Hunter Feedback Thread

[Nick123q23]

No, not those hunters you're thinking of. TheseHunters.
The ones you all know and love for hunting honorable game and being tribal plasma jamaicans.

It's important to know how we're doing, and how the community as a whole, marine players, xeno players, and staff feels about the space jamaicans.

What are we doing that's good? What are we doing that's bad? What would you like to see us doing?

[Boltersam]

This is going to backfire horribly and you know it.

That being said, they're a tweensy bit weak at the moment, as far as I've seen.

[shyshadow]

They're not fun enough to fite. I get one broken bone. Then I die and it's boring.
Or I'm trying to RP and they either kill me or bugger off. Orrrrrrr, marines are so intolerable they try to shoot the pred and they just end up AP Bursting me twice and I INSTA DIE.

[KaliSzop]

Muhreens love to shoot at preds for no reasons at all, and it's kind of fun to see it biting them in the ass

[Sargash]

I tried to bribe the Predators just recently as teh Queen. I offered a cease fire, and open reign on any ayys that attacked them. In exchange, when we got to the bird in the sky, we would save the leaders of the ship, to duel with them. Afterwards, if they survived, I would duel with them. Sadly they were lame and declined.

[Symbiosis]

Some Preds are pretty good at RPing and getting Marines to not shoot the hell out of them. The biggest battle royales I see are when Preds build the lodge in LV at the Temple or Big Red in the Secure Tool Shed.

I'd advise, if the Pred players don't already have it, a subforum for them to discuss ways to be less likely to have intruding Marines discover their lodge. Marines like looting, just part of it.

I like the netspeak of the translator, whenever I see a Pred use one I know they're top shelf.

[Kerek]

Coming in here with my bias

Before I became a predator, I really enjoyed Predator rounds, I felt they stirred shit up and I rathehr enjoyed fighting them.

After I became a predator I still like us, I feel we are a good side note of paranoia in the round. The one thing I don't like is how often marines attack our lodges, even when everytime they do one to two squads die and even if I just stand in the open after showing I can blow people up, and still spare them, they shoot at me again.

[SagaSword]

Predators are so shit and baldies shooting them for no reason are more SHIT!

So far, we really don't interact with predators that much and when we do it really isn't that fun because marines tend to either shoot them on sight. So predators be like "Well, Imma cloak for SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO long time until I find a lone honorabru muhreen to fite".
Alternative, go ape shit crazy on everyone then detonating in the middle of FOB. Good times. I really think us as marines and you as predators must keep a sensible level of RP, not fighting too much but also not hiding too much either.

[Bronimin]

I don't like that they are so weak pretty much only because Xenos downing a Prae and de-limbing seems to guarantee the Xeno win. Buff them or get rid of them entirely (I would be far more happy with the latter, myself)

[Butlerblock]

As a xeno player, I think it's neat to have preds around once in a while, because it's kind of cool how they just chill around and most of the part wont attack you unless you engage on them or are already a priority target.
But what I don't like is when they decide to fight you and you have basically no way of beating them, such as being off weeds or being a spitting/building caste, you kind of just die no matter what and it's pretty salt generating when you have 0 way of fighting back. What's also really annoying is that they have no communication with eachother some times, or just have no way of knowing what's alive and whats not, so two preds could just be happening to kill all the T3's or specialists and completely change the whole tide of the Marines vs Xenos battle, instead of kind of just making it go a bit quicker or evening out the sides.

[Recounted]

I hate preds who willingly blow themselves up in the fob

[NGGJamie]

I don't like that they are so weak pretty much only because Xenos downing a Prae and de-limbing seems to guarantee the Xeno win. Buff them or get rid of them entirely (I would be far more happy with the latter, myself)

Predators being easy to kill is something that's the Pred's problem, while I would agree they could use a buff forcing them to be robust isn't a bad thing since I've seen some pretty robust predators out there.

More to the point, it'd be nice if the interactions between the marines and predators improved on both sides a bit. Most of the time the marines either flip out and shoot the space jamaican while others shout "No don't shoot the rasta man!". More often than not you don't see them at all, and other times they just kinda chill near the fob and stand until some triggerhappy marine initiates.

Am I saying they're all being played wrong? No, not at all. I just don't feel like the interactions are at the level they could be.

[ShortTemperedLeprechaun]

Predators being easy to kill is something that's the Pred's problem, while I would agree they could use a buff forcing them to be robust isn't a bad thing since I've seen some pretty robust predators out there.

