Skulls for the Skull Throne Event

I propose the Reintroduction of the ‘Champion of Khorne’ event frame which was obtainable in may 2018 during the Skulls for the Skull Throne event, through completing 10 quickplay missions (on any difficulty). Newer players that have actively started playing this game after the event, so since june, 2018 until now, obviously did not get the chance to pick up the frame.
It’s already been 2 years now, and a whole lot of players online, some I personally know and talked to and a plethora of others that have inquired about this frame, players that have over a hundred or even thousand hours of playtime in this game, thus a notable chunk of the playerbase, were never able to claim it. Of course, you may say that it was meant as a special gift from Fatshark to all of the people that have been present at that time, and I must say, fair point. But the thing with that just is, is this frame really that special of a reward to justify a chunk of the players not getting it? There were indeed quite some people who got this frame and a, never played the game again or b, barely play it anymore or did not spend a lot of time on it. It actually seems like most Vet’s would not really care if the frame will be made available again for a few weeks.
Essentially, the event was active just 2 months after the initial launch of the main game itself, which is why I think people deserve a second chance now to acquire such a unique frame.
And here is why I think this would be a good decision:

  1. Defining Veterancy and the problem with time based exclusivity: Individuals that only played a minimum of 10 games could get the frame during this time and then just quit and never start it up again. Are these people ‘Veterans’?
    Of course, true Veterans do exist and there surely are a good amount of players that have played the game since then, and they do indeed deserve praise for that. But shouldnt a player that has achieved more than 100 hours in the game, spent time on helping others, actively engaging in the community to further enhance its cohesion and bringing other people into playing the game, be perceived as a veteran instead of someone who just played the game in that specific week and for just about 4 hours? Again, these do not circumvent all players, but this comparison is still quite important. A frame like this, khornate in nature, shouldnt simply be earned through some generalized and easy task. As you probably know, Khornate Warriors and Berzerkers are insanely hardy and disciplined warriors, and only the strongest may survive and thrive, so why should this not also apply to the real game? This would make the game feel much more in tune with the world just through a miniscule change.
    Does real veteran dedication lie in whether you played the game at a certain time or rather in the duration of your total time on it and your consistency? For example, the “complete 500 deeds” and the “complete all Helmgart challenges on Legend difficulty” frames are a grand way of presenting veterancy and dedication. Thus, arent these devoted players worthy of such a reward, too?

  2. A quick comparison to another exclusive frame in the game: The Eternal Serpent (Ouroboros) Frame, which was given to exactly 15 individuals who won a contest, is a good example of reasonable exclusivity, as it creates some form of competition that breeds strength. That Frame was only awarded to the best, and not just to everyone that played the game at a random given time.

  3. It would actually benefit the community and playerbase as a whole. There will be players that return to the game for the event and to acquire this frame, maybe because they just think it looks cool, because they’ve always desired to get it or still really want to complete everything and thus stay with the game and return to it over a longer time. Also, new people will probably realize what chance they are being offered and thus get the game and maybe even proceed to play it regularly. And that not just because of the event (even though it’s awesome in itself) or the possible sales, but because of the reintroduction of an exclusive frame that is objectively quite well designed and would be seen as a great gift and a second chance for the people who’ve missed it or were unsure about purchasing the game.

Ideas:

  1. Propose a difficult challenge, not just giving it away that easily, as a such a reward should be earned through hard work. It should of course be bound to the event itself and only last for 1 week again. This would make the frame retain its “charm” so to speak.

  2. Naturally, true Veterans should not be deprived of special value or rewards due to this. Implementing a mechanic could work similarly to the one with the ‘Fangtastic Fortitude’ Frame, the one you’d get if one of your teammates had it equipped during a successful run. A new, basic frame could be put into the game with the addition of the original ‘Champion of Khorne’ for those who do not have it yet. The basic frame would have a normal, easier quest while the latter should be earned through a fairly difficult task, like completing 10 or more runs on Legend, for example, to prove one’s dedication.

