Heroes!
Welcome to the Q & A of week 41. In this post we will answer some of the frequent questions circling in the Vermintide 2 community.
The questions have been collected by searching through the Fatshark Forums, Social Media, Reddit and Discord, and they will be answered directly by the developers of Vermintide 2. Is your most burning question not answered here? Do not worry, we will continue to answer questions in the coming posts.
Do you have more questions? Post them on the Forum.
Answering your questions this time is the Live Game Director, MĂĄrten and Game Designer, Kasper.
Q: From Patch 2.0.12
“Also fixed an issue for all breeds where different armor types for different body parts did not allocate properly. Headshotting standard bearers with ranged attacks should now deal significantly more damage.”Do you mind elaborating a bit on this? I know standard bearers were supposed to have berserker heads and super armor bodies, but the changes seem to have affected other enemies too. Like how burn now affects super armor but bleed does 0 damage a tick and poison does 1 damage a tick.
A: (Kasper): In this case, we fixed an issue with some enemies that had different body armor types for different body parts only used their primary armor type. The most raised issue was that Standard Bearers were regarded as having full super armor, making them resistant to ranged attacks. Regarding super armor burning, it is something we are experimenting with for consistencies’ sake. There were cases where an enemy could visually look like they were affected by a burning effect, but did in fact not have a debuff, which clashed with some talents. Notes regarding this slipped through the cracks in the last patch due to some internal restructuring, my apologies about that.
Q: Hi Team! Are there any plans to buff the great sword aside from the cleave on armored units there is no reason to choose it on Kruber when Executioner sword is just plain better. I really like the Great swords look but its really lacking on the higher difficulties like legend or Cata the only career that can make it work that ive seen is Zealot because of the move speed talents but even then there are better weapons like axe + faclhion and Bill hook. Its move speed is slow on both attacks, damage is too low and the stagger time is too short.
A (Kasper): We are trying our best to stay on top of keeping all weapons roughly balanced against one another. Greatsword has always been a very polarizing topic of discussion. It is a rather difficult weapon to balance because it can quickly overtake other weapons that fulfill a similar role if it is made too strong. It can also become completely obsolete if it ends up too weak. Right now, it might be on the lower end of the spectrum, and we will monitor it closely for the next round of tuning.
Q: Why did you change your policy regarding accessibility of content ? I’m talking about Cataclysm being locked behind a price when it was free in VT1, and also it and weaves requiring every player to have made the purchase. Are there plans to introduce Cataclysm or Weaves to the wider audience (those who do not own the Expansion) and add alternate value to the expansion for those who already purchased it? It would go a long way to uniting the playerbase who find themselves fragmented based on DLC ownership. Thanks!
A (Mårten): We have received a lot of criticism in the past for how our DLC model worked where people felt that it was worthless to actually purchase them since we want to continue working on the game we need to find ways of paying the bills. If DLCs are not the way, maybe cosmetics is. We are not locked in by anything but what you and we feel is fair and right, so I wouldn’t rule out anything at this point… Cataclysm in VT1 and Cataclysm in VT2 are two completely different things. Legend is, to be fair, what used to be Cataclysm, so that is very much included in the base game (what we did was to remove the “easy”-difficulty between VT1 and VT2).
Q: How will you handle Beastmen and other additional races? Having them in 98% of the existing maps, for > 50% of the map is unacceptable for me. I realize not everyone will agree, but me and a lot of players like me enjoy these games first and foremost for the attentiveness to the story and the setting. Their introduction as it is (dark omens and weaves are ok) is quite immersion-breaking. I’d like new enemies to be in their own content, as well as make them spawn very sparingly in sections of maps where it really makes sense (like the first part of Athel, against the grain, the second part of engines, and just maybe some bit of fort, empire and festering ground - the wild bits).
A (MĂĄrten): There should definitely not be Beastmen in 98% of the existing missions for more than half the time. We need to find places where they fit in, like with all enemies, and reap the benefits from having three enemy factions to increase variation rather than reducing it.
Q: A fair number of players dislike the current THP system. Are you guys happy about it? There have been many suggestions, one of which is to entirely change damage/cleave so it’s a single talent based on damage dealt, and players don’t need to compete for the kills.
A (Kasper): THP was always a delicate problem to solve. Since Vermintide inherently is a game about attrition and pushing forwards against unbeatable odds, it is essential to keep the feeling of inexorability as the horde rolls in. Resource management requirements from a great team playing together are also important. THP inherently alleviates these problems for the player. At the same time, what THP enables is a very active and aggressive playstyle, which many people enjoy. We definitely regard THP as being in a better place than it was before the initial overhaul of the talents, but more things can be done in the future to make it feel better.
Q: Do you plan to improve on existing content, like adding more dialogues, and/or tweaking existing DLCs? I’m mostly thinking about changing the unnecessary event at the end of the Blightreaper with a shorter but funnier bossfight to grab the sword from a chaos lord, or things along that line. There are a lot of suggestions around, some of which - change of books’ locations - are fairly easy to implement.
A (Mårten): Yes, we want to work on improving existing missions and DLC’s to keep them exciting and fresh. Everything from changing things around like fixing tedious and long-winded events to adding new and exciting random events and hidden levels within other levels. With every new adventure or game mode we add, we add thousands of new lines to the characters, both specific for the situation and the general game.
Q: Hey! Now you guys and girls have had some time to reflect on the release of the WoM Expansion, do you have any plans to shake things up for future seasons in regards to meeting the coop goals you set out to develop with Vermintide (1 and 2). There’s a general feeling that the leaderboards are counter to those goals (as well as restricting access to game modes through expansion ownership requirements). Sure, versus is a thing that’s coming and it would be a good place for those who want to exercise their competitive nature, but with Weaves we have a coop feature with competitive side lines, and they’re making the cheating portion of the community much more visible (honestly I never really saw proof of cheating before the leaderboards were put in the game so they never really bothered me until now). Thanks!
A (Mårten): The simple answer is; yes! We will continue to update and improve things for each season to come… Like the non-ranked quick-play feature and the ranked ladder mode for the weaves for Season 2. We will have another look at how we do with the leaderboards in the coming months, and we are working closely with EAC to find and ban everyone. All questions and concerns we receive from the community have an effect on what and how we do things in the future. We will not be able to please everyone all the time, but we listen and try our best.
V2 is a different beast and SHOULD stay a different beast.