… is pretty wild. And that goes for most of them. The latest one, both trail of treachery, the karak azgaraz one with the crazy winch event near the start.
This is what a failed run (“push the oil cart” section) of the new map looks like:
In general base game cata maps havent changed much if i look at modern stats they are similair to back then, seems like hordes are more dense and more elites from what i see on average but not by much so maybe just personal bias. The changes to gas and stormers especially have made the game a fair bit harder though.
Either way. The gap in difficulty between the new maps and the regular game + old DLC maps is pretty insane in my opinion and very very noticeable. The latest one is on the “easier” side compared to the events in trail/tower and the winch but it being that long is pretty nuts.
I think trail 2 would be fine if the barrels would be cannonballs so you dont instantly lose them or if the skulls didnt exist but those 2 things make a pretty difficult event absurdly hard.
I vividly remember a number of base maps getting significant nerfs to their end events. Are we at the point in the games life where it doesnt matter? Should maps have massive gaps in difficulty? Do you even care at all?
The design is certainly cool although i still really really hate everything that involves barrels because anything with carrying is the absolute most painful thing to solo and only a couple of characters can do it at all when the distance isnt super close (which its not that bad on the latest map but still)
From my POV its all subjective. The time it takes to complete, the familiarity with maps, the cohesiveness between playstyles, the synergy between builds, if its Sunday or not(heh.)
I do agree that the difficulty varies from map to map, I think of sections like the CoG wheel for Trail of Treachery or even some of the Karak Azgaraz sections , like the turn the wheels or barrels section which you mentioned. In general,i think this is a good thing. I like maps that make my friends and I audibly groan when they are selected from QP. Like ughh not this one again. It allows us to enjoy the maps we like when they pop up. My only frustration is the algorithm in map selection during QP, sometimes getting 2-3 of the same map in a 4 hour play session, but this is off-topic.
The first thing that comes to mind for me is trying to identify maps that are narrow vs wide. Does this matter? I would say no, holding chokes during fights in specific locations isn’t really a meta like it was for (OG) L4D. The idea is to “move” during non horde and then as soon as a horde breaks out, hunker down and stay in a room, or section, until the wave subsides.
I rarely see lobbies adopt this playstyle in preference for simple kiting, which is just as good, if not better IMO.
The second thing is Enemy density. DTM? I would say yes, very much so. Typically the run killers (from my exp.) are berserkers or specials in the density of a horde. I think this comes down to the newer maps not having a “meta” fight figured out for those difficult sections that has been adopted to make things cheesier. Classic example is the Burn the Food Storage fight during The Pits.
Balance still matters, although I would like them to balance the horde > weapons.
In general, yes.
In general, yes.
Barrels are fine when you have teammates that understand what a sense of urgency means, along with some idea of map knowledge for that specific section (which to be honest is asking too much from randoms), do you despise them because you play private solo ? (assuming from screenshot) I can see how barrels are despised when I fall into the trap of “I have to do everything myself”.
Overall, its fine. I will always prefer more maps.
Don’t know if I’d call it more difficult. Tedious would be the descriptor I use. The maps are longer than by default and spawn enemy waves a lot. But it’s not any more difficult than the rest of the game. Just feels a bit cheap when after +30 mins you eventually get a few stray hits in and downed.
Well first of all i very much agree with the sunday observation playerquality varies wildly depending on which individuals are most likely to have free time on their hands. Less so these days as overall population just isnt very high anymore.
I dont think the QP map selection is necessarily off topic as the new maps are (at least in my opinion as i said) almost all vastly more difficult than basegame and as a result they will be the most picked ones for average lobbies due to how the game handles the whole map selection based on map completion rate thing. If there is a gap in difficulty its going to be noticeable pretty much everytime. Was the same with maps like convocation or whatshisface the eternal back in the day. If there are maps that are more difficult (or less liked for that matter, could be something like the blightreaper darkness mechanic as well). They will always pop up a lot.
I agree that familiarity will make a difference for the latest map. I dont think its going to be enough to cut the overall damage required to complete the map by half though.
And then my experience with some of the maps that have been out for a while really wasnt any different. This also addresses the point of “solo issues being fixed by playing with other people” - i did a public run of tower of treachery and asked near the end how the skull mechanic works/how to deal with the skulls moving the barrels and the only one of my 3 pub players who answered said something about crypts that was completely unrelated and it turned out that he - paraphrasing his own words that he said later during the event - “had never seen the skulls behave that way with the barrels before”. There are a lot of factors coming into play here, randoms really not being an improvement over bots in most cases, the skull mechanic being pretty terribly conveyed and having no prior similair experiences.
I actually went ahead and googled a few of these end events and the way how everyone i watched dealt with the skull mechanic was simply to use a character with a dash that dashes towards the pit and then throw down which leaves the skulls unable to react fast enough. I generally consider a game mechanic that the community decides to completely circumvent not to be particularly well thought out but obviously that has nothing to do with the difficulty directly.
I wish people in public lobbies would play chokes or do anything that even resembles a strategy at all to begin with. Most players ive seen recently either
backpedal/backdodge (until they hit a wall) and shoot (which is awful) - probably the people who came from darktide - a game that requires exactly 2 braincells to clear any content, 1 braincell for locating the sprint button and the other for shooting. That just works in DT because you can outrun everything.
