Dauntless: F2P Monster Hunter Clone

[TheFeniX]

Another in the list of Epic Store (PC) exclusives that look like Fornite what with the low polys and cel shading.

You're basically something something hunter of behemoths. Something about Aether and protecting people, blah blah. You pick from a setup of a few weapons: sword, double blades, Axe, Hammer, and gun. You kill big things either on a hunt or a patrol. NOTE: It's the exact same thing.

For what it is, it does what it does. The UI is clean and simple and obviously setup for mobile. Animations are ok, voice acting is there. It runs pretty stable. Basically, if you want to play Monster Hunter but don't have the time to spend over an hour on a fight: this is your game. Also, if you don't want to spend any money.

True cross-play across PC, Xbone, and PSN. You can auto fill the other 3 slots or run solo/private party.

The Bad:
1. The Epic launcher is fucking garbage garbage garbage. Jesus, you can't even throttle downloads and you will be spammed with friends requests. You'd be better off buying and launching games from IE5.0
2. Cheaped out on servers. You can end up 50000th in the queue. Can take up to 25 minutes to log in.
3. A whole SHITLOAD of everything is handled server-side. Even movement. So you get that "rubber banding" when sprinting sometimes. This is ridiculously annoying when you use the Axe (like all the cool kids should) because it's ALL about timing and positioning, so you can end up clicking and nothing happens. There can be up to (that I've experienced) 5 seconds of you being able to only run around. Server-side bullshit like this in 2019? Holy fuck, get it together.
4. The cashshop. Haha, talk about scamming kids. 100 plat is ~ $1.00. 3 Dyes? 750. An emote? 750 - 1500. The elite pass, which covers a season (~45 days) of extra loot: 1500. But the "super duper pass" which you WILL want if you're dumb enough to spend money on it: 3000. But it's ON SALE guys! In a game that just released: 2400. See, in a just world: this would be immediately designated as a scam. Had I the inkling to spend money on this game, as I have dropped money on F2P games, this would stop me dead. I will never spend money on this game even if they offered something worthwhile.
5. Scales to borderless windowed 4K but the internal resolution won't go above 1080p. Dafaq?
6. A lot of assets seem derivative. I've seen near exact same models of Axes used in WoW. The Thundering Scythe is a dead-ringer for Gorehowl (Garrosh's Axe). The hairs seem like they were licensed as multiple are also available in FFXIV. The Boreas armor is also a dead ringer for the Stalhrim armor from Skyrim. Though I guess "nordic" themed is a thing.
7. This cel-shaded Fornite bullshit needs to die. There's a different visual theme out there: fucking find it. As much as I hate giving Gearbox credit: Blands took realistic texture work and wrapped it around cel-shading to create an extremely distinct look that works damn well. Blands is an INSTANTLY recognizable game. Dauntless is not. It's cookie cutter lazy shit designed to cut down on a rendering premium.
8. Game is not responsive. Delay between pressing and action is noticeable to a nerd like me. It's infuriating. The game seems purposely designed around this concept because there's nothing really "fast" about it. You find yourself "locked in" to button presses because they are sent server-side asap with no way to override them. The only exception is that "dodge" seems to be able to preempt anything else, if it's allowed to.

When shit works, it's a fun little game. You spawn in, hit shit, get loot, craft shit, upgrade shit to hit shit with bigger health bars. Alternatively, you could just play Warframe.

* This is where games like WoW just knew what they were doing. Most actions are handled client side, you use an ability, it goes off, if the server can't respond, it errors out and you usually get your "resources" back (like Stamina). If the server DOES send back "ok" then you never even notice it. When you require server response to START an action: fuck you. You WILL have lag, always, no matter what. So games designed this way are fundamentally flawed.

EDIT: Also, that THIS is a problem is a game that's essentially just 4-player coop matchmaking? It's fucking dumb. I could only imagine how painful this setup would have been in Left 4 Dead. Sure, yea. Sometimes you'd fire the gun and nothing would happen and even your ammo wouldn't drop. But you didn't feel like the LOCAL FILES on your own computer were failing you.

[bilateralrope]

The Epic launcher is fucking garbage garbage garbage. Jesus, you can't even throttle downloads and you will be spammed with friends requests. You'd be better off buying and launching games from IE5.0

That's not as bad as:
- Launch a store without a shopping cart. So every single item in the store has to be purchased in a separate transaction.
- Do a big sale event. Where people will purchase several things.
- Have the stores anti-fraud system trigger because people made too many transactions in quick succession.
- Oh and 3 games were pulled from the store because that was the only way for the dev/publisher to prevent their game being put on sale.

But the "super duper pass" which you WILL want if you're dumb enough to spend money on it: 3000. But it's ON SALE guys! In a game that just released: 2400. See, in a just world: this would be immediately designated as a scam

So the same thing that Bethesda tried with holiday items in Fallout 76. Until Bethesda realized that it was illegal in several countries.

[TheFeniX]

Yea, it's all pretty shady. Here's another issue I just realized. EVERY dude I tried to create had this Cro Magnon thing going on in-game which I couldn't figure out, so I thought "why not waifu?" since you can change appearance (for free) anytime in the hub. Even the feminine faces turn into brick faces in-game, I assume due to FoV issues.


Character Creator vs in-game.
Yeesh.

[Dominus Atheos]

Aspect ratio.



Second picture was 4:3 image stretched into 16:9.