1. #1

    Overall Game Feedback

    I've played probably about 8-10 hours thus far, and have maxed out the battle pass. LOVING the game thus far. The sheer gameplay blows every other BR out of the water in my opinion.

    The Good:

    Graphics & Art style. The hub area reminds me a bit of GTTOD (that's not the only thing that reminds me of GTTOD, either), and everything's very sleek and nicely detailed. It does a good job of indicating exactly what everything is and how it works at a glance (you know when you pick up the revolver, it's going to act like a revolver, the shotgun a shotgun, etc., plus the inclusion of the breakable barriers and crates having a stark color contrast to the surroundings lets you know immediately where you need to go for loot).

    Characters. Obviously not a huge focus here considering there's no effect on gameplay, but all the characters are varied enough and are voice acted excellently. The only thing I can criticize here is the lack of variety in voice lines per character. Playing as Josephina, all I ever hear is "Básico, but it'll do." "Something to work with." "¡Cuidado!" and "Restore me already!", so I'd like to see a little more variety here. Hopefully there will be some more skins and emotes in the final game, too. I like the robot announcer lady, even though I don't know her name. My main problem with the voice acting is that there isn't a specific callout for each weapon or hack, and considering the limited roster, this seems odd. Maybe this is to make it so the VAs don't have to send in new lines when new stuff is added, but it's a detriment overall. Good quality VAing, though.

    Movement. The best part of this game by far. Being able to double jump and slide boost around the map at warp speeds is incredible. Liberating as far as BR goes. I love being able to bound around on the rooftops jump from place to place, especially when combined with the abilities. It's exactly what I had hoped Apex would have been when I heard there was going to be a Titanfall BR with no Titans or wallrunning. Feels a lot like GTTOD, as a matter of fact. I really can say no bad here. It's odd that you don't retain your slide momentum after sliding off an edge, but I can see why this was done, so there wouldn't be people sliding around too fast and you could maintain some level of shot predictability on surfaces. It's also a little weird you can't cue up the slides, so you have to press the crouch button the precise right time, but this is not a bad thing, just something I had to get used to. Mantling is also quick and fluid - as a Titanfall 2 player, I REALLY appreciate this.

    Abilities. The abilities are mostly super fun. Slam and teleport are the highlights, considering they accentuate the movement. Most feel a little gimmicky, but are really fun to make up for their lack of overall usability.

    Map Design. What good is the movement if the map design doesn't support it? And this one does. Objects like balconies, air conditioners, and solar panels are placed at exactly the right places to allow for quick and instinctive traversal up a building. Locations are well designed and distinctive as well, though I fear there might not be enough that's far enough out there to allow for specific regions to become memorable match-to-match; other than the large landmarks, you're mostly travelling in the same building clusters from one area to the next. I get that this is to maintain some recognizability, so you're not completely lost when dropping in a new area, though. Architecture feels very European inspired, reminding me a little bit of the newest Deus Ex game.

    Weapons. The actual selection of weapons is nice. This ties into the point of recognizability that I made earlier. There is a shotgun. An auto rifle. Et cetera. I know exactly what niche each weapon is going to fill when I pick it up, which goes a long way for the cognitive process of a player trying to fit a given situation or build.

    Music. Great music selection at the match start. Very 80s synth, similar to GTTOD.

    BR mechanics. Restore points are unique and interesting, and provide something new to the space. The closing of sectors is really cool, and though like I mentioned above that sectors aren't entirely individually identifiable, it actually makes the shrinking map feel more tangible and like it has consequence. Being able to make use of duplicate items and weapons to upgrade is a really great mechanic, too.


    The Okay:

    Gunplay. The guns handle well enough, and the sounds and feel of weapons are mostly okay. There's not an incredible feeling of effect on target, but there really can't be as this is a fast-paced multiplayer game - there's not really room for slowing people down or putting damage decals all over them at all times to track their damage state, especially with regenerating health. It's serviceable. The only major problem is the sight picture issue that I'll mention below, which ties into balance.

    Sound. As mentioned above, sound is mostly good and fills its role, but there's not exactly much you can do here - it's not the kind of game where sound design really needs to shine. Everything is recognizable and distinguishable when you hear it, so you know what's shooting at who and where. My biggest problem is that when you get a headshot with a hitscan weapon, you in fact can't hear the sound of the gunshot itself but just the hit indicator for a headshot. Not sure why, but this threw me off.


