I’ve been active in every solo thread and I’ve not seen a single person ask for specifically offline solo. VT2 solo was online can’t imagine why anyone would expect anything different.
So if we take out your misunderstanding about what people want from solo mode, and just stick to option A), it doesn’t seem like it would require much of a content drought at all to get done.
Especially since they said it was nearly done previously, so surely at least some of the ground work has been done.
If anything you’ve just convinced me further that online solo mode is extremely reasonable to expect from them.
I really don’t care if it is online or offline… I just want a solo game mode.
And if possible, a game mode with the possibility to use our own other characters as bots (boost dlc sales and cosmetics sales - someone did it for the solo mod)
You are speaking as someone who wants to play the game and might also be inclined to spend some money on it, when FS’s target customer may be someone who wants to show off cosmetics but might also be inclined to play the game.
What we’re dealing with here may not be a fat shark: Instead, a späckhuggare - a “blubber chomper,” an orca - hunting whales.
No more than dividing the playerbase across 4 distinct game modes (Base, Havoc, Mortis. Expeditions) already does.
Players still have the online HUB, and if we had the ability to drip out our bots, then cosmetic sales would actually go up. Additionally, regarding “the draw to keep playing,” I play Vermintide 2 almost exclusively solo w/ bots (the exception is the rare occassion where I duo with a friend), and it’s my second most played game on Steam at nearly 400 hours. My most played being Borderlands 2 at ~450 hours
Yeah I don’t think that automatically translates into more cosmetics sales than now. The whales already buy tons of skins for each of their characters.
If the social aspect of the game diminishes as a consequence of adding solo-mode, the “show your drip off to other players in loading screens and during play” would diminish too. It’s not at all clear that this would somehow be out-weighed by already existing whales buying skins for their bots (that they haven’t already and wouldn’t already buy?).
The vast majority of players haven’t got more than 1 or 2 characters they care about.
On steam only 19.1% of players have achieved the “Two’s Company” achievement (have 2 different classes at rank 30)
I would postulate that there is a not insignificant amount of whales that only buy cosmetics for the 1 or 2 characters they play, but give them the option to fill up a lobby with their own bots would suddenly give them reason to play “pretty pretty princess dress up” with the rest of the cast as well.
Notice how each game mode added has a significantly smaller effect on the split of the player base? With 4 game modes, adding solo would, in this scenario, reduce player counts by 5% across the board. While adding expeditions reduced it by 8% across the board. Mortis trials reduced it by 17%, and Havoc reduced it by 50%. Obviously the playerbase isn’t perfectly split like this, so the actual effect would honestly be even more reduced to the point of not even being noticeable. After all, I don’t even play the game since I can’t play it solo, so you’re already not seeing me in your games.
Because people paid for cosmetics in VT2 for their bots, and there are people (like me) who already don’t play, but would play with solo mode and would buy cosmetics if we played. Sales are sales.
No way to know, but likely more than you think and less than I think.
Wait, is this a defense for not adding solo mode? Gotta check after
Because if they/you draw the line at splitting the player base with 1 more “mode” that people actually want vs the modes noone asked for and that were received luke-warm at best, resoundingly negatively at worst, well…that’s just too cute.
The original drip was solo drip (Oblivion horse armour iirc), and sold buckets.
It’s clear that whales are the target demographic of the shop, and it stands to reason a bigger net catches more.
Plus it was a good point someone made about dripping bots, and crafting a squad being an attractive reason to buy more skins. People already go crazy for Krieg sets, why not 4?
Still, it mostly comes down to:
We don’t. Pretty much the only certain conclusion any of us can draw is that we’ve been done dirty. The rest is delightful conjecture until it gets addressed directly
honestly i agree with the point that the reason the mourning star, quickplay, etc are the way they are to force people to look at eachothers microtransactions to encourage more sales. but this specific point i agree with a lot, bot dressup would 100% serve the same purpose and probably way better even
If I could actually summon somewhat powerful bots and have them look like my spare character builds it’d incenticize me to play more, NGL.
The game already stores your last active build on a given character (that’s how it shows them in operative selection) and a functional private game setting with a specified strike team leader would fix the question of ‘whose bots do we use?’ easily enough.
As it stands the bots are useless and I don’t care for them.
It just clicked for me how hilarious some anti-Solo Mode arguments are when you put them together. We’ve seen “not enough people want it, it’ll be a waste of dev time” and “it’ll split the playerbase and ruin matchmaking” in the same thread (different people of course).
