WWAUT - Survivalist Tree

[Yoshiro]

Hello everyone! We are back today with some more concrete details (subject to change at any time before we launch on Nov 18th as we continue to evaluate it). Last time around, we talked about the high level concept of what the Survivalist is: a high skill cap, jack-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none (or the bard for those of you who play those sorts of games... with "magic" and "dragons").

Players who choose to play the Survivalist will have an interesting start to the game; by default the perk start with an HE grenade, a machete (for its knife), and a random tier 1 weapon. The Survivalist's passives include Weapon damage (.6% per level in current testing), Global damage resistance (1% per level), Heavy Body Armor (1% per level), and Zedtime Reload (3% per level).

Diving into the perk skill tree, this is where the player makes choices to how the Survivalist will play out for them.

Level 5 - Weapon Handling:

• Tactical Reload - Increase reload speed with Commando, Gunslinger, and SWAT Weapons
• Heavy Weapons Training - Increase reload speed with Demolitionist, Sharpshooter, and Support Weapons

Level 10 - Survival Techniques

• Medic Training - Increase the potency of all your healing by 20% and decrease the cooldown of your syringe and healing darts 25%
• Melee Expert - Increase melee attack speed 15%, inflict 10% more damage, and move 25% faster when using any melee weapon

Level 15 - Equipment

• Ammo Vest - Carry up to 15% more ammo for all your weapons and your grenades are swapped out for Healing Grenades
• Weapon Harness - Increase carrying capacity by 5 and your grenades are swapped out for Molotov cocktails

Level 20 - Destruction

• Spontaneous Zed-plosion - Zeds you kill have a 20% chance to explode, damaging and knocking down nearby Zeds
• Make Things Go Boom - Increase area of effect of all explosives by 25%

Level 25 - Specialist Training

• Madman - During Zed time all your weapons shoot 3x faster
• Lockdown - During Zed time the power of all incapacitation methods are increase by 200% for all weapons

Our goal is to have this content in community hands as an opt-in beta at some point over the next few weeks (we are looking at early November) so we can get player feedback and make any adjustments needed before launch. We also are rolling in some changes we had hoped to have out as a Quality of Life update into that opt in beta instead of having it as a separate build to allow us to concentrate more on working on the game instead of the build and QA process.

As we covered in the last WWAUT, the content teams are hard at work on what we hope will be a nice holiday experience for you and yours as you take your trusty Mace and Shield and enjoy the beach while running away from the More Gore Faster (we really need to name him soon, let us know if you have any suggestions!).

 

[Kittenmittens]

Yes please, I want all the molotovs! mwhahaha

 

[PurpleFanta]

I can already tell this perk isnt quite what I was hoping for.

When you make a perk that's supposed to be a jack of all trades, dont give it perk skills that restrict it to specific perk weapons. Like at level 5. I'd rather it be all weapons reload speed and then something completely different for all weapons on the other side.

Level 10 is either specifically berserker or specifically medic, while medic is alot better globally, it's either going to be "Are you going to melee or not"
It needs to be more of a "what role do you want to fill" than "what perk do you want to try and copy"

Level 15 is better. It's got more general use than perk copying. I like that you have grenade swaps.

Level 20 is more of a "Heres some demolitionist stuff" which doesnt feel like a jack of all trades thing. The two skills themselves might be okay (I actually think they look a tiny bit lackluster) but they both just fit the same theme. On a perk that I thought was supposed to be a "build your own perk" kind of deal.

Level 25, I've never had a perk to level 25. But I guess alright from what I can tell.

EDIT: By the way, I love playing bards in DnD and Pathfinder. Which is why I was looking forward to this perk. Someone brought up that Commando could have been similar to a bard because it has team bonus effects. I also think I remember there being some sort of Damage resistance or reload speed aura somewhere in the game really early in the game.

I think what the perk needs is for the skills to have more diversity. Rather than having a "berserker" skill at level 10, it could be move speed, damage and attack speed across all weapons. Or for simi auto weapons and melee weapons to attack faster, but on the other side have a broad coverage of bonuses. I'm personally fine with having a medic perk becuase it's a generally good thing to have regardless of what you're doing.

In level 5 there's 2 of the same skill but for different weapon groups. I think another way to think about this is all of the perks are focusing more on which perk you want to be like rather than focusing on what you want to do. Like in berserker, you can either pick beween being tanky or doing more damage, having more sustain or being a powerhouse ect. In this it just feels like I'm picking what perks I want to steal from. I like where in level 15 it feels more like you're building a perk because it changes what you can do, rather than chose which weapons you're efficient with. I feel like the weapons that you're going to use should come from your skills, not have your skills chose which weapons you're going to use.

 

[Goyanium]

If that's gonna be the final perk icon, You should come up with a new one for Off-Perk. I think it'll confuse people with two similar icons in the Trader. Also I like the name Gorefaster.

 

[Veny]

To be completely honest, i expected more.
Releasing hybrid perk as the last of the perks had a great potential - with more levels and more perks we could do more specializations, more XP grinding and more unique choices. This? This survivalist is simply made of recycled perks, with no new mechanic and no new weapon (except for machette and grenade, that we wont be using anyway).

I think 100 levels (at level 50 this perk may be renamed into Horzine specialist at he is not "master-of-none" anymore) and 40 perks would bring much more fun and it could provide great way, how to prepare for HoE difficulty.

No offense but this look like a way, how to rush developement and fulfil promise of 10 perks without adding actual content, sorry.

 

[Blow-Ya-Mind]

Sounds interesting, I will have to see how it plays out.

