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Killing Floor 2 Summer Opt-In Beta 2 (PC Build 1115) Is Now Available!

Reason why Spartan works is because you have other skills keeping your health topped up (Vampire most notably). Since your survivability is tied to milestone skills, choosing Spartan means that you trade away one of your biggest tools for survivability for a few extra kills. I think some adjustments can be made to make it a viable sidegrade to Berserker Rage
I'm literally nonplussed. Like, I've never ever heard anyone say Berserker Rage is even worth the perk slot because Spartan works so much better at actually killing things, which is the point of the game--dead things, after all, can't hit you. In fact, Spartan is probably the single best Zed-Time skill in the game with the only balancing factor being it's on a character which is meant for close combat.

Spartan lets you take the fight to Zeds instead of Berserker Rage making them run away from you. The move-and-attack in real time is what gives you the ability (like Gunslinger) to delete everything you can run to, notably with the Nailgun. Staying alive outside of the health regen is what the team's Medic and Vampire are for. (And "a few kills" could literally mean "your entire lane" or "multiple large Zeds", especially if your Commando is allowed to do their thing.)

I could maybe see the argument if you're on a 6-man team in one of those god-awful cramped holdout maps that demands a zerkwall AND you're having trouble killing things and staying alive even with BoneCrusher, Dreadnaught, Vampire, and stacked medic buffs, but that would probably indicate its own problem.

I still maintain the 'weak' perks should've been improved instead BUT that's what KF3 is for, right?
As Yoshiro mentioned in one of the previous threads, the team deemed it too much. This is fair, because the game's already had enough power creep. If every class were as easy to win with as Zerk and Medic then there would be no point in having difficulties.
 
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I'm literally nonplussed. Like, I've never ever heard anyone say Berserker Rage is even worth the perk slot because Spartan works so much better at actually killing things, which is the point of the game--dead things, after all, can't hit you. In fact, Spartan is probably the single best Zed-Time skill in the game with the only balancing factor being it's on a character which is meant for close combat.

Spartan lets you take the fight to Zeds instead of Berserker Rage making them run away from you. The move-and-attack in real time is what gives you the ability (like Gunslinger) to delete everything you can run to, notably with the Nailgun. Staying alive outside of the health regen is what the team's Medic and Vampire are for. (And "a few kills" could literally mean "your entire lane" or "multiple large Zeds", especially if your Commando is allowed to do their thing.)

I could maybe see the argument if you're on a 6-man team in one of those god-awful cramped holdout maps that demands a zerkwall AND you're having trouble killing things and staying alive even with BoneCrusher, Dreadnaught, Vampire, and stacked medic buffs, but that would probably indicate its own problem.


As Yoshiro mentioned in one of the previous threads, the team deemed it too much. This is fair, because the game's already had enough power creep. If every class were as easy to win with as Zerk and Medic then there would be no point in having difficulties.
There's the problem, too many toys doing too much damage on top of lopsided perk balance. Now if they added more Large Zeds to justify such arsenal additions then maybe the gaps wouldn't be so noticeable.

Point is top-to-bottom things need to be reassessed so the game IS a challenge but rewards those who learn the mechanics and co-operate as opposed to now where you can somewhat grab x, y or z weapon and do your own thing.

As much as I'd like to see feature A or gamemode B in KF3 the absolute fundamental point of contention is BALANCE - as in no perk/weapon should be considered a 'go-to' but they should all have their flaws as well as their strengths.
 
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I've played around with Berserker a fair bit since the Beta 2 released. I'd say the changes/nerfs are fine overall. On solo, you just gotta be smart with knowing when to pick a fight or to retreat and recoup. On multiplayer, you can still be a tank, especially with support from your teammates (the way it's suppose to be, hence a team based, co-op game). Whether it's a medic or even teammates with med pistols/medic cross perk weapons or even with just the medical syringe that all perks have. Also, to stress what a lot of others are saying, the damage output has not changed. You can still shred things to ribbons, you just have to mind your health a bit more.

@El Nino Thankfully I don't run into too many people like that, but there are definitely some bad apples here or there. I mean, having friendly competition is fine. It's when people start to take it too seriously is when it gets annoying and toxic...
 
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To opt into this beta on Steam, join the "preview" branch available in the Beta drop-down list. Admins will need to use the following SteamCMD flag:
  • app_update 232130 -beta preview

To opt into this beta on EGS, the Beta will be accessible within KF2 owners’ game libraries as a separate install called “Killing Floor 2 Beta”. Users may need to restart their EGS launcher for the Beta to populate and be accessible to install. Progress for stats and inventory is shared between both versions on EGS so for users switching between Beta and Live be sure to sync your game data to use the latest timestamp to prevent any lost progress from participating in the Beta. The Beta on EGS also includes its own dedicated server within the install for your own personal hosting needs for this version.

