Weaves

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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Weaves are more obnoxious than difficult. They are not fun. There’s a degree of skill involved, but it’s almost entirely just learning the weave, making a plan, and executing said plan properly. It gets to a point where the player just “turns off” or “cruise controls” because there is no thought or true challenge to it. I observe people just grinding it repetitively and essentially “brute forcing” their way to victory. Then people do cheesy builds or strategies and say “OP OP OP” to some builds like Kaboom! BW, but in reality things like Kaboom! BW don’t transition well into something like a regular adventure mode or twitch/deeds because things/builds like that function very well in a static environment but not so much in a dynamic one.

I helped a buddy here and there with weaves all over the board, including several higher ones, and when people follow the plan it plays out smooth as butter most of the time. Or if people aren’t listening then it’s more like rinse and repeat until they hopefully do the thing they should be doing. Sometimes there is a bit of RNG, but static challenges like weaves lose any sense of challenge when they’re just gimmicky in design.

Things like Twitch Mode or Deeds are better in design because they maintain that dynamic experience while still achieving the goal of making a more difficult playthrough for players.

I think the best example I could give is weaves are almost identical in design to old arcade games like Pac Man. You follow the same strategy and motions each time and you can produce nearly identical results each time. It eventually becomes a game of memorization and execution. Anyone is capable of producing the result given they can also memorize the “layout” or plan and execute it even moderately well.

This isn’t about appreciating or diminishing the accomplishments of a player who achieves victory in a scenario like that. Rather, it’s about making a point. For a game like Vermintide, the true test of skill comes in being able to change, adapt, and overcome with skill and experience the dynamic challenges that come with each randomized playthrough. That is the heart of the Vermintide experience. When you take that away, you take away what makes Vermintide, Vermintide. And you take away what makes Vermintide a truly enjoyable experience.

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I really like Kaboom in Adventure Mode. It’s my go-to pick for Battle Wizard. But otherwise yes, I agree Weaves in their current state are bland and unfun.

I remain hopeful for the “Quickplay Weaves” which are coming in October.

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there’s nothing fun about it. i refunded WoM last month but if i want the new weapons and skins i better suck it up and buy this… garbage, its annoying they mesh it together like that, i want nothing to do with weaves but too bad, if i want to hunt new cosmetics and weapons then i have to buy it.

i literally got 30 other games Im switching between i don’t want to commit to the grindfest that is weaves.

i realise this sounds hyperbolic. It’s just annoying when i enter weaves solo because there’s no people actually playing it. i can see 300 hours into the future where if I’m lucky 100 of them are fun.

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From what I’ve played of them, I’ve enjoyed the ideas, and I know it’ll lead to better normal mode levels and effects. I just treat it like a standalone challenge though. It also gives them lots of room to experiment with things that won’t really translate into the normal mode. Or could be tweaked and changed it people enjoyed them enough.

The Weave aesthetic is amazing considering how long they had to put it all together. Hoping with more time they can accomplish something even better.

With the unbalance that always seems to exist, I’m not really bothered about the ladder. Shade and BW just push it to the absolute extremes.

Sadly, while I quite like the idea of a side-challenge, my friends said they didn’t like the idea, and would have preferred a Deed overhaul. As they move forwards, hopefully they can still do both and somehow merge Deeds with the Athanor, but with much less scripted missions. (I have to stress this every time- all I ever see people saying is that they want to choose their own mutators on Deeds).

I’m still trying to bring my friends around. :rat:

The scripted missions feel kind of cool as a side challenge, and hopefully it stays within the Weaves. I’ve been soloing them and the only thing I find frustrating is the scripted Gutter Runners. I feel like the Packmasters/Leeches can be outplayed even if you don’t know the spawn points, but Gutter Runners are like; ok time to restart and kill that gutter runner next time, because they silent spawn and leap within a few seconds of it. Most of my deaths in that way are when my character hasn’t even finished their ‘it’s a runner’ voiceline.

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How can I start with this…

I’m all about fixing matchmaking, but entire core gameplay idea is what makes weaves unique and fun for my personal experience. Nobody takes away “what makes Vermintide good”, because again, that’s separate gamemode. But whole idea of static challenges makes a clean gap between normal QP gameplay and hyper-twitch madness.