More to the point, it'd be nice if the interactions between the marines and predators improved on both sides a bit. Most of the time the marines either flip out and shoot the space jamaican while others shout "No don't shoot the rasta man!". More often than not you don't see them at all, and other times they just kinda chill near the fob and stand until some triggerhappy marine initiates.

Am I saying they're all being played wrong? No, not at all. I just don't feel like the interactions are at the level they could be.

Personally, the type that outright go "Don't shoot towering beast man with giant wrist blades, let's give him hugs and chocolate" infuriate me. I've had some of my best expierences, when both sides act like you know, the actual movies? Paranoid looking over the shoulder, distorted laughter in the darkness, a spear narrowly missing their head, only to see their best friend dragged away into the darkness, never to be seen in one piece again.

[Casany]

Personally, the type that outright go "Don't shoot towering beast man with giant wrist blades, let's give him hugs and chocolate" infuriate me. I've had some of my best expierences, when both sides act like you know, the actual movies? Paranoid looking over the shoulder, distorted laughter in the darkness, a spear narrowly missing their head, only to see their best friend dragged away into the darkness, never to be seen in one piece again.

Well, my whole philosophy here is I'll shoot at it until I see it fire the explosive plasma bombs, or something else as powerful. Yeah, its a giant beast so I'm gonna shoot it at first, but I don't wanna risk getting killed by that thing when I realize what it can do, so I'll usually tell people to stop and retreat or leave.

[NGGJamie]

Well, my whole philosophy here is I'll shoot at it until I see it fire the explosive plasma bombs, or something else as powerful. Yeah, its a giant beast so I'm gonna shoot it at first, but I don't wanna risk getting killed by that thing when I realize what it can do, so I'll usually tell people to stop and retreat or leave.

More often than not people aren't yelling to avoid shooting them because of what they're capable of and should be avoided. Usually it rides closer to meta-ing that predators will most often leave groups of marines alone until fired upon unless they're already the target.

[Tidomann]

Only time I've ever been truly salty is when my squad saw a predator. It seemed like a normal paranoid standoff, weird text, a harpoon flying by. Then I think one squaddie then fired at him. Next thing I know the predator is going apeshit speeding across the map. My squad is getting shot up plasma bolts and a bunch of explosions and, as a medic I was just trying to pull them away and heal them.

It went from 0-100 in like 2 seconds.

Then I randomly get hit by a hunting trap in the landing zone. A runner happens by and tacklespams me back to nest.

[SagaSword]

Only time I've ever been truly salty is when my squad saw a predator. It seemed like a normal paranoid standoff, weird text, a harpoon flying by. Then I think one squaddie then fired at him. Next thing I know the predator is going apeshit speeding across the map. My squad is getting shot up plasma bolts and a bunch of explosions and, as a medic I was just trying to pull them away and heal them.

It went from 0-100 in like 2 seconds.

Then I randomly get hit by a hunting trap in the landing zone. A runner happens by and tacklespams me back to nest.

Yea, plasma shooters. They ain't funny in the slightest. In my opinion I think plasma guns should be restricted to stun only because my god can they do a lot of damage.

[Bronimin]

Predators being easy to kill is something that's the Pred's problem, while I would agree they could use a buff forcing them to be robust isn't a bad thing since I've seen some pretty robust predators out there.

I would not be against a mandatory robustness test for predators to be whitelisted, not at all. If an unrobust predator gets captured by the aliens because they don't know how to shot plasma then it is game over for the marines. I don't like how a third party can completely ruin things like that, personally.

[Boltersam]

Yea, plasma shooters. They ain't funny in the slightest. In my opinion I think plasma guns should be restricted to stun only because my god can they do a lot of damage.

This, I can answer.

They're this powerful because they're very restricted on their upper levels of usage. You need to remember that Predators are mostly by themselves, rarely fighting in teams and usually there won't be enough whitelisted online to work together, so they need a capable weapon for emergencies, one that they can use when they're outnumbered, as they likely always will be. The plasma caster IS very powerful, yes, but the SADAR is even more so. The point of it being powerful is that it's also restricted, like many of the Predator tools. It's only brought out when needed, or at least I'd hope so.

[Sailor Dave]

This, I can answer.

