I’d say just redo the way classes are and make all DLC skins just skins that fall within the default classes I.e JH as a hunter, Cleo as berserker, Wolf as scout, etc.
Balance 3 unique diverse classes with strengths and weaknesses, weapon restrictions instead of stat changing all the DLC to make them either P2W or P2L. This should apply to FT as well.
Also add new gear and weapons for both sides.
The Axe will get you maybe 2 downs or 1 claim before you’re put into 2nd Wind.
The Hammer is the Axe but worse so probably can’t even do that.
The Pistol is fine, its basically just the bow without a charge now but reinforces the same META of “Stay away and play range.”
Melee Combat tracking improvements have had no noticable difference on the flow of matches because Melee just does not work against good players/Premades to begin with, this was a meaningless change.
The Hook suffers from the same problem as every other melee option in that FT has superior DPS in melee range, due to weapons like the 1011.
The Disk is not a reliable weapon above 80 ping, which most Quick Play matches are played at, and stacking Down Range with Analytic or Stalker often requires you to abandon something else which is more useful like Medic.
Pig Spawns happen mostly around FT, making them super unsafe. Before the Cancel bug was fixed, they were a death trap. Now they’re slightly less risky but still not something that will save you: what you should be relying upon is Large Pouch. Which basically every build is forced into taking right now.
The Caster like every Pred weapon is Projectile, not Hitscan. FT have higher DPS and can land said damage more easily.
Buffing Melee hasn’t changed anything because the underlying problem with the game is that FT’s individual DPS is too high, and when combined together makes any team that can aim unapproachable within 20 metres: ergo Melee is suicide and the Predator is forced into playing Range, which is also a field they are still on the backfoot in due to FT having Hitscan whilst Predator is subject to Projectile weaponry which has travel time & can be affected by Ping. If you put two equally matched players up against one another, the FT player with the SAWZ will win against the Caster Pred majority of the time due to these factors.
What needs to be buffed is Health, every Predator class needs roughly 500 more HP across the board for starters. And then changes to passives need to be introduced as well. The noise that a Predator makes also needs to be reduced, as Pepe has said.
Now in a perfect world, ALL of FT’s weapons would be made Projectile as well: but unfortunately the lead gameplay dev for this game is a Counterstrike Fanboy. So we are in the darkest timeline.
Point is Melee does not work against good players and no amount of changes to tracking or scaling damage up on said weapons will change the outcome of the matches so long as FT is able to win the DPS race 1 on 1 in CQC.
So long as the game is balanced around 1v1 and a single player can solo any engagement without the need for help from their team, then the majority of Predator weapons will remain bad due to their melee nature. Don’t believe me? Here’s the statistically worst FT class in the game winning a melee engagement with the commonly agreed upon best Predator who is using the Axe. With zero help from anybody else on the team.
I agree with many things you said, but i will say this again: the balance on this game can not be figured out by putting up top tier premade Fireteam players on the equation. In any co-op game, top tier players will always be that and extremely hard to beat them. The balance line must be drawn with what you get on public matches with random players.
If you put top tier FT vs a top tier Pred, both sides will win matches more or less equally.
Also, on that video, despite Isabelle is the overall worst class, she is the best melee fighter as Dutch87 and i think that’s not the best example, cause that was a huge mistake made by that Pred, trying to spam melee brute force. An average Pred (like me for example) would never do that. And even if you wanna play dumb like that, there’s the Brute specialization.
Bottom line, and forgetting buffs and nerfs, this game’s gameplay punishes the Predator a lot as long as he is almost not allowed to commit a single mistake and, like i said before, the Pred depends a lot it’s perks and specializations to deal damage. ATM this game it’s not about hunting but about who deals the most damage faster. Longer missions, pig spawning on random locations and further from the FT and maybe an imcrese of the Pred equipment will be enough to aid the Predator…
I made a huge feedback thread last year about all this and more. It all still rings true, because we’ve been playing with the same META for a year and a half now.
Every Pred needs roughly 500 more HP.
Both sides need new perks.
The amount of noise the Preds make has to be toned down, let it scale with the Classes. The heavies like Viking & Zerk can make the noise they do now, but the smaller ones like Scout, Valk, Exile etc should all be super hard to pinpoint via sound in comparison. Hunter and such should be somewhere inbetween.
Missions do have to take longer, the vast majority can be completed in 3 minutes. 3 minutes into a 15 minute match and FT can just up & leave, unacceptable.
Pigs have to have spawns based on the map, not where the FT is currently located.
We need more gear. We need Explosive Mines; Shurikans to throw like Batarangs, Nooses to trap FT by hanging them from Tree Branches, Smoke Grenades should be taken away from FT and given to Pred they literally have no affect on the AI and only hinder the team that uses them anyway. The list goes on.
IDEALLY, Fireteam’s guns should all be made Projectile based just like the Prototype & NRV-E and most importantly EVERY Predator weapon.
These are all suggestions, just a few of many that have been made as far back as October.
I know this ain’t your fault for thinking this but I really hate how people think the balance should be centered around the top tier players and not the simple fact that the weapons themselves mathematically is overpowered, making the overall power level of Fireteam objectively on their side. Its like this right:
Yeah, any random Fireteam player with decent aim can make great pain on a Predator. Problem is if a random Fireteam player can cause that much damage despite such a low skill level, you know it isn’t fair when top tiers come into play. Which in turn falls into this situation:
It feels like people don’t realize when people have fun or like a game, they tend to get better on it overall so the skill level of players can go up, thus making the OP weapons used to carry and hand hold bad players will simply be easy wins for players once they get the handle of such situations. When this happens, the balance will be seen more bluntly then ever that the balance will be greatly on the side of Fireteam. Power creep gotta be avoided so the balance has to be scaled yet again to make the game more diverse in gameplay and fun for both sides instead of the constant stomp on random Fireteam players and meta Fireteam death squads getting easy wins on Predators on any skill level.
You are right. Idk why everyone here is saying git gud.
Just go balls deep plasma.
“But that’s unfair/takes no skill” they say.
