Dev Blog: Versus Closed Alpha Test - The First Step in Co-Creation
Heroes,
Today, we sit down with Vermintide 2 developers—Joakim, our Design Director, and Erik, our Product Owner—about our goals and design philosophy for the closed alpha test for Versus happening in the near future.
Editor’s Note: As of this dev blog, the test has been delayed; but it is still sure to happen, and quite soon. We’ll keep everyone posted on new dates once we iron out this last wrinkle!
What is Versus and how can players expect it to work?
We see Versus as a casual asymmetric 4v4 PvP+E game mode that pits the Ubersreik Five against our AI enemies and up to 4 player-controlled Skaven specials (known as the Pactsworn). The gameplay is based off of our adventure mode maps, but split into multiple sections. Heroes progress through a map section, completing objectives as they go. For each objective they get a certain amount of points.
The Pactsworn goal is to stop the Heroes from getting points by killing or disabling them. When the Hero team has either reached the end of the map section or have been fully disabled, the teams switch sides, competing for points over multiple sections and rounds.
The team with the most points after a match wins.
The Versus game mode is definitely something that players familiar with the genre will recognize. We want to honor our predecessor in this space while adding our own unique melee-oriented flair to it that most of our players recognize us for.
Why are we working on Versus?
Ideally, we want to create a player versus player plus enemy (PvP+E) game mode that can be played alongside our co-op modes to hit that sweet spot for players of all types. We want to provide a fun, casual team experience but still scratch that competitive itch.
This isn’t the first time we’ve announced Versus; and our first reveal happened way back in 2019. We had run some small external tests with a select group of players during that time and weren’t completely happy with how things were running, so we put it on the shelf to marinate for a bit while we focused on other content like new careers and co-op game modes. We had worked on it a bit here and there with some tweaks to tighten up the foundational PvP+E gameplay, but it wasn’t until last spring did we decide, “Let’s actually do this thing” with fresh eyes.
What are our goals for players in this closed alpha?
First and foremost, we want Versus to be fun for our players, both for those who are new to Vermintide as well as for our veterans. We tried to have a good mixture of both when selecting those for this test. We want players to go in, play, and tell us their unvarnished thoughts.
One of things we’ve learned through our years of development is that our players deeply love and care for this game, and we want to learn from them and their feedback during this testing period. We’re aiming to take a co-creation approach with our players by opening up a closed test for a large majority of those who signed up, observe them play, analyze their feedback, and take that into our development process as lessons learned.
But we also want players to know this is our first time testing Versus with a larger number of players, so things aren’t completely final, and some things may be a bit unstable. We want feedback on this, too! The good, the bad, the ugly; we want to look at all of it and come back with takeaways to discuss and iterate upon to create something our players will be happy with.
Will there be other testing opportunities in the future?
Absolutely. We don’t expect this test to be a one and done type of deal, so we’ll be testing more in the future and soliciting feedback during those periods too! The closed alpha test is just one step in a multi-stage process to get both the team and our players feeling good about the game mode and how it plays!