WWAUT - A Prestigious Upgrade

[Lorkenpeist]

Weapon upgrades of just plain damage sound a bit lame and needless, but as a starting point towards later having upgrades that change a nice variety of stats, maybe with visible features, it could become a plenty worthwhile game mechanic. I'm looking forward to it.

Some characters were hoped for, but then we got their gear instead. Chicken costume, horzine suit, hazmat suit, welding mask, and probably more. And then DAR was just "beep bop [filtered copypaste]".
Some of Mrs. Foster's VA's previous works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WQGS2zGAXg

Yeah I get that, but the WWAUT said Mrs. Foster is the first, implying that the existing characters aren't fully voiced. Or did they mean first since release?

 

[007_lord1]

So what is the medic rifle I see in the 3rd image sounds like a Medic/Sharpshooter Weapon.
Looks like only the name, weight, and maybe the price are done. (12,000 dosh sounds like something that can only be used in endless)

 

[oldmidget]

Welp, wasn't big fan of the prestige idea, it will be pointless if you'll not introduce map whitelist along it. Othewise Perk Leveling Map population +400%.

Edit: Also, i really hope there won't be any achievements for this. Really.

my thoughts exactly.

 

[LazyTiger]

Prestige for a knife and fancy icon, sure- ok, that might be nifty, though you know there are going to be people abusing perk-training for it. Since prestige doesn't change the gameplay itself, I see nothing terribly wrong with it.

KF1-style DLC Character pack? ehh... I'm not so fond of this idea given my bad experiences with DLC Characters in in KF1 not working properly. but, whatever- it's fine, I'm sure a number of people will enjoy Mrs.Foster regardless of how it's implemented- and that's a good thing.

Completely re-balance the weapon system by changing weight and damage and adding 'upgrades' No... This is not okay in my book. It seems like a really bad idea that will only end poorly. I'm really worried about this, and I'm not the only one. Here are some quotes from friends of mine, some of whom are also fairly prominent in the community- with their reactions to this particular facet of the announcement:

That Heavy Goat made a great post on the subreddit here that accurately describes a number of my views on this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/killingfloo...iec/?context=0

"Tbh, I'm curious what makes them think 'nerfing a gun so you need to work harder to make it normal' = 'upgrading'. It's like 'we have a bigger size of pizza, here's a even smaller size one, and you can pay more to make it bigger!!' ” -SteveM

"im not really digging this idea" - Antoan

"God help us." - Fat Cat

"the prestige thing is fine, upgrade thing is gona be a balance nightmare"
"its stupid i hope they get negative feedback the guns dont need to be touched" - Rykerzzz

"I'm actually sad about the whole ordeal. This feels like a legitimate funeral." - Stohgee

"That sounds dumb, I'll reserve an actual judgement though til after I play it" - Dark Darkington

"they're high, it's 4/20- they have to be high" - pooploop

"they gone full retard" - level

"there's 0 chance the weapon upgrade system isn't going to be broken" - Amathy

"I have no idea how this game is going to be balanced if you can upgrade past current stats"
"anyways, seems like TW is ready to go full retard again. We'll see how it turns out for them this time, ggs" - Kore

"the weapon upgrade system looks like rip game balance" - Koh

So TWI, I know the opinions of long-time players probably don't mean too much to you, since the game is balanced around the vast majority rather than outliers like myself. (Though I do wonder just how much of your MTX comes from long-time HoE and CD players buying up keys and precious items compared to the rest of the user-base.) But you've got a lot of players worried about this. You'll be messing with balance in a way that could easily turn out disastrous and ultimately drive away a portion of your playerbase that has done nothing but promote your game for you free of charge while assisting with player retention. (A lot of us wouldn't still be playing this game after all the nerfs to vanilla HoE without controlled difficulty and friends to play it with).

I urge you to be very careful in considering how these changes to weapons will affect current balance, and I'd strongly recommend ditching the idea entirely- or at the very least, limiting it to endless and only endless, and leaving survival alone.

