I am burnt out. As of right now I haven’t really played the game in a couple months, and I am waiting for new content and for my interest to recharge. In the mean time, I felt like making a discussion about the most impactful type of updates this game can have, and what would get me back to playing the most.
Partially in order of most/least interesting:
Big Balance Patch - I was already starting to lose interest before this years BBC, but it came out unexpectedly and it was one of the most fun periods I’ve had in this game. Just like that, it made more than half the arsenal feel new and fresh again - I was using weapons I never used before, and it felt weird having success with previously pure meme weapons. That one patch made it feel like over 10 new weapons were added, and introduced more content than any DLC ever did (maybe). Seeing the discussions about it here on the forums was great, I participated a lot in feedback with my own posts and comments as well, and it felt nice to feel like I had some input to the game. Definitely would love another one soon.
Enemy Roster Expansion - Maybe controversial to some, but my initial reaction to the Beastmen when they came out was very positive. It was very cool to encounter an entire new faction in missions with their own unique aesthetic, enemies and move sets. Sadly, this didn’t last, because Beastmen were the most broken set of enemies this game had arguably ever seen, and felt incredibly frustrating to fight against in the long run, and took months for Fatshark to roll out even the most obvious and slightest fixes, not to mention how bare-bones the faction is, being half the size of Chaos and like a 1/3 of Skaven. Revamping the Beastmen with an entire new set of enemies and cleaning up the faction would cook 2 pieces of meat with one stick - it would make a boring and small faction fun/more fun to encounter again, and would introduce new enemies to fight against and add some variety to chop.
New maps - This is one of the simplest and most straightforward of any type of content updates, new maps always rekindle that sense of adventure for me - walking through an area I know nothing about, exploring the scenery and walking around makes it feel like an RPG for a moment. After that, it’s an addition to the relatively small map pool and we get to experience it many times in the future. To this day, the Castle Drachenfels maps are the coolest trilogy of maps in this game for me, being the most visually stunning and life-like (Old Haunts), and having the coolest single encounter in the game (Enchanters Lair). I always enjoy fighting Nurgloth, and wish every lord in this game would be reworked to be more like him (more challenging, not dying instantly, fight lasting for at least a few minutes, and more than just bodies being thrown at you). He is individually quite scary, which is not something this game sees.
Revamped Enemies - This is something that is the most adventurous and probably least likely to happen, I really wish that we’d get to see core updates to how the enemies themselves function and additions to what they are capable of doing. One of my core beliefs is that I don’t think the factions in this game are different enough. I would really enjoy seeing some experimenting in that regard, and making Chaos feel significantly more bulky with less numbers than Skaven, focusing a lot more on individual strength, mass, cleave and stagger resist. I want Chaos Warriors to be significantly tougher individually than they currently are now, with immunity to flinching, combo attacks, more stamina damage and significantly higher resistance, with less numbers. I would love it if skating was removed from this game and done so in a way that doesn’t make the game too easy. I’d love it if enemies spread out more, come at you in a formation rather than a straight line, and surround you as much as possible, just things like that. Smarter gameplay and more threatening individual pieces in play, that with support would mean a lot more than they do now.
Nerfs - Community feels like it has a 50/50 split on this, but I’m on the side that most careers in this game are too strong for me to enjoy and for the game to be interesting. Stuff like Mist Shade, meta BW, 10 second cooldown Mercenary can be tiring to see in action and use. I want our heroes to be strong, but believably so - often times it feels like we’re stronger than a lot of legendary characters in the Warhammer universe. Stuff like career abilities aren’t just used as brief moments of power, but constantly every dozen seconds or so. it’s not good enough for Mercenary to blow away everyone around him with his voice, but to heal and give damage reduction as well, and do it every 20-30 seconds too. The effects I don’t mind, but it feels a bit much to do it so often just playing normally. Such a powerful ability doesn’t feel very special, and doesn’t warrant to be used more tactically, and that’s just one example.
Career and Talent reworks - This is something that’s been an issue in this game since launch. Even now, there are a lot of talents in this game that are useless, or just as significant as a single property. And I would love it if certain careers were reworked to fit a certain theme and feel more, with respectable diversity in builds and playstyles for each career. There are dozens of unique effects and talents that Fatshark could add to various careers to make them more distinct from each other, rather than just straight + damage or straight + damage reduction.
I touch on this in my Defensive Talent Diversity topic, which still stands, and I hope to revive and bring attention to this topic once the next BBB comes along.
