Predator: Hunting Grounds - Asymmetric Predator game from the makers of Friday the 13th: the Game

[Sir Wesley Tailpipe]

Fuck yeah, they do. I never even heard of The Hidden: Source. I doubt there's that many people playing that mod, no offense. It's just a shame that Illfonic of all devs is doing a game with this concept.

He can’t help being a hipster douche, he’s a PC gamer.

 

[Sir Wesley Tailpipe]

They pulled the plug on a couple of stretch goals. Most notably a peak into Tom Savini's studio for the creation of the Hell Jason that was a backer-exclusive (and there's some damning evidence the devs were selling keys on Ebay for hundreds of dollars). When it turned out the Hell Jason wasn't designed at all by Tom Savini and Savini just loaned them his name.

There eventually was a kind of story mode in the name of a Mission Mode or whatever similar to Hit Man where you have to kill Counselors in X number of ways.

Hell Jason was designed by an underling at Savini’s effects studio, same with WWE wrestler Bray Wyatt’s Fiend mask. Savini does very little work himself anymore, he’s taken on the role of the master artisan teaching a new generation of makeup effects artists and putting his name on stuff they produce.

Thechnically, it was a Savini (Studio) creation, just not a Tom Savini creation.

That still doesn’t forgive selling more download codes for the skin on eBay than they gave to backers in the (Extremely Limited and Exclusive!) Kickstarter tier.

 

[Ihavetinyweewee]

I played the trial version, thought it was trash. I actually had fun with F13.

But this is a clumsy mess of a thing. It's like all of the development money went to the Predator mechanics.

The soldier side is like time capsule to the year 1998. The shooting mechanics are so woefully inadequate that it's comical.

You can't go from something like COD: Warzone to Hunting Grounds. It's way too jarring imo...

 

[BrunoMattei]

Hell Jason was designed by an underling at Savini’s effects studio, same with WWE wrestler Bray Wyatt’s Fiend mask. Saving does very little work himself anymore, he’s taken on the role of the master artisan teaching a new generation of makeup effects artists and putting his name on stuff they produce.

Thechnically, it was a Savini (Studio) creation, just not a Tom Savini creation.

That still doesn’t forgive selling more download codes for the skin on eBay than they gave to backers in the (Extremely Limited and Exclusive!) Kickstarter tier.

I thought one of Illfonic's people designed him? A guy made the case that the model for Hell Jason was based on a designer's face.

 

[mr.moon1488]

I guarantee this will have the exact same problem as other Asymmetric titles where a coordinated group on coms can destroy the Killer or Predator.

Also, there's crossplay between PS4 and Epic Store which is something. I still think this will bomb pretty hard.

I'm kinda starting to wonder whether the problems with asymmetric games is even something that can be fixed.

 

[Sir Wesley Tailpipe]

I thought one of Illfonic's people designed him? A guy made the case that the model for Hell Jason was based on a designer's face.

The concept was from Illfonic and Gun, and the finished “concept art”was done by a Savini underling and signed off on by Savini.

It’s like a Thomas Kincade painting. It has the famous name on it, but all he did was vaguely nod in its direction once.

 

[Sir Wesley Tailpipe]

I'm kinda starting to wonder whether the problems with asymmetric games is even something that can be fixed.

The biggest issue with asymmetrics is that people also have to accept an asymmetric chance of winning if the weak but numerous side of a game doesn’t co-ordinate correctly. Dead By Daylight fucked it up to the point where a single victim can beat most killers without help. Devs need to stand by their decisions about design and balance, and explain them clearly, and most gamers would still bitch about disadvantages.

 

[mr.moon1488]

The biggest issue with asymmetrics is that people also have to accept an asymmetric chance of winning if the weak but numerous side of a game doesn’t co-ordinate correctly. Dead By Daylight fucked it up to the point where a single victim can beat most killers without help. Devs need to stand by their decisions about design and balance, and explain them clearly, and most gamers would still bitch about disadvantages.

Yeah, that seems like the biggest problem. For the game to work it needs to be somewhat unbalanced in favor of the smaller side, but people bitch about losing.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I'm kinda starting to wonder whether the problems with asymmetric games is even something that can be fixed.

