Merc Report - Fall Field Improvements 2023

[Kittenmittens]

Hello Mercs!

As we near Autumn and the Halloween Seasonal Event, it’s time to talk upcoming quality of life improvements and additions for everyone joining the fight against the outbreak. Horzine wants more than candy; they are looking for zeds with new tricks. New matchmaking options and the usual balance based on community feedback are incoming!

Bounty Hunt Weekly Outbreak

Horzine is locating and targeting zeds exhibiting advanced behaviors in this new mission for mercs code-named Bounty Hunt and is looking for fearless mercs to step up! These zeds are more formidable and have developed different instincts, making them harder to take down. Upon discovery, the first oddity our research has uncovered is that these zeds flee when approached. Unlike their counterparts who attack endlessly, seeking out any life to extinguish without concern for themselves, these zeds run away. This sign of self-preservation isn’t the only new concerning behavior! Reports claim they began requiring more firepower as those in the field killed more of their surrounding mobs. It’s as if the extermination of their fellow clones triggers a heightened state. Those who have made contact with these strange zeds also claim them to be more aggressive, dealing more damage as the mindless hoards dwindle. The team recommends dealing with these specific zeds as soon as possible to prevent these effects.

Not all zeds types exhibit this behavior. The reconnaissance informs us they can only confirm Rioters, Quarter Pounders, Gorefiends, and Scrakes. To make further endangering your lives worthwhile, Horzine will reward Dosh per Bounty Zed kill to each member of squads on these missions. However, to keep your focus on these dangerous new threats, there will be no dosh reward for the Non-Bounty Zeds. Don’t worry! There will still be a general Dosh reward for the squad at trader times. To increase security for each merc that steps up, the HUD will reflect how many Bounty Zeds are left and mark them according to the threat level.

• Yellow: no buffs regarding how many Zeds are left currently applied
• Orange: 50% or less wave Zeds remaining
• Red: 10% or less wave Zeds remaining

Each merc that can successfully meet this challenge will receive 500,000 Vault Dosh and a new look for their Desert Eagle!




Quality of Life Additions

Weekly Mode Selector
Tripwire and Saber have enjoyed bringing new unique, and exciting ways to play Killing Floor 2 with the editions of The Weekly Outbreaks. Since the first Weekly Outbreaks edition in the 2017 Summer Sideshow, 21 modes have been dreamed up and added to the game! Just as it sounds, these modes rotate weekly. That’s a lot of time for players to wait for their favorites to be active. Now players will be able to choose their best-loved Weekly Outbreak anytime!

Now, after choosing “Weekly” as the game mode, players can select which Weekly Outbreak they want to play using a dropdown menu. The menu will include a “Current Weekly” option to highlight which Weekly Outbreak is active per the regular rotation. Only current Weekly Outbreaks will grant the Weekly Outbreak Rewards.

FIND A MATCH:
This option prioritizes finding a populated weekly server regardless of the type first. If it needs to perform a server takeover to give the player a weekly server within their region, it will then set to the current active weekly index rather than any hidden preference set within Create a Match or Solo.
CREATE A MATCH:
Creates a match with the chosen Weekly Outbreak, taking over an existing empty server enabled for takeover based on the requested Weekly Outbreak chosen.
SOLO OFFLINE:
It lets you play locally in Solo mode for any Weekly Outbreak. Pick your favorite one using the selector (same filters as Create a Match).

SERVER BROWSER:
Allows the player to search for a specific weekly mode, showing an icon in the main list and indicating the weekly that the Server hosts within the details.

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Additionally, here are details for server admins to set their preferred weekly:

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How to configure your server
Add the following line to your batch file: "?WeeklySelectorIndex=<NUMBER>"
The <NUMBER> will correspond to the desired Weekly. The list is the following:
1: Boom
2: Cranium Cracker
3: Tiny Terror
4: Bobble Zed
5: Poundemonium
6: Up, Up, and Decay
7: Zed Time
8: Beef Cake
9: Blood Thirst
10: Coliseum
11: Arachnophobia
12: Scavenger
13: Wild West London
14: Abandon All Hope
15: Boss Rush
16: Shrunken Heads
17: Arsenal Ascent
18: Primary Target
19: Perk Roulette
20: Contamination Zone
21: Bounty Hunt

The current Weekly Outbreak rotation will continue working as it was, updated weekly as usual. Weekly rewards will only be granted if the Current Weekly is chosen. Playing any custom Weekly Outbreak won’t grant any reward.