In weaves you are facing challenges that are much harder than in QP, and are somehow similar to stuff happening in twitch, but you know what - it feels more fair only because it’s predicted.

The word “fair” is the main one. Memorisation and planning isn’t something bad, and it’s very fun and rewarding in its own way. There is finally a reason to bring specialised builds and team compositions, and not just universally good meta crap. There is almost nothing in this game that requries you to plan your builds. Only hard okri’s challenges.

You probably talk from old twitch player perspective. I’m talking from perspective of consistent cata QP player, who hasn’t jumped yet to new twitch/modded stuff, and tried several of weaves (up to 64). And I’m really happy to have this gap between modded madness and consistent normal games.

It’s much better learning experience - playing at determined and scripted playground. Instead of just having your face overwhelmed by literally anything. Also, it’s easier to find people to play weaves than twitch, because it’s locked to premade groups, while weaves at least have some lobbies. (I know matchmaking is bad, but you still can compare)

And don’t start with test of skill. That really speaks of elitism. I can agree that all this hyper twitch stuff is probably hardest thing in game atm, and dedicated player should consider playing it eventually. But saying that something is easy just because it’s determined? Give me a break. It might be easy for you, but there are lots of players, who haven’t jumped yet to that level. Or just want to experience modded-like experience in more determined playground.

I may somehow agree, that late weaves are not the best experience for our best of the best players (from what I read), but again, there is not many ways to increase difficulty good way. I’m yet to see a single good idea for that, because nobody really brought anything decent to the light of this particular discussion. Yeah, infinite scalings are bad. But what are the alternatives?

I’m sorry if I sound too heated. There is just so much potential in weaves gameplay-wise, and a very good way for any player to experience modded-like gameplay, without will of RNGesus and mods themselves.

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Unfortunately, the way the Athanor is set up doesn’t really help this much - it’s easy enough to change your setup after you’ve gained the resources, but getting them isn’t easy, quick or fun, and it takes a lot of Essence to build up even two pairs of weapons, let alone several (or for several characters).

Also, tell that to the high-Weave players who spent the time guarding their Battle Wizard and blocking.

There’s some potential in the Weaves, but I don’t think they’re worth it. Some people do like the puzzle aspect of them, but there were too many strange decisions made considering what they were meant to be and what they are.

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Shout out to the Shades who can solo the entire thing while invisible too.

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@Kitten Aesthetically, I agree it’s beautiful. There are a lot of really gorgeous things there. The art in Vermintide 2 has always been very nice.
A lot of the disdain for weaves involving its creation versus deed rework and stuff comes from a game that already had numerous broken or weak elements that are postponed for something like this. New content is great, but so is having a flawless gameplay experience. When the game runs well and smooth it’s a very pleasurable experience. When you hit bug after bug, especially ones that are game breaking, it’s brutal. Existing elements like deeds or crafting have been on the backburner for the longest time and these things really wear on people. The OP isn’t a complaint about “I got this instead of this” and it’s more about why weaves fail to deliver the experience and enjoyment the original and standard adventure mode gives to many players.

@Nesit1 You’re grossly misunderstanding the OP. It’s talking about design and why weaves fail to achieve the experience and enjoyment that adventure mode gives. It’s explaining the various parts of weaves, where the “challenge” design philosophy of weaves comes from, and why it ultimately fails to provide any of the things it promised to do.

It’s acknowledged that weaves are different and that being different in and of itself is not where the failing point lies. It lies in the design of weaves. What makes adventure mode so successful and fun versus what makes weaves so unsuccessful and not fun for many players. A single example would be loot and rewards are a major thing for players. 100 wins in weaves could mean 100 loot boxes not earned. That equates to not improving the gear power(from 1-300) and not gaining gear for adventure mode, which is the dominant mode. It works okay in the reverse because if you’ve played any weaves, you get essence for playing adventure mode.

Twitch and Deeds are examples of successful designs to increase difficulty or challenge but maintain that dynamic experience and the core of what many players find so enjoyable in Vermintide 2. They also don’t require mods, can be done on the official realm, and players can still gain loot and other rewards. Twitch is even easier than ever to modify too, which is phenomenal. Fatshark’s idea of eventually having Weekly Events contribute towards rewards also meets that criteria. Weekly Events can even be toggled on or off in Twitch settings, further demonstrating a great design and integration of two existing modes. Difficulty level was never stated because the standard difficulty levels are irrelevant to the subject. You can apply Twitch, Weekly Events, or Deeds to any difficulty level and they still achieve what they set out to achieve.

