WWAUT - Fleshing Out SWAT

[Yoshiro]

Hello everyone!

For those who may have missed the news last week, we are working our way towards an opt in beta. This will include a great deal of balance work for existing perks (see last week's post) as well as the new SWAT perk. So what exactly is the SWAT perk?

The skills for the SWAT perk are set up so players can choose between a more tanking/supporting build or a build that focuses on fast reactions and slowing zeds down. This is what the perk tree currently looks like (subject to change before the beta):

Passives:

• Perk Weapon Damage
• Bullet Resistance
• Increased Mag Size
• Weapon Switch Speed

Level 5: Specialization

• Heavy Armor Training - While you still have armor, you do not take health damage, clots can’t grab you and you start the game with 50% armor
• Tactical Movement - No movement penalty for using iron sights or crouched movement

Level 10: Assault Techniques

• Close Combat Training - Increase damage with your 9mm pistol and knife by 100%. Begin each game with dual 9mm pistols
• Tactical Reload - Increase reload speed with perk weapons

Level 15: Equipment

• Suppression Rounds - Increase stumble power 100% with all perk weapons
• Ammo Vest - Carry up to 30% more ammo for each perk weapon

Level 20: Defensive Techniques

• Assault Armor - Maximum Armor increased by 50%. Begin each game with 50% more armor (stacks with heavy armor training)
• Cripple - Multiple hits with perk weapons will slow down zeds up to 30%. Hitting the legs is most effective

Level 25: Specialist Training

• Battering Ram - During Zed time, you move in real-time and have massive knockdown power when you run into a zed
• Rapid Assault - During Zed time, perk weapons have unlimited ammo, shoot in near real time and have increased stumble power by 100%

Weapons List:

• Flashbang Grenade
• Tactical Knife
• MP7
• MP5
• P90
• Kriss Vector

Also coming with the beta is the new M4 with M203 for the Demo perk. This will give demos some more choice as well as provide another off perk choice for those looking for a bit more versatility with their current weight loadout. As the new Tier 3 Demo weapon it does the bullet damage of a bullpup with the explosive power of the m79. I have an webm of it in action as well so check it out!

http://media.tripwirecdn.com/071916/m203.webm

Now the last topic I want to talk about today is the Server Takeover feature. We aren’t sure if this will make it in for the next content update but we wanted to give the community an idea of how it will work.

To start, players can create a party and head to matchmaking like they already do. Here there is a new item that will be presented to them under Game Progress - Create New Game. This option will have the matchmaker attempt to find the party an empty server that has not opted out of Server Takeover and change the Length, Difficulty and Map (stock maps only) to match the parties choice.

There is also another new option in Matchmaking that will tie into this called Permissions. Here parties can filter by (or set the option for their Server Takeover) to allow public joiners, friends only or a password. If a party chooses the password option they will be prompted to create a password for the duration of their server stay.

 

[TheTCREngineer]

M4203 Grenade seems terrible offperk(or maybe even in general) and SWAT's skills are a mess.

 

[poultrygeist]

looking good..thank you yoshiro.
cant wait to get my hand on the new weapons

about battering ram..i love the idea of you charging into a horde and them flying all over the place.
just as an idea. couldnt the swat perk have the choice between a shield (destructible) to use as defense or charge into groups if not deployed or a primary gun?

if the shield doesnt have too many HP's it could be very usefull and used tacticly while not be OP.

 

[Yoshiro]

We trialed a shield and its something we want to do at a later date but it isn't something we can bring online in time for launch.

 

[poultrygeist]

great..iam not pressed for time anyway. i just think a shield could bring a new aspect to the game.

 

[FoolishNinja]

The M4 M203 sounds AWESOME!

The SWAT perk has some interesting perk skills to choose. I like the Battering ram and Cripple skills.
The "Close Combat Training" is worthless. Switch it with something else tbh. Its a SMG class, why does he need dualies?
Shield will be a mess. What will be the purpose? Blocking doorways and be a 2nd choice zerkwall guy? I dont like that at all!

