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Author Topic: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide. Now with II!  (Read 21977 times)

Neonivek

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Re: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide
« Reply #15 on: October 20, 2015, 04:55:21 am »

Ok this might be an odd question

But I always thought the Skaven were... cowardly cunning.

Do they really just do wave tactics unless commanded by a general?
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Mech#4

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Re: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide
« Reply #16 on: October 20, 2015, 05:02:32 am »

Skaven are cowardly cunning. The leaders are big cowards who sit behind wave after waves of their own kind, expending the rabble so they themselves might live. They become brave-ish when in superior numbers. 2 to 1, 3 to 1, 5 to 1. It's also kind of the same deal as with Commissars; they fear their leaders more then the enemy most of the time or see a higher chance of survival and advancement if they fight.

Tactics are more left to the better trained units. Stormvermin are the most disciplined. Things like Globadiers are better equipped but I don't think their tactics are much more than "get close and throw gas orbs". Certainly not ranks and formation.
« Last Edit: October 20, 2015, 05:05:15 am by Mech#4 »
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Kaypy:Adamantine in a poorly defended fortress is the royal equivalent of an unclaimed sock on a battlefield.

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debvon

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Re: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide
« Reply #17 on: October 20, 2015, 05:14:51 am »

Found it. Space Hulk: Deathwing. That shit is (probably) going to be awesome.
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Neonivek

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Re: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide
« Reply #18 on: October 20, 2015, 05:20:07 am »

So... are we playing a special unit and the city otherwise has millions of Skaven?
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Stuebi

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Re: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide
« Reply #19 on: October 20, 2015, 05:41:55 am »

So... are we playing a special unit and the city otherwise has millions of Skaven?

The cast is linked for different reasons. The Imperial Soldier is the Witchhunter's Bodyguard. The Witchhunter brought the Bright Wizard to Ubersreik to stand trial. The dwarf is searching for something in the City. I dont know anything about the Elf yet.

Appearantly the Skaven attacked the city while these 5 guys were in it, and now they're one of the few squads left who actually defends the city.


Also, about the meelee-Focus. I'm aware that you used the Guns in close-quarters most of the time, but that doesnt change the fact that you were using guns more than melee most of the time. I was referring to the fact that people tend to stick to melee weapons more than the ranged (Witch the possible exception of the Waywatcher, who has a LOT of ammunition with her standard bow). Also, you cant reliable cull the Hordes fast enough with ranged attacks in Vermintide. Well, the Brightwizard can, but she overcharges quickly if you do it that way.
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nenjin

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Re: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide
« Reply #20 on: October 20, 2015, 10:14:14 am »

Hrm. Sounds like it's worth it to wait until full release. Only 3 maps in L4D would have quickly burned me out on the game. Plus the hitboxes and what not sound pretty obnoxious.
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Stuebi

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Re: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide
« Reply #21 on: October 20, 2015, 10:35:33 am »

Hrm. Sounds like it's worth it to wait until full release. Only 3 maps in L4D would have quickly burned me out on the game. Plus the hitboxes and what not sound pretty obnoxious.

Release is on Friday, so it doesnt make that much of a difference anyway. And yes, those 3 maps are burnt out pretty quick. :D I will probably only start playing again on Firday, or if they rotate the Maps during Beta.
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Teneb

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Re: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide
« Reply #22 on: October 20, 2015, 10:38:15 am »

Hrm. Sounds like it's worth it to wait until full release. Only 3 maps in L4D would have quickly burned me out on the game. Plus the hitboxes and what not sound pretty obnoxious.

Release is on Friday, so it doesnt make that much of a difference anyway. And yes, those 3 maps are burnt out pretty quick. :D I will probably only start playing again on Firday, or if they rotate the Maps during Beta.
They said it would only be those 3 during the beta, so don't get your hopes up for that.
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nenjin

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Re: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide
« Reply #23 on: October 24, 2015, 04:29:03 pm »

I picked it up.

Much like my first few hours playing L4D, this isn't a game that presents itself well playing solo.

The good first though. It is much like L4D in that the game is mostly about mowing through chaff, here with melee instead of guns. Melee combat is pretty responsive once you get familiar with it, although the long range of both your's and their attacks takes some getting used to. Combat gets quite hectic. Encountering a swarm head on at the right spawn place means you're cleaving through a literal pile of bodies. You end up slashing around like a madman most of the time and, if you stopped looking there, combat might come off as pretty repetitive. I think there's a layer of subtlety beyond that though. Between charged attacks to hit big crowds of guys, dodging, blocking and block-smashing an opening for yourself, combat feels responsive to the point where you're able to accomplish as much as you're capable of with the controls.

