V RISING AMA (With Community Manager Jeremy)

[SLSJeremyBearson]

Hey folks! I'm Jeremy "Bearson" Fielding, the Community Manager for Stunlock Studios for the last 3 years and for the public life time of V Rising!

I am relentlessly bothering our team with constant, probing questions about our development. I literally never leave them alone. From questions about game design, to art and inspiration, the hows and how-nots of the technical details of our game and what we're able to do, I've asked them everything. Now it's your opportunity to ask me anything! If I can't answer it immediately I can probably find someone who can, so go nuts.

We recently released a dev blog with plans about our next major patch! Feel free to ask questions about it, though pretty much the only thing I can't talk about are unannounced features for it. If you have questions about anything we talked about there, it's very possible I can elaborate a little bit.

p.s. I didn't have a paper to write the AMA thing on because it's 2024 and I don't own a printer or printer paper, but there's an uncomfortable picture of me.

 

[LateNightRant.exe]

Hi!

So this is where we ask? Anyway, I'm going out on a limb here and hoping "anything" may refer to things beyond the update. Aren't questions regarding pvp balance such lovely fun?

- How is testing new mechanics done? Is there anyone within the company who plays pvp?

- Why was the decision made to further increase the power of defensive abilities after the Gloomrot? Was it a mistake?

- Looping back to question 1: it seems like there's is a large emphasis on adding new content rather than refining what already exists, is this accurate?

- You've mentioned before that SLS is hesitant to make drastic changes to defensive abilities and things generally considered problems by the PvP community, perhaps fearing that hasty action may cause even larger problems. However, considering the meta has been stale since Gloomrot, what was the purpose of asking for specific PvP feedback without any worthwhile changes? Furthermore, since the "last minute whip change" apparently almost pushed the patch back entirely, what was even the idea of asking for this feedback? A miniscule attack speed nerf which fails to address the core problem of the weapon was almost too much, after all.

Thanks in advance Jeremy, and twofold thanks for everything you do for the community.

 

[ChillyH2O]

Hello Jeremy,

Longtime player since the game's initial release on Steam. Oh, how I miss (laughing at) the large, thick necks of the male player model. Natural selection was kind to the males, providing them ample muscle grown to protect from other vampires.

One of my concerns and questions about the game is a small one.

"Will my gorgeous vampire locks ever return to me? Will I ever see them flowing through the wind of Silverlight hills?"

In short, will we ever get our hair models along side headgear rather than one or the other?

 

[Jesus Christ's Right Nut]

1) Are we getting a new spell school? Will this update have a drill spell?

2) Can we have all 6 variants of weapon types for each artefact weapons (eg frost mace, lighting mace, chaos mace)

3) Are we getting new weapons?

4) This is one is very much a suggestion, but could we get a major balance patch 3-4 times a year. Something that changes the meta during that year, because as much as people hate rogue being meta right now, if the movespeed meta only went on for 3 months it wouldn't have been as hated and would have been quite fun purely due to variety.

5) Can whip be buried completely into the ground or reworked cause that weapon is annoying, it also makes me feel like a pervert.

6)Are these dark mages?


7) Jeremy is that a piercing in your eye O_O?? Hardcore man

EDIT:

8) Thoughts on adding a jewel modifier on some of the spells with long cast times like lance giving them damage reduction while channeling, for example, people get off 2-3 autos before the cast goes through.

9) Can we get some missing abilities that are common elsewhere, again this is another request. There's a couple of abilities types that are missing in this game, like a long range weapon combo. Lux from league is a good example of how such a combo could look, there's no flamethrower attack either, especially since battlerite had so many of them, we're also missing a charged melee attack (vi's punch from league), hades 2 black coat's (xinth's) charged lmb

 

[zfolmt]

Thanks for doing the AMA Jeremy, much appreciated.

How much internal refactoring might we be looking at for the update here?

Examples:
- renaming, removing or changing the order of entity queries in systems
- adding, removing, or making significant changes to components on existing entity archetypes
- reworking existing features/systems to support new ones we can expect in the update

Rough estimate is perfectly acceptable, thank you for your time!

 

[SLSJeremyBearson]

Hi!

So this is where we ask? Anyway, I'm going out on a limb here and hoping "anything" may refer to things beyond the update. Aren't questions regarding pvp balance such lovely fun?

Yeah, those are all fine, and this is the right place to ask!

- How is testing new mechanics done? Is there anyone within the company who plays pvp?

Playtesting, feeling them out in game design, and then getting our last impressions during the beta playtests. We have some people, particularly in game design, that do enjoy PvP and we have plenty of people who enjoy PvP games. I don't think anyone is actively playing on a PvP server right now, though, and we don't have anyone in the studio who actively does regular PvP or plays on an arena server.

