Testament to the current state of the game

I’m properly gonna loose my spear because of this post, but whatever.

first off, I’m a huge fan of this game and want it to succeed so we can have a triple A installment of Vermintide 3 (keep dreaming)

I’ve bought both Borgenhafen, Ubershriek and Winds of Magic.

i ended up refunding Winds of Magic even though i want to support Fatshark and their endeavors, but this was just a -insert curse word here- mess and honestly i only bought it because of the new weapons. i tried to complete Dark Omens on legend and it took me 5 -insert curse word here- hours just to get one win so i could get my weapon. 5 -insert curse word here- hours to complete a map on LEGEND. . . what the actual -insert curse word here-!? it felt like playing on champion, an uncoordinated mess.

any -insert curse word here- way, i ended up refunding WoM because after i finally got a team with half a brain between them and completed Dark Omens I’m met with a Grind Fest Galore forcing me to play with one weapon until it’s leveled up enough to get back to where i was. . . are you – insert curse word here- serious? not only that but I’m pretty sure you could choose between what weapon you want to play and max first but i accidentally pressed on the Falchion instead of the spear. . . well, though -insert curse word here- you’re just -insert curse word here- out of luck. so i refunded that -insert curse word here-. but not before i crafted myself a fancy new spear to try it out, only to find out that the special on Saltspyres spear is a temporary disabler, i was under the impression you could drag enemies around like spear rats, but no, just a temporary stun. . . meh. . . -insert curse word here- meh. so i refunded that -insert curse word here-. but, the next time i log in i see i have and can still craft the DLC spear, which was the only reason i forced myself to buy the DLC tbh.

so here i am, running around in V2 with a mediocre spear i really should’nt have, but you know. . . it’s vermintide.

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You mean you couldn’t adapt to changes and raged because of something that was known from start of beta.

Well qp rarely will carry you if you can’t do your job ingame.

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Well they were needed and were asked for.
Game is in way better situation that it was before in term of balance.

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like a*

elaborate please.

I’ve played with a few dedicated teams (discord and everything) and on the current patch, the game is much harder than before. The sole cause of this? beastmen. One banner behind you, beastman horde, second banner in front of you, blightstormer spawns. Even with teams that do successful legend runs regularly, this will kill you 90% of the time.

That’s not challenging, that’s just straight up unfair. I also fear beastmen hordes moreso than skaven patrols at the moment. At least skaven patrols have clear attack animations and don’t sneak around you without making noise.

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Someone who played this game in it’s current state against beastmen and saing that he is not cursed fatshark profusely is clearly hypocrite.

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If you ask me ~ changes in difficulty were needed. When i started playing this game about 2 months ago, it took me only 3 weeks to enter legend difficulty. Sure i played with friends and this granted me a higher success rate than in just solo entered quickplays. But finishing a Legend run on quickplay with 0.001% teamplay did also work quite often.

So is that a good state for the (at the time) highest difficulty in the game ? I honestly dont think so. Sure we have many players that do solo quickplay only and i get that these people also want to enter the difficulty that grants the highest rewards.
But the way it comes across from so many threads here and on reddit is … that these people simply do not want to work for their meal. Many seem to be used to just play Solo/Ego style and being succsessful with it … but in the end this is a 4 player coop game. How is the highest difficulty in a good place for a coop game if it doesnt need much actual coop to get through ?

And it has been changed. Im rellay happy with it because its more coop than ever. Its just to many people not willing to do actual teamplay and i see players like this every time. Running ahead half the map , not willing to take some time to actually get a reasonable split of potions within the team, not even considering proper positioning for horde encounters , only going for max score (green circles) to shine at the score screen in the end … and just stuff like that.

So what now ? Did i still go quickplay , playing solo superhero style like i used to ? Of course not , since 2.0 i started talking to people way more. I try to make the people actually play their roles and play with the team. And since then i found a ton of really cool players im slowly filling my vermintide 2 friendslist with. It just happened that we cleared Dark Omens on Legend with no sweat whatsoever , just with random people i met that day but all willing to communicate and stick to the plan we came up with. THIS was more fun than i ever had with the game before.

I really think that many people who play this game , have a total solo mindset. Fire up quickplay and expect the players around them to adjust to their solo way of perception or to just function on their own. There is too many people not working for the coop aspect of this coop game. These are the players getting frustrated because solo-style used to work way better before ~ im sorry for them but i honestly think: dont pick up a coop game if youre not here to play and communicate with other players. Maybe have a look at DooM2016 instead.

Dont expect some sort of matchmaking system to do the teamplay or communication work for you. If you wanna play the highest difficulty in a coop game … do the f***ing coop part of it.

Btw. Beastmen ~ i dont think that they are too hard in terms of density and the banner play. My only problem with them is that especially the spear guys stab in weird angles and ranges (attack tracking issue) and through too many lines of their own team. Makes it more guessing than actual reacting to it because you simply cannot see them in many cases.

