 Hello everyone and welcome back to beta mills the show where we play a bunch of beta games Then let you know if they're worth playing for yourself and today Well, I'm your host the man who's showing me as always is the Viking Jedi and jelly knees jelly knees won't always join us But he's been there for a good good bit of these and um, so we played the cycle frontier. This is a free to play I don't even know survival action first-person shooter looter I don't know what to call it from Jaeger Development and um, yeah, it's been fun But of course we have some good good and some bad things about it But let's start off with of course the first question is this game worth downloading and trying out Viking Jedi. What do you think? Yep, but I would say it is worth downloading and giving a shot that that the game overall While having pros and cons and we're gonna obviously get into those is still a good game as the I think it has the tools in place to Really capture an audience. It's not as like hardcore as like Tarkov, which is a game that's similar to this And so I and I think that puts people off that hardcore scene I know the people who love Tarkov really love Tarkov But most people who've maybe tried Tarkov are like it's not really so much for me This might fit that niche for you So if you've played Tarkov in the past or at least like the idea of that this has some of the What I would say is like more casual friendly catches in place to kind of help navigate The game as a whole while still having all the things that people like of Tarkov of the risk versus reward aspects and stuff like that So definitely worth the download. I would encourage people to play with a group Probably better in most scenarios, although Mingus can tell you that he's definitely been playing solo and managing to do some stuff But you might not be as charming as the Mingus. So, you know, try at your own risk What about you? It's true. What about you jelly? How do you feel about it? I think I completely agree I think this is a game that people should definitely try out. It's free to play as well, which is always nice There's no there's no cost to entry there The skill ceiling is high the skill floor is high at the same time though It's it's definitely a learning curve when you first get in Of course, there's the PvP aspects but even learning the map and learning how to fight each of the environment creatures the actual and NPC creatures takes a bit of time to get used to and all that good stuff Yeah, I would say generally it's worth a doubt worth a download worth a try if it looks interesting to anybody Yeah, I think I don't want to suggest that people just try every single free-to-play game out there because You know, it just seems natural to just suggest it's free to play Just give it a try, you know, but I'm I will caution with this one If you are the kind of person that like if you play arc, but you only play PvE where it's not because you don't want to lose your stuff or or if you if you don't like Tarkov because it's So very hardcore then this game is probably just gonna frustrate you You get really cool gear and you get really cool loot and then Somebody that just happens to be hiding in a bush shotguns you in the face. You die. You lose it all so And you can't insure your stuff but this is kind of a Not really a pay-to-win aspect, but to get your stuff back you have to pay you have to use the The proof the the premier currency to insure your stuff You can't get that from your currency other ways other than just premium currency other ways than just buying it with real money But you use it a lot faster than not if you If you if you're getting into this the other thing I would caution with this against this game This has been brought up By us three and it's brought up by other streamers and such There's a lot of cheating going on in this game This game has got gathered a lot of attention from various twitch streamers So there's a lot of people trying to make it big on twitch in this game and there it's There's some pretty obvious Cheating I don't like to always accuse people of cheating because some people are just that good like they can 360 headshot But there are times there were times in this game where it was definitely somebody using wall hacks and stuff like that So that's what other thing I would caution about it, but let's talk about the stuff that we actually enjoy a Jelly got Great. Oh now he's back. Okay. Now. Now you'll get another chance to now. I have a good face to sync up with I like D From what you said earlier. Thank you. Thank you. Oh geez So, yeah, let's move on to what we actually enjoyed about the game jelly. What did you like about the cycle? Frontier, uh, there's a lot of things I like about the game I love the idea of PVP VE, right? So players player versus environment, right? So there's not just players you have to worry about there's environment to do There's things on the map objectives that you're looking for But there be the missions that you get from different factions, which I'm sure we'll talk about or Just going around looking for certain types of gear like certain materials that you need for crafting or stuff like that I Really enjoy a lot of that. I think the guns Early are decently balanced, but then the Scaling on them gets a little out of hand too fast Right. They don't it in my mind these guns. I'll go into it, but later But yeah, so I like the early feeling of the gun progression Really a lot and it just There's a lot of aspects of the game that I think were well fleshed out From the get go and that's partly because this is not technically a new game Right. This is by same developers who made the cycle Which it's the same map same character design same weapons but that was a third-person shooter and This is a first-person PVP VE More nitty-gritty like Tarkov type deal And so they've Flesh out a lot of the details with that earlier version of the game But now have to work on the the more finesse aspects to me Jenna, what do you think would you like about the cycle? I Mean jelly touch on a lot of it. I think their early game like when you first start playing is feels the most rewarding and the most fun I think that there is a learning curve, but I don't think that like at least for us I didn't hate the learning curve like it was exciting. It was it's definitely an intense game Which can you know be good or bad depending on how you like it like every time you're loading into the map You never know what you're gonna encounter. You're not sure what's gonna happen And when you're exiting the map, it's like intense literally until you see the loading screen that you're out Which is fun. It's it's an engaging game in that regard same thing I know for Tarkov hunt showdown has a lot of those same feelings. So if you like that intensity High cost again high reward type 5 district game nails on all of those things I think graphically the game looks good You know, I'm playing on pretty decently high settings But you I tried turning them down to see what the game looks like that way still pretty good So if you're not playing on like a super high-end machine, I think you can play this game relatively well and still enjoy it There you know is some like de-syncing sometimes with animations and stuff like that, but for the most part It's pretty smooth more times than not See I was gonna go into gunplay because there's parts of it where the gunplay feels really really good And then there's other parts where it's just it feels really really bad. So I'm like 5050 on gunplay I Do like the crafting system. I like the idea that they have in place of the quests And and you're moving your way through so there's three fraction of factions that you essentially get quests and jobs for And you can level up with that each one. They'll give you like in-game You know things you have to either go retrieve or kill or whatever And and that's how you progress with them and get access to more gear and weapons and and all kinds of stuff like that So I do like that idea. I actually really liked that idea And I like that you have your own little hub where you can You know craft or make your base itself like your little room better and improve it So it's just constantly like rewarding you for playing the game You can always find something to invest in that makes you a little bit stronger or whatever But yeah, those are all the main aspects that I really enjoyed So I Think intensity but you touched on when you said intensity I think that's what I like most about the game is a game that gets your heart racing and it feels exciting and It definitely generates a response from you. We didn't really explain