What would i do if I were Vermintide 2 developer (A little freeform essay aboyt everything)

Fatshark Lounge
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Welp I really like to imagine some cool features for the game, but they pretty much always stays in my head. Let’s change it now. I would be happy if others present their own ideas and thoughts.

There will be 4 main parts in this topic:

  • Weapons

  • Talents

  • Difficulty

  • Weaves

~Weapons~

I honestly thinks that weapon system in V2 is a little bit bland. If it were up to me i would try to make each weapon type feel unique in some ways. To do that I would introduce new statuses, weapon traits and some mechanics.

First of all i think it would be good to ad 3rd attack control button(let’s bind it on Alt) So regular heavy attack would be cleave and Alt+Heavy stab or over head strike(dunno how it called properly)

After that it would be good to introduce smth unique to each weapon type and tweak ingame mechanics around that.

  1. Hammers will be the only weapon that would be able to properly stagger elites and would be very effective against armor and pretty meh against flesh.
  2. Spears will have bonus damage on headshot attacks or even center of the chest (just add another hitbox for spear) with heavy stab attack.
  3. 2h Swords -best cleave ingame. Pretty meh against heavy armor. Probably massive bleed DoT against flesh.
  4. Rapier/1H sword+dagger/daggers - unique counterattack when you time your strike with enemy strike. + Sone minor bonuses like rapier could get chest weak point if your weapon got armor penetration trait. Duals can have poison and Pain shock status(if you attack enemy fast enough it microstuns them) and probably some kind of backstab bonus for daggers
    5 Shields - can block with zero stamina, but if you have 0 stamina you will still receive heavily reduced damage. (doesn’t interrupt resurrect)
    I dont have ideas for other type of weapons so it’s up to you guys)

Weapon progression and traits.
I don’t like how power system sounds and works. I would use 2-H hammer as example to illustrate how i want weapon system to be.
I’m not WH fantasy specialist so let’s say for Hammers there will be 3 weaponsmithing schools Elvish/Humans/Dwarfs. And several levels of quality Bad/Normal/Good/Perfect(current 300 power weapons)/Masterpiece(current reds all traits that you roll is always maxed out)

Let’s talk about schools. I’ll use some random numbers to illustrate
Elven 2h Hammer have 1.2 Aspd 90 damage and 0.8 stagger strength
Human 2h Hammer have 1.0 Aspd 110 damage and 1.0 stagger strength
Dwarf 2h Hammer have 0.8 Aspd 125 damage and 1.2 stagger strenth

Plus every school have some special extreme traits that can be rolled like (+30% Aspd/-20 damage for Elf or +30% stagger power/-20% Aspd for Dwarf, Human can roll lesser buffs but without minuses)

~Talents~

It won’t be a big segment since i only played Kerillian. And honestly I’m kinda liking current Waystalker talents.
I always was fun of heavy character customization so i would add some form of minor stat distribution. Like get some attack speed but lose some damage. Or get some hp and lose move speed. It doesn’t even need to be properly balanced. Because I think people play V2 to enjoy coop experience and have fun first of all not to get most green circles. ( I hope I’m right)

~Difficulty~

I never understood why developers tend to tie difficulty with numbers. There are plenty of alternatives.
Firs of all it’s alternative weapons for elite mobs. That won’t make game much harder but you’ll need to at least think about several move sets.
Spawn ranged elite with escort like Gas rat with several slave rats that hold wooden doors on easy to couple of stormvermin with tower shields on higher difficulties.
Assassins (I honestly have a feeleng that some very rich Rat boss had a lot of kinda rtardd sons so he just gave them glow in dark daggers and sent them to frontlines) will progress with difficulties. Faster/Stealthier/Quieter. To the extent that you need dedicated player to watch party back. (That also opens some good interactions like Keri can warn team with voiceline in forest/ Bardin underground / Kruber in cities and Salz/Siena where magic is present.
Berserkers can have their own elites (Just slap some skulls on default model and make them immune to stagger or any form of CC so if he got in melee range you can only use block dodge and pray that teammates will react.
And lastly i would introduce Chaos gifts for elites for max difficulties. How about Chaos warrior with health drain aura? Or rat gunner with 90% range damage reduction? Or maybe berserker with aura that buffs all nearby mobs? There are tons of ideas for chaos gifts and honestly i don’t think they are so hard to implement)

~Weaves~

My idea for weaves would be that you can get gems that grant special powers outside of weaves. They would provide small but unique and impactful bonuses in normal maps. And will get progressively stronger highter tier weave you play. Higher tier weave you play better chances to get some rare gem.

