What is this? Can someone explain?

[Nick]

So I played Hawken a little bit. From what I read from the reviews on this it is a singleplayer PVE game that sucks and has microtransactions. Can someone confirm or deny that? It's just what I read from the reviews and I do not really want to download it myself.

[Morgan]

PVE is good, the combat feels just as good as I remember from the old game, if not a little bit better. And people complaining on the microtransactions clearly haven't payed long enough to see that the things you can buy can be earned for free if they're patient enough to play the game and look at the crafting system for more than a minute. It's not pay to win, it's pay-to-skip-the-grind. But the grind is actually enjoyable, so there's no reason to pay for anything unless you just want to support the devs to keep up the good work. Wish I had the money to show my support right now.

[Daikatan]

Dunno if pve here can be called "good" (more like "oookay" perhaps), but maybe its up to taste and expectation of this or that player.

For now, as i see, even if we disregard the whole situation with absense of pvp, the pve they provide here has its problems. Like, enemies are currently wonky and dont provide that much of interest or challenge. And the whole core gameplay loop could be much improved with adding more depth to combat (from both player side and enemy side).

[Daikatan]

p.s.

Also, for some people such type of pve is pretty boring, like, they expect more fleshed out "missions" with actual level- and encounter- design.

Though IF they add COOP, it MIGHT help as well, ofc.

[Nick]

Alright thanks. Well if that is only PVE for now then I guess I gotta pass and see if they ever add PVP. Very sad that hawken got taken down on PC tho.

[Allwynd]

Originally posted by Daikatan:

p.s.

Also, for some people such type of pve is pretty boring, like, they expect more fleshed out "missions" with actual level- and encounter- design.

Though IF they add COOP, it MIGHT help as well, ofc.

The AI is too easy for single player except sometimes it just overwhelms you with numbers and there is not much visual or auditory feedback that you're taking damage, the first few times I got destroyed was because I had no idea I was taking damage at all ... until it was too late.

Later on I developed the habit of looking at my shield/hull bars, but, that's just not a good way to do it, there need to be more sounds and visuals, that burning cockpit is not very visible and the first few times I didn't see it all.

With an AI this simplistic and predictable, Co-Op will be a breeze as players will learn how to exploit it.

That's the problem with PvE. They have to put in so much work to make PvE and Co-Op worthwhile. Much more effort than PvP would need, but at the end of the day, it's their game, they are free to ruin it however they want and as fast as they want.

[Daikatan]

its weird that some people were praising AI of enemies, maybe they act better when you unlock "higher level of threat", but considering you have to grind with easy and boring stuff before getting there... mmhm