The biggest issue with asymmetrics is that people also have to accept an asymmetric chance of winning if the weak but numerous side of a game doesn’t co-ordinate correctly. Dead By Daylight fucked it up to the point where a single victim can beat most killers without help. Devs need to stand by their decisions about design and balance, and explain them clearly, and most gamers would still bitch about disadvantages.

The problem time and time again is that the Killer/Predator/Fiend/Mastermind has to be powerful enough to take on a group. Simple as that. And where they continuously fuck up is that the Survivors can 1 v 1 the Killer.

The problem really manifests when it's a coordinated group with mics versus the Killer. Because 1 guy can 1 V 1 the Killer while the rest of the team gets the objective done or orchestrates a cock block so the other guy can get away.

So, the Killer has to be powerful enough so they cannot be 1 V 1'd and the second problem is that Survivors in these games always have extremely powerful 2nd chance abilities. It might suck as a solo but that's the way it goes, try and play any team game with rando's and it's the same kind of experience. But the devs for these games never seem to understand that and would rather bend over backwards and fellate the Survivors by giving them tools to function as solo because -in their mind- to hell with a coordinated team vs the Killer because they make up a minority of matches.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I played the trial version, thought it was trash. I actually had fun with F13.

But this is a clumsy mess of a thing. It's like all of the development money went to the Predator mechanics.

The soldier side is like time capsule to the year 1998. The shooting mechanics are so woefully inadequate that it's comical.

You can't go from something like COD: Warzone to Hunting Grounds. It's way too jarring imo...

Double post, fuck it, but it makes more sense now why Illfonic's work for Star Citizen was rejected.

 

[Ihavetinyweewee]

Yeah, that seems like the biggest problem. For the game to work it needs to be somewhat unbalanced in favor of the smaller side, but people bitch about losing.

Easily fixed though: incentivise individual performance over winning

I mean a horror game shouldn't really be about winning anyways imo...

 

[mr.moon1488]

Easily fixed though: incentivise individual performance over winning

I mean a horror game shouldn't really be about winning anyways imo...

That's something I've wondered too. Some of these types of games already have microtransactions so why not just give more "gold" or whatever to the role which isn't getting filled? At the end of the day, it would be more profitable since yeah, the devs are giving up a bit of cash, but they're keeping the servers more active and I'd be willing to bet that most of the tards dropping real shekels for in-game items are also the kinds of people whom exclusively play one side or the other anyway.

 

[BrunoMattei]

That's something I've wondered too. Some of these types of games already have microtransactions so why not just give more "gold" or whatever to the role which isn't getting filled? At the end of the day, it would be more profitable since yeah, the devs are giving up a bit of cash, but they're keeping the servers more active and I'd be willing to bet that most of the tards dropping real shekels for in-game items are also the kinds of people whom exclusively play one side or the other anyway.

I can't speak for the other games but the reason why they don't just sell perks individually in DbD's case is that they want to encourage you to grind and keep playing. So they'd rather encourage you to buy a character and then grind for bloodpoints, dump them into the character to unlock the perk you want and then grind for more bloodpoints and dump into more characters to get that perk on them.

The whole game has an ingeniously designed grind similar to mobile games.

 

[mr.moon1488]

I can't speak for the other games but the reason why they don't just sell perks individually in DbD's case is that they want to encourage you to grind and keep playing. So they'd rather encourage you to buy a character and then grind for bloodpoints, dump them into the character to unlock the perk you want and then grind for more bloodpoints and dump into more characters to get that perk on them.

The whole game has an ingeniously designed grind similar to mobile games.

Well, that's somewhat what I'm talking about. I'm just saying it would likely be more profitable, and make the game better if they adjusted the grind to be less for the side that needs more players.

 

[Ihavetinyweewee]

As I said, I had fun with Friday the 13th. Largely because it was stripped down and concentrated on the experience.

From what I played of DbD, it came off as a convoluted mess.

It wasn't even cheap scary, it was just a big chore in unintetesting maps...

I don't think anyone has quite nailed the formula yet with these games...

Kinda shocked Alien hasn't entered the foray yet...

You could remove a player killer and make a pretty cool 'Blob' game around survivors...

 

[BrunoMattei]

As I said, I had fun with Friday the 13th. Largely because it was stripped down and concentrated on the experience.

