Hi guys -
I have a very simple -- but hugely important (IMHO at least) suggestion for KF2. I've been playing a good amount of Payday 2 over the past 6 months. For those of you who are not familiar with the game... It's about "heists" (robbing banks, stealing diamonds, hitting an armored transport to release a prisoner, robbing a train, etc.) You have objectives (move the jewelry to the getaway van, protect the cocaine bags, etc.) that you try and accomplish while waves of cops shoot at you. There are mundane SWAT guys, but also "special" enemies, like heavily armored Bulldozers, "cloakers" that have ninja moves, "tazers" that shock you, etc. So it's actually quite comparable to the Zeds of KF.... it's a wave-based co-op shooter... so I think some comparisons are apt.
For the first ~30 hours of gameplay I wasn't in love with the game. I don't really game alone much - I mostly tag along with what my brother is doing at the time (Which included a good amount of KF1 a few years ago ;)). I kind of just followed alongside the other heisters, moved loot bags around, popped off some rounds at cops when they seemed close..... mostly I was focused on drinking my beer and shooting the **** with my bro.
That all changed when I discovered the incredible community created Mods for the game.
There is A LOT of buried info in Payday 2. If I play with random people online, I notice a lot of them don't have a grasp on fundamental components of the game -- Even if they've leveled all the way to 100! For instance, when your health hits 0, you go "down". You have a timer during which your teammates can revive you. If the timer runs out - you go into police custody (very bad). If your teammates revive you - You accumulate a "down". When you hit your fourth down - you automatically go into police custody. Using a medical bag rejuvenates your health - but more important, it resets the number of downs you have accumulated. This is possibly THE most important concept to grasp in the entire game - and a vast number of people have no understanding how it works. People use the medical bag the second their health gets low regardless of the number of downs they have. This GREATLY diminishes the sustainability of the team!
The mods make a LOT of minutia more transparent that most people would not focus on otherwise (the exact number of seconds it takes to pick a lock, number of kills, number of "special enemy" kills, how a certain perk is affecting your ability to dodge, how much stamina you have and how a perk affects that)..... This alone makes the Mod worth installing. Also has pop ups for when a certain bonus is activated (ie: When you are surrounded by 3 or more enemies - you get a 15% damage bonus for 5 seconds.... without the mod you literally have NO IDEA when this bonus is active!).
Also has a chart that tracks which missions you've completed on different difficulties, a jukebox so you can change the in-game song if you don't like a particular track, "unlimited corpse" options, physics options, chat options, ability to change the color of the aim-guide lazer attachment, .... just LOTS of good little stuff that vastly improves my enjoyment of the game.
Most importantly though - and most relevant to KF2. It has little damage numbers that pop up when you shoot an enemy. This revolutionized the game for me. I went from just taking the same assault rifle every game that "felt" sufficient enough - to creating intricate load outs with dozens of variations on guns that work in synergy. Now I pay attention to every detail... accuracy, stability, rate of fire, even the type of ammo I'm putting into my shotgun. My killingness is transparently conveyed through numbers and math --- THAT is when I fell in love with the game. Also has damage pop-ups for teammates that are color coded. So if I see a friend getting some nice kills I can be like "Dude you're getting some nice range with that AK!" and he'll be like "Yeah, I putting a Steel Foregrip it on for damage but compensated for the accuracy loss with a sniper stock." or "How'd you take down that bulldozer so quickly?" ... "Oh, I've got HE rounds in my shotgun to take off his armor, then I switch back to my assault rifle and pop a few head shots".
In fact, it actually feels kind of primitive for me to go back to KF1 and NOT have this kind of info. I would definitely enjoy it more if I knew exactly HOW my gun is doing against that fleshpound... and exactly how my ammo efficiency is based on how effectively I'm killing clots/crawlers with different guns... or HOW a perk is affecting my damage output.
In RO1 and RO2 I was extremely strict about my HUD - I wanted to feel immersion. I wanted to feel like I was peeing my pants in a shell hole, that the cold was penetrating my skin, that fear overcame me as a machine gun relentlessly raked the dirt inches away from my face.
In a co-op wave-based killing shooter - I'm not giving a tenth of a damn about that stuff. I want to play well. I want to succeed as a team and wrack up kills and contemplate how perks and weapons are affecting my ability to do that. I want to try and beat out my friends on kills in a friendly competition while still remaining rooted as a team player. I want to KNOW how much damage I'm doing, how a perk is affecting my stamina or damage or whatever, how much health I have, how effective a healing move was, how the guns are faring in terms of damage output/ammo efficiency/effect of different types of enemy..... etc. etc.
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I implore TWI to take a look at the amazing work done by the modders in the Payday 2 community and integrate some of these features into Killing Floor 2.
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Below are some examples of PD2 Mods :
This shows unlimited corpses, as well as an indicator in the upper left corner showing that a bonus from a perk is active :
http://ift.tt/1DEGoXSThis is a list of information that is optionally displayed via the Mod, which really shows you how much crap is not transparently conveyed in vanilla PD2:
http://ift.tt/1DEGoXUThis is a list of heists which includes how many times I've attempted them on each difficulty, how many of those attempts I've succeeded at, and how the EXP reward is modified based on my recent activity :
http://ift.tt/1DEGqyRThis is a video of a guy covering what HoxHUD does... I'm actually using PocoHUD which I prefer to HoxHUD -- but I think this kind of conveys how important (also essential) these mods really are... his description even says "Once you go Hox you never go back" :
http://ift.tt/1vTIqvfThanks for reading! Hope TWI takes a look at some of this stuff!
[EDIT : just remembered there's a suggestions forum ... my bad]