- Why was the decision made to further increase the power of defensive abilities after the Gloomrot? Was it a mistake?

I only vaguely remember this, so I'm asking around about it and will come back when I have a good answer!

Edit: Some folks on the design team were hoping for more context, but ultimately the answer is that there is a LOT of reasoning that goes into individual design decisions like this, and it's hard to go back and pin-point the exact reasons at that time so long after Gloomrot. It's a big game! A lot is happening!

- Looping back to question 1: it seems like there's is a large emphasis on adding new content rather than refining what already exists, is this accurate?

Yes and no! Everything is interconnected, so adding new content redefines a lot of what already exists. By and large, yes, we are focused on adding new content instead of redefining what already exists when it comes to pushing a major patch. However, we're very aware of how adding that content changes the entire journey and, more than that, changes the relative experience of everything around them. For instance, in our latest dev blog we talk about adding the fusion forge. It's new content, yes, but it completely redefines how you interact with legendary weapons at every level.

- You've mentioned before that SLS is hesitant to make drastic changes to defensive abilities and things generally considered problems by the PvP community, perhaps fearing that hasty action may cause even larger problems. However, considering the meta has been stale since Gloomrot, what was the purpose of asking for specific PvP feedback without any worthwhile changes? Furthermore, since the "last minute whip change" apparently almost pushed the patch back entirely, what was even the idea of asking for this feedback? A miniscule attack speed nerf which fails to address the core problem of the weapon was almost too much, after all.

Woof, this one feels a little more aggressive, hahaha. I don't mind, though. I like that you care about the game, and I appreciate that you can obviously disagree with us on some points, and you're frustrated, but you're still respectful and able to have a conversation. I just want you to know I recognize that, and I'm always happy to answer any questions as long as we can talk to each other.

So, this question had a lot of questions in one so I'm going to try and break them down one at a time to make sure I'm actually answering every bit of it. FORMATTING BE DAMNED.

You've mentioned before that SLS is hesitant to make drastic changes to defensive abilities and things generally considered problems by the PvP community, perhaps fearing that hasty action may cause even larger problems. However, considering the meta has been stale since Gloomrot, what was the purpose of asking for specific PvP feedback without any worthwhile changes?

That is true; we are concerned about making sweeping changes targeted at PvP, largely because it can be very easy to completely break things with what feels like very small changes. V Rising is a dark fantasy survival vampire game; it's a bit of an action RPG, and it's a lot of things. A part of what it is is a game with PvP, but it is not, first and foremost, a PvP game. However, we're happy to spend some time on PvP-related changes where we can!

This is where asking for feedback comes in. We recognize that we only have a limited amount of time to make changes, and we tried to be very clear that we were limited in what we could do. Certain changes mess with underlying systems in an incongruent way with older saves, so things would break on updates, and interactions would be a mess without forcing a game wipe. This is a pretty non-negotiable option unless we're doing a major content update.

For that reason, and because we don't have time to do two more balance passes to adjust for every balance pass we do, we tried to ask for feedback to get the most we could out of the one.

Furthermore, since the "last minute whip change" apparently almost pushed the patch back entirely, what was even the idea of asking for this feedback? A miniscule attack speed nerf which fails to address the core problem of the weapon was almost too much, after all.

There were multiple angles we looked at to try and change the whip in a way that addressed the issue, which is that the whip does too much damage compared to how easy it is to hit. We tried a few changes, including ones very popularly suggested, and some things sound great on paper but just... feel awful. It just felt bad. Some pacing changes mess with animations in an untenable way, mess with the game feel of movement, mess with readability, and all sorts of other issues that on their own might seem minor at first, but its attention to these sorts of details and making the game a good, all-around game that in my opinion makes V Rising what it is, and makes it great. At the end of the day you can choose not to trust us on that, and that's alright! I can't make you trust our sense of game design, but I will say that there is probably a reason why you like V Rising, and it's not an unbelievable series of coincidences that birthed the game.

At the end of the day, we weren't going to add a whip change because we thought it was insufficient because it couldn't address the core issue, but we decided to add something that pushed it as far as we thought it could handle without breaking animations or severely impacting the feel of the weapon. We only added the last-minute change because of the strong community reaction to the patch notes not having anything for whip, and because it was so last minute it almost pushed the patch back into a time frame where we wouldn't have time to properly test it so it wouldn't risk breaking the game for everyone.

Edit: A lot of the feedback we received from the PvP community is also still relevant, even if as we explained in the follow-up blog we couldn't implement a lot of it. We're hoping to try and implement a lot more of it in relation to some other changes we're going to be doing, and further balance PvP for when we release arenas and dueling.

