Traits Thread 999,999,999,999,999,999,999

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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If we apply a numerical weight to SS, call it 10, and a numerical weight to the other traits, all weighing less than 10, since SS is the agreed upon ‘universal best’. Bringing the other traits up to 10 is literally balancing them. SS doesn’t do anything game-breaking. It is the best because the other options are bad. That’s the point. Also, paying more attention to my Pyro melee trigger in recent games, your 100% uptime hyperbole is also absolutely incorrect, along with your understanding of balance and redundancy.

No. I said that the old Resourceful Sharpshooter caused problems because of the way it interacted with certain staves, and because of the way 1st-hits against enemies proced CDR in general. But that’s all fixed now. So there is no reason RC should be gimped by a once-per-4s cap. I never said crit-based-triggers were a problem, and they aren’t. Generating crits is the whole point of certain classes, so it makes sense that there are traits to synergize with that playstyle.

Well I am a braindead SS junkie. My plebeian understanding is that you push enemies who are attacking you, and they get knocked back…unless they’re a CW, or a SV, or a zerker, or a mauler, or really any unit that it would actually be helpful to cc. Once certain units start their attack animation it’s 50/50 you can interrupt them, and dodging/blocking is just safer than pushing. Shield weapons are the only thing that really benefit from this trait, but Off Balance is better for them anyway because damage buff.

Also Parry is worthless trash.

No. That’s not an interpretation. That’s a fact. That is the gameplay. You literally kill hundreds, if not thousands, of enemies per run.

How do those struggles and challenges manifest themselves? Do you build and fortify defenses/settlements to survive the endtimes? Do you sneak past waves of Skaven and Chaos? Do you solve puzzles? NO. You walk from point A to point B, maybe grab some books (which I guess are puzzles, barely), and kill everything that tries to kill you. You keep using the phrase ‘hack n’ slash’ like its a bad thing, but that is literally the core gameplay. Oh, and 20$ is pretty cheap, so this game is a cheap hack n’ slasher.

I can play on Legend and Cata and do exactly that, because that’s the game. I’d like there to be more viable build options (weapons, talents, traits) so the game has more replay value. YOU are the one who is suggesting that SS is so OP that bringing other traits up to it’s level would require another difficulty setting. I disagree. Legend and Cata are challenging enough even with SS. My point is that if YOU feel the game is too easy, there are ways to increase the challenge.

No. Rude would be implying that people running SS are braindead drug addicts, and calling people stupid for wanting the game to be more “Phunn”

Not if the top level is balanced with the topdifficulty, which it is. The problem is that it’s boring to only have 1 or 2 options at the top level, which is why the other traits should be buffed instead of nerfing something that’s useful and popular and doesn’t even come close to breaking the game.

Do you have brain damage? I said powercreep is unavoidable as long as new content is being produced, and already exists in the form of many of the DLC weapons. But, because of the difficulty ceiling this game has (Cata, Deeds, Twitch, etc) none of the ‘powercreep’ weapons are game-breaking, so there isn’t a problem with the game being too easy. There is a problem with lack of diversity, which is why buffing the bottom is a better solution than nerfing the top.

Really?

Because it seems like you’re implying that SS negates all defensive/tactical/team-oriented gameplay, which is just straight-up factually incorrect.

Not what I’m saying.

irony

If it doesn’t matter then it isn’t really a problem, is it? You’re the one with the elitist ‘for the sake of the game’ mentality. As I’ve said numerous times, SS isn’t breaking anything. The problem is lack of build diversity because the other traits are bad.

They APPEAR bad because they ARE bad. Heroic Intervention is bad. Parry is bad. The others are mediocre at best.

Wrong, because SS isn’t breaking the game. The problem is lack of diversity, which is a problem with the other traits because they are bad. Even if it gets an uptime nerf, SS would still be a superior option to everything but Off Balance/Opportunist(maybe) on shield weapons only. So even with nerfs, the diversity problem would still exist.

