Paid Weapon DLC?

[Spicy]

ALSO: This is a nice little tidbit for everyone to know.

Scenario: I'm in game with 5 other people. I bought the weapon DLC, none of them did. I can buy any of the weapon pack DLC items and give it to a teammate.

 

[Digital Spooker]

It is 50% off right now, as part of the event.

and it's still 2.99 too expensive.

without the discount this "DLC" is half the cost of the game. WITH the discount, it's a dollar under the cost of the game.

this weapon pack should not be 8 bucks, or even 4 bucks, 99 cents would have been a reasonable price, and even then, it could have been a "hey guys, Tripwire here, we like these weapons and are going to add them to killing floor, if you enjoy them consider making a donation to the mod developers here <link>"

 

[Brightside]

It is 50% off right now, as part of the event.

It is 50% obiviously - http://store.steampowered.com/app/210934/

EDIT: he wrote 75% before

 

[ElvenRed]

4. There have been a couple of comments about "pay to win". Um - this is a CO-OP game, not competitive. You're not playing AGAINST someone who can get a drop on you because they've spent money. No-one can "beat" you at all - with or without any extra weapons. The weapons aren't any "better" than FREE weapons anyway. That is just knee-jerk reaction.

I think the "pay to win" thing they are referring to is like "I can beat the game easier because I have access to X weapon".

I played some with the new weapons and the only things I found out I listed in another topic:
The Saw bow should get reduced zerk bonus, so as to not stun Scrakes on body shots; That or just become a sharpie weapon for once, I mean, we got no sharpie weapons this update, and the zerk got 2 with the DLC. Why not share the wealth? ;D
The Scythe alt attack is too powerful, it three-shots a scrake on the head (the claymore alt takes 5 hits to achieve the same).

That's all I found out. The other weapons seem fine for what I tested them.

 

[Tankrussian]

The DLC weapons worry me a bit. It's not nearly as bad as DLC in other games, though, and I love KF, so I'll probably suck it up and buy it anyway.

But, they do give DLC players an advantage (when it comes to Zed-killing performance) over free players.

I'd like to point out that there are no such thing as "side-grades". By offering more weapons, you make players stronger overall, even if the weapons aren't individually overall better than their counterparts.

The DLC weapons in KF aren't any better or worse than their counterparts (factoring in in-game cost). They're balanced with the other weapons. Every weapon in KF is situational - they are better than their counterparts in certain situations, but worse in others.

The thing is, a player who has access to a greater variety of weapons and greater choice is able to choose the weapon that fits the situation best, and is therefore a stronger player.

For example, someone who has access to DLC weapons - if they're half-decent - will, in a certain situation, choose a particular DLC weapon that best fits their need at the time. Someone who doesn't have that access would be forced to pick a free weapon that - in the current situation - doesn't work as well.

If the situation changes so that the DLC weapon isn't as effective, a DLC player can sell it and buy a regular weapon.

Greater choice is greater power, because a half-decent player can pick and choose at will between DLC and non-DLC weapons to find a loadout that synergises better and works better in the current situation than a standard loadout of free weapons.

(I do love you, TWI. You guys have a lot more integrity and are a lot more player-oriented than most devs and publishers. I hope everyone can understand, though, that that doesn't mean people (myself included) shouldn't give their opinion or criticism when they think it's due.)

 

[ultramalakian]

ALSO: This is a nice little tidbit for everyone to know.

Scenario: I'm in game with 5 other people. I bought the weapon DLC, none of them did. I can buy any of the weapon pack DLC items and give it to a teammate.

This, 365this.
It's as simple as that: if you don't want to pay for the DLC, just snoop around for someone who has, and ask him to buy you on perk-related weapon from the DLC, fin. I can't see any problem with that, and you'll get to try them out.

 

[becoming-insane]

The Scythe alt attack is too powerful, it three-shots a scrake on the head (the claymore alt takes 5 hits to achieve the same).

It also stuns the scrake with bodyshots.

 

[Valken]

and it's still 2.99 too expensive.

without the discount this "DLC" is half the cost of the game. WITH the discount, it's a dollar under the cost of the game.

this weapon pack should not be 8 bucks, or even 4 bucks, 99 cents would have been a reasonable price, and even then, it could have been a "hey guys, Tripwire here, we like these weapons and are going to add them to killing floor, if you enjoy them consider making a donation to the mod developers here <link>"

I love TWI and was going to drop some money to support them. Want to buy 4 DLC and noticed that it cost MORE than buying the complete KF bundle with ALL DLC!!!

