The Great Weaves Feedback Thread (Season 4 edition - NEW AND AWESOME ! 50% DISCOUNT ON NEW REPLIES)

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
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Currently, at the time of this post, currently at 120, and going further this season in order to unlock the 160 frame.

This thread is a follow up of

And NOTHING has been changed since, except the reshuffle, and no more 5 same winds in a row which is a good point for variety. The 160 new frame reward will take its own category.

I will therefore summarise the previous one :

  • Winds still are a hit or miss
  • Winds effect doesn’t really change the way you approach them (with some rare exception)
  • The grind is still horrendous as no QoL have been made (you still have to do 1-40 even if you start at 41) => Will also explain further.
  • Damage scaling still is the worse way to add difficulty making the whole experience too frustrating.

So let’s start with the new 160 reward frame :

I have mixed opinions on this one. I do think it’s cool to get a reward for the real end of the journey, but I do also think that, as they are now, highest weaves are most frustrating than fun for a lot of people. I would have waited for a rework to actually ask for that kind of grind. (the fact that the reward is limited time is also kinda tricky)
I do therefore think that there should not be a 160 reward until the higher weaves are actually reworked to be fun instead.

The Leaderboard and score system :

At the base of this weaves system, a system of scoring, that’s not that hard to understand, but which is kinda hidden in the code.

Not only this mean it is kinda obscure to players, but it also means it’s hard to compete when some people do have an understanding of that system. You should explain the system in game somewhere.

Now on the competition part, we’ll have to compare to other games with a scoring system, and you’ll usually see that the completion is not the hard part, but scoring higher than opponents is. Which means that higher weaves should probably be less tedious overall so people can compete on actually achieving high scores rather than only achieving a completion.

The checkpoint system

Doesn’t work. Not only stopping at only one checkpoint (40) is very weird. As there is 3 full cycles after. But requiring people to kinda replay the 1-40 frames so they can unlock a frame is kinda like asking people each season to play 40 maps in recruit, 40 maps in veteran, and 40 maps in legend because the 40 maps you completed in cataclysm doesn’t count. It’s really boring, and it’s a part of the frustration.
Checkpoint should at least go up to 120, so people can compete around the 160 faster, scoring wise. Without the need to actually repeat tedious task.
Completing tiers X of rewards, should also unlock previous tiers (so 81-120 should unlock 1-40 and 41-80 frames).

Fun vs Frustration : The damage scaling

Note that my focus is on the higher weaves because it’s mostly them that kinda make the game explode. All the negatives sides of the game are magnified by the damage scaling and the sheer numbers of enemies thrown at you without a consideration for the wind they are a part of.

Winds of invisibility ? The archers becomes at least 100 times more annoying than before.
Winds of metal ? Let’s put repeating waves of chaos warriors.

The wind makes them annoying, the damage scaling make them frustrating.
I do think that the damage scaling part should be either capped way lower, or completely removed as it’s only an artifical way to increase difficulty. Which does work at that, but in a frustrating manner.

Weaves becoming easier near 120 than previous seasons ? It’s okay : We can now focus on actually scoring. It will also open far more varied builds (choices are kinda non existant currently, battle wizard everywhere for obvious reasons).

Lack of rewards

The qp quest not counting in qp weaves, the ridiculous amount of xp you earn from weaves, all point to a lack of consideration for the player time (not a genuine one, I know that there’s no dev out there behind his desk that secretly laugh at that). The rewards should be increased with difficulty. Or you know, shillings, an alt way to earn them, something which is asked by players since the beginning.

tl;dr
Therefore suggested rather small changes waiting for a rework :

  • More Checkpoints, auto unlock previous one or put a system of tiers unlocking
  • More commendations chests (via more xp) and/or shillings if the weave is high
  • Remove damage scaling (or cap it way before)
  • Explain the scoring in game
6 Likes
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As my religion enforces me to repeat myself over and over again, I will use this chance again to promote the idea of making Weaves more adventurous by clumping them to smaller groups (8-10 Weaves) of same difficulty where you can take different pathways to reach from the beginning to the end of the group to give choice. Detailed description can be read somewhere else.

Other than that my focus today will be on the Leaderboard and score system as well as the accompanying points of rewards and replayability which can all be adjusted without to much work.

Currently ranked Weaves can only be joined while being in the Keep. This hinders progress on Weaves for most public players who don’t want to rely on pre-made groups. We know from Season 1 that it is technically possible to join midway ranked Weaves. So there has to be another reason why this is currently not possible. Only halfway logical conclusion would be the leaderboards. However, we can have both: non-abusable leaderboards by joining midway AND easier progression for public players.

