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40% of Hunt: Showdown players have never killed another player, says Hunt: Showdown's general manager

Spyxos

Gold Member
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"We have an achievement in Hunt called Debut," Fifield said. "It's 'kill your first enemy Hunter', 40% of our players never get it. We're a PvP game where you come in, you do some things, and 40% of the people trying Hunt have never killed another player."

Gunfighting with other players is the most thrilling part of Hunt, which suggests that a chunk of that 40% are players who bounced off of the game before they got a handle on PvP, perhaps during one of Hunt's multiple free weekends on Steam. That's why Fifield would like it if more Hunt players had the chance to score a kill, and says one of his aims for Hunt is "being able to put more experiences in where that number goes down and more people get to play at least some part of the fun part, or find that mastery before they churn out having never got that achievement."

https://www.pcgamer.com/40-of-hunt-...r-player-says-hunt-showdowns-general-manager/
 
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Merkades

Member
I don't remember the game but I do recall a dev saying how this was a problem for their game so they manipulate things for newer or worse players, iirc, making them harder to kill or making them deal more damage. The logic seems fine, though I don't think I would like it if I died because the system gave someone some boosts, though maybe a higher player count means more. Irrelevant to me since I don't engage in that though.
 

Spyxos

Gold Member
They're missing out. Probably the best CO-OP/PVP experience I've played. I'm not a good aim but the explosive crossbow made up for that.
I have sunk a little over 80 hours into this game. I'm not really good, but luckily the people who play with me are very good. So I am often revived :)
 

Mister Wolf

Member
I have sunk a little over 80 hours into this game. I'm not really good, but luckily the people who play with me are very good. So I am often revived :)


The gameplay loop, there is nothing like it. Tracking down the boss, crossing paths with rival teams, trying to steal bounties from teams that have already killed the boss or getting ambushed yourself in a race to the exit. The game is amazing. Looks great too with its raytraced lighting.
 

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
Epic Games said this about Gears of War multiplayer too. It was something along the lines of "(very high percentage of players) who don't get a kill in their first match never play a second match."
That's not surprising, if you play a shooting match without actually getting a kill, it hardly feels like participation let alone in something fun.

Funny thing - in some other games it can be even more bizarre - in my first (and only) game of Fortnite, I spent the entire match ignoring other players (and everything else in the game - I was exploring the world/visuals/tech), got to the final 3, killed one of the remaining players with a pickaxe ending up 2nd in that game. So while I did get one kill, I don't exactly see any reason to go back to the game either.
 

Luipadre

Member
The gameplay loop, there is nothing like it. Tracking down the boss, crossing paths with rival teams, trying to steal bounties from teams that have already killed the boss or getting ambushed yourself in a race to the exit. The game is amazing. Looks great too with its raytraced lighting.

what raytraced lighting? :D Im waiting for them to update to the latest cryengine with DLSS. Game looks kinda dated now and the AA is awful in the current version. Engine upgrade coming sometimes this year
 

Mister Wolf

Member
what raytraced lighting? :D Im waiting for them to update to the latest cryengine with DLSS. Game looks kinda dated now and the AA is awful in the current version. Engine upgrade coming sometimes this year


CryEngine uses SVOGI for its dynamic lighting of Hunt Showdown on PC. It's Voxel GI which is a form of raytraced GI and every bit as good as UE5's Lumen which is also raytraced lighting

 
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Fuz

Banned
Try play quake online as a noob
Oh boy, did I get absolutely wrecked for months while learning Q2. Also had to completely rethink my control scheme for that game - which isn't something easy, although I was much more adaptable at the time. Most egregious example: a duel with an acquaitance that was one of top italian players ended up 30-0 for him - I actually killed him once then proceeded to suicide by falling.
Thankfully I had a very competent online friend at the time, we used to play duels in Q2DM1 and we were about the same level (he always was slightly better than me but we had roughty 50%, then started to take it more seriously and became semi-pro while I remained semi-casual), so had a lot of fun and it never been too frustrating.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
That's not surprising, if you play a shooting match without actually getting a kill, it hardly feels like participation let alone in something fun.

Funny thing - in some other games it can be even more bizarre - in my first (and only) game of Fortnite, I spent the entire match ignoring other players (and everything else in the game - I was exploring the world/visuals/tech), got to the final 3, killed one of the remaining players with a pickaxe ending up 2nd in that game. So while I did get one kill, I don't exactly see any reason to go back to the game either.

Tasting the glory of a Victory Royale must be on every true gamers bucket list.
 
