If you take all the reviews from August 2018 to the start of August 2019 (before WoM pre-order opened), the steam rating for the base game was 87%. That’s incredible. Since then, reviews over the past two-weeks has it dropping to a staggering 45%. Scores for the WoM DLC itself are currently an appalling 34% (mostly negative).
Fatshark… what are you doing?
It’s understandable that people are going to be upset with changes. I happen to be in the camp that I think the core combat gameplay changes aren’t that bad - and with some tweaking (see this post), could get into a good position. But there are tons of bugs (many of them reintroduced!) that need to be fixed ASAP.
But beyond the combat changes, I feel a large part of the negative scores are because of the following issues, which speak to a deeper frustration with the game’s development direction:
Weave system that few people wanted (Seasons? Gah! No alignment with progression? Whut!? Splitting player base? Crazy. Leader board? Why?)
Getting gouged on the price: Only ONE new map after a long-time period with no new maps. New difficulty behind paywall. Beastmen faction that still needs a lot of work. Weave-system that few people wanted (see above)
Seemingly lazy/incompetent integration of new content: #1: no extra skins for the new weapons. #2: no new loot chest levels for Cataclysm; #3: Cata missions don’t count towards Okri’s challenges; I’m sure I’m missing other obvious gaps in the integration of features.
Combination of many difficulty adjustments that make it really hard to farm legend runs for red (this is a big, often unrecognized impact I feel). We wanted a NEW higher difficulty level, not large changes to the existing difficulty level.
I also think a large part of the negativity is because after waiting a long time for quality of life and other long-requested features, instead of getting those things we got something we didn’t even ask for. There are so many things that people have been clamoring for:
Rebalance weapon traits so it isn’t swift slaying 99% of the time…
Cosmetics? Where are they? How about the ones buried in the files but not actually obtainable?
Improved system for Deeds and Weekly Events that don’t end up giving out “worse” rewards (i.e. no mitigation for loss of QP bonus).
Improvements to the base game crafting system
Minor quality of life improvements: e.g. choice to replay the run vs. return to keep vs. new map, improved UI menus
Sanction more mods and approve updates more quickly!
We didn’t get any of this.
There is a lot of repair work with the community that is currently needed, as I feel like we’re all losing faith in Fatshark. I still enjoy the gameplay - regardless of the increased difficulty - but the pace of content (we want) coupled with stagnation on these QoL improvements coupled with limited communication from FS about this whole situation has me worried.
FS needs to take the approach other developers have taken in similar situations (e.g. Overkill with Payday 2) and own up when bad decisions were made and lay out a roadmap for how to rectify the situation. WoM might have sold well - but the negative reviews are going to catch up and have a lasting impact on the game’s success if the ship isn’t turned around.
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EDIT: I should add that the reason why so many people are upset and also so vocal, is because deep down I think we all love this game - despite its many flaws and frustrations that we put up with - and just want it’s full potential to be realized. It has a ways to go, and we’ll stay on for the ride - but we need to know there is a light at the end of the (rat) tunnel.
The problem is not Fatshark, but whinyass unskilled playerbase.
I’m seriously ashamed of this community (not forum one, but the vermintide players on steam community).
FS fixed most of the issues, yes, some talents need overhaul, but overal game is a lot more fun than pre-patch. At least there is some challenge to completing legend.
In the OP - I tried to downplay the difficulty question and focus on the other reasons for the negative reviews. I do think it will take some time for better play to take root and in time I think success rates for legend runs will go back up again somewhat.
If you look at the steam achievement stats, less than 5% of the players have finished skittergate on legend. Obviously take that with a grain of salt. My personal theory (based on observation) is that a lot of people try VT2 for a while and eventually turn away because the reward cycle is too grindy and/or requires too high of a skill level to achieve.
I’m all for adding more difficulty levels and more ways to challenge players. But that doesn’t mean you need to put the basic building blocks of character progression even further out of reach for the average player. The “masses”, like it or not, often play games more casually and enjoy a consistent and regular reward cycle. The RNG in VT2 is abusive and farming full book runs on legend was the only reasonable way of getting around that before. It was already hard for many people - and now it’s even harder.
Everything that was fun still is.
What is not fun (crafting) is also in.
Overal - combat has changed for better, some things need ironing out, but that’s it.
People are whining because other people are whining - most of the humanity are a bunch of sheep, easily influenced, and unable to form their own opinions.
“Fun” is a hard thing to pin down. I feel that people felt it was “fun” before because people were generally challenged just enough but that challenge felt fair. The atmosphere and vibe of quick play, even on legend, was pretty casual.
Now, the need for greater teamwork, coupled with a greater level of chaos and randomness in the AI director means that players need to spend considerably more effort to achieve the same result as before. More effort, often means less “fun” … particularly when people were acclimated to a more casual vibe.
By all means a new difficulty mode should require more effort, but messing with the existing ones, as much as was done, wasn’t good.