yet Thoroughly what the game is really about so what it is you drop in to this map That's an instance map. There's people that have already been there. There's people that are leaving There's going to be people that drop in after you like it resets after a certain amount of time But it's not like every it's not like apex or a BR or something where everybody just drops in at the same time It's people dropping it at different times at different locations. You don't get to pick your location So that's kind of RNG right there and then you just progress through the map you pick up loot you pick up guns there's gonna be Monsters running around you usually want to try and avoid fighting the monsters for the most part unless you have a quest for them because Anytime you fire shots that gives away your position and other teams will come and try and kill you and that's the other thing There's other teams running around you can kill them or they can kill you and then you can take All their loot any guns that they have anything that had their backpack you do have safe pockets where you can store a minimal amount of things that will carry over to To back to your base, but um, yeah, just that whole feeling of getting in there and You get a bunch of this loot and then you have all this loot and you're like well fuck Where's the extraction point because you you only have two extraction points on the map So you have to make your way safely to those extraction points while trying not to fight a bunch of monsters And then you got birds that fly up and give away your position and like every sound like everything You do in this game is a risk when you loot it makes noise and people will hear that if you mine or it makes a bunch of noise And people will definitely hear that Um, if you sprint people can hear your sprinting footsteps a lot louder than just walking footsteps Then you run out of breath like we had a fight where a guy ran out of breath next to us We could just hear him You know and that's how we won that fight because we knew that they were right there and then Then you get to the extraction point and you're still not safe like you have to call in this ship it takes forever for it to come and then it lands and The doors open and you could jump in the ship immediately, but people could still kill you While you're on this freaking extraction ship It's like 15 to 20 seconds or something that this between the ship landing and the ship taking off So you have to wait till the very last minute to try and run onto that ship and hope that nobody snipes you in The process like every time you leave the planet successfully It's exhilarating like it is like holy shit. We got out. We did we did the thing We got a whole bunch of loot and we got out. So That's what I really liked about the game But again if you're not if you're the kind of person that doesn't like that sort of thing That doesn't like losing your shit if you played v rising like we played and you played it on pve Because you didn't want people knocking down your your castle walls and taking all your goods that you work So hard to to achieve a smudge Then you're not going to enjoy this game it's it's not going to be for you It's just going to be extremely frustrating and I get frustrated playing it like we'll we'll play and we'll just get Dictal in like three times in a row and I'm like yeah, I'm just going to step away from this game for a bit So I step away for a while Yeah, absolutely, and I think you touched on an earlier man goose One of the things I really like is that they do have a cosmetic shop for their monetization It is free to play right, but you like you said you can earn that premium currency Just by playing the game So if you're not spending it on ensuring your resources or ensuring your guns and things And you're not spending it in other places You can slowly accumulate that premium currency to then Be able to spend it on a cosmetic if you played the game long enough Viking anything to say Uh, no, I mean, I honestly I think we touched on all the things that are of the hard positives. Um, it's It's again, I think the best thing is high-risk high reward So if you like that style game, you're going to enjoy this for me I'm more of like I can play for a little bit and then it's too much I start to get really like it's the anxiety starts. Yeah, the anxiety starts to build like you almost were like You don't want to queue up to go into the map and then when that feeling hits me I'm just like, you know what? There's other games I can play and I will but there are moments where it's like You know, you can't wait to queue in and get in there and have that There's fun moments where you're going in getting one thing done and let's get out Like we don't want to stay here and and take our chances And there's been like I said, I think the the gun battling is is another one That's if there's some moments where the the fights feel really really good And it's like intense and back and forth and you know It could go either way and then there's other parts where you're just like, oh, this was terrible And I hated everything about it. So yeah, again, if it's if you're kind of on the fence about that kind of stuff And whether or not you would like it I mean it is free to play so you can download it see for yourself, but it is brutally punishing In moments and they can feel really defeating when those moments happen But if you don't if you win that fight and get that cool gear It's like, ah, you're just you're just vibing, you know So it's it's a lot of fun There is there's a lot of parts of it that are a lot of fun and getting graphically I think it's cool sound wise. There's really interesting sounds and I think they really do make you feel like You're on the planet surface, which which is which is a hard thing I think to do in a lot of games these days At least for me, I feel very immersed in there because they do such a good job of footsteps crunching noises like, you know echoes and bouncing up sounds bouncing So yeah, you definitely feel like you're there Everything's scary everything is scary including your own teammates Yeah, and they can't kill you everything can kill you and well yeah, and uh I don't know it's What I like well This is like in a dislike. What I dislike is there's no solo map like You can have a team of up to three But if you want to just go in by yourself and complete some quests You're gonna be in a severe disadvantage to a team of three people What I found from my experience was that they have a A standard map and a hard difficulty map and the hard difficulty map just has much more ferocious PvE monsters running around and um For the most part single players Would just go onto that map armed with nothing but a knife so that they didn't lose anything Run around loot as much as they could run away from absolutely everything And then evac and that's the map where people were talking to people because there's proximity chat in this game So like I would be talking to people all the time like You'd hear somebody you'd be like, hey man You guys fighting people like no, I'm just trying. I'm just trying to get out. I was like Okay, uh, well, I'm not gonna shoot you then. It's like, all right. Well, I'm gonna call an evac You want to take my evac with me? I'm like, yeah, sure, you know It's like there was a whole lot of that going on on the much on the on the difficult map Which was kind of fun. But god, it would be so much better I think if there was a solo player solo map and a team map now what I liked about the team And especially what I liked about playing with both of you Is it really really highlighted how different our play styles are Jelly gets in there sprints fucking everywhere runs in starts looting the dog shit out of everything doesn't check for anybody Like I'm kind of true. I check for people To my face. Yeah Yeah, with your face very quickly if there's someone there Do you know what honestly it feels like more times than not He will sprint make all this noise the person that heard him sprinting will come try and find it And then he finds us who are walking behind and we get shot at because jelly sprinted by him and yeah, so it's uh, Yeah, definitely a little bit different because half the games. I wasn't even there anymore. Well, that's true That's true too. Yeah, that's another negative about it but uh, yeah, yeah like Viking you were you and I were fairly cautious, but you were actually a little more cautious than me not with actual play style but with what you would bring to the planet like I don't know how many times we dropped in and I have my absolute best of everything On because I don't give