Hi. I was thinking about how the hoe mode became so easy (especially w alls hrg cheated weapons and medic includ) so my opinion this game lost all synergy and team mates job needs like one example, let parry raged fp freeze let sharp snipe him cover larges killers from little zeds ect like all have to respect their jobs and priorities for succes properly. Now this game on 90% of match making are like : zerker front w medic healthrower on him both tank and fb demo survivalist spamm on them every hrg kaboomstick nailgun ect u literaly can succès HoE w an Atari joystick w one button... So this game really need a New worked difficulty for players who enjoy succes properly only and where alls players have a job to do and respect... Like a New no hope difficulty : medic big nerf,no hrg weapons, scripted area for first 5 waves like u have no choice to succes if u want buy weapons... If one die he definetly die so need buy a defibrillator (1000dosh) for res him, scrake with armor if no headshot u rage him w +30% dmg speed and he run like crazy twister w chainsaw... Same w fp... Amor and only rokket or sniper in heads kill them. King scrake as boss and somes scrake who spawn anf run immediatly not raged but Just run. Plz share that w developpers because kf2 was a great game and its almost dead. Alls deserve to be enjoy playing xD
"No hope" devs should create New difficulty mode .. Read its very interesting. Only good ideas
- Thread starter neo-warriors1
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> Medic big nerf : that's super vague dude. What do you want nerfed exactly?
> No HRG weapons : but why? Tons of broken and unbalanced weapons aren't HRG. And HRG weapons range from uninteresting to OP. It ain't like a classification
> Scripted area : I didn't even understand what you were trying to say
>Scrake with armor : for someone wishing for extra difficulty, you surely don't understand game design very well, do you? EDARs and Rioters are hated for a reason
>Only rocket or sniper will kill FP : can you imagine how stupidly limited that strategy would be?
> What does a "King Scrake" would bring to an extra difficulty level? I mean... why would he more difficult specifically? I'm also pretty tired of the "Zed, but make it a boss" trend. We got enough with the King Fleshpound & Abomination
> No HRG weapons : but why? Tons of broken and unbalanced weapons aren't HRG. And HRG weapons range from uninteresting to OP. It ain't like a classification
> Scripted area : I didn't even understand what you were trying to say
>Scrake with armor : for someone wishing for extra difficulty, you surely don't understand game design very well, do you? EDARs and Rioters are hated for a reason
>Only rocket or sniper will kill FP : can you imagine how stupidly limited that strategy would be?
> What does a "King Scrake" would bring to an extra difficulty level? I mean... why would he more difficult specifically? I'm also pretty tired of the "Zed, but make it a boss" trend. We got enough with the King Fleshpound & Abomination
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About medic : defense nerf and dmg nerf. It's too easy to tank w medic, can even kill a 6p Hans boss w hemoglobin easily because of the stun... Healthrower too(maybe nerf ammo) ... Constantly buff u and zerker then others play just spamm kaboomstick, canon husk and survivalist another kaboomstick and easy win, medic can snipe w good dmg very strong on larges during zed time. That's not coherent. Hrg weapons : its Just noob stuff my opinion excepted buckshot w support. Scrake Armor : pushed to play very carefull or u get ruined like that pples stop spamming so edars (edar, i dont like robot design but game was too easy without) and rioter are hated by noobs only... Because power core update until steam fortress was Best kf2 period. About rokket and sniper its an example because its the two Best perk for focus larges zeds... So yea u still can kill scrake w commando but headshot only... Because a New boss with difficult raged armor scrake waves should be cool. scripted area : your scripted to succes area defense for make dosh first 5 waves (u lost life slowly if ur not in zone) like when ur outside on nuked objective.
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I think he meant that you have to protect some areas. Which is actually an interesting idea that you only get paid for doing those mini-quests. I would definitely not pass through
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Its not mini quest... You need defend difficult area for have good economy. No choice. On hoe u can skip doesn't matter but if New difficulty thats important for succes.
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About larges spawn alls should got an armor... The interest of that its no brain players who spamm kaboomstick canon husk nailgun ect on zerker during medic spamm his healthrower have nothing to do anymore on a New difficulty where u respect ur priorities, if u spamm a scrake u Just buff him and hes unstoppable so nothing really difficult just let demo sharp gunslinger stun (depend of situation) or commando headshot w fn fal or scar. Just let do the job instead of spamming style. Like my zerker style its commando and zerker hold a spot at two i Just Block alls zeds for give him full zeds times 95% of zed times like that others 4 pples hold their spot full trust about ztime and me for my commando friend i kill larges headshot only w spartan and nailgun. If raged fp i parry use my nade plus froze w shotty and kill... Still many pples dont understand my zerker but make a New difficulty its pushed to play w good synergy only. Finally nothing more difficult. If pples want part of fun w spamming they stay on hoe. If want play very properly just play New difficulty where u know its impossible to spam. Ur literally blocked w that style.
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I'm sorry, but parsing this makes my head hurt.
You're not wrong that this game has gotten much easier over time but the thought process needs to be fleshed out. It's all well and good to say "new difficulty" but that wouldn't really fix the issues without a proper grounding of the problems at hand.
