bots perform better than the QP pool - maybe that’s the problem right there.

1 Like
#34

I have no idea what career you are playing, so I cant speak to that. Unless you can put your finger on a tangible issue with how the game “feels” that makes it un-enjoyable I cant really speak to that either. 4 specials targeting the same person? I have never experienced that even on the most ridiculous Cata runs… Literally every other bug you talk about has been a feature of Legend since the game came out, especially the skating of mobs, you just didn’t notice it because the dodge window made it impossible for you to ever get hit.

You can play just as fast/yolo in current legend as you could pre WoM. I played multiple games today leveling my Slayer in legend quick plays, and basically didn’t stop pressing mouse 1, mixed with some occasional dodge spam, the entire time. Not sure how that differs from gameplay pre-WoM, but it feels almost identical to me.

#35

If you’ll check my history from “since Legend came out” you’ll note that I directly address a lot of them. And if you don’t want to do that I’ll make it easy by linking it here: The 4 S's: Sight, Sound, Spawns, and Specials

And no. They fixed a lot of these issues, or made them inconsistent as all hell. Enemies popping out of actual thin air hasn’t been a thing since like before even the second BBB. Not even just 1.6. We have a reasoning behind that, this was forked development that occurred ages ago. So bugs smashed that we’ve lived without are back again
Fatshark Hans talks about that here

As for something abstract as “fun” and “feel”? Well as I’ve said before:

Though to be clear. I’m not going to entertain “the game is the same”. So you’ll excuse me if I ignore that part of the retort.

Moving on

Remember 1.08? I remember 1.08. I also remember 1.3. 1.3 was when they made dodging an actual thing you could depend on to avoid damage, because enemies sliding and rubber banding made the impact of raw movement speeds inconsistent, as you never had a clear record of when you were going to get snapped to by an attack that happened four score and seven years ago.

The dodge changes that happened AFTER 1.3 were over the top sure. The ones before and including 1.3 were fine. If they wanted to reduce dodging being a universal tool, and frankly they should have after they overbuffed it again in 1.6 turning every player invulnerable, all they had to do was go to either the 1.3 change or change the ability that were causing problems. They changed attacks for halescourge, for spinemanglr, changed ults so their dash properties worked accurately as a dodge. All of these being great changes. And then…? We now removed back dodge as an option. Alright fine.

Well whatever. Enough of the history. That is then. Now is now. As my old man used to say “‘Used To’ died Yesterday”.

1 Like
#36

Readability issues aside, I have no idea what you are talking about with half of this. 1.3 is literally the patch that made dodging a complete joke. Removed any skill based aspect of it, while upping effective dodge counts of literally every weapon. There is a reason that over 80% of my hours in this game came before 1.3. If it wasn’t for the DLC in December, it would’ve been more like 95%. Base Legend literally turned into a pure dungeon crawler, with almost all sense of survivability mechanics removed.

You repeatedly say that the game isnt “fun”, yet cant name anything tangible that makes it not fun for you, aside from a handful of infrequent, fairly low impact bugs, that are almost entirely avoidable/manageable.

P.S. Back dodging multiple enemies has always been a terrible idea. It was in vt1, and it has been here since release. The fact that they finally made it even more punishing, shouldn’t change anything.

#37

I’ve repeatedly said that it’s subjective and will always remain a difference in opinions.

I like being able to depend on my tools. I like bugs not happening. (Which infrequent? Seriously.)

On the topic of base Legend. Once they pruned out the issues like Silent Patrols, Silent hordes, suddenly surrounding hordes, and a host of other issues it became far easier. The first wave of dodge changes in the beta were nice and fine. A chaos patrol just smashing back to back overheads that were just impossible to deal with depending on your character was frustrating. That was the only reason dodge changes were needed to begin with. But an unfortunate result is that elites are still jokes.

The only thing that hits players in this game are specials, berserkers, and infantry. Crap like Burblespew and Rasknitt being changed to actually miss was a great thing.

But given you’re likely to bring this up again
What do I like or find “fun”?

