How would like the perks to be in KF3?

[Carlso]

This thread is created to show your opinions on how you would like the classes to be in KF3, to support the devs with feedback and suggestions.
We don't know how classes and perks will work on the new game, but it always helps to give them any feedback.

Here are mine:

I would like to start this post by saying I am not a game designer, nor an expert, I am just a fan excited for KF3! These are just suggestions from a passionated player.
Sharpshooter was my main, and Berserker was the class I think needed the most rework for KF3.

Sharpshooter lacks passive perk skills (only got 3), and some of its perks could have a "cool" factor to make them more interesting.
Berseker is one of my favorite classes of the game, and it is really fun to play with it. However, specially after the nerfs, you need to be very careful with berserker, which is kind of odd since bersekers were warriors who would not stop killing doesn't matter what. I'm not saying the class is bad, it isn't. I just think I would be interesting to see a Berseker that is more tanky and aggressive.

Here are my suggestions:

Berserker weapon damage 0.6%/level max 15%
Melee damage 0.4%/level max 10% (includes bash from all guns, stacks with Berseker weapon damage)
Resistance to damage 10% + 1%/level max 35%
Resistance to parried attacks 25% + 3%/level max 100%
Clots cannot grab you

It might seem that Berseker is doing less damage, but for the melee weapons it would gain 1.15*1.1 which is x1.265, which is bigger than the current x1.25. So he deals a little bit more of damage and is much more tanky.

Dreadnaught Increases total health by 100%. Whenever you are healed while Zeds are within 2 meters, you regain twice as much health points.	Skirmesher After hitting Zeds with melee perk weapons, increase movement with Berseker melee weapons by 25% and regenerate 2 health points per second for 3 seconds.
Vampire When you hit Zeds you heal health points: 1 for light attacks, 2 for pokes and bashes, and 3 for heavy attacks.	Butcher Increases attack speed and damage of melee weapons by 20%.
Resistance While you attack with perk melee weapons, you have an extra 15% resistance to all damage and 40% resistance to sonic, acid and fire damage.	Parry Parrying an attack increases attack and movement speed by 15% with melee perk weapons and melee damage by 25%.
Smash Heavy attacks with Berseker weapon damage deal 50% more damage on head hits and have 3 times more stumble power.	Massacre Light attacks and bashes with Beserker weapons do 30% more damage and when hit in the head have a 15% chance of stunning the Zed.
Berzerker Rage During Zed time, you heal all of your HP and deal 100% more damage with perk weapons.	Spartan During Zed time, you move and attack in real-time.

On his perks, most of them are only activated when it is actively attacking Zeds, encouraging the class to focus more on tanking for the team and dealing damage.
Also, I buffed some of the skills because they were overshadowed by the other option.

Sharpshooter weapon damage 1%/level max 25%

Sharpshooter weapon recoil 1%/level max 25%

Weapon switch 2%/level max 50%

Headshot triggering Zed time chance 0.2%/level max 5%

Speed with sharpshooter weapons 0.4%/level max 10%

Headshot penetration with sharpshooter weapons 4%/level max 100%

So I have a lot of bias because Sharpshooter is my main, but I will justify each one of the new passives. I think it it would be cooler if Sharpshooter could support the team with headshot Zed time since the early levels, rather than only unlocking it at the level 25.
Speed would help because it is a class that works better at a distance, so helping it keep its distance is goos. Also, having the 10% speed on top of the shooting speed on Marksman completely overshadowed Sniper.
The Headshoot penetration is for the cool factor. It is very satisfying to kill multiple aligned Zeds with headshots, and it is always good to give this class more incentive to aim for the head.

Sniper Increase headshot damage with perk weapons by 25%	Marksman Increase shooting speed with perk weapons by 25%
Stability Increase damage by 30%, movement speed 50%, and reload speed 20% while crouching using perk wepons	Ballistic Shock Increase headshot stun power of perk weapons by 150%
Rack’em up Each consecutive headshot with perk weapon increases damage by 10% up to a maximum of 50%	Tactical Reload Increase reload speed with perk weapons
Dead Eye Reduce recoil and increase perk weapon headshot damage when aiming down sights by 15%	Always Prepared Carry one extra grenade and 25% of ammo for perk weapons
Assassin During Zed time, the first shot deals 100% more damage and penetrates all Zeds. (Comando Zed time reset also resets this ability)	Ranger During Zed time, your headshots with perk weapons will stun any Zed

So on the Zed time one, I know the previous version of Assassin was solid, but I wanted to make it have more "cool" factor. That first shot could have an special effect, like leaving a red trail behind it like and the bullets glows, indicating that that shot is gigga freaking powerful.
Also just imagine two fleashpounds aligned in zed time you just aim for the head with the Railgun and 1 headshot both of them THAT WOULD BE SOOOOO SATISFYING!