it. I'm like, what's the point of having this shit if you're not going to use it And you'd be like, yeah, I'm not losing any of that shit. I'm going to drop in with a gray pistol and that's it You know, yeah, I it did. So I think um, I followed that Mindset initially was like, all right. This is one of those games where it's like, you know Similar to Tarkov and in some of those games are just like you don't necessarily always want to go on with your best stuff Because you're going to lose it. So I was like, okay, I bring my best stuff when I need to like Win fights or when we need to kill things quickly. That was my mindset, right? I didn't necessarily tell you guys that but that's how I thought about it And so any other times I'm like, well, let's just bring the lowest tier You know stuff in there because I don't if we die, it's not that big deal. I don't lose that much But um, yeah, and then when I decided, oh, they're taking their gear All right, I'll take my gear and then we get into fights lose it all and then I was getting mad I was like At our level, we don't really have the ability to replace the higher end gear that we might have Acquired, you know, and so like that was frustrating It's like, well, I wanted to save that for when we were stepping up our game and and needing to You know guarantee extractions or whatever a little bit more So yeah, I definitely took it in a in a cautious approach But uh, even on Like on the planet once we were there like um now granted me and you are both, you know prior military and so I think we It like walked around a little bit differently. Uh our callouts were a little bit different for sure and You know, we would be checking corners and you know watching behind us and jelly's just You know hard sprinting and going like, okay, I'll meet you there But you know and then he get full like, oh, I'm full on everything and we're like, oh, dude I still don't have anything in my bag I haven't picked up a single thing, but you know No, it was it's it's fun. It definitely exposed though the the difference in our in our play styles Um, well, let's talk about some of the uh the negatives about this game and the big one would be Like jelly knees had this bug that is not an uncommon bug. There's a lot of people with it where He would load in And just disconnect and then his body would just when you when you die your body turns into foam That's like the the lore of the game like your body's foamed up and then it can be Repaired later or whatever or what have you but yeah Jelly just had a horrible time connected to this game and he's definitely not the only one so that The worst part about it though is the way that it loads because he would his character would be loaded in while He's still in a load screen and that was to me the biggest issue It would be one thing if you just got disconnected while loading in and then nothing like because what ended up happening Is we ended up wanting to save his gear So we would load up on all the stuff that he had and then trying to extract like the bug was Not only not fun because then we just didn't get to play that much together But it was also just immediately made it more difficult for you and I to play Because his character would just be standing there for so long and and people get you can see it as they're flying in You can see the pods dropping in so if there's pvpers on the server and they're wanting to engage people The probably best time to engage is when people first land, you know what I mean, they're Fresh they don't have it. They're they're not ready to be engaged on that They've only gotten a little limited amount of information at that point, right? So if you really wanted to just you know ruin people's days as they're loading in and take all their shit That's the perfect time and man, it would be like what sometimes 30 45 seconds or so before you would even show up in game Yeah, if you didn't get disconnected and sometimes it was brutal no, it's and it's They don't have a reconnect system So I I'm out my gear if you guys weren't there. I was just playing by myself And that bug happens to me. I'm just out my gear sucks to be me Yep, right and I didn't play the game. I didn't die to anybody. I didn't do anything I'm just out my gear and so there's no reconnect system and That same thing is that now anything that I've worked towards if I bring anything with me I'm I just lose it like it's just gone And even as I'm going through what the people in discord are telling me did to fix it I'm going through other things that might fix it Right, then I have to load into games without anything And then try and see like it did it fix this time and I would go Okay, I think I fixed it play a game with actual stuff disconnect, right? Like it is just one thing after the other after the other terrible It was and I mean I saw I finally fixed it Right because we played some today and I didn't have any issues But still if the fact that it took me two weeks almost To figure out what the issue was solve it and then actually be able to play the game consistently Feels terrible Um, what are some of the other negatives you guys feel about this game? I mean I we kind of touched on it when we do in the intro I mean the cheating is probably the worst one That's well among of the things that are outside of the game Control for us, right? Like it's like just people playing the game to to shit on others and make the experience worse or Trying you know get into a lobby with their favorite streamer or something like that So they could stream snipe them or any of that stuff. Um, that that's obviously shit and nobody enjoys that But I think for me it kind of goes back to the gunplay is the biggest one The weapons are so inconsistent of what they will do as far as damage and the The time to kill in this game. Well, it should be short It it feels almost Punishingly short like it just it doesn't take much to kill somebody and so if you are new or kind of going in somewhat bare bones But even if you're bringing in greens and some blues if somebody else comes in and has blues or purples You feel the difference like they just delete you And and begin there's no separate queues you just queue in whatever where you go is where you go and Um, I think we started to notice that some people would just be camping out areas that they knew players were going to be coming into So they take advantageous places wait for players to come in start sniping start, you know Just unloading on them go loot their gear Rinse repeat as many times as they wanted to Um, and and that might be a viable play style But it's not fun because again It's not like a normal br or any other game where it's like you're you know The load in and load out is super fast after you get killed and you lose all your stuff You got to put on all your you got to find new gear So you got to put on your backpack if you have to craft stuff you have to go back to crafting it Which is an instant it takes minutes Uh, sometimes longer So if you want to go fast you have to use your currencies which aren't don't replenish super fast So it's like there's a lot of things that once you lose not only do you lose the gear you lose more of your time to Regit back into the game. It takes us what maybe I mean if we're if we got out quick We're back into games easy, right? If we if we didn't lose anything. We won our fights. We got our gear We're fine. We get out. We can get back in but if we if any of us died It's another five maybe sometimes 10 minutes before we're back in to get reloaded up To go and then if you have three games in a row like me and mangas did where you die Man, it's just so defeating. Yeah, you just feel like you're like why am I even playing this? I'm just giving away resources to other people and and and that's not a fun experience. Um, again, that's part of this type of game But I feel like it's almost There's just other I think there's ways that they can balance it and and make that feeling not as punishing as like a tarc off um At I don't know what exactly that looks like but it definitely I think that's where I find my most frustration is in those moments. What about you jelly? I think So one thing Is getting started especially if you're you started with everybody when the game first came out Right, you kind of feel everybody progress at the same ish speed Sure, right? Sure. Sure. Some people are ahead of you some people are behind you But there's like a range that you can kind of feel the whole lobby is probably in your range Uh, but now if you were starting the game now You're going to struggle significantly more Because you're going to go into games where people already