Balances Must have been Suggested by Normal Difficulty players.

[Dr Nick]

First, let me start by saying I was excited for the christmas update. New content and more achievements sounded like it would be fun and give us something new to do.

Upon playing the updated game, I feel like the game is less fun. It feels as if all the balances were suggested by people who don't even play on the harder difficulties. For example, the sharpshooter nerf:

• The Crossbow was only used to take out the bigger classes of enemies, the price of its ammunition made it illogical to use against easier enemies. The ammo is now harder to get and the weapon does less damage. On the harder difficulties, Suicidal up, this makes it near impossible to kill Fleshpounds, and much harder to kill Scrakes.
• The M14EBR was slow enough already. The Sharpshooter is one of the classes who should be getting more kills. It's an important class for the harder difficulties.
• The removal of the Recoil Bonus isn't even sensible. maybe on dual weapons, but on a single 9mm pistol the bonus should still be there.

Other classes, like the demolitions expert have similarly disabling reductions as well. People will essentially stop buying pipe bombs. The LAW isn't even a useful weapon. Even after the update, it's about as useful as the Hunting Shotgun. Heavy, expensive and doesn't do enough damage to justify itself.

The Medic should above all be the fastest class in the game, faster than all other classes by a notable amount so that he can keep up with other players. Really, if you wanted to slow down the Medic, you should've fixed the bugs involving the medical dart launcher on the MP7.

The Firebug with the Mac 10 was the perfect class for killing Crawlers, now the Crawlers are more annoying than ever.


Really, it feels like the balances were suggested by people playing on lower difficulties, and I can understand if they do. My team played on normal last year around this time, then we moved up to hard, now we're playing Suicidal.

The game doesn't really feel like fun any more, and more like a chore.

 

[Zips]

There was a beta that went on for over a month that included players of all skill types providing constant feedback.

 

[Salad Snake]

• The Crossbow was only used to take out the bigger classes of enemies, the price of its ammunition made it illogical to use against easier enemies. The ammo is now harder to get and the weapon does less damage. On the harder difficulties, Suicidal up, this makes it near impossible to kill Fleshpounds, and much harder to kill Scrakes.
• The M14EBR was slow enough already. The Sharpshooter is one of the classes who should be getting more kills. It's an important class for the harder difficulties.

• 
  
  Wrong. The Sharpshooter in general is meant for bigger enemies. If you want to "Get more kills", pick Commando or Firebug.
  
  Sharpshooter is balanced now, he can't team-carry and is no longer the one-man-army he was before. Adapt to the fact that he is now only 1 of six classes, instead of being "The Class" to play.
  
  
  Also:
  
  Law is very useful now. Pipe bombs might be a tad expensive unperked but they are still viable for Demos.
  
  Mac-10 is still great, but more for mid-size enemies. Use the Flamethrower for crowds of Crawlers.
  
  Medic still has great speed, the nerf was barely noticeable. You can still catch up to almost anyone.

 

[avp2501]

The game doesn't really feel like fun any more, and more like a chore.

When you can solo suicidal using 5 human ai's as a sharpshooter then you know something needs doing.

SS nerf was essential to bring team play back into the game, lets face it who goes berzerker when you have a team of 5 snipers around

As for the pipebomb its to encourage you NOT to spam them, its cheaper to refill your pipes rather than buy them new all the time.

If you're having a problem with crawlers then your commando is NOT doing his job.

As for the medic why don't we just give him a segway or a moped so that he can always keep up with the rest of the group even when he wondered off for 10 mins.

 

[Hemi]

Im a n00b...and was in the Beta....And im loving this. Its harder, and sharpshooter finally feels right now. I never played with SS cous it was no fun at all. Now its finally a challenge, and it feels more like a perk instead of something you pick only to do round 1 with. This is my opinion offcourse, others will and may disagree.

 

[Slappy Cromwell]

The game doesn't really feel like fun any more, and more like a chore.

Play Beginner. Seems more your style.

 

[outofrealman]

Now, each perk is balanced to each other. Bet testers do a great job in this. However, some perks is not balanced within that perk. And nobody cares.

Sharpshotoer:
Xbow serve what purpose now? Who can tell me, really? When it is better than M14?
And remember xbow cost more than M14, ammo cost much more than M14, you only get 36 shots, and it weights 9. Or you really want to shoot a line of clots / crawlers considering you only have 36 shots? Or you want to use SCAR + xbow and only use xbow for sirens and husk? Sorry, ANYONE with xbow can do that.

With M14 you can also grab LAR which is also a very powerful weapon of sharpshotoer. And you can also kill fleshpounds with the M14 even on some indoor maps like office if you can aim for the head. Trash zeds wont be too much of a problem too.

