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Few suggestions to Freshen game expierence

Kabelis

Grizzled Veteran
May 29, 2009
91
0
1. RANDOMIZE THE WAVES!
Really, I'm sure everyone playing KF for a while gets sort of sick of seeing exactly identical wave progression.

For example, in a 10 wave game we all KNOW that two fleshpounds will come at the very start of the 7th wave, right?

We KNOW that Siren can't spawn behind us and take half of our health during the 2nd wave.
etc. etc.



So to make game more fun we could do the following.
a) Evaluate each Specimen's strength.
b) Evaluate each wave's strength.
c) Spawn random specimen corresponding to the wave's strength..


For example.
Let's assume that first wave features 15 clots, 4 gorefasts and like 2 Bloats per player.
Let's assume that,
1 gorefast is as strong as 3 clots.
1 bloat is as strong as 4 clots.


The overall wave strength would be 15 + 4x3 + 2x4 = 35

Then evaluate the strength of other specimen in a similar way
[For example, 1 siren = 3 gorefasts = 9 clots etc.]
and then the strength of each wave.


Last step.
Spawn Specimen RANDOMLY during each wave correspondingly to the strength of the wave.
So in the given example, if the strength of 1st wave per player would be 35 clots, instead of the regular 15 clot, 4 gorefast and 2 bloat wave 2 sirens, 4 bloats and 1 clot (2x9 + 4x4 + 1) could spawn instead.


Ok, maybe not something as extreme as a FP or a Scrake during 1st wave :p
But I hope you get the idea.

P.S. note that all these values are just EXAMPLES.
I'm sure every player would evaluate monster strength differently.
Please look into the concept of the suggestion, not the numbers.




2. Make Trader Time Shorter!

Really, I feel that game should basically FORCE players to fight waves at different areas.

As it is for now the time to shop at the trader is so long that it's extremely easy to buy everything and then get back to the same fighting area before the start of new wave.

I think that players should be forced to fight specimen somewhere near the trader area and NOT have enough time to get back to their favourite place on each map every single wave without the risk of getting separated and cornered..

And the easiest way to do that would be to lower trader time.


Because if players can choose, they will always pick easiest spots and won't fight at different area just to make it more interesting.
However, if they simply can't make it back to their favourite place on time, they will be forced to fight somewhere else, unless they want to risk moving after specimen have started spawning.



These sort of changes would add a lot more replayability value and shouldn't be too hard to implement programming wise..
 
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I totally agree with 1. more variation is always a good thing.

But on 2. however, I think like you that players have too much time to reach the traders and on most maps they don't have to worry about moving from their position, but I don't think shortening the trader time is a good thing.
Maybe something like: a limited time to reach the trader but once you're at it, you get a litlle more time, so you need to get close to the trader before the end of the wave without being in a hurry to buy a weapon.
 
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This is true, Refuge is the only map that I know of that makes this not happen.

You realize how this would make it completely impossible for new players to reach the trader from the spawn before time runs out, right?

So they'll die with nothing but the 9mm and knife. Respawn at spawn, unable to get to the trader in time again. Repeat until players leave in frustration. Trader time is the way it is for a reason. And, in case you hadn't figured it out, part of the trader time should be used to get AWAY from the trader on many maps (Back trader of Foundry comes to mind, as that whole area is a deathtrap if you stay too long!)
 
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You realize how this would make it completely impossible for new players to reach the trader from the spawn before time runs out, right?

So they'll die with nothing but the 9mm and knife. Respawn at spawn, unable to get to the trader in time again. Repeat until players leave in frustration. Trader time is the way it is for a reason. And, in case you hadn't figured it out, part of the trader time should be used to get AWAY from the trader on many maps (Back trader of Foundry comes to mind, as that whole area is a deathtrap if you stay too long!)

Well, in the majority of the occassions there's more than enough time to kite the last specimen to the trader, shop for 5-10s and then have 50s to go whenever you want.
And since most maps have favourable position to fight, those positions are used for the whole game, because 50s is enough to go there.
You have a good point about newly connected players though.

I don't know, maybe make it work somehow different, the idea is to force players to pick different spots to fight instead of running back to the same position over and over again.
 