Thanks in advance Jeremy, and twofold thanks for everything you do for the community.

Any time! It's what I'm here for. At the end of the day we're a studio of regular people, and while not all of our decisions are perfect, I want to stress that they make sense. We're logical, rational people who are generally at least pretty decent at what we do, and all we want is for everyone to enjoy our game. (Then we want to go home and feed our cats.)

 

[SLSJeremyBearson]

Hello Jeremy,

Longtime player since the game's initial release on Steam. Oh, how I miss (laughing at) the large, thick necks of the male player model. Natural selection was kind to the males, providing them ample muscle grown to protect from other vampires.

One of my concerns and questions about the game is a small one.

"Will my gorgeous vampire locks ever return to me? Will I ever see them flowing through the wind of Silverlight hills?"

In short, will we ever get our hair models along side headgear rather than one or the other?

View attachment 1063

I like to think the necks were there to hold stronger biting muscles, and also support their huge vampire brains that contain their heavy evil machinations. However, other members of the lore team eventually veto'd my ideas and I was never able to codify it in game. I'm so sorry.

One of our 3D artists actually does have some ideas on how we could do this, having looked at some other games in how they pull it off, it isn't impossible that we do it at some point but she'd have to have time to do it, and unfortunately she's too useful doing 3D modeling and otherwise being an absolute boss at it. It would involve a little tech time too, and... man they are just really difficult to get for stuff. So overall as an answer: I hope so, many of us hope so, but it's not looking great.

Oh, uh, an all bad news post. I need to think of some good news. Uh... uh... horse stables! We're adding horse stables!

 

[Mario]

Hello Jeremy


-Last time before the balance patch you guys asked for player feedback, oriented for open world pvp. Have to be honest, basically any feedback I had read has been ignored and seems in the end you choose by yourself. Are you aware the balance patch literally had 0 impact in open world, and overall, balance?

Shouldn't be better follow the feedbacks when you ask for them? Or not ask them in first place if you gonna to ignore them anyways?



-Is there any dev who actively play V rising pvp at SLS? Because some choise seems really out of touch, like buffing projectile's spells damage thinking it helps while the reason they aren't used much is the crazy amount of move speed you guys introduced with 1.0 combined with turbo broken defensive spells.

Or like void nerf because raids, that has 0 impact in raids since with unbreachable stairs you can funnel golems and players in 1 tile



-When you releas a game in Early Access you asking people to trust you gonna finish develop and fix the game. While the game overall changed a lot and in many good ways (some negative but that's a personal opinion) Raid system feels like is still in a early alpha version. Outside of swapping golem ability in the hotbar, and giving it 2 more abilities, and a nerf to servants HP, raid system hasn't been received any change since then.

Instead other features you introduced, like stairs, floors and so on had a negative impact on raiding, making it a super frustrating experience. Do you guys think to overhaul them with the next patch since we aren't in early access anymore? Or we should accept it for what is it?


-Next patch is going to be the last update you gonna make to V rising?

 

[SLSJeremyBearson]

1) Are we getting a new spell school? Will this update have a drill spell?

I can't say! Except for the drill spell thing. As much as I want to get them to add a Gurren Lagann spell school it's not looking likely.

2) Can we have all 6 variants of weapon types for each artefact weapons (eg frost mace, lighting mace, chaos mace)

That's a LOT of artifact weapons! Are we making around 50 new unique weapons? Probably not, especially if we're updating them with unique models. Is it possible you'll be able to switch out the on-hit effects with the fusion forge? POTENTIALLY yes. We're still experimenting with where we want to put the limits on that.

3) Are we getting new weapons?

Like entirely new weapons, in the same way the longbow and whip were new? Hmmm. Can't say.

4) This is one is very much a suggestion, but could we get a major balance patch 3-4 times a year. Something that changes the meta during that year, because as much as people hate rogue being meta right now, if the movespeed meta only went on for 3 months it wouldn't have been as hated and would have been quite fun purely due to variety.

I can't say for certain, but I have my doubts. I think we've found that our ability to do a balance patch just isn't sufficient for the amount of time it takes us to do and how much time it would take away from other future development. The changes players want are fundamental and would require a wipe, which PvP players certainly don't mind, but I think to do that would be to ignore a huge portion of our community.

5) Can whip be buried completely into the ground or reworked cause that weapon is annoying, it also makes me feel like a pervert.

No, maybe, and I can't help you with that last one. There will almost definitely be balance changes in 1.1.

6)Are these dark mages?
View attachment 1064

No. Well. Sort of. You'll see.