Weapon Balance Changes

The Killerwatt was powerful but could be more comfortable to use. We sped up its alt-fire charge rate, increased the default fire mode damage, and made it easier to control while alt-firing.

Killerwatt

• Default fire mode damage from 50 to 55
• Alt-Fire charge time 30% reduction
• The camera turn ratio is now x5 faster than the previous version when alt-firing
• Spare ammo increased from 300 to 450

The Head Hunter and the Reducto Ray had a shared problem: it took too long for Zeds with altered sizes (heads or entire bodies) to return to their original state. Now recovery rates are sped up.

Reducto Ray

• Reduction effect removal speed x2

Head Hunter

• Time to start head reduction x5 times quicker
• Head reduction rate decreased by 10%

HRG Vampire

• Crosshair added

Perk Balance Changes

We heard your feedback regarding the ammo price for one of the most ammo-consuming perks of the game, the SWAT. All the ammo now costs 10% less (except for the HRG Nailgun).
Many players also expressed that 3 Support skills weren’t being used as they did not feel enticing enough alternatives to their counterparts. Those have now been updated as follows:

• Fortitude - 10% damage reduction in addition to the 50% health increase
• Armor Piercing Shot - 5% Perk Weapon damage increase in addition to the penetration buff
• ZED TIME - Penetrator - Now allows the player to reload in real-time in addition to the existing buffs.

Player input suggested that Acidic Rounds is a skill that caused more harm than helped the cooperative playstyle. We’ve taken that feedback and revamped the skill, maintaining the poison theme: now the darts shot from Medic weapons cause more damage over time, allowing the Medic to help in specific situations instead of poisoning zeds in unwanted scenarios.

Stay tuned for more reports to come detailing some new treats coming mercs way!

 

[Milan]

Killerwatt

• Default fire mode damage from 50 to 55
• Alt-Fire charge time 30% reduction
• The camera turn ratio is now x5 faster than the previous version when alt-firing
• Spare ammo increased from 300 to 450

Just in time

Many players also expressed that 3 Support skills weren’t being used as they did not feel enticing enough alternatives to their counterparts. Those have now been updated as follows:

• Fortitude - 10% damage reduction in addition to the 50% health increase
• Armor Piercing Shot - 5% Perk Weapon damage increase in addition to the penetration buff
• ZED TIME - Penetrator - Now allows the player to reload in real-time in addition to the existing buffs.

Support has literally the most wide arsenal consisting of weapons with almost every damage type, including blunderbuss, which can hold 5 rounds in one mag! Almost like Demo with m32 or seal squeal.
I usually use Blunderbuss with HRG Ballistic bouncer and Shockgun, This is by comparison the most solid loadout for support, and now he's almost like berserk with 10% damage reduction and additional 5% damage for close range.

Also i feel like Penetrator will now be used for clearing long hallways such as one in Containment station, this perk is more fitter for boomstick and doomstick. I will definitely use it. I love support with how much weapons he got and various tactics and ways to engage

I will wait for new arsenal report

 

[Alica_T.3.R]

Has there been any work done on DDOS attacks on user servers? Still, server admins make no small contribution to the life of the game. It's sad to see posts from admins "The server is temporarily down, work is underway to protect the servers." Can you help and put a post on Steam? And that is, there are already a few cansperological thoughts that it is you who do not allow other servers to work. Okay servers with training, but simple servers suffer.

 

[Aleflippy]

"Bounty Hunt" sounds quite convoluted for something that's actually very simple... It's pretty much the opposite of the "Defend The Zone" objectives But I like the idea of chasing down a specific zed instead of running away from them or simply letting them come to a camping spot of choice. It miiight be super annoying... or bring some new gameplay flavor. I really hope it will be the latter. I do hope that the extra dosh is variable though... But I don't know what would be best?