Suggested Change #1: Players when opening or searching a lobby will have a checkmark if they play for leaderboard or not. If yes, other players can only join prior to starting the Weave. If no, other players can join midway.

Another problem (which has to be solved before the rest can be adjusted) is the positioning on the leaderboards. Currently, the leaderboard only cares for the highest score on the highest beaten Weave. This means that someone beating only Weave 137 will have a higher position as someone beating Weave 1-136. This is BS!

Suggested Change #2: Separate leaderboards into smaller groups of Weaves (let’s say 10) and determine position on these leaderboards by the average score over all included Weaves.

This would enable us to actually compete for the top position on these sub-boards by replaying Weaves in them and give lower skill players also the chance to compete without the need to go the full way up. With this we get to:

Suggested Change #3: Give out rewards for the top position per sub-board. This would be an ONCE-a-Season reward which would enable FS to give something actually useful.

Ideas are found fast from a red weapon of choice, to a premium cosmetic of choice, to the Eternal Serpent Frame or a Shilling reward (once! a season). What the player gets would be mentioned with the start of the season and be different for different sub-boards. In order to avoid frustration for players, each player should only be eligible for one or two rewards per season. If he has mutliple top-spots on multiple boards he can chose which reward to claim. On the other board subsequent position will become eligible. This is in order to avoid Godplayer xyz to hog all low-difficulty boards and killing competetion before it even started.

With a now actual meaningful leaderboard and rewards and reason to replay certain Weaves, we could also “separate” Weaves into necessary challenge and additional challenge.

Suggested Change #4: Reduce the amount of joining specials per Weave and remove the timer. But add voluntary challenge modifier for increased score.

This is where replay value could be added and also to make the basic Weaves more accessible skill-wise. As without the modifiers they would be easier than the current set. Possible modifiers for leaderboard players could be: Add random special spawn, add second (suitable) wind effect, add timer, etc. This could be either a multiplier or an absolute bonus to the score (depending on the modifier). With this players have an easier time to get more Weaves and to get the higher frames but if they want to get the ONCE-a-season reward they would have to use the modifiers to get better results. We could even go as far to give solo players the chance to play Weaves disabler-free without modifiers. Because it is difficult enough already.

Overall these changes would enable a better accesibility for the Weaves so that public players can more easily play and beat them for Frames while still having (and actually emboldening) the competitive side of the Weaves for additional rewards. As bonus Weaves are getting a tiny bit more replayable. Most of the work would be concerning overhead with only minimal changes to the actual Weaves themselves needed (like determine which specials to remove without the modifier).

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Note that I’m all for a rework of the whole system (not so sure about your specific idea though), but I try to keep the feedback on solutions that could be used for the next season without asking too much dev time.

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My suggestion to bury the weaves forever and forget that they have ever existed still stands. I would be a bit sad to forget the look of the levels from beta, but hey…

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Which is exactly covered by the four made suggestions. The only work is in the framework and how the score is calculated. Only the modifiers would mean more work, so they can be skipped, reduced or postponed. But suggestion #1, #2 and #3 would all still work with minimal developer time needed. For #4 it could start with only the timer as modifier.

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No reason to go nuclear. There are aspects of weaves that are nice.
The crafting system, the map design, the weave modifiers, how they are intense and short adventures that even make 200% twitch with low cooldowns seem tame in comparison, and how fixed amounts of spawns lead to being forced to overcome that situation, instead of restarting until you get the AI Director to go easy on you. The “goals” to blow up something with barrels or chunks are also a nice mix up in between the slaughter everything sections.

Weaves are not beyond salvation. Change the damage scaling on ultra high weaves, edit some weave effects, and shift focus to the QP part. The hardest part for me, and most likely for everyone else, is how you need to have the same four gents around to progress ranked. Iam playing VT2 regularly with friends, but the same three not so much. (Adding Cata2 and 3 down the line, when there is more people playing them, as WeaveQP difficulties would also be nice.)

It wouldnt be hard to get people to try out Weave QP. Add the skins into chests you get there, and add dust of all rarities as blanks.
Especially the skin part might make the “I hate weaves, because everyone hates weaves” people actually try them for a change.

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Shock and disbelief, nothing has changed in almost dead (from early beginning) game mode :rofl:

giphy

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I’m convinced efficient matchmaking will never actually work in weaves for everyone who is not in a pre-made team. For the singletons like me, i think that making a scaled-down single player version of ranked weaves with no timer (or an unlimited timer that counts up) and no leader board is the only way to salvage something from the nice but unrealistic concept of multi-player weaves.

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Weave matchmaking was broken even at a time when the game had 14k average players (up from 4k) in August 2019. There is no way the game will ever approach those numbers again without going F2P or something, and quickplay weaves were not only added too late but also provide little incentive to play them for a multitude of reasons.

