Time for another Community Cataclysm Playthrough

Fatshark Lounge
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I think it’s time for another Cataclysm playthrough with experienced players guiding new player through Cata.

This would greatly benefit the community and ease frustration.

The reason I am writing this is because recently, Quick Play has been plagued with ragequitters and people just playing out of their league in general.

I don’t know why people generally decide to ignore those great guides and tutorials that are out there, blows my mind honestly how you see people doing mistakes that you shouldn’t be making even on Legend, let alone on Cata.

I also don’t know what the thoughtprocess of people is going into Cata in general.
Do you think it’s going to be easier than Legend or what are you thinking?

At this point people generally come up with the classic “but how will they know that they aren’t ready for Cata if they haven’t tried?”
Risking to sound like jerk, but somebody has to say it

Here is what the irks and quirks are with this argument:

  1. Self-assessment is what is essential but most people lack of - just because you got carried through Legend, and most people don’t even realise that they have been carried and you had a fairly easy time in Legend, doesn’t mean you are ready for Cata
    Just because you can cheese a level by using whatever is outside the basic head-on fight strat, doesn’t mean you are ready for Cata.
    And no I am not assuming most people cheese - that is just a generalisation due to observational experience, because when I see your precious Weave 120 Potraits of FoW Potraits and you are doing mistakes that would get you kill even on Legend - I am getting a bit suspecious of whether you obtained those potraits legitimately or you cheesed your way to obtain them.

  2. Experience can be analysed and categorised after a few minutes into the map (obviously I am giving people the benefit of a doubt and chances)
    Every player that has enough experience in Cata can tell by watching you, your movement, positional decision making and other things how well you will be doing and what the outcome of the map might be.
    Personally, if I see players making the same mistakes all over again and not realising how to change your approach to circumvent that, is also a good indication for me that you are unfit for Cata yet.

  3. I don’t know how ofter this has to be said for people to understand - STAY TOGETHER
    2 simple words that shouldn’t be hard to grasp, yet some people blatantly ignore it.
    Even if you exlain in a mannered why, at the start that we should stay together if you want to survive (because I am not exaggerating here when I say most experienced players can survive on their own) we are saying this for YOU to survive mostly, not for us.
    We want YOU to stay with us in order for you to have a higher chance of survival.
    Yet you get the DERP type of players who are like (Uh let’s check out what’s going on over here) and mostly they DONT learn from their mistakes, you revive them at the next respawn and they do it again (as soon as he/she is revived - off they go)

  4. Ragequitting - somebody has to explain this to me because I cannot fathom why people would instantly - as soon they die - quit the game.
    I don’t think you understand that this is frustating on so many levels:
    A) You did not just decide to abandon the team by basically saying F you team but
    B) If every player does that you just F’d out of the game leaving 1 guy alone to deal with all of it,
    Bots dead - respawn points probably far ahead to reach - possibly low on health, no healing in sight
    And
    C) The obvious oh it wasn’t my fault - funny that it never seems to be your fault in particular
    Walking around pointing your middle fingers out and simultaneously making posts on blebbit or whatever your echochamber of choice might be, complaining about how mean people are to you.
    Well I don’t know if you have noticed but toxicity breeds toxicity - you shouldn’t be surprised if you get treated harshly when you are doing the same.
    Now I am a firm believer of just let it go - if somebody shoots you in the game and you start shooting them back it’s going to have a snowball effect. There are always 2 sides to a story.
    People need to seriously stop blaming either the game or other players for their mistakes.
    Granted, the game has some quirks here and there but it is not often the case that you get into a situation that couldn’t control the outcome of with good positioning or decision making.
    Also stop blaming eachother - instead blame the whole team for the failure and work on a solution.

For me Cataclysm has gotten really stale, as much as Legend has gotten before Cataclysm was released.
It is mainly not the frustration about Cataclysm that is directing my frustration towards this it’s peoples behaviour in Quick Play mostly.
My mindset right now is, that I would much rather bang my head against a true solo (which is much more exhausting than QP) but knowing you only have to deal with your failures and only yourself are to blame is more comforting than listening to a bunch of randoms with their Ds out comparing who’s is bigger like a bunch of first graders (granted some of them might actually be first graders but that’s beside the point)

I would much rather the community matured a little.