From what I played of DbD, it came off as a convoluted mess.

It wasn't even cheap scary, it was just a big chore in unintetesting maps...

I don't think anyone has quite nailed the formula yet with these games...

Kinda shocked Alien hasn't entered the foray yet...

You could remove a player killer and make a pretty cool 'Blob' game around survivors...

I initially thought Alien Isolation would have multiplayer where it's one player as the Alien going after survivors.

 

[Ihavetinyweewee]

I initially thought Alien Isolation would have multiplayer where it's one player as the Alien going after survivors.

It's also one of those things that lends itself to implementing proper mechanics...

I got a team of 5: but two objectived have to be done simultaneously(at different ends of the map).

You're forced to split your team, thus allowing the alien to stalk and pick it's battles..

As numbers dwindle, the objectives start to shift to a lone survivor. Thus, putting the pressure on the alien to finish the job....

It seems tailor made for this game genre. It could be very cinematic and fun...

 

[Sir Wesley Tailpipe]

Double post, fuck it, but it makes more sense now why Illfonic's work for Star Citizen was rejected.

The story of why Illfonic’s work on the FPS component of Star Citizen was thrown out is actually hilarious.

Cloud Imperium, Chris Roberts’ company that contracted Illfonic to do the Star Marine module, as it was called, was really closed-off and not communicating with Illfonic on a regular basis. This led Illfonic to just do the work, and by all accounts they were doing a good job. It was the only solid, playable part of Star Citizen.

The problems popped up when CIG tried to integrate Star Marine with the flight module. Roberts had licensed CryEngine to build his game as part of a deal to have CryTek’s demo team do the sizzle reel and first demo for the kickstarter campaign. CryEngine is not built for the scale needed for what Roberts intended Star Citizen to be, and had his coders monkey around with the engine. The main adjustment was changing the scale to allow more space for dogfighting to happen in. Illfonic wasn’t told that the decision had been made to make the FPS integrate seamlessly with the flight portion, so they weren’t aware that the scaling was not the same, and there may have been missed payments as well.

The scaling in Star Citizen today is equivalent to a human character being 0.1 mm tall. Illfonic had made Star Marine at a 1:1 scale, so it could never integrate into Roberts’ pipe dream of a seamless FPS/Spaceflight SIM/Life substitute/Ponzi scheme correctly, and Roberts threw a fit when he was asked for payment to square Illfonic up before they would do the work to rescale, so the only competent piece of Star Citizen got binned.

 

[BrunoMattei]

The story of why Illfonic’s work on the FPS component of Star Citizen was thrown out is actually hilarious.

Cloud Imperium, Chris Roberts’ company that contracted Illfonic to do the Star Marine module, as it was called, was really closed-off and not communicating with Illfonic on a regular basis. This led Illfonic to just do the work, and by all accounts they were doing a good job. It was the only solid, playable part of Star Citizen.

The problems popped up when CIG tried to integrate Star Marine with the flight module. Roberts had licensed CryEngine to build his game as part of a deal to have CryTek’s demo team do the sizzle reel and first demo for the kickstarter campaign. CryEngine is not built for the scale needed for what Roberts intended Star Citizen to be, and had his coders monkey around with the engine. The main adjustment was changing the scale to allow more space for dogfighting to happen in. Illfonic wasn’t told that the decision had been made to make the FPS integrate seamlessly with the flight portion, so they weren’t aware that the scaling was not the same, and there may have been missed payments as well.

The scaling in Star Citizen today is equivalent to a human character being 0.1 mm tall. Illfonic had made Star Marine at a 1:1 scale, so it could never integrate into Roberts’ pipe dream of a seamless FPS/Spaceflight SIM/Life substitute/Ponzi scheme correctly, and Roberts threw a fit when he was asked for payment to square Illfonic up before they would do the work to rescale, so the only competent piece of Star Citizen got binned.

I heard the same story but I think how bland the FPS portion was was another contributing factor.

 

[Sir Wesley Tailpipe]

I heard the same story but I think how bland the FPS portion was was another contributing factor.

There has also been talk that Roberts felt that Illfonic was stealing the show with the backers, because they were actually making progress, while his team spun its wheels in feature-creep hell.

Compared to the insanely buggy work CIG has done, bland but competent is the work of gods.