Decline Killing Floor 3 by Tripwire Interactive

[d1r]

Fuck this game and fuck Tripwire

 

[PlayerEmers]

i have no faith in this game after all the fuck ups on KF2

also they decided to continue this souless scifi garbage aesthetic from KF2

Despite what I said, the gunplay will be probably good tho

 

[d1r]

i have no faith in this game after all the fuck ups on KF2

also they decided to continue this souless scifi garbage aesthetic from KF2

Despite what I said, the gunplay will be probably good tho

KF2 still had fine aesthetics in Early Access. Sure, it wasn't grunge kino anymore, but at least it was consistent. Then they started introducing "le reddit funny" MTX content, introduced one of the most ugly female characters in video game history, introduced E-DARs, and then those Sci-Fi reskins of existing weapons, and ...

Oh shit, wait... Why am I hyped for KF3 again?

 

[d1r]

Fuck this game and fuck Tripwire

 

[HumanTotemPole]

Not looking compelling from a visual design perspective based on those trailers up top. Cyber-Scrake looks unlikely to have the charm of his previous iterations, that reveal and the concept art are very dull. The chainsaw is way too big, looks like it belongs in a Tonka tool set or a 12 year old's sketchbook. The Cyst is a bipedal uncut cock with teeth which, in addition to looking fucking stupid, doesn't gel terribly well with the more sterile, cyberpunk-adjacent aesthetic evident so far.

Wouldn't hold out much hope given that Tripwire are kings of the unforced error. Beloved and lightly tactical mechanic with door welding? Better make it unreliable and change the spawning system to invalidate it in the sequel. Bearable level of monetisation in KF1 with small DLC packs? Replace that shit with an RNG skin shop and torch the goodwill. Fun new weapon like the Microwave Gun? Nerf that shit into irrelevance.

It's a shame because as ever they'll probably get the look, feel and sound of the shooting right. They may also have some good new ideas e.g. like Gunslinger being a fun class well suited to KF2's changed mechanics and map design but needlessly fuck up or overbalance 5 other things to compensate. God only knows how bad the monetisation will be this time as well given the returns Embracer will be looking for.

 

[rumSaint]

The first one had this moody dirty look, sorta reminded me of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It was great and voice lines of angry Brits added to atmosphere.

The second one was built and optimized around consoles. Locations are smaller, shooting was more arcadey. It was a good fun especially with your own squad, but it was sort of step down in my opinion.

And in third iteration they are going into more sci-fi/neon look, bleh. Totally uninspired. Oh well, there are lots of others coop shooters anyway. I don't have high hopes.

 

[udm]

Even the music wasn't spared from decline. Compare the tracks that are on Youtube now, versus the ones from KF1/mod.

Spoiler

Maybe I'm just not metal enough, but a lot of the tracks in modern games like D44M and KF2 just sound like a mash-up of various instruments. It's noise. There's no cohesion with the pacing of the game. In contrast, when Dirge Repulse 1 played in kf-offices, your game and adrenaline were always going to get amped up 200%.

 

[Konjad]

Why do they make this instead of Red Orchestra 3, WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

 

[Cogemesiter]

KF2 is good mindless fun, but for fps co-op they can’t beat DRG.

 

[udm]

Why do they make this instead of Red Orchestra 3, WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Bro you just know they're going to screw it up anyway

 

[PlayerEmers]

Why do they make this instead of Red Orchestra 3, WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

my bet is that AA FPS games were not as profitable as AA CO-OP/multiplayer games (or at least thats what the executives at their studio think)
and honestly I dont blame them... just look at the numbers and think about it: https://steamdb.info/charts/?tagid=1663

you can hardly find indie/A/AA multiplayer PVP FPS games at the top of the list... but you can find plenty of coop games
there is also the fact that is way easier and cost efficient to monetize coop games compared to pvp FPS games (its so easy to fuck up paid DLC for those types of games)

 

[HumanTotemPole]

Even the music wasn't spared from decline. Compare the tracks that are on Youtube now, versus the ones from KF1/mod.

Spoiler

Maybe I'm just not metal enough, but a lot of the tracks in modern games like D44M and KF2 just sound like a mash-up of various instruments. It's noise. There's no cohesion with the pacing of the game. In contrast, when Dirge Repulse 1 played in kf-offices, your game and adrenaline were always going to get amped up 200%.

It's the layers of electronica and EDM over metal that's the problem with the D44M Mick Gordon stuff. Very overproduced. Obscures a lot of the neat riffs he comes up with.

A lot of the music in KF2 is Christian metal that TW licensed. With the lyrics cut out it becomes relatively simple and unadorned metal music. Good fit for a wave based co-op shooter with some horror influences.

