What KF3 Will Need

[Shou Toramaru]

Optimizations - Literally every game better be making use of this. Do I need to say why?

An actual active dev team that LISTENS TO THE COMMUNITY - I don't know what's going on for KF2 for the last few years, but the devs seem to be listening to nobody but themselves. Nobody likes having to pay $10 for a single DLC, nor were people stoked starting Summer Sideshow 2018 for what was added. A good example can be an Alpha stage where the devs and player have direct contact and can share and give opinions to at least get an idea of what people want in KiIlling Floor 3.

Increased body health (and resistance to bodyshots) for Zeds - KF2 already has a massive problem with vanilla Zeds where a chaos perk comp can just cheese body damage even groups of Fleshpounds to death, and how Scrakes can easily be bodyshotted by how easy it is to afflict them It should take a good while for a body damage comp to jump a single FP. FPs and Scrakes should be able to resist enough bodyshots to punish the team heavily assuming bad play, while trash and medium Zeds resist multiple bodyshots.

Increased Zed damage (and range) - Assuming medic will have buffs in KF3, Nothing can hit hard enough to outpace the Medic's healing and buffs as it current stands in KF2. You can literally stand in multiple sirens and still be relatively fine on HoE. No Zed (save for Sirens) should be able to one-shot a player with any attack, but a combo like say a raged Fleshpound attack plus a shot that directly hits a player by a Husk should down a player, or at very minimum leave it on low HP. Sirens should devastate any unprepared team by leaving them all on very low HP, Husks should have increased accuracy and shooting cooldown.

Increased Zed speed - As of currently, a Gunslinger with full medic buffs can outpace a Fleshpound, this should not be the case and will promote more careful gameplay rather than mindlessly running around like headless chickens and being able to survive.

Focus on precision-based gameplay - KF1 might of been slow, but in that game you had to play for headshots on 6p HoE to succeed. In KF2 you can bodydamage your way to success. Why should it be easier and even promoted that playing like a complete bafoon gets me easier success than not?

If Chaos perks have to exist, then make it a state to where it's objectively inferior to precision. Considering the state of current KF2, chaos comps should never be able to be able to beat the highest difficulty without significantly more struggle than precision.​

Giving the Zeds subtle, but very game changing abilities on higher difficulties. - The "Nightcore Zeds" are a great example of giving abilities to a Zed to make them far more dangerous to play mindlessly around. Scrakes there will inflict a slow on a player (while also having more reach and damage) on a hit. More examples that can be used is the VS Mode Siren "Vortex" ability, sped-up Nightcore Fleshpound and Husk animation, or the Crawlers more focused running on walls and ceilings to let the other Zeds charge into players without clogging the way up.

Increased amount of Zeds alive and allowed to spawn at once - As of now, 32mm (with it decreasing all the way to 12mm) is too easy to play with, the only spawns worth a concern for a team as it stands is a triple FP spawn.

No Zed downscaling of any form per dead team player - This should demote any selfish playstyles and force actual cooperation. No more Zerk/Medic 20 minute kites per wave.

Animations Killing Floor 2 had - One of KF2's biggest appeals is the gunplay with mocap animations and 240 FPS.

No EDARs/Spawnrages - Ask anyone actual vocal about the highest difficulty and I can guarentee these two factors are on the top list of hated mechanics. No mechanic should rely on pure RNG to increase difficulty such as spawnrages, nor should enemies never die to headshots (EDARs)

Less is more - Think about all the newly added content from 2018 and beyond, how many of these weapons are actually seeing usage? How many are actually able to add themselves to the meta? This shares a similar problem to Payday 2 where there's so much variety, but only 10% of all the weapons actually see usage on Death Sentence (highest vanilla level) play. Or how about the Zed variants which are hit or complete miss? How many people actually like gas crawlers, QPs, or EDARs? Or how about the cosmetics which love to eat up GBs of space. Does the upgrade system serve any real purpose apart from getting certain weapons unnerfed?

Make skills have a real purpose - Right side medic (which is trolling btw), Vampire, Resistance, Fortitude, AP Shot, you get it at this point. How many people actually use these skills?

There are far more things I can list with more time but I think I listed my thoughts and opinions for what KF3 needs.

 

[OnionBubs]

Most of this I couldn't agree more with, though I did have a couple of notes:

Vampire, Resistance, Fortitude, AP Shot, you get it at this point. How many people actually use these skills?

