This might be a long post, but I'll post everything in one instead of splitting it in several different posts.
I love KF2. I loved KF1 even more, but that's a different post
. This is just a list in no particular order of practical things which, if changed, I would feel is an improvement to the game.
If these are too many to address, consider them a wishlist for KF3!
I am mostly greatly enjoying the game, but I think it could be better.
1. Electric sound (+ general comments of sound design).
The electric explosion sound (shock grenade/"EDAR explodes") is ridiculous. It sounds like a bell being rung or something. Weak, wimpy, gamey.
Here's 10 hours of sound effects, some of which would actually be pretty annoying (the high-pitched, buzzing ones I don't like), but imagine something like the effect at 0:57, ran in reverse. It's not annoying, and if in reverse, it would represent a nice, bassy "impact" electric explosion, with a short electricity-arcing-sounding decay, representing circuits burning or zeds being electrocuted. The effect should start with a "thunder-like" explosion, with good bass, and then some decay with electrical arc sounds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38j6Qmlfz68
General comment on sound design: Some, especially "fantasy" (energy/fire) guns sound too "pew-pew" and that makes them feel light and cheap. Yes, the animations everywhere are top-notch, but unfortunately the sound doesn't always match.
Compare the railgun in KF2 to the railgun here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq9zx_xvEdw
The echo helps, but even the base sound just has "balls" compared to the KF2 more pew-pew railgun. Also the metal sounds of rounds being inserted and the gun opening, that I think just isn't well-done in KF2. Yes, there are reloading sounds, but they're definitely not as cool.
Some other guns also sound "weak." In addition, the 3rd party sounds of the guns are sometimes ridiculously muffled and muted. Yes, I understand that making them "full loudness" - or even louder than "the user" since you might be standing nearer the barrel opening, would make the game ridiculously loud and annoying, hearing your teammates' guns just sounds like every gun is ultra-suppressed. The solution is probably to introduce a faster-than-real-world falloff of the "super loud" gun sounds, so it's only at nearly full power if you're standing really close to the user.
Why does 1. matter?
KF2 has top notch weapon animations, but unfortunately the sound design doesn't always match - especially with energy/fantasy(non-bullet) guns. Having better sounds would make you feel more connected to your guns, give them more feel of "weight," and hearing your teammates' guns better increases the feel of them doing damage, and the feel of teamwork.
Making the electric sound explosive, and actually sounding like electricity, would make you feel like you're causing an electric explosion, and doing damage, as opposed to playing a game.
2. Electricity vfx.
I don't know if the electricity vfx was added last minute or something, but it just feels unfinished. Consider the lightning seen at 1:10 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oGTReEvNMM .
The smoke is unnecessary and detrimental in KF2, but the lightning effects shouldn't be an "expanding sphere" with a cheap, 90's-looking plasma shader on it, as well as the same crappy plasma on the affected zeds. It should be lightning bolt particles or arcs emitting inside a sphere, or from a single point or something. I don't know, I'm not a vfx expert - I just feel like instead of a sphere, it should be somehow better and with more lightning/arcs.
Why does 2. matter?
If the shock effect vfx was revised, coupled with a sound revision, it would really really increase the enjoyment of fighting robots, throwing shock grenades, or the enjoyment of shock effects of the new rifle that's coming to survivalist, as well as future shock weapons.
3. "heads"
This is a tough one. Zeds (even low-level ones) covering their heads in KF2 so much is quite annoying, but ok, I'll play the whack-a-mole aiming minigame between bloats, or try to "hyper-aim" in the little tiny space on the sides of the cleavers where you can still hit their heads or the chins of elite clots even if they're covering. I feel like it's a cheap way to artificially increase difficulty, but whatever...
The bigger issue I see creeping up lately is that, fine, we now have 2 zeds which are "headless" - rioter (legs, except sharp and maybe gunslinger with heavier pistols) and EDARs (chest).
However, I feel like those ideas contradict the basic design of KF2, and since they were added later, they present some problems:
- Mutators. Beefcake encourages headshots. Bobblehead REALLY encourages headshots. Cranium cracker is headshots only.
Most of KF2 is headshots, but the weekly mutators (now also randomly included in endless) make it ultra headshot heavy. So now when it's either of those 3 above, rioters and EDARs don't make sense - at all. Beefcake should probably "not expand" rioters when shot in legs, and EDARs shot in chest, at least, maybe it's already been fixed. Bobblehead doesn't make sense at all - maybe it should be bobblechest and bobblelegs? lol... I don't know what the solution is there. Don't spawn rioters and edars at all? To TWI's credit, I think cranium cracker doesn't spawn EDARs at least, since they'd be unkillable. I think? It probably still spawns rioters. Since they're resistant, that's kind of an issue. I guess the cheap answer is, "well, it just increases the difficulty of those mutators - deal with it." It's just unfinished, un-thought through design to me...
