I’ve played this games Beta and release and there’s a number of issues holding this game back. I don’t want to just slate this game but hopefully provide some insightful feedback for the Developers.
1. It’s clunky
The menus are awkward to navigate, switching weapons and generally moving around the map doesn’t feel good. There’s an strange delay when switching weapons before the weapon wheel actually appears. When moving around I get stuck on things and even projectiles like Nets and Plasma shots seem to impact with leaves or a mild breeze.
Suggestion
Improve the smoothness of navigating menus both in and out of the actual game. Not sure why there are delays. There also needs to be more work on environmental hit boxes.
2. Poor balance
I’m not one of those who will play one or two rounds and cry that X is overpowered or Y is underpowered. At the moment the game is in its infancy to really determine this. From experience however successful Predator gameplay seems to boil down to fishing for fully charged Plasma hits strafing in and out of line of sight or pounce attacks against competent Fireteam players which isn’t captivating gameplay for either team.
What, however, is evident is there is very poor balance within each faction which leads to the stale gameplay mentioned previously. If more tools are viable there are more varied ways to play the game. A lot of Predator tools are obsolete.
The Predator classes are a big yikes for balancing. The Scout class is literally a handicap. Stamina is a useless resource when compared to health in a game where both factions are glass cannons as it is. The Scout class gets to carry less gear at the cost of having more perk “weight”… The default Hunter class has 12 “weight” which is enough to pick any perk combination you want so why you would I want to have 15 “weight” when it’s impossible to go over 12? Again, yikes.
Suggestion
Get rid of the weighted perks and equipment and let them have any combination of 3 perks/equipment, give each class a quirk similar to Fireteams. E.g. Hunter has unlimited thermal, Scout has unlimited Cloak, Berserker can’t be parried… just ideas I’m plucking as writing I’m sure there are better ones.
3. Lack of content
It’s been beaten to death but it’s valid, there are three maps which are very samey. One mode. This game is going to go the way of Evolve when the majority of the content is cosmetic padding, at least you aren’t trying to charge me IRL money to change my gun purple however which is a big plus.
Suggestion
It’s unrealistic to ask for a campaign and anyone expecting one should just walk, but this game desperately needs more varied maps.
4. Gameplay
General gameplay is entertaining enough, in my opinion, but there’s always room to improve. I’m not really a fan of the 15 minute time limit as it puts a lot of pressure on the Predator to make a move. Coupled with the fact that the Predator doesn’t know a) where the Fireteam has spawned and b) where they are headed to, you can’t really plan ahead. You can only ever react to what they are doing which most of the time will be fighting AI inside a camp.
Suggestion
Up the round time to 20-25 minutes and make the AI deadlier/tougher to slow down the Fireteams movement around the map. The benefit of this is that the Fireteam gets a challenge other than waiting for the Predator to show up whilst literally sprinting to the objective.
Again all of this is my experience and point of view. Happy to discuss any criticisms on my post.