Ok there might be a little rant in there but the point of this post is to look for a collective solution which I think is doing another Cataclysm Playthrough which would benefit the community in the long run.

If people aren’t willing to make a minimal effort to improve their gameplay maybe this will, I hope atleast.

And before people start dissecting certain parts of the post - you are missing the point which is a collective solution to make the current situation better.

Please discuss

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“Better” is a funny word - much like “freedom” in that you need to specify what is better and better for whom?
At this point, you just described the way people behave in general - do you think those who ignore every bit of info thrown at them will somehow not ignore this thread?

If I’m allowed to talk about me, then better is fun for me, and that means both dicking around in QP and occasionally play some harder stuff in pre-made teams.

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I agree.

Question: do you not think those types of players you are describing will just ignore community playtrough or teaching runs? A bit what orsonmaxwell said?

Also to comment on things besides the point. I wouldn’t judge players on their frames. For example someone could of done weaves as sienna but want to just learn a differen’t career in qp, positioning should transfer over tho so there you are correct. Also qp is supposed to be fun also and chill, meme builds etc, maybe i just wanna run around smack some rats.

Edit: ragequitting is a personal issue. I never ragequit normally but there have been moments i did. Or i had irl stuff to do so i left. Ragequitting as host is more annoying i would say (both are)

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They won’t if you care to explain to them that it would benefit them in the first place.

I don’t know why you got stuck on the word better? It’s just a figure of speech but meant as in less frustrating in general for the players to get into Cata easier.

There is nothing wrong with having fun in QP, but when you see people qutting the first instant they die, where is the fun for the rest of the team?
How are you going to improve as a player when you die - quit - rinse and repeat?

I am assuming people do that out of frustration and that is exactly what a playthrough should make it less frustrating.

The problem isn’t going to fix itself apparently so you either just ignore it or try to do something about it.

If you don’t care, good for you

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Ragequtting in general is a problem and yes it’s more of a problem when the host does this obviously which hasn’t happened to me yet in Cata, but I do think that people do that out of frustration mostly and I also think that a playthrough could make it less painful experience for them. A win-win situation basically

I am not judging people based on their portraits, it was more of a pun to people who actually do.

I am not judging anyone based on anything but I know that alot of players do care about potraits and think it gives them some sort of bragging right, which is nonesense ofc.

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There are a lot of assumptions in your post. Here are a few:

  1. People quit when they die out of frustration. Maybe they do it so they can rejoin another lobby faster without waiting and get a chance to run around and kill some rats without sitting there looking at the whole tied down hostage simulator?
  2. People care what’s fun for their teammates. I was under the impression that most people want to do something that is fun for them. If one person’s fun steps on someone else’s toes, well hard cheese, mate.
  3. People want to be good at the game. I think here you’re projecting your own incentive to play - what is fun and ‘better’ for you. I can imagine that people may just not care if they are good or not. I personally like to be good at the game, but deaths and defeats don’t really bother me.
  4. I don’t care. If I weren’t I wouldn’t post in your thread now, would I?

Also, what exactly are you proposing? There is no real plan of “doing something about it” - at this point your thread just looks like another rant about n00bs in Cata. Sorry, I’ve read through it twice, and you just want the player base to mature and want to look for a solution, but you don’t really state an objective problem - only your subjective perception of you Cata QP experience.

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I want people to collectively solve this and I think another Cataclysm playthrough where you guide new players through Cata could benefit them in the first place.

Do you expect me to come out with a solution this instant?

I want people to discuss whether a suitable solution can be found and what the best way about it might be.

You aren’t really helping here, you just decided to come in here and start to dissect my post for what? Being a rant about noobs? Where did I mention that? I admitted that I ranted a little about people ragequitting because it is really frustating to me.
Can we get back the topic now?

