Killing Floor 2 Spring 2021 Beta 1 - 1110 Update is here!

25 Feb 2021Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

KF2 Spring 2021 Beta 1 - 1110 Update
To opt into this beta on Steam, join the "preview" branch available in the Beta drop-down list. Admins will need to use the following SteamCMD flag:

app_update 232130 -beta preview

To opt into this beta on EGS, the Beta will be accessible within KF2 owners’ game libraries as a separate install called “Killing Floor 2 Beta”. Users may need to restart their EGS launcher for the Beta to populate and be accessible to install. Progress for stats and inventory is shared between both versions on EGS so for users switching between Beta and Live be sure to sync your game data to use the latest timestamp to prevent any lost progress from participating in the Beta. The Beta on EGS also includes its own dedicated server within the install for your own personal hosting needs for this version.

Event
Dystopian Devastation

A dark future will arrive for all of us if you mercs don’t do anything about it! Dystopia 2029 is your new destination, join the fight and recover the downtown, explore the smoggy alleys and buildings, and clean the streets out of Zeds. But that is not the only thing you should do for this mission, Blood Thirst and Coliseum, the new Weekly Modes, will be available for those who want to try a different challenge, only recommended for veteran mercs. Sounds like it's too much to deal with? Don’t worry, the last Horzine Research Group experimental weapon has arrived to pump up your decibels, the HRG Beluga Beat.
Beta 1 Start 2/25/2021, Beta 2 Start 3/9/2021 (Dates are subject to change)

New Additions and Highlights

1 New Community Map
- Dystopia 2029
  - Compatible with Survival, Weekly, and Endless Game Modes.
  - Take the streets and clean up the buildings of this dark and smoggy downtown, placed in a dystopian futuristic city.
2 New Weekly Modes
- Blood Thirst
  - A health drain debuff constantly harms all players during the waves, unless there are less than 5 Zeds alive.
  - Killing enemies or making assists regenerates a portion of the player’s health. Other healing methods like syringe or medic weapons are deactivated.
  - Killing Scrakes, Fleshpounds or Quarterpounds will grant the Hellish Rage skill to the player (damage and speed boost + additional burning damage).
- Coliseum
  - Only Berserkers using Melee weapons allowed.
  - Zed time rate increased and Battering Ram skill granted to every player.
  - Custom Zed spawn composition, with more Gorefasts and Quarterpounds than usual.
2 New Weapons
- HRG Beluga Beat for the Sharpshooter
  - An alternative version of the Seal Squeal turned into a sonic weapon. It launches sound blasts that damage and push enemies back.
  - Alt-fire increases the frequency of the next blast, boosting its speed and damage, but reducing the size and pushing the capacity of the projectile.
  - Trader price is 1100 Dosh.
- Gravity Imploder for the Demolitionist (Not available for purchase during BETA)
  - This is a paid DLC weapon. This weapon can be shared amongst players through our weapon-sharing system.
  - It is a tier 5 grenade launcher that offers strong damage and crowd control capabilities.
  - Default projectiles create an implosion that damages every surrounding enemy with almost no falloff. Alt projectiles detonate after a short time, creating a singularity that attracts all enemies, and then a gravity wave that knocks them down.
  - Trader price is 2000 Dosh.
New Steam Achievements
- Dystopia 2029 related achievements
Time-limited Objectives, Tickets, and Cosmetics (Not available during BETA)
- Seasonal objectives related to Dystopia 2029
- Complete all seasonal objectives to earn the Cyborg Companion Backpack
- Cyberpunk Prize Tickets
- Cyberpunk Golden Prize Tickets
Zedconomy (Not available for purchase during BETA)
- Gravity Imploder Weapon Bundle
- Dystopian Devastation Full Gear Bundle
- Premium Cyberpunk Ticket Bundles come in three sets of tiers:
  - Bronze - 5 Premium Seasonal Tickets
  - Silver - 10 Premium Seasonal Tickets and 1 Bonus Golden Seasonal Ticket
  - Gold - 20 Premium Seasonal Tickets and a 3 Bonus Golden Seasonal Tickets
- Paratrooper Gear Cosmetic Bundle
- Chemical Warrior Gear Cosmetic Bundle
- Neon MKVII Weapon Skin Pack
- Killing Floor 2: Armory Season Pass

Beta 1 for this update contains a lot of exciting new features! As such, feedback is going to be incredibly important. Stay tuned for a link to a survey where you, the community, will be able to provide your feedback directly to us! Thank you!