 

[FoolishNinja]

Almost all perks have this kind of perk skill as level 25: "do something faster in zed time." Can we get some more interesting skills?

About the skill tree for the survivalist, it looks pretty interesting and need to see it in action first, before we judge it =)

 

[Jorick]

I'd have liked to get the choice of things I get, since I couldn't care less of zed time reloading speed as a passive, and would've liked more HP, resistances & stuff, or in fact, anything but that, same goes for the skills like bigger explosions in general (truly useful on a medic for example, or a berzerker). The skill tree there, no offense, but doesn't invites me to tailor anything to my taste. Even worse, I don't even get to choose the kind of grenades I want to use, what if I wanted to use flash nades instead of a terrible molotov, or healing grenade that doesn't suit my playstyle ? The passives are on the borderline OP side, but the perk itself is a disappointment like it is presented right now. I just hope it'll turn out better at the beta build, and we're actually going to be given an ACTUAL choice in the way we want to play the perk, with a drag & drop system with a pool of skills for each tier. And finally, how am I supposed to use the flamethrower without a consequent damage boost from the skills considering it's terrible even with a 35% damage bonus from skills ? Same goes for all the weapons who shine only because of skills, like the bullpup not being able to decap a gorefast in one shot without the ''Hollow point rounds'' skill.

And no, I'm not hating on it for the sake of it, since I'm one of those guys that obviously want it to be great. Please take a second look at the tree and allow us to have deeper customization to our builds.

 

[imnrk]

Survivalist looks great! I don't buy what everyone else is saying about it, it looks like a lot of fun to play. I always like using off-perk weapons, so this should be great.

 

[jd641]

I'm not sure how I feel about Survivalist, I'm really not excited about it like I thought I'd be.

I do have a two questions for you though that are sort of OT:

1. Will the in-game store update before the new beta?

2. What is the plan for adding the submitted content on the workshop that hasn't shown up on the marketplace yet? Will that arrive before or after the game becomes retail?

Bonus question: Why would you not want Killing Floor 2 as your e-friend on steam?

 

[DARKNESS]

His name is... TwinBlade.

 

[Yoshiro]

I'm not sure how I feel about Survivalist, I'm really not excited about it like I thought I'd be.

I do have a two questions for you though that are sort of OT:

1. Will the in-game store update before the new beta?

2. What is the plan for adding the submitted content on the workshop that hasn't shown up on the marketplace yet? Will that arrive before or after the game becomes retail?

Bonus question: Why would you not want Killing Floor 2 as your e-friend on steam?

1) We are trying to work one in, but everybody is focused on getting the game out the door
2) We will continue to add things over time

 

[Jorick]

1) We are trying to work one in, but everybody is focused on getting the game out the door
2) We will continue to add things over time

Is there some hope we actually get to choose the skills we want from a pool of skills (more than 2 at least) in the future when it comes to the survivalist ?

 

[half_baked]

As we covered in the last WWAUT, the content teams are hard at work on what we hope will be a nice holiday experience for you and yours as you take your trusty Mace and Shield and enjoy the beach while running away from the More Gore Faster.

Good to know the beach map has finally been confirmed.

I was hoping for some more info on the matriarch.

Still looking forward to the opt-in beta and testing out survivalist.

 

[DreaderVII]

Ohh..

Ohhhh..

This feels alot more restrictive then I initially thought. And I am not onboard the 100 lvls or Drag and Drop kind of perk that others want it to be. Keeping it to two choices is the way to go, don't change the mold, but the choices could have been more versatile then just choose if you wanna be thrash killer-ish or heavy weapons-ish.

Let's see how it plays out, but the tree got no excitement from me right now.

EDIT: Oh, and he should obviously be named: Ripper so you can dress him as Jack the Ripper on Halloween.

 

[Yoshiro]

Is there some hope we actually get to choose the skills we want from a pool of skills (more than 2 at least) in the future when it comes to the survivalist ?

This isn't do-able with the current perk system. We will be making changes to the perk tree based on player feedback but it can't be completely open ended.

 

[Supurdave]

1. Splitting the level 5 skill is the biggest problem I see. It forces players who want to play sharpshooter and gunslinger to only get a bonus for 1 weapon group. This isn't good for a jack of all trades perk, all weapons should get the tactical reload.

2. starting with a random weapon isn't something I would ever want dual 9mms, or a single 1911 would be better.

3. A skill choice between melee and healing seems really restrictive when you may not want either of those play styles in your jack of all trades. At least put the healing grenade with the medic skill.

edit.
It just occurred to me that putting specializations on the right side and general skills on the left would be a great way to manage this skill tree.

for example put tactical reload (all weapons) next to +20% recoil reduction, start with mp7 and flashbang grenade.

this way you could include 5 diferent perk grenades and equipment while not forcing any on the player. The left side could include many generic bonusses that could benefit any perk.

 

[Survii]

oh god what a pile of ****


sorry but its the brutal truth, i thought you would atleast be able to choose your perk skills

 

[TheTCREngineer]

It's okay, most of the skills don't look that big. Hate the random zed explosions skill though, that's really dumb. Also, not allowing me to pick what grenade, knife, or weapon to spawn with? Thanks, but no. It makes sense, and I get it, but no.

 

[EctoCooler]

This is a mess. You get a random tier 1, so you won't know what skills you need each round. At level 15, you have no way to keep your HE grenade. A mishmash of some of the most boring skills in the game. I realize TWI is trying to shove this "10th perk" into the game in time for launch, but damn.