Recent reviews by oMiNoUs

Let me start this by saying, if you think you'll like this game in it's current state, great, give it a go, but if you've seen hunt videos or streams in the past it's worth reading this review and of course, other peoples thoughts too. TL;DR at bottom

The developers have seriously struggled to decide on what they want the game to be. Originally it was about slow methodical gunplay where one shot was death, but if you missed it was a slow process to reload and re-aim, creating a unique sense of urgency and skill. Over time this has lost the focus and the devs decided (intentionally or not) that they want the game to speed up and not be with hardcore slow shooter anymore. This was all in Early Access.

• Skip to 1.0, release patch.

The game became a lot less about slow tactical gameplay and more about BR-ish style gameplay, you spawn, are given an objective to funnel you, and shoot people along the way. Instead of everything being a trap that could end you, it was now very arcadey in comparison. Weapons at this point had stopped swaying significantly and the game was brightened up for visibility leaving flashlights and fusees as remnants of a forgotten time.

This infuriated and annoyed the people that had payed money for a different game and had played the game before 1.0 and liked it's slower horror aspects with harder gunplay and mechanics than most other shooters that it had i nearly access. some of them left to never return. This was their last straw.

• Jump to 1.3

The three different ammo types differ for obvious reasons.

• Compact is your small pistol ammo
  
• Medium is your intermediary between long and compact
  
• and Long is for bigger weapons such as one-shot rifles.

Compact does the least base damage and damage over distance. Making it good to use at closer ranges.
Long has the highest base damage and damage over distance. Making it viable at most ranges, save it's CQC capabilities due to slow fire rate.
1.3 made the first step to narrowing the skill ceiling and floor in this game. Most compact guns used to be able to minimum 3 shot someone with fast fire-rate, with 1.3 they can all now two shot people up to 40m. This is the same game that had that original riskier, shoot-and-miss-and-you-die-style gameplay, but now you can be shot twice by guns with little to no recoil from very far away. This change also made it so all these guns can headshot from further away, making for easy kills up close and far away. Of course you needed to have some degree of skill to headshot, but when you have over 40 rounds and a fast fire rate, it's not that hard. They also added in a mechanic where you can fire a lever-action rifle from the hip and spam, it heavily relies on RNG but close enough it doesn;t matter. Dual wielding pistols also was added, creating a more RNG experience too.

Others saw the direction the game was heading, this was their line in the sand. They too, left.

• Enter 1.4.4. The ♥♥♥♥ storm.

The already catered to the easier weapons of the game, and allowed for newer, less experienced people to come in and kill people much easier. Great right? Well sure, but over the course of these patches they started to alienate their veteran playerbase. No new content for over a year. Nothing. Just changing core mechanics and adding in random new ones here and there. Nothing for the people who played before, who put 100 and 1000s of hours in and played their game because they loved it. Nothing except for making the game easier for new players and removing the skill gap. Not by fair means, but by changing game mechanics so that any pleb with half a brain-cell can murder someone with 3k hours by shooting twice ridiculously fast with no recoil. If you've played hunt and you're reading this, this is where bringing up Quickswap (QS) makes the most sense. People never used to complain about quickswap, only in recent months have people started to moan about it. Was quickswap the most mechanically intensive thing on the human mind? No. Did it require skill and mastering? Yes. It took time to learn and was an extremely viable strategy for a lot of players
Quickswap has the following advantages:

• Very quick to follow up on your first shot.
  
• Enables players that master it to be able to two tap someone with one shot from either gun.
  
• allows you to move properly after firing your weapon
  
• stops recoil affecting the player so much

Sounds OP right? You can see why people are so upset when they get killed by it. So, when was it added? Over 18 months ago... So if it's an "exploit" all of a sudden, why wasn't it fixed a year ago. The devs have only recently changed their tune regarding the mechanic. It went from "Intended mechanic" "To exploit" and anyone that used it now automatically gets labelled as an abuser or exploiter by the community. This includes their partners who used it and stream the game consistently and for months/years. So to 'fix' this "exploit" they made it so when you attempt to QS you're force locked into an animation, unable to move or cancel it (This patch is supposed to make the game feel less clunky) and anytime you aim your pistol you have RNG sway, which takes some getting used to, and can be fought against with skill but ultimately it's random if your gun lines up onto the enemy or not upon aiming down sights.

In this same patch they added sprinting and shooting, including shooting while aiming downsights. While this is subject to change, you cannot argue that this game is trying to be anything but a glorified BR with the slow removal of skill and rewardingness the game once had.

Alienating your veteran and large portion of your playerbase is a bad move, almost all of the partners protested this change in one way or another to simply be ignored. The people that stream your game to hundreds of people are now against you, and their audiences will feel inclined to agree with them.

Personally, I'm not going to entertain the thought that hunt can return to it's original glory of shooting being skillful, and lethal. The game is heading the complete wrong way in a vein attempt to get new players in my eyes. Many people agree. Many don't. I'm not the voice of reason here, no one is. Have an educated and measured answer before you buy this game.


TL;DR The game has changed a lot, and the devs aren't sure what they want. They pushed away their older generation of players, and turned the community against them indirectly, at multiple stages people have left this game at different times, but ultimately for the same reason. It wasn't the game they played when they first bought it, and it won't ever be again.