Killing Floor Update #3

[Alex_KF]

Originally Posted by Tolil

Masterful dodging, dude. 1 up.

I don't understand how 36 players is easier to level, if anything it's harder. You have to compete with 35 other dudes to get a kill, and if you die then you're out for like a half an hour. When I played on a 36 player server, we couldn't even get past wave 3 on Suicidal...and thats pretty much how far we would make it on a 6 player server without godly level 4/5 perks. AT LEAST let us play 16 players. I played on a 12 player server once and it was epic. It felt like such a rush compared to 6 players, which is stale IMO. Back in 2.5 having that many players was boring..but theres something in retail that just clicks.

Oh, and I'm still trying to figure out when Commandos are going to get a break, being forced to kill 4000 stalkers and grind 3.5m damage with a gun that does **** damage.

EDIT: Just curious, why is it that people who prefer 6 player servers feel the need to force everyone to play the game the way they enjoy it?

WRONG. the max zombies active at any one time (unless it is manually adjusted for the server) will be the same as on a six man server. 32.

So it says 600 zombies for wave one, but you are only ever fighting a handful at once.

Raising the max active zombies per wave is a seriously dumb move. The performance cost multiplies exponentially.

If you have seen lagless servers supporting 600 ACTIVE specimens in a wave, with 150 players, let me know. But i dont think so.

[WarFreak131]

Seriously, I don't understand the logic here TWI. You are saying that its bad to play the game normally (perk progression) with more players (And hence, more monsters with more life, thus scaling the difficulty).

BUT

It's okay to play a game with 6 players that's designed so you rack up points insanely fast? (KF-Leveling, KF-PerkBuilder).

Not everyone is a perk-whore. Not everyone is trying to build their perks up extremely fast. Some players just like having 32 players in a server. Why stop them from enjoying the game with perk progression? The perk whores who don't get to play in 32 player maps anymore will just go to the perk farming maps. You have done little to stop them. And you know what, if there are players out there who severely want to go to level 5 and play in a 32 player map, they are just going to go to a perk leveling map, rank up all the way to 5, and then go to the 32 player maps. Again, you have done little to stop them.

The leveling maps are designed so that you rank up. Unless you kill yourself, there is no possible way that you can die. At least with the 32 player servers, you are still playing the game the way it's meant to be played.

[Zips]

Originally Posted by WarFreak131

Seriously, I don't understand the logic here TWI. You are saying that its bad to play the game normally (perk progression) with more players (And hence, more monsters with more life, thus scaling the difficulty).

BUT

It's okay to play a game with 6 players that's designed so you rack up points insanely fast? (KF-Leveling, KF-PerkBuilder).

I don't believe I've ever seen anywhere that TWI said they felt it was "ok" to play on those types of maps.

It's impossible to limit the maps and maptypes that users decide to play on and run.

[Alex_KF]

Originally Posted by WarFreak131

At least with the 32 player servers, you are still playing the game the way it's meant to be played.

No dude, you're not.

In case you hadn't figured out, KF is kind of a game of ratios. The difficulty is a direct result of the number of enemies, versus the number of players at any given time.

Back in the mod days, 6 man cap was chosen because it reflected the best balance for the number of active enemies you face in a single wave.

So here's some math for ya....


32 active enemies vs 6 active players
Rough Ratio of 5 to 1 (the current "golden ratio" KF uses)
to maintain that ratio, with a 32 man server you would need to have 169 active enemies per wave. And as I explained earlier, just because the "enemies remaining counter" says 600 or something, doesnt mean you are fighting them all at once. The active enemy count, unlike the total enemy count, is a fixed variable which must be changed by the server host manually.

I've tested with about 60 active wave enemies, and it was a lagmess.

[gusone]

Originally Posted by Tolil

Masterful dodging, dude. 1 up.

I don't understand how 36 players is easier to level, if anything it's harder. You have to compete with 35 other dudes to get a kill, and if you die then you're out for like a half an hour. When I played on a 36 player server, we couldn't even get past wave 3 on Suicidal...and thats pretty much how far we would make it on a 6 player server without godly level 4/5 perks. AT LEAST let us play 16 players. I played on a 12 player server once and it was epic. It felt like such a rush compared to 6 players, which is stale IMO. Back in 2.5 having that many players was boring..but theres something in retail that just clicks.

Oh, and I'm still trying to figure out when Commandos are going to get a break, being forced to kill 4000 stalkers and grind 3.5m damage with a gun that does **** damage.

EDIT: Just curious, why is it that people who prefer 6 player servers feel the need to force everyone to play the game the way they enjoy it?

You are taking advantage of a game that's technology can easily be abused by cheaters. If the game could not be so easily abused like for example L4D we would not even be having this conversation. You also expect the same rewards as the people who play the game the way its meant to be played which is ridiculous. You're already lvl 5 and yet you still want more. If you want 32 man zombie game go write one and sell it. KF was written for 6. Stop cheating.

