I play this game via QP and I consider myself competent and a good teammate. If I can’t QP into Cata and have fun I will probably stop playing. Especially considering WoM legend will almost certainly be even easier than live legend
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I feel like it’s fine to have Cataclysm be beyond what most people can expect to beat, as long as there’s something to bridge the gap for people bored with Legend but not able to run Cataclysm with randoms consistently. It’s like Fortunes of War, an insanely hard challenge that’s not meant for everyone. The problem is that it seems like they’re maybe, y’know, designing an entire update that took them the better part of a year to make around something like Fortunes of War, which just doesn’t appeal to everyone. It’s a big misstep, in my opinion.
If they reworked deeds to be selectable mutators that we could add to our game in return for loot, made Twitch mode more palatable/customizable to a wider range of people, and actually did something with the damn Weekly Events… I feel like that’s a good amount of content just sitting untouched that could be a gold mine for replayability and offering a challenge between difficulties if you’re not quite ready for Cataclysm (or don’t want to pay for a harder mode because that’s dumb).
I’ve been having a lot of fun with Legend twitch mode and I can’t recommend it enough because of the unexpectedness and spontaneity it offers, although I know there’s people that dislike it. I imagine, after the update, I hope I will enjoy that mode as much when I’ve exhausted the Weaves or Cataclysm.
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Oh thank you yes that’s good clarification, keep the map, wind, and objectives static for each weave # but have spawns be randomized with an AI director like a normal map. The worst you might get is teams only pushing high weaves when they get lucky with spawns. While you couldn’t predict eh difficulty before hand to ‘fish’ you could still ‘farm’ runs until it was randomly a little easier. IMO not that big of an issue.
TBH I read FS’s post as randomizing the weave variables, map/wind/objectives, which I admit could cause ‘fishing’. So maybe there’s some miscommunication about what exactly to randomize in weaves with FS.
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I bought the game together with two friends. They didn’t level one single character to 30 before they quit. Maybe the game wasn’t for them or maybe they didn’t give it a chance to grow on them, but they’re most definitely part of that 95%. Some people surely aren’t interested in the higher difficulties but there are plenty of people, with V2 in their library, that doesn’t play the game and maybe never did.
I dare say everything points to the opposite. If nothing else, the upscaled terror event will certainly make the game challenging, at least on Champion+ difficulty.
That would make it subjective and indeed you point of view.
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It can be relevant, but not alone. If we consider passing Veteran difficulty as a point where a player moves from being a beginner to being competent, only less than a quarter of the (PC) players have completed Skittergate on that difficulty. Out of that portion, roughly half have completed the same on Champion, and again under a quarter passed to “complete” the game on Legend. So while 95% of players haven’t reached the Legend milestone, vast majority of those didn’t even reach the Veteran (or even Recruit, really, with completion rate of slightly over a third) milestone either, and in fact likely quit playing during the first couple of months of the game’s life. We could look deeper to the Achievements, too and draw interesting conclusions, but I think that’s enough for now.
As for player numbers, Steamcharts give us an average of 2-3k simultaneous players online at a given time, with monthly peaks of 4.5k+ even in the summer months.
I somewhat agree with the idea that the game should be more accessible, but I think smoothing out the difficulty curve and reducing the frustrating features of the game would be the way rather than overall reduction in difficulty. Listening only to the “average” players is also just as bad idea as listening only to the best ones. All kinds of players deserve a voice and content.
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Any word on the fabled Map Editor?
Will we ever get community made maps?
Is there any hope for this at all?!?
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Might want to check your spelling there.
When it comes to how we asses all feedback
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Once you have played something enough you kinda get a feel for it. Right now the highest Rifters in say Diablo 3 fish for there best chance for a clear. Although rifts are random in Diablo 3 people have played it enough to spot when a Rift is going to give you an optimal experience and best chance of clearing.
It’s not something the common player would spot but play something long enough you just start seeing it like Neo sees the matrix.
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Yes, no group of players should be heard apart of the rest. My point is, there are so much people who just do not play legend at all, as you said, and they should have their voice heard too. FS should do something to encourage them to advance their game difficulty. TBH, I don’t know how to do it. The game difficulty alone atm is fine, the problem is in reward system. The game treat player too hard in sense of rewarding. Commendation chests alone aren’t enough to deal with that. More daily challenges, like 3 or 5 per day, some reagents as a reward for progressing the map through certain checkpoints (say, 1/3 and 2/3 of each map) even if it failed after all, but definitely something to encourage them to play more.
