The topic where it was supposed to be: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/index.php?threads/qol-improvements.2344740/

That comment has been awaiting a moderator's approval for nearly a week at this point. TWI moderators refuse to make it visible for unexplained reasons.

---

A solid list of suggestions. I appreciate that you have requested a better mouse sensitivity input method. An editable text box next to the sensitivity slider is one of the most basic things any FPS/TPS game should have, and it should let you input digits after the decimal point, too. KF 3 is not the only game that has this problem. Come to think of it, games developed in the 1990s and 2000s got it right, but some of the modern titles are missing such an important feature. As it pertains to the Killing Floor series, the in-game settings have never been truly good. You'd always have to edit a configuration file to get exactly the value you wanted, but, from what I know, KF 3 took that away, at least for online sessions.

1. KF 1 has a text box permitting 5 digits. It doesn't matter where the decimal point is, but the total number of digits cannot be higher than 5. The lowest allowed value in the interface is 0.25, which is approximately [130.1 cm / 360°] at 400 DPI, [65.1 cm / 360°] at 800 DPI, and [32.5 cm / 360°] at 1600 DPI. Obviously, this is not optimal, but editing the "User.ini" file is a workaround because it lets you bypass the UI limitation.

2. KF 2 has a slider without a text box. The slider movements aren't smooth even at 400 DPI, so each time you readjust the sensitivity, you get a slightly different one than before. The lowest allowed value, 1, is approximately [104 cm / 360°] at 1600 DPI and [52 cm / 360°] at 3200 DPI. It's definitely better to have these low limits than KF 1's (and it's natural, because mice evolved before the release of KF 2), but still not ideal for high DPI users. At least the sensitivity value is editable in the "KFInput.ini" file.

3. I haven't played KF 3 myself, but if we trust the data from mouse-sensitivity.com, the lowest allowed by the slider, 0, is approximately [16.3 cm / 360°] at 3200 DPI, [32.7 cm / 360°] at 1600 DPI, [65.3 cm / 360°] at 800 DPI, and [130.6 cm / 360°] at 400 DPI. Judging from what I've read on the forums, there is a config file that can be edited, but the value set there only persists in offline play. If the game is played online, the value gets overwritten with the value saved in the cloud. This is bad, and the settings have quite literally gone back in time and are worse than in KF 1. Players shouldn't have to reduce the mouse DPI to get their desired sensitivity. They shouldn't have to deal with an imprecise slider. They should be able to set a value as low as 90 cm / 360° at 3200 DPI, and the adjustments should allow steps of at least 0.1 cm / 360°. That might not be possible to achieve with a universal slider, but an editable text box and a value from a configuration file that gets saved will definitely solve the problem.

> 8. **Custom crosshair options**: cross, dot, color customization.

That's a good point, too. KF 1 doesn't have these options because it simply doesn't have a crosshair. That's the way it was meant to be played. KF 2 and KF 3 have a crosshair, so it's better to make it customizable. For many people, it's a matter of convenience. However, it is also an accessibility problem for others. I know a KF player who has trouble seeing the red color but sees green well. In addition to that, a customizable laser sight color would be good, too.

Tripwire Interactive, the developer and publisher of Killing Floor titles, uses the XenForo engine for the forums located on their official website. There is one important thing that you should be aware of. Even if you don't use TWI's official website, you may come across the same problem on any other forum based on XenForo.

XenForo has a feature called "Discouragement" that is available in the admin panel. Here is how it works, according to XenForo documentation

---

XenForo Administrator's Manual | Users > Discipline > Discouragement

Discouraging aims to make using the site slow and painful for a problematic user, such that they eventually give up and leave. According to the system configuration, each time a user subject to discouragement attempts to load a page, there is a chance that it will fail to load, a change that it will result in a blank page, a change that it will take a very long time to complete etc.

Discouraged users are not made aware that they are subject to this special treatment.

A user can be discouraged by editing the user in the control panel and enabling the Discouraged option. The behavior of the discouragement system can be controlled by options in the User discouragement and discipline group.

Alternatively, specific IP ranges can be discouraged. This helps ensure that the behavior is maintained even when the targeted user is not logged in.

---

I have a strong suspicion that a TWI-appointed moderator with an "administrator" status in their XenForo system has applied that "discouraged" state to my account recently. It, or at least the worst stage of it, started after these 2 events:

1. My comments about DDoS attacks in KF 1 were removed for the second time. They were not approved during the pre-moderation stage, to be exact. No explanation during the first try, and no explanation during the second try.
2. I created a support ticket to ask why my comments about DDoS in KF 1 were getting removed, why my other unrelated comment in a KF 3 discussion wouldn't get approved, and why I suddenly found myself unable to view profiles of other users.

