Bleeding edge feedback from a fan of Hero Brawlers (Gigantic, Paragon, Battleborn, Atlas Reactor)
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So, I played both closed betas and release and I wanted to share my input. I am a fan of and played Gigantic, Battleborn, Paragon, and Atlas Reactor, all hero brawlers in a way, up until they all shutdown
I hope bleeding edge doesn't see the same fate of the hero brawler curse. I want to do my best to provide feedback and perspective. here we go!
my biggest problem is the issue of ROLES. or one specific role: HEALERS. healers at the moment are a detriment to the game flow. They are essential to the meta and they make fights less dynamic.
When starting out a fight, it is imperative to focus the enemy healer above all else. Attacking anybody but the healer is futile because they will just be healed, duh. it results in flights that are very linear.
instead of trying to figure out which enemy player is a priority target, I just have to find the healer. healer is dead? ok move on to the lowest HP target. rinse and repeat every fight. it gets repetitive fast.
So how can this be changed? just remove dedicated healing abilities from the game. as in, abilities with the primary purpose of healing other players. Replace the healer's abilities with other utility abilities such as slows, buffs, debuffs, etc. Then allow all characters to heal over time when out of combat, like in Paladins. As well as reduce the respawn time of health pick-ups.
This way, simply retreating from a fight is enough to eventually heal everyone automatically. No more running to a player jumping in-front of them begging them to heal you. no more playing the healer and being focused constantly by the enemy team. I just think that having dedicated healers causes more problems than it benefits.
Certain self healing or sustain abilities are fine, like Butturcup's Burl, Makuto's Healthiers, and Kulev's Shield. But ZeroCool's replenish beam, Miko's targeted heal, and Kulev's candle have to be changed or removed in some way. Their existence is detrimental to the game imo.
Now, to my next points:
-The objective distracts too much from the fights. For one, the objective switches out too often I think. It encourages completely abandoning a fight to get to the objective.
Ive seen players straight up leave the point and go into the enemy to fight because it was boring to sit and wait for the enemy to attack first too many times.
The objective needs to be streamlined in some way to be conducive to fights and encourage them, NOT encourage defensive playstyles, disengaging and waiting around. thats boring. How to fix that? I'm not sure.
maybe make the points much much bigger. So the fight can occur over the point more easily. currently, it is too easy to go off the point from just performing 1 combo. making the point bigger will allow the fight to be contained within the objective much easier. Also, how the objective functions should change. there should be a contesting mechanic. as it stands, whoever grabs the point first keeps it. the point has to be completely cleared before it can be recaptured. this allows stalling in the most annoying way.
-there are too many Powercell hand in points active at once. I personally think one at a given time is enough. two is much harder to defend and three is just ridiculous. I think if only one hand in point was active between collection rounds, teaming up and defending/attacking would be a lot easier and more consistent.
-Another thing, anticlimactic endings to matches. when a team gets enough points or hands in enough power cells, the game just abruptly ends. its kind of jarring tbh. not sure how to remedy this.
maybe play faster and more tense music as a team gets close to winning to increase the tension? or maybe require a final kill to secure a win. so once a team reaches the requisite amount of points to win, they have to then kill one person from the enemy team to end the game. that would result in a frantic teamfight to end every match, which could be more fun.
-another thing, the communication. there needs to be more voice command options. Group up, retreat, ultimate ready, help, and collect powerups are fine but not enough imo. there NEEDS to be an OK or AFFIRMATIVE command, a THANKS command, and SORRY command to better facilitate communication in game. I want to be able to say thanks or good job whenever a teammate has my back or does a cool play. I also want to say sorry if I miss a move or fuck up a combo. its important. saying OK in reply to a teammate asking for help, grouping up or setting up ultimate combo goes a long way to facilitate synergy between players.
-Another suggestion: killstreaks! allow players who achieve 3 or more kills in a life be worth more points when killed. This would intuitively allow teammates to focus and/or protect the players making big plays on either team. It would also feel quite awesome to achieve a killstreak. currently, it doesn't keep track of it, which is a shame.
-make power-up boxes a little bit quicker to break. it takes just a bit too long at the moment, making it a bit of a drag. also provide different kinds of power-ups throughout each map. Damage up, defense up, as well as speed up, and invisibility would be sweet.
Thats all I have for now. I think removing dedicated healing in-favor of passive healing out of combat for everyone would the biggest thing. Secondary to that are the objective adjustments. Bleeding Edge has a really solid core base already. you really have something here, Ninja Theory. Don't let it slip past you! please listen to me! I'm also very open to talking in voice chat on discord, skype, microsoft teams, or slack if you want to talk more details. but please take into account what I'm saying! I don't care about recogniztion or money. I just don't want to see another fantastic game die prematurely...
I sorely miss gigantic and paragon. Bleeding edge is giving me a similar feel and I want to do everything I can to make sure it lasts. Rahni Tucker, I'm a fan of your work. please please please don't hesitate to reach out. It would be my pleasure to have a conversation with you.
Best of luck everyone at Ninja Theory!
Here are a few highlight clips of gameplay from me btw:
https://youtu.be/5eGM0geWyvc