- Perk design. Most perks' abilities were designed heavily around headshots. Yes, some have leg/arm abilities like gunslinger, but mostly it's headshots. Now we have zeds which are non-headshot, mostly. They're not many, and we "force through" those issues in-game, but if more non-headshot zeds are added in the future, this will become a much bigger problem for the whole game.
Why does 3. matter?
KF is "the headshot game" - and with heavy bonuses, much more dependent on headshots than most shooters. Messing with the formula too much (by putting metal in front of heads, or putting heads in the chest or legs) messes with what makes KF great in my opinion. Or at least, it can be done a lot better and more thought out than it is right now.
4. Perk skills. All-positive vs "net" (increase one to decrease another).
There is a TON that can be said for perks, but something that hasn't really been said much before (?) jumped out at me while I was thinking about the non-choice at Demo level 15 (siren scream immunity vs decrease damage to increase aoe).
Why that choice isn't one is in my opinion because in that particular case you have made one side be "+" while the other is "-+". When that's the case, people will trend towards the "+".
For example: A perk skill may be defined as:
- Increase weapon damage 25%
or
- Increase weapon damage 25% but increase recoil 10%.
Or:
- Increase melee heavy hit damage 25%
or
- Increase melee heavy hit damage 25% but decrease all melee weapon attacks speed by 20%.
Among a LOT of other issues with balancing, I feel like tripwire needs to decide - are all perks "all positive" or "negative effect to cause a positive effect."
The design thought behind "all positive" vs "decrease one stat to increase another" is extremely different, and if there's a "net zero" skill choice, it should be "net zero" on both sides to make it really interesting. If one side is "just increase something" and the other is a "net zero," the "just increase" will win almost every time.
Also, when there's "free" damage increase with no downside, I think people might choose this almost every time, unfortunately, so consider that.
Why does 4. matter?
"Net zero" vs "increase something" choices in skills make them non-choices. Among many other issues, solve that to introduce more meaningfull skill decisions. Perhaps introduce more downsides to make the choices really gut-wrenchingly difficult (maybe all skills net zero? so for example (Left) you get mag increases but damage decrease or (Right) mag decrease but damage increase).
5. Self-heal.
Medic is ridiculously OP and stupid for soloing purposes. Berserker and somewhat survivalist approaches the same stupidity with the general resistance and self-heal skills. All need to be nerfed somehow.
I've seen people play medic to not heal their team, just because if everyone dies, which is common in random fail pubs, it's trivial to solo with the increased movement speed (discussed also in next section) and the self-heal spam (syringe + grenade). However, because they're a "weaker" DPS perk in general, and have no "damage spike" weapons, such non-heal medics are a detriment and a drag to their team. They would've been more helpful as a different perk if they're not going to heal. Still, they play medic because they can self-patch their mistakes so easily.
In Solo, medic makes HOE a joke. Spam grenades to self-heal AND kill trash at the same time, self-heal and escape with speed if you get caught in a bind. It's just too stupid.
This is a difficult thing to address, because the speed is necessary to (in theory) get to teammates and heal them with syringe, although almost nobody in KF2 does it, sadly, because of the aimbot darts and just general laziness to switch to syringe and run to teammates. I miss KF1 where even healing well was more of a skill. Syringe regen and medic grenades are also very necessary, because healing is medic's "thing" and if he's not good at that, he's not good at anything, because his weapons are generally weaker and he just sucks at everything that a more dedicated class would accomplish and solve better, faster, and/or cheaper.
Proposals. All of them are difficult, but probably necessary:
- Movement speed, either remove movement speed bonuses completely (also see next section), or increase movement only if you're moving at a sharp enough angle towards a teammate who is within ~20m of where you are. If everyone is dead, or you're too far from teammates, receive no movement speed bonuses.
- Syringe regen - regen at increased speed ONLY if you healed someone else. Regen at normal, base game, speed if you healed yourself. Also, receive no bonuses for increased efficiency if healing self. Basically make medic syringe bonuses ONLY if you're healing teammates. Otherwise, it's your basic 25 heal and then slow recharge like all other classes. Leave guns unaffected, since they're probably fine. Maybe even too fast in the AR's case, could use a little nerf, or a little %-nerf across the board, but it's mostly fine as is.
- Make grenades still cause poison, but make them not as damaging as to not make trash trivial in solo HOE. The poison from grenades feels too strong. The poison from guns or darts, conversely, feels too weak.
Why is 5. important?
Too many go medic to solo kite at the end of the wave, or end up solo kiting because everyone died. This is not helping the game, or introducing fun gameplay. It's hurting it. If the team dies, it should die. Too many rounds end in a solo medic infinite kiting around the map. It doesn't matter how much you teleport zeds behind people to try to sandwich, it doesn't matter how many fleshpounds you spawn raged at the same time - with the self-heal and healing nade spam + movement speed + ammo box spawn, the current medics can probably deal with mostly infinite enemies in most conditions. This is completely broken, and has been since KF1. In theory, the bonuses should help you help your teammates. In practice, the bonuses make you weaker, and if your teammates are bad and can't pull the small extra weight you put on your team by going medic and they die, you end up either willingly or unwillingly kiting for a LONG time while everyone watches. Rinse and repeat. This needs to stop. The medic should die without his teammates as well, and should be just as punishable for his own mistakes.
