[2020] Thoughts on current state of the game part 2 and feedback/reaction for Lab Update #2

Hi everyone!

Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy in these odd times. I wanted to give a new post as a follow up to my previous thoughts on the game in its current state as I feel there have been many great changes and not so great ones, as well as the most recent Lab Update provided by Ubisoft :) I will breaking down my post in the same format that Ubi did their Lab Update so that all of my points line up at the same time as theirs and is easy to follow. So without further ado, lets get into it. Feel free to comment and discuss below as well!

PLEASE REMEMBER, I AM ON PC AND WILL ONLY TALK ABOUT THINGS FROM A PC PERSPECTIVE, BUT I WILL TRY AND BE AS GENERAL AS POSSIBLE

Game Balance & Accessibility Update

Patch v2.4 - Health regen. Update was phenomenal and I believe 10 seconds is perfect in both TDM and BR. I have nothing bad to say about this as I believe it is the perfect middle ground, and feels especially good with the much faster actual regen. Health Packs are also great however I do miss the speed boost (although I have an idea for that later).
Patch v2.4 - D-tap. This is the first part I will disagree with. Although I will sing the praises of the health regen, the D-tap still has no place in this game and is still an overbearing and quite frankly, just simply annoying gun. Even if it does not kill you, just the design of the weapon can get on anyone's nerves. I am afraid the simple idea of the gun is where the problem lies the most and not simply with its ROF and damage. Would much rather see a complete redesign of the gun. It can be an easy gun for newcomers to use, however more player input is required. Have players have to track their target for period of time before lock on occurs (2-3 seconds), as well as an audio que (homing missile type of sound) that alerts the player they are being locked onto by D-tap. If these changes cannot be done, it may be best to simply remove the weapon and replace it with something else. Many of the PC player base that I have spoken to seems to echo the idea that this gun is not highly praised in the community.
Mammoth and Salvo (PLEASE READ THIS ONE ITS IMPORTANT)- This was hinted in the lab update that changes are coming to increase viability and usage of these two weapons. I cannot stress enough that these weapons are not being underused because of the weapons themselves. Quoting the Lab Update it was said "Our next focus in term of balance is going to shift toward improving weapons that currently have little impact or generate little interest in the community. Mammoth and Salvo are two weapons in our sights at the moment, although we intend to take the time necessary to improve their behavior and not just play on parameters to boost them." I am glad that they are looking at more parameters than just simply boosting them, if I read that correctly, because I believe this was one of the faults that created Komodoscape. Sometimes just because weapons are underused, does not mean they are underpowered and need buffs. Because both the Salvo and Mammoth, are INSANE. And I mean INSANEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Especially the Mammoth, which depending on who you talk to, is either overpowered currently, or just right. But what cannot be disputed is how strong this weapon is, especially with all pellets hitting at close range, even with a base level variant. In my opinion, the only reason these two weapons are underused in the community, especially the mammoth, is because there are too many other punishing weapons in the loot pool that require much less player input. Why would a less skilled or newer player use a mammoth that requires shot placement and movement management to close distance on target, when they can just spam Komodo? I believe the Mammoth when used in a high skill environment is one of the most effective guns in the game, but we will generally see it underused in the community as a whole, because frankly right now, there are lazier ways to fight. I believe this is an issue we currently see often in the state of the game and the loot pool is some weapons MAY be very good and effective, but are dwarfed by the current spammy, lesser skilled weapons.
AA and Bullet Mag - Buckle in cause I have no other way to say this one. Its bad. I have thought of many ways to critique this, but I got nothing. Its just bad. AA and bullet mag in its current state, is some of the strongest I have ever seen in gaming. It was hard for me to decipher if these two things are on the right track, or are still chanced on being nerfed. I hope its the latter, but I could not quite gauge the mindset through the reddit post. There's not much more I can say here that has not already been said. IT IS TOO STRONG. Satisfaction and reward (IMO the two most important things to a gamer while playing) is being taken away with the current state. This is critical for player retention. If players feel that they are less and less responsible with their own bullet placement, it is hard to see their progression, and in turn, harder to retain them for long term. https://www.twitch.tv/skopezy/clip/SteamyMushyPeafowlChefFrank?filter=clips&range=7d&sort=time Here is a nice funny clip of my 2nd game on controller. 1st game I dropped 22 kills and had never touched controller before.
Player Comfort and Accessibility - I am worried that the state of the game is branching away from accessibility and is instead going in a direction where players can execute a high amount of effectiveness, with a minimal amount of input. There is a big difference between making the game accessible, and making it so the player has to do less. I DISAGREE heavily that Hyper Scape was " hard to play for too many players." I will not argue that Hyper Scape has a large skill ceiling, we all know this and love it. However, there are many types of gamers out there. Some learn faster or slower than others, some may go out of their way to research the secrets of a game to master it quicker, others may need a nudge by either the game itself or peers to experiment with the games systems. I do not believe this game was "too hard" and instead simply lacked guidance for the players that did not have a social circle or desire to do research on their own. Many of the top players in Hyper Scape, due to low pop count, know the other respective top players. It is a circle of information where all top players are feeding off each others experience, strats, and know how. What about the players that don't have that? How do they learn? They would have to research and put in hours. Well what if they don't have the drive to do that? They need tutorials and guidance. I am aware the game is looking at ways to teach players mechanics, what I am trying to get at is I hope this is in the future higher priority than simply tweaking weapon balance. Hyper Scape being too hard is not an issue of mechanics or weapon balance, it is an issue of lack of resources for a player who does not have colleagues that are in the know, to experiment with the way the game works.
Crossplay - Excited for it. More excited for PC to be added into the general pool later, because PC is in dire need.
TDM Beta Improvements - Loved everything here. Excited for map rotations. Would love to see a map voting system in the future. Especially since more maps are coming.
Navigation Paths (Arcadium Beta) - Loved to see this added in. However, would love to see more in depth tutorials and training to coincide with these navigation paths. Simple reason is a new player will still take a good chunk of time to collect these objects as nothing has told or hinted to him of the movement skill ceiling. However, this is still a great addition to see and it will be better if these tutorials are added in. Also, time trials? And are these navigation paths linked to challenges or XP? There needs to be some incentive for players to want to enter certain mini games/movement challenges.