Vampire actually does have its place as a solo laner alternative skill (or just for solo/low player count Skirmisher builds), but the rest are completely understandable. As players get better, some skills just flat-out get worse.

No EDARs

I've said it a million times and then some: if they died to headshots there would be much fewer complaints.

the only spawns worth a concern for a team as it stands is a triple FP spawn.

That, and [6 Quarter Pounds / 2 Fleshpounds].

Increased body health (and resistance to bodyshots) for Zeds

Also wanted to add: please rework the incap system and how incaps are inflicted since that's half the reason why bodycomps get away with it.

 

[Malarkey]

While I agree with you here and there, I think your requested changes should affect the harder difficulties no? I have over 500 hours in KF 2 and I don't touch Hell on Earth because most of the time my aim is off and get clapped either mid waves or at boss.

For me it's not "easy" like it is for you and a vocal minority here, granted there are some overtuned perks and abilities but even if everyone played strictly with those, not everyone will be capable of saying "Hell on Earth is easy, make the game overall harder" because not everyone is on the same skill level.

Try to pinpoint the issue within your experiences, I usually play hard because I want to turn off my brain and enjoy mindless zombie murder without much planning, or suicidal if I wanted a challenge. If every difficulty were to become harder because you and a vocal minority are complaining, it wouldn't make sense because not everyone want a tough, gruff, bloody, barely made it, hard earned victory.

What could work for thrill seekers like yourself would be tossing in some hardcore and bs surprises from the zeds, because for some reason tryhards enjoy that kind of torture where a single mistake is punished with defeat.

Maybe add a temporal bleeding mechanic when hit hard, guns randomly jammed, tripping while running, getting 10 sec leg cramps where you can't run and some other bs to Hell on Earth like a hunger and thirst meter to see if finally it will be hard enough for you Hell on Earthers... You guys have been so vocal about it since KF 1...

 

[OnionBubs]

While I agree with you here and there, I think your requested changes should affect the harder difficulties no?

For the most part, we are talking about the harder difficulties.

If your game has four different difficulty levels (technically AAH is five but there's not much of a difference right now) then it's not unreasonable to say that the harder difficulties should be testing the players in a manner that means they need to have mastered the game's mechanics, yes? The easier difficulties are for people who don't want to put in that effort, which is fine. The problem is when you have mechanics that dilute the intended challenge of the higher difficulties, because then there's little point in having that distinction.

Ideally, as players go up the difficulties, they are required to play more and more in a manner representing the skillset requirements needed to do well until they're at the sweatlord mode. Currently, KF2 is not designed like that, to the detriment of the playerbase on the highest difficulties.

It's not a problem when you're on, say, Normal difficulty and Firebugs will basically kill trash holding down Mouse1 with a flamethrower as quickly as a SWAT; it's normal difficulty, who cares? When Firebug doesn't have to aim and SWAT does, and Firebug is almost as effective on HoE as a perfectly-played SWAT with far less input or effort required, that's where problems lie, because players will gravitate towards easier options to win, because they're easier.

I've beaten this dead horse so much that we're down to displacing subatomic horse particles, so hopefully I don't have to go over the skill indexing spiel again. If you don't like tryharding, then just don't do tryhard difficulties, simple as.

What could work for thrill seekers like yourself would be tossing in some hardcore and bs surprises from the zeds, because for some reason tryhards enjoy that kind of torture where a single mistake is punished with defeat.

Maybe add a temporal bleeding mechanic when hit hard, guns randomly jammed, tripping while running, getting 10 sec leg cramps where you can't run and some other bs to Hell on Earth like a hunger and thirst meter to see if finally it will be hard enough for you Hell on Earthers... You guys have been so vocal about it since KF 1...

OP's already said that stuff like spawnrage--a random chance mechanic that turns the Fleshpound rage punishment mechanic into a tool artificially used to inflate difficulty--is unwelcome, which I concur with.

If I played Metal Slug and the game was patched to make me spontaneously die independent of getting hit by enemy attacks or running out of time in a game, that would make the game harder. Just not by any sensible metric of game design, because it's independent of player mistakes.

