Needs more stuffing in the chicken and I have heavy reservations about the game design pulling me into my sweaty tendencies when I am not playing with my friends, and I haven't had that side of me touched for half a decade. I feel like most of it is because the developers haven't found the center they want to stake just yet, but some of the things they've said about their design philosophies after the infamous Railgun nerf (which was warranted fwiw) hints at some dissonance about what fulfilling a "fantasy" actually means. Theres one thing to cling onto "You can't please everybody" - the most nothingburger thing you can say on game design - and making your mechanics contradict your intentional designs anyway. Heavy armor being nullified by headshot damage, for example, does not make me feel like I'm a slow moving, damage soaking juggernaut, it makes me feel like an idiot for not picking light armor.
Beyond creature and objective interactions (the weakest links in the game so far) they've done a fine job in maintaining a balance within stratagems and weapon loadouts and I'm overall pleased with the direction the game is going. Massive reservations, but I'm not interested in holding it against them beyond specifics when figuring out what you want to do with your game years down the line is a hard line to cross; I bid them good luck. And as much as Im not interested in defending microtransactions as they're bad for us in general, this is also one of the very few games where racking up the MT currency is not an exercise in manipulation via hard limiting currency drops - you play matches, you get 20-40-100+ SC. And considering that they could remove some well known exploits to take advantage of SC accumulation, but havent yet, I do believe that Arrowhead are on the right head in terms of appeasing their ends (justified or no) and not making it a sore point for the game. If they decide to deprecate the SC value of packs over time, than they gain my respect. But only until than. All to say that this game is not "p2w", because your game knowledge and teamwork is going to do more for you than having stun grenades. Though yeah, some goodies in the SC packs are pretty damn good to have.
Beyond creature and objective interactions (the weakest links in the game so far) they've done a fine job in maintaining a balance within stratagems and weapon loadouts and I'm overall pleased with the direction the game is going. Massive reservations, but I'm not interested in holding it against them beyond specifics when figuring out what you want to do with your game years down the line is a hard line to cross; I bid them good luck. And as much as Im not interested in defending microtransactions as they're bad for us in general, this is also one of the very few games where racking up the MT currency is not an exercise in manipulation via hard limiting currency drops - you play matches, you get 20-40-100+ SC. And considering that they could remove some well known exploits to take advantage of SC accumulation, but havent yet, I do believe that Arrowhead are on the right head in terms of appeasing their ends (justified or no) and not making it a sore point for the game. If they decide to deprecate the SC value of packs over time, than they gain my respect. But only until than. All to say that this game is not "p2w", because your game knowledge and teamwork is going to do more for you than having stun grenades. Though yeah, some goodies in the SC packs are pretty damn good to have.