7) Jeremy is that a piercing in your eye O_O?? Hardcore man

It's not IN my eye. It's NEXT to my eye! I can see it if I look up and to the right really hard.

8) Thoughts on adding a jewel modifier on some of the spells with long cast times like lance giving them damage reduction while channeling, for example, people get off 2-3 autos before the cast goes through.

9) Can we get some missing abilities that are common elsewhere, again this is another request. There's a couple of abilities types that are missing in this game, like a long range weapon combo. Lux from league is a good example of how such a combo could look, there's no flamethrower attack either, especially since battlerite had so many of them, we're also missing a charged melee attack (vi's punch from league), hades 2 black coat's (xinth's) charged lmb

"These are good suggestions" according to our creative director, Shelt. He said he'll be bringing them up when we're discussing more PvP and ability changes later on. We intend to put a bit more time into balancing PvP in conjunction with the addition of arenas.

 

[SLSJeremyBearson]

Thanks for doing the AMA Jeremy, much appreciated.

How much internal refactoring might we be looking at for the update here?

Examples:
- renaming, removing or changing the order of entity queries in systems
- adding, removing, or making significant changes to components on existing entity archetypes
- reworking existing features/systems to support new ones we can expect in the update

Rough estimate is perfectly acceptable, thank you for your time!

I don't think we're intending to do a lot of refactoring of old archtypes and components, at least not nearly as much as we did with 1.0! We aren't upgrading the Unity version this time around so it won't require nearly so many changes. That being said I can't said at the time how much other refactoring might happen, because there's plenty of time to decide to do some reorganizing... but I think if there is any, it won't be on nearly the scale that 1.0 had.

I hope that answers your question! I am not a very technical guy, but I checked with our head of tech and tried to make sense of his answer.

 

[SLSJeremyBearson]

Mario:

Hello Jeremy

Hey Mario, good to see you buddy.

-Last time before the balance patch you guys asked for player feedback, oriented for open world pvp. Have to be honest, basically any feedback I had read has been ignored and seems in the end you choose by yourself. Are you aware the balance patch literally had 0 impact in open world, and overall, balance?

Shouldn't be better follow the feedbacks when you ask for them? Or not ask them in first place if you gonna to ignore them anyways?


-Is there any dev who actively play V rising pvp at SLS? Because some choise seems really out of touch, like buffing projectile's spells damage thinking it helps while the reason they aren't used much is the crazy amount of move speed you guys introduced with 1.0 combined with turbo broken defensive spells.

Or like void nerf because raids, that has 0 impact in raids since with unbreachable stairs you can funnel golems and players in 1 tile

We went over pretty extensively why we did certain changes, and why we couldn't do others. I also answered a lot of this a bit further up, but suffice it to say most of the changes asked for, like movement speed caps and much more significant changes to the whip (like moving more damage to the "sweet spot") either didn't work very well in practice for the game as a whole or would have required a wipe to do. Some of these changes we're looking to implement now that we're able to, and we're hoping to be able to get some balance feedback earlier in the process than last year so we have more time to make adjustments and then readjustments before we hit that "point of no return" before dropping the big patch once again.

-When you releas a game in Early Access you asking people to trust you gonna finish develop and fix the game. While the game overall changed a lot and in many good ways (some negative but that's a personal opinion) Raid system feels like is still in a early alpha version. Outside of swapping golem ability in the hotbar, and giving it 2 more abilities, and a nerf to servants HP, raid system hasn't been received any change since then.

Instead other features you introduced, like stairs, floors and so on had a negative impact on raiding, making it a super frustrating experience. Do you guys think to overhaul them with the next patch since we aren't in early access anymore? Or we should accept it for what is it?

This is a good question, because raiding has been pretty contentious from the start, and I understand frustrations with it. I don't think we have any plans to overhaul raiding for the next patch, however. There are a lot of issues with raiding in how it affects player motivation, interacts with player freedom in building, and just overall affects the economy of the game that make it a really difficult subject to tackle and for now, we haven't found a solution to pursue.

-Next patch is going to be the last update you gonna make to V rising?

I can't say it will be the last update, but I can't really speak too far into the future in general right now. Sorry if that isn't a great answer!

 

[Jesus Christ's Right Nut]

Couple more questions if I'm allowed to post twice.

1) Will coliseum have a built in arena?

2) Are there plans to add global queues for a different game mode within the same client. I know this is a touchy subject *Cough* [redacted game title] *Cough*. Lots of games do this maybe we can get one in this game? Like destiny almost

3) Will there more weirder skins? I know you guys do a variety of outfits but could use some wacky ones. Here is an example, just take this down if this picture is not acceptable


4) Will there be mount skins?