 

[Carlso]

Also, on Berseker I forgot to say that he also gains some benefits from using bashes and melee weapons regardless if it is a Zerker weapon. So if you wanted to equip the Mosin Nagant and you had this version of the Butcher and Parry you would deal 100*1.1*1.2*1.25 which is 165 damage, a 65% increase.

You would also would be more encouraged to use your ranged weapons more aggressively, since their bash with the passive increases to perk damage Butcher, Parry and Massacre would deal 30*1.15*1.1*1.2*1.25*1.3 which is 74 damage a lot of damage!

I don't think it would be OP because he is kind of obligated to hit Zeds to access his skills and kiting with Zerker would not be very good, so it's only fair that he is really good at dealing with Zeds up close, right?

 

[KUNRACOON]

classes should depend more on each other to encourage team play

 

[Aleflippy]

It's a tough question to tackle honestly. On one hand, you want perks to be recognizable, but you also want some novelty. Maybe you'd wish for a couple of new perks, or the merging of old ones? Some could new some important tweaks, some could stay nearly the same... I'll try to scrape my thoughts and give my two cents in a way that's sorta cohesive.

Before going over every perk, I'll just say that I actually want the skill system to come back. Ideally with a bit more thought and depth. I'd love to see more skills (either 3 per levels, or just more levels...), but having two sets of skills that are both different AND valuable would already be a great improvement. It's pretty rare to go outside the meta in KF2... Most of my skills just haven't moved in years.

Not sure about weapon discounts coming back or not. It did make the perk stand out more, but I also like that the tier system is now way more straightforward. It also creates a lower gap between high-leveled perks and low-leveled ones, although passives and skills are still there to keep the lower levels at bay... I don't think I would mind either one of those options.

Lastly, I'm hoping for fewer but better options for every perk. Less weapons, but a clearer distinction between them. Maybe you could be a bit more flexible with the tiers this time around... or get rid of that system entirely. I don't know. At the same time, I also believe it's part of what makes each weapon distinct from one another, and a key balancing factor. It's just that I find the "routine" to be a bit samey after a while. Oh, and avoid cross-perks if possible... or at the very least the weapons which are very obviously meant to be used by a single perk.

-Berserker : for the most part, I'm content with how the perk is today. I believe we should keep its core gameplay features for KF3: a tanky, rather fast perk that can also stagger and stun zeds and simply act as a distraction to the zeds. However, we should definitely get rid of nearly every ranged option he has in its arsenal... It makes for a pretty fleshed-out perk that strangely has weapons that don't seem fit to its playstyle at all. For skills, I believe we're on a good path. Either focusing on increasing your resistance and survivability even more, or losing some of that tankiness for extra power sounds simple enough, but totally fit for a melee-centric class.

-Commando : again, for the most part, I'm quite alright with how the Commando feels and plays. I do believe (as said on another topic) that its ability to highlight the HP of nearby zeds should be put into play a bit more. Maybe being the only one to tell the remaining HP of the boss for example? Also, being the ONLY ONE capable of seeing stalkers would give him a more defined (if somewhat trivial) role. Skill (and weapon) wise, I believe we should have two (if not three?) skill trees that are very different: one tailored to making him absolutely gung-ho, possibly increasing mag sizes, rate of fires, reload speed and the like. The second one being more towards resources and being a de facto "team leader" (the return of "Fallback" ? Better and more grenades? Sharing the ability to see invisible enemies? Giving out ammo to its teammates?). And the third one would be geared more towards having better, more versatile, weaponry. Like extra damage, better accuracy, maybe selecting between multiple firing modes... I believe the Commando could easily be the most diverse perk out there, just thanks to how customizable assault rifles can be. Tailored for any situation.

