@Ramm-Jaeger: Thanks for your interest. The specific bugs that you listed many of us could discuss in a lot of details but it has mostly already been done so in the bug report section of the forum, even though there is a lot of noise data over there. If you think that a more organized and detailed effort is needed to solve this, it can be done. The only reason they're in this document is to remind you of which ones are the most gameplay affecting and that still aren't fixed.
I know a large amount of players with varied playstyles. I could explain and illustrate the various things that are currently done in KF2 (which I already did in v1008
over here but it is of course outdated), what people usually like (because yes there are things that they do like!) and what they don't. This could all be illustrated with videos (with the benefit that it could also be shared with everyone else), or I could organize games with people who I think are awesome players and let them demonstrate this to you ingame.
If TWI really becomes open to learn about how the community plays the game and what they think about it, then of course many people would be willing to help. However, I hope that such a relationship can be built to last and not as a one-time thing.
How does one find 25 best players of Killing Floor I have met very good players before but have no clue whether they are the best or not? I would like to know how you found the best players so i can decide whether or not their opinions even matter. Also as said previously why would tripwire listen to 25 people who have the time to invest 2000 hours into their game to become the"best" im not saying their opinions dont matter but if i was them I would rather listen to a group of 250 random people with at least 100 hours in the game rather than 25 people who have spent 2000. Its not about making the best players happy but about making the most people happy(from a business standpoint) .
Hey, happy to answer this. I already mentioned this but the answer is that if we want to be accurate, we can't speak of the best. You can never know that anyone is the best with certainty especially in a non-competitive game where it doesn't even matter. I used this wording as a shortcut to say something that means more or less "the guys I know who play extremely well, and I know a lot of people from all over the word and I spent some effort to find the really good ones, so they're at least really good". Maybe there are better guys somewhere, I still very often meet some of the "best" players that I didn't know of before. I think I mentioned that I met like about 10 new ones that were willing to help with feedback since that old document happened. If you want some concrete info about what they can do: some of them win on Commando HoE long solo+2faked and do well with 3faked. Pretty much all of them can consistently win a HoE long game with a team of 6 Commandos or any team composiiton without any of the very strong/overpowered elements (no medic, no MWG, no Nuke, etc). Things like that. So can't say with absolute confidence that they're the best, but I hope you get the idea, I never mean the best literally because it obviously doesn't make any sense in the context of KF2.
@Greenbacks: Thanks for your suggestions! There are probably many people who'd agree with you, and many of the ones involved in creating this document in the first place would have changed many things in it since it was written. It is quite old now.
The rest of this message isn't addressed to anyone in particular, but some recurring points that come and go in the topic.
Several people asked why some of us think that balance should be focused primarily on HoE. Here is my answer, which is only my personal opinion.
Think of adjusting balance like of adjusting the position of a point in a high dimensional space where each dimension, or each axis if you want, represents one variable relevant to the game's balance. Say one axis could be the damage dealt by a given weapon for example, and there are many many different variables to adjust.
For the case of Normal difficulty, if you want to find a good balance, you basically look for a position of that point in this space which results in the game being fun to play. Not every position will work, for instance, you can't make damage absurdly low or high, because there are constraints on what works in the game and what doesn't. Too low damage doesn't work because you feel powerless and can't win, and too high damage doesn't work because the game becomes trivial and boring. So you can't actually put the point anywhere in the space, there is a small region of the space inside which things work, and outside of it they don't.
Then you want to balance Hard difficulty. We again have to find a good position in this space, but we're talking about the
same space, because the same variables are involved, for example weapons deal the same damage regardless of difficulty. However, on Hard, the game is harder: Zeds are faster, more powerful and more resistant. So the constraints on the location of this point are tighter and restrict more possibilities, you can only explore a smaller region of the whole space.
And here is the crucial part: this smaller allowed region for Hard is
contained in the region that works on Normal. This is easy to understand by realizing that a tactic that works on Hard will also work on Normal, and actually even more so because it will be easier to perform. But some tactics that work on Normal would not work on Hard, it could be for many different reasons such as for examples the Zeds being too fast to let you perform that tactic. In other words, it is possible to find a position in the space where the game will be balanced on Normal but
not balanced on Hard. Whereas if you put the point inside the allowed region for Hard, it will still also be in the allowed region for Normal.
The same goes for Suicidal's allowed region which is contained in Hard's, and HoE's which is in Suicidal's. Like Russian dolls.
HoE is the difficulty which has the most constraints and restrictions on what the variables can be. So, if you find a good location for the point inside the allowed region for HoE, it's actually guaranteed that it is also inside the allowed region of every other difficulty too.
Now, this is nice, but things are a little more complicated. There are variables which do not belong in this space because they are unique to each difficulty, such as Zed's health, speed, and so on. So each difficulty needs to have some individual adjustments in addition to the universal variables I talked about until now. So, it is true that every difficulty needs to be given its own special attention and care. However, for the universal variables that are difficulty independent, the only way to balance the game is to do it on HoE. If you were to try to balance primarily for any of the lower difficulties, the worst case being Normal, you'd constantly have to worry whether the position of the point is outside of the regions allowed for higher difficulties, you'd be blindly moving around, hoping to not break anything for the higher difficulties, having to double check everything all the time. It would likely result in a mess similar to what HoE is now.
Here is a picture to illustrate.
That being said, I'm not a game designer, programmer or developer. I don't know the theory of balance, probably some clever people already figured it out better than me. I still think this reasoning is solid though. Let me know what you think.
EDIT: No internet at home at the moment, contacting ISP to fix this, sorry for slow replies.
