In another entry to my ‘A Critique in‘ series, this is more of a raw list of problems or issues I’ve had while playing in the past month or so. As I play more, I hope my thoughts will crystallize to form a more cohesive critique that I can make a video with supporting footage.

What works

• There’s a lot of features that force conflict; Burning bodies, heal from banish, bounty escape. This prevents camping or slow gameplay.
• Customizable health bars is genius. Losing health bars different from damage, death , and burning.
• Interesting meta-game, deciding how much I want to risk on a character. Do I play a shitty character for my warmup game? Low-risk, low reward.
• Audio-driven gameplay. Player-driven sound cues are littered throughout the map, all with intention and purpose.

 

What needs help

• AI
  • It’s important that ai and bosses aren’t made more difficult for a new players or solo players, but currently killing AI as a good player or a team is trivial. Need to increase the difficulty/dynamic ceiling without increasing the floor.
  • AI difficulty comes from knowledge/planning, not execution.
  • AI isn’t dynamic enough, watch any streamer and you’ll see how calculated their attacks are. Monotonous. Predictable. Non-threatening.
• New players can’t lose their character and are completely oblivious to one of the most unique and important aspects of the game.
• High level players don’t play the game as intended, they run around making as much noise as possible with unlimited money.
• Almost all talent customizations are upgrades, not sidegrades.This makes talent selection less interesting and thus, limits talent power.
• No tracers on bullets, therefore no corrective mechanism.
• Stagnation caused by camping. Camping is caused by being punished for moving(sound). There needs to be more tools to combat camping.
• One-shot kills. Currently there are too many ways to achieve it. It’s not terrible in team games (where you can be revived) but it should be practically impossible in solo. This includes sniper rifle headshots, shotguns up-close, and crossbows.

 

Lack of build diversity, roles, archetypes, and team synergy

There are hints of the ability to ‘customize’ your character but there’s no real reason to. All the pieces to diversive builds that support different playstyles and archetypes exist, but aren’t taken advantage of.

Reasons people don’t have diverse builds:

• There’s no limits, you can eventually have everything(theoretically). Nothing forces you to make hard decisions.
• Equipment can be acquired/changed at any time. If you don’t like a previous character choice, you can change it.
• Battle environment is unknown and dynamic. Ie. I can’t plan to use a flashlight unless I know it’s a nighttime map.
• Limited talent/weapon/tool pool for low level players. New players don’t have enough options to make real choices.

 

Potential solution in new Game Mode

To encourage build-diversity, players are given a partially built Hunter. They’ll then have to build out the Hunter with limited resources to encourage a ‘build-around’ the starting loadout. Map specifics are known ahead of time to also impact builds.

• Have to recruit a “Limited Hunter” for $500
  • Starts with ~$300 worth of equipment. 
  • Starts with ~15 upgrade points’s worth in talents
  • Customization:
    • You are given $250 to spend on equipment. You can unequip default equipment but you can’t sell it.
    • You are given 10 upgrade points.
• Limited Hunters are gone after the game, win or lose, there’s no way to keep them.
• Details of the contact are known when you pick your hunter. Including the map, time of day, etc..
• Rewards:
  • Percentage of the XP gained in the mission is cached out in gold.
  • Extracting lets your keep all you equipment

 

Content Ideas

• Spirit mode that shows player footsteps. These steps would fade away over time.
• Spirit mode that makes players emit smoke that can be seen through walls. This effect would stack to identify camping.
• Fire extinguisher item that also emits smoke
• Map with rain, this would essentially cancel out most soft sounds(player footsteps)
• Teir 3 traits, these should be expensive (10+ points) and be POTENTIALLY very powerful.
• More  equipment that affects the zombie, like a swarm grenade that attracts zombies to a target area.
• Roaming boss that forces conflict between players
• More talents around bullet penetration
• More indirect/utility-bases equipment