Probably because 40% play it, get wrecked and say F&$K that. I’m not even joking.

Onboarding is hard and in a hardcore game with a small player base almost impossible without really good bots.

This is exactly why my friend and I gave up on it. After 5 matches of slowly struggling to even get to the objectives then getting instantly ninja'd by other players, we deleted it. Atleast with apex or fortnite if you get insta killed its quick to get back in and into the action. Its ZERO fun to spend 20~ minutes for nothing
 

Strider311

Member
I really loved this game before they added all the ways to mitigate ambushes and stealth, like dark vision and the alert notification that someone has entered the boss area. It was so much more fun being able to stealth through an entire match.
 

Fools idol

Banned
should try CSGO. took me 500 games of grinding matchmaking to get to global, the amount of idiots in your team fucking you up is harder than the enemies.
 

Wildebeest

Member
Never heard of it. Just looked at it on twitch and all the people "playing" it were either in menus looking depressed, camping, dead, or ending their stream. Looks quite grim.
 

dave_d

Member
Sounds like me and classic Counter Strike. When I played a round where I literally snuck up behind another player, shot multiple bursts with an MP5 at point blank range and instead of dying simply turned around and shot me once in the head with a pistol that was it for me for that game.
 
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Lasha

Member
Probably because 40% play it, get wrecked and say F&$K that. I’m not even joking.

Onboarding is hard and in a hardcore game with a small player base almost impossible without really good bots.

Not even good bots. Look at Fortnite/PUBG for the caliber of bot needed to drive engagement.

Sounds like me and classic Counter Strike. When I played a round where I literally snuck up behind another player, shot multiple bursts with an MP5 at point blank range and instead of dying simply turned around and shot me once in the head with a pistol that was it for me for that game.

Did you miss every shot? Only takes 3-5 torso hits to to drop somebody with the MP5.
 

Evolved1

make sure the pudding isn't too soggy but that just ruins everything
I know the terrible analog controls and performance is why I immediately dropped the game. Despite liking the idea of the game... it was one of the worst feeling fps on console. Input lag, deadzone, weird-ass acceleration curve... just dreadful controls. And 30 fps. Dropped immediately.

That's why *I* didn't kill anyone.
 

dave_d

Member
Did you miss every shot? Only takes 3-5 torso hits to to drop somebody with the MP5.
Not if they're wearing body armor. Afterwards I looked it up, since there were guides that listed damage, and an MP5 on an opponent with body armor could take something like 9-12 shots to the torso.
 

Lasha

Member
Not if they're wearing body armor. Afterwards I looked it up, since there were guides that listed damage, and an MP5 on an opponent with body armor could take something like 9-12 shots to the torso.

I didn't think you meant literally old school CS. Point blank tactic was spray from head and yank down to get at least one headshot. That dropped ttk to 4-6 hits if you controlled the recoil.
 

MagiusNecros

Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
Meanwhile 60% of Hunt Showdown players have indeed killed another player. All the more reason to steer clear of the PvPvE game when I would only want to track and hunt monsters and not worry about other players ruining my experience.

I'd play a PvE version of Hunt but I have no interest in these kinds of games otherwise.
 

Lasha

Member
Meanwhile 60% of Hunt Showdown players have indeed killed another player. All the more reason to steer clear of the PvPvE game when I would only want to track and hunt monsters and not worry about other players ruining my experience.

I'd play a PvE version of Hunt but I have no interest in these kinds of games otherwise.

Luckily for you that co-op hunt games represent the majority of the genre.
 

dave_d

Member
I didn't think you meant literally old school CS. Point blank tactic was spray from head and yank down to get at least one headshot. That dropped ttk to 4-6 hits if you controlled the recoil.
Yeah, I didn't know how much extra damage you got for doing a head shot so I just did center of mass, center of the chest. If I had even gotten 1 head shot you're right, the guy would have gone down.
 

NoobSmog

Member
My friend and I tried this game out on steam and didn't see a single other player for 2 hours so we refunded. So, uh, guess I'm part of the 40%.
 
Isn't this expected though ???

Shit Royale games are about to git the worst players ever a chance of having some fun by put them into a gigantic RNG fest where they prey to found a weapon before the other dudes or just shot someone from behind....
 

hlm666

Member
I played it a while ago and noticed even when going in solo you still got matched against duos, I thought everyone was teaming after constantly getting into fights with other people working together. Once I worked out what was going on I suggested in the steam forums they should only match solo vs solo or at the very least make it obvious on the launch screen going in solo your still playing in the duo games. A dev responded and pretty much said it was a me problem and if I can't handle fighting duos alone find a partner, I just uninstalled and refunded the game.

