Why The Ranged Meta REALLY Exists

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
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I tried not to rant but I might have let loose a little. These are my thoughts on why the ranged meta is so prevalent, or rather, what I think people are missing about why it’s so prevalent.

I join my first game in a long time only to be oneshotted by 10 enemies all clipping into each other standing in the exact same spot. Has FS ever actually addressed why they haven’t fixed this? This sort of thing is both immersion breaking and game breaking. I was all hyped up and ready to go for the G-nacht event but after that I think I’ll pass until something else comes around. I’m just sort of disappointed that in a game where being close to enemies is such a normal occurance that the clipping hasn’t been at least mentioned by them, and if it has been I’d love you to link it, I want to take a look.

I mean no wonder the meta has been ranged, who would want to deal with the extremely janky melee combat this game (and its predecessor) has had for so long ? The ranged combat may be more boring but it at least functions for the most part. I literally can’t remember anytihng questionable happening when using ranged other than weird “neckshots” that counted as headshots, but honestly the neck is pretty important when it comes to a weak spot so I say, fine.

Meanwhile in melee land 10 nurgle slaves form a “non collision party” and start flailing around. The best thing you can do in this situation (keep in mind, not the ONLY thing to do, but usually the best) is retreat, which makes it so frustrating. Trying to attack isn’t going to work because you’ll never get enough damage in before you lose unnecessary amounts of health. You just can’t cleave through that many bodies. Same with pushing, you won’t have enough stagger damage to push all of them. Dodging doesn’t work because there are just too many attacks coming in, on higher difficulties it’s not worth the risk. No what you might as well do here is whip out a blunderbuss or ranged weapon and blow all of them away, which is what most people have been doing.

IMO the collision bug is worse than how enemies have constantly spawned in directly next to players (before the ambush sound cue) because at least I can figure that I can avoid damage by paying attention to the spawn points like holes in the ground. The collision bug is a lot like the problem of skating enemies which looks like it’s being worked on, yay. Why? Because both of these required the player to deal with unreasonably stupid / unrealistic situations. Berserkers flying across a span of 4 meters to hit you, or literally any enemy turning around as they spawn in, sometimes hitting you before their animation even goes off.

TLDR: The reason why the ranged meta is so hard to knock off is because of the melee issues this series has been plagued with. Yes FS has been trying to improve the situation through balance, but I think there are problems that go beyond just balance here. Case in point, enemies phasing into each other and acting as if they don’t collide at all, causing “death balls” of enemies that you just have to stay away from until they all un-phase from each other. Or, skating berserkers. Or, spawning enemies that are actually attacking the second they spawn if you’re close enough but you don’t know that because their animation hasn’t even started, because they just spawned in lol. Or, up attacks, I think most people will know what I mean by how dumb they are.

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I think posts like this are a great thing, because (for me at least) it means that instead of everyone getting in a mind-bending rage about the ACTUAL ranged meta of PYro/WS/BH and previously HS we are now discussing some of the more deep seated, hidden issues. This means that the surface symptoms are being treated via the balance beta, and the actual cause of the problem is beginning to be addressed.

I feel robbed when I get downed by Hyperstacked hits, especially if I was blocking and I just get hammered into the floor. Addressing this would make fighting toe-to-toe a more enjoyable experience. Currently in the Beta at least you can spank things around to get some Temp Health, but the issue of hyperstacked enemies is the underlying cause of a lot of frustration, for me at least.

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Agreed the clipping is a major issue that breaks immersion and makes pushing such a strong mechanic. It’s also besides dual overheads the thing that kills me the most because it basically kills you immediately for one single mistake sometimes even from full health. Now I know you are supposed to kill them fast enough so they can’t even stack.

If clipping would get resolved at some point mobs might be in need of buffs / the dmg reduction per mob targeting you might need tweaking.

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Why previously? HS is great

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The other classic of a chaos knight winding up a charged shot which you dodge only to be downed by an infantry unit hiding within the chaos knight model ^^

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I believe a proper collision for that many enemies would overtax most players CPUs.
As far as I can remember, all games with massive amounts of entities limited collision to important objects.

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I think the real reason the range meta exists aside from just being somewhat enjoyable, and easy is that a vast majority of the melee weapons feel clunky, partially due to things like hyper-density as you described, but there is more to it than that. Weapons like the halberd and spear feel fine, but spear’s current (not PTR) anti armor is horrid, and halberd is slow, and gives pretty horrid movement drawbacks, so for classes like huntsman its maybe not ideal. 1 handed swords get stuck too often, maces, 1h maces don’t cleave enough, blah blah the list goes on. The only comfortable melee is really the elf due to the high damage / cleave and the fact her mobility goes unhindered. Additionally, the fact that swinging away at 10-20 storms isn’t fun or likely to have a positive outcome if you are alone, and the fact maulers do 360 spins, annnnd the fact berserkers teleport and jump, and do 360 spins, and all sorts of whacky junk, just makes it less and less desirable to engage in combat. I don’t know about you guys, but personally when I make a set up for a hero I pick based on what my team may need but what I need personally to survive in case they all die, which typically amounts to mobility, light to moderate anti armor, and decent cleave.

A good example of this is:
My huntsman set up currently includes a 1h sword because 1. its red (and I don’t have a red mace) 2. it gives me mobility where my LB can handle armor, and specials. This allows me to move and re position easily at will, and out range mobs with backdodge so I don’t have to frequently weapon swap to use my bow in combat. If I ran halberd which is an objectively better weapon for melee I would be slow, but if a wave is there and my team wiped to an SV patrol or a boss, im not going to be able to stand and fight my way out of that, hence the sword, which lets me move, run, shoot, and eventually get a stealth rez or just kill everything.

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That’s true you would not take the collision of every mob into consideration all the time. It would be more like in a strategy game where you send all your units on the same enemy unit. (Maybe there would need to be some kind of formation code like these games use for a reason to move larger armies)

I think a good system would be to give them a slightly too small collision cycle but make them push each other apart in a larger one to allow for them to move past each other more easily but spread them as soon as they stop walking. The AI would need to be adjusted so that it works together with it.

Unfortunately that is already an issue for this game. This is something that can be overcome with good and efficient code. So as it is currently adding real collision would break it for sure but a patchwork like steadily pushing them out of each other might work but will look awkward. (not that enemies inside of each other don’t just in a different way)

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@revy I meant when HS could blunderbuss a boss into goop and when he machine gunner everything with handgun. This is the previous things I was on about.

If enemies are stacked could the AI not detect that and only impact something like 5 hits from a horde on a player rather than a complete beatdown? Double overheads from Maulers should only imapct one overhead really.

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That’s what they already do (or should). Only a limited amount of enemies attack in a given timeframe.
Sometimes, some enemies stay at a distance and wait. Hilarious if an Ironbreaker taunts.
If there’s 20 inside each other, obviously killing them is a challenge.

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