-Support : would you look at that? Yet another perk I'm pretty ok with ! I guess the Support is the most straightforward of the bunch, so it's pretty difficult to think of any meaningful changes for him. I remember an idea was to give him the ability to repair the armor of its fellow soldiers using the Welder (which is almost never pulled out in KF2...) and I do like the idea, although we pondered for weeks as to how balanced it would be. Other than that, I don't really see how I would change the perk...

-Medic : on the opposite corner... where do we even start with the medic ? I don't think I'm allowed to start from a blank canva, so let's assume the perk still heals mostly thanks to darts implemented in its guns (it was a thing in KF1 already!) I think the perk should simply go back to the basics honestly, being able to heal and nothing else. No buffs, no debuffs. No wacky, dangerous weaponry. Just enough to defend oneself against trash zeds. The incentive should be to STICK WITH YOUR TEAM. You are nothing without them and they are nothing without you. I believe it's the only perk that could honestly be simplified for KF3. Going back to the KF1 days seems like a good place to start.

-Demolitionist : another perk that deserves quite a few changes to go back to a more reasonable state. It's already a pretty unorthodox perk all things considered, you rarely have a class or hero fully dedicated to explosives, at least in "serious" shooters. Once again, I believe KF1's version is the thing to look out for. As much as I respect and admire Onionbubs' knowledge of the game, and its defense of the Demo's in the beginning of KF2's lifecycle... I do believe he was a bit too unidimensional. And absolutely powerless without its team (at least the medic still has extra survivability and trash-cleaning capabilities). So KF1's version sounds a bit fairer. You start of pretty weak, without much tools to help your team and yourself. Then you get access to a pretty damaging option (the M79), but hardly useful against smaller targets and bigger groups. You can then select three options : the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none option (M16 with grenade launcher), the total annihilation option (L.A.W. / RPG-7) or the less impactful, but more lenient option (M32). Hell, those weapons already seem pretty fitting for the perk, and different enough to allow it to fit a few different roles (although the crowd control/nuking would certainly be the most valuable). Get rid of EVERY "gyrojet" weaponry at his disposal though... all of them are stupidly easy to use, with zero risks and massive rewards. Maybe, skill-wise, you could also go the two very obvious paths of bigger booms VS more booms.

-Firebug : the third and last perk that became absolutely broken and lost its entire identity over the years. I believe it's even harder to truly pinpoint what the firebug does, compared to the demo. It's an even rarer archetype in video games, so we don't have much inspiration to look for (besides TF2's pyro, but that's a very different type of gameplay...). I obviously don't want the perk to simply use a flamethrower of course... but I also don't want the perk to get anything as long as there are some flames tacked in. I think its the perk that needs the deepest rework, and a lot of thought to bring it up to speed. Maybe we could focus on the crowd control first and foremost? The perk is good at dealing with hordes of lesser zeds, and great at blocking an area for a limited amount of time (thanks to residual flames). Maybe afterburn could also be useful this time around? On the flipside, I do believe the perk should be highly limited by its range. Not to the extent of the zerk of course, but enough to force him to get close to the zeds or employ "hit'n'run" strategies. Skill wise, I think you could do something similar to the Demo : either increase the power of your flames, or increase their radius/range. Should we add a few ranged options (at least to break the mold and not get five flamethrowers), I believe they should be slow-firing, pretty limited options... think of the zerk or the demo's PDW options ! Basically trading versatility and power for the opportunity to mitigate your main weakness a bit.