I’d say that SS being the overwhelmingly most popular melee trait means that most players find it fun

Nooo. I’m just a braindead SS user. Wit is beyond me.

You’re complaining that SS is making the game too easy, so I have to assume you’re playing at a high level. If not, maybe you should try true-solo with SS on Cata and see how “redundant” attacking is with blocking/dodging/teamwork.

Again. This is a hack n’ slash game. That is not a subjective argument. The point of playing a game is having fun. This is a hack and slash game. Therefore hack and slash = fun. If you’re not having fun, quit.

So after all you’re rhetoric about teamplay you’re mad that your teammates aren’t dying. And your gripe is that a player was able to solo one horde and a packmaster? Is this Champion difficulty? You know flamethrowers exist in this game right? Also you’re implying that this player didn’t have to dodge or block at all during this encounter, which, I’m guessing they did, and how would you know if they were that far away?

Back at you.

Doesn’t seem like you do.

Again implying that SS is somehow trivializing Legend and Cata, which it isn’t.

And again implying that anything being brought up to SS power, and therefore SS itself, is making Cata boring. So Cata is boring, but you’re only an average/below-average player? That doesn’t seem right.

I have over 2000 hours on this game and SS on all my red weapons. I’m lucky to win 25% of my Cata QP games, and I’m probably around 60-75% on Legend. In those games 90% of the time, a player that charges ahead as you described gets killed/downed. If they don’t, it probably has more to do with luck/skill than it does Swift Slaying.

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Exactly. Our glowy runic weapons that we spent 100s of hours grinding for should have decent trait options. It’s really that simple.

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I think the issue with this is long term. A little bit of power creep isn’t likely to make a difference, but a little bit over a long period of time turns into a lot pretty easily, and then you get issues with actually making the game difficult or designing challenging new content. Just having to constantly up the difficulty because the game is objectively getting easier is a pretty hard issue to fix.

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If they would create a game mode, that combines the various game elements - like the requested deed rework -, then power creep would be less of a problem, since you would be able to up the difficulty as much as you want.

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I don’t think it would really, most games with power creep issues try to address it by adding harder content.

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If we want to adress traits, there will need to be a rework, and then a rebalance of enemies, kinda like what they did with WoM. But they’ll have to provide some sort of short betas to try all thoses changes (progression can be skipped for thoses ones) if they want meaningful stats (and opinions).

My opinion stand the same, thoses legendary traits needs to be thematic, kinda powerful in the sense of you see them working and sometimes a bit flashy. They could also provide some serious drawback to maintain balance and most importantly, choices.

And there will be a huge work behind it. I guess properties should also be looked at, at the same time.

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But you worded it as players nuking everything they come across, when the game is supposed to be difficult and challenging. Yes, you’re killing hundreds of enemies per mission, but you’re still struggling hard and often losing. You don’t just nuke everything and breeze through levels.

The more power creep seeps into this game, the easier it gets. The easier it gets, the more difficulty settings have to be added, the more enemies you have to fight, the more ridiculous it gets, the laggier it gets, issues like hyperstacking become more obvious (and more necessary to challenge you). If we would go down this path, Chaos patrols would eventually have to consist of 50 chaos warriors to even pose a challenge (hyperbole of course).
Not everyone in the Warhammer universe is a legendary God of a character, capable of snapping entire armies away, and I wouldn’t like this game to become that.

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Well i have been thinking alot about if power creep is bad in vermintide 2 and i can’t come to an answer. Power creep being bad in mmorpgs, yes, but still unsure about vermintide.

(Ofc it’s bad when you can skip entire mechanics in fights, like perma invis shade, bw kaboom, etc etc

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Taking your example: Let’s call Cataclysm balance Level 10. Now we have Opportunist which is also at around 10. It is meaningful and helpful. The other traits we are at a level from 5-8. Now we have SS. Compared with other traits and the highest difficulty SS is at 20. So bringing everything up to SS makes Cataclysm far easier, hence power creep. That is why balancing doesn’t work like buffzerking. You have to bring weaker alternatives up and the overpowered choices down. You are also throwing around the term “game-Breaking” as this was the issue (ignoring that you will be hard pressed to find a suitable definition for the term anyway). SS is trivializing certain gameplay elements, making them less prominent or redundant. So yes, in a certain way SS is game-Breaking.