Should you get more dosh the sooner you kill the bounty? Or more dosh the stronger he gets?
Regarding the zeds that can appear as bounties, I'm a bit less enthusiastic to be honest. I wouldn't have expected a clot or a crawler to be one, of course... But a Siren or Husk? That's more plausible. Fleshpounds rather than Quarterpounds as well. My boy the Scrake is well-deserving of being a priority target, but Rioters and Quarterpounders are kinda annoying to deal with ngl. But we'll see how it goes.

It seems like for once we won't get a mutator that changes the gameplay drastically, and yet will still have a large impact on the way you (and especially your whole team) will play. At least I hope so... It would be a shame if people just take down every zeds around just to come and get the bounty at the end, free of any danger.

The Weekly Selector is FINALLY THERE and I cannot thank you enough for that. I kinda wish you went the extra mile and allowed us to choose multiple weeklies at once... Or that rewards were available at all times (after all, it doesn't make the weeklies any easier. It just allows you to retry more often). But that's a nice start.

The Killerwatt buff is incomprehensible, however. The weapon is already rock-solid in the hands of the Survivalist, with the only balancing factors being its price (being a T5) and how much you have to commit to using the alt-fire (lots of ammo + being brought to a crawl + charging up... but in exchange for a beam of death that melts everything, FPs included). I felt it was very powerful but still somewhat "balanced". Those buffs really didn't seem that necessary...

I pretty much never use either the Reducto Ray or the Head Hunter, so I can't really say much about these changes. The HRG Vampire already had a crosshair if I'm not mistaken? I never really had trouble aiming with it? Or maybe you're talking about a literal crosshair, not just the ability to ADS...

SWAT being cheaper to maintain sounds a little extra, but 10% ain't really the end of the world either. I think I would have enjoyed more max ammo a tad better, but I welcome the cost reduction, especially in earlier waves (even if the SWAT already has an edge with its full armor and dual 9mm on spawn...)

Support receiving a lot of love this time around apparently! Fortitude giving some all-around damage reduction indeed makes it a bit more desirable... But 10% seems like a fairly small bonus. I'll let the experts do the math, but I doubt that will save you from most really nasty times. And then again, giving out a bigger bonus (let's say 20%) in addition to a generous 50 extra hitpoints ? That'd turn the Support into a better tank than even the SWAT or Zerk ! I think it's another one of those cases where X (aka "Fortitude") is not a bad option, it's just that Y (aka "Salvo") is better.

Wait... People don't use Armor-Piercing Shots? That has been my go-to option ever since the beginning! I find the tighter spread to be unnecessary with most weapons personally... Most shotguns are already quite accurate enough at their desirable ranges. And zeds aren't very smart: they keep coming toward you anyway! Even with the few weapons I thought "Tight Choke" would be worthy (namely the Boomstick and Doomstick), it ended up ruining their very quirks, like being able to blast a group of crawlers or clots in a single shell. Sure, sniping monsters at mid-range with less wasted buckshot is neat, but being able to skewer a line of zeds is even better, and the very small (c'mon... 5%?) damage will make it even more desirable.

Penetrator suffers the same way Fortitude does IMO. Reloading faster and making short work of crowds is nice, but firing faster and cranking up that DPS is even better. Plus, if you're already using Armor Piercing Shots... Isn't that overkill? I could only see that new Penetrator asset being mad useful with weapons with super small mags, the Boomstick being the obvious candidate. For many others though... Depleting your mags in a blink sounds more helpful honestly.

 

[LorenzoZp]

I would like to choose survivor and demolition, can't you?

 

[OnionBubs]

Not really sure SWAT needs the buff, but OK, I guess. As long as Firebug is as easy to play as it is, SWAT is going to look lacking by comparison. Why bother aiming when the Infinite Fire Sticks can play the game for you by shooting them into a chokepoint from across the map?

Many players also expressed that 3 Support skills weren’t being used as they did not feel enticing enough alternatives to their counterparts. Those have now been updated as follows:

• Fortitude - 10% damage reduction in addition to the 50% health increase
• Armor Piercing Shot - 5% Perk Weapon damage increase in addition to the penetration buff
• ZED TIME - Penetrator - Now allows the player to reload in real-time in addition to the existing buffs.

The reason most of those alternate skills are passed over, especially in the meta, is because of how the preferred picks help counteract some of Support's weaknesses and how they scale better as players improve at the game and understand Support's strengths and weaknesses (as well as how the meta skills synergize with each other).

