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Hello!
As introduction, I will say that I mostly enjoy the game. That said, I see a lot of flaws that will easily prevent its success and that might make me abandon it in the future. Since my goal is to provide as much useful feedback as possible, I will be light on the positive aspects and go in depth on the negative points.
As many people here, I've seen many "promising" games die, and it happened quite a lot in the MOBA-like/Hero-shooter genre, that's why I think we need to face the problems frontaly, without burying our head in the sand with pleasing but unrealistic reasonings ("they just need to advertise it more", "they just need to do this and the game will be popular", etc.), or forced positivity (which is from my experience, the swan song of dying games).
Despite all the things that I will say, I understand that making a good game is hard and that sometimes making a good game is not enough to prevent its slow death.
I will structure this report under 3 big topics : Barriers of entry, Game feel and Quality of Life. Additionally, through this post I will discuss the tension between the MOBA aspect of the game and the Shooter aspect.
Before starting, this is what I liked the most:
- The original soundtrack is wonderful and memorable. I almost regret that we don't hear more music (even if it would be very discrete) during the game. Especially when there's no action.
- The visual look of the map, even its layout. I love the colors, the vertical depth, its strange, organic paths. That said, sometimes it's very confusing to find a particular mini-objective "that should be there" according to the map.
- The various objectives and the semi-randomness of their positions. Everything that can increase the variability is good. I'm not sure if they totally fulfill their goals now, but on the concept alone I'm 100% favorable.
- Tiny detail: I like the crowd manipulation of the AI herds, it reminds me the jungle phases in MOBAs. It's relaxing and satisfying.
- Sometimes fights can be very fun and tense.
Barriers of Entry
Beside video games I enjoy modern board games, and in that hobby, misunderstanding the rules can instantly kill a game. Either the player gets frustrated by the complexity (or lack of clarity) and blacklists the game, or the player manages to play without understanding all the nuances, which gives him the impression that the game is more shallow than it is. In our case, I'm pretty sure that thousands of players tried and uninstalled Crucible simply because the game poorly introduces itself to the players.
Crucible struggle to explain its gameplay/rules.
- The tutorial is way too limited. My first 4v4 games were confusing. The easiest fix would be to implement a pop-up window top left or top right on the screen to explain the different phases, the different icons, the mini-objectives, etc., while you play a regular game. Many times I interacted with "things" that I haven't really understood.
- The icons and the overall HUD outside and inside the "map mode" is severely responsible for most of the frustration experienced by the players. By itself it is among the biggest flaws of the game. Where should I even start... Without order:
-Lack of visibility of the pings through the landscape in the normal view (if I ping an objective far away, the blue eye icon is tiny). Many game implements "flying arrows" at the border of the screen to indicate a ping that is behind the player.
- It's too hard to distinguish the importance and the difference between the various objectives icons on the map. It's funny that the most important objective of the 4v4 mode has the weakest contrast while the AI herds icons really pop. Some people might say that you will get used to it. Yes, if you already sold on the game. The average gamer of 2020 won't bother if his frustration threshold gets triggered by too many annoyances. All these HUD and Icons should be more obvious and intuitive in any situation and at any level of skill.
- It's a pain to find your icon on the map. It's so bad that I have to strafe left and right and play "where is waldo" to find my own icon when I open the map. Make it bigger and much more obvious. Maybe add an option to move the map relatively to your position.
-Lack of communications tools. You know it and are working on it, but it's hard to respect a team-based, wannabe competitive game, that doesn't have text chat or voice chat on day one.
-Let's talk about the pings. They are okay at best but not really responsive in comparaison to Apex (that is close to perfection in that regard). Crucible is relatively fast-paced but there's a huge delay before the appearance of the pings wheel. I know that you can change that speed in the options, I've done that. But most players won't bother so they will feel handicaped or might not use them as much as they could. Otherwise, the most frustrating thing about the pings is that I can't open the pings wheel directly on the map. Sorry but this is dumb and makes me mad. The map is the most precise way to ping, but I can't use all the nuances in that mode to ping something from far away.
