Walls on EVERY boss spawn? There has to be a better way

The update on boss walls just makes bosses 10 times more frustrating, particularly when the team wipes and you need to revive them. But even with the buff to melee against monsters it still takes absolutely ages to kill the boss with melee as the last man standing or with most of the team down. Usually people start leaving out of boredom because they don’t want to sit there as you spend 20+ minutes meleeing the boss and the whole match is ruined.

It’s not so bad when there’s ammunition for the boss because you can kill them fairly quickly with ranged weapons, but the problem is that most of the time the ammo spawn is behind the wall so you can’t reach it. Same with team mates too, they respawn behind the wall and have to sit there as you slowly kill the boss when they would prefer if you just suicided.

This needs to be improved before it goes live and there’s a couple of ways that I see that you could go about it:

  • Make it so team members spawn at the boss wall during a boss so they can rejoin the game and the battle doesn’t drag on for ages.

  • Make minor ammo pouches (e.g 5%-10% refill) spawn at intervals near the boss wall or around the map for the duration of the fight when players are at 0 ammo. This way players can still use their ranged weapon occasionally so that the fight doesn’t drag on as long.

  • Make the boss wall move or disappear after a certain amount of time or when a certain amount of damage is done to the boss. This way players can progress and revive if the fight is just dragging on.

  • Add some kind of buff to trinkets or gear: e.g +50% power vs monsters when you’re the last man standing

These are just a few ideas but the point is the walls are just annoying. It was bad enough with bile trolls before, but at least that was every now and then not all the time.

5 Likes

While I’d rather see bosses buffed to somehow punish runners I think the boss walls are a decent way to handle the problem of people just speedrunning and easily kiting ahead, a problem that we didn’t really have in Vermintide 1. Roger was the only boss then and he was fast, plus players didn’t have various speed/stealth/knockback ults to make rescuing teammates trivial. Heck in V1 kiting a boss and horde while rescuing teammates was almost more impressive than soloing the boss.

The boss battle is part of the level challenge, and I appreciate that boss walls make it so people actually have to face the challenge. It’s also possible to force teammates to respawn ahead of the wall; just backtrack when they die and they’ll spawn further back as a result. Now that troll regen was nerfed really any boss can be solo-ed with any class, but you’re right some may take awhile. Boss walls aren’t a perfect solution but overall I think they work well and help to promote better teamplay; and they definitely fix the issue where having a handmaiden (or similar) in the group meant other players dying wasn’t a big deal, handmaiden could just run ahead and pick up any number of times.

4 Likes

I honestly see no point in that mechanic. Boss will follow players so why put walls? Even if they try to run from them, they will en catching up.

4 Likes

Yeah I hear you, IDK maybe a good compromise would be putting the boss wall around the bridge of shadows so you can run ahead but have to kill the boss before fully completing the level.

3 Likes

I agree with you. I think the boss wall makes more problems that it solves.

WITH WALLS

  • Novice players in a TPK situation don’t know what’s going on and run into the wall while trying to escape/revive -> not fun.
  • Good players in a TPK situation have to either solo clutch the boss or… give up.
  • Excellent players just solo the boss.

WITHOUT WALLS

  • Novice players in a TPK situation have a fighting chance to pull out a team save, or run for the mission end. They won’t have the skills or calmness necessary to speedrun a long segment of the map without getting caught by hordes, etc.
  • Good players will be able to speedrun to the end if that’s an option (no event, etc.) but will normally prefer to revive team anyways (for better loot with books & grims if any are left).
  • Excellent players will solo the boss if they want to, or speedrun if they feel like it. If they’re playing for fun they’ll also prefer to revive the team.
  • Speedfarming players will be able to to speedfarm.

I feel like shutting down speedfarming isn’t worth giving novice and good players bad experiences.

6 Likes

This was an option that was discussed while in Sweden with the devs. Not sure why they moved to boss walls, instead. I think it may have been because sometimes bugs/desync could lead to a boss wall at the level end even though the players hadn’t done anything wrong?

Agree.