[Jaek]

Originally Posted by slayerduck

Jaek, it indeed shows that you are a politician. Because like all politician they have 0 common sense and only live with numbers.

Ahuh

Originally Posted by slayerduck

Can you explain to me, why people that play 6 player servers should decide whenever other people are allowed to play on high player servers with perk enabled? Sorry but that logic fails in my eyes because im just to used in living in a free country where i decide what i play and not others.

Ahuh

Originally Posted by slayerduck

Its not like those people that play in high player servers bother you or anything, or is it still "unfair" ? Because i can assure you that you dont lvl faster in a high player server besides a medic maybe.

Originally Posted by slayerduck

Everybody cry's and whines and it not being fair with perks.
So enjoy your corrupt poll that does not make any sense.

Lol. You silly guy.

[mastertheknife]

Originally Posted by Alex_KF

WRONG. the max zombies active at any one time (unless it is manually adjusted for the server) will be the same as on a six man server. 32.

So it says 600 zombies for wave one, but you are only ever fighting a handful at once.

Raising the max active zombies per wave is a seriously dumb move. The performance cost multiplies exponentially.

Many servers had that value adjusted.
The syrential #1 has 96 max runtime zombies (when full) and there is NO LAG whatsoever.
We even tried 128 max runtime zombies and there was no lag either!
Please play on such servers before talking untested and unproved rubbish.

[WarFreak131]

Originally Posted by Alex_KF

32 active enemies vs 6 active players
Rough Ratio of 5 to 1 (the current "golden ratio" KF uses)
to maintain that ratio, with a 32 man server you would need to have 169 active enemies per wave. And as I explained earlier, just because the "enemies remaining counter" says 600 or something, doesnt mean you are fighting them all at once. The active enemy count, unlike the total enemy count, is a fixed variable which must be changed by the server host manually.

I've tested with about 60 active wave enemies, and it was a lagmess.

Isn't that the point of scaling enemy difficulty? To reflect the number of players? If you had 32 monsters at a time all with life scaled to be at a 6-player-game, of course it's easy. If you had 32 monsters all scaled to have 32-player-game life, it will obviously be harder. And to say that there's more players shooting to counter-act the stronger monsters, is not even fair.

With a 6 man squad, you can probably coordinate tactics. In a 32 player game, half the players are running around doing their own thing, and getting killed. And like the guy before me said, it's harder to level up on 32 player games because your competing for kills, and people can easily steal your kills.

And what happens when a fleshpound comes at someone unsuspectingly from the side, it wrecks people. The majority of the team probably won't realize until its too late, and since everyone is in relatively close proximity to eachother, the FP can go tearing *** around the battlefield.

[Alex_KF]

Originally Posted by mastertheknife

Many servers had that value adjusted.
The syrential #1 has 96 max runtime zombies (when full) and there is NO LAG whatsoever.
We even tried 128 max runtime zombies and there was no lag either!
Please play on such servers before talking untested and unproved rubbish.

Funny, im playing on your server and it seems kind of empty, want to find me 23 guys we can test these claims with?

[lance_]

Originally Posted by Alex_KF

WRONG. the max zombies active at any one time (unless it is manually adjusted for the server) will be the same as on a six man server. 32.

So it says 600 zombies for wave one, but you are only ever fighting a handful at once.

Raising the max active zombies per wave is a seriously dumb move. The performance cost multiplies exponentially.

If you have seen lagless servers supporting 600 ACTIVE specimens in a wave, with 150 players, let me know. But i dont think so.

I had no problem writing a cron job to change the maxzombiesonce variable every minute. Right now I just set it to 50 for a 32 person server, but when I'm less lazy I'll write a script that changes it based on the number of non-dead players.

[mastertheknife]

Ok sorry for being offensive then, was a bit angry from all the anti 6+ servers posts.
The IPs are 91.211.8.162:7707 and 91.211.8.162:7727
We took a great hit from TW's move, the servers aren't populated like in the past so i don't know if it can be tested properly now.

Also, the reason why it was laggy for you was maybe because the server you played in was overloaded. Those two servers we have run on a dedicated server with nothing else running in it and the CPU is never fully utilized.
Another reason is your computer hardware, more players and zombies on the screen definitely hurt fps.
6+ players servers with good custom maps, big enough for the amount of players are really fun to play in provided done right and player has good hardware.

I really hope TW will make the max runtime zombies variable internal and calculated by the amount of players, improve other scaling issues and enable perk progressing back.

[KillItNow]

Compromise, with 2 perk databases, one for 6 man servers and one with 6+ man servers.Everyone will be happy, people that only play 6 man severs will only play with people that got there perks the same way and people that play 6+ can still lvlup and keep playing all the 6+ the want.

