The Onslaught Series: The Rise of a Competitive Cooperative Game in Vermintide

[@reallycool]

Feel free to help promote this video by retweeting twitter.com/MRIXRT/status/1595470285951717378 Get Your Deathwish Coffee bit.ly/3hLUtyL Notes about video below: This video was recommended to me by my Patron, Osmium, who also put in more than a few hours helping me understand the community. Most of the gameplay from DWONS in the video is his, and I am hugely thankful! Thanks so much to my Patrons for supporting this, you can support too www.patreon.com/MRIXRT You can join the Modded or Onslaught Discords here: --Onslaught Series Discord discord.gg/FMnwKnygK2 --Vermintide Modded Community Discord discord.gg/Xr9fCh5ecV Most people are on both, as the Onslaught Series discord is mostly only active during Tournaments Corrections: None yet!

[@666stonewall]

More often than not, you need someone to step forward with a unified vision like how Aqshy needed to do and did. Excellent work there. But having a committee be put in charge, well, if anyone has ever done anything via committee, or dealt with committees for work or other projects..... you know how painful it is. Excellent video!! Had literally ZERO idea any of this was in the background of a game I have loved for years.

[@Kataki1987]

I mean, theres an entire chunk of the video that shows that having someone with a unified vision failed. While committees can definitely have some issues, so can having big personalities in a hierarchy like they had. Nothing is perfect

[@royalewithcheese7138]

:) Really fun to watch, glad to be a small part of it.

[@reallycool]

You provided me most of my initial base knowledge, I am very thankful for your assistance

[@hoxatron6024]

best coach ❤

[@Evercade_Effect]

Thank you for such a great video. I love geeking out over this niche type things. It's rare that a video will hold my attention for a long video but you managed to do so.

[@reallycool]

Thanks for the kind words. If you enjoy the video, feel free to share it!

[@joaogomes9405]

Iceolator seems like the type of person who thinks he's always the smartest person in the room, even when he's saying grass is blue. And strangleholding a mod that the game can't function without by enforcing your changes that everyone said were not acceptable along with it is just a grade A asshole move. Reminds me of that douche with the Helm's Deep L4D2 mod who thought he knew what was best for the game above everyone else, to the point of adding a ton of hidden scripts to the map mod that messed with your game if you had Helm's Deep installed

[@pyroparagon8945]

better than aqshy. He definitely shouldve either tampered with, or disabled beastman loader for being effectively kicked off the team by that moron

[@itxi]

Yeah, this video sounds overly kind about him tbh, dude was totally malicious by using his mod as a trojan horse for his unpopular changes

[@lil_ducc4491]

man, hearing about the L4D2 Helm's Deep controversy makes me feel old

[@Daniels2l]

im playing vermintide for a few years now and i can never really recommend it to my friends, i often say these exactly words "I love it, it is a good game, but its not for everyone and it is very, very... very repetitive, so buy at your own risk and i will join your lobby"

[@cernunnos_lives]

I like your comment. Very honest. There's things I absolutely love, but can't usually recommend.

[@prich0382]

I just say if you love co op games that can be hard, game alike Mass Effect multiplayer, Deep Rock Galactic, and other similar games, then Vermintide can fit in to another co op game you'll maybe like

[@crypto40]

I usually tell my friends left 4 dead but more intense

[@TheRealSykx]

if you like clicking rats, then I've got the game for you!

[@pubcle]

@@prich0382 I don't like Deep Rock much honestly nor was I a huge fan of LFD, I did briefly enjoy Helldivers but it revealed a lot of bad design cracks as I played & studio insulted me. The Tide games however, they come up toward my favorite games list. Definitely on the upper side of things. That challenge, that melee, that pattern, the characters, wonderful.

[@lestrn2337]

Impressive quality, interesting video, strange that it has so little views

[@reallycool]

Thank you. If you liked it, please consider sharing it

[@melin9799]

It's wild to find out that Aqshy is EXAN. Been having a blast hanging out in the official discord where she pops up and brightens a lot of days. This is polarizing to my only interaction with "EXAN" and my first interaction with the modded community that sullied it for 2 years. Crazy to think that someone who was so willing to destroy a player's willingness to join modded is now a massive part of the onslaught series.

[@JagEterCoola]

Everyone has bad days, that's just how it goes.

[@sebastiansochanski]

👌

[@briggsliceaga9257]

Love it, it’s different! Grow your online following - Promo>SM!!

[@flannelmcmannel]

Vermintide is a game I see often but never got around to playing. It's really interesting seeing a different community start and develop. Great work as always, keep it up M!

