Rewards for end game are wholly unfulfilling

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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With 1118 hours of VT1 and 706 hours and counting I can safely claim I love this game. But the rewards for end game play in VT2 are if I’m, being honest feels horrible for the effort to me.

Don’t get me wrong I’m still doing Legend Runs, and I very much enjoy the challenge. But to me it feels like the challenge and the cool cosmetics are all I’m playing for at this point.

I still have a awful lot of red weapons to collect it’s taken 100s of champ and ledge runs to get my elf so that 80% of her Eqipment is Red. And yet I still don’t have either of my two fav weapons ( Sword and Dagger or duel daggers ). In the last few days I have opened at least 13-15 vaults Grinding out the Waystalkers and Handmadiens tier 3 armor and working on their helmets. I think I found 1 maybe two red items and one was my 5th or 6th red crossbow the other a 4 charm. It’s frustrating and disheartening to finish a 4 hour session and have zero character porgession.

It seems like anynumber of solutions could help this, red dust to craft specific items with as opt in reward you can pick when opening any vault or Emp chest in place of items ( pick random items or dust as the reward before the loot box is opened. And harvested by salvaging red items you don’t want.

A hard cap of two or three successful legend runs before the game gives you a single red item as a reward.

Have exp and gen vaults only have 1 item in it but it’s always going to be a red item ( and it would be amazing if it didn’t give you duplicates of reds weapons you already own when possible) maybe this one is going to far but I’m sure it could be something like this with out making it to easy to collect reds.

Even something like more transparency on the odds of getting red weapons might help. If I’m just having bad luck right now and the drop rate avg is higher than what it seems for me right now. It could help a lot for players to see that.

I’m getting power level 295 items out loot boxes for the hardest setting I can play the game on ? Finishing levels with all the books ? Please make this stop.

VT1 crafting system seemed far better at giving players consistent forward progress even if it wasn’t necessarily fast progress. After the shrine was added it was so much more rewarding to play nightmare and Cata because after every run you could try to infuse your weapons for better stats on abilities you want to have.

It’s super, super annoying to throw 50-100 shard ( including both blue and green shards ) and have a very legitimate chance of ending up with a inferior weapon. This didn’t happen with the shrine, absolute worsts case was it’s going be as good as it was before you started if already had pretty good rolls on a property, but most likely it’s going to be noticeably better than when you started.

The other aspect is the silliness of getting the same rewards for maps that are by default going to be harder than others. Hunger in the dark as a example, nothing good ever happens in the darkness escorting the cart. It’s always a scary few mins in that darkness on legend runs. The two new DLC maps, super cool maps, lots of ground to cover though, long runs means more combat and a greater risk of failure and greater commitment of time by the party for literally the same reward I’ll get from any other map.

And while I do get that lords drop loot dice, it really doesn’t seem to matter since its improving my odds of getting something useful by a very marginal factor. I have zero sense of excitement or anticipation when opening a Vault, gens chest or emp chest, theirs zero expectation of finding something useful. And when I do finally find something useful after 20-30 hours of end game gameplay, I’m not like “ oh cool a new weapon” I feel more like “about d*** time !)

In closing, I. Not hating on your game guys/gals it’s a super fun game to me, as evidenced by the amount of time I spend playing. But the end game rewards suck ( I’m sorry to be so blunt ) and I mean it’s only a matter of time before most players reach the end game in a loot grinder. Maybe none of my ideas are viable for where you want to take the game. But please at least consider what I’m saying and address the end game rewards.

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Agreed. The loot system is just bad. Tbh I don’t understand how they can make this bad of a loot system in a pvm game. Bad/Boring loot systems like this are usually prominent in pvp games since it’s that much harder to balance everything. In this game there should be a lot more interesting traits/buffs tied to weapons and even armor and those should not be achievable via stupid rng.

An enticing loot/reward system was their chance to keep players playing the game. Because that’s eventually what made games like diablo3 so addictive. Playing for the sake of gameplay will only keep so many players. Yes the gameplay itself is excellent and very entertaining and immersive and that’s why I kept playing the game for so long, but eventually even I am growing a little bit tired of it. These days I’m sometimes really hyped to play vt2, but then after 1 legend run I’m already kind of tired and don’t wan’t to play anymore, and the shitty reward system doesn’t help. That’s where a good loot system without any rng should’ve come in place to give me some motivation to grind.

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Red dust conversion system is coming. Hopefully FS gets it right.

A guaranteed red after 2 or 3 Legend games would be too easy IMHO. Thats like a guaranteed red every day.
Would have to be 10 to 25 IMHO.

