I still need 1 map for Cata… been trying to do it for weeks now. Player count in legend - Cata has for sure dropped. Checked the browser and there was only 9 games going in the entire world for Cata, this was with the browser set to all, not just those that are join able. 2 of them where Weaves…
Dropping down into Legend, most QPs won’t even take books. And it’s to the point I always grab the grim, even on WS/Shade as I can’t count on anyone else to stay alive. I’m not sure if it’s the new difficulty spike or just an influx of newer players. Either way, people seem to be struggling hard with the changes. Even on maps like Halescourge, which normally only took 10-15 mins. Average groups are taking 25-35 mins to finish it not.
Yep. that is the situation what i afraid. We lost old players who could play legend+ because they felt less fun post WOM. It could be fun to new players but as they struggle on legend, they may feel less fun and they will turn their eyes on other co op game like borderland 3 or remnant from the ashes.
Fatshark should change somethings to prevent it
A not-insignificant number of players are driven away by the bugs, too - that’s why I’ve barely touched the game in the last month. I still love it, but it’s almost unplayable. Most people won’t be as patient as me, and if they play a couple times and are getting massive FPS drops, or buggy enemy behaviour, or their bots are acting like morons and ignoring them while they die/jumping off cliffs, they’re just gonna uninstall and move on.
I’m not the only one with these issues, either. I can’t begin to guess what percentage of players have these problems, but it’s a significant minority at least.
Even if these weren’t a factor, the game honestly doesn’t feel the same, in a negative way. I’m a fan of changes like tuning enemy aggression, but something was definitely lost - the best I can describe it as is the feeling of skill expression. It used to be fairly linear in the game, because in many ways it was kind of an old-style game like Doom, when you knew just how many times to Shotgun a Cacodemon. “Stormvermin has 39 HP, I need to hit him x times in the head for an optimal kill”. The challenge was landing those hits while other things were happening, and it started to become second-nature. Now, enemy effective health can massively vary, and there are so many interactions and things simply tied to esoteric mechanics that it sometimes doesn’t even feel like it’s skill-based. I just throw out attacks, cleaving into a mound of meat, and eventually I brute-force through it instead of expertly carving off precise pieces.
Maybe that’s just me; it just seems a lot of nuance was lost. It’s still fun, but it doesn’t feel as good.
I haven’t been playing as much post launch. I was in beta and I didn’t like weaves so i spent 90% of my time playing cata in the beta. It was fun despite many many losses. But then when WoM dropped I played cata maybe two or three runs. As much as people wanted more difficulty even when I was getting the hang of legend it was still plenty difficult for me. I know fun for some is in the difficulty but even if the combat is more “tactical” I just subjectively like it less. On open beta the last map would crash, I cleared dark omens twice on legend only to have the game tell me no. And while I do like the level and faction. The fact that we didn’t get a mini campaign for it ( which would have been terrific) but no its one map busted on launch, and then if you don’t like weaves then too bad. People can spout players just needing to git gud at the new combat as the issue but champion is just fine and plenty of fun still. But if you don’t like weaves then this expansion as content is underwhelming. So yeah if you wanted more difficulty and fight mechanic challenges then you got it. But if you wanted a fun romp through the End Times, then this expansion feels like a move away from that. The result is I’m not playing as much because A) WoM did not rekindle my enjoyment and fervor (well maybe fervor on the forums) for Vermintide and B) I want to see some sort of sign from Fatshark that the content we get going forward is going to be better that what we got.
Couldn’t have said it any better. As much as I love Vermintide 2, I quickly lost interest in the game after WoM was introduced. It’s not because I can’t do Legend runs, but because it’s not fun anymore. They added Weaves, and while I understand the intention behind it, majority of the players didn’t ask for this mode to be put in the game to begin with. 1.6 was probably the golden time where VT2 really shined the most imho.
All we wanted were new maps, weapons, occasional balance tweaks/bug fixes, and the ever-mythical addition of more cosmetics (why FS didn’t add them to the official realm yet is a big mystery to me). Nowadays, I’ve been playing Remnant From the Ashes, and while it has its own set of quirks, it’s been very enjoyable for me so far. Certainly one of the best games that have come out this year.
