20 Minute Queue Times? Play During Peak Hours. Use Quick Matchmaking. There Are Options To Make Queues Manageable.

[Friendly Monster ^_^]

I just wrote a Comment on one of the Steam reviews which declared that since it can take up to 20 minutes to get into a game of VHS, it is not worth playing and people should just stick with DBD or wait for TCM or any other Asym.

I pointed out that if someone wants to genuinely give VHS a fair shot, they should play during "Peak Hours". Afternoons and Evenings. The Weekends.
They should also play in the Server that corresponds with Afternoons and Evenings for their own location.
US-West is usually the easiest Server in which to find a game as a general rule of thumb.

I also indicated that if getting into a game quickly was a priority than "Quick Matchmaking" would be another option that should help to reduce Queue times even further.

In my experience, playing during Peak Hours, my Queue times were usually under 5 minutes.

To close, I suggested trying "Custom Matches" which now have AI Bots.
If someone just wanted to get a feel for the game play, they could play with a mix of friends and bots.
The Bots aren't too bad, and the Monster Bot especially can be pretty tough.

Well, after taking time to write a considerate and helpful Review, I found out that the Original Poster had Disabled Comments, so no one would be able to read my suggestions, and maybe using the suggestions to give VHS a fair chance.

This is an example of the kind of "bad faith" reviews that plague VHS' review page.
The barrage of unsubstantiated negative reviews based on less than an hour of game play have unfairly depressed VHS review score.
We all know that many Gamers will take a look at a negative or even mixed review score and not even bother to give a game a chance.
Gamers who intentionally try to hurt VHS' ability to succeed in such a mean spirited manner represent the very worst elements of the Gaming Community.

VHS has a small player base.
No one will deny that.
It is hard to find a game during "Off Peak" hours.
Yes, it can be a bit of a pain to have to schedule game time during Peak Hours, but if someone wants to give the game a fair chance, that is what is required at the moment.

Ultimately, people are free to do as they wish, but before leaving a negative review of 2 poorly written sentences, and less than an hour game time, they should ask themselves if they're writing a review to give fair and honest feedback, or is it just to help kill VHS so DBD (and "real Asysms", aka, "dark / slasher" Asyms) will dominate the genre.

My Feeling : Give the game a fair chance (peak hours, play a couple of hours, maybe try Customs with Bots) before leaving a Negative Review.

I think VHS is a special game and one that deserves to find its audience and success in the Asym genre. I hope that fans of the Asym genre will be willing to make a bit of extra effort to give VHS a fair shake before they decide to negatively affect its ability to survive and eventually even thrive one day.

Thanks for attending my Ted talk.

[Ramzesfal]

Thats a bad argument. People shouldn't have to plan out when they can physically get a match. Right now, the game is dead af; I really wish it wasn't because what little I got to play was really fun.

Hopefully Hellbent can revive it, but its really not worth playing unless you have a group that wants to play customs

[PsionicDiamond]

I agree with you.

The community lost a lot of players within a few months after launch, and a lot of unhappy customers wrote negative reviews about the que times… It was reasonable though, because waiting in que for so long was frustrating.

Also some of the negative reviews weren’t valid, as they only had less than 1 hour of game time therefore barely played enough to understand their role. I still retain the belief that a new and informative tutorial would have helped tackle this, but it seems the new tutorial is still in the works.

We can only hope these same players return and give the game another chance.

[Case]

Originally posted by PsionicSnowjob:

I agree with you.

The community lost a lot of players within a few months after launch, and a lot of unhappy customers wrote negative reviews about the que times… It was reasonable though, because waiting in que for so long was frustrating.

Also some of the negative reviews weren’t valid, as they only had less than 1 hour of game time therefore barely played enough to understand their role. I still retain the belief that a new and informative tutorial would have helped tackle this, but it seems the new tutorial is still in the works.

We can only hope these same players return and give the game another chance.

They were told for the better part of a year that the role you're tip toeing around wasn't fun or engaging to newbies all the way up to all, but the very narrow niche of people that like meticulously stalking a player, but don't want to play Hunt. Or the other side that genuinely couldn't find a game in a reasonable amount of time. That less than an hour of playtime is an abundantly clear indicator.