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I’m all aboard with bashing the stagger mechanic but as for the Legend and the steam stats, those are not accurate, because there is incredibly high amount of people who don’t really play the game, they just get it because they are collectors, play it few hours and that’s it. I even know quite a few friends who did exactly this, they were like “ye sure, I will get it and play with you” , they got it, played one evening with me and than never touched it again because it just wasn’t something they enjoyed.
But if you were to take active players, ppl who actually play the game on whatever consistent basis, daily or at least weekly,for some considerable amount of time, those who like the game. Than big part of those players is playing Legend and than again considerable part of those people find Legend relatively easy.
There was a poll on reddit about this, not so long ago, and j_sat got video talking about results, I don’t remember exact numbers but I believe very big part of player base played Legend or harder (modded). Even tho this might no represent playerbase perfectly, since it was reddit poll, it’s much much close to reality than the Steam metric.
That is probably just impossible, and not only in this game, but in any other. I mean getting 25% completion rate on end-game hard content in certain game.
Again, I doubt there are amazing games that will let you play end-game hardest content, with random people or while chilling (as some people asked for before) and completing those hardest challenges just fine. In that case the game would be boring, because if most people can do hardest difficulty with random people, than the better players will just stop playing the game at all, because it will be so easy that it’s not fun to play.
I most certainly won’t. You will get new harder enemies, much tighter dodge window and if they don’t fix it than you will also get the stagger mess. It won’t be easier.
Yeah, this should be #1 priority, which would add loads of replayability and would not require too much time. I can slap whatever mods I want on modded realm and have lots of fun now. They don’t need to create some new convoluted system, they could just create something simple.
Yes that is exactly what I was trying to say. And if someone tells me yes this is massive issue and we really need the difficulty perfectly leveled… well than they are perfectly out of touch with reality, because people don’t care about this level of perfection when it comes to leaderboards at the cost of basically zero replayability.
No, I believe individual can see something objectively.
If I say “From my point of view, it’s objectively true that one minute has 60 seconds” that it is not subjective statement right ? It is pretty objective. I’m not saying “I feel like one minute should be 87 seconds long, because that’s the number that feels good to me”.
Google says:
- Subjective refers to personal perspectives, feelings, or opinions entering the decision making process.
- Objective refers to the elimination of subjective perspectives and a process that is purely based on hard facts
To go back, we were talking about fixed vs random spawns, my point was that it is pretty objective (based on facts) that making stuff fixed instead of random will lead to less replayability, which than will lead to negative effects on playerbase and if we look at what people want, than we can clearly see that they don’t want this, they don’t want fixed spawns, they don’t want grind etc.
What playerbase wants is objective, you can just look at reddit and see with perfect clarity what most of the players want, and saying that fixed spawns will be horrible for replayability is also pretty much objective, I can’t see how anyone could even argue about that. (but actually there is one guy who seems to be arguing about that with me now … but … I’m not sure I can take that seriously, but I try)
yy I agree, I did few top spots in D3 rifts back then when it came out and that is indeed true, but it is very subtle, it’s not like I could easily see that this rift is sh*t 5 seconds in and I would restart and do that 100 times till I saw that this one is amazing and than I did it.
But they did not sacrifice random spawns there, and people were not complaining about random spawns either, at least when I was playing it. It was fine as it was imo.
I can’t imagine what kind of terrible feedback they would get if they decided to make it fixed.
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We already speak through that, but don’t ask for reasons why weaves should be fixed and then answer that they’ll never get the balance right because they didn’t in the past (which is wrong, since they did hit a very interesting meta right after the big balance patch, even if not perfect).
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It’s probably expected that mostly the people that felt the strongest about all the new changes reply in this thread. The people that feel the strongest are also the people that disliked the changes the most. This creates an image in this thread like gameplay in the Beta was an absolute disaster or something. I just wanted to say that it honestly wasn’t really that bad.
Especially the stagger changes are the most maligned. Now, I will not pretend like it didn’t have its problems and needed a little tweaking, but it also had some really positive effects and - in my opinion - a lot of potential. It’s not really useful to have the same discussion on the pros and cons of it (with the same people) again here, but I just wanted to counter the image of doom that is painted in this thread a bit. During the Beta Fatshark had already adjusted the mechanic in the right direction, and I’m sure they are aware of the negatives of it all and are working on ways to change it for the better.