I think weaves doesn’t need any kind or relevelling mechanics. When i thought about weaves being seasonal I thought it would be actually nice idea. But the point of Seasons in weaves will be tied to gems and cosmetics that you can get out of it. Let’s say firs Weave season will be season of Life And Death so in this season you can get Life/Death related gems and life/death themed cosmetics. The next season will be Fire/Ice themed. And to add unique twist for each season only current season gems will get progressively stronger higher tier weave you play. Gems from previous seasons will still work but wont grow in power.

Welp. That’s all i wanted to write. It took much longer than i anticipated) But whatever. I hope someone would read it till the end.

2 Likes
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I feel like these changes would almost make weapons too complicated.

I see the point in you being able to choose if you want to do a cleave heavy attack or an overhead heavy attack, but having to hold a second button while doing it just makes it complicated (especially during hectic situations like hordes or boss fights, or even other calmer situation where you’re trying to line up your strike), and it will also result in the weapons losing their attack patterns, and thus lose some of their individual uniqueness.

The unique mechanics for each weapon type is already something the weapons have in most cases (for example 2h swords already have great cleave and are semi-bad against armor, and spears already do bonus headshot damage. Making hammers good against armor is as easy as just giving it the Armor Penetration property. The unique counterattack-thingy for the rest is something I’m not only having trouble understandng, but also feel like they would be a mess to program).

I agree that the Hero Power system is unintuitive, but the weaponsmithing schools don’t really make sense with how different the characters are. For example, it doesn’t really make sense for Bardin to run around with an Elven hammer, or Kerillian to run around with a Dwarfen one, etc. etc.

I think weapons are fine as they are, even if a bit “bland”.

Stat allocation is something I’m definitely for, even if we already kinda have it in the form of properties on necklaces, charms, and trinkets.

Alternative weapons for elite mobs was something Fatshark already attempted when they added Sword & Shield Stormvermin, and people really aren’t fond of fighting those, so I’d prefer some alternative to that.

Elite escorts are doable, but specials tend to be very lone wolf-ish and mobile, so it would really only work with Gas Rats and Warpfire Throwers. The rest of the specials wouldn’t make sense to have escorts, as they’d either lag behind in the case of Packmasters, Warpfire Throwers, and Gutter Runners, or result in some bullshite insta-teleporting elites with Lifeleeches and Blightstormers.

The stealth specific changes to Gutter Runners make sense, but it’s hard to apply this to every special. What do you do with Packmasters? Or Blightstormers? Or Lifeleeches? The only thing you really can do is make them faster, but it will very quickly turn into 0.5 second insta-grabs at the higher difficulties.

Berserkers already count as elites, and are already quasi-immune to stagger, so I don’t see the point.

Chaos gifts sound cool, but they would only real make sense for Chaos units (since Skaven don’t worship Chaos). They could add a Chaos Cult Leader unit that provides a random buff (based on a few different ones) that applies to nearby Chaos units, similar to how Standard Bearers work with Beastmen.

Let me be the first to say: please no.

I can already tell you that having to grind Weaves, a game mode that is supposed to be completely separate from the actual game, in order to make Adventure Mode easier is going to be terrible.

I wouldn’t mind the gem feature staying in the Weave gamemode, however (I.E, you can earn Gems which you can then use in future Weave Seasons).

2 Likes
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Well i honestly adore complicated stuff but i see what do you mean. Same goes for 1 alternative button I personally wont mind even 10 additional buttons. But everyone have theiir own preferences. I think fixed weapon attack patterns is a minus not a plus.

Well you are right about unique mechanics that we already have.

That was random example. I bet some Wh fantasy enthusiasts can name 3 elven or dwarfen weaponsmithing styles.

Thats why i called the topiic what “I” would do not what FS should have done so it’s all abut my personal tastes.

Thats honestly the worst possible example you could use. Cause Shiield vermin is one of the most boring mobs i saw in my gaming life.

Minor defence on Packmasters like leather armor so you wont be able to kill them with 1 body shot. Blight stormers could have lesser range but posses some chaos gifts liike ranged damage resistance so you will need to allocate 1 person to break through the horde and kill him. Leeches are a bit trickier but you can give them gift like if they grabed someone they release chaos bolts to nearby enemies. So if you dont save your rteam mate you will have a pretty hard time.
Berserkers just to add a liittle bit of varriety.

I never said anything about grind but yeah giving mod specific rewards that affect other game mode doesnt sound really nice. But honestly i think weaves just further divided V2 community and we kinda need smth to bring people together. I dont actually know why FS doesnt crerate tons of cosmetics tiied to events/game mod it would surellly spike game popularity.