Difficulty scaling making waves easier? No, just no

[Pwnstarr6]

Think of how it is currently, if your entire squad wipes and you survive alone, unless you're on normal then you just die. That's something people (myself included) have been complaining about for awhile.

My whole team just wiped on Wave 7 SUI and I survived with 100+ zeds left including 3 Scrakes and 2 FP. Carried game to boss.

Keep practicing and playing at a challenging level. You will get much better. The game really isn't as impossible as some people make it out to be.

And I think thats the concern many of us have, people aren't going to get better if they aren't being challenged. The game play will get stale if every game is guranteed to win.

 

[Chimpster]

How about we stop speculating and getting out the pitch forks and torches and bloomin wait until we actually see what this director or whatever they call it actually works.

Well it was clearly stated the difficulty can dial down with this system so there's not really anything to speculate about regarding that specific aspect. I don't need to know the inner workings to come to a conclusion that making a game easier based on performance is something I don't want. Sure, maybe it's just a slight adjustment and nothing drastic but it's entirely unnecessary. If it's optional, great (as long as you can still find plenty of servers running without it). But nothing wrong with making your stance known before they finalize everything.

 

[MikeHoncho]

TWI finally realizing that people don't like knowing they are just prolonging death once a few teammates go down.


Sounds like a balance problem to me. Why don't we get to the root of that problem instead of trying to develop a system that "dynamically" tiptoes around it?


Here's a hint, damage sponges and unreliable RNG mechanics.

 

[Gallic_Taffer]

Been reading the posts here and there, and most of it comes off as groundless panic.

A group of dedicated weirdos were convinced that clot-spin would RUUUUUUIIIN THE GAME, but in practice the mechanic has made them much more dangerous than ever.

When medic got his well deserved nerf, terrified medic-babbies moaned this would RUUUUUUIIIN THE GAME, but medic is still used regularly, armor repair is still valuable as ever.

Next comes the cosmetics. Oh man, the backlash from this one was a doozy. Nobody could shut up about how TWI had sold out and betrayed their loyal fanbase and only cared about money (newsflash, you need the $$$ to make good games unless you want to live in indie bum pixel trash heaven), and that the economy created by the drops would RUUUUUUIIIN THE GAME. Guess what, nobody even talks about the cosmetics except in rare cases. Yes, the drop / key system is stupid; most of the good drops are common ones anyway.

Which takes us to now. I've heard about the director from L4D, and frankly I don't really have an opinion on it until I've experienced it.

Best case scenario: the difficulty adjustments are minor. A 6-man group being chopped into a 2-man kite will no longer be accosted by the dreaded dual fleshpound with their ugly siren girlfriends and the fifth wheel scrake at the rear, but will still have to deal with that number of zeds at some point, just not all at once where it guarantees a wipe.

Worst case scenario: Above mentioned situation, only now the last two survivors never so much as see another scrake spawn in the remaining 100 zeds.

Everyone take a breath and calm down. I know the HoE crowd loves to complain about how too few of their bones were broken after a wipe, but I can't see this having an immense impact on the game unless TWI really screws up.

 

[taiiat]

Alternatively if things like players dying to often i.e. a near wipe or players losing expensive weapons when they die means an easier next wave, until the players get back on track - then that sounds like dynamic zed configuration and spawn generation, to suit the current game situation. Sound clever. Hope that made sense!

that... maybe.


i'd still say there's a Difficulty Setting, and that's what it's already for.
so i don't really understand why you'd have automatic Difficulty Settings inside of your Difficulty Settings.

if someone plays Hard and it's a cake walk for their mastery of the game, play Suicidal.
if someone plays Suicidal and it feels too hard for their mastery of the game, play Hard.
if someone insists on playing a specific Difficulty but complains it's either too low or too high, but refuses to change the Difficulty they play on - how is this person relevant at all? they have ways to find Difficulty that is fun for them already. if they refuse to take that option, get f...ed because you're an idiot.

Best case scenario: the difficulty adjustments are minor. A 6-man group being chopped into a 2-man kite will no longer be accosted by the dreaded dual fleshpound with their ugly siren girlfriends and the fifth wheel scrake at the rear, but will still have to deal with that number of zeds at some point, just not all at once where it guarantees a wipe.

that, again, might be alright - but still.
why.

yes, why? why do it?
if you have Difficulty Settings, that's literally what they exist for.
i am not really for or against the suggested system - however i do not understand it's theoretical existence, and why it makes any sense since there's already 4 options for Difficulty, and they certainly f...in' work.

 

[DolphinBuffMan01]

yes, why? why do it?
if you have Difficulty Settings, that's literally what they exist for.
i am not really for or against the suggested system - however i do not understand it's theoretical existence, and why it makes any sense since there's already 4 options for Difficulty, and they certainly f...in' work.

