Vermintide 2 critical opinions

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
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Alright so I wrote this huge chunk of text a while back and I thought it would be interesting to see your guys opinions to it. This critique is not meant to be negative or a attack on the game but I do admit that when comparing V2 to V1 I just found that many new system in the game are just not working (imo !). The text is also almost half a year old so not every point I make is necessarily relevant now especially the points I made about dodging and some weird animations I think. Also keep in mind that this is my personal opinion and it doesn’t say that V2 is a bad game but that it is a worse functioning game compared to its predecessor (at least that’s my core takeaway). Kudos to everyone that takes his time to actually read this whole novel I wrote xd.

"My biggest Problems right now are three big “categories”: skill, loot and combat (so basically almost the whole game xd).
In regards to the loot i dont like the new hero power System and how it handles weapon values and the value of the item itself. It also goes Hand in Hand with the skill Problem but just bare with me here for a sec, ill explain myself.

So heropower at a whole was only implemented to stretch playtime and give more casual Players a feel of accomplishment (in my humble opinion) because it allows you to feel stronger after enough playtime and makes you dish out more dmg ect. Whats so bad about this tho is the crippled learning curve and Overall Progression that results from it. In V1 the only differences between higher loot and your starting gear were the dmg and the number of traits a weapon could have - thats literally it. Because of that the Player skill is more focused and weapons are more a matter of Preference because of the traits they posess. If we look at v2 tho things are Looking way worse - a hp 60 falchion will always be worse than a hp 300 one which means that true weapon values are always locked behind the endgame (hero power600) because cleave and similar things are also influenced by those values. It also removes are lot of choices from the Player because we can for instance dont use low Tier weapons anymore if we reach a certain treshholds, meaning once we get powerfull we will always dish out more dmg. V1 was so brilliant because the weapons were so consistant. Sure better loot meant you would make more dmg and the Progression to the next difficulty was probably a bit easier but if you were skilled enough you could just move up regardless. In V2? Nope, you better reach that certain hero power Level or your not allowed to Veteran. because of the trait System weapons also werent as expendable as they are in V2 now because there wasnt a fluxuation of values wich now is a result of the hero power System. Basically: everything you require until power Level 600 is redundant and in V1 its not…

And now regarding skill: I touched a bit on it with the hero power and thats our biggest issue here - consistency. The fact that your able to just move up values like Stamina, max Hp or crit Chance is bad for a game like this. In V1 you could get similar boni through your weapon traits and trinkets but many of those traits were gameplay altering Things and not straight up buffs. In V2 for instance i could tank up my rapier with the WHC to have 6 (!) full Stamina shields if i go for it… just wtf haha. The reason why i dont like that is because the first game was about a hard learning curve that made you Progress at a Player and not about moving up numbers to get literally a stronger character - wheres the chellange in that anyway? That coupled with the new class Systems means there are many many ways to cheese around the difficulty and challenge. And i believe the devs are even Aware of that because the way the highest difficulties are handled is very different from the first game but more to that when i talk about the combat. Also the ability to Regenerate temporary Health through kills is broken given how squishy enemies are, making it even easier.

But because im rambling here is what i would have expected from the game upon release to stay true to the V1 Philosophy: (regarding skill and loot) The only differences between the classes should be their ultimates and nothing (yes Nothing) else. That may sound radical and you prob. thinking “well that removes alot of gameplay choices” and while thats true it also expands directly upon the first game without creating a whole bee hive of new Problems due to the skill and leveling System. And if you want still some kind of Progression for the classes then why not just have Alteration of those ultimate abilities unlocked at ceartain Levels, giving the Player more gameplay choices without the powercreep we now have. Also remove hero power and temporary Health completely its both stupid. And instead of putting so much development recources in the new Progression System just upgrade the one of the first game. Make it so that you always get loot for the character you finish the Level with and every complaint about the first games reward System would have been solved lol. Instead you could try to expand the weapon rooster even more so that you have the learning curve shifting from the class System to the actual combat because there is more stuff to Experiment with and master. Because lets be honest - if i Play the BH or the WHC makes no damn difference if im trying to learn a new weapon (its the true Progression of the game, or at least it should be).