Considering your Pyro example. SS has a duration of 15 s. Depending on weapon this is a certain number of possible attacks. Taking an ultra-conservative approach let us say you need 1 s per hit. This means you have 15 hits in those 15 s. Considering that by weapon traits (ignoring other crit buffs) you can give yourself 10 % crit chance, then yes you have unlimited uptime when facing hordes. And as we are talking about Pyro you have far more then 10 % crit chance. But as you seem to have not much uptime with SS apparently, you are surely not against changing the trigger condition from crit based to hit based (5- 12 % depending on weapon) as it won’t change much for you. And as you should have noticed by now, I haven’t said to change SS effect, only the activation trigger which by your own words shouldn’t influence you.

The trait causes problems either way without the 4s-cap. That is why it is necessary to stay. Let’s keep the Pyro class as example. Ressourceful Sharpshooter gives 5 % of your active skill time back. That is 20 hits until activation again, ignoring the normal bar increase as well as the gneral hit and kill Bonus. Now we have Pyro which can get a crit chance up to 50 % (?) I think. Let’s keep it conservative and say about 33 % crit chance which means you would need about 60 hits in average. Taking Bolt staff you can easily spam 2 projectiles per second (atcually more but let’s keep it conservative) which means you have your Chaos Warrior deleting ult back in half a minute, ignoring all other effects on skill recovery. This increases your fire power significantly and therefore has ben rightfully been capped. The problem wasn’t Wigglemancer alone, he was just the ultimate form of this problem. So there is very much a reason to cap the trait.

Correct, generating crits is CLASS specific. There is no reason that the class (or other Equipment) should effect the WEAPON trait, especially not in such a significant way. The trait should be weapon specific and have a near similar effect on all classes which is currently not the case.

That is not how facts work. That isn’t even how realitiy works. Killing enemies and nuking them, are two different things as common sense dictates. The difference is killing Speed. So yes, the Point f the game is struggling, surviving, killing. But not nuking. And apparently you don’t understand the difference between Hack n’Slash and Vermintide on higher difficulties.

Then your logic is backwards. If you want to have more viable builds you have to get to a common middleground. If you keep SS at the current level, it promotes dps builds over other builds. Defensive builds and classes become less viable. And my point is that if YOU feel the game is not nuky enough, there are ways to adjust this WITHOUT going to the modded realm or separate game modes which play differently. You are trying to push away people from the five ain difficulties for no good reason.

I called arguments stupid, not People. Again, learn to read. And once gain, I also want to have a fun, BALANCED and interesting game. I just don’t consider SS very fun.

I explained that like five times already. If you actually balance and not power creep you will have multiple viable Options. Buffzerking never helped anything. Changing the trigger mechanism does not make the traits unuseful. It will still be useful, however without ruining other gameplay elements.

Of course power creep can be avoided O.o Left4Dead added new content without power creep, Vermintide 1 too. The DLC weapons could also have been properly balanced from the get-go instead of giving us a broken piece like F&A. Power creep is avoidable and should be avoided. It is problematic in games heavily relying on leveling aspects. The levels are capped in Vermintide, that is why it can be completely avoided. And the leveling aspect is one of the more criticized ones. Additional modes are not an excuse for power creep. The game should be balanced around the five main difficulties. That is why it is necessary to change SS. The lack of diversity will be solved with this as well. You should be happy then.

Nice that you edited the “extreme case” out. Anyway, the statement s correct. If it dies before it has a chance to hit you, you don’t need to dodge (learn to read, there is a conditional). And yes, the faster the player attacks the less other gameplay elements are needed. And again, I said redundant, not negates. There is a difference in the word. But I see, you are trying to press everything in an absolute formulation/situation on order to downplay the problem.

