Some Feedback on WoM from a Longtime Player

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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I can think back to the days when I believed I was among a very few amount of players who played this game because the mechanics of the combat were incredibly exciting. I had all the upgrades available to me and those whom I matchmade with were of the same dedication. We loved the game because we could dice through a thousand enemies and it would present us with some challenge we could, with some dedication and skill, overcome.

In the last couple of days I have taken those same dedicated teams into the new missions provided to us by Fatshark only to be overcome with an impossible enemy.

I have had some time to reflect on why I just made the statement above. ‘An impossible enemy? This is a skill based game, at heart, why not just get better or try for stronger teammates?’ Well my answer is I have had some time to play this game, as some of my more veteran readers might also have, and I believe I have some ability to recognize when someone is a good player. When they’re able to perform with their back against the wall, a scenario I’m sure you, reader of this post, know all too well, and make incredible plays that allow us to continue the mission. Moments that emblazon themselves within the mind due to the patience and skill it took to create. That ability to craft those moments makes a good player. And yet, I have also seen those players who are capable of these moments be absolutely overwhelmed. How many of these incredible players have been neutered by the swarming beastmen driving down into the crater at the end of Dark Omen?

In my first two days of this new DLC, I put 6 or so hours into trying to complete Dark Omens on Legendary, a difficulty I’m familiar with. Those who are familiar with Legendary know it is a punishing but rewarding experience. However, the new mechanics were overwhelming. I was slaughtered ever time, no matter the effort made. I remember leaving the game the second day feeling incredibly disappointed.

But why that feeling, out of all the feelings available to me, disappointed? Well, I felt that way because the new mechanics demanded it. Everything that us faithful players have trained in had been destroyed. All of the experimentation Fatshark had done to make a balanced game had been forgotten. A new model of combat, which was unnecessary, was introduced into our beloved game. I was disappointed not because Vermintide 2 needed a new model of combat, but because it was incredibly great the way it was. I loved the game, as I’m sure many people did. The combat was great, true and tested, and made for difficult but rewarding play.

Now, involuntarily, we have been shoved into a new game. Something that is foreign to us Vermintide 2 players. I have seen the posts on this forum and feel some togetherness in the fact that I do not believe this alone. I feel confusion in the fact that we did not provoke these changes and yet they came. I believe we were unprepared for this.

In the end, Fatshark, I love you. You are one of my favorite development studios. But I do not know why you have chosen this path. And I hope in the future this post may deter you from such future behavior.

Sincerely, and always, your dedicated player,
Jackson TC

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It’s not a good feeling to go from finishing levels with ~100 damage taken, maybe we get that flawless game, to practically losing every game or taking ~1400 damage. Since the first beta they mentioned increased aggression and turn around time of enemy attacks across the board but this has felt so inconsistent to me that it’s hard to say if it’s a mistake on my part or the increased agression actually being a thing. There’s just so many more enemies attacking at once that it’s just no reasonable to dodge every attack with the current window we have. Enemies just completely ignore the slot system and swing through their allies and that seems to be why games end for me.

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One of the biggest problems has always been lunging attacks from enemies. When they start a lunging attack(Storm Vermin are the greatest of sinners) they ignore the slot system and lunge a massive length and will almost always hit the player unless you dodge left or right. When you fight a lot of enemies and you’re backing up/dodging backwards, many enemies will start to do this lunging attack and because they’re ignoring the slot system, they overlap on each other heavily and pound you with a torrent of hits.

Then like you said, there are times when they stack on each other and even if you’re stationary, they may start a flurry of hits. However, since the launch of Winds of Magic the slot system they implemented has been marginally useful. Enemies may not always hit you with a flurry of hits when you’re stationary, but they can stack up on each other anyways(attacking or not) and create this beef wall. I think when the enemies lunge(or any number of ways they may get closer to you and stack on their buddies), they overlap on the enemies inside of the “slots” and end up being in a position to attack you anyways.