Whats sad is that P90 is T4 and Vector T3
Cant we switch them? P90 is such an overused gun.

 

[PurpleFanta]

I'm not gonna lie. Just the level 5 skills make me very excited for this perk, as well as just being able to use SMG's. The perk seems to have less unity than the other perks now that they've been reworked, some more than others. But this is pretty good and fun looking for a brand new perk that's not been in KF before. I cant believe you skipped the opportunity to give SWAT a police stick

I know balancing is hard to do without community feedback and time to test things out, and its also hard to know how well a perk will work without playing it. There just seems to be something missing from this perk. It seems like you've tried to keep reliance on skills from being a problem but swat seems to not be able to tank effectively until they have both armor skills. Also, didnt medic lose it's ability to restore armor? I cant see them having longevity past their initial armor and maybe a support supplying them with some armor once. Maybe they should have their armor degrade slower, but maybe take tiny amounts of health damage to make up for it.

That being said, I could see them being able to deal with things by not letting them catch them. Maybe they need some bonus move speed every 5 levels or on some skills. I love the idea of being a mobile tank like this. Cant wait to try this bad boy out.

Edit:
I think what I feel is missing is that innate perk passive that most other perks have. Like how commandos can see cloaked zeds and health bars, Berserkers cannot be grabbed, Demo is getting reactive armor. I think the level 5 perk skill should maybe be innate and the skill at 5 should compliment it. The base perk without skills seems to lack any direction. If it had some base tanky stats or an innate skill it would feel easier to go for the mobility/crowd controll tree.

 

[Chyros]

Oooh, interesting, liking the looks of those skills . I expected the P90 to be T3 and the Vector to be T4 but I guess you guys have some sort of interesting balancing mechanic in mind . Looking forward to the return of the M4/M203 as well, although either the Yoshiro isn't playing very well or the grenade launcher is much weaker than the M79 (only kills two Clots, an M79 would've killed a lot more I'd think).

Also really hoping for a nice HK bolt slap on the MP5 .

 

[PurpleFanta]

Oooh, interesting, liking the looks of those skills . I expected the P90 to be T3 and the Vector to be T4 but I guess you guys have some sort of interesting balancing mechanic in mind . Looking forward to the return of the M4/M203 as well, although either the Yoshiro isn't playing very well or the grenade launcher is much weaker than the M79 (only kills two Clots, an M79 would've killed a lot more I'd think).

Also really hoping for a nice HK bolt slap on the MP5 .

Its important to note that he's using swat on a demo weapon.
It's also important to note how awesome the gun sounds

 

[YtsorF]

Hello everyone!



The skills for the SWAT perk are set up so players can choose between a more tanking/supporting build or a build that focuses on fast reactions and slowing zeds down. This is what the perk tree currently looks like (subject to change before the beta):

Passives:

• Perk Weapon Damage
• Bullet Resistance
• Increased Mag Size
• Weapon Switch Speed

Level 5: Specialization

• Heavy Armor Training - While you still have armor, you do not take health damage, clots can’t grab you and you start the game with 50% armor
• Tactical Movement - No movement penalty for using iron sights or crouched movement

Level 10: Assault Techniques

• Close Combat Training - Increase damage with your 9mm pistol and knife by 100%. Begin each game with dual 9mm pistols
• Tactical Reload - Increase reload speed with perk weapons

Level 15: Equipment

• Suppression Rounds - Increase stumble power 100% with all perk weapons
• Ammo Vest - Carry up to 30% more ammo for each perk weapon

Level 20: Defensive Techniques

• Assault Armor - Maximum Armor increased by 50%. Begin each game with 50% more armor (stacks with heavy armor training)
• Cripple - Multiple hits with perk weapons will slow down zeds up to 30%. Hitting the legs is most effective

Level 25: Specialist Training

• Battering Ram - During Zed time, you move in real-time and have massive knockdown power when you run into a zed
• Rapid Assault - During Zed time, perk weapons have unlimited ammo, shoot in near real time and have increased stumble power by 100%

Weapons List:

• Flashbang Grenade
• Tactical Knife
• MP7
• MP5
• Kriss Vector
• P90

Well, now that we have the perk skills listed out, some skills seem good, while some of them I don't really understand. First off, lets start with the level 20 skill Cripple; it should be worded differently, or there should be a provided list of ZED body parts and their relative effective stumble rates. It says the legs are the most effective, but what are the ratios for other parts of the body.