Event
Interstellar Insanity
  • You made it! The moon landing was performed without any complications! Well, almost... Anyway, this research station has gone quiet for a while so you must check if everything is going well. But considering that communications were cut off a few days ago, the situation does not look good, so don’t let your guard down. On top of that, there are also 2 alternative scenarios that you may experience that will imply an additional challenge level: Arachnophobia and Scavenger weekly modes. But there is some good news! At least you will be able to use the new fancy tools from Horzine Research Group, the HRG Bastion and HRG Blast Brawlers, that were being developed in this station. Final advice: it may take you some time to get used to the moon’s gravity.
  • Beta 2 Start 6/10/2021, Beta 2 End on the final release.


Addressed Community Feedback
As mentioned in the 2020 Killing Floor 2 ‘State of the Game’ our goal is to bring to the community a continued stream of QOL changes for each update throughout the year. Please continue to report any QOL changes you believe should be added to the game by submitting your feedback in the ‘general’ section on our official forums at: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/forum/killing-floor-2

Balance
  • Weapons
    • FAMAS Masterkey
      • Primary magazine increased from 24 to 30
      • Damage of secondary fire increased from 25 to 30 per pellets
      • Number of pellets of secondary fire increased from 6 to 7
      • Penetration of secondary fire increased
      • Spread of secondary fire reduced by 17%
    • Thermite Bore
      • Ground fires duration reduced from 10 to 7 seconds
      • Iron sights offset slightly adjusted to the center of the screen
    • HRG Blast Brawlers
      • Damage of primary fire increased from 36 to 39 for each pellet
      • Penetration of primary fire increased from 0 to 2
      • Ammo pool increased from 36 to 40
      • Spread of primary fire increased about 20%
      • Block damage mitigation decreased from 60% to 50%
  • Perks
    • Berserker
      • Parry (level 15 skill)
        • Incoming damage reduction increased from 25% to 30%.
        • Duration increased from 6 to 8 seconds.
  • Weekly Modes
    • Scavenger
      • Dropped weapon lifetime increased from 10 to 20 seconds

Designer Notes :

FAMAS Masterkey was underperforming more than what we expected, mostly regarding the secondary fire. So we boosted the fire power of the masterkey shotgun in damage and penetration capacity, trying to make it a useful tool for close quarters. We also increased the magazine size of the primary fire to alleviate the lack of single shot fire mode of the weapon, a fact that sometimes is causing the players to consume more ammo than what they wanted.

We think that the Thermite Bore was in a good spot. We just made a slight adjustment on the ground fire duration, reducing their life time a bit. We also made a small adjustment on the iron sight position of the weapon that was slightly off-centered.

The HRG Blast Brawlers were also underperforming so we made few adjustments to make it a more attractive weapon inside the support arsenal. The damage and the penetration of the primary fire was increased. The ammo pool was also increased. The spread of the projectiles was slightly increased. On the other hand, the damage mitigation of the block was reduced so now the defensive capacity is still there, but making a parry is more rewarding than a simple block.

About the recent Berserker Perk adjustments, we are confident that the current state of the perk makes a better overall balance of the game. Even so, we agree with the community that the Parry skill was downgraded too much, so we increased its resistance and duration to a midpoint between the original state and the beta 1 values.

In Scavenger weekly mode, players need to constantly use and drop a lot of weapons and without any adjustment on the pickups, the battlefield would be full of empty weapons. To avoid the frustration of picking an empty weapon we implemented a reduction on the dropped weapons lifetime, so players can focus on picking new fresh weapons rather than empty dropped ones. Seems that this lifetime felt short for many players that were having problems when sharing the weapons with their mates. We increased this lifetime a bit, but still with the mechanic of removing the used weapons after a short time.



Bug Fixes
Also mentioned in the 2020 Killing Floor 2 ‘State of the Game’ our goal is to bring to the community a continued stream of community-reported bug fixes for each update throughout the year. Please continue to report any bugs you discover by visiting our official forums at: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/forum/killing-floor-2 and posting in the ‘PC’ or ‘Console’ sections.

Top Community Issues:
  • Fixed an issue where the finish tone after completing a Stand your Ground objective would repeatedly play until the end of the wave.
  • Fixed an issue with the Scavenger Weekly mode where using the DLC weapons would prevent the weekly from being completed and led to incorrect stats being reported at the end of the match. This has been temporarily fixed by removing the DLC weapons from the weapon pool for Beta 2 while a long-term fix is being worked on for the update release.