Come on TWI! If you give 75% for the full KF bundle, why not 75% off the DLC for the rest of the KF users who already have supported you? Why would it cost existing users MORE to get the full bundle?!

I've given away 3 games of KF already to friends (got the 4 pack back in the days) so lets us 4 and others give you more money but on a reasonable level.

99 cents would be ideal for existing KF owners but at least make an effort to appear to be fair, even at 75% off!

It just bad marketing. I know, bad PR is better than no PR.

 

[wz_dew]

I'm disappointed with this. Any potential balance issues aside, there are achievements based on these weapons that are available only for a limited time. You said you weren't going to alter the game-play with paid DLC and you did. I don't believe I will be purchasing games and content from you guys in the future.

 

[Raccoon99]

In reply to the original post...

1. We always said we wouldn't charge for our own weapons. We're not. We're using this as a way to reward community members for work done.

2. It is no longer a "mod". It is DLC taken in as part of the game itself. That is one of the many little headaches we've got to work on to find ways to make this all work sweetly. Random individuals trying to charge for odd bits of code/art are still in breech of the EULA.

3. The weapons don't change gameplay - they are "side-grades". They all have stats similar to existing (FREE) weapons.

4. There have been a couple of comments about "pay to win". Um - this is a CO-OP game, not competitive. You're not playing AGAINST someone who can get a drop on you because they've spent money. No-one can "beat" you at all - with or without any extra weapons. The weapons aren't any "better" than FREE weapons anyway. That is just knee-jerk reaction.

So - the weapons are effectively cosmetic anyway. If we've missed anything and one of them is OP, we'll reel it back in - just as we would with FREE weapons. Have done, in fact. We're doing it as an experiment, related to the Steam workshop experiment, seeing if we can give people decent ways to reward community members who do a boat-load of work - that meets the quality bar as well. We picked this one as the experiment as it is reasonably simple to handle. And Paypal buttons on random websites are largely useless.

We have looked at other ways of doing it and will continue to do so. Ultimately, we want the players to be able to choose what is worth it to you - and what it is worth. And then we will always have to inspect for quality and sanity. But that is still a little way off.

So this is an experiment: some weapons that do NOT make anyone "over-powered", but are a fun alternative to the (50+) (FREE) stock weapons. No-one NEEDS to buy them. No-one will get any more "powerful" with them. The IJC guys will get some reward for the time they've put in and we will learn things from the experiment, adjust plans and move on. What direction that takes depends in part on this experiment, on part what we can afford to do, in part on what the player community is interested in.

But there is a limit to the amount of free content we can generate (we already do 3 events a year, new maps, weapons for free, some DLC characters to help pay for it) - so we really do want to encourage the broader community to make more content that fits, that is of high enough quality and is attractive to the players. If we can find ways for people to earn a bit of cash off providing that content, then the player base will wind up with even more content to play with. That is one theory, anyway

THANK YOU! I Understand of Having DLC Community weps to reward The Guys who made it! It takes One Sane man to take down an Whole Storm.

 

[ro_sauce]

i'm glad that this dlc goes to the parts of the community that has made this game so so so much more than it originaly was, the modders.

 

[Elvenmonk]

Spoiler!

In reply to the original post...

1. We always said we wouldn't charge for our own weapons. We're not. We're using this as a way to reward community members for work done.

2. It is no longer a "mod". It is DLC taken in as part of the game itself. That is one of the many little headaches we've got to work on to find ways to make this all work sweetly. Random individuals trying to charge for odd bits of code/art are still in breech of the EULA.

3. The weapons don't change gameplay - they are "side-grades". They all have stats similar to existing (FREE) weapons.

4. There have been a couple of comments about "pay to win". Um - this is a CO-OP game, not competitive. You're not playing AGAINST someone who can get a drop on you because they've spent money. No-one can "beat" you at all - with or without any extra weapons. The weapons aren't any "better" than FREE weapons anyway. That is just knee-jerk reaction.

So - the weapons are effectively cosmetic anyway. If we've missed anything and one of them is OP, we'll reel it back in - just as we would with FREE weapons. Have done, in fact. We're doing it as an experiment, related to the Steam workshop experiment, seeing if we can give people decent ways to reward community members who do a boat-load of work - that meets the quality bar as well. We picked this one as the experiment as it is reasonably simple to handle. And Paypal buttons on random websites are largely useless.

We have looked at other ways of doing it and will continue to do so. Ultimately, we want the players to be able to choose what is worth it to you - and what it is worth. And then we will always have to inspect for quality and sanity. But that is still a little way off.

