I’ve always felt VT2 would benefit from a prestige mode – that is after you hit max level for your character, that you could get the option to revert back to level 1 and climb up again (and perhaps, be forced to use blacksmith versions of weapons that scale with your hero power and don’t give you access to properties and traits until specific levels).
This probably sounds insane to many people who are very critical of the grind, but hear me out!
A few years back my sister got into the game and asked me to level her Sienna one 2x EXP weekend when she was away, so I did that. As a veteran, going back and playing a character with no hero power, no talents, no weapons, no traits, no properties, and having to work with new players – it was a ton of fun! It was gritty in a way the higher difficulties do not quite replicate. Your talents are not functional, you don’t get career get-out-of-jail-free-cards, and on top of that you have to clutch with whatever meager tools you have. It was a novel experience all delivered by the game’s systems as-is.
A prestige system would give veterans that kind of challenge whenever they wanted it, and would also give a healthy influx to the lower difficulties. These players would also help newbies through the levels and help them learn at the same time.
Prestige modes have worked very well in many other games, so clearly there’s a niche it can fill.
Glad you had fun with “Back to Basics” which is a Heroic Deed modifier and I believe a Weekly Event modifier as well.
I don’t see the point of adding a prestige mode to VT2. If it’s purely about challenge we have plenty of options for that: Heroic Deeds, Weekly Event, Twitch Mode, Weaves Grind, Chaos Waste, Modding Realm and so on.
A prestige system simply for resetting a character and ‘releveling’ would miss the entire point. There is no challenge in playing a character back to 35, to the contrary, it’s godawful as leveling is one of the most obnoxious experiences in Vermintide (sadly, it’s the first players encounter in the game). I don’t know a single player who would like to do this again after maxing out all characters.
I’d prefer a prestige system that let you do something with all the cosmetic extra levels you gain, like trading them in for exclusive hats, skins, or portrait frames in the Emporium.
Sadly I think this ship has sailed as people have characters accumulating many extra levels so that introducing such a system would either be expensive for said player (more so for new players) or would result in a 100% buyout. New players would essentially be left out of such an addition.
I’d rather Fatshark add unique events to pre-existing maps where if completed on Legend you’d get something out of it - Cataclysm is paywalled so that would be just additional challenge. Kinda like VT2 Horn of Magnus where you can channel the Gutter Runner’s Secret Stash only in this case perhaps you could encounter unique enemies (different skins / stats) or unlock a small new portion of the map that would have this added challenge.
Highly unlikely as Fatshark doesn’t seem to be interested in re-visiting their old maps too much other then to fix the occasional bug or balancing certain events.
If that were true, Hero Power wouldn’t matter and no one would care for it.
Ultimately if you reduce a player’s ability to cleave, deal damage, and shove… and then strip away their abilities… and then remove their weapon’s active abilities… how could that not be more difficult than just normal play?
Obviously I’m not suggesting it’s harder than Cata or anything, just that it provides a different experience.
When you’re trying to speedrun levelling, chasing reds or whatever one might perceive the “Endgame” to be, yeah, grinding up the levels kind of sucks. But, like I explained, I think there’s a charm to it. Same as playing, say No HUD mode (which is my favorite Weekly Modifier, bar none, so you might have a sense of what sorts of things I enjoy).
Chaos Wastes uses this exact same setup, notably you start low and weak and grow, and does it in many of the ways I just mentioned - starting with no hero power, no weapon abilities, no properties.
Perhaps this is a very niche want. But I don’t think it’s insane, and I do think there are players out there that would enjoy it. I’m not the first person to talk about how a prestige mode might work for VT2.
You pretty much answer your own question when you mention Chaos Wastes. Furthermore, if deeds weren’t such a pain to get a hold of and play, you could just get into Back to Basics as much as you want. I think you can do that on the modded realm, in any case.
It’s a matter of what is to be considered difficult. The idea of stripping all talents and base power values from a character does not - by far - represent the predominant opinion within the VT community of what makes things difficult or challenging in a meaningful way. Especially not within the modded community where the hardest content is usually played.
A naked character is not hard to play, it’s rather insanely boring and onedimensional. Back to Basics has been the most disliked deed modifier since the beginning for this exact reason. Also keep in mind that most consider ‘leveling’ characters to 35 the bare mininum of setting yourself up to actually play the game to its full potential.
Whatever you think of this, it doesn’t do anything for your proposal of a prestige system. Look at Killing Floor 2’s prestige level system which is exactly what you’re asking for: It’s a farce mostly for the same reason as you lose access to skills that make playing the different perks interesting (again, this is not about difficulty). Why do you think xp/leveling custom maps are so damn popular in KF2? Because no one likes leveling there either, players work around it with boosting maps because it’s the easiest way and because you get prestige skins for all the standard weapons.