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Killing Floor 2 State Of The Game 2018

Kittenmittens

Tripwire Interactive Community Team
Staff member
[h=2]From Producer Mike Stone[/h] [h=3]December 11, 2018[/h]
We've Come a Long Way




Many of you have been playing Killing Floor 2 since Early Access on Steam since 2015. However, the community has continued to grow over the years from the PC to the Playstation 4 and Xbox One. We even have new players who've joined the fray as recently as the past couple of months. With that said, I'll start by bringing everyone up to speed on the accomplishments the team has delivered in 2018. I'll even provide a glimpse of what 2019 holds for Killing Floor 2 at the end.




Today's Killing Floor 2
  • Game Updates
    • Infinite Onslaught
    • Summer Sideshow: Treacherous Skies
    • Halloween Horrors: Monster Masquerade
    • Twisted Christmas: Season's Beatings
  • New Playable Characters
    • D.A.R.
    • Mrs. Foster
    • Badass Santa
  • Game Modes
    • Endless
  • Maps
    • DieSector
    • Power Core
    • Airship
    • Lockdown
    • Monster Ball
    • Shopping Spree
    • Santa's Workshop
  • Weapons
    • Mac 10 (Firebug & SWAT)
    • Husk Cannon (Firebug & Demolitionist)
    • AF2011-A1 (Gunslinger)
    • M99 AMR (Sharpshooter)
    • Static Strikers (Berserker)
    • Doomstick (Support)
    • Gore Shiv (Survivalist)
    • HMTech-501 Grenade Rifle (Field Medic & Commando)
    • FN FAL ACOG (Sharpshooter & Commando)
    • MKb.42(H) Carbine Rifle (Commando)
    • Road Redeemer (Berserker, cross promotion weapon with Road Redemption)
    • Battle Axe (Berserker)
    • Fire Axe (Berserker)
    • Tommy Gun (SWAT & Commando)
    • M32 Grenade Launcher (Demolitionist)
  • Features
    • Weapon Upgrade System
    • Prestige System
    • No Duplicates Zedconomy System
    • Matchmaking System Rework
  • Enemies
    • E.D.A.R. Trapper
    • E.D.A.R. Bomber
    • E.D.A.R. Blaster
    • Rioter (Rework of the Elite Alpha Clot)
  • Reskins
    • Halloween models for all Zeds during the Halloween event.
  • Killing Floor 2 Website Redesign
    • We've provided a fresh coat of paint to our KF2 website. This is now the "one stop shop" to ensure you have the latest news on anything KF2 related


What Lies Ahead




We at Tripwire firmly believe in establishing and maintaining open lines of communication with the community. Final decisions on game designs and new features are always made internally, however, feedback from you, the community, provides us with valuable insight as to what the players would like to see next. As such, we have crafted another survey for you to participate in.




The process of this survey will be multifaceted. Part 1 will begin with broad strokes, asking for your feedback on a variety of categories. As we collate this data, the development team will then determine the top areas that the community has expressed interest in. Part 2 of the survey will delve deeper in to the top choices asking more granular questions. The end result is to have a better understanding of where the community's interests lie, which will help bring an even more exciting and fulfilling experience to everyone. As always, changes in a development schedule occur for a variety of reasons, so if what you voted on is not something that makes its way to the LIVE game, that does not mean it never will.




If you'd like to participate, please click the following link: Killing Floor 2 Survey The survey will be up through the 2018 holiday.




Aside from the above survey, the team already has plans on what we'd like to bring your way in 2019. As such, you can expect new additions and continued improvements for the following:




Additional Weapons - Providing new and exciting weapons is a staple in Killing Floor 2. The tradition will continue throughout 2019. To provide a bit of a sneak peak, one of the new weapons currently slated to launch in early 2019 (timeframe subject to change), is called "The Laser Cutter” (working title). Let your imagination flow! I"d provide more information but the Clots wouldn't play nice!




Additional Maps - What would a Killing Floor game be without a unique, crazy, and fun filled map to play in? We're already working on maps that we believe will be extremely fun to experience. Do you want another sneak peek? Well, I wouldn't want to spill anything so you'll just have to wait a bit more to see what comes your way!