have purples and they're running purple armor and they're running The best things that they absolutely can they know where the spots are they know what they need to do And you're going in there and you're just getting dumpstered on um And I think the fact that solos can cue into the groups of against groups of three is bad That's I wish that was an option. So for instance, I played a lot of hun showdown Hun showdown has up to teams of three But it's a toggleable option that if i'm playing solo or duo I can choose to play in games with other with trios or without trios So then it's my choice if i'm comfortable going into 1v3s Then I can cue into that and theoretically better loot for me If i'm not comfortable doing that and I just want to do duos groups of two Which are significantly more in my favor than 1v3s Then I just talk all that off and it's good to go and I wish the cycle Did the same thing Because yeah dropping in solo and then coming against a team of three people feels terrible I think that's the best comparison too of if you've played hunt showdown. This game is a lot like hunt showdown um Well, like well, like you were saying jedi there's no punishment for just camping So you get a lot of people that will just they'll get on the map. They'll find a place where people normally traverse They'll just sit in a bush with a shotgun And just and there's no punishment for that like there's You don't get punished Eventually the storm will come and then they'll have to move then but for the most part There's no punishment for just sitting there just waiting for people and ambushing the the shit out of them Um, which is I mean if that's how people want to play that's how people want to play As far as the cheating goes it seems to be more wall hacks than anything And I told you guys this story today I was on the hard map and I had to go pee or something I forget what I was doing, but I went and found a place that like there was no loot anywhere There was no it was just this random little spot where I could crouch down and hide and there was no um PVE objectives or anything. So I got up came back when I came back. I heard people moving. So I was like well, I better Just stay crouched down here Because it definitely sounded like multiple people and I was by myself They came directly to me And immediately wiped me out like they were put they came around the corner pointing directly at me and shooting And like there's no possible way. They would know I was there Unless people just often hide behind that random hay bale, you know Maybe one time they got ambushed from that hay bale and now they always check that hay bale I highly doubt it and then there's another totally went against a one team Jetta and I were playing we come around a corner. We're well far away from this team But I come around the corner. This guy's looking directly at me And we were loaded up. We didn't want to fight. So we went around the other side And they had taken a position Where they were putting directly at us when we came out the other side And it's like there's no way they could have known because The audio is a big part of this game, which is another thing that I want to talk about that I disliked, but um They were too far away to hear us Unless we were like sprinting or something and we weren't but they still knew exactly where we were going to be And that that kind of sucks, but um And like like I said, the other people have talked about how the cheating in this game is a little rampant They need to get a handle on that if they want to be successful in the future But the audio too the audio the sound engineering of this game In some parts is really well beautifully done and in other parts just sucks ass Like you walk through a riverbed and all of a sudden it's the loudest thing ever or you walk over glass And it sounds like like you're walking with glass. It doesn't sound like it's directly under your feet It sounds like it's coming from like 10 miles to the right or something And it feels like it sounds you can never tell if it's another person or if it's you And there's a lot of those situations in the game where you can't tell If you made the noise or they made the noise, you know Yeah, the audio spatialization is Terrible honestly like you'd never know How far something is from you you never know which direction with any kind of accuracy Right, it's kind of like i'm pretty sure that was off to our right side like maybe And then you walk over there and it was way off to your left, right or the uh triggers against ai Like if you're sneaking around them Sometimes you could be five feet from them and you're not they're not agroing on you And then others you're like 50 feet away from them and they're like, oh, hey you let's go Terrible it's true Yeah, no the audio in this game Is better than it was in the betas or the the previous like closed beta tests that they had But it's still not great And to make things worse you can't see your teammates through walls like you can't see an outline of your teammate That's what i was gonna bring up to so Like in jelly is making noise over here Like I hear noise. I'm like, oh fuck. Oh fuck. Is that a player? Well, yeah, it is a player. It's jelly But then other times like I think that it's my team. I don't realize that my team's behind me like That makes it very frustrating to play the game. I understand why they did it like yeah in real life You can't see people through walls But goddamn is it frustrating when you don't when you have zero idea where the rest of your team is And knowing that it was a feature they had and removed Right, they the devs actively chose and said no That's too friendly, right? Like that's we don't want to be that friendly to players and that's frustrating Because when they're standing right in front of you you get a little blue outline But the second they go out of out of sight behind a wall. It's gone. Yeah Yeah I think uh with that too if if it sound wasn't an issue when it is an issue Right, there's parts when the sound just sounds so cool And then there's other parts mostly when you're trying to listen for footsteps or whatever that it sounds Hard it's hard to tell right so if sound was better And it was easier to detect the difference between your own footsteps your teammate's footsteps and possibly player or npc footsteps Then it might not be such a big deal that you can't see their outlines through it But because you can't It adds to that level. I mean there's so many times where we've all almost shot each other Because you don't know where the sound's coming from. You're not sure what it is and you and this game in particular I mean a lot of you know these types of games It's this way but this game it feels like you have to be the first to shoot Because the time to kill is so fast if you get first shots off you're Way more likely to kill that guy and not get killed in return It's so it's hard to like disengage and heal or armor up or do any of those things Well, actually you don't armor up in this game, but it's hard to heal and disengage because you just die so fast so Again, unless you're going up you get somebody who has just way better gear than you you're going to win more fights than you lose Um, I but yeah, that that's to me a big one was I think they should add the outline back in Because their sound is bad And another thing we didn't really touch on but I think we talked a little bit about it But is the weapons themselves like shotguns Are stupid and this game. Yeah freaking. I freaking hate shotguns. There's there's Absolutely players who are literally running around and they will shoot at any distance and still do damage to you with the shotgun And not small damage like, you know, you I've shot a shotgun Many people who've probably watched this is shot one. Yeah, the spray goes very Far out like it's the accuracy of being able to shoot a shotgun at any distance beyond maybe like 10 15 feet is Ridiculous, right? And the game tells you you know that this is of course a close range weapon But I mean me and make who's got into a fight where the guy was literally peeking around and he's 30 feet away And still getting 20 damage off by shooting with a shotgun a great Beginner shotgun. It's not like it was even one of the higher tier shotguns. It should be maybe doing more than it was And so it's just it's so punishing I I don't know that stuff drives me nuts too. Um, so yeah, it's just Games are often unrealistic with shotguns like they make it to where like Like a shotgun like about 50 meters you you could hit some you can hit something and kill it probably um but like In most video games like after 10 feet like the it