I do think the difficulty can be adjusted pretty easily and get closer to where people would “find the fun again” … but it takes FS being willing to listen.
The OP has a point (Several points) about the devs giving us something we didn’t want to begin with.
Did they originally announce to us that the entire core game was going to be overhauled?
We all expected new content, we didn’t expect having to relearn the game after hundreds of hours of play time, only to find we have to relearn the game and rebuild our talents.
The new build is even more buggy than before. Who else is annoyed at silent ambushes and specials spawning literally on top of the players? This adds to frustration more than challenge. Random game crashes, certain talents not even working correctly. Right now I’m especially frustrated with Ults that do not proc at all. Any Ult that is considered a “dash or leap” sometimes will not proc and I die when my guard is broken when I could have escaped using my “Dash/Leap” ult.
Is 1 map, 1 new weapon per character worth $20? The last DLC had 3.5maps, even if they were just recycled. Bogen DLC at least had 2 maps and technically new cosmetics even if they were just palette swapped skins. Lazy! but still better than WoM.
I personally agree with you for the most part. I don’t mind the added challenge. But many others do.
My OP, however, laid out a number of other issues - completely separate from the one of difficulty - for why the reviews are trending negative. Put the “combat changes and difficulty” issue aside, and consider that there are a bunch of other things that don’t work well right now either.
As I’ve said many times on the forum, it’s not “the added challenge” that I and many others dislike. Combat is tuned in a way that it doesn’t feel good at all to play, even when you’re winning.
I’d say a lot of it has to do with Beastmen. I played for 5 hours today, only 1 clear on Cata with premades. That was on Into the Nest, no beastmen XD Cleared it on the first try. The rest of the maps, we mostly did fine with until we ended up meat walled into a corner. Taking so much chunk damage from attacks you can’t even see coming. Spear boys poking you through the bodies of Gors and other mobs. The dodging needs to be a tweaked a bit as well. Enemies tracking you while dodging is rather annoying. Even playing as host, I had mobs overhead me after dodging.
I’m also agreeing with it, but there are a few “features” that are making game not fun, at least for me. My main concern is about bug that was fixed long ago, but for some reason is reproducing again- sound, especially silent specials/pats and missing backstab sound. Ofc silent hordes are also a thing, but they are not that annoying as that one little rat just stabbing you in the back w/o any warning.
@SmokerT69, 2 b honest I’m already used to current dodge, but Beastman are a bit overtuned comparing to any other threat.
Must be a real fun time at the Fatshark offices right now. I feel bad for them honestly.
Overall I like the new content. The Weaves have grown on me a bit. Don’t like the matchmaking stuff with regards to Weaves but whatever. I probably won’t ever grind them unless there’s a portrait frame I really want.
I am, however, not pleased with the amount of bugs that have found their way back into the game. But those will get fixed eventually (I sure hope so anyway).
I really do feel bad for the devs in a lot of ways. I quite like the new map - I just wish there was more. I’d feel like absolute crap if the content I worked so hard on for so long was so ill-received.
But at the same time, they made the conscious decision to do what they did and develop something that was pretty antithetical to what the community seemed to want.
Agreed. The vast majority of defeats are currently caused by the Beastmen (in my experience). Most QP groups seem to handle both Skaven and Chaos just fine, but as soon as the beasts show up most people just get clobbered immediately.
So for beastmen … my feeling is that they just need to (1) have some of their crazy gor damage turned down a little; and (2) maybe lower the horde “size”. I like that beastmen are bigger/rougher than the rats or humans (they should be), but maybe the balance is that there aren’t quite so many of them during a horde.
Yeah, for me the beastmen are the main problem in combat.
Especially those spear pokes. If you look from the side, ungors make and INCREDIBLY quick dash (they dash like that for up to 10m, maybe more) and poke a player no matter what stands between them and their target.
This cost me a lot of HP and sometimes - whole run. Running at the beastmen horde head-on sometimes may end in a few seconds without any warningi- at least that’s how it ended for me and my friend, when we were fighting close quarters it was all fun and stuff, we finally regrouped in the open (2 bots died a lot time ago), faced the horde wave and just died as soon as we engaged, even though we finally had horde coming from 1 direction only, no specials etc. I mean, all of the sudden it felt like dodging wasn’t working while it sure as hell allows to clobber chaos and skaven into oblivion like in the dodge-dancing times pre-2.0 if one gets timing right.
On the other hand, dying vs Skaven or Chaos on legend requires some seriously botched timing (“oh, I totally missed that Stormvermin preparing overhead strike”) and/or team that is performing surprisingly bad - so bad that you all of the sudden feel like you’re playing solo and you’re getting overwhelmed or some awful luck (spawn + horde just after the elevator on Righteous Stand :D).
Can people please stop posting things such as clamouring a change to swift slaying meta? Fatshark is just going nerf it to the ground and offer no other alternatives. Just look at what happened to CDR traits. So please for the sake of keeping combat fun, stop asking for a change to swift slaying.
I’m sure the word was chosen at a subliminal level.