I truly miss this game, and right now, I feel like I lost something important, as if I lost a close friend or something between that line.
Not to give any credence to the melodrama but my friends and I are in a similar sort of position where it’s been more fun as of late reading/discussing the issues surrounding the game than actually playing it. It’s less frustration and more apathy. Nothing against those that do like the experience right now, but i’ve never appreciated the first game more than the last couple of weeks rediscovering it. It’s amazing how much i’d taken for granted once it was absent or broken in the second, and in retrospect I sort of regret pouring so much time and energy into this one.
It’s not really worth complaining about, though. Ultimately despite all of its problems it managed to be worth the money spent(at least, for the base game) so even if it were to abruptly die now at least it hadn’t been a total wash, and the first game will certainly always be there. At this point i’m more hoping that other developers take some inspiration from the couple of cool ideas VT2 had and see how they could expand upon them. I’d certainly enjoy Deep Rock a bit more if there was more nuance to the combat.
-It’s too buggy to be as unforgiving as it is. More often then not, you lose due to an insta spawn, an ult that didn’t work at a critical time, getting body blocked during the new Terror Events that spawn things in way to quickly and way too close to you, etc.
-The critical mass of skilled players needed to complete runs is gone. They either quit or moved on to cata. Finishing a QP/pug run is just not a thing that happens anymore.
The result is Champ is too easy, Legend is intolerable, and I don’t really play at all.
I keep trying to enjoy it again, but it’s difficult to keep playing a 20 min level for an end event to feel like it can not be overcome.
Last couple days I went 1/5 for skittergate, 1/1 war camp, 0/4 on bracksonbrukre.
The gameplay feels better since the last patch, but it still feels like when defeat comes it was unavoidable. Until I feel like I could have done something better it will remain a chore more than entertainment.
Edit: forgot to mention. I tried one champion game and it was insanely easy. Didn’t feel threatened at all. I don’t know how a newbie would make that jump the contrast is so much
At this point I think many of you werent actually as competent in old Legend as you think you were. There is no way, 4 weeks after launch, you can still be having this much difficulty with Legend, if you were easily clearing Legend pre 2.0. Legend pre 2.0 was able to be solo’d without bots. Legend 2.0 can still be solo’d without bots, and even more careers are viable for it now. 4 man legend runs, premade or not, are literally snorefests. They always have been. Nothing is challenging. Bosses get deleted instantly, specials get one shot, patrols are meaningless…
Yes there is a significant difficulty jump from Legend to Cata, just like there was at the beginning of the game from Champ to Legend. But if you are struggling with Legend at this point, it is not the fault of the game.
I think people are less frustrated by the difficulty itself and more by how inconsistent it is, between bugs and how the game now more actively punishes having weak links on your team. It’s great that the game is pushing you into teamplay but the game’s design doesn’t really accommodate it like the first one did. Obviously people are having a harder time with it, and i’m sure that the new difficulty is a contributing factor, but you’ll find just as many competent people here(maybe more) complaining about the update as you do hooligans just looking to whine.
The guy who started this topic literally cleared Cata FOW and he’s also been making posts about how frustrating the experience is. Again, challenge is fine - but more than just challenge came with the update and it’s been exhausting.
The guy that started the topic wasn’t who I was talking to. The topic is almost 48 hours old. I was responding to the last 5-10 people that have hijacked the thread to complain about Legend being difficult. Legend doesn’t do any of the things you just mentioned in your post. Bots are the epitome of weak links and it is still incredibly easy to do solo bot runs in Legend regardless of what the AI director throws at you. If you are less effective than a bot, you shouldn’t be playing Legend.
Yes Cata is difficult. If you consider the things that make it difficult to be bugs, then I don’t know what to tell you, because for the most part they aren’t. Special spawn rate is working as intended. Beastmen are supposed to be harder than chaos. Dealing with banners is supposed to be challenging and require teamwork. Yes there are cases of silent/quiet spawns, but they are not the norm, and definitely should not cause wipes on their own in 99% of situations.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
I swear.