6. Movement.
This is the big one.
Player movement is, well, way too fast. There's infinite sprinting, and with the (optional) autoaim grabbing, clots aren't as dangerous - even without the autoaim, they aren't really. This enables infinite kiting.
As if base movement wasn't fast enough, medic, gunslinger, and berserker have even faster movement ability.
Full disclosure: I hate kiting for the sake of kiting, from the beginning of a wave. The way I like to play KF is to hold a spot, and deal with shifting priorities with "lanes" or whatever, as zeds come at you - by aiming and team members prioritizing targets correctly. If a particularly bad spawn combo appears, I'm fine with "escaping" and kiting a little bit while the team gets the situation under control and establishes a hold in the same space, or somewhere else. But not kiting from the beginning of the wave to the end of the wave. Unfortunately, this is all too common, especially around sales, or people of too low level in a too high difficulty server. That's also why lately Nuked is popular - it's an endless circular kite.
Why do I hate kiting? It's personal preference ultimately. I can understand how you might not have a problem with it or even enjoy it. I personally like punishing games where you either rise above a threshold, or die. In KF, I love going INTO zeds, because it just feels badass, and it's a triumph over what the game "threw at me." It feels good to me that not only can I "hold" against the problem that the game presented, but I can "rise over" the problem. I don't like kiting in KF in particular, because it's mostly a patch for lack of skill, bad choices, and/or lack of teamwork. Addressing this would make the game more "hardcore" and "elitist" or "exclusive" perhaps, but the movement speed increases for zeds on higher difficulties are already attempting to do that. However, they're failing. You can kite just as well on "HOE" (very hard) as on "Normal" (easy).
What I propose is to make the sprinting speed limited. A slowly rechargeable bar would be fine, with perhaps even a cooldown, and maybe even link player speed to weight carried. Carrying heavier weapons weight? Slower movement speed. The current speed for all classes should be the speed for carrying their starter weapons. It only goes down from there. How much? I don't know, it needs testing. A lot of testing.
What I also propose, and I understand this will not have many fans, but I feel is necessary, is to remove all player speed bonuses, EXCEPT medic, and ONLY if medic is moving at a narrow enough angle towards a nearby (~20m) teammate, maybe even only while holding a syringe, not in general.
Also, I think you should not be able to sprint backwards. Yes, that will introduce a somewhat stupid sprint-jump-lookbehindinmidair-lookforwardinmidair-sprint minigame to kiting, but anything to make kiting more difficult, or "higher skill ceiling" if you will... helps .
Also, I would like it if the small movement speed bonus while holding a knife like in KF1 was reintroduced. Knife only, not "any melee weapon."
There should be more penalties for firing while moving for all classes. Yes, you get a recoil and accuracy bonus while crouched, but it should be more pronounced, and there should be distinct differences in deviation and recoil when sprinting vs running vs standing vs crouched, crouched being the best, but not too much better than standing because ideally not everyone on a team should be crouched.
Why is 6. important?
This is unfortunately subjective because you might not have a problem with kiting, or even enjoy it, but in my opinion it's not the way the game was made to be played, and kiting should be viable in emergency situations only (separated, the spawn was too difficult, someone made a mistake mid-wave, etc.). It will make the game more punishing to reduce movement, but I like that, and it will leave camping/holding tactics completely unaffected. The difference in skill required to camp vs kite is unfortunately very large currently, and I believe the number 1 bar-none reason is the fast movement, movement bonuses + self-heal (see section above), backwards sprinting, and small penalties for shooting while moving (except sharpshooter, see next section).
7. Sharpshooter bonuses for crouch.
This gets its own section because it's a large problem, especially when put together with the movement issues above.
Sharpshooter has huge bonuses for crouched, and a small potential bonus while scoped. With a kiting team, the perk is pretty bad. It has movement skills, yes, but consider this: Would you rather play a sharpshooter with the movement bonuses, or just... gunslinger. In my opinion, this is a non-decision. If you're playing a moving sharpshooter, you'd be better off playing gunslinger more or less 100% of the time. I won't go into detail, but if you think about it, the only way in the game that it makes sense for a sharpshooter to play is crouched and probably scoped most of the time.
The problem with that, is that this is the ONLY perk in the game which has this standing/crouch/scope restriction. Again, yes, you can play ss moving with MBR or whatever, but again gunslinger is better in that situation, which makes this a huge issue due to prevalent kiting.
If movement is adjusted as seen above, this issue will fix itself.