Salvo is an extra 30% increase on top of Support's 25% extra damage passive , which changes a number of breakpoints/shots-to-kill, which is very important, especially with a perk as tricky to master as Support. Understanding shots-to-kill on each Zed is part and parcel of top-tier Support play, To greatly simplify the point for the sake of brevity, most of Support's weapons have slow/clunky firing speeds and work best at close range. Failing to kill things at close range means you get hit as they close into melee range, and Support does not do well with crowds of enemies already bearing down on them at melee range. All of this is largely made less of an issue by killing things in fewer shots.
Salvo, in other words, changes Support from a clunky dedicated trash killer to a generalist that can handle pretty much anything given the appropriate loadouts and player skill.
Meanwhile, Fortitude's main benefit comes into play when you are not killing things and are getting hit (and thus are taking it with the understanding that you will be getting hit enough to warrant taking it over fewer universal shots-to-kill), in which case you already have a problem. Fortitude does nothing for skilled players who do not die to begin with. On top of that, having increased shots-to-kill means you very well may be taking hits where you otherwise would've killed something before it became a problem to begin with if you were using Salvo.

Armor Piercing Shot's problems are twofold:

• It's extra penetration on a perk that already gets 500% extra penetration boosts.
  • Ask yourself this question: when a maximum of 32 Zeds can exist in a server at any given time, how many Zeds are you--the one Support--regularly dealing with at once? You already effectively kill up to 5 clots/crawlers with each trigger pull; are you ever going to run into that much at once on a regular basis throughout each wave unless you are carrying the entire team via one lane as Support?
  • Realistically speaking, your odds of lining up that many Zeds that will actually die with that many unfocused pellets (as damage on each trigger pull is split between all the pellets, not like in Payday 2 where one pellet does as much damage as all pellets) at once is miniscule. You'll never get to put all that extra penetration to use.
• It's not Tight Choke.
  • Tight Choke changes Support from a dedicated close/point-blank perk (that does not like Zeds being very close) to a close-medium ranged perk depending on the weapon.
  • It solves the weaknesses of many shotguns in this game: you don't have to worry as much about pellets whizzing past a Zed's head at a reasonable distance, you don't have to get as close to the mostly melee enemies, it turns the AA-12 into an extremely effective ranged weapon capable of picking off trash and medium Zeds alike (which combos excellently with Concussion Rounds), as well as actually allowing Support to use it against HVTs without risking close-range hits during takedowns.
  • In other words, Tight Choke fixes most of Support's inherent problems, other than lack of hitscans.
    • The only shotguns it doesn't help are already bad on Support in the first place (Trenchgun)
  • "But doesn't having Tight Choke make you worse against trash?" Technically, yes...but only in situations where Support would need the extra spread so badlythat they would give up the accuracy boost, in which case you are probably positioned badly to begin with and thus the point is moot since you are already playing in a less-than-ideal manner. Support already is ideal for being positioned in hallways and chokepoints where they can funnel Zeds and maximize their already existing damage output by plowing through crowds, while allowing for quick executions on HVTs should they close the distance to a point where Support needs to handle them. Needing the extra spread means you are allowing Zeds to crowd you just to shoot them, which is bad practice to begin with.
    • If Zeds can already regularly surround you to the point where you need wide-spread blasts to keep them at bay, either you or the team are collectively doing something wrong (or you are playing Support on a questionable map where chokes and funelling are not an option, in which case Support is a bad pick).

5% damage is going to change absolutely nothing about it being bad; Tight Choke is just that good.

Penetrator is bad because--again--as with APR, the excessive penetration is the prime example of "diminishing returns," but also because Barrage's real-time DPS makes Support able to use the M4 and AA-12 to decap pretty much anything in Zed-Time (or just blast an entire hallway of Zeds in one magazine if available).
The suggested skill would probably wind up like Tactician for Commando in that you give up a lot for being able to top off in Zed-Time: the loss of damage means you're giving up Zed-Time kills, and if you need Penetrator just to keep topped off, you're probably doing something very wrong to begin with as Support.

The point being most of those alt skills just aren't that good if you actually learn how to play Support to begin with; Fortitude is basically a crutch and the others are just bad.

