Vermintide: Who got Skaven all over my L4D?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Vermintide: Who got Skaven all over my L4D?

«‹›23 »

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Lunethex posted:

Why does ranged falloff exist at all?

Because they couldn�t think of a better way to justify ranged careers than kneecapping ranged weapons across the board and making ranged careers undo those disadvantages

# ¿ Mar 5, 2018 19:02

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 14, 2024 01:49

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

�The feature is fine because it eventually becomes obsolete� is a compelling argument for its existence

# ¿ Mar 5, 2018 19:23

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

LuiCypher posted:

I mean, you've all probably played the game more than me, but I'd jokingly say it's to discourage new players from standing at range with non-ranged classes and encourage them to get stuck in melee and kill rats. It's definitely annoying if you're a VT1 vet, though.

I know you�re joking but for the sake of preempting any similar argument people try to make for why it�s somehow necessary, the fact that two careers don�t have falloff at all automatically invalidates this

# ¿ Mar 5, 2018 19:40

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Mikedawson posted:

God, I can't wait to try and make mods for Vermintide.

Things I have in mind:
-Rat sticks (nailbats) as weapons (maybe modified maces/hammers?)
-Huntsman Kruber as Doomguy and replacing the blunderbuss with the super shotgun, including sound effects
-Model replacements fitting the characters' personalities/mechanics.

Elf voice for rats
Rat voice for elf

# ¿ Mar 5, 2018 20:17

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

toasterwarrior posted:

What the hell? Crafted a new 181 executioner's sword for Huntsman Kruber to replace his old 151 ES. It raises his hero power from 292 to 298. However, it does less damage, with the best case scenario (crit heavy headshot) having a difference of 1k damage (6k old vs 7k new)?

Muddying the waters even more, his blunderbuss has no damage difference between the two swords? The hell is going on?

EDIT: Now the same thing's happening with Saltzpyre and a new set of pistols. What's up with this math?

Power level gets even more fun when you consider that all the bad poo poo I�ve said about it hasn�t even been run through the Fatshark Uncertainty Factor yet

_{(i know it�s a beta, I�m kidding)}

# ¿ Mar 5, 2018 20:41

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Coolguye posted:

well the weird thing is, if you presume it's implemented well, hero power will probably make balancing easier for Fatshark, but make it harder for players.

i talked about this a bit in the discord a couple nights ago, but when you have the VT1 setup, the issue you run into is that as you add permutations of heroes and equipment evaluated against each threat you present, mathematically the entire situation gets out of hand extremely quickly. if you instead set up weapons such that they are to adhere to their tags rather than some obscure design document that came out about the weapon months or even years ago, you can punt on the specific mathematics of the implementation if you have a sliding scale like hero power. a crowd control weapon should, at x hero power, knock y dudes. a high damage weapon should, at z hero power, kill a in b hits and c in d hits. this doesn't really reduce the number of meaningful choices since the combinations of tags are always different per character. this makes it really easy to go 'ah, norscans are too heavy right now because at 200 hero power, the crowd control weapons are only knocking down 2 of them before getting stuck - they should be able to handle 4 before that happens' or whatever have you. you can then make the focused change that you have isolated (whatever that is), test it quickly with an appropriate hero/tag combination, and call it good - it will affect both Kruber's hammer and Bardin's axe/shield similarly since they both have Crowd Control on them.

this is a pretty nice deal for the developers since it becomes much easier to reason about when something is wrong and what it should do; it's exactly the sort of environment i would try to build if i was in charge since it means i can make balance changes quicker, safer, and with lower impact. but for players, these breakpoints aren't public or easily discernable, so for them, things just start magically working at a certain point and they're not sure why or what happened - and that's really the thing that needs to change. again, even if it's just the courtyard allowing you to spawn illusory, passive enemies instead of using the dummies, i feel like that would be enough. being able to just play with your gear and build in a somewhat real setting would pretty much eliminate all the big problems with hero power right now because at least all the details would be discoverable. right now, they're just not.

I don't see how this is actually any easier for fatshark. Just looking at what power level immediately touches, in vermintide 1, there's only 3 weapon damage permutations: orange, blue, and white/green. There's just a single permutation for targets hit: How well a weapon staggers/cleaves never changes. In vermintide 2, there's an entire spectrum of permutations of weapon damage to try to balance, and a whole spectrum of permutations of targets hit for that weapon to try to balance. (and if I can go down a bunny trail here, I think targets hit is an absolutely critical part of a weapon's balance in vermintide and simply not something you can muck with on a spectrum that a player constantly moves along.)

