Trust me, I didn't misunderstand. It's just that I don't agree with your point because it's flawed and, if I'm being honest, more than a bit self-centered. I'm sure you're a great person IRL, but I'm sorry, this is also the KF2 boards, and this is a bad argument.
I've written and rewritten this multiple times because I'm to be as un-dickish as possible and such as, but I'm going to be honest:
At the end of the day,
the entire point in so many words is "please stop nerfing 'fun,' especially my (the OP's) personal definition of 'fun.'" This particular instance of it is just drawn out to a grandiose degree.
This, of course, is ignoring the matter that
'fun' is subjective and that what may be 'fun' may not be healthy for a game. It's a discussion I've had variants of about sixty million times and it doesn't get any more fun for me each time I have to write out an essay. But of course, just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in, so here we are.
I have to do it here, I've had to do it in the Back 4 Blood forums and such because of overpowered things that completely smashed that game's difficulty and intended learning curve, and it's never going to end because live service games always lend themselves to this kind of nonsense; the demand for new CoNtEnT always begets power creep.
It's a completely unproductive thing to do and also I don't agree from a "fundamentals of game design" perspective. Games should challenge the player in more specific ways, especially 7 and a half years since their Early Access debut since people have had 7 and a half years to get good**, and for a game where the basic dividing line for a good player is "how good are you at headshotting Zeds?", adding more and more things that ignore players having to work on that fundamental skill is bad and antithetical to proper game design.
So in writing all the words below, it's not even intended for OP (as I do not count on swaying OP at all) as much as it is for anyone else reading the thread, on the off-chance that anyone actually does. At least I can refer back to the post for future use.
I can tell that you're obviously upset by the Berserker nerfs from 2021 and you're nervous that something similar will befall the Medic, although that's extremely unlikely and I wouldn't hold my breath on that happening ever.
That has the same feel as telling someone "do your own research" and closing the argument on your own terms and yours alone.
For what it's worth, I did in fact do my own research on this one. In fact, I read all the way up to the message where OP said they probably weren't going to respond to the Steam thread anymore (which is interesting in that they also said they weren't going to respond to this thread, either).
Some interesting highlights, emphasis mine:
You should be able to expect teamwork, yes. After all, it is a team game. But you shouldn't expect people to go out of their way and do something they aren't comfortable with to enable your playstyle on a pub, regardless of difficulty.
Those two concepts aren't mutually exclusive. See my above post for callbacks to this, especially re: perk interactions. This also extends to weapons, for what it's worth, as weapons also affect other perks.
While poor understanding of teamwork is part of general human nature, KF2 has a particularly bad problem among pub games with a complete disregard for team cohesion. The playerbase and to an extent the devs and the game's direction create this feedback loop.
I'm not saying the game shouldn't be hard. I don't mind a challenge. I'm saying that players shouldn't be forced to use comically specific tactics (pre-defined takedowns and weapon loadouts) in order to play it. Experience and skill is and should remain enough without the tedium of using other people's playstyles or specific optimized weapon choices. But the game has been moving in that direction, and that's why I started this thread.
Remember this for later.
By "pre-defined" takedowns, I mean copying and practicing a takedown exactly as created by another player, like one I saw for Berserker in which they used a specific melee weapon to stagger then switched to the nailgun and fired a specific number of shots into the head (I can't remember the exact details).
Obviously you shouldn't just be body-spamming large zeds or any zeds at all for that matter. But IMO you should be able to beat Hell on Earth if you can consistently land headshots with high-tier weapons.
That's...pretty much how the game already works.
Takedowns as it currently stands more-or-less boil down to "Zed [Y] needs [X] number of headshots with [Z] weapon on [Ω] perk, ideally performed in [λ] seconds." That part is fine. Expecting an unlimited amount of time to perform kills on large threats would entail them not really being threats in the first place. If the player has an unlimited amount of time, etc. to perform the takedowns, well, they're not really takedowns, that's "shoot it until it dies"
Some weapon/perk combos work better on some Zeds. That's how things are. That's how they should be.
The weapon-switching thing only applies to a couple of things:
- A handful of Berserker's melee weapons, because of the range involved with the takedown contrasted with Berserker's ability to inflict CC and stumble at said range.