Addressed Community Feedback
As mentioned in the 2020 Killing Floor 2 ‘State of the Game’ our goal is to bring to the community a continued stream of QOL changes for each update throughout the year. Please continue to report any QOL changes you believe should be added to the game by submitting your feedback in the ‘general’ section on our official forums at: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/forum/killing-floor-2

General

Balance of the initial dosh the player gets when joining a game in progress
- Dosh amount received adjusted for every wave and game duration.
Medic buffs feedback
- A new visual indication feature is implemented in the game HUD for the different buffs that the Field Medics can apply to themselves or to other players when healing.
- Perk skills that unlock the Medic buffs:
  - Adrenaline Shot
  - Focus Injection
  - Coagulant Booster
No Local Admin Filtering
- A new filter has been added to the Server Browser, to include or exclude the servers that have ever used the kick/ban functionalities from the WebAdmin tool.
- A new icon has also been added to the Server Browser list for these servers.

Balance

Weapons
- SA80 L85A2 Bullpup
  - Weapon weight reduced from 6 to 5
  - Bullet damage increased from 30 to 32
  - Initial spare magazines on Trader purchase reduced from 4 to 3
  - Ammo price per magazine increased from 30 to 32
- Freezethrower
  - Rate of fire of default fire reduced by 30%
  - Minimum ammo consumption of default fire reduced from 4 to 3
  - Alt-fire damage type changed from “Freeze” to “Ballistic_Shotgun”
  - Alt-fire base damage increased from 20 to 35 per ice shard.
  - The number of shards of alt-fire reduced from 12 to 9
  - The spread of alt-fire shards reduced by 20%
  - Default fire horizontal recoil reduced by 30%
  - Alt-fire vertical recoil increased by 50%
- Dual 9mm
  - Some perk skills compatibility were reactivated for this weapon:
    - SWAT's Tactical Movement
    - SWAT's Suppression Rounds
    - SWAT's Rapid Assault
    - SWAT's Tactical Reload
    - Support's Tactical Reload
    - Sharpshooter's Tactical Reload
    - Demolitionist's Tactical Reload
    - Commando's Tactical Reload
    - Commando's Prepared
    - Commando's Machine Gunner and Tactician
Perks
- Berserker
  - Dreadnaught
    - Total Health bonus increased from 75% to 100%.
  - Resistance
    - Resistance to all damage increased from 20% to 25%.
    - Additional resistance to Poison and Sonic damage increased from 20% to 25%.
- Field Medic
  - Resilience
    - Max amount of resistance increased from 50% to 70%.
- Sharpshooter
  - ZED TIME - Ranger
    - Updated the way this perk skill applies the stun, to be more consistent. Now every shoot of any perk weapon will stun any Zed.

Designer Notes :
Regarding the dosh balance, we had some community feedback about the dosh that the player receives when joining a game in progress as not being enough to play at parity with the other players. We don’t want to be very punishing in these situations, so we scaled up the amount of dosh received depending on the current wave.

We included the medic buffs icons in the HUD as another usual community feedback. The adjustment goal is to make it easier to recognize that you have been buffed and what boosts you count with.

Some servers use kick/ban functionalities from the WebAdmin. We understand that this can harm the experience for some players, but is not a problem for others. The No Local Admin filter has been added in order to let the players choose if they prefer to include these servers in the Server Browser List or not.

The SA80 L85A2 Bullpup was almost in a good spot for a tier 2 commando weapon. However, we thought it deserved a slight boost. Mainly, we reduced its weight from 6 to 5 to allow more weapon loadout combinations, especially with some very heavy weapons of the commando arsenal. We also made some minor adjustments in the damage output, starting ammunition and magazine dosh cost.

We made the Freezethrower adjustments focusing on improving its performance and viability. First, we updated the damage type of the ice shards from Freeze to Ballistic_Shotgun, so now it will be affected by the vulnerabilities and resistances of the different Zeds in the same way other shotguns are. We also tried to make the shots more powerful and predictable, adjusting the damage per shard, the number of shards, the spread, and the recoil. Finally, the rate of fire and minimum ammo consumption of the default fire mode was adjusted in the same way we recently did with the HRG Healthrower, so the ammo should last long while still dealing an appropriate amount of damage.

Some compatibilities of various perks were reactivated to work with the Dual 9mm. This was a community request that we can agree with, regarding the Dual version of this weapon is able to be used by all perks. So now it will benefit from those perk skills as other specific perk weapons.

We boosted some Berserker skills that were not performing as well as their counterpart. Dreadnaught and Resistance received a slight push up in their bonus values, we hope that enough to encourage more players to choose it over Skirmisher or Parry, but without outclassing them.

We also tuned up the bonus of the Field Medic Resilience skill, boosting the endurance of the medics that prefer a more offensive build.

Finally, we adjusted the way Sharpshooter’s ZED TIME- Ranger skill applies the stun to be more consistent. Before it was just increasing the stunning power of the weapon by a multiplicator, leading to some situations where the stun was not applied because the base stun rate was low or even zero. Now every shot independently of the base stun rate of the weapon should stun the Zeds.