Battering Ram just sounds either overpowered or really bad. What is the definition of "massive knockdown power"? As for Rapid Assault, does the stumble power with this skill stack with the level 15 skill Suppression Roundsfor a 200% stumble during ZED time? Also, that M4M203 might be good, or really bad. It sounds really cool though.

Overall, Getting that opt-in beta out so we can play around with the new perk changes will be the true deciding factor on what skills are balanced or not. But I'm sure that you guys over at TW will be crawling through this thread, looking for feedback. Hopefully some of the more intelligent feedback is noticed.

 

[poultrygeist]

Shield will be a mess. What will be the purpose? Blocking doorways and be a 2nd choice zerkwall guy? I dont like that at all!

not where iam coming from.as i said my idea is to have the choice between a shield and a sidearm or a primary.
sure you can use it to aid zerkwalling but you can also use it tacticly if your team gets overwhelmed. or charge into a group with it (without having to wait till zed time) and clear a path for your group. or deploy it at one side knowing it only lasts that long but will make sure you're not attacked from that side for the duration.

 

[jd641]

I think maybe SWAT will need a bit of tweaking, but that's what this opt-in beta is for.

Yoshiro, will the rig fix for Rae not blinking be included in the beta? Munk said that it would hopefully be in a future content update, I was just wondering if he meant a big update like this one or something else.

 

[Gregs2k2]

M203 sound, muzzle flash and reflections are superb. V.weak off perk damage on that nade though.

 

[YtsorF]

I expected the P90 to be T3 and the Vector to be T4 but I guess you guys have some sort of interesting balancing mechanic in mind .

If you want to go all gun-nut, technically the 5.7x28mm cartridge goes a little over 1,000 FPS faster than a .45, but them having a balance plan is the probable answer xD

Also really hoping for a nice HK bolt slap on the MP5 .

Please yes we need that.

 

[CrispyTreats]

The hype is real! Can't wait to play with all the new stuff, however the Swat seems to need a tweak or two. Nobody is going to opt out of the first armor perk. I'm not sure how OP that would make swat since there will be no more armor healing so maybe that won't be as bad as I think it will be. A few of the skills seem geared towards having the riot shield and that would make some of the choices pretty interesting. Too bad we have to wait till post release for that though. Other than that, I think it looks good so far. There are a lot of new skills that are purely about utility and not boring ol damage increases. Thanks for posting Yoshiro.

 

[CrispyTreats]

Also the m4 sounds amazing! A few questions though. Will the bullets get a damage increase per level on demo, can you make the other assault rifles sound this amazing, and can you please make the ar-15 sights look way more open like the m4's? It's almost impossible to see through in its current state.

 

[Yoshiro]

Most of the assault weapons are getting a sound pass in this update (except for the AK I believe).

 

[Escadin]

To start, players can create a party and head to matchmaking like they already do. Here there is a new item that will be presented to them under Game Progress - Create New Game. This option will have the matchmaker attempt to find the party an empty server that has not opted out of Server Takeover and change the Length, Difficulty and Map (stock maps only) to match the parties choice.

There is also another new option in Matchmaking that will tie into this called Permissions. Here parties can filter by (or set the option for their Server Takeover) to allow public joiners, friends only or a password. If a party chooses the password option they will be prompted to create a password for the duration of their server stay.

Will we be able to use this feature without matchmaking?

 

[szpen]

Do you have a specific date when the beta will be available to us ? I really would like to test the new things out.

 

[Reclusiarch]

Everything looks promising as heck, loving it! the only complain I have about the m4 is that when you shoot the m203 you can see the m4 ejecting a case. Still, great stuff!