-Gunslinger : the more I think of that perk, the less I'm sure if I want it to be merged with the sharpshooter again or not. I think the division of skill trees would be much easier obviously => one is tailored to a more "nuking" playstyle, where you take your time to fire single, but very deadly shots... While the other would allow you to be better at mid ranges, where you'll move faster and fire faster as well, with less opportunities to oneshot big zeds. But I feel like I'd rather give the Sharpshooter marksman rifles in that regards, in opposition to bolt-action options. What about the GS then? Let's keep it in the game, but remove the LAR/Centerfire (or anything alike) and keep them in the Sharpie's toolkit. The Gunslinger would be much more straightforward, being only able to use pistols and revolvers. But I think a great way to keep the design fresh would be to make it the second-fastest perk in the game, maybe with some movement tech to boot (double jump? sliding?) in exchange for being a litteral glass cannon. Make the perk super weak. Hell, maybe grant alternatives to the Rack'em Up skill ! A skill that reloads a single bullet with every headshots, so you can keep firing as long as your aim is true? A skill that slightly damages nearby zeds everytime you score a headshot? Hell, maybe make it possible to dual-wield DIFFERENT weapons, so you could have a powerful revolver in one hand and a fast pea-shooter in the other. I'm definitely going wild with that perk and I'm sure many ideas just wouldn't be balanced or viable... But I believe the perk is in dire need of something ballsy to warrant its existence around perks like the Commando, Sharpie or SWAT.

-SWAT : Speaking of the devil... I also want the SWAT to come back, even if its somewhat bland these days. I believe the SWAT has a lot of cool ****, but still seems like a mish-mash of many other perks. Sure, it's tanky... but so are the medic and zerk. It's a great trasher cleaner... But so are nearly every perk these days. It can stagger and stun zeds... But so can the Sharpie and the Zerk (and many others to some extent : Commando, Support, Medic...) Even the fact that it's the "smg perk" is pretty boring, considering other perks have access to SMGs as well. This makes SWAT a pretty decent perk overall, but that doesn't do anything special. So I got a few ideas.

1) Make the Medic the "SMG-perk" once more. It would fit it's status of a decent trash-cleaner that can't really defend itself very well beyond that. The zerk would inherit its tankiness and the Commando/Support its ability to CC.

2) Grab my "gung-ho" idea from the Commando and give it to the SWAT, making the perk the "gunslinger" compared to the Commando's "sharpshooter" role. Instead of being resilient, make him an absolute bullet hose that swims around the battlefield like in a Hong Kong action movie.

3) Make him the second tank of the game (alongside the Zerk), but also make him the slowest class as a result. So the Zerk would still have an edge as he's faster, something he needs considering he needs to be at melee ranges. Meanwhile, the SWAT would be hella slow, but would be able to mow down zeds before they even reach him. I think another key difference would be that the zerk could have extra health (or healing) and resistances while the SWAT would "only" have improved armor. Lastly, maybe the SWAT could still fit that "bullet hose" role by getting the LMGs rather than the Commando this time... at the cost of losing its CC capabilities. Essentially, he'll pretty much become a wall. But careful if anything manages to reach that wall... He won't be able to outrun it at all.

-Sharpshooter : probably the best designed perk of the bunch, even if I find him too "static" for my liking, with those two skills that rewards you for crouching and standing still... I think it can pretty much come back as it currently is. Even my idea of having skill trees divided between favoring mid-range VS long-range combat is pretty moot, considering we already got the M14 EBR competing against the Railgun for example.

-Survivalist : having a jack-of-all-trades in a class-based game seems counterintuitive. The whole gameplay is shaped around teams that are balanced and where everybody has a specific role to accomplish. Sure, some classes are more versatile than others. Some are more straightforward or beginner-friendly. But having a class that can fits any role kinda defeats the purpose of having classes in the first place. It can be left out I think.

And as a bonus, here are two perks ideas I already mentioned four hundred times that I feel COULD make the cut in KF3... I don't see it as necessary if every existing perks gets new stuff to play with, but as KF2 added new perks... It sounds plausible that KF3 might have new ones too.

-Martial Artist : I still can't wrap my head as to why that perk didn't work out, and why it got replaced by the Survivalist... It's not a perk thing per se, but I think the melee combat could be refined and expanded upon in KF3. As Tripwire seems quite friendly with Torn Banner, maybe taking a few pages from Chilvary's book could be neat. As to what the Martial Artist could do, I already developed my ideas on these very forums a few times, but in a nutshell, it would be the polar opposite of the Zerk... Think of the relationship between the demoknight and the spy from TF2. Basically, the zerk would be the "come at me bro" melee perk, while the martial artist would be the glass cannon. I could see the martial artist being the fastest perk of the bunch, dealing insane amounts of damage, at the cost of dying very easily if he gets caught.