So they can do what you're describing (which they probably did) and choose some arbitrary power points to balance around, but if they chose only 3 distinct points on the power spectrum to target, that's still exactly where vermintide 1 is, but worse, because they have to figure out cleave balance in addition to damage balance. So in addition to all the issues it adds from a player standpoint, I wouldn't even want power level to exist if I was a fatshark developer trying to make a sensible experience out of the game

vvv agreed

Owl Inspector fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Mar 6, 2018

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 02:05

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

explosivo posted:

Anyone have any gifs handy that I can use to show this game off to my friend who I'm trying to convince to buy this?

https://i.imgur.com/NaQaHfd.gifv

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 02:32

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

fatshark please bring back the gratuitous, pandering jiggle physics on kruber from the first game

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 02:33

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Coolguye posted:

This is missing that you need to make sure that all of the weapons make sense with respect to one another, too. This is the way that balance always runs away with people. It took half a year for Fatshark to get the relatively limited armory in VT1 feeling good, and even then, new additions came by to make certain weapons pointless (such as the pick invalidating the greataxe when it came out). There was also the constant problem that oranges were literally the only thing that mattered and fundamentally players were wasting their drat time getting anything but blues or oranges - and the blues were only required to provide shards to unlock the orange traits. THEN you had the problem of weapon traits on top of it being such a complex topic that you can have two idiot nerds talking for twenty minutes about only that topic.

hero power flattens all of this math by punting all of these variables into a much more simple equation that you can then tweak the inputs to. The view of the world they have now fundamentally simplifies the programming challenge here simply because there's now no questions on whether or not something should do this or that; it's all spelled out in the tags and it's all easy to say 'yes, this is in fact a problem' and provides a generally clear path to fixing it - again, presuming it's all implemented in the clear-ish way i'm envisioning.

all that said though, i still feel it's a mistake from the perspective of a game because all of these things still need to be discoverable by players, and currently they're just not.

Power level does not seem like a prerequisite for a tag system in any way. We don't even know if the game uses a tag system under the hood unless code diggers have found evidence of it beyond the little descriptions the game reads to you on weapons like "crowd control" which could just as well say whatever fatshark wants them to. this all seemed pretty vague the first time you said it and I'm even less convinced that it's some magical solution to their difficulties now, much less one that couldn't be solved a different way without so much collateral damage--I still believe it only exists to create a slightly longer treadmill for those insane black powder farmers

FWIW I don't think vermintide 1 even having those three damage levels based on weapon color is a good thing, and I think its loot system is really pretty bad before you hit the orange plateau and can just play around with traits. But it's a hell of a lot simpler than this and better for players in ten different ways. I was excited when I saw fatshark say on their stream Q&A that they weren't tying weapon damage to rarity anymore, but I wasn't expecting that to mean they were replacing that with something even worse. As for traits, both games have traits on weapons so that isn't an angle of complexity 1 has that 2 doesn't--everything that they had to balance in 1 is either still here or more complicated.

JBP posted:

Mining pick is a real piece of poo poo. "Wide sweeps" but has no stun or knockback at all and only swings once every thousand years when a bloody red moon hangs low in the sky.

I really don't know why they thought the pickaxe's already very awkward cadence should go even slower. There is just an eon of time between its swings now, and it doesn't seem to beat the 2h hammer in either damage or CC

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 07:36

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n1HO1THh8I

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 07:53

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

I'm probably the most critical person of it here and for all the ways I think it's a worse-designed game than the first one, even I think it's still good and worth playing

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 08:18

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

While I think a 1-1.5 minute fight on the chaos guy would be ideal as opposed to the 5 seconds it currently takes to stomp him with the right setup, I don�t know of a way to do that without either making him a horrible sponge with any other setup or removing every single boss killer setup, and I don�t think either of those is a good thing�it�s probably not a good situation, but the ability to delete roger in 5 seconds with a strength potioned hagbane or volley crossbow is absolutely vital because good loving luck dealing with the guaranteed horde that comes 10 seconds after roger in the dark on Dungeons, or spending two minutes fighting him without anyone getting punched off a cliff in summoner�s peak. That ability seems no less important in 2 because you can get a troll or Baby on Board in a narrow corridor with an accompanying horde that comes from behind not long after, with two grimoires, and that can be your second random boss of the game.

in short, gently caress that

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 19:52

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

If they changed nothing else to make you less reliant on having a boss stomper setup around, they should remove the ability to have 2 bosses spawned by RNG in one level. hell, vermintide 1 never even did that except for the bugged roger on wheat and chaff and on supply on demand's finale which they fixed.

If you have a shotgun lumberjack then it's just another speedbump, but if you don't have anything like that and the second fight ends up taking two and a half minutes because you have to do it the slow way and deal with all the spawns during the fight, you will be seriously hurting by the time it's over

e: Release is only 2 days away, that was fast

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 20:51

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Night10194 posted:

It's kinda funny that we all still think of it as ratfight, despite the Chaos Boys trying so hard to stand out (and failing, the Chaos Lord is boring as hell).