However. Note that list of weapons and corresponding perks you're using as examples. There's two things noteworthy about them: None of those have to aim, and most of them are also weapons that remove perk weaknesses.
The de-emphasis on aim is one of the primary culprits. The amount of spam-friendly AoE weaponry that's been added to this game is staggering, to the point where I'd say it's the game's primary distinguishing feature from most of its peers on the market, and not in a good way.
To make a long story very short: the spam weapons and chaos perks are tuned so that they're effectively ways to shortcut the game's primary skill divider, which is headshots and takedowns. Playing a chaos perk from Hard to HoE is virtually identical throughout all difficulty steps, but the same does not apply to the precision perks. The reward for playing chaotic perks is disproportionately high for the effort required, especially compared to their precision counterparts.
Weapons like the Kaboomstick and Locust are among the biggest culprits here, because they're so powerful and so easy to use for that power that most players have no reason to not pick them.
And those easy-mode weapons and perks create a self-feeding cycle where players have no real reason to pick the precision perks because 1) they're harder to play, and 2) trying to play precision perks on a public team with chaotic perks is a bad time, which often leads to said precision players either resigning to a chaotic perk or leaving in frustration in most games.
Even perks like Medic are a double-edged sword in that regard, in that they can be extremely powerful both as a team player and as an independent entity that just happens to have heal darts. See here for details because I ain't typing that out again. But yes, Medic needs to be reined in.
Unfortunately, TWI has shown that they don't really want to adhere to balancing based around skill floors and ceilings, probably because it would alienate a good chunk of their playerbase, so that is where player-owned environments have to come into play.
Understand that this is a game that, like it or not, was heavily console-ized and balancing decisions will unfortunately center around that choice (hence the easier perks that don't have to aim, the lower Zed count to avoid overloading client machines, etc.).
Here's another thing: most players' ideas on how to make a new difficulty fail to understand the game mechanics that have been contributing to the decline of difficulty.
Which brings me to some of your suggestions:
Some HRG weapons are a problem, yes, but they're not the sole problem. A lot of non-HRG weapons are very problematic. Some of the DLC weapons like the Frost Fang are badly designed and need to be blacklisted from that sort of difficulty as well.
Hard disagree on the "protect the area" objective requirement. Unless there's some sort of rework on how those areas are decided and mapped out, no. Too many of them are in terrible spots that would serve as nothing but meatgrinders, making games nigh unwinnable because you rolled a bad spot. If you go there, you die, and if you don't go there, you have no econ power, meaning you die.
You'd also have to work around the fact that people can just leave and rejoin if they die.
Having said that, to your second point: I would be interested in seeing the Scrakes from Early Access return as a test run for harder HVTs. They had a much longer chainsaw hitbox and outran basically everyone when raged, but were vulnerable to alternative takedown methods like a player circling them. A Scrake model colored albino (think Pepsiman or something, IDK) with a double-bladed, extra-long chainsaw to indicate the increased attack range would be neato, but as it would entail a lot of extra work, I wouldn't hold my breath on seeing something like that happen.
UPDATE: I see you wanted body armor, but not necessarily a helmet. That is a different matter, and yes, I don't knee-jerk-reflexively disagree with making enemies harder to kill with bodyshots. As long as the Scrake weak point isn't on the body like EDARs.
Completely removing all but 2 options to eliminate something you see as often as Scrakes and FPs (and are you including QPs in this as well, those things that can show up six at a time in 6P HoE) would do nothing except mortally irritate players.
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At the end of the day, a lot of the difficulty issue could be mitigated with the following:
...and probably some other stuff I'm leaving off.
There are other options, like how KF1 has intentional nerfs to specific weapons on HoE, but my guess is that TWI is trying to avoid that.
You're not wrong that this game has gotten much easier over time but the thought process needs to be fleshed out. It's all well and good to say "new difficulty" but that wouldn't really fix the issues without a proper grounding of the problems at hand.
So yes, this is absolutely something I've been repeatedly harping on for quite a while. Weapon power creep (and to a lesser extent, perk base kit power creep) is a huge factor in the game's decreased focus on perk synergy and needing to fill each others' roles.
However. Note that list of weapons and corresponding perks you're using as examples. There's two things noteworthy about them: None of those have to aim, and most of them are also weapons that remove perk weaknesses.
The de-emphasis on aim is one of the primary culprits. The amount of spam-friendly AoE weaponry that's been added to this game is staggering, to the point where I'd say it's the game's primary distinguishing feature from most of its peers on the market, and not in a good way.
To make a long story very short: the spam weapons and chaos perks are tuned so that they're effectively ways to shortcut the game's primary skill divider, which is headshots and takedowns. Playing a chaos perk from Hard to HoE is virtually identical throughout all difficulty steps, but the same does not apply to the precision perks. The reward for playing chaotic perks is disproportionately high for the effort required, especially compared to their precision counterparts.
Weapons like the Kaboomstick and Locust are among the biggest culprits here, because they're so powerful and so easy to use for that power that most players have no reason to not pick them.
