Meet Your Maker Review (Araxiel)
While I overall have fun with this "Mario FPS Quake Maker Trackmania" game, there are some very rough and sharp edges to it that do cause frustration.
In short
As a builder, only kills matter. This means people create nonsense killboxes. Every killboxes can be beaten, but only with the right tools. Those right tools cost too many damn resources to unlock. So raiding tools are locked behind upgrades. But as a builder, you don't actually have that many "tools" yourself. Even comparing it to the kind of stuff you can do in Super Mario Maker or even just Trackmania, building options here are extremely limited.
In Conclusion:
The game can be fun, but man it's a bumpy ride.
Longer review:
As a builder, the only thing that gives you resources are kills. You get no resources for building "fun" or "enjoyable" or "cool" levels, you only get resources for killing raiders. You also don't actually play through your levels, just a walking NPC needs to technically be able to get to the goal. This incentivizes building nonsense near-impossible killboxes and other type of cheese.
However, no cheese is undefeatable. I have never given up on a level and have defeated every outpost, no matter how bulls**t it was. The reason for that is that any obstacle can be overcome with the right tools.
But that just highlights another problem; exactly those tools needed to overcome many challenges need to be unlocked first. I'm now some 15 hours into the game (about 11 plus 4 from the beta) and I just now roughly have around 2/3rds of the raiding tools and weapons unlocked (and some upgraded to lv2). This means I have a so much more flexibility to approach an outpost. Flexibility you completely lack at the beginning, leading to much more frustration. Honestly, the biggest gods-send is the shield; it helps massively to counter any potential cheese. Which makes it even stranger you do not start off with it.
The other problem as a raider, is that you have absolutely no way to properly filter or categorize levels. One level might be really cool and fun and artistic, the next one is is just a single bulls**t killbox. Outposts are only categorised as Normal-Hard-Dangerous, but that is only taking into consideration the amount of "stuff" in them. I've raided highest difficulty Dangerous outposts that were artistic and challenging yet enjoyable, and then played one that was only Hard and it was a single bulls**t killbox that took me twice as long to beat. What also frustrates me with that, is that because of this type of sitution, I wish I could really, properly reward those builders that made cool and fun outposts, but I can't. Most ironically, by dying a bunch, I give the bulls**t killbox outpost more resources and XP, than I gave the enjoyable one that I didn't die in at all. And that's not even touching on the aspect that there's like zero social tools. I can't subscribe to a creator who's outpost I really liked. I can't sort outpost by certain criteria. There are no tags or categories outside the three difficulties. I can't leave a comment or rating or anything beyond handing out two seemingly near meaningless accolades.
But like I alluded to; there is no good reason not to build a bulls**t killbox yourself. As a builder, you only get resources from kills, and you get most XP from kills. Technically people can give your outposts Fun-Brutal-Ingenious-Artistic accolades at the end, but (like YouTube likes) most people seem to either forget or skip past those. And even then, you can only get at best two accolades from a player. Meanwhile kill a player even just 5 times, and you get much, much more out of them. Further, the only thing that matters is kill ratio and the amount of "stuff" that's in an outpost. A way I can see to reduce the amount of killboxes and what should also be taken (much more) into consideration should be a "rage quit" rate; not just how many kills an outpost gets, but also how many people stick around to actually finish a level. If someone tries your outpost and gets killed a bunch of times, it really doesn't matter to you (in gameplay terms) if they rage-quit or not. But that does matter to the game as a whole. As raider you really only get XP and resources from beating outposts. You need resources to unlock new tools. If newer players keep on hitting a wall of bulls**t killboxes, they will grow frustrated and leave. This also means that over time, the game will become a virtual arms-race on how to build the most bulls**t killbox, which in turn will create even more frustration for all but the most dedicated, stubborn and high-level players, meaning there will be even less players to actually play as raiders. Long-term this does not sound like a healthy player base.
The other problem with building, is that actually you are just very limited with your tools. You can place blocks, traps and guards, and then add slight mods to the latter two (all of it needs to be unlocked individually by the way). You can choose the visual look of the blocks, and add some decorations... but that's it. All blocks are cubes and mechanically the same. There is no way to add sounds or music or effects. There are no moving blocks or destructible blocks. There are no doors. There are no pressure plates or triggers or sensors. There are no checkpoints. There is nothing you add to help a raider like ammo pick ups. There are no weird gimmicks like gravity reversal or magnetic floors or slippery ice. There is nothing that can be bigger than a single block. Every trap works and activates only by standing in front of it, with the exception of only one (the plasma turret). The way to check if a level is "acceptable", is a NPC that can only walk (I love that weird dog-person-thing tho, and it helps guide the way if you're raiding). The problem with that is, it means you can't have any type of platforming or really interesting path or maze (or hypothetical elevators or moving blocks). Together with the somewhat limited "budget" each outpost has and the fact each outpost has a limited lifespan that costs resources to prolong, this further incentivizes to make bulls**t killboxes. Any trap or guard, really even any block, that doesn't yield kills, is wasted resources. Making a cool and enjoyable level that is easy to beat, is wasted resources. I spend a bunch of resources to have a low-level, relatively easy and fun outpost, and it didn't get a lot of kills (cause I didn't want it to); it now has run out of lifespan and I can choose to either spend a ton of resources to re-activate it and gain nothing, or I could spend nearly the exact same amount to continue to re-activate my brutal very difficult outpost that yields me like a 100 kills per-day. Why would I EVER bother wasting money on an easy outpost.
And that's not even touching on the fact that both new outpost building unlocks and new raiding weapons/tool unlocks, both use the exact same rare resource. Or how the level up system is a Byzantine mess, where you have your Custodian Level and then you have 5 advisors that each have their own level, so 5 different levels, and then you have Chimera level on top of that, which you increase everytime an advisor increases a level, and then each of your outposts has it's own level, and then you have your Tribute level which even I do not understand why it goes up and then on the map you have a Raid level that unlocks champion outposts... just so much noise of "make XP go up".
I want to see this game prosper and be played for years to come. Perhaps a little bit of "Trackmania" but for FPS. But as it stands, this will never happen. Every element of this game and every mechanic of building, it pushes towards making the most difficult, the most unbeatable, most killbox-y level ever.
Like most others, I do enjoy the game right now. I'm just worried for how much longer.