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  1. If someone is frustrated, it is okay in my books if he leaves the game after dying as long as he is not the host. Over the course of the game you can build up some frustration and I leave and join other games occassionally too after death. Other games I stay even three failures in a row.
    Honestly, I don’t see much of a problem with leaving at any point for any reason (unless host). People don’t abandon the team as they are dead anyway. And at least in my region the places are often filled again anyways. I don’t understand your “B” and “C” argument. And someone leaving doesn’t mean he blames the team. If I leave most often because I am mad at myself and am not much of a help for the rest of the run.

  2. Blame class and weapon balance design on this. The game makes it far to easy to survive for a while while being completely alone. If it gets hectic then they die. But if being alone (while the rest of the team is still alive) would be punished harder (or the weapon/talent design would make it less easy) then it would happen less often.

Maybe more later.

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Yes, you start, we’ll follow.

I personally prefer to carry anyone joining my lobby to the best of my ability and gently point to them if I see them doing something obviously stupid.
What more can you do? A written exam paper before allowing them into Cata? Is there an actual way to tell if a person is ready for Cata or not? I thought there wasn’t, so why try to make everyone play the way you’d like them to?

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Whatever really, I am not derailing this topic because you decided to go on a headon collision corse with me
You seriously have issues if everything you take from this topic is me wanting people to play a specific way which obviously is so far beyond the truth but whatever think what you want to think

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Be the change you want to see. What is stopping you from doing guided runs and posting them in the Guides section?

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That’s fair enough the reason is in order for this to work it needs to reach a wider range of people which is only possible for people who are known
Also if people would read guides in the first place we wouldnt be in the situation I think
No need for me to reinvent the wheel just reach people with suggestions

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Yes agreed.

I do think the playtrough could help. What i also firmly believe in are vermintide guides. We don’t really have alot of content creators sharing builds/tips/ tricks/ mechanics (also cuz not rlly alot of players). We did have jsat (idk if he is still active) and steam guides but there is so much yet to be learned. Also a better tutorial or default info about stuff accesible ingame. Or some kind of discord that explains every mechanic, default bp’s. I know some people out there can make crazy discord servers which would help with the lack of info spread across everywhere.

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I think thats a big reason players ragequit. Mostly out of shame or feeling of holding the team back, or scared of judgement. I even left because someone was blaming all his mistakes on me.

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Hmm yeah thats true but you would need Fatsharks permission I think to link it to the official discord
Yeah Jsat was really good at explaining things on a fundamental level but you know people would still take the p1ss out on him on reddit for no good reason
I also give people the benefit of a doubt that they maybe dont want to read tutorials but have a visual presentation instead

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Jsat honestly learned me so much when i started playing. Does he really get hate? His tips like staying together, find someone in the group that looks like he knows what he’s doing and stick to him was also a big tip that helped me. Later on the mechanics of dodging, kiting, ledge climbing/dropping, effective dodges. Steam guides also helped me in the beginning, they might not be perfect, but for a player who is new and doesn’t want to understand every choice they are a good beginner resource.

To stay a bit on topic. In the beginning i went to legend i am sure i got carried alot but i think a difference is players that wanna learn and improve and players that don’t, and i think a big part of the players you described mostly don’t wanna learn. Yes there might be players who don’t know they are doing something wrong and even don’t realize it and blame others, which is fair as you probably don’t know you did something bad. The best thing is to let them know and also say why that is. Coaching runs might help but i think only for the type of players that wanna improve or realise something they are doing is wrong, and not for the other type.