The game still being played short term is different from the game being unbalanced causing problems long term. Crit chance based triggers are a problem. The past has shown this. This is one of the few undeniable facts int this whole thread. Weapon traits should be weapon dependent, NOT class (and other equipment) dependent. That is why crit chance based triggers should be completely removed.

Heroic Intervention IS indeed bad. Parry though? Not. It has its applications.

Again down-playing with “game-breaking”. It is balance breaking. Which is why we can reduce the uptime as it wouldn’t be a problem.

Not really. It just tells us that it is the most popular trait. Because it is enabling power-gaming and works as clutch-trait. The trait could literally be “Your weapon will one all monster but crash your pc every two Hours” and it would still be popular. So crashes are fun?

No, you don’t have to assume. I just told you. And you are gain pushing people to additional modes instead of solving the issues at the root.

And again, this is different from a hack n’slash game on higher difficulties. And again, I’m all for having fun. I just don’t consider nuking enemies fun.

Yes, because if they move away from the team, it isn’t teamplay anymore. They should be punished for it, in game which centers around challenging co-op play (developers statement). If they can survive this long without their team something went wrong. SS is one of the problems. And no, I am saying that he didn’t have to rely as much as one should expect fighting a whole horde and SEVERAL disabler.
If you have never seen this behaviour on Legend or Cataclysm then you are a statistical outlier.

Certainly do. As I said. The five main difficulties give you the chance to play this as nuking hack n’slash. I accept that. I don’t make threads that Recruit should be a cruel tormenting experience. However, pushing clicker gameplay on Cataclysm and pushing away people is still rude.

Because Swift Slaying is a boring gameplay style and creates balance issues. Just change the trigger condition and it may be better already.

Your numbers are meaningless. Fatshark has all the data and they can easily identify problems, issues and cross-verify claims. If they act on it, is another Story. Again, crit chance based triggers have Always been a Problem. Weapon traits should be weapon dependent, not class dependent. That is so simple that everyone should understand it.

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I maintain my opinion that Stagger and THP effects should replace weapon traits and traits should be converted to talents that can work with the given class.

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Well i wouldnt be against adding all temp hp talents to wep traits. And ofc removing all the current wep traits because temp hp would be pretty locked in choice.

Edit: and the stagger ones aswell, but i’m not sure which traits they would replace, or maybe add temp hp ones to the current healing traits spot and stagger to wep

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I absolutely sympathise with the people that feel buffs to underwhelming stuff should take precedence to nerfing the really powerful stuff right now. However, it’s undeniable what an outlier Swift Slaying is. And it’s not like we have a handful of things that are so obviously more powerful, no; It’s just one: Swift Slaying. Balancing the game in any way is simply impossible with such a horrible outlier. If the game existed as it does today, with the only difference being that SS didn’t exist, and I’d propose to introduce it to the game, nobody would think that’d be a good idea. It’s way stronger than anything else. It only makes the difference between more and less powerful loadouts bigger. It makes everything easier.

It’s unavoidable that SS needs a nerf, since power creep is indeed bad for the game. (Any game.) I’d like that to be accompanied with a total traits rework though. One that reduces SS from “power level” 20 to 10, and brings the other traits up to 10 as well. People that depend on SS too much will have to take a few games to adapt, but in the long run it’ll be waaaay healthier for the game and the meta than bringing everything up to SS levels of crazy.

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My argument would be that, depending on the type of power creep, it slowly removes the actual fun gameplay we all play this game for.

I had the same issue with Huntsman killing Bosses in 4-10 seconds. Shade doing the same with CDR, Pyro deleting almost every enemy with 1 second Ultimates.

None of that is melee, dodging, blocking, positioning, and yet it still ruins the gameplay, because you have one person soloing the majority of enemies, sometimes before 3 other people can get a chance to land a single hit. This was also my issue when range was too strong.

It would be much more preferable if they set a base line of balance in every difficulty, so that this didn’t happen.

