Whatever you say, I saw the map editor in one of the streams, that would be easily usable by modders if they released it to the community…
They have again some other reasons for not releasing it, it’s not about it not being rdy or it not being “releasable” … they just don’t want to do it because X. (My guess is something like "No we can’t release map editor, are you kidding me ? What if some modders put out a lot of maps and those maps are actually great ? How are we selling map DLC’s in that situation ?)
And I bet you that people would put out more maps in 1.5 year, than FS did …
The map editor is a very interesting topic. If it works, it would elevate the longevity of this game to new heights!
But I doubt they will release anything similar because:
FS already has problems on the existing maps with spawn locations, etc…
AI Game Director sometimes does what he wants
AI PATHING !!! (very important)
all the other existing problems discussed so many times already
etc etc…
So a functioning map editor has to be a usable and simplified tool that does what FS programs and makes it accessable to us “normal users” (or some “die-hards” filling up the workshop with decent maps). If the devs already struggle, how are they going to present that to us?
Imagine to create some terrain yourself, only to see you struggle with AI pathing --> enemies/bots jumping from place to place --> hanging here and there --> or avoiding areas you’ve worked hard on completely.
I assume and fear that all in all this is a task way to complicated to functionally implement and would result in more frustrations because it just won’t work properly!
The endeavour with a working editor is entangled in severe doubts…
Would be great though if they get a hang of it so we can forge maps to our liking!
Upcoming beta-news might be connected to versus more likely.
But I’m open to surprises! You never know…
lol, that is no conspiracy theory, I could go and give you 100 other examples where they just made bad decisions like this and had all kinds of weird excuses why they are not doing it.
Like the night maps… I ask why the fu*k are you not releasing this when people do want it ?! … Answer: Uh, muh,… the moon… mmmhm… like … can’t release it because of the moon dude.
Ok, that sure makes sense… thank you for answer.
Next year… Ehm, can you finally release it ? Or you just so stubborn ? … Answer: Sorry can’t talk about it, I don’t want to lose my job.
Perfect, thanks man.
I feel like this can’t even get more absurd, but it prolly can.
It’s not about releasing simple tool, you can’t do “simple map editor” for game like this. It’s like, have you ever used unreal tournament map editor ? That is not simple at all, that’s the same thing the devs use. But it was available to the players. And there was huge amount of awesome maps being made. It doesn’t mean that if the tool is not newb-friendly, that you won’t get anything out of it.
I would not even want some simplified tool, I would want full map editor, again, the same thing devs use, the same thing the guy on stream used.
They could do the same thing (as UT2003/2004 did) if they really wanted.
I really can believe Fatshark’s explanation of tool rights being an issue - they aren’t Epic, after all, who were a huge studio with a lot of clout and a lot of their own tools. But it still is something that just needs to happen if they want the game to have the lifespan they talked about.
Honestly, after a year of mod tools, we’ll see maps that will absolutely blow us away, I’m sure. There will be a lot of crap, too, but game communities are really good at weeding out the chaff and finding the gems.
Mod tools are like 95% done, they’ve just, for various internal reasons we’re working on trying to address but have been haunting us for like a year, stuck in a bit of a limbo right now. Our previous “safe” Q1 date was clearly a gross miss prediction, we’ll likely give a date when we have one.
I did. Since 2.5 if I remember well, with Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell. It have a lot of documentation (it’s one of the most used engine with unity). It also have constraints. But using the map editor from Unreal is by far easier than using a homebrew solution (which usually mean using a 3d modeling tool first, to import it after, rather than prototyping the level in the map editor and decorating it later with 3D models). I can certainly tell you so.
No I didn’t. Not the fatshark ones. I did say “usually” because that’s “usually” what’s happening in videogame industry.
I don’t have any specific information on Fatshark map’s editor (it will come when it will come, I’m not in a hurry, it won’t “save the game” alone).
I’m just saying that it would have been released already if it was technically viable to do so. It’s clearly not a matter of keeping it secret for the purpose of selling dlc.
Even on a game with a huge modding group, like L4D2, there’s hardly not a lot of maps that are “Valve level”.
This will probably be the same, if not worse, since we have A LOT LESS players able to use thoses mods tools (using a far less documented editor with far less availables assets).