Even lore-wise, those walls have absolutely no place in the game. Since when rat ogres became able to use magic?

Just give bosses +150% movement speed boost (accompanied by an angry roar to indicate the “you’re about to get boss’d” state) if you see that the players are running away from them. Boom, problem solved without any stupid walls.

2 Likes

Some1 suggested moving boss walls to near the bridge of shadows - serves the same purpose (kill speedrunning), yet doesn’t affects normal play at all

1 Like

doesn’t affects normal play at all

I think it does.

Take “Empire in Flames”, for example. You can get a boss spawn near 3rd tome and yet ignore it and run to the portal without fighting him.
Or “Hunger in the Dark” - after your suggestion it will be impossible to ignore the scripted troll at the end, which is what I always do.
I don’t think that the game should enforce “kill the boss or die” system. If you get a boss near the very end of a level, you deserve the chance to outrun him. If you get the boss in the middle of a level, you should not be able to finish a map easily by ignoring him.

5 Likes

Make exceptions then, they dont put bosswalls from troll spawning at the end of empire/hunger currently, dont they?

Fighting the boss makes the wall a non factor. The main people complaining about this are solo players and speedfarmers. And since this is a teamgame they should balance from a teamplaying experience.

Here’s a brilliant idea: Just kill the boss and move on. It’s not that hard. You can solo any boss now due to the nerf of the Troll. The only one being slightly harder is the chaos spawn mainly because of his great speed. But it’s still doable.

But ok, instead of walls just increase the rat ogre and chaos spawns movement speed to such a degree that you cannot outrun it and it will hit you. That would basicly be the same thing as walls. However the troll and stormfiend should have walls due to their slow speed.

1 Like

This is exactly what the game needs :slight_smile:

Did you actually read the topic? People are complaining that walls divide teams in two and provoke strange bugs. That’s not good for the team, is it?

1 Like

i dont get teh problem , over 500 hours in have only seen that boss wall on bell , never once had it be in the way or cause problems , if your not cheesing it and speed running past how are they causing problems?

1 Like

Well it’s no secret, that i think the bosswalls are necessary…

That shouldn’t be in the game. It is designed around teamplay , sticking together etc. and if someone dies, you’ve rescue him/her.
So if your mate will spawn “next to you”, this “design of a dead” would be absolutely nonsense.
You still can trick out the spawn director, if you fal back, as far as you can.

I don’t think it’s needed and i personally don’t want something like that in the game. Endless ammunition is doubtful so or so, but giving free ammunition , that noone have to facetank a boss? Please not…
In my opinion - ammunition should be spend for specials and range-attacks might should be nerfed on bosses. Especially the melee buff is such strong, that you don’t need any arrows to melt the boss down.

Time based - this would be the same like before… just run in a circle , until you find a way ( or play HM ) to rescue your teammates.

Health based - I think if you’re able to geh the boss halflife , you’re able to kill hin.

That’s one i can agree with. Like i told ages ago , they should take the “heal properties” from the necklace and make them lvl binded traits or just let them be a “normal passiv you could choose”.
So the necklace would be free for situationel properties like:

  • 15% hero power last man ständig
  • 10s 50% dmg reduction for revived teammates
  • health back if you killed a boss
  • etc.

You can’t balance a game for everyone. The game got hard “casualized” next to V1 already. Even a Newcomer should recognize " oh trumps Wall ". Or atleast someone could tell them , that it comes from the boss.

If a novize player cant solo a boss , he won’t be able to fight a horde / hanging around enemies / specials solo , as long as a boss will chase him /her. Just some classes will forgive him that. (HM)

I cant really get your thoughts about that.

  • good players will just kill the boss immediately , so noone cares about the wall.

  • If novize players aren’t able to kill the boss in a team , that’s i’m pretty sure about it , they arent able to finish or rescue someone so or so.

So if you fight a horde and your teammates are just a lil bit away from you and die to the boss , the boss would be immediately behind you.
Buffing the Speed is not a good option and you still could “speedrun” , because the boss needs his time for attack animations.
Or you just go stealth every seconds with your HM.