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They said they’re going to add a red dust system. I’m sitting on about 20 trinkets and necklaces, 6 of each bow and crossbow, 4-5 two handed swords and swords & daggers, etc. All for the elf mind you, lol. Yet I have never got a set of red daggers and I finally got a glaive after close to 500 hours in legend xD I have all the legend armour for elf and the 100 clear hats plus all the commendation chest hats and a few of the bög DLC hats as well.

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I get it, and in my frustration last night some of my suggestions might be a bit to knee jerk. I know it’s not easy to finD the sweet spot of fun and fair rewards, with out making it to easy to “finish” the end game.

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i mean this isnt rpg. well the dev dont want vermintide to be rpg (yet somehow they added a bunch of rpg stuff like hero power e_e?) so really the end game of this game should be compared to l4d. are there any reward at l4d (or l4d2) end game? not really. are people still playing l4d (and l4d2)? yup.
:stuck_out_tongue:

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I mean VT at its core is a loot grinder game type. The loot at the end of the run is the primary carrot. It was the only real carrot ( besides achievements, that honesty a lot of people didn’t care about ) in the first one. And it’s the pretty much the same in VT2. You are gonn hit max level with all your goons long before you collect legendary equipment for everyone.

Unless something has changed in LFD theirs no persistent char progression of any kind or difference in the chars them self that I know of.

People don’t play LFD expecting to find a better gun this play through or anything. People do expect new and better equipment as they play VT.

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I think the core VT is the gameplay loop, not the loot grind. Yeah, they added in loot - is that even an option not to anymore in a game? People would have crucified them even worse than they are for the bad loot system if they’d had zero progression, or progression as minimal as VT1 (I recall before 2 came out, people were clamoring for a deeper loot system; this is deeper, but it’s not good).

But yeah, as others said, they are working on a red dust system. I hope it’s not too expensive, despite hundreds of hours I’m not even sitting on a full set of red items; I still don’t have a red necklace, and not a lot of other reds, either. Ranald really doesn’t like me. I don’t really care that much, except I’d really like a red Executioner’s Sword, it being my favorite weapon.

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Exe is also my favourite weapon and it took me 500 hours to finally get the carrorburg honor blade. Still waiting for mecklenburgs revenge.

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No I don’t.
Please don’t expect that everyone who plays a game that has loot, plays the game for that loot.
I am perfectly fine playing the game just because I like playing the game, and the primary reason to get loot is to try out things I haven’t done yet - which doesn’t even require reds.

While I see the reason people are upset, and kind of agree, the red dust system is probably all that is needed.
Dunno, might take 5 reds to get a new one, but people would get what they want.
If there’s loot, and people aim at getting it, it should be scarce in the end - the few times I actually grinded for something I always felt disappointed once I got it, because what would I work towards now?
Which, I guess, is exactly the problem with the loot system, and especially the new boxes - there is no way to work for it. You just get it. Or, more likely, you don’t.

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I’m not saying that everyone plays it for loot, I’m just saying it’s the primary carrot for a large enough portion of the community for it to matter in relation to keeping players playing at the end game.

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I’m not convinced on that. While the loudest part certainly is one that complains about different aspects of the loot system, presumably at least partly because they see loot as a major part of the game, the loudest parts are rarely the largest. I’m guessing that the silent majority plays the game for fun first, finding the base game enjoyable enough by itself, and for loot second, getting what they may and working with what they have. Because otherwise I doubt this game would have even its current playerbase if people really took the (completely random in several layers and frankly mostly unrewarding) loot as primary motivation. This is guesswork on both sides, though, and the people in the forums (Steam or official) and other communication sites are pretty much by definition part of the vocal minority, so I doubt we’ll get any kind of reliable confirmation either way.

As you probably noticed, I do think that there is a lot that could be better on the loot and crafting side of this game, but I also think it’s nowhere as serious as some people make it to be. We got a solution (even if it’s a bit clumsy) to the dust imbalance problem, and there is a solution under construction for the troubles with reds. So it might take a while, but it’s getting better (and considering VT1 at the beginning didn’t even have a possibility to reroll weapons at all, we’re already in a better place now).

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Just for a little glimpse into my perspective, try running Waystalker with Longbow, using only Vaul’s Quiver to recover ammo. Okay, I personally use also Conservative with that, but I don’t specifically try to abuse it on hordes to recover extra. That’s quite close to what I think the baseline on a ranged Career should be: Able to shoot Elites and Specials, with occasional few arrows into hordes to soften them up, but if she spams arrows into every horde and roaming enemy, she will run out, thus either necessitating pacing and drawing melee weapons from time to time (or trusting her friends to handle things, which is bad form imo), or forcing it in already tight situations. Add horde abuse and/or Kurnous’ Blessing and she can spam arrows on everything, only having a real chance of running out of ammo on bosses or several closely timed dispersed hordes.

