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Hello there. Dear Dev-team, I announced this topic in my feedback forms as „Hiden’s CT Diary”, so here it is. I really hope, you will take this topic seriously and maybe try to discuss it here, since after 90hrs of playing HMM I really love that game and want it to be great. I’ve got very, very engaged into it (I spent about 25 hours on modelling a prototype pilot for you, coming in few weeks) and I’m going to spend lot of time to give you a detailed feedback, in professional game-tester manner. I hope that my knowledge obtained while working in game-dev studios will be helpful. It will be probably veery long post, so I will divide it on four parts - gameplay/player's experience, physics pilots and audio-visual improvements. I'm sorry in advance for my grammar/language mistakes, I write these posts in late night hours and English isn't my native language. I played not really much matches, but after watching announcements and reading HMM Blog I was mentally prepared for the Test and focused on analytic record of my experience during the gameplay. I tried all four pilots and knowingly analysed every aspect of the gameplay I could hit on. Probably I will play some matches more, but I think that at this point I know / I’m aware of everything I need to, to share my thoughts. Let's start with the most important thing, which is gameplay. GAMEPLAY The overall feeling of the game is just crushing awful (in comparison of regular version). The gameplay feels dumb, boring and unattractive... here are factors, which make the game comfortable or not: The pace and lethality. - the feeling Let’s tell this chronologically: Start of the round. There’s nothing to do, no shop, no minigame. The greenlight countdown feels like have no sense in that situation. Everyone has equal chances and it makes the game boring. Yep, you can say, that now the chance to get to the bomb sooner than opponents depends only on your skills. But wait wait wait, on what did it base before? On player’s skill! In revving mini-game, in wise choice of using skills (the moment to activate secondary of FMJ or primary of Lotus), on driving skills. That was making the game more unpredictable and fun – more factors equals more scenarios equals more counting on your transporter’s game skills. If player (eg. transporter) is better in some game mechanics, he should be rewarded. Now there's no challenge in starting and physics are much simplified, making player's skills less important than possibility to bumping and being slowed down by other teammates who can't drive properly... Especially when you start as Stingray (so you're forced to start from last grid) and you are the only one who is competent to fight for the bomb on start of the round. Okay, the bomb is grabbed. The slaughter begin. If you’re Monster, you die in about 25 seconds, if Artificer – in 10. Okay, it was just generalisation, since I grabbed the bomb as Wildfire once (starting from third grid, as you forced me! It was hard, and our tansporter didn't try to catch the bomb!) and driven directly to the goal without giving a sweat. But probably I played against really skill-less opponents, idk. The essence is that you even didn’t feel the rhytm of the battle and you are already dead. You even didn’t noticed, what killed you, because now all players just drive towards the bomb and shot like crazy trying to kill that freakin’ Monster ASAP! The way to the goal. As I said, it’s complete chaos. Cars feel like they’re faster. But tempo, in which you die is even faster, that you can’t get into any rhytm, any regular pace, you have no time to analyse situation, to plan a route and point in which you will strike. Don’t to mention, that if you even manage to fulfil any plan, in final effect you usually kill anybody but not your target and you even don’t know, how. All players just obsessively try to kill the transporting player by impulsive spamming with their skills, without any plan, coordination. There’s no 1vs1 situations, no unique actions – just constant, chaotic, brainless slaughter spiced with respawn kills which, even if quite inventive, very often feel like the game kills you totally randomly without any reason. You have no time to think, that it was just your bad luck with opponent’s respawn. The effect of that manner of gamestyle is, that I didn’t felt ANY contradistinction between good and weak opponents. I died so frequently or my opponents died so frequently, that I had no time to feel their playstyle, their manners. Every player felt like a generic bot to me. During all matches while Combat Test I didn’t experience even just one situation, which would make me say „wow, that was good, well played”, either with my or enemy’s death. You died. Quickly! Quicklyyy! You have to find good place to respawn! Normally the first thing I do right after death is pushing a shop button. It allows me to get some psychic rest by thinking about something different than combat itself, gives me a time to take a deep breath, relax my muscles and get a new breath to go back to the action. In Combat Test you have no time to take that breath. Even the scoreboard doesn’t offer you any shelter from exhausting action, because there’s no time to analyse it – you have just few second to observe the development of action and foresee the best place to respawn. You’re constantly sticked to the combat and your brain gets overheated. Okay, the bomb is near! The last enemy interceptor is taken off, you will manage to carry the bomb to the goal already, ufff... oh, wait. Three enemies just respawned right behind you and killed in few seconds. Frustrating, isn’t it? You’ve got just 10 seconds of rest from your pursuers. The chaotic slaughter continues. That's how I feel the flavour of gameplay now. All action-shaping factors were removed or vanished due to changes, making this all mindless and monotonous like Cookie Clicker web game. The effect is - no satisfaction from matches and high level of fatigue. Which lead to destruction of "just one more match and I go sleep" syndrome. My whole team, after 4 matches in CT was like "i don't want to play it anymore. Let's wait till Combat Test ends". ..... Let’s quickly summarise it: - exhausting pace - there’s no time to take a deep breath and cool down your brain which is constantly redlining like engine in youngster’s honda civic. - monotonous gameplay - No there’s no time to observe and feel other players, because you die very often or they die very often. There’s also no situations to shell their behaviours, since all the gameplay feels just like zerg rush on the transporter. To be continued...