I liked the game better when it was in Closed Beta. It was a pure Outlast experience. It was completely focused on hide and seek, stealth and teamwork. Only 3 difficulties were there - Normal, Hard and Insane. Normal difficulty alone was such a thrill I could only dream what Hard and Insane would bring (they were locked). No rigs, no amps, no prescriptions, no level barriers. It was so neat and clean with zero confusion and 100% fun.

6 months later we have Early Access. I immediately spent my money to get this game on first day. This is literally the first game I've bought with my own money on Steam. My disappointment is immeasurable. Everything turned to garbage. This is not even the same game from Closed Beta it feels like. It's like Red Barrels steered away from their original vision of this game. They took all the bad feedback and applied it in the game. It's so cartoonish now. Not slightly immersive. All the gameplay mechanics they've changed are immediately noticeable and it's so unrealistic now. The animations like crouching and standing are so quick now. The Hard and Insane difficulties are gone now and replaced by level modifiers. It's not even fun to play. They changed some enemy encounter sequences and other cinematics and they're worse now. Now if you're level 50 and have all upgrades and stuff you can literally bully enemies. While the low-leveled people get their asses beaten. This is not how it's supposed to be. There shouldn't be any progression of this kind. Complete nonsense. Everything feels so less polished and buggy and weird now. Speaking of technical issues latency is ridiculous (especially while arm-wrestling) and group finder is the worst I've seen in any game. And why no text chat for us introverts lol. I don't wanna speak up to Chinese people it gets funny. I tried playing this game first day. Didn't like anything I saw then closed. Then next day I again tried. Then the days ahead, again, and again. I'm just not enjoying myself. In contrast, I kept playing the Closed Beta for 8 hours continuously and couldn't get enough and it had just one trial lmao. I played it daily until the beta ended. Now I never know what to expect from anyone. My favorite company failed to deliver. I feel betrayed.

Update: It's good to see their enthusiasm of supporting this game as much as they can. Update frequency is slow. Many old bugs still haven't been fixed. The game has so much potential to evolve into something extremely real, fun and big. But there seems to be hesitation to add anything major (like fun things to sleep room, sleep shuttle, more interaction with players and objects around, etc.). The lack of player base is very noticeable and a good way to overcome the infinite matchmaking times would be to simply add a quick play button that searches players across all servers, all difficulties, and/or all programs. I'm tired of switching through different servers a dozen times just to find some people to play with. Some of the issues I'm facing: infinite joining group screens; pause menu not opening; infinite rejoining group screens; all text briefs disappearing (left side of screen) until the game is restarted; players not joining despite the 'group invite have been sent' messages until the game is restarted or the server is switched; and many more well-known issues since the Early Access or 1.0 update.

I liked the game better when it was in Closed Beta. It was a pure Outlast experience. It was completely focused on hide and seek, stealth and teamwork. Only 3 difficulties were there - Normal, Hard and Insane. Normal difficulty alone was such a thrill I could only dream what Hard and Insane would bring (they were locked). No rigs, no amps, no prescriptions, no level barriers. It was so neat and clean with zero confusion and 100% fun. 6 months later we have Early Access. I immediately spent my money to get this game on first day. This is literally the first game I've bought with my own money on Steam. My disappointment is immeasurable. Everything turned to garbage. This is not even the same game from Closed Beta it feels like. It's like Red Barrels steered away from their original vision of this game. They took all the bad feedback and applied it in the game. It's so cartoonish now. Not slightly immersive. All the gameplay mechanics they've changed are immediately noticeable and it's so unrealistic now. The animations like crouching and standing are so quick now. The Hard and Insane difficulties are gone now and replaced by level modifiers. It's not even fun to play. They changed some enemy encounter sequences and other cinematics and they're worse now. Now if you're level 50 and have all upgrades and stuff you can literally bully enemies. While the low-leveled people get their asses beaten. This is not how it's supposed to be. There shouldn't be any progression of this kind. Complete nonsense. Everything feels so less polished and buggy and weird now. Speaking of technical issues latency is ridiculous (especially while arm-wrestling) and group finder is the worst I've seen in any game. And why no text chat for us introverts lol. I don't wanna speak up to Chinese people it gets funny. I tried playing this game first day. Didn't like anything I saw then closed. Then next day I again tried. Then the days ahead, again, and again. I'm just not enjoying myself. In contrast, I kept playing the Closed Beta for 8 hours continuously and couldn't get enough and it had just one trial lmao. I played it daily until the beta ended. Now I never know what to expect from anyone. My favorite company failed to deliver. I feel betrayed. [b][u]Update:[/u][/b] It's good to see their enthusiasm of supporting this game as much as they can. Update frequency is slow. Many old bugs still haven't been fixed. The game has so much potential to evolve into something extremely real, fun and big. But there seems to be hesitation to add anything major (like fun things to sleep room, sleep shuttle, more interaction with players and objects around, etc.). The [b]lack[/b] of player base is very noticeable and a good way to overcome the infinite matchmaking times would be to simply add a [b]quick play button[/b] that searches players across [b]all servers, all difficulties, and/or all programs[/b]. I'm tired of switching through different servers a dozen times just to find some people to play with. Some of the issues I'm facing: infinite joining group screens; pause menu not opening; infinite rejoining group screens; all text briefs disappearing (left side of screen) until the game is restarted; players not joining despite the 'group invite have been sent' messages until the game is restarted or the server is switched; and many more well-known issues since the Early Access or 1.0 update.