So end game events difficulty balance in legend

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
1

You do what you want but I really think :

  • Deads from Horn of Magnus during barrel events should respawn before the door.
  • Convocation of Decay finale should really be nerfed. Really. At the moment this is so out of reach of every other finale I still don’t know why it wasn’t. (it’s doable, but way harder than others events)
  • Fort Brackenburger could use a nerf. A bit. Not a lot.
  • Skittergate last boss. If you’re in phase 2, without a dash or some invis. It is actually impossible to revive someone when you’re the only one left due to the speed of the boss spells.
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Convocation is quite ok right now
Fort is ok its dont throw at you that much its only few monks and a lot of trash.
Skittergate, well you can still revive him you know Rasknit will target you even on invis? He specifically target reviving ppl but after that salve of 3 bolts you can revive without problem there is big window of time for it

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I honestly think, Fort end event is just not handled properly.
Currently, it misleads the majority of players into desperately defending a bad position, where enemies come from all directions at once.
And it’s not “just a couple of monks and lots of trash”, it’s minimum 2-3 specials, 4 monks/4 StormVermin and lots of trash on Legend. It’s not that scary with proper place to hold, but the cannon is not such kind of place and turns into unreasonably hard challenge after a reasonably normal start.

After thinking for a bit, I got to wonder, if the event could feel a bit differently, if, instead of holding the cannon and then bringing 1 cannonball to wrap up, the team had to bring cannonballs fro EACH shot, but the turn rate of the cannon was increased to compensate for it.
Right now, if you think about it, we generally use only 1 small area of the fort each time we fight. If we have to bring cannonballs from different parts of the fort ,we would have more reasons to maneuver around and hold proper positions, where vermin don’t crawl out from all 360 degrees around us.

What’s your thoughts on it?

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They could boost rest of event to not be snore fest, only going for ball is interesting rest is just kill trash and 1-2 special with few sv and wait.

Most problem is people dont know how to fight monks or they want to get cheeky hits and die instantly.

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It’s not about not knowing how to fight monks. It’s about having to fight multiple monks in a VERY tight space, while there are other mobs trying to surround you and block your movement.
Monks are not the problem - being surrounded is.
And you are somewhat motivated to do it, because you need to protect one poor person on the cannon, so the event (and endless monk spawns) stop as soon as possible. I am not saying it’s the only option, but it’s the first one that comes to mind to people, who don’t play in a Discord Party every weekend.

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Thats just an issue with players trying to hold in bad positions, the higher the difficulty the less times you can get ‘away’ with those positions etc. It’s the same on convocation where players are like scared to drop off the platform which i dont understand, splitting off in akward positions. If you have trouble with events, you should consider learning how they work, or adjust your positioning or in the worst case drop a difficulty.

I know it’s quickplay we are talking about, but quickplay doesnt mean being stubborn and doing your own thing. I have plenty of good teams in quickplay who know how to hold or are willing to follow others if they are a bit confused using the ‘come here’ command. I also have bad teams in quickplay who wipe on those events, I dont think its the event being too difficult, it think its the players making mistakes, myself included.

I do agree with OP that you should respawn inside the barrel event on horn of magnus.
The skittergate one maybe, but you do have a cooldown on the lighting attacks, its just super annoying if you dont time your res correctly.

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Sometimes bad play is just encouraged by the game itself.
In Convocation of Decay, everything points to you having to stand in the circle. Characters speak about it. The bar goes down, if there is not enough players in the altar (which is the strongest motivator, in my opinion). Even the Feed me Sinner achievement has this sort of indirect encouragement (I know, how it’s obitained, it’s just one of those “green lights” leading to the death pit instead of the exit).
Simmilar thing can be seen with the Garden of Morr. People always wipe out on the chains part simply because the game puts and incentive to “rush through” instead of breaking chains one by one and fighting off the smaller hordes. Even just a simple “Get in here, mayflies, we shouldn’t fight them all at once!” would save some teams from instant failure.

In case of Fort - making Cannon require balls for each shot would demotivate people from standing as a group on top of it, thus holding the worst possible position, when they actually don’t have to.
(I am just trying to look into psychology behind the thing)

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The game just gives you an objective, it doesnt tell you the best way to do it. Maybe a bit farfetched but its like the game saying on halescourge ‘take the lifting platform’ and a new player will just run to it and die because he gets swarmed by ambients etc.

Or like on empire in flames where they just say ‘put barrels in’ if you go rush off alone for a barrel on higher difficulties, chances are you will get surrounded if you do it on a bad time. I dont think its the games job to tell you the most efficient spot of way to hold or complete the event.

