Yeah it's concept art for the Backwater map.
On the technical side things definitely seemed
mostly improved. The framerate seems better along with the matchmaking, though there still seem to be bugs telling you you've got new stuff unlocked when you've already looked at it all, as well as unlocking field lockers. And the occasional times when the game literally just freezes that I mentioned in another thread is just terrible. They need to sort that one out asap because as the Predator it can lead to you going from fine to almost dead because the fire team is shooting you all the time you're unable to move or even tell what's going on.
It also felt like playing as the Predator was a lot harder, though part of that was definitely me doing stupid stuff and also probably going up against people who had pre-ordered and waited up to play it, so they knew what they were doing. It felt like whenever I was the Predator I was going up against these "MLG Hunting Grounds esports pro team" wannabes, yet when I played the fire team I mostly got paired with useless teammates who just split up, ran off and never shot the Predator when he jumped down and swung at people.
Speaking of the melee it feels really weak, possibly even weaker than in the trial. The elder sword takes so many hits to down someone, and uses up a lot of stamina, so it doesn't really feel any better than the wrist blades, which are also really weak. I cornered a lone player in a room and hit him three or four times with the elder sword and he just ran off, and because my stamina was all gone from using it I could only follow and do one swing every few seconds, which still didn't bring him down even though I hit him about three more times. So that kinda sucked, especially since you don't really have any choices of weapons early on.
On the plus side though the plasma caster is amazing if you can hit a fully powered-up shot. It can down someone instantly. With how crappy the melee seems to be and how good that shot is, I've come around to thinking the scout might not be such a bad class after all, since at least there you're not even going to
want to use melee.
Also confirmation of there only being the three maps from the trial was disappointing, and given Illfonic's record with Friday the 13th, also entirely expected. It seems they haven't learned from their mistakes there.
Overall my first night playing was more frustrating than anything, mostly because of the fact that I didn't win a single match against a full fire team, some of which was straight-up due to the game screwing me over with bugs that cost me the match, or melee that felt like I was trying to knock over a tree with a wet newspaper. I certainly don't want to be steamrolling over full teams, but having every match end with half my kills coming from the self destruct definitely wasn't the best.
So yeah, a more frustrating first go at it than I would have liked, but hopefully things will go a bit better next time; if only because they can't go much worse!