The Perfect Map of Killing Floor 2 - The most fun you can have

[DianaStanley]

Recently (and by recently I mean 12 months to now) there are a lot of posts and threads on Tripwire oficial forums, Reddit, Steam forums, etc complaining about a few busted mechanics, perks, passives and weapons that sometimes (or often) break the game and take all the fun. These complaints come, most of the times, from people that like to enjoy the game in a more fair way or veterans that would like to keep the game to a more balanced and challenging level (less spammy, more skill).

Another unfortunate thing that happens is that you sometimes find tryhards that demand you to play with certain guns, even if you are playing the right perk, with the right skills and with good weapons. But as long as you're not playing the totally busted weapons, you can even be blamed or kicked if something goes wrong. One example that comes to my mind is - playing as a Field Medic, but you're not interest in playing the (IMO boring) Healthtrower, the neverending buffer. So you play with the 401 Assault Rifle, which has the top best darts of FM, but even then, people blame you if they die (even if they were Firebugs that enraged a FP and died in a combo, but ok).

Now, what map offers players the best experience in therms of as long as you're playing serious, everyone will have a good time? But, few things I'd like to consider before getting to the map.

1) I play KF since the first one as a SS main. With this I mean that I understand when people who play precision perks complain about how chaotic KF has become and how low effort the chaotic perks players have to be to succeed in their roles compared to their precision counterparts. So holdout maps are out of consideration. As a SS, I can contribute with my team in maps such as Powercore or The Descent trying to proc Zed Time as frequently as possible, but playing a different role like a big gun guy is pretty hard (although not impossible, I know).

2) Corridor maps are boring as hell. Despite of playing as SS, I really hate the sitting duck game where you just sit, aim and shoot. Compared to any other FPS game, of the same or other genres, there's no such thing as sitting and shooting indefinitely, and there is a good amount of official maps that allows this. So, at the same time that I love SS, I don't want to have a boring easy experience.

3) Most of the current official maps are played only on the same 20% of the map. Take Crash, the newest one, as example - people camp the same spot for the entire match, leaving the spot only when something goes wrong (and probably, when someone dies). I get that part of the KF experience is saving the match when **** happens, but I wonder why Tripwire would create another huge ass map with lots of details if players rarely like to roam or reposition, except when time calls. And, also, I know that different players and groups camp on different spots on different maps, but most of the times, people camp on the same 2 spots at the best.

So, to summarize, a "perfect" map has to meet the following requirements:

1 - Provide a good experience to precision perks (the other styles will always have a good experience anyway);
2 - Be challenging to all perks (perks that like to move with high or low frequency, that love chaos, that hate chaos, etc etc);
3 - Require the team to not stay on the same spot for the rest of the match;

So, IMO, the map that brings all of this together to me and provides me the most fun I can get in KF2 is:

Elysium - The Open Square (Main Map)

I played as all the perks with probably all team compositions (6P HoE, of course) and, although not a hard challenging map, it's good enough to make everyone happy:

- SS, GS, Commando and SWAT can play pretty much any loadout they desire, as long as they do their job. In SS's case, I'd say that you can play any of SPX, Crossbow, M14, M99 and still work. Even a Magnum will do good.

- Firebugs, Demos and other chaotic perks/loadouts can spam the hell out of their weapons, kill a lot of trash, but without taking the fun of other people. A Thermite Bore or a Locust will still be great, but will leave some room for other players to kill trash, as they spawn from different places.

- GS, Survivalist, SWATs and Zerkers can roam all they want and take advantage of their speed kiting zeds.

- Field Medics can either play with the Imbathrower or help with the trash killing (201/301/401/501). Hell, depending on the composition, they can even give some support on killing big zeds with the Incision and healing and killing with Incision darts is pretty satisfying.

- You can't camp a spot, but you can "produce" one if playing with someone to kill trash around you so you can focus on big zeds.