Major Events - The Summer Sideshow, Halloween Horrors, and Twisted Christmas events are favorites amongst many of you. We know we enjoy them!. These events will be making a return in 2019. What will be new with these events, you ask? Time will tell!




Objective Mode - Currently, we have the following objective mode types that many of you are quite enjoying; Operate & Control, Wield and Repair, Escort, and Stand your Ground. Next year, we will introduce a new objective mode type and a variation on an already existing mode. More details to come later on.




Quality of Life Additions - The team has been collecting and reviewing feedback from our internal community team, forums, emails, and recent surveys. Our goal here is simple. We want to enhance your experience by providing QOL additions that make your stay that much more enjoyable. We still want to hear from everyone on what QOL additions they'd like to see, so please be sure to provide your feedback in the aforementioned survey.





AMA (Ask me Anything) - You've got questions! We've got answers! Along with developer interviews, we'd love to interact with the community in real time. We're currently in discussion about hosting an AMA online event in early 2019. This is where all community members will have an opportunity to ask all those burning questions about KF2. AMA date and developer attendance specifics will be announced at a later date. Stay tuned for more details in early 2019 by following our Facebook and Twitter social media outlets.



Bugs - The team will continue to review all reported bugs and look to address them as quickly as possible, while still maintaining the quality of each update to exceptional standards. As a reminder, you may report bugs at the following locations:




Official Tripwire KF2 Forums - https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/forum/killing-floor-2

Official Tripwire KF2 Steam Forums - https://steamcommunity.com/app/232090/discussions/1/




Continued Polish & Refinement - As mentioned previously, the teams have accomplished a lot of goals this past year. A portion of those goals being polish and refinement. We fully intend to not only maintain the quality bar but raise it moving forward.




Community Presence - Interacting with the community and keeping everyone up to date is very important to us. Our community team does a wonderful job interacting with our playerbase. We want to increase our presence in new and exciting ways. This could range from developer presence on our KF2 forums to staff interviews where we not only provide a fun factorial on our KF2 developers but also an opportunity for you to to post questions that you'd like a particular developer to respond to. Want to know where an artist gets their inspiration from? Want to know how programmers solve unique and complicated bugs? Want to know how designers begin to design a weapon? These are just some of the questions that we'd love to answer for you. We hope to have more information about this as we move in to the 2019 calendar year




As stated by the Clots during The Summer Sideshow event “This is the happiest place on Earth! The KF2 community energizes us every waking day. Your passion for Killing Floor 2 does not go unnoticed and we want to take this final moment to say THANK YOU. Without you, Killing Floor 2 would not exist.




2019... here we come!




Best,




Mike Stone

Producer

Tripwire Interactive
 
Some opinions I wasn't able to impart with the survey;

Perk Tiers;
OPAF - Berserker:
Fast, damage resistance, and can have health regen. The regen allows the user to save time by omitting self-healing. Pretty much unstoppable due to being able to outrun/dodge most damage and resist/outheal the rest while doing great damage to everything.
Just OP - Field Medic:
Fast, armor bonuses, can mix and match between maximum team healing and some decent weapon buffs. Once again able to outrun/dodge most damage and resist/outheal the rest, but lacks some damage output compared to zerk.
Strong - Gunslinger, SWAT:
Movement speed of Gunslinger and armor of SWAT give them an advantage over other perks in addition to having enough damage to handle pretty much everything.
Average/good enough - Support, Demolitionist, Sharpshooter:
These three have the damage output but are lacking in survivability. This is a good thing as it promotes team healing.
Underpowered - Commando, Firebug, Survivalist:
Commando lacks answers for heavy tier zeds which is fine but also lacks any significant strengths. Firebug obstructs views with flames, has a partial focus on DoT where anything else would outright kill the zed, and causes zeds to panic, making them even harder to hit with precision weapons. Survivalist is a jack of all trades, master of none. In my eyes that makes him weak at everything and good at nothing in addition to confusing your teammates when you pick him.

Weapon tiers have gotten better with the upgrade system allowing you to ignore the inferiority of certain choices but there's still a feeling that T3s, T4s, and T5s are always better choices than T1s and T2s. Sucks that lower tier weapons were created just to be disposed of ASAP. I wish more T1s and T2s had deeper ammo reserves/more ammo per box picked up to counter weaker performance with superior reliability at least.

