5 big upgrades you need ‘off the grid’ before you leave early access

Off the Grid has had an impressive start so far, filling the charts and racking up massive player counts. As far as crypto gaming goes, it's the biggest startup to date and has cracked the world of mainstream gaming enthusiasts, many of whom didn't even know it existed in blockchain. (To be fair, crypto stuff isn't fully integrated yet.)

But the initial hype of the launch has started to die down, leaving Gunzilla Games with its next big challenge: improving and refining the game to keep players hooked. OffGrid must maintain a strong player base and continue to improve until it's ready to leave early access, or it may lose its chance to become the game that introduces the benefits of blockchain to the gaming world at large.

After putting a good few hours into the game, I noticed some things that could be improved. If they stay as they are, Off the Grid may struggle to maintain a large player base and may never reach this level of popularity again. But since it's early access, the expectation is that upgrades are in the cards — and here are five I'd like to see soon.

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Add better damage indicators

This is without a doubt the single most annoying thing about Off the Grid at the moment.

It's almost impossible to tell how much health you have left without directly looking at the small health bar at the bottom of the screen. The damage indicators don't do a great job of letting you know you've been shot, but they're even worse at showing how much health you have left.

Other games use visual elements such as bleeding the edges of the screen or making your view black and white when you're near death. It's not a complex system, and there are probably better ways to do it, but Off the Grid's current approach certainly isn't.

Add a new map

This is planned from the Grid of Freedom map, but if you ask me, the current offering is not good enough and should be moved up. It seems, when trying to do something different, the map is basically just a long line… and while that sounds like a fun idea, in reality, it just makes things more frustrating.

Since the map is so thin, the circles cannot be at either end, so there is not much reason to go to the extremes of the map. The best place to drop is always the middle. A map with the most common shape alleviates this problem, and the current layout is marked as an interesting idea that does not touch the mark.

Make it hard to find a load drop

Battle royale games should be about thinking on your feet and adapting to your situation, and one of the key areas for that should be the weapons you have to use. But in Off the Grid, it's so easy to call a load drop and I'm never without it, and I've tinkered with it in-game so it elevates my game.

Making it a little harder to find, not having every player overload past the 5 minute mark adds variety to Off the Grid and makes it more fun. Using the same loadouts is getting tiresome, and I need more of a reason to loot the previous game other than just getting hexes.

Cool on the cinematics

The claim that Off the Grid has any kind of player-vs-environment (PvE) element is especially true considering the promised 60-hour narrative campaign—which you'll have to play player-versus-player (PvP) matches to experience. I couldn't care less about it either. That might be fully functional in the future, but the current implementation isn't helping the experience.

The odd cut scenes that provide some sort of narrative are confusing and boring. They shouldn't be told the weird story that when I start a game, I want to go and shoot people, and in the end I'm not very interested. Keep this as an optional extra, having them placed on play screens around the map—but skipping them means grinding gears every game.

Open the market to everyone

Currently, if I want to sell items on the player-to-player market, I have to pay £10 ($12) a month for a pro membership, which includes other benefits. That price isn't too outrageous considering the extras on a Battle Pass or skin. But locking the marketplace behind a paywall feels a little unfair.

The best solution is to cut off every transaction on the marketplace, and when the GUN token is actually live and can be bought and sold on the exchange, the team can either burn it or sell it back to players. Money.

Limiting the option to sell to players who pay for subscriptions ultimately shows a lack of diversity in the marketplace, where a few sellers can make big bucks. In contrast, most average players don't bother.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair.