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Is TW's animator on loan?Why does the quality of weapon details and animation decline so much?

Hec0v0ules

Grizzled Veteran
Nov 11, 2019
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I saw an update of another game yesterday. The game is called "Ground Branch".

The announcement mentions a man named "Mike Munk".According to the announcement, this is a TW developer who has developed games such as Red Orchestra and Rising Storm.

He was invited to the production team in June last year (2020.6) to develop new weapon animation and character animation, and ensure the stability of the game framework.

KF2's weapons animation and weapon details were a drop in quality in June last year.Is it related to this person?

Will he come back to be responsible for the development of KF2's weapon animation and details?

The animation of FAMAS master key is really bad. I hope it can be improved. The bullet is not empty. Why pull the bolt? Animation is rigid. What causes this problem?

@Yoshiro @Kittenmittens
 
Then Saber needs to step up their game. The weapon looks truly ugly and the animations are horrendous. Then again, the community is pretty much numb from taking L after L each year.
They seem to have a lot of projects on their plate, and I think KF2 post-release support is placed at a lower priority than say a high-profile release like a raytraced Crysis Trilogy.
 
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Then Saber needs to step up their game. The weapon looks truly ugly and the animations are horrendous. Then again, the community is pretty much numb from taking L after L each year.
Yes, Saber should speed up the learning process. The updated weapon animations and details give me the feeling that they have not made progress, but have regressed
 
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I mean.. Although Tripwire has indeed been praised for their gun handling and wonderful animations, in the end, it is nothing more than extra flair. Your weaponry won't perform any better than intended, even if it looks stylish. Sure, it makes it a bit jarring when not every weapon has the same care put into it... But KF2 certainly isn't the only one guilty of that either.

The drop in quality in undeniable, but I do find your criticism very harsh. It doesn't ruin the game in any way. And as Yoshi put it : Saber may not have Tripwire's expertise in that regard, but they have other tricks up their sleeves. I think we shouldn't forget that. Also, although I'm the first to mention that Tripwire should hit the brake on updates for a while and bring us a big one, full of meaningful content as a "parting gift", you can't complain both that they aren't doing enough and then that what they're doing is not on-par with what you'd wish for. Don't forget that most of the content is not only FREE, but is for a game nearly hitting 6 years of life. Most games aren't being updated by that point.

As for Tripwire, it is more than heavily hinted that they are working on other things. Again, we should be grateful that we're even getting new things (TF2 anyone?), as they could have called it quit a long time ago. Sure, I'm not exactly psyched on the new stuff either, I do feel some feature-creep fatigue as well. But even having updates to begin with is pleasing.

In the end, let's just say that fancy animations are always a nice sight to behold... But they aren't the ones making a game good to begin with.
 
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Don't forget that most of the content is not only FREE, but is for a game nearly hitting 6 years of life. Most games aren't being updated by that point.
Probably for the best. Friendly reminder that Killing Floor 2 in its current state can best be described as a broken machine held together by duct tape and happy thoughts. Myself, I had some pretty nasty performance hitches that brought the game's FPS down to 20FPS on the default High settings... While using an RTX 3070/Ryzen 3800X. Someone on the Steam forums also posted how they had similar issues on the far less obtainable RX 6900 XT.

Had to dig up my custom low config from my old computer.
 
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Probably for the best. Friendly reminder that Killing Floor 2 in its current state can best be described as a broken machine held together by duct tape and happy thoughts. Myself, I had some pretty nasty performance hitches that brought the game's FPS down to 20FPS on the default High settings... While using an RTX 3070/Ryzen 3800X. Someone on the Steam forums also posted how they had similar issues on the far less obtainable RX 6900 XT.

Had to dig up my custom low config from my old computer.
Funnily enough, the same could be said about Team Fortress 2 (considering I used that comparison as I spoke of other games that lasted very long). The game is a huge mess of FXs as it stands and even high-end computers seem to struggle to render the game correctly. For a 13+ years old game, it's stupidly hard to run. Hence why TF2C got so popular when it first came out... It was the same game, without much of the bull****. It both runs and plays better.

Funnily enough, that's another though that crossed my mind : what if we got a "vanilla" KF2? Or maybe not vanilla as in "the very first update" (which had only four perks), but something like what the game looked like in late 2017 or something like that. That would be quite a sight to behold.