And OP? I love the hell out of RE: Resistance and if I could get a game more than once in a blue moon, I'd play it. I'd give it a negative review for the same reasons though. You spend more time in queue than playing. The sooner this game's community stops trying to convince everyone that the foundation isn't cracked and sinking, the more likely the game is to get fixed. Or fall by the Nosgoth wayside. Either or.

[ForsakenM~]

Both the OP and PsiDia (of course) have rather awful takes on this.

First off, fortunately VHS is free and the only people who spent money on the game either are long-gone and regret everything or look at every post Hellbent makes and react like the frothing mouth kid from A:TLAB...but imagine if it HAD been a game you had to pay money for out the gate to even play, just for a moment.

Steam's refund policy means you can't play it for over 2 hours or you have to fight to get your money back, so if someone spent nearly an hour of time just WAITING for a match in VHS, that is nearly HALF the time spent before they could be blocked from a refund...just keep that in mind.

That aside, most people understand who they are as a person and what they enjoy, and most people have an IQ high enough to not eat dirt consistently. This means that someone can usually tell within the first 30 mins or less of playing a game whether or not they will enjoy it and wish to keep playing. Some people have been around the block long enough that they can watch an HONEST trailer of a game and know if the game is for them or not before the game even drops. See, the reason we make judgements like this is because it comes naturally for us to do so, and because it's really just smart in general to come to a decision before investment whenever possible.

Now to OP's credit, maybe if this person who left a negative review had taken just a bit longer and gotten into a game, they may have found that they actually LOVE VHS and it's gameplay...though this would be unfortunate, because if they love how it is RIGHT NOW then they wouldn't enjoy it after it gets the changes it needs and would join the rest of the gang that is actively holding the game back, but guess what? If a game doesn't have enough players to get you into a match normally at any reasonable hour of the day...then it's probably not a game worth playing and the low population already reveals this.

See, here is where your takes on this are borderline asinine: you are saying that sitting in the game, waiting for a match for 30-45 mins and not getting to play and then uninstalling the game and giving it a 'bad' review isn't giving the game a fair chance...even though it is. You aren't asking for a fair chance: you are asking for special treatment.

See, a fair chance is just what that person did: install the game, fire it up and hop in to get a match and try it out, then make a decision from there. What OP and PsiDia are asking for is not a fair chance but to take literally every step in favor of VHS and being biased towards the game just to play a single match.

First off, you shouldn't HAVE to play at 'peak hours' to get a match: you should be able to play at almost any time of day...but VHS isn't a successful game and has had to shutdown servers that aren't being used, so you don't have enough players to play at any time of day. Even still, 'peak hours' should be long stints of time where you just get in matches almost instantly and only have to wait about 2 minutes otherwise...but VHS peak hours takes anywhere from 5-10 mins or longer, and playing outside of those hours has you waiting even longer than that on average. This is also hella arrogant and inconsiderate of others, because people have these things called lives where they have to work and be with family and many other responsibilities, so they can't just constantly make time to always be free for when the most amount of people decide to fire up VHS on any given day...and once again, they shouldn't have to do that to get a match.

For an analogy to show what you are asking for is favoritism and not a 'fair chance', let's use fast food restaurants! Let's say you have a McDonald's and a Wendy's, and you haven't eaten from either of them in this area before. You want to give them a fair chance, so you just drive over to McDonald's at any given time and order from them. Now, instead of doing the same at the Wendy's, you actively wait until they have barely any customers and are just now switching the menu from breakfast to normal menu so you KNOW the food you are ordering will be more fresh. Did you really give them both a fair chance...or did you try to give yourself the best scenario with one over the other?

You should be able to get a match in your region, end of story. The minute you have to switch regions or your region has it's servers shutdown and you are told to move over to servers that will most definitely have way worse ping and latency...that is the minute you have a dying game and your time is better spent somewhere else.

Next, OP doesn't mention when this review was made, so it's entirely possible the review may have been made prior to the February 2023 patch that introduced Quick Match. That said, a player shouldn't HAVE to use Quick Match and have their role picked for them to get a game in a decent amount of time: implying that a player should do this is admitting to the dying playerbase.

