Illfonic Talks Feedback From Predator: Hunting Grounds Trial, Balancing and Fixes!

Started by Corporal Hicks, Apr 20, 2020, 07:51:33 AM

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Illfonic Talks Feedback From Predator: Hunting Grounds Trial, Balancing and Fixes! (Read 4,760 times)

Corporal Hicks

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.

Bow

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.”

Make sure you stick with Alien vs. Predator Galaxy for the latest news on Predator: Hunting Grounds! You can follow us on FacebookTwitter, 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!

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AVP-CAPCOM

Didn't you post a different version of this article not 20 minutes ago?

Corporal Hicks


Kailem

I'm interested to see what balance changes they make from the trial to the full release, if any. One thing that I think contributes to the idea that the plasma caster does no damage is that since it's a charge-based weapon, you can never really tell just how much it's done to a player when you hit them as the Predator. You could charge it up halfway and hit the same person twice and potentially do massive damage in reality, but if they're then able to run behind cover and heal it gives the Predator player this impression of "well I just hit this guy with two charged-up shots and it did nothing."

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.

Corporal Hicks

Perhaps some sort of spotting, or focusing feature, that lets you tag a specific enemy.

Kailem

Yeah it's good that you can tag all the human players in thermal to differentiate them from the AI, but that was a bit of a problem with the "claimed" text on the right side of the screen being too indistinct too. It would tell you if you'd taken a trophy from someone which you would think in theory would help you keep track of who you'd killed and how many were left, but it never updated or changed in any way after the reinforcements were brought in, so you could end up getting confused about how many players were actually still alive since you could still have peopled listed as "claimed" who were actually still alive.

PAS Spinelli

Any news on graphics and key mapping settings?

Dyre

It doesn't matter, this game will flop.

Voodoo Magic

Quote from: Dyre on Apr 20, 2020, 10:31:20 PM
It doesn't matter, this game will flop.

You should hold out for the Robowar game.


molasar

Quote from: Dyre on Apr 20, 2020, 10:31:20 PM
It doesn't matter, this game will flop.

Jealousy will get you nowhere.

AVP-CAPCOM

AVP-CAPCOM

#10
Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Apr 21, 2020, 12:48:47 AM
Quote from: Dyre on Apr 20, 2020, 10:31:20 PM
It doesn't matter, this game will flop.

You should hold out for the Robowar game.






Quote from: Dyre on Apr 20, 2020, 10:31:20 PM
It doesn't matter, this game will flop.

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.

molasar

molasar

#11
Quote from: AVP-CAPCOM on Apr 21, 2020, 07:50:03 AM
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.

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.

acrediblesource

I nver liked IGN---ever. Extreme bias on their reporting front leaves me to believe if nobody pays them or sponsors them to do it , they will destroy a game. They are affilitated with CNN and you know basically everything on CNN is trash.

Sexual tyrannasuarus

I hope that the graphics improve and the stealth kills dont remain buggy. I loved it overall. Hopefully they add single player hunting down the road like Friday the 13th

bendinglight

Quote from: Sexual tyrannasuarus on Apr 22, 2020, 04:22:02 PM
I hope that the graphics improve and the stealth kills dont remain buggy. I loved it overall. Hopefully they add single player hunting down the road like Friday the 13th

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.

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