Looks like we're not going to make the goal, bummer but oh well it was a fun weekend event. Abe is a beast in arena, and managing his shotgun spread can put so much damage on a monster even at long range. Arena has also helped me out a ton with my Parnell as far as knowing when to best use Super Soldier for maximum effectiveness.
A stage 2 fight against a competent hunter team is most definitely not in favor of the monster. The problem is that the hunters require skill and coordination, qualities which the average pub player lacks.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is a bad game to play in pubs. This is the sort of game you play in scrims with people that know what they're doing. I usually don't advocate dumbing down games but I do hope they make Evolve 2 more accessible for pub play.
I think there is some truth to the statement people make where in Evolve an effective team needs 4 people working together intelligently whereas an effective monster is just one lone player and thus it's like there is more effort needed on the hunters part to be competitive.
Honestly this game has gotten better for me as I went up in ranks and people just play smarter in general and know what to do (and unfortunately people who it didn't click for just stopped playing entirely). One of the most frustrating things when I first started playing was teams and trappers who only follow tracks, now I almost never see that, teams generally spread out intelligently to cut off a monster and don't solely rely on the trapper. Not that it happens every time, but it does make me stick in the game a lot longer when I find a good coordinated team. I will usually stick around until people start leaving first.
I think the #1 thing they could do to make it more accessible for public play is simply make the monster team have more than 1 player. Balance it so it works somehow, but in my experience the people who dropped this game that I know just hated playing the monster. Not because it was poorly made, but because it's a 'hot seat' position and if you feel somewhat left out of the team dynamic the game provides. It's a lot of pressure and it's the same reason 1v1 based games in general have fallen off in lieu of team based games, people don't like all the pressure to be only on them and would like teammates to both rely upon and blame. This game would have likely done so much better if it was like 2 monsters vs 6 or 8 hunters.