You guys are sounding like lvl 1's and 2's 3's and 4's are useless in suicidal.
Have you become too greedy for a easy game? Half the fun is having it challenging, and not all the Lvl 1's and 2's etc are bad. They can still do great damage just like everyone else.. Its not a HUGE decrease.. Yes.. some aren't the best players, but that just gives the more err "mature" players a chance to teach the lowers a little about the game instead of ragging on them. I'm seeing alot of that during the games i've played in.
Yeah... you can get off your high horse now. I can assure you that no one cares about your moral posturing. That said, firstly, challenge is all subjective. Take Fallout 3, for example. I've spoken to many people who feel that Normal is hard-enough without having to bump it up any further, meanwhile I'm over here saying that Hard is too easy. Having low-leveled Perks isn't about challenge vs ease (because Suicidal can still be very hard even with all Level 6 players), it's about knowing that my teammates have played an experienced the game. It's more justifying to get pissed at that Level 6 player for getting killed while doing something stupid, meanwhile that Level 0 player I can only think "Why is he in here if he doesn't know what he's doing yet?"
Secondly, you can talk all high and mighty about "being mature" and taking the opportunity to teach a new player about the game all that you want. Heck, I'm behind that 100%, newbies gotta learn about the game somehow, and if experienced players want to teach them, then that's great. Suicidal isn't the place for that. I could write a whole other paragraph about this, but I'll just keep it simple: If a player hasn't learned the basics of the game, they're going to die. Every wave. With few kills. If any.
No to level smoothing. If I join a server as level 6 and everyone else is level 2 then I have earnt the right to kill everything first. I would not appreciate being dragged down to a temporary level 2. Equally the opposite of boosting the level 2's to level 6 is just ridiculous because they would have the temporary perk advantages but without the experience. Pointless and a low quality gaming experience for all. If someone buys a game a year later that requires some kind of progression they just have to face the fact they are behind their friend who has been playing for a year period. Applies to the majority of games and for good reason.
Wow. Just wow. I barely even know where to start with that, so I'll just go from the beginning. Your opening comment about having "the right to kill everything" is just 100% wrong. Dead wrong. Not even anything to debate there. This is a team game, and if you're joining low-difficulty servers just so that you can rake-up all the kills from people who are actually trying to level their perks, you're just a jerk. End of story. You are the reason why this feature should be implemented, thank you for being an example.
Also note that it's a server OPTION, thus you could just look for a server with non-locked levels if you're really that dead-set on grieving people.
As for the second part of your post, I think you misunderstood (though maybe I miss-worded). The idea of only allowing (for example) Level 5 and up Perks isn't that people would be "boosted" to that level for every perk. It's that they could only pick from Perks that they have increased passed that point. If a server admin had set a minimum of Level 5 for the server, then any perk at Level 4 or lower would be grayed-out.
Finally we get to the part about "If you buy a game a year after your friends, you just have to accept that it'll take a year to catch-up"... Umm... no. Even in MMOs like World of Warcraft you can get caught-up to your friend who's been raiding for a year within a few months if you really work at it. As for anything less time-devoting than that, I can't imagine a game requiring more than maybe a few weeks to catch-up within a respectable degree.
In short, the problem with your "taking a year to catch-up" point is that you assume that the first friend playing the game has been progressing for 100% of that year, when the more likely case is that he spent the first few weeks making major progress, and spent the rest of that time just playing because he liked the game, but making little or no actual progress. Granted that Killing Floor takes more than a few weeks to get all your Perks to Level 6, but it still doesn't take a full year's-worth of gameplay to achieve (assuming steady playtime).