So and now finally to the combat (hope you didnt passed out by now…and if not i thanks for your Patience): One big Problem the combat suffers right now is just the fact its unpolished as hell - i regularly take ghost hits, some enemy animations look wonky (like the Skating chaos guys), missing Audio ques when youre getting backstabbed, there is hyper Density during chaos hordes and the Overall experience is very unstable. In v1 If i see a clanrat trying to hit me i just dodge backwards and thats it. in V2 tho that damn clanrat is gonna track me unless i dodge at a specific Moment sideways and if i dodge backwards there is a 50/50 Chance its gonna hit regardless. some of this stuff is intentional some is not but you get the Point. Fact is the devs want you to dodge some attacks at a specific Timing in a specific direction and that is even true for the trash enemies during a Horde. The Problem there is that its simply unrealistic because you cant pay Attention to every damn enemy at once if there are like twenty dudes around you. This design decision should only apply to bigger enemies like storm vermin ect. And even if thats more of a personal complaint (wich i hope it isnt) i think its still objectively true that all of this is visually really bad represented, meaning that if you get hit by a attack that is meant to be dodged in a specific way you feel cheesed because there is a lack of visual indication to it. What that results in is in Rats that skate around Corners to hit you instant or a slave rat thats is able to hit you from Five meters away even tho you dodged backwards. Now to my last big personal issue - the way difficulty is handled in Champion and above. Ill make it quick on this one because i already wrote way too much: V1 is a game about skill and handling multible enemies under pressure and Mastering the melee System. V2 is about pure chaos Management, throwing most you learned from the first game totally out the window. In V2 the normal enemies are redundant and even hordes arent dangerous (unless theyre bugged) but the game wants to make up for that by spamming you with Specials and ramping up the difficulty Spikes. It makes the game feel cheesy imo but its necessary because the individual dmg output is so flexible per Player (due to class and hero power) meaning you have to tweak the game differently to make it feel consistent to different builds of characters - wich frankly is impossible and results in a way worse Kind of “hard” compared to V1. If everything would be more consistant from the start there would be no Need for pure chaos Management because you could monitor the balance way more efficient and set the emphasis on a challange that actually evolves around the great melee combat the game still has.

Thanks for Baring with me till the end and sry for all the writing Errors but im tiping this on my Handy and im not Patient enough to actually correct every mistake haha. Also english is not my first language. With that beeing said remember that i still love the game but i do see many flaws and hope that at least some of it is gonna Change in the future. Many of the Problems sadly just are issues resulting from the new design the game has and are probably to stay unless they completely revamp the whole game - which isnt gonna happen."

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That really sums up how I feel about the difference between VT1 and VT2 very well. Well put and very insightful. I feel that less is more in the vermintide system. Combat was more skillfull dueling with smaller groups in VT1. This bloodbath of mashing and people telling you pushing is worthless just keep hacking. I find it distasteful in comparison to VT1 precise combat.

I fear that it’s a little to late to undo all that has been done. They decided to appeal to a broader audience and have ended up with a less deep and precise game as a result of this.

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Yeah I think we have to accept that V2 is a very different game in comparison. The problem I see is because of the class system balancing becomes really difficult and that’s why we ended up with this different experience compared to V1. The real tragedy tho is that on its core the melee system has actually improved (I rly love the push stab for instance) but the game doesn’t give it enough breathing room and the importance that it deserves…

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Well summarized you’re a bit late dough, post like your’s were in when we were in the closed beta one year ago. Completely ignored of course.
But about dodging it’s far simpler than you think they track you and if you dodge they just freeze in place where they are/looking. It’s cheezable af.