As for the other stuff zYnthetic has been more influenced by techno and industrial music over metal as time has gone on and that Rocky Gray guy just isn’t as good.

 

[Konjad]

I just realized Tripwire belongs to Embracer now lol

RIP

 

[d1r]

Fuck this game and fuck Tripwire

 

[HumanTotemPole]

Not into the eyeless design motif at all.

​

 

[V17]

Is KF2 any good now?

I loved KF1 but despite some of its shortcoming being clearly improved (like the fact that some of the KF1 maps were "solved" and you always knew what to do and where to hole up, at least up to Suicidal difficulty) KF2 never clicked for me. It felt kind of soulless, but also I'm thinking maybe I just grew out of the formula. Love the game in theory, but in reality I just play a few rounds of L4D 2 instead if I want a zombie coop.

Even the music wasn't spared from decline. Compare the tracks that are on Youtube now, versus the ones from KF1/mod.

Spoiler

Maybe I'm just not metal enough, but a lot of the tracks in modern games like D44M and KF2 just sound like a mash-up of various instruments. It's noise. There's no cohesion with the pacing of the game. In contrast, when Dirge Repulse 1 played in kf-offices, your game and adrenaline were always going to get amped up 200%.

It's the layers of electronica and EDM over metal that's the problem with the D44M Mick Gordon stuff. Very overproduced. Obscures a lot of the neat riffs he comes up with.

A lot of the music in KF2 is Christian metal that TW licensed. With the lyrics cut out it becomes relatively simple and unadorned metal music. Good fit for a wave based co-op shooter with some horror influences.

As for the other stuff zYnthetic has been more influenced by techno and industrial music over metal as time has gone on and that Rocky Gray guy just isn’t as good.

This is surely part of it, but part of it is that in my opinion the new song is just badly mixed. "Overproduced" but also not produced well enough, you could definitely take this style of music, keep the instruments and make it sound better.

It feels like it's on purpose - (at least some of the) songs in KF have a clear and punchy mix where everything is in your face, so you still sort of hear it even in the chaos of action, whereas the new one feels like it's mixed to be "background music", it doesn't feel clear and punchy even when listened to on its own, so it more easily fades into the background under all the in-game noise and just feels like "something is there". I also think this is stupid and more annoying than anything, but I'm inclined to believe that it's not a coincidence.

 

[Konjad]

Is KF2 any good now?

I loved KF1 but despite some of its shortcoming being clearly improved (like the fact that some of the KF1 maps were "solved" and you always knew what to do and where to hole up, at least up to Suicidal difficulty) KF2 never clicked for me. It felt kind of soulless, but also I'm thinking maybe I just grew out of the formula. Love the game in theory, but in reality I just play a few rounds of L4D 2 instead if I want a zombie coop.

Nah, I gave it another try some time ago and meh. I have much more fun with the first game.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

Is KF2 any good now?

I loved KF1 but despite some of its shortcoming being clearly improved (like the fact that some of the KF1 maps were "solved" and you always knew what to do and where to hole up, at least up to Suicidal difficulty) KF2 never clicked for me. It felt kind of soulless, but also I'm thinking maybe I just grew out of the formula. Love the game in theory, but in reality I just play a few rounds of L4D 2 instead if I want a zombie coop.

It was never going to have KF1's scrappy grindhouse appeal. Started with some nice consistency in visual presentation but that's been ruined by all the cosmetics, weapon skins and meme characters. Most of the guns look and sound great. I found that I'd occasionally look for an excuse to use something suboptimal like a base M4 just to admire the animation work. The basic KF gameplay loop remains solid but a lot of mistakes were made:

• The Cyst takes the Clot's role from KF1 and the Slasher takes the role of slightly more threatening basic mook. The Clot is effectively redundant on the roster and it shows in game as you almost never see them.
• Almost all the other new roster additions suck shit aside from Hans. KFP, Mat and Abom? All shit fights, literally so in Abom's case. Jihadi Crawler - looks bad, annoying area denial on death, spammed remorselessly on higher difficulties. Rioter - looks bad, annoying to fight, only introduced because nobody with a functioning brain used the crap limb shooting perks. Gorefiend - head blockers with annoyingly high body health and an infamous spin to win attack. Would probably be all right if used sparingly but spammed again. Quarterpound - more spam to the point that you might only see one actual FP per 10 waves. EDARs? Almost universally hated by everyone since their introduction. No fun to shoot at, no fun to look at, bad mechanics and predictably over represented in spawn waves.
• Changes to the spawning mechanics. Game relies on spamming fast trash Zed spawns outside your FOV too much compared to KF1s more restrained approach of groups tending to enter from defined areas. Play some solo to get a sense of what I mean - 3 Slasher groups spawn behind you like clockwork.
• Survivalist straight up ruined the pub game when introduced. Baffling decision. Why introduce a bad generalist to a game about learning specialised class roles?