(Note: some people were offline when I asked for permission to quote. If you decide you don't want to be quoted hit me up and I'll remove it)

 

[Deadliest Luigi]

Let us play as the Trader from KF1!! That would be awesome 🙏🏼

 

[slendyman123]

Weapon upgrade picture has leaked new medic weapon info btw... lol tripwire you don't check your pics before uploading them?

 

[wifemeupfam]

I'm excited about everything in this update but I'm a little concerned about the weapon upgrading. As someone who has put a lot of time into the game understanding all the weapons, I feel like it will force me to scrap everything I've learned. I feel like it is a great concept, but I feel like it will hurt the experience kf community. And a lot of people I've talked to feel the same way but we'll see. I have high expectations of you tripwire please don't ruin this game<3

 

[wifemeupfam]

Keep that upgrading **** out of survival. I think it will ruin it. I think it could work for endless tho. Tread carefully tw that upgrading junk is spooking everyone out.

 

[simplecat]

Yeah, i agree. Upgade system should be endless exclusive - players definitely need more ammo, bigger mags, extra damage etc there as game keep spawning more and more ZEDs especially medium and big ones.

But for normal survival it would look like completely unnecessary level of complexity added to promote usage of extra dosh.

Now i don't know the finest details and probably exaggerate, but from what i understand you're gonna adjust (nerf) top tier guns so you could buff them later with dosh investments. This looks counter productive to me, why wouldn't you just straigh buff some weapons? You're saying you looking to provide more weapon options for players to choose, so how about making current unpopular weapons to be more appealing to players?

I can see two potential flaws with this system:

1. Upgrading like half of the tier 1, 2 or even 3 weapons will either not worth it or it will destroy game balance. You won't be able to make a proper t4 gun out of t2 outsider no matter how much dosh it'll take because these weapons have completely different functionality and usability . Or you'll make something seriously OP out of the current headliners.

Either way you might end up picking wrong upgrade strategy / "tree" and likely run out of dosh and / or opportunities.

2. Considering upgrades become mandatory for top gear you getting bounded to your loadout like never before. What's gonna happen when i decide to change by weaps or, even more, class at the very last waves of the match? Am i doomed to stay with "unapgraded" gear?

I think what people had in mind when you came out with this survey back in 2017 were attachments such as scopes and silencers and all the stuff that does not involve such drastic, counter productive and redundant changes.

 

[Aleflippy]

Damn son. Killing Floor is certainly moving forward still ! After three years nonetheless (can we expect to hit 10 years worth of updates? One can only hope ~~~~ )

I've never been that much about prestiging. I'm more than good with hitting max level and having my badass warriors all-powerful. Even with the extra dosh and skins, that won't make me start all over again. But that's nice for the people who wished for it I suppose.

Leveling up weapons is something I'm EXTREMELY WARY about. But then again, so was I with the cross-perk system and I ended up falling in love with it (so many more possibilities, so many more hours spent on the game!). But honestly, I'm afraid it might make the game even easier than it was... and worse of all, might reduce the appeal of certain weapons even more. We all have guns we truly like, but keeping the same for the whole match? Meh... Once again, it depends on how you'll do it in the long run. Maybe being able to customize them a bit (not too much as to make them all similar) would be a good thing? I don't know at all. It's interesting to say the least.


And I'll totally buy Mrs.Foster! I'm for tons more fully-voiced characters...They actually feel like actual personnalities instead of bland avatars. Plus, having another woman is a nice bonus. My only gripe would be that I would have prefered her to have some huntress boots or something. But it's a minor complain (let's hope she's as sassy as her male counterpart!)

 

[Shadaaaa]

I guess im the minority here thinking weapon upgrades would bring some color into the game.
If done right, this could be the opportunity to bring lots and lots of variety to how you could play the game. Im curious on how a tier 5 shovel, medic pistol, or C4s and etc would be like, or how much a T3 RPG or AA12 would weigh, and more.