And those easy-mode weapons and perks create a self-feeding cycle where players have no real reason to pick the precision perks because 1) they're harder to play, and 2) trying to play precision perks on a public team with chaotic perks is a bad time, which often leads to said precision players either resigning to a chaotic perk or leaving in frustration in most games.
Even perks like Medic are a double-edged sword in that regard, in that they can be extremely powerful both as a team player and as an independent entity that just happens to have heal darts. See here for details because I ain't typing that out again. But yes, Medic needs to be reined in.
The playerbase has been doing that independently with the Controlled Difficulty mods and custom servers that tend to disallow spam-friendly playstyles as well as manipulating Zed spawns and enemy counts to give players reasons to diversify perk choices.
Unfortunately, TWI has shown that they don't really want to adhere to balancing based around skill floors and ceilings, probably because it would alienate a good chunk of their playerbase, so that is where player-owned environments have to come into play.
Understand that this is a game that, like it or not, was heavily console-ized and balancing decisions will unfortunately center around that choice (hence the easier perks that don't have to aim, the lower Zed count to avoid overloading client machines, etc.).
Here's another thing: most players' ideas on how to make a new difficulty fail to understand the game mechanics that have been contributing to the decline of difficulty.
Which brings me to some of your suggestions:
The Medic thing I can agree with, as mentioned above, but the others?
Some HRG weapons are a problem, yes, but they're not the sole problem. A lot of non-HRG weapons are very problematic. Some of the DLC weapons like the Frost Fang are badly designed and need to be blacklisted from that sort of difficulty as well.
Hard disagree on the "protect the area" objective requirement. Unless there's some sort of rework on how those areas are decided and mapped out, no. Too many of them are in terrible spots that would serve as nothing but meatgrinders, making games nigh unwinnable because you rolled a bad spot. If you go there, you die, and if you don't go there, you have no econ power, meaning you die.
An ironman difficulty setting would make for an interesting weekly, I believe, but as a core mechanic...no. The game's not designed with that in mind.
You'd also have to work around the fact that people can just leave and rejoin if they die.
Of all the element to double down on in this game, "more armored enemies" is absolutely not one of them, and "armored heavy Zeds" even less so. Armor over extraneous limbs such as Fleshpound gauntlets is one thing, but armored weak spots is just an artificial TTK increase in most cases, and something like a Scrake with a helmet would make the game harder for all the wrong reasons, in that you basically couldn't let HVT killers do their thing without raging the Zed in question and render any other perks like SWAT useless because they couldn't contribute to takedowns at all.
Having said that, to your second point: I would be interested in seeing the Scrakes from Early Access return as a test run for harder HVTs. They had a much longer chainsaw hitbox and outran basically everyone when raged, but were vulnerable to alternative takedown methods like a player circling them. A Scrake model colored albino (think Pepsiman or something, IDK) with a double-bladed, extra-long chainsaw to indicate the increased attack range would be neato, but as it would entail a lot of extra work, I wouldn't hold my breath on seeing something like that happen.
UPDATE: I see you wanted body armor, but not necessarily a helmet. That is a different matter, and yes, I don't knee-jerk-reflexively disagree with making enemies harder to kill with bodyshots. As long as the Scrake weak point isn't on the body like EDARs.
I appreciate what you're going for, but I guarantee you this wouldn't turn out well.
Completely removing all but 2 options to eliminate something you see as often as Scrakes and FPs (and are you including QPs in this as well, those things that can show up six at a time in 6P HoE) would do nothing except mortally irritate players.
You've listed nothing on how this boss would work on a mechanical level. "Scrake but bigger" isn't a good idea. We've already had two bosses that are duds compared to the other ones; that's half the reason why Matriarch exists, as an anathema to the two "shoot it until it dies" bosses that came before her.
Well, they are badly designed. They're not even challenging, just badly designed and irritating. They could be reworked. It's as easy as making headshots a weak point. But I'm not counting on that.
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At the end of the day, a lot of the difficulty issue could be mitigated with the following:
- Reducing AoE damage and effectiveness
- Removing or heavily reducing incap availability for perks that didn't have it to begin with (i.e. let Sharpshooter only have access to freeze, and keep it just via grenades, or make freeze weapons heavy enough that it's impossible to carry them with other weapons)
- Reworking Firebug's ground fire dependency since it homogenizes the entire perk's arsenal and dumbs down effective playstyles
- Neutering "perk weakness counters" such as weapons like the Kaboomstick
- Nerfing Medic to be more in line with other perks rather than being good at everything no matter what setup you use
- Tweaking enemy count to favor more trash specialists (which I don't expect to happen, ever)
...and probably some other stuff I'm leaving off.
There are other options, like how KF1 has intentional nerfs to specific weapons on HoE, but my guess is that TWI is trying to avoid that.
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Great content, as usual. One note though.
Well, we don't know about it. We assume that the spamfest is something that most players like, but do they?
Yes, CD and precision oriented servers seem to be less popular, but on the other hand, are servers that emphasize the spamfest, e.g. Zedternal Reborn, more popular? Maybe we shouldn't compare CD with the core vanilla game, but compare with the opposite margin of the modded KF2 experience?