just putters out and just deals barely any damage This game it just takes it to the other extreme like it's extremely accurate out to fucking forever and like up close Uh, you hit somebody in the chest, you know deal 84 damage if they're like 100 yards away from you then you just get 40 damage Which when you only have 100 health at least that's only three shots with the shotgun Uh, it's a little ridiculous. Um Then up something else that always pisses me off about games I hate when games limit you from doing something that you could do in real life Like, um If there's a fence that's chest high You can't jump over it in this game Like I could jump over that in real life. Why can't I do it in this video game like video game like Yeah That always pisses me off You can also dance on barbed wire or razor wire if you want so what you want here True. There's a few things too. Like that's another one, right with the the um, What do you call vaulting is really inconsistent? There's a there's like a ramp that comes up and there's like literally just like a lip like that big But it stops you from being able to walk up It's you literally you in order to get over that lip you have to jump Which guess what guys jumping makes a lot of fucking noise So if you were trying to be sneaky now, you're not sneaking anything that was around you Uh, here's you and armor Confuses the shit out of me in this game like it does not Seem like I mean I will take full on shots. My health goes crazy down by armor takes almost no damage on it And I know it's supposed to be it's like, you know jelly will probably go into more detail because he knows more about it But it's like a damage reduction and each weapon has like a variance of penetration that ignores armor essentially Shotguns I think have some of the highest which is maybe why people are using it because it has really high penetration And does damage pretty far out. Um, but like yeah, the armor in this game feels really bad It's like almost like why am I even using the armor until you hit like purple Then the the armor seems god tier and and you can't do anything To do damage to guys who are wearing purple or above armor. So it's like, uh I don't know. It's very inconsistent. Yeah to me armor at the same Like tier level as the weapons is basically a wash. Why have armor, right? Like it just doesn't it doesn't feel useful at all Right, but when they have purple weapons against your white armor Again, your armor feels like it's nothing because they just one shot you regardless because the penetration on their weapon is so high Right, but then yeah when you have purple armor, but a white weapon you feel that difference significantly more In terms of what it's blocking, but you always have a hundred health and I think that's Unnecessary if you're gonna have armor It's just say white armor gives you an extra 10 health Yes, there's no reason There's no reason to make it extraordinarily complicated with such a core system To your game in a shoot or no less Right, right There's no reason for me to have to go into the math of like what my effective health is when I have a white versus a green shield Just tell me white shields give you an extra 10 damage, right? An extra 10 health greens 15 blues 20 right go up whatever the increments are Call it a day. Yes. Does a player have an advantage by being able to have higher tier and then they have more health Absolutely, but that's what's happening anyway with your current armor system based on the penetration of the weapon that's being shot at Right, if anything it's worse for the person that's doing the shooting Then it is for the person receiving the shooting because if you have a white weapon Doesn't matter And if they have anything higher than white armor, you're screwed Right because the the effective health is Is not linear it's exponential in that case And that's that's where I think the balance of their weaponry falls apart right because the weapons They damage does not increase but the penetration does penetration a magazine size does for most of the weapons up through the tiers And that feels terrible because it should be relatively consistent with the ammo type And then they've got the different ammo types for your different weapons And it doesn't feel you can take two weapons of the same ammo type And they'll feel completely different in terms of what the damage output feels like And that is off to me like you it should By like class of weapon right so snipers should all feel relatively similar with with an ammo type SMGs all relatively similar with an ammo type and they you could take the white SMG versus the purple SMG And it'll be wildly different from each other And that that I think gets to me the most and that's partly because I'm coming from hunt showdown Where a lot of hunts weapons are really well balanced that even the Better weapons Can be beat by a white weapon because they played better right And I think that's a big point right there is it starts to feel like no matter how well you played the fight You weren't going to win anyway because you're just outclassed with weapons or or armor a lot of times in it so Um and I know we're going like a lot heavier on the negative side Like it's it these are things that are fixable and which is why I still recommend the game Because it's definitely something that can be adjusted and made to feel better overall And so like in if the overall arcing idea of this game sounds interesting to you Despite these negatives, which I think need to be addressed at least from my perspective and it seems like the guy's perspective But um, yeah, that's where the gunfights don't feel good if you're going up against equal So graze on graze and you know manage to spot each other at the same time or whatever There's some really fun fights like it does feel good in those moments. Um, and a lot of times it's just skill wins out Um, but yeah, the other thing I wanted to kind of touch on in um is the npcs Some of them are just they're just so strong I think that's one of the they have so much health And they're so strong like it takes with the gray weapons on the normal map against a what we call spitters But and if you play the yeah, they're called rattlers But we called them spitters because they have an ability where they shoot out a laser of vomit basically at you Um, not only will they chunk you if that hits you but it to kill it with a gray weapon It takes almost two full magazines depending on the weapon type you're using if you're using an ar or an smg You rarely will kill it in one go Um, if you like really line up headshots and you know try and do that then maybe you can kill it in one But it's it's a lot to kill them and you can start getting swarmed so that it'll aggro other guys around And the the consistency of being able to kill the the smaller creatures is not always there it's so it's it can feel really um punishing from a pve standpoint Not not to mention the fact that you can then get third-party because you made a lot of noise and now you're half health because the thing Hit you one time and you just lose half of your health and you don't have any stem kits or anything It's very very frustrating from that perspective and I know a lot of these games are meant to be punishing Like hunt is pretty punishing when you encounter an mpc, but they're also really slow They don't take a lot to kill like if you were dumb and allow one to get not the bosses right and hunt I know the bosses are going to do damage to you But like the regular zombies that are walking around and some of them are bigger and stronger But you can usually play around them and be smart and out thank them and this game. It doesn't always seem like that It's just very inconsistent and their damage is so high and their health is so high Uh, it makes it feel like fuck. I don't even want to fight these things. Like let's can we just run away? I don't know and their aggro range. Oh, I didn't I now I'm going down But their aggro range for how far they will chase you Is so ridiculous like you run for so long and I mean sprinting you're running out of stamina They're chasing you forever if if someone's running but here's you running by they see this mpc chasing They know exactly where you are now Yeah, bro, so frustrating like that far that drives me nuts So there's those are things that I think again they could be fine tuned and made the make the game that's You know, again, it should be intense like I don't want to lose the intensity But I feel like there's a way to scale Back some of those things that are so punishing The gunplay the armor the weapons the NPCs like those types of things to make it to