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Some of the changes were good (dodge in particular needed a tweak), but better in terms of balance? I think it’ll take a lot more patching for that to be the case. A lot of the new mechanics are just kinda pointless or detrimental still - the stagger mechanic/attendant health increase just means that fewer weapons are rewarded for precision headshots. Spear on Handmaiden is a great example; while push-attacking is better than ever, it can no longer one-shot Marauders to the face even in just Legend. Notably (due to Assassin) Keri’s other careers can. Given that Spear is Handmaiden’s iconic weapon, that’s pretty silly, and no idea how they can fix it for her, since simply increasing Spear’s headshot multiplier will just make it too strong for her careers with Assassin.

Weapons like Kruber’s bow are a straight downgrade from Keri’s bow right now, because it lost all its breakpoints. Dual Axes are in a much worse shape, and one-handed Swords for Kruber and Sienna are still pointless, as are Mace/Hammer. Shields are only better because of their specific buffs, and because control has been tweaked to make it more valuable and keep them from just throwing enemies all over the place - though this still only applies to 3 of the 5 shield weapons.

I feel like all the positive sides of these changes could have been achieved with just the tweaking of aggression/animations and a little mass increase.

Balance can be achieved, but it’ll be despite these changes, not because of them. I think if we just had a few of the positive changes, we’d actually be in an even better state now.

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There’s problems I have with the teamplay component of this game.
Just a few ones.

So let’s say I’m fighting at a doorway with somebody. Pre Legend it’d be fine for us to both be at the entrance attacking. But if they see an attack coming and I don’t see it coming. I get stuffed by an entire avalanche of running attacks. At that same level, two people fronting the same approach angle in a pathway is painful. Which is why you do unfun crap like this right now

The other is temp on kill. That ability frankly I think is a blight on this game and should get removed. But as temp across the board was nerfed, hits stick with the party a heck of a lot longer. Which means that the value of actually landing a killing blow on elites has skyrocketed. Much to the point that on all Legend maps and certain Cata terror events I’ll be going out of my way to eat elites and beast hordes. They’re quite filling and satisfy my ravenous appetite.

To Beastmen. They’ve become more manageable once I just accepted the reality that I’m going to get hit by spear boys and played around swinging blindly at them like some sort of gorilla gripped hammer wielding simian. It doesn’t “feel” good to play like that but I can’t argue with the results.

My opinions aren’t that different from yours overall. I wanted the game to be more challenging. Or rather than that, I wanted a new quickplay option in a new difficulty or a better deed system that let me get in there into some meaty crap while having the risk of actually dying.
But here’s a zinger


All of that said, you’re not wrong.

The game was a bit easy. It was really easy once you became familiar with it. To the point that I’m running around with a shield and a handgun on a RV just to add some spice to my games in Legend. I know this isn’t the case for everybody, but it certainly was for me.

But despite being easy. I felt that the game was in such a state that with a new difficulty and tunings of that difficulty they could create an engaging experience that people could tentatively start working their way towards. It might have been a bit of a leap like it was from 1.08 Champ to Legend, but I sincerely believe it would be what needed to happen to scratch my itch.
Did Cata succeed in that? I certainly believe it did. But while I like and love cata I have to say I absolutely hate what the current Legend has done with the game. It’s not “comfortable” anymore. For reference, I find playing through Nethack and dying miserably to be a “comfortable” experience.

Old Legend was pretty freeform. It’s about to the same degree as just picking your favorite class in KF or your favorite weapon in L4D1 and that’s what you’ll be using in all difficulties. New Legend feels like it’s forcing me into a particular way of playing with particular weapons on particular careers and I can’t say I approve of that.

For Cata I make a special exception. Due to how breakpoints are in that difficulty, you simply can’t be good at everything. You have to be bad at one thing. I love that. It gives me goosebumps when (IF I CAN EVER FIND A GAME) the team is closed up, we’re holding to the sides, and we hear that chant of a banner carrier. Those are GREAT feelings. But ONLY in Cata.

I just wish they made another difficulty on top of Cata man.

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Your comment makes me think. If they opened up all stagger talents and all temp health talents to all classes, surely it would make thinks easier to balance. Obviously temp health on cleave still definitely needs a buff, and temp health on kill is still a bit problematic since it encourages fighting for elite kills, but at least build variety would be a lot less limited, and those juicy spear head shot break points would be attainable.

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Yes. I believe the devs said that they saw stagger as a new way to balance things, and fair play to them for seeking innovative solutions. But I just don’t see how it’s helped. Everything’s stagger strength seems to be roughly equivalent to its control, and enemies seem to scale in stagger resist with their general toughness. There’s no enemy who is just a mound of meat you’re just hacking uselessly at until you think to stagger them. You just do that via attacking, and the end result is kind of a bloat in terms of things to keep track of, and a lot of precision weapons take a big hit to their pace.

