...that I think many of the hardcore community will enjoy...

[ScrakeMorgendorffer]

We have two systems that are in design/prototype stage going into this week that I think many of the hardcore community will enjoy and I look forward to feedback on them to help dial them in.

We feel these will address some of the major concerns and help make the game more balance and interesting while rewarding skilled play. I should have more this week and be able to start talking about these systems.

Most of us have been privy to 1035 and 1036. I've read a lot of steam forum feedback, a lot of reddit feedback, and talked to a reasonable proportion of people on my list that I primarily added from playing KF2 together on Suicidal and HoE difficulty.

So I'm interested to know, playerbase - are you part of the "many of the hardcore community" that's enjoyed these new systems?

 

[VastSpartan]

Nope. I had to resort playing on normal mode. The zed resistance on that setting is as close to the original system.

 

[Chyros]

Nope. It's **** on a stick, even after the adjustment.

 

[TheTCREngineer]

dont know how bad the resistance system really was since i was too busy playing sharpshooter solo but the knockback is dumb. i hate pubs though, actually died twice on ****ing hard difficulty because the team is just abhorrent enough to warrant an execution license, not them to others but one on them. **** pubs, never playing with them again. did hoe pub and it was alright, had to leave midgame tho, religion is important to me

 

[eckojay]

The "hardcore community" barely even exists at this point. More or less everyone I know who plays the game regularly completely hates the new systems.

 

[vealck]

1035 was a catastrophe. 1036 is damage control afterwards. Introducing a brand new perk that in itself has a huge impact on the game meta, rebalancing half of others and implementing a game-changing system so flawed that pretty much everything can be thrown out of the window. All at once. That's class 101 on what not to do in game development. Also, it seems that people who come up with all those balance ideas do not play the game at all.

KF2 is just a mess right now. What we currently see is a snowball effect of bad decisions and clumsy attempts to compensate for them. Devs need to go back to the drawing board, start at the square one and meditate on what they want the game to be. Because chaotic running spamfest with magically teleporting zeds frantically clawing at your face all the time probably won't keep players interested for very long. And it's clear now that introducing silly arbitrary resistances won't suddenly add more depth to that shallow gameplay.

And when that vision is settled, then it's time to figure out what they want each one of perks and zeds to be, and then start building stats with hat in mind. Not the other way around.

 

[Ryno5660]

They're a good idea and can make it feel more strategic but it needs tweaking before it enters this "final form".

The potential of it though looks good. Incaps are great fun, I don't know as much about those but having more body-control over certain zeds can both really help and also open up fun new ways to deal with them. Buildup application probably needs work though, some methods should take longer than others but the most successful ones are ones that apply more instantly like Bash, Heatwave and grenade/rocket impacts to the head.

Resistances are the same with potential and not being in its' final form. I reckon the different ballistic resistances are supposed to further separate perk effectiveness on certain zeds since all perks generally focus on one weapon type (shotgun, assault rifle) so you can say it's more perk separation than specific weapon separation. Like I say, could do with more tweaking though. Myself, I think some vulnerabilities like x2 and over are too extreme much like the trash resistances were, I think the whole system should be less extreme spikes in resistance/vulnerability and more subtle effects across the board. Less spikes/mountains on the graph and more bumpy roads, if that makes sense! This way big zeds aren't trivialized by certain damage types and straight-up denying others.

I have no problem whatsoever being unable to hurt an FP with a flamethrower (in a team/multiplayer anyway, I think solo should still be doable and currently it is) but it'd be bad if a whole tank did absolutely nothing sorta thing.

For the record I am no hardcore player but I don't want to see the game made easy still. I'm fairly sure nobody does, that's what normal difficulty is for!

EDIT: Once again Vealck is correct on a few points! I am starting to see what you miss now, since having a bit more time with KF1 recently also. To sum it up it wasn't chaotic sprinting and everything in your face all the time, it wasn't speed-based. It was more methodical and the gameplay itself allowed you to retreat and set up a firing line or a trap, the same gameplay allowed holding an area well whilst making it dangerous to roam, and none of the teleporting or speed was required for that stuff to be deadly!

It'd be cool to get some of this back; Speed and spamming wasn't a factor and zeds didn't teleport or indeed move very fast, and this could have been a key factor in what made sharpshooter god-tier. But at the same time, even without them being in your face all the time you'd be overwhelmed and killed the moment you dropped your guard because they were definitely fast when it came to exploiting a crack in defenses, the opportunity to die just as quick was there too!

I've also heard good advice recently regarding the structure of what's being made: Perks being made first and having the zeds there, then building everything else upon that. I mean without that how can you even take maps into account? The closest you can get are concepts like Evac point for Demo/Sharpshooter.