- The wheels for voice lines are useless for actual communication. It feels like an insult to struggle that much to communicate with your team while being able to spam goofy quotes.
- In my opinion the most useful ping is the "I've seen someone here". I keybinded it but the problem is that the character spams the exact same voice line, which becomes annoying very fast. It would be better if that ping had a dedicated sound plus the voice line that only triggers the first time you ping. Then it goes on cooldown for 10-15sec.
- Some events are unclear. There should be some kind of encyclopedia or visual tutorial to understand each one. The pre-game phase is too short to understand and digest each one. I struggled to understand the barrels that need to be shipped somewhere. Once I gathered the barrel it wasn't clear where should I go and the little tower didn't provide enough feedback to realize that I triggered it. Most of the objectives need to be actively triggered but for the "barrel's tower" it is automatic. That's inconsistent.
To finish on that chapter, I have to say that Crucible struggles to communicate what kind of game it is. The game attracts FPS players and MOBA players, but so far it struggles to satisfy the expectations of each group. I don't think it's a fatality but it needs a merciless examination to fix all its weaknesses. This subject would deserve its on post but for now I will mention few problems that resulted, in my opinion, into the frustrations of many players.
Game feel
I play and enjoy FPS and MOBAs, so I can understand where many complaints are coming from.
From the perspective of a FPS player, the minimal features that you expect in any FPS you try are: strong and reliable feedbacks, a sense of agency on your destiny ("If my aim was better, he would have been dead"). I won't write an essay on why people enjoy FPS, but what I can say is that in the mind of the most passionated FPS player, Crucible will compete with the shooting sensations of well-established games with years, sometimes decades of expertise.
From that perspective, these are my issues:
- The shooting/hitting/killing lacks responsiveness, visual and audio feedbacks. I'll try to be short: No floating damage numbers (which is inconcievable for this game (that relies on stats, abilities, leveling, etc.)), no informative and satisfying hit sounds, the majority of the weapons deal the same damages regardless of the part of the body. To sum up, shooting right now feels like an inoffensive "PEW PEW PEW" fest.
- I want to emphasize on the next point: The kill sound effect is the worst, the most anticlimatic kill sound I heard in my entire life (I'm 31), in any multiplayer game. I swear. This is shockingly bad. It is so weak and unsatisfying that I convinced myself for multiple hours that it was just the sound of whatever ability or ping. Many FPS succeed because of the different ways the game provides a dopamine boost. Hit sounds and kill sounds are an important part of it. Crucible totally neglects that and doesn't reward tense fights.
- Moving across the map to reach the action is slow and pretty boring (it reminds me the worst moments of Evolve and Paragon). Mostly because you haven't implemented an out of combat speed boost. Please reconsider, this is one of great ideas of Gigantic. It would require the rebalancing of certain timers, but everyone would like it. Some people think the map is too big for the wrong reason.
- We can't vault or climb at the edge of high grounds. This feels pretty bad and reduce the skill expression.
- Not my problem, but I can see FPS players being disappointed by the PVE fights. They are not meant to be challenging and varied, but without proper introduction to the MOBA-ish philosophy of the game, those players could think it's just bad and shallow.
From the perspective of a MOBA player:
- Mediocre (enemy) health bar design (poor visual feedback between remaining health/dot damage/damage received).
- Some if not the majority of the characters seems to be pretty limited in terms of depth. I'm still learning, I don't feel like an expert, but I struggle imagining myself learning new tricks after 10-20 hours on the same character. I know some are asking for a bigger skilltree. I'm not sure it would really fix the problem. In terms of quantity of abilities per character, it's comparable to Overwatch, but in Overwatch you're also tested on your aim, movements, team coordination/synchronisation, so you still feel that you have something to learn. Crucible is or feels very limited in that regard.