So no, they don’t keep it to sell more dlc. If they say that they have technical issues doing so, then they have absolutely no reason to lie. If you want to know technical details behind it, ask Robin directly, he usually answers them a lot.
And yeah, I guess they show you stuff that work on stream, rather than the technical problems they face (when they don’t crash).
I was referring to a simplified tool were we’re able to use pre-rendered assets, etc… not a thing usable by dummies which is toned down and deprives you of deeper functionalities.
I assume they don’t work with an editor which is manageable without programming skills, or any other “higher knowledge” (3d modelling, etc…), that is ready for public access.
No, but back in the days I used Morrowinds editor, which wasn’t easy for me, but accessable and doable in the end. None the less, that was a different game.
If FS has something (almost) ready close to this, I’m fine with that.
Sure that’s the same thing?
No, I haven’t seen this stream you’re referring to. If it’s still available somewhere and you know where, please share it! Would like to see that!
I also like 2.0 a lot better. I’m not sure exactly why because they changed so freaking many things at once… but 1.6 felt like “spam side dodge and left click, shoot a special every now and then, win.” Felt like that with every character, and slow or stagger based weapons were just useless. I mean the only time I saw someone use a 2h hammer was merc or slayer because they had so much attack speed, otherwise you were gimping yourself in the OP dodge meta. I think we’re all in agreement that dodge needed to get nerfed though.
I like that they made stagger more important, although I don’t care for how complicated they made it. Screw the stagger talent row, just make it so that staggered enemies take more damage across the board, nice and simple. However I do like the current iteration more than 1.6 because stagger does actually matter now and I actually see people with shields frequently and they are a huge boon to the team. Take this with a grain of salt, I LOVE shields and I do like playing a sort of tank and just staggering the heck out of everything for my team. I also love slow stagger-heavy weapons, which 2.0 was favorable towards, so that contributes some to why I overall like it better than 1.6.
Overall I’m a fan of the temp health changes although it really does need some balancing. It was far too easy to get on most characters before… now it’s still too easy to get on some. It’s a tough thing to balance though. Probably my favorite build in 2.0 is huntsman with bow and s+s. Great dps with the bow and great cc and survivability with the shield, and it generates a ton of temp hp on stagger, but huntsman is squishy enough that you need it and have to play carefully still. I prefer a more defensive play style where temp hp is harder to get, unfortunately we kinda need temp hp due to eating hits from hyper density or lag… but I would rather we fix those problems because just giving more temp hp feels like treating the symptom not the cause. Bear in mind I loved the defensive attrition style gameplay of V1 so that colors my view on this a lot.
I do love the talent shakeup but I think that’s a bit separate from the combat changes.
Anyway if I were to sum up why I like 2.0 better than 1.6 I would probably say “because the gameplay feels more dynamic now.” cant just spam dodge and light attack anymore and I dig that. The biggest problem with it imo is that it feels half baked, and players don’t appreciate being conned into being live beta testers so they’re leaving. There’s a few CRUCIAL bugs that would make the hardcore fan base very happy if Fatshark fixed them, and I think that is doubly urgent because we’re the ones live beta testing for them… the input buffering bug especially, I’m not going to go over the list here because we’ve all exhaustively described these issues over and over already. Players will put up with bugs if the game is improving but with vermintide sometimes it’s hard to tell because they improve one thing and then something else breaks, but despite all of this I am still enjoying the gameplay more than I did in 1.6. To be honest the only thing that ruins my game is ending up with players who either 1) constantly gripe about Fatshark the entire time, or 2) constantly try to tell me what build or play style to use. Sadly as time goes on and other players leave that experience seems to becoming more common, especially in cata.
Surprise, I like your post But yea, if I could add on that. If I would have to say why I like 2.0 more or better why I loathed 1.6 enough to stop playing I would say: Variety and Lack of Unity.