Kind of an over-arching game design thing but KF2 has a fast pace compared to KF1 and this causes some balance problems and puts undue stress on certain mechanics. Anything that reduces downtime is extremely valuable and due to this the faster reload speed perk skills are generally must-picks. Movement speed can do the opposite and create downtime so perks with increased move speed have a much easier time on higher difficulties(Gunslinger with 9mm/Med pistol can outrun 6p HoE Scrakes by backpedaling until they die from a hailfire of tiny bullets). Weapon switch speed bonuses are also great and allow you to run loadouts with more than one weapon much more easily. This increased focus on speed is also why DoT effects like poison and fire are kinda garbage regardless of how much you can/could/should buff them. I dunno what the best way would be to tackle these issues but I guess this paragraph is just a bit of FYI.

All the observations above are from the perspective of a player trying to optimize their power and generally only become noticeable/important on HoE difficulty. Due to this and other factors I prefer playing on Suicidal where I feel the game isn't boring but allows for more flexibility and creativity in perk and weapon choice.

Overall I feel the most difficult part about KF2 is preventing zed colliders from boxing you in. If I can move I can survive anything the game throws at me roughly 95% of the time. KF1 felt like every zed could do big damage to you and if you took too much your movement speed would be reduced to the point you could no longer outrun the zeds. It was more of a chase than getting trapped and I find that more fun.

There was a section in the survey that asked about my preferred map types and I feel one was missing- that of Krampus Lair and DieSector. I enjoy unlocking new parts of those maps as the game progresses through the waves. They can drastically affect the validity of different camping locations and kiting paths and I feel they are the most natural evolution of classic Survival map design yet.

Another part asked for what type(s) of new content I would like added to the game and I feel there was an option missing- Perks. I'm still hoping for Martial Artist and think a team-enhancing Scientist perk would be a great addition.

Sorry for the rant, these thoughts have been accumulating over the past year and this survey feels like a good time to let them out.
 
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So nothing earth-shatteringly new, but plenty more content to come? Sweet. I'm always wary at the dawn of a new year that you might call it quit. Glad to see 2019 will still be a great year for Killing Floor.

Laser Cutter uh? Getting some Dead Space nostalgia?

(Oh and I'm crazy about these surveys! Reminds me of the silly internet tests I did in my youth)
 
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Aleflippy;n2327895 said:
Why should the firebug be buffed? It's one of the most consistent and satisfying perk of the bunch. I'd much rather get a medic rework, as long as the survivalist of course

I as Firebug main feel like the Firebug is not up to date. Some of the perks are trash and not worth ever using. DOT fire is extremely weak even when using both of the DOT length increasing skills. The MAC-10 is not really worth 1100 dosh, i feel like it's at the same tier with the flame shotty and flare revolvers. Also reverting the nerfs to Flamethrower would be nice. I have no idea why the flamethrower was ever nerfed. You don't waste your dosh at upgrading your flamethrower when it can relatively easily destroy low tier zeds.

You could say that rather then "buffing the Firebug" they the developers should Balance the Perk. Make Firebugs Skills more balanced.
 
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I think you guys need to focus on making a tier 5 $2000 weapons for all perks. That would probably fix all perks that feel weak, like the Firebug or Commando.

Also One small thing I noticed for the Firebug since I really started playing him again was the ammo pickups in the maps don't give him 100 rounds for his Microwave Gun. They only give 50 rounds. Why is this? Every other perk gets a full mag for all their weapons from ammo pickups. But not the Microwave Gun?
 
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While I think that every perk should get a T5 at some point, I don't understand your point about making it a priority... I mean, a lot of upgraded weapons can already act like very potent T5 guns? The Support for example, pack an extraordinary punch already.

Not to mention that since they introduced the M99, three other perks already received their T5 (M32, hmtech-501 and battleaxe), so it's pretty safe to say they are coming eventually.
 
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The seasonal Zeds are fun and all but i think you got all the bases covered with midsummer, holloween, and christmas zedpacks and i think TW should focus on optimizing the game performance now instead of making new event zeds (which is clear designing all of them takes a lot of resources and effort but really the time should be better spent on performance, maps and guns)
 
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