It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely better than what it was.

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A small number of high-level players were so good at chaining dodges (largely because they abused the dodge-jump glitch for infinite dodge count with every weapon…) that Fatshark decided they needed to fundamentally change the core combat system, because no number of enemies would be enough to make the game truly difficult for those few highest-level players.

And you know what happened? The new combat also presented no more than a trivial challenge for those players.

But it ruined the highly-tuned combat for everyone else.

I really don’t think they have any competent product managers at Fatshark. Very little of what they do seems well-thought-out. They stumbled upon a magical formula but they didn’t understand what made it good, and now they’ve lost it.

Or maybe the new combat actually appeals to more people than the old combat did, and they’re gaining 200 new fans for every 100 old fans that they lose. But it’s sure disappointing to lose a game I loved. If they can’t find some way to fix the game, I’ll probably never buy a title from them again. How can you trust a developer that does this?

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I had been one who thought dodge was too strong, but all it needed was a little tweak, not an overhaul of the whole game.

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Yeah, I think tightening the timing window a bit was probably good, but making enemies track you through dodge probably was not a good change for hordes. It feels bad when enemies (especially ones with fast attack animations) start an attack during your dodge. At least make them wait until the end of the dodge animation, maybe?

I do wonder how much of the “problem” could have been eliminated just by fixing the dodge-jump glitch so people would actually be limited by a weapon’s dodge count. Almost everyone I knew who actually complained about dodge being too strong abused that glitch constantly. (Edit: I don’t mean everyone who thought it was too strong, just the ones who openly complained about it.)

I agree it was probably a bit overtuned, but given how many players still struggled to consistently finish maps on Legend and even Champion without dying at least once or twice, I don’t think it was actually a problem for the overall player base.

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Dodging only needed to be changed itself so that the window was tighter for elites excluding elites running attacks. The entire reason it needed a buff at all was because a chain of run attack enemies were just a death sentence that you couldn’t hamper. I’m sure everybody remembers rows of ice skating chaos warriors.

Before that, from the aspect of a Bardin, 1h hammer was king for a time because of the old stamina system letting you do infinite push attacks, which were completely safe and the only way to reliably avoid damage indefinitely until the aforementioned buff to dodging.

Now we’ve gone a crap ton of steps back, increased enemy aggression, and made it so that if absolutely anybody dodges near you you’re getting hit by something that was meant for them. Frustrating is an understatement.

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why isnt it possible to step down a difficuly level and just continue playing the game as you have before, but at one difficulty level lower? im not seeing the problem here.

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Have you tried going back a difficulty?
I did, from legend to champ, and it was more of the same problems. I lost those partly because of the same bugs/increased difficulty, partly because my teammates were a lot greener.
I was able to clutch once and solo magnus’ event but that was no fun at all, let me tell you.
So I went back to legend.

PS to prevent “git gud” replies I’ve got a good success rate with friends, but it gets bad with QPs, and champ didn’t make it easier

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Not seeing a problem, huh?

Left 4 dead 2, a game older than this one, a game that still has a devout following, a game that has an average population the size of this one that just had it’s dlc released, has gone through god knows how many patches, bug fixes, some changes here and there half of them fixing exploits and with all of that, all of it, didn’t budge a single inch when it came down to overall gameplay feel.

You don’t see a problem with a game many times younger going for a complete overhaul but then completely and utterly changing players gameplay experience satisfaction and feedback loop? No problem that many players gameplay experience is massively reduced? Well then I don’t know what anybody could possibly ever say to that.

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Let’s start with your rewards being worse for same amount of effort has been diminished.

Second that difficulty didn’t per se went up across the board rather has changed in it’s entirety.

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I agree completely, but I have to say that after doing some testing on modded, this might not be that bad in the end, it does offer more customization of builds.

