I don't really play PFC anymore, and its mostly due to CM's gun feedback being bad. From observing and playing xeno, I know that even a single rifle can do a respectable amount of damage, but as a marine it feels like I might as well be using a water pistol. This is because from the marine perspective, xenos have three damage states: alive, crit, and dead. Unlike marines, xenos don't slow down when taking damage (which would make them unplayable) or have their sprite become increasingly bloodied.
TGMC does have an extremely robust set of damage overlays for all of its xeno castes, and players have cited this as being one of the reasons why TGMC has better gunplay. Currently no devs/spriters have expressed interest in creating a similar system, as it would require a large amount of work (4-5 sprite overlays per caste times the number of damage states) or somehow getting TGMC's overlays (unsure if that would ever happen).
This does not change the fact that weapon feedback is still non-existant in CM. As such, I propose that for a testing period, we have pips appear next to xeno sprites as they take damage. This would be like the pips that appear on marines when a praetorian hits them with acid abilities, except that the number of pips would correlate with the percentage of health a xeno has lost. We then see how gameplay changes and players adapt for after a week or two. If it proves to be popular, the improvised damage indicator system might inspire contributors to create proper damage overlays. If not, then we can simply return to the status quo.
Since devs don't really visit this forum anymore, I'm primarily interested in hearing everyone's thoughts regarding damage feedback on xenos, and how we might realistically deal with the issue.