Bug Fixes
Also mentioned in the 2020 Killing Floor 2 ‘State of the Game’ our goal is to bring to the community a continued stream of community-reported bug fixes for each update throughout the year. Please continue to report any bugs you discover by visiting our official forums at: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/forum/killing-floor-2 and posting in the ‘PC’ or ‘Console’ sections.

Top Community Issues:

Fixed an issue where the Elysium map defaulted into Endless Mode on Linux servers instead of survival.
Fixed an issue where spray actor weapons (Flamethrower, Microwave Gun, etc.) did not impact the heads of large zeds such as Fleshpounds and Scrakes.
Work was done to improve connectivity for EGS players to servers based in Singapore. Code was put into place to better the error handling and cleanup around stopped/failed auth requests.

Perks:

Fixed an issue where the Rack ‘Em Up skill did not work on the Matriarch’s 3rd phase in some cases.
Fixed an issue with Survivalist skills where any interaction with Zed Time would spam the user’s log per tick or use of the skills.
Updated the descriptions of the Medic skills Adrenaline Shot, Focus Injection, and Coagulant Booster to accurately reflect the usage of the skills.

Maps:

Elysium:
- Fixed multiple instances where Spectators were able to reach non-playable zones.
- Fixed an issue where the toxin streams, black holes, and emergence of terrain features have no SFX.
- Desert
  - Fixed multiple pathing issues for Zeds throughout the area.
  - Fixed multiple areas where users could get to areas or onto terrain features where Zeds were unable to follow.
  - Fixed issues with the sand textures that showed them as very angular shapes.
  - Fixed an issue where dropped weapons and dosh would disappear under the sand textures.
  - Fixed an issue where weapons would bounce far away from players when dropped.
  - Fixed an issue where the player was forced to crouch in 3rd person while walking up sand dunes.
  - Fixed an issue where players would automatically jump when the users approach the rocks and trees within the area.
- Swamp
  - Fixed multiple pathing issues for Zeds throughout the area.
  - Fixed multiple areas where users could get to areas or onto terrain features where Zeds were unable to follow.
  - Fixed the collision on multiple barrels in the area.
- Castle
  - Fixed multiple pathing issues for Zeds throughout the area.
  - Fixed multiple areas where users could get to areas or onto terrain features where Zeds were unable to follow.
  - Fixed the collision on the main gate where the player is able to clip into it.
  - Fixed an issue where the user is able to see through the geometry of the map in some instances.
- Forest
  - Fixed multiple pathing issues for Zeds throughout the area.
  - Fixed multiple areas where users could get to areas or onto terrain features where Zeds were unable to follow.
  - Fixed an issue where the collision is various tables and environmental objects are pushing back the player as they approach it.
  - Fixed an issue where the player is able to climb the fences without jumping.
- Loremaster Sanctum
  - Fixed multiple pathing issues for Zeds throughout the area.
- Space
  - Fixed multiple pathing issues for Zeds throughout the area.
  - Fixed an issue where there are no ice traps under the spheres in the area.
- Botanica
  - Fixed multiple pathing issues for Zeds throughout the area.
  - Fixed multiple areas where users could get to areas or onto terrain features where Zeds were unable to follow.
  - Fixed an issue where players would automatically jump when the users approach the barrels and sacks within the area.
- Main Area
  - Fixed multiple pathing issues for Zeds throughout the area.
  - Fixed multiple areas where users could get to areas or onto terrain features where Zeds were unable to follow.
  - Fixed an issue where some environmental objects floated above the ground.

Weapons:

Fixed an issue with the HRG Scorcher that would drop the overall frame rate when shooting dynamic objects.
Updated the impact sound of the HX25 grenade pellets to the correct sound.
Fixed an issue where switching weapons after trying to reload the Doomstick without any reserve ammo would force the weapon switched to fire automatically.
Fixed an issue with the Min Reconstructor projectiles where they would become stuck in some objects.
Fixed an issue with the Pulverizer reload animation that caused a desync of the animation in 3rd person.

Store:

Updated the icon for the Neon MK III Bronze Bundle to reflect the accurate number of USBs contained therein.

Audio:

Fixed an issue with the VoIP icon where it would not appear when a user that had reset their audio options would speak.

Localization:

Changed the Brazilian Portuguese text string for the Dual HRG Buckshots in the trader pod to fit within the text box.
Changed the Spanish text string for the Medic Zedative skill description to fit within the text box.
Fixed multiple Spanish, Polish, and Brazilian Portuguese text strings in the store to fit within the text box.

Console:

Fixed an issue on console where Dosh Vault crates were not being added into the user’s inventory.
Fixed an issue on console where in some cases where a large number of Dosh Vault crates were being awarded to the user.
Fixed an issue on consoles where black artifacts and striping would appear throughout all areas of the map when sprinting in Elysium.

As always, thank you for your continued support!