Weapons:
  • Thermite Bore
    • Fixed an issue where the Demo skills were affecting the Thermite Bore.
    • Fixed an issue where the firing sound of the Thermite Bore was being heard even when the SFX volume was disabled.
  • HRG Bastion
    • Fixed the SFX drop off distance of the shield activation/deactivation for the HRG Bastion.
    • Fixed an issue where the shield animation did not play fully after changing weapons.
    • Fixed an issue where some of the parts of the Bastion had no back facing textures leaving them to be seen through.
  • HRG Blast Brawlers
    • Fixed an issue where the tracers appeared behind the weapon as it was fired from the 3rd person perspective.
  • FAMAS Masterkey
    • Fixed an issue where you were unable to cancel the underbarrel reload animation.

Map:
  • Moonbase:
    • General
      • Fixed an issue where film grain post effect was more noticeable in Moonbase corridors.
      • Fixed an issue with the frame cap removed on higher end graphics cards that would cause ragdolls, dosh, and weapons to float to the top of Moonbase.
      • Fixed multiple seams and gaps between the walls and floor plates in the Moonbase Lobby.
      • Fixed multiple seams and gaps between the walls and floor plates in the Moonbase Kitchen.
      • Fixed multiple ZED pathing issues throughout Moonbase.
      • Fixed multiple instances of floor indicator lights overlapping and not drawing on certain textures in Moonbase
      • Fixed an issue where the floor was a tile to deep leading players to be stuck in Moonbase.
    • Living Quarters
      • Fixed multiple seams and gaps between the walls and floor plates.
      • Removed multiple instances of collision volumes creating snag spots.
      • Fixed multiple instances of objects missing textures.
      • Fixed multiple instances of blood splatter not applying to various textures and objects.
      • Fixed various LOD issues throughout the area.
      • Fixed an issue where light fixtures and neon lights were not attached to walls and hung in the air.
      • Removed multiple objects in the area that were extraneous to improve the performance of the area.
      • Fixed various instances of z-fighting within the area.
      • Fixed an issue where one of the weapon spawns would appear mid-air.
    • Rocket Dome
      • Fixed multiple seams and gaps between the walls and floor plates.
      • Fixed multiple instances of objects missing textures.
      • Fixed multiple instances of blood splatter not applying to various textures and objects.
      • Fixed various LOD issues throughout the area.
      • Fixed an issue with the cables where they had no collision for grenades or projectiles.
      • Fixed an issue with the ceiling that had no collision for grenades.
      • Fixed an exploit spot around the ramps that ZEDs could not path to.
    • Green Dome
      • Fixed multiple seams and gaps between the walls and floor plates.
      • Removed multiple instances of collision volumes creating snag spots around the scaffolding.
      • Fixed multiple instances of objects missing textures.
      • Fixed multiple instances of blood splatter not applying to various textures and objects.
      • Fixed various LOD issues throughout the area.
      • Fixed an issue where tvs were hanging in the air.
      • Removed multiple objects in the area that were extraneous to improve the performance of the area.
      • Fixed an issue where the poles had no collision for grenades.
    • Tech Dome
      • Fixed multiple seams and gaps between the walls and floor plates..
      • Fixed multiple instances of objects missing textures.
      • Fixed multiple instances of blood splatter not applying to various textures and objects.
      • Fixed various LOD issues throughout the area.
      • Fixed an issue where Zeds spawning from the ventilation could become stuck in the air.
    • Corridors
      • Fixed multiple seams and gaps between the walls and floor plates.
      • Fixed multiple instances of objects missing textures.
      • Fixed multiple instances of blood splatter not applying to various textures and objects.
      • Removed multiple objects in the area that were extraneous to improve the performance of the area.

Modes:
  • Fixed an issue where the Scavenger weekly was available on Holdout maps.

UI:
  • Fixed an issue where the FAMAS Masterkey and the Thermite Bore were unable to be sorted by perk and weapon type.
  • Fixed an issue in WebAdmin where the thumbnail for Moonbase is not visible.
  • Fixed the sorting order of the maps correcting the placement of Moonbase.

Localization:
  • Fixed an issue with the FAMAS Masterkey shotgun shells name not fitting within the text box in the Trader.

Cosmetics:
  • Fixed an issue where inventory icons for the FAMAS Masterkey and the Thermite Bore are showing as broken images in the Steam inventory.

Store:
  • Flagged the Gravity Imploder to allow it to be tradeable.

Misc:
  • Fixed log spam referencing “Cannot 3D-Scale rigid-body primitives” so that it no longer occurs.