It�s because the cool funny rat bros still have all the memorable personality while chaos are utterly loving boring musclemen with 0 personality by comparison who suck as much of the soul out of the game as they can, and who I will be modding out entirely if possible

although based on what lunethex is saying about the EAC that may be a false hope, since I�m pretty sure any mod that changes spawns would be considered a cheat�replacing them with skaven models which will no doubt get horrifically and hilariously deformed on their skeletons may be the best possibility

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 22:15

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

I really don�t rush through levels unless the people I�m playing with really make me and I get a shitton of health from the waystalker. I would say that the really quick and dirty elf adjustment would be to slap it on the handmaiden instead, but it�s related to a talent so it don�t work

Either way that�s one of those balance things I�m not very concerned about since it�s something fatshark can easily tweak any way they want.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 23:33

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Vermintide 2: POST FOR OL' KRUBER

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 01:36

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Gonkish posted:

So, heads up: if you're on a recent AMD card (I'm using an RX480 but a guy using a Vega 64 on reddit reports the same issue), the "game ready" 18.3.1 driver for Vermintide 2 actually causes an issue. Specifically, on the Festering Grove mission the entire screen will go black. The only way that I've found to fix it is to exit the game completely. 18.2.3 was not doing this, and I've done a clean install via DDU to try to eliminate that possibility.

So... avoid the latest driver for now, I guess.

Parts of the tutorial prologue and random bits of the caves in that mission have made this happen on my nvidia card--it depends where I am and where I'm facing

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 04:07

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

I think this is gonna feel like another phase of the beta given how much they�re pushing back for after release and the fact that they still haven�t publicly beta tested half the maps

I hope there�s another wheat and chaff situation where the intro cutscene pans back to reveal that everyone has already been punched off a cliff by roger

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 17:05

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

VOIP existing is fine

VOIP existing with �always on� as the default is a war crime

lookin� at you mass effect andromeda

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 21:47

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Night10194 posted:

I wonder why they decided the Glaive needed to hit like 6 rats a swing now, while still doing everything it did well before.

Well the number of enemies it hits is constantly changing based on your current combination of power level, difficulty, what you�re hitting and other factors like whether it�s currently staggered, so everything is just all over the loving place now

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 22:29

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Lunethex posted:

How was it nerfed though it's still pretty good.

They fixed a bug with the drake gun and the flamethrower staff where they could always spray for the max possible duration no matter how long you had actually charged them up

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 22:30

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

DreamShipWrecked posted:

Is there a bug with BH's crippling strike, or is the tooltip wrong? I was testing it out on a dummy and the tooltip says "Increases the power boost of critical hits by 25%", but crit body shots only go from 1500 to 1525 with my repeater.

Well, 25% is not unlike 25

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 22:42

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

DreamShipWrecked posted:

Especially considering that unless you are shooting for Champion gear the rarity doesn't really matter. All it really does is get you some bonus xp, which is what, 60 extra XP on top of the 600 you get from quick play completion with four people?

Who gives a poo poo about getting 140 power oranges

yeah, this is the ridiculous thing about it at most power levels--your poo poo is going to be numerically worse than what boxes are giving you 5 games from now so why get a second grim if it's going to endanger your life that much

I mean I'm all for them if it's clear we can do it, but many times, these people can not do it

# ¿ Mar 8, 2018 04:57

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Deakul posted:

Fair points all, I dug VM1 for the most part even if I pretty much stopped playing after going through each map a couple of times... the rat murder was enough to get me to hop on for a few minutes and just kill until I was satisfied afterwards.

Sounds like VM2 is more of an actual game with built in longevity now.

The game�s design is worse than the first almost across the board, partly because some of the additions are just incoherent in the context of a lag-limited 4-player game where you fight 60 enemies at a time, and partly because it was redesigned around a Destiny Number which only exists for players who will abandon the game the moment they no longer see it going up anyway. It also has way less personality than the first because the enemies you�re fighting over half the time are utterly loving boring and soulless compared to skaven, which reflects on the characters too

In spite of all of this it�s still a really good-feeling action game for just $30 from a dev who will probably support it really well, so it�s well worth it imo, but you�ve posted that you didn�t like the first one in the past so I�m not so sure 2 is for you

# ¿ Mar 8, 2018 17:50

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Agrajag posted:

The one aspect i hated the most from vermintide 1 was the poo poo rear end loot rng.

They improved on that in vermintide 2 and made it so you actually get weapons for the class youre playing on and can craft the weapons you want to use. Personally, that's all i care about.