-Scientist : I don't really like that name but oh well. I also don't really like the wacky weaponry the Survivalist got, but considering KF3 will take place in the future... I guess we'll have some unorthodox weaponry still. Then, why not have a perk dedicated to the use of such near-magic high-tech guns? Notice that I said that the Medic should only focus on healing, and not buffs/debuffs? I believe the Scientist could do that instead. He wouldn't be as valuable as a medic for that reason, but on the flipside, he'd still be a formidable supportive perk that still struggles a lot when he's by himself. Skill trees could be as simple as "left = buffs" and "right = debuffs", but we could tune it a little to make him good at both roles.

 

[OnionBubs]

First, some housecleaning on base game design that needs to be taken care of:

1. Double-down on needing to master headshotting for KF3 as you go up in difficulties. One of the game's foundational systems is heads having smaller independent health bars from body health, to incentivize learning headshots in order to kill Zeds more quickly.
2. The chaos perks need to be far more restricted in their roles to force a tighter team composition and cooperation in order to compensate for their ease of use. For example, Firebug is limited to anti-trash, and Demo is limited to anti-large as their primary loadouts.
   1. You want to be able to still contribute damage to the team in a first-person shooter, but can't aim? Cool, but you'd better have your other counterpart nearby so that you can cover each other. You want a more diverse skillset to really contribute to HVT takedowns on a trash class and be a more generalist-oriented perk? You gotta learn to aim and play a different perk. Or just play on lower difficulties where it doesn't matter as much.
3. Rework the incap system in its entirety and put it on fewer weapons. It wasn't a bad idea on paper but players eventually got too many incaps for free, especially on perks that absolutely didn't deserve nor need them to begin with.
4. Fewer weapons. If the weapon doesn't have a distinctive purpose in the perk's arsenal that fits the perk's role, don't add it. If the weapon breaks perk roles, don't add it. And so forth.
   1. That means no freezing shotguns that crossperk to multiple different perks that don't deserve a shotgun that automatically freezes anything it doesn't outright kill.
5. No crossperks. Or at the very, very least, no crossperks on dramatically different roles (zerk/sharp, chaos/precision, etc.).
6. Rework or remove the Game Conductor system. Punishing good players for playing well vs. taking it easier on crutch playstyles was a mistake. Dynamic difficulty interferes with the entire point of there being set difficulty levels to begin with.
7. Rework scale-down mechanics, which muddle with the intended difficulty balance and also disproportionately favor certain perks to others. Waiting on scale-down for an easier win should absolutely not be a viable strategy, or at least not in Hell on Earth.

Without following those principles (and probably more that I've forgotten), KF3 will still be just as much of a mess balance-wise as KF2 was. I know official word from TWI is that they wanted to make all perks "equally important," but due to the vast difference in skill requirements for each perk, that's literally not possible without dumbing-down the precision perks to allow bodyshotting everything to death.

