Very hard to convince my friends to keep playing this game

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
43

Ultimately, I do think the levelling system, with respect to acquiring level 300 items, is kind of grindy for a game without an adventure-driven story. I can’t speak for everyone, but VT2 is not a game that ends when you hit max level, or when you beat the story (unless you want it to I guess). You’re going to be re-doing the exact same 13 (or 23, if you include DLC) missions over and over and over and over, and at 20 minutes-ish a pop, that’s not a lot of actual content. For most people (myself included), I would assume what’s intriguing about VT2 (opinion) is it’s thrill of finding juicy reds, testing yourself on higher difficulties, and being able to play with friends on those difficulties - all things the Hero Power / Item Level wall(s) prevent you from doing, at least for a while.

Most of the complaints I see from people on this subject are like the OP, people who already do Legend/Cataclysm regularly (like myself) and who have new friends that join them and lose interest due to either “feeling carried all the time” or simply just losing interest before hitting a meaningful hero power. In fact I have a friend that lost interest recently simply because of how grindy it was trying to get all level 35 heroes, added with the knowledge that Darktide will be coming out soon, and he wants to save his energy for that. It sucks when you can’t game with your buds. While it hasn’t deterred me personally from continuing to play, I can see how it would deter others.

Here’s why I think item/hero levelling should be sped up a bit. Three key things:

a) People learn to play this quicker than you might think
b) Newcomers are burning out on the game before they hit level 35 on all heroes
c) Darktide is coming out soon.

For a), anyone without severe chronic carpal tunnel generally becomes good at this game fairly quickly. I recently had a handful of friends get into the game as level 1’s who learned how to play well very quickly, and once they had one level 25-35-ish character capable of doing Legend, we were able to take some of their other characters on Legend and beat it without too much fuss. I don’t feel the individual character levelling really brings a lot to the table though. Every class essentially does the same thing, madly swinging a weapon, blocking when you hear the “woosh” sound, reacting to specials, and ult’ing now and then, it’s just … now you’re a Wizard! or an Elf! etc. I feel that if my friends had stayed on lower difficulties for much longer, they would not have learned just how important it is to react to disablers appearing before the team. Getting them up to Champion/Legend and educating them about certain things as quickly as possible was a much greater learning experience, than baby’ing them through Recruit/Veteran. Sure their Hero Power/Gear prevented them from hitting any meaningful breakpoints like one- or two-shotting Stormvermin, but they were still capable of holding their own. Playing well exceeds any amount of gear/talents/hero power, but I won’t deny that being maxed out definitely helps that along. If you still feel you need more practice, you always have the option of staying on Recruit/Veteran for longer, nobody is forcing you to play higher difficulties … but the game is forcing you to play on lower ones, even if you’re ready for higher ones.

For b), those same friends I mentioned above unfortunately burnt out pretty quickly after getting one level 30-35 character. Even during the x2 experience event, they wanted to try new characters, but Recruit/Veteran and even Champion was too boring for them. They wanted to hit up Legend, but still needed the required Hero Power before doing so (as their item level was still a bit too low combined with their level/Hero Power to hop straight into Legend). They already achieved Legend-capable mindsets, but were now being forced to go back to a lower difficulty to level their hero, which I can see being a deterrent for new players. Rushing through Screaming Bell on Recruit/Veteran/Champion to level heroes didn’t make them better, it made them annoyed.

For c), Darktide is coming out this year, another game I plan to sink over a thousand hours into. Which means FatShark may see a larger player decrease in Vermintide 2 soon. Some people see how much effort it takes to level heroes, and with the release of Darktide soon, may deter new players from purchasing/playing this game.

If I were to suggest any changes, honestly, maybe having +100% experience for tomes/grimoires collected would speed it along a little more. Or as a more drastic suggestion - just leaving x2 experience in place. Another game I play a lot and sunk 4000 hours into was Monster Hunter World. Upon the release of their “final update”, they gave us all event quests, all the time (whereas before they were either random or seasonal), and increased the drop rate for rarer gems. This didn’t help me much, as a veteran player, but I’m almost positive that decision helped bring in new players and get them up to speed to the “veteran hunters” like myself a bit faster.

Note: I noticed Borderlands mentioned a lot in this thread and while I’ve only played Borderlands 3 myself (a lot), I just want to remind everyone that the enemies scaled with your level in that game (ignoring other difficulty-enhancing features like “Mayhem Mode” and “True Vault Hunter” mode). Levelling made you stronger, but in turn, made your enemies stronger too, so if you ran through the story on a level 1 it would feel more or less the same as running through with a level 27 (albeit you’d have a few more skills/weapons at your disposal at higher levels, which would certainly help). Additionally, if you played with a friend, enemies would scale respective to the “player’s” level. So if a level 30 character joined a level 15, the enemies would appear to be around level 15 for the lower player, and around level 30 for the higher player. Also, you could play as the same character as your friend, so if they picked “Zane, the Operative”, you could do the same. I enjoyed this about Borderlands 3, as I could play with my friends and we would all share the same gaming-experience without having to level different characters to play together.