A big thing also is if you look at events most players don’t know how they work, which is understandable as it’s very hard to find. So they just wing it or use community strats, like fort bracknshruke everyone stays at cannon and then they get cannonball and rush portal, is this the best strat? No, on higher difficulties you’ll prob get overwhelmed depending on careers, but it’s so set in stone by the qp community that everyone does it, yet they don’t understand why or how. So i think info is important, maybe a youtuber that shows specific spots on a map to hold, it wouldn’t work all the time but a big part of players just like to be told what to do indirectly ofcourse. “(If this guy does it, i’ll copy, even if i don’t understand, if it works it works)”. So instead of explaining mechanics and systems is the best explanation, i think for the good of the community more direct tutorials could be good. Just like steam guides are, kinda. Nobody wants to think their build themselves and use a ‘by the looks of it’ super complicated bp calculator. I’ll prob went way of topic

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Nah you are good, atleast you are giving some useful input

I mean yeah if people want to just finish the game and move on thats fine but I think people who do want to learn shouldnt fall through the grid.
Steam guides are great for new players but maybe some of them are to detailed for a complete new person.
Well I was aiming for people trying to get into Cataclysm but Thats anothero issue on itself

LIttle off topic: I remember one instance when people would call out Jsat for being Fatsharks helping hand
Not sure if it was the survey he did I cant remember, but he was called all sorts of stuff which to be honest angered me

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Getting more players into cata can only be a good thing. I’m all for guided runs and coached runs, even reviews as it helps the player in particular + players watching + it also teaches what to do in certain situations with a combination of enemies, like a boss + horde, or even teaches good spots to kite or fight in.

Yes that’s true, but for players getting into legend or cata i think they are not too detailed. Speaking of personal experience.

I think the best solution would be what you proposed, and maybe letting players know some tips ingame if you see they need it, without forcing yourself, just be like 'hey i see you keep getting grabbed by hook rats, you can dodge them when they are about to grab you" obviously the player will not be a god dodger the second you say that, but he will know you can do it and he will only improve later down the line. giving tips on positioning is already a bit more trickier to do, i personally use come here command and if 3 others are ignoring me, i give up and join them, as i’d rather be with 3 in a less optimal spot then alone in a good spot, generally speaking.

Edit: one thing i’d like to add with my previous comment was that psychology also is a big reason of certain strats that exist ingame in quickplay, in events especially. Looking at convo of decay or fort and others. But thats a whole different discussion as it could make events too easy etc etc

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That honestly is another challenge in itself
How do you explain certain mechanics without getting to much into detail and avoid getting the new player confused because you can also overwhelm them with information which is not a good thing
And that is exactly the reason for me creating this thread so these details can be discussed

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I see.

Ok let me try and explain my views on this.

First i would rework the tutorial. The things i would add in the new tutorial would be basics like using ultimates, blocking, dodging, switching weapons, attacking, push attacking, pretty straightforward stuff. I would also include tagging and general tips like staying together.

After the tutorial you play a bit, you get explained how hero power works, how crafting works etc.

Inside a map i would put tooltips or more ‘immersion friendly’ options like something that shows there is an item nearby, such as grims or tomes, without ruining the exploration or the jumping puzzles, also fix jumping puzzles to actually require them to be done instead of jumping and grabbing from below.

I would also lock legend difficulty, tbh i don’t know if it is locked or if they changed it, but i would lock legend behind a hero power req or lords req.

I would also while playing, starting from champion difficulty, add something that says you can push assassins out of the air, or dodge hooks, leeches etc, maybe add a training ground in the keep, which would help with that.

General things i would add some kind of event book inside the keep or voice lines which indicate to players they can do something. Like ‘hey we should get the cannonball together’, more lore adjusted ofcourse. I would also wanna see improved dummies, also be more reliable with stagger talents and make some bp’s more accesible (an idea would be to add for example a chaos warrior dummy and show that you oneshot it, instead of showing dmg, ofcourse still a way to minmax and show dmg for those types of players) also more clarity on which properties work on which enemies, could be an enemy kind of book inside the keep or something.

Those are just rough ideas, things like ‘event book’ are ofcourse examples, they could be implemented in a variety of ways. Also there can be done alot with the keep.

It’s ofcourse a fine line between not removing the discover factor of a game and randomness by giving too much info or making it TOO accesible, But there could be improvements right now.

Also updating their Wiki, or working together with them (idk if it’s their wiki or not). It’s a bit difficult for to answer for me tho because i will look for answers very fast on 3rd party sites, but it shouldn’t be like that or atleast not this severe. too much info is ofcourse not good aswell

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