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Dodge is useless for me because I play using left handed controls on an xbox controller. I don’t even try to dodge in this game. The right thumbstick is my movement, and the right bottom A button is dodge. Can’t press both at once. I guess I could map dodge to the D-pad, but that would be a pain to change back every time I wanted to play something else.

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I needed time though to Form a valid and grounded opinion, not clouded by nostalgia or hype. And even so it would’ve changed nothing - what I’m asking for would require to build the game from ground up and that’s just a fantasy for now and back in the beta. I think the smartest move they can make to turn things around is to introduce a new difficulty and to balance around that. In the modded realm are currently some very good mutators that could be used a templates for a new mode and maybe well be lucky in the future.

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I think a few of those things are just opinions - the hero power, for example. I mean, a lot of people (not including me) considered it a “fault” of the first game that there wasn’t a “progression” and that levels didn’t mean much. I don’t know why people feel every game needs to have that, but that feature just wasn’t implemented for players like us; I can get why the devs added it, even if I’m just “meh” about it. The good thing is that it’s not that bad reaching max level, and then you never really need worry about it again. And to be totally clear; I’m not saying you’re wrong about that, it’s just personal preference. Though, to be fair, in VT1 you’d never use a blue item if you had an orange item of the same weapon (I think there was one blue weapon that had a trait combo you couldn’t get on an orange, but that was it). So the “tiers” still definitely existed in VT1.

I may be in the minority here, though, in that I enjoy that we have the ability to min-max. I don’t always do it, but sometimes I do - and it does influence gameplay in a meaningful way. If you want to go for some breakpoint, you’re giving up something else that was potentially useful. On some weapons, you have to choose “do I want to be able to kill x in less hits, or y?” It’s certainly not perfectly balanced, certain bonuses outstrip others noticeably. The fact that “attack speed + crit” is kinda the default on most things isn’t good. But I’d say the system just needs some tweaking. At the end of the day, you can use whatever random combo you want, and if your fundamentals are good enough, you’ll win. Probably without THAT much more difficulty.

I totally agree the game feels a fair bit different from VT1. Rather than the threat of getting worn down over the course of a match, we have a “difficulty spike” challenge, where you can cruise along fairly easily until the stuff hits the fan. I do prefer the old VT1 style. Temp health is probably the biggest offender here, and despite the lvl 20 talent changes, we’re still getting waaaay too much. I feel like generation of temp health needs to be cut in half, or some new mechanic needs to get introduced, to help counter it. I really feel temp health generation really needs to be limited a bit more, because hordes are very unthreatening threats. Dodges are also, now, a bit too strong. It’s so dang easy to just avoid damage entirely, and so if you DO get a stray hit, it only means “now I need to hit more stuff to fill up on temp HP” not “I’m in danger!” The other day I took a Stormvermin overhead on a squishy character at the very beginning of Skittergate (I was up on a cliff and didn’t think he could hit me, lol), and I just . . . kept playing at 20 HP. I won, without much of a problem, only getting topped off mid-way into the game by a bot with a health pack. I just filled up on temp health from the first horde, and was fine for half the level. I never even felt endangered (and I had healing items, I just didn’t see a reason to use them!). That’s . . . troublesome.

Combat is still a bit buggy at times, totally agree there. But they have patched a lot of issues, so mechanically the game feels way better than VT1 ever did, at least IMO. I think VT2 is in a pretty tricky position, that the tightness of the combat design (and impact of any hit) is so severe that you notice if anything is even imperceptibly off.

I do think the game still needs work; I’m not saying you’re totally wrong here. It certainly is a new game, rather than Vermintide 1.5 - that’s a good thing, IMO. I like how each career is built to operate differently - and fundamentally, I think they work. You can win with any career, any combination, if your fundamentals are right. Skill is ultimately the deciding factor (aside from a few cheese builds, which the devs do actively nerf), but the skill ceiling is lower than in VT1.

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