They're this powerful because they're very restricted on their upper levels of usage. You need to remember that Predators are mostly by themselves, rarely fighting in teams and usually there won't be enough whitelisted online to work together, so they need a capable weapon for emergencies, one that they can use when they're outnumbered, as they likely always will be. The plasma caster IS very powerful, yes, but the SADAR is even more so. The point of it being powerful is that it's also restricted, like many of the Predator tools. It's only brought out when needed, or at least I'd hope so.

From what I've seen, this isn't generally the case, especially recently with predators switching to more powerful weapons in response to how fragile they've been. Many predators use full-charge plasma blasts against even one or two people at a time, usually xenos.

I think that predators need an overhaul, or at least a slight rework. What that should be is debatable, and I think that's probably worth discussing here. They're in a bit of a weird spot right now where they can be deceptively fragile at some points, especially to things like tackles. I've mentioned a few times, and I believe there was even a suggestion thread for it, that predators should have tackle resistance. They succumb very easily to xenos because all it takes is one obnoxious runner or drone to keep them down while the rest of the xenos wail on them.

Now, you could say the predators are just biting off more than they can chew, but having seen this happen countless times, there's often very little they can do about it. They could be fighting one or a handful of xenos, when suddenly a swarm of them appear. The pred gets tackle-spammed, they try and fail miserably to retreat, and not even their plasma caster can save them.

That's just with the xenos. With the marines, they can be effectively shut down with one good shot to the lung, which will fuck them up completely for the rest of the round. They'll be gasping, falling all over the place, and they can't fix it. Time for a glorious death? Maybe, but most of the time they just retreat to the ship and sleep.

Of course, fixing all of this is based on the assumption that people WANT the predators to be incredibly tough murder machines. People will complain if the predator is too strong, but I've also seen lots of shit-talking in deadchat towards poorly-performing predators. What people want and expect from predators varies quite a bit, and I think that's the real question I have for everyone. What do people want from predators? If you could change them in any way, even if they were made completely different, how would you do it?

[Nick123q23]

Predators are restricted to being playable by very few, trusted, quality people, hence the whitelist.

They should naturally be extremely powerful, with their equipment being restricted based on the situation and the Predator's decisions at the time. For example,
The Plasma caster works on three power modes. Low, Medium, and High. Low is apparently intended to be a stunning tool, however it's lost that capability over time and has become useless. Medium seems okay enough, though it's a little overwhelming at times when a standard marine pulse rifle could do better than it. Then you have the Plasma caster's High power mode, the starship-destroying last resort, never used because of how powerful it is.

However, in game, it can't even destroy a resin wall, and when used against live targets acts like a very weak SADAR shot, not the emergency annihilating sphere of destruction it's depicted in the movies and games as.

Developers should be able to trust the predators enough to make them vastly powerful, yet unwilling to abuse their power except when absolutely needed.

The meta here has forced predators to do some really cheap and uninteresting tactics, such as laying hunting traps everywhere, because there's only one or two tactics that will actually work against the xenomorphs.

[Fritigern]

I always laugh when people spout out this "Predators are so weak!" line every time they're brought up (conveniently from the people who are the ones playing them, mind you), when the reality is every predator round will see these guys consistently wiping entire squads of marines. I think that really goes to show just how skewed their perspective has become.

It is physically impossible for a Predator to lose a 1v1 fight, or hell even a 1v2 fight, against marines. The stats aren't there. And when it does happen it's due to some WILD RNG crap or the predator is just straight up UNROBUST. And even against the xenos, if a predator was REALLY trying, who would they lose against in a 1v1 fight? If you keep your distance and use your ranged weapons you would destroy all of them, in fact you could probably effectively engage an entire hive if the terrain was right.

So really the complaint seems to be that the predator can't fight MASSIVE swarms of enemies without being killed. Oh, well, I'm sorry I didn't realize how hard the game had gotten for you!

Then there is Feweh coming up with the most flimsy of excuses to raid the Almayer whenever he can, and because he's so deeply in touch with his inner warrior monk we just can't grasp the fine points of his honoru combatu jutsu we're unfit to call him out on the murderboners. Mind you, there is nothing honourable about THREE predators ganging up and curb stomping individual marines as they walk through a door, but you can justify crap however you want when you're the one who gets to be an unstoppable killbot.

Basically, as far as I see it, the predator system is fine in concept and awful in execution. The vast majority of the whitelist needs to be purged, specifically Feweh because I think he's the one poisoning the well by setting the worst example for the others to follow. Predators should be seen as mini-DMs of a round, cultivating roleplay with both the marines and xenos alike (because we still pretend we're a roleplay server from time to time). They should thrive on paranoia and interacting with small groups of players, building a story with them.

