Evolve - First Impressions after a week

Evolve has released and its only been out a week.  I personally love this game, and was hooked since I tried it during the open alpha and beta weekends.  The game is a fresh change to the competitive landscape that is gaming.  I see this game for more than the surface fun and pretty graphics.  I will go into this and hopefully find ways to tear down negative perceptions of a game I think can be a solid foundation for further iterations and themes.

Up until Evolve was released, most competitive gaming I took part in were often an even symmetrical foundation.  Teams consisting of even number of players will square off in some form of competition to complete objectives or wipe the opposing team off the map.  Evolve comes into this world but offers a drastic change.  Let’s take the team based games, and 1:1 games and turn it on its digital head. We are going to make this game asymmetrical in that 1 player will compete against a team of 4.

For those of us who’ve grown up on games and have played enough online you have to know that a game integrity is reflected in its fair balance for all players.  To balance a 4 vs 1 game type, the single player must have enough support in his character to compete at the same level that 4 players will be outputting on him.  In the opposing sense, for a team consisting of 4 players, the design of the game must be that no one single player on the 4 man team can be a power lone wolf to carry the victory.  Each of the 4 hunters must be broken down into a component role such that the 4 combined will have equivalent skills/features enough to be a fair enough match for the singular monster.

If you break the game down like this for someone who has not thought about it, it is quite clear how the game was designed and for what purpose.  I sense that many players find the allure of this game through visuals and marketing, but when they hit the ground they quickly learn this is not a fast action highly rewarding shooter.  This game was designed for players to spend many hours prolonged on the maps honing their character abilities, while learning persona player skills and tricks to gain advantage.  All games have this aspect, but it must stay within the game balance such that a brand new player and a veteran should hopefully meet on even ground for a shared experience. 

In the first week, it is my observation through playing mostly matches joining public games solo that many players come into this game just assuming they are dropping into another shooter.  They quickly become familiar w/ the physical control scheme layout, determine their favorite gun/character and then go for the kill w/ a high focus on shooting anything.  As each hunter has a class based role it is not surprising to me when I watch all characters guns up shooting the monster instead of looking out for their teammates to keep them up, running and healthy.   I would say I lost 70% of my public matches to AI and human monsters.  If the team cohesion is not apparent from the get go, an experienced monster can easily find a way to single out hunters and knock us down like cascading dominoes. 

I notice these things and yes I get upset at some matches b/c it is just painful to know the end you’re about to face, but it’s all in the fun of gaming and experience.  I am hoping that as the game matures on the market, the players will ride along as well and start to show some more engagement.

This game is quite similar to my experiences in battlefield.  Things will not just come together, verbal communication, know your role, and having the attention span to keep a keen sense out for the monster while being able to break and assist a teammate to keep things in flow are key.