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What We Are Up To - Getting Objective About The Situation

Yoshiro

Senior Community Manager
Staff member
  • Oct 10, 2005
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    Hello everyone!

    For those of you who have been with us as fans and players over the past few years, you will most likely recall some "strong hints" (including the most recent objmod.jn that Horzine has been downloading) that we were working towards adding to a set of tools with pretty much every major update. Those tools made possible some of the great maps you enjoy now, but we kept adding. Today we are happy to say the toolbox has the tools it needs. For what? The return of Objective mode!

    Starting with the upcoming Steam Fortress map, this is a mode where players will need to "get a move on", as those objectives won't complete themselves, and the Zeds will keep coming! New to the objective types players will experience in these maps are a refined and updated "escort" and the brand new "transport" objective, which will require players to collect and move mission critical items to where they need to be. The full objective type list now includes:
    • Exterminate
    • Hold the Zone
    • Operate and Control
    • Weld and Repair
    • Escort
    • Transport

    Did you think you knew everything there was to know about Killing Floor? New stories are being told in places you thought you knew well. Joining Steam Fortress are two classic Killing Floor 2 maps updated for Objective mode: Introducing the objective versions of Outpost and Zed Landing. Someone new, Dr. Ogada Buyu, has asked for your help in discovering some of Horzine's darkest secrets... and perhaps some of her own along the way, if you dare.
    ObjMenu1.jpg




    We can't wait for players to get their hands on these maps and let us know what they enjoy most, and be sure to let us know where we can improve moving ahead as well! As always, the modding community will have access to these tools to help them forge their own creations and we are excited to see what they come out with.
    objhud1.jpg





    And speaking of players getting their hands on it, we expect to go into beta testing on PC late next week if all goes well! Keep an eye out for the official announcement. The first beta will also include some significant balance changes including the following:
    • Husk Cannon
      • Added impact damage, which increases with charge
      • Explosion damage reduced
      • Explosive radius increased
      • Magazine size increased
      • Spare ammo reduced
      • Removed ammo consumption while maintaining charge
      • Fire rate increased (this will improve weapon feel greatly)
    • C4
      • Moved to the sidearm slot
      • Decreased price
    • Freezethrower
      • Alt-fire
        • Blast spread increased
        • Increased number of shards
        • Added penetration
        • Removed freeze affliction
        • Added stumble
      • Primary
        • Ground ice damage increased
    • Swat - Battering Ram
      • Added Bludgeon damage
      • Increased movement speed
    • And more!
    batteringram2.gif
     
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    The Freezethrower's always felt underpowered for me: the primary fire didn't seem to do much and the alt's damage was negligible... until I discovered the alt-fire could freeze, which turned whoever was holding the weapon into a frightening scrake backstop.
    Hopefully for the greater good of the weapon you can manage to make it overall more useful, at the expense of that arguably OP freeze.
     
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    imnrk;n2331643 said:
    As always, super excited to test the balance changes. Turning the freeze thrower's alt into a shotgun attack sounds interesting. Does "And More" mean there will be more balance changes coming?

    There are quite a few tweaks, but these are the major pieces that I am aware of right now!
     
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    Objective-style play modes is an interesting pursuit, because I am of opinion that it has the potential to give Perks a new meaning, as opposed to "generalized killing machine No. 2".

    The Perk roles in KF1 derived meaning from the limitations in design, i.e. engine limitations, not being able to run, no homing healing darts and a singular perk tree (unlike the 2-branch tree in KF2) made KF1 objectively harder than KF2. As such, there was always strategy in perk picks as a match progresses, e.g. you tend to see more Sharpshooter, Medic, Berserker and Demolition picks in KF1 towards higher waves. This was less the case for KF2 when these limitations were relaxed.