It does become relatively easy because nothing ever changes. But before you reach that “easy” point, the real challenge is often going through the pain of learning the levels and then planning for that, akin to a puzzle. Once you learn it and have a plan, people executing the plan correctly makes it a fairly basic experience. You don’t have to think about where things are going to come from or what’s going to spawn. You don’t have to be that alert. There is nothing to adapt to. You know what’s going to happen before it happens, unlike adventure mode. It stagnates change and adaptation, and by doing that it stagnates the growth of a player for anything that isn’t a weave. Playing weaves after a point is just running through the motions. There is no thought. It’s not fun.

I agree that there is potential in weaves, but it’s really important to understand some of these elements or design choices that make weaves not fun or interesting to a lot of players. This is just critique of those things to help give more perspective as to what are some things that are fun or not fun and elements that make adventure mode successful versus weaves being less so. The obvious end goal would be changes or improvements to weaves to hopefully achieve something incredibly fun and engaging for many players. The quickplay weaves that Fatshark talked about is one of their steps towards achieving that goal.

Getting essence isn’t so bad once you get some weaves done and then hop back into adventure mode to play matches. Higher weaves end up offering such large essence rewards in adventure mode after a point. Not even really high ones either. Just maybe 20-40? If that? Even when you lose matches in adventure mode you get essence. Right now I have 892,000 essence. Grinding up playing only weaves to get essence though would be a different story.

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Oh, I know. I’m on Weave 18 (only) and I get clearly over a thousand Essence per cleared Adventure map. But mastering a weapon still takes more than 10k Essence (if my calculations were correct) for each of them, plus a thousand more to unlock them. This needs to be done twice to get a fully-built set for one character. Multiply by however many different weapons and characters you want to use, and the amount rises fast. And this isn’t taking into account the Essence you need to spend on the Athanor itself and the Amulet. For a guy like me (and a group like mine) who like to switch around builds and characters, it’s a lot of (slow) work even with the Essence from Adventure Mode. So while the Athanor system is geared towards the higher-level players who want to go for particular builds (and switch them around to some degree), I still don’t think it’s well-geared towards experimentation and switching around your equipment.

Both gathering Essence and the Weaves in general have a grindy feel in them to me, something that hasn’t been there before 2.0 and WoM. Luckily to me, there’s no real incentive to playing the Weaves either, so I can keep playing what I like.

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I feel like Weaves should have been what Heroic Deeds and Weekly Events tried to be both of which to me are bland when it comes to their affixes and how they were implemented.

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It’ll really come to just “I don’t agree” debate, tbh.

I didn’t really deny modded/twitch experience, and my whole point is that weaves are a gap between adventure and that, only because due to determined design. Just don’t skip that learning process as something so easy and fast to do. (Because it isn’t). And that’s point where we just don’t agree with each other.

It really pains me too see that all handicraft experience in weaves like shadow’s wind vietnamtide - is getting that negative feedback. Yes, it’s puzzle. Yes, it’s “learn it once”, but that’s the whole point. I can’t really say that’s “basic experience” to overcome such threats. Unless you are abusing anything that makes game too easy - being flooded with lots of spawns is as hard as anywhere, no matter do you know about it beforehand or not. Maybe my teams didn’t approach it the most efficient way, but maybe that’s the why I enjoyed it.

I think I come from older games, where “running though the motion” was core gameplay. Like any kind of speedrunning is exactly that, optimising the route to achieve the best time. Or games like Devil May Cry, where you are struggling against same stage/boss on high difficulty over and over, until you learn all enemy spawns, all boss patterns and etc. Of course, enemy moves are a bit based on RNG, but it’s all about learning which enemy will spawn and where. And that’s the same stage all over, until you eventually beat it.

So oof, in the end, I enjoy, you don’t, so I really can’t say much more about that.

But yeah, more loot would be good. Chests should really come in one way or another.

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I can’t agree. Being able to predict reliably spawn timing, positions and composition is what separates top tier from below. Everyone has the mechanical skill at that end of game play (or should) but situational awareness and map/game knowledge allows them to always be in position when the '**** hits the fan.