- Most weapons don't even switch because switching is impractical, which is why Simple Rabbit did a huge series of videos on his channel detailing takedowns for every weapon.
- The Nailgun only requires a switch for prepping the parry, but otherwise it's effectively "parry --> switch --> bash --> 3 headshots."
- If your parry is up, as it should usually be, you can omit those first two steps.
- There is a reason the devs included some prep-work: when Berserker doesn't require any setups, it becomes too W+M1 to be fair to the other perks by comparison. See: pre-nerf battle axe. Close range matters far less when things die too fast to actually hit you in their prescribed effective range.
- Demolitionist's Scrake takedown, ".500 magnum headshot --> RPG"
- "Freezethrower --> shoot in face", or really any other incap that completely paralyzes a Zed.
That's really it, and none of those are a huge ask.
Takedowns, much like headshots, are one of the things separating skilled players from less-skilled players. Skilled players who enjoy performing well will gravitate towards doing these things because it feels good pulling them off, and it feels good to perform your role well.
Removing them removes much of the skill and nuance that should be expected from the game as a whole.
Really, the main thing I'm arguing is that the game shouldn't be changed based solely on the wishes of the highest-level players because I don't want the variety to be lost. I don't want to have to practice takedowns (which I'm defining as a specific number of shots with weapon A, then maybe switching to weapon B for the kill, always the same every time like the berserker example I gave earlier) and be forced to use specific loadouts to play.
Leaving aside the fact that it really isn't, otherwise you'd see about 70% of the weapons axed...
This is terrible for any sort of skill indexing, as the highest-level players understand how the game works--and more importantly, how to break it--better than the devs tend to do. They understand what is OP, what has skewed effort/reward ratios, and what just flat-out doesn't belong.
Or, to put it another way: Without balancing in regards to high-level players, you get:
- Firebug's current arsenal
- The FAL on Commando
- HRG weapons overstepping perk boundaries
- The HRG Locust
- The old Reducto Ray
- Field Medic in its entirety
- Pre-nerf Berserker
- Chaos perk prevalence
And so forth. Most variety is window dressing at best and bad for the game at worst. This is a fairly simple game at its core and most of the arsenal was bad for keeping the purity of that challenge in place.
A lot of people are bringing up trolls and disruptive players, but that's not at all what I was talking about in my original post. I was saying yes, players should try their best on higher difficulties and use good guns, good teamwork, and have the game sense and experience to play there. But they should not be forced to use very specific tactics dictated by other players in order to participate. Like I've said before, that is the direction the game seems to be going in since the berserker nerfs and the handover to Saber, and that is why I made the post.
I'm not forced to play in an optimal way as you put it yet,
So you've admitted thusly that one of your main complaints--that same point from above--does not in fact apply.
but I don't enjoy playing Berserker at all anymore, whether in solo or multiplayer because of the nerfs they made. I realize Berserker can still be very powerful, but that's more if you know your takedowns and not the way I played it anymore.
So Berserker's kit hasn't changed outside of less damage absorption; the damage output is exactly identical.
Which would mean by process of elimination that the only change to your preferred "playstyle" on Berserker would be how many hits you could eat before dying.
A thing that all perks not named Beserker and (especially) Field Medic have had to contend with since time immemorial.
So shouldn't you just work on getting hit less? Improving your micro, etc.?
And to address the elephant in the room: I don't want to do the Berserker discourse. I really don't. Berserker is out of place in this game and tends to be disruptive by nature because of its built-in mechanics. There is no way to balance a melee character in a game where everyone else--including the Medic--has guns, and not have it be a pain in some form or fashion.
I am concerned about all the perks, but most notably about Medic. A lot of especially high-level players who do practice takedowns and play optimally are floating ideas and asking for Medic nerfs. I understand a lot of their concern does have to do with disruptive players now (I didn't know that before I started this thread).
Speaking for myself as someone who uses teamwork in multiplayer, I don't want to lose my survivability on Medic or my potential in solo (you often see people asking for removal of the battle medic skills) just because some disruptive players are doing what they are going to do anyway. Nerfing Medic, Berserker, or any other perk for that matter isn't going to solve the problem of disruptive players, but it will punish people who aren't disruptive. I don't want to lose the fun I have on Medic like I lost the fun on Berserker. I don't want to lose the fun I have on any perk.