Only two problems that I find in this map -

1) The "Dream Maps" (the interlude maps) don't provide the same experience, they usually are more cramped (except the one with the moons/planets) and few of them have the "camp a spot" problem.

2) The main map isn't that hard. Of course, playing together with a Firebug and Demo will make your life easier, but even if you give yourself a challenge of playing, for example, a LLLLL SS won't be so hard on the hands of an experienced player. HOWEVER, I died a lot of times and also watched a lot of people die in this map.

(Something that I like is when you reach wave 8/10 and all the props have spawned, making you take damage from poison/ice, having more obstacles, etc)

To conclude, I'd like to say that I know that are other maps that provide good times for everyone. I like Nuke or Spillway for example. But to me the best experience I find in KF2 is on Elysium's main map.

I'm not so familiar with many other custom maps, so if you have a suggestion of a similar map to me (and also an opinion on the topic above) I'd appreciate!

Thank you for reading ♥

TLDR: Elysium's main map design provides the best experience to all styles of gameplay/loadout/perks.

 

[OnionBubs]

My starting counterpoint would be that Elysium is indeed the map where anyone can do just about anything and still win in a lot of cases...which is why it's so popular and why many of the people who regularly frequent Elysium are not very good at the game.

And why Elysium games tend to be among the worse ones w/r/t team cohesion, player skill, etc. It's the main map other than Nuked that players use as an official "perk trainer," and thus I still regularly jump into Elysium games and see things like multiple Right-side Field Medics brandishing M99s and Locusts, healing absolutely nobody unless another person just happens to be in the range of their thrown offensive grenades.

And unfortunately, many of the players who play only Elysium and Nuked and such rely heavily on being able to run away from their problems to win rather than dealing with them firsthand.

Most of the current official maps are played only on the same 20% of the map. Take Crash, the newest one, as example - people camp the same spot for the entire match, leaving the spot only when something goes wrong (and probably, when someone dies). I get that part of the KF experience is saving the match when **** happens, but I wonder why Tripwire would create another huge ass map with lots of details if players rarely like to roam or reposition, except when time calls. And, also, I know that different players and groups camp on different spots on different maps, but most of the times, people camp on the same 2 spots at the best.

There is nothing wrong with camping on its own merits. Most CD players prefer to anchor down in a safe position and plug at everything with good reason:

1. When done correctly it minimizes or altogether prevents backspawns killing players in a flash on HoE. Otherwise referred to as "bad positioning."
2. It's really, really fun to hold the line and test your ability to headshot everything before it reaches the team (just like in KF1). It's a good rendition of Aim Hero. And since the game's primary skill ceiling was designed around clicking heads...
3. Kiting in this game is punished by teleporting Zeds and the not-infrequent occasion of spawning tanky heavy-hitters to block off players and/or guarantee hits while kiting, to say nothing of the fast trash Zeds inflicting scratch damage and throwing off aim during kites. Trying to deal with those when your team is disorganized and on the move is even harder than it otherwise would be, especially when it's packs of roving Quarter Pounds.
4. On paper, kiting forces team cohesion. In practice, what usually happens is that faster perks leave the other slower, non-chaotic perks to get eaten by Zeds (while they have the Medic to make up any scratch damage), and when the scaled-down difficulty kicks in, the remaining players have an easier time mopping up the leftovers since they can drag the match down to their terms. The perks like Commando and Sharpshooter have a harder time in this situation since they don't like being surrounded by trash and not being able to aim; Demo has a tougher time than the faster perks but also has the Kaboomstick to cheese their way out of getting surrounded, and Firebug has an easier time due to Heat Wave being a free "get off me" button on short cooldown combined with DoT.

Zerkwalling and such is where the lack of fun comes into play with camping, because it reduces the complexity of the game to "outlasting the incoming damage with Medic while shooting vaguely in the direction of the enemies." There is very little in the way of aim or nuance required to win when the entire game revolves around planting a tank in the doorway and surrounding his general position with explosives and fire. Or robot bees.