  • I like being able to hear specials.
  • I like the sounds of specials being consistent.
  • I like enemies not popping out of thin air.
  • I like my hits registering and staggering the things I hit.
  • I like the old talents for my careers of choice.
  • I like the ability to separate from my crew in a horde (though admittedly you can and I do still do this).
  • I like the different rules that dictated specials.
  • I like more consistency and tools that allow that consistency.
  • I liked when gutter runners were more prone to operating under the laws of the game
  • I liked when I could dodge an enemies down swing and not get hit by the thing because I successfully dodged the downswing.
  • Liked the functional slot system as well
  • I also liked when things did go bad generally due to hyper twitch shenanigans and we have to team together hard core to pull out a win. Things like that are great.
    Oh. And I liked being able to queue into a mode and having a game to join or my own filling up. Getting Cata rooms is like pulling teeth.

All of these things contribute to levels of fun and their opposites decrease the fun I personally have with this game. And to head off an anecdotal “well I don’t see the difference”. That’s nice and all. But you wanted me to label what I found “fun” for some reason.

Frankly this whole affair is rather weird. I responded to a blanket statement that the game was disliked because it was difficult in Legend. Which is simply not true for everybody. For some people that remains true. It can’t be argued that the game is relatively harder to solo now due to special combinations and the existence of beastmen.

Honestly. “low impact you say” Leap being broken on sittergate, on terrain, on hills, and in random spots in every map isn’t low impact. That’s life or death in a game. Quit being silly and/or obstinate.

Oh:
And as an FYI, back dodging being bad for most attacks is fine. It being bad for stationary attacks where the enemy doesn’t move forward is simply terrible.

Lastly, as I’ve said before

Though maybe I’m being the obstinate one? Regardless, this isn’t likely going to lead into any productive breakthroughs for either of us. So I’ll consider this particular conversation chain done.

I should close this with a postword that I believe Cata is great. I like Cata. What I don’t like are all the changes being blanket enforced on every difficulty. This isn’t the experience I paid into going into the beta of this game.

7 Likes
#38

Not being able to use leap on part of the Skittergate platform is not a high impact bug… There are places on the platform it can still be used, and you have teammates for a reason. There is no way that being able to leap, or not leap causes a wipe by itself. Could it be a factor if you are the last one alive and you cant leap to res your teamates? Sure, but you shouldn’t be in that situation anyways. At least not on legend.

A high impact bug is an invisible mob walking up to you and one shotting you with no warning. Or having players disconnect from weaves when transitioning to the arena zones. These are frustrating, unavoidable, unmanageable, and will lead to wipes in most situations. These types of bugs are typically patched out within a few days or week of their first occurrence.

I get the fact that you think the game should be completely flawless, bug free, and cater to your expectations, but that isn’t how game development or life works. Vermintide from the very beginning has been a chaotic game that you are meant to adapt to, learn from, and succeed against all odds. If that isn’t what you want from the game, then I think you are playing the wrong game.

#39

It’s more the bugs and other new features which make it frustrating. Fighting some ambiant elites, I drop back to hagbane after proc my double shot. Rear is clear, just looked, fire off a few shots, turn around again and an entire beastmen horde is now in melee distance with running attacking incoming. Wtf?

Then you got mobs spawning in behind players, you can even see it happening to your team mates. This leaves me walking around with block up nearly 24/7.

And ofc, the spooky ghost boy mobs. You actually land your first hit on them, and then the CW or SV or whatever it is teleports off this plane of existence. The really scary spooky ghosts are the ones who somehow unlocked the shades ULT. You see them disappear, assume they’ve been sent to another plane of existence like their brethren before them. Then 2 seconds later, they reappear with a overhead on your side. It’s frustrating to say the least…

6 Likes
#40

I think you’re bringing up a valid point here; increasing difficulty should get people to cooperate more, but in a general population you’ll still get a lot of people who can’t do that, and it only takes a couple per game to ruin it for everyone else. Simply making things harder isn’t enough to encourage teamwork.

