So despite that very negative tag on steam, i highly disagree with it, i see the weaves as a bold and risky attempt at something new and ambitious that ended up missing the mark, but that doesn’t mean it should stay like that.
The bad thing about weaves is that they become way too hard later on and one of the core component of the gameplay loop (exploration) is removed thanks to the time limit.
To counter that, i suggest you guys straight out port some of cw buffs into winds mode HOWEVER make it drop from sack rats, who would need a buff on importance, behavior and spawnrate, basically give them the same treatment you gave to grudge markeds but for evasion sake, like allowing them to drop illusions and each run to different directions, or let them go slightly invisible (not entirely though) or one that straight out explode like khorne skulls upon death.
Since you re on time pressure to move on, make said buffs last x amount of time (thus turning time into currency) but make killing bosses renew said buffs so they last longer (because on winds killing bosses is kind of always optional outside the end arenas).
Also allow extra traits to be placed on weapons at the athanor.
I have no idea if you guys completely abandoned this mode, i hope not, i am sure it was a stain in the morale but i strongly disagree with the consensus out there, i still think theres potential in it and with a few tweaks here and there you might get it to work.
Oh yeah btw, i am sorry for spewing so many unrequested ideas, i just like the game (a lot) feel like this might help, i tried to keep it short.
Its not that they wanted to abandon weaves, but if one of those journal entries from Lohner´s is anything to go by then they are simply a bit too busy to really sit down and just fix it from the ground up.
I do not recall which journal entry it was specifically but there was one with a few lines about the weaves and there never being enough time to fix them or something.
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And we recently got a comment from our new management person aqshy stating that balance changes have come up as a topic during some manner of meetings and it seems like it´s a thing rising on the priority list.
The whole point of weaves is that they are meant to be extremely hard, at least the upper weaves. That’s why the spawns are scripted - so a team can learn them and come up with a strategy to be victorious. That’s why there’s also a leader board and a time limit.
Weaves were a nice concept but have 2 flaws:
Because they are scripted there is no replay value. Once you’ve beaten them, what’s the point of playing the same game over when you can play other modes with randomized spawns?
There is no matchmaking in ranked weaves and most players don’t play in pre-made teams, making weaves unappealing to the majority of the player base.
The only thing that would make me step back into a weave again is if they released a single player version where the number of spawns was scaled so that a solo player could reasonably complete them within the time limit. This will never happen because it’s kinda anti-thetical to the whole ‘co-op’ experience, but matchmaking into 160 separate maps will never work with the size of the current VT2 player base.