Variety: This is strangely enough a controversial point but because there are people who say variety was higher before and others say it is higher now. Maybe it is true and you could play anything before 2.0. The problem is (and this is strictly speaking from Public Games Legend 1.6) you didnt see it. Maybe the Meta was to much in the head of people and such a state will come back, but playing 1.6 you saw the same set-up over and over again. You could play anyhting? Nice, but in 90 % of my games I saw Axe n’ Falchion being used. It wasnt even important which class it was. Bounty Hunter, WHC or Zealot. It was used everywhere. For me, it is the worst offender for everything wrong with Vermintide at the time. That at the highest difficulty! you could tap-dance through the game without breaking a sweat and without relying on the team. Similar stuff you saw on other characters (nothing as bad as Axe n Falchion). The whole game was structured towards fast melee weapons because you didnt need defense support and enemies died with one hit on the highest difficulty!. It felt repetitive to say the same procedure in every game. Could I play something else? Yes, I could but it disconnected me from the run as I was more running behind. Shields? Forget it.
Now, I see on regular basis (Quickplay Cataclysm) different builds. Maybe it is that Meta has not established yet and we will return to the awful state. But people are experimenting and I see lots of interesting ideas. Saltzpyre with Billhook, Rapier, Flail, Axe n’Falchion or even Greatsword arent exotic anymore (I would say you see Falchion or Axe nearly never but so did you before unless in combination) I think it has to do with stagger and talent changes. The game is geared more towards niche builds. Creating specialist instead of allrounders. As such, people have to make decision on what they want to emphasize in their play. Coming to a game with a shield now is something accepted and welcome instead of a let-down and hindrance. You can support your team while providing stagger and play passive aggresively but you dont have to. Dodge based fighting still works wonder but you have to chose correct talents and weapons for it. So, the seen and experienced build variety has in my eyes increased which is something enjoyable and does let different games play out differently. I would agree that certain weapons dont work well on some careers anymore but I like the specialist philosophy better.
Lack of unity: The specialist approach also goes in here. The addition of stagger as well as the slightly forcing approach of being specialist increases teamplay and coordination. Most builds have now certain weaknesses which have to be covered. If you want to go, chances are higher to get shreddered as it was in 1.6. This is good as it should be. This is a co-op game. It should reward people using team tactics. Let the wizard hide behind the shield. Let the Waystalker kill the specials while the mercenary holds the front line. Could you teamplay before? Yes, but again. In public games you didnt see this behaviour because it was not necessary. It felt like four people randomly running beside each other murdering everything in their path. And it did not feel like a team working together to get an impossible mission goal achieved. Teamwork feels just better now. It is fun playing with others and not a chore.
In the beginning people often tried to stretch that dodge and hit tactics dont work anymore at all. Gladly, time has proven this claim wrong. You can still do this with the right set-up. People also claimed that killing stuff was now slower and more tedious. This claim has also proven to be wrong. If you play on Legend and avoid actively stagger you kill largely at the same speed as in 1.6. If you use stagger and team tactics, you kill even faster than before. If you run off alone, it might be a bit slower. But again, co-op game. Running around alone is not the intended design. If you play on Cataclysm, even then you technically kill faster than before. But due to the increased enemy numbers the overall pace is slower.
So in 1.6 anything goes? Great, nice. You just didnt see it in public games. It was not fun. Neither doing the meta nor trying something non-meta and being disconnected from the run. As for those not liking stagger, up to Champion you dont even feel its existence, so you can play there and still farm reds. You dont lose anything in the process and can still do the anything goes playstyle murdering everything.
In 2.0 you have to specialize to a certain degree, so you actually experience and see more variety in builds and teamwork.
This is all just about the gameplay and does not discuss the technical state of the game. Right now 1.6 and 2.0 are for me the same from technical side. Both did/do not crash on me and I have no major bug issues. There are people who stilll have great problems there. Also initial 2.0 was in a poor technical state. And this is a problem as people have reviewed back then a game which was in a poor technical state and the revies majorly cite that as reason for their disappointment. It is a reasonable complain which should be listened to. Combat changes on the other hand have not been listed in reviews very much. I would even go as far and say people who voted down the game and said the reason are the combat changes never really experienced the real gameplay as it was overshadowed by the bugs. If the combat changes were a significant reason why people stop playing than the score would have not risen again as the combat balance for the vanilla game largely stayed the same. And again, this is not discussing the technical state (i stretch this point in every post that this was and is a problem) and also not Beastmen and Weaves as they are WoM DLC. As such to evaluate the combat changes I have to look at the vanilla game reviews. And they are looking good.
