Hunters,
With each new Event, we’re committed to listening and improving—and that starts with your feedback. As promised, we extended the survey window from just a few days to a full week this time, giving more of you the chance to share your thoughts.
Judgement of the Fool brought with it a lot of moving parts, and that meant a larger and more detailed Event survey. We would like to thank all of you that took part in this survey. It has given us some great insights which we will jump into in this blog!
We have also heard your feedback about wanting to provide more detailed written answers. While longer surveys provide us with more context, they can take more time for us to analyze and categorize answers, but we will make sure to look into how we can balance this going forward.
As always, thank you for taking the time to contribute. Your input is instrumental in shaping the future of Hunt: Showdown 1896 and we’re committed to making it the best horror shooter out there. Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty…
Current Status
Before diving into how the Event was received, there were two broader topics we wanted to hear your thoughts on: how the game currently feels to play, and how you define a “win” in Hunt.
Starting with the first question, we wanted to get a sense of the community’s overall sentiment during this update. Around 69% of players rated their experience a 4 or 5, which tells us that most of you are enjoying the game in its current state. This is something that is great to hear and not something we take for granted!
For the second question, we were curious about what “winning” means to you. We offered a list of possible goals based on internal testing, and unsurprisingly, the most selected achievements were getting a few kills and extracting with a Bounty Token. The written-in responses revealed to us something more nuanced, however. Many of you expressed that simply participating in PvP—even when you lose—feels meaningful as long as the fight is intense, fun, and challenging. Even for solos, just surviving the encounter is seen as a personal victory! These insights are super useful to read, as they remind us that success and winning in Hunt is not always black and white and that the overall experience of the game matters.
Judgement of the Fool Battle Pass and Event
The ratings for the Battle Pass of this Event came back to the level of our previous Events, with 64% of players reporting that they were satisfied with it on some level.
We were happy to see the ratings up from the last Event, despite this Event not featuring any new weapons. The change had a mixed response, with a 50/50 split between being satisfied and dissatisfied with the decision. This update was an anomaly in that sense, as we are committed to bringing new additions to arsenal in future updates.
Event Traits
The Gunrunner Trait was perceived to be quite a lot more powerful in comparison to our other Event Traits, which we expected as it opens a lot more loadout opportunities for players within a Mission.
We also asked you how much you liked the Traits that were included in the Event. The
Gunrunner Trait was much more divisive here when compared to the Catalyst and Corpse Seer Traits. From our data, Gunrunner is currently our 17th most chosen Trait for this release, with the highest usage rates within 3-star and 6-star lobbies and its pick rate reducing as the Event progresses. However, pick rate does not measure the Trait's impact, and from your earlier written-in comments and community sentiment, we understand it is a frustrating Trait to play against. Based on all this feedback, we have made the decision not to include Gunrunner as an Event Trait in the foreseeable future.
DeSalle and The Fool’s Hideout
We were glad to see that ~87% of all responses were satisfied with the visual overhaul on DeSalle. One of the highlights for us was the community’s warm response to DeSalle’s return, and we would like to thank all of you for your amazing feedback!
The addition of adding DeSalle back to the map pool led to an interesting question: What is the community preference for how often maps should appear in rotation? The answer was much more balanced than we thought, with DeSalle slightly edging the other maps out when looking at the mean number. (Though it’s possible we’re seeing some recency bias here in the data due to the survey being so close to the return of DeSalle.)
We have also investigated to see how playtime hours affected the mean for the map preferences. And again, we were pretty impressed on how equally players want to experience our maps, with the majority of all hours played preferring DeSalle. An interesting insight was that Stillwater Bayou stood out as the maps most preferred by beginner Hunters, while Lawson Delta is preferred more by veteran Hunters. (Note: the numbers of players in each category below are not equal).
The Fool’s Hideout
From the previous Murder Circus Event survey, we saw how much you loved an additional 17th compound that spawned in different locations and became a meaningful gameplay space for the Event. Due to our focus on bug fixing and performance stability for Garden of the Witch, it wasn’t possible to add another location to that Event, however we made sure to add this back in Judgement of the Fool, bringing The Fool’s Hideout to all maps.