If movement is not adjusted (realistically, I understand this is not likely to happen, but I can dream), then sharpshooter either needs those bonuses without having to crouch and scope, or it needs some beefy bonuses to make it viable while moving, and more attractive than simply playing gunslinger.
Why is 7. important?
If the group is moving for any reason, you have to play a sprint/crouch/scope/sprint/crouch/scope minigame and forfeit your reload penalty while everyone else just shoots. Also, maybe I don't want to crouch all the time while shooting... significant bonuses being tied to crouching and scoping just isn't fun in my opinion.
8. "Stand your ground"
Cute idea, but I get annoyed when nobody wants to bother, or only half the team is there. I would welcome a bit of evil with this system, and introduce a negative consequence for "not even trying" to defend the area. For example, the current system remains, but the ticker for "expiration" is increased to 2 times faster (it's too easy to "get the bonus" or "get some bonus" even if you don't try right now because the wave can end too quickly), and if you fail, the area starts counting towards negative dosh (dosh only should be enough, negative vosh and xp would be too complicated and perhaps unnecessary) for the wave. So you can actually get up to +300dosh, +100xp, +200vosh or something, or up to -300dosh if you fail.
Important: The negative count ONLY counts if people have left the physical area. It does NOT count negatively if zeds AND people are in the area. So, it only penalizes you for complete abandonment, not for not being able to hold it.
Why is 8. important?
"Stand your ground" is awesome since it encourages variety, but teams should be punished for not bothering, not just incentivised to care. Put a bit of stick next to the carrot.
9. Firebug is a no-aim class.
The skill to playing firebug well vs playing commando or sharpshooter well is not even close to comparison. Firebug is a super chillax class where aiming doesn't really matter. Movement matters a bit, but compared to the high intensity of commando and ss and their need to constantly headshot with few mistakes allowed is a stark difference to sitting with flamethrower and carelessly spamming at zeds' feet and basically erasing trash with a button push while topping the kill chart and making insane amounts of money through economic efficiency.
This isn't necessarily a "problem" because some people might just like it like it is. If you want to be a badass skilled aimer, go commando. If you want to chillax and push a button, go firebug... But, I think (among some other issues like some perk skills are useless for bullet weapons while others are less useful for DOT weapons) firebug should probably have more weaknesses than it currently has. I don't really think it has place with the other classes with reliance to headshots, but perhaps in addition to it being "weak against" large zeds (fp/sc), except with microwave gun perhaps, there should be some kind of additional downsides to just spamming flamethrower.
The solution here is the most difficult, because I don't really know what it is, and probably needs testing. Perhaps make husks completely immune to fire or all firebug weapons? Make sirens' scream block fire or put out fire?
I don't know, but something needs to be done to make the mechanics of "see group of specimens - point flamethrower loosely at feet in front of group - fire - group is gone" more interesting than they are. Maybe introduce a fire-blocking shield specimen? Increase everything except crawlers' resistance to fire greatly to what it is now?
I don't know.
Why is 9. important?
Firebug is too easy in comparison to ss and commando. It also ruins bullet classes' lives, it's too easy to top the kills and economic efficiency while having an extremely low necessity to aim accurately.
10. 10:1 crafts.
You get one drop per day, 2 if you play religiously for hours. I get that TW wants to maintain item rarity, but most items are sold at $0.01 already, and if given a realistic look at the "non-crate" items, having a 10:1 craft doesn't make sense. It's not really "hurting" the game, it's just useless and more of an insult sitting in your inventory than anything else. Probably make it 2:1 like vosh items?
Why does 10. matter?
It doesn't, it just makes me look at useless "crafting materials" in my inventory for a long time, when all you get is $0.01 items that nobody wants out of the non-crate items anyway. Why not accept the flood there? Leave crate crafts still rare though, I'm fine with that. If people open crates, they deserve rare stuff.
11. Reload cancellation.
This is the easiest one to fix. I don't know why I hate the "reload cancel" minigame, but I do. If you don't know what it is, you can fire your weapon earlier than the reload animation finishes, because the ammo "appears" in the gun sooner than the animation finishes. To do that, you simply have to push your "bash" button before firing. That is because the reload animation can be cancelled by the bash, and the bash animation can be cancelled by firing.
Why not simply make the reload animation cancelable by firing? You can still get the pretty full animation if there's no enemies on the screen, but if you need to fire ASAP, why make you push a "bash" button to get the maximum reload speed out of your guns? It's just rules for the sake of rules and button pushes for the sake of button pushes.
Why is 11. important?
It's not a fighting game - although combos sound interesting for berserker - and having to push a button to fire sooner just annoys me personally. Just make the reload animation be cancelable by fire. Trust me, it will feel good. If it's an argument that it's "skill" - timing the shot would be considered skill as well because if you push fire without bullets in the chamber, it should attempt to fire the gun and start the reload over again if unsuccessful.
---
I really believe if all those things are done and thought about, we'd have a much better game on our hands. Maybe not as easy for new players, unfortunately, but deeper and more engaging.
