Alright, I have 120 hours played in game so far, as well as some hours on the other beta test.
Zealot and Vet at level 30, working on my Pskyer as well, have quite a few Heresy and Damnation missions under my belt. Here is my feedback for the game:
Power Sword- needs a nerf. It does everything and its class specific. Most of what I feel makes Veteran OP is this sword alone. People complaining about their ability to shred elites, thats the class’ job. However, the class should also not be a wave clearing machine. There is zero reason to take any other melee weapon but Power Sword.
Veteran- in General feels way too strong. Its a jack of all trades that excels at everything it does. My fantasy for a sharpshooter is generally marksmanship. It has this down and I don’t feel like this should be touched. However, its also a very strong tank and front line due too all the grenades, toughness regen and of course, the power sword. I’d lower the base toughness of the class, cut grenades in half, and adjust power sword. Class would be way more in line with what its fantasy calls for.
Zealot- feels okay? The ultimate nerf felt a bit heavy handed. Not sure why this was beat down while Vet ultimate does what it does. A charge and 100 toughness with crit? Vet gets weak spot damage and ESP for a set time, once 30 they get a full on reset on specialist / elite kill. Thunder Hammer is also junk. I heard this was nerfed, but I never got to use it during the other beta so I have no reference to how it performed before this iteration, but I don’t find my self having a reason to ever use it.
Pskyer- so far feels not great. The changes to staffs appearing earlier was a welcome one, but because the kit doesn’t synergize at all with guns makes shopping and gearing it extra frustrating. I’m actually a bit surprised there aren’t any Pskyer feats that impact firearm performance. Could have done things like augmenting bullets with warp on F key press, kills cause mob to explode in Shadowflame or w/e element, or more armor penetration on bullets per shot, but every shot increases peril. Picking up a gun instead of a staff feels stupid as it currently plays right now. Force Swords also feel pretty weak.
Penances- largely are okay. For my Zealot and Vet, I got them passively playing without really trying to get them, minus the Zealot penance where I had to not fire a single shot. I did this before it was discovered the flamer didn’t count towards it. The only one on these two classes that feels like total ass to get is the heresy in 10 min with less than 1 wound. As of now, I see a lot of Zealots spamming LFG to try and cheese this penance for the cosmetic and its honestly frustrating when trying to do a quick 4 pug. Ogryn ones from what I’ve seen don’t appear to be terrible, I hear the 75 meter one is bugged? But the other ones from what I’ve seen are totally doable without screwing over your team.
and then there are the Pskyer penances-… Almost every last one of these bar maybe 2? Require the player to hold their game hostage if they’re pugging up to get them. These are highly toxic and just freaking ridiculous. I get tired of doing the raid mission on chasm terminus only to have 2 Pskyers hold us up on extraction while they try and throw mobs off the small bridge, or, even worse, refuse to progress past the start of the mission while they’re busy trying to chain a horde to the cat walk and push them off. The monstrosity one is just a cruel joke for the Pskyer and their team mates. This class got the short end of the stick when it came to penances. If any penances need to be changed, its with this class.
Loot in this game is frustrating.- The system it self for hunting blessings and the systems described how they will be when they’re all out are FANTASTIC. However, the method of obtaining items in this game is atrocious. I don’t know who it was that thought a shop on a 1 hour rotation and a weekly vendor that deals in a currency you can only get so much of per week thought this was an excellent idea, but they are so out of touch its insane. I don’t even want to get started on The Emperors Gift system either, but I will in hopes something gets done.
The Emperors Grift-, because it is exactly that, a grift. From what I’ve been told, end of mission rewards in Vermintide were much more plentiful. What the hell happened here? 120 hours played. I’ve seen maybe 10 - 15? Its like clocking into a shift at work every day to get handed a freaking salvaged shovel at the end of it. Just up the proc chance, or better yet, bring the crates back.
Melk- the missions are fine. I know people are high key upset at things like “Complete 25 missions” but they can reroll these. The only missions I feel are poorly designed, are the ones that want you to complete a secondary objective on specific missions. Due to the nature of the mission board, this can take way longer than it needs to. I’d rather just see these done by zone. Like, complete 6 secondary objective in “The Torrent”.
Side Objectives- these are pointless and boring outside of weekly missions. Do I really want to carry around 2 grimoires in damnation for a handful of dockets? No, I don’t. These should be more rewarding, more interesting at that. I’m supposedly on this planet to purge heretics, but somehow I’m sweeping the city looking for books.
Bosses- are fun. I’ve enjoyed all 3 of the monstrosities that spawn. Kinda wish they dropped materials or an item, but they are fun. The 2 bosses at the end of the assassination missions are cool as well, if not very easily cheesed on lower difficulties. I look forward to seeing more of these in the future
Missions- I honestly don’t think there is one that I feel is bad. I’ve liked all the ones I’ve played so far, my personal favorite being the Hab mission with the Tree that looks like its made of literal poop. The way the lighting hits this mission, the particles in the air, the close quarters and theme? It all hits hard, that being said, every mission has been enjoyable. I legitimately can’t wait to see the next few maps.
Performance- is not great. That being said, there have been improvements. I played a lot of my 120 hours on an i5 8400 with a 1650 super and 16gbs of DDR4 memory. I could not run this game on 1080p with 60 FPS. No matter how I tweaked the settings. I had to eventually drop the resolution down to 1400x900 to get the game smooth enough to enjoy, but once I got it down there, it ran well. I actually just picked up a 3060 while they had a special on it I wanna say a few days ago, literally got here the other day and I can run this game on 1080p with Medium / High settings just fine at 60 FPS with DLSS on or off and ray tracing totally off. I had planned on purchasing a newer processor to pair with it, but I’m actually shocked to see that the game is running this much better with just the video card upgrade as I kept hearing that its very CPU heavy. To those out there that would like to inform me that my i5 and this card will experience bottlenecks, I know. However, at 1080p, game runs fine right now. No crashing, a frame hitch every once in a blue moon due to CPU bottleneck. Usually on an endless horde map with an ass load of mobs on screen and fire effects everywhere.
Shared Stash / Currency- I don’t know how I feel about this. I’ve played games that have had this, I’ve played games that haven’t. To me, it doesn’t matter. I could understand the anger a bit more if this game had some kind of end game to it that required fine tuned builds, but it just doesn’t. Game isn’t a race, you don’t really get much benefit if you’re playing 1 game a day vs 10 games a day. We have access to the same missions, we have the same dog poop armory RNG. Maybe this changes at launch and there is some end game content planned for release? I don’t know. As of now, I don’t really care about this.
TLDR and Overall- this game has been highly addicting. I haven’t clocked no life hours like this in a very long long time. I want to see loot fixed. I don’t care for vertmintide 2 crafting, I’d rather earn the items actually playing the game rather than stare at a UI slamming a button repeatedly, so I think the way crafting functions now is excellent, but getting items through a low refresh shop is not good. Not at all. Make bosses drop items, or give us emperors gifts every mission. The rate at which we get these are way too low. Loot progression would feel a lot better. Classes do need tuning, Veteran in need of some gentle nerfs to their toughness, Power Sword needs balancing, its overloaded. Zealot, Pskyer and Ogryn (from what I’ve heard anyway) could use some love.
Thats about it.