Then you would prefer them to have yellow circle above their heads and then smashing you in face when you try to jump on them? Maybe devs can respond better but I think this way you at least know already what will happen if you try to jump on them.

The AI detect him just the same as human players should - every time you try to pull this on enemy that isn't occupied with anything else at that time you'll get your face smashed. I did Loaht mission with new players yesterday and even they learned how to beat Doldren antagonist who was stupid enough to attack people that were not distracted.

I was in the second protector mission yesterday where it seemed that 2 of my teammates didn't even know that dodging evades strikes and got pummeled by antagonist literally as soon as they spawned. We lost A LOT of lives but we actually won the match because nobody gave up and the new guys learned all the stuff eventually. We got rating of 6 or something in the end and the match was very long and tiring but it was the best experience I have had for months in this game. The antagonist was level 40 something, I am level 50, another teammate level 30 and two new players below level 10. To have new players get together, literally learn their stuff in the process of getting their faces melted by AI, turrets and antagonist and beat the higher level antagonist with their crap weapons on mission that even lot of "experienced" players tend to fail even without antagonist very often - that just feels awesome.
All the point of my rant is that - sure, maybe you'll get no antagonist mode eventually with no effort needed and less rewards, but you'll be stuck with players that will never get better because they are fine with easy mode. I have learned everything I know about how to properly play this game from antagonists that kicked my ass and I better lose to good player rather than get bored to death playing easy mode missions with clueless people. And I have the most respect to people who kick my ass as antagonists and to people like those 2 new guys who kept fighting in what seemed to be already lost match and turned it all around in the end.

Derclaw already wrote a perfect Aneska guide. Also being the targeted guy is the easiest and most fun part of fight IF YOU HAVE DECENT TEAMMATES. If you do and they actually kill adds while you're avoiding missiles then last phase is super easy and you still can shoot Aneska in between the missiles.
I play with randoms and almost always lose Aneska fight at the last phase when people all try to shoot her and nobody cares about taking out adds anymore.

No idea how many people play this game but I doubt that it is going to die anytime soon. Also with last update you get matched against antagonists of the same MMR which makes life easier for new players and harder for antagonists.

Also question to OP - how many months do you need to finally "learn the basics of the game, the characters, the maps, the objectives, and obtain those cards". I'm just asking because the first whine post appeared almost a year ago.

I think it should kill him, but also recharge faster.  Since there is increased risk with speed of decay then there should be increased reward with speed of becoming enraged.

I mean, he has to be in melee range to kill stuff in the form, so it makes it useless on objectives anyway.  I kind of want to use it as an assassination tool, turn, hit an elite, turn back, collect aleph, take a shot, turn do it again. etc. See if it works/is worth it.

But it is exactly what you can do right now already - turn, quickly kill bunch of adds or elite, turn back and keep most of your skill bar. I use Loaht on very rare occasions because I suck with him, but the skill bar was never an issue. It fills very fast and you can turn him all the time.

Mercury already replied to one of offline whine posts that they included offline mode only to let players test new weapons and card combinations on AI. There is no other purpose for offline mode as just training and testing your stuff.

This is why I don't use Tsiklon at all because I noticed that the weapon has limited range when trying the gun in solo mode. Not sure if it's a glitch or was intended. I know Hornet can hit anything from any range but Tsiklon doesn't hit targets far away.
I can't access youtube right now, so I haven't watched the video, but my guess is that there were no damage numbers when trying to shoot enemies far away and they suddenly appeared when shooting enemies in close range.