A lot of work goes into game development. So here is some context into the amount of work that goes into a game like KF2 and why we as a community should not be so negative and unforgiving.
Lets talk about the big one first, animations.
Animations:
- The amount of animations required for a game like KF2 to feel fluid is absolutely ridiculous. Here is an example list.
- Zed movement
- Zed reaction to being shot and melee'd on each part of their body for every type of gun
- Different animations for each difficulty and for each different attack on each difficulty
- Each individual zed having different animations created for them across everything mentioned above. This is hundreds of animations per zed.
- Reloading for every gun including new ones for dual wielding and unique perk reloads. Also those fancy reload animations when you have a fully loaded weapon. Also wiping off blood from melee weapons.
- Reaction to recoil from guns (take a look at how the characters arms move when shooting a heavy recoil weapon)
- Aiming down the sight for each gun
- Melee animations along with bash animations for each weapon.
- Individual animations for each character
that doesn't even cover everything. I think the community forgets how fluid this game feels and how huge an achievement that is to accomplish.
Gore System:
- If you don't appreciate this please play KF2 and pay attention to how the gore works and then go play KF1.
- Every zeds individual body parts can be shot off and blown to tiny little bits
- Splatter map system so the environment actually gets affected by the gore and changes as the game progresses
- new materials, giblet meshes and much much more has to go into actually getting the gib system to work. This goes for every individual zed.
- Maps:
- Hundreds of assets have to be made for each new map.
- Each map must go through rigorous testing to make it exploit proof. If you find one that is one of the 50+ ways they fixed to exploit a map.
- Outpost and Manor and all the other maps have an extreme attention to detail. If you open up the SDK or just walk around you will know what I am talking about.
- SDK for the community. They let the community make maps for the game and welcome it. Games like Payday 2 suffer from not letting the community make maps or mods for the game and they suffer while KF2's creative community makes the game thrive. I think we forget how rare it is to have a developer that fully supports modding for their game and actually make it a part of the games experience.
Sounds:
- Each character has a large amount of lines and voice acting that must be done for them. There are also new lines created for each map in individual areas. Characters react to how dark it is among other things happening in the match. This includes being low on ammo, needing dosh, having a lot of dosh, needing health, reaction to the guns being used, and many more.
- Each gun has its own unique sounds that takes quite a bit to make for reloading and shooting.
- Zed sounds and sounds that play when being shot
- Enviromental sfx for levels. turn off the music to listen to all of them. Keep in mind each surface needs sounds make for walking/running on them.
Balance:
This is very, very hard to get right with the amount of factors each perk and zed along with movement speed give. Not only does TW need to make sure the zeds are balanced they have to make sure each perk is balanced and feels equal. That is a MASSIVE amount of iteration and work that needs to be done and is why KF1 feels balanced now after years of work.
All of these things have to come together to get right and the balance will not be complete until ALL perks have been released. That is when we will truly see the balancing phase start. We are still in the content phase and the game will drastically change because of that, queue the whole early access thing.
Summary:
This doesn't even come close to covering everything but I hope the point I was trying to prove is expressed with the above.
A lot of work goes into every part of a game. Nothing is easy and it takes great care and time to make a great game.