The unfair, quasi-random, usually lopsided distribution of shielded enemies makes or breaks games

This is hard to notice when 90% of the games are between 4 man premades with a combined 10k hours and level 1-10 noobs who have literally just bought the game 2 weeks ago, BUT: I noticed that on the rare occasions that two somewhat comparable teams fight, the game is basically decided by who is put up against more shielded enemies. They also spawn in clusters, so it’s an all or nothing thing, either ridiculous shield spam or barely if any shields at all. One team gets to fight 5 maulers and a bunch of raiders. The other team at the same spot has to fight 3 rotshields and half a dozen shielded clanrats. Rotshields are especially brutal because they take forever to kill or require using an ult, and can be used as meatshields by the skaven team. In tight spaces, such as the start of round 2 on Righteous Stand, a horde or ambient mobs counting an abnormally high number of shielded enemies, or even just a stray rotshield that is well-utlized by the skaven team, is a GG. Then in the next round, for the other team, nothing spawns but soft trash that can be cleaved through for free THP.

The distrubtion of shielded enemies needs special attention and made even for both teams. While it might not look important now, while everyone is either queuing up with premades pwning noobs 400 to 0, or queing solo and watching a 30 minutes long cutscene of dying over and over again, on the off chance that Versus mode will ever get some semblance of balanced matchmaking, the issue will become a lot more prevalent.

3 Likes

Huh

I also noticed the difference in spawns recently, played a round starting as skaven, enemy team chopped through some maulers, monks and stormvermin and then ended the match pretty much. A damn speedrun all in all. Hordes got torched in an instant more or less after the elites got popped.

Then its my side’s turn.

We go in, go shy of halfway and 2 skaven use their horde summons, suddenly there´s 3 rotshields, 3-5 stormvermin with shields, monks and an absolutely metric ton of assorted mobs, several of which were also carrying shields. Our teamcomp was not built for that, got bogged down really hard in spite of 2 bombs and then basically spent all our health and supplies just to survive.

Then another horde happens along with a troll and, 2 more rotshields and some other mobs. That was it. Was hella different quality of spawns relative to what the other side faced.

My personal take is that rotshields should be removed from Versus

2 Likes