So much other shit to harp on - weekly challenge crap, an unnecessary prestige system, an upgrade system in place of better balancing, bad perks that stayed bad, awful hold the area objectives that ruined pub games once again. A lot to complain about but fundamentally shoot Zeds get money remained fun last time I played 3-4 years ago. Prefer KF1 overall.

 

[PlayerEmers]

Is KF2 any good now?

Nah
KF2 was truly good only during early access phase, before they dropped the cosmetic shop/dlcs. It was all decline from there.
Current KF2 is a mess.

-New dlcs have low budget quality and some of them are OP (aka you must buy it to have an advantage or have someone on the team that bought them)
-Game still have the weird conundrum of incentivizing and disincentivizing kitting. On one hand, the game and devs hate you for camping spots, throwing at you shit that makes camping tough and undesirable. But at the same time, there are other mechanics/zeds that makes kitting feel like shit (like EDARS, elite clot buff), specially on close quater maps with lots of corners. They said they "fixed" teleporting zeds, but im sure this shit is still in the game, making kitting even more miserable.
-Absolute cosmetic bloat that looks ugly as shit.
-New bosses suck dick. Only the nazi grampa and patriarch are cool.
-You need 94GB thanks to all the cosmetic bloat and maps.

You can still have fun but... at what cost? Your insanity to deal with all the retarded shit and the robots
FUCK ROBOTS

 

[Avonaeon]

Personally i liked in KF1 that maps had optimal places to camp out and defend. Especially on higher difficulties when a single fuckup could get you overrun and dead. In the beginning it was all about learning and testing the best places, after a couple of years everybody implicitly understood and worked well together, even on public servers with randos. Community maps and custom servers were also great back then.
Gunplay was better in KF2, but level design was a lot more "lets make sure there isnt a single good spot to defend".

 

[V17]

Personally i liked in KF1 that maps had optimal places to camp out and defend. Especially on higher difficulties when a single fuckup could get you overrun and dead. In the beginning it was all about learning and testing the best places, after a couple of years everybody implicitly understood and worked well together, even on public servers with randos. Community maps and custom servers were also great back then.
Gunplay was better in KF2, but level design was a lot more "lets make sure there isnt a single good spot to defend".

I thought it became kind of boring after a time, even though still difficult (I only played on Suicidal, HoE was a bit much), but it's a very good point that it was one of the reasons why public games worked so well despite it being a coop game with randos. Looking back it's almost shocking how good the community was.

 

[9ted6]

I hate how KF declined from 28 Days Later grunge to Haloverwatch with Borderlands characters.

Why do they make this instead of Red Orchestra 3, WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

They also scrapped a WW3 shooter for this I'm guessing.

 

[Avonaeon]

I thought it became kind of boring after a time, even though still difficult (I only played on Suicidal, HoE was a bit much), but it's a very good point that it was one of the reasons why public games worked so well despite it being a coop game with randos. Looking back it's almost shocking how good the community was.

It did get quite samey, true, but i think slightly more levels could have helped in that regard. Having only 6 levels to a class meant you could play 10 matches and barely see any progress.

Some maps were definitely also more fun than others, so a server with rotating maps could be a mixed bag. But that was the beauty of a server browser, cause if you wanted to play office, you could just hop on the office 24/7 server or whatever

 

[rumSaint]

Personally i liked in KF1 that maps had optimal places to camp out and defend. Especially on higher difficulties when a single fuckup could get you overrun and dead. In the beginning it was all about learning and testing the best places, after a couple of years everybody implicitly understood and worked well together, even on public servers with randos. Community maps and custom servers were also great back then.
Gunplay was better in KF2, but level design was a lot more "lets make sure there isnt a single good spot to defend".

I personally hated this in KF1. You had "figured out" map and was shooting in one place, or from vantage point until someone fucked up and angered Scrake/Fleshpound. So much fun.

KF2 was on the other hand too dynamic, as locations were so small, especially in endless mode, making some classes hard to pull of, like demo or sharpshooter.

 

[Avonaeon]

KF2 was on the other hand too dynamic, as locations were so small, especially in endless mode, making some classes hard to pull of, like demo or sharpshooter.

One can hope they reach a middle ground, but i fear it'll be more of the "lol random" direction KF2 took.