This has unfortunately only grown since the game first released, and the increasing prevalence of weapons that make the game easier even on the game's highest difficulties has been a huge collective complaint from experienced players--it removes the only real major mechanical skillset the game is supposed to encourage. Not only has it made the game easier in the sense that players don't need to work on aim, etc., it's opened up avenues to win the game that were considered really bad ideas before.

As an example, take Farmhouse. In the older days of the game, the optimal plan was considered either holding the second story balcony (which had its own risks from Husks shooting you in the back and such, combined with short sightlines to Zeds in the main threat area) or holding near the spawn point trucks with a team of hitscanners (harder, but infinitely more fun to pull off). The barn door in older days was considered suicidal because it trapped players in with the Zeds, with limited healing and no real way out if the line broke.
Now the only time anyone plays Farmhouse, it involves camping the barn door and showering it with--you guessed it--fire and explosive AoE/DoT weapons wihle the Medic farts on everyone with the Healthrower. Guess which map is no longer in my rotation? Same deal with Prison.

The problem isn't with camping. The problem is the game balance w/r/t weapons and chaos perks.

Map design also plays a part in it as well, but that's a separate topic for a separate thread.

 

[o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu]

It's a garbage map for multiple reasons.

- it's a holdout style map with random floors progression. Got a bad floor (e.g. swamp) closer to the end? Get wiped! Don't make it up like the main arena is the only floor on this map. Some floors are of outright questionable quality.
- aesthetically it's a stretch too far in my book from the initial offering which I value the most -- the most realistic down to earth monsters, weapons and maps. Post-apoc european cities maps like Burning Paris or Evacuation Point are the best and I accept no other opinion here. While I can see the aethetical point of having some bizarre ancient greek/egypt themes, these things are better left for community maps as they step away from the initial image of the game waaaay tooooo faaaaar.
- zeds fall on your head on the main arena, some are vomiting in the process. Some are scrakes and they stomp you to death immediately on landing, no matter HP/armor.
- the literal floor on the arena is unpredictably uneven, which makes precision perks lives actually hell. Both zeds and mercs go up and down slightly as they move which is just enough to miss the headshots. Funny you don't even mention it. You do not play precision perks much, do you?
- fps and qps get timeraged sometimes even before they step on the main arena. Great design! Now get a deadly punch from a raging fp/qp at no fault of yours, but just because.
- the map in some conditions which are up to this day nobody cared enough to establish switches the server to the default settings, which are difficulty: hard, gamelength: medium, which is a pain for server owners.

You think I'm a precision elitist who has no clue about what casual/average players think? Well, I host multiple servers and collect the stats -- people don't like this map and barely play it. The winners by far are Nuked and Containment Station (guess what -- it's these maps that are the best overall) with maps like Spillway, Burning Paris, Ashwood Asylum, Zed Landing or Farmhouse trailing a bit behind and the rest are rather unpopular. People's vote! Don't believe me -- check gametracker.com as for some servers they maintain most popular map pie charts.

 

[Aleflippy]

Funny you don't even mention it. You do not play precision perks much, do you?

You think I'm a precision elitist who has no clue about what casual/average players think? Well, I host multiple servers and collect the stats -- people don't like this map and barely play it. The winners by far are Nuked and Containment Station (guess what -- it's these maps that are the best overall) with maps like Spillway, Burning Paris, Ashwood Asylum, Zed Landing or Farmhouse trailing a bit behind and the rest are rather unpopular. People's vote! Don't believe me -- check gametracker.com as for some servers they maintain most popular map pie charts.

Just saying, but you don't have to be an ass about it. Neither do you have the ultimate objective point. We're on forums, where we're meant to discuss things. No need to think of yourself as some kind of Killing Floor encyclopedia. Even when most of your criticism is totally valid.

 

[o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu]

Just saying, but you don't have to be an ass about it.