 

[Malarkey]

Ideally, as players go up the difficulties, they are required to play more and more in a manner representing the skillset requirements needed to do well until they're at the sweatlord mode. Currently, KF2 is not designed like that, to the detriment of the playerbase on the highest difficulties.

It's not a problem when you're on, say, Normal difficulty and Firebugs will basically kill trash holding down Mouse1 with a flamethrower as quickly as a SWAT; it's normal difficulty, who cares? When Firebug doesn't have to aim and SWAT does, and Firebug is almost as effective on HoE as a perfectly-played SWAT with far less input or effort required, that's where problems lie, because players will gravitate towards easier options to win, because they're easier

This brightens the picture, yeah... There's a glaring imbalance there, but I don't think it's fixable without screwing one perk over the other without serious gameplay changes to HoE. Adding something like a "flame resistance %" to zeds is just putting a bandaid over a gouging wound...

Nor do I think it could simply be an increase in zed stats either, I mean what would be the point of buffing every zed to nearly one shotting you and running like Usain Bolt? That's not an interesting twist to an increase in difficulty.

But for KF 2 means that fixing one part of it breaks another one, and nobody will ever be satisfied as it is. So for Killing Floor 3 zeds and perks/weapons need a serious overhaul.

OP's already said that stuff like spawnrage--a random chance mechanic that turns the Fleshpound rage punishment mechanic into a tool artificially used to inflate difficulty--is unwelcome, which I concur with.

Completely agreed with this.

Thank you for your valid criticism and insight.

 

[Aleflippy]

Well, for the "listening to the community" part, I believe it's no really hard to understand why it fell short in the last few years. Tripwire was surely busy with other projects and even ended up letting another team do the hard work. It's also pretty difficult to apply globally simply because we're all different kinds of players. We all have different ideas of what the game should be. And naturally, we're all sure that OUR vision would be the best... I've heard a few cases of games that were made far worse because devs listened to the community TOO MUCH. But a nice balance could certainly be found.

Having stronger and more numerous zeds, ideally bringing forward new challenges too (new capabilities? new movement? entirely new zeds?) seems like a given too.

Again, I fully agree with having a focus on precision perks. I'm a pretty poor marksman myself, but Tripwire's skills in regards to gun-feel is legendary. You'd expect them to go even further and make it both convenient and rewarding to land accurate shots. I do like "chaos perks" too, but the tradeoff should be less rewarding results.

No EDARs, no spawnrage, no downscaling AND no teleporting zeds are all mandatory in my eyes.

Lessening the content creep and instead focusing on multiple rebalances if necessary is also something I wanna see.

Lastly, in regards to skills... I believe that we shouldn't have a massive amount of new ones. If anything, we could go from 10 to 15 skills at most. But they should be way more impactful and versatile. I'd honestly want you to be able to play as two very different sharpshooters or demos should you want to. Or being able to switch skills when you want to spice things up. As it stands, once you find the "meta" path, you pretty much never pick anything else.

 

[Malarkey]

Well, for the "listening to the community" part, I believe it's no really hard to understand why it fell short in the last few years. Tripwire was surely busy with other projects and even ended up letting another team do the hard work. It's also pretty difficult to apply globally simply because we're all different kinds of players. We all have different ideas of what the game should be. And naturally, we're all sure that OUR vision would be the best... I've heard a few cases of games that were made far worse because devs listened to the community TOO MUCH. But a nice balance could certainly be found.

Having stronger and more numerous zeds, ideally bringing forward new challenges too (new capabilities? new movement? entirely new zeds?) seems like a given too.

Again, I fully agree with having a focus on precision perks. I'm a pretty poor marksman myself, but Tripwire's skills in regards to gun-feel is legendary. You'd expect them to go even further and make it both convenient and rewarding to land accurate shots. I do like "chaos perks" too, but the tradeoff should be less rewarding results.

No EDARs, no spawnrage, no downscaling AND no teleporting zeds are all mandatory in my eyes.

Lessening the content creep and instead focusing on multiple rebalances if necessary is also something I wanna see.

Lastly, in regards to skills... I believe that we shouldn't have a massive amount of new ones. If anything, we could go from 10 to 15 skills at most. But they should be way more impactful and versatile. I'd honestly want you to be able to play as two very different sharpshooters or demos should you want to. Or being able to switch skills when you want to spice things up. As it stands, once you find the "meta" path, you pretty much never pick anything else.