From what I understand, it’s a legal issue with the tools. Perhaps because they did at one point license their engine out to other companies and there was other games using it. It could also be that something in their tool kit doesn’t belong to them, it’s a 3rd party tool.
Eitherway, looking forward to Season 2 and all this content to drop. Really excited for Beta branches were we can test things before they go live.
Well yes, if you are dev and you’re working on new unique content. If map editor is available publicly, then prolly like 99.5% of players will use existing assets, instead of firing up Maya or 3DS Max and trying to make their own models.
I tried to find the stream on twitch, but it’s not there anymore that kinda sucks, since that editor looked relatively easy to use, at least from my perspective.
I’m not claiming it would save the game by itself, but it would certainly be awesome if we had 50 more maps by now that we could play on modded or some of those could even be sanctioned to be played on official, holy cow that would be insane.
Valve is not comparable to FS. I don’t know much about L4D2, but I would guess they released bit more maps in first 1.5 years than VT2 did.
If I look back at the UT2003/4, community did create huge amount of maps, and a lot of those were pro level map designs, as good or better than the base maps. Reason why the base maps did not get overshadowed was because those base maps were really good and there was a lot of them.
Of course they do, level designers are not staring into text editor, writing pages of code, when creating levels.
Yes
Unfortunately, I’m not sure if it’s possible to get few months old twitch video, unless it got intentionaly backed up or something I couldn’t find it doing quick search.
This is the same issue as with everything here, they could just explain why exactly is it not coming out, if it’s not some bs as I mentioned before.
If it’s issue with some 3rd party tool that is needed, then they could explain the exact problem in one reply and be done with it.
I know people like to use the statistical outlier to make their points and in terms of player retention L4D is probably a prime example of being a statistical outlier. But in terms of content and developer created post-release content it is a horrible example. Let’s take L4D2 as it received more post-release love:
Release November 2009 with 5 campaigns
5 Months later in April 2010 addition of one new campaign (the Passing)
6 Months later in October 2010 addition of another new Campaign (the Sacrifice) shared with L4D1 (so if we are mean, we could count it only as half)
Both campaigns are significantly shorter than the main campaigns
Over the course of a whole year up to November 2011 release of one community-made! (as “official”) and porting of L4D1 campaigns to L4D2 (which would be equal to "Back to Ubersreik)
So right now, Fatshark has already released more post-release content for Vermintide 2 than Valve has in total for L4D1 and L4D2 together in LESS time. And L4D1 and L4D2 also don’t even have that much content to begin with. Content-wise they are a complete joke in comparison (and I have played both Vermintide and L4D enough to evaluate that). The reason for the high Player Retention of L4D is three-fold:
L4D is and always has been in a very technical clean state which Vermintide can’t and most likely never will be able to compete against which may be due to the significantly higher complexity in gameplay which will be mirrored in the complexity of the code making it more prone to bugs
L4D has a lot of player-created content although this only counts for L4D2 and less for L4D1. Although the majority of the player created content is …. um … questionable. This was eased by the own IP of L4D in comparison to Vermintide. I will get back to this in a few lines.
Timing. L4D1 was more or less the first of ist Kind and hold this Position for very long. So there is some nostalgie involved as well as word of mouth. If L4D would be released now, I wouldn’t be so sure that it could hold its players.
Back to player created content. Your comparison to UT doesn’t hold up to well. First off, I don’t think I have played it so I can’t be completely sure. But UT2003/2004 is a pure arena shooter, Right? The creation of maps for an arena shooter and for a campaign orientated game and very different, like one is easy-mode and the other is hardcore mode. For the arena shooter you only need one navigation file at best and the size is moderate. For a campaign you have to regard spawn points, navigation files for hordes and differently for specials, you have to regard variety in comparison to one simple theme in arena shooter, you have to consider map structure to keep the overall map layout size small (for this look at Valve’s Maps, it is freaking amazing how some sections basically ended in the room neighboured to your starting point while making you run around for 5 minutes). This leads to most community maps released for L4D2 being quite …… dull and still took several months to be created.