BRAIN STORMING IDEAS (things I come up with, may have balance issues. Half this stuff might not work):

New gun - Trip Mine Launcher. Currently there are too many splode weapons with emphasis on spamming. This would be a single shot and then reload, trip mine that attaches to walls and can be shot to disarm by enemy players. (Would like to see this added in replacement of one of the splode launchers. Not while they are all in the game. Too many boom boom guns already)
New gun - "Spartan Laser Type Gun". Inspired by the Spartan Laser from Halo. This gun would have a large charge up with a targeting laser. Windup time is long, but with proper tracking, would inflict great damage once finally fired.
Heal Hack - Needs rework as currently has lost much of its viability. Good alternative is next gun suggestion below.
New gun - Heal cannon. Inspired by Fortnites bandage gun, would only be available in duos/trios. Shootable gun that will heal teammates shot by it.
New Hack - Speed boost hack. This would replace the now removed speed boost that we received from the Halloween Candies. Would temporarily increase player sprint speed.
New Hack Mechanic - Invulnerable. Two options I have come up with. Either rename back to "Armor" and have a HP system for the hack where it will break after sustaining damage. Or, have armor be breakable by melee. This will encourage armor players to use movement and keep distance, or risk their armor being broken by melee. <--- really like this idea
Lethal melee event - glowing weapons. or make sky turn blood red. Lethal melee needs more indicators.
Supply crate event - Remove event and have it take place randomly throughout match. Prioritize splode spawns in supply crate random event, and the crates that spawn throughout the world. Currently splodes are too common in floor loot
Reveal event - Please remove blinding effect cause by event.
Hack idea - Blind. Will apply a strong blinding effect, similar to what happens in reveal event that impairs enemy vision.
Remove Magnet. Replace with GRAPPLE HOOK HACK. Can be used to scale buildings or pull enemies towards you with a direct hit. Can be used as a movement hack as well as a aggressive offensive hack. Also will require more player input but with high reward, especially when paired with shotgun to close distance for kill shot. I
Incentives for switching up game modes. Currently BR playlists are non existent and TDM is by far the most popular. If player base increases, would love to see incentives for players to experiment with different game modes. It may be very easy for players to only want to play TDM due to the drop in quick and have a quick match nature of it. Perhaps challenges and cosmetics unlockable in specific game modes? I know that the Battle Pass is a trend in Free to Play games, especially BR's. But would love to see cosmetics not tied to battle pass or store. One way around this is playlist specific cosmetics, but can only be accessed by battle pass OWNERS, even though its not in the pass itself. Would love to see skins that reflect player rank in ranked playlists as a show case of player skill or success.

The game is in a rough place in my opinion. I know PC and console are separate, but I have also been noticing a dip in console lobbies from some of my streaming peers. This game deserves to thrive. These are just a few of my notes, feedback, and ideas. Would love your opinion on these :) Keep the convos civil. I love all you and I believe in the devs, but nothings perfect, but I believe.

Thank you so much for reading and hope to discuss with you in the comments!

Be safe <3

External link →

Hi again Skopezy! Once again, I appreciate you putting in a lot of effort to share your thoughts on current topics within the community.

I have also been seeing positive feedback about the tweak to Health Regen. I personally think its current timer with the addition of Health Pickups creates a great pace. I also partially miss the speed boost and the little candy animation 😛

The D-Tap adjustments have seemed to help slightly but not nearly as much as some people feel. I find this partially confusing since it’s TTK is one of the slowest out of the bunch. I think majority of the situations where the D-Tap is irritating is when you are caught off-guard/confused on where you are getting shot from + trying to scramble away. I’ve had some players mention it does not feel as big of an issue in the BR mode compared to the TDM mode, where the maps may not have a lot of space to out-juke the weapon. Given the fact it’s TTK is so slow, there is some room to outplay the weapon assuming you are landing your shots. You should be able to out-damage the D-Tap. However, there is not necessarily as much risk to using the D-Tap vs using other weapons considering the fact it does lock on to the enemy. The main way to counter the D-Tap is with movement to break line of sight with the enemy. So, although you can out damage the D-Tap, it relies on you to be able to land your shots in time. I mentioned before I like the idea of adding an audio cue for when you are locked on by the D-Tap to give you more time to react instead of it hitting you for free. Although, since movement and positioning are important aspects, it is also important to be aware of your surroundings to help mitigate windows of opportunity where you may be caught off-guard. This may be easier in TDM vs the BR, but it’s a valuable skill to have overall. The team wants to be careful with adjustments to balancing in general, but specifically in the D-Tap's case to make sure it is still a practical, accessible, and fun weapon.