Another consideration: while KF2 playerbase remains stagnant for years and even the 2020-2022 huge spike in gameplay time due to more people staying at home because of the lockdowns and WFH spike didn't improve it much, why its competitors such as DRG steadily grow in playerbase? Are they more or less spamfest friendly? Are they more or less aim oriented?
Well, we don't know about it. We assume that the spamfest is something that most players like, but do they?
Yes, CD and precision oriented servers seem to be less popular, but on the other hand, are servers that emphasize the spamfest, e.g. Zedternal Reborn, more popular? Maybe we shouldn't compare CD with the core vanilla game, but compare with the opposite margin of the modded KF2 experience?
Another consideration: while KF2 playerbase remains stagnant for years and even the 2020-2022 huge spike in gameplay time due to more people staying at home because of the lockdowns and WFH spike didn't improve it much, why its competitors such as DRG steadily grow in playerbase? Are they more or less spamfest friendly? Are they more or less aim oriented?
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Tragically, I really can't answer for Zedternal or those sorts of servers because honestly, I've never played it and never cared to look into it or ask. Reminds me of those Japanese servers modded to the point of no longer being recognizable; funny once or twice, but not what I boot up KF2 for.
You'd have to ask actual server owners, frequent players, and such as.
I've got quite a lot of hours in DRG and, for the most part, it's not that difficult a game. The randomized cave and prop generation will occasionally result in an ugly situation out the starting gate in the highest difficulties and that's your lot sometimes, but rarely does it feel genuinely unfair that I died in situations where it happens outside of some collision jank that results from how enemies interact with breakable terrain.
There are five base selectable difficulties for mission types, there are modifiers for some missions that can make them easier, harder, or both, and even double down on that (e.g. "greater critical hit damage" alongside "no player shields"), and there are two different "difficulties" of weekly bonus missions called Deep Dives that are composed of 3 missions tied back-to-back in one go with escalating difficulties. This is really weird to type out in retrospect, so think of it like this: Deep Dives are difficulty 2.5/3/3.5 in that order, and the Elite Deep Dives are difficulty 4.5/5/5.5 in that order.
Enemies scale in health and (particularly) numbers with additional players, so it's quite possible for lesser players to sandbag teams on harder difficulties; single players carrying whole games is possible but not likely because you tend to be fighting the inevitable overwhelming tide in cases where 3/4 players are down on the highest difficulties and you're likely to run out of ammo if you have to carry a game, at which point you're in deep trouble.
Having said that: the vast majority of DRG players prefer the standard 3/5 difficulty and sometimes dip into 4/5, which I personally consider to be snoozers (4 can surprise you every now and then, but 3 is a bona-fide easy mode once you have actual experience at the game). The devs understand and acknowledge this because in multiple dev streams, they have said that 5/5 and EDD players are an incredible minority and thus they are not spending time on anything harder than the current highest difficulties. There are mods to make the game more challenging, but that's your lot.
I find it a game that's fun with other players on comms, but not that fun otherwise. Compared to KF2 and other horde shooter comtemporaries, it lacks the (potential) combat depth of many other contemporaries, but it's a nice palate cleanser sometimes from something like, say, Back 4 Blood's No Hope difficulty, yet not so easy on the highest difficulty that I'm bored.
All of this to say: Why would DRG be more popular with a burgeoning community than KF2? Well...
Granted, this game is more recent and had time to work out the kinks in its systems that befell KF2, but the appeal in some cases is understandable. It's certainly been less volatile over the past couple of years than KF2 has been, and isn't balanced towards spam-to-win to water down the difficulties as much as KF2 has been doing the past couple of years.
Different games, different strokes, different priorities, different directions, and so forth. This wound up being a lot wordier than I intended so hopefully that answers some of it.
This is different from something like Back 4 Blood, which started out life as a mercilessly difficult PvE-oriented version of Left 4 Dead (often not always for the best reasons) and was in a rough state at launch but has smoothed out over time, albeit at the cost of some of its initial difficulty curve (melee continues to be a problematic element in B4B but otherwise the game's design is pretty fun).
You'd have to ask actual server owners, frequent players, and such as.
DRG is, for the most part, not an aim-intensive game unless you go to the maximum difficulty possible, and even then it varies depending on the situation because the playable characters are split between both fighting and mobility potential, as well as having a some kits that allow the classes to play off each other in combat. When I say "mobility" I don't just mean like in KF2 where you can run faster than other perks; DRG places great emphasis on vertical mobility as well as horizontal, both for player characters and enemy grunts. Greatly simplified, you have:
- Fast character who is bad at crowd control but is mobile and good at single-target fighting; grappling hook is a more selfish mobility tool than other options in that no other characters can use it, but it allows the Scout to get to resources that no other players could get to with relative ease; excels at killing HVTs, particularly with certain builds that take advantage of enemies afflicted with status ailments.
- Least useful when stacked. Good thing the host on the P2P infrastructure can disable class stacking.
- "Glass cannon" with automated turrets and powerful weapons, but no mobility or "panic button" equivalent; excellent map traversal assistance potential with deployable platforms that can also serve as on-the-fly obstacles to enemy pathfinding; ironically, for an automated turret class, it's probably the hardest character of the four to play well but extremely versatile when mastered.