That said, this is gonna be a total overhaul in gameplay balance. Whats the new dosh cost for the T4 -> T3 weapons, how much would it cost to upgrade them back at T4, the weight for each weapon and every tiers, and generally every numbers of weapon stats would have to be changed. This is gonna be a hell of a work...and when it comes to weapon balancing, KF2 was always slow and sometimes off about it, so I would be lying if I said im not worried at all.

If done wrong, this will be a complete mess. But if done right, I can see Ill be spending tens and hundreds of hours experimenting all the weapon combinations and their upgrading paths. Please do this right!

 

[Ramare]

Ohhh no, I'm worried. As someone who already watched as one bad update to my favourite game (Chivalry: Medieval Warfare) started an irreversible death spiral, this weapon upgrading and tier-mucking system sounds like it has the potential to be that kind of update and it's stressing me out.

Now, since we've already had one of those updates come by and get ablated (remember day one of the damage types and resistances update? I member) I'm hopeful that if it does go poorly you'll immediately back it off or even remove it; but I'm still nervous.

But hey, it also has the possibility to be a grade A+ update that makes every weapon shine on it's own merits and erodes some of the rigidness of the tier system, letting a bit more of the "use the weapon for the weapon not the tier" mentality from KF1 shine through in the process. The problem with that is that some perks (SWAT being the most obvious) were very clearly designed around that rigid tier system and would interact strangely with this new system without additional re-balancing to the base weapons...which is also another chance for things to go wrong, albeit on a smaller scale.

In any case, the next public beta build is going to be interesting.

 

[Delta69er]

As many people have said before - I'm also extremely wary about these weapon changes and their very big chance to screw with the meta and how many people you can potentially drive away after these changes.

Theres just so many balancing issues and bugs that are going to arise - it almost seems insane to consider the idea after 3 years. I dont think anyone in the community wanted these types of 'upgrades', werent they referring to things like attachments and small improvements?

This is starting to feel like Resistances 2.0 :\

 

[amathy]

Weapon upgrade picture has leaked new medic weapon info btw... lol tripwire you don't check your pics before uploading them?

that's pretty obviously a dev weapon for testing

 

[D.A.R.]

I understand voice acting can be expensive, but Commando Chicken and DAR should have had their own voices (DAR was not his own voice, it is a recycled mess!) I wish we get to see more voiced characters inside of the game and less of this laziness, I for one am really annoyed with the way you handled DAR's voices as its not unique with its own voices like in KF1 and just other characters lines built in with beeps. Hope this helps in the future of developing characters, because with DAR it took away completely the Nostalgia.

 

[Servalion]

Wow. Just when I was getting antsy about having gone 5 months without a response on Prestige, the news finally lands. Great to hear that it's coming....oh, but its just cosmetic? Blah, oh well. Still, I didn't hold out hope that it would be anything more than that. I might give it a shot regardless. At least leveling back will be faster. Maybe they can add more benefits to it down the line.

What's more surprising and pleasing is that you're not only implementing a weapons upgrade system, but also doing it independently of Prestige. Solid move, although I understand everyone's concern about the current balance and what this will do. Nerfing current T4s to T3s does sound strange and troublesome, but I don't believe this system will remain in its current state forever. Its a placeholder for testing the waters. Maybe data collecting on which weapons people stick with for upgrading more. With any luck, real upgrades affecting weapon performance beyond just damage will come in the future.

Now, making people pay for Current T4s to bring them back from T3 to T4 again is only really an issue if it costs MORE than it currently does. Nerfing them to T3 should mean they'll cost $1100 or so. Meaning, bringing them back to T4 should only cost $400. That brings it to 1500 altogether, making it no different than it is now. Question is, how much will the T5 upgrade cost?

Nerfing T4 down to T3 also seemed to imply nerfing their weight to compensate as well. That could open up some new options in a couple of my chosen loadouts. Finally, the P90/UMP/Kriss Trinity can be realized. But how much of a damage cost to the Kriss will this mean? Alternatively, how good would a SWAT do with sticking to 2 upgraded SMGs? Time will tell if 2 T5s hold up to 3 T3s.

