Rivals were one of the first updates to make players go ‘HEY, that’s pretty good’. With the addition of experimental Weaponry. However I feel like Rivals could use a little bit more of a touch to make them feel like real obstacles and challenges.
First an issue I’d like to address is the exp weapon drop rate. We know why you decide to make it so they was harder to obtain because players were finding them to easily and got bored. However this currently is a bit overkill. Through the entire 2 days I spent hunting Rivals (lvl 4s exclusively) I had killed 21 rivals being harvesters and tanks with a small amount of hunters. I only got one drop being the exp lmg. This feels a quite over the top and makes it really time consuming in which during that time people could get easily bored.
- Improvements -
Make them more difficult. I know that we can just change the difficulty but they in general feel underpowered. Maybe giving them otherwise rare weapons you find on occasional machines could be used too.
- mapping -
Alot of people that I’ve talked too have seen Hunter Rivals seemingly come together as a pack. There is probably a code behind this and it should be done more often. Large groups of rivals could be a fun and challenging thing to take on.
Another thing is making it so that when a rival reaches level 4 it hunts you. As in it makes a path towards you. Someone told me this happened before but I don’t think it was intentional. Having it so that your negligence of the rival has caused it to become fully evolved and track you down would make early players really consider killing a rival early or not.
- model -
One of the things that really disappointed me with rivals is that their model doesnt change. I was thinking that maybe when it becomes a rival its model changes to become a wee bit more equipped because it ya know ‘evolves’. When it has reached level 4 it gets a bigger model change revealing armour and maybe some added bits and pieces. It wouldn’t even have to be a massive model change.
- Attack -
Giving Rivals unique attack or attack patterns could also make Rivals more interesting and menacing. This would be exclusive to lvl 3s and 4s. This could be in the form of unique melees or even newer Weaponry.
Finally.
Plz debuff the exp shotty ik it’s really helpful but it’s such an easy way to avoid a fight completely. Pz debuff the shotty.
AND that concludes my list of possible improvements thanks for reading of you did. 