• Berserker: Melee combat in a hitscan-gun-oriented game where most enemies are limited to melee range and damage falloff is nonexistent is never going to be properly balanced or fair. On top of that, making a perk that specializes in winning wars of attrition in a game where surviving is all you have to do to win will never be fair to anyone playing a glass cannon perk that dies when coughed on, especially when both of them are affected by the game's difficulty systems in disproportionate ways. I'm personally OK with just not putting the class in and doubling down on forcing players to git gud at shooting things, but I also know that this perk is too popular for TWI to do that (in most HoE servers Berserker and Field Medic are the most popular picks by a wide margin).
  So instead, I'm proposing something different with Zerk: forcing risk/reward factor. I'm thinking one good idea would be to revisit the Early Access idea of making Zerk more powerful as they lose health, but still keeping them tanky as long as they can keep their health up. Something like the Unchained character class from Vermintide 2, where the class can be played tanky but have bad damage and thus contributing less to the team while also being more likely to be overrun by hordes, or much better at fighting but you're one bad mistake away from dropping due to an "overheat" mechanic. So juggling both is key to victory, or pure skill means you can get away with the latter (just don't get hit).
  You could even tie this into the lore: the Berserkers can run on the same experimental adrenaline system that fuels Fleshpounds, and as they take damage and use certain mechanics, the adrenaline meter goes up. As the adrenaline meter increases, they hit harder, swing faster, and move faster, but if the meter tops out, the adrenaline overloads their weak human systems and they either suffer great damage or die.
  If you want to lean into the glass-cannon-fast-moving role, you can use one skill tree for that. If you want to lean into the tank role and not worry so much about the adrenaline system, great, but your damage is going to suck and you will be mostly only good at tanking and not killing, and you won't have runspeed to infinitely kite things with your increased defense/health/whatever.
  IDK, I just want something other than the do-everything-but-hitscan M1-Abrams-mixed-with-fighter-jet monstrosity that was pre-2021 Berserker that remained for so many years. Melee classes have a tendency to be absurdly broken piles of stats that either aren't good enough or are too good and ignore a game's intended skill curve (see: Back 4 Blood), and we don't need to sacrifice skill development in the name of "player choice" any more than FPS games these days already do.
• Field Medic: Less crazy weapons, more focus on healing, no incaps, and make the Medic more dependent on teammates to survive. A healer class that also functions as a jack-of-all-trades and also a tank and also functions as a kiting carry class when everyone else has died is too much. Make it squishier, like basically every healing unit in every video game ever.
• Support: good as it is; just remove one-shot weapons like the Doomstick and it's more-or-less fine. Support's skill-curve-to-output/risk-reward factor is just about right for KF2 and I'd like to see that remain for KF3.
• Commando: Commando's skill curve is one of the best in KF2: it's easy to pick up but hard to master, it has tons of incentives to keep it team-friendly without being completely overbearing, it has very little base gimmicks, and it encourages players to hone their technical skills and click heads. Only thing I'd say for KF3 is to keep stuff like the FAL out of loadouts; easy access to nearly instant HVT deletes on an already loaded trash class is excessive (and justifies power creep).
  One thing I'd like to see with any potential skill trees is to lean into Commando's support role passives. For example, COM gets callouts for both health bars and Stalkers in KF2, but only Stalker vision applies to the team. What if one skill tree forced you to choose between giving your teammates health bar vision, or Stalker vision, but not both? I could see potential applications for both cases, i.e. giving other players an idea of how much damage they are doing with their takedowns to learn how to best apply damage bursts when needed.
• Demolitionist: Go back to the basic "bad at trash, good at HVTs" principle it was designed with. The more anti-trash weapons are added to this class, the more it dilutes other roles. Keep it dependent on trash cleaners. This perk should get harder to win with as difficulties increase.
  • No Kaboomstick. No anything like the Kaboomstick.
• Firebug: See Demo, but reverse the roles. This perk should get harder to win with as difficulties increase. Players should be incentivized to play harder perks like SWAT/Commando as they improve at the game and go up in difficulties, especially given that TWI has maintained FIrebug's disruptive tendencies to precision perks over the course of two titles.
  If ground fire is going to remain as widespread as it was in KF2, it needs to be seriously reworked.
  • Between the prevalence of ground fire and Heat Wave both being overcentralizing mechanics of KF2's Firebug, the class has serious problems with mechanical skill scaling: without those two mechanics it becomes a pretty bad perk in higher difficulties, but with them, the perk is extremely easy to play and really doesn't have to vary their approach to anything other than "shoot floor, afflict stumble if not dead, shoot floor again."
  • Compare this to SWAT and Commando, who actively have to go out of their way to prioritize targets, aim, count shots-to-kill, etc. Especially SWAT, since that's the closer precision counterpart to Firebug.
• Gunslinger: Right now Gunslinger has too much going for it: high movespeed while shooting and ridiculous movespeed while sprinting, high damage that can be either burst damage or stream on demand, and insane uptime due to reload shenanigans.
  Ideally it's supposed to be held back by reloading bottlenecks and small magazines, but that in practice only applies to akimbo revolvers; the akimbo mag-fed pistols being able to reload in about half a second and be back in action spraying away again means that intended downside effectively doesn't matter.
  It needs either a reload speed nerf to akimbo mag-feds across the board or a reduction in movement speed. Or both.
  Also, no akimbo glocks; of all the classes that did not need an anti-trash spray-n-pray weapon, Gunslinger was chief among them. Bad TWI.
• Sharpshooter: Pretty good spot overall; Sharpshooter in KF2 is a very good perk, it's just that other perks are too easy and offer too much while asking for too little. Sharp should be the gold standard for class balance in any future installments.
  Left-side specializes in easy anti-HVT while keeping you dependent on others for trash clear; Marksman builds make you an extremely scary generalist but you have to earn it by mastering headshots.
• SWAT: So many people ignore the fact that SWAT is meant as a second precision trash-specialist for when Commando is already taken, as stacking Commandos is a bad idea due to ruining extensions. SWAT's main problem is how good Firebug is in KF2: as long as Firebug can be used to reliably beat HoE by someone who has only played maybe the first Dragon Warrior on the NES or maybe a point-and-click adventure game and nothing else in their lifetime, SWAT will always be seen as requiring too much for too little comparative output.
  Giving Commando a very powerful anti-HVT tool in the form of the FAL did no favors to SWAT's standing among the community, either; it's very telling that TWI/Saber's idea of trying to patch up the class late in development was giving it a weapon that ignores armor, a thing that was meant to inconvenience precision perks in the first place but only wound up hitting SWAT the hardest.
  Nerf the chaos perks, clip Commando's anti-HVT a bit, and SWAT will be in a relatively fine spot.
• Survivalist: It doesn't belong in a team-composition focused game and is mostly popular because of the appeal of novelty. Every "QoL" improvement it has received and basically every weapon it has received have been buffs that contribute to the dumbing-down of the shooting mechanics by giving them spray-and-pray powers while giving them completely unnecessary survivability buffs, in a game where tanky classes are already problematic.
  Remove it, or at the very least make it unviable for the highest difficulties to force serious players to learn specialist classes.