It's not just "disruptive players," although that absolutely is part of the problem (people in general using Acidic Rounds on a team with any hitscan players or even Support).
It's that
Medic's current state in
that regard is
equally ridiculous when compared to the rest of the perks, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be looked at because a number of actually good players have concluded that it's a problematic perk. It's meant to be a force multiplier and team support at the cost of being weak on an individual level, but with each patch, Medic only gets stronger and stronger as an individual. This is not a good thing for the health of the game. Medic is tantamount to a cheat code in many ways, and that needs to change.
It's also about discouraging playstyles that are just awful to put up with (Medics and Berserkers, and especially Medic/Zerk combos, using their ability to leave everyone in the dust on a moment's notice, kiting a round for 40 minutes because they can never die outside of instakills on bosses or a misplay so dramatic it would make the rounds on TikTok; players refusing to use left-side buffs in multiplayer games because they expect the team to lose; players who are otherwise terrible at a first-person-shooter abusing Medic/Berserker/Survivalist to win where they would otherwise be trounced; Medics "helping" by tanking hits for players as what should be the fragile support class). In many cases with pub games, the disruptive players go hand-in-hand with the perk's problematic aspects because they learn to abuse them.
Ideally this would extend to other aspects of the game such as removing blatantly OP weapons that violate perk roles, but that is unlikely to happen at this stage in the game's lifetime.
And perks that are balanced around 6P HoE--the default hardest setting in the game--do not lose their potential in solo because solo is piddly easy by comparison. There's a good reason why Berserker and Field Medic are still recommended for players looking to cheese Hell on Earth wins for achievements: they are objectively easier to win with, especially in solo, because the game is far less punishing on that setting, and especially for those perks. So that is a non-issue.
This is going to be pretty cynical, but I have to say it. Every time an Event beta starts, this is how the update notes read to me:
- Nerfed some of Cannonaire's playstyles specifically, so that he would have less fun even though he mainly just plays solo these days and doesn't play disruptively when he does play multiplayer.
No comment.
Leaving aside the fact that Berserker's main change was not being able to wade into the entire horde and come out alive
on the game's hardest difficulty setting, what else do I say to that? I've said my piece on Medic above.
And this is omitting a number of things that I could say and probably have said in previous threads:
- The efficacy of headshots should indeed be the primary balancing factor for the game. Headshots are intended to be difficult and should be the most rewarding aspect of the game. However...
- There are perks that, by their nature, are disruptive and/or have disproportionate rewards for the effort it takes to master them. This is a basic game design mistake; risk/effort vs. reward is half of what gives a game depth. If everything is more-or-less equal in result but not in effort or learning curve, players will inevitably gravitate out of trying to play the harder perks in favor of the easier ones, because why would they?
- See literally any chaotic perk vs. their precision counterpart.
- This is a mistake of balancing; if you want proof of what I mean, see the "Firebug vs. SWAT" problem, where HoE is beatable by mostly staying awake as Firebug while you shoot the floor, while SWAT needs to be about ten-thousand times better to perform 105% vs. the Firebug's 95%. Why bother learning to rapid-fire headshot as SWAT when one can spam fire at chokepoint floors and watch the kill ticker give dopamine? Why bother learning to play Sharpshooter now that Demo has the Kaboomstick, eliminating its primary weakness?
- The solution to the above is not to buff SWAT to the point where it can kill everything on bodyshots, but to reduce the efficacy of Firebug in general. Firebug should struggle in Suicidal and need Demos to cover it in HoE to function well.
- These same chaotic perks counteract their precision counterparts by making the game harder for the latter, by way of disruptive mechanics (panic, stumble, fire dancing, poison, explosions shaking screens, particle effects, etc.). The opposite does not hold true unless you're playing on something like Containment Station or Fat Cat's corridor map where the Zeds are effectively funneled into a shooting gallery for hitscanners.
- There are some perks that have outstandingly high survivability compared to the rest of the perks in the game, which become glass cannons as the game shifts to higher difficulties. Berserker still has some of that, but Medic is disproportionately so, and Survivalist is getting there.
- These perks, by way of being nearly impossible to screw up with and lose compared to other perks, are extremely attractive to disruptive players, or those who would choose mediocre loadouts for a team because they are banking on using the solo-oriented loadouts in preparation for their team to die so they can play on scaled-down difficulties.
