VT2 and jumping (frustrations)

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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First of all, let me start by saying that I have never been a fan of certain jumping puzzles. If the game requires me to make an uninterrupted sequence of jumps, preferably with crouching at the beginning of the some of the jumps and performing an action not assigned to LMB/RMB by default, I will hate it.

Having said that, I’m fine with reasonable jumping mechanics:
a) that do not require pixel level precision
b) that do not require at least 960 Hz refresh rate and input lag no greater than -100 ms
c) that can be reasonably learned with practice by someone who is not a teenager with reflexes sufficient for their chosen career path of a Formula 1 driver
d) that do not require a non-default character ability.

I cannot say that all - or even most of - the jumping puzzles meet the above description. I will mention several of the puzzles, and the ones that I will be complaining about below are the ones that I cannot manage to do either at all or, when I make them, it is a non-repeatable accident rather than a success. Such puzzles make me hate the game and people who thought it was a good idea. Just a remark: I would like to thank in advance each and every “get good” comment. But if I fail to learn something after hundreds of attempts and experiments in a video game, after rewatching tutorials and rereading guides, I do not consider this to be me being incompetent or lacking persistence.

So…

Righteous Stand: access to both grims is what I consider to be hard, but on the right side of the reasonable difficulty.
Hunger in the Dark: not happy about the precision required for the second grim, but still not something that makes me homicidal. Despite a high penalty for failure.
The Screaming Bell: tome 2 is just the right amount of difficulty - hard, but very learnable. It has no penalty for failure.
Fort Bewlaybroch: tome 2 again, so many interesting ways to reach the last jump, and that one I feel to be too hard.
Against the Grain: tome 1… it’s not that it is impossible. But it is something that I used to be able to do without any problems and now I simply cannot but feel that it’s an accident when I make it. I manage to get it every third time, just like that jump from the chair after the first monster. I know I can do both of those, I rarely know why I fail when I don’t manage it.
Empire in Flames: grim 2 is yet another great example of a difficult, but very learnable jump.
Festering Ground: tome 3, seemingly hard, but actually very easy. Overconfidence is a biyatch.
The War Camp: when the game came out, the grim 1 was something I have learned very quickly and I couldn’t understand people who couldn’t do it. A few patches later and it has been years since I could do it except by pure accident. Hundreds of attempts, all I get is pure frustration.
The Skittergate: the shortcut to tome 2 from the cave and the jump directly to the main path from the tome 2 location are too hard - but those are the two that I have not put a lot of effort into learning, especially since there is a longer and easier option.
The Pit: grim 2 has a few tricky places, but, again, the failure is usually due to overconfidence than to difficulty. However, it’s a good example of how hard it is to judge what is doable and relying on “I tried it and this works/this doesn’t work, I have no idea why this works and this doesn’t”.
Garden of Morr: grim 1 requires a hard jump for me. Not happy about it because I cannot do it reliably, but doable. Grim 2 is what I have always wondered about: while picking it from below is ridiculously easy, was the designer’s intention to jump from the protruding part of the platform opposite the one where the grim is located? If so, I have never managed to do it without a movement ultimate.
Engines of War: both grims require at least one questionable jump, but not unreasonably difficult.
The Horn of Magnus: I have left this basically all-jumping-puzzle nightmare for the end. While nothing really matches the War Camp grim 1, to me the HoM grim 2 is very close. The grim 1 and tome 2 are also on the wrong side of the difficulty curve because they require precision and the action in the middle of the very short jump window. The tome 3 is not the easiest sequence either, no matter from which direction it is approached.

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Personally for most of these…i cant empathize at all, i find them terribly easy.

The one tome that comes to mind as weirdly difficult is the second one in The Horn of Magnus…as for the second grim? You can walk up the stairs and look down towards the gate and you´ll see this lamp holder sticking out.

Jump down ontop it (very easy).

Note that there´s this tiny line of bricks sticking out along the wall, crouch and follow along it until you reach the gate and then turn and look towards the grim and grab it with no extra effort.

…
’
But oh yep, the second grim in The Garden of Moor is also hard to get properly.

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you can just pick it up from the ground tho without the jumping puzzle

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Yeah but that´s somehow grabbing it through the floor&box its on&inside. To get to it properly the idea seems to be jumping but that jump´s actually hard for me at least.

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both tome and grim on HoM can be picked up through the floor by simply standing in place and looking up. It completely defeats the point of the puzzle though ,and negates any design problems.

I hope this isn’t a feature of DT, in that I’d rather have something like the picking-up-a-skull-at-halloween-makes-it-harder kind of thing.

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i cant remember when they changed it(mabye WoM?) but they did something to most, if not all those jumping puzzles, making them way harder for me.
i cant even pinpoint whats different except that i have a harder time sticking on the area i land on.

in the release version i definitely had a way easier time, but somehow no one said anything so i thought it might be a matter of habit

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It’s definitely muscle memory. I had a terrible time with the jumps for Empire in Flames 2nd Grim, until a patch made the wooden beams sticking out a tiny bit bigger. Do it every time now.
BUT

it took me forever to figure out that just jumping in a straight line on Hunger in the Dark made it easiest to get grim.