No it is indeed like that, players will just stand there because thats the objective, defending the cannon aimer, but players should be able to recognize when there is too much enemies coming and you cant just hold them off anymore. Thats why on low difficulties that spot works, we assume it will work again while climing difficulties and we will just use that same strat/spot again, until it doesnt and then you have players who will see what they can improve and then there are others who will say its overtuned. Sometimes events are overtuned, sure, but this isnt the case here (unless its bugged and way more specials or elites spawn than intended).

Also on convocation the bar does go down when there isnt anyone inside the circle, but it doesnt go faster the more players are in it (correct me if that isnt the case, but i’m like 99% sure it doesnt or its a very little difference). so players jumping off the platform isn’t a bad thing, there has to be 1 player in atleast, jumping off and kiting back in is not a bad decision either, its better to let the bar go down a bit instead of dying.

edit: forgot to add the bar also doesnt progress down past that point once a sorcerer dies.

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I do understand your position.
I am just trying to think of a solution, that could improve both sides and does not involve the “players are just bad and should get good” mentality. I don’t like, when game holds players by the hand, but at the same time, properly exploiting human psychology can lead to a much better experience.

As an example, my suggestion to change the flow of the event. It would both give bad players a reason to learn (because of the nature of the event and the amount of enemies), but also provide good players with more things to do. Maybe even encourage some fun strategies with mobility tools.

Currently, there isn’t really much of a way for the players to know about it outside of word of mouth. I can see, why some people feel okay with it, but in my PERSONAL opinion, when players have to discover a reasonable (not optimal. Reasonable.), maybe even intended way to play the map, by pure accident and then spread it through the community, while fighting a very common misconception, it might not be the best map design. But I might be wrong here, so I don’t want to strat a war over it. <_>

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I mean sure they can change the event i dont mind. This wouldnt fix the issue, now players will just move around and fight in bad spots around the fort, dont see this changing anything. It would fix it so its a bit more engaging like you said.

Yes thats true, Vermintide in general has alot of things that aren’t explained to new players, i test things myself aswell because most of the time the info is not out there available for everyone.

This is not by pure accident most of the time, this is by testing and looking in the code how an event works, looking in the code is not even needed you can just test it. But its true the information is not very good available, same with breakpoints, but those things arent really needed for a new player.

New players dont know they can dodge hookrats or dodge assassins (not sure if the tutorial teaches you that) and also have to go out of their way to find it by accident or by looking it up. That info is more available tho.

Still i think the only info the game should provide are things like gameplay mechanics (dodging hooks for example), breakpoints, current armory mod should be ingame officially, maybe some better explantion on how stagger works and a more reliable way to test and see it on the dummies. But those are all pretty advanced and not needed at all for the early difficulties.

I dont think the game should tell you all the exact ways an event works, there could be some strategy guide ingame which tells you broadly how an event works and maybe add a line to it which adds a tip but isnt obvious. (like your example of garden of morr,

Which i think should be enough.

also as much as i hate the ‘get good’ mentality, it is true here, if your entire team wipes to 4 monks. if i died i would also think its a ‘get good’ problem for me, which still happens occasionaly cuz im bad and monks are buggy but you know what i mean hopefully.

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11

Yep. That’s exactly, what I mean.

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Hmmm… I wonder how they could incentivize going off the platform on Convocation. Because throwing more enemies is just plain unfair and doesn’t really help the core problem - people will just call it impossible and unfair.

Maybe make a warp lightning strike the altar when one of the sorcerers dies? With a loud sound cue and warnings. This would indirectly push people towards going off the platform, while some tanky/properly positioned person could in theiry stay there despite the damage. This would indirectly make it more plausible for people to notice the mechanics behind the bar while playing normally… Also lightning could help out clearing some space in rare cases, if players know what they are doing.

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It’s not really needed to go off the platform and i wouldnt incentivize it, otherwise players will drop off randomly, splitting off etc. Players should know they are able to, but shouldnt be mandatory. I feel like some players are scared to drop off because they don’t fully understand how it works. It will always be hard to coordinate advanced strategies in quickplay but just dropping off when surrounded or when you need space to kill a special, and running back up and into the circle can make such a huge difference for quickplay.

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Yeah, I can agree with that.
I just liked the idea. Plus it would be a more engaging mechanic, instead of “stand on the altar oustide the soup and kill stuff”. (I am exaggerating)

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Agree with Horn of Magnus and Convocation of Decay.

Fort Breakfast and Old Haunts are broken imo. What used to happen with Fort Breakfast is that after each cannon interaction you’d have slaves and elites spawning in a wave. Now once you need to get the cannon ball you have continuous waves of elites. Old Haunts I assume the waves are supposed to line up with placing gargoyle heads - but that is also not the case.

Skittergate is annoying as Rasknitt’s spell can’t be interrupted as easily as before plus it takes too long to kill him due to Shade / Bounty Hunter and whatever other boss build that exists ruining game balance.