In this regard, your assumption of 50 maps is …… not even optimistic. It is delusional. If Vermintide 2 had released with map editor we would have by now at best 20 Maps of which 2 would be of acceptable quality and releasable in the officialrealm. Okay, two maps more. That is a point. I don’t argue that content would increase. But I argue that it wouldnt be as significant as people think. You purposefully used the modded realm which was a wise choice due to the IP complications. But even with map editor the pull to the modded realm wouldnt be strong enough. The same was said about mod support for Vermintide 2 and the modded realm. But look how many use it regularly for longer times. I don’t think maps would change this (pure assumption though).
So yea, in this regard maps would have to be designed with Official Realm in mind. This means the content would have to be of quality and it would have to be original within lore of Vermintide. So, if you have the time, I would kindly ask you to go to the L4D2 Workshop and search for just 10 community made maps which are of quality (let’s say 4 stars or more) and original (so no Helm’s Klamm, no City 12, no Resident Evil, no Evil Dead, no anything). It is possible, but it will take more time than it should. To make it easier: “I hate Mountains” (although a bit Long) and “Suicide Blitz” are original and good campaigns. The best I played was probably “Precinct84” but Im not sure a L4D2 version exists. Only played it for L4D1.
TLDR: Fatshark has already released more post-release content than Valve in less time. Map Editor is not the powerful tool people want it to be.
Like do you want to play FK with executioner or 2h hammer ? No you don’t , it’s garbage. Cos it’s slow, low dodge, low dodge range, kidna low damage when taking the slow AS in consideration, it’s just terrible to play. What you want is faster stuff or at lest you take Merc where you have 10% as kinda all the time and 20% more dodge range.
And in general you want the fast OP stuff, WHC with rapier, BW with whatever, Shade with whatever, Zealot with F&A etc. Slow weapons are still meh, because those are too slow, way to slow to handle stuff in Cata and Cata+ properly.
Just take the fu… Gors, the mob is standing/moving, not in attack animation, I will start the heavy overhead with exec, moving towards it, and he will just headbash me, starting at the point where I can’t stop the heavy attack animation and he will finish attack before I hit him… wtf is that, the weapon is just too slow. You’re not running in this kind of issue with other weapons on OP class/fast weapon combos.
And it’s not like the already mentioned executioner has insane range, so you could just trash the low mobs before they get to you, nope. They will just wobble around you, with some crazy range attacks combined with the ridiculous new running attacks and you will soon get sick of that mess.
We absolutely are, I was certainly one of those poeple who thought the dodge needs solid nerf, but ! Solid nerf would be like 30-50% WITHOUT ANY OTHER CHANGES. What they did was nerfed it by 66% and then strongly multiplied this by wobbling beastmen mess, the new Fu*kY’ll running attacks, improved tracking even on trash mobs, enemies attacking thru bodies of other enemies and other new “features”. So in the end it’s not bit nerfed, it got hammered super hard.
This is terrible approach.
Yea I think there would hardly be any complaints, if they just added small feature where enemies who are climbing or who got staggered hard will be getting damage multiplier. It would be simple, easy to understand and would not interfere too much with other stuff and gameplay would feel the same. But that’s not what happened unforutnately.
At this point I’m not hammering on stagger anymore, since it got nerfed so much that it’s not big deal anymore, now it’s just kind of whatever extra slightly chaotic feature.
But the thing with shields has hardly anything to do with 2.0 in general, they could do the same tweaks in 1.6 also and it would make shields amazing too, you got higher dodge count, you got ability to block boss attacks, you got new talents to complement the shield… for example shield on FK is completely stupid in terms of defensive power it offerers, it’s just … like wtf. You ever seen what FK can do with it ? He’s close to immortal and can stagger the crap out of everything and get a loooooot of temp HP while doing it.
That doesn’t seem to me like great “update”. It’s just broken.
It would be much more interesting, imho, if they upped the damage a bit so shileds are also decent offensively, so you’re not just tank. But not allow for this kind of god-like tanks.
And they could do more with shields, as we talked in beta. Like they could make shield push do some small damage to unarmored units also, like if you mash that huge shield right in the face of small slave rat, it should do some amount of damage.
