@OnionBubs is fuming in the corner right now
(ಠ ∩ಠ)
not mad, just disappointed
I don't really feel like writing a long paragraph to explain to you why you got that all wrong... That's a dying battle at that point. And I'm not talking about you specifically, but the whole shape of the game right now, and how most people seem to play.
Fortunately, my hyper-focused ass is good at doing exactly that.
Don't you think that mk23 for sharp is a bad idea?
Sharp only has low capacity revolvers, mk23 suits gunslinger more, but we really don't need it.
I don't know why so many people were hyped about adding a freakin pistol that just does pewpew
Honestly, I'm in agreement with this.
Mk23 was largely popular back in the day because it was both a good offperk weapon and a good option for Sharpshooter, arguably the strongest perk in KF1. Many want it purely out of nostalgia moreso than actual function. Given how newer weapons usually look these days, I have a feeling most people asking for it would be disappointed if it were added in under the game's current management.
I don't understand how precision players enjoy the game,
Because the fun in precision perks is learning to aim so well that the Zeds don't make it through your line, same as in KF1.
It takes a lot of practice, a lot of twitch reflexes, and good old-fashioned hand-eye coordination.
It's the number-one hardest to overcome skill gap for most players. It's been built into the game since day 1 of Early Access as a mechanic.
"Destroy the brain" is 99.9% of zombie game stuff, which just so happens to tie in nicely with skill indexing in video games. See, because headshots are harder to make than bodyshots, which is where the skill indexing stuff ties in...and so forth.
Commando is fun to master because it's a team-oriented perk with absolutely nothing in the way of safety nets. There's no fast movement, not much in the way of extra health or armor, no spammable incaps on any weapon to save you from bad positioning or failure to kill things well, etc.; it is entirely on the player to shoot well and stick with the team or die squealing as hordes of Zeds mulch you. Perhaps another way of phrasing it would be: your mechanical abilities and gamesense are your only safety net, barring coverage from other players.
In exchange for not having a safety net to speak of, a good player is rewarded with one of the strongest kits in the game, both in the form of reliably powerful weapons (some of which are not easy to master), free counterpicking on Stalkers (and really, Crawlers too) and arguably the most indispensable contribution to the team: the ability to extend Zed-Time up to 21 seconds. That's 21 seconds of god mode for a maxed-out team.
It's easy to understand and pick up (point bangstick at enemy, click Mouse1) but the cliff of learning to headshot reliably keeps the skillcurve interesting and hard to master. It's not to the point of Sharpshooter where players find it intimidating (I guess?).
perhaps this perk has the most simple, boring and repetitive weaponry... Bullpup being the worst weapon in the game imo, same goes for ak and mkb, boriing..
Hmtech rifles and m16m203 are a lot more interesting, because they have some additional mechanics to them.
If you're looking at it from a perspective of "how does this weapon help me click heads and kill Zeds more efficiently" rather than "what gimmickry does it have," then you'll understand. I don't care about gimmicks, I care about effectiveness and balancing for effort/input. That's why I don't really care about adding more weapons to this game.
Remember--we started this game with four (4) weapons: the Varmint Rifle, the Bullpup, the AK-12, and the SCAR. All of which have their nuances of their own. In fact, here's the entire list in TL;DR format from yours truly:
- Varmint Rifle: Starter weapon; bad at bodyshots (except Crawlers); kills up to Gorefasts with one headshot.
- Bullpup: Stopgap weapon that has a few niche applications but is ultimately a worse AK-12.
- AK-12: Slept on hard. One of the best-executed weapons in the game. Has a manageable rate of fire in full-auto that players can easily learn to feather the trigger with. Burst-fire is skipped over as a gimmick but when mastered is one of the Commando's most lethal kit pieces (over 1000 RPM when chained well) that lets them body Scrakes with a T3. Recoil is punishing if not controlled properly but is more than manageable, raising the skill ceiling for the weapon.
- SCAR: Good offperk option due to low recoil, fine on-perk option. Offers an alternative to the AK in the form of a weapon that has far less punishing recoil but doesn't do as well at top-tier play; it's easier to pick up and play with but isn't as good compared to other options when mastered. Ultimately suffers from overkill on trash but has an element in being able to take down medium Zeds with fewer shots, and plays a role in being able to kill Scrakes and Fleshpounds (the latter when combo'd with other weapons only because Commandos are supposed to be bad at FPs).