-Martial Artist : I still can't wrap my head as to why that perk didn't work out, and why it got replaced by the Survivalist...
...Basically, the zerk would be the "come at me bro" melee perk, while the martial artist would be the glass cannon. I could see the martial artist being the fastest perk of the bunch, dealing insane amounts of damage, at the cost of dying very easily if he gets caught.

I would be wary of how the "glass cannon fast melee" idea would actually pan out amongst the playerbase, given the complaining most Zerk mains have already done when their "reinforced steel cannon" got its survivability kinda nerfed already. I love me some Scout from TF2 but sprinting shotgunners (a close analogue to "close range speedy glass cannon") have been omitted from KF2 presumably for good reason.

That's a balance that's admittedly very hard to strike. If there's too much "cannon" then you have a pre-nerf railgun/m99 situation where the output is too much for how easy the thing is to use and it makes the game kinda boring when you can 1-tap Fleshpounds with no effort required. Plus, you'd have to consider how well it meshes with Field Medic. If it's too much glass, then you have a class that's too much risk for not enough reward if you die as soon as you get coughed on...that is also forced to play in melee range in a game where things move fast and attack mostly in melee by surrounding players.

 

[Aleflippy]

I would be wary of how the "glass cannon fast melee" idea would actually pan out amongst the playerbase, given the complaining most Zerk mains have already done when their "reinforced steel cannon" got its survivability kinda nerfed already. I love me some Scout from TF2 but sprinting shotgunners (a close analogue to "close range speedy glass cannon") have been omitted from KF2 presumably for good reason.

That's a balance that's admittedly very hard to strike. If there's too much "cannon" then you have a pre-nerf railgun/m99 situation where the output is too much for how easy the thing is to use and it makes the game kinda boring when you can 1-tap Fleshpounds with no effort required. Plus, you'd have to consider how well it meshes with Field Medic. If it's too much glass, then you have a class that's too much risk for not enough reward if you die as soon as you get coughed on...that is also forced to play in melee range in a game where things move fast and attack mostly in melee by surrounding players.

(Not reacting to all of the above comments, because as usual you make a lot of sense and I think you hit the nail on the head with most if not all perks. I must saaay that I'd still like to see the Zerk back though... Or at least SOME space for melee combat, but that's mostly because I'm a gorehound)

Regarding my idea for the Martial Artist... You are also right. So here's a few bullet points :

-People are never happy, and we can be thankful that most players' ideas are totally ignored. Not just in Killing Floor but for any game. I'm obviously not saying that ALL criticisms and feedback should be ignored. Simply that the vast (or vocal?) majority of players don't seem to know much about game design and balancing. Myself included ! We still see people asking for Medic buffs too... for some reasons. So if the idea of a melee glass cannon would be dismissed because people don't like a little finesse... that's a poor argument (from them, not you). Some perks are easier to master than others. Just like some weapons are easier. Some classes/characters too. Let's sum it all by saying "playstyles".