where it's still fun to To engage with them but not so punishing that you never want to come back because like we ended up with quests That I'm like, I don't know when I'm gonna be able to do this one because it's like it's just gonna I'm gonna make so much noise killing these things or doing this thing it will um It would just be not valuable and um, and that's another thing I want to go into after you guys have a chance But it's going into the quest themselves the mid game of quests are just Terrible go ahead, but sorry. I know I've been monolining You know something that's important to me is that and I think I talked to man goose about this maybe it was both of you but The enemies in hunt showdown, which to me is a gold standard for this kind of game, right? You've got balanced gunplay balanced NPCs balanced pvp, right the whole nine yards Um the every NPC in hunt showdown with the exception of one and even then it's questionable You can melee to death without taking damage if you know what you're doing You cannot do that in this game. No And that is to me a huge huge thing Like you said, it takes two full mags sometimes to take down a rattler with a gray weapon That feels terrible and that makes ridiculous amounts of noise But if I even if it requires a skill check or a knowledge check on my part I know how to take on the rattler with just a knife and can do so I should be able to take it out silently And be able to take it out in general without taking eight knife hits Which is insane. Yeah, and I've taken rattlers out with a knife But you still make a shitload of damage because you got to run around and do this and do that and And it takes forever The rattler makes noise too like it makes a bunch of noise that people are going to hear And know that you're fucking fighting a rattler. Yeah, and it's so that to me is one of the more frustrating parts of this game is that even if I really wanted to play silent I'm not incentivized to do so pretty much at all for from a pve standard because it's just not effective other than striders and blastics There's nothing else that you can kill with a melee effectively and quickly And also let me run in melee at the same time Well, don't make me charge my heavy melee and then run. Yeah. Yeah, just let me charge my heavy melee while I'm running That gets me more than anything So Jen Jen, what were you about to say you're about to launch into something wouldn't you? Yeah, I felt that because I started to monologue there a little bit with some of my frustrations Uh, I think it's the quests that are where I'm at right now. Um, because I this is the thing I I still really enjoy the game like we played it some today. I was excited to boot it back up Like no questions like, you know, I don't play hunt showdown because it scares the shit out of me. Um, you know, but But Um, but but I like this game and I I always like the idea of tarkov But I knew it was too punishing for me to play like that I was just like it sounds cool But I'm just I wanted something a little bit more in between and I feel like this game Matches that it's not quite hunt showdown. It's not quite tarkov. It's its own kind of middle of the road Version of those things, which is fine. I think that there's a space for that and it's it's more Arcadia of the of the two I guess and so I like that Um, but the quests where you because your progression is tied to each of the factions So there's three of them so far. I don't know if they're gonna add more or do something else different later on But there's three so far each one gives you Various things you need to do on the map collect different items you need to or go and deposit items. So it's just Once I feel like we hit the mid game So like level like five Or so of what I would consider the mid game. Maybe I'm crazy on this But it just you don't have really like access to anything that's super beneficial for you yet You have like some Like okay weapons, but no like gear nothing really valuable valuable But the quests themselves require require you to do some like really Insane things or fine Items that are really difficult to get or are low spawn. So you end up needing to go back in like I think I need 10 Optic lenses and that's one of the hardest things that we've been able to find Like it's other than killing an NPC to get their hardened bones or whatever Just straight Getting this item is so difficult. Um And that Right now they have their quest lines If you're doing them all pretty much evenly and leveling them up at the same time Almost I think it's all three factions Have a quest for optic glass at the same time So now not only are you fighting for the hardest material on the map to find that only spawns in one or two places Now you're also doing it across three quest lines You need 15 of said thing and the places where you get it only spawn two or three Plus, you know, everybody else is doing that same quest line So now everybody's looking for 15 optic glass means everybody's going to these same three locations And so it just is this ever grinding thing. Yeah, I completely agree. I wish Each faction had a more niche Thing that they focused on right? So if if so the three factions are corelev ica and osiris If corelev was more creature hunting creature based go out kill things fine Then ica is purely material based So it's go out and get all bearings go out and get optic glass go out and get these things And then osiris is all like plant or wildlife based in that like You have to get the bones of creatures. You have to go do these things it would separate them and allow players to go Do the thing that they want to do right? Am I going material hunting great? Check my ica quests. I go material hunting Do I want to go get wildlife and level up osiris bam? I have a niche for that Instead what they do is all three of them force you into the same area So when you're looking for materials it forces all the players on the map to the same spot If they're doing the quest because they're all looking for the same thing and it feels terrible If they added like an ability even if it's relatively slowly too because they have a crafting system in the game If they added like you can okay if you get you know five hardened steel And you know three of this thing you can make an optic glass at least that way If i'm not able to find the optic glass outright I'm able to start crafting it even if it takes a little while or whatever it is And I can get enough and then I just log out and eventually I'll come back and The fact that you literally you have to go in there and you can only get it again in one or two spots It just yeah, it's it feels bad man. Um, and it starts to Again feel like okay. Well, I didn't get it last time or You got all the stuff like I do we have main use. I think with an eye we had gotten like Like three quests worth of stuff like we were like loaded to the gills and we died on a ship Or getting to into our ship and you're just like To to god this is when we had we only had access to gray items Yes, and it was two guys with purples that were just waiting for people to e back to that spot And kill them Yep, and we just it was so defeating. I think we both quit after that. We were both just like, you know what? I don't want to play now like and and I if I'm a developer. I don't want that response I don't want so they find other ways to be able to garner Um that and the other thing too is going along with that is the rng of your spawning We spawn in the southern part of the map 90 Maybe 95 of the time and it most of the stuff that I need for my quest at this point are in the more northern part So if I'm Going to go to do those quests I have to walk through The entirety of the map or scale the outsides and hope I don't run into anybody hope I don't get killed by some random NPC Like it just I don't know one thing if that's the way it always was but every once in a while you do just Land on one of those areas, right? You never know when you never know when Or why like is it we only land down here because that's the way the game is designed that most of the spawn points are down there Or or is it because all the players are all up there? And so therefore it's not going to allow anybody to spawn and then it's like, okay Well, yeah, it just feels defeating we get into games and we're like well We're all the way down here in swamps. We need to go up to dig site Do we traverse all the way through and hope that we get there or do we just go do some quick looting and get the Fuck out and more times than not it's that let's just go do some quick loot See if we get lucky get some optic glass and get the fuck out Um, and then we die or