My answer to why would be to ask you why you think there only needs to be a 4 difficulty system?

If the adjustments are minor, and fair (in both easier and harder adjustments), then it could actually be really good for the game. We at this point don't know what will cause these adjustments to occur. I for one would love to see it so that if the boss has a heal left and you get him to the last phase by yourself, after the team has wiped, his health isn't at 6 person, but maybe 2 - 3. Otherwise just have the game kill the last player automatically because dealing with a 30k boss is just not feasible (without going into 40 minute kite that everyone hates).

Perhaps this system will allow the game to progress in a way that teams that are just on the edge of survival are given a small chance, and teams that are not losing any health at all are pressured a little more. I don't think either of these sounds unfair, and would only add to the intensity and fun.

Or the system could be complete crap and ruin the point of difficulties in the first place. Essentially make it so that your team competency means nothing as the game will bend itself to you. I think we just wait and see.

 

[ScrakeMorgendorffer]

I'm inclined to think that the concerns people might have about the dynamic changes to difficulty might be that:

• the data used to identify how well you're doing might actually be giving a misleading and truncated picture of the team's current level of success or failure
• a win on Suicidal or Hell on Earth difficulty won't have the caveat of "we won on Hell on Earth, but the dynamic difficulty system was MVP that match"
• people are beginning to become accustomed to how many big zeds spawn each wave, and if the system is dynamic, it takes a lot of the known factors out of each wave

I haven't developed a strong opinion about it yet, but I'm curious to see how it pans out and which data is used in what capacity to gauge how and why it's tuned.

 

[M1_Account]

words

I agree that people shouldn't "panic" about anything regarding a videogame. Particularly about changes that have barely even been mentioned and haven't been explained or implemented yet.

But I don't see much that falls under that description. Have you read my posts on the subject? Do I come off as though I'm panicking to you?

I do see a few posts in this thread that could use some tact, but I mostly see people offering well-reasoned criticism. I won't speculate on why you want to characterize us as people who "love to complain" and "need to calm down". But if you disagree with our viewpoint, I'd appreciate some arguments beyond comparisons to reactions to completely different mechanics in the game that I personally have never even spoken on.

 

[Hatesandwich]

You mean to tell me it's not a lot harder to play this game with a controller than with a keyboard and a mouse?

No, well and truly, no. There's certainly a difference between the two, yes, but not anywhere near as large as you're making it out to be. The difference certainly isn't large enough to assume any major difficulty changes are made because of it; hell, we don't actually have anything in KF2 that could even remotely be said to have been done to cater to the console audience.
No, the voicemenu wasn't made into a radial menu for consoles; tripwire started doing that in red orchestra 2, a game that was most certainly never developed with the intention of porting to consoles.

Well it was clearly stated the difficulty can dial down with this system so there's not really anything to speculate about regarding that specific aspect. I don't need to know the inner workings to come to a conclusion that making a game easier based on performance is something I don't want. Sure, maybe it's just a slight adjustment and nothing drastic but it's entirely unnecessary. If it's optional, great (as long as you can still find plenty of servers running without it). But nothing wrong with making your stance known before they finalize everything.

I support making your position known, let me clarify that.
But again, you're assuming the worst.
"Dialing down" the difficulty could mean anything from less zeds (which actually means less cash, which means it's actually HARDER to buy weapons and ammo) to less heavy zeds, to clots not being able to grab, to something as measly as husks not being able to suicide, or specimens not jumping out of the way of a fireball shot.
It's fine to cement your stance, entirely fine, but it's definitely not an effective way of providing feedback in this situation. You're providing feedback to something which you haven't experienced yet; you're effectively answering a question before you even know what's being asked.
I should note that I definitely love a good challenge, and it'd be nice to have this be optional, but I absolutely refuse to condemn it until I see it in action.

 

[Chimpster]

Yeah for now we just have to wait and see, not much else we can do. I'm hoping that whatever they are trying to do, it uses a variety of metrics to determine what's actually going on before making any sort of adjustment, and ensure whatever adjustments they make don't promote sloppy playing by not having to really do well in order to make it to the end. The tension of being overrun and wiped out adds to the fun. It should also be adjusted per difficulty level (perhaps even eliminating it entirely above Hard).

TWI usually makes good decisions so I'm willing to see how it all plays out before completely condemning this process across the board, but it does seem like a solution looking for a problem. I'm ideologically opposed to making games easier just because you don't know how to do well, but just have to see what's in store for now.

 

[Munchiesaurus Rex]

Well they cant make the game to require skills - due to console release so they have to give casual players a reason to stick arround and it's by bending the rules.