Thing is : sure, there's a point when you NEED to call it quits. When you need to wrap up a game and let it stands on its own two feet for the rest of time. Another silly comparison I could make would be either Terraria or Binding of Isaac : they are also 10+ years old games, who regularly got updated. And for the most part... It worked tremendously, with their latest updates bringing old players back EN MASSE. But considering how big they have gotten now... Should we REALLY wish for future updates now? I don't think so. Modders will take the lead, just as they did for Team Fortress 2... And as they should for Killing Floor as well (I think the first talks of letting the community do the job are dating from waaaay back in 2018 or something)

My point being that, indeed, I wish Tripwire would cut on the next updates altogether. Secretly work on a follow-up... Then announce KF3 at some point. And at the same time, release a KF2 update out of the blue that acts both as a "end-of-the-line" affair AND a way to quench our impatience in the months leading to KF3's release. And not a big update as in "12 new weapons and four new maps", no. I'd rather have one or two missions that wrap-up KF2's lore, a HUGE amount of balancing and maybe, just maybe, the addition of something big that will keep us occupied for the next six to twelve months : a fully-fledged upgrade system? A new perk? You name it. But then they could also hold that up for a third game, so I don't know.

In the end, I would say that you are right... But also that people shouldn't exactly be surprised as to why that is.
 
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Funnily enough, the same could be said about Team Fortress 2 (considering I used that comparison as I spoke of other games that lasted very long). The game is a huge mess of FXs as it stands and even high-end computers seem to struggle to render the game correctly. For a 13+ years old game, it's stupidly hard to run. Hence why TF2C got so popular when it first came out... It was the same game, without much of the bull****. It both runs and plays better.
Even so, TF2 didn't try to stress the Source Engine to its absolute limits back in 2007. Yes, you'd be hard pressed to play the game on a computer from the early 2010s but I think what i'm trying to say is that TF2 isn't nearly as broken to the point where it can bring the most powerful and least obtainable gaming PCs to their knees. KF2 on the other hand, does.
 
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Again, we should be grateful that we're even getting new things (TF2 anyone?), as they could have called it quit a long time ago.

Should we? I think we shouldn't. I would have preferred if they stopped around 2017-2018. This way we'd have:

- no microfreezes on new joins, first clot headshot with 9 mm, first siren headshot and some other freezes, no tons of goofy cosmetics that cause this and look aweful;
- no spawnrage;
- no EDARs;
- no QPs;
- no hard to to turn off goofy seasonal zed skins;
- no new weapons that started the power creep, breaking the perk specialization principle.

These are all bad, casual gamer oriented things in my book that make the game worse.

The game is great in its core, but its maintenance, including the "new things" you refer to, doesn't match the initial quality of the game. It would be better if they had called it quits back then. And just to get back to the message of this thread, awful FAMAS animations and the awfulness of the weapon itself (burst only when nobody needs 3 when 1 is enough, no reload cancel on shotgun, penetration mismatch, etc) is just one thing in a long row of similar thing brought to us by low quality updates.
 
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Should we? I think we shouldn't. I would have preferred if they stopped around 2017-2018. This way we'd have:

- no microfreezes on new joins, first clot headshot with 9 mm, first siren headshot and some other freezes, no tons of goofy cosmetics that cause this and look aweful;
- no spawnrage;
- no EDARs;
- no QPs;
- no hard to to turn off goofy seasonal zed skins;
- no new weapons that started the power creep, breaking the perk specialization principle.

These are all bad, casual gamer oriented things in my book that make the game worse.

The game is great in its core, but its maintenance, including the "new things" you refer to, doesn't match the initial quality of the game. It would be better if they had called it quits back then. And just to get back to the message of this thread, awful FAMAS animations and the awfulness of the weapon itself (burst only when nobody needs 3 when 1 is enough, no reload cancel on shotgun, penetration mismatch, etc) is just one thing in a long row of similar thing brought to us by low quality updates.
People really needs to stop acting as if EDARs ruined the game. Come on, it's a free EMP grenade people. Not to mention that many of said people are also the ones complaining that the game is too easy. Having new opponents to fight is great : it keeps everyone on their toes and forces you to adapt. And while I could see the frustration in fighting EDARs... Quarterpounders? Really? What's the deal with them?

Seasonal zed skins were already there at that time too, so I don't know what you're smoking. But I do agree that they got old very fast. Same for the power/content creep problems. I actually already talked about them numerous times, on numerous topics.