There could be same buffs (dodge,boss block etc.) + other things done to shields in 1.6 without getting in this kind of mess we’re in now.
I would not say a word, if FS did actually some testing on changes and did not randomly nerf some stuff and push it live.
If they made a post where they explained that they want to make temp much harder to get, that they want the game to be more hardcore (which again tbh, I don’t think is being appreciated that much, I can appreciated it… as kinda hardcore player, but I would not bet that most of the players want this). Then they could do some testing and try to achieve some flat reduction to temp in general with maybe some exceptions… like now if you play Pyro… how the fu… are you supposed to vent, it screwed the playstyle to certain extent, because the temp was being used as ammo basically. Or the Zealot, I was so irritated playing the new Zealot because I basically have to run constantly forward, not get hit at all… and my main goal in the game is try to last hit all the elites while screaming at teammates to not last hit em, so I can get the temp. That is such a bs. People will object with “get the more temp hp talent” but, that should be built in the Zealot, otherwise it’s rendering the other talents in that row useless… these are just 2 examples of issues that come up when they change something and don’t think about it properly and don’t test it at all.
So like sure, nerf temp hp if you think it’s good idea, but it needs to be tested, balanced and well thought out, what they did was and still is … embarrasing. Not even talking how for example on FK with normal weapons not shield, you are basically running no-temp-hp mutator.
Yea I do also, it seems to be aiming to more skill based kind of talents which is great, but again, same issues, hardly tested at all, some of them bugged, some not balanced, some useless.
I mean yea it sounds good, but doesn’t work on many classes from my experience. I always tell people, just go and play few games as FK with Exec & Blunder, those were/are relatively meta weapons and yet the experience on Cata is super bad. I doubt anyone will do 5 runs of this and end up with feeling of “this is amazing, so much more dynamic”. Especially not when playing 5 runs of Dark Omens, where one can properly enjoy the beastmen wobble action.
I’m prolly also more negative, because lately I wasn’t playing the OP classes and doing Cata Onslaught or whatever as lot of the older players do (had enough of those classes during the weaves, which are ofc nightmare to play also), but I was trying different non-op classes and testing weapons, and the experience just suck. While before it was great. I was playing all kinds of mods/difficulties on modded, could switch to mostly any class/char and have bunch of fun. Now… it’s dry, not really enjoyable unless playing the meta stuff and I don’t want to do few hundred of hours of playing the same few builds.
Totally agree with you. Maybe i can shed some additional light on the left 4 dead map editing and why i think its probably more complicated than other games to do maps for. If you compare the left 4 dead series to other games with the source engine , l4d (1&2) got a lot less of fanmade maps.
One point is the overall Campaign structure of l4d where you can not (or should not) just simply build 1 map. in oder to give players the experience they expect from the game , you have to provide around 3-5 maps chained together to a campaign.
Next point would be deciding for coop or verus or even both. Maps that can be played in versus will need an unbelievable amount of extra work to create areas and paths for infected players. Not only to make it look solid but to make it consistent for special movement of some of the infected classes.
And the last … and in my opinion most important point of it all: AI pathing. Problem with the l4d series was that you had to create your map in the editor and once you did that , you had to go and load up your map and edit all pathing and ai behaviour in-game. You needed to do some extra configs to have at least some shortcuts for all the functions you needed and you did not get any context menu or something like that. Even worse , if you found some problems while doing the pathing , you had to basically scrap it and go back to the editor in order to fix some geometry. And than you would go back in , do pathing and so on … horrible ! On top of that you needed to do some normal playthroughs in order to properly test it. You couldnt just reliably do some pathing , test it and move on. And imagine that process over a whole campaign with 5 maps … including versus functionality , allied bot pathing , general ai pathing and properly working panic events.
L4d still is a great game but i can totally see why there are not many good fan made maps out there … its simply too much work in order to get it right. And i think if a vermintide editor would allow for editing of ai pathing in the editor directly , it would all be less problematic since you would only work 1 map at a time and could go on with some test runs for every new bit you created. So i think if done right , we would see more vermintide maps than left 4 dead maps in general.
