A month after Predator: Hunting Grounds revisited the cinematic universe with the release of AvPR’s Wolf Predator, Illfonic are now debuting another movie Predator with the release of the Emissary Predator DLC alongside the release of Patch 2.39!
This Yautja chose to remain hidden and watch the modern human warriors, studying their tech and practices over the years. Gradually, this Predator stole and constructed armor and gear similar to that of a modern military combatant. With a slight resemblance, this Predator found he was able to elicit additional confusion and fear from human warriors perplexed with his unique but familiar armor.
Alongside the Emissary Predator as paid content, the new update includes some free content in the way of 5 new shaders for Dutch’s Knife, a new Predlocks and tint and a new Predator skin pattern.
You can find the patch notes for 2.39 below, including fixes for the Wolf Predator bugs.
General
- Backwater (Day Variant) has been reenabled and will once again show up in the map rotation
- Fixed an issue where certain cinematics were too dark in several maps
- Fixed an issue on Headquarters where a certain ammo crate could not be interactable
Predator
General
- Fixed an issue with the Wolf Predator mask appearing too dark in certain locations
- Fixed an issue where the Wolf Predator’s skin pattern shaders would display incorrectly when previewing in the customization menu
- Fixed an issue where the Falconer Predator’s face was not displaying the intended pattern
- Fixed an issue where the Exiled Predator’s Platinum and Steam exclusive armor had the same swatch in the customization men
Gear
- Wrist Launcher
- Lowered gear cost from 2 to 1
- Reduced total ammo from 10 to 8
Thanks to SuperiorIronman and Kailem for the heads-up!
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It appears we'll be getting a Prey themed update or expansion in the next several months that includes bears, based on someone's datamine that RT shared...
https://i.ibb.co/R0sdqF6/IMG-20220427-083753.jpg
...but I guess we'll see!
Ok so I was wrong here, there are no beads like that on either the Viking nor the Thicker dreads. So yeah looks like this is the same situation as Exiled with missing new dreads featured in the marketing picture.
Its just the way they've been handling the game. It seems like they are just chucking in color shaders and one DLC for the sake of content for the past few months and not something of real gameplay changing substance. Better stealth options, tactics, new gear, new long range predator weaponry, balance issues, new modes, new maps, but we get nothing at all. There was some Falconer drones that we thought was going to drop long ago but never made the cut for some reason, even though its in the game and the Predator itself was dropped in sometime ago.
There is also the fact that Illfonic claims they will respond to the feedback that the community gives in the past few years, but they have responded in very little to nothing at all, which frustrates the community constantly. Like one of the biggest grips of the game is currently Fireteam being too overpowered in its weaponry and the Predator's lack of long range weaponry and new gear to properly respond to the unfair high damage numbers. There is tons of issues to talk about, but again I invite anyone to look over at the forums to understand the issues as I would need to make like what 6 posts to cover all of this, or better yet, some people who can explain it better than I can.
with all this potential men, it cant be
If the bear datamine is legit and there is an assumed Prey-themed expansion, I really hope they have some quality talent working on it.
I think it's just the longer dreads actually, the initial female ones. Not sure why they used two different ones for the marketing though.
https://image.api.playstation.com/vulcan/ap/rnd/202203/2918/81JTlwviOrsMThgx2wxaNnGF.png?w=780&thumb=false
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FQtaUw6XEAsusEL?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
I've been away on some travel and just got back, but yeah another super disappointing update with this one after Wolf. Not how I was hoping they'd ring in the game's 2nd Anniversary.
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/603438127314632704/966163935986343977/unknown.png?width=630&height=676
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/603438127314632704/966136984974266458/unknown.png?width=407&height=676
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/603438127314632704/966085721498726400/unknown.png
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/603438127314632704/966082018783940668/unknown.png
All from the discord
Voodoo, there is a huge difference between a game having bugs at launch and a game lacking massive loads of content at launch and having bugs
PHG was a PVP only asym game at launch, with barely any class variety aside from looks and stats that didn't offer much play style variety, few weapons and equipment, only three maps and missions that don't give any of those maps any sort of variety. It lacked in many regions that many other Asym games didn't at launch. Let's compare that to the game that essentially birthed this genre, Evolve. Evolve had 4 character types at launch, each type had 3 different characters, all significantly different from one another, and had 3 extremely different Monster classes, Evolve had 12 different maps and 4 different modes at launch, now, Evolve had a big budget, so if we compare this to other asym games like DBD or even Primal Carnage, both of which had 5 or more maps at launch and had all their monster roles be significantly varied, well, it also doesn't look too good on PHG.
