Bleeding Edge

SHERIFWIGUM

I have played BE now for some time. Had a lot of fun, i realy like the combat. I think it has great depth and i find there is always more to learn and get better at. Mechanicly the game is very solid except for few issues, fighters are great and diverse and are definitely game's highlight.
That being said, here are things i personally would want to see improved. Its just my opinion, but it is what would for me personally make the game better experience.

The biggest issue in general i find to be communication of what the game is and how the game is positioned. its a bit more positioned towards players of fps like Overwatch while i think the audience it should target more is Dota and LoL. The game is much more focused on mechanics, teamplay etc rather than your aim or other fundamental skill. There is actually almost no aim involved in this game and its all about right positioning, understanding your character, using specials at right time and follow game objectives. FPS like OW is all about your aim and a bit about positioning and objectives. But i believe this is not communicated well enough in who should be more interested in the game. Its at least how i see the BE having played both OW and Dota since when they were released.
Tutorial and general introduction to the game goes along with first point. When i started playing almost no one was using evade, ping system etc ( ie matchmaking with lower lvl players ). I dont know what are the numbers on how many people finish the tutorial, but it seemed to me that not many. I would suggest making the tutorial mandatory and focus a bit more on understanding the mechanics of a 1v1 fight and teamfight mechanics. Ie that its not about running in and mashing buttons only. It takes at least several hours to understand that this is not how you play this game, yet my impression was that almost no one understands that in the begging. But perhaps it was just me.
Story and world building. Game has great setup and is oozing with potential yet there it is very little of any actual substance. Tutorial would be much more fun if it incorporated some story elements. Great way of introducing world building is waiting zones at start of the match like OW does. People are forced to be there, yet they can see little tid bits of story and interactive destructible environment in those zones makes it more fun to wait. Right now those waiting zones are just that, places to wait, which is a missed opportunity.
Maps itself are very well designed as far as game design goes, but lack any kind of visual distinctive flair. Ie some big landmark or something which makes the map very unique. They are all very cyberpunkish futuristic part of cities with a lot of crates and boxes. The areas and layout is good, it just feels like maps needs to be more unique.
Environmental hazards. This is more subjective, but i personally dont like the train or rockets. Electricity and the fire on zone point triggered with gong is fine. The rockets and train feel too disruptive and artificial to me. I can count many times how it was frustrating to die in the middle of battle because of train i forgot to keep track of and i cant barely recall any instance where it felt good to win a teamfight because train slammed an enemy fighter, it happens, but then the win does not feel earned. I am sure others might like it. I dont, since it disrupts the gameplay in a negative way for me.
Hoverboards. In general they are cool, look cool, but as far as game design, i dont understand the point. They dont pretty much do anything except for provide speedboost, so you can litterally just replace them with Sprint ability on cd and nothing would change. I would think that having hoverboards in game like this would involve some cool gameplay in the maps, like big jumps, crazy high speed chases, whole team jumping into area on hoverboads dismounting them in mid air and slamming enemy team from air. Crashing into enemy at full speed to stun them. There is so many fun things ways how it could be incorporated into the game.
Speed of the game. This is something i am not 100% on, since the combat speed feels kinda good and can get already quite hectic, but the game also feels a bit slow and sluggish. Like if the fighters were moving through mud sometimes when you are trying to chase someone ( thats probably why i play mostly for Cass ). Perhaps increasing movement speed, adding more evasions and generality agility to fighters would improve the speed of action and game. People would die more often as a result of that, but i think that would be fine. Perhaps higher movement speed, higher speed for hoverboards and adding few more ways how to make chasing/escaping more fun would improve all the time in between fighting and getting to fights.
Fighters. Fighters and players have very little spotlight. I am missing some introduction of fighters at the start of the match. There is no proper end screen for the match to show properly who was best at what ala OW. This is a competitive game and this helps a lot to make people feel good about winning or showing off skins etc.
Intro screen. Let me put there my favorite fighter or at least rotate them. The main screen is actually quite weird in general i think. Daemon is portrayed like this kinda crazy colorful character with big sword, slashing something all the time, the whole game looks crazy and colorful, yet in main screen Daemon sits on the ground staring at his blade. I get it, its supposed to be "calm before the storm", some zen element in the game etc. but i find it strange that the game goes so far away from its crazy fights, colorful fighters visual language in its own main menu. ( that being said i prefer this zen city feeling more
Fighters abilities. This goes hand in hand with previous points, but the game is heavily based around synergy and combos yet i dont think this is what the game communicates to the players. I think one of the main reasons Maeve is so op right now is because she has very good cc and escape. In any moba game, those are two major abilities in fights. CC and escape. Maeve has both and some fighters have none or one very weak. This causes in my opinion very big imbalance in whole team composition.
Ie if you take team of Maeve, Miko, Bastardo, Cass vs team like Daemon, Gizmo, Buttercup and Zero of equal skill second team will have very hard time. Both teams have 2 dps, 1 healer and 1 tank, but one is full of disables, stuns and escapes and second has virtualy none or very little.
Mods and progression, this seems to have been mentioned here several times. There is very little to unlock and progress towards to. Game is fun, which is most important, but this little progressions makes all the difference. My main is Cass, i unlocked skin, which is essentially same, just a bit different color and dont even have hoverboards. There is about 5 realy good mods relevant to my playstyle and i have all of those. So as far as progression goes, its a gg for me for probably many more months.
Voice lines. Little thing, but few voice lines unique for each character which both your and enemy team can hear are fun. As used in Dota, you can call out enemy fighters, cheer your team etc.
This is a point mentioned by Skillup in his review and i think its very good point. There is no ramping up of action or crescendo for the match. The match starts, you play and its over. There is no chance for comeback, no big moments, no nothing. The gameplay is very fun, but its missing this element very sorely to raise the gameplay up. Turning surely losing match into a win is great and makes the matches more enjoyable, but currently there are no mechanics to support that. Overwatch has simple mechanics for that, you are doing real bad whole match, but if you at the last second capture the point the game almost restarts and you have chance to push again. The ultimates are way bigger deal which can things turn around. In BE you have no second chances and Ultimates are in general too weak to turn things completely around. If you wipe whole enemy team in BE you get maybe few more points, but your chances to win are not much bigger. Perhaps this is not what the game is trying to do and its just about constant steady progress, then thats fine. But again, for me personally game would be more fun if there was potentioal for these game changing plays.

There is probably few more i could come up with, but i am good i think Dont usually post any feedback for games, but i find BE unique and fun game and i would want it to do a bit better. Not sure if any of my feedback would help with that, but it would make the game more fun for me.

General Feedback on few things