Give the casuals a reason to come back is by giving them false impresion for doing good. No one likes a game where you are ****ed up by the system also no one likes to play on easy serttings.

Everyone wants one thing and it is to beat levels on the highest dificulty and this will allow them to do that.

Since they can't bring back combos and without them thegame is too hard - they need another way to give players a sense of completion. There are 2 ways. One is endless grind - soon KF2 will have "prestige" system or whatever giving players sence of completion by restarting their skills to 0 and receiving meaningless tittle. The second is by letting them think they have won the hardest dificulty possible without them knowing it was actually not at all but it was scaled.

TWI need kids and casuals to buy cosmetics or KF2 will be dead in less than a year. I would love for KF2 to become like KF1 but that is not happening and by their actions I can clearly see that they are not even trying.

I am not going to bother with cosmetics, people with 1000s of hours in KF1 will not bother with cosmetics. It's kids born after 2000 that actually cares about those things. And they don't like to have to learn, they don't like to do hard things, but they want to have the feeling that hey had - wel theres game conductor

 

[Escadin]

Am I the only one who thinks this thread is ridiculous?

 

[Nenga]

You know I assumed everyone read the entire post before complaining about it, though from reading on here it doesn't seem like that're true. If I could just quote a section from it.

With this system the game can make some decisions based on how well players are doing to increase or drawback the intensity of the wave within some limits (each difficulty can be tuned up or down towards the ones bracketing it). The goal of the system is to find a sweet spot where the players feel challenged but not over or underwhelmed. We expect parts of this system to start coming online over the next few QoL updates.

The bolded section states that difficulties can be tuned down, but only towards the ones bracketing it. So I don't think that HoE will ever be sui. There is nothing lower than normal so I don't think normal could get easier, or HoE harder.

 

[Hatesandwich]

the same words complaining about cosmetics weapons skins and etc

This isn't about cosmetics or consoles or any of that, you need to stop trying to derail every single thread you come into with this crap.

 

[q3.railgun]

Regarding difficulty scaling.

Regarding difficulty scaling.

I'm a bit surprised that a majority of players are only seeing this as going up and down in difficulty.

I actually imagined it as something modified by the ways waves approach via something similar to Skell's P1 tweaks.

Vanilla base being the current game now with maximum difficulty going upwards to 0 spawn delay and increased max ZED at once count.

I.E. - Players are capable of clearing the current spawn and have to wait seconds for the next one to spawn? Let's increase the maximum active ZED count. Players are still not taking damage? Let's decrease the spawn timer between groups. 1 player has died? Increase spawn timer. etc...

Not a let's just have the game go from normal -> hard. The overall ZED hp, the behaviors don't change at all just the sheer number and frequency to compensate for the players doing well while keeping the current base vanilla game as the lowest point.

Obviously some thought would have to go into it as you don't want the game to instantly begin spawning 10 SC's on your team at once but I saw this as dynamic difficulty scaling and not as a jump from actual in game difficulty to the next.

 

[tejo.hr]

Make it a server option and filter in search and I'm all up for it.

READ: I don't like it and let me play my own way.

 

[DBShinigami]

Am I the only one who thinks this thread is ridiculous?

No

But, I think that TWI should have explained a little more the "scaling" in the post.

It was obvious that people would compalin about this idea (even though we do not have a lot of information yet).

 

[SunBro]

As almost everyone in this thread has either missed the mark or forgotten what the main issues really are in this game:

1) "PUB" games where its hodgepodge team on hard mode that can't get past waves 7-10 because of Flesh Pound resistance to everything but explosive damage (and even then it takes all your c4 just to kill one as a level 20 demo).... Dumb.

2) Hans insta kill charge, lunge, charge, lunge

Those are the mechanics that are the "you are dead have fun dying because there is nothing you can really do about this". Again this is mostly for PUB groups which is a majority of the gameplay. If you have an organized group of level 15-25's you can do hardmode and the other modes pretty confidentially. Except for Hans who will force feed you our own anus.

Minor class balances/tweaks need to be made, sure. More gun options definitely. But mostly its Flesh Pound charge from offscreen and 2-3 hit combo that you can't run from and Hans which is wiping almost all parties. Scrakes easy to kill even with 1 remotely competent gunslinger, commando, or support.

 

[simplecat]

Some info on Game Conductor

https://www.reddit.com/r/killingfloor/comments/45axza/game_conductor_criteria/

 

[q3.railgun]

That's a pretty decent system except that I instantly thought of the exploit that the first comment mentions lol.

I'm also glad that it seems to just tweak the spawnrate and movement speed. I think those are good values to tweak rather than hp values. Although I did recall in the past that ZEDs with too fast movement speeds were de-syncing badly so I'm curious if HoE is going to be the absolute cap.