    The Bad:

    Weapon Balance. Yeah, you knew this was coming. Obviously, this is somewhat the point of betas and tech tests. We all know it's coming: the Hexfire. It's not that it's super OP or anything, it's just that it overall outclasses every other weapon in every situation except extreme long range, where really only the Protocol V does anything. Not sure what the solution would be to mitigate this (maybe increase projectile spread, maybe add overheating?), but it's quite prevalent. Here's another issue: sight picture. Pretty much every weapon seems to be only usable at close range, excluding the Protocol V. The launchers should obviously be this way to an extent, and of course the D-TAP, but the zoomed-in FOV on the Ripper and Riot are just waaaay too small to actually allow them to fit the role of an assault rifle and precision revolver, respectively. I don't think there needs to be attachable optics, but maybe allow us to change zoomed in FOV within a certain subset of ratios of our overall FOV? I think this is the case on the Mammoth as well to an extent, it just seems like you can actually still do a little bit of damage at range with it but you have to be so pinpoint accurate within this tiny reticule with barely any zoom. I also think the D-TAP is pretty useless as of now; I get that it's auto-targetting and should have a slight tradeoff (it's not egregious like the Smart Pistol in Titanfall is), but its DPS is far too low for it to ever be useful, even at the highest Fusion level. As of now, the Hexfire rules the roost, with the Mammoth and maybe Ripper right below it, then the Komodo, and everything else essentially becomes meme-tier or barely useful beyond the first few moments of play.

    Ability Balance. Not as out of wack as weapon balance by a long shot, but there are still some issues. Some abilities are just outright better than others in most every situation. Slam is one of the most useful abilities, because it's used more for movement than it is for actually... slamming. I actually personally like it this way, though; it makes the movement that much more fun. The proximity mines are not very good because of how much warning you get for the ones placed down and left there, so there's not much use if you're not sticking people with them immediately. My biggest issue is with Armor - you basically already have an armor ability in the form of Ball, except with Ball, you can't move as quickly and the armor breaks, as opposed to Armor that never breaks until the timer is up and you can still move properly in the midst of it. I think I've seen people combine it with invisibility too which is pretty much an unstoppable get out of jail free combo. It just seems like the existence of Armor invalidates Ball, and in fact seems too good. The only saving grace is not as many people have been picking up armor because it's slightly less common right off the bat, and the other abilities are just more fun. But people are picking up on this, and picking it up far more often now.

    Glitches. I've encountered relatively few, but the main one that is SUPER annoying is when you're holding down the button to restore somebody, and it randomly cancels. This happens to EVERYONE in EVERY match, and needs a fix ASAP. It's gotten me killed a fair few times. There was also one time when I loaded back into the Hub, that it seemed the camera was not attached to the player but was in an arbitrary direction and position (though I could still hear myself moving around). I restarted the game which fixed it. I've not been able to reproduce this, though. I've personally also had a lot of rubberbanding, but maybe that's just me.


    Stuff I'm Not Sure About:

    Regenerating health. I can see it go both ways. You don't have inventory management, so there's no real place for healing items and whatnot, but regenerating health basically means you can get the edge on people by just running around the corner for a few seconds and coming back. The tactic is no longer stand and fight, but just run away for long enough to regen, then do a 180.

    No Minimap. I have seen people comment on this, and I personally could go either way. Sometimes, it seems like it'd be useful, but the level of verticality to the maps means there would be little actual navigational use for it outside of a very high level.

    Longevity. This game is going to have the edge on Apex and other games because of its movement and its fun mechanics, but what's going to keep people coming back? I hate that this has to be a consideration, since games should just stand on the merits of gameplay, but it's something that has to be considered in the modern gaming space unfortunately. There seems to not be a story (at least not a character driven one, considering the characters don't really have any effect on anything), and other BRs have pretty much everything this one does.


    Okay, that's my long winded analysis. SUPER fun game, I'm hooked, I absolutely love it. This game deserves high praise and lots of success. Best of luck to the dev team, and great job!
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  2. #2
    Can't edit the post, but I wanted to add that the Mammoth feels slightly underpowered except at extreme close range. It should be good at close-medium range, but is not that effective as such. Maybe a buff to damage is in order.
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  3. #3
    Armor hack is broken, just lost a game because guy snatched crown, ran out into the open of the collapsed world, and just spammed armor. I was the only smart guy attacking him and I couldn't kill him with a fully upgraded Ripper/Protocol. Think about that, an 80 damage body shot sniper rifle couldn't kill this guy, he was infinitely in armor for 45 entire seconds. Not even the collapsed area was hurting him.
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  4. #4
    Ball is a better way to do that kind of ability. Preventing [I]all[/] damage for an extended period of time is pretty darn powerful.
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  5. #5
    A few things I wanted to add.

    1. New mode is awesome, love the free for all and the fog. I do wish it could start the match when it gets to 90+ players or after a certain time interval instead of having to wait for exactly 100, though :P

    2. The viewer events. I really dislike the low gravity one, as it seems to contradict the entire paradigm of the game's movement. I also dislike the reveal one, but only for the below reason.

    3. The screen distortion during Reveal is very disorienting for me, and during the Reveal event it becomes a bit unbearable.

    4. Another thing I'm not sure about: the end of match crown thing. I'll have to play with it more, but it's an odd mechanic that I've not seen before. I usually don't make it that far, but the one time I've actually won a match was when I just grabbed the crown and ran around for long enough to avoid everyone :P
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  6. #6
    HAVOC.elb133's Avatar Member
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    the Ball hack doesn't work, i flipped to it and died as the ball,,,,,,how is this supposed to work.
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  7. #7
    It's a short term breakable armor that slows your movement. My point is that Armor is a short term unbreakable armor that does nothing to your movement. Ball has no use.
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