Lastly, Custom Matches may have AI now, but it was just recently added as an option this month, so yet again it may not have been available when the review was posted. Even so, there some issues with this suggestion: you might not be able to go against/team up with real people this way, which is TYPICALLY what people want when they play multiplayer games. Additionally, you can't actually rank up or grind things you want or need in the game this way, so there is no real progression or reward so...what's the point?

And no, these people aren't acting in bad faith or trying to sabotage VHS or Hellbent, and they aren't negative or hateful people: they are just gamers who gave this game a TRUE fair chance and VHS failed them because it's a failing game.

[PsionicDiamond]

Originally posted by Nebiros:

They were told for the better part of a year that the role you're tip toeing around wasn't fun or engaging to newbies all the way up to all, but the very narrow niche of people that like meticulously stalking a player, but don't want to play Hunt. Or the other side that genuinely couldn't find a game in a reasonable amount of time. That less than an hour of playtime is an abundantly clear indicator.

I wasn’t tip toeing around it, quite a few of negative reviews were about the que times which is true…? Not every single negative review was about the monster experience so not sure why people are acting like I was ignoring those complaints. This thread is about the que times, monster doesn’t have to be the main topic of every single forum discussion.

I never said monster was perfect at launch, but I will say there was a lot of reviews from people who barely played enough to actually understand the monster role completely. A lot of the reviews seem to be new players who tried monster, saw teens had weapons, ran into open spaces without a care in the world & not using any cover, inevitably got thrashed and that was it… that was what their negative review was about. Those types of reviews didn’t play the role properly.

Some people complained at the fact teens had weapons and monster wasn’t this indestructible force of nature… I don’t understand what those people wanted? This was as designed by HB. It was only when monster players said the role isn’t fun or engaging is when people started to listen because those people started to convey their opinion more effectively, instead of sitting in the corner with a tin foil hat, rocking back and forth and screaming how HB are purposely screwing over the 1 role and how teen mains are coming for them.

Those with under 1 hour of playtime I wouldn’t trust to give an opinion about balance… just like I wouldn’t bother listening to someone who hasn’t so much as played the game. Long que times? Yeah, write a negative review about that, I get it.

[GingerSnaps]

Nobody, or virtually nobody, ever left a negative review of VHS because they wanted other asymms to dominate. I do want VHS to succeed but it's better to leave that idea behind; it was only used to discredit people's feedback and give resistance to changes.

Queue times are an issue and will drive away players; VHS doesn't need special review treatment for that. It's a game; not a special event that necessitates a softer touch and/or forgiveness for everything and treating it like such has only hurt the game by making the devs feel like they could ignore feedback in the past since they were told it was such a special creation. As entertainment, it has to be fun enough to keep players playing or it won't succeed. Players can't be forced into a vision they don't find enjoyable.

What I'm hoping VHS can do is continue fixing issues and then build from there. Monster is a lot better now. Once an event or new Monster release doesn't have a significant player drop or better yet gains players after the event that would probably be a good sign that the game is closer to benefitting from advertising and the queue issue (and reviews) resolving.

[MadArtillery]

I don't know if I'd call that bad faith. If someone downloads the game, can't find a match and uninstalls then that is their legitimate experience, and relating that is simply being honest. It can be incredibly difficult to get matches in VHS sometimes, and unfortunately that is a self propagating problem as the longer ques get the less people will put up with it feeding the cycle. But it is also a valid criticism as there are better wait - gameplay ratios is countless other games. Gaming is an incredibly competitive market with so many games on offer at once which is especially punishing for inefficient experiences like long ques.

[Sheik Link]

Originally posted by GingerSnaps:

Nobody, or virtually nobody, ever left a negative review of VHS because they wanted other asymms to dominate. I do want VHS to succeed but it's better to leave that idea behind; it was only used to discredit people's feedback and give resistance to changes.

Queue times are an issue and will drive away players; VHS doesn't need special review treatment for that. It's a game; not a special event that necessitates a softer touch and/or forgiveness for everything and treating it like such has only hurt the game by making the devs feel like they could ignore feedback in the past since they were told it was such a special creation. As entertainment, it has to be fun enough to keep players playing or it won't succeed. Players can't be forced into a vision they don't find enjoyable.

