Hey everyone,
I’ll run down some things that should be changed in my opinion and give some ideas or directions where to go at. I’ll say it again, if you like it or not, it’s my opinion. It doesn’t mean I’ll be 100% correct on everything, nor would i ever claim to be. This is just what I think would go a long way.
Plus I have to mention, I do NOT remember any Predator related lore. I watched maybe 2 movies and don’t really remember them, so don’t expect lore considerations.
Just for base information, I have played Fireteam only from level 1 to 100 and played almost exclusively Predator since, so I would argue that I have gotten reasonably experienced on both sides.
I’ll start with Fireteam (FT) changes.
-
Weapon sway, at least for snipers.
It’s a little too easy to stay on target in general. The recoil mechanics seems pretty well done on the RP-103 for example. Since recoil doesn’t really matter for snipers, especially because you stay on target even after shooting, if you don’t move your crosshair.
That said, at that point, console player might need a helping hand for aiming, just a bit.
I honestly believe they do already, considering how fast paced the game is already. -
Stamina Increase by 3-4 times. Reduce stamina regeneration to 25-30%.
Punish Stamina exhaustion harder.
FT stamina management is currently nonexistent, especially because you don’t really get punished for exhausting your entire stamina bar. I also think the bar empties too quickly and regenerates too fast.
I personally would like if the stamina lasts for a lot longer sprints and more jumps/parries, but if you keep running around, for example because you keep hunting the predator and run out of stamina, you should enter an exhaustion state for about 5-10 seconds, not being able to sprint, make a ton of noise from breathing heavily, jump half as high, but more importantly not being able to parry at all. It gives more incentive to actually pay attention to your stamina and manage it well while positioning correctly. It gives the predator one more thing to capitalize on. -
Reduce world med kit and ammo crate uses.
Okay so, before you all go “REEEE how do we survive”, hold on.
I’ll have some recommended changes on the predator side that will supplement this change.
I really think spawned med kits should only have one use and ammo crates two. This change shouldn’t affect low-level play much, it will probably start from mid- to high-level play, Too much free heal makes it already really hard on an even playfield as long FT is aware they exist. I know you can destroy them as Predator, but that really isn’t feasible considering on how much time pressure the predator already is, since mission are done pretty fast. -
Change Reinforcement mechanic.
So the reason why I really don’t like the current reinforcement mechanic is mostly based on the fact that people somewhat get forced to spectate people play the game, while expecting to get to play later in the round.
A fair amount of times it ends up people not reinforcing, may it because they don’t know or because they want to maximize the value and want to wait until 1 or 2 more members die or because the team gets rolled by the predator 5 minutes later. I even had rounds where I kept spectating and people literally never reinforced and did the objective, called the chopper and left.
I would maybe recommend something like giving FT 1, 2 or 3 “lives” so to speak they can use manually once they are dead, so they get reinforced at a spawn after like 20-30 seconds or something similar. You could even spawn multiple reinforcement radios per map and let FT choose or let it always be the farthest or closest to the rest of FT or objective. That guarantees they will be able to keep playing, it adds a bit more strategy for both FT and predator and doesn’t leave games as a stomp for better predators.
Okay next I have some Predator changes:
-
Remove the fast claim and slightly increase downed FT timers/health.
I really believe that fast claiming should not be a thing and that this change would only really affect low-level play. At mid-level play, you will sometimes get away with it, if you get to fast claim around a corner, but you will be punished if not killed most of the time. I hope we all agree that on high-level play, the predator gets killed fast claiming 9 out of 10 times and the 10th time at least gets punished really hard. Which is why it will almost exclusively affect low-level casual play. They likely won’t be in position to punish, nor will they have good enough aim to punish, even if they could in most cases.
It will teach predators not to claim in front of 3 other people expecting to survive it.
I really love the long claim and it’s cinematic on the fireteam side is fun and I even do it every now and then mid game, if the team left someone behind, which is in my opinion the only time you should claim anyway, aside from the very last kills of course.