Also, a remark on shields (as they were specifically mentioned in Fatsharks post): By the end of the Beta shield & axe and shield & sword were in a place where they were actually useful to bring in high difficulties for maybe the first time in the history of Vermintide 
. (Shield & mace/hammer was still rather bad unfortunately.) They were however far from the best weapon in the game, and I do hope that they won’t be nerfed again in the upcoming changes. It was really fun to play them as they were, but even with a buff they wouldn’t become overpowered in the slightest and a nerf would probably hurt them a lot.
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I see two different topics in this, unless I’m reading it wrong.
You’re talking about weaves and than about weapon balance right ?
As for BBB, I agree it helped a lot in terms of balance, but it still needed additional tweaking that has never been done … and now I was just saying that if experienced players were involved, the balance could be much better than if basically one dev was doing it all alone. Which is what I remember they told us, was the case.
And I doubt that one dev doing the balancing was Valentino Rossi or Casey Stoner kinda guy.
I mean, tell me your opinon on this, do you think that one developer, who most probably don’t have time to waste thousands of hours playing the game, will do better job in terms of balancing than let’s say group of very experienced players (as I mentioned in my suggestion previously) ?
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Then I’ll come back to some remark that was said there.
There’s a difference in what people think they want about a game, and what they need. I know you did take it in a harsh way, but if you were even only once in the game industry (or if you listen to GDC speaks), you would have known that they’re actually right about it. Even if it’s hurting our feelings.
On the balance part now, they have access to more tools than we have. And I know for sure that a group of experienced players does not mean a perfect balance for everyone. Only a balance around experienced players, which is not… great in the long term for the game (see Heroes of Newerth debacle, that Riot Games did tackle a bit back in the days).
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You were a Stagger apologist during the entire beta test from the beginning so your viewpoint isn’t very surprising.
It only just became bearable during the last beta build, and even then, weapon balance was still utterly borked.
I’m not confident that they’ll be able to fix it with just one patch, but I guess I could be wrong.
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This brought to my mind a certain article: How Gearbox's 'Truth Team' outwitted Borderlands feedback - Polygon
Tl;DR: We, as testers and feedback-giving players usually, even if we try being as factual as we can, talk about how things feel, so the solution to certain things feeling “wrong” can be quite unexpected. This is basically why the game devs, when discussing balance and such, want more us digging as deep into what we feel is wrong with things as we can, rather than stating ideas immediately. We can identify what feels wrong, it’s their job to find a way to change that - and that way can be unexpected.
Though of course, tossing around ideas isn’t exactly wrong. It just might not be as helpful as you think.
In this case, I can’t fully state my feelings about the new features, be it Weaves or the stagger mechanics, as I haven’t tested them. But I can state some of my feelings based on what I’ve read, and I can state my fears. And I fear that the Weaves won’t bring the freshness to the game they’re intended to if they stay fully curated, and I fear that the stagger mechanics may feel forced, so that (at least seemingly) you need to use them rather than them merely helping and complementing other styles.
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“Apologist”… It’s true that during the entire Beta I did see the potential of the stagger mechanic, but I always acknowledged that there were issues that needed fixing. I don’t know if you intended it that way, but it feels like your reply was made to simply dismiss my view, as if I never argued in good fate and were just a single lunatic with this opinion or something. And that’s just a lame way to debate. It’s not like I went around saying “Yeah, well, you guys were stagger haters during the entire Beta so your replies are expected.”
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While I think the new system could have its place (if FS balance it correctly), let’s not pretend it wasn’t just a flat 40% dmg buff to the weapons in the game that are already good and also have easy access to any CC (again, dual hammers, exec, glaive etc.), and weapons with no CC were not meta.
Very very few people enjoyed the initial way it worked where enemies were meatwalls and you needed it to cut down on kill time, it wasn’t hard for it to get changed for the better.
While you’re not wrong, as @afriholioo said that works both ways. FS still needs people to actually buy WoM, and long term they need the players to keep playing weaves to be able to get any kind of longevity out of further developing that content. At this point I’m sure people’ll buy it for Cataclysm, the beastmen, the new weapons and the new map, but I’m more than skeptical about weaves’ longevity (let alone popularity) until they add a random mode.
