This game is too unfriendly for recruiting ur friends to play the game for both parties. I’m a god with all maxed out characters and my friend is trash with all level 1 with no loot. Its gonna take a very long time to level a character to lvl35 and what if he wants to switch? Spend even more time on leveling another character? Wait forever so you boxes finally drop lvl 300 items? How is this fun for me as a maxed player to spend all this time carrying my frined and for my friend to just follow me like a useless anchor for hours and hours? It feels like its more fun for me and my friend to not play together untill he gets to max level so he can play with other scrubs feeling that he is contributing. Basically they want to play a better L4D but they have to grind many hours to be relevant so we can both play on the same level.
The whole leveling system was fun at launch but now its just a massive gatekeeping cockblock for the new players. Remove character levels, remove item levels, make the recruit and veteran the only available difficulties for new player, unlock champion if they completed all maps on veteran, same for legend and cata. I doubt that veteran players would mind and it would be better for my friends and me to just run all the levels on veteran/champion once and be at the endgame together.
If the game is not bringing enough of new players and the old playerbase keeps leaking Fatshark is better off just making a Vermintide “3” to get new blood during the launch hype or reskin the game into 40k for even bigger hype.
Exp is the same no matter what the difficulty level so it doesn’t matter what level they play at - apart from the completion rate obviously.
I guess you must know carrying tomes and grims for your friend boosts EXP.
You point is very valid though. Removing all grind on progression and unlocking the talents from the get-go would definitely open up new players to just lasting a bit longer. Thos Damage Reduction talents are useful, and things like numb to pain certainly make a big difference to the cheap shots Kruber gets when he charges.
I guess FS must know this, as double/triple XP is a fairly regular thing to boost players past the opening grind. SImply getting ONE character to level 35 unlocks everything on everyone else would be some measure of relief from the new-player speedbump.
I mean even since they make xp standard across difficulties, leveling up has become little to no ordeal. Item level and your friend getting decently rolled oranges? Yeah ok that’s still pretty tedious admittedly.
I feel like you’re taking the wrong attitude here. If you’re Cata level, or even Legend level, it’s gonna take a fair while for your friends to catch up to your skill level anyway. By the time they do they’ll certainly be leveled up enough and with good enough gear to contribute.
Just take them into Vet while they get their bearings, don’t go crazy killing everything so they actually get practice fighting things (maybe play more of a support build or just special snipe and let them practice frontlining).
The skill curve in this game is so long I just can’t imagine xp grind of all things holding up new players getting into it. Again though item power and gear in general is a different story and could definitely do to be smoothed out A LOT.
I have nothing good to say about the leveling system.
Getting a friend into the game becomes a struggle every. single. time.
Having Hero Power tied to a character Level equals you being OP as Sigmar for the longest time, even if you equip blueprints. You told your friend about this hardcore game, that will have a steep learning curve and be challenging with every new difficulty? Not aslong as your forcefully overgeared backside is part of that story.
Even forgetting about the social part, leveling a second, third, fourth character is the least fun you can have. You already play Cata for 100h with your one Hero? Well to bad. Time to play Legend until your Hero Power makes you hit harder than wet noodles.
Do you know the only crap solution to scale down Hero Power? Its to start a family share account with every new friend. You will miss out on some loot and overlevels. You will still have a better grasp at what is going on, and probably fall asleep halfway through a map, but you are not forcefully OP geared and onehit everything.
Iam always happy for a couple of moments when someone I know from other games is interested in the one I seem to play constantly. Only for as long as it takes for the leveling process to ooze slowly back into my memory.
While I see the problem here and agree, had the same happen. But I don’t think levelling is the problem, because there is imo a way bigger grind here: getting good. New player with max level could not even do champ because the game is really hard to master. And that’s why we are here. So I don’t think there would be any possibilities. I always thought fatshark added levelling so that newcomers with little skill would mixt even less with veteran than in left 4 dead. I don’t think there will be any satisfactory way to solve this.
The problem is not the leveling, it’s a bit tedius but is managiable, the problem is the loot, how long is to grind to 300 power weapons, how hard is to get reds if you play below legend this is what stops my friends to keep playing. About the skill would be nice if fatshark would give players more useful tutorials and tools to better understand the game so people are not forced to rely on mods and have to search in forums and whayever else information about mechanics.
Just so happens I’m currently playing with 2 real-life aquaintances that are low level and whom I’m helping to get their bearings in the game. I must admit, I pretty much agree with your general point.
I’m honestly convinced that if hero power wasn’t a thing and all skills were available from the start, sooooo many things in this game would be a lot better: Levelling is a drag anyways. It makes balancing the game unnessessarily complicated. Making playing at a certain difficulty easier the more you’ve played is exactly the opposite of what makes sense.