But I think this is the kind of viral, learned behaviour that is passed on passively from player to player. Definitely some of the charm of the game (I remember thoroughly enjoying learning all of the bricks to push for HoM Rune) as part of breaking the ice and just chatting to players.

@Fatshark_Hedge @Aqshy if there’s any feedback, is that these kind-of viral things really promote people in-game talking to each other.

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i doubt that they would inquire information of that sort, its too specific, it would be intresting though if fahtshark sees these little puzzles as “social features”.

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yeah “social features” is a good way of putting it.

The Term “ice breakers” has been completely destroyed by team building/interviewers using it to force people into horrifying cringy activities, but breaking the ice in a co-op game that’s supposed to be a social thing can only be good.

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I don’t know, suppose I’m weird because I’ve always enjoyed all of them. When I watch people in pubs struggle to get the jumps it just doesn’t make sense to me, I’m not sure what they are doing wrong.

I also enjoy that a lot of the books have alternate unintended paths that players have come up with over the years. It’s kind of like a meta game in the game.

I personally wouldn’t be opposed to making some even easier I guess, but they already did that to a few in the past and I think it makes them look silly (Empire in Flames grim #2, the super long beams look ridiculous)

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My thoughts about this were that this “picking up through the floor/walls” were either bugs or “here is a way to do it if you can be precise enough”.

Strangely, as I have mentioned and obviously there is something to it since Cedric wrote something similar in the next message, it used to be easier. I was able to pick up the third HoM tome from the ground without any problem. I cannot do it any longer except by accident.

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That’s all fine, if we all enjoyed the same things… Who knows, maybe you saw me struggling in a pub?

In any case, when I say difficult, I just consider all the puzzles above worth mentioning, as opposed to walk in the park. Apart from the few of them, I don’t consider them too difficult. My problem is that when after a lot of time and effort I still cannot do it, especially when some of the things I used to do (and some now I can do with just the muscle memory, but no logic), I think there is a problem with the mechanic and the design.

This is not, after all, some very difficult challenge (fun part - one of the things I’ve never been able to do is One Last Jig) like roger or ratlings and bombs, but a part of the basic game.

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That’s what I was thinking… But have you ever made that jump properly, i.e. without e.g. a dash?

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I have, but admittedly i recall finding to be hard enough (failed much more than i succeeded) that i eventually caved in and just abused the bug to make things go a little faster…and to make sure that a grubby death-prone teammate didnt do so before i could : p

Ah the time when loot was of interest.

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Thanks. Not that I will stop trying whenever I get there, but now I at least know it is possible - as I expected.

And you are right about the HoM grim 2, I don’t know if something has changed since the beginning, but I have mostly been concentrating on getting it without the approach from the above. I know some people do the jump from below regularly…

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Some people grab the second tome before that easily by just jumping once too…i’ve found myself jumping back and forth for minutes, from the box or just straight from below and still failing to get it somehow.

Weird how it just does or doesnt click at times-

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If you’re not Bardin you can just look straight up. Same with the second grim.

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Bardin’s shortness affects more than a few quick books but the 2nd grim on HoM can easily be grabbed from the ground, just center your crosshair on the bottom black bar of the box on the door and jump, never fails. Now trying to stand on the top pixel of that rock in War Camp, that is easily one of the more irritating ones for me. Honorary mention to that bouncy ledge on Righteous Stand, I’ve seen so many pubs rage on comms when the windowsill grease slips you off multiple times in a row. As for the potentially dangerous one on Hunger in the Dark I had no idea there was a jump involved, I always just climbed up that wall beside it that you can walk right over.

If I could change anything about campaign at this point I’d just add the ability to load in deed modifiers without deeds…I want elites everywhere at all times without having to burn 10+ chests for 1 game if I don’t quit out to save it. Weeklies too because twins is starting to be rare or way too often paired with bomb rats which isn’t nearly as much fun.

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Yeah, V2’s reaching the end of its life now so it’s a little pointless, but I would have appreciated having other difficulty modifiers available in-game, like the skull for halloween. The existence of healing kits make tomes not much of a hinderance. And Grims don’t really switch things up much, as curse resistance reduces a lot of their impact and everyone in QP runs it. Squishy careers will get deleted by an elite overhead no matter what, and tanks are slightly less durable, but that’s all really.
Also I hate having to go on a big detour for grims and stuff. Most campaign levels are long enough as it is, I really don’t appreciate going on a 10-min trip to get stuff like in the Enchanter’s lair or Dark Omens.

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Most of the wonky ones seem to be misaligned collission boxes. On this one in particular, you have to aim to the left of the pole. Just imagine an imaginary pole next to the one you can see.

Another good example of weird collisions is the second grim in Hunger in the dark. Even before a patch broke it even a more, you couldn’t trust your eyes when trying climb those rocks.