Ranald's Gift needs rework?

[JiiPee]

I don't know about you guys, but I feel like the Ranald's Gift requires some sort of rework.

If you manage to beat the missions flawlessly, with the Quickplay bonus and with all Tomes and Grimoires collected, and you even manage to find couple Loot Dies, the best box you can get is the General box. You need to be lucky with the Ranald's Gift roll, if you want to get that Emperor's box.

For me that's the problem with this system. Like I mentioned earlier, even if you manage to beat the missions Flawlessly, you still wont get the best rewards that you deserve without getting lucky with the RNG roll.

I would more prefer a system that measures how well you play with your chosen class (how well you dodge, how active you are, etc.) and gives you bonus loot roll based on that, instead of crossing your fingers and hoping for a good RNG roll.

[Dr. Marker]

Originally posted by Quiet:

The last thing we need is something that will make people rush to get kills first... It's bad enough as it is.

Just a thought but why would this system have to only apply to individual players? Why not make it a team based bonus that everyone benefits from at the end of the level?

Put in criteria like having a bonus for nobody dying in the course of the level, giving an extra incentive for players to protect each other, take their time, be cautious with their healing and be wary and mindful of people running off.

There seems to be an overarching worry about 'players rushing off by themselves to kill everything' but I think you probably need to be reminded that you're playing a game where the overwhelming majority of your interactions with the world involve killing stuff, that's an inevitability.

What people (including the developers) should be thinking is how you take that innate attitude some players are going to have and how you can encourage it to be directed in a way that benefits the team (which should be the ultimate goal for just about everything in a co-operative game).

But doing that is difficult and requires effort so let's just make everything RNG.

[trainee-M.]

I'd be happy if killing the sack rat would guarantee a loot die.

[Hottiboy88]

Originally posted by 💜LittleCiddles💜:

Even without all grims/tomes, you can easily get Emperor's chests if you miss two or three with a good roll.

No.

[gachi is manly]

Originally posted by Flustered:

I mean what is more frustrating than 100% a map, playing super well, and missing the best reward because Ranald felt like being a tease completely out of your control

Outside of crashes

I can think of a million things more frustrating than that, honestly. RNG in a loot based game, oh no, say it isn't so!

I dunno, maybe I've just played enough of these loot based games that I don't always expect the best rewards every time from doing a hard task.

I mean I still curse Ranald to the high heavens when he stops 1 tick short of emperor, but then I move on with my life because it's really quite insignificant.

[Dr. Marker]

Originally posted by Lyle Ugleman:

I can think of a million things more frustrating than that, honestly. RNG in a loot based game, oh no, say it isn't so!

I would agree with this pithy comment if it weren't for the fact that it assumes that all RNG is created equally.

When you look at a lot of loot based games you are often awarded large amounts of loot of varying power levels frequently, in order to help offset the innate frustration that can arise from dealing with a system that's largely out of your control.

Vermintide does neither of these things, instead opting to drip feed you marginally more powerful loot in a linear fashion, a set up that does little to assuage the creeping feeling of monotinous grinding.

To a certain extent, up until a certain point, the quality of chests doesn't really matter given how the power level of items (the thing that actually matters) increases at a steady, linear rate (so to a certain extent as far as levelling goes, the quality of chests is irrelevent), however, as far as the player's perception of the levelling system goes it can be rather demoralising (in a game that already has a bleak atmosphere about it) to see all of your hard work essentially be for nothing.

I dunno, maybe I've just played enough of these loot based games that I don't always expect the best rewards every time from doing a hard task.

And maybe for you that is fine, power to you.

I don't think anyone is expecting to always get top tier loot all the time but for hard work to at least be decently compensated for (something they feel is not currently the case).

I mean I still curse Ranald to the high heavens when he stops 1 tick short of emperor, but then I move on with my life because it's really quite insignificant.

You do know that it's ok to be pissed off at a game developer if there's a part of their game you don't like, right? (they aren't actually above criticism or ire just because it's games they make)

You don't have to reduce yourself to a human doormat and essentially say 'it's ok for the developers to waste my time, it's not significant, really'.

[Darcurse]

They go nuts with the loot rng, sure.
So? I can't see your point.
VT1 was a problem, since you'd go for hours on end getting absolutely nothing of worth on a low chance bet even with all tomes/grims and a dice.

Not trying to justify this system because the previous one was worse, but the point is, the system is designed to be unfair.

You get a lot of stuff and if you don't get what you want - Happy freaking Birthday - this is the same as any other game which uses rpg loot and doesn't shove it down your throat in order to please you.