After sending that support request (to which I have still received no response), I noticed that official TWI forums started acting up for me while I was logged in. Sometimes, what used to load quickly before would take much longer to load. Other times, the pages wouldn't load at all (a blank page would be shown instead). There were cases when trying to click on a forum topic would result in a long loading sequence that would fail with an error message. I could not use even the basic "settings" functionality of my profile. When I log out, everything suddenly becomes fine again, as if a switch gets flipped.

When this "discouragement" feature of XenForo was applied to another user on a different forum (not related to TWI or the products of this company), this is how that user described it:

> They did that to me over New Years one year. When I tried explaining it to people I was told it was internet problems. No one believed they could do that.

Admins of XenForo-based forums can totally do that, and this is what it looks like. Here is a topic from the XenForo website with a screenshot.

Here is a screenshot shared by a forum admin of a third-party website.

Ain't that a good feature? Spreading awareness about DDoS attacks that ruin matches and sharing possible solutions must be such inexcusable "trolling" that I should go and "troll" some other site, right? I shouldn't comment on the lackluster mouse sensitivity settings and support it when other users encourage developers to improve that aspect in KF 3, should I? I shouldn't be saying that people with vision problems will appreciate customizable crosshair and laser color, either, I guess. /S

It's not like there are KF players from China, Russia, Belarus, Iran, Vietnam, Indonesia, and other countries where the population is already bothered by connection problems created by their government, right? Why confuse them even more and create extra obstacles for them? Why confuse people from various other territories who may simply not have a good Internet connection and may blame their ISP for that?

Pathetic, disgusting, disrespectful to the userbase, and completely inexcusable. It is quite likely that they started to use the "Double Counter" bot in their official Discord server for similar reasons (I don't believe that the officially stated "bot problem" is the most important factor). The same reasons why they pre-moderate your first few comments, despite their forums not seeing such a huge volume of activity to mandate that constant pre-moderation. The same reason why they keep those who don't own KF 3 and KF 2 out of their Steam forums. It's about censorship, not safety. If they don't happen to like you, they'll find a reason to silence you, no matter how nonsensical it is.

Just to clarify, I am not banned from the forums on TWI's official website (at least yet), but I cannot really use them if I stick to that account or this online identity there. That's because there is nothing to ban me for and no good reason to remove my posts, but they still don't want me to participate there. It's hard for them to latch onto their already existing autocratic rules at this point.

"We pride ourselves on offering unbiased, critical discussion among people of all different backgrounds. We are working every day to make sure our community is one of the best," they said. "If you have any questions, reach out to us," they said.

---

I will conclude this post by stating that XenForo is not the only forum software that has this feature. vBulletin has "Miserable Users" and "Tachy goes to Coventry" (or simply "Coventry"). The former functionality is similar to XenForo's "discouragement." The latter is similar to Reddit's "spam filter" and "shadowban" systems, where you can see your posts while you are logged in and everything appears fine to you, but if you log out, you realize that your posts have got hidden and/or your account is already in a "restricted" state. It's easy to see how such features would get abused. Here's what an admin who watched the struggles of a "miserable user" had to say on that matter:

> I actually once tracked a miserable user and watched him suffer for 2 whole hours before he was able to make a simple post. This hack is considered one of the most sadistic hacks on my board.

If you are a forum admin who doesn't hate his userbase and for whom "ethics" is not a blank word, you should be looking to impose a moratorium on such features. If you are a forum software developer, give admins of your forum software an option to disable it entirely or, even better, do not introduce such a feature at all.

> I guess that's from the "Passive-Aggressive" section of the Xenforo User Manual? Jeebus. I can't believe that functionality even exists, and that other forums actually use it. Just boot the ****ing poster if you don't want them around anymore.

> yes and no..... if that member is paying for a membership, u can **** with them and still cash their payments

The topic where they were supposed to be: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/index.php?threads/killing-floor-1-ddos-issue.2344665/#post-2375563

TWI moderators refused to let these comments pass and deleted them for unexplained reasons.