- HMTech-401: Even post-nerfs, it's still veering on the edge of too good. High mag size, featherable RoF, requires the player to learn how to space out shots and not hold the button down. 1-taps most trash on headshots and kills Stalkers in a bodyshot. Fast reload time. Darts are an added bonus. Light enough to be carried with the FAL and counteract its main downsides; more on that below. Allows for safe Scrake kills due to the insane stumble/gunhit. Only bad part is that it takes three (3) headshots to bring down a Gorefiend.
- HMTech-501: Gun part is dubious at best, but the grenades allow a Commando to top off an entire team outside of Dreadnought Berserkers. Medic gas allows for brainless self-defense from crowds and self-healing beyond what Commando should otherwise have.
- M16/M203: Noob trap that encourages spamming explosives on a precision class, and isn't that effective against the things it's supposed to be effective against (the sole exception to a point is Quarter Pounds, which were added long after this gun to incentivize picking chaotic perks). Making regular use of the grenades requires you to run a skill tree that is worse with 95% of all other Commando guns, and the other 5% weigh too much to be paired with this.
- Tommy Gun: Alternative to the Bullpup which is thankfully better on Commando than SWAT, but that's damning with faint praise because it's not that good in the first place. Terrible ironsights and a redundantly large magazine, which is actually required because this gun inflicts SMG damage instead of AR damage. Oops.
- Mkb.42: Baby SCAR. Fun to run from time to time but has nasty circular recoil unlike most other ARs, and the firing rate hurts its DPS against anything beyond a Husk/Bloat.
- Stoner: Counterproductive to Commando's playstyle. Unnecessarily high rate of fire that results in wasted shots, bad damage for a T4 weapon that barely justifies the excessive RoF, and a reload time long enough to put on a Bob Ross episode and contemplate your life's mistakes.
- Minigun: Stoner, but moreso. Still kinda fun to play from time to time even if it's bad, but it has to be bad because Commando isn't supposed to have high-RoF weapons that are also strong (one of the game's balancing principles).
- FN-FAL: Overpowered in Commando's hands, as it gives Commando access to a dedicated anti-HVT weapon that can do legitimate takedowns on Fleshpounds since it deals the same kind of damage as the M14 but with a rapid-fire function. Funny enough, outside of that one role, it's not great, but that doesn't matter when you can also carry it with the 401, negating most of the weapon's downsides.
- FAMAS: Ugly gimmick weapon that fails on all accounts. Burst fire is either inadequate or wasteful depending on what you're shooting. The shotgun is badly implemented and clunky.
- Sentinel: In a game where the sole objective is "shoot the bad guys," implementing a tool that plays the game for you by replacing basic player skillsets (learning to check behind you, pointing and clicking at the things in question, etc.) is bad enough, but to add insult to injury, this thing doesn't even work well with the perk it was keyed for. Sentinels will automatically bodyshot anything unless they otherwise walk directly under the firing cone, wasting ammo, and these things are designed to rage large Zeds. On that other note, they also will gobble the Commando's Zed-Time by shooting everything without even trying to space out kills, making them completely counterproductive to good players.
I mean, precision perks just camp in one spot, constantly buffed by medic, doing headshots... killing zeds from afar... This is stupid, most players promote playing precision perks
Shooting everything in the head mostly means it dies faster than not shooting everything in the head, by the way most enemies are designed. This excludes EDARs and QPs, which were intentionally introduced to curb headshot supremacy (one of the cornerstones the game was initially designed around). That's not to say precision perks can't kill them, just that without specific setups they are more obnoxious.
It's a proven winning strategy as opposed to kiting, which tends to be favored more by players that have trouble with headshots. The two often go hand-in-hand, if you will, as players not killing things efficiently means Zeds slip through, which means they hit the team, which means the team needs to make space, which means Zeds don't get killed because the team is running...and so forth.
Part of it is because of the fun of skilled precision play, and part of it is that kiting leaves you truly at the mercy of the game's spawn system, which most perks can't take advantage of in the first place outside of Medic/Zerk/Survivalist. Ever tried to run only to get cut off by six QPs blocking your path?
and then they complain about railgun, suggesting to nerf it, because the game is too easy without big zeds.
I mean...yeah?
When you can one-shot the hardest boss enemies in the game and have 5 other competent players on trash duty, the game gets boring on anything except the worst-designed, most claustrophobic maps.