Thanks for bothering to read all this, if you did.
I love KF2. I loved KF1 even more, but that's a different post
. This is just a list in no particular order of practical things which, if changed, I would feel is an improvement to the game.If these are too many to address, consider them a wishlist for KF3!
I am mostly greatly enjoying the game, but I think it could be better.
1. Electric sound (+ general comments of sound design).
The electric explosion sound (shock grenade/"EDAR explodes") is ridiculous. It sounds like a bell being rung or something. Weak, wimpy, gamey.
Here's 10 hours of sound effects, some of which would actually be pretty annoying (the high-pitched, buzzing ones I don't like), but imagine something like the effect at 0:57, ran in reverse. It's not annoying, and if in reverse, it would represent a nice, bassy "impact" electric explosion, with a short electricity-arcing-sounding decay, representing circuits burning or zeds being electrocuted. The effect should start with a "thunder-like" explosion, with good bass, and then some decay with electrical arc sounds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38j6Qmlfz68
General comment on sound design: Some, especially "fantasy" (energy/fire) guns sound too "pew-pew" and that makes them feel light and cheap. Yes, the animations everywhere are top-notch, but unfortunately the sound doesn't always match.
Compare the railgun in KF2 to the railgun here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq9zx_xvEdw
The echo helps, but even the base sound just has "balls" compared to the KF2 more pew-pew railgun. Also the metal sounds of rounds being inserted and the gun opening, that I think just isn't well-done in KF2. Yes, there are reloading sounds, but they're definitely not as cool.
Some other guns also sound "weak." In addition, the 3rd party sounds of the guns are sometimes ridiculously muffled and muted. Yes, I understand that making them "full loudness" - or even louder than "the user" since you might be standing nearer the barrel opening, would make the game ridiculously loud and annoying, hearing your teammates' guns just sounds like every gun is ultra-suppressed. The solution is probably to introduce a faster-than-real-world falloff of the "super loud" gun sounds, so it's only at nearly full power if you're standing really close to the user.
Why does 1. matter?
KF2 has top notch weapon animations, but unfortunately the sound design doesn't always match - especially with energy/fantasy(non-bullet) guns. Having better sounds would make you feel more connected to your guns, give them more feel of "weight," and hearing your teammates' guns better increases the feel of them doing damage, and the feel of teamwork.
Making the electric sound explosive, and actually sounding like electricity, would make you feel like you're causing an electric explosion, and doing damage, as opposed to playing a game.
2. Electricity vfx.
I don't know if the electricity vfx was added last minute or something, but it just feels unfinished. Consider the lightning seen at 1:10 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oGTReEvNMM .
The smoke is unnecessary and detrimental in KF2, but the lightning effects shouldn't be an "expanding sphere" with a cheap, 90's-looking plasma shader on it, as well as the same crappy plasma on the affected zeds. It should be lightning bolt particles or arcs emitting inside a sphere, or from a single point or something. I don't know, I'm not a vfx expert - I just feel like instead of a sphere, it should be somehow better and with more lightning/arcs.
Why does 2. matter?
If the shock effect vfx was revised, coupled with a sound revision, it would really really increase the enjoyment of fighting robots, throwing shock grenades, or the enjoyment of shock effects of the new rifle that's coming to survivalist, as well as future shock weapons.
3. "heads"
This is a tough one. Zeds (even low-level ones) covering their heads in KF2 so much is quite annoying, but ok, I'll play the whack-a-mole aiming minigame between bloats, or try to "hyper-aim" in the little tiny space on the sides of the cleavers where you can still hit their heads or the chins of elite clots even if they're covering. I feel like it's a cheap way to artificially increase difficulty, but whatever...
The bigger issue I see creeping up lately is that, fine, we now have 2 zeds which are "headless" - rioter (legs, except sharp and maybe gunslinger with heavier pistols) and EDARs (chest).
However, I feel like those ideas contradict the basic design of KF2, and since they were added later, they present some problems:
- Mutators. Beefcake encourages headshots. Bobblehead REALLY encourages headshots. Cranium cracker is headshots only.
Most of KF2 is headshots, but the weekly mutators (now also randomly included in endless) make it ultra headshot heavy. So now when it's either of those 3 above, rioters and EDARs don't make sense - at all. Beefcake should probably "not expand" rioters when shot in legs, and EDARs shot in chest, at least, maybe it's already been fixed. Bobblehead doesn't make sense at all - maybe it should be bobblechest and bobblelegs? lol... I don't know what the solution is there. Don't spawn rioters and edars at all? To TWI's credit, I think cranium cracker doesn't spawn EDARs at least, since they'd be unkillable. I think? It probably still spawns rioters. Since they're resistant, that's kind of an issue. I guess the cheap answer is, "well, it just increases the difficulty of those mutators - deal with it." It's just unfinished, un-thought through design to me...
