I wanted to mention two things that I feel the devs should look at. The first is the most important for attracting and keeping new players, while the second is for holding onto seasoned players.

1) Controls need work.

I love this game but I'm having trouble getting my friends to play with me. When they tried it out, they hated how convoluted the keys were and how awkward and hard to remember it was to select items (like medkits), drop them, etc. I don't think those were changeable, at least at the time. They complained that the controls were "consolized" and hard to customize, a carnal sin for at least one person in the group. ;)

I haven't checked recently whether controls are re-bindable in new versions, but if they're not, they need to be (including single-keypress shortcuts for button combinations like drop item). At least for a keyboard, there are so many keys available to you that awkward controller-related limitations don't fly with PC players.

And actions like crouch/pickup item should be possible to split apart into different commands, since picking up an item when I'm trying to crouch under an attack or go down a ladder in an emergency has caught me multiple times.

I'm now learning how to play with the XBox controller and that's going well enough, but it still seems like dropping an item is a throwback to old-style games (like metal slug) where buttons were so limited. I harp on dropping items in particular because it's a critical action players must do all the time (e.g. to pick up C4 and progress through the level). :)

If anything can be done about the control scheme, do it. It's pushed away my friends from playing with me, and I worry others have walked away for the same reason.



2) Shake up the weapon projectile variety

I loved the Metal Slug games' shotgun, which didn't fire a projectile. It blasted an area in front of the player, with a sprite animating the blast. I really liked how that weapon mixed up the way weapons behaved. Likewise, a laser beam (an actual beamed weapon that isn't a projectile) would help with variety. One final option is a flame, acid or cryo spray weapon that sprayed a cloud or shot blobs of material (instead of colored bullets), or a small-AOE ballistic grenade launcher. The grenade launcher could be done as a special combo ammo type (like ball + missile or ball + magnum), for example.

The reason I feel this is needed, is right now we basically have 5 bullet types, as a lot of them end up feeling the same.
-bullets (including piercing & magnum)
-buckshot
-shattering rounds (which I've yet to figure out how to use effectively)
-bouncing balls
-missiles

Everything feels like it falls into these 5 categories, and even those categories may not differ that much from each other in the way they play. Once I started to get used to the ammo types, I realized there isn't as much variety in weapon behavior as I'd believed.

For example, magnum rounds basically equate to "big bullet", and I've never understood the allure since that doesn't add much (besides a small damage boost). If magnum rounds knocked enemies back, offered a chance to stun briefly, or exploded in a small radius (or offered some boon besides being slightly wider than a sniper round), that would help.

Even if we didn't add any beam weapons, area blasts, or spray attacks, finding more ways to mix up the way bullets behave (and look) would help a lot. I like the special ammo types that are being previewed (and that's a good start), but they're fairly limited in scope, and having to get two ammo types to 100% limits their application a lot. Some feel meant for a specific weapon only.


3) (not a critique, just a lower-priority feature request) Dummy Damage Summary
After I stop shooting the dummy (e.g. with a shotgun or machinegun), I'd like it to flash a larger number over its head (after a 2 second delay of no attacking) to show total damage dealt in that shooting spree.


Despite these critiques, I'd like to make it clear that I love this game. Just wanted to offer some feedback. Thanks devs for all you've done!