Hello! I have played the game for quite some time now (around 25 hours) and I thought I’d share a few thoughts I have, even if the odds of them being seen feels rather low. I do really like the game so far, and wouldn’t have taken the time to do this otherwise.
I will divide this into three sections, firstly some notes on guns, then the progression, focusing more on the non-monetized side of it, and lastly, stats.
So, I feel that a few guns have some minor balance issues and some I either don’t get yet, or they have a deeper issue. I’ll start off with what I think needs a minor tweak.
Bulldog: This gun simply lacks damage, in my opinion. I understand most guns here fit a utility role, but the role of a shotgun is to murder things up close and I feel the roughly 3 hits it takes to kill an enemy at point-blank is a bit lackluster. You of course balanced it like this for a reason and I don’t know how tweaking this would affect things in practice, but spontaneously, I feel it should kill with 1-2 hits at approximately 1-10 meters and then gradually fall off after that. Perhaps where one hit drains a full shield, and the second kill, having a single hit instakill an already damaged enemy, similar to melee damage. This gun of course operates on a per pellet-basis, but roughly speaking.
Stalker Rifle: I haven’t been very successful with this gun at all, mostly due to its slow rate of fire. I simply feel this gun fires too slow to be doing as little damage as it does. The Shock Rile comes to mind as a comparison, it also fires slowly and requires 3-ish hits to kill, but it also serves the function of disabling vehicles, where the Stalker Rifle bogs down to only dealing damage, but very slowly.
Disruptor: I feel this gun simply lacks proper feedback. I don’t see if I hit anything mid-duel. The effect is too subtle.
The Ravager: I feel the AOE fire graphics are hard to see and are too transparent. Both when getting fired at and when using the gun yourself. This is also one of those guns that feels huge and powerful, but when it comes to dealing pain, it is way weaker than it feels it should be.
Onto guns I either do not get, or that I have some deeper flaw:
Heatwave: I have heard from friends that this gun works well in tight corridors, I have mostly played Big Team Battle. I feel this gun basically does nothing. Even when facing an enemy up close enough to hit them with every single projectile fired, they easily mow you down before you can kill them with basically any other small arm. I assume the concept here is to be able to bounce projectiles and do more damage the more of them hit, as you can swap between horizontal fire (bigger spread, easier to hit, fewer projectiles hit) and vertical fire (harder to hit, more projectiles hit) but it doesn’t play out like that. Hitting the enemy with all or close to all projectiles from 2-3 slowly fired shots just to get killed with an assault rifle isn’t very satisfying and feels off in terms of balance.
Hydra: This thing also fires slowly and reloads even slower, but does basically no damage. Not to enemies, nor to vehicles. It feels big and powerful but does nothing. From my own account, it appears to kill with 3 direct hits if not targeting, and about 4 if using the targeting feature. Getting direct hits is very hard and takes so long the enemy can kill you with basically any other gun before you have managed to fire that many shots (if at close or medium range). It may be tiring to hear points of damage done, as I assume I am not alone on this, but these missiles feel like they should do about the same amount of damage as a frag grenade.
Now, onto the progression.
So, I have sunk about 25 hours into the game and it has literally given me nothing for my efforts. The only thing it has done is show me a few items I WOULD have gotten IF I had a premium battle pass. I personally don’t care too much for monetized cosmetic items, and I am not going to talk too much about the monetary side of the game, but I feel this kinda fails at the free-to-play model. Small rewards for your efforts are usually sprinkled on you along the way, with higher value items and boosts to your progress being locked behind a paywall, and I feel that approach would be better at keeping players in, and I know from experience that is the case from playing other free games like Quake Champions and MTG: Arena quite a bit. There simply isn’t that much carrot-dangling going on here, and the system feels more like a massive mountain to climb for barely anything in return, which makes you lose interest rather than motivate you to engage with the premium content as the effort/reward ratio is simply too low. Those are my two cents on that one, onto the next topic, the personal progression of your player profile.
Right, so as far as I can tell, your performance in-game doesn’t reward you at all. Those points you get for each kill, zone capture, flag capture, etc, appear to exist while the game is running and stop existing as soon as that game ends, while older titles in the series (Reach, in particular, having my favorite system out of any Halo game) all of your efforts mounted to XP-points which boosted your player rank and awarded you with items. If I’m wrong about this, and your in-game points do amount to XP-progression, it isn’t telegraphed at all. And if it is like I think it is, the only thing you end up with after a game is essentially a participation trophy personified as fixed XP, where your individual effort is irrelevant, making actually playing well feel pointless. I miss the system from Reach here, and I feel any and all in-game points should reward the player with permanent XP-progress, the number of medals earned should be kept track of, etc, motivating you to rank up your profile, where now there is no incentive to do well at all, really. I also suspect your current character level is tied to the current season and will reset once that season is over, making progression feel even more futile as that would leave you with literally no permanent progress whatsoever.
Alright, so stats. I haven’t found stats in the game at all, and I assume they aren’t there. Similar to the topic above, I feel the game should keep track of your performance over all time, months, weeks, days, individual games, etc.
Thanks, Billy (Lead, Quixel viz/specialized at Epic Games)