- Perk design. Most perks' abilities were designed heavily around headshots. Yes, some have leg/arm abilities like gunslinger, but mostly it's headshots. Now we have zeds which are non-headshot, mostly. They're not many, and we "force through" those issues in-game, but if more non-headshot zeds are added in the future, this will become a much bigger problem for the whole game.
Why does 3. matter?
KF is "the headshot game" - and with heavy bonuses, much more dependent on headshots than most shooters. Messing with the formula too much (by putting metal in front of heads, or putting heads in the chest or legs) messes with what makes KF great in my opinion. Or at least, it can be done a lot better and more thought out than it is right now.
4. Perk skills. All-positive vs "net" (increase one to decrease another).
There is a TON that can be said for perks, but something that hasn't really been said much before (?) jumped out at me while I was thinking about the non-choice at Demo level 15 (siren scream immunity vs decrease damage to increase aoe).
Why that choice isn't one is in my opinion because in that particular case you have made one side be "+" while the other is "-+". When that's the case, people will trend towards the "+".
For example: A perk skill may be defined as:
- Increase weapon damage 25%
or
- Increase weapon damage 25% but increase recoil 10%.
Or:
- Increase melee heavy hit damage 25%
or
- Increase melee heavy hit damage 25% but decrease all melee weapon attacks speed by 20%.
Among a LOT of other issues with balancing, I feel like tripwire needs to decide - are all perks "all positive" or "negative effect to cause a positive effect."
The design thought behind "all positive" vs "decrease one stat to increase another" is extremely different, and if there's a "net zero" skill choice, it should be "net zero" on both sides to make it really interesting. If one side is "just increase something" and the other is a "net zero," the "just increase" will win almost every time.
Also, when there's "free" damage increase with no downside, I think people might choose this almost every time, unfortunately, so consider that.
Why does 4. matter?
"Net zero" vs "increase something" choices in skills make them non-choices. Among many other issues, solve that to introduce more meaningfull skill decisions. Perhaps introduce more downsides to make the choices really gut-wrenchingly difficult (maybe all skills net zero? so for example (Left) you get mag increases but damage decrease or (Right) mag decrease but damage increase).
5. Self-heal.
Medic is ridiculously OP and stupid for soloing purposes. Berserker and somewhat survivalist approaches the same stupidity with the general resistance and self-heal skills. All need to be nerfed somehow.
I've seen people play medic to not heal their team, just because if everyone dies, which is common in random fail pubs, it's trivial to solo with the increased movement speed (discussed also in next section) and the self-heal spam (syringe + grenade). However, because they're a "weaker" DPS perk in general, and have no "damage spike" weapons, such non-heal medics are a detriment and a drag to their team. They would've been more helpful as a different perk if they're not going to heal. Still, they play medic because they can self-patch their mistakes so easily.
In Solo, medic makes HOE a joke. Spam grenades to self-heal AND kill trash at the same time, self-heal and escape with speed if you get caught in a bind. It's just too stupid.
This is a difficult thing to address, because the speed is necessary to (in theory) get to teammates and heal them with syringe, although almost nobody in KF2 does it, sadly, because of the aimbot darts and just general laziness to switch to syringe and run to teammates. I miss KF1 where even healing well was more of a skill. Syringe regen and medic grenades are also very necessary, because healing is medic's "thing" and if he's not good at that, he's not good at anything, because his weapons are generally weaker and he just sucks at everything that a more dedicated class would accomplish and solve better, faster, and/or cheaper.
Proposals. All of them are difficult, but probably necessary:
- Movement speed, either remove movement speed bonuses completely (also see next section), or increase movement only if you're moving at a sharp enough angle towards a teammate who is within ~20m of where you are. If everyone is dead, or you're too far from teammates, receive no movement speed bonuses.
- Syringe regen - regen at increased speed ONLY if you healed someone else. Regen at normal, base game, speed if you healed yourself. Also, receive no bonuses for increased efficiency if healing self. Basically make medic syringe bonuses ONLY if you're healing teammates. Otherwise, it's your basic 25 heal and then slow recharge like all other classes. Leave guns unaffected, since they're probably fine. Maybe even too fast in the AR's case, could use a little nerf, or a little %-nerf across the board, but it's mostly fine as is.
- Make grenades still cause poison, but make them not as damaging as to not make trash trivial in solo HOE. The poison from grenades feels too strong. The poison from guns or darts, conversely, feels too weak.
Why is 5. important?
Too many go medic to solo kite at the end of the wave, or end up solo kiting because everyone died. This is not helping the game, or introducing fun gameplay. It's hurting it. If the team dies, it should die. Too many rounds end in a solo medic infinite kiting around the map. It doesn't matter how much you teleport zeds behind people to try to sandwich, it doesn't matter how many fleshpounds you spawn raged at the same time - with the self-heal and healing nade spam + movement speed + ammo box spawn, the current medics can probably deal with mostly infinite enemies in most conditions. This is completely broken, and has been since KF1. In theory, the bonuses should help you help your teammates. In practice, the bonuses make you weaker, and if your teammates are bad and can't pull the small extra weight you put on your team by going medic and they die, you end up either willingly or unwillingly kiting for a LONG time while everyone watches. Rinse and repeat. This needs to stop. The medic should die without his teammates as well, and should be just as punishable for his own mistakes.
