It’s been just over a year since Tripwire Interactive launched Killing Floor 2 as an early access game on Steam. Since then, the game has seen the addition of several new classes, a new boss, and even a brand new PvP (player vs. player) game mode, in which players can take on the role of the regular Zed exterminators or of the Zeds themselves. But there was one feature that many fans of the original Killing Floor felt that the game lacked: the Sharpshooter perk, whose role is to pop the heads of offending mutants with precision-based weaponry.
Rest assured, Sharpie players. Tripwire has revealed small snippets of the upcoming Sharpshooter perk in the form of sneak previews over the past few months. Today, Tripwire Community Manager Yoshiro made post that gives us another preview at what lies in store for the Sharpshooter.
The first among these reveals is the M14 EBR, a Tier 3 Rifle that features a scope. This semi-atuomatic weapon was featured in the first Killing Floor as a more versatile alternative to the Crossbow. While the Crossbow specialized in slow-firing, massive headshot damage, the M14 possessed a much faster firing rate and a laser sight for hip firing, which made it more flexible against crowds of weaker enemies. The scope is a new addition to the M14 in Killing Floor, though, so there’s no saying how this weapon has been changed for its second iteration.
The second reveal is the much-anticipated grenade for the Sharpshooter: the Liquid Nitrogen Freeze Grenade. This throwable boasts the ability to literally freeze Zeds in their tracks, which will make them ripe for easy headshots or for a quick escape. It’s unknown if Zeds are instantly frozen, and if powerful Zeds like Scrakes or Fleshpounds will possess some kind of resistance or immunity to the freeze effect.
The Sharpshooter’s Tier 4 weapon, Yoshiro promises us, is a Railgun. He didn’t post an image of it on the blog post, but he hopes to have footage of it and some of the other Sharpshooter weapons uploaded soon.
Tripwire will announce more details on the Sharpshooter class – including its release date – at E3 this year.
Yoshiro also discussed three potential balance changes coming soon to Killing Floor 2.
The first change is to the ammo system. This includes tweaks to starting ammo capacity for each weapon, total mag count and ammo pricing. Currently, players spawn with few mags for their Tier 1 weapons. With the planned changes, players will potentially start with more mags for their starter weapons, while starting with less for their higher-tier weapons. Ammo prices will likely be adjusted to fit this new ammo economy.
The Incapacitation system will also be revamped. The current incap system is binary: Zeds will be stumbled, panicked, or stunned if the weapon that caused the effect has an incap value that surpasses that of the targeted Zed. The new incap system will be much more dynamic. Individual weapons will stack incap points on the targeted Zed with each shot, and then will fall off if the damage stops or if the incap triggers. Think of this system like a stun meter in a fighting game, where players are stunned if thy incur enough stun points, which are attached to moves as values separate from damage points. The incap rework is intended to make for more interesting games, and will prevent players from enacting stale gameplay by incurring guaranteed stuns on groups of weak enemies.
The last change is rather vague. It deals with enemy resistances to certain types of gunfire and other offensive sources. The goal is to diversify the Perk System by making certain types of weaponry effective against certain kinds of Zeds. It should be noted that this system is already somewhat present in the current game; Bloats are weak to fire damage, while Fleshpounds are weak to explosive damage. Though Yoshiro stated that there are no specifics on this new system, he will update fans as the change is ironed out.
Note that these changes may take several updates to complete, and may not be released in the very near future.
With E3 drawing nearer, the next few months should be an exciting time for Killing Floor 2 fans. Stay tuned for more updates on the Sharpshooter perk in the coming weeks.