[@reallycool]

I think it's a very fascinating community, I'm really happy to be able to share this little slice of the world

[@gimligloinson972]

22:52 that’s my team on the bottom left, our first tourney and I still remember it! All these people involved r lovely, I’ve been stuck playing in these tourneys ever since! Aqshy is lovely and deserves all the attention she gets, and bio was my first captain/coach. Then ofc combine is the local scumbag that I can’t get enough of XD

[@0sm1um76]

Glad I could help with the story! I find it interesting you came to many of the same conclusions as me with regards to shortcomings of the current OS group in the final chapter of the video. Poor communication, being too insular (especially with information), and the Captain's Series events not providing ways for brand new to modded players to meet each other. That last point especially is one I've been very vocal about to Onslaught Staff, but I am fairly certain I never spoke to you about that last one in particular.

[@chancegk]

ur an uggo

[@IncandescentOCE]

Cool video, never thought our lil niche would get a retrospective like this and I'm glad I've gotten to be part of the history of this game and community. Quick background: I'm Incandescent and have been part of the onslaught series and vermintide festival since pretty much the formation under Aqshy and was part of the BBB mentioned in the video and currently work on the onslaught series and helped with tourney balance. I'd like to provide a lil extra context for things if that's ok/clarify the timelines of events The very first balance mod vermintide saw was a mod called vermintide reworked which was worked on by Zaphio and Random Words (the latter who worked on the 2020 BBB and contributes a lot to tourney balance while the former currently works for FS) the 2nd which would be done by us and be adopted by FS in the BBB. Class balance came AFTER that and Tourney balance was made roughly around the same period just after CB started being quasi-forced on the onslaught series. The "Ultimatum" that was provided was more than just Ice having to take over entirely, included in the drama was that we wanted Ice to actually work with Core on Tourney Balance so we could have some compromise and get to a place that we could agree on. Up to that point it was pretty much the entire staff in agreement minus Ice. The "hiatus" Ice took was actually more of a forced removal since he refused to compromise...which is in line with the video. This context is valuable to get a proper feel for how things were at the time. As for the changes in structure, the changes were basically to prevent another Ice situation from happening, while not having a leader™is somewhat less efficient, having leadership that is impossible to work with is even less efficient and nearly killed the tournament as a whole, our current structure prevents that and it's been a much friendlier atmosphere since. The marketing is also not entirely Aqshy, we obviously reach out to Fatshark via Aqshy since we have a connection there and it's a great boon but it's not entirely on her shoulders, we've done plenty of marketing as best we can ourselves with our limited resources (reaching out to youtubers and the like). In fact our highest numbers in viewership and participation started coming AFTER we'd adopted tourney balance and made our structure changes. As for the website thing, if we had the money and expertise to properly get one rolling and maintained we would but it's something that's simply been out of reach and we're not entirely sure if people would trust a random link any more than the systems we have in place currently. We're constantly working to refine how we do things and accepting help when offered. Happy to talk more on any outstanding issues or provide further clarity. Was a great trip down memory lane seeing all the older footage especially from the vermintide festival

[@reallycool]

Thanks for the additional context! I believe you'd find people are much more willing to trust www. onslaughtseries .com than they are to trust discord .gg/LinkA2 #room "click my twitch and donate"

[@IncandescentOCE]

@@reallycool yee that's totally fair, and I think it *would* be cool to have a super pretty done up website and stuff with all the widgets, it's just a matter of being able to find the resources to do it. I dunno how the other lads go with websites but I know absolutely nada about building or maintaining one lmao

[@sleezyclips8068]

@@reallycool just a point of clarification, no one was asked to donate to twitch or redirected to a twitch at any point. Both the discord and the website would have directed to the same link as you can’t do financial transactions just because you have a web page. There has to be some piece of fintech behind the transactions. PayPal was what we chose to effectuate transfers so both the website and the discord would have directed to the same PayPal link.

[@TheRealSykx]

As a vermintide player I do love boons

[@herpicusderpicus128]

I STILL dont want to fight fucking beastmen to this day. Fuck the constant knockback, fuck the archers, bring back the funny rats.

[@advicepirate8673]

It's interesting to learn about a community that I most likely would have been a part of had I not quit after the complete disaster that was Winds of Magic. I got the privilege of paying $20 for an update that ruined the game I loved. These days I'm glad for it, I don't have the time or energy to waste on mastering a good game, and apparently Fatshark doesn't either. Props to my fellow ratslayers who stuck with it, I left a little part of me with you, behead some stormvermin for me.