It was warranted to ridicule the OP message a bit because the OP claimed to address precision concerns for a map. Yet, somehow, this detail, which is a huge letdown of this map's main arena, is missing. When you say you take precision concerns into account, you are supposed to put effort and at least admit biggest issues. Which hasn't been done.

Neither do you have the ultimate objective point. We're on forums, where we're meant to discuss things. No need to think of yourself as some kind of Killing Floor encyclopedia. Even when most of your criticism is totally valid.

While I'm no encyclopedia, I know a lot about this game. When I'm right -- I'm right. When I'm wrong -- there should be no problem to point it out right?

 

[DianaStanley]

OnionBubs, thank you for your reply and I'm going to discuss a few points with you in few minutes, lemme just address Mr. Letter + Numbers up my post, because I feel like I should do it first.

So, o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu, let's talk about your points 1 by 1.

1st - Agreed, the floors / dream maps RNG can f*ck your squad up. That's why I didn't add them to the mix, I said the main map, the so called "box" is the closer I can understand as a "perfect" enjoyable map for a few characteristics the map has.

2nd - I don't have anything against different aesthetics to the maps, but I get your point and also agree with it: KF should keep with the post apocaliptic theme. But in any moment I mention about the aesthetics part. The focus of my post was to show that an open non-camping map should provide fun for everyone (of course, you can disagree with that, but I'm seeing you're missing the main points of my post).

3rd - Zeds fall from a predictable part of the map (where you can avoid to stay) and no big zeds spawns from the center of the map, only from the edges. Yes, you can be screwed by a husk spawning behind you when you are aiming at the edges of the map, but to me a little RNG won't ruin my games. But, as big zeds don't spawn from the middle, there's no way you will die to a Scrake stepping on you UNLESS you are nearly under the big stairs at the edge of the box.

4th - Ok, now things got a little weird lol. You assumed that just because the floor has some irregularities that makes aiming a little more challenging I don't play precision perks? First, I won't brag I'm a top tier FPS gamer, but bro it's not that hard to aim in this map. To be fair, as I said in my post, Elysium is a pretty easy map. I don't get why people like to play KF2 like a turret. There are even people who complain about EDAR's because you don't have to aim at their heads. I mean, people don't only want to play with their keyboards unpluged (the turret mode), they also want to aim only horizontaly, lol. Back to the main points of my post, Elysium is not a hard map, it's just a map design that would provide fun for everyone (or for most of playstyles).

5th - Again, I can understand that you and other people don't like the enraged FP/QP mechanic, but that only screws you in maps where you HAVE to camp and can't leave the area. In an open map like Elysium you just parry or, I don't know, kill them before they even reach you?

6th - Sorry, I didn't understand your last point. But I never owned a server anyway.

Last one. No, I don't think you are an elitist as a precision perk player, but maybe a server elitist? Because, I don't think numbers taken out of context can help with this discussion. I'm not saying that Elysium IS the most played map, neither that people love and will love this map, mainly because usually people like the running/spammy perks, and maps like Nuke benefit them. Or they like the KF turret simulator map - Containment Station - that even I get bored very fast as a SS player, because you just sit and shoot (sometimes without aiming, zeds come in a line).

I don't want to be rude with you bro, but I just highlighted a few things I like in my post and you got a little too personal.

But I see no reason to create maps that favors only Firebug/Demo or only SS/Mando to reck them.

 

[DianaStanley]

It was warranted to ridicule the OP message a bit because the OP claimed to address precision concerns for a map. Yet, somehow, this detail, which is a huge letdown of this map's main arena, is missing. When you say you take precision concerns into account, you are supposed to put effort and at least admit biggest issues. Which hasn't been done.


While I'm no encyclopedia, I know a lot about this game. When I'm right -- I'm right. When I'm wrong -- there should be no problem to point it out right?

Ridicule my post? My brother in Christ you think it's hard to aim in Elysium just because of the irregular floor and you call yourself a precision perk elitist? You should approach KF2 by hosting less and playing more, kek.