we don't it just yeah, they need to incentivize Players to actually go find the materials for themselves right whether that be that if you deal somebody if you hurt somebody material loses some of its Quality or loses some integrity and if it changes hands two times at the course of a match It breaks and the materials gone Right that way there's they need to do something to incentivize people to actually go into the compounds and not just wait at evacs and not just wait at The outside the compounds for someone else to go do the dirty work for them Because right now that's like you guys said earlier That's one of the worst things too is that the purples will just sit back and wait Let you go do the hard work clearing out the camp the whole nine yards And then just take one good shot and that's all it takes and oh all your hard work goes to them If they would just increase the size of your safe pockets pockets considerably the game filled A hell of a lot a hell of a lot better to me. I think Uh, I don't know. We're we're kind of going along with the uh with with shitting on this game however Even if I think all three of us had a positive experience with the game Like we we've been talking about the negatives and we this this is things that we want to improve And this is a beta game. So this these things can't improve. This isn't our final judgment on the cycle frontier or anything But uh, one thing I want to start doing uh, we probably should have been done with all of our beta reviews Is what do we think the likelihood of this game surviving is because we you see a lot of flash in the pan games A lot of games come and go they they come in. They're huge on like Twitch and and everywhere and then like maybe three months later You never hear the game again. Maybe it has some players still playing but hardly anybody does and it's like a they have player base issues Um, do you guys think that the cycle frontier? um, I don't know two years from now We'll have a sustainable player base enough people playing that You can just queue into a game and and go straight to the map Viking I'll let you go first Uh, two years. No Uh, I think I mean the only way I see it lasting two years Is if basically a lot of the stuff that we just talked about as far as the negatives Are addressed and addressed quickly. I think the part of the reason why so many of these types of games Um, you know, we could talk about hood. We could talk about like, you know, there's a plethora of them Everybody in the comments can probably talk about a game that seemed so great and had so much potential But that's the whole thing. It's like a lot of these like, you know, smaller, you know, non AAA You know titles will have these cool ideas and and Managed to get them to a what what we would call a somewhat fruition state to where people can see the proof of concept But the problem becomes that like either again cheaters ruin the game Uh, the devs unable to respond quickly enough to the issues that the game has Um, and there's other games that are out there that they they'll switch to like we look at like for example Like a pub g pub g had stayed in power, but not because the game itself was being developed and worked on really quickly There was really nothing else that did what pub g was doing in the same market space So they were able to keep players high and keep going for a while despite The other stuff and and you know, people were willing to invest because of the potential But as soon as like apex came around fortnight came around, you know Modern warfare came around like all these other games that competed in that same space You know, you could see a Deviation from it and I think in this case it's going to be compared to the two games that we mentioned It's going to be compared to tarkov and it's going to be compared to han showdown Both of those games have very dedicated player bases already And they're both good at what they do tarkov is extremely punishing But it's good at doing so like it's really good at rewarding players who understand their game It's a reason why the hardcore base plays that game like crazy And it's still managed to hit really high numbers not as high numbers as like a pub g was hitting But it's still hitting good high numbers. This game can do that It won't if it doesn't make changes and very quick changes. So I don't know how they do it I I just don't think the longevity is going to be there for two years It can be here for six months. Maybe if uh, if they're able to do it I mean, it's the same thing we talk about with like on ftm A lot of these games have a very short period of being able to capture A large audience and maintain it and I just don't think that a lot of These smaller indie devs have the ability to do it quick enough And that's the unfortunate parts is that the game's just not able to keep up with the demand that the game needs to Maintain so two years from now probably not Unfortunately because I do think that and that's what started this is that I think it's there the possibilities are there The core aspect of the game is there and it's fun and it's engaging. It's cool I will never play tarkov personally. I will never play. I will play this game. I don't really like hunt It's too scary for me, but I'll play this game. So like there is an audience. I'm part of it I think you guys are part of it part of it, but it I don't see major changes I'm just not gonna play it because right now it's just not It's not as consistently fun as I want it to be to play it like every single day I will play something else and um, if the game is still operating I'll come back to this game ever so often, but like if we take hood for example Really love the concept really like the idea of hood Really don't play it that often after maybe a major update We'll get on and we'll play it for a little bit and then we're reminded of why we didn't continue playing it Because they just didn't fix the stuff that they needed to fix fast enough to maintain Relevancy to feel engaging and fun and good. Um, so I know I'm monologuing a little bit But that's that's my long answer to the two-year question. What about you jelly knees? I think I agree with you for the most part. Um, they can Pull off what hunt did when hunt first came out hunt had Not the same issues, but the same type of issues in terms of Player base was unhappy with how the game was the game was fun But there were just a lot of things that were not fleshed out enough to really keep players wanting to come back and playing the game and The devs put in really to I'm looking at steam charts to about two years worth of work And then had a moment where it just caught on and their player base quadrupled Right that and so they big success dip off and then finally caught it again and then use that momentum to go forward the I think this game could definitely do something very similar In that regard partly because the devs like I said earlier, this is not the first iteration of the cycle This is the devs originally released the cycle in 2018 for alpha tests and That means that they've been working on this for four years Right if we're four years of the two different versions of the game Right if they were willing to support that game for about three years Right and try to make the fixes, but just couldn't get there But still did it and then decided you know what we still believe in this game But let's turn it into something. Let's fill a niche. So let's fill that middle ground like you were saying between hunt and between Tarkov Like they believe in it, right? I so I believe in these devs that they will stick it out to two years But it's a matter of whether or not they actually do what's needed To get it to stick that two years and potentially pull a hunt that then after two years their player base takes off Because they've made the right changes. They've made the good things But the bad things better and the good things better even on top of that It's a hard thing because A lot of the bugs and issues people are facing with the game As of this release as of the early access release Were present in both of the closed beta test prior right and those were The most six months ago right so in six months What did they fix that was a gripe with the players? Uh, they removed the ability to see through wall see your teammates through walls And the vast majority of others have not gotten considerably better if anything. It's just like a okay Yeah, that is holding itself together now move on to the next thing like And so it's I really hope they stick it out But it's really going to be on them to determine their own success at this point Magus, um It's a unique game