- Interplay of manual aiming along with your turret is required since the turret by itself is hamstrung by ammo supply and being intentionally designed to not mulch everything a la TF2; it's meant as a supplementary weapon, not something to sit back and let it play the game for you.
- Heavy weapons specialist with primaries that have high damage uptime but must be managed well lest you run out of ammo; carries a temporary deployable shield that has a surprising number of uses and can turn the tide but has limited charges so you can't abuse it; mobility tool is a deployable zip line that helps with vertical mobility.
- Tunneling specialist with primaries that specialize in killling trash via AoE and stream damage but are limited in burst potential; has some options to inflict status effects along with AoE damage, and other options that take advantage of inflicted status effects (primary flamethower; secondary pistol that hits burning enemies harder, and so forth); mobility tool comes from being able to pretend walls don't exist on demand; least aim-intensive character but also pays for that by having the most trouble with tanky targets that would require high DPS to quickly put down.
- Everyone gets a pickaxe for melee as an emergency weapon, killing the tiniest of annoying tiny enemies, and a means of (slowly) tunneling through walls, and it can have a "power hit" every so often that does enough damage to instakill a lesser grunt but requires cooldown before using again. That's it. There's no other melees except for Driller's hand drills and those are extremely limited in actual melee potential on purpose.
I've got quite a lot of hours in DRG and, for the most part, it's not that difficult a game. The randomized cave and prop generation will occasionally result in an ugly situation out the starting gate in the highest difficulties and that's your lot sometimes, but rarely does it feel genuinely unfair that I died in situations where it happens outside of some collision jank that results from how enemies interact with breakable terrain.
There are five base selectable difficulties for mission types, there are modifiers for some missions that can make them easier, harder, or both, and even double down on that (e.g. "greater critical hit damage" alongside "no player shields"), and there are two different "difficulties" of weekly bonus missions called Deep Dives that are composed of 3 missions tied back-to-back in one go with escalating difficulties. This is really weird to type out in retrospect, so think of it like this: Deep Dives are difficulty 2.5/3/3.5 in that order, and the Elite Deep Dives are difficulty 4.5/5/5.5 in that order.
Enemies scale in health and (particularly) numbers with additional players, so it's quite possible for lesser players to sandbag teams on harder difficulties; single players carrying whole games is possible but not likely because you tend to be fighting the inevitable overwhelming tide in cases where 3/4 players are down on the highest difficulties and you're likely to run out of ammo if you have to carry a game, at which point you're in deep trouble.
Having said that: the vast majority of DRG players prefer the standard 3/5 difficulty and sometimes dip into 4/5, which I personally consider to be snoozers (4 can surprise you every now and then, but 3 is a bona-fide easy mode once you have actual experience at the game). The devs understand and acknowledge this because in multiple dev streams, they have said that 5/5 and EDD players are an incredible minority and thus they are not spending time on anything harder than the current highest difficulties. There are mods to make the game more challenging, but that's your lot.
I find it a game that's fun with other players on comms, but not that fun otherwise. Compared to KF2 and other horde shooter comtemporaries, it lacks the (potential) combat depth of many other contemporaries, but it's a nice palate cleanser sometimes from something like, say, Back 4 Blood's No Hope difficulty, yet not so easy on the highest difficulty that I'm bored.
All of this to say: Why would DRG be more popular with a burgeoning community than KF2? Well...
- It's new, for starters; DRG was in EA for a while and released in 2020.
- The game takes up ~4 GB of space for everything that's in it, as opposed to KF2's 90 GB.
- It runs on Unreal Engine 4.
- It can run on a toaster as long as you have a semi-decent Internet connection.
- Both the game itself and the overwhelming community "advertise" it as a casual-friendly game where FPS skills aren't as required for you to just "have fun," but the option to go sweaty is there if you want it.
- The lobby/mission hub is an interactive environment where players can buy beers, throw snowballs and firecrackers at each other, etc. rather than just being a menu with a lobby, giving players opportunities to goof around between missions.
- In most cases, the classes are as hard as you make them, and can be built for many different scenarios where you aren't usually completely helpless with certain builds, outside of some niche specialist builds that don't pan out on certain mission types.
- Everyone can contribute to team success via weapon synergy and cave navigation/mobility tools, so nobody is completely useless in most cases. For example, in most difficulties, even if a Scout player is bad at shooting, they can still contribute to the team by mining resources that an Engineer has marked with the platform gun while the other players fight.
- The difficulty settings, as noted above. The Deep Dives are important to this in particular for reasons I'll outline later.
- Simplified comms. There's only one on-demand emote button and it's basically a "go team" emote. There's only one ping button and, while you do have to aim it, it's context-sensitive.
- Loadouts are preset so there's no buy order to consider for each run; you take what you want and that's what you get.
- Because of all of the above, there's a meta (as always) but the game is designed such that only people who care about theorycrafting and breakpoints will always be following it.
- The player characters are all extremely chatty and have funny voices, if that's your sort of thing (it's one guy pitch-shifted to all 4 playable classes).