What I'm hoping VHS can do is continue fixing issues and then build from there. Monster is a lot better now. Once an event or new Monster release doesn't have a significant player drop or better yet gains players after the event that would probably be a good sign that the game is closer to benefitting from advertising and the queue issue (and reviews) resolving.

Aside from many other things, this game needs a console release and crossplay.

[wopa]

ok good
then I dont install this game anzmore
I plazed the Beta and 2 Weeks after release.
So no one is plazing that Game_
I wonder iI plaz also the old F13 Game and there is a 300 plazer peak or so and in 2 Minutes i find a Game..

[immrwall]

the game just wasnt ready for early access. and after the critcism was given none the valid takes were given merit and the a lot of member of the community started to dismiss and downplay everything to the point of gatekeeping and echo chambering. everything that needed to be said was already said but no one wanted to listen. its sad because i liked the idea here too but it is what it is.

[MadArtillery]

Honestly a few more patches, get some good content available, do some more playability tweaks, build a tutorial, then console release with crossplay is probably the most viable if not last opportunity to save the game. hopefully they can pull it off.

[Versatile Gay]

I stopped playing this game mostly because it felt skins and shop content is priority vs the games health. The few players it has are just extremely toxic and even with video proof they ignore the way the few players are treated just like the games health sadly :/

When I don't feel safe in a game I simply can't even begin to enjoy it let alone the non existent playerbase it has, wait 30mins to get called homophobic names and told to off myself and they allow that behaviour... Worse is I bought the Ultrafan package when they launched now seems just to have my concerns/thoughts ignored.

I had so much passion for this game leading up to the EA release but after everything I just can't bare to even look at the game. Truly heart breaking seeing a good asym game go to waste because a lack of care and respect for the community.

[Friendly Monster ^_^]

Nebiros

Originally posted by Nebiros:

They were told for the better part of a year that the role you're tip toeing around wasn't fun or engaging to newbies all the way up to all, but the very narrow niche of people that like meticulously stalking a player, but don't want to play Hunt. Or the other side that genuinely couldn't find a game in a reasonable amount of time. That less than an hour of playtime is an abundantly clear indicator.

And OP? I love the hell out of RE: Resistance and if I could get a game more than once in a blue moon, I'd play it. I'd give it a negative review for the same reasons though. You spend more time in queue than playing. The sooner this game's community stops trying to convince everyone that the foundation isn't cracked and sinking, the more likely the game is to get fixed. Or fall by the Nosgoth wayside. Either or.

Hi Nebiros. I have been playing the game since the beginning of Beta. It's true that many people were giving feedback about Monster from early stages. To be fair, well known Content Creators like Dowsey, Granny, Trickster Shadow, Jaee, and others were playing VHS and making videos in the early days, and pretty much had nothing but praise for it (including playing Monster). The problem was, and I experienced this first hand, Monster is hard to learn. I tried Monster and just couldn't get the hang of it, so I stuck with Teen. It wasn't until Q times got long that I felt I had to try Monster to actually get some games with my limited gaming hours. I watched videos, Twitch players, and practiced, and got good. Then Monster became a lot of fun and very rewarding.

RE : Resistance was very cool. I'm with you. If you felt that waiting in Q a long time was deserving of a negative review, that's fair. But, unlike the Original Reviewer I was referring to, you obviously had put in some amount of time into RE : R, otherwise you wouldn't love the hell out of it. You would have left your negative review with more than 1 hour of game time, and your review wouldn't have amounted to, "Long Q Times. Game sucks. Go play DBD." Your review of RE would have been fair and even elicited sympathy. The original reviewer's review only elicits dismissal and contempt of VHS, and with less than 1 hour of play, and with me having given detailed tips on how to find games reliably and give VHS a fair chance, I can only conclude that the original reviewer just wanted to crap on VHS and hurt the game. You two couldn't be more different.