We were happy to see this approach worked, with 78% of you being satisfied. We will continue to refine compounds and open new question options for this, so we can get your detailed feedback on the new compound areas and deliver even better gameplay spaces for future Events.
Without spoiling too much, we do have a new 17th compound in the works, which we are crawling with excitement to reveal to you…keep an eye out on the web for more info…
Balance Changes
We were happy to see that almost all the changes resonated with you as a community. Changes such as Health Chunk Restoration, the price for the Fast Fingers Trait, and item name display are all because of you making your voice heard.
But for this section, we primarily want to talk about two of the lowest rated changes for the Salveskin Trait and the Dark Dynamite Satchel. These two had the highest number of dissatisfied responses among all balance changes. Let's talk about Salveskin first. The changes to this Trait were more of a fallout from all the changes made to the burning speed of downed Hunters, which saw a higher positive response. Currently we are still seeing Salveskin as the 5th highest chosen Trait across our whole player base. As you would expect, when filtering from lower to higher MMR ranges, the pick rate for the Trait drops. In 5-6star lobbies, it becomes the 15th highest chosen Trait, after being in the top 10 before Update 2.4. This drop brings it to the level of other Traits such as Conduit, Physician, Witness, and Vigilant. So even though its utility was reduced, it is still one of the most used Traits, which we are happy with.
Next, we will look at the Dark Dynamite Satchel change, and the mixed reception that it received. One reason players may not have liked this change was due to it enabling ambush playstyles. We have also seen a general sense of fear in the community of its ambush playstyle becoming too powerful without a counterplay option. Dying to a low audible ambush setup is not fun, especially on the heels of some of our streamers showcasing some creative ambush setups (Kudos!).
Before Update 2.4, the Dark Dynamite Satchel was among the least used Consumables. Even though its pickup rate has increased since the change, it is still in a low position. When looking at explosives only, it is still the least used Consumable across all lobbies apart from a 6-star lobby. We understand your concerns about this change and are still investigating its pick rate and effectiveness in fights, but we don’t anticipate making any further changes at the moment.
UI Changes
Regarding UI, we are happy to see most changes have been received positively.
That said, we anticipated mixed reactions to the Gear Screen Filter behavior change. Some players prefer equipping the same items every time, and altering the remembered filter behavior understandably impacts their flow. With the addition of more dedicated custom loadouts, we hoped to ease that friction, but we’ll continue to keep a close eye on feedback and adjust as needed. Regarding one of the lower-rated changes—the Lobby Screen navigation—we’ve heard your frustrations loud and clear. Players who focus on Soul Survivor or switch between game modes have found it frustrating to always be dropped back into the Bounty Hunt lobby, rather than returning to their previously selected mode. To be honest, this was an expected criticism. The current setup was only the first step toward a larger design overhaul. The good news? A more comprehensive solution—one we teased some time ago—is on the way and will be landing in Update 2.5!
As you can see in the charts below, we can see a huge difference between where we were with the UI in Scorched Earth vs this Event. We will continue to work on improvements and make sure you have a better experience with each update.
Audio Changes
We are delighted to get so much feedback regarding the current state of audio in Hunt: Showdown 1896. Over 98% of you are using headphones, which highlights the vital role sound plays when hunting in our world, both in terms of immersion and gameplay readability.
When it comes to spatial audio, 60% of you are now using CrySpatial, our custom-built solution. CrySpatial is tailor-made to enhance positioning and clarity, giving you a better read on danger, footsteps, and the intensity Hunt is known for. While we believe that CrySpatial is the optimum way to experience Hunt’s audio, we are happy to see a number of players are exploring other solutions to discover what works best for them. We are continuing to test and improve mix clarity across the various spatial audio solutions to ensure Hunt’s immersive soundscape is experienced by all our players.
We’re also very happy to report that a majority of players feel that the audio has improved since the launch of 1896. We recognize that there are still opportunities to improve our audio readability, and these results help us to evaluate pain points and continue to refine the experience.
In Conclusion
We hope you find these survey results insightful and can see the benefit of how your survey feedback is shaping the future of Hunt. Let us know if you would like us to continue these deep dives into your survey results via our socials! We look forward to sharing more about our upcoming update very soon!
-Your Hunt: Showdown 1896 Team