Survivalist Rework

[Zesa]

Remember the good old days, early in Killing floor 2 beta when medic was able to repair armor using healing darts? While I’m sure it was changed because it was blatantly overpowered. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had another perk that could perform the role of providing and repairing armor minus the healing part so that it would be relatively balanced? I realize it's far too late in the games lifespan to consider adding a new perk. That's why I made a reworked survivalist skill tree that more or less reuses skills already in the game.

The primary change that would need to be made is how the welder works for survivalists. It would need to be able to perform both functions of welding doors and repairing armor of teammates. It also seems obvious to me that any weapons given to this reworked survivalist should be EMP/Electricity themed because the only unique weapon survivalist has now is the killerwatt.

 

[ImDylsexic]

What makes you say it’s far too late for a new perk? I don’t think there’s a point at which any new content is late unless Killing Floor 3 was already in development (doesn’t seem like it is).

Besides, reworking Survivalist away from his jack of all trades/combo of existing perks is effectively the same thing as adding a new perk. They’d still need to make new weapons and introduce a new mechanic in armor healing.

I appreciate the skill tree - cool custom perk icons. However, I think a couple of them would be totally broken: self healing armor paired with heavy armor training in particular.

 

[Zesa]

What makes you say it’s far too late for a new perk? I don’t think there’s a point at which any new content is late unless Killing Floor 3 was already in development (doesn’t seem like it is).

Besides, reworking Survivalist away from his jack of all trades/combo of existing perks is effectively the same thing as adding a new perk. They’d still need to make new weapons and introduce a new mechanic in armor healing.

I appreciate the skill tree - cool custom perk icons. However, I think a couple of them would be totally broken: self healing armor paired with heavy armor training in particular.

I said it's far too late to add a perk because people have requested far simpler things than adding a perk and got a response from Tripwire "it's not in the budget." I think the majority of concurrent players would agree that survivalist could use an update.

As for regenerating armor being overpowered, keep in mind that zerker can regenerate 2 health every second passively as well. I randomly came up with 2 armor every 5 seconds, if these changes were ever actually implemented they would need to be balanced accordingly.

 

[infntnub]

At this point I don't expect Survivalist to be touched other than tweaking the impacts of the current perk build skills being offered.

What you suggest would be a completely new mechanic for the perk. We are now in the era of reskinned weapons being passed off as new to provide the playerbase with some form of additional content. I don't expect anything new to be generated going forward unless it's a DLC with an individual pricetag.

 

[Zesa]

I completely agree, I don’t expect any major changes to be implemented this late in the lifespan of the game like I mentioned in my original post. This post was just me having an idea and sharing it out of boredom of being cooped up inside.

Also who knows what could happen now that Tripwire has apparently given the reigns over to a new development team Saber Interactive. Right now they are just getting their toes wet so we can only hope in the future we get more substantive updates paid or otherwise.

At this point I don't expect Survivalist to be touched other than tweaking the impacts of the current perk build skills being offered.

What you suggest would be a completely new mechanic for the perk. We are now in the era of reskinned weapons being passed off as new to provide the playerbase with some form of additional content. I don't expect anything new to be generated going forward unless it's a DLC with an individual pricetag.

 

[infntnub]

Yeah - I am a bit curious what Saber will contribute.

 

[Aleflippy]

Funnily enough, quite a lot of people proposed for the support to be able to wield armor...But I think it would fit the survivalist more. Contrary to what its name suggest, the support is more of an infantryman really.

For the skill tree proposed, I agree with most of the ideas actually! Fairly straightforward, but it could work fairly well. I do have a few things to mention though :

-Armor Plates is a bit much IMO. 20% is quite a lot really.

-Self-healing armor is the exact opposite. While it would be neat to save some money, 2% of armor is pretty much nothing. It gets melted way too fast. I think something similar to the zerk would be better. Yes, you'd pretty much never need to buy armor... But HPs can be replenished frequently by every perk anyway. So why not armor for the survivalist?

-Rearmor pack, once again... is a bit broken ! Even more so in earlier waves, that would be mad helpful and maybe overly so. I think 33% would be a better compromise.

-I assume Madman would imply that wielding armor is also three times faster...? ;-)

-Lockdown should maaaybeeee not including "any damage", but more akin to "X damage inflicted to a zed apply an EMP effect". It would also be a bit more fair to survivalists using slow-firing weapons !

And all in all, with all that resistance... Wouldn't that be a bit too similar to the SWAT and Medic? It would make perfect sense for a SURVIVALIST to SURVIVE for longer periods. But still... I think it's better to avoid too many similarities in-between perks, when possible.

 

[Zesa]

Appreciate the input, I agree most of the perks would need to be re-balanced. The numbers I came up with were either off the top of my head or pulled from other perks. For example the 20% from armor plates was just Resistance from Berserker without the added poison/sonic damage.