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Randomizing specimens is a good idea, but yea only if they make sure FPs and scrakes don't show up too early lol

But I agree with nanostrike about the trader time. The issue of new players not being able to make it will ruin the entire game. Bad idea unless they adjust player spawns according to trader location. This would be a lot of work though and I doubt tripwire would make such drastic changes to gameplay.
 
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Just out of question because I don't play the mode all that often:

Does the trader time remain at 1:00 on Suicidal?

If this is the case, it should seriously be reconsidered. I know it stays at 1:00 on Hard mode, which should also be reconsidered...

In the mod, I remember the trader time was consistently ramped the easier the game-mode was. I think Hard mode had 0:45 and so on. Perhaps something like this?

I like the wave randomization idea as well. Variety is the spice of life.
 
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I often wondered why the specimen spawning was so fixed... the only benefit is that you can't predict where and when they will spawn, otherwise the game would've become stale long ago.

Everyone knows Scrakes start spawning in wave 5/6, everyone knows wave 7 has the Fleshpounds and they begin spawning with Sirens/Bloats before dual spawning in wave 10. It would be nice if there was a bit more variation. Like throw in a surprise Fleshpound during wave 5 or 6 or a Scrake during wave 3.

Keep Easy as fixed, Normal has upto 1 wave variation, Hard has upto 2, Suicidal upto 3.

So its possible a Fleshpound will spawn in wave 4, 5 or 6 on Suicidal (just a single 1 in the FPs case). Keep wave 1 as fixed and perhaps you get the odd Siren spawn on the 2nd wave, if something like that is causing you to fail your team obviously isn't good enough to dance to the new beat.
 
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Sorry to burst your bubble.
But if you're on suicidal and FP's came at you on the first/second wave you'd be pretty god damn screwed in most cases.
You can't exactly randomize the waves without it being unfair to most.

This is why I said
Ok, maybe not something as extreme as a FP or a Scrake during 1st wave :p
But I hope you get the idea.


I don't think it would be very hard to TWI to implement something like that, but it is one of the easiest ways to increase replayability.

We don't necessarily need new weapons/enemies/maps to make the game more fun, we just need to make the game unpredictable.

Like I mentioned, currently after playing for a while you can almost KNOW at which point of each wave which enemies will come at you.It gets really repetitive.
 
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I very much agree with point 1, at least. It'd mix things up a bit if you had to look out for the possibility of crawlers and sirens first wave, and the Scrake might show up on 3/10 when you're not expecting him. It'll keep people from rambo-ing the whole time from Wave 1 to Wave 7. :p
 
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This is why I said



I don't think it would be very hard to TWI to implement something like that, but it is one of the easiest ways to increase replayability.

We don't necessarily need new weapons/enemies/maps to make the game more fun, we just need to make the game unpredictable.

Like I mentioned, currently after playing for a while you can almost KNOW at which point of each wave which enemies will come at you.It gets really repetitive.

Ok so basically swapping the Siren to wave 1? You wouldn't notice much of a difference. You're going to have to come up with new specimens if you wanted this to work.
 
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Ok so basically swapping the Siren to wave 1? You wouldn't notice much of a difference. You're going to have to come up with new specimens if you wanted this to work.

Currently every wave spawns exactly same specimen every wave.

After a while you just know at which point which squad of specimen will come.
For example, if playing a long (10 wave) game, two fleshpounds ALWAYS come at the very start of the 7th wave.

What I'm saying is that specimen spawning shouldn't be fixed.
We just need to evaluate the strength of each wave and the strength of each specimen and spawn them randomly.
 
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1 is definitely good, in general concept. But big specimens shouldn't just count as more total zed, they should be less likely during earlier waves, and more likely in later waves.


But 2 would be awful, unless players spawned near/inside the shop.

The trader time limit is already bad enough as is when you have to run from the spawn area to the shop, only to find that it's blocked off by an idiot doing their trading in the doorway, and you have to wait for them to finish, and by then wave 9 is starting and you only have your 9mm.


No player collision during trader time shouldn't just be a white listed mutator, it should be default.
 
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