Regarding the Mammoth and Salvo: I know a lot of players were startled by the mention of looking at both weapons. I want to clarify that “improving the behavior” does not mean buff. As mentioned immediately afterwards, “not just play on parameters to boost them”. As I just mentioned, the team wants to be careful with making adjustments at this point. You are definitely right in saying that just because they are underused, it does not mean they necessarily need buffs. In my opinion, I think it is a matter of how these weapons are being used plus how satisfying they are to use. I adore the Mammoth and did not think it necessarily needed the recent buff it got, but understood the reasoning was to ensure the Mammoth stayed on a level playing field with the rest of the weapon options. The Mammoth is certainly strong in the right hands, but the same thought can be applied to most of the weapons in the cast. If we look at the TTK for the Komodo and Mammoth, the Mammoth’s TTK is ever so slightly faster than the Komodo. However, this all relates to the idea of landing everything perfectly, which is not the case for a lot of normal players. I personally consider the Mammoth to have a mid-tier skill floor and a high-tier skill ceiling vs the Komodo having a low skill floor but mid-ish skill ceiling. Movement and positioning play a big part in these fights just like fighting against the D-Tap, in my opinion. Regarding players opting for more “lazy” options, I think part of this comes from the fact there is not a lot for players to grind for currently. Players do not feel the need to sweat it out even though those sweaty players have the capability to outfrag these combos.

As we said in the post, we have been monitoring the heated discussion between Aim Assist on controller as well as the increase in bullet magnetism for KBM. One small note I wanted to echo is the fact the adjustments to KBM are different than the adjustments were made to controller. I personally dislike the use of the term “aim assist” in relation to the adjustments to KBM as it is different than adhesion and snap-to-target controller has. Additionally, this is a mechanic that has existed since launch and is prevalent in other titles to some degree. As also stated in the post, the goal is to find the middle ground between accessibility and true skill. This does mean there is potential for the “training wheels” some of you may feel like exist to come off in the future. As a competitive player myself, I emphasize with the need to feel satisfied with the amount of skill you have practiced and earned. After putting hundreds of hours into Overwatch and grinding my way to Masters, I was proud of my mechanical skills. I personally cannot speak on the experience on controller since I am very much not a controller player. We have been seeing controller players sharing their experience and continue to iterate based off feedback to help improve comfort and accessibility. Players like Zytiv and Magswap have been vocal of their experiences.

The fact that Hyper Scape was and still is “too hard for too many players” is actual. The reason you may feel like this is not the case is because you personally have high tier experience with other titles. You already have the resources and understanding of how to improve. Many players do not have that luxury. I owe my experience in the FGC for how I developed the mentality to improve via resources and VOD review (something a lot of players are not utilizing currently). The team recognizes the high skill ceiling is favored by a lot of players who are dedicated to grinding. The team also recognizes the lack of substantial onboarding tactics to help those players develop the base knowledge and capability to improve. I think the community would benefit immensely from skilled players sharing their gameplay knowledge and having the ability to support those types of content creators through our Gameplan website, which is currently out of date. There is a lot of potential for many content creators to expand the available resources alongside resources given by the team in the form of game modes or tutorials. I know Pannicked has been working hard to create a series of tutorials to talk about the basics and why they are important. The whole purpose of formulating an Onboarding cell is to put focus towards bettering this experience, which that team is working hard to do so. I think more in-depth tutorials and training to coincide with the addition of Navigation Paths is something the team does plan to expand on. It’s simply just a start that has the potential to expand. I think the addition of time trials would be an excellent improvement to the system!

I really like brainstorming new weapons and hacks! The Trip Mine launcher could be interesting. It feels like what I thought the Atrax would be like. Reworking Heal into its own weapon is a cool concept and is a topic I don’t think gets enough discussion on. Adjusting Invulnerability to be shattered by melee is also a unique tweak with the additional risk. The purpose of renaming Armor was to prevent confusion that it would add an armor bar on top of your health bar. Regarding Reveal Effect, this may have to do with your video settings depending if you adjust vibrance at all. I mentioned before I like the idea of having some more incentives for players to play specific modes. As I mentioned on another thread, TDM is currently our most popular game mode. I think something could be expanded here to help increase the likelihood of swapping from TDM to BR or vice versa.

Overall, fantastically written! I appreciate you taking the time to sit down and constructively write out your feelings and backing it up with your thoughts.

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