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What is good about KF, and what would you wish it had been?

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Udyrfrykte

FNG / Fresh Meat
Sep 10, 2010
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#1
Hi everyone.
Why I'm wondering that?
I'm an apprentice programmer (not a rookie, not a veteran) who likes KF very much. I played it all the way from the very start as an UT mod in 1.0 and bought the game on steam.
I am, with a small team, going to create a game in less than a year as a part of a school task (finishing my bachelor in a games development-ish degree). The game will be some sort of zombie survival co-op thing. We are still planning things out, exactly why I am asking it too. Only thing that is sure is that it will be mission based.

What I like about KF is the desperation I felt when ammo was running low, baddies getting tough, people dying.
What I hated (I haven't played in a while, might have changed) was that sometimes players would be a solohero and give F in their team.

KF would be cool with a mission oriented campaign for instance. I'm not saying this should be done, because I know that would prove challenging or at least a lot of work without changing the engine.

So, basically, I want your ideas for a cool co-op game.
 
#2
Just a few things off the top of my head...

Good:

  • Each zed type is very distinct and iconic and instantly recognizable with clearly differentiated colours and silhouettes, so you can make quick decisions about your targets without getting annoyed at trying to figure out what your situation even is.
  • Most of the player characters have enough concealed that it could be any dude underneath the mask.
  • There's a bit of a rock-paper-scissors game against both the computer and your teammates. Every time you choose a weapon, a target, a door to weld (or unweld), or a time to reload, that choice has consequences that will affect all sorts of things further down the road and a lot of the gameplay is developing a useful, intuitive sense of how these things relate to one another. (And being surprised when you're horribly wrong and wipe out the team. :D)
  • Although there's a lot that can be determined, KF leaves a lot of room for guessing and gambling. You never know when the next encounter will have a fatal siren/pounder combo, or some other thing that forces you to think outside any box you might've retreated into the past couple waves. And you never know if you'll get an awesome team, a team of good soloists who are all dickheads, or a team of completely doomed morons, or a mixed team with one moron who it turns out oddly morally gratifying and XP-awarding to babysit for half the game.
  • Teamplay and niches are developed, but not to the point where they are a fetter to your discretion as a player. I lay out the particulars of why this is so at the bottom of this page. (I remember when I first played WoW and the friend who introduced me to it mapped out for my benefit every single ability I got because that was only optimum route... I ended up logging way more hours on an alt of a race/class combo she never played.)
  • The designers didn't pick a lame-o default option for everything. The crossbow, for all its faults, gives the game a very distinct flavour, as does having a firebug instead of a heavy machine gunner.
  • The player character's Cockney accent also plays to this. Yes the protag's yet another assumed-default white male, but to see him ethnically marked somehow makes the game way more approachable.
  • On the flip side of the non-defaultness: there's a lot of whimsical, arbitrary stuff in the game. Why does the crossbow shoot like a railgun? Why is the machete so useless? Why is a weapon (okay bswearer you win this one) so obviously designed in its RL history for commando-style fighting classified as the highest-tier sniper weapon? If it were all orderly and consistent we'd just think "oh wow that's so neat and orderly and consistent" and play for like a week night before forgetting about it - it's the oddball stuff that makes you think. Sorta like alignment in D&D3 versus 4 - the former gives all these bizarre and absurd possibilities that can also promote some potentially interesting insight and discussion about how we really derive our morals and our ethics, while the latter's super-streamlined good-and-evil "high" fantasy does its job to pit X against Y and disappears in a completely uninteresting way.
  • The game doesn't take its plot or theme too seriously. The last thing I want to play is some pretentious arsehole masturbation piece where they try to be all important and artistic without delivering on interesting, deep gameplay - playing at you rather than with you. The player character isn't cringe-inducingly earnest, nor is there any pretence of being "cool" in a way that the players should look up to - his lines reflect more or less the same annoyance, frustration, relief, and homicidal glee that's been observed from the players.
  • The guns. There was time and care put into their design.


Bad:

  • Everything is brown and grey.
  • The demo and support icons look very similar if you're not familiar with them and are going by general outline.
  • Demo. It's just a big source of headaches, killsteals, and frustration when you can't see the enemy. The demo's only real worthwhile function on a pub is to kill fleshpounds with pipe traps.
  • It's not really survival horror any more than the Republican Party is conservative or Christian, so the subtitle kinda bugs me every time I see it. But that could also play into one of the good points I mentioned earlier.
 
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#3
I have no idea where you want to take this.
"Co-op survival horror" can range from left 4 dead that emphasizes teamwork over resident evil 5 which is basically an arcade shooter to killing floor which just puts you in a cage and then throws some zombies in.

Perhaps you should make your mind up on what type of game you want to make.
 
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#4
I interpreted the question as asking the people on the forum "what do you like about KF that makes it a good game, as an example of what sort of elements would work together make one particular game good?"

In KF's case, the simplicity of how it "puts you in a cage and then throws some zombies in" really works for me. I don't want to follow a plot or be arbitrarily obliged to move from Point A to Point B when I'm happy at Point C and curious about what's at Point D - I'd much rather just enjoy a grand old survival TDM where one team happens to be populated by co-op game monsters instead of similarly-endowed players or bots.
 
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#5
Good:

-Definitely one of the "fairest" games I've played. Balance issues aside, the zeds generally have a good chance of ripping apart the team if they don't know what they're doing, but at the same time a well-organized team can get by just fine, and I hope the upcoming update really works on amending the "fair" challenge to this game.

-At the same time, it's really easy to jump in and enjoy as long as you know the basics.

-Every zed has it's own distinct strengths and weaknesses, and each one is very easily recognizable. I think the top thing I want to see in content updates is more zeds.