- It has lots of "recurring player engagement" stuff (read: busywork), and whatever other gross businesswords you can think of that apply, but admittedly it's not as exploitative as other contemporaries.
- Infinite "prestige" that gives you increasing player ranks (which outside of the first prestige unlocking skill slots are useless except as a metric of time spent), encouraging players to grind for shinier ranks. Number goes up, if you will, for the players that care; I personally don't and will only bother if I feel like messing with it.
- Prestige doesn't reset level-dependent skills, so prestiging doesn't actively hamper player performance unlike KF2.
- Each mineral that players can mine is effectively a contributing currency for weapon upgrades and prestiges, so players are encouraged to explore caves and scour for resources.
- The weekly assignments and Deep Dives are what give the "currency" for the most important weapon upgrades, so players are encouraged to work through those.
- Free battle passes in the form of "seasons," which weren't a thing until basically 2022, that dole out incremental rewards for doing stuff in the game.
- There are no P2W unlocks.
- There are absolutely paid cosmetic bundles that, according to the devs, are specifically for players who like the game enough to want to contribute a little extra financially and that's it.
- New weapons outside of the starter sets are unlocked through the in-game currencies.
- The new weapons that do occur aren't necessarily amazing (some are very good but still require mechanical skill to get the most out of them; some are just bad but mercifully few are "throw pick" levels of bad). Most new weapons aren't game-breakingly powerful; some are indeed powerful but have drawbacks, and balance changes do happen albeit infrequently.
- There are new mission types and enemies to go with them, in some cases, being added semi-regularly.
- The devs host beta testing builds for incoming stuff and encourage players to try and break it, as well as taking feedback into account.
- Classes generally don't step on each other's toes on a base mechanical level, unlike KF2's perk interactions that make pairing certain perks a nightmare to deal with even if the game isn't technically impossible.
- The devs have emphasized in communications and dev streams that they are not going to put in melee-focused classes or medic classes, as they feel focusing on classes with those kits would run counter to the base design and intent of the game.
Granted, this game is more recent and had time to work out the kinks in its systems that befell KF2, but the appeal in some cases is understandable. It's certainly been less volatile over the past couple of years than KF2 has been, and isn't balanced towards spam-to-win to water down the difficulties as much as KF2 has been doing the past couple of years.
Different games, different strokes, different priorities, different directions, and so forth. This wound up being a lot wordier than I intended so hopefully that answers some of it.
This is different from something like Back 4 Blood, which started out life as a mercilessly difficult PvE-oriented version of Left 4 Dead (often not always for the best reasons) and was in a rough state at launch but has smoothed out over time, albeit at the cost of some of its initial difficulty curve (melee continues to be a problematic element in B4B but otherwise the game's design is pretty fun).
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Wow, that's the best DRG eulogy I've ever read, haha! I hope that David Amata reads this and it makes him sad, angry and motivated to make the changes.
Well, here's why this is a wrong argument and if the devs really push it this proves that they have no clue.
There's a spectrum of games with different level of player retention. In order to retain players for a long playtime a game has to be very replayable, which is achieved through a number of techniques the main of which is arguably difficulty levels, which allows players who exhausted whatever the game has to offer on lower difficulties, but still feel engaged, to challenge themselves with something harder.
There are obvious implications on monetizing approach as long retention type of games benefit from DLC and subscriptions while stunningly impressive but scripted/story driven games benefit from one time purchase. Good examples of long retention games are KF2 or DRG and short retention games are most Resident Evil games or Dead Space, etc. All arguably in the same "survival horror" genre.
So, DRG is a long retention game. Thus, game difficulties is a must to retain players. Even if for now it's an incredible minority -- these players engage in such an activity that becomes eventually the future choice of how they play the game for almost all players that stay with the game. These are the players who buy the DLCs, subscriptions, invest in modding and so on. These are the "whales" who bring the absolute best of player number/revenue earned conversion rates. These are the players who keep the game afloat. They are the future of any long retention game.
Thus, for a long retention type of game it's crucial to pay a diproportionate amonut of attention to 1) in-depth game styles such as playing borderline impossible difficulty 2) players who engage in it.
Here are 2 examples of it.
1) There were some calculations done recently measuring the popularity of KF2 as measured by the number of online servers YoY. Here's the table:
Notice anything? The number of HoE servers grows at the expense of almost all other difficulties. Why? Because of the 1) game power creep the updates introduce 2) game growing old and people becoming more skilled in it.
Then, what happens when a player exhausts the 1 official topmost difficulty? That's right, they move to other games. Which means no revenue from DLCs for the game developer.
2) There's an old game out there called "Doom". Released in freaking 90-s. All old farts behind KF2 development, such as Gibson himself, but probably also Munk, Wilson, maybe Quick and others were clearly influenced by it.