AFTE is a PVE only horde shooter, it had 5 classes at launch but all offered something different with how they functioned, it had lots of content, 13 playable levels but a very noticeable lack of story telling connecting them aside from easy to miss cringy dialogue. When compared to old PVE horde shooters, AFTE has a passable amounts of content, with it's 13 maps, 32 weapons and 5 unique classes, comparing it to a notable example in the PVE horde shooter scene, L4D had 20 maps, 10 weapons and no unique classes, so I'd say it holds up pretty okay to that, trading off more maps for more unique character gameplay.
Content wise, I showed the progress both games made within 8 months after launch, which I'll reiterate in here
AFTE released 2 completely unique classes, one new mode/map that feels in line with what we already had ingame, 12 weapons, various weapon mods and mission modifiers, as well as many QoL minor features. All of this for free
PHG released a total of 9 classes, 4 for Fireteam, 5 for Predator. Three of the Fireteam ones are paid, and 2 of the paid ones are the same character, both feature the same weapon but with different mods. The one free class was a movie character, which was pretty cool, but aside from the thermal vision passive, it was another reskin of the base classes. 3 of the Predator ones were paid, one is a movie character that had an ugly mask but aside from that was a very welcome additon, the other two are original creations made to coincide with the release of popular games at the time. The other 2 free classes were the Elder, a movie character, and the Alpha, a Neca character, the Alpha was which at the time, was a simple Hunter reskin, which could also be said for the City Hunter, which didn't have many different stats and instead had a permanent gear spot taken by his wrist launcher.
Weapons wise, AFTE released a weapon for each of it's 4 types in all of it's updates, making sure everyone got something.
PHG, released 6 weapons for the Fireteam and 3 for the Predator, I'll ignore gear items
Out of the 6 weapons for the Fireteam, 2 are the exact same rifle with different mods, one is a rocket launcher, one quite literally a reused Predator asset and the other 2 being 2 laser weapons made out of Predator technology. All Predator weapons were melee weapons, and all of them were original and not any of the missing gear seen in the movies. Over half of these weapons were locked behind DLC at their time of their launch. Illfonic really neglected Predator AND different playstyles, with no new shotguns and handguns for the Fireteam and no new ranged weapons for the Predator.
There's more but at this point, you can see how one was struggling and the other wasn't, Alien has also been very transparent with us with their roadmap, while Predator kept us guessing and even tricked us one time :/
What you're mostly talking about is available playerbase and wait times, which is sparse on PC, but very robust still on PS for PHG.
What I'm talking about was matchmaking was completely broken for players at launch for AFTE. Completely broken. There were people including me which was forced to play only with bots.
Dude? Dude!
Same I felt about AFTE, all which I said on the podcast while still giving it an 8/10 for fun. I said it felt like an incomplete game. Levels just stopped. Matchmaking was broken. Aliens fell through floors. AI at hub wouldn't unlock further missions correctly, nor advancement doors would open making one re-start the game. And environments would go completely black, only showing the models.
You can knock it off with the 'lying to yourself' comments. We can agree to disagree, but no need for all that. Cheers.
PHG's matchmaking issues are far worse than AFTE's, I played AFTE today with a friend that just got the game and found someone else instantly, PHG? Good luck finding a match in less than 5 minutes with Predator, or even finding a match at all seeing as empty lobbies were never fixed.
Also, PHG was an incomplete game at launch, it felt like an Alpha of a game and not a finished product. And the quality control just got worse after that, say what you want about AFTE, but it launched with a full campaign, full arsenal and full enemy list, with the one lacking factor being an endgame cutscene. PHG? A MP only game with ONE MODE, THREE MAPS and only 3 classes on each side! And don't try to say this was a small indie team, I've seen small indie teams do better with other asym games, Primal Carnage had 5 playable classes that are completely different from one another and 7 maps at launch! Don't even get me started on DBD.