Always liked reading your replies as you get the picture a lot better than most of us. (This account is new because I forgot my old one I used a couple of years ago when I was active here).

In addition to that I also think tripwire should make using every weapon rewarding on its own. Like using it and completing some milestones for unlocking basic attachments (different iron sights, different optical attachments like reflex, holographic maybe even ACOG like and have reticle shapes and colors to be unlocked) or new alt fires for the guns, because right now there's no incentive to pick up and try a weapon that is seemingly underperforming over the popular choice.

Also the in game trader shop inventory and the armory inventory management is very rough still... It's too cluttered and messy, that needs addressing for sure. That's a QOL upgrade I hope to see in KF 3.

 

[Aleflippy]

In addition to that I also think tripwire should make using every weapon rewarding on its own. Like using it and completing some milestones for unlocking basic attachments (different iron sights, different optical attachments like reflex, holographic maybe even ACOG like and have reticle shapes and colors to be unlocked) or new alt fires for the guns, because right now there's no incentive to pick up and try a weapon that is seemingly underperforming over the popular choice.

Also the in game trader shop inventory and the armory inventory management is very rough still... It's too cluttered and messy, that needs addressing for sure. That's a QOL upgrade I hope to see in KF 3.

I read your more thorough topic about it, I still have to answer it ! But here are my quick two cents :

1) On paper, it sounds like a great idea. It would give out a reason to try out new toys, give it a little time to maybe seek up new strategies or simply change your playstyle. But I'm a bit afraid that people would either drag their team with a subpar weapon, simply because they're completionists. Or that people would simply pick up a gun, complete all its objectives (or achievements? Name it how you want !) and then never use it again. I also feel that it might dilute the uniqueness of each guns, but that's a fear I have regarding full customization as a whole anyway.

2) I do still believe that many weapons fall into one of three categories, as you suggest. Those being :

-Meta weapons, and weapons that are simply reliable and good to use.
-Average-to-mediocre weapons, some being quite similar to the good ones, almost to a fault
-Trash weapons

Both the second and third categories are to be avoided at most times, but it's almost impossible to make a game where EVERY option is as good as the others. But I do believe that making a forgettable weapon is almost a bigger sin than making a bad one. Some bad ones can be interesting in some very niche situations, or they could be fixed quite easily with a few tweaks. Mediocre and forgettable weapons are just... boring I guess? That's the case of many weapons in the GS and SWAT arsenal in my opinion, but every perk is guilty of a few stinkers by that point. A lot of times, tiers tend to meld a little, and it's common to skip an entire tier (often tier 2 or 3, but tier 4 may be skipped if the previous options are solid... the AK12 being a great example of that).

Which brings me back to my worries: how do you make these weapons stand out? How do you make pretty similar weapons feel unique? I guess attachments are a good starting point! But if said guns are highly customizable... Wouldn't we get a lot of overlap?

So I'm pretty much back to my first thought: give us fewer guns, but make all of them worth using and exploring.

Oh, and regarding the Trader's UI... Yes indeed, and I believe it's also due to the content creep we've been mentioning! It was fine at first, when every perk had between four and six weapons to choose from. But with crossperks, HRG, DLCs and updates... It honestly takes some time to find whatever you're willing to buy. I guess the "favorite" option is there for a reason, but I do believe you could do a little better. Maybe you could have colors ? Related to perks or tiers for example, so you could navigate quicker. Maybe you could "preview" the gun you're eyeing, more akin to what KF1 was doing. Or better yet : have some simple tips attached to them (I could see the RPG-7 saying "Head Hunter : Scrakes are highly vulnerable to headshots !" or something similar)

 

[Hypnotic]

As Malarkey say and im not touch HOE but i'm not because much faster comes the moment which the game spawn raging Fleshpounds everywhere notice not Quarter Pounds and there is no place to reload the weapon ( all that's left is to run and heal self indefinitely ) there is no point to continue for me its uround 30 or 40 im not remember .
But after all yes very nice theme from me .

 

[Anon24w0w~]

Make skills have a real purpose - Right side medic (which is trolling btw), Vampire, Resistance, Fortitude, AP Shot, you get it at this point. How many people actually use these skills?

I played 90% of my time in KF2 on single (or multi with my girlfriend only (so 2 players)) I loved to use some skills like Vampire, so.