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44

a) Simple fix: useful tutorial or actual load screen tips. e.g. dodge left to avoid a chaos spawn, back dodge has less distance, push attacks are an actual move, etc.
b) Simple fix: start the game at max power, level 300 items no matter what and level 35. Mastery comes from experience with a certain play style, not being introduced to a different play style (compared to base hero) at level 30.
c) Simple fix: previous owners get goodies in DT, new owners can bundle and save.

Granted FS isn’t even remotely exactly up to speed because this game was hoping to make tons of cash off of lootbox gambling.

45

After thinking about this issue more, here is my idea for a solution. It’s probably less dramatic than some would want, but I’m aiming for a happy middle ground that makes things less tedious without flooding legend with inexperienced players, as that’s something that’s been complained about plenty during double/triple xp weekends.

  1. If people really think leveling is still too tedious, perhaps an overall increase to xp in the ballpark of 20-30% would be appropriate.

  2. Change how item power on newly acquired items is calculated. From memory currently when you get a new item the item power can be between -5 and +5 of your current average item power. I’d recommend changing this from +0 to +10 of your current average item power. Not only would that make the item power grind a bit faster, it would also mean you always get 300 power gear once you’re at max power, and getting gear under 300 power when you’re max is a complaint I’ve seen numerous times over the game’s lifespan, so it would be a two birds with one stone fix.

Would be curious what people’s opinions are on this suggested change. Personally I think it’s fairly elegant but I may well have missed some issue with the suggestion.

46

If i recall correctly, in the weaves you only have to level the athanor once and it applies to all characters. This is much better than the standard ‘level each character separately’ system. I don’t see why a player that is playing Kruber at level 35+150 on Cata for a few hundred hours should be forced to go back to level 1 on Sienna when they already have enough skill and game knowledge to play at a high difficulty. The current system just introduces pointless grind that makes the game less appealing. I really hope fatshark do a better job with darktide - players should be limited by their skill not by some anti-fun progression bloat.

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47

This is actually quite an elegant solution. Grind once is usually done with someone you like, so going back and forcing people to grind up again with characters who aren’t their first choice is annoying.

Something as simple as The Imperial Primer on fighting techniques - a book lying around the keep - that has all of the basic and hidden mechanics described might be a good place to start. Lohner reading segments of it instead of “Whoooo’s Moooordin?” would be good too.

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48

there’s a lot of the keep that goes completely unused, would be cool to have a library section that contains tips, tricks and info on mechanics

could also maybe make a good place to bring lore pages into the game

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49

It took me exactly 3 years to come around to playing Sienna. All that time she was lvl 1 :slight_smile: Thankfully, double XP event coincided with some of my mates coming to the game after a big break. So yeah, progression in this game has absolutely no upsides - it was a huge crutch that was supposed to keep low skilled players out of higher difficulties, but anyone who has played a single evening in QP can see that it isn’t doing its job.

I really hope FS does a better job with VT2 first!

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50

This is really important I think for convincing some of their lapsed customers to buy DT, and for those people who have been completely disillusioned by FS’s release schedule, lack of info and comms and so on. Show the community you’re listening and deliver today.

Darktide feels a bit like “cake tomorrow” at the moment.

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51

The first step is cancelling Versus, then moving all resources to Vermintide 2 so that its success builds a solid base and expectations for Darktide.

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v1 was a lot more gear dependent for most people and the community was toxic, I cleared all of cata before level 100 and people accused me of being carried and would try and kick me from lobbies because of my level even if I was outperforming them, the gearing system was also tragic, but! V2 has a plethora of different issues. Although I recently got some friends into the game, and didnt have much of an issue getting them into legend.

I do however have some issues with the following.

  • red drop rates
  • gating on careers
  • having to grind multiple heroes.
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53

That has never happened to me, but I played the game its last year of development.
I’m sure it was messier at the beginning but since the shrine system was in place I’d argue it takes less time to get any weapon I want (stat and max) than in VT2. Getting a specific trinket was at the mercy of RNG though, even with the bounty board it took me ages to get the lichebone pendant.

What I meant by more sound is just that it was easier to get into the game. You could easily play cata with grey items if you had the skill and there was virtually no grind (unless you wanted all reds or something)

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The funny thing is that Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (aka WFRP) - the TTRPG that inspired the Warhammer world, DOESN’T have a leveling system!

Instead, characters gain XP to spend it acquiring attribute advancements and skills/talents available to them in their current career, with different careers offering different advances/skills/talents.