One thing I will say and I do hope it's not upsetting (We are all on the same side after all) but Vealck is right about a lot of these changes having a "hasn't been tested ingame" vibe. I don't tend to notice that kind of stuff much but I noticed it right away a couple of times now. Just feels like they were added and not really tested beforehand - The initial resistance system was supposed to be subtle, for example, when anyone who jumped in for a few minutes noticed changes immediately!

 

[Veny]

Cant complain about the new system tbh
I guess i am not such a hardcore player.

 

[Difficulty]

Nope. I had to resort playing on normal mode. The zed resistance on that setting is as close to the original system.

Was this a joke?

 

[Ryno5660]

Doesn't sound it, logically in 1035 normal difficulty would have equalized all the trash as all their health goes down 25%, whereas in 1035 itself trash had different values and resistances making them (at their worst anyway) almost mid-zed level annoyances.

I'm just trying to clarify for spartan though, I'm sure he can talk on his own!

Regardless, different people find different things fun. Some people would have enjoyed having to prioritize targets on the trash level (which is a nice idea but in 1035's application made it necessary instead of an optional ammo/time saver) and some prefer to mow it all down. You can't cater to both, of course, and I personally don't want to see the game made easy, but how these 1035 resistances are applied simply needed a little more time and looking at to make it fun and noticeable without being mandatory trash priorities.

It was technically doable and I'm sure you can gracefully glide through waves, killing everything with a knife strapped to your crotch (ergo: it's possible and everyone should abide) but there's a balance of what's fun and what's not. The main difference; That is, where the system was vs. where it "could" be, is the mandatory part. Like I say, ammo or time saving should be the biggest benefit out of prioritizing trash targets, with the bonuses of using vulnerabilities/risks of ignoring the resistances getting bigger the higher up the food chain you go.

Not abiding the trash resistances should still allow you to easily take care of the threat but it could take a second longer or take more ammo or something. The 1035 iteration was leaning more towards a few seconds more or a lot more ammo used, big loss when you start counting how many of them there are gonna be, and it made guns "feel" weak. That was the most important part besides numbers; the "feel" of stuff is just as important as the stats. Otherwise we may as well play this as a roguelike, I can read about how much damage I did and how effective my shot was. That's where gun feeling comes into it.

Speaking about T1 weapons here but it still applies to every weapon and the level of target it is designed to hit; A shotgun should be able to perforate and slaughter anything getting hit square-on. An Assault Rifle should be versatile enough to handle any threat, the performance being down to you. A shovel should hit hard and mess up the recipients' day, with multiple hits being a real beatdown. Fire should melt the skin and be as uncomfortable as it is lethal. You get the idea. Shotguns taking multiple shots to kill their intended targets and heavy melee weapons causing no ill effects when applied full force to the target's face, just feels odd. So I can see why he would go back down to normal; The shotgun performs like a shotgun again and so on.

Numbers can be hashed out later but tell me you don't want your guns to feel like guns!

 

[Pharrahnox]

Depends what it meant by a "hardcore" player, but I would consider myself close in that I really care about where the game goes, and want a challenge beyond HOE.

Many of the very good players I have the privilege to play with have many complaints about the new system, and some have almost ditched the game for the moment. I can understand why. There are plenty of very annoying "features" in the game at the moment, that I have somehow managed to see past and that others haven't. For instance, zed teleporting and knockback.

I actually really like the idea of the new incap system , but some of it is just rubbish at the moment. Gunslinger's trip incap is useless. I have spammed an entire 10 rounds of magnums at a raged scrake's feet with no effect. I have no idea why it didn't work. Other times it might only take 5 shots. Still way too many for it to be useful, when it can take less than 10 shots to the head to decap it... Demo's incaps are fantastic and hilarious, and commando's stumble actually seems to have an effect on scrakes now. Firebug can keep a scrake under control with the incaps from just the CnB which I think is great.

The resistance system I'm not sure about yet. I need to see it in a more refined form. I think it has great potential, but I'm yet to see it fulfill that potential.

I have high hopes though, as TWI seem to be taking some of our feedback on board, like with the demo now carrying the RPG and M79, and have been modifying the resistances. I know there's still a LOT of feedback that seems to have been completely ignored for seemingly no good reason, but I expect it could get addressed eventually.

So to answer your question, yes there are some things that have been recently added that I do enjoy quite a lot, namely parts of the incap system like demo's grenade impacts and firebugs "on fire" incap.

 

[Ryno5660]

Yeah incaps are overall a good addition in my opinion. Like resistances they probably need tweaking to get 'em where TW wants them or something but one thing I like is the smaller cooldowns. Being able to more reliably use incaps seems to be, in my eyes, the key to surviving when you're a perk out of water in a bad spot! Where before you'd be S.O.L and people are already typing "gg", instead you now have this one last chance to get yourself out of there which I think was always needed.

Furthermore I can't wait to see how incap affects firebug (can't really see much panic at all with the flamethrower, and it's not just because it's damaging) and what that perk rework will look like later down the line. I also fully agree that Demo incaps are amazingly fun and hilarious, I must recommend them to everyone who hasn't tried them including TW staff!