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So, given that there is a thread on ranged, and this here is a thread on endgame rewards, I assume this post was supposed to go into that other thread?

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I mean just to entertain this off topic post a little bit. I have no love for the long bow, it’s not my style. The mobility of the Short Bow works better for me and I hate being forced to zoom in. I have tried it on many occasions it just not my thing. I don’t use ammo return traits on my waystalker bows. Her passive was more than enough for any of her bows. At least it’s enough for each of the bows when used for what seems like thief intended role.

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Yep, very much so. Apparently I had a more serious brainfart than usual. That’s what you get for sleeping too little for several nights in a row… I’d appreciate it if a friendly @Fatshark_Hedge could move the post into the right topic, if that’s possible. If not, oh well.

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I personally think that the new Bogenhaffen weekly drops are a huge improvement to this problem. Before, I would wholeheartedly agree with you. However, 3 guaranteed cosmetics/reds a week is pretty decent. I do agree that it is ridiculous to get 6 charm drops like many people do, and that once you have duplicates, the drop chance for that item be lowered, so that you have a greater chance of getting something different that you don’t currently have. I would also like to see the illusion system tweaked, so that you can preview the illusions you have in a “dressing room” sort of window, rather than in the crafting menu.

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I agree with the title, but I don’t know what I would do differently. My main gripe is that 98% of the items that drop are technically salvage material. And if I have a red for a certain slot that I want/need, I’m not going to keep an orange version of that item ever again. What would be the reason? If I want different stats, it costs less to reroll everything on a red weapon.

So when you get a red weapon, all the other rarity levels of that same weapon are no longer necessary, except for the illusions, but many people prefer the glowing one inherent to the red weapon anyway (i.e. I can visually communicate to my team that I am TEH BOSS!). So for all the good that red weapons bring, they more or less nullify the other end-game rewards. This, of course, applies after you get a red weapon you wanted.

But the problem continues. If you don’t have a red for a certain slot, you’ll roll a 300 HP orange item with the best possible stats and leave it at that until the red comes along. And if you already have a perfectly rolled orange weapon, then the same situation applies as when you have the red of the same category. For example, I have a perfectly rolled orange drakepistol, so all other drakepistols have been salvaged since. And even when I got the red, I just moved the illusion over.

So it’s relatively easy to max out a weapon and consider every further copy simple salvage material. This is not necessarily an issue, there are plenty of weapons out there and maxing them all out takes quite awhile.

The real problem arises from the fact that having salvaged thousands upon thousands of items, the salvage materials are just inventory fodder (not literally). Why would you craft anything from the materials when you already have everything maxed?

And this is something Fatshark needs to think about (imho, obviously). How to make all that salvage material useful, how to put some life and spirit into the whole crafting business?

I don’t have a solution, but perhaps I can suggest some stuff:

  1. Crafting deeds (you can choose the difficulty, the number of modifiers, whathaveyounot)
  2. Crafting single-use items that give you a temporary buff for a fixed duration, like the Q&C buffs V1 had that lasted an hour or two.
  3. Or crafting single-use items that last for a fixed duration, providing both a buff and a debuff at the same time (for example +10% movement speed, -10% damage).
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That one’s where my opinion differs from yours, but it’s more about me testing a lot of stuff out and wanting to tweak my builds and doing many different things than anything more fundamental. I like to have a few versions of the same weapon to both make it safer to try new stuff (I always have something to fall back on if I don’t get what I want) and to have several build options available, either for different Careers or just for different weapon combos. I also prefer not to spend 15-30 minutes rerolling every time I want to tweak something. In the end, though, this only pushes the problem you described to later. I still have gathered more Necklaces and Trinkets than I need, and if enough stuff accumulates, I would still have way too many of other things too to ever fully use. And the thing about crafting materials is very much true. A few thousand pieces of Scrap just sitting there (though if I were very bored and needed them, I could still use those to get more dusts. Inefficient, slow and boring process, but it can be done).

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Maybe it’s the cynic in me, but I think red dust crafting is going to cause problems too.

For example, the day that is implemented, I’ll probably be able to craft almost every red I’m missing… Not that it really matters anyway, since the red items are basically just a reskin of my oranges at this point.

In any event, then I’ll literally have nothing to play for except cosmetics? That are either crazy rare (commendation chests) or locked behind a time lock/pay wall?