I'm sorry, but to say those 2 are even comparable in quality in their first year is just lying to yourself, AFTE has been consistent in quality while PHG just got worse and worse, Clash feels like a mod made in the 2000's for Quake for God's sake!
Everything after Dutch 87 was noticeably worse in quality, since it's when they started running out of assets they already had made before launch, you could already see signs of their poor planning with Clash
Interesting slant your graphic has, the way you present things. And 19 modifier cards! Wowzers!
And you can revisit threads to see AFTE had complaints of an incomplete game, massive bugs (one alone being matchmaking was broken for so many, where they couldn't play with other live players / just bots for a couple months, even after hotfixes.) And it's easy not to have many balancing issues when all your opponents are AI.
My personal point is, if someone starts comparing game updates 9 months in with 24 months in, I'm always with intellectual honesty going to say it's an unfair comparison no matter what the game. Also, if someone says "Cold Iron is showing up Illfonic on how its done" I am again, with intellectual honesty going to say "Oh lord no, Cold Iron has their own problems." And the same goes for vice-versa, because Illfonic has not won any awards here either with their product or support problems. Not at all.
Think one is doing better than the other? That's cool, but I see neither to be a bastion of good game management.
This is what we got for the 2 games 8 months after launch!
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/603438127314632704/967245482516680724/unknown.png?width=1367&height=676
This is also not mentioning how PHG had massive issues relating to optimization, bugs, balancing and crossplay during these 8 months, something that AFTE doesn't really suffer since they actually tackle these head on, please let's not pretend even for a second that PHG had better support than AFTE, it didn't, PHG had more classes added and that's it, and all of them just had different stats cuz Pred specs would only be added way later.
PHG's classes are the definition of quantity over quality.
https://c.tenor.com/JEj4FA-lXdEAAAAC/confused-jaguarsfan.gif
That is exactly what was Illfonic was doing their first year. And Illfonic's updates were monthly, not quarterly.
We're 9 months in on AFTE right now. Let's go back and check 9 months in on PHG:
For me if I had to redo the backstory I would've had him be a representative of Cleopatra. Essentially that this is the Predator equivalent to what Dutch is doing. If Dutch is adopting Predator weapons and technique, then the Emissary is operating under a similar idea. The Emissary is adopting human style body armor, camouflaged gear, maybe some weapons. It's inferior to what he'd normally carry, but the technique and the ability to go under unnoticed and especially at a distance gives a surprising edge for him. He'd be here to soften Dutch up or outright kill him. Cleo didn't spare him in their first encounter, she thought she was too good for him. And now that Dutch has survived, he's become an even greater a threat than before. So Cleo assembles her own team to soften Dutch up for her, or outright kill him. And it'd be hard to convince them not to, it's Dutch, any Predator would be willing to fight him.
You could even retain the allied backstory. Maybe this guy joins the OWLF to a degree. Dutch is too much so he surrenders Cleo's location explaining how Sean got it. Or if they made a new enemy type from this guy he could be working with Stargazer to take Dutch on.
Had they planned ahead, suddenly you've got a new enemy type to get some sort of Predator A.I
The Lore looks off though, the Emissaries joined up with the humans and were provided the human gear.
Welcome to two years, turning three, of the community wondering what in the hell is Illfonic doing with PHG. I mean I know you mentioned that comparing the years of PHG and AFTE isn't that fair, but at least they are pumping out new weapons, classes, and balance changes within each patch. I have no idea why is it difficult for Illfonic to add a Speargun and lower the damage number in some of the weapons coding. What is worse is that for the past years, they claim that they are listening in to feedback from the community but in fact do very little to nothing with it, which in turn bitters the community as by that point it seems like they take nothing serious with the actual concerns about the game's quality.
One small example is the one already brought up, the Exiled dreadlocks. It appeared in promotional screenshots so they must already have it in their systems right? So why did it take 6 months to make the drop, but then have the great idea of making people work for the dreadlocks they bought alongside the DLC? What next, they drop a Scar DLC but the dreadlocks and unique mask of his must be bought via level progression? So then what would be the point of buying the DLC if I only get 3/4ths of it? It's so weird and I don't blame the angry backlash they have gotten from the recent drop due to this and the lack of content.