Just get bopped in melee by the first elite because they dont block/dodge/push and dont run loadouts that stagger
Its ultimately related to my unwillingness to invest time and effort into finding good players to then invest more effort into coordinating a time when all involved can play which is not super straightforward once you finish school/uni/whatever. But it also doesnt really factor in the map difficulty. Which as i said i feel is ultimately a fair bit above the base game.
I would always consider “required consistency” a factor in difficulty for that matter.
Making no mistakes for 40 minutes straight compared to 20 minutes straight is obviously more difficult as far as im concerned.
We can all atleast agree that the base maps have ALL never been as dense as they should have been even from the start. And nerfing Fort Bracksenbrucke because of all the idiots complaining they couldn’t do it while refusing to go to a lower difficulty better suited for them was a mistake from the start.
On the contrary, I hope FS returns to all the base maps and ups the density of each level for all difficulties minus recruit.
That being said I do wish FS avoids the Blightstormers who casts their tornadoes from outside of map boundaries.
That’s like the primary appeal of Vermintide and L4D.
To kill as many people as possible be they rat men goatmen or savages in as large and frequent waves as possible.
So this is 100% a case of the more the merrier. And I only wish the game had a custom slider under custom games that lets us ramp up the horde density and horde frequency as we like so every level is a constant bloodbath regardless of difficulty level.
Thats true imo this makes indeed harder, but i dont know the base difficulty of the map if you dont look at the time factor is pretty on pair with the other common maps, therefore i wouldnt recommend a nerf of the map.
Depends on the pacing. I don’t know what it is, but in VT2 it feels somewhat more grating than in Darktide. Maybe it’s the sole melee combat being a focus without any real break-up of that. In Darktide I can go hours and play the longest maps, but VT2 I get exhausted from it on the midpoint of most levels now.
Yea I can agree here. I stopped playing Chaos Wastes as it just felt Tedious, the currency and map selection was a bit weird. I was hoping Darktide would refine this, but that can is still bouncing down the well…
I remember a theory why battleroyales became so popular, they were saying, that there is high stakes and high adrenaline action, but also just enough pause between fights, which prevents the player from burning out and they can play for longer. They were saying this pace is addictive, the action can be very intense, but its not too long, and the breaks allow to process what happened and look forward for the next fight.
I see clearly the same principle in L4D, DRG, Vermintide 1 and VT2 (for Legend and below).
For me, non-stop hordes (or specials) in Vermintide is more of an exercise in endurance, rather than something fun. Many builds/careers can just circumvent the attrition with THP gen and ammo passives/talents, in this scenario.
I’m not 100% a big fan of constant special spawns myself, but there’s nothing more fun than, say…Reikwald Forest of V1, specifically the fortress rush and the escape portion of that map that literally floods you with endless hordes and elites to the point where you’d be overwhelmed if you don’t cut your way through quick enough.
That’s a catharsis that drives me to play that otherwise BS map over and over again just to relive those two segments. Same with that one Chaos Waste map where the stage ends with an escape through a forest as an endless stream of pactsworn floods in.
I’d be fine, if, say, this endless horde gimmick was a repeatable deed that offers no extra reward, or a custom game setting (available on all platforms)
Great theory! Probably why a few of my friends only play PubG. For me yea, some of the most fun times are playing with new players and the downtime between hordes for them to ask Q on how to block cancel or random tid bits, even when we all got better as a group the downtimes was just fun to talk about lore and kick around. Even playing solo, the simple tasks of reloading, checking inventory, looking at the map. I’m huge on environment for immersion, I’m the fool looking into a window with the light on to see “is anyone in there?”
I recently did the new map on cata and the numbers were not exceptional, my team kinda hewed through everything that came along. Except this one chaos patrol that was…um, guarding a corner?
We did not see the need to fight them over that, curious as it was.
As for the events during the map, i do not recall anything exceptional about them but i like that, no over the top gimmicks or hoops, just plain smashing through. Enemies kept coming but it felt appropriate given the setting, this all in all made me feel like the map is overall a perfectly fine addition to the rooster. Even if possibly a bit long and confusing to navigate.
Its definitely a hundred times better than the fat piece of lard that is nurgloth anyhow.
Nurgloth is one of the DLC maps that has already been heavily nerfed. Hes pretty trivial now if you ask me. Definitely was easier to solo than the winch event or the events in the treachery maps.
If you go in to face him deliberately sure, but otherwise? Otherwise he is still the absolute bane of cata QP with overwhelming loss rates again him since you cant really block him without a shield and you cant dodge him reliably on most careers/weapons. Instead you just get punted into minion attacks/aoe blasts unto death.
From my perspective it is really not cool that a big prick that you need a specialized build for sits in the QP pool. At least the new winches or ToT events only really mandate that you got basic skills down good and then its free fighting on anything you wana play.
At worst its somewhat more difficult to play ranged careers given enemies are disposed to appear from all over a lot to mess with shooting… but that´s not too far from the norm.
playerquality varies wildly depending on which individuals are most likely to have free time on their hands. Less so these days as overall population just isnt very high anymore.