- When players can skirt by in a first-person-shooter by being bad at the first-person-shooting bit yet still somehow manage to be the last person alive and carry rounds, something is fundamentally wrong with the design of both the game and the perks. These players should be the first to die.
- "Last Man Standing" scale-down is a huge problem in general with this game and is half the reason for perk imbalances, but as that has been in place for years and years, if there are no plans to change it, you must change the game around it. Something has to give somewhere.
- HoE should not be equally winnable by any tactic or whatever is considered "fun," because what is "fun" is not always objectively good, or takes much less skill. If your hardest difficulty is equally winnable by everything regardless of skill, the difficulty doesn't matter.
And just to cut one more thing off before it starts:
Many things that are nerfed in betas are done for good reason, such as the old Reducto Ray, which allowed any perk to take a tool that bypassed all of the game's basic mechanics and erased up to 14 Fleshpounds. For several hundred dosh and five (5) weight blocks. And up to 6 players could carry this.
People still complained about the RR being nerfed because "stop removing fun" and "well you could just not use it." This, of course, ignores the fact that it was blatantly OP, and that even if one chooses not to use it, you cannot stop other players from doing so, which of course they did, because it was blatantly OP. So you might have five players abusing it in a game instead of six. Whee.
Killing Floor is a PvE shooter with loads of variety, not a competitive eSports title.
Ah, the "it's not a competitive game so balance and fairness shouldn't factor."
No. Again, I point to four different difficulties.
The game, at its highest difficulty setting, should be challenging
and not disproportionately easy for some perks to beat compared to others. The highest difficulty level is intended to challenge a player's individual (and collective, for multiplayer) knowledge and technical skills. To omit that would be to miss the point.
Anyone who wants the experience of using whatever they want without the challenge can play lower difficulties. Anyone who wants the challenge should play harder difficulties, and argue for those difficulties to stay difficult.
Believing there is just one most optimal way is too limiting. You won't be flexible enough to employ possibly better tactics if you think that way.
You're missing the point.
Unless literally all options available are equal among all players and roles, there will
always be a most effective way of doing things, a most efficient way of doing things, etc. That's the whole point of forming the META in the first place (Most Effective Tactic Available).
That doesn't mean that other options can't be used, or that they're not viable, but there will always be a "best" way of doing things. Players more skilled than you or I will were the ones who found that out. The META is discovered by people who enjoy exploring the depths of what a game has to offer,
because they enjoy it.
Now, having said that, it's true that the designers for this game have been trying to reduce the gap in player skill that the META (which they created, mind) has resulted in over the years.
The armored Zeds, EDARs, QPs, and such were all evidence of that.
But it doesn't change the fact that a group of skilled hitscanners diversifying their perks will still be the top-tier method of beating this game. Which is perfectly fine and by design, as that meshes with TWI's deliberate design choices from the game's base mechanics. They don't even have to be using their best weapons, but it's what gives them the best shot at winning a game and maximizing their performances on their respective roles. Which is perfectly reasonable on the game's hardest difficulty.
Now, doing well at the game's hardest difficulty level may be harder if you don't use the best options available, but that's the risk you take.
Is it fair, then, that if the rest of a team is trying their hardest, you also shouldn't?
Everything they said was covered in the Steam thread. Basically it comes down to this: The Steam thread took off with pages of good discussion, and the thread here has gotten like three or four responses aside from my own posts, so it's not worth it for me to continue here. I make my argument pretty clear there, and to be blunt I have medical problems that make it difficult for me to do basically anything. I'm not dismissing their arguments, but I'm simply not able to go through the whole process that happened in the Steam discussion here. I'd be happy to continue the debate there, but I'm not going to spend several hours going through here what has already been covered there.
It's kinda poor form to just drop this prompt in pretty much any KF2-relevant forum and then say you're not bothering to respond except on one specific forum.
You didn't even address Aleflippy above, who also made some good points.
**Nota bene: the challenges added should not come at the cost of balancing around power creep because that begets its own set of bizarre difficulty and balancing problems. Exhibit A: Payday 2. It is much easier to nerf OP things than to keep power creeping while maintaining fairness and challenge.