 

[DianaStanley]

OnionBubs, I'll start saying that I have a problem with team cohesion and cooperation in KF2 because differently from, let's say, CS:GO or Valorant which has more "grinding" like ranks, etc. KF2 is more like a chilling game (except, as you mentioned, if you're playing CD).

What I mean with this is that it's pretty hard to play kf2 optimized. Weapons aren't balanced, perks aren't balanced, you can play with different suboptimal styles and still win, etc.

But let me just say something, and disclaimer, I'm not saying that I'm right and you are wrong, I'll just highlight a few questions for us to think:

- Is it possible to have a map that will make everybody (or most of people) happy? I know that a lot of people like to play KF2 camping, but what if I don't like and suddenly everyone is just playing Containment Station? Do I have to play solo or is there a way to create a map that explores a little of everything?

- You mentioned that KF2 should punish people that don't play cooperatively, but isn't that true either for camping squads as well as for kitting squads? I just played yesterday few matches where we had a Mando and Support and we always waited/helped them to re-position and move together with the faster perks. But I also played with teams that didn't give a f*ck and just left you to die, so it's all about team coop. (Except that, of course, the faster perks will outlive and finish the wave).

One thing that I disagree is that the game was design only around clicking heads. I said in my post that I played as SS, but I also played A LOT of Demo and, since KF1, Demos melted FPs. So you didn't actually need SSs to win your game, a Firebug + Demo + Support (of course, Support has to aim, but in a way that is much easier than landing HS after HS) would prevail in most of the maps, if not all, as long as they were played correctly.

Now, I agreed with everything else you said, how the game will be easier if you play as spam perks. But the point is that there should be a map that will work for every perk. Even on Containment Station, you don't want a Firebug because it will mess your LoS, so that's what I want to take as a consideration.

Anyway, I was very enlighted by you recent responses and posts on last threads here in Tripwire, thanks so much for them. I never really digged how broken some weapons or combos were.

 

[o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu]

Ridicule my post? My brother in Christ you think it's hard to aim in Elysium just because of the irregular floor and you call yourself a precision perk elitist? You should approach KF2 by hosting less and playing more, kek.

Don't downplay it, my brother in Christ. This is serious. Jokes aside. This is super important and the map creator was clueless about it. That only thing completely makes this map irredeemable, unless someone flattens the floor or makes it uneven in a more predictable fashion.

As for my aim it's 80%+ hsacc on a flat surface and this is as good as one can get in this game.

 

[OnionBubs]

OnionBubs, I'll start saying that I have a problem with team cohesion and cooperation in KF2 because differently from, let's say, CS:GO or Valorant which has more "grinding" like ranks, etc. KF2 is more like a chilling game (except, as you mentioned, if you're playing CD).

Different case since those are PvP. As Back 4 Blood and other games like GTFO and Aliens: Fireteam Elite have proven, you can absolutely have a PvE game that requires cohesion and high player execution to do well.

I do not have a problem per se with games being "chill," but they shouldn't be "chill" on the hardest of four (technically five but AAH comes once every 20-something weeks...) difficulties, which unfortunately this game absolutely can be and not for the right reasons. It is reasonable to say that, at a game's hardest difficulty, the players should be required to perform with the game's highest skillsets in mind.

What I mean with this is that it's pretty hard to play kf2 optimized. Weapons aren't balanced, perks aren't balanced, you can play with different suboptimal styles and still win, etc.

The meta's been figured out ages ago, it's just that most people don't care and such as.

You can play it like an elite shooter. You just have to pull a L4D2 Confogl and roll your own version of the game on your own private server. Which is unfortunate, but that's the situation as it currently stands.

Or to put it rather glibly: if I'm designing the game, I at least expect a mention in the "Special Thanks" section.

- Is it possible to have a map that will make everybody (or most of people) happy?
I know that a lot of people like to play KF2 camping, but what if I don't like and suddenly everyone is just playing Containment Station? Do I have to play solo or is there a way to create a map that explores a little of everything?