In a perfect world instead of asking for a rework I would have preferred a whole new perk named the Armorer or Blacksmith that can perform the role of providing armor to the team. However I highly doubt that tripwire would go for that this late in the games life-cycle. Best we can hope for is a rework which I probably like 0.1% chance instead of 0% of happening.

 

[Aleflippy]

Appreciate the input, I agree most of the perks would need to be re-balanced. The numbers I came up with were either off the top of my head or pulled from other perks. For example the 20% from armor plates was just Resistance from Berserker without the added poison/sonic damage.

In a perfect world instead of asking for a rework I would have preferred a whole new perk named the Armorer or Blacksmith that can perform the role of providing armor to the team. However I highly doubt that tripwire would go for that this late in the games life-cycle. Best we can hope for is a rework which I probably like 0.1% chance instead of 0% of happening.

Actually, that's a point I wanted to mention too !

You're entirely right about the game being too far in its life cycle to consider adding a whole new perk (even more so considering Tripwire is apparently having money problems at the moment... or at least saving it for other projects). But, truth be told... I think a new perk could inject some much-needed new life into the game. Because I believe part of the reason why people are drifting away is precisely because updates have become... Predictable.

I mean, we know exactly when we'll get updates. We know they're always be themed around the same ideas. We know they'll include a map, some new weapons and some new tweaks. It has become so easy to predict that people don't want to get invested anymore. Yes, they might pop the game to try the new guns (like I do), but after a few matches, they'll just leave again.

Having something meaningful added, like a new perk, a fully-fledged rework we've been asking for YEARS, or the proper upgrade system they've been talking about... That would probably bring back a lot of players, veterans and newbies alike.

After all...maxing out a perk takes time. Unless you choose to cheese on "level-your-perks" type of maps, it will take some time. Time where they play the game, get invested in it and (why not?) spend some more money.

That, or we could at least take into consideration the ideas of the community... I've always been a huge mod-addict. So being able to try out community perks in solo would be insanely fun.

 

[user1091]

if they to add a new perk called "armorsmith" and give it this skill tree I wouldn't mind. but as survivalist rework it's terrible

 

[Zesa]

More terrible than survivalist in its current state? I don’t think so, but that's just my opinion. There is really no reason to play survivalist in its current state because it doesn’t perform any specific role better than another specialized perk. The only reason survivalist exists in its current state is because it was intended to be the Martial Artist originally. Tripwire scrapped that idea during development and now we are left with a Jack of all trades perk that really doesn’t add much to team compositions.

 

[Aleflippy]

Well...That's what they intended, so in a way, we can't complain that they didn't do it right.

It is true however that survivalists are rarely welcomed in any team comp. Not only are most perks effective enough to survive on their own, but even if we want to balance things out : it's usually way better to pick another, more specific perk to help the team out.

So what's left? Well... It's fun to tinker with bonker loadouts. You can easily mix up some ludicrous combos. But that's pretty it.

(And I'm still mad we didn't get the martial artist, I really don't get what was so hard with balancing such a perk)

 

[infntnub]

@Zesa " now we are left with a Jack of all trades perk that really doesn’t add much to team compositions. "

I think the biggest issue with the perk is, despite how bad it is to some people, it's still easy to carry a team with it with the right loadouts. You can derp like crazy with Survivalist and not die.. so in that sense I'd say it does add a lot to team compositions but the perk has this stigma that causes some to groan when they see it due to the weaker damage bonuses that comes with the perk. I also think this is partly why TWI may be hesitant to tweak the perk. That being said I'd still like to at least see global reload bonus [for all perks] and a slight bump to global damage bonuses at level 25 to help lessen the gap somewhat between Survivalist and dedicated perks.

 

[Zesa]

I agree, it can be fun to play with unusual loadouts. However once you have several hundred hours in the game I usually stick to my preferred loadouts anyway. Which makes playing survivalist unappealing because I’ve already experimented with just about every combination of weapon I can think of.

The synergy between weapons of specialized perks wins out in nearly every scenario. To play survivalist you are gimping your team to some extent because it doesn't add anything that another perk simply can’t do more effectively.

 

[Aleflippy]

...And amen to that. I've always struggled to give credit to games where you can simply switch class at will. Or even handle everything the game throws at you because you can redo your whole skill tree, or have a bit of everything.

I think it's better to have a role and stick with it. It should allow for some margin of error of course. Like...When you know nothing about the game, it's perfectly normal that you have to experiment and try out stuff. But after a while... A choice should be made.

There's a reason why people love RPGs : you get closer to your character, it's more immersive and you end up becoming very good at what you're doing. There's a sense of progression and success. Same goes for people having "mains" in fighting games or hero-shooters. When you dedicate yourself to something, you just improve. It's no rocket-science.

Now of course, it shouldn't always be a "one-off". It's perfectly fine to switch-up from time to time... Even from playthrough to playthrough! But simply having "a little of everything" is boring IMO... And unhelpful for the team as well.

...Which is also why I tend to dislike action-rpgs where you have no classes to choose from (looking at you Dying Light !)