Wait... People don't use Armor-Piercing Shots? That has been my go-to option ever since the beginning! I find the tighter spread to be unnecessary with most weapons personally... Most shotguns are already quite accurate enough at their desirable ranges.

The idea is that it makes Support a better fighter at longer distances. In a game where Zeds are locked to melee and close the distance quickly, players usually have range advantage, and TC's range advantage boost to a class otherwise sorely lacking in it is immensely helpful.

It takes advantage of this game's complete absence of damage falloff and makes Supports actually capable of long-range takedowns without getting hit. Not having it effectively relegates the Support to trash-only duty...and there are so many better options than Support for trash duty.

Even with the few weapons I thought "Tight Choke" would be worthy (namely the Boomstick and Doomstick), it ended up ruining their very quirks, like being able to blast a group of crawlers or clots in a single shell.

While they can do that to a limited degree, it's not the intended use; they function best as execution tools to kill Scrakes/FPs in a couple of alt-fires at most with reload-cancelling and the range extension provided by Tight Choke.

Trying to use them like the Doom II Super Shotgun, with how clunky they are and how the spread works in this game, doesn't work that well.

 

[OnionBubs]

Oops, missed one:

Player input suggested that Acidic Rounds is a skill that caused more harm than helped the cooperative playstyle. We’ve taken that feedback and revamped the skill, maintaining the poison theme: now the darts shot from Medic weapons cause more damage over time, allowing the Medic to help in specific situations instead of poisoning zeds in unwanted scenarios.

The problem isn't just the poison DoT itself being bad, per se; the problem is the poison affliction causing thrashing about and so forth which makes life suck when you're a precision perk trying to hit a Zed reenacting a Source Engine corpse glitching out. Acidic Rounds in the pre-this-patch-buff state just means that every single hit from the Medic applies it instead of only applying to darts, on top of the Medic in question missing out on the left-side buffs that could actually be useful for the team.

If poison did some kind of debuff it would be leagues more helpful than "a single point of DoT that causes enemies to flail about and scatter everywhere." This only makes Acidic Rounds less bad, not actually good.

 

[pie1055]

• It's extra penetration on a perk that already gets 500% extra penetration boosts.

Well, technically that's only +5 penetration power on top of most shotguns' base 2. When a Bloat has 3 penetration resistance you can only hit zeds behind them for ~57% damage with the passive alone(2 + 5 - 3 = 4 / 7 damage to the next zed hit). More penetration allows you to increase that post-penetration damage, making it easier to maintain damage thresholds. With Armor Piercing Shot's +4 additional penetration the post-penetration damage becomes ~72%(2 + 5 + 4 - 3 = 8 / 11), not to mention Penetrator's massive +30 which really helps with penetrating 2 zeds and up, maintaining damage much more effectively and clearing hallways like it's KF1. Sources: KFProj_Bullet.uc, KFPerk_Support.uc, KFPawn_ZedBloat.uc, etc.

Now then, I've been out of the game for a long time so I'm probably out of touch with the meta but those are a few common misconceptions I've always seen about Support's penetration effects and it certainly changed my mind on which to use. Armor Piercing Shot and Tight Choke are the only perk skills I regularly switch between and I do so based on which shotguns I feel like using.

Since it's so easy to misunderstand them I'm willing to bet that skews the player usage statistics quite a bit- they may be more closely balanced to each other than most players realize but the usage stats are the usage stats.

 

[OnionBubs]

<snip>

Yeah, that all works as intended.

A more succinct way of phrasing my above points would be "there's not enough trash Zeds in vanilla settings to warrant taking extra penetration over Tight Choke and just learning to bottleneck a little better while also being able to reliably kill stuff from farther away; the only time you need to specialize in killing trash with extra penetration is when your team is bad and the Support has to do it, in which case there are better perks for specializing in trash."

Controlled Difficulty and such can be a different case, but that also comes with another problem: Support doesn't scale as well to Controlled Difficulty.

 

[Nac]

If there's a weekly selector, there should be a server browser option for consoles. There's no point if all consoles have is matchmaking and players end up joining a weekly they don't want to play.

 

[Alex Milo]

What about the minigun? It is still bugged last time I checked (it loses ammo if you change weapon).