I think that everyone can agree that currently Grimoires are a non choice. Almost every game that is not a complete disaster from the start involves getting Grims. It is to the point where I just assume we are going for Grims every game regardless of how the run is going. This also means that the majority of people end up always running curse resistance. The fact is that Grims end up reducing player choice rather than expanding it.
What can be done?
I believe that quick play would be more of an enjoyable experience if Grims were excluded. However, I don’t believe that Grims as a mechanic should disappear all together. I remember hearing that the bounty board would be making a return to Vermintide 2 some time ago. If this is the case then this is the perfect place for Grims. You could have missions where you are encouraged to find Grims for extra rewards at the end of the mission. They could even have there own quest markers and be placed in a variety of locations. This seems like a much more interesting way of making grim hunting fun .
How can this be implemented?
If the bounty board is not going to happen than Grims could be incorporated into some kind of deed modifiers. I don’t believe that this is as interesting as the previous idea, but would probably work well enough.
Curse resistance would also need to go for obvious reasons. I don’t think too many people would object to this. You could even replace it with something a little more interactive.
Loot might also need to be reworked a little since higher level loot is basically impossible without Grims. There are 6 levels of loot boxes in this game. Quick play bonus can bump you up to level 2, tomes can all be worth 1 level, loot dice can be half of a level each, and finally Ranald’s blessing can be a random 0 - 1 levels. This accounts for all 6 levels of loot. However, this is just a quick and dirty idea of how loot could be changed. There several alternatives that are potentially much better long term solutions.
What are the risks involved?
Bugs are inevitable reality with any major changes to a game. Removing Grims might not be as easy as it sounds and could potentially introduce new issues into the game.
It is no secret that the game has many issues at the time of writing this. It could very well be argued that removing Grims is not worth wasting time that could’ve been used to fix something else.
Many player might object to the idea of removing Grims. I don’t think Grims are too terribly popular of a mechanic, but I’m sure there are plenty of people who would think it crazy to remove them from quick play. Especially given that they were in Vermintide 1.
I have only two real gripes about Grimoires. First is the annoying jumping “puzzles”. They are learnable, though, even if they still occasionally end up as time-wasters. Worse is that picking one up makes your Charm Trait irrelevant and weakens Ranger’s Master Brewer Talent hugely. And as you said, they are almost always expected to be picked up, so that’s half the team missing anything potion-related.
Removing Grimoires or moving them or their effects elsewhere is the more complicated option, I think. Easier is to change these two things that lose effectiveness with Grimoires. Besides, picking up or losing Grimoires is still the most effective way of fine-tuning the game difficulty, especially on the run.
That is indeed simpler. However, that solution doesn’t address the issue of everyone being pressured into curse resistance. You could remove curse resistance, but that would make book runs ridiculously difficult. So, you would have to lower the amount of default health lost from Grims.
Even with all of that, I feel like Grims are just completely unnecessary. Tomes make sense since there’s very little downside most of the time in picking them up. You usually aren’t hurting your team when picking up a tome. The same can’t be said about Grims. This is especially problematic in pubs where everybody doesn’t necessarily agree. This causes unnecessary losses. I genuinely feel like winning should be the only real objective. Grims fly in the face of that.
Also, your final point doesn’t really make sense to me. If you want more difficulty you play on a higher difficulty. Wanting to change difficulty during the run seems really odd to me. I guess the jump from some difficulties can be rough, but I don’t think Grims are a good solution to that if it means everyone is forced into them.
Would be great if you could full premade into Quick Play. I’d definitely do no grim runs for Soldiers/General Chests then. At the minute QP groups always seem to make small mistakes and fail from it. So some added forgivness for mistakes would be great. Usually only run Righteous Stand to avoid constant wipes.
The jumps between difficulties are very high. My group is just starting to be able to clear Legend without Grimoires (and limited Tomes) while we were doing full book Champion Deeds regularly before. That’s why I said fine-tuning difficulty. In my mind, exactly that is the primary purposes of the books: Adjusting difficulty when the actual difficulty level difference is too high. The actual loot level boost they give isn’t as significant (except maybe on Champ, where they enable Veteran quality items) as people make it to be. Most of the loot will be scrapped anyway.
When I play as host, I stopped going for grims a long time ago. Emp Vaults are not guaranteed, it does make the game harder and longer and to be frank, I got most of my 30 red items from soldier’s and merchant’s vaults (2 from emp vaults and 2 from generals), even though I have opened significantly more emp and gen vaults than of the others (I opened exactly 2 peasant vaults in my playtime and got a red out of those ^^). It is very interesting to see how people are conditioned to just go for the vaults, even though me and a couple of friends who don’t hunt them anymore have alot more red items to show. Just do yourselves a favour and don’t bother with them anymore, no matter if it gives you more red items (which it did for me), it does change your perspective on the game.
I would love to ignore Grims. However, most randoms are not going to be happy about a team member not going for Grims. Even if I do completely ignore them, I am still getting stuck with the health debuff when my team inevitably picks them up.
Playing with friends would help, but I honestly prefer playing alone.
Risk vs reward is pointless if my team is going to force Grims no matter the situation and against my consent. If it was just a debuff for the person carrying it, I could tolerate it. I respectably disagree about the jumping puzzles. They bring the run to a screeching halt and are generally unfun.
That is a well known issue. Champion is too easy and legend can be very challenging. However, that is an issue with difficulty. Forcing Grims on everyone is not a very balanced solution especially for people who solo queue.
That’s the point of the puzzles. Add an extra horde, maybe 2. Or get fall damage from messing up. Vmt1 had a lot more hard to reach grims then 2 even.
You can also try communicating with your team.
I can’t agree with you, they are probably OK in terms of time waste due jump puzzles, but they are defenetly not ok in terms of risk-reward, 1) 3+2 book runs, even +2 loot dies don’t garantee Emp vault. Also I’m happy for those people telling me that they get 1 red every 5-10 Emp vaults, but I get only 1 of my 17 reds so far, in fact I goe 3 from Merchants, and no, I opened a lot more Emp vaults then Merchant ones. Also I have a friend Who get 0 reds from Emperors.
That’s where you and I differ. I like the sense of accomplishment. The better loot is just an extra reward. It’s like an extra difficulty.
I only have 2 red charms and don’t care so much about veteran items. Orange suffices to enjoy this game to the fullest.