5) Will there be ex abilities?

6) Is it possible to have rift events in multiple different areas rather than just the dracula region (I forgot its name, its been a long time since I played)

7) Is it possible to have potions and golems on the vampire power wheel

EDIT:

8) Are we getting any new forms?

 

[Jesus Christ's Right Nut]

Questions from Amo ad Salem on discord cause he still is waiting for approval

• Will we be seeing any (even minor) expansions or changes in general to the building system( Excluding the arena tiles etc)? How will that reflect on PvE players and also raiding and PvP players alike, for example, not having to trade off how my base looks for it to necessarily be PvP viable.
• Outside of the expansions to the world of Vardoran by adding new areas, should we expect improvements and changes that enhance its immersion, I'm sure you may have seen people discussing more events happening across the map but also smaller things like weather. Things like that, and if not in 1.1, could we ever expect something like this to be added outside of a static biome weather. (I'm looking at you gloomrot)

 

[SLSJeremyBearson]

Jesus Christ's Right Nut:

Couple more questions if I'm allowed to post twice.

Mods. Get 'em.

1) Will coliseum have a built in arena?

Unlikely! But there's a good reason for that.

2) Are there plans to add global queues for a different game mode within the same client. I know this is a touchy subject *Cough* [redacted game title] *Cough*. Lots of games do this maybe we can get one in this game? Like destiny almost

There aren't any plans to make a global que for "game modes" between servers, largely because there isn't really an infrastructure for servers to transfer data between each other. That would be a pretty big project!

3) Will there more weirder skins? I know you guys do a variety of outfits but could use some wacky ones. Here is an example, just take this down if this picture is not acceptable
View attachment 1065

MODS! GET 'EM!

The mood of the game is really important to us, so we've endeavored not to get too silly with the outfits. If outfits lean towards more silly, it's with judgement to the limits we're willing to push without hurting the vibe of the game too much. We have some humor, but a good example of how we do that is the Fisherman. The fish are a liiiittle cartoony, the voice lines are goofy, but he's still got a very dark gothic aesthetic.

4) Will there be mount skins?

There sort of are, already! We're keeping it horsey, though.

5) Will there be ex abilities?

I don't think so. The way the design space is already there are already a LOT of buttons that need assignments. This might also be something that would be especially painful for controller.

6) Is it possible to have rift events in multiple different areas rather than just the dracula region (I forgot its name, its been a long time since I played)

It's not impossible, but it will take a lot more dev time to implement than we originally hoped when we were first designing it. Back in 1.0 it was something we were hoping to be able to do, but as you can see, it didn't seem feasible so we didn't pursue it then.

7) Is it possible to have potions and golems on the vampire power wheel

So after asking design about this, the answer I got is that it's largely related to a scale of the issue it would be solving vs. dev time kind of thing. Adding a new scroll wheel is a bit of a nightmare in terms of inputs, also making a UI that supports dropping items into it and the tech to make it work properly, testing, everything. It's a fairly "expensive" solution compared to the scale of what it might slightly alleviate.

8) Are we getting any new forms?

Unfortunately, I can't speak on this! You won't any feature announcements from me sir (not any serious ones anyway)

 

[SLSJeremyBearson]

Questions from Amo ad Salem on discord cause he still is waiting for approval

• Will we be seeing any (even minor) expansions or changes in general to the building system( Excluding the arena tiles etc)? How will that reflect on PvE players and also raiding and PvP players alike, for example, not having to trade off how my base looks for it to necessarily be PvP viable.
• Outside of the expansions to the world of Vardoran by adding new areas, should we expect improvements and changes that enhance its immersion, I'm sure you may have seen people discussing more events happening across the map but also smaller things like weather. Things like that, and if not in 1.1, could we ever expect something like this to be added outside of a static biome weather. (I'm looking at you gloomrot)

MODS. CAN HE DO THAT? MODS.

Overall there will be some new crafting stations, and there may be new building pieces if we have time to fit it in with the other things we're doing. Adding more decorations is usually on the docket somewhere to fit in if we can manage it! In terms of improvements to the overall mechanics of building, I know some ideas have been thrown around in terms of QOL improvements and potential ways to expand on building a bit, but I can't confidently say any of them panned out to be feasible or got added to the planning. Maybe material for a dev blog when we get closer to 1.1 release!

In terms of layering in new experiences to other zones, like weather effects, immersion, etc., we're more focused on gameplay-centric features right now that we feel will have the most impact. Though weather has been on our list for a while, I'm not sure we're going to be getting to it for 1.1. Beyond that, I can't say!