The slight buff to downed FT members is mostly to make it more easy to punish low level predators that go for easy kills once again. It is indeed a buff to high level FT, but I think that especially reducing world med kit effectiveness helps countering a bit.
This would also “nerf” the noob stomper berserker run in, down, fast claim, jump away strat that a lot of people seem to complain about on the forum. “nerf”, because, as mentioned, I don’t think predators should or even would lorewise claim, when they would be in danger of gunfire and it really doesn’t make him weaker either, if anything, fewer berserkers will probably insta die to a lot of teams punishing those. -
Improved Weapon selection and switching for Predator.
I think that all people that ever tried playing predator will agree that the weapon selection is pretty bad for the pace this game has. The current wheel is really just made for controller players and I have even heard those complain about specifically the top 2 slots, which are in an active fight, literally the most important to access fast.
I also think you should be able to “queue” weapon selection midair. I don’t think you should be able to start switching physically midair, but it should at least give us the option to pull the wheel up and select a weapon to change to upon landing.
I’m not sure if weapon switching in general should be speed up a bit too, but that is something that could be tested after improving general input.
I also don’t think I really have to mention the obvious solution hotkey customization, which I have done now anyway. -
Improve Predator leap mechanics.
I had something in mind like, lose collision the first half second of the leap (EXCLUDING: Buildings, Fences, Tree trunks). No collision with branches along the entire leap.
This should remove annoying cases where a soldier ate too many cookies and left a pile of crumbles on the ground that you faceplant instantly into when trying to leap and redirecting it to somewhere way unexpected or just terrible in general, making you an easy target for FT (predator is an easy target leaping as is, no reason to make it worse).
I also mention branches, because those are really hard to see/predict with the current camera angle the predator has. -
Melee swing lock on.
I think this should be something that you can turn on and off in the options.
It really needs to be improved aswell. I think in almost all cases FT just backing up, makes you miss the 3rd swing. So I really think that either the hit box for said swings needs to be adjusted or the lock on improved. -
Fix Predator stamina issues.
I don’t actually know if it is an Intended mechanic or not, but from what I’ve heard, seen and experienced, it seems very much like a bug and not intended at all.
Sometimes as predator, you’ll enter a state of extremely low stamina regeneration, leaving you with no ability to leap or even sprint, which just leads to 0 combat capabilities, which also continues, even if you hit second wind, so you can’t even fix it, since you can’t change weapons or swing in that state.
GiantChiprel and I have been trying to figure out how it works, how it’s reproducible and even more important fixable.
I personally thought for a bit that eating Pigs would fix it, which made it seem like an intended mechanic, but according to GiantChiprel swinging a melee weapon or spamming Q (weapon switch) and Left mouse button (Attack button) fixes it and it’s caused by being attacked while throwing the combistaff or melee attacking in general.
With this info it makes sense that I thought eating pigs would fix it, since you actually melee swing at them to kill them in most cases.
But yeah, this needs to be adressed fast, since it actually kills a good amount of games. -
Crosshair accuracy.
Not sure if intended or not, but the crosshair accuracy seems pretty poor, even after the patch and i think the accuracy should at least be increase, if the inaccuracy is intended.
Now I have one more last thing which is the Mission timer.
I honestly think it should be removed/replaced or at least increased. Sure people will abuse it, but you can take actions against such situations other than just ending the game. Increase AI spawn around the FT, making it harder for them to withstand, creating loud noise, so they can’t just hide or just plainly reveal them to the predator permanently (red squares you get from scanning them with thermal vision).
There’s many things that can be done differently. I’m personally just sad that actually a reasonable amount of my predator games go to time because I’m not a fan of claiming and killing downed people.
I appreciate you guys taking your time to read all these huge wall of text’ and I hope this might actually help towards improving the experience of all players.
Good luck hunting everyone!
Cheers,
SaDOution