Thanks for the invite to the Beta, here are my impressions and thoughts after one weekend play, i only got around a dozen multiplayer game in due to the 15+ minute que times , im on PC in europe (ENG).
First up balance , obviously not done but ill say it Harec doing 800 damage a bullet is just plain wrong. And the old PC vs console issues come up, as a PC player it feels like im playing down to console levels , there are small amounts of enemies , they move slowly and have huge hit boxes, makes it trivial to just chain headshot kills all day long with no great effort.
Now you have tried to cut the PC advantages down to size through player design , i mean 1 aim bot two zero accuracy weapons and a spray tube leave only one hitscan sniper , but one is all you need to imbalance things, Harec cn as it stands kill the boss of the area after the beholder in around 6 bullets and from complete safety.
Abilities are not made equal. ALicia wall jump is i would say is plain old bad. shes got a crap gun that does almost no damage outside of point blank, why on earth would i bullet jump slowly around out of cover? unless i want to have my brains blown clean out of my head by the sniping antagonist, then you have the shield and stalk that are just plain overpowered.
The Core gameplay loop.
Ai director Vs Antogonist. i watched the dev diary, if thats just PR advertising then fair enough, but if your guys are actually that sure that this feature will add replay and variation i am here to tell you point blank that it just aint going to happen.
For my vote Left for dead has to win the best award for a 4 player co op vs computer game where things were actually different and kept you engaged , never knew exactly when the music would ramp up and the horde come. the game could adjust by throwing more things at you, more specials, more hordes, lower the resources remove medkits and weapons.
You have passed all that up and placed the hole weight of keeping it fun and fresh on the antogonist.
1. adding the antogonist makes it pvp, which can be at odds to your market when you are making a 4 player co op. it puts me off for eg.
2. cant balance it , (see my other post) but in short the teams strength is not a sum of its individual players ability , co ordinated pre mades have huge advantage over 4 no comms randoms,
3. cant match make it. no metrics can judge the strengths of the two sides. you will simply have a lot of games where one side just rolls the other , The odds of the rolls fortunately lining up and the two sides manage to balance against each other and you have a good "could go either way" game are tiny.
Roles.
Are the snipers meant to be the dps while the assault class ones just kill the trash mobs? because thats how it is right now, take the beholder Harec is doing 150-200 damage shot from anywhere on the level , alicia can rarely get close enough to hit it and does 0-30 damage, bad idea to divide the work up like that to me. i would much rather they play differently but be capable of doing hte job no matter who you choose.
Everyone has to melee, ok to get aleph and bullets you have to melee, when playing assault not a problem when playing a ranged sniper feels like a pain in the ass, i have to keep a mob alive some how get my team to not kill it (lol good luck with that) while i walk my slow ass up to it?
Bang, bang, punch, punch, why do anything else. shoot themto stagger them doing pitiful damage and wasting mu low ammo count till i get in mellee range then spam the canned animation (soo cool at first sooo tedius now) grpple gets you punched, so you just always punch if they dodge or not is out of my hands 1/4? ish they do and i end up downed and crawling for cover , if they dont roll i walk all over them from one to the next invulnerable and safe waiting for a roll that i have no control over to shaft me.
the lack of depth puts me off but others will like it, the lack of control on the players front though that is a problem, your attack landing and working is not up to you its up to the ai to not react.
Cover is pointless and annoying unless you need to hide behind cove thats a bit too low to just stand behind your simply better off not using it. why trap yourself and pin yourself to a position so the antagonist can easily murder you? i dunno maybe it makes it easier to control on console but i found myself wishing i could simply turn the system off, at least if it required a button i would have a choice.
Have to look down sights to shoot my shotgun again can only assume this is to force parity between platforms, its really chuffing annoying to me especially when playing alicia or the shield guy or that type in general.
on a related note oh my god how long do i have to sit there spinning up/locking on with kons and shae, cant stand it not ever playing them again.
cant look around when sprinting have to keep this narrow fov straight ahead, so i can be easily murdered by the antagonist! i see this as just another balance problem, those teams that know not to move to sit backs in a corner and camp are just at such an advantage to a new team that runs around not knowing the right place to sit. it all just really slows down and interrupts the flow.
My bottom line.
Now i know i have only seen 2 (i assume small) levels but right now im just bored, the gameplay loop is already stale there's no depth to it and it remained fun as long as those punch animations felt rewarding to trigger.
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cash shop? so its free to play?