Gear Customization - Traits and Properties have been stagnant for a very long time, with little to no diversity or changes. So much feedback has been given in this regard, I’ve no idea if Fatshark ever even plans on doing anything with it.
Cosmetics - The Warhammer Fantasy universe has some of the most fabulous outfits and coolest looking visuals ever, and this game is horrible at representing that. Where are the different Witch Hunter suits? Reiksguard full plate armour? Armets? Ranger gear with capes? Knights of Morr gear? The beautiful black elegant ebony plate mail armour? It’s a shame, really. Game has huge potential for cosmetic customization (and yes, cosmetics matter to me, it would make the game more fun and interesting for me).
Anyways, that’s a whole bunch of text. Hope to see how people are feeling with the game, since we haven’t had major updates in a long time. It’s not a secret that content for this game is produced at an absolutely glacial pace, so it’d be interesting to see what type of content people are interested in the most. I did label this as a discussion. Keep in mind this is all my opinion.
I want to add that updates which expand character dialogue are also great to have.
I agree with most of what you said here, I loved what came from last year’s BBB, the drachenfels maps are wonderful and of course I love the idea of expanding the enemy roster even further.
Well honestly I’m pretty much sitting where you are at this moment. Before the BBB and the patch that came out of it, I was playing extremely sparsely and even now most of my gameplay can be summed up to random legend/cata game once or twice a week. Chaos wastes is probably the next thing that truly hypes me to put more hours into the game again.
When it comes to impactful updates, I really do not have a massive preferences to one way or a other. Tough I feel like if the game were to have some massive properties/traits rework that would probably spark the most interest because the current system as is, is kind of lame and basic and somewhat forgotten to the 2018.
After that maps,enemies,roster expansions etc I’m all game, honestly anything that gives some new life and spark to the game is a massive plus for me personally and i could repeat most of the stuff said in the OP because I almost 100% agree with it.
So overall its kind of tough for me to pin down anything specific or even rate them because there is still so much potential to expand, update or simply rework to make the game so much more exciting and better than what it currently is.
That has the potential to be huge, but my expectations are pretty low for some reason. I never got to play something like L4D with Versus mode, so no prior experience with that either.
I’m guessing that’s how most people feel who haven’t just started playing the game yesterday or haven’t already completely written it off (so pretty much 90% of the people I’ve ever played with).
Going into the title, I would list one more thing that means the most to me as a " stimulant", and that is communication.
I’m sure the community managers at FatShark can’t do anything about the current situation, but honestly, what are they doing right now besides recording bug reports or publishing patch notes? Communicating in any case is not it. I know FatShark has had a difficult past but I don’t think that should legitimize complete ignorance. Posting on this forum just feels completely pointless because feedback just never comes back from the developer. Even threads started by FS, like the one about CoD, are just left without comment after months and hundreds of posts…
I really liked the big balance patch too, and all the new maps aside from the beastman one. Having old and useless talents be switched out for new options diversifying builds also made me happy.
And indeed, i too was initially hyped for the beastmen but even as they are now i can do naught but loathe them, there is something about them that just doesnt seem to mesh with how playing vs everything else goes.
That and them being so damn tall makes it impossible to deal with assassin and packmasters, since you cant see them. But new enemies that arent quite so…so, like beastmen? May be nice?
…
So as for new content i´d like to see would indeed be new careers and the replacement of crappy old talents that cant be used, ricochet for instance. Then i´d like new maps, or just plain old “updated” old ones from vt1.
The two BBBs they’ve done are far and away the best updates this game has ever seen. Followed only by the crafting QoL from last fall and maybe the recent bot patch.
All other updates have been very hit and miss at best. New weapons are often brokenly good. Sometimes new maps are fun, like Old Haunts, sometimes they’re very boring, like Blood in Darkness. Beastmen have been nothing but a disaster. It’s next to impossible to care about cosmetics with how stupidly grindy the Emporium is. And the less said about weaves the better.
I had the most fun time while playing with my friends. But they are gone. Most of them don’t play or hardly play. I have to play with foreign friends now.
No update, no bug fix, no feedback made them left. Twitch mino crash remains for 3 months. No feedback means wind of magic beta and QOL patches.
I’m still playing this game whenever i can. I think any big update can make them return. Of course for a while. There should be consistant updates.
Personally, what i want is diablo-like grinding system. Higher grade item which gives you fascinating effects. There will be much variable builds. Endless replayability. Vermintide 1 is grinding game, i don’t know why this game isn’t but i know this is not likely happening.