For the most part, we're only held back by our weight limit now. Might there be a way to upgrade this in the future? Who knows. Adding +1 to Weight cap for every Prestige level (assuming there's a Prestige cap of like 5 or something) would actually add incentive to do it beyond the first do-over.

Perhaps most significantly of all, this update confirms that T5 is now official.

 

[imnrk]

I'm wondering about how prestige will work with Support and Survivalist. Do I only need to prestige one of the two in order to get the red knife, or is the machete different for the different perks? This leads me to hope that the Survivalist rework is coming soon. Otherwise it seems like a fallacy. I see the Survivalist rework is no longer on the Trello board, but the one about explosives arcing back down is still in the "community requests under consideration" category, so I'm not sure how accurate it is.

I, too am worried about the weapon upgrading, but there's no way to tell how it will be in-game until we actually try it out. So I'm ultimately holding my judgements until then.

I would definitely prefer paid, fully voiced characters over costumes. Costumes are cool and all, but the voice is what really makes different characters feel unique. That is why DAR was a dissapointment for me, it's just depressing to hear it with the same voices as all the other characters. Really looking forward to being able to play Mrs. Foster in-game! The model is perfect as well. Why not kill zeds in slippers?

 

[Kittenmittens]

What does fully voiced mean? In what way are the existing characters not fully voiced?

It means new fully voiced in several languages characters after launch rather than characters with improvised voice affects like DAR ort costumes with no voices.

Wait, so you're downgrading tier 4 weapons to 3 and making us upgrade them to get them back to what they used to be?

That is one of the possibilities.

I feel like Tier 5 weapon upgrades should mean that this game needs to be harder in general to warrant getting them, otherwise you just have "ggez" guns, and for the record this game on 6p HoE is already easy enough as-is.

This is something we have been discussing internally and keeping in mind.

So current tier 4s will be nerfed to tier 3s, but with two upgrades available, t4 and t5. That's tremendous.
Will traditional tier 3s be equal in upgrade opportunity? For example, both AA12 and M4 start at T3, can be upgraded to T4, and can be upgraded again to T5?


Suggestion: Visually distinguish the different upgrade levels optionally, by letting players' weapon skins be equipped per tier. For example, if I wanted, my RPG-7 could have my "Vietnam" skin equipped when I buy it as a T3, no skin equipped if I upgrade it to T4, and my "Tiger" skin equipped if I upgrade it to T5.

If that is the way that the design stays, yes that's how it will work. All weapons would be able to level up to a T5.
I know the upgraded weapons have visual indicators in the hud/ inventory to show what tier it is and it also has different looks for when it's dropped. As for the suggestion about multiple skins, that would probably require some reworking of how the skin system works. I can pass along your idea.

For my understanding: When choosing the "Prestige" option, my perk level will be reset to 0 - the skills will be unavailable aswell or will they remain unlocked?

YOu'll be a fresh level zero earning your bonuses back. Skill will need to be unlocked again.

So what is the medic rifle I see in the 3rd image sounds like a Medic/Sharpshooter Weapon.
Looks like only the name, weight, and maybe the price are done. (12,000 dosh sounds like something that can only be used in endless)

Just a test weapon

 

[NOD]

Maybe instead of downgrading weapons a tier just to 'upgrade' them a tier or 2.. you can add button options for different ballistics? (i.e Hollowpoints for more damage but not hitscan, AP rounds for piercing sirens, fp, and elite clot, etc - Maybe demo and FB only have access to incendiary or explosive rounds on applicable weapons) I know that might be a little more complex, but it might add some tactical diversity to the gameplay, based on what the player chooses. Just an idea to play around with.

Also, if we're talking about a weapon upgrading system.. I'm still all down for applying accessories to weapons via main menu inventory

 

[Patros]

Really looking forward to the prestige system. I reset my perk levels once already and it was fun. For me it adds replayability.

Lvl 0 on HoE makes the difficulty feel a lot different. Hope prestige is not capped.