I've honestly played the shit out of this game. I didn't get it on release because of the DLC crap they had going on but a year later I got it in the discount bin and I put a fair bit of time into it playing as a monster.
There's a huge update coming out today that scraps the old gameplay in the hopes of properly balancing the game which it suffered quite badly from. Teams of 4 hunters that worked even moderately well had huge advantages over the monster player. So in an attempt to drum up some players for the game they're re-releasing the game in a F2P model. All the characters/monsters will be unlockable by either playing the game or paying for them but the base game is free for PC.
They're doing a beta on PC and once that's done releasing on consoles, if you've ever wanted to play this game now's your chance. It's quite fun, if you enjoyed L4D you might like this.
Evolve goes F2P
Re: Evolve goes F2P
This model worked great for QL.
Re: Evolve goes F2P
The contrast with Overwatch is telling.
Blizzard are tweaking various factors in gameplay from day one, trying to work out any wrinkles players expose. Why didn't the devs of Evolve release gameplay balancing patches two weeks after release if it's so obviously broken? To me this re-release feels like they've done some tweaking (nerf this a little here, bump the damage output a little there, etc etc) and are trying to make it seem like a huge deal now.
Blizzard are tweaking various factors in gameplay from day one, trying to work out any wrinkles players expose. Why didn't the devs of Evolve release gameplay balancing patches two weeks after release if it's so obviously broken? To me this re-release feels like they've done some tweaking (nerf this a little here, bump the damage output a little there, etc etc) and are trying to make it seem like a huge deal now.
Re: Evolve goes F2P
Actually Eraser, they did do a lot of patching and balancing since release of this game. Mostly like you say, little tweaks in terms of damage and a few other gameplay issues.
This patch however is not that. It completely changes the entire game. They've re-worked all the maps to make them more suited for competitive matches and they've completely changed how the game is played on both the hunters and monster sides.
For example, previously, only the trapper could dome a monster (IE Trap it in a dome) but now each hunter class can drop a dome on the monster. That radically changes the game. On top of that monster skills and damage output has been pretty drastically changed. They've made the mosters more of a challenge for hunters at stage 1 so that the game isn't hunters chasing a monster until it reaches stage 3. We should see a lot more fights now at stage 1 and 2 and those fights should be more of a challenge enabling the monster player to actually be scary at those stages. Before, a stage 1 fight as a monster meant you're pretty much dead against a good hunter team.
I'm not a huge fan of some of the monster changes though but I'll have to give it a shot first before I put down my judgement.
edit: I should add that the difference between overwatch and evolve is huge. Blizzard released a very polished game, full of content and no DLC while 2K did the exact opposite with evolve. It sucks for turtlerock studios though because at its core, evolve is a great game. The learning curve though is a bit steep, it can be a bit of a chore to reach a semi competitive skill level although this patch may help with that. Also, with it being F2P it should drastically increase its player base I'm hoping.
This patch however is not that. It completely changes the entire game. They've re-worked all the maps to make them more suited for competitive matches and they've completely changed how the game is played on both the hunters and monster sides.
For example, previously, only the trapper could dome a monster (IE Trap it in a dome) but now each hunter class can drop a dome on the monster. That radically changes the game. On top of that monster skills and damage output has been pretty drastically changed. They've made the mosters more of a challenge for hunters at stage 1 so that the game isn't hunters chasing a monster until it reaches stage 3. We should see a lot more fights now at stage 1 and 2 and those fights should be more of a challenge enabling the monster player to actually be scary at those stages. Before, a stage 1 fight as a monster meant you're pretty much dead against a good hunter team.
I'm not a huge fan of some of the monster changes though but I'll have to give it a shot first before I put down my judgement.
edit: I should add that the difference between overwatch and evolve is huge. Blizzard released a very polished game, full of content and no DLC while 2K did the exact opposite with evolve. It sucks for turtlerock studios though because at its core, evolve is a great game. The learning curve though is a bit steep, it can be a bit of a chore to reach a semi competitive skill level although this patch may help with that. Also, with it being F2P it should drastically increase its player base I'm hoping.