Read thru this, I want to know who wrote the questions, because while they’re trying to be polite, they weren’t being assertive. So all the answers are CORPORATE answers, that answers…nothing…
It seems with the release of 2.0, the ‘tightness’ of the Vermintide 2 experience has loosened a little, and we feel some cracks are showing. We feel we’re taking unpredictable damage either due to enemy range or enemy stacking. We’re seeing more enemies disappear and reappear before our eyes, and beastmen in particular are spawning in some unusual locations and run as us as if climbing from a clown car. Prior to 2.0, losing around could almost always be attributed to the team making mistakes, but post 2.0 we see the tide turn to the game seemingly ‘robbing’ us of our chance at finishing maps. Is there a plan to address the loose feeling a lot of us are experiencing with the game and take some time to tighten up the admittedly complex web of interactions in the slot system and AI spawn system?
A (Mårten): This is something we want and plan to do. It might take some time since we have to make sure that nothing else breaks in the process. Sadly, as with a lot of things, repairing something broken takes longer than actually breaking them.
So… you had a working product (somewhat, we the consumers were relatively satisfied with the product build 1.6), but the instant 2.0 is implemented, EVERYTHING breaks… Did you bother to make sure nothing was broken pre-release Marten??
Q: For the longest time there have been issues with specials and some of their behaviors. Assassin rats flying at us at highly inconsistent speeds, from a jovial glide across a very tall spline, from launching at us at the speed of light whilst ricocheting off walls. Hookrats have a habit of dragging the player out of bounds, or upwards through the skybox. Hedge has mentioned in the past the team wanted to take a pass over special behaviors. Is this still in the works?
A (Mårten): Yes, this is still in the works. It is actually a pet peeve of my own. It was bumped down a bit during the Winds of Magic and Beastmen production, but as soon as things are back to normal, we will take on these as well. Specials are supposed to be special, but not -that- special.
You broke the game, and you decided that unfair game ending instances wasn’t priority to fix. Which, btw, hook rats would drag the player into the Earth, solid objects, off a cliff face, through walls and into the the atmosphere, so that teammates can’t even get to them all throughout build 1.6 . This means specials had always had bugs that were NEVER looked at to begin with.
Q: Beastmen! A cool addition but could use some love. They seem to deal disproportionate amounts of damage compared to their Skaven and Chaos colleagues (of which we’re told they should be equals in terms of threat). Bestigors and Standard Bearers look very similar and makes prioritizing difficult. The range of the spears (coupled with the high damage) often leads to frustration. Bestigor overheads feel clunky and hard to read compared to the SV/CW equivalent. We know a balance pass is due after a bug pass on the Beastmen, but right now it feels a bit like Leaderboards are making you hesitant to push hard in this area. When can we expect to see changes to these guys in the patch notes?
A (Mårten): It will be an iterative process, not a ‘big-fixing-everything’ since we need to fix the bugs and make sure the tuning is just right. The team is working on a first pass on the Beastmen since the release of Winds of Magic, to tame them a bit.
Play your own game Marten, and put it on twitch with your co-workers. Feel the same pain the players have to deal with. If you and your team can beat all the maps on Legend, 1st time thru (give yourselves all the red items you want), then I will concede we as players just need to “git gud.”
The only thing that needs to be done, as mentioned by a large majority of the players, REDUCE the SPAWN COUNT. It’s NOT difficult.
Q: It’s neat that end events now scale with difficulty. This is a sensible way of scaling challenge as we move up the difficulty settings. There are a couple of outliers, notably Convocation and Fort Burgertown. There was a fix to the end event of Fort but both noted events still seem disproportionately difficult compared to the other events and the difficulty of the map prior to the events. They should be harder, no doubt, as they’re the crescendo of the map I suppose, but they feel so much harder that it feels wrong. Are they intended skill checks or will there be some change to these to tone them down?
A (Mårten): Neither Fort Brachsenbrücke or Convocation of Decay are intentionally set up as skill checks, we really want to do a normalization-pass for all the events to make sure they are in line difficulty wise.
Difficulty scaling is fine for end game event, but not the entire map! Also…skill check? Can YOU survive your own creation? It’s like you looked at VT1’s Deathwish mod and said, “I’m going to steal that idea and call it my own! Players love a challenge, that’s why they modded our game.”