Although the game development industry didn't have much clue back then and it was mostly just a shot in the dark, but 1 thing they've got right. Which is introducing the "nightmare" game difficulty the developers themselves believed wasn't really playable. But the game was so fun and engaging, that the players stayed with it and first speedruns on Nightmare difficulty started popping up roughly a decade after its release, when people put enough (thousands) of hours into learning it. Up to this day (30 years after the initial release) the competition among the best of them keeps going strong:
Note, that literally nobody played that difficulty in any serious way in the first couple of years after the game release. It was the "incredible minority" though who kept investing in it and because of them this game is still alive. How's that? Worth it to appreciate this incredible minority or nah?
David Amata's answer to this, as we know, manifested through their actions is a clear "Nah." Was it the right thing to do for TWI? Is it the right thing to do for DRG devs?
To make it practical. Yes, there's a clear disbalance in messaging the game conveys to players on behaviors detrimental to the team. It's clear as a day for a sharpshooter when a zerk engages in such a playstyle. However, for a zerk it's not clear. Or, to put it in a different way, there's a ton of ways a zerk can spoil the game for a sharpshooter. Putting everything on stumble or in non-stop attack animations, raging zeds when have no aggro on their teammates and getting them killed and so on. But there are practically no way for a sharpshooter to return a favor and a sharp basically can't make other perks lives worse in this game. It's a clear disbalance.
![vIMGYEO[1].gif](https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/data/attachments/14/14814-74fda7ff4d1201593d229f57825d394a.jpg "vIMGYEO[1].gif")
In your opinion, what are the ways to balance it right? Not the perks themselves per se, but the messaging and ability to make lives worse disparity?
Well, here's why this is a wrong argument and if the devs really push it this proves that they have no clue.
There's a spectrum of games with different level of player retention. In order to retain players for a long playtime a game has to be very replayable, which is achieved through a number of techniques the main of which is arguably difficulty levels, which allows players who exhausted whatever the game has to offer on lower difficulties, but still feel engaged, to challenge themselves with something harder.
There are obvious implications on monetizing approach as long retention type of games benefit from DLC and subscriptions while stunningly impressive but scripted/story driven games benefit from one time purchase. Good examples of long retention games are KF2 or DRG and short retention games are most Resident Evil games or Dead Space, etc. All arguably in the same "survival horror" genre.
So, DRG is a long retention game. Thus, game difficulties is a must to retain players. Even if for now it's an incredible minority -- these players engage in such an activity that becomes eventually the future choice of how they play the game for almost all players that stay with the game. These are the players who buy the DLCs, subscriptions, invest in modding and so on. These are the "whales" who bring the absolute best of player number/revenue earned conversion rates. These are the players who keep the game afloat. They are the future of any long retention game.
Thus, for a long retention type of game it's crucial to pay a diproportionate amonut of attention to 1) in-depth game styles such as playing borderline impossible difficulty 2) players who engage in it.
Here are 2 examples of it.
1) There were some calculations done recently measuring the popularity of KF2 as measured by the number of online servers YoY. Here's the table:
Notice anything? The number of HoE servers grows at the expense of almost all other difficulties. Why? Because of the 1) game power creep the updates introduce 2) game growing old and people becoming more skilled in it.
Then, what happens when a player exhausts the 1 official topmost difficulty? That's right, they move to other games. Which means no revenue from DLCs for the game developer.
2) There's an old game out there called "Doom". Released in freaking 90-s. All old farts behind KF2 development, such as Gibson himself, but probably also Munk, Wilson, maybe Quick and others were clearly influenced by it.
Although the game development industry didn't have much clue back then and it was mostly just a shot in the dark, but 1 thing they've got right. Which is introducing the "nightmare" game difficulty the developers themselves believed wasn't really playable. But the game was so fun and engaging, that the players stayed with it and first speedruns on Nightmare difficulty started popping up roughly a decade after its release, when people put enough (thousands) of hours into learning it. Up to this day (30 years after the initial release) the competition among the best of them keeps going strong:
Note, that literally nobody played that difficulty in any serious way in the first couple of years after the game release. It was the "incredible minority" though who kept investing in it and because of them this game is still alive. How's that? Worth it to appreciate this incredible minority or nah?
David Amata's answer to this, as we know, manifested through their actions is a clear "Nah." Was it the right thing to do for TWI? Is it the right thing to do for DRG devs?
To make it practical. Yes, there's a clear disbalance in messaging the game conveys to players on behaviors detrimental to the team. It's clear as a day for a sharpshooter when a zerk engages in such a playstyle. However, for a zerk it's not clear. Or, to put it in a different way, there's a ton of ways a zerk can spoil the game for a sharpshooter. Putting everything on stumble or in non-stop attack animations, raging zeds when have no aggro on their teammates and getting them killed and so on. But there are practically no way for a sharpshooter to return a favor and a sharp basically can't make other perks lives worse in this game. It's a clear disbalance.
In your opinion, what are the ways to balance it right? Not the perks themselves per se, but the messaging and ability to make lives worse disparity?
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The above stuff is a lot to chew on, and I have a lot of thoughts on it, most of them disorganized. But to leave a long story short:
DRG makes no bones about it being targeted as a more casual-player-friendly game, and the mechanics aren't generally as complex or deep as KF2 can get.
Where DRG differs is that it, at least right now, doesn't care if you can beat the hardest difficulty level; the devs will pretty much say "maybe you aren't cut out for it." What they aren't actively doing is making the game easier by adding a metric ton of overpowered weapons for players that can't aim or ration ammo.
