Having played around 1300 hours on Steam, I’m increasingly asking myself: what is even going on at the studio? For clarity, I’ll break down my grievances into several key aspects: maps, heroes, gameplay, and cosmetics.
Maps. Why aren’t you adding new maps or modes (like FoW)? But the problem isn’t just that. Why not bring ALL the missions from the first game over? Let our useless wizard Olesya Pimenova create another illusion — and that’s it. I understand it would require rebalancing for the second game’s mechanics, but are you really too lazy to spend time on that?
Heroes. As someone who has read some books and is familiar with Warhammer Fantasy lore, I’m genuinely irritated by the Necromancer class. It’s an incredibly childish class with terrible in-game lore, which is why I’ve only played it maybe 2–3 times (while my other heroes are around level 300+). It’s a pointless class whose presence in the game is unjustified. I genuinely regret that Saltzpyre didn’t manage to finish off Sienna in Vermintide’s lore. Perhaps the Necromancer is interesting gameplay-wise, but its presence turns the story into a childish game where motivation boils down to “let’s kill someone to make up.” The main Vermintide story and the Drachenfels DLC are decent — there’s a clear and important task for the Empire. But the “A Parting of the Waves” map is just blatantly stupid in terms of lore (again, because of the Necromancer).
Gameplay. Moving on to what I consider a more objective part — gameplay.
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Why doesn’t completing Cataclysm give, for example, double the chests (or their equivalent)? This would motivate our ever-whining community (which whines about every grimoire picked up or Sienna’s accidental fireball) to collect books on the highest difficulty.
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Right now, I only play Cataclysm with the Twitch mod. Why does activating it require connecting to a random stream? Why can’t you just play with random events without connecting?
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Why does the Twitch mod have a Minotaur event but no Beastmen patrol event?
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Why can’t you independently enable any weekly modifiers (without extra rewards, like in the normal mode)? For example, I really liked the Tzeentch event in the Twitch mod, and it would be great to be able to enable any modifier for an extra challenge.
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Why isn’t there flexible mission configuration? A good solution would be a custom difficulty system: settings for enemy resistance and health, special spawn frequency, the ability to disable the annoying Minotaur (subjectively), adjustment of enemy numbers in hordes and patrols, and proper mod support. There’s a sea of similar gameplay ideas, but for some reason, you’re either afraid to implement them or simply don’t care.
Cosmetics. And finally, the most subjective part — skins. Personally, I consider almost all glowing and donation skins tasteless and ugly; they break the game’s atmosphere. “Runeforged” glowing weapons for Bardin can still be understood, but Kruber? Saltzpyre? Glowing skins are the peak of laziness: you just change the glow color. You can’t even be bothered to come up with unique descriptions for event items. Why not make unique weapon models that people would want to get for their lore and design?
The donation skins are also puzzling. There are some very high-quality and thematic ones. For me, the gold standard is the skins for buying the first game (they could conditionally be considered donation skins). From the store, I really like, for example, Kerillian’s Lion’s of Chrace skin and “Naieth the Prophetess.” But tell me — why? WHY is “Naieth the Prophetess” NOT AVAILABLE for Sister of the Thorn? Maybe there’s a lore explanation for this (I’m not a big expert on Wood Elves), but then how do you justify the “Count Boris Todbringer” skin on Bounty Hunter? That’s a completely inappropriate skin. Who is the genius who came up with such ugly sets as “Solstice Warden’s Garb,” “Reikland Rover,” “Gambler’s Glamour,” “Count Boris Todbringer,” or “Isabella von Carstein” for Pyromancer?
At the same time, the game has excellent, detailed skins: “Champion of Ubersreik,” “Wulfhart’s Array,” “Armour of the Blazing Sun” (except the helmet, perhaps, but that’s my opinion), “Varagvalg,” “Wizard’s Motley,” and others. Why can’t you make new work in the same philosophy? Why, instead of unique and atmospheric models, do you release childish nonsense for some unclear audience? If I want total absurdity, I’ll install a mod for Total War: Warhammer — it has proper mod support, and I won’t have to pay for your garbage.
I understand that the words of one player mean nothing to you and your community managers. But I just wanted to speak up because this is still one of the few quality games in its genre in the Warhammer universe, and it saddens me to see what you’re doing with it. My opinion is largely subjective, but I hope many veteran players share it.
