Recruit difficulty needs a buff

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
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So, hear me out. Having introduced a number of friends into the game when I was already at champion/legend difficulty, I had to play recruit with them, which is fine, I didn’t expect to have a blast or anything there, but the reaction from these new players was practically the same.

The game seemed fun to them, but the maps were a bit empty and uneventful. Recruit difficulty just has an extremely low number of enemies, and it can easily be unengaging or just plain boring even to completely new players.
This wouldn’t be an issue, however, if they could immediately jump to Veteran, but the 115 power requirement from Veteran prevents them from going there and having a proper experience.

The gameplay experience shines brightest when you’re carving your way through a seemingly endless horde of enemies, reveling in the gore, sniping a special before diving back into the fray, that sort of thing. Recruit hordes are like, literally 40 rats. You chuck a bomb at them and move on.

So, essentially, I feel like this area of the game needs some changes, because it’s exactly what new players are going to encounter, and an influx of new players is what keeps games alive.
Most importantly, I believe recruit needs infantry enemy counts to be higher. Way higher. Nerf the healthpool of them if needed, it’s not necessarily about difficulty (although it’s also a small part of it), but mostly catharsis factor. Special spawn rates and pickup spawn rates seem good for Recruit. Elites seem alright, maybe up them slightly.

Monsters I have, let’s say, outdated perspectives on? I haven’t encountered many in these past few days as I accompanied a friend through recruit, but back when Shadows over Bogenhafen was about to launch I accompanied two friends and Bosses were just absolutely lethal in recruit. If there’s been changesmade to Monsters since then, ignore this, but if not they need a nerf in damage and possibly health, specially if the rest of the stuff (hordes’ enemy count, enemy count in general for the whole map) is buffed as per my suggestion.

tl;dr about recruit: severely increase enemy numbers in recruit difficulty, to increase the catharsis factor and keep new players engaged in the game for longer, because new players are finding recruit too easy.

However, recruit’s biggest sin is the simple fact that you are forced into playing recruit until you build up enough power to escape asap from it. If recruit is buffed, this wouldn’t be an issue, but it’d also not be an issue if Veteran didn’t have a power requirement at all. This is the simplest solution, but I still strongly believe that buffing recruit is better.

Now, let’s briefly talk Veteran. Veteran has sort of the same issues as recruit, tbh, but definitely not as deeply. The biggest difference is that Recruit’s issues are highlighted by the fact that Veteran has a power requirement of 115, while Veteran’s issues are highlighted by the fact that Champion is much tougher than Veteran, and finding Veteran boring doesn’t mean that Champion will be adequate. Of the friends I introduced to the game, the ones that made it to champion were finding veteran to also be boring by level 8 (this was before the buff to exp for all difficulties, I believe the equivalent rn would be finding veteran boring by level… 15?)
They had the power to get into champion, but they got demolished there. No biggie, though, Veteran wasn’t dreadfully boring or anything, just a bit too easy at times. I believe the answer is the same, increasing the amount of enemies (and this times, also of specials), although only by a small amount.

Please comment what you think on the matter, although the focus of the thread is Recruit.

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I think Recruit should just be removed all together.

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It would be cool to be able to adjust the core main game spawn rate, as there is a modifier for twitch mode.

I mean, you could play twitch mode that would add a difficulty increase on your current difficulty setting, you could also remove the option to get heal/bonuses and only negative effects on your run.
So you’re not completely left empty handed there. Also you can increase the spawning from 100% to 150 or 200%

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I dont know. Recruit is balanced to be beaten by power level 10 heroes with no talents, grey items and little to no knowledge of the game mechnics. When I was new and didnt have high level player tagging along, it felt difficult enough. Still somewhat forgiving as I had to get to gripes with the game, but it´s not like I was breezing through it. It does get boring if you have somebody with you who knows where to go and can take care of anything that might be a threat to you, but that´s not what this difficulty is designed for.

I can see that some people would want to jump into veteran, but I can also see why Fatshark would want to prevent complete newbies from jumping into veteran right away as they overestimate their abilities. But I´m pretty sure that just making the lower difficulties harder would be a bad move, unless you made that optional.