-Scout is easily my second main after Medic, so I'm glad you mentioned it! But I envision the Martial Artist (and ideally KF3's Zerk) as melee-only class. With MAAAAYBE (and that's a big "maybe") a single tool to somewhat deal with complicated foes (think of the VLAD for KF2's Zerk). I was thinking of shurikens for its grenade slot, which would be more numerous (15 max rather than 5) but would be used mostly to quickly stagger zeds rather than a burst of damage. This could be used either to make a quick escape or sneak in a powerful strike. No shotgun allowed.

-I was truly thinking of a perk that wouldn't have ANY defensive advantage. In fact, it might even get a slight penalty (weaker armor?). In exchange, you would have to use its better speed and movement (higher jumps?) to keep yourself out of danger. I must admit that I'm very fond of hit-n-run strategies, hence why I love playing flankers. Which in turn would make the Martial Artist absolutely SCREWED should it ever get boxed in. Cramped maps would also give it a far harder time... But I don't know your opinion about maps regulating team compositions? I'm fine with some maps being more tailored to certain perks than others to be frank.

-In order to avoid making the perk too easy, and adding some layers of complexity, I was thinking about a "crit" system to boost its offensive capabilities. Not a random crit system of course ! Rather, I was thinking about either a combo system (if you hit the same target three times in a row, the third hit will be a crit) OR simply a backstab mechanic... Somewhat requiring the perk to be played with a team that drives the zeds' attention in order to make the most of it. As it would be pretty frustrating if your team is not helping (or if you're playing alone), maybe smoke bombs could be used rather than shurikens to affect the zeds... but then it would screw over precision perks. So maybe a sonic grenade...?

==> That way, simply using the Martial Artist as a diet zerk would be very inefficient. You'd simply be a tad faster, but much weaker. Instead, when you time your strikes perfectly, that's when you can dish out some insane damage. I could also see the perk as more of a priority target killer rather than a trash cleaner... as its capabilities would simply be overkill and you'd run much more risks of getting boxed-in. I believe a strong incentive to use the parry system should also be in order, as it would be one (if not the only) defensive option the perk would have.

 

[OnionBubs]

First, some housecleaning on base game design that needs to be taken care of:

Forgot one:

8. No more giving certain perks drastically increased free runspeed. In practice, it is a free boost to bad players and encourages terrible habits, while also discouraging players from even playing certain perks because they are "too slow", and softens the learning curve for certain perks because the runspeed is carrying the job of avoiding hits for the player.
The Gunslinger/Sharpshooter dichotomy has a lot to do with this particular sticking point. The vast majority of players who insist, for example, that Gunslinger is better than Sharpshooter strictly because "Sharpshooter has no runspeed" overlap with the same players that get absolutely clowned when you introduce them to a map that discourages kiting, like Lockdown.

But I don't know your opinion about maps regulating team compositions? I'm fine with some maps being more tailored to certain perks than others to be frank.

It's fine when done in moderation. Obviously you want a mix of maps; as much as I love hallway maps with the spawns cranked to 11 for aim training and CD warmups, a game made mostly of those wouldn't last very long

-In order to avoid making the perk too easy, and adding some layers of complexity, I was thinking about a "crit" system to boost its offensive capabilities. Not a random crit system of course ! Rather, I was thinking about either a combo system (if you hit the same target three times in a row, the third hit will be a crit) OR simply a backstab mechanic... Somewhat requiring the perk to be played with a team that drives the zeds' attention in order to make the most of it. As it would be pretty frustrating if your team is not helping (or if you're playing alone), maybe smoke bombs could be used rather than shurikens to affect the zeds... but then it would screw over precision perks. So maybe a sonic grenade...?

I like the idea of (what I assume is a reference to) the TF2 Engineer's three-punch crit on the Gunslinger. Or building up damage after killing enough trash Zeds to deal a harder hit so you can either severely injure or immediately dispose of a bigger enemy.

Maybe not quite identical to Rack 'em Up but the idea of snowballing damage could be fun.