    Clearly, there is only so much one can do by expanding the armory and Zed variations; the more ways that Zed can be dealt with, the less challenging the game; the more ways Zeds can deal with human players, the harder a match can be. Objectives act as the buffer between these two extremes, because it introduces a soft margin wherein developers can formally temper with map-specific difficulty (i.e. local difficulty), without formally making changes to weapons or Zeds, both of which will affect the game globally (i.e. it affects any map).

    While I would still prefer that KF retains the KF format of a survival shooter on some level, I would add here that L4D and Vermintide uses these "objective devices" as means to create a non-linear pacing experience, i.e. the KF formula relies on wave number to adjust difficulty (higher wave number = higher difficulty), but the former games rely on objectives or events to design spikes of difficulty, with the added benefit of opportunities to introduce lore (and the downside of hiring voice actors for event-specific lines).

    I just think it is refreshing that the KF team is foraging ahead in unknown territory. All the best.
     
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    I'm excited that the objective mode seems to be layered on top of existing maps and hyped for the day when every stock map has a unique and interesting objective mode on top of it! Will certainly put a twist on how much we like certain maps- perhaps we'll prefer Descent on objective mode over Survival, for example.
     
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    Ruining the Freezethrower's ability to freeze with alt. fire will not make me use the Killerwatt more, it will only make me play Survivalist less. Survivalist is an already weak perk, removing its perk-specific weapon's ability to quickly freeze a big Zed is only going to make the perk even weaker. The goal should be to make the perk viable for Hell on Earth, not to make it so useless that it cannot even carry a weak team to the next wave on Suicidal difficulty.
     
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    Copycat;n2331679 said:
    Ruining the Freezethrower's ability to freeze with alt. fire will not make me use the Killerwatt more, it will only make me play Survivalist less. Survivalist is an already weak perk, removing its perk-specific weapon's ability to quickly freeze a big Zed is only going to make the perk even weaker. The goal should be to make the perk viable for Hell on Earth, not to make it so useless that it cannot even carry a weak team to the next wave on Suicidal difficulty.

    I agree with you to the extent that we shouldn't be taking away from the Survivalist as much as we are, but instead should be trying to figure out what purpose the survivalist would be best suited for considering the options. The jack of all trades gimmick evidently doesn't cut it for HoE since the individual abilities of any single Survivalist could be balanced between multiple teammates to a much greater effect, making cooperation much more viable and reasonable than relying on the perk itself. I don't know how most people make use of Survivalist honestly since there's a lot of variety between personal arsenals and regular arsenals placed upon that perk, and I feel like the idea of a "scientist / engineer" perk could probably be much more interesting than a universally neutral one.

    Maybe Survivalist could serve as like a second-hand medic -- instead of just healing people, they could serve as the medic's righthand man by holding off the zeds with special tactics when healing needs to be dealt amongst injured teammates. Electrical weapons would make sense for this, since stun capabilities would likely be integrated into that category. Essentially this could serve as a handling tactic for keeping the horde stable when enemies are rushing in mass amounts from every which way, so that the team doesn't get overwhelmed entirely and an escape route could potentially be established with some help from the Survivalist.

    Idk, just a dumb idea lol. Main point is just that I don't think Survivalist can fit to anyone's satisfaction with what they have going rn. And I still think the Killerwatt is a bit too op.
     
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    Copycat;n2331679 said:
    Ruining the Freezethrower's ability to freeze with alt. fire will not make me use the Killerwatt more, it will only make me play Survivalist less. Survivalist is an already weak perk, removing its perk-specific weapon's ability to quickly freeze a big Zed is only going to make the perk even weaker. The goal should be to make the perk viable for Hell on Earth, not to make it so useless that it cannot even carry a weak team to the next wave on Suicidal difficulty.

    I'm not seeing the issue here - the alt fire has a lot of bonuses being added to it, so naturally something must be taken away to stop it from being OP. Plus you can still freeze big zeds with the regular fire, just not as quickly. As always though, we need to wait and see just how this plays out in-game.
     
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