Weaves, a lesson in pain, a lesson in humlity

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
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After so many years, I’ve finally got back to playing Weaves again and I just want to say: this is by far the most frustrating experience I’ve ever had with Vermintide 2 in a real long time. Whoever designed this mode: who pooped in your cereal; because It feels like all the designer wanted to achieve with this game mode was inflicting psychological pain upon the person that soured their morning breakfast meal. I’ve never been so exasperated by a game this much since playing ranked League of Legends - thanks for reminding me of my negative experiences with that game. The first time I played weaves was when it first released and back then it was pure tedium going through the first 40 weaves. As a result, I stopped playing it and never came back to the mode. However, now that I’ve come back to Weaves, as I need the frames as well as challenges completed because Cousion Okri wants me to prove how stupid I am by enduring this crap; I’ve realized just how awful of an experience this whole thing is as I grind my face through it.

I’m currently on the threshold of breaking to Cata 3 as I progress to Weave 80:

Never going to play this crap again once I finish my stupid challenges for it.

So my feedback:

  1. First off the damage scaling is really, really, unfun. Do you know why so many people like Chaos Wastes; because you progressively got more tools to deal with the challenge, i.e boons, blessings, Morg’s bomb, ability to dupe items, and so on; there’s even a boon that gives you damage reduction based on missing health. In this mode though you only get access to the same defense that you already can achieve in regular play save for increased power - which is absurd since none of that scales to Cata 2 or Cata 3 enemy damage. I played one Cata 3 weave which was 150 something with a random friend and I got one tapped in one singular strike, like what; in a game where you can easily get overwhelmed by multiple things all happening at once, you should not be able to get one tapped through a single attack.

The whole thing with damage is silly. You mean to tell me I need to have the reflexes of a cat and the speed of a mongoose with the spatial awareness of an orangutan to even have a chance - how about, no! I’m not nineteen years old anymore. I’m twenty seven. My reflexes have gone decrepit. I don’t care if there’s a group that’s capable of pulling it off. There are Tetris players out there that play like super computer, does that mean we should all design Tetris around the 0.0001% of players. Of course not. It means we instead design the mode’s balance around what is realistically feasible for most people to achieve.

  1. Some of these encounters are beyond baffling. Me and my friend duo’d a bunch of Cata 2 weaves and after beating them we kept asking ourselves: how. How are you supposed to do any of these encounters in normal play. We once had a whole legion of bannermens just keep spawning over and over again. You know that one chest challenge in Chaos Wastes that nobody likes, well grab that, and amplify it ten times and you get beastmen bannermen weaves. Awesome huh. The thing is though those were fun optional challenges you can do in Chaos Wastes, i.e not mandatory to beat the level. This crap on the other hand is mandatory in order to beat the level. Don’t get me started on the three bosses that you can get in second stage. I didn’t like dealing with two minotaurs while a third chaos spawn is glitched inside the other.

I will say though. I do like the puzzle approach towards spawns. It’s a pretty rewarding experience when you learn the spawns and play around them. I feel mega smart when I beat Weaves by telling people what location triggers what. It feels very satisfying when everyone holds up in a spot, triggers a spawn point, falls back; then we all play tactically by managing the horde, pointing out specials, lining shots up, maintaining distance by constantly dodge dancing and or falling back to a place with wall behind back while we stand our ground, it’s all great stuff. The whole experience gets more enhanced when we come up with a strategy in lobby. I didn’t use voice chat in any of my weaves, nonetheless, it was so fun coming up with strategies in text and or doing shot calling through text.

  1. Nobody plays weaves. It’s so hard to get anybody to play with me. All my Cata friends hate the mode. I have to beg people just to play with me. 99.999% of the time everyone insta quits whenever I so much as mention weaves. It just makes it so discouraging since I like playing with other people in Vermintide and doing Weaves solo is too hard for me, plus solo is less fun compared to jolly good ol’ cooperation.

  2. I know this has been beaten to death already: but I don’t like how divorced the crafting is from the game. Why can’t we reach the same power scaling that we worked to get in this mode. Why can’t I enjoy my 900 power weapon fantasy that I worked for in Weaves? Why can’t I enjoy my Weaves skins in regular play? Why are there no keep banners to showcase how silly I am playing for this mode.

  3. Some of the modifiers are downright lame. I don’t like evil grass that blocks my way, chomps my health, and makes it hard to move. I also don’t like modifier that makes enemies invisible because it bugs out the tagging function.

  4. Why, why did you make so many weaves. Did we really need a 120 weaves completion for a challenge. It’s such an unfun grind. It’s like playing ranked League all over again while being hardstuck in low plat.