Commando:
Ok, they rebuff a little bit of SCAR damage. But SCAR still cannot out-efficient the ak in most cases. A gun with 17 more bullets per clip can make a huge difference. As both gun now do simliar job for most of the zeds using the same amont of bullets. Ak + M32 can make you do decent job in clearing small zeds. And you can still do spike damage to large targets, especially fleshpounds.

 

[Evilsod]

How would you balance the Xbow? It has spent far too long trashing the games balance with its 1 shot kills, now secondaries can use it to kill Sirens and Husks only (this is hardly a bad thing for a Medic who knows how to pick his shots carefully). But for SS its an awkward thing, too powerful and the endgame foes are still easy too weak and there are other weapons that do better.

I think it might've gone a bit too far with anti-Scrake but FP is debatable. You can drop Scrakes with a LAR headshot to stun followed by a few M14 rounds to the head (i really need to figure out where the head hitbox while stunned instead of hoping) which has made the Xbow a little useless in that regard.

As for Commando, i'm still not understanding this AK better than SCAR rubbish. AKs sights are horrible, not M14 level horrible but horrible none the less. SCARs sights are awesome and the 12 (not 17) less bullets can be put into everythings head with perfect precision quite quickly. AK remains my fully auto backup weapon.

 

[9_6]

The Firebug with the Mac 10 was the perfect class for killing Crawlers, now the Crawlers are more annoying than ever.

Because... they don't burn anymore?
Most of what you say doesn't even make sense.

 

[Merin Redplate]

Even IRL, the Xbow would be **** in this situation, as it can only penetrate one being if not two if you're lucky, and the reload would kill you.

 

[9_6]

Xbow serve what purpose now? Who can tell me, really? When it is better than M14?

When you actually need to aim.
When you need to snipe that siren with meatshields in front of her.
When you need to deal with scrakes.
When you need to keep that husk from shooting.
When you need to take on the patriarch.
There.

Given its current effectiveness, its ammo could be a bit cheaper, I suggested that before, but whatever.

 

[Rainydaykid]

First, let me start by saying I was excited for the christmas update. New content and more achievements sounded like it would be fun and give us something new to do.

Upon playing the updated game, I feel like the game is less fun. It feels as if all the balances were suggested by people who don't even play on the harder difficulties. For example, the sharpshooter nerf:

• The Crossbow was only used to take out the bigger classes of enemies, the price of its ammunition made it illogical to use against easier enemies. The ammo is now harder to get and the weapon does less damage. On the harder difficulties, Suicidal up, this makes it near impossible to kill Fleshpounds, and much harder to kill Scrakes.
• The M14EBR was slow enough already. The Sharpshooter is one of the classes who should be getting more kills. It's an important class for the harder difficulties.
• The removal of the Recoil Bonus isn't even sensible. maybe on dual weapons, but on a single 9mm pistol the bonus should still be there.

Other classes, like the demolitions expert have similarly disabling reductions as well. People will essentially stop buying pipe bombs. The LAW isn't even a useful weapon. Even after the update, it's about as useful as the Hunting Shotgun. Heavy, expensive and doesn't do enough damage to justify itself.

The Medic should above all be the fastest class in the game, faster than all other classes by a notable amount so that he can keep up with other players. Really, if you wanted to slow down the Medic, you should've fixed the bugs involving the medical dart launcher on the MP7.

The Firebug with the Mac 10 was the perfect class for killing Crawlers, now the Crawlers are more annoying than ever.


Really, it feels like the balances were suggested by people playing on lower difficulties, and I can understand if they do. My team played on normal last year around this time, then we moved up to hard, now we're playing Suicidal.

The game doesn't really feel like fun any more, and more like a chore.

I played the beta extensively. I and the people I played with all played HoE and suicidal pretty much constantly. Slow down your shooting with the 9mm. I played on HoE last night as a sharp, mainly using the 9mm. I had no problem killing things. I wasn't top of the scoreboard, but I had a lot of fun playing it. The suggestions were mostly made by veterans, because the game was too easy and boring as hell, even on suicidal.

The sharpshooter was an overpowered spamfest, it has been balanced. It is actually a fun and balanced class now. It requires slow, careful aim, which is what it was supposed to be in the first place.

 

[Basilisx]

Really, it feels like the balances were suggested by people playing on lower difficulties, and I can understand if they do.

I can't see your logic. The beta featured players of all skill levels and espacially the suicidal players wanted more challenge. Saying that players of lower difficulty wanted nerfs doesn't make any sense, because they could just go to a higher difficulty.

If suicidal is to complicated for you go and play hard and get back if you are ready for the real challenge

 

[outofrealman]

How would you balance the Xbow?

Reduce the cost to 400, come with 25 shots when you buy it. You cant really kill pounds now. Each shot cost $8, no discount for any perk. (with the current selling price and ammo cost, it is rubbish comapre to other weapons)


For commando, well, ok, I guess you're right then, I just happen to not using any sights to play. So i think ak's better.

 

[rckrdude]

I agree with you about the sharpshooter. It has been nerfed to hell.

