So I watched all my old clips from the beta, including my first ever matches, for the first time tonight. And damn. Was I excited to play this game. But it’s also shedding a lot of light on where this game went wrong. In my first ever game, we were hyped watching our guys drop in you can hear me and my friends geeking out at the music and chopper cut scene drop in, all that jazz. Then freaking out when we first see the laser coming from the trees. But by our 5th game or so, you can already hear us saying “I kinda wanna lose one just so we know this game is real” we already were stomping predators within a few matches and losing all fear. And every little thing we take for granted now, I was taken back by then. I dropped down my first med kit and went “wait WTF this heals THE WHOLE TEAM?? And I have MULTIPLE! That’s so OP!” Then we all laugh and carry on. We KNEW ft had op shit from the rip. And they have just continued to receive more and more help. Meanwhile, we were saying, when a predator actually uses all his gear, like the traps, in effective ways it will make the game a lot harder and more interesting(bear traps then got nerfed to the ground) and after my first pred game, I was explaining how it worked to my buddy. I told him I was surprised how many times you had to attack someone with wrist blades to down them, and then on top of that, they can just get back up. It seems so normal to us now but back then it was like, wait. Wat. Then I said to my buddy(keep in mind you could only play hunter in beta) “I guess it’s fine if you’re hunter to have to lay into them, but maybe berserker will be different. If that’s the play style you want you’ll probably have to use him for quick melee downs” and now we all know berserker does a whopping 1hp more per swing lol. Like we all had such high hopes and every little thing surprised us or excited us then. And this was before thick skin got buffed and combi got nerfed and all that nonsense. Basically my point is, looking back, we all knew what the game needed in order to get better from its pretty good starting point, but instead it just went backwards. Like. A lot
Looking back to the start
I didn’t play with friends during beta and I had a very different experience. 1st match was the same, really freaked out from the clicking, then laser blasts and choas and dying and it was a shit load of fun. It was a few games in until I got the impression that the fun level is entirely based on the Predator most ability. A good pred made a good game that I actually enjoyed losing as much as winning.
Since I never really played in a group though I never really saw the FT as OP. Especially in the old combizerker days. Wouldn’t call it balanced but there was definitely significance in the character classes back then. Zerker was a damn tank, hunter was pretty utility and you never knew what you were getting. Then there were the scouts, you saw them and you knew you were fucked.
Now it’s a completely different game though. Still fun but I think the balance and difference in classes was better in the beginning than now. Which makes no sense but it is what it is.
keep in mind since then almost none of the FT guns were nerfed i’m pretty sure the only guns that have been nerfed are the SAWZ 2XL and Hammerhead (which most people still consider the best AR) in fact most guns since then have only gotten buffs compared to the predator side of things which is the exact opposite
Combi zerker was never op niether and scout was always bad the only thing lacking at that time was FT knowledge and not having the level’s to equip the good perks/guns
If they had waited to do balance until Dutch 2025 had came out we’d have a much diffrent game than we have now
I’d argue this with respect to random’s, which do still make up the bulk of the player base (I believe).
If you had 3 guys who knew what they were doing then yeah the combizerker wasn’t that big a deal. Most times and cases even now though, you don’t have 3 randoms with the right mentality, you don’t even have 2. I hate to balance around that but it still needs to be factored in.
Right 100% that they should have waited to balance and let the player base learn the game properly. That’s still their biggest issue, in fact I dread the next update if they do balance changes in preds favor. If players have been adapting and winning now, and you throw an advantage their way by doing the balance changes we’ve asked for, it might be fish in a barrel.
That’s exactly what the problem was though. Combi zerk was literally fine, but 4 randoms running around like goons would get merked by this. Only problem is, that goes for essentially any tactic lol. Combi zerk is just such an in your face thing that all the kids were complaining about it. Not realizing scouts with down range were wayyyy stronger than melee zerkers. So now, zerk is basically useless
I would argue that the forced adaptation is a good thing and bad thing with this game. Good as in yes it encourages the player to develop new play styles, work around the changes, somewhat keeps the game lively and breaks metas. Bad as in just how you addressed they change stuff without letting the previous changes resonate fully with the player base in some cases like with combizerkers and other instances. But also especially for pred side, it leaves them with not a lot of utility or things to change to.
Every play style that was used the most was nerfed not cuz of the strength but more of the commonality of people seeing/complaining about it.
As it stands right now, the bow is the only weapon that hasn’t had any major changes, nerfs, or alterations to them and has been here since launch. And the bow is still somewhat bugged as shit.
I understand what you’re saying when your against having a update in favor of pred but they wouldn’t have to worry about that if there were a balance of items towards both sides that way adaptation is more encouraged rather than forced and it doesn’t feel like their eliminating options because their adding more.
Right now it feels like pred sides has to keep juggling through different pre-existing options and what would work compared to if I play ft i have so many new options to try that can all be equally effective.
Combizerker was the easiest thing to parry in the entire game and combizerks could be parried over and over and over and over and over
The people complaining about it literally had no idea how to parry. All the sweaty players had already figured out parry was broken over the beta weekend.