Go onto Discord. You won't find people blindly white knighting VHS. Check out the channels with game suggestions. People write essays of suggestions on how to improve the game. The Community isn't blind to its faults, they just don't delight in kicking Hellbent in the ribs to convey their dissatisfaction with elements of the game.

Coddling Hellbent isn't going to help VHS, but dancing on them when they're down with hobb nail boots is just cruel. I think VHS is special and deserves for people to give it a fair shot before leaving their feedback. But, again, it's a free country. People just have to ask themselves if they're being fair.

[Case]

Originally posted by Friendly Monster ^_^:

Nebiros

Originally posted by Nebiros:

They were told for the better part of a year that the role you're tip toeing around wasn't fun or engaging to newbies all the way up to all, but the very narrow niche of people that like meticulously stalking a player, but don't want to play Hunt. Or the other side that genuinely couldn't find a game in a reasonable amount of time. That less than an hour of playtime is an abundantly clear indicator.

And OP? I love the hell out of RE: Resistance and if I could get a game more than once in a blue moon, I'd play it. I'd give it a negative review for the same reasons though. You spend more time in queue than playing. The sooner this game's community stops trying to convince everyone that the foundation isn't cracked and sinking, the more likely the game is to get fixed. Or fall by the Nosgoth wayside. Either or.

Hi Nebiros. I have been playing the game since the beginning of Beta. It's true that many people were giving feedback about Monster from early stages. To be fair, well known Content Creators like Dowsey, Granny, Trickster Shadow, Jaee, and others were playing VHS and making videos in the early days, and pretty much had nothing but praise for it (including playing Monster). The problem was, and I experienced this first hand, Monster is hard to learn. I tried Monster and just couldn't get the hang of it, so I stuck with Teen. It wasn't until Q times got long that I felt I had to try Monster to actually get some games with my limited gaming hours. I watched videos, Twitch players, and practiced, and got good. Then Monster became a lot of fun and very rewarding.

RE : Resistance was very cool. I'm with you. If you felt that waiting in Q a long time was deserving of a negative review, that's fair. But, unlike the Original Reviewer I was referring to, you obviously had put in some amount of time into RE : R, otherwise you wouldn't love the hell out of it. You would have left your negative review with more than 1 hour of game time, and your review wouldn't have amounted to, "Long Q Times. Game sucks. Go play DBD." Your review of RE would have been fair and even elicited sympathy. The original reviewer's review only elicits dismissal and contempt of VHS, and with less than 1 hour of play, and with me having given detailed tips on how to find games reliably and give VHS a fair chance, I can only conclude that the original reviewer just wanted to crap on VHS and hurt the game. You two couldn't be more different.

Go onto Discord. You won't find people blindly white knighting VHS. Check out the channels with game suggestions. People write essays of suggestions on how to improve the game. The Community isn't blind to its faults, they just don't delight in kicking Hellbent in the ribs to convey their dissatisfaction with elements of the game.

Coddling Hellbent isn't going to help VHS, but dancing on them when they're down with hobb nail boots is just cruel. I think VHS is special and deserves for people to give it a fair shot before leaving their feedback. But, again, it's a free country. People just have to ask themselves if they're being fair.

Well, I had a proper response, but it got swept under the rug.
I was in the Discord, it was just as bad when I quit. I was around when Jaee first showed it off because I was learning Ghostface at the time. I was excited that DBD might actually have competition so I could Scooby Doo antics around. I saw the same complaints and had the same complaints. Finally a 20 minute queue time is 100% a valid complaint regardless. People have other commitments and can't always hope they get a game finally.

Until they get their heads out of their third point of contact, get past the snowjobs and clean the ranks this game's going to struggle.

[Communal Boyfriend]

The game gets a "fair" and proper try from the moment one presses the play button and it boots up. Everything from the credits screen, the menu, the queue time, to playing a match is the experience. If the queue at any given moment is too long then that is a person's "FAIR" experience and completely valid of the negative feedback. I'm not sure you understand exactly what fair means.

Anyway, I think either steam or this thread is having issues because I've already basically posted this twice now and it just disappears for some reason.

Honestly, I dig the game and still try to recommend it to my friends but until it gets a proper player base with shorter queue times when we're available to play, then they just won't care. New killer looks amazing btw.