Containment Station is just not a very well designed map from a mechanical standpoint, unfortunately, even if it looks very cool. It is more or less an official aim trainer in disguise for those who do not feel confident at hitscan camping and is one of those that is also out of rotation for me because I find it dull.

For those who do not want to play precision perks, one Firebug can easily hog an entire hallway and put the precision player at their mercy. To say nothing of including more than one chaotic perk.

- You mentioned that KF2 should punish people that don't play cooperatively, but isn't that true either for camping squads as well as for kitting squads? I just played yesterday few matches where we had a Mando and Support and we always waited/helped them to re-position and move together with the faster perks. But I also played with teams that didn't give a f*ck and just left you to die, so it's all about team coop. (Except that, of course, the faster perks will outlive and finish the wave).

The way the game is designed, the "punishing players for not kiting" thing is already in play; those players just get left to die.

The perks that are better at kiting are: 1) the ones that don't have to aim (obvious), and 2) the ones that are faster and have greater survivability (because they are less likely to be instantly killed by a handful of Husks or QPs spawning around the corner during a kite, etc., etc.).

Those perks who are good at kiting also happen to overlap with being the perks that are, in general, much easier to play and win with.

One thing that I disagree is that the game was design only around clicking heads.

This is going to be a long-yet-still-incomplete thought.

Not only around clicking heads, but inferring that it's the intended way to play the game well--at least in the original days of KF2--speaks for itself.

In the earlier days, all Zeds had lower head health compared to body health. Lower health translates to quicker kills with headshots. So in most cases not headshotting was a less desirable outcome. The headshot meta thus follows. There was a certain skill floor you had to work around as you climbed in difficulty levels, where you just weren't cut out for it without practice or coordination.

KF1's Demo and Firebug perks were viable but had severe restrictions placed on their roles (Firebug was bad against Scrakes and Fleshpounds, and Demo needed protection from trash to play optimally). In addition, Demos and Firebugs made it harder for good precision players to perform to their fullest because of screen shakes, smoke effects, flame particles, and flinching Zeds so that they were harder to headshot. Berserker was regarded as a perk which did not scale well with difficulties and often was the hallmark of a lesser-skilled player. Thus, while they were technically viable, it was vastly preferred that players not rely on them to win harder difficulties and to learn alternative perks instead which gelled with expert playstyles and teams. They were skill gap classes, if you will.

KF2 started like this to an arguably even greater degree, but for whatever reason, this design was done away with over time in favor of--to simplify the issue--letting anyone tackle any role they wanted to as any perk given the right loadout. (Remember that Firebug on release in EA was hands-down the best perk in the game because of how the Microwave gun killed everything, combined with the old Splash Damage skill and Zed Shrapnel having a 50% proc chance while also being buggy and broken. There was simply no other reason to play any other perk, hence it needed a nerf.) No official reason from anyone at TWI, to my knowledge, has been given on this, so I have to assume it was that so no players get left out.

Here's the problem with doing that:
The effort required to get good results with KF2's chaos perks compared to their precision counterparts is frankly ridiculously low.
Consider Firebug vs. SWAT. While SWAT can technically be better than Firebug if played incredibly well, Firebug can accomplish most of what SWAT does by picking a weapon of choice and shooting at feet. Or to really trivialize the game, one can just pick the Thermite Bore and spam it at a chokepoint. And so forth.

For a not-quite-as-bad-but-still-hella-present example, compare Demo to Sharpshooter.
In the early days Demo was just "the RPG/C4/.500 specialist" with all of its other weapons and non-LLLLL loadouts being mostly useless at high level play. This is reflective of Demo's design as the chaos anti-HVT perk: it did not have to aim to achieve its best results, but at a cost of not having certain capabilities.
Sharpshooter in this game had two different builds (the LLLLL Railgun loadout was meant for only HVTs and required other teammates to cover for its ability to remove large Zeds; the Marksman loadouts are difficult-but-awesome high-skill-cap generalists that can do just about anything but require the player to be very good at an individual and team level). The implication here being that if you wanted to be able to kill large Zeds and still have anti-trash capabilities, you needed to get of your comfort zone and learn how to play the hardest perk in the game very well.
With the arrival of weapons like the HRG Kaboomstick and the many, many adjustments to Demo's weapon weights over the course of the game, Demo now has access to incredibly easy anti-trash capabilities while still being able to wield its strongest anti-HVT weapon at the same time. So you have a similar issue as "Firebug vs. SWAT."