That'll never happen because it's a type of selfless gameplay that is at odds with the "HOLY SHIT I AM SO UNKILLABLE YEAH PLASMA WOOOOO" mentality that has taken over.

[Monoo]

Playing Predator is boring. Roleplaying with Predators is boring. I don't see how that's going to change in the near future, to put it simply.

Once you figure out the mechanics and play a few rounds of "run around and hope to god someone consents to fighting you so you don't get reported" and "roleplay in the form of roaring and laughing at marines from behind a conveniently placed bush" it gets incredibly stale.

It's supposed to be a role that has a high impact on the round and creates situations for players that are that much more interesting, but I've seen that occur maybe one time, and that was because the staff had a direct hand in guiding the predators to do something they normally wouldn't be allowed to do. Every other time it's just been a slugfest of salt and grief, either from the predator players or the players they killed, often times both.

Mechanic wise, predators get completely destroyed by things that shouldn't affect them much, like tacklespam, knockouts from regular melee weapons, and broken limbs or organs. If I remember correctly there's still no cure to having your lungs punctured, and you're guaranteed to die a slow and pathetic death. Predator updates have been promised to the community for a long time to rectify things like this, but they've been very slow in coming. (No disrespect to the dev team, I know they have a massive amount of work on their plate, but I wish that staff were a bit more transparent on when exactly changes will be made)

The attitude on the forums isn't great either; in the apps section you have Bolter mercilessly shitting on pretty much every single app because he thinks it makes him look important and interesting, and pretty much everyone else metagrudges each other based on past interactions or on who +1'd and -1'd who. It doesn't promote a good and healthy environment.

It hurts me to say all that, since (for the most part) I have a lot of respect for everyone in the predator community, since they try their asses off to roleplay well and maintain their reputations as pillars of the community. But it's my honest opinion. Yautja have amazing lore to work with and have a lot of potential to spice up the games, but they won't be able to until things change.

[northcote4]

I'll go ahead and preface this by saying that although I'm a whitelisted predator player, I have no qualms with preds being on the backburner development-wise. After all, we're not the focus of the round.


EDIT: Last edit, and I'm putting this right at the top 'cause I reckon it's the most critical part. Kudos to SailorDave.

"Of course, fixing all of this is based on the assumption that people WANT the predators to be incredibly tough murder machines. People will complain if the predator is too strong, but I've also seen lots of shit-talking in deadchat towards poorly-performing predators. What people want and expect from predators varies quite a bit, and I think that's the real question I have for everyone. What do people want from predators? If you could change them in any way, even if they were made completely different, how would you do it?"

-

Predators are restricted to being playable by very few, trusted, quality people, hence the whitelist.

They should naturally be extremely powerful, with their equipment being restricted based on the situation and the Predator's decisions at the time. For example,
The Plasma caster works on three power modes. Low, Medium, and High. Low is apparently intended to be a stunning tool, however it's lost that capability over time and has become useless. Medium seems okay enough, though it's a little overwhelming at times when a standard marine pulse rifle could do better than it. Then you have the Plasma caster's High power mode, the starship-destroying last resort, never used because of how powerful it is.

However, in game, it can't even destroy a resin wall, and when used against live targets acts like a very weak SADAR shot, not the emergency annihilating sphere of destruction it's depicted in the movies and games as.

Developers should be able to trust the predators enough to make them vastly powerful, yet unwilling to abuse their power except when absolutely needed.

The meta here has forced predators to do some really cheap and uninteresting tactics, such as laying hunting traps everywhere, because there's only one or two tactics that will actually work against the xenomorphs.

Nick definitely makes some interesting points. Though I do find myself drawn to disagree with his first; that Predators deserve to be extremely powerful by virtue of their limited numbers. Fundamentally they are a supporting characters to the round. And while I know for sure this isn't what Nick meant, I do have to say I don't believe Predators should ever have an instant 'I Win' button or round-destroying levels of power behind them. That way lays Muh Snowflakitude.

Canonically, the plasma caster avoids use in a Hunt most of the time due to its immense power, to the point of taking away the sport. Gameplay wise it tends to avoid use as well, but rather than for it's power it seems to be more for a lack-of. It seems to have lost some of its utility with the evolution of the game.