We got more buffs for being near allies, but I think it might help to add even more (and make it much more apparent their range), and give some kind of indicator for your relative position to your allies. It could be dolled up however you want, but having some kind of buff icon that changed colors as you moved further from your allies (maybe with a tooltip that “when it turns black the Skaven will focus you down for being alone”) is one way to help with this. It doesn’t have to be connected to a direct buff/negative, but having an easy-to-read indicator that tells you “You’re in danger!” might help more casual players learn to stay near their team, especially if they get buffs for doing so.

2 Likes
#41

Wait a minute… Animation canceling, shade ulting, ping related shenanigans. Are we already playing Versus without knowing?

2 Likes
#42

While new change is the reason why old players leave the game, but i also agreee that bug is the one of the reasons why old players leave game. Look at this Video.

10:50 You can see that there is no marauder in the corridor.
11:01 I defend myself besides wall but suddenly marauder is spawned behind me and hit me.

This is one of the real problem VT 2 has.
We report numerous time, but almost nothing is fixed.

With Beast man, this can cut your hp 70ish and glass career will be downed by this spawn bug which is not player’s mistake. Because of Dev.

I felt that Our feedback and Our bug report are ignored.
Anyone saw review on steam? players who play 100 ~ 5600 hrs left game.

Edit 2. 100 ~ 5600 hrs on just one game means they really loved VT2.
They didn’t give up playing game even though there was no update for a long time.
But then, they left because of new update. We need to consider this.
Before we suffer from low number of player base

9 Likes
#43

Yea, doing full book runs on Cata is really a game of chance now. You never know if that gor is gonna spawn behind you and 1 shot you with it’s ridiculous 75 hit damage >_< Then again, clan rats could already hit 50 damage on Legend pre-WoM if they were alone and from behind.

2 Likes
#44

I was honestly expecting you to get bonked due to some reasonable doubt that a marauder wasn’t there. But no yeah, that thing just fabricated out of nonexistence to give you a love tap.

1 Like
#45

That marauder is maybe one of Tzeentch’s spy on papa nurgle.

2 Likes
#46

No, this actually happens a lot. And strangely enough, it’s nearly always a mob that doesn’t belong. Like during his vid it was a chaos during a skaven horde. Same thing will happen in reverse.

The rest of the time, it’s just random BS. Backs to the wall, what’s this, back stab noise indicator. Turn around and somehow we missed the mauler behind us nearly inside the wall :joy:

4 Likes
#47

Maybe unrelated but what is also interesting is that currently the saltyness-levels in game are rising extremely currently. Especially in Legend some QP feel like literal salt mines with players hurling insults and complaints at each other much more. Which is kind of sad given that VT usually was a very friendly environment previously…

I still think that the rebalance of Legend was a bad idea. In Cata, if you are able to find a party that is, people seem to be more… professional(?) and chilled while Legend is just awful. And Champion is currently populated with literally everything else as you can run the most stupid meme builds and still kill everything with ease.

So from a design and play-base perspective the changes where really bad as currently there is no challenging go-to difficulty. It is either Cata which really emphasizes pre-made or just goofing arround in Champion. Both is fine but not really the thing you want to be doing all the time…

3 Likes
#48

We can solve that problem by the way league of legend did.
During Dice ~ result phase, Let player can award a mark for cooperative play.
Granting rewards like portrait or weapon illusion or red dust to player as they get certain number of cooperative play mark.

1 Like
#49

As somebody that plays league. That didn’t solve anything. Fakenice and robot tricking sarcasm exists for that reason and more. It was a nice step in a right direction, but that toxicity is just stuck thee forever

1 Like
#50

'course its going down.

The complete disregard for players time is insulting enough, but add on top the incredible instability with bugs and unreliable behavior of enemies, why would anyone want to play this mess when there are so many other, better options out there?

Deep Rock Galactic springs to mind, easy to have high hopes for their next update - as it seems the danes are going to make a better setup than weaves(then again that doesn’t take much), that’s for sure. But time will show!

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#51

I think it suffers from what Champion did in 1.6, where people are on the cusp of good gameplay practice but just can’t contain themselves when things go south. This is what new legend is. All the old Legend players moved to Cata and so the Legend playerbase wound up with high sodium levels, unfortunately.

I’ve fortunately had very mellow Legend pubs (save that one troll who went from game to game team killing people), but I’ve heard horror stories.