A long read about my thoughts on Killing Floor 3

[Mason]

I still have my Killing Floor CD case, I was at a walmart and chose to buy it instead of getting Mc Donalds that day. It was an awesome choice, it was fun as hell. First time you pop a clot's head with a 9mm was satisfying. Conserving ammo in the early rounds clicked in like RE4 and Nazi Zombies. There was a lot of tech there involving movement and weapons combos, but everything was grounded, simple, and required teamwork to survive (unless you were a try hard medic main) which was perfect for the time. The DLC stuff, especially the unique weapons was kind of annoying at the time but it wasn't a game breaker. It really captured a grindhouse punk aesthetic about a band of survivors brutally fighting off a horde of mad scientist monsters (in the UK). And as a result had its own unique corner in the genera of wave survival FPS games that no other game could scratch.

Fast forward to KF2. Some good, some bad, some generic, some weird. But it was definitely a Killing Floor game (despite the issues). It was a lot more of a independent power fantasy than being teamworked focused, and they definitely dropped the ball plenty of times but the identity was more or less intact. The DLCs, micros, and balance were a lot worse though. There's a lot to go over here, but the important part is that it retained a large chunk of its identity despite the flaws.

Now.... KF3 doesn't look promising. It's like they attempted to cudgel the game to be more like the newer Doom games than being... well killing floor. If you compare the two the similarities become painfully obvious especially with enemy and weapon design. The art-style has degraded from the evolving punk/grindhouse horror aesthetic (with the exceptions of holiday events which were supposed to be ironic noncannon B-horror movie tropes to the midwits who use this as an excuse for the newer art) to this generic neon-cyberpunk that really wants to be in line with the newer DOOM games. I'll try not to be vague about it, but there's so many little things your subconscious sees that just... looks and feels wrong. You can even see this with things like enemy executions (shown off in the game awards trailer) it's slow, and locks you into an animation in a game where you don't want to stand still. Everything, looks over-designed without actual substance. Weapon mods being a good example of this. It reeks of an incompetent desperation to attempt to visually wow the player with all these options at the cost of weapon identity and most likely balance, but this design choice permeates throughout Killing Floor 3 entirely. It's indicative that the designers weren't confident in the base merits of a well designed Killing Floor gameplay loop, and instead focused on mass feature dumps they could market (and most likely monetize), which just ends up as visual noise, which is ironic because if you pay attention, ragdolls are poorly done especially with the gravity. Hey how about all that vertical level design?!

The gameplay loop looks... geriatric, slow, like wading through jello with movement abilities supplementing this to hide how sluggish everything feels, sprint, slide dodge, zipline, fly/super jump... why? Enemies have cartoonish stilted visual feedback pauses and indicators treating the player like a toddler as a big "DODGE NOW!" sign which beyond a fast scene transition in a trailer looks patronizing to anyone with a pulse, (I have a deep seated suspicion that the developers looked at Vermintide and copied it poorly). Take a look at some of the most recent gameplay trailers that have been released, turn off the music and run through clips a few times and just focus on the enemies for a second. They seem to have a travel mode when they're far away from you, but then slow down once they're within range, and keep in mind that the player in these demonstrations is going TOWARDS the enemies. The scene cuts, music, and camera angles tries to hide it, but KF3 gameplay looks slow and often stilted. Is the excuse for this that it's for trailer purposes or locked to difficulty?

But the more I looked into it the more disappointed I got. We've seen a trend in gaming, and especially with Tripwire, going down a route to cater to audiences, to markets other than their original core one for a variety of reasons which factor to the on going culture war which has a front in entertainment. This usually results in two things:

1.) Games catering to players to an insultingly easy level so that more people can play it (yes I know difficulty settings are a thing, but no matter how you balance things some systems will always reflect this).
2.) Social pandering for a variety of reasons (mostly monetary if we're being honest).

There are pros and cons with both, but personally I think that KF3 will suffer more in the long term as a result of both catering and pandering.

Catering is very tricky, because a well designed game is intended to provide a satisfying challenge for a player as they personally progress skill. This is supplemented usually with a leveling system, unlocks, and difficulty, but with perks this can be extremely annoying as the player is artificially time gated, and locked out of content in a variety of systems. And unless said player is willing to grind, you will lose retention. This was a huge issue in KF2, and why "afk leveling" severs were some of the most popular in the game. It also teaches newer/less skillful players awful habits, and a variety of other issues. KF3 seems to take an odd approach exacerbating long standing and well known issues with a combination of the leveling, perks, poor gameplay pacing, and specialists which I'll get into later. KF2 doesn't have a good track record of balance so this will be an uphill battle unless KF3 is made based on extremes, which isn't good design. Factor in all the player systems, how oddly enemies interact with the player, and number/ability balance, difficulty, gamemode, wavecount, and playercount.

Pandering is just the same artistically bankrupt parasocial parasites grifting off of the success of old established IPs, either ones they've inherited or ones they're trying to copy. We've seen this with a variety of other games (and movies). KF3 looks very indicative of this due to Tripwires recent policies, KF3's art direction, and the bizarre counterproductive specialist system. Everything points to them trying to hit checkboxes to get that sweet investment money which can come from either investors who push trends into games (the big one currently being hero shooters) or ESG/DEI (Enviromental Social Governance/ Diversity Equity Inclusion). Usually both. This is often detrimental to games that weren't built from the ground up to do this (and often those that are).

A good indicator of this is the utterly idiotic idea of locking players to "specialist" characters instead of allowing people to play the characters they want with the perks they want, in an era of corporate greed with how the killing floor series (and Tripwire) has ramped up microtransactions and payed DLCs, why would they lock perks (and visuals that are locked to said perks/abilites) to a gaggle of diverse and multicultural power rangers (dangling Mr Foster as nostalgia bait as none of the other popular and reoccurring characters that I'm aware of have been shown) when they could let players pick and choose their favorite character and then purchase cosmetics for said character. Players will now have to choose between perks and abilities or their favorite character in a series where you could always choose your character and perks separately. The only thing that makes sense is either gross idiocy, or they wanted to be similar to other successful hero shooters, likely both. The specialist system takes away from customization, and money generated from cosmetics which makes no sense (as the overwhelming majority of KF players are uspet and confused that Mr Foster is locked into Commando). I'm assuming from a greed (stupid) point of view that they think that forcing players to play as different characters will make them purchase cosmetics for said different characters, but players will most likely not purchase cosmetics for characters they don't like, making them lose out on profit in the long term, stunting player customization in the process, and arbitrarily creating issues as players will have to chose between the character they like and the perk.

The old guard who made the original killing floor games being fired is just a symptom of where pandering has lead to and has been echoed in a lot of other games.

I'm sure speculatively in the short term there will be profits (supplemented by said investments in the background on top of the usual content creator cycle.) But after a few monthly cycles of premade content drops which will mostly be trying to milk the player for a few more dollars (remember the lootboxes in KF2) and a morbillion balance updates that will upend everything several times or do nothing at all, people will get bored of the soulless parody of killing floor that 3 is.

I'm sure some of you will be smug with how you off-put this text dump but despite graphical updates and features being crammed in... KF3 feels mediocre.