It's a unique concept but I don't know I could see something else coming along and trumping this to where It'll just be something else will be the new hotness. I don't think this is unique enough that it's going to It's going to take the gaming world by storm and just be That thing that people play I think people are going to play this and enjoy it for a while And then it's going to fade away. I think I don't think this one really has staying power um If they can fix like we said the it is in beta and they're obviously willing to make major changes to the game They can fix all that stuff. It'll have a little more staying power But I can't see myself playing this In two years I can't see this is like a staple main game for me I think what the interesting thing with this game Is it could be the pub g Waiting for apex and fortnight to come out Right for it because I mean apex and fortnight have Way bigger studios behind them and just did the battle royale genre Better than pub g ever did and honestly probably still does in a lot of ways Right and so this game could be the pub g of like, you know, like really cool idea Right a lot of the concepts are there it fills a niche in between like these two games That's great. And then all we're waiting for is the 600 pound gorilla to show up and go like, ah, you're right That is a great concept here. Here's our better version. Here's better sound engineering and Balance and yeah, because so escape from tarkov other than tarkov is relatively unknown devs Punch showdown has cry tech behind them. So the people that make crisis So that they they were a 600 pound gorilla, but they're kind of like a little offshoot of that a little bit Right, so it's just waiting for that company to come in there and be like, ah, yes This is a great place for us to to come and settle right like And it could happen. I wouldn't be surprised if it did happen I agree. Um, yeah Well, let's start wrapping things up then um final statements about the cycle frontier. Uh, jelly you go first I really like this game. I mean, I played both close beta tests, right? And so when it was coming out, that's why I put it on our list of something to play here because It does it builds that middle ground. I think really well In providing the things that I love about hunt the things that I think are cool about Tarkov, but that are too punishing and kind of brings them into a good little middle space here Um, I wish they would fix a lot of the things I mean bugs and crashes are rampant right now So I really hope that they fix those other than my issues I don't think we've been you guys have had too many issues with that kind of stuff But when I go into their discord when I was looking for a fix for my stuff It's just all over the place hundreds and hundreds of messages a day Which is going to slowly suffocate their player base if they don't get fixed very quickly So but I I would still recommend it and hope that you don't have any issues going into it if you're going to play it Um, and hopefully it just gets better from here Yeah, I pretty much echo those same points. I mean it the hard part about this like so, um, I think I played it with you right jelly In the before they changed it because I'm pretty sure I had this game already Um, and it it it does it fits that middle ground perfect enough for me to want to play because again I'm not a Tarkov guy. I'm not a showdown guy. So it really spoke to me to be able to play this game Um, again, I really like the art I like I like the way the world feels lived in you feel like you're there when you're there The immersion is great the intensity of the world that you're in the you know risk reward aspects I really enjoy that so it's like There's lots of this game that I feel like I can absolutely Spend a lot of time and I wouldn't make it my main game because it just makes me anxious too much But that's not a bad thing. It's a game that where it's like, okay, we got the boys together Let's jump in let's play a few rounds of this until we get too anxious to keep playing and then we're out Right and and I think that's fine. I think that's a cool thing I mean the hard part for me in this is they got the attention of some really big streamers, right and A lot of the games that we have covered in this and are going to cover and they don't always get that same benefit you're not always going to get your game broadcast to hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of players and Get positive, you know aspects from it negative aspects from it. You're not going to always get that as a dev So they have a great opportunity right now To be able to capitalize on that exposure and make the game exactly what we've discussed I don't know if they have the ability to do that as quickly as they're going to need to maintain the players that are currently trying to play the game, but If they do they they could yeah pull out a really successful, you know title I think Um And and it's a fun game like it is fun Like and like you're not going to be bombarded with like it's free to play There's not immediate like they don't have a battle pass currently They don't have like I think you can buy the premium currency, but uh, I think outside of that There's not really anything else that you can uh over the top buy. I don't even think they have skins currently available anymore I think they did at one point and then they turned them off So you're not going to go into this game and immediately feel bombarded with like spend money buy stuff from us So we could keep making this game. They're not doing that. Um, which I think is which is which is really cool Um, so if you played it in the comments, I would love to know what your uh, your experiences were What did you like about it? What did you hate about it? Um And where do you think the game lands in two years? What about you make is how did you feel overall? It's a fun game super intense and I like the intensity however if it wouldn't have been for being able to play with You two I would have absolutely hated this game. This is not a solo Player friendly game. You need to go you need to have some friends before you before you hop into this one And you need to have your own voice chat too or something like that. Um, so Yeah I really like the game, but I wouldn't suggest other It's not a game that I would feel comfortable suggesting that everyone pick up and play and um, I think that's probably a good thing. Um Like like we've said before like a seven is the worst rating a game can get because that just means that Nobody really liked it, but nobody really hated it Like you need to you need to have some people that love and hate the game and this is This game. I don't know man. Um I think it's got I think it's good that Old people would really really like it and really really hate it, but at the same time. I can't suggest it for everyone um, I think a pve mode would be Fun on this game, but it would probably split the player base up a little too much I don't know. Um, it's got potential. Um, and it's in beta. So if anything could happen And I had fun with the game so it Uh, one last thing it Punishes aggressive play while rewarding very cautious camping style play, which I don't really dig if they could find some way To balance that out. I would be I would be a lot more behind the game, but um Yeah, I think that's gonna about close it out for this week. Um I've got jelly knees is twitch and youtube linked in the comments below if you're looking for viking jedi You can look for him right here on my channel because this is where he shows up now Or on twitter. Yeah, you can follow me on twitter. You know send me your suggestions on there. That's fine I'll put your twitter in there. There you go. It's the same name. So the viking jedi on twitter Um, you know, it's mostly at this point just to plug the the show every once Well, throughout some random memes or Comments, it's yeah, it's fine. Uh, but no, I've been having a blast. So yeah, you can find me right here I'm definitely gonna put that twitch clip of you playing hot showdown. Oh, man It's fine that I laughed so freaking hard at that But uh, okay, that's gonna wrap it up for this week Let let us guys let us know in the comments what you thought of the cycle frontier if you've tried it And uh any improvements that you think that they should make and uh, if you disagreed with us in any way, of course, keep it constructive But uh engage with us in the conversation But uh for now, this is the beta males signing off you guys. Have a good one Man goes Special shout out to channel members. I blood hunter jelly knees meow mix for men stunt raven and blast always king