  3. Additionally, the reframe colors seem to have ran out now, since blue/green/pink belong to all the other chaos gods. All I could imagine seeing now would be brown or some kind of tone of orange, even though we got a similar tone of color (brass/gold/yellow) last year. So, some sort of revamped version of the frame would work too, basically making it similar to the original one (another shade of red maybe, because its the signature color of Khorne.) but it not being the exact same one, essentially.

Me and my friends are huge fans of Khorne and we really like the idea of roleplaying as another subfaction of Chaos in the game, and that specific frame is one of the only Chaos themed frames and, in my opinion, the best looking one in the entirety of it, so it’d mean a great deal to us and a lot of people in the community if you’d put it back into the game as a second chance to get it.

What do you guys think?

Thanks for your attention, have a good day <3.

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Now I did not read the whole post, but two things really caught my attention.

heresy

The best of what? Making the Sharks laugh? You could literally win that contest without ever playing the game.

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Yes, and also you can get it from meeting Sharks at conventions and events from what I understand, so it’s not even strictly tied to any competition. I would have liked event frames to be available every year when the event rolls around again, but I think FatShark dropped the ball on holiday events like that after the first year.

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I generally wouldn’t mind if timed frames were made available somehow. Maybe tied to a challenge following the theme of the event with a frame + commendation chest award. The same could go for all frames, even old weave seasons if they were somehow made available. Basically make it somewhat of a grind (not that the game needs more of that) to work for a specific frame you missed.

I still use the “midsummer” frame for FK because it fits him so well, so I get where the request is coming from.

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I fully support this idea.

  • There’s no need for “digital exclusives” nowadays.
  • The Eternal Serpent is still given to people who meet devs, and as long as the devs go to conventions, it’s okay like this.
  • Cycling back old events is always a plus. New things ? It’s okay as well. Give the “old frames” in lohner’s shop as a limited reward each time the event come back.
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Okay, I’ll be this thread’s bad guy and simply say: no.

If you have been around Vermintide 2 since launch in 2018, you got rewarded for being one of the first. You endured its release bugs, you kickstarted its community as a player, and you were part of making it grow. There can’t be ‘second chances’ to get a frame that represents all of this.

Also, I don’t understand the argument that players didn’t have to do anything special to get the frame but just play the game. So what? This is the same for current events.
If players who were early adopters of VT2 still play this game two years later - that’s the only time when you see that frame today in your sidebar btw - why shouldn’t they be able to equip a frame that tells people: I’ve been around for a long time and I’m still playing. Two years, that’s quite some commitment, don’t you think? You won’t see this frame worn by ‘unworthy’ players because, as you said yourself, “individuals that only played a minimum of 10 games” (…) “during this time” (…) “just quit and never start(ed) it up again”. Players like this probably don’t know that Vermintide 2 is still a thing.

Time-limited rewards are a very good incentive. Don’t blame other players for having been more involved with a game than you were at a specific point in time.

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I’d say this is pretty exclusive. You either pay money to travel to a convention or you don’t get it. I don’t mind exclusive frames, but i would put the serpent under exclusive. I know in theory it’s not exclusive becausz you can still get it, but it’s very hard to get or expensive for some people.

If they did monthly community events where you could get it that would be different

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I’m 70% with @kuli here.

I was there when machine gun huntsman was a thing, I was there when every other swing felt like a phantom swing, I remember Spinemanglr being damn hard, and spawning outside of the arena if you got downed. I remember the jump for the 2nd grim on Festering Ground was nigh impossible and downed people in the lake below. Hookrats getting me through a fence? Check. Getting Ratling Gunnered through a wall? check.Silent Assassins jump-suiting from orbit through a building to hit me directly on the face? Check and Check.

I quite like the original Khorne Frame, and I think it is fair that only those who completed the challenge got the frame. Same for the one with the flowers. I was there, I earned it when everyone else bailed out, I remember. Pepperidge Farm remembers.