So that makes me wonder how many people like me loaded it up, jumped in solo to learn the ropes and thought the game was full of teaming and never went back.
 
I play Hunt: Showdown several times per week, have three teams I regularly play on and so on and even I can tell you, this game is exceptionally brutal. To new players, to anyone who isn't a giga-Chad at it. It's possibly my favorite game of all time, not even kidding, yet I still find myself considering just quitting all together here and there just because the game can send you into brutal losing spirals like no other I've ever experienced. I have about 800 hours, typically a 5*, and yeah, I still get fucking wrecked regularly.

Hunt is also obtuse and downright aggressively unfriendly to new players in terms of its UI, "training" and basically anything. I found it weirdly mesmerizing and fascinating because I'm not a PvP/FPS guy in general so I just stuck it out and saw it through but I've recommended it to three friends and they all dropped it within a week or two.

The game did recently get updated with a much more solid beginner tutorial mode but still SOME-FUCKING-HOW lacks any sort of actual PvP training. They added these dummies to mimic enemy hunter bodies in the tutorial but...somehow couldn't be bothered to make a shooting rage with simple side-to-side movement or something. The game is built around slow, old world guns with slow muzzle velocities and shots must be lead big time...yet it offers no way to actually practice this, it's really weird. It's so bad at explaining itself that when I first started playing, I thought the game was broken and my shots didn't "register". Turns out it's just really hard to hit anything with muzzle velocities the speed of throwing a rock really fast.

Anyway, I really, really hope Crytek continues to work on how to bring new players on board because their last dev stream even acknowledged that new player retention is terrible. They ARE bringing the game over to their current engine, which is incredible, but yeah they need to work on making it more accessible at lower MMR tiers because it's an absolutely incredible and meticulously designed game. You'll never shit your pants harder in any "Survival Horror" game than a 15 minute match in Hunt, I guarantee it.
 
I know the terrible analog controls and performance is why I immediately dropped the game. Despite liking the idea of the game... it was one of the worst feeling fps on console. Input lag, deadzone, weird-ass acceleration curve... just dreadful controls. And 30 fps. Dropped immediately.

That's why *I* didn't kill anyone.
I know this always sounds like an excuse but the default settings are absolute shit on console. It took me going on the game's Discord and asking experienced players for their settings to find something comfortable. If you're ever inclined to try it again, @ me and I'll send you a screenshot of my sens settings if you want.
 

GC_DALBEN

Member
Awesome game!! If you like great sound design(!!!!), great atmosphere, good pve and great pvp. I had a lot of fun with my friends in this game, its brutal but so much fun :).
 

Famipan

Member
First ever PS4 game I tried to re-redeem on PSN since I thought it had a single player main game in the style of RE7 and RDR2 but got really dissapointed.

Turned out it was not looking great on PS5 neither since it looked horrible with no AA and 30fps IIRC, and game felt like some indie-game, but most big problem was lack of world explanation/story/lore anything to introduce you to the world and suck you in.

It’s basically a F2P-style multiplayer game where they lured people into buying it by using marketing and selling three different versions Standard, Deluxe Ultimate so you might think it’s a real singleplayer game. But now I know all games having that sales tactic are probably best avoided.

However, these days games like that would be F2P from the start since otherwise titles with a cost necessites PS Plus (which is something I learnt recently and which baffles me quite a lot) and developers wants people to continue playing and paying for DLC foremost. Blarrrg
 
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I'm not one of the 40%, but I can't argue that it isn't noob friendly. However, I can attest to how great this game is for the creative people out there. There are so many ways to tackle a particular situation and every match has it's own distinct personality, so much so, that my friends and I can recount a match from months ago and be able to recount how it unfolded just by highlighting the zone, weather, or play style of a person in the match. Each encounter is a learning experience, and you can't ever phone it in and expect to succeed.

I hated this game at the outset, but the setting was so unique, and the gameplay was intriguingly complex - traps, throwables, dark sight, ammo types, etc. - that I felt compelled to discover what my play style would be with these various options. I kept seeing so many variations on how to use even a single item. Now, I'm bouncing from upper 4 to low 5 star and feel that only now after 500+ hours, I can feel comfortable (never completely, though) traveling and engaging. But even now, I'm questioning my entire loadout. There's always something to consider.

I never play solo, only with two's/three's and we all struggle consistently, but love to try and figure it out. I'm definitely ready for the engine update for sure. It runs ok on PS5, other than the occasional glitch or freeze.
 
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