I mean there was a lot of that too in the beta forums, from initial impressions threads to people saying why certain things (talents, mechanics etc.) didn’t work well for them personally in practice.
Stagger was a good example, before it got tuned down you were dependent on it to get through the mission in reasonable(ish) time, but the problem was while people defending it said you can just bring a teammate with good CC if you don’t, in practice you don’t go into combat in VT2 stacked on top of each other like matryoshka dolls - much of the time you have two people covering one angle while another is picking off a special or the team has to split to take enemies coming in from two angles. Even if they’re just coming in from one side, unless you make it into a choke (which isn’t always possible or ideal if say a boss appears) you usually aren’t hitting the same enemies, you’re handling say the left flank of the horde while your buddy takes the right.
Let’s be fair, your first paragraph in that post came across as you saying the people who didn’t like it were a loud vocal minority, when in reality it was the majority that were unhappy.
mashmonster’s also not wrong, once they toned it down it became bearable and there was actually room to work with it - I’d have rather taken more time experimenting with the 20%/40% stagger and seeing how the balance was with it e.g. only on shields, only on shields AND heavy weapons, and/or tweaked depending on weapon profile (so very easy ones like dual hammers for example only benefit in dmg from staggering elites/things that require charged and push attacks while weapons that didn’t have any access to it had their dmg tuned accordingly).
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Well, they clearly did a beta on purpose to collect feedback. So we can’t really tell that there’s not listening. They wouldn’t have done it if it was to ignore us =p
The great idea when you’re game designing is to provides a bit of stuff that you know people want => Here, Beastmens.
And still experiment a bit to stay “new”, or on top => Here, the weaves.
If there wasn’t this “experiment” part, we would still play chess-like games today. Sometimes thoses experiments do work (Dota), sometimes, they do not (A f*ckton of mobile games). Even in most “big budget” games, you’ll see them experimenting stuff, Ubisoft being one that comes in mind when it comes to trying stuff (Tower Defense in Assassin’s Creed didn’t work, Naval combat did work)
And we can THINK that the weaves will or will not work, but we don’t KNOW for sure until it’s done, implemented, and probably updated a bit.
I guess I would agree, yea I don’t like that comment, especially from someone who makes ton of mistakes. Because at this point it’s pretty obvious that they should listen, that this “we know better” doesn’t work well for them.
I already replied to this on reddit :
Actually I also got slightly irritated by this statement, because you guys are not Steve Jobs, and this is not Apple.
Steve couldn’t really ask random phone user what does he want in new phone. Because average guy has no clue about this kind of tech and how to innovate on already high end product.
This is far from what is happening here, if you just ask about important or controversial things I would say that you mostly get pretty clear response.
Like if you ask people do you guys want the fixed weaves or you want random re-playable weaves, you will get imo pretty straight forward feedback, that should be taken , like seriously, should be taken and implemented not go around saying “Well guys, you have no clue what you want … we will do it this way”
Same for seasons, hardly anyone wants that, and again, thinking “We know better, players just don’t get it…” is just crazy in my opinion and you will just receive more negative feedback.
Of course there is more than just those two examples, but these two illustrate the point well.
This kind of stuff could be easily avoided if there was more communication and flexibility from your side. I’m repeating myself constantly on exactly these issues that are being brought up here and also some others that are not so obvious now but will come biting later if they don’t get fixed. (saying this in completely neutral, friendly tone)
I’m saying that if you take group of very experience players, provide them proper tools and work with them on balancing than you sure will get much better result than when one lonely dev that is trying to do it all himself. Of course considering that the players are able to cooperate. But it’s always easy to filter out someone how can’t cooperate in certain group, so that is not an issue.
That just seems obvious to me, that group of different ppl who could have 20-30k hours combined in the game, will do better balancing than one guy with hundreds of hours or whatever it might be.
I don’t understand how you can know for sure that group of very experience people can’t produce better balance than single much less experienced developer. I just don’t get how that would make sense.
Who else would produce that balance ? Recruit & Veteran players sure are not the ones, those don’t understand the mechanics and lack the skill. If Veteran player picks up the weapon and he thinks it’s crap because he doesn’t know how to use certain attack combinations, how to block cancel and other mechanics than that guy is sure not providing useful feedback for proper endgame weapon balancing.
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