With weaves that is not a thing, just rinse repeat, anyone can do it given enough brute force application of time. Some people might like it, I don’t. Which is a shame because the levels are fun but soloing them is just levels of tedious I refuse to invest in and aint nobody queuing for them now (in my region no-one queing for them since say day 7 of release)

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Because the handcrafted experience isn’t that good and makes really questionable designs stick out like a sore thumb. Such as ammo bags beside ammo crates, weave decorations in places you can get stuck on (bonus points if they’re in areas you can freely walk through in vanilla), little ramps and bits of geometry creating mini-corners you can get stuck on, enemy horde spawn points being out in the open, ect. Like, yes you can learn and prepare for spawns, but it’s still jarring to walk around that tiny fence on weave 65 and see a single rat appear and transform into a full horde.

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Again it’ll eventually apply to the same “I don’t agree” debate. I’m not saying learning RNG timers and spawns is easy or bad. It’s lack of them that makes weaves more unique and more forgiving for that players that climb between duper-twitch and normal QP. That’s the whole point.

I’m not saying that learning RNG timers is bad design. And it’s satisfying to stop your team right before boss spawn (in QP), deal with horde few seconds later, and then face boss in empty area. I recently did exactly that, and it felt so good.

Saying that “anyone can do it too” - well, it’s all about time it’ll get for the team to get it done. I’m not talking about time completion for single run, but amount of runs and time combined to overcome particular weave. Good players will do it in few tries, while solo or incompetent will struggle for much bigger time. And that’s entire point of “arcade-like” gamemode. Which, again, isn’t something bad.

Your so called “brute force” can be applied to lots of games both in present and past. And same can be said about more RNG-based gamemodes like normal adventure. Everyone with mechanical skills can complete it until you get no bosses and patrols in the end (which is best RNG scenario). And everyone can complete big twitch if RNG will say “you’ll have easy modifiers today”. Even if it’ll be something too rare, it’s all same “brute force” sentence, just try it until RNG gets good.

But there are no RNG scenarios in weaves. You either obtain skills you need - or you die. That’s the point. Those challenges are harder than normal QP, but somewhat easier (depending on settings) than twitch. So let me have that middle-ground.

But again, if one doesn’t like it - I’m not here to judge it.

It really feels like several bugs or oversights that should be reported and fixed. I didn’t have much problems with stuff you mentioned, but I remember few of them. In the end, it didn’t really ruin experience much.

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Fair, it’s easy to nitpick when you’re not enjoying something and vice versa

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There is very little skill to it. Its just a grind. The best thing that could happen is they just drop it. I’m sure many have played with the people at the top of the leader boards. They are good, but what separates them is only their willingness to grind through the nonsense of weaves. They know its nonsense, they talk trash on it too. Useless, meaningless addition. You dont get extra points for not cheesing it.

More maps and Cata 3 in offical without needing to mess with modded please.

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I really didn’t follow what you were saying. I understood the sentences but I’m missing the point your directing at me. My point is the weaves aren’t too difficult for people to enjoy they’re just not enjoyable. Anyone can win these but clearly not many people are enjoying the process of winning them.

Which is for a bunch of reasons but I think it works like this.

High time invest for no reward.

Many people drop out because they enjoy the reward part of the process.

Not enough people left to fill consistent game play for those who might enjoy it without reward.

Weaves are an empty wasteland of lost potential.

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Well, after nearly 120 (still blocked on 115 but actually finished 116 to 120 having no people to play with) weaves.
This is too much grind.
I mean, weaves would have stopped at 80, reward wise, it would have been kinda okay.
Here, we’re struggling with only one meta (BW + Shields), being one shot by arrows (mostly), and some unkillable specials :
metal non staggerable ratlings
invisible specials
“pushes” from stormvermins on fire weaves, because yeah, they apply the dot

On thoses weaves arrows can go through shield, because, why not, so it’s kinda RNG if we’re dying or not.
On thoses weaves, you are forced to follow the same pattern : Find a “safe” spot (or safer one), push with shield, BW burn them all, because you actually can’t melee at all (they’re too fast to hit, you get os even if you’re playing a tanky character, and you can’t take your time because there’s a timer)

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In a game which talks about having visceral melee combat Fatshark takes even that away with their Weaves. So poorly implemented.

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To be fair the first 80, you can melee just fine. The “upscaled difficulty” is poorly implemented.