It’s just 3 more days of waiting, and then we’ll finally be able to jump into the skin of the Predator and take on the Fireteam in Predator: Hunting Grounds! And to celebrate the impending release, Sony officially unveiled the launch trailer for Hunting Grounds!
In addition to the trailer, Illfonic’s Charles Brungardt wrote an entry for the PlayStation Blog talking about how Illfonic has taken the feedback from the recent trial weekend, and the changes they’ve implimented as a result.
“For the Fireteam we made infil locations based on the mission. Quick gear swapping controls are now shown on the screen and many weapon adjustments have been made, in regard to damage done, etc. We made the diffuse button for the Predator Self Destruct sequence easier to interact with. However, there is an increased difficulty with the Self Destruct puzzle. Also for the Predator target isolation will no longer start at 100% at the match start. We also enabled the ability to switch weapons while transitioning in Predkour and made changes to various elements of the weapons, like damage. One of the pieces of feedback we heard a lot was about the Predator’s footstep sounds, we updated the walking/running footstep attenuation to make the Predator stealthier.
And lastly, some of the additional issues the community gave us feedback on were also addressed like matchmaking times and notifications, crossplay is now enabled by default, voice mic mute is no longer enabled by default, and many more. Performance issues are still something we continue to look at and dial in. This will be ongoing, especially as we put out planned updates down the road, post launch. Which we do have a plan for!”
Illfonic also recently published the Patch 1.0 notes on their community forums, detailing some changes made from the trial version of the game. You can read them in full over on Illfonic’s forums.
Brungardt also talked about post-release support for Predator: Hunting Grounds, confirming that the first content update will be around a month after the game’s release!
“Speaking of planned updates, we view the launch of Predator: Hunting Grounds as just the beginning. What that means to us, at IllFonic, is that we can continue to drop new content post launch. We do have a roadmap in place for this already. In fact, you will see the first content update — which will be a free one — go live a little over a month from now. And there will be more content updates after that. These will include many great surprises. This is part of why our community forums are so special to us. We are listening and taking your feedback to heart, whether it be found bugs or comments on the game.”
And for those out there planning on picking the game up on the PC, the Epic Store now has a Deluxe Digital Edition which comes with a variety of Epic themed (much like the PS4 version had Playstation themed) skins for a variety of weapons, and the Predator himself!
Thanks to molasar for the links. Make sure you stick with Alien vs. Predator Galaxy for the latest news on Predator: Hunting Grounds! You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to get the latest on your social media walls. You can also join in with fellow Alien and Predator fans on our forums!
Not to mention it feels like they either stealth nerfed the melee, or the elder sword is just worthless. The amount of times I would jump in and hit someone literally about 7 times in a row with that thing only for them to keep running until their teammates arrives was ridiculous.
On the plus side the plasma caster on full charge is a monster if you can get the hit off. It really is an insta-down. Ironically I was trying to move away from using it as the trial made it clear that meleeing with the combistick was really the way to go, so I was trying to do more of those sort of attacks. But once I realised how worthless they were I started going back to ranged with the caster, which was how I really wanted to be playing all along.
But yeah, I really am starting to slowly come round to the "buff the Predator" way of thinking. At least the melee anyway. Because right now at the start of the game his only two options for it are a bit of a joke.
Lucky!!!
Have fun!
https://media2.giphy.com/media/GCSIwtwqAMBTq/giphy.gif
I'd better pick up a PS4 then
https://media.tenor.com/images/404381627a8702d596dec9185b01ac0a/tenor.gif
Hopefully they can get it sorted out before midnight since it'd be nice to be able to dive right into it as soon as it becomes available rather than having to wait another hour or so for it to download.
I really was hoping they would have a better name than 'Predkour' but oh well
I just wished we had a first-person option and fewer UI overlays. I don't like the on rails branch system of following the red trail. I would probably prefer a wall walk system similar to what we had with Aliens in previous games where you could walk/jump anywhere. (of course more limited to climbable surfaces for a predator.)
Agreed. While I enjoyed AVP 2010, I was never a fan of the target focus jumping. Moving around had such a stuttered flow.
Do you ever get tired of being you?
Definitely I am not a part of "we" in this case and AvP(2010) did not attract me with anything when it was released.
I agree, even with the lack of content AvP 2010 was incredible. Even by today's standards the graphics look great.
I'll forget this comment long before I forget this game.
Somehow I am not going to follow your instructions.
Sadly I have not tried it in the trial.
Can you do a Private Match solo while offline? Or is it online only?
I think you are still able to pre-order it from their website. Also, check their store list to see which stores are closed in your area as some of them are still open.
In the trial you could create a private match and start it without other players, but there is no AI replacing them. You just deal with enemy soldiers.
In your dreams.
AvP 2010 looks better.
Oh...ok. Thanks for clearing that up.
The thing I really want to know (and I'm sure there are others as well) is will the game offer any type of offline option or will it be strictly online only? From my "research"....all I've been able to find is....that only the Tutorial could be played offline. However, I did find an article that mentions that it was possible to play solo as the Predator or Fireteam member offline.
https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2020/02/26/predator-hunting-grounds-gets-a-ps-and-pc-trial-weekend-27-march/
"The trial will allow you to sample this online experience, but also has the offline solo mode, where you can play alongside and against AI."
Could anyone on here confirm whether this could be done or not? Or is this missinformation?
Yup. I didn't know about it either until I saw an interact icon on a downed Predator one time and it brought up the defuse mini-game.
Basically if you kill the Predator before he can arm his self-destruct, you're good. But if he managed to arm it and then you kill him, you can try to defuse it by interacting with the prompt that appears on his body, then matching four Predator language symbols in a row before it explodes.
Making the prompt easier to interact with is definitely a good thing because there was at least one instance where I got blown up because it took too long for the prompt to appear. And making the mini-game itself more difficult is equally good because once you got the hang of it you could defuse it pretty easily, so this should make it a bit more of a risky thing to do.
There were three maps in the trial, Overgrown, Derailed and Backwater, but we don't know if there are going to be any more in the full game.
The bad thing is, like you said, they only mentioned Overgrown getting the "stuck in place" fixes when it happened to me once on Derailed too, so it's by no means the only map that could happen on.
Yep. Go to the 6:15 Mark.
However, there are still some things left unanswered.
I noticed that only the Overgrown map is mentioned. Is this the only map? Are there different versions of this map?
And of course, talk of new content coming soon after the game's release. That's good. I can't wait to see what their "roadmap" will look lIike. Hopefully, more maps added, new classes, extra gameplay modes (possibly an offline option), and other stuff.
Oh damn, did they improve the netting animation?!
Yeah, not really a fan but to each their own.
You could diffuse the self destruct?!
https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/Diesel%2Fproductv2%2Fpredator-hunting-grounds%2Fdigital-deluxe-edition%2FCRE1089_Predator_EpicStore_DDE_1920x1080_002_TH-1920x1080-4d92f031878d6ba27398dfa86181d59f1c47ef5d.png?h=1080&resize=1&w=1920
No mini art book.
Glad they're buffing the pounce slam damage too. That thing was straight-up garbagio on the trial, especially when the trade-off was that it overloaded your energy. The combistick nerf will be good in that it should help cut down on the amount of people who just did nothing but jump in and spam with it, but I guess we'll see how it ends up comparing to the other weapons once we get our hands on all of them, since there were still two other melee weapons we never got to use in the elder sword and the war club (and the description of the plasma pistol made it sound like a close-quarters shotgun-type weapon too).