And I know I'm going to get skewered from some corners for this, but Survivalist is another branch on that chaos/non-aim tree, just not in the same way you'd think.
Survivalist started out just plain bad, which is not a bad thing from a design perspective as KF2 was designed around specialization. The idea being that you can pick a "jack of all trades" and have "fun" at lower difficulties, but if you wanted to play in the higher difficulties, you need to learn how to play specific perks that accomplished their roles well.
Survivalist has instead gotten numerous buffs and a ridiculous set of weapons that go against the game's original design in every form and fashion, to the point where it doesn't matter that it's bad at dealing damage because it breaks the game in a way that it doesn't have to be good at that, meaning it circumvents the game's primary skillsets as a whole.
Some of this has to do with the incap system, as Survivalist has gotten a number of weapons that effectively allow it to prevent damage from even happening in the first place by chaining and abusing incaps (all without landing headshots, natch), which breaks difficulty scaling from both a player count and selectable difficulty perspective. Some of this has to do with the weapons themselves, the main culprits here being the HRG Locust and the pre-nerf Reducto Ray, which I've already said my pieces on elsewhere, just check the profile.

And even this wouldn't be the worst of it, but as icing on the cake, all of the chaos perks interfere with precision perks just by doing their jobs. So as more and more chaotic-inclined weapons show up in the game, there are by proxy fewer and fewer reasons to bother with learning the precision perks.
Why try to play as Sharpshooter when my team will inevitably fill up with spam and kiting? Why play SWAT when Firebug gets 90% of the yield for 10% of the input? And so forth.

That's not even including the anti-headshot enemies and mechanics (blocking, etc.) that were introduced in 2018 to try and shake up a meta that was a feature rather than a bug to be patched out.

So while the game as a whole technically still has headshotting as the top-tier skill ceiling, the entirety of the game's skill floor has been raised to the point where headshots are completely unnecessary, even in the hardest difficulty levels, where headshotting should be at least a bare basic requirement. This change in direction has broken the game's difficulty curve entirely, taking with it any reason to "git gud," barring the expectation that there will be customized difficulty servers playing their own versions of the game without all the annoying stuff that comes with pubbing.
THAT is where things have gone wrong.

Anyway, I was very enlighted by you recent responses and posts on last threads here in Tripwire, thanks so much for them. I never really digged how broken some weapons or combos were.

Thank you very much, and I mean that sincerely.

As long as I'm reaching someone and getting them to engage with game design from a perspective of challenge instead of simply as a grind and something "just to do"--even if they don't agree with everything I say--I can rest a little easier.

I've watched this game go wildly off course since the first days of early access and what it's become these days is admittedly unrecognizeable to me, which is why I'm writing all these words that are ultimately so much digital ink on digital paper. But I criticize because I care.

 

[o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu]

So, o2xVc3UuXp0NyBihrUnu, let's talk about your points 1 by 1.

1st - Agreed, the floors / dream maps RNG can f*ck your squad up. That's why I didn't add them to the mix, I said the main map, the so called "box" is the closer I can understand as a "perfect" enjoyable map for a few characteristics the map has.

Would you be happy if a map like Horzine Arena, which may actually satisfy all your requirements, was adopted by TWI as official?

Steam Workshop::KF-HorzineArena-B1

steamcommunity.com

Do you bring up the main arena of the Elysium instead of the Horzine Arena only because Elysium was adopted as official? Horzine Arena, not being the "holdout" type of map, obviously doesn't suffer from the RNG floors.