I understand how levelling could serve as an extended tutorial, of sorts. But levelling as-is serves only as something that gets in the way of the real fun. A system in which you unlock difficulties by completing the one before would work better. (Like how you unlock Cata by killing all Lords on Legend.)
And then we haven’t even talked about the way weapons are aquired / the crafting system yet… An Athanor-like system where you unlock weapon traits as you play the weapons would be a lot better for newbies as well.
I know its more of an exception, but if a newbie has prior experience in melee action games (esp. PvP, like Mount&Blade, Chivalry, Mordhau), depending on their experience, they can get cata ready within 30-100 hours (of playing legend-cata).
Vermintide is a game that attracts that melee gamer audience, so its valid criticism that leveling and gearing can really get in the way for some new people.
Agree with OP. This game is far too grindy and it ruins the fun. The whole leveling and loot system needs to be streamlined (with no RNG). I’ve put thousands of hours into VT2 and have acquired some competence. The thought of having to go back to level 1 on recruit with terrible gear in new games like Darktide and potentially Vermintide 3 and spend hours getting back to a difficulty where I feel challenged is a major detractor. I really hope the new Fatshark games get rid of the artifical grind and let players begin at a difficulty dictated by their skill not character level or gear - I like OP’s suggestion of unlocking higher difficulties by completing a few games at the lower level. The only thing I don’t mind grinding for in VT2 is achievement cosmetics like the Deed portraits or 100 game hats. Grinding for gear and levels is annoying.
I personally enjoy the grind as it gives me (well did) me some sort of long-term goal (something the game really lacks imo). Though indeed this is not the best mechanic and Fatshark should really come up with something new.
I don’t think that game difficulty should be locked to any sort of progression, maybe with the exception of Cataclysm (which really needs to be made available to everyone for free).
I would prefer some sort of a “mentor mode” if you will. Any player with maxed out character could enable this mode, and it would lower their power level (for as long as they have this mode enabled) so that they can play with new players on lower difficulties and not decimate everything in one swing. In addition, they would provide a party-wide buff for all characters below lvl 35, increasing their XP gain (any maybe increase high-quality weapon/accessory drop chance) by a substantial amount.
The beginner Grind in VT End Times was just as bad. It was just easier to power down when you introduced a newcomer. VT1 featured locked trinket slots until you reached level 30, and a gear grind that ends up being frustrating and unfair to no end.
Neither VT titles had a smooth experience regarding acquiring equipment or leveling. Other Coop titles do a much better job. (Ofcourse there is those that do even worse.)
I’m sure we won’t see any changes in VT2, not even sure if there will be major changes to crafting/deeds/etc. bc, as you said, it would require a lot of reworking that generates no money aswell. But I really hope FS carries the feedback from the last 2 years over to Darktide or maybe even V3, it really might be a better idea to go for a 3rd title rather than “wasting” to much time on a game that is almost dead anyways. As hard as it sounds, but I can’t see a “2nd wave” of Vermintide players comming, even with the Chaos Wastes DLC (but let’s see, hopefully I’m wrong).
It takes much much more time to level every character to a max level compared to clearing all levels on a single difficulty.
I dont mind running the whole campaingn ONCE while I teach my friend the basics of the game. During this time he can check out all classes and git good.
This game is ok for bad players since they can keep rolling on recruit. I’m talking about recruiting not braindead friends to play the game. They become decent after a few games but they realise that they need to grind loads of hours doing irrelevant content just to get to the end game. Its like convincing your friends to play a new CS:GO like game but you need to grind 30hours to unluck all the weapons to buy. I can teach my friends to be good after clearing the whole campaing on veteran. This game is not that hard if all players are on the same discord call. Thats why we want to get our friends to play this game.
As many said, your skill at playing the game is a lot more important than pure level or even reds. How about teaching them melee mechanics, how to fight bosses, maybe show them a couple of builds? (there’s some good ones on steam or reddit).
And btw, are you using the x2 or x3 XP event like the one currently?. I must have leveled up like 100 times already.
That would be nice if I only had to do that ONCE to complete all missions on veteran. But that is far from enough to get them to max level on even ONE character. Is this fun for me to grind veteran with my friend when Im maxed? This game is about coop and to have fun with your friends but when you want your friend to start playing this game its opposite from having fun.
I disagree. Depends on you and your friends. My friends understood the game after a few hours and veteran became boring, playing on champion was inefficient since they are getting lvl 60-70 items anyway. They start asking “So when are we gonna play the real game?” After they figured out how much worthless boring grinding they had to do they never logged back.