So this is an experiment: some weapons that do NOT make anyone "over-powered", but are a fun alternative to the (50+) (FREE) stock weapons. No-one NEEDS to buy them. No-one will get any more "powerful" with them. The IJC guys will get some reward for the time they've put in and we will learn things from the experiment, adjust plans and move on. What direction that takes depends in part on this experiment, on part what we can afford to do, in part on what the player community is interested in.

But there is a limit to the amount of free content we can generate (we already do 3 events a year, new maps, weapons for free, some DLC characters to help pay for it) - so we really do want to encourage the broader community to make more content that fits, that is of high enough quality and is attractive to the players. If we can find ways for people to earn a bit of cash off providing that content, then the player base will wind up with even more content to play with. That is one theory, anyway

How are the weapons sidegrades? The flame pistols are basically husk guns without the need to charge. Right there you basically effed the Husk gun which nobody was using other then for the lulz already. The Saw Bow is a 100% new gun. Not only that it ADDS ranged attack to a class that never had ranged attacks before and shouldn't have had them either. So now the Zerker can mess you up close and long range especially with the Saw Bow being able to stun the infected and bounce off the walls for added crowd control. The Scythe seems like a 100% better Claymore which was another weapon no one was using. The Tommy gun seems meh and it just a nice alternative to the AK that is stronger and takes up 1 less weight class.

These weapons are not the same as weapon skins. Weaponskins I would've been fine with. But one of these weapons changes the gameplay completely while the others are replacement (Read: better) weapons to the weapons you for some reason refuse to fix.

The character DLC was fine it was 100% cosmetic. I think the chickenator is a bit insulting since we can't unlock the chicken from the previous halloween event (which I missed because of work) due to this hillbilly one. Then you charge $5 for him simply because he has feather flowing around him. The only premium DLC I think that was worth it was Ash due to her new voice samples.

 

[detc]

I like TWI, they're good people. They made RO2, and despite it releasing at almost the worst possible time and being bombarded by the community from all sides over the many bugs, they updated it for free. And beyond that they've kept KF going with interesting events and far, far more and not to mention free content than the average developer would ever consider.

But this is rather off. Cosmetic DLC is reasonable, as it doesn't change the gameplay. On the other hand, selling weapons that offer a discernible advantage over the core game's alternatives is not acceptable. I've not been playing KF for as long as many of the people here (I've only been playing since ~2010) but TWI's MO on balancing KF was to nerf, nerf, nerf. Anything that gave a blatant advantage to a particular class has been shut down, generally so hard that the community feels it and is forced to adapt.

So what's the deal, TWI? Why do a 180 and start offering weapons that drastically change the roles of classes (a Berzerker that can one-hit Scrakes with this new sawblade weapon does not remotely fit with how you've defined the balance up to now) for cash? Who put you up to this?

 

[detc]

In reply to the original post...

1. We always said we wouldn't charge for our own weapons. We're not. We're using this as a way to reward community members for work done.

2. It is no longer a "mod". It is DLC taken in as part of the game itself. That is one of the many little headaches we've got to work on to find ways to make this all work sweetly. Random individuals trying to charge for odd bits of code/art are still in breech of the EULA.

3. The weapons don't change gameplay - they are "side-grades". They all have stats similar to existing (FREE) weapons.

4. There have been a couple of comments about "pay to win". Um - this is a CO-OP game, not competitive. You're not playing AGAINST someone who can get a drop on you because they've spent money. No-one can "beat" you at all - with or without any extra weapons. The weapons aren't any "better" than FREE weapons anyway. That is just knee-jerk reaction.

So - the weapons are effectively cosmetic anyway. If we've missed anything and one of them is OP, we'll reel it back in - just as we would with FREE weapons. Have done, in fact. We're doing it as an experiment, related to the Steam workshop experiment, seeing if we can give people decent ways to reward community members who do a boat-load of work - that meets the quality bar as well. We picked this one as the experiment as it is reasonably simple to handle. And Paypal buttons on random websites are largely useless.

We have looked at other ways of doing it and will continue to do so. Ultimately, we want the players to be able to choose what is worth it to you - and what it is worth. And then we will always have to inspect for quality and sanity. But that is still a little way off.

So this is an experiment: some weapons that do NOT make anyone "over-powered", but are a fun alternative to the (50+) (FREE) stock weapons. No-one NEEDS to buy them. No-one will get any more "powerful" with them. The IJC guys will get some reward for the time they've put in and we will learn things from the experiment, adjust plans and move on. What direction that takes depends in part on this experiment, on part what we can afford to do, in part on what the player community is interested in.

