Fundamental Problem:
I played the weaves in season 1 until around weave 95 and really liked the new challenges/environments, but like a lot of other people i mostly
play quickplay, because of time issues or it is not so easy to find others for the long-term commitment of ranked weaves.
Then Fatshark introduces the quickplay weaves which are blatantly dead.
I sometimes look in the lobby browser to look at the current open weave lobbies (of course only non empty lobbies are visible).
As a lot of you already know there are almost no or very few weave quickplays.
Reason?
No real incentive for newer players (if they even have WoM) and around none for veteran players (like myself).
(it is debatable but i think most will agree?)
In the end we have two separate queues for quickplay where most go for adventure, because of loot, quests and xp.
It really bugs me. Weave levels can be really funny and would give more variety if it were possible to combine them with the normal mode.
So question is, whether it is impossible/possible to make ONE quickplay queue.
There are a few design problems which may make it infeasible to collude them.
For later i also have to mention that i tried to search the forums for the same ideas and when i will talk about some ideas later somebody may have already stated these aspects.
See also http://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/athanor-inventory-and-weaves-overhaul-along-with-deeds-and-lohners-emporium/35383 where nobody has answered.
You will also see, that for it to really work, the loot system has to change dramatically.
Combination problems:
- Biggest problem is that we currenty have two separate inventories for the modes.
- You cannot do most of your weekly/daily quests in the quickplay weave mode.
- There is not loot in the weave mode. Further no tomes and no grims.
- Weaves are only available for WoM owners.
- Specific illusions for the weapons in weaves/you cannot choose what you want.
How to deal with these issues
So in general let’s say you combine them. We could either start to think about the problems from the beginning(forward induction) or from the end (backward induction). Normally i would prefer to do it with backward induction but i think it might be better to do this from the
start.
-
Thus, when somebody hits the quickplay button for the respective difficulty we first got to deal with the issue that we have
Non-WoM owners. Usually you cannot join ongoing matches for which you dont have the DLC. That’s not really a problem.
If you get into a lobby that has not already started it will depend on whether somebody has WoM, like with the normal adventure maps.
Now this might be an actual problem, because Fatshark might not want to open a big part of WoM magics to a lot of people. -
One issue also arises when we talk about new players that have no clue that they are actually “in a different mode then”. Easy solution is to
only let the Weaves come up from champion(legend) or higher. This would also imply that there still must be a quickplay weave mode for those
who want to do weaves specifically. -
Next issues is on how will your character load into the match. That is, which of the inventories are gonna be used for the match.
There might be several solutions. First and easiest solution is to only use the inventory from the adventure mode. Second solution consistens of a mixture of both for which reason i dont like this. You have to manage two inventories all the time. Thus i deem this infeasible.
Third option, and frankly quite impactful, means to throw the loot system completely overboard.(I think a lot would like that and youwill see that the old loot system is the elephant in the room 
)
Then we would only use the Athanor for both modes (Probably lore problem). Therefore loot becomes obsolete. So how do we get our nice illusions now? You could still use the chests but now you will only find illusions AND cosmetics. This could involve the chest rarity
to to change the likelihood on what cosemtics to find there for example, but you might already think this is weird.
As you can recognize the third option leads to pretty heavy consequences. Luckily, we already have some nice framework called
“Lohner’s Emporium of Wonders” and the Shillings. We can use that in combination of the change of the “loot-system” to make a really functioning incentivized loot system that does not hit us with RNG and Ranald’s middle finger, but still give longevity. So this thread turns actually into “how to change vermintides loot system into a non-unfair RNG-Game”.
Still let’s say, we now generally have the Shop with the Shillings for illusions and cosmetics as well as the commendation chests, normal chests
and lastly the purple things for the Athanor.(Scrap the crafting system, we dont need that)
The purple stuff now serves for us to level up our heroes weapons and abilities (the scaling would be up to Fatshark on how to set the speed for progression). The problem with non-red items is gone for good which always was a pain in the ass for those who were on the wrong side of the
probability distribution.
So for the illusions and cosmetics the Shop could be enough. Thus how do we get the Shillings and what do we do with the chests. Actually it is fairly simple. You still use the chests but now they contain illusions, cosmetics and Shillings. Illusions and cosmetics with a low drop rate, but you will have the chance to directly get something and the Game-Designers might want RNG and people actually like the rewarding kind of RNG that does not punish you too heavily, because we tackle this issue by the Shillings in the chest. So you will always get something which has an actual value to you. Further people always will have an incentive to play (if we have enough cosmetics or illusions to achieve which coincides with the speed for achieving them).
Do we still need experience? Maybe. It actual delivers different things. Firstly, you get something even when you lost. We can still have that but we just will get Shillings etc. from the commendation chest. Secondly, you would normally raise your hero power and unlock perks. This we dont need anymore. So you could probably even let it go even further than 35 like in Vermintide 1 where it has no “real value” at all besides showing that you really played this game a lot.
Last remarks on this. Do you, Fatshark, really want use to leave with two different inventories and not to use full capabilities of your shop and work of weaves?
- Ok, lastly about how to incentives the “adventure” and “weave” maps equally. Adventure maps still will have tomes and grims…
For the weaves you could determine the execution of the weave itself as a proxy for a chest that will contain the respective Shillings etc.
What do you think?
Hopefully, i have not forgotten something along the way.
Maybe i will also start this thread on reddit.