Difference is, WE the players, had the option to turn on Deathwish. It wasn’t forced on us!
Q: Sound! What’s going on here at the moment? There are lots of recurring issues throughout the patch cycle. Sound stuttering during intense situations, things becoming silent from one patch and back in another (Hordes, special spawn clues, backstabs). Sound prompts are key to the Vermintide 2 experience and sounds when they work as expected sound brilliant (along with the music!). I just wanted to know if the team is looking at this system in fine detail any time soon so we can once more truly rely on those prompts for the feedback and information they’re designed for. Thanks!
A (Jonas): This is not something we are unaware of, but we have had difficulties reproducing the stutter issue. I have attempted to optimize it the best I can without being able to reproduce the problem, and it is possibly gameplay-related when too many enemies spawn. Unfortunately, if we can’t reproduce a bug, they are difficult to fix. We will continue to investigate what might be the cause.
Some people are experiencing issues hearing sounds coming from behind you while using Headphones. This was caused by a Windows update that made some sound drivers behave different within our game, making the sound output “surround” instead of “stereo” while using headphones. To fix this issue you need to change “Sound Channel Configuration” setting in the Vermintide 2 options menu from “Auto” to “Stereo”.
Backstab was fixed a couple of weeks ago and should be working as intended.
Hordes have sound to warn the player about their arrival. Ambush hordes do not have a sound to alert the player, because they are an ambush. This is not something new, and this has been the norm in the regular game from release. In Winds of Magic, we spawn ambushes far more frequently than before, and that can sometimes be perceived as normal hordes without sound cues. In the latest patch, we added sound cues to the ambush hordes according to the feedback we received.
NOT AWARE!? How many bug reports and forum complaints do you NEED to BE AWARE?!
I knew for the longest time, the sound bugs are a result of too many spawns at a time. Reduce the spawns within a SINGLE spawn point and spread them out at locations BEYOND the map boundaries, that’ll solve two things. Sound! and instant floods.
A steady stream of mobs is fair for players to handle vs an entire WATERFALL. If ambushes are meant to have NO sound, ok. But NOT OK when they literally spawn in MIDAIR on top of players and literally behind a player after they JUST cleared an area! Their movements don’t have sound, their backstabs have no sound, dropping down behind you from a higher elevation creates NO sound, they spawn ALREADY in an attack animation. Is this what you call a challenge?!
Q: I believe a great way to further increase the quality of an otherwise lovely community would be to remove competitive green circles from the scoreboard and show the player their contributions to the match. You could show them personal bests (eg: Damage Taken this round: 400 (PB 98)) and encourage players to better themselves and not to best others. Would this be something you would consider implementing (or something similar of course)?
A (Mårten): Yes. We are working on an overhaul of the end screen to address this.
You know what a great endscreen looks like? Look at VT1. Not to mention options to RETRY the map, vote for next map, vote to return to the keep, or just LEAVE entirely without having to reload TWICE.
Q: Recently I found the increased subtitle scaling options and as a player with hearing impairment this has greatly increased the joy I have with the game. That, coupled with a buff to the sound of the Packmaster has been… well, tearful (in a good way)! I’d love to see further expansion of the accessibility options within the base game (so console players can also avail of these), such as (pick your poison) contextual subtitles like Minecraft, contextual screen edge glowing (increasing orange border for incoming backstab, or a colored highlight around the edge of the screen to indicate a special stinger/alert that’s happening off-screen (highlight the closest screen edge to the enemy)). I could go on (and happily can provide countless ideas or implementations from other games!). Would you guys be able to find the time to look into additional accessibility features for the base game?
A (Mårten): Glad you liked the feature, we might have done more to advertise it since it is such a good thing. Please get in contact with us regarding the rest of your suggestions!
HOW?! HOWWW can we GET IN CONTACT with you with OUR SUGGESTIONS!? Is this feedback section NOT enough? Do we have to print them in 20 point font on bright colored construction paper with sparkles, and mail it to a PO Box so you can ignore it!?
I am beyond niceties! Everyone has the right to be upset with a broken product! Get your butts out of your heads (yes I said that right) and PLAY your OWN game WITH the rest of the Community! That’s all I ask! Is that too much effort?!