I suppose it might actually work to increase the spikes of difficulty; you can stagger almost anything short of a monster reliably with headshots, so things like Chaos warriors can vary a lot more based on skill; land a buncha headshots and they crumble in seconds, go for weaker body hits and they’re impenetrable. This is an upside, I suppose, though it also means that when things get dicey, it becomes that much harder to recover, since you’re likely kiting two dozen enemies and can’t make time to focus them properly.

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I see the toxicity is spreading.

I totally get your point but i think we just have a slightly different perception of how the concept of difficulty for the best loot chance (legend) is implemented into the game.

My problem is that most players still play like “lets get this over with , i want my loot”. Constant rushing and pushing is very common in quickplays. I do not have enough experience with all careers to judge the viability of all careers but at least i can say that i had success in legend with a wide variety of teamcompositions as long as the teamplay was working. So should Legend force a super specific build and meta ? No , i agree but i think this comes down to proper balancing of careers and not rewarding solo mentality gameplay.

My main point is: wanna play the highest difficulty in a coop game ? Well do some coop then. And that is something most players still not do while still wanting to get through legend with no sweat.

I think the actual (exaggerating a little) greed for loot is hurting the overall effort for people to actually take their time with a run in many cases. When i started playing online in 1998 not a single game i can remember had some sort of reward for players. People played because they enjoyed the gameplay and nothing but the gameplay. No progression , no comsmetics , nothing. Today , any 2nd discussion i see is: give me more reds , give me more hats , give me lohners emporium , give me give me give me. People nowadays doesnt seem to see fun and engaging gameplay as a reward for their time anymore. Its progression or gtfo. Well i guess time has simply changed. When i started playing this game and saw like 3 items under cosmetics i thought that is all. And i did not care because i enjoyed gameplay.

So back to legend. I think it should be the difficulty where people should be able to engage proper teamplay or simply lose. I dont think that random yolo freeform rush should be the way to play in legend in a coop game. Not forcing special builds or careers but thats simply a different question , a question of career balance.

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More time = more hordes and more special spawns = more chances to wipe. Wipes = wasted time with strangers.

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yeah that balance between lingering around and getting more hordes, etc vs rushing and pushing into a really bad situation with the team fragmented is really hard to achieve. especially on qp

Personally i would rather take 2-3 more hordes with proper control than ending up in chaos. Losing control is the nr.1 wipe reason in my opinion.

Same goes for patrols. Some patrols are quite risky with their path. When i play with friends we sometimes pull patrols on purpose but in a controlled way. This minimizes risks of a patrol joining an already tough situation.

Rush to get less hordes is something i personally would only recommend to teams that know how to play together. Rushing with random players, it is (by experience) quite likely to end up in chaos with crucial roles way out of position. Im talking legend or cata here. So what do you do with a horde of beastmen + banner when your bountyhunter is like 20meters away , hugging a hookrat … this is where runs fall apart thanks to rushing and its so extremely common that i really wonder why so many people play it that way.

With proper control you could kill an insane amount of extra hordes, no sweat at all. But even if you happen to be at the same spot defending, so many players will push into the attacking horde not even realizing that they open up new paths and frontlines with it and suddenly someone is cut off. And again , losing control of the situation by simply moving somewhere without thinking about it. Rushing and pushing is the actual curse of quickplay in my opinion.

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Eh sure. That also make game way too boring. There’s a point where you start feeling that you’re just wasting time. Just like FS wants you to do. There’s a point where this becomes tedium and bad gameplay.

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Hope this doesnt come across aggresive , thats not my intention.

I didnt say “i want people to play boring and as slow as possible”. I say stop rushing and pushing at all cost and instead consider taking on maybe 2 or 3 hordes more per run but take a look at what your team is actually doing … ( facing more hordes is not even the case most of the time while playing controlled , it simply depends ).

Playing with a team and actually managing the tasks on any given situation is what im pointing out here. And thats not the case in many quickplay runs. To me , losing a run close to the end because some people just run around like a chicken on fire is frustrating and i get bored of doing quickplay with random people because of that. And thats the real waste of Time if you ask me …

Its totally okay for me if you enjoy playing a little more on the chaotic side with people constantly breaking any control with their gameplay, missing out on potions , ammo and bombs for no reason weakening the whole team with it. But i simply dont think that cooridnated teamplay is “way too boring”. And i also dont think that Fatshark wants me to play the game in full rush mode considering the structure of tome/grim and supply placements on the maps (including some riddles like on dark omens ) or the general layout of most maps.

So yeah , camping out the whole map can get boring i guess but thats not even close to what i wanted to say here and i think i pointed out some pretty exact examples in my previous post.

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Did a few games today… Normal Legend. People are still not taking books in Legend, what is going on? I was even told to drop the grim so we could clear the map. Sure enough, entire team wiped 2-3 times. Had to pick them all up with RV. I’m not sure what’s going on but people are still very much struggling hard with Legend.

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What’s going on is two things :

  • New players came to legend and are mostly not ready for it.
  • Old players are now on cataclysm or weaves and won’t really help “not legend ready” players anymore.