Main problem is changing 10 core things at once, so now people can’t really tell why game feels bad/disappointing, because everything got changed.

I am coming to conclusing lately that biggest issue are busted running attacking/slot system not working properly combined with very agressive enemies and overtuned spearmen/minotaur.

Dodge window prolly also needs slight buff, like 100-200ms.

If you step down difficulty it won’t be same as before, it’s still very different and also psychologically, it is a problem, since if someone is used to Legend, they don’t want to drop it and go Champ.

Solution is to add next difficulty not force people to drop down.

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ok.
for a long time legend was the hardest difficulty. which percentage of runs should end in failure? im not talking yours but over-all in game. i mean how many times out of a 100 or a 1000 should the average group of average players fail vs succeed.

id bet the average completion rate was something close to 80-85% before. on the hardest difficulty. with an average group of players. i dont mean you. or your group. i mean overall, in game.

do you see anything fundamentally wrong with that? whats the difference between that and a participation trophy?

therein laid the problem with vt2. it had gotten to where it was a participation trophy for many to just run through legend. bad habits werent punished so why bother learning good ones, you can finish most of the time either way. who cares. right? i watched a youtuber post a negative review on WOM and talk about all the stuff he doesnt like. i watched his video and just ignored his droning on and on. i actually watched. no blocking, running off and leaving his group, spamming left click, no team work, you name the sin and it was right there. and hes a “big guy” in the community. and his gameplay sucks. why? because its more fun to run off and be thor and just cleave through everything than it is to get positioning, to use tactics, etc. and for a long time the game favored that or if not outright favored it then definitely didnt punish it. i mean we ALL know someone (usually the elf) that just runs on ahead and abandons the team and somehow manages to survive to the end, right? is that really ok or should it be punished for the bad gameplay that it is?

i had a college professor who graded based on averages. the average grade will be a c with correspondingly fewer b and d and even fewer a and f then he weighted every test and the final grades to match that. 50% right off got a c. 10% wound up with an a and 10% wound up with an f and the rest were b and d. id suggest to fatshark taking the same view of legend. about half of all runs or more SHOULD fail. crank that difficulty up however they can until that reality is matched.

dont like it then deal with your psychological issues and play champion. which imo should have about a 30% fail rate. cant make that and step back down a level again. ideally the hardest difficulty isnt so easy that just about everyone can do it with ease. eh?

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It means the game is too easy, that’s all. There is no issue with steamrolling stuff if u can do it, imo.

But as for cranking up difficulty, yea absolutely, but not in a way that slave rats are more dangerous than chaos warriors and it’s impossible to avoid enemies like spearmen in certain situations, because they will jab you thru the belly of some gor that is creating meatwall around you with his friends. Not even talking about how range of spearmen and zerkers/monks are broken along with guided missile like running attacks of trash mobs.

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Aye, if you want it harder. You do this by adding new difficulties, not making existing ones harder. Legend was fine the way it was for what it was. The Devs have even stated that Legend is where they want the majority of the players. That’s where people will go to farm reds and so on. Cata is for the challenge.

With Cata out now, if people want it harder. Give an option to toggle on deed modifiers, like 2x damage and HP on enemies. Replace all ambiant with elites, etc. Even give the option to toggle the difficulty to Cata 2-3 which is currently only in weaves. But leave legend alone…

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Sigh, I didn’t want to answer this on the phone, would be pain in the a**. Again, this all is discussion of opinions though.

[quote=“endrsgm, post:13, topic:35467, full:true”]
ok.
for a long time legend was the hardest difficulty. which percentage of runs should end in failure? im not talking yours but over-all in game. i mean how many times out of a 100 or a 1000 should the average group of average players fail vs succeed.[/quote]

DeathWish ONSlaught would like a word with you.

As for a second question. 50% completion at 415 power (required to play Legend) with almost 50% increase to you power at max power, let’s say average of 73-74%.