The graphics are pretty nice. Curiously the game is way brighter than I've seen in videos even with the gamma turned down quite a bit. It's a little hard to appreciate the gore though. The speed of things, the dark browness of the skaven to begin with, and what shadow there is means you only occasionally see a head or limb come off.

There's quite a bit of WHF lore peppered throughout the game as well, which is always a nice touch.

Now the not so-good:

Some of the voice acting gets on my nerves. Just like L4D the characters comment along as you do stuff. The Elf sounding like a country lass in particular just sets my teeth on edge, like no one really thought about what she should sound like. While the lines are all done well by everyone, I dunno, the content of the dialog isn't that great. Like a bad D&D game really.

The AI is bloody useless. They respond terribly to you being incapacitated, either by special vermin or getting taken out. I've seen them stand next to me in a big pile and do nothing to save me.

The game can be glitchy in patently unfair ways right now. Packmasters snaring you through walls and floors, destroying what little chance the AI had of saving you. Said Packmasters glitching through floors themselves while they have you in the noose, basically doing the same thing. Sometimes they'll throw two and three of them at you at once at just the right time, and you and your band of feckless AI are pretty much screwed. They will run and run and run while carrying you along and I've watched the AI follow along, swinging and missing trying to catch as they turn corners, go up stairs and through buildings. Smokers by comparison are nothing to this.

There's doubltlessly rules I'm missing here, but, some stuff seems kinda like bullshit. Ratling gunners will absolutely destroy you if you try a frontal assault against them, chewing through 3/4 of your life bar in one volley. And yet if you come up behind them, no amount of wailing on them with light attacks seems to make a difference. I had one turn around one me after 15 hits probably and proceed to mow me down at point-blank range. Maybe only Power Attacks really matter because they're armored, but, power attacks are slow and it's hard to get a sense if anything is actually doing anything until it topples over dead.

Assassins and Gutter Runners are in some ways even worse than L4D's Hunters. They don't bounce off walls and leap, but their attack seems? nigh unblockable. And the worst is, after you knock them off someone, they almost immediately drop a smoke bomb and vanish, meaning you have to put with two to three rounds of their sneak attack shit. Stormvermin aren't bad to fight, they're actually kinda fun because it's where blocking and dodging become more important. But when they throw 4 of them at you it's easy to get overwhelmed because unlike slaves and clan rats they don't go down in one hit. More like 8 to 10.

And then there's Rat Ogres. At first I watched one wipe my team in one mission, just pounding each AI down one at a time like nails into wood. Then I sort figured out that as long as your team is all on its feet and attacking it, and you have room to get it to charge so you can dodge its attacks, it's beatable. Although it takes forever to kill it. Going toe-to-toe with it is a supremely bad idea. And if your team isn't there with you, or is down, you're pretty much screwed, as you don't have the damage to kill it or anyone to keep the other vermin off your back. Vermintide seems to keep a more constant stream of guys on you so you rarely have the luxury of a 1 on 1 fight with big guys and real threats.

And then there's missions. I've tried most of the starter ones now, and I gotta say it's a total pain in the ass to have barrels of gun powder or explosive get lit up when they're struck in melee. It makes the missions take twice as long as they should. So playing solo, you grab a barrel and go running for the drop off, and a rat takes a swing at you as you run by, and congrats, that barrel is useless.

And then there's the loot system. It's like....double, triple, maybe even quadruple dipping on the RNG. First you get the standard amount of dice to roll for beating a mission. I think there's 6 or 8 of them to start with. Only a couple faces of those dice has a winning mark, the rest are blank. How many winning marks you get dictates what quality level of loot you get. And then the item type is random. So 1 to 2 or 3 pips which is an average roll gets you a common item, which may or may not be for the class you're playing. Of course you can throw it in storage and use it on another character, melt it down and use it to upgrade other gear, yadda yadda. But it feels like the worst kind of lottery meant to support long-term play. Higher difficulties reward more dice and so on, so, early impressions are what they are. But it feels pretty tedious to go through all that, to then get a shit white weapon you're not even going to use. I think there's other pickups you can find in levels that give you more or better dice, at the cost of some disadvantages you carry around with you during the match. Maybe? you get better dice just for being in a group? I dunno.

So all in all, it's not bad. The action is good and the Skaven are pretty awesome (the voice overs are great.) But this is a game you really need to play with people both for it to be maximum fun and because it's balanced for it. There's polish and balancing to be done still for sure.