[Alex_KF]

Originally Posted by mastertheknife

Ok sorry for being offensive then, was a bit angry from all the anti 6+ servers posts.
The IPs are 91.211.8.162:7707 and 91.211.8.162:7727
We took a great hit from TW's move, the servers aren't populated like in the past so i don't know if it can be tested properly now.

Also, the reason why it was laggy for you was maybe because the server you played in was overloaded. Those two servers we have run on a dedicated server with nothing else running in it and the CPU is never fully utilized.
Another reason is your computer hardware, more players and zombies on the screen definitely hurt fps.
6+ players servers with good custom maps, big enough for the amount of players are really fun to play in provided done right and player has good hardware.

I really hope TW will make the max runtime zombies variable internal and calculated by the amount of players, improve other scaling issues and enable perk progressing back.

ok dude, we just filled up your server and had a couple games.

While it was definitely fun / funny, the performance was constantly poor, once the 24 player cap had filled up. I was ranging anywhere from 18 to 30 FPS and usually no more than 20 in combat, and others were reporting the same or lower.

In short - Nice thought, and it's true that you can crank up the zombie count above 32 and still have a playable and fun game... but this isn't gonna cut it for the majority of players.

Finally, the "big" servers out there are running with waaaay more players than yours.

i'm talking 100+ guys.... How is the zombie scaling gonna work on those servers?

[mastertheknife]

Originally Posted by Alex_KF

ok dude, we just filled up your server and had a couple games.

While it was definitely fun / funny, the performance was constantly poor, once the 24 player cap had filled up. I was ranging anywhere from 18 to 30 FPS and usually no more than 20 in combat, and others were reporting the same or lower.

In short - Nice thought, and it's true that you can crank up the zombie count above 32 and still have a playable and fun game... but this isn't gonna cut it for the majority of players.

Finally, the "big" servers out there are running with waaaay more players than yours.

i'm talking 100+ guys.... How is the zombie scaling gonna work on those servers?

Well, I really thank you for playing and testing, nice of you
Also, Thanks Ramm-Jaeger and Yoshiro for coming to test things out too.
I would have joined you all, but i'm in work with my laptop.

Regarding FPS, unforunately it has to do with your computer, many others can't join such servers, but there are some people with computers fast enough that can join such servers. I can't see why to restrict people that have fast enough computers from playing in such servers just because some other people don't have fast enough computers.

Our hardware can handle more than 24 players, but we chose that number for few reasons, such as the size of the custom maps running on the server.
100+ players is too much in my opinion, not many have fast enough computers for that and it's too crowded because there aren't many custom maps big enough.

[Jaek]

I played a round on there and it was a lot of fun and it skipped a little and wasn't smooth like a normal game but it was awesome nevertheless. There was a guy named alex01 who was the last man standing on the tented forest map, was this The Alex, or not The Alex, that is the question

[Demolution]

Originally Posted by Syrential

I'd really appreciate it if TW could explain me the reason why the Perk Leveling has been disabled for Servers that have a capacity for more than 6 Players.

Fact is: There are TONS of 6 Player Servers, and basically anyone with a "normal" PC and decent Internet Connection can host a 6 Player Server. If people want to play the Game with only 6 Players, they can always do that, but why blame everyone who had fun playing with more people?
Seriously TW, what's your point? Why do you have to FORCE people to play the Game with 6 Players, what if someone has more than 5 friends and just wants to have a good game WITH Perk Leveling?

But back to the actual point. WHY? It's not even that Perk Leveling becomes easier with more Players. Maybe you get to heal more people and increase your Medic Perk faster, but that's about it.
What about the people who play the game on EASY mode or some cheap Maps that make it extremely simple to level up your Perk.
If you are so damn smart, why does that stuff still work then? Do you fear that the rants will go out of control? I'd like to hear the explanation for that.

I can only suggest you one thing if you want this game to keep being so popular. Enable the Perk Leveling again for ALL Servers and let the players decide in which way they want to level up, whether on a 6 Player Server or on a 32 one, I don't think you are in the position to decide for all the players out there, they have their own minds and can decide for themselves.

I hope you will read this TW and realize how bad your move was to the whole community.
Instead of upsetting players you should for once consider their wishes to make this game last for a long time.

Amen.

[Switchblade]

they must be scared now

[Agenda_Suicide]

The game was intended for max 6 players. Can't the cry babies who want more players just make a mod then the problems solved? They gave the sdk away at launch for a reason so why not man up and mod the damn thing?

[slayerduck]

Originally Posted by Jaek

Ahuh
Ahuh
Lol. You silly guy.

Thanks for answering my question, that was very helpful.

[Jaek]

I apologize, but I felt personally attacked and I have anti-troll like reflexes that keep me from pushing it further.