The other 30% of me thinks that there is such a dearth of content and it arrives so slowly maybe we could let others get frames just to keep people engaged. We’re in danger of getting into the “Content released too slowly” circular argument again though.

Let me keep my petty bauble please.

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Which is a route we should explore. I was thinking about adding this to an old thread of mine so thanks for bringing it up here. As the Verminlore contest has shown community organized events work well enough.

And I think there are enough ideas floating around so that the community could come up with a community event each month (not in-game related though). However, I would love for atleast an absolute minimum involvement from our lovely community manager. Very General, I think about something like this:

  1. @Fatshark_Hedge creates a thread were community members explain what kind of event they want to hold as well as the how and when
  2. Community Member A describes his community event
  3. Community Manager approves
  4. Community Manager gives head-ups for the event in the weekly developer post similar to the Verminlore contest
  5. Community Member A holds contest and provides previously discussed rewards (optional though)
  6. Fatshark provides in addition one Frame (potentially of choice) for the contest winner

Seriously, this is very little work (namely creating a thread, saying yes once per event, reference(s) in the developer update and giving out a code for one frame per event) for a potential higher trade-off in the form of more community involvement and more regular contests. In my vision, everyone wins.

Also it does not deevaluate any of the frames as we are speaking of about 50 winners per year at best. And winning a contest might not be a simpler task than whatever the original task has been.

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Not a bad idea at all and I’m absolutely in favour of community driven events, but I think weekly is a bit too frequent as it might be hard to come up with 50 ideas for events that aren’t repetitive or oscure .

Doing it alongside the seasons seems too long a time between events though.

Your point is still very valid though, all we need is a way to offer prizes which is somehow sanctioned by FS, or have our own prizes (are there custom titles or something for the Forum?). The Short Story contest on the Subreddit was surprisingly well received and people entered with all kinds of cool stuff. 2 possible hats were up for grabs with a lot of people entering so it doesn’t need to be a massive haul of loot to attract people.

Is your other thread solely for events? Could you start one with fleshed out ideas for what you’re thinking? I’d relish getting involved in this somehow.

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Yes exactly. I think combining community events and real life conventions as valid ways to obtain the serpent frame would be ok and not devalue it (if the community events are done well ofcourse). Not everyone is able to fly or travel to a convention, and the event they did with the quotes is a good idea. They could make a couple events per year and have multiple frame winners. Like for example every season and instead of only 1 winner make it top 10 or something.
Or make it weekly or monthly but only allow 1 winner.
Or make 1 big community event per year and have multiple categories, because not everyone can make vermintide art.

Ofcourse the people who did travel to the convention purely for the frame could feel a bit cheated, and i understand that.

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Actually, it’s not exclusive because you can still get it indeed. Especially since we’ll have others contests and stuff like that.
It’s a partially exclusive, but not more exclusive than christmas event that’s “exclusive” to the event, even if it’s come back.

Others community contest can be fine. It’s stay linked to some sort of event.

Now we don’t need “a frame” because we “endured” bugs. We did play the game, and we enjoyed it before new people. That’s kinda all. That was not a contest of endurance there. We did just enjoyed a game we did continue to play regularly. Despites bugs.

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Hm, regarding the past schedule I think it might be the better idea for community contests to be community driven. So we should generate the ideas and organize them. Meanwhile, Fatshark will concentrate on in-game events and “only” approve the community contests.

I think a monthly contest seems the most reasonable for participating (like two weeks sending in) and voting/judging (one or two weeks).

Maybe, but I have a hard time believing someone spending several hundreds of euros for “just” a frame. Even then, visiting a convention is a surefire way to get it, while winning a contest is depending on several factors.

I did say community event in the last post and that specific thread. But what I described is actually more of community contests. Simple examples would be “Create two Okri’s challenges” or “Create new quests/quests description”. Stuff easy enough to get more participants which also could be used in some way by Fatshark. Verminlore or Verminart are possible too, but you will be left with fewer entries.