The only real mistake FS did on this end was to actually add loot to appeal to the side of the community that apparently can't play video games anymore without their artifical rewards in place.
They could have spent that time improving VT1 and VT2 in order to enhance the rest of the game. Not complicating the balancing which they are oh so freaking good at smoothing out.

[Dr. Marker]

Originally posted by Darcurse:

They go nuts with the loot rng, sure.
So? I can't see your point.
VT1 was a problem, since you'd go for hours on end getting absolutely nothing of worth on a low chance bet even with all tomes/grims and a dice.

Not trying to justify this system because the previous one was worse, but the point is, the system is designed to be unfair.

A system that is designed to be unfair would be what we often uncharitably call 'artificial difficulty' or an artifical lengthening of the game's loot grind in this case.

Just because you can openly acknowledge that a game's mechanics are unfair doesn't suddenly mean that stops being a valid criticism, it's like saying that it's ok if a store charges too much for a product as long as they tell you they're doing it (along with a 'tough guy' crossing of the arms and saying 'if you don't like it, go somewhere else then').

You get a lot of stuff and if you don't get what you want - Happy freaking Birthday - this is the same as any other game which uses rpg loot and doesn't shove it down your throat in order to please you.

You don't play a lot of loot based games, do you? Either that or you didn't pay much attention during them.

As I've noted before, may loot based games usually get around the disappointment of getting sub-optimal loot by sheer quantity and frequency (to the point where another challenge these games often have added on top of them is inventory management, requieing the player to be mindful of what they find and try to assess what loot is worth grabbing and what can be safely left behind at no serious loss), it doesn't matter so much if the loot you get is crap if you're getting drops practically all the time.

Compare this to Vermintide which is significantly more stingy with the loot it gives out, imagine playing something like Diablo where the only things in the world that drop any form of loot (even crap grey items you'll probably scrap or sell) were the end of area bosses, this frankly wouldn't work (or would require a dramatic redesign of the game at the very least).

Also compare to the fact that a lot of loot based games usually have luck manipulation mechanics in place that the player can actively utilize to benefit themselves, whether it be passive magic find stats in RPG's or things like PayDay 2's Offshore Payday screen allowing you to spend more money in order to guarentee certain types and rarities of items.

The closest that Vermintide 2 comes to this is that all items in loot chests will only have items for your currently selected character (and this was only the result of people complaining about this being a problem in Vermintide 1).

The only real mistake FS did on this end was to actually add loot to appeal to the side of the community that apparently can't play video games anymore without their artifical rewards in place.
They could have spent that time improving VT1 and VT2 in order to enhance the rest of the game. Not complicating the balancing which they are oh so freaking good at smoothing out.

I would agree that if Fat Shark were going to include a loot system in the game (and they have in both Vermintides so this isn't a new problem) then it needs to be carefully thought out, in this case, because the power level of your equipped items is tied so directly to your effectiveness in a level (and even to what content you are allowed to play) it's not unfair to say that FS deliberately wanted loot to be a very important part of the game that players would focus on rather than some form of artificial reward (which would make more sense if all of the loot boxes held purely cosmetic items and the difference in weapons and gear was more like L4D, flat, consistent changes between specific weapon classes).

[Darcurse]

Originally posted by Dr. Marker:

A system that is designed to be unfair would be what we often uncharitably call 'artificial difficulty' or an artifical lengthening of the game's loot grind in this case.

Bravo to you for figuring that one out.
Like I said before, FS shoved the loot system into the game in order to appeal to the reward addicted players. If the items are handed out like free balloons, these kind of players will turn away pretty fast cause they can't get the kick out of it anymore.

Combine that with the fact that VT is by genre nature not supposed to have loot in the first place and now we come to the point why it isn't exactly like your run of the mill borderlands/diablo/whatever.

It uses a similar loot system sure (rewarding you for finishing a quest or beating a boss on the end of a dungeon), but it can't toss loot at you left and right in order to hide the fact to you grind for hours on end in order to get something nice. That's because the games loot system is rather shallow.


You falsely compare this game with an RPG while you should compare it with L4D in this regard.
Even while the loot has slightly more influence in VT2 than it had in VT1, the entire loot system is not part of the core game but just an addendum.

[Brother Bigot]

Originally posted by ComradeHX:

I would be okay if Ranald's Gift depends on the difficulty of the playthrough(number of specials, bosses...etc.).

This there needs to be a insentive to fighting bosses when farming for loot.

[Dr. Marker]

Originally posted by Darcurse:

Bravo to you for figuring that one out.

Compared to you who seemed to be taking a position of 'just deal with it'.

Like I said before, FS shoved the loot system into the game in order to appeal to the reward addicted players.

