Heroes and Pactsworn!
As mentioned in our previous announcement, another Vermintide 2 level has been adapted and added to the pool of playable Versus maps: A Grudge Served Cold!
We thought you might be curious about why or how a map is turned into a Versus level, so we interviewed one of our level designers, Pål, who redesigned the level...
Why was A Grudge Served Cold picked to be the next Versus map? What features or aspects of it made it seem like a good fit for Versus?
“The level was built in a way that converting it to Versus would be quite a fast process, compared to other levels. The layout is open to water on the left-hand side and mountain ranges to the right and it doesn’t have too many empty backfaces or “half-built” structures like many other levels have.”
Areas that Heroes never get to look at in normal gameplay often aren’t meant to be looked at, but because the Pactsworn specials can move around all over the place by climbing or even leaping, patching up all of those views is important.
“We also wanted to have another art style, where both snow/winter mixed with the Dwarfen environment made it feel fresh."
"It also features a nice mix between tight passages or “corridors” and open spaces, and it also provides quite a lot of verticality.”
What, overall, makes for a good & fun Versus level?
“Definitely a mix between open spaces, verticality, chokes, interiors, and exteriors.”
“Levels that are “geometrically complicated” in their set-up are also hard to convert to Versus (‘Tower of Treachery’ would probably be quite hard to do, for example).
Maps with too many long chokepoints and tight passages are also not fun (‘Hunger in the Dark’, as an example)”
“Maps that have some built-in events that make sense in the world already (such as the gate you blow up in Screaming Bell to pass through the plaza) are great, but levels that offer opportunities for new Versus specific events to be added are also good.”
“We wanted the “portfolio” of levels to offer everything that makes Vermintide 2 fun, and the levels are better if they allow a lot of new areas to be added for Skaven, so the players see some new parts and experience what the world looks like from different perspectives (such as standing on a high cliff and looking down at the Heroes).”
For ‘A Grudge Served Cold’, are there any highlights of new or changed places, objectives, pacing, etc.?
“‘A Grudge Served Cold’ was a bit too long and had to be cut at the beginning. We also added some interiors such as caves and safe rooms inside the Dwarf interiors.”
“The main events are still as they are in Adventure mode, but we added a few capture zones, and a payload to reduce the endless running and allow the pact-sworn to break the Heroes’ dash.”
“It was supposed to be only 2 rounds, but the length of the level made it into 3 rounds. We added a night environment to the last round to make it feel like some time has passed, and also because it looks nice.”
What would you look for if you had to turn another map into a Versus level?
“ ‘Garden of Morr’ is a level that looks to have a very fun Versus layout, but the geometry is quite complicated to work with, with many small units stitched together, and lots of holes where Heroes can’t look.
On the other hand, it’s not nice to have too many large, solid structures, because if we need to make changes, artists need to spend time separating them, exporting new units & more.”
“‘A Parting of the Waves’ looks to be a great Versus level as well.”
“All-in-all, we move, delete, add, and heavily rework the levels, but on the “surface,” they should look just like the Adventure levels. But pretty much all the units in a level are somehow tweaked, rotated a little, moved, and fixed so Versus works. It’s mostly about making the pact-sworn feel like Heroes because they have access to a lot of level areas that the Heroes can’t reach. So shortcuts, vantage points, etc. are very important.”
“You also create a “net” of transition points with the climb units, which in theory should cover the whole level, but it’s important to not add too many (the UI becomes bloated).”
“We also scaled down the enemy compositions, terror events strength, and roaming enemies a lot, since we have the 4 pact-sworn players using the Horde ability all the time.”
“If I were to convert another Adventure level to Versus, I would look for a bit more ‘wild and crazy’ layout level to push the Versus experience even further and avoid repetitiveness. For example Bögenhafen’s ‘The Pit’, which is a huge open town map with plenty of possibilities to add cool events.”
The new map will be added to the pool of Versus maps on March 6 alongside the Anniversary event! Check it out then!