- Zero feeling of power escalation and gradual intensity through a HotH game. It is telling when the arcadish mode 8v8 offers more intensity and comebacks than the "competitive" mode. In terms of feeling, there's no difference between the first 5 min and the last 5 min of a game, which is a terrible statement to make for any MOBA. In a classic MOBA you definetely feel, through the audio, the visuals and the gameplay, the crescendo that constitutes the game. Here I feel like I'm playing some kind of ball sport where everything is reseted after each heart gathered. I never feel that my character is stronger than the enemy team, even if I'm winning or stomping. Overall, I never feel that my character is getting stronger. I don't know if it's totally fixable but I have an idea: you should create different levels of creatures. Through the games new species would appear and be stronger and harder to kill but you could still farm the "level 1" creatures. Killing "level 1" creatures would provide feedback on your own power. Another potential solution to compensate (and permit!) a power difference between two players would be to create a bounty system. If a player never dies and kills a lot, the enemy team gets informed and would obtain a big xp boost is they manage to kill that particular player.
I understand that you don't want to go too far on the MOBA route. It could alienate some players and most MOBAs have failed outside of League and Dota2. Some people here also need to realize that MOBAs are a niche genre. LoL and Dota are big because they were the first ones, period. Competing against that is insane and I'm pretty sure Amazon is aware.
That said, as for the FPS players, I think the devs need to satisfy the basic expectations of the MOBA players. And feeling your power growth during the game is a part of it.
Quality of Life
I passed too much time writing this post already so I'll try to keep it short:
- I encourage the devs to post dev notes/blog posts. For the cynical gamers, you're just Jeff Bezos trying to make money via video games. As well, why the hell do you not publish your patchnotes on steam? That doesn't help.
- I don't like that the season pass weekly challenges are locked behind the paywall. If I miss the start of a season I would feel late and would not consider buying the pass. Apex is better in that regard.
- I hate the "press F" and don't move on the structures. It's not intuitive. The UI let's you think than you need to hold F (which I would prefer!).
- For the same reason I hate the heal station near the harvesters. "Hold F" would be better. The looped animation on those stations are stupid too, please improve that.
- The melee attacks have no distinctive sound effects when they hit a target. I can't believe you thought it was fine enough.
- By default, if a player doesn't choose the spawn location after their death, the location chosen for the capsule should be the closest to an ally. So many minutes wasted walking through the map because of it. I'm sure a ton of players got frustrated because of it.
- I'm skeptical about your queue system that allows players to pick their character before queuing. For now it's a non-issue, but if some characters get too popular it will create terrible queue times and various frustrations. The Gigantic system was pretty good in that regard.
- We need ranked mode ASAP to properly evaluate the game and see what should be improved.
Quick characters observations
(I won't talk about balance, only feelings)
- The sniper girl is decent, much better than in my first games, but she feels clunky to play. There should be a discrete visual indicator to indicate if you can hook on the surfaces that you are aiming, and (as the rest of the cast IMO) she should be able to grab the edges of a high ground to climb.
- Placing the little robot of Rahi is very frustrating. In an action team-based game from 2020 we shouldn't have to pixel perfect a position to place an object (that will take ages to move).
Conclusion
I feel that you tried to find the right balance to be accessible enough to a wide crowd of players. It's a hard task and I salute the effort.
The first big problem is that the game is not welcoming enough to the new players. Not because it is hard to play, but because it is unclear. The second problem is that you seem to underestimate the skill of your audience. Let's not forget that we live in a world where Fortnite is among the most played video games. What I'm trying to say is that most gamers, even the kids, aren't afraid of high APM, complicated fights, but somehow it seems like Crucible underestimates the average gamers and treats them like actual childs: shooting shouldn't not be too punishing and too skill-based, movements should be relatively limited to not create frustration against good players, players should level up without being too powerful, there should be a skill tree but let's limitate the choices instead of creating presets for noobs, etc.
I don't have a magic solution and I'm sure there will be many interesting discussions during the coming weeks, but as players I think we should be able to understand what the game is trying to be and what skills need to be learnt to improve, even after hundreds, maybe thousands hours of play. These last hours I won most of my games, but I'm still looking for a vertiginous learning curve that would keep me engaged on the long term.
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