Yes and like I said before you are provably wrong on that front, this isn't a case of you getting a crate of nice hats at the end of every mission to tart up your character, the items you gain from them (and the increase they provide to your power level) is actually pretty important to your progression throughout the game.

Whether you like it or not, the loot boxes are pretty important to the game and many aspects of the game were designed around them and the contents of them.

Being jaded about something doesn't make you right.

If the items are handed out like free balloons, these kind of players will turn away pretty fast cause they can't get the kick out of it anymore.

I merely mentioned that a lot of other games will get around lackluster loot by simply giving you more of it, as I said before, bad loot isn't such a disappointment when you have lots of it.

Vermintide, by contrast seems to take the worst of both extremes by being restrictive with the amount of loot it gives out along with making the majority of said loot not particularly rewarding (compounded by the random nature of getting a decent levelled loot box to begin with), if it wants to not give out a lot of loot then that can work too but it's the sort of thing that demands that the limited loot you do get be more valuable to compensate.

Combine that with the fact that VT is by genre nature not supposed to have loot in the first place and now we come to the point why it isn't exactly like your run of the mill borderlands/diablo/whatever.

Please explain what you mean by 'by genre'? You give examples of Diablo and Borderlands but those are games from two completely different genres (three if you count the fact that Diablo has gone from an isometric Roguelike to a standard ARPG over the course of the series), the only thing they have in common is the fact that they have semi-randomised loot systems, based upon that, 'by genre' there isn't a reason why Vermintide isn't supposed to or cannot have a functional loot system in it.

It uses a similar loot system sure (rewarding you for finishing a quest or beating a boss on the end of a dungeon), but it can't toss loot at you left and right in order to hide the fact to you grind for hours on end in order to get something nice. That's because the games loot system is rather shallow.

Already sort of addressed this but the issue with attempting a loot system like other games has more to do with Vermintide lacking an inventory system (thus meaning that you can't pick up loot mid-game), this means that a better workaround would be my other suggestion (namely, giving signifiacntly higher quality loot to function as an end of quest/boss reward).

The loot system itself is perfectly fine, that's not the problem, the problem is that the loot it gives out seems more suited to a game that should be giving you way more loot and that the means of improving the quality of the loot (thus taking the edge off that grind) is too reliant on random chance.

You falsely compare this game with an RPG while you should compare it with L4D in this regard.

Weird how I also compared it to PayDay 2 (a game that is just a team based objective shooter, very similar to Vermintide in many ways, down to both of them having their origins in L4D as a matter of fact).

Also, considering how Vermintide has character levels, selectable traits/talents, abilities that can be activated, character classes and other similar trappings of RPG's is it unfair to call Vermintide 2 an RPG?

I'm still waiting to see how the comparison is false?

Even while the loot has slightly more influence in VT2 than it had in VT1, the entire loot system is not part of the core game but just an addendum.

Again, please explain how it isn't.

I have explained how it is but you seem content to just turn your nose up and say 'well that doesn't count'.

[Warlord]

The

E
N
T
I
T
L
E
M
E
N
T

Is strong with this one.

[Darcurse]

And your explanation is going the way of "because I want it to be".


VT is not a RPG.
It borrows some elements from that genre but is nowhere near that.
If I need to explain to you why a game that is mainly based on L4D can't be a RPG even with some talents/levels/loot, yeah... no point talking to you about it.

Moreover (in addition to the point above) the whole system is shallow and thus pretty much not "gamechanging" in the deeper sense.
You grow stronger, get better gear and some traits, yeah that's for sure, but do they change your way of playing?
Do you actually play differently with a lvl 30 full red equipped char than with a lvl 1?
Nope you don't.
Exact same weapons now with some more damage and special traits which also just increase dmg (or hp). But every thing simply supports the way you have been playing right from the start.

-> The same game play, the CORE gaming can be achieved if you would simply drop all talents, loot and levels. You don't need them in order for the game to play exactly the same way it does right now.
If something doesn't add fundamentally to a game it isn't a defining feature, simple as that.

---

Coming from all of the stuff about:

Loot is optional.
-> You don't need reds to play, most of the time don't even need blues to play, because the game allows you to compensate with skill (or better: doesn't add much with the higher rarity).

Loot doesn't add to the gameplay or allows you to customize in any deeper sense.
-> Picking a different type of melee weapon is more customization to your gameplay anytime.

Therfore loot being more than "the little extra" for a job well done is totally overkill in this game.



Just so know: By your definition games like CoD would be RPGs. (Winning loot, traits, "level ups")

[Bob]

The RNG aspect is worse in this game than in post bounty board/NM drop rework V1. We already have to grind chests for drops, so I don't see why a random chance after scrounging through 2 grim champ quick play is needed...