6. Movement.
This is the big one.
Player movement is, well, way too fast. There's infinite sprinting, and with the (optional) autoaim grabbing, clots aren't as dangerous - even without the autoaim, they aren't really. This enables infinite kiting.
As if base movement wasn't fast enough, medic, gunslinger, and berserker have even faster movement ability.
Full disclosure: I hate kiting for the sake of kiting, from the beginning of a wave. The way I like to play KF is to hold a spot, and deal with shifting priorities with "lanes" or whatever, as zeds come at you - by aiming and team members prioritizing targets correctly. If a particularly bad spawn combo appears, I'm fine with "escaping" and kiting a little bit while the team gets the situation under control and establishes a hold in the same space, or somewhere else. But not kiting from the beginning of the wave to the end of the wave. Unfortunately, this is all too common, especially around sales, or people of too low level in a too high difficulty server. That's also why lately Nuked is popular - it's an endless circular kite.
Why do I hate kiting? It's personal preference ultimately. I can understand how you might not have a problem with it or even enjoy it. I personally like punishing games where you either rise above a threshold, or die. In KF, I love going INTO zeds, because it just feels badass, and it's a triumph over what the game "threw at me." It feels good to me that not only can I "hold" against the problem that the game presented, but I can "rise over" the problem. I don't like kiting in KF in particular, because it's mostly a patch for lack of skill, bad choices, and/or lack of teamwork. Addressing this would make the game more "hardcore" and "elitist" or "exclusive" perhaps, but the movement speed increases for zeds on higher difficulties are already attempting to do that. However, they're failing. You can kite just as well on "HOE" (very hard) as on "Normal" (easy).
What I propose is to make the sprinting speed limited. A slowly rechargeable bar would be fine, with perhaps even a cooldown, and maybe even link player speed to weight carried. Carrying heavier weapons weight? Slower movement speed. The current speed for all classes should be the speed for carrying their starter weapons. It only goes down from there. How much? I don't know, it needs testing. A lot of testing.
What I also propose, and I understand this will not have many fans, but I feel is necessary, is to remove all player speed bonuses, EXCEPT medic, and ONLY if medic is moving at a narrow enough angle towards a nearby (~20m) teammate, maybe even only while holding a syringe, not in general.
Also, I think you should not be able to sprint backwards. Yes, that will introduce a somewhat stupid sprint-jump-lookbehindinmidair-lookforwardinmidair-sprint minigame to kiting, but anything to make kiting more difficult, or "higher skill ceiling" if you will... helps
.Also, I would like it if the small movement speed bonus while holding a knife like in KF1 was reintroduced. Knife only, not "any melee weapon."
There should be more penalties for firing while moving for all classes. Yes, you get a recoil and accuracy bonus while crouched, but it should be more pronounced, and there should be distinct differences in deviation and recoil when sprinting vs running vs standing vs crouched, crouched being the best, but not too much better than standing because ideally not everyone on a team should be crouched.
Why is 6. important?
This is unfortunately subjective because you might not have a problem with kiting, or even enjoy it, but in my opinion it's not the way the game was made to be played, and kiting should be viable in emergency situations only (separated, the spawn was too difficult, someone made a mistake mid-wave, etc.). It will make the game more punishing to reduce movement, but I like that, and it will leave camping/holding tactics completely unaffected. The difference in skill required to camp vs kite is unfortunately very large currently, and I believe the number 1 bar-none reason is the fast movement, movement bonuses + self-heal (see section above), backwards sprinting, and small penalties for shooting while moving (except sharpshooter, see next section).
7. Sharpshooter bonuses for crouch.
This gets its own section because it's a large problem, especially when put together with the movement issues above.
Sharpshooter has huge bonuses for crouched, and a small potential bonus while scoped. With a kiting team, the perk is pretty bad. It has movement skills, yes, but consider this: Would you rather play a sharpshooter with the movement bonuses, or just... gunslinger. In my opinion, this is a non-decision. If you're playing a moving sharpshooter, you'd be better off playing gunslinger more or less 100% of the time. I won't go into detail, but if you think about it, the only way in the game that it makes sense for a sharpshooter to play is crouched and probably scoped most of the time.
The problem with that, is that this is the ONLY perk in the game which has this standing/crouch/scope restriction. Again, yes, you can play ss moving with MBR or whatever, but again gunslinger is better in that situation, which makes this a huge issue due to prevalent kiting.
If movement is adjusted as seen above, this issue will fix itself.
If movement is not adjusted (realistically, I understand this is not likely to happen, but I can dream), then sharpshooter either needs those bonuses without having to crouch and scope, or it needs some beefy bonuses to make it viable while moving, and more attractive than simply playing gunslinger.
