They could do so much with this game, but the 4v1 is just a flop and somehow they still refuse after so much time to give up with it.

The game could just have normal PvE but do something similar to what Resident Evil Resistance is doing which funnily enough would very easily work with this game, and then if players want actual PvP...then just put a 4v4 mode in, but 4v1 where 1 player directly controlls the 1 mostly doesn't work very well or at all, the rare exceptions are games like Dead by Daylight because it's not 4 players directly attacking 1, they're avoiding and using tools to avoid and escape, but you physically can not balance a direct 4v1 encounter, Evolve was the first to try and look how that turned out.

I honestly find it strange at times in to why people are giving this game the time of day, not because it's bad, the core concept is good (no, not the developers idea of the core concept, that being a 4v1 game with absolutely no balance at all), but forced unbalanced antagonistic game play is what drives most people away from an otherwise fun pve experience.

I've been tempted quite a few times to come back onto the game again but then I remember "Is it really worth getting this angry at a game just to get those few rare games where an antagonist may not join so I can have some actual fun?" and the answer is no it's not.

We understand your point but there are also a lot of players who enjoy playing as Antagonists. Spacelords is a 4 vs 1, we can’t offer the option to play with no Antagonist without prejudicing most players. We’d like to please both sides in the future, but this is the main feature right now.

I've never seen a developer crew so against the idea of catering to more players, especially when one of the reasons the game has died 3 times and is currently on life support is actually down to the fact that the antagonist system exists at all, if it wasn't forced on players then there would be more people playing and the queue times wouldn't be a horrendous mess, this game isn't going to pick up on players with what you've got going on your roadmap, at best it will help satisfy the current small playerbase and that's it.

Additionally, the antagonist only adds to all the other issues this game has, the long story short being there's a lot to learn and generally you want to play each map a few times before having a good idea of what's happening and how to go about playing efficiently, especially when you're playing a new character perhaps, but no, you only seem to want to cater to antagonist players which according to you is the apparent majority what with your "we can’t offer the option to play with no Antagonist without prejudicing most players" comment, is that why queue times are so long then? because the majority of the playerbase are trying to play as an antag and there's not enough raiders to go around? great game you got there if that's the case then, not flawed at all.

My assumption that people who dislike the Antagonist mode so much also were very hostile towards Dark Souls invasions? They are exactly the same in being a pve game that allows another player to join the enemy side and stop the pve players.

I would of thought that Darksouls works the same way that Bloodborne works, so I'm saying this with my bloodborne experience only, but I would of thought that in Darksouls, much like in Bloodborne, the only way to get invaded is by choice, by which I mean in Bloodborne you ring a bell which allows friendly players to join your game and help you out, but it also allows invaders to come kill you, either way, I enjoy Bloodborne because I get to choose when I want to encounter invaders, not have it forced upon me.

I doubt the developers will read or respond to this, simply on the premise that they have refused to listen to logic and reason ever since this game reared its ugly head into existance, and yet the only thing that's happened is that the game started to die a slow and painful death from the moment it released.

The forced pvp in this game needs to go, I have absolutely no idea what genius thought it was a fantastic idea to force pvp on players that have no intention of ever wanting to participate, do you know what happens when people discover this? they leave the game immediately, do you know what they did in this game? yep, you guessed it, they either all left, or didn't bother playing at all on discovering.

There needs to be 2 queues in this game, one for casual pve, and the other for an antagonist to play with. The casual pve queue also NEEDS to have no player requirement to start a game, if I want to start a game with 1 or even 2 friends then simply let us, if me and a single friend complete a mission and you as developers care so damn hard about the end-game rewards, then simply reduce all rewards by 50% to simulate the idea of all 4 players selecting gold at the end, the same goes with if theres 3 players, reduce the rewards because of lacking 1 member and we're all good, and once again for if I'm playing solo.

I have 2 other people that are mildly interested in playing the game, but we're not stupid enough to waste our time trying to play, and we're definitely not daft enough to part away with our money to buy all the campaigns just so we're going to be stuck waiting for an eternity to play the game, and then get stuck with some experienced player as an antagonist to ruin our game and make us uninstall it out of our lives for ever.

Please, consider actually listening to this vital feedback into why your game is on its death bed, far too many of your potential players don't care for the forced pvp, at least not before we've even learnt the basics of the game, the characters, the maps, the objectives, and obtaining those cards to make builds with, no one enjoys getting stomped, but yet Mercurysteam seems to think that's exactly what we want, get our faces stomped just so we can uninstall.

I've played for 3-4 hours today, and my overall thoughts that I keep repeating to my self is "turdy gameplay".

The ideas of the things in the game are good in general, but the implementation is just so poor in that I honestly just can't stand most of it, if this game ends up as a buy game then I wouldn't dare buy it if these features and mechanics stick into the final product.

Antagonist is a good idea in concept, I remember having this in a game called Global Agenda in which is was an optional PvE mode and you got extra rewards for the added difficulty of having a player also trying to kill you. The problem here though is that you're forcing a PvP concept into a PvE mode that's already very difficult as it is, especially when you're playing with random people we have no communication with.

I have no idea if the Antagonist has infinite lives or what, but there's nothing more boring than being killed by someone pressing E, it's bad enough that some specific enemies do it to you in which you're forced to run away like an idiot and keep dropping some bullets behind you, but killing them is the most un-fun thing I've ever had to do, they charge at you for all eternity until they hit a wall or something to jump up.

Antagonist players on the other hand will be barraging into you when a bucket load of enemies have spawned (which is already far too often as it is and with no set areas after you've already cleared the area) and either meleeing you or just press E if its from the side with no time for them to reliably react, but even then when the game is lagging with a poor connection you can guaruntee that the person trying to grapple you when get you regardless.

When you run out of lives and need to survive the time limit to come back again, the huge problem comes in when it's possible to deal with the AI during the given period if you play smart, having an enemy player makes this virtually impossible to survive due to the map layout, how aggresive the enemy AI are, and that melee/grappling is impossible if they're starting directly at you.

What I honestly hope gets taken out of this game is grappling, it's 100% not fun to die to it, it's barely a little fun to actually pull off considering how the AI will always melee you if you're directly infront of them, meaning it's mostly an assasination tool from the side/behind, what I've found is if something is incredibly un-fun to die to and it's not removed, players will simply leave the game, this is even more of a given when Shae just makes her self virtually invisible to you and jumps you with a grapple, result? frustrating and not fun.

This brings me onto my second point here, Antagonist should be its own mode, there needs to be a strict PvE only mode, and a second PvE mode that allows players to come in as an Antagonist at any point in the match, you will be hard-pressed to find people like me that will play the game if Antagonist is there by default, because I don't enjoy dying to heavy cheese gameplay, especially when that cheese is lagging.

TL;DR:
Antagonist needs to be in a seperate/optional PvE queue, many players do not like dealing with odd modes like this when the game is especially not balanced for that kind of gameplay.

Grappling should be reviewed and possibly taken out of the game, it's very un-fun to die to, by both Antagonist players and AI chargers, it's a no-skill ability that kills you while the enemy that grappled you is fully immune to damage while the animation is happening, leaving to counter play for an obviously stupid ability.

P.S I've been unable to find any difficulty selection, this could really be a problem when the AI are very aggresive and deal so much damage to players from both shooting and meleeing, technically speaking every individual AI has a very good chance to kill a player, average/casual players will not enjoy dealing with what I'm assuming is the default difficulty.