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Recruit is more like you want to do some stupid challenges like bogenhafen jumping then thats its for you :smiley:

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Mmm, I see. Well, tis definitely possible that my presence there warped their experiences a bit.
Nevertheless, it is possible to increase the enemy counts without increasing the difficulty if the healthpool of enemies was diminished in turn. I don’t think Recruit should be -difficult-, but new players should experience the best the game has to offer right away in order to get hooked, and the extremely low amount of enemies in this difficulty takes away from the visceral, bombastic melee combat. If they were constantly fighting stuff (with some breathers, naturally), it’d be more engaging.

And regardless of the presence of a high level player or not, hordes are… astonishingly small. I wasn’t kidding when I said a single bomb can take care of a horde in recruit. That’s way too low.

I believe the forgiving part of recruit should be the high amount of healing items scattered all over the place, and the fact that you can go down several times. Combined, they’d allow you to mess up and rise back up without failing.

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I’m inclined to agree, but I also haven’t played as a lvl 1 in a very long time. When I saw what recruit had while helping people, it was pretty barren. It’s really difficult to get a strong opinion on it now because the power level of all my characters is so high and I have all the goodies. There isn’t a way to really try it out from the beginning again. Weaves sort of did that though, which provided a bit of perspective.

I think when I first played the game when it came out, recruit at the time was adequate for learning but I think I jumped into veteran pretty quick. The thing I found to be a bit of a drag was having to level each character to 30. If there was a faster way of doing it (like each character lower than your highest lvl character had a 50-100% experience boost) it would’ve felt much better. I had experience from Vermintide 1 so I also had an advantage.

If anything, recruit definitely gives a very casual introduction into the game and what you’ll be dealing with.

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My experience will be a bit different, but Vermintide was the game I used to learn keyboard and mouse. I literally had no idea how to use WASD and remember asking a friend “how do I move diagonally on a keyboard?” Recruit was literally the only difficulty I could survive on at the time, facetanking my way through a map, and vet was my first real challenge. I think they’re fine as beginning levels, and games do need to appeal to all skill levels, even those who find veteran a super hard challenge. If someone had buffed them during my harsh learning curve, I think I would have just straight up left. I remember veteran being my first real challenge as a newbie verm player too, and pubbing vet being a really difficult adventure at the time too. Randoms vastly toss in a mode of challenge no matter your difficulty level, and a disabler is a disabler (have died in vet being cocky and guiding friends through levels, and thus starting chains of events that led to wipes).

People play this game for a variety of reasons and difficulty isn’t always one of them (it is for me, but I have friends who won’t play above vet because they like story, banter, map exploring, or just aren’t good at Verm).

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Very fair points.
Well then, I still think that if Recruit shouldn’t be buffed, then Veteran at least needs its power requirement removed.

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That I 100% agree with. No need for training wheels if you don’t want them!

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I had my troubles in recruit due to not knowing any mechanics and my first person gaming skills needed 15 years worth of rust to ground off. If it is anywhere close to what it was back when I started I feel it is fine for people with near zero skill (things like general awareness - recruit allows for periods of tunnel vision). Your presence surely made an impact especially if you had voice comms.

Removing lvl requirement for vet is a good idea though. I guess for most people with recent gaming experience recruit is a joke that gets old quicker than you get to 115 power level.

Regarding that presence, it’d be a nice addition for the host to be able to flag the lobby as “help needed”. The few occasions I’ve done that it’s been a good experience despite not knowing the others beforehand. I’d gladly join a lower difficulty game once in a while (or when low ping lobbies are not available which seems more common now and for the past month or so).

I think Fatshark stated bombs will get their share of rebalancing. Better scaling with difficulty would be good as without any active buffs they can be a bit meh at times.