I also believe you are misguided by saying it's "casual gamer oriented" ... Not only is it a blatant lie that makes you look like a hypocrite (how can you blame casual gaming, and then complain about EDARs and Spawnrage?) , but casual gaming should REALLY stop being considered as a bad thing. Not every has the same gamer profile, and the "git gud" trope really needs to stop. A game doesn't have to be hard to be fun, although it should poses challenges that everyone should be able to overcome after a while : the time needed, the techniques used might differ. But it should be doable for everyone.

There's nothing wrong with connecting to a game only to have a couple of lazy playthroughs after a hard day at work. People needs to realize that not everyone is a hardcore gamer spending whole nights gaming. But that's a problem that reaches far beyond KF2.

And don't get me wrong : I do actually agree with you that KF2 got a few too many updates that brought a lot of technical problems AND blasted away the balance the game had between perks and skill trees. There ARE too many weapons. And tweaks, meaningful ones, are just non-existent at that point. But I feel like you're not blaming the right things.

As for my initial comment : an updated game is a lively game. You may like it or not (I don't either! ) but the game would have died way sooner if they stopped updating the game in 2018. Here, even if it's mostly to complain about the new additions, I do come back to the game every 2-3 months to see what's new, to complete the seasonal objectives, and goof around. Hardly the best bragging rights for Tripwire, sure. But at least we're still here. I would have probably moved on to other things if they stopped 3-4 years ago.
 
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Quarterpounders? Really? What's the deal with them?

walk speed too fast, walking QPs catch up with sprinting mercs and hit them, their damage is only slightly less than that of FPs, even more prone than FPs to do follow up attacks, no distinct raged state animations, annoying head/body HP ratio promoting spam shooting, tend to spawn in huge packs (up to 6), dilute the stats of big zed kills. It's the same issue at its core as with the FAMAS. Why develop distinct animaiton for their raged state? Why even develop a distinct monster? Let's just copy/paste FPs, reuse the same calm movements animations and ship it to production! A lazy and disrespectful design approach one should be ashamed of.

Seasonal zed skins were already there at that time too, so I don't know what you're smoking. But I do agree that they got old very fast.

Clowns -- summer 2017. Nutcrackers -- winter 2017/2018. Vampires -- autumn 2018, just like I said. And no official way to turn this freakshow off.

I also believe you are misguided by saying it's "casual gamer oriented" ... Not only is it a blatant lie that makes you look like a hypocrite (how can you blame casual gaming, and then complain about EDARs and Spawnrage?) , but casual gaming should REALLY stop being considered as a bad thing. Not every has the same gamer profile, and the "git gud" trope really needs to stop. A game doesn't have to be hard to be fun, although it should poses challenges that everyone should be able to overcome after a while : the time needed, the techniques used might differ. But it should be doable for everyone.

It should be obvious that some games are harder, some are easier. There's a spectrum. Some games are more hardcore than others. Not every gamer plays every game. Gamers find what's suitable for them. That's why games have difficulty settings and that's why most games are niche games that target specific audience. Historically, KF franchise has been a very skill oriented and very deep from the skill ceiling standpoint game. By design, it places this game into a hardcore bucket that targets the hardcore audience. I know that this game targets people like me, and I'm a tryhard, by the way it's designed. No surprise that I want the game to stay that way, because I enjoy it, because it was designed for people like me. And of course I absolutely hate everything that breaks this approach and I'm unapologetic about it.

And don't get me wrong : I do actually agree with you that KF2 got a few too many updates that brought a lot of technical problems AND blasted away the balance the game had between perks and skill trees. There ARE too many weapons. And tweaks, meaningful ones, are just non-existent at that point. But I feel like you're not blaming the right things.

Yes, they did. And may be I'm not always blaming the right things, nobody is perfect, but I don't enjoy EDARs and don't enjoy QPs and low quality design that ruins the initial higher quality standard of the game.

As for my initial comment : an updated game is a lively game. You may like it or not (I don't either! ) but the game would have died way sooner if they stopped updating the game in 2018. Here, even if it's mostly to complain about the new additions, I do come back to the game every 2-3 months to see what's new, to complete the seasonal objectives, and goof around. Hardly the best bragging rights for Tripwire, sure. But at least we're still here. I would have probably moved on to other things if they stopped 3-4 years ago.

Well, I wouldn't. The KF community, for example, is roughly 10% of the KF2 community these days head count wise, but they still play it although the game didn't have any official updates for quite a while. I'd be happy if the same was true for KF2. I never enroll in betas, I never crave for new content, I never lifted my finger to go out of my way to complete a single achievement, I'm here to just pop heads and it annoys me when something (e.g. updates) ruin this experience.
 
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