There doesn’t seem to be a suggestion sub-forum, so I’m just sticking it in here.
I’ve been playing the game for a bit (slightly more than 100 hours now), and I really enjoy the game. However, there are some glaring issues that I feel should be looked at to improve the enjoyment.
The first issue relates to when XP is awarded and counted towards mission progress. The game is free to play, which by nature makes the game very grindy. That’s fine, as the game isn’t exactly pay2win because getting at least a bronze loadout is not that difficult. However, due to XP being awarded only at the end of the match, it can leave a very, very sour taste in players’ mouths when they end up getting DCed from a game that is halfway, or even ending. This negates the entire gameplay efforts of the players in one fell swoop. My suggestion is to have XP be awarded in real-time:
- It prevents situations where players are punished for erratic connection, or even a fault in the game’s network
- It encourages a more hop-in, hop-out attitude if players don’t wish to play an entire match, increasing flexibility
- It possibly reduces the number of players playing at a time, which I don’t think is that big an issue as there are so many servers, which means that players can just look for other servers with more people to play with. As the game’s popularity increases, this will be an even smaller problem.
This brings me to my next point. The game sometimes takes too long to start up and get into the action. This is primarily because of the match start countdowns in the lobby, and the match preparation countdowns after the warm-up at the start of the game. The latter is not so much an issue, especially considering competitive matches where you have a team of players who may be discussing their merc choices. My gripe is with the former. The match start countdown causes a few problems:
- You’re forced to make your merc and loadout choices quickly. Sometimes, you’re given insufficient time to make your choices. The existence of the match start countdown itself has personally made me not want to go into my barracks to edit my squad and loadout choices, as it just extends the amount of time required for me to be able to jump into the action.
- Sometimes, you enter a waiting lobby right as the match is about to start, which means you have no time to make your choices. Again, this problem would be solved if you make your changes in the barracks before entering a server, but this means you have absolutely no way of synergizing your choices with your team’s. Besides, if players are expected to enter the barracks to make their choices, why bother allowing them to make their choices in the lobby?
My suggestion would be to remove the match start countdown totally, and have an untimed lobby. This allows you to make your choices without rush, and eliminates situations where you’re immediately thrown into the match without being able to edit your squad. A simple idle timer can be implemented to kick players who are deliberately taking up space in lobbies.
My next issue is on the shuffle system of the game. I don’t know what algorithm it shuffles based on, but my understanding is that there’s still no MMR system in place. The next best alternative would be to shuffle based on levels. I don’t intend to equate level to skill and teamwork, but I think we can agree that they are correlated. It’s infuriating for the shuffle to have all the low level players on one team, and the relatively high players on the other. These are not isolated incidents; this happens many times at the start of matches.
I would also like to suggest that a breakdown of XP gained so far (or even mission progress) be shown in-game. The missions form the core focus of my (and I suspect others’) gameplay. Sometimes, I am required to earn multiple types of XP. I try my best to finish all 3 missions in one match, so it would be good to know how much I have earned of each.