[@marvinradermacher5781]

you okay? the game is still incredible fun

[@NeutralEffect]

Sounds like the entire idea is a perversion of what this type of game is all about. It's nice to see that even people like those DWONS players can find their niche in Vermintide, but I'm glad this isn't the direction the main game is being developed towards by Fatshark.

[@timinou9915]

Honestly had no idea what to expect from the Title/Thumbnail ( never played Vermintide ) but it ended up being an interesting subject. Good work 👍

[@ItzSandman]

Very high effort video and a fantastic rundown of one of my favorite communities online! I really wish Fatshark could make these difficulties available to play in the official realm so we could get so much more people playing these modes. With Versus actually releasing sometime this year, I don't think it's too farfetched for modded difficulties to be officially implemented into the game.

[@hoagie911]

terrible idea

[@ZeludeRose]

20:15 i know you clicked the paid promotion box on your video, but you should still clearly disclose your sponsorships during the ad read. direct quotes from the FTC: "Don’t assume that a platform’s disclosure tool is good enough, but consider using it in addition to your own, good disclosure." "If making an endorsement in a video, the disclosure should be in the video and not just in the description uploaded with the video. Viewers are more likely to notice disclosures made in both audio and video. Some viewers may watch without sound and others may not notice superimposed words."

[@reallycool]

Thanks.

[@hoagie911]

Thank you! I wouldn't have even realised it was an ad if SponsorBlock hadn't notified me. Very sneaky.

[@TheRealSykx]

I pity the fool that can't recognize an ad without a program telling them they're watching an ad

[@Raxyz_0]

I can't help but feel like this excessive min-maxxing does ruin things for more casual players though. People say the community for these modes are friendly, but they forget to mention that there's a condition for that friendliness: you _have_ to share their interests. Because the "let's have fun together" attitude dies real fast when you make an heretical suggestion like "maybe the drop rate for reds should be a little higher?" or "since there's a new top-end of difficulty, what's stopping the vanilla 5 difficulty levels being rebalanced?". Because here's the thing, I can keep up with a Cata team. I can't carry a bad team or clutch an unlucky run, but I pull my weight and don't hold anyone back. My friends however, cannot. If I play Legend with them it's either me carrying the whole thing or we all dying near the end with no rewards. It's one thing if the game is *built* from the ground up to have this kind of "git gud" design - like GTFO for example - but for Vermintide which is supposed to be hard but accessible? This community ends up sacrificing the latter whether they want to admit it or not when they keep insisting they know better about balancing FOR ALL. Yes, Shade is broken if you're pushing the game to it's limits and fiddling with enemy density that was never tested for in the first place. And then Fatshark notices this and starts nerfing Shade, making her so hard to properly use as a casual that you might as well stick with Waystalker that nets you even better results in Champion for much less time commitment in mastering it. If Vermintide 3 ever exists, I hope Fatshark picks a lane and sticks with it. Because the current state of V2 isn't fun for the average player for a single minute after completing the campaign once. Everything after that is a chore. Grind 300 power level. Copy RoyaleWCheese loadouts. Use the best weapons on the best class while only using optimal combos. Pick the fastest maps on Legend and farm those crates for reds. Ugh...

[@reallycool]

These are totally valid concerns somewhat outside the scope of this video, but I think it's a worthwhile discussion to have

[@Raxyz_0]

@@reallycool Oh, yeah. It's only tangentially related to the Onslaught per se, but it's the first thing that always comes to my mind whenever the competitive aspect of Vermintide is brought up. Precisely for being a discussion I think it's worth having, but it always devolves into two extreme viewpoints who treat this as a zero-sum game when I think it's very possible for this game in particular (at least) to accommodate both playstyles when the framework is kinda already there. I just wish there were more people at least open to listening... lol

[@prich0382]

Really what you saying is fine though, some games are like that and that's fine, some are more casual than others, Vermintide falls more in like with the high skill not as much casual friendly games. Nothing wrong with that at all.

[@Raxyz_0]

@@prich0382 If Vermintide is supposed to be on the hardcore end, it does a lot of things wrong though. The power rating locks you out of the higher difficulties for too long, there's not enough in-game resources to teach you core aspects of the game, it encourages games with random people matched together instead of a closed team, offers too many crutches in some classes, so on and so forth. I don't think Vermintide is built for high level play. It allows for it, but the core systems in play didn't seem to have that in mind. But if that's the route they wanna go now, I'm OK with it. I just wish they would clearly pick a lane instead of half-haphazardly trying to please everyone.