 

[Severeaids]

I mean so far so good for me. I do agree that resistances need to get adjusted, but I'm still getting good progress in hell on earth. I've been asking for the game to be more challenging so maybe this is ot? Lol

 

[JoelFig]

Every big change TWI has made in KF2's not-so-recent descent into dissatisfaction can be traced to feedback that we, the community, have provided in one way or another.

We got the zerk buffed way back when, then nerfed multiple times. We made a big fuss about perk roles being nonexistent, "homogenization" they called it. Enter resistances. How many threads did we make about "teamspam" and big zeds being a group effort? And now we have the most trivial version of those big zeds courtesy of the outrageously ezpz stun mechanics. Ammo buffed to the point where anyone with a decent trigger discipline may as well have unlimited ammo? The list goes on. We had our role to play in what the game has become, for better or worse, so really, we're all the "hardcore community" they are referring to.

 

[Gladius]

I think the overall pub experience has improved since v1035. Now the sharps can handle SC/FP in a non messy way and there is less chaos. People don't rely anymore mostly on zerkwall+pocketmedic+firebad+derpdemo.


I don't know what that fuzz with the resistance system is about. I play mostly gunslinger, mando and now sharps and when you shoot zeds in the head, you don't have much problems.


Gunslinger got a huge buff and is now well balanced imo. Now not only the 0.01% of players can handle FP.


Commando is still good. I don't like the tradeoff between damage bonus and reload speed, but it still works good enough for me without the damage bonus.


Sharps is kinda lame with the stun system imo. I wish there would be something like flinchlocking, where the stun breaks, when you miss a shot on a slightly moving target. The railgun is an affront and the ammo needs to be so expensive that it requires to be funded by the whole team.


Support feels a bit weak right now but it's the most underdeveloped perk anyways and I hope it will come close to its former glory in KF1 some day. It needs more then just some tweaks. A complete overhaul with more interesting systems is needed. I want uppercuts and jumpshots, to begin with.


Firebug got nerfed, what is one main reason why there are so much complaints about the resistance system imo. But it is good that the firebug isn't a frontline perk anymore. Making something with such a low skill ceilling so overpowered resulted in a lot of gameplay disturbance. Firebug is now balanced.


Zerk was nerfed what also leads to a lot of complaints but now it actually requires skill and there are less players going rambo that don't care about the rest of their team.


Can't say much about demo but from what I hear it's more capable now.



Overall i would say the game has improved but it still has a long way to go.

 

[Pharrahnox]

Firebug got nerfed, what is one main reason why there are so much complaints about the resistance system imo. But it is good that the firebug isn't a frontline perk anymore. Making something with such a low skill ceilling so overpowered resulted in a lot of gameplay disturbance. Firebug is now balanced.


Zerk was nerfed what also leads to a lot of complaints but now it actually requires skill and there are less players going rambo that don't care about the rest of their team.

How about raise the skill ceiling of Firebug then? That would be much better than having a perk that is 'weaker' than the others simply because it's easier to use.

As for zerk, sure it is harder to play now, but I don't think that it is due to the skill of the players now. I think it has just been made harder due to changes in the perk. I will have to try it out a bit more though. To be honest, I've pretty much avoided playing it after seeing all of the other zerks constantly die and after a bunch of testing on a test map.

 

[Gladius]

How about raise the skill ceiling of Firebug then? That would be much better than having a perk that is 'weaker' than the others simply because it's easier to use.

In theory that's a good idea. But how do you do that on a body damage perk that isn't about aiming, just about looking into the general direction of the zeds and holding down M1? It's easy to ask for "raising firebugs skill ceilling", but how do you do that exactly?

 

[juliex011]

Every big change TWI has made in KF2's not-so-recent descent into dissatisfaction can be traced to feedback that we, the community, have provided in one way or another.

We got the zerk buffed way back when, then nerfed multiple times. We made a big fuss about perk roles being nonexistent, "homogenization" they called it. Enter resistances. How many threads did we make about "teamspam" and big zeds being a group effort? And now we have the most trivial version of those big zeds courtesy of the outrageously ezpz stun mechanics. Ammo buffed to the point where anyone with a decent trigger discipline may as well have unlimited ammo? The list goes on. We had our role to play in what the game has become, for better or worse, so really, we're all the "hardcore community" they are referring to.

^^^

 

[Escadin]

In theory that's a good idea. But how do you do that on a body damage perk that isn't about aiming, just about looking into the general direction of the zeds and holding down M1? It's easy to ask for "raising firebugs skill ceilling", but how do you do that exactly?

There have been many suggestions... or did I dream those up? I would certainly know how to tweak that in the right direction. And just to prove that it is possible you can go back and play some KF1 firebug because it had a much much higher skill ceiling.

 

[Gladius]

Lol