Yeah I�m only really talking about gameplay here, I totally agree that the experience of starting out in 2 is way better than 1 in terms of loot

Stanley Pain posted:

Caring about a good game is fine, but projecting a bunch of stuff from the first game onto its sequel is silly Especially with wide sweeping statements like "The design of this game is total bollocks."

I�ve never called it �total bollocks� and wouldn�t still be here saying it�s a good game if it was. the problem is that it�s worse than the first game, a statement that really isn�t sweeping at all when I�ve explained numerous reasons why over loving weeks here. You�ve spent longer misrepresenting those reasons as all being �different than the first game� than you have actually reading them, so forgive me if I have a hard time taking a single word you post seriously

# ¿ Mar 8, 2018 19:09

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Willie Tomg posted:

On stream right now: Power level number now has a tooltip that explicitly shows stagger levels and other relevant stuff. which it shoulda done in the first place but, fatshark, better late than never, etc etc

This is good

# ¿ Mar 8, 2018 19:11

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Lunethex posted:

A little while ago on the release stream CEO Martin said:

"Don't show off the grimoires let people find that on their own"

other guy says

"I can't do the jumping puzzles anyway"

The best thing I've seen today.

lol

They changed drachenfels specifically to make the jump to the second grim easier though so I really think they�ll make the jumping puzzles better

# ¿ Mar 8, 2018 19:19

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Willie Tomg posted:

They also blunderbussed a chaos spawn which went flying ten feet in the air and thirty feet back, nodded, and said aloud "we only use legit physics for our game"

good devs, would have a beer with, a+++

Please tell me you or someone clipped this

# ¿ Mar 8, 2018 19:19

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Stanley Pain posted:

Here's the thing. If you don't want generally broad characterisation don't post things like "the entire game's deisgn is bad" and then get mad that someone calls you out for it.

congrats on calling me out on what I never said

Stanley Pain posted:

Dude, don't make me quote what you wrote. I don't feel like scrolling down :P. You literally said something to the effect of the game's design is bad across the board. How else is someone supposed to read that as? Yeah you've spent weeks posting about how V2 isn't V1 in gameplay and mechanics. I happen to disagree with pretty much everything you've said. Mostly because we don't and probably never will see eye to eye on what makes a game fun for us. That's ok.

you cannot go one post without misrepresenting what I say

My issues with this game from the start have always been about aspects of it being worse than the first, which you consistently twist into just being "different from the first" because that's easier for you to disagree with, and which you are now twisting into it just being "bad," because like coolguy observed it's a lot easier to respond to what you wish I said than what I actually said

"worse than the first" is a very different thing from "bad," and when someone asks the thread whether they think this game is better than the first, my honest answer to that question is no. And that does not in any way mean that I think it's a bad game, especially not just because it is "different than the first." It plainly means I think it's worse than the first one, and I've listed numerous reasons why that is over multiple weeks. I am done wasting time on someone who misconstrues everything I say, which will go for both threads because trying to discuss the differences between the games with other experienced people who actually know what I'm talking about has honestly been frustrating as gently caress due to this

# ¿ Mar 8, 2018 21:27

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 14, 2024 01:49

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

Psion posted:

was this on purpose

so genuine question about VT2 vs 1 i'm not sure how to put, but let's try. There's some real frustration potential in the first if your group isn't on point, and I see complaints about "the elf runs off on their own, dies, blames team" are as alive as ever. but can you save a run from that bad situation more often in VT2? like if you're down a player or two is it more or less possible to carry through to a win than it was in the first? assuming players of reasonable skill level anyway

It also looks like the pressure to do max-grim runs 24/7 is also lowered a lot, which is pretty good to hear.

Yes and no, but leaning toward no. In vermintide 1, two players can deal with any number of non-specials if one of them has a CC weapon like a shield and one of them has a damage weapon: if they just plant themselves in a choke point and the first player slams everything into pudding with a shield while the other one kills, they can withstand any size of horde even after the elf ran off and died, without really needing to be godlike players. In vermintide 2 they ruined the ability of most of the old mainstays to CC any number of enemies, there�s shield assholes who basically demand you handle them individually, and there�s unstaggerable assholes who have the same effect but worse. The AI is also obsessed with getting you surrounded even if you�re in a good choke point a lot of the time. Knowing how to funnel all the enemies onto the screen at once and then slamming them with CC attacks just doesn�t cut it anymore.

Madmen are already posting true solo videos on champion so it�s obviously still possible to cover for much worse/much deader players, but that�s easier said than done for us normal people. It will heavily come down to what career you are and what your power level is, and I haven�t seen most of the spectrum of that stuff yet. So it�s hard to say but in a dead average scenario I think the pubbie elf is going to handicap you a lot more than she used to

# ¿ Mar 9, 2018 00:35

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Vermintide: Who got Skaven all over my L4D?

«‹›23 »