The Official PlayStation Podcast made its debut on the virtual airwaves last Friday – though technically it’s just their first release under that name! And in its inaugural episode under the Official PlayStation Podcast banner, Illfonic’s CEO Charles Brungardt and Chief Creative Officer Jared Gerritzen join to talk about how Illfonic and Predator: Hunting Ground is doing!
The discussion starts at around 15:30 minutes in and lasts for 10 minutes. The pair confirm that Illfonic is working on the game from home and keeping safe. They felt they had an advantage in working like this due their experience in communicating and working from three different Illfonic studios anyway.
They confirmed that further balancing has been worked on following the feedback from the trial weekend. They specifically mentioned complaints that the Predator was underpowered (though they did find in their backend data that in terms of overall wins, the Fireteams and Predators were very nearly split down the middle). The difficulties with matchmaking were also discussed, and they commented on how the trial was incredibly useful in fixing that prior to launch.
It was confirmed that the trial build was already an older build that was 6 weeks old, and that some issues identified during the trial had already been fixed but not rushed into the trial build at the last minute. They also revealed that Hunting Grounds had gone gold ahead of its release on the 24th of April.
While they’re focused on making the launch version of the game as good as possible, Illfonic also discussed the importance of the post-launch support and following the feedback from player experiences to further refine the game.
On the same topic, lead designer Jordan Mathewson also recently spoke to ComicBook.com about the feedback from the trial weekend and how they were using that information going forward.
“I think the biggest things that we took away from it were some balance,” said Mathewson when asked about the response to the Hunting Grounds trial. “A lot of it was coming down to, ‘This is how we’ve been playing for quite a while now, I really want to see what happens when other people get it.’ Sure enough, there were some balance things that we took into account, and we’ve been making some adjustments. And a lot of usability and other feedback that came back was really great. So, we’re doing everything we can to address those things.”
When asked for specifics on the game’s balance, Mathewson referenced the arsenal of weapons available to the Fireteam and the Predator. He said IllFonic chose specific weapons to be used in the trial that the developers had lingering questions about, and seeing players use them helped answer final questions regarding which ones were “a little bit too much.” He mentioned the grenade launcher which dominated Fireteam loadouts once it was unlocked as one example.”
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Haven't felt the predatorish thing but definitely tasted the COD style and ACM unfinished states for now in this game.
You are right about these two games being completely different i.e. they aim to do different things but P:HG is closer to the first two Predator films than AvP2.
Also stating that AvP2 "is the better game" is very questionable. If I was not a fan of Alien or Predator as a gamer since the early 80s, I would not be interested in it in 2001 at all. And no PC gamers I knew back then were hyped about it. Generally they played it, then jumped to a new shinny thing on the horizon.
It's 1:32 AM. Goodnight!
Sure AVP2 is the better game but still, it's not a good comparsion
The first time I played AvP2 was in 2001 and I do not remember it being special gameplay wise for its time. Definitely it is not a better Predator game than P:HG.
Also regarding more weapons. Are you sure about it? And which AvP2 map is more interesting (more complex) than those in P:HG?
Gameplay-wise, AVP2 has more maps, more weapons, and a multiplayer mode dedicated to Predator vs Marine gameplay. That's kind of all that Predator: Hunting Grounds is offering.
The game runs on UE4, not Unreal 4 Engine. Are you sure you were downloading it from the official website because there is no link to an Unity engine there?
IllFonic is the most familiar with UE4.
Nothing new here for me. I am a gamer since the early 80s. IMO those some posters are out of their mind thinking that using a commercial engine is a lazy choice. Completely detached from reality. I guess jealousy feelings play a big role here.
AvP2 the same game with aliens as well? I miss something here.
When you download Unreal 4 Engine the link insists you download Unity Engine instead so there is some business to business, cross compatibility going on there.
That's because Unreal 4 engine requires knowledge of coding and C++ (for seasoned commercial game designers) whereas Unity is for individual modders and a lot is pre-set code and brushes.
Its not uncommon for studios producing AAA titles, to use other people's game engines, rather than inventing their own. Some posters here at AVP-G think using Unreal 4 for P-HG was a lazy choice and a glorified fan-game.
I think this is what is making some posters hesitant to purchase. Me personally I still play the PC game avp-2, as its the same game, just with aliens as well.
I didn't think the graphics needed much improvement - I was/am playing on the PC - but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case on the PS4.
Same here (for the single player) - would be great to have that be part of their future content deliveries but not holding my breath. I would be happy with their focus being 100% on the MP aspect to future tune balancing/bugs/etc.
I believe you meant Unreal Engine 4 (game engine) made by Epic which was used for P:HG development (not reskinning of Unreal game).
Unity (game engine) is made by Unity Technologies.
Well the perpetual Call of Duty fanboys at IGN already gave the Hunting Grounds beta the thumbs down, so thats a given. As much as its cool to dismiss the bias of IGN, they are the authority on gaming reviews, advertising and hype.
From what I recall though this game is a reskin of the Unreal 4, Unity Engine so would be interesting to know the production budget against gaming sales.
Jealousy will get you nowhere.
You should hold out for the Robowar game.
https://ilzinefilo.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/robowar-2.jpg
It can also be hard to do follow-up damage sometimes just because all the players look the same, so it's not really possible to focus your attacks to try and weaken one rather than just going for whoever's in range at any given time. It's one of the reasons I think the game would benefit from more vision modes like other Predator games have, or at least some sort of "scan" ability that lets you determine the HP of an individual target so you could go after specific targets.
And given that each fire team member can literally go into a match with 5 healing items each for a total of 20 for the whole team (and that's without taking into consideration the health kits you find on the map) some sort of "tech" vision mode that highlights ammo crates and any medkits or ammo pouches that the fire team puts down might be good too, in order to make it easier to spot and destroy them.
I do like that you can blow up ammo crates as the Predator though. I'll definitely be doing that a fair bit.