The bosswall is actually the easiest and best way , to force the players to fight that challenge and don’t running away.

2 Likes

If the team gets divided into two teams they are clearly to spread out. I have never had this problem. Even with all 4 being slightly spread out on the new maps.
I have not seen any of the strange bugs aswell that you mention since well… I just kill the boss and move along.

In vermintide - end times we speedrunned all the time for fun.
It is a game within the game wich creates a fun challenge, hence why the wall is stupid on every boss.
I dont mind wall on the slower like troll or stormfiend, then you get the chance to solo or teamfigth a boss and a horde.
keep respawn inside the wall i agree on. x/ stupid not to have it.

creating barriers in a game that gives you new possibilites on how it’s played is gonna make people quit playing it.

i enjoy the challenge of speedrunning all the maps. i also enjoy playing the game the normal way with an equal ammount of challenge. why create a barrier for it ? idk. it only helps the game in my opinion.

2 Likes

Boss doors are, by and large, a very intrusive solution to a very minor problem. I do get the idea behind it and if the inclusion of it was a little less random, it’d be somewhat acceptable. Sometimes though, the boss wall is pretty close to where the boss spawns. Sometimes, it is miles away I’d be less irate about it if every map pretty much only had only one place for a boss door somewhere near the end and if a boss spawned after a certain trigger near the end, there’d be none. The situation how it is in Hunger or Empire is pretty much how it should be all the time: A boss (be it a random boss or a map boss) that spawns close to the end should be skippable. A boss that spawns at the first boss trigger on a map should not be (if you want to keep that boss door thing in the game, that is), but I don’t see any reason why the door should be right where it spawns. Putting it near the end would still mean all those nasty speedrunners would get what they deserve and it would still mean clutching (which, again, is something the game incentivizes with certain carreers) would remain meaningful. I do think it is very much possible to design this feature to be almost unnoticable for most players and still be an obnoxious hurdle for evil Handmaidens dashing about the map. For the time being, everyone gets “punished” for only a fraction of people not “playing as intended”.

4 Likes

Which is why I looked at “the boss wall experience” across three levels of player experience. It seems clear to me that boss walls are a net negative for the game, all levels of player experience included.

To understand where I’m coming from, you should flip the situation around. What kind of player is having a better experience because of the boss walls? I don’t think being forced to fight the boss until TPK or success is fun. Typically the first time a player hits a boss wall they die and then say “WTF?!” and then their team gives them the little speech to fill them in. “Oh, there’s an arbitrary barrier”. In contrast, running for your life as the last person alive trying to make space to revive a teammate – that is pretty fun. Clutching produces some of the best damn fun in this game or any game. Doing that for the first time can hook a player on the game for months.

Again:

  • Novice players won’t just run past bosses – they’re not good/fast enough to escape them. So Boss Walls aren’t necessary for them.

  • Good players in a “last man standing” scenario get kinda screwed. It’s a big jump between “I can DPS a troll while my teammates have its aggro without taking damage” and “I can DPS a troll by myself, not take damage, and deal with a horde or two at the same time”. While people are in this in-between zone, the boss walls aren’t fun at all. These players are good enough to kite forwards for a good distance and successfully revive a friend under pressure. Let them do that instead of have to solo the boss.

  • Excellent players – boss walls are kinda irrelevant.

I consider the downsides above legitimate. So the question is “are Boss Walls a net positive in the game?”. The only positive I see is to kill speedfarming. The pseudo-math is clear to me.

6 Likes

I’m confused… are the gates there now for Bosses or for Monsters? Or both? Or we don’t use the therm Boss for an actual Boss but we rather use Lord for Boss and Boss for Monster?

The terminology is a mess, mainly because “Boss” used to refer, typically, to random Monster spawns in VT1.

But all the Lord Bosses are part of events and could never be skipped. Here we’re talking about FS adding “boss walls” to the Rat Ogre and Chaos Spawn as well, whereas before they only showed up for Trolls and Stormfiends.

I have to say I think it’s better if all bosses have walls vs. some. I just think it would be even better to ditch them entirely.

2 Likes