Gameplay ideas
- By Tiger_
- KF 3 Ideas & Suggestions
- 13 Replies
You have deep knowledge about in game mechanics i give you that,did you know what in early KF2 development devs want to make game more dynamic what leads to the players move around a map often and not defense one spot an entire game? But they kinda fail with that,so i think with KF3 now they want fix this,improve,and make a real dynamic experience,let's be honest we just want a fun game no matter how the gameplay loop may be and that's devs must think about foremost,if the game just not fun doesn't matter how grounded (like KF1 or dynamic like KF2) gameplay was,KF1 is perfect team coop game for it's time but today it feels outdated,it's hard even to find servers with minimum one person,KF2 was fun coop shooter even now but TWI ruined it with bad content.You have any suggestion on how the devs can made KF3 a better game than KF1 and KF2? How they can improve the gameplay loop knowing that they lead more aggressive and dynamic gameplay rather defensive and grounded?The same way I feel about KF2 having sprinting.
KF1 was intentionally designed around having limited movement for both humans and Zeds. I'm sure part of that is because it's just easier to do so when you have a small team working on their first major game, but that design was very deliberate:
KF2 added sprinting in as a feature, and with that added in, the devs upended one of the major tenets of the original game's design. In doing so, the game needed to be fundamentally redesigned around sprinting being part of the player's kit so that kiting isn't the single best answer to everything.
- The Zeds all shamble except for certain Zeds moving faster under certain conditions.
- Gorefiends/Scrakes/Fleshpounds all have sprint states that let them close the gap on players
- Players move very slow by default with their guns deployed so you can't outpace the melee enemies while whittling them down.
- The sole exceptions are Field Medic and Berserker
- Medic has lesser firepower and also needs to reposition to get LoS on teammates due to lack of homing darts
- Berserker had no distance weapons (until the Buzzsaw Bow was added very late in the game's life cycle) which created its own need for faster movespeed
- The only way for players to move faster is to holster their gun and pull out their knife. This is to force players to either commit to a kite/reposition or stand their ground and risk dying. If you beef a kite or reposition badly, you are caught out with just your knife and by the time you get back into shooting position you may be screwed.
- This is somewhat inherited from Counter-Strike, which also has somewhat grounded movement and uses the same principles w/r/t movement vs firepower with the knife movement mechanics. Especially notable considering the zombies mod that would go on to become the basis for Left 4 Dead.
This is why Zeds move quickly and aggressively, why the main difficulty differentiator is how quickly Zeds can move, why they are given dodging animations, and the entire reason as to why the game's highly aggressive spawn and teleport systems exist.
Depending on who you ask, the spawn and teleport systems are one of the most aggravating features in the entire game. It literally makes or breaks some maps. TWI has redesigned entire maps from the workshop to accommodate the spawning system because without adding in tons of LoS breaks and-so-forth the maps would be a complete non-issue for players trying to stay awake. When the game has to be designed that shakily to accommodate "improved" movement, the design of the game takes a hit, both in how it's perceived by players and by how players will accomodate to that spawning system (those who can't, kite as Berserker/Medic/Survivalist; those who can, aim).
As for vertical movement, well...the game was simply not designed around vertical movement, which is why most maps don't really feature it outside of technically having staircases, why fall damage is so killer in both games, and why shotgun jumps are extremely limited (either to handful of on-perk weapons at best, or forcing you to offperk a break-action shotgun to have that movement option at hand).
So when you consider the requests for KF3 to have more movement and more verticality in general, you have to consider what that means for the players and Zeds. Without typing an entire essay here on it, I will say that as you move more towards fast movement and increased verticality, you're straying away from Killing Floor's basic design principles (limited mobility for PCs and enemies, flat and simple area design to complement that).
When you have players and Zeds flying around at high speeds in open arenas that are designed with that movement in mind (because you have to design levels with that increased mobility to match; that absolutely would not work in something like the cramped confines of Biotics Lab as seen in either KF title), you have to ask yourself at what point is the game you're playing still KF? From the various online blurbs I've seen such as the ones in PCGamer, GamesRadar, and so forth, that is exactly the direction the dev team is taking.
In fact, what you're basically asking for with even more verticality and faster movement, double-jumps, dodges, dashes, etc. is something towards the "boomer shooter" end of the spectrum, namely Doom 2016/Eternal. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with those on their own merits, but that's not what most people who enjoy either of the KF titles play it for; the KF1 enjoyers play that for its ruthless difficulty and design encouraging tight teamwork, and KF2 enjoyers play it for the absolutely sublime shooting mechanics and cranking up the shooting gallery difficulties by mastering headshots against swift-moving (but not flying!) targets.
That doesn't mean the game can't be good. But from a mechanical standpoint, that would be a further departure from what I'd consider a proper KF title. (And I'm not counting Incursion or Calamity, obviously, just mainline entries.)
Obviously I'll have to wait and see. But given how much KF2 flew off the rails post-2017, I'm not holding my breath on it just yet.
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