In the current build of the game, as soon as you shoot at an enemy, their shields start glowing, but in the tech preview the only part of the shield that glowed was the place that they were being shot at, until they received enough damage, then the shield started to glow completelly, that meant you could kill them by a single melee!
I think it was such a brilliant way to make the game clearer, it helped you differentiate between enemies that had a little damage to their shields from those that were almost dead and in close quarters it helped you choose who to melee, it was a fantastic visual cue that now is lost.
The current glow system is very unclear when it comes to OHKO melee. I’ve died a few of times now because I’ve gone in for the punch against a guy who’s glowing like the sun only to discover that he wasn’t actually low enough for that punch to kill him. It’s very frustrating every time it happens and as far as I can tell there is basically zero visual difference between a guy who is hurt but can survive a melee and a guy who will be killed by a melee.
This has happened to me several times as well. People glow so much now it’s difficult to tell when to really melee them. The way it was during the flight I found interesting, even though its a very small change seeing shields react to damaged based on where you shot someone just felt, I don’t know, advanced for lack of a better term, as if the game and its universe has actually progressed technologically that now you can tell where you were shot instead of knowing you were shot.
Without putting a whole lot of thought into it, it seems like it could be something that should be toggled on or off depending on the player, I’d love to see it again.
To be fair shields do still react visually depending on where they get shot, it’s just that now each hit increases the overall brightness of the shield instead of flaring up solely around weapon impacts.