  5. Why is there a competitive element in my cooperative game via ranked and ladder system. I don’t want that crap. I don’t care about the top players who beat this mode super fast or who got high score - congratulations to them but I don’t care about that, I’m not here to measure myself against others, I’m just here to have fun.

Lastly, make Cataclysm free for all. As a person who purchased this DLC I don’t like how Cata is gated behind a paywall. I want the Cata community to grow.

4 Likes
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Continuation from original post:

Honestly, if I were to revise the mode what I would do instead is decrease horde density for solo play so it’ll be more accessible for players who can’t get a group for Weaves. I like this idea because it focuses more on small skirmish based encounters. Increase the timer for solo as the already existing timer is too strict. Reduce the bosses in those multi-boss fights for solo players, maybe instead have the monster fights be one at a time instead of all three or two at the same time, whilst having the next one spawn only after the first one dies.

Also decrease the amount of essence it takes to unlock portal. This will make the difficulty far more flexible to play with for solo play. Of course if you’re playing with a full group then the difficulty will be harder. The specials and disablers are fine for the most part except for packrats. I never liked the design of packrats being able to pull players through a horde, it’s so cheap; especially when a bunch rush up on you while you’re preoccupied with a horde while dealing with other priority targets; I’d like it if those were just slashed down to only one or two per spawn. I really hate packrats.

Beastmen bannermen need to be slimmed down in general. It’s absurd with how many can spawn in some of those later weaves.

For damage scaling, either give us more tools to combat it or scale it down. I shouldn’t be able to die in a single hit in Cata 3 because I got an lucky hit to face whilst dodge dancing. Or you can go back to giving us old dodges that we used to have until you nerfed it for whatever inexplicable reason.

Regarding modifiers I’d rather if evil grass didn’t last as long as it did. It’s such an annoying modifier that only exists to frustrate the player. Either cut down on the amount of time it takes for it to disappear or diminish the damage it does, it shouldn’t be chunking my health, man, while blocking my path. Invisibility modifier sucks too. Just let me tag specials through fog.

Anyways I doubt anyone will read this but I feel better now after venting about this terribly ill-conceived mode.

1 Like
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I read it. I agree.

I really, really want to like weaves. I shmucking hate weaves. I might enjoy playing them if you could at least progress with pubs. Forcing pre-made groups for progress is weak af. Playing true solo is out of reach for all but the very best of players.

I think I have two or three of the first weaves complete. I gave up after that. Its the one DLC that I feel slightly cheated on, thankfully I like the extra weapons and the beastman level, but locking cata behind it is weak af, I dont remember the last time I saw beastmen when playing the normal quickplay pubs, nobody has it. The weave weapons are awesome and how you build them is awesome. Its a crying shame that the cosmetics and the Athanor are hardlocked from the rest of thegame, so none of it matters. It really feels like my only use of the DLC is from the 5 new weapons which, while they are great, I actually dont use or even see them used very often.

My personal ideas:

  • Add proper pub progress.

  • Add weave skins or some reward that transfers in to the main game.

  • Add a mode where disablers dont spawn? Progress could be disabled when this option is turned on and THIS could be the queue only mode.

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I agree with 99% of what you say except…

No, thick endless hordes is what I actually enjoy about this game, and in Weaves the horde get crazy thick of you deliberately rush ahead. THAT is very fun

What I hate is

  1. you can’t bring bots along in ranked play to save your ass from the occasional disablers

And

  1. all the disabler spamming as you get into later levels

This game was made with a party of heroes in mind, so disablers are okay most the time. But because weaves disables bots for some reason, the balance is out of whack

2 Likes
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Months later and I finally finished this game mode:

My opinion hasn’t really changed all that much. I still don’t like weaves. The higher weaves though are kind of infuriating - mainly because of the amount of stuff that gets thrown at you with the consideration you get one tapped by the slightest tickle of an enemy, is very stressful. In this regard I specifically hated the fire weaves as that damage over time is a death sentence.

Higher weaves was mostly people using cheese spots to even have a chance. Groups that I participated with, that attempted to play this normally; read: sticking together, pushing, triggering then falling back to favorable positions, using choke points; didn’t really make much progress as we’d constantly get stuck on one thing or another.

Weaves just isn’t that fun compared to Chaos Wastes. At least in Chaos Wastes you get fun boons, potions, and exotic weaponry to meet the challenge.

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The Weaves game mode is so fundamentally flawed in so many different ways I doubt FS will ever devote effort to fixing it. They won’t delete it entirely, either, so it’s just gonna be the forgotten child. At least make a way to earn those incredibly luscious weapon skins!

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Its doable without cheesing, i guess i only cheesed 4-5 weaves up to 160. I like them somehow it forces you to think different. But said that you can cheese it with glitching or other abuses. The safespots on the otherhand seem intended, at least some of them.