But there is a limit to the amount of free content we can generate (we already do 3 events a year, new maps, weapons for free, some DLC characters to help pay for it) - so we really do want to encourage the broader community to make more content that fits, that is of high enough quality and is attractive to the players. If we can find ways for people to earn a bit of cash off providing that content, then the player base will wind up with even more content to play with. That is one theory, anyway

Care to offer some commentary on this video?

KF - IJC Zerk Weapons OP - YouTube

Here's a summary of the video description: everything shown is from a 6-man HoE game, the Scythe alt-fire stuns on body hit and kills after 2 alt-fire head hits. The saw stuns on body hit, kills on 2 head hits.

 

[Althamus]

4. There have been a couple of comments about "pay to win". Um - this is a CO-OP game, not competitive. You're not playing AGAINST someone who can get a drop on you because they've spent money. No-one can "beat" you at all - with or without any extra weapons. The weapons aren't any "better" than FREE weapons anyway. That is just knee-jerk reaction.

a) If the weapons are more powerful, then buying them makes things far easier for the entire team. It's not a scenario of "If you don't pay, you get beaten by other players" but it IS still "pay to win". Particularly if with OP weapons, you can complete higher difficulties than without.

b) The buzz-saw deals more damage on a bodyshot than an Xbow, stuns scrakes in a bodyshot, and kills scrakes in 2 headshots. There's nothing to compare it to, since it's the first zerker ranged weapon, but it's a little more powerful than an Xbow, and not even a sharpshooter weapon.

The scythe is similar to the claymore but it does more damage, has a slightly quicker primary swing speed, and costs less.

On paper, they might look comparable, but little things ingame can make something a lot more powerful.

 

[HuNteR-]

Thank you for the reply Wilsonam.

Like I said, I was just curious not upset. I'm all for business

Kind Regards

HuNteR-

 

[HeatSurge]

Killing floor is not a free to play game.

Exactly. That's why it shouldn't try to adopt models which are for F2P games IMO. "Side-grade" weapons are for F2P games, and greedy publishers with day 1 DLC or the recently popular "season passes" - see BL2.

I was under the impression that this was a "buy once" game, with $1.99 cosmetic skins for fun times.

I surely hope this "experiment" is a flop. I'm not liking ads on the start menu, "premium characters," and now these weapons. I can see more tabs being added in the future - maps, hats (lol), insignias/ribbons, name colors, and why not even DLC classes? After all, classes aren't necessarily more powerful than other classes, so it'll just be cosmetic anyway, right?

If you're converting the game to f2p, please don't do it halfway through. Just do it all at once like TF2 did.

 

[Dramira]

I can't say that I was thrilled to see weapons for sale. I was always impressed that KF was the kind of game with DLC that was only cosmetic and you didn't feel like you had to buy anything to enhance how you play the game.
I understand why this pack is available for sale and I'm not entirely against it but I'm not for it, either. Of course the people who made these deserve some sort of compensation, but I don't see why these are for sale when the IJC were not(feels somewhat unfair to the IJC guys). I guess it was worth a try for Tripwire to see if anybody would be willing to buy extra weapons after some thought.

A friend gifted it to me so I do have the pack. I think some of the weapons are actually really fun. I haven't tried everything yet.
Somebody else mentioned you can buy one of the weapons and then pass it to a teammate. I was able to do that for my fiance. If you aren't sure you want the pack I guess that's a way to try out what you get.

And some criticism: Saw-blade Crossbow!
Berserkers are already powerful and pretty much the most favored perk in the game. It's a really versatile perk and often saves the day.
I think the saw is a very cool weapon but I don't think it suits zerker. I don't really mind that the saw is for the zerker, buuuut, it seems more powerful than the Xbow is for SS.
I think the weapon could use an adjustment. And I'm not even one of those people who fears the game is getting too easy. This one just seems to be particularly out of balance.

 

[infntnub]

Bought both DLC (commando chicken + weapon pack) immediately.

Thanks for your usual efforts TW!!!

It's been beaten to death with people who find reasons to justify not buying additional skins (and now weapons). If you are too cheap to spend $2.99 that's your choice - don't. But don't come to the message board crying other people have access to things you don't. It's not like we're talking about $50 add-ons; it's 2.99 in addition to a game you paid at most $20 for in the beginning.

Thanks again for the DLC and the Halloween Event; had a blast night #1!!

 

[HeatSurge]

$8 isn't that much. Heck, I eat $8 in about two or three meals.

However, my biggest concern is that this is only the beginning. Now they've set up the framework for this, so imagine seeing bi-weekly skins/weapons/perks/maps/(insert game feature here) for $5 each.

That's what this is about - the "hidden" preparations for this turning into a F2P game.