You are like my friends. 11 months of no new map. 7 months of no news on chaos waste. You need stimulus.
I doubt there will be more expansions after chaos waste. They are developing darktide. You won’t be hearing any news on vermintide 2 for months again. Chaos waste can be not satisfying. This boredom will repeat.
One single update can’t keep this game alive no matter how good it is. Well, such good thing is not like happening. If Fatshark want make it good, it gets worse because of forum.
Just a lot of contents drop is needed. Some of them can be good and keep this game alive.
While Chaos Wastes and new careers are exciting, the only thing that’s gonna pull me back for a significant amount of time is another BBB. Meta shakeups are fun even when they’re not necessary (in this case though it’s still very necessary).
Ultimately though I’d need to see a pretty radical shift in how FS communicates and incorporates community feedback to really have faith in the game again, or for that matter to have any excitement for Darktide. One of the reasons the last BBB was so exciting was because it genuinely felt like they were listening. Fairly rapid changes incorporating a lot of the feedback on the BBB forum and elsewhere. That was really exciting and invigorating to be a part of.
So long as any updates don’t change or negatively affect this build: https://www.ranaldsgift.com/10/122212/32,1,4,6/19,3,5,7/3,2,1/1,4,2/7,2,3 to an extent that it is no longer possible play as fancy rapier dodge man then my interest will only ever drop once I finally get tired of the core combat.
To answer the question, I’d say new challenging content that pushes players not to cheese, but to feats of skill.
For me the most important type of addition is and always will be maps. I appreciate new ways of playing, but I find the game already offers more ways to play than content to play. With 15+ careers and 50+ weapons there’s a lot of room to manouver, not to mention different talent builds which can drastically change the experience.
The game has been virtually the same in the last 2 years though - drachenfel being the welcome exception.
Maps push the story forward (to a minor degree new lines do too) and story is one of the main reasons I like vermintide.
I’d be terribly interested in having new factions added into the game - fleshed out beastmen, undead etc - but for me they pose a HUGE problem. If no new content (maps) are released alongside them, they’ll just be spammed into the old maps which creates:
immersion problems
anacronisms
Since WoM has been released I feel like I’m playing a beta, with beastmen nonsensically all over the place. I was glad to see them removed from many city maps, but they still appear in too many.
(this is not a statement on the faction itself, which I believe needs more work but which I do enjoy fighting occasionally)
What has kept me invested in this game is the ability to play the same maps differently, by using different classes and weapons and builds. My play these days tends to focus around trying to get the most out of ‘sub-optimal’ weapons - I try them on every available class and create builds that compensate for their deficiencies. Last 2 months I have played sword and shield almost exclusively on every Kruber class. The couple of months before that it was Greatsword on every elf class.
For me the least interesting content is new maps because after a few runs the novelty wears off. The Drachenfels maps are cool but everything except for the Nurgloth fight got predictable within about 2 days of launch.
Even if you add a few extra maps this won’t change your overall experience of the game if you use quickplay, as 95% of the time you’ll be thrown into the old familliar maps. FS can freshen up the whole game by introducing changes that affect gameplay on every map - primarily by adding new units to existing factions so that we face new combinations of threats.
I also really like twitch mode because of the unpredictability it introduces into a game - I’d like to see twitch mode incentivized by adding a twitch lobby/matchmaking function, increased loot bonus (so people can still get top tier chests without all books), and some twitch frames (like the deed portraits). This would allow FS to easily freshen up gameplay on every map by adding new modifiers/spawns to twitch mode. You could even replace the Weekly Event with a themed weekly twitch, so that one week the chances if chaos factions spawning, or armoured units, or bosses, or specials are increased for these game.
As a solo player, the only thing in the game I have not really touched is the ranked weaves because of its lack of matchmaking. I dabbled a bit in previous seasons but even on weaves where I could safely handle the threats I would sometimes wipe because of the time limit. If FS introduced a solo weave mode (no bots) with spawn numbers scaled to a single player with no time limit, i would invest time in ranked weaves. Also, an ‘escape’ mechanic (like mash lmb-rmb repeatedly) for grabbers in solo mode would be nice, so that you take damage when caught but it doesn’t necessarily end your run (there was a mechanic like this in a single player mod on the modded realm).
I’m quite partial to the balance updates myself. It’s just so fun to experience the changes to weapons and see where they are better or worse. Sometimes it feels like a whole new weapon.
The balance is in a reasonable state right now so I don’t expect another BBB any time soon, but tweaks to individual weapons are always nice.