Edit: to comment on the lvl grind. It was a life saver for me to get a double XP weekend. Now with high XP for all difficulties it’s better, but still it is an unnecessary grind.
imo the power level idea is a bit backwards in general; a difficulty gets easier because you learn and for increasing lvl

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I think removing the Power requirement for Veteran is the best solution. MANY gamers skip past any modes labeled “Easy” and just start on “Normal” I think it’s a mistake to not allow this in Vermintide.

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Well, when I made that comment the focus wasn’t so much on the bomb’s power as it was on the fact that the amount is so low that the radious of a single bomb (without Extended Radious trait) is big enough to cover the entire horde.

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the only reason why this was all implemented was PUGs joined and ran off and just died and ruined QP runs

recruit and vet should be tied together
champ and legend should be tied together in terms of power level
it should be segregated by that much.

from recruit to vet is pretty steep but doable, playing at those lower levels feels like champ to legend now for myself. you def learn how to keep up with the changes

but there just needs to more options like twitch modifiers has but just for regular gameplay
that should def be an option for custom games at the very least.

options that could make things more interesting for just regular gameplay

1. enemy spawn total 100% 150% 200% (currently only for twitch)
2. amount of specials can be spawned ( 2/3/4)
3. RNG boss spawns ( less frequent/more frequent)
4. health pots (less, rare, none, lots/random)
5. bombs ( same as "4" options)
6. pot bonuses (same as "4" options)
7. ammo boxes/bags (same as "4" options)
8. increased damage from enemies ( low/medium/high scaled to difficulty settings)
9. filter map options, set a list of maps to continue, choose map order
10.enable random deeds that you may have in your inventory

spawn 1 type of factions only

  1. rats
  2. chaos
  3. beastmean
  4. any races
  5. rats&choas only
  6. rats&beastmen only
  7. chaos&beastmen only
  8. That also applies to boss type that spawn for those factions

with the options within 4
if options set to high or med-high, you will not get achievements , if set to low/rare/random achievements will be achievable

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maybe recruit was too easy for your friends because you were too overleveled for that difficulty. when i first started playing and was matched with people near my level, i wiped a lot. it wasnt until i got to level 10 before i was able to complete one mission. recruit is fine for new players and shouldnt be buffed since there arent many players on that difficulty anyways. it should stay as it is so new players can experience the game at their speed.

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That I 100% agree with. No need for training wheels if you don’t want them!

My guess is that requirement is more to protect the people already playing Veteran. I mean, if I buy a game nowadays, I dont play that game on “easy”. I´m a seasoned gamer so I play any game on normal at least, sometimes outright in hard. Now imagine you´ve advanced a bit in Vermitide, want to play random and get randoms in the group with characters below level 5 who have barely finished any maps yet, if at all. Your group will probably struggle really bad and maybe go down.
Or, imagine you´re new to Vermintide, get to choose difficulty, play what looks like “normal mode” (because you have played some games before) and repeatedly die. Chances are you´d be sour at some point, maybe blame the game for its poor balance - and stop playing, rather than switching to “easy”, because “easy” is for newbs…

So I kinda get where Fatshark is coming from with that restriction. If they did remove it - the game should at least make it very clear that recruit is the inteded way to start for the average player. Either with some clear labeling and warnings, or by providing some kind of incentive (… maybe giving more XP or double the loot boxes for clearing any level the first time on recruit. Recruit boxes are capped at level 100 anyways, so its not like that would inflate items much). Thus people who really know what they´re doing can skip to veteran, but the average player who might think they know what they´re doing, but really doesnt, gets eased into the gameplay loop properly.

Dont underestimate how Vermintide is for new players. I started this year in August, and while recruit was decently doable, I certainly did feel the step up to Veteran quite a bit. I was scared to play champion for quite a while, thinking I would probably hurt my team with the friendly fire, and thought Legend was absolutely insane and nowhere in my reach to play. By now, anything below Legend feels like a breeze, but I´m not too far removed from that fearful nooby who thought he´d probably stay on Veteran forever that I have forgotten how that felt. Especially for someone who has no higher level buddies and relies on low leveld randoms to get anything done (low level bots without equipment arent much of a help either when you´re leveling your first character).

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