Why is 7. important?
If the group is moving for any reason, you have to play a sprint/crouch/scope/sprint/crouch/scope minigame and forfeit your reload penalty while everyone else just shoots. Also, maybe I don't want to crouch all the time while shooting... significant bonuses being tied to crouching and scoping just isn't fun in my opinion.
8. "Stand your ground"
Cute idea, but I get annoyed when nobody wants to bother, or only half the team is there. I would welcome a bit of evil with this system, and introduce a negative consequence for "not even trying" to defend the area. For example, the current system remains, but the ticker for "expiration" is increased to 2 times faster (it's too easy to "get the bonus" or "get some bonus" even if you don't try right now because the wave can end too quickly), and if you fail, the area starts counting towards negative dosh (dosh only should be enough, negative vosh and xp would be too complicated and perhaps unnecessary) for the wave. So you can actually get up to +300dosh, +100xp, +200vosh or something, or up to -300dosh if you fail.
Important: The negative count ONLY counts if people have left the physical area. It does NOT count negatively if zeds AND people are in the area. So, it only penalizes you for complete abandonment, not for not being able to hold it.
Why is 8. important?
"Stand your ground" is awesome since it encourages variety, but teams should be punished for not bothering, not just incentivised to care. Put a bit of stick next to the carrot.
9. Firebug is a no-aim class.
The skill to playing firebug well vs playing commando or sharpshooter well is not even close to comparison. Firebug is a super chillax class where aiming doesn't really matter. Movement matters a bit, but compared to the high intensity of commando and ss and their need to constantly headshot with few mistakes allowed is a stark difference to sitting with flamethrower and carelessly spamming at zeds' feet and basically erasing trash with a button push while topping the kill chart and making insane amounts of money through economic efficiency.
This isn't necessarily a "problem" because some people might just like it like it is. If you want to be a badass skilled aimer, go commando. If you want to chillax and push a button, go firebug... But, I think (among some other issues like some perk skills are useless for bullet weapons while others are less useful for DOT weapons) firebug should probably have more weaknesses than it currently has. I don't really think it has place with the other classes with reliance to headshots, but perhaps in addition to it being "weak against" large zeds (fp/sc), except with microwave gun perhaps, there should be some kind of additional downsides to just spamming flamethrower.
The solution here is the most difficult, because I don't really know what it is, and probably needs testing. Perhaps make husks completely immune to fire or all firebug weapons? Make sirens' scream block fire or put out fire?
I don't know, but something needs to be done to make the mechanics of "see group of specimens - point flamethrower loosely at feet in front of group - fire - group is gone" more interesting than they are. Maybe introduce a fire-blocking shield specimen? Increase everything except crawlers' resistance to fire greatly to what it is now?
I don't know.
Why is 9. important?
Firebug is too easy in comparison to ss and commando. It also ruins bullet classes' lives, it's too easy to top the kills and economic efficiency while having an extremely low necessity to aim accurately.
10. 10:1 crafts.
You get one drop per day, 2 if you play religiously for hours. I get that TW wants to maintain item rarity, but most items are sold at $0.01 already, and if given a realistic look at the "non-crate" items, having a 10:1 craft doesn't make sense. It's not really "hurting" the game, it's just useless and more of an insult sitting in your inventory than anything else. Probably make it 2:1 like vosh items?
Why does 10. matter?
It doesn't, it just makes me look at useless "crafting materials" in my inventory for a long time, when all you get is $0.01 items that nobody wants out of the non-crate items anyway. Why not accept the flood there? Leave crate crafts still rare though, I'm fine with that. If people open crates, they deserve rare stuff.
11. Reload cancellation.
This is the easiest one to fix. I don't know why I hate the "reload cancel" minigame, but I do. If you don't know what it is, you can fire your weapon earlier than the reload animation finishes, because the ammo "appears" in the gun sooner than the animation finishes. To do that, you simply have to push your "bash" button before firing. That is because the reload animation can be cancelled by the bash, and the bash animation can be cancelled by firing.
Why not simply make the reload animation cancelable by firing? You can still get the pretty full animation if there's no enemies on the screen, but if you need to fire ASAP, why make you push a "bash" button to get the maximum reload speed out of your guns? It's just rules for the sake of rules and button pushes for the sake of button pushes.
Why is 11. important?
It's not a fighting game - although combos sound interesting for berserker - and having to push a button to fire sooner just annoys me personally. Just make the reload animation be cancelable by fire. Trust me, it will feel good. If it's an argument that it's "skill" - timing the shot would be considered skill as well because if you push fire without bullets in the chamber, it should attempt to fire the gun and start the reload over again if unsuccessful.
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I really believe if all those things are done and thought about, we'd have a much better game on our hands. Maybe not as easy for new players, unfortunately, but deeper and more engaging.
Thanks for bothering to read all this, if you did.
