First of all my general thoughts:
I think the Game is fun but Overall I am kind of worried that it has too many "frustrating" than "fun" Moments.
Somet Things I want to talk about specificly:
Rewards;
Winning seems irrelevenat apart form doing so once for a Character Unlock.
The Amount of Time you use for failing about 3 Times is similar to winning once. Hence you are given more Options and overall more Ressources (Except if my Math is incorrect, which I am willfull to accept )
Losing 3 Times: 3x ca. 300 Coins/Points 3x Coin Flips for Gear
Winning 1 Time: 1x ca. 750 Coins/Points 1x Coin Flip for Gear
While it is nice to get something out of losing, winning, especially against Antagonists, should be Worth more than just 2-3 Loses.
Antagonists;
Antagonists can be a massive Spike in Difficulty depending on their Skills. While it certainly makes the Mission more tense and exciting it can be crushingly Difficult for Newcomers. Either implementing a Matchmaking Score or letting Players be safe from Antagonists when they Play the Map the first Time so they can at least try to understand what you are supposed to do in the Map,..
Lives:
In a normal runthrough I think the Way Lives are handled are "okay" but for Antagonist Clashes it should be changed in my Opinion.
Normally when a decent Antagonist is around you'll hit the second Life-Reset-Timer pretty fast. (I forgot the actual Amount) The 140 some Seconds you have to Survive when that is triggered is kinda nutty. My Suggestion would be to decrease the Amount of Lives (to 6-8) but also reduce the initial Spawn Timer by a few Seconds and let the added Growth per Reset be much smaller - like 10 seconds.
I think by doing so it would increase the Times when the Antagonist can win but it also stops the Game from sometimes becoming "wait in this corner and do nothing until the timer is done" because you cannot win against the Antagonist. At least not with the short Amount of Respawn Time he/she has and not with the Game mostly pressuring you with the AI. Changing the Antagonists Spawn-Timer would influence the Gameplay of the Antagonist too much and would make it less fun, that is why I would tackle the Spawning of the Raiders.
Hosting:
Hosting has been a massive Issue for me during this Beta.
This Game really needs to have a Function that defines how good a Host a User can be or a strict Ping Filter for Matchmaking.
9/10 Matches I had were riddled with lag-snapping and screen-jiggling which was mostly cause by terrible hosts.
I tried Solo just to be sure that it wasn't on my end - which it wasn't. And on few Occasions I did find a Team where there was maybe 1 or 2 lagspikes but no bigger Issues.
This was probably by far the worst Part about the Beta for me. It was massively frustrating and annoying to constantly run into those Connection Problems ad naseaum.
Camera during Cutscenes:
Shakes too much. In-game it is easier to bear (but still very noticible). But having watched Streams of it on the Side I got kinda nauseas from looking at it. Turning down the bobbing and reducing the Amount of Jumpcuts could help for it to become more enjoyable to watch.
Obviously, most of this is just a Matter of Opinion and I am not familiar of the Goals of the Design-Document.
In the End I do believe that the Game is fun but theres a few medium/smaller Things that cause Issues with enjoying it fully.
I was mostly just critizicing so that maybe somebody is going to look at those Options/Mechanics again.
Best of Luck
- I hope I dont sound too incoherent.