You keep saying this so I gave it a go these past few days. Funny enough FK with 2h hammer was the build I always WANTED to play, really badly, ever since launch - I just love the theme and idea of it, but it was always god-awful-terrible. Super bad as you say. Ever since launch I would keep circling back and trying to make that build work and giving up when it kept being awful. I would give up and play Merc with 2h hammer and that was cool.
I will say this, playing FK with anything/Blunder is still terrible, I think the Blunderbuss is just in a horrible spot right now. Especially on Cata… it can’t one shot kill any specials unless they are at point blank range, and even then sometimes not. Packmasters and gunners/flamers especially I feel like it’s 50/50 chance if I kill them at close range unless I’m touching them, and far away specials like gas rats or stormers? Forget it! On top of that traits are just in a bad state for it, ammo on headshots doesn’t work, scrounger works but no longer on bash (very sad), and the attack speed and ammo capacity are just too slow for the rest of the traits to be useful at all. It’s basically good for decimating hordes (until you run out of ammo), but only standard hordes, throw some armor in there to block your bullets and it’s just meh. Hordes and assassins and leeches and that’s about it, and the special density in Cata means that you pretty much HAVE to be able to take specials out with your ranged weapons. As FK that might not be your specialty, but being able to take one out here and there when your team special killer is occupied can make a huge difference. Long story short, I started using either the handgun or the repeater and EVERYTHING was immediately so much better.
These past few days with FK have been surprisingly excellent. He has two talents for gaining attack speed, simply ludicrous amounts of it if you use the ult one… if you take SS on top of that, well, it’s just ridiculous how fast you can get going. It’s not as constant though and without the dodge range you really can’t play it like you would on Merc. I ended up going with the talent for more stagger (instead of attack speed on push), talent for increased BCR, counterpunch for free pushes after blocking, and FK is just a defensive powerhouse, unkillable and amazing stagger. block and push several times to stagger the F out of everything and having slow attack speed doesn’t matter, you have plenty of time to lay down some attacks before blocking again. Keep the attack speed on ult and you can basically zerker rage when you ult and lay waste to anything around you for 10 seconds.
The biggest thing I would say is overall playing it more defensively, talents as I mentioned plus setting my gear up that way too. Stamina and BCR + Off Balance on the hammer. BCR on the necklace too, puts you up to 80% BCR. I’ve been using Revive Speed on the trinket - holy hell, this is a bit of a tangent, but revive speed is AMAZING and I’ve only recently started using it. Basically, I can survive anything and pick my teammates up very fast in any situation, even without my ult. Sidebar, I wish revive speed worked when rescuing teammates who had died and respawned…
Anyway, I’ve been playing FK sort of like a team shepherd, staggering the absolute “FK” out of everything and keeping the team alive. Going on a killing spree for 10 seconds every time I use my ult, sniping the odd special here and there. It’s a super interesting build to me. If you have a team that “gets it” and rallies around you, especially if your special killer hides behind you while dealing with specials, you’re just unstoppable. I’ve found it surprisingly effective to charge directly into the center of huge hordes; before this would be a death sentence because you’d be trapped in there and once the enemies got up they’d pummel you. Now just keep blocking and pushing in all directions and you can just stagger the hell out of everything and allow your team to mop them up. Rescuing teammates is a breeze. Even taking out the odd special is much easier when you can push several times to create space to fire a shot or few.
I definitely did better with the 2h hammer thanks to the stagger, but exec worked ok. I think exec is a far better fit on Merc for the more consistent attack speed as a DPS weapon and with his increased dodge, but it worked OK for me when paired with not the blunderbuss. By the same token I found the 2h hammer a far superior fit on FK than on Merc. It works great on Merc until you get cornered, which is bound to happen… FK has the tools to survive and escape that.
I would say the main weakness of FK is lack of DPS and if you don’t have a team that plays together, and perhaps more importantly has the other roles covered. You need a DPS person and you need a special killer backing you up. If you don’t have them, or if they YOLO off on their own and die… well, you can’t be killed except by a disabler so the clutch potential is pretty damn amazing but the frequency of disablers in Cata can make that pretty challenging. Plus the lower DPS means you just get overwhelmed by horde and armor until you can’t even see the specials coming for you.
