I am going to list issues that I feel require some form of fix from MercSteam , I don't expect these issues to be immediately fixed but some form of acknowledgement would be appreciated. I am sure some of these issues have been brought up already.
Here we go:-
- Matchmaking system is more complicated than it needs to be:-
Forcing players to complete the prior mission before they can search for the next seems unnecessary , for multiplayer you should just let people search for whatever mission is included in the campaign. Also an antagonist has to finish the mission before they can play that same mission as an antagonist , I think that is probably causing less antagonist distribution. I think you should implement a lobby browser so players don't have to spend a long time waiting and can see what campaign missions are being played.
- Raider rewards are still too low even with modifiers and a present antagonist:-
Please stop forcing players to share rewards , the possibility that a player that carries the team for 20+ mins can walk away with nothing is just wrong.
- Still no text or voice chat:-
You need to at least expand the current communication system to include more prompts. example: Ping things of interest (Like in Evolve) , Ways to warn raiders that they are in danger.
- There should not be a gold / antag rank requirement to read the lore:-
Personally I don't care about this alot but I think you should be encouraging players to read your lore, instead the gold / antag rank requirements are probably going to discourage them. I think this should be based on character mastery , antag rank lore requirements could be reserved for Urus bahrat lore.
- Raider mastery should be displayed on the raiders section in the menus.
- Mid mission difficulty modifiers or cheating AI:-
I might be wrong on this but I think the game might be cheating with AI. I feel as if sometimes enemies spam grapple way too fast or certain enemies spawn in way too fast right behind you. This is an issue because it can cause many cheap deaths and thus lower mission rating.
- Add mission time records to player HUD:-
Allow the players to have a better idea of mission time so that they can improve and get better ratings.
- Reduced SOLO very hard gold rewards:-
Why were gold rewards for missions on SOLO very hard reduced to 1500 , it is bad enough that you can only get gold rewards from solo one time per difficulty. Also maybe allow players to get more than just gold from SOLO , I am not the biggest Payday 2 fan but I think they allow for alot more rewards for SOLO players.
- Raider / Faction card locking costs are still too high:-
All you did here was switch the required 25 K from gold to faction/ hero points , I don't think that is really fixing the issue.
- Antagonist system / reward has to improved:-
In character select if raiders ready up quickly the antag is only left with only 10 seconds to select a character , raiders can also change their character choice after they have hit ready but the antag cannot.
Antag spawns are also too limited and can be abused if the raiders memorize the locations. Given the amount of effort required from an antag player stigmas are just not enough as a reward , antags should be rewarded with gold , blueprints and character/faction points for skilled play. Antagonists should be allowed to see what mission they are about to join , you need to change that back to how it was.
-Intentionally unbalanced weapons:-
You need to look into balancing alternate raider weapons or increase the drop rates.
That is everything I can think of right now , the current state is honestly making online play unbearable. The design is just forcing people to play content they may not want to over and over , I think that is flawed design. Given that rewards rely on low player deaths and low mission time this just leads to players getting mad at newer players.
Ultimately I think the current state is making things toxic between players and leading to some players joining missions but not really doing anything only so they can choose a reward at the end , how is that fair?
The developer stated that this is not a F2P game , so why does it have inflated prices (40 dollar alt skins/ 60 dollar Ginebra) and a grind that is worse than actual F2P games.
The amount of time MercSteam is asking of players to put into the same content is simply unhealthy , I hope these issues are addressed soon in some way.
Sorry if that was too much , thanks.