All the community knows is that Illfonic claims they cannot talk about what is up and coming due to red tape reasons but things are coming. But if the last 4 patches proved anything, is that this isn't looking good at all, and no one in the community is believing this "red tape reason" anymore.
All true. And while I had applied the same concept for a Hell-Hound to be applied to a Smart Disc model (timed release - Predator can only be on the ground to release it) the Falcon drone in place of the Smart Disc in third person indeed doesn't require any animation and can get stuck in trees just the same and just tag enemies in the area. It feels so simple in programming terms, and lord yes, a UAV style would be even so much simpler. Yet we didn't get either with the Falconer? So weird.
Yeah, it seems so simple that I wonder, am I missing something?
It is probably scrapped though I wouldn't actually know why. The Falcon could reuse the tech for the Smart-disk where it deploys and probably wouldn't require an animation just have the Predator look at the gauntlet, probably lasts a bit longer as well like a way to ping targets given the scanning specialization. Or they could be lazy and do it like the UAV. We even have precedent for the Falcon slamming into people from the mobile games so they barely have to change anything.
Hell, the shuriken much as I don't want it to be that could've been a variant of smart-disk.
I really don't know what Illfonic's aversion to ranged content is. But given this release should be Fugitive, they actually could've reused the Wrist launcher animation and did that disk launcher from the film. So bleed instead of burn damage but they probably could've even left the damage numbers the same. It'd still have usage since your target's not on fire to give yourself away you just shot a guy.
Oh for sure, I seen how there need to have more campaigns, multiplayer options, and the like, but at least the game's performance and balance is being consistently worked on, compared to Illfonic fixing 3 bugs and having 10 new ones, no nerfing of overpowered weaponry, or improving the frame rate that still causes crashes even in strong computer gaming builds. I'm looking at the recent update they drop and its way nicer and fatter then what Illfonic has dropped, its insane to me that one has more going on then the other. I mean look at em:
The recent drop:
https://www.aliensfireteamelite.com/en/releasenotes/
And the one above with PHG, like I'm seeing actual changes being made compared to just a few new skins, a half baked DLC, and locking dreadlocks to a character we paid for 6 months ago only to work for what we paid for through a 500 level up wall. Cold Iron ain't perfect, but at least they are working hard on their forge.
Well at least Aliens Fireteam Elite is doing the good shit, Cold Iron is showing up Illfonic on how its done.
Or perhaps it's just abandoned like Falconer's drone. It's all been very weird since Exiled if you ask me. And Exiled's dreads unlockable at level 500 even when you purchased the DLC? Unacceptable. It all seems sorely mismanaged.
Honestly, this is the anniversary update.....bruh.
Well as I quote one person from the PHG Fourms:
They are doing absolutely nothing innovative at all. THATS a goddamm shame. What is f**king appalling is that the dreadlocks of Exiled is behind a damm level up reward of 500. I'm sorry, but we paid for the DLC, we expect the ENTIRE MODEL to be included, not waiting for 6 months of the dreadlocks to be dropped in separated by a goddamm leveling system. If someone PAYS for the damm PRODUCT, WE EXPECT ALL OF THE PRODUCT to be INCLUDED ONCE WE DOWNLOAD IT.
SERIOUSLY WTF?!
I'm a just leave a link here to the fourms for people here who are out of touch of the community's feelings of the games current state, like no one is meming here, we just want the game to be better: https://forum.predator.illfonic.com/t/patch-notes-2-39/27316
Anyone else find it weird the Shuriken still isn't released though? Like what is it going to be released with then, if not Wolf or here, then Celtic maybe?
Also just going by the bio, even though he's very clearly based on the Emissaries from The Predator, I'm kinda taking this as an "original" character in the same way that Exiled is, even though he's clearly based on the Preds from the first arc of the Hunters comic. That way I can easily get over any inconsistencies between this one and either of the ones we (didn't) see in the movie.
Unless it's a case of more technical issues though, on which case those would continue to suck.