Chaos perks at least add some dynamic.
While technically true, this game has implemented the non-aim perks extremely badly. Often in the most unhealthy way possible.
While they used to be sort-of crutch perks (easier to do lesser difficulties with but fell off substantially in higher difficulties), TWI has been buffing them over the years to more-or-less have parity with the precision perks; that is, they can win almost as hard as the precision perks in most cases.
"But that doesn't sound like a bad thing," you might say to yourself. It is. There's a few problems with this principle.
- The chaotic perks are way, way easier to play than the precision perks. You are effectively giving the same results for far less effort in most cases, and the game's latest years have only boosted these perks.
- Take Firebug compared to SWAT, the second precision anti-trash specialist.
- SWAT needs to watch magazines, count shots-to-kill, and ration ammo while chaining headshots together.
- Firebug has been buffed to the point where most games can be won by shooting the floor at a chokepoint with your preferred weapon of choice and letting enemies walk over the flames.
- Not all weapons used to specialize in Ground Fire--that used to be the sole realm of the Flamethrower weapons since those were easy to output damage with but required you to be close to the Zeds--but now 90% of Firebug's arsenal uses Ground Fire or Residual Flames, meaning you can apply the same damage from a completely safe vantage point instead of having to be close, which damages the risk/reward that was part of playing Firebug in the first place.
- For Scrakes and Fleshpounds, there's the Helios Rifle.
- Take many of the new weapons for Survivalist.
- The Locust is the ultimate trash-killing tool in this game, as well as a HVT-crippling tool, and the skill ceiling is "aim vaguely in the zip code of the enemies."
- Take many of the post-2018 arsenal for certain perks.
- The HRG Kaboomstick makes Demos worse at efficiently killing large Zeds--their one job--in exchange for a weapon that lets them easily counter their intended weakness (getting surrounded by trash Zeds and dying).
- Contrast with Sharpshooter, who has to be about 10x as skilled as the average pub demo.
- Take many of the buffs and weapons made to/for Survivalist.
- Survivalist now has a million different weapons that work by easily applying incaps to enemies.
- Incaps bypass the need for efficient shooting because they render the Zed unable to fight back.
- Therefore, many players will stack incaps to bypass the skill needed to win games that was previously required.
- The chaotic perks, simply by playing the game, interfere with the precision perks. The following interfere with players trying to land headshots:
- Flame particles and smoke.
- Fire and poison afflictions causing enemies to "panic dance."
- Explosion particles.
- Explosions shaking the screen of nearby players.
- Weapons like the HRG Locust having their own blinding particle effects.
- Knockdown afflictions like Demolitionist's Concussion Rounds, the HRG Locust doing that by existing, etc.
- Stumble affliction on a Zed throwing off head tracking.
- There's more but you get the picture.
- Perks like Medic, Berserker, and Survivalist being used as crutches to stay alive.
- The basic principle here is that players have learned some perks are much better at staying alive after being punished for mistakes, due to a combination of:
- Above-average movement speed letting them leave their team behind while they escape from the horde.
- Above-average health, armor, and damage resistance allowing them to take more hits than, say, a Sharpshooter.
- Above-average self-healing ability (Medic, Berserker, Survivalist's healing grenades) allowing them to quickly recover from mistakes, or prolong engagements with large Zeds beyond a reasonable level.
- And more!
- Those perks have above-average survivability and will often be the last ones left alive if things go badly for the team.
- Ever had your team wipe except for the Medic and Zerk kiting things for 40 minutes? That's this principle in action.
All of the above principles create a self-feeding cycle where many players won't pick the precision perks because those perks get punished harshly for badly-behaving teammates, leaving the impression that those perks are non-viable (Sharpshooter, SWAT), meaning that fewer people will play them, etc.
Conversely, for someone who's already mastered the headshot perks, shooting fire at the floor for a literal hour is suck-start-a-Doomstick levels of boring. There's no skill, no nuance, nothing, but you can still watch your scoreboard numbers go up and feel...something, I guess.
In short, the balancing in this game has completely skewed the effort/reward ratio that should otherwise be a part of this game, which is an awful design choice that has turned off many players and has driven others to take certain measures. This is the entire reason why HoE+/CD/etc. servers exist: because those good players recognize how screwball this game's balancing is and want to play for a challenge without others ruining it for them.
More weapons will only exacerbate this game's core issues and add further clutter to a game that's already got it in spades.