But just as there is little incentive to PLAY weaves, there is also little incentive for FS to rework them, even in the limited ways suggested in threads like this one.

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I tried to keep it really short.
I don’t think there’s actually little incentive to rework them as they kinda serve the purpose of making the expansion more appealing and more inclusive.
But I know the rework takes time, so little solutions to not make it a frustrating experience can help.

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I meant in the context of what FS is focusing on right now. They’re seemingly very busy with new V2 content and Darktide, all of which can make more money and positive buzz than a mostly abandoned game mode, as well as fixing a bunch of bugs and crashes.

I’m all for making Weaves a more accessible, fun and well-balanced experience at some point with ANY degree of changes, but in terms of priority compared to everything else… I don’t see it happening for a long time just as it hasn’t happened for season 3 or 4 which were the perfect time windows to turn weaves around.

Obviously I’m not telling you to stop making improvement suggestions, those can only help when FS DOES look at weaves again

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I’m at #52 and what should I do? Even reach up to #60 as to the moon on foot.

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I actually don’t understand your question, do you mean than 52 is too hard ?

Ah yeah I get what you mean. But I actually knows that damage scaling for example is removable/tweakable in a matter of mere seconds (as I actually found it in the source code). Checkpoints will probably be more code, but should be attainable. Whatever is on works, it’s okay if it takes too much time to improve the existing “right now”, but as some of this modifications can and could be done before next season without too much fuss, it should probably be done for the sake of our sanity.

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Oh no, that’s easy-peasy, isn’t it? I can open the lobby and in five minutes there will be a group that can easily win this, right?

What I need are bots that don’t have to wait all day. Or as a last resort, so that people can enter an already started game .
Not to sit and wait, but play I want.

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Some good points. I feel that ultimately weaves are a fun game mode and it’s really not much needed to make it many times more enjoyable.

The most important aspect is to remove the damage scaling since it promotes snoozy block “play”.
Should be fairly easy to add difficulty in another way that scales past C3.

Vermintide, in my opinion, is a game about constant risk vs reward decisions made on the fly, when everything one shots you that aspect is completely removed. If they find a way to bring that aspect into higher level weaves it will become very good.

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Apart from the fact that the gameplay is so fully scripted, I actually like almost everything about the gameplay - the variation of levels, modifiers etc.,

What I hate - and yes, I consider it good enough reason to go nuclear - is how they are effectively a different game that got grafted onto VT, i.e. everything surrounding the actual gameplay. The leaderboard system, separate crafting system/character configuration, different matchmaking… Which is why I personally refuse to play them under any circumstance.

To add insult to the injury, FS forces anyone who wants to play cata to purchase WoM, and I’m sure there are many who don’t want to buy it just for that.

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I do wish I could un-buy so I could stop having the pop-up to open the Athenor. I played Weaves in the beta and had enough, I don’t want to play them again.

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There are many feedbacks on weave(mostly negetive). Don’t know why you do this again. I think reward and pre-made group aren’t that matter. Well, pre-made group in game like this is a bot weird though, that’s what Fatshark want. FOW, modded realm, weave, selected discord group, difficult deed all are same.
To play other than QP, you better have pre-made group. Fatshatk want this.
Did you see Darktide explanation? Fatshark doesn’t even like matchmaking. Fanboys also support pre-made group. Didn’t you see they say cata is heaven because there is no noob who want only for reward?

10 of 12 my friends online were playing weave yesterday. They all want reward. I think reward is more than enough.

Major problem is progression. It’s still hard to help each other in pre-made group. To help 1 man,3 men who finished weave have to play full 40 stages again? Can’t help 2 men at once if their progression is different.
I wished weave quickplay could solve this. Everytime you enter weave, you meet one of 40 weaves. There is dmg scailing which is ridiculous so there should be scaling with party member’s least progression.
Someone can exploit to do only easy stage , keep re-entering. Fatshark can lock random so until you finish one you got, can’t change. But you can progress with other’s weave. That’s fair.

I would do only weave with this. Won’t play cata or may hardly do but mostly weave. Weave can be fun if there are many people willing to do.
Still don’t understand why weave quickplay had to be like this. Everyone play weave for reward, not for fun except me.

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You need friends to play. (socially positive action by FS)
You drop either game or friends because your friends cannot play when you want them to. (socially positive or negative outcome of the FS socially positive action)

Could you tell me where? I have strong doubts about coop approach that has no matchmaking.

1 Like
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You know, for me task of the game dev company is not to create social actions, but to provide a products that will be satisfying, and Weaves are not this product.
So maybe instead of focusing on what they have no idea, they should focus on what they know.

4 Likes