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Convocation of Decay - I disagree it is not even the hardest of the listed ones. Things can go wrong quick, with bad defensible spots this finale puts you in the middle of a couple jump downs and a bunch of climb up’s which means enemies are constantly going to be popping up behind you if your alone or if the team spreads out, add to this the center puddle makes you slower giving you even less room to work with. The key here really is people staying and dying in the center when they could have survived had they just gotten out kited, killed the elites / specials that where surrounding them and then return to the circle (Intended way, not including glitching)

Fort B - This is the hardest map (finale) for most casual players in Legend. This is also a devestating finale for players that have not yet learned that Plague monks are not anywhere near as easily staggered in Legend as they are in Champion, which in addition to the damage boost from Legend makes them especially deadly to players that think they can still just Stagger them down rather than blocking or dodging and Whiffing their attacks and counter hitting. Then you have bad defensible spots and a extremely dangerous revive location. However after completing this map with just BOTS several times on different careers I would say at least 70% of players wiping on Fort B could be solved by…inhales BLOCKING and waiting for your teammates to help you kill Plague monks. I’m not super good at the game, but I can solo Legend with Bots, but I am pretty sure Blocking and Kiting Plague monks is > immediately dying or going down to Plague monks on their very first flurry. Everyone makes mistakes, and miss things. But there is too many players on Legend that just immediately get downed as soon as a Plague monk shows up. Yes Fort B Plague monks is pretty brutal, but that does not change the fact at how abysmal some players on Legend are at dealing with Plague monks.

Skittergate - I disagree. Map is super predictable. You simply have players that understand the Rasknitt fight and those that do not. Hes harder than the rest sure, but hes also the final boss of the helmgart story. And really the only reason hes harder than the rest is his adds are far more regular than the other Lords. The Other Lords adds are much more predictable as opposed to Rasknitt adds being much more regular. I think the major problem is players wanting to kill Deathrattler and Rasknitt super fast… Its better to kill him slower and more stable, keep all adds down and slowly work him down, because if you try to rush it and fall behind on adds it can go south to a nearly be nearly “unrecoverable” as opposed to the other Lords in which you can almost always recover, and don’t have enough health or distance in their teleports in order to make the fights long enough to the point where adds become too many.

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I feel like this is where some actual data that we unfortunately do not have access to would end most of the arguments here pretty quick. If the fail rate for baconburger is much higher than other maps then the end event should be nerfed a bit, plain and simple. Same for Convo though personally I don’t think that one is that bad on legend at least. Hopefully FS is monitoring this and will adjust accordingly.

All the stuff about respawn points I am 100% behind. It’s very inconsistent and unintuitive which events players will respawn in and which ones they won’t

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  • Convocation have a serious issue with stacking specials and elite at the same time. There’s a legend challenge (and a cata one) where players needs to actually not drop off and even stay in the pool. I’ve done them all, so I don’t really care, but I do think the legend one is kinda out of reach for non cata ready players at this point.
    Now it kinda require a drop off (in pugs), where as before you could actually have a strategy to get a side each.
    And I’m really sure that the stats will show more team wipes on this event than in any other events (skittergate aside I guess).

  • Skittergate boss is the end boss, and therefore needs no nerf (that’s not what I asked) when several persons are alive.
    Spells could be slowed down when only one remains to actually allow a possible come back. Which isn’t really the case here if you don’t have the good remaining career.

Skittergate boss have lisibility issue, so players do have a hard time understanding the strategy as the sorcerer in phase 1 does not act the same in phase 2 when it comes to interrupting the spells. (you can actually slow down spells in phase 1 but not interrupt them, in phase 2 it stops the cast if you keep hitting)

Also skittergate boss kinda require you some dps heavy career in the team. Which, in Pugs, is not always the case. But that’s another matter, and not the most important one if you could actually free your teammates when you’re the only one left standing.

  • Fort B have the stacking elites issue. But offers more space to actually manage a wiping team. Therefore a bit of restraint could be interesting when it comes to throwing the hell on players. But as the event is more manageable, not by a lot.
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I agree. They need a nerf/fix.

Moreover also Engines of War needs a nerf… the end is full of Monks + shielded SV… that combo of enemies is pretty unfair (one covers the other’s weaknesses). I would replace shielded SV with normal SV.

p.s Skittergate is weird. Apart the problem you correctly exposed, the AI director is pretty unstable… sometimes the event is ok, other times we have an innatural spike of diffuculty.

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The end? Like where you wait for the ship? I don’t think I have ever seen a group fail there neither in Legend nor in Cataclysm. And this includes my glorious run where I headshotted and downed two team mates with one BH ult.

Fatshark has the telemetry data. The need to nerf endings is only there if the completion rates are abysmal low. And I would be very surprised to see large failure numbers for Engines of Wars finale, same for Fort Brachsenbrücke which is medium to easy (depending if you have a Shotgun with you).

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