[@JCtheSpy]

I did not know this video existed until know. Great watch. Guess I'm famous too. I never participated in any tournament simply because of being too busy. I've met so many great people in the V2 Modded Community and have only stuck around for so long because I have friends to consistently play with. Tourney Balance really extends the lifespan of modded, without it we would still be playing on official realm balance which is... interesting to say the least. Thanks for the video.

[@CorthosFellrin]

I wanted to play Vermintide pretty bad, but I need a better computer for that lol. I like the video so far dude! Edit: Also this video is really good. Damn nice job seriously.

[@reallycool]

Thanks a lot Corthos, super appreciate it

[@flemlius3507]

1:00:55 Mom! Look! I'm in the video! :D

[@tremolobanshee]

V2 is my favorite game of all time and I didn't even know about this series. Now that I do though I need to try and get into it; 1800 hrs is probably enough experience, right? Lol

[@reallycool]

Absolutely 😁

[@swoopisbird3117]

wow this video is reallycool :) also nice ad placement

[@reallycool]

Smooth and robust

[@juliofoolio2982]

Fascinating piece. I love learning about subcultures and you have done an admirable job introducing this one. Thank you.

[@prich0382]

Console Players so wish they could play this. Me and my friends played Twitch Deeds, we have a regular "Golden Deed" or "Onslaught Lite" as we call it Deed which is Send in the next Wave+Vangaurd, (Next Wave also makes Specials spawn a little bit faster if you didn't know), then we have Twitch on top with no Blessings with a time of between 30 to 60 seconds, soemtimes even 20 seconds which is as fast as it can go. We also love the Halloween Event difficulty as enemies have +125% Health and +90% Mass (Equivalent to Cata ~5.5 in terms of enemy Health scaling on Cata difficulty). But now Darktide is out, we play Verm a lot less.

[@uberdwarf6539]

Hey, I'm one of the players visible on screen throughout the video. I'm glad the Onslaught Series is getting some more attention. As someone who started modded recently, I'd like to add how friendly and helpful the community has been. It has been a blast participating in the Captain Series and the tournament itself, and I, and the rest of my team, have received a lot of help from some of the best players in the game. The most recent tournament had some cool new additions for the streams, like being able to see where other teams wiped or reached an event with the Life's Hard Everywhere mod. There are also a few more balance mods available, as well as Tourney Balance Testing and Class Balance, which are both still being updated to this day.

[@Christian-gr3gu]

Hey good job you got in the vid

[@uberdwarf6539]

@@Christian-gr3gu Privileges of being Osmium's teammate lol

[@prich0382]

It's kinda funny about the console modding situation, there are a handful of games that support mods, there is no real reason to block mods on consoles. Console got half of the official QoL mods that were implemented into the game (Still waiting on the rest promised in the next "Big update" which they failed to deliver), but so many mods are needed, we'd love even just Cata 2 and 3 for normal maps. Honestly if they would release a Xbox Series and PS5 version of the game that had crossplay with PC like Darktide has, that would be epic and bring back players to Vermintide and beef up the player base. Even better release modded realm on those consoles too. One can dream. But I guess perhaps one day they'll be a Vermintide 3 or something that'll do that anyway.

[@Nexus_Hives]

Interesting and informative video M. Well done.

[@reallycool]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@TheRealSykx]

This video's comment section is a hotbed of top tier verm players, very cool!

[@TheOneMagpie]

I don't know if I missed it, but why didn't they just make it a rule that each person getting to the end is +1 point, to a total of 4? Sort of like L4D versus, right? That way, at best, every team would either run a shade to 'potentially' get a minimum of +1 points, or would instead play a different role on kerillian to better support more players getting to the end for more points. These two ideas they had instead seemed so extreme.

[@play3rthr339]

My 2 cents on that is, had Shade existed as she was, she would have had a 100% pick rate, and the games would likely devolve into shade soloing the entire map with infinite invisibility, only reviving the rest of the team at the end right before map completion. 100% pick rate is boring. And even if this solved the Shade problem, it does not solve the new classes being added at the time that needed a different way to balance them for tourney use. Having a mod already in place that balances things for tourney games while being as unintrusive to the core gameplay as possible, that can be updated when new things are added, discovered, etc. is probably the best way to go about it given the circumstances.

[@strobolazer4082]

Over 2k hours into V2, and still my fav go to game since forever.