I'm not sure if Low shots have entirely lost their stunning capability, so I'll be going from my previous experiences, when it still stunned marines. Even then it was fairly limited. It could keep potentially two marines at bay without inflicting any lasting damage. The applications of this are varied, but its at least a decent utility tool if you get flanked by marines. Against xenos however, low-power was/is entirely useless.
Medium has always been in a weird spot. It sacrifices the stun of Low for more hitting power, but the power that it brings has always seemed just... Average. Obviously I don't know the exact specs, but it never really felt like it had much of an impact. Likening it to a pulse rifle as Nick did is probably a fair comparison, as it felt about as powerful as a single burst, albiet with a slower fire rate and harsher penalty for missing your shots.
High always felt the role it was intended to do in my experience, though in a weird way. It combined some fairly good damage with an area stun, but was offset by the cooldown and energy costs. This meant that it was pretty much exclusively used for tightly-packed groups, and mostly as a stun to escape. Or alternatively against all kinds of xenos, as it was the only mode that could actually stun them. That said, its hard to say whether it's scaled well as new updates have some out, particularly against xenos. While we no longer have to deal with those moments when Exoskeleton deflects the eradication sphere!, the overall damage reduction afforded to most xenos and stun-immunity of the T3 heavy hitters basically makes the High power shot primarily useful for its stun effects on T2 xenos, as it simply doesn't pack enough of a punch to be worthwhile damage-wise.

It does make me wonder if it may be worthwhile looking at the Medium and High levels of the Plasma Caster, since overall I don't believe they've scaled terribly well with some of the newer content.

EDIT: On the topic of plasma casters, the plasma rifle itself is kind of pathetic. As a primary weapon (compared to the caster being a secondary), I actually find it to be worse than the caster in all respects. The only reason I ever take one is for the mounted scope.
-

I always laugh when people spout out this "Predators are so weak!" line every time they're brought up (conveniently from the people who are the ones playing them, mind you), when the reality is every predator round will see these guys consistently wiping entire squads of marines. I think that really goes to show just how skewed their perspective has become.

It is physically impossible for a Predator to lose a 1v1 fight, or hell even a 1v2 fight, against marines. The stats aren't there. And when it does happen it's due to some WILD RNG crap or the predator is just straight up UNROBUST. And even against the xenos, if a predator was REALLY trying, who would they lose against in a 1v1 fight? If you keep your distance and use your ranged weapons you would destroy all of them, in fact you could probably effectively engage an entire hive if the terrain was right.

So really the complaint seems to be that the predator can't fight MASSIVE swarms of enemies without being killed. Oh, well, I'm sorry I didn't realize how hard the game had gotten for you!

Then there is Feweh coming up with the most flimsy of excuses to raid the Almayer whenever he can, and because he's so deeply in touch with his inner warrior monk we just can't grasp the fine points of his honoru combatu jutsu we're unfit to call him out on the murderboners. Mind you, there is nothing honourable about THREE predators ganging up and curb stomping individual marines as they walk through a door, but you can justify crap however you want when you're the one who gets to be an unstoppable killbot.

Basically, as far as I see it, the predator system is fine in concept and awful in execution. The vast majority of the whitelist needs to be purged, specifically Feweh because I think he's the one poisoning the well by setting the worst example for the others to follow. Predators should be seen as mini-DMs of a round, cultivating roleplay with both the marines and xenos alike (because we still pretend we're a roleplay server from time to time). They should thrive on paranoia and interacting with small groups of players, building a story with them.

While Frig definitely makes some interesting points, I reckon it's a bit of a skewed take on things. I guess that's a bit funny when he starts by stating how predator player perspectives are skewed. Maybe mine is, we'll see.

'Wiping entire squads of marines'. While it is definitely possible for Predator players to wipe an entire squad of marines, be that through extreme 1v1 melee aggression, an un/lucky detonation (depending on perspective) or abundant plasma-spam hunting (which is probably pred-bannable), to say they do so consistently just isn't true from what I've seen. You might get the occasional predator-bomb wiping a clueless squad, but that's far from every round. And squad-wide massacres for the sake of massacres are even rarer, short of those few who do so and are de-listed as a result.

As for being physically impossible to lose a 1v1 to marines? The stats are closer than you'd think when they're both using melee weapons. Not to mention the massive advantage on the marine-side of chain-knockouts which have absolutely no counters, not too unlike xenomorph tackles. And unfortunately that's not even something you can discount as wild RNG, due to both cases being readily and easily repeatable. I think it's a bit of a sad state when a marine with a fire axe is a bigger threat to a predator than a 5-man squad with pulse rifles.