There has been people arguing for EVERYTHING to be buffed to the most OP builds since the game came out, and my argument to them is still the same. Play on Recruit. Leave Cata alone.

Another point about the ‘solution’ to power creep, is that increasing the difficulty means what? more enemies, more HP enemies, more damage for enemies? There goes any Career without DMGR or a CC Ultimate. And then we’re back at the start. Our players aren’t having fun getting one shot at this difficulty, lets buff everything. Oh now the tankier Careers are obselete because squishy Careers can do their job better, lets buff them.

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There is currently a counter that agrees with that.

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This is a sensible argument.
Balance should revolve around Cata ; however I haven’t played enough of it to argue whether this trait or that one is balanced. I know almost exclusively play with SS as it is the best one, for a lack of other good options.
It might not be that good, but since there are no other contenders, it is the best.

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All current weapon traits.
Both THP generation and stagger are determined by the WEAPON, not the class or the talents.

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Traits and item modifiers should’ve been updated a long time ago but Fatshark neglected to improve the base game’s crafting system until it forces them to do so after a lot of complaints as per the norm.

-Green Dust conversion added due to people playing high difficulties barely getting any green dust
-Red Dust added to finally allow people to get rid of duplicate items and forge the red item they actually want
-Re-rolling modifiers no longer rolling the same modifiers multiple times in a row which helps narrow some of the rng when players try to get the combination of modifiers that they want

Traits / Modifiers? Largely ignored. Only things we’ve really seen are nerfs and not buffs / changes to the worst traits or modifiers.

Crafting Material Sink? Unthought of! Yes there is some but that can quickly be ignored allowing for the +999 material stockpiles that people will eventually reach.

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I mean this is just how the game is, it seems weird to want to change that when it’s so fundamental to the experience everybody enjoys. The game is about killing as quickly as possible(and sometimes one guy with a shield pushing enemies around), and even if you flat-out removed swift slaying or incorporated it in some other method, you’d also have to address the tons of steroids built into the careers themselves. Classes like Merc and Slayer and Zealot all have ways to boost the hell out of their speed and power, which is why some weapons are only really viable when employed by them specifically. Nevermind entire careers built around mechanics as they are right now, like Pyromancer’s melee build.

I imagine you’d have to fundamentally rethink the game at its core, which was kind of what WOM seemed to be trying to do with stagger and the comical rate of special spawns, but all it’s really done is reinforced how important attack speed and ammo regen are for some weapons to remain baseline decent. I think we’re in too deep to try and redesign the game a third time.

Honestly, as much as I don’t really favor the current state of the game, I have to admit i’m grateful that it at least works. Considering what a rollercoaster it’s been just to get to the point where people can play the game relatively bug-free and have a decent time, it’s probably best not to look this gift horse in the mouth.

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Balance in Deep Rock Galactic is far better. Not only do the Developers not shy away from well needed nerfs but they do continually apply buffs where they are needed.

There are still some perks (traits) in DRG that are underwhelming but overall the balance to me is far better. No more grenades that can cc a near infinite amount of enemies (L.U.R.E. and Pheromone Canister).

I swear the devs for VT2 are scared of touching old content due to the potential of destroying the game itself because of spaghetti programming.

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WoM’s stagger mechanic was an attempt to bring difficulty without making a slaverat as strong as a SV was before. It’s just, nobody asked for it.
Also we got Cata, which is a pathetic shadow of the much superior Onslaught mod, so, another fail.
At least they understood finally that the base game has to be fixed before trying to add more content. The question is how long it will take to finish, we have a quite long radiosilence again (no, these Dev Updates don’t say anything). Nice to be able to hide behind the covid situation.
Doing another BBB, or rather 2 will be inevitable if they really want to support the game for 5 years from which the half is gone already. Let’s be realistic, with this quality and speed of work, nobody will be here for 10 years.
I expect V2 will end up like V1, where once they finally made the game good, it was abandoned for the next project.

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