I think it differs from L4D in several ways. Working together seems more important here. Things are generally just tougher than in L4D and so much of your business gets done at the end of a sword instead of a gun. Special vermin happen regularly and do lots of damage, big swarms of clan rats and slaves can do serious damage if your back is to a lot of them. The objectives seem to encourage you to watch people's backs. It also seems like you're more tempted to get separated too, because levels can be pretty open and gnarly, there's chests and potions all over the place to distract you and it's easy to lose yourself in hewing through vermin. Levels are also harder to read in Vermintide sometimes. I wandered around the sewer map for about 10 minutes because one objective room looked much like the last and there was no marker. I suppose because L4D is modern day and VT is fantasy, one is easier to read than the other. Still, it feels like L4D keeps you on task better than VT, but maybe that's just my newness to the game.

I'm going to try some online play and see how that jives, I imagine it's easier. On solo I was starting to get a little frustrated.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2015, 05:36:02 pm by nenjin »
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Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Quote from: Sindain
Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
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How will I cheese now assholes?
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Always spaghetti, never forghetti

Wiles

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Re: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide
« Reply #24 on: October 24, 2015, 05:24:57 pm »

Yeah I would definitely recommend playing online as opposed to solo. You will get the occasional dunce if you are playing with randoms, but on the whole real players perform much better than the AI because a lot of the game is about working together. Things like the exploding barrels that Nenjin mentioned work much better with proper teamwork because you have players helping the one that is ferrying the precious cargo to the drop location. If everyone is doing their job the barrel should never get hit and blow up.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2015, 06:08:49 pm by Wiles »
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forsaken1111

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Re: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide
« Reply #25 on: October 24, 2015, 06:13:25 pm »

Ratlings you're supposed to hit from the sides or front. Wait for them to target another team member then you can walk right up to them on the side without a problem.

Or just put a crossbow bolt in their eye. I love the dwarf's crossbow. You can pierce 2-3 rats with it
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nenjin

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Re: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide
« Reply #26 on: October 24, 2015, 06:34:34 pm »

It seems attacking stuff in the back is pretty worthless. I've tried beating on Ratling Gunners and Rag Ogres from the rear and it just doesn't seem to do anything. It seems like Headshots or GTFO.

What do people think of the classes? Right now I'm playing the Sergeant, and I enjoy being able to keep a whole wave at bay myself. There are clear advantages/disadvantages to two-handed vs. single and shield. The shield slam is awesome for keeping a wave of rats at bay, in between slashes with your weapon. On the downside, it's slower to clear packs which leads to you getting overwhelmed. The two-handers make a mess of anything in front of you, but, the push seems worthless compared to the shield and blocking seems a little questionable too. It's great when you're on the offensive, but it's not a great weapon on defense. Still, if you get the attack ranges everything operates at in this game, you can avoid 80 to 90% of most damage, most of the time.

I think I find VT's crisis moments more difficult than L4D. They really like putting you in a shoebox with a Rat Ogre and a Gunner or Globettiere pouring death on you.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2015, 06:40:00 pm by nenjin »
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Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Quote from: Sindain
Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
Quote from: MrRoboto75
Always spaghetti, never forghetti

Wiles

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Re: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide
« Reply #27 on: October 24, 2015, 07:53:05 pm »

I've been mostly playing the Bright Wizard. I've played all the other classes but so far I've found the wizard suits my preferred playstyle the most. There's just something very satisfying about blowing up a pack of vermin with a fireball.

There are several different kinds of staves, each with their own spellcasting style. I've had pretty poor luck on loot rolls so I very rarely get a new staff to try out. So far I've tried the fireball staff (which is the starter staff) and the beam staff. The beam staff (which was my first uncommon wizard drop) feels very underwhelming, the standard attack is a close range shotgun style fireblast that fills up your watchamacallit bar very quickly. Its secondary attack is a long range beam that slows your walking speed significantly. I feel as though the loss of movement speed makes using the staff effectively very difficult. In most situations you want to be on the move so you can keep your distance from the rats.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide
« Reply #28 on: October 24, 2015, 10:17:29 pm »

Ptw before thread is flooded with skaven

debvon

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Re: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide
« Reply #29 on: October 24, 2015, 10:32:41 pm »

Are there ONLY just a few missions (and probably more released in the future), or is there actually a story driven campaign with some sort of climax or conclusion? I haven't watched anything about this yet, I don't want to spoil it too much.
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