As always, thank you for your continued support!
As a Berserker main I would like at least Vampire or the one with health regen buffed back to original. One at least because the way I play I dont parry like, at all
 
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guys, why does this: bForceMapSorting=true
have to be a thing, now? I can't keep my maplist or continue to let people vote for whatever game mode they want to play with this sort of thing going on:( This whole update is disappointing enough already without adding this bit, too - you really should fire Saber, they are trying to ruin your good name (Masterkey animations, for instance)
 
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guys, why does this: bForceMapSorting=true
have to be a thing, now? I can't keep my maplist or continue to let people vote for whatever game mode they want to play with this sort of thing going on:( This whole update is disappointing enough already without adding this bit, too - you really should fire Saber, they are trying to ruin your good name (Masterkey animations, for instance)
Yeah, WTF was that? Thanks for ruining my map list.
 
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guys, why does this: bForceMapSorting=true
have to be a thing, now? I can't keep my maplist or continue to let people vote for whatever game mode they want to play with this sort of thing going on:( This whole update is disappointing enough already without adding this bit, too - you really should fire Saber, they are trying to ruin your good name (Masterkey animations, for instance)
FYI: Tripwire is behind all the decision making, saber is just a workforce.
 
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I got two questions that sprung up.
Do you guys have a planned release date for this update, or will there be a Beta 3 before release?
Are we getting a 2x XP and 4x item drop bonus on the week it releases? :>
As per usual
Beta 2 is final... so from the day of its release there's about 2 weeks of testing before update goes live
When update goes live there is always a bit of delay before new items are released for sale and double xp with drop rate increase become active (all happens on the day of update going live)
 
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Balance
  • Berserker
    • Parry (level 15 skill)
      • Incoming damage reduction increased from 25% to 30%.
      • Duration increased from 6 to 8 seconds.
Designer Notes :

About the recent Berserker Perk adjustments, we are confident that the current state of the perk makes a better overall balance of the game. Even so, we agree with the community that the Parry skill was downgraded too much, so we increased its resistance and duration to a midpoint between the original state and the beta 1 values.
I like the changes overall for nerfing Zerker survivability, but I think it kinda hits other skill choices indirectly. Like because healing overall is less, Juggernaut is less of a good skill because unless you have a Medic solo healing you more then half of the time. You can only fill up 200 health so much by yourself. Which is why there's Vampire to help you heal with 3 health a kill, but as the left side of Zerker tree is supposed to be near teammates and act as a bodyguard (where you in theory have some ranged weapons, go for headshots, etc), you don't really get kills and don't heal as much. So it kinda becomes counter intuitive to want to be near teammates.

So what I was thinking, is A) buff Juggernaut but not with just more health, and B) make Vampire more consistent.

So with Juggernaut, maybe to add health regen like Skirmisher, so they do become more homologized. At the first tier, you get health as a melee class, but you can choose more health in the tank, or you can be faster. Kinda in the same vein of Tier 2 skills both having 20% swing speed. And if you really want to make them more themselves and their own personality, Maybe add on 5% Damage Reduction instead of 1HP/sec, so it does revert the nerfs to DR/level, but it's not just reverting them, it's more saying "Hey! You can be as tough as you were before, but you have to actually pick the tanking skill to be a tank instead of getting it naturally".

And with Vampire, I can see why getting too much health from killing could be a problem, so I wouldn't wanna change per kill healing. But as the skill that's really the only healing for Juggernaut other then Zed Time triggers, and wanting to be near people to protect them, what about 1HP per assist? So you're still healing from bigger zeds that teammates are more inclined to kill (or people killstealing when you REALLY needed that horde of Crawlers to regen when you were on 15 health). So you do heal more with the skill, but it's more from the philosophy of 'live to kill, kill you live' with less of 'well, I keep killing trash mobs to outlive everything so I'm basically unkillable'. So you being in the thick of a fight still heals you, even if Demos exist to blow up a RPG-7 near you, or Firebugs exist.... anywhere in your general vicinity.
 
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The Arachnophobia weekly sounds nice (if a bit too quirky), and I can't help but imagine that there could be other specific zed-themed weeklies.

How about a "Clotmageddon" weekly where every wave is just a huge horde of Clot variants? Make it Hell on Earth so they're always sprinting (except the Rioter) and very strong... it could make for a fun mode where you could easily get swarmed if you don't take them out quickly and efficiently.
 
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How about a "Clotmageddon" weekly where every wave is just a huge horde of Clot variants? Make it Hell on Earth so they're always sprinting (except the Rioter) and very strong... it could make for a fun mode where you could easily get swarmed if you don't take them out quickly and efficiently.
Tripwire PLEASE DO IT
 
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