Nor did they start out with a principle of "headshots or lose" at the hardest difficulty, then walk that back over the years so that the difficulty is more readily accessible to anyone (thus defeating the point of a harder-than-hard difficulty in the first place). KF2 has absolutely done that.
I literally don't think you can change the messaging without rebalancing the game--and the perks--to go along with it. Not in any meaningful manner. That, or it would send the wrong message to the playerbase. That's why so much of the preexisting long-term playerbase has taken it upon themselves to maintain that messaging on every forum and virtually any worthwhile player guide.
To put it another way: Let's say the devs added tooltips to the perk select screen saying "Firebugs get along well with Demolitionist, but can interfere with other perks like Commando and Sharpshooter due to fire effects, panic, and stumble. Exercise caution around other players!"
On the one hand, some might take it to heart and play responsibly around precision perks; there are always some players, minority though they might be, who will take that advice to heart and use it.
On the other hand: look at how many players will readily play Firebug compared to Sharpshooter. Most of the broader playerbase considers Sharpshooter a disproportionately hard perk with nothing to offer over the others just because it's harder. I don't have faith that such a message would be received as anything other than "this already hard class is unplayable around the perk that literally anyone in the game can pick up and play; why is it not getting buffed to match?" And so forth.
DRG makes no bones about it being targeted as a more casual-player-friendly game, and the mechanics aren't generally as complex or deep as KF2 can get.
Where DRG differs is that it, at least right now, doesn't care if you can beat the hardest difficulty level; the devs will pretty much say "maybe you aren't cut out for it." What they aren't actively doing is making the game easier by adding a metric ton of overpowered weapons for players that can't aim or ration ammo.
Nor did they start out with a principle of "headshots or lose" at the hardest difficulty, then walk that back over the years so that the difficulty is more readily accessible to anyone (thus defeating the point of a harder-than-hard difficulty in the first place). KF2 has absolutely done that.
Hot take, but:
I literally don't think you can change the messaging without rebalancing the game--and the perks--to go along with it. Not in any meaningful manner. That, or it would send the wrong message to the playerbase. That's why so much of the preexisting long-term playerbase has taken it upon themselves to maintain that messaging on every forum and virtually any worthwhile player guide.
To put it another way: Let's say the devs added tooltips to the perk select screen saying "Firebugs get along well with Demolitionist, but can interfere with other perks like Commando and Sharpshooter due to fire effects, panic, and stumble. Exercise caution around other players!"
On the one hand, some might take it to heart and play responsibly around precision perks; there are always some players, minority though they might be, who will take that advice to heart and use it.
On the other hand: look at how many players will readily play Firebug compared to Sharpshooter. Most of the broader playerbase considers Sharpshooter a disproportionately hard perk with nothing to offer over the others just because it's harder. I don't have faith that such a message would be received as anything other than "this already hard class is unplayable around the perk that literally anyone in the game can pick up and play; why is it not getting buffed to match?" And so forth.
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All right, that's fair. These are hard and oddball questions, I understand if you or anyone actually don't have ready to use answers. But it's worth keep talking about it. I feel like I'll be playing this game for years, haha, even after the online is dead, etc. It's just how I am and I can feel it, I've been playing it for thousands of hours and no end in sight.
With that in mind it's worth it to keep discussing these things, because I can, I do and I will keep modding this game to make it more balanced in terms of getting back to the roots of a headshots first mentality shooter. This way both game depth, difficulties and perk roles & affinity are all important questions on which I'd like to have better understanding so I can adjust it right.
Well, it's probably too late for guides and verbal messaging. I don't care much about what's going on with HoE and below difficulties. On my servers most players are elitists who know all that and don't need additional messaging, a rare random join typically just gets kicked quickly. I have nothing against HoE randoms, but it's just a matter of fact that the vanilla game does not teach them proper team-oriented behavior without which one cannot hope to win games on harder than HoE difficulties, so if they don't get kicked they typically cause a wipe by raging and not finishing off, by reraging fps, by stealing extensions, by running with gimmicky and selfish weapons (clobber, frost fang, etc) -- all these are although selfish but viable behaviors on vanilla HoE and they are used to it. But with even that, even hardcore players with thousands of hours, on occasion knowingly engage in selfish behaviors, just because the game allows for it and doesn't punish the team and the offender overtly enough.
I was thinking about something like friendly fire, which can make the zerks or supports to think twice before running up to hug the zeds, because they suffer from absorbing their teammates shots. Yet, friendly fire, while does this particular job somewhat okay, introduces other negatives. E.g. friendly fire by mistake happens and it's no fun for a zerk to get a railgun slug to the head, even when they do nothing wrong and do their best to crouch and/or approach from the side, it's just these things can naturally happen through inevitable mistakes. And in general the friendly fire is disliked. I dunno, maybe there are other reasons to dislike it exist.
Maybe there is some game mechanics related way to disincentivize bad behaviors. I rarely play other games, so maybe some ideas on that were already implemented and I thought that you just may know or open for wild brainstorming.
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