[@quarkbent9165]

... I can easily summarise, just gotta treat things less as 'comparisons' and 'genres', more features; Vermintide 2 is a 4 player co-op first person horde combat game in the styling of L4D2 with a rough 80/20 split on melee/ranged focus. It is cut from the L4D2 design cloth, complete with picking between taking 'pills' or a 'medic bag' because of your down limit being 3 downs and your out and a medic bag takes time but resets your down count. Like Payday 2. It too could be called 'Action RPG FPS', but that's an inability to talk about features distinct from genres, which is its own kettle of fish. Comparisons to Deep Rock Galatic are really only a matter of them both being 4 player co-op first person perspective games with overlaps in their public exposure... That's why that's a bad comparison... That's one of the many reasons it fails to communicate much of anything... Vermintide 2 is effectively cut from that cloth but while still divergent, the ROOTS say L4D2 in most of the design tropes. I can go shorter if I grossly oversimplify; "L4D2 with ARPG tropes". There, done. Struggling to 'describe it via comparison' just reveals the incapacity of that rhetoric in general, UNLESS things are explicitly X+Y= XY... Like that FPS Hotline Miami, that's... literally someone doing that formula and getting XY... Otherwise it's not really a useful way to communicate what a game is like. Using a whole paragraph of that to try to underline the difficulty of communicating what the game is like would have been my first suggestion to edit out of your draft for this, it mostly just says you can't wield an unwieldly thing well. No shit, dude, coulda fooled me!

[@prich0382]

Limit to 1 down*

[@quarkbent9165]

@@prich0382 It's like saying Super Mario Bros 2 is a different game because of poison mushrooms. While normally technically correct is the best correct, technically you're missing the point so... no. But thank you.

[@giova2704]

very well put together video, and very informative. i wish i was anywhere near as good as these players 😅

[@kaizaki9148]

Great video, really cool to see another perspective of the community I've been a part of for some years!

[@thetuerk]

This was a fun watch! I really enjoyed this rabbidhole

[@NovaIity]

I was never much for the modded community so this was a nice treat to see with a bunch of familiar faces. I would like to add my 2 cents and extend the point made at 9:00. An obscure part of v2 history is that before the onslaught tourney format existed, There was a smaller friendly-competitive community made by Zaphio and RwAoNrDdOsM called The Rat Races which was ofc centred around the the speedrunning niche. The two formats it had were live races over the course of a few maps (3 tries per map, then DQ), and a weekly segment with a specific map / seed / career choice. The Rat Races had a lot of ambition, but unfortunately died out early on due to a mix of over exhaustion and dwindling interest in speedrunning as a whole, but through its death it served as a valuable lesson and source of inspiration for the Onslaught Tourney format. One of the first places the onslaught tournament was advertised in was the Rat Race discord as somewhat of a sister/child community. Years ago Zaphio spoke the painful truth: "RIP Rat Races 2019-2019. The daddy of OS/CS. You shall not be remembered." imgur.com/a/OyTr9Ty

[@soggyflipflop]

in the minecraft speed runs, the issue is almost non existent. they would simply the gold pickaxes into its own speed run category which can’t apply without modifications to this situation

[@Pinoisreadingabook]

no, the only thing that vermintide does different from other coop pve games is the focus on melee combat....

[@elgringofeo9348]

The first 15 secs sounded like you were saying you have no life 😂

[@PedroDoderoEscalante]

Why not add an enemy that is the counter for the class that is broken?

[@TheRealSykx]

ahhahahah you don't know fatshark

[@LuizHenrique-zw5su]

6:05 fucking mood lmao

[@fizz_time7003]

It’s kinda like borderlands

[@Lykyk]

01:11 After seeing that face I never thought I'd hear the word drama.

[@zinstonehead]

Very nice vid! TY!

[@jakeman52]

Clicking off this video after the 5th "THIS IS" in the first minute. Like bruh

[@reallycool]

I'll tag you when I make a tiktok version

[@hoagie911]

It's a pretty common linguistic technique in English. Bit cheap, mainly used in ads, but hey this is a youtube video essay, you can't expect high quality scriptwriting.

[@CoHigh]

Favorite game ever! Maxed out every thing

[@DezZzO_YT]

Good to know how our community influenced this stuff, even though the boys are still afraid to even acknowledge our existence

[@hoagie911]

meh

[@anteeantee8144]

there was no cataclysm in vanilla

[@prich0382]

Vanilla refering to the game without mods. Cata is highest, unfortunately it's behind a pay wall yes, but if you really get into the game without diving into modded difficulties, you get all the DLC, needed anyway to unlock weapons and maps.

[@ShadowKari]

These people really need to touch grass

[@DouglasMeloche]

over 4 minute long intro... b y e

[@reallycool]

imagine admitting you need less words to stay interested, iPad kid

[@selectionn]

me trying to find the "Rise" of it (it doesnt exist, no one cares about it)