The one I was thinking mainly about was for Okri’s challenges. Like people have two weeks to send me their entries per PM, after the two weeks I will create a thread with all entries, and then two weeks where people vote by liking entries they like. The roundabout way about me getting entries first is to avoid voter bias towards participants and to make sure all entries getting the same exposition time.

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I know not everyone is available to play during christmass or certain holidays, but it’s easier to get it and more available.

Spending real life money to buy a frame which depends in price for different people is weird, and that kind of exclusivity shouldn’t be soley real life money, if they added more community events and community event’s would be harder to get then going to a convention then sure i wouldn’t mind.

Exclusivity for challenge or seasons or beta’s, competitions, etc etc, i don’t mind. But having one of the rarest frames in the game just because you can spend several 100s euro’s like adelion said feels weird. I’d rather they add the serpent frame to the shop then and make it a fixed price for everyone.

About the skull throne frame, you know my Stance on exclusive frames as we discussed it in depth on the weaves thread already :). I don’t have it and i don’t really mind to not have it, but i could see completionist not liking that it’s not available anymore, so maybe it could be added to LE or add it to collectors edition dlc.

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I mean, there’s a lot of warhammer event out there, so next time an event is announced and you want a code. Try to ask to warhammer (the real minis games) fans on facebook (tips, warhammer fest comes each year without a pandemic). They usually throw away their codes as they prefer the physicial game (also got a total war key thanks to thoses guys). They’re really nice guys.

Yeah I do know, and I think you got the point well =p

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I didn’t know that, thanks

Instead of pointing out that we should get old frames somehow, I would rather have the guy who did the first event frames do some for the coming events aswell. The new ones kind of suck. The first Khorn frame and the flower one are by far the best looking event frames so far.
No shenanigans, no bloated mess, just straight up good looking.

Missing an event sucks, but it double haunts you if the following years lookes like someone had to design it during his coffee break.

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I didn’t read the whole original post (no offense, just pressed for time) but I agree that time-limited exclusives kind of suck. I have most portrait frames from 2018 and often get asked in Quick Play how I got them, especially the Khorne one. My response? “Some event a long time ago. I forget. Sorry.”

Getting the frames wasn’t memorable and I feel bad that people who really like ones I have can’t get them. It’s not like I had to do something special to actually earn the frames, nothing out of the ordinary anyway. Most event frames are given simply for being at the right place at the right time (not playing a different game during the event, basically). It’s not like I got these frames from proving my worth or enduring some early game hardships. Having old frames available again after a period of time (6 months, a year, whatever) seems fine, especially if they are a little more interesting to obtain than playing the game normally during a set time window.

I mean, I took a break from the game in 2019 and missed a few frames from then, one of which actually looks cool and pretty, but I could have gotten them if I had simply logged in and played the game for a few hours. Unfortunately I wasn’t in the mood for Vermintide 2 at the time and/or was more engaged in something else. It’s not the end of the world that I didn’t get the frames but it also wouldn’t have been fun forcing myself to log in just to unlock them.

Giving players a way to unlock old time-sensitive frames whenever they want through some sort of actual accomplishment (Okri’s Challenges, maybe) could provide players with an incentive to play the game, not for a short period during an event, but at any time by giving players more goals to set for themselves (see: Stardew Valley). Like I said, event frames can even retain their exclusivity for a time, not unlike when a game is available on only one platform before going to any number of others, and I’d be fine with that (the frames I mean, not platform exclusives). Players who showed up during an event can feel special for a while like they’re in some sort of VIP club (I guess?) and then other players can eventually earn the frame through more interesting and conventional means. Everybody wins?

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I think it would diminish the value if anyone could get it years later, I also dont have the older frames because I didnt participate in those events, why should I get them now? There is a reason people use those exclusive frames instead of the recruit lv frames.

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I’m of two minds when it comes to timed events. There are a lot of variables to consider. IRL gets in the way of gaming lol… I can see both sides though. My ideal scenario would be reusing timed events for small periods of time in between long breaks. We can just look back at the triple XP DAY that we had recently. A lot of people were upset that they only had one day to benefit.

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