As for predators fighting 1v1 against xenos? While the drone-caste of evolutions are usually not much of a threat, the melee/ranged classes are one hell of a mixed bag. From what I've seen, if you take a predator and a xenos of equal skill, Elite-level upgrades are the point where the odds tend to tip in the xenos's favour. The xeno simply has the raw damage output to contend with the predator, and tackle chances are high enough that about two-thirds will get through, giving the xeno a few seconds of free hits. When high-skill levels come into play, unfortunately the gameplay favours the xeno. A skilled xeno is able to more reliably put tackles onto a predator, even at lower tiers of evolution and upgrade. And more stun time means more free hits, to which the predators don't really have an answer. They only have a few stunning options of their own against xenos, and none of them are high-frequency, high-reliability like the xenomorph tackle. So even a skilled predator might be forced to rely on lucky RNG to take out a good xeno player, rather than it actually coming down to skill at all. And that's to say nothing of damage-permanency versus health regeneration. A single broken bone or popped on a predator has the potential for round-ending consequences. Yet a xeno can freely toe the line of critical as long as it escapes to heal, ready to fight again in a few minutes.

Say what you will, but I have seen even a young runner beat the absolute shit out of some of the more experienced predator players in a 1v1 situation. There's a reason tackle-spam salt is shared by marines, after all.


-


Quick addition for Monoo's stuff as well: My understanding was always that predators AREN'T a high impact role. They're not there to change the entire round. They're there to change it for the few people they interact with, be that a single player or an entire squad. And if you're limiting your roleplay to *roar and *laugh, I think you're not making the most of your roleplay opportunity.
The rest seems fairly spot-on, though I haven't noticed any +1/-1 metagrudging myself.


Edit: Huh. This post got a lot bigger than I intended it to be. Sorry for being long-winded.

[Renomaki]

as a hunter myself, I feel that besides all the issues with combat, a lot of predators these days seem to be lacking in something that is supposed to make things fun for non-predators... Attempts at roleplay.

As Monoo implied, a lot of predators don't really put forth a big effort in creating a scene for marines and survivors (and sometimes even xenos if they aren't being dicks). They either stare quietly at them from the shadows or cloak, make noises using their emotes, or just plain try to kill them the moment they pop out from cloak. Rarely do I see predators attempt to use their translator from the shadows to speak to unknowing marines, or calmly decloak before a small group to engage in intimidation and conversation.

Of course, it is understandable due to the risk of someone with a Sadar or flamer might suddenly fuck you up for so much as looking at them, so predators sort of evolved a very passive role in the game, where they rarely make for much interesting roleplay because most predators are too afraid to attempt it. I myself had many interesting moments of RP with both marines and survivors, and it makes me feel good that sometimes, even if I don't get a single trophy all round, I still manage to make a small memory for someone to spice up what would otherwise be a common round for many.

Another issue I noticed is how quick predators are to go PEW PEW the moment a human dares to even look at the lodge funny. Even if they are only passing by with no intention to enter and trespass, sometimes predators make the mistake of picking an unnecessary fight with them, causing all manner of needless death when there could have been a better way to handle it. Made worse if they decide to put the lodge in a place where marines will no doubt encounter very easily, and thus make it even harder to avoid a needless battle, as much fun as they can be sometimes.

One time, for instance, I was a solo predator on ice, and attempted to make the underground ship my campground.. Only to discover that all the survivors were hiding there too. My response? I just cloak, sneak in quietly and set up camp in a corner they wouldn't inspect, intending to be a spoopy ghost for them and teasing them without murdering the fuck out of a group of rag-tag misfits. They ended up discovering me eventually, however, but together we had a good RP experience and they managed to be recovered by the marines safely. It was very.. Refreshing I have to say, not being a heartless killer of all things and showing that not all predators kill without mercy (that, and killing survivors would be really shitty).

Maybe I play predator wrong, but I always try to avoid the ol' *roar and charge that a lot of predators tend to do towards most humans, trying to find more creative ways to interact and fight with them when I can. Of course, it also depends on the round itself and the performance of the aliens and marines.

... But yeah, predator combat, at least against smart xenos, is very frustrating and discouraging, and I wish I didn't have to resort to snares so much just to get a slight chance against xenos.