2nd - I don't have anything against different aesthetics to the maps, but I get your point and also agree with it: KF should keep with the post apocaliptic theme. But in any moment I mention about the aesthetics part. The focus of my post was to show that an open non-camping map should provide fun for everyone (of course, you can disagree with that, but I'm seeing you're missing the main points of my post).

Good.

3rd - Zeds fall from a predictable part of the map (where you can avoid to stay) and no big zeds spawns from the center of the map, only from the edges. Yes, you can be screwed by a husk spawning behind you when you are aiming at the edges of the map, but to me a little RNG won't ruin my games. But, as big zeds don't spawn from the middle, there's no way you will die to a Scrake stepping on you UNLESS you are nearly under the big stairs at the edge of the box.

This still happens and I blame the map design for this, as these things are relatively easy to avoid from the map design perspective. There's no good reason to allow zeds to fall on players heads on any map whatsoever and expect them to learn these places in order to avoid them.

4th - Ok, now things got a little weird lol. You assumed that just because the floor has some irregularities that makes aiming a little more challenging I don't play precision perks? First, I won't brag I'm a top tier FPS gamer, but bro it's not that hard to aim in this map. To be fair, as I said in my post, Elysium is a pretty easy map. I don't get why people like to play KF2 like a turret. There are even people who complain about EDAR's because you don't have to aim at their heads. I mean, people don't only want to play with their keyboards unpluged (the turret mode), they also want to aim only horizontaly, lol. Back to the main points of my post, Elysium is not a hard map, it's just a map design that would provide fun for everyone (or for most of playstyles).

Yes, I maintain you don't, at least to a level I do. It's hard to aim on this Elysium floor. Objective fact. And yes, I'm am one of these players who complain about EDARs. Actually, by complaining about them I represent a vast majority of KF2 players, which includes both vets and casuals. EDAR hate is one of the not so many things on which both vets and casuals agree on.

https://imgur.com/TcI1FX9

As for "aiming horizontally" the point is it's okay when the terrain is uneven, but this feature should always be telegraphed so the players are in position to understand where and how it's uneven and adjust their aim for that. If it's not, and for Elysium it obviously is not, this leads to frustration from missed shots that otherwise should have landed. That's unacceptable.

5th - Again, I can understand that you and other people don't like the enraged FP/QP mechanic, but that only screws you in maps where you HAVE to camp and can't leave the area. In an open map like Elysium you just parry or, I don't know, kill them before they even reach you?

Parrying with a knife is borderline useless and doesn't make much difference, so you can't really appeal to this mechanic as one that allows to "deal" with raging FPs in a meaningful way. "Kill them" applies here, if approached in a meaningful way, only to body damage and demo weapons, as when raging FPs, on top of their head bobbing, cover most of their heads with their grinders, which significantly reduces the share of shots landed. This is okay and it's by design, as the design was and it was the right one is to release them in a calm state and allow time for a team to deal with them cleanly before they rage. On maps like Elysium main arena you aren't in position to do that because they timerage before they even reach shooting distance.

6th - Sorry, I didn't understand your last point. But I never owned a server anyway.

There's some kind of bug with this map. Rarely, but still, after this map is played on a server, it changes its settings.

Last one. No, I don't think you are an elitist as a precision perk player, but maybe a server elitist? Because, I don't think numbers taken out of context can help with this discussion. I'm not saying that Elysium IS the most played map, neither that people love and will love this map, mainly because usually people like the running/spammy perks, and maps like Nuke benefit them. Or they like the KF turret simulator map - Containment Station - that even I get bored very fast as a SS player, because you just sit and shoot (sometimes without aiming, zeds come in a line).

Yes, you aren't saying that Elysium is the most played map, but what you are saying is it should. No, it shouldn't for all those reasons outlined above and in this message and unlike in some other cases, the crowd is right here and vote with their feet. It's an unpopular map and in this case it's how it should be.