---

Comment 1

In February of 2026, a few days before this topic was posted, a KF 1 server admin confirmed that the DDoS attacks switched to a reflection-based amplification model. DDoS attacks used to happen in KF 1 before, too, but they were of a different type and were not as frequent. There were easy solutions to them. It appears that the current type of DDoS attacks resembles the DDoS attacks plaguing Killing Floor 2 servers in 2021-2024. This is what it means:

• A KF 1 game server becomes a node in a botnet rather than the final destination of the attack. The targets are something else. The game server is a means of generating garbage traffic that is meant to reach the targets.
• The malicious traffic becomes outbound. This is why some KF 2 server admins were reporting that their hosting provider shut down their servers for malicious activity.
• Even outbound traffic in large volumes can cause lags for people playing on the server or take the whole server down. Yes, it's DDoS, not necessarily a sign of the server's misconfiguration which caused that flood to happen.
• Shutting down unnecessary ports will not work, as this type of attack relies on the ports necessary for the server to function.

As it happened in KF 2, attackers are periodically tweaking their strategies and rediscovering the server's ports in case they are moved.

I do not host public servers myself, but I would like to share solutions that helped server admins in both KF 1 and KF 2, so that other admins have at least some possible solutions to try.

---

Here is the most recent solution by Northdaft: https://github.com/0xNorthdaft/AntiDDoS-Firewall-for-KF-servers

It introduced an "ASN banning" feature, and here is an important note from the author on that matter:

> In the rules.v4, you will see that there is an ipset list called asn_ban. This is designed to capture the IPs from once specific ASN. Under the iptables directory, you will find an additional bash script called block-asn-ipset.sh . This will help you capture the IPs used by that specific ASN.

> Use it only if you're certain your attacker is consistently using one or more datacenters to attack your servers.

Here is an older solution by Northdaft, which helped him and another KF 1 server admin: https://pastebin.com/6p90gsqE

However, Northdaft says that it's outdated now because the bad actor is constantly readjusting their attacks. I am leaving it here just for reference.

The solutions listed below helped KF 2 server admins, so there is a chance that they can work when applied to KF 1 servers.

---

Solutions by Baz that make use of whitelisting:

• Post 1
• Post 2

---

Solution by Noodle: drop all packets with a TTL value higher than 240. That was when the malicious packets had such an abnormally high TTL value.

---

KF2-AntiDDoS by GenZmeY. It is said to work on KF 2 Windows servers, too, which is an important detail, as most other solutions are designed for Linux systems. Link: https://github.com/GenZmeY/KF2-AntiDDoS

---

There is more in-depth information on the nature of DDoS attacks that took place in KF 2, but it cannot be referenced on official TWI platforms. If you are willing to discover it on your own, use the following keywords in a search engine like DuckDuckGo or Google:

> killing floor 2 unreal engine 3 dedicated server ddos defense

Some server admins report that changing the "game port" and "query port" values managed to stop the DDoS attacks for a short period of time. However, the attacker eventually rediscovers the ports. If your server is on Windows and none of the suggested solutions work, you can try changing the "game port" and "query port" periodically. The default values are 7707 and 7708. Change them to something else, like 20707 and 20717. If they are rediscovered, change them again. For example, to 32010 and 32020. The downside of that is that the visitors of your server will have to add it to their lists of favorite servers again and again.

---

Comment 2

If you are a server admin, do not hesitate to share solutions that worked for you, both here and in other places, especially the Steam forums, which is the most active discussion board. Even if it's simply an insight into what's happening without a ready-made solution, share it. Only the community can do something about it.

> Is there nothing Tripwire could do to help us with this issue?

> tripwire is doing absolutely nothing to help us solve this issue <...> tripwire can't even give a single reply about the issue it's 2026 and we still have some chud DDOSing servers.

Do not expect anything from Tripwire Interactive. When a TWI community manager was approached with a request to incorporate a KF 1 community patch that fixed several game-breaking exploits, she said that such a patch wouldn't be accepted because there hadn't been a KF 1 team in ages and Tripwire had moved on to newer projects. She added that "some things behind the scenes would be a major ordeal to conquer in order to resume the work on KF 1, and the company is no longer at a point when it is able to."

When KF 2 had a major problem with reflection-based amplification DDoS attacks, the game was maintained and updated. However, the company did nothing to solve the problem until the attacks stopped.

KF 2 servers have had a critical problem with Steam Workshop downloads since last summer. There has been no official solution so far. Only a solution suggested by a community member that substitutes the outdated library files with the ones from SteamCMD.

These days, if there is anyone who could do something about those problems, they are occupied with KF 3. The bottom line is: do not expect anything from TWI. If you want to have a problem solved quickly, do it yourself or ask around. Most importantly, if you find a solution, share it with the community. The survival of the old Killing Floor titles largely depends on the people.

---

EDIT: added horizontal line breaks and bold formatting to improve readability.