To me this is the biggest problem, people want to all be able to take whatever character and build they want in the team and play it “their way”. Team comp and team play are just really important. In Cata that is, in Legend you can still get away with less effective team comps just fine. Cata means you need a frontliner and DPS and someone taking care of specials and everyone needs to pay attention to how their teammates are playing, and their role, and support them accordingly. I’ve played games where before we started I told my team “hey I’m playing a defensive build and am unkillable, rally on me when s*** hits the fan” and we absolutely dominated. I finish games with 0 green circles other than saving teammates (which has glitchy tracking), but I know I was instrumental in winning because I protected and empowered the team.
Sadly this level of teamplay is hard to achieve without a premade, especially since voice chat in this game is such garbage. Teammates YOLO off and die and you find yourself alone and having to clutch again. Sometimes you get a full lobby and SOMEONE is gonna have to switch, because you got an IB with a shield and a handmaiden and maybe BH and then you as FK… someone switching to Merc with Exec or Sienna to fill that DPS need will make the team so much more effective. I see that happen quite a bit where it’s like “all of our characters and builds are fine but in this team combination we’re just asking to get rekt”, and I think in that scenario a lot of people don’t want to switch and so they just get rekt and blame their build for not being viable.
The map editor is about content control. it is hard to say ‘it costs us to much to release map packs of x quality’ when consumers are doing it regularly for free.
It’s also why would you buy expansions when community maps will be better get updated regularly and actually have their bugs fixed. This is not a what if, the community is die hard enough to spawn talented content creators who will shame the original creators into either providing serious quality of life improvements and content that justifies new content pricing or just working on a sequel I think we all agree the latter is far more likely but if they can milk a few cheap dollerydoos for every map or skin or voice pack they start churning out… oof. I really hope they aren’t going the route of full micro transaction monetization.
Yea I agree, it’s another blunder… what they did to the Blunder But handgun is too slow for Cata and I really don’t enjoy that minigun thing
RIght, and it would be awesome if it was tweaked to be usable on more weapons, the push attack speed is good idea, but since you can’t dodge much and especially beatmen are wobbling like crazy, going super close to get that push connected feels like crap to me and then you get what, 2.5 second boost after push animation ? That’s way too low, when other classes can sustain these buffs relatively easily or forever (like Maiden). Then the ult has it’s own issues with not properly hitting all enemies, taking too long to wind-up and still having trouble running over stuff where Maiden has no issues.
I get what you’re saying here, but in action I doesn’t really work, at least for me (slow attack not being a problem). I usually try some solo with different classes, and that FK, oh man, was so bad.
Yea that’s what I always used, that is great talent.
Well this is kinda the issue, that’s too many downsides. If one gets great team who can handle specials for you and does good dmg, you can play anything, you don’t actually have to do anything, they will do it in 3
Exactly, specials are everywhere, and if you play Twitch then … ouch.
But there are classes and builds that are can do it all, which is why these feel like crap compared to those. I think one should be able to do decently alone with FK, but that it’s extremely hard currently, from my experience due to various factors I complained previously.
This is probably the main issue I have with it. That class could be so damn fun to play, if they did some tweaks to talents, ult, and fixed the combat so I don’t get headbanged before I can hit heavy attack, am not getting showered by the running attacks and so on.
I just don’t enjoy blocking and pushing and hoping my team will do well. I know there are people who do, but I think it’s prolly minority.
Finally, I’m not sure what is your tldr, would you say that non-shiled FK playstyle needs buffing or you feel like this is “fine”, like no problem really ?
Well i did not investigate but i can not think of any game that got hurt (in terms of selling expansions and stuff) because it also provided player created content.
When i think of the Half Life series , Starcraft or WarCraft , player created content did quite the opposite.
Especially when we talk about Maps in Vermintide 2. I dont think player created maps would be automatically playable in the official realm. If maps from fans make it there then only through manually picking and pobably revisiting by fatshark stidios.
!!! (very important)
But yea, if I could add on that. If I would have to say why I like 2.0 more or better why I loathed 1.6 enough to stop playing I would say: Variety and Lack of Unity.
that kinda sucks, since that editor looked relatively easy to use, at least from my perspective.
But handgun is too slow for Cata and I really don’t enjoy that minigun thing 