-Player progression in this game works well as an incentive to get people really hooked on playing the game long term, and also helps people learn how to play their perk and get better in general.

-Almost all of the weapons are distinct, well-balanced, and feel satisfying. Maybe not completely realistic in the cases of things like the Crossbow or Flamethrower, but they're still enjoyable to use, and they just feel solid in a way that weapons from other games don't.

-The blend of "mainstream" and original ideas like the MP7M's dart launcher or the fact that the "sniper" perk's best gun is an assault weapon and his only scoped weapon is a Crossbow really add to the style of the game, like Vaecrius said, and really help it feel unique.

-I like the music a lot. Especially on Bedlam. I hope they add more.

-UT2k4's a good engine for modding and that leads to some interesting things like the skateboards on KF-Arcade-Shopping-Center, which are just fun to play with, and really help keep the game alive, if you ask me.


Bad:

-Visual clutter from Demomen or Firebugs gets annoying. I'd rather that they made those respective perks weaker in other ways instead of making it more difficult for non-Commando team mates to take out zeds.

-Sometimes it honestly gets a bit repetitive.
 
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#7
SMIFF said:
No SCAR or M14.

More grungy and filthy looking
Click to expand...

This ^

Tier 3 Sharpie wep shoulda been an enfield bolt-action scoped rifle.

And the grungy/filthy look will seperate it from the generic zombie games out there. I would've liked to see a story mode in the package with people making story maps specifically for it. Hey, maybe for KF2?

Also, it needs a Bren Gun.

Spoiler!
 
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#9
Generally my main issue with KF is that it's not possible to change the basic play experience because of the ONLINE servers keeping all the perk data, local perk data should've been an option from day one, not something for mods to add.

Let people modify difficulty, specimen details, perk and gun details, swarm sizes, max players, EVERYTHING in a few handy .cfg files.

And then if you're going to have classes and stuff, keep that sort of thing updated LOCALLY, not ONLINE.
 
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#10
PurpleXVI said:
Generally my main issue with KF is that it's not possible to change the basic play experience because of the ONLINE servers keeping all the perk data, local perk data should've been an option from day one, not something for mods to add.

Let people modify difficulty, specimen details, perk and gun details, swarm sizes, max players, EVERYTHING in a few handy .cfg files.

And then if you're going to have classes and stuff, keep that sort of thing updated LOCALLY, not ONLINE.
Click to expand...

Powerleveling much?
 
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#13
I'd just prefer to have local stats so I can edit the game however the hell I want without suddenly being forced to play it with 0 in all perks and no advancement.

As long as I'm playing it locally, with my friends, what trouble is it of anyone else's?

I don't really care much about whether I'm level 1 or level 6, I just prefer it when I can adjust the play experience as I like it. I see no reason why that shouldn't be permitted.

Besides, it's just stats on the internet, does it really matter that much if someone hits level 6 before someone else?
 
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#14
PurpleXVI said:
I'd just prefer to have local stats so I can edit the game however the hell I want without suddenly being forced to play it with 0 in all perks and no advancement.

As long as I'm playing it locally, with my friends, what trouble is it of anyone else's?

I don't really care much about whether I'm level 1 or level 6, I just prefer it when I can adjust the play experience as I like it. I see no reason why that shouldn't be permitted.

Besides, it's just stats on the internet, does it really matter that much if someone hits level 6 before someone else?
Click to expand...

You have a lot to learn.
 
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#16
PurpleXVI said:
I'd just prefer to have local stats so I can edit the game however the hell I want without suddenly being forced to play it with 0 in all perks and no advancement.

As long as I'm playing it locally, with my friends, what trouble is it of anyone else's?

I don't really care much about whether I'm level 1 or level 6, I just prefer it when I can adjust the play experience as I like it. I see no reason why that shouldn't be permitted.

Besides, it's just stats on the internet, does it really matter that much if someone hits level 6 before someone else?
Click to expand...

Why should you be able to edit your perks however you want? So people who want to play the game legitimately and earn their perks are inferior?

It doesn't matter if you're only playing locally with your friends either, you still cheated. And cheating takes 100% of fun out of games. I know if i could have just insta-6ed all my perks the first day i would never have put the 300 hours i now have into the game into it.

I went down your "road" if i may call it that, in Borderlands. And i got bored super fast of the game, even with friends. Insta 61, making all my own weapons that you could never find in the game. It was fun for a brief time, but i know if i legitimately played the game i probably would have put a lot more hours into it.
 
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#17
Holy crap I just tried a solo game and I finally remembered how hard KF is without any perk bonuses.

Here I was thinking I was actually getting better in the game when in fact it was nothing but my stats making me better :(

I dunno, I really do sympathize with Purple's concerns here, since the level system basically just rewards seniority with an easier time without reference to any sort of actual ability (which would create a very, very un-fun environment) or need (which would almost certainly result in a system that can be gamed for some really perverse incentives). But at the same time I just don't see how being able to set your perk to anything you want on some servers wouldn't just result in everyone being level 6 everything unless they specifically want a handicap.
 
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#19
9_6 said:
I have no idea where you want to take this.
"Co-op survival horror" can range from left 4 dead that emphasizes teamwork over resident evil 5 which is basically an arcade shooter to killing floor which just puts you in a cage and then throws some zombies in.

Perhaps you should make your mind up on what type of game you want to make.
Click to expand...

I know where I want to take it. I'm just willing to let myself be influenced by the good elements in other games. Basically I'm heavily inspired by KF.

We've got all the basics down now. Multiplayer, lobby, enemies, etc., but still got a long way to go. We still haven't gotten any 3D models (got 2x 3D modellers but I don't know how good/fast they are)
 
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