I don’t like betting. You could always ask Fat Shark for numbers, if they’d give them to you. I don’t think there’s many other ways around that, I don’t even know, if there’s stat page you could look at for your own performance and I can’t say what is my win/loss statistics or that it’s above your guesstimate.

Nope. You seeing it in non competitive environment is kinda not surprising, but more telling about you to me.

On second question, maybe the difference is that this is not a competition? Nor this game has been until Versus was announced a competitive environment?

Indeed. I really don’t care about that.

I don’t know how to untangle this mess of a paragraph. I really don’t.
Is it okay to be, as you say, “punished” for what you perceive to be “sins” of playing V2? Kinda and game kinda did that pre WoM anyways. It just let you fix your mistakes way more than current iteration while also having multiple bull**** moments itself screwing over players.

Is it okay to disregard his opinion, which you sought because you judged him to be not good enough in your mind? No not really. You voluntarily watched his video and decided his opinion is not worth listening to on basis of his competence in video shown.

Can you not? Like seriously, calling incompetent gaming a “sin” is way overboard.

After working in a university hospital for close to 10 years now I came to conclusion that professors are no more exempt of being idiots than rest of the people, just because he’s doing it, doesn’t make it correct or smart way of doing it. Only means he’s kinda terrible it at giving proper challenge to people to grade them properly.

Sigh, you’re not the first (far from it) to make this point and definitely not that last.

Failure percentage doesn’t indicate difficulty or even quality of the challenge.

You really are driving yourself into very unlikeable position here.
The product that people bought has been changed to a degree that they consider it to be inferior to what they had. People don’t like that the thing they bought and poured their time in has been taken away from them through no fault of their own. Unlike you, I can see where they’re coming from. I can see where you’re coming from too, but that doesn’t change the fact, that you have a right to take away what has already been theirs. It’s not right to say they should get lower rewards for same effort. If you really want for people to play Champion, then advocate for Vaults to be available there. And if you want them to play even lower after they were getting stuff from Legend, advocate then for Vaults to be available there.
HOWEVER, that would be fine if you did that IF the Champion was just old Legend, which it isn’t. There is no old Legend difficulty nor comparable ones either. And people don’t like that either.

P.S. before you continue advocating for retaining the changes, you should deal with your own psychological superiority issues.

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At the current state of the game , it seems ipossible for me to judge if the new combat is either good or bad because the game is just bursting with bugs. Talents ? Many of them do not work as intended … Siennas fire damage got nerfed to the ground by accident , enemy behaviour with tracking and stacking is simply broken (postet a video in bug reports where a beastmen spear stab is executed in below 20 miliseconds from being visible to the player until actual recieving the damage … on top of this it was happening over extreme range and also upwards a section of stairs) , sound and notifications do not work and on and on and on …

Who can tell if the actual design idea behind all this is good or bad ? Nothing seem to work as intended at the moment … combat has turned into a game of chance with this massive load of bugs.

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Becoming a fan of it, Flisker? :smiley: Are you sure it’s not just Stockholm’s Syndrome?
I kid, if people are adjusting, that’s good. I still see downsides, and not a lot of upsides, but they’re minor enough that I find it playable now, too. Still don’t quite see that it was worth the PITA of it all, but oh well. Just have to solve the framerate issues at this point.

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I’m sure not fan :smile: I think it was very bad idea to implement it now, in this messed up situation. And I’m pissed that they did shadow changes and wasn’t even transparent about how this works… particularly how dev was explaining how implicit stagger on executioner works… just for me to find out that it’s not there anymore.

It has been pointed out to me on discord why some non-newb players like it. I did go on modded, tested it and I see the point.

So I’m just saying that I see one side of this, in it’s current version. There is positive side and then there are negative sides. But it’s not going away so people should at least know about the positive side, I think.

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That’s fair, and I’m not down on it, or you pointing it out. We aim to be critical, not simply negative, and that involves pointing out good things.

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