This is just a rough draft of ideas for human skills and specific zombie classes designed to counter said skills.  It's probably super unbalanced and has not been put into practice



What I'm suggesting is a skill tree system that's a hybrid of PAYDAY 2 and Killing Floor.  Similar to PAYDAY 2, the base gameplay at lvl0 would be the "default" state of human skills with no added buffs. The player can then opt into certain skills after they progress further into the game.


The problem with PAYDAY 2 though, is that it can be very confusing for new players to try and align every skill with eachother properly through a slow and steady progression without proper understanding of the games mechanics.  The class-based approach of Killing Floor, however, simplifies the players choice in certain skills and playstyles to avoid balance issues, and avoids players becoming confused on what skills would go best with others.


What I would propose is a system where players can fine-tune their skills to whatever playstyle they want, but ultimately the buffs and debuffs will weight out to create a proper class or "sub-class".  Ultimately, it would be best for the player to follow the "meta" for each class.


This makes it easier for new players to understand how the skills work together, and gives veteran players a challenge by allowing them to create unique sub-classes.

Buffs: +
Debuffs: -

Human Classes:

- Beserker: Massively increased self-sustainability at the cost of minimal long-range abilities and lack of team support.

	+ Increased damage with melee weapons
	+ high focus on skill-based movement and increased agility
	+ Can buy weapons without arsenal crate
	+ Zombies have a chance of dropping health on death
	- reduced healing from medics
	- less ammo from ammo resupply
	- cannot buy weapons from arsenal crate
	- cannot buy ammo

- Support: Making support somewhat vulnerable, more valuable to medics, and slow, would hopefully motivate players to work together to keep the cader alive.

	+ Spawn with more nails
	+ Cheaper nails
	+ Increased barricade healing capacity
	+ slightly more healing from medics (medics will get more points for healing support)
	+ Increased point return for ammo resupply
	- Decreased movement speed
	- Increased damage vulnerability
	- increased duration of debuffs (bleed, poison, etc.)
	- overall lower damage output compared to damage focused classes

- Medic: High movement speed and health at the cost of minimal damage and low self-sustainability.

	+ extra healing power
	+ extra starting medkit ammo
	+ Increased Movement speed
	+ Increased Damage Resistance
	+ ammo resupply regenerates a portion of health
	- low damage
	- extra medical ammo consumed when healing self


- Survivalist: Main power class.  Requires medic to be effective

	+ Increased damage with shotguns
	+ extra starting ammo
	+ more ammo from ammo resupply
	+ Zombies have a 50% chance of dropping ammo boxes on death
	- less ammo and health received from arsenal crate
	- Increased duration of debuffs
	- reduced self-healing with medkits

- Engineer: Teamwork without the pressure of being a medic, good for helping the team and dealing damage at the cost of low self-sustainability

	+ Increased damage with SMGs and explosives
	+ Your resupply boxes give more ammo
	+ Your resupply boxes give a very small portion of health
	+ cheaper explosive weapons
	- Increased duration of debuffs
	- Increased damage vulnerability


Zombie Classes: Very boring and basically 3.0.  Zombine is the only one that's interesting.

Normal Zombie:

	- Counters: Support, Medic, Beserker
	- Weakness: Engineer, Survivalist

	- slightly slower than humans, can still catch humans if several are coordinated
	- can launch props at humans (propkilling)
	- average damage
	- average health

Fast Zombie:

	- Counters: Medic, Beserker
	- Weakness: Engineer, Survivalist, Support

	- pounce, stun humans on impact
	- moves considerably faster than humans.
	- low health
	- reach high areas
	- low dmg, fast attack
	- very powerful in numbers

Poison Zombie:

	- Counters: Survivalist, Support, Medic
	- Weakness: Beserker, Engineer

	+ lots of health and bullet resistance, bullet sponge.
	+ Long-range poison attack.
	+ High Damage
	+ Secondary attack: activates an AoE buff that boosts other zombies movement speed and damage vulnerability.  Long cooldown
	- slow movement speed
	- Increased vulnerability to melee damage
	- slow attack speed

Zombine:

	- Counters: Engineer, Survivalist, Support, Medic
	- Weakness: Beserker

	- After health is depleted to 70% of its total value, zombines will "enrage", increasing movement speed and attack speed dramatically

	- Very high bullet and explosive damage resistance before first 30% of health is depleted, minimal damage resistance after zombine enrages

	- Medium to High damage output primary attack, very high damage suicide bomb secondary attack

	- explosive secondary attack has a cook time before explosion

	- Serves similar purpose to Chem Zombie in 3.0, but with more versatility

	- no resistance to melee damage