12 xbow bolts really? The recoil bonus and reload speed being taken away from 9 mms makes it useless against smaller zeds. LAR's reload and lack of ammo doesn't make it very viable either. I know the focus for the SS should be on larger specimens but holy sh!t how many shots does it take to down an FP or scrake on HOE now? Demos who spam pipes and m32 take them down way faster and easier than a SS who carefully aims his shots.

The fact is-

On HOE, SS is useless against both weak and strong specimens. I tried every other class and it is superior to the SS now. And please don't jump on the "LOL SS is in line with other classes" bandwagon because its not. Its not at all. This is coming from a guy who played SS since KF came out, has 30k+ headshots and didn't complain when all we had was the old weapons and screwed up hit boxes.

 

[Dr Nick]

Wrong. The Sharpshooter in general is meant for bigger enemies. If you want to "Get more kills", pick Commando or Firebug.

Sharpshooter is balanced now, he can't team-carry and is no longer the one-man-army he was before. Adapt to the fact that he is now only 1 of six classes, instead of being "The Class" to play.


Also:

Law is very useful now. Pipe bombs might be a tad expensive unperked but they are still viable for Demos.

Mac-10 is still great, but more for mid-size enemies. Use the Flamethrower for crowds of Crawlers.

Medic still has great speed, the nerf was barely noticeable. You can still catch up to almost anyone.

I actually play Support Specialist, but I find the SS nerfs pointless. The SS had been nerfed plenty before, I don't think these new "balances" were needed.

If the Mac-10 can kill mid-sized enemies but not crawlers, then Crawlers need a nerf.

The thing is, the Medic can't catch up to every class now. A fully leveled medic(which we have on our team) can't catch up to a fully leveled Berserker(which we also have on our team). The only thing he can do is shoot darts at him, which often doesn't even work. If there's one thing I could ask for to be fixed, it'd be the medigun dart bugs.

 

[Spicy]

Upon playing the updated game, I feel like the game is less fun. It feels as if all the balances were suggested by people who don't even play on the harder difficulties. For example, the sharpshooter nerf:

• The Crossbow was only used to take out the bigger classes of enemies, the price of its ammunition made it illogical to use against easier enemies. The ammo is now harder to get and the weapon does less damage. On the harder difficulties, Suicidal up, this makes it near impossible to kill Fleshpounds, and much harder to kill Scrakes.
• The M14EBR was slow enough already. The Sharpshooter is one of the classes who should be getting more kills. It's an important class for the harder difficulties.
• The removal of the Recoil Bonus isn't even sensible. maybe on dual weapons, but on a single 9mm pistol the bonus should still be there.

Speaking in general terms, but you bring up the points most people are going to voice concern over.

I actually enjoy the Crossbow changes, which may put me in the minority. It was really boring being able to 1-shot or 2-shot Scrakes and Fleshpounds by myself. Spawning with full ammo didn't make much sense either. Now that we start off with 13 bolts, players (hopefully) aren't going to waste them on clots or gorefasts.

I don't use the M14, so I'll leave that to others. I would hazard a guess that the slower rate of fire is to nudge players away from spamming center-of-mass shots and aim more carefully. Since the class levels by amount of headshots, this might make some sense (to me ^^; ).

As for the pistols, I never understood why the Sharpshooter got those bonuses in the first place. Just slow down your rate of fire a little bit. Increasing your mouse dpi, or lowering your mouse sensitivity will also do wonders for compensating recoil and it's generally true for most games.

My main question is this, and it's something that most players should be asking:
Where is the rest of the team when a Scrake or Fleshpound appears?

Since Sharpshooters can't down them as quickly as before, they'll be a much bigger threat. This means teams (pub especially) will have to pay more attention and learn to focus fire better.

The game definitely feels tougher but we'll adapt to it within the next week or two. If nothing else, it'll make getting the new map achievements that much more satisfying.

 

[Dr Nick]

I can't see your logic. The beta featured players of all skill levels and espacially the suicidal players wanted more challenge. Saying that players of lower difficulty wanted nerfs doesn't make any sense, because they could just go to a higher difficulty.

If suicidal is to complicated for you go and play hard and get back if you are ready for the real challenge

Also, people who don't play on the harder difficulties, asking for weapon nerfs because other people are "stealing their kills".

 

[brick_top1982]

It might be just me... but I miss how the SS used to be. No 9mm, just the hand cannons, Lever action and Crossbow. Those weapons were more than enough for me.

 

[BenioX]

The fact is-
On HOE, SS is useless against both weak and strong specimens. I tried every other class and it is superior to the SS now. And please don't jump on the "LOL SS is in line with other classes" bandwagon because its not. Its not at all. This is coming from a guy who played SS since KF came out, has 30k+ headshots and didn't complain when all we had was the old weapons and screwed up hit boxes.

+1 to this