This approach means that “veterans” are significantly more skilled than “novices” but there isn’t a superhuman difference between them.

It’s a shame FatShark did take inspiration from WFRP’s career progression system when designing V2!

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55

Uh, that sounds quite interesting actually!!

EDIT: @SaltySpyre have you thought more about it? could you provide a template for it?
One thing that comes to mind is how to return to a previous career. Would you have instant access to any career you previously unlocked? (so you’d end up with something similar to VT2) or would you do things differently?

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Careers in WHF ttrpg are usually more like a natural vertical progression, though there are also a lot of horizontal options.

You have a handful of basic careers (60 of them in second edition) and advanced careers (53 of them in second edition), and all of them have career entries and career exits that allow progression once you’ve “finished” the current one and gotten the prerequisites of whichever career you’re going for next.

An example would be Initiate > Priest > Anointed Priest > High Priest ; but the possibilities are quite literally endless. For instance, that character could’ve instead gone Initiate > Zealot > Flagellant.

Hmmmm I have to disagree with this. A character that lives through enough XP does become demigodly in comparison to other humans. There are terrifying things out there that match them, but there are characters powerful enough to match those. Slayers are a good enough example of this.
Troll Slayer > Giant Slayer > Daemon Slayer > glorious death

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I think you’re talking about exceptional characters, rather than the norm.
Slayers are themselves rare individuals, especially if they survive for long.
Hence, the infamous Gotrek and Felix novels!
Also, while such veterans are more powerful overall they can still die to overwhelming numbers or a lucky shot. They don’t become invulnerable to certain enemies simply because of a “difference in levels” between them.

Crucially, the WFRP system doesn’t suffer from the scaling issues that come with leveling, such as Hit Points and Armor Class in D&D.

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I’m just theory-crafting as a player (I’m not a game designer myself), so I can’t provide a template, especially not without in-depth knowledge of V2’s game design, but if you consider how it might work with the existing game design, Career Talents/Skills and Weapon Bonuses (Properties and Traits) could be unlocked via earned XP (instead of Levels).

Similarly, Hero Power and Health could be replaced with percentile (%) attributes such as Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, Strength, Toughness and Wounds (all taken from WFRP) which affect damage taken/received, but can be increased with earned XP and are capped at 100%.

As for Careers, it depends on how you want to model them.
WFRP allows characters to migrate through several different careers (more like “jobs” or “professions”), using earned XP to switch between them, but this is because a player typically only has a single character but there are about a hundred careers in total, of which they might choose a dozen or so, over the lifetime of their character.

Here is a list of careers from 2nd edition: WFRP 2nd Edition Careers
(Basic careers offer progression into Advanced careers)

However, as there are only maybe 3-6 careers per “hero” character in V2, you could provide the player with all of them, separately, from the start (instead of unlocking them at certain levels), so they can choose whichever career they like and start unlocking talents/skills/advances/bonuses for it with earned XP etc.
Alternatively, you could opt for a combination of (e.g. 3) Basic and (e.g. 3) Advanced careers with the latter being unlocked once the former are “completed” (or some qualification is achieved)…

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PCs, yes :blush:

I definitely have to agree with that. I have my own set of houserules for DnD / Pathfinder to tone down all that scaling.

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So all things considered, besides adhering to the cooler looking WFRP, the main difference would be that the characters would lose the hero power (or rather all have the same hero power at the start) and they’d get to unlock talents/properties by playing. Is that correct?

I approve of this: it’d be similar to VT1’s system, where you could play anything from the start, and experience would give you better loot with which to play (trinkets and weapons). I mean, it’ll probably be more important than in VT1 because of the talents, but I think it’ll be a good middle ground between the two systems. In retrospect the hero power system doesn’t make much sense: it’s there just to force people to play at a lower difficulty (regardless of personal skill). If they get rid of it the lowest difficulties could be based on different parameters (numbers of specials etc) and it’ll be easier for the devs to balance/modify, I guess.

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Yes, I think you’d want to do away with Hero Power altogether because it scales with levels, making it difficult for older and newer player to play together.

Currently, Hero Power is made up of 2 components: Hero Level and Equipment. You can reset the Equipment to 0 by equipping only blueprints, but there’s no way to reset your Level. However, if you remove levels (and leveling) then this problem disappears. Instead, in the above system, once a Hero “resets” their equipment the only extra bonuses would be their Talents and any Attribute Advances they’ve taken., so they’d still have an advantage over newer players, but not as much as they currently so.

You can still have different DIFFICULTY levels for each map/mission, by varying the health and damage of the hordes/specials/monsters, but any character would be free to attempt any difficulty.
If you did want to restrict access, by setting a minimum “standard” (e.g. for Cataclysm to only be available to experienced players) then one option would be to unlock difficulties as you complete them.

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Again, like VT1. Sigmar, what a great game!

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