Ok so after sinking my teeth deeper into the pre order beta this right now is my overall feed back in the game after pushing up to level 30, getting some heresy under the belt and getting general feel for the game. Now I fully understand this is beta, this is not the full game, we are still seeing other things being added. With that in mind this is my feed back on the availability of mechanics thus far.
The Good
*Enemy Spawning and density: So over all the gameplay feels very nicely paced, the diversity in enemy types and the rate and variety of which they are encounters keeps every run feeling different enough so that each play through is a exciting experience, while at the same time staying samey enough that familiar tracks of the game create a good rhythm and familiarity. What i mean by that is, i know section A is coming up, i know section A always spawns with a lot of things, what those things are, usually is different every time. So it creates a good experience.
*Weapon verity: Another solid note here, great array of guns and weapons, all feeling like they very much fill a role/playstyle and so far nothing is screaming at me, “Im the cog hammer for this class” IE ends up being the auto take weapon every single time. Using the psyker as an example, each staff feels like it has a place and a home, each staff feels like its more powerful in the hands of someone who likes using it, and thats a good thing.
*Level feel: Each level truly captures the insanity and the chaos of the 40k settings, things are very close, ram shackle, confined while at the same time being monumental in scale. You constantly feel like you are just barely able to fit through the levels you are going, and at the turn of a corner, feel like an ant among giants in the vastness of a hive city. With what we have seen so far, truly fat sharp has done a marvel at making the immersion of feeling like you are in a 40k setting really stick.
The Bad
With all the good things in the game though it is not with out some very major faults. I will not be speaking about technical issues, as i know those will be worked out, this is simply things from a mechanic stand point that are very bad, and very much need to be looked at and addressed in my personal opinion.
*Truma health and wounds: This is overall just a bad system that was practically directly lifted from the Back4Blood game. A game that flopped very badly, and a very very ill received trauma system. It does not add to the depth of game play, nor does it make anything more of a challenge it just makes it far more tedious to play. Since there is such an abundance of med stations in a game that quite often can heal the whole team even on level 4 and 5, this seems like a way to just further punish the players then it does make the game better. This leaves me wondering why the temp health system just did not remain in the game, it was tried and true in VT and leaves me questioning this choice. Personally i would just remove it, and remove the health stations, as even they seem so outta place in teh game as is. Here i am in a shanty town, where the lowest of the low live, and i apparently am running into a auto doc hat would only be found in far more affluent areas.
*Stun locking from ranged: Another system that was very much railed against in the closed betas, and while tuned, still is horrible in the pre order beta. Higher difficulties see a lot more ranged units in play, and with that, cover becomes far more important. However that cover is extremely hard to use, which taking even a few hits will stagger your character, stun them AND move them. Which can result in a far to common issue where you will get pushed just enough from a single guy hitting you a few times to where the rest of his team can lay into you and merc you. No other game i can think of in recent times has had a knock back mechanic on being shot. This again is another one that i think overall just needs to be removed. Its not fun, innovative, engaging or anything, its just annoying and frustrating to deal with.
*Rezing: Rezing or trying to pick someone up is another thing that in VT was done very very well, and in fact was so well received because of a bug. Originally blocking while rezing was not intended it was a bug that was so well liked it was just made into a feature. This feature is not present in DT, whats worse is rezing is now harder then ever with only one class having a bonus to it, making this character almost a requirement to take. But the issue is not done there, not only do we lack the ability to block while picking up, we also can be interrupted from being shot. This creates a very VERY bad issue in the game where if you are the last person up, and you are in the middle of a wave, or an endless spawn, its impossible to pick up a team mate by your self, because you will be getting shot at, hit, and unless you are the ogryn you are SOL. At minimum you need 2 people to be able to rez someone, one to clear one to rez. Great idea in concept does not play out well in game. The best thing for this would be while rezing, either you cant be interrupted from being shot, or you just dont get shot while rezing. I would say 80% of my fails have been because we went to 1 person up, and they literally could not rez us no matter what.
*Animation cancellations lacking: There is a very brutal absence of animation cancels especially on the psyker, resulting in being locked to your current weapon until you finish your current animation cycle. This is just a very clunky and bad system to have, something that VT did not suffer from. At higher difficulties the need to switch quickly between weapons is make or break some combat. Why this was not included is beyond me.
*Mission selection: This is really bad, and im going to assume that this is because we are in beta, but this random quickfind, and only having a given amount of missions up that then rotate is HORRID. It works fine on games like say, Deep rock, where levels are procedurally generated. This is not that game, levels are not randomly generated, being forced to do that same levels or only the levels that are up at the time is just crappy to say the least. AGAIN, this might be because of the fact we are in beta and will change, i dont know but as is, its not great. There is literally NO reason to simply keep the mission system from VT. It worked dont reinvent the wheel.
*Tomes and grim no longer standard: This was a big BIG BIG!!! Let down for me, and while i could put this in the ugly section, after giving it some more thought its going in the bad. One of the most fun things in VT was doing the puzzles, jumps, and tricks to pick up the books, now they are just randomly found in chests or item spawn locations, gone are the days of fixed locations, and that just feels bad. Worse yet they are secondary objectives that have a CHANCE to spawn, not even a guaranteed. Locking more content simply behind LOL random, does not equate to good content. It feels shallow and unfulfilling.
The Ugly
Now these are things i wanna provide feedback on, that are no necessarily game breaking, bad, or anything of that nature. These are things that personally i think are just very poor choices and or are just ugly design choices that dont add to the game, or dont provide enough for the game.
*Player characters: This one might be a hot take, but, i think the design choice to have random shmucks was a bad one. Part of the charm of VT was the characters involved, even though i heard the same banter between the characters hundreds of times, each time it was memorable, it felt personal, i felt like i was playing a real character set in the setting. The created characters of DT, feel extremely soulless and hollow in comparison. Each interaction feels horribly forced /scripted to the point of im not sure if im listening to DT or NPC dialog from The elder Scrolls Oblivion. It also reminds me of things like warcraft, where the player character is constantly just referred to as “CHAMPION!” it just feels hallow and i think we a poor choice.
*Weapon Attributes: You have provided us with a massive amount of keywords but no explanation as to what any of it means. What is soul blaze? What is wrath? What is warp resistance do? What does collateral do? What is the difference between rapid fire and torrent? What is an assassin weapon? Ect ect ect. None of this means anything because we have no idea what they are. Having these things are not bad, but not explaining what any of them do is.
*Lack of weapon description: Similar to above, the lack of explanation of what weapons does is frustrating at best. The only way to find out is to buy it and try it. Some weapons ok no issue, An axe is an ax, a sword is a sword, but the lack of explanation of, what is a recon las gun? How is it different from a regular one? Whats the difference between these 3 auto guns? What do these staves do? Voidstrike? That does not tell me anything? Why? what is it? please explain?
*The hub: I get it, you were going for at Destiny 2 kinda player hub, but it once more just feels hallow and soulless. I would much rather have gotten a small, far more personable hub just for myself and my party members. Again, this results in a very hallow feeling of a player hub, vs like Taals horn.
*No class cap in match: This is another thing that annoying as mentioned above if you dont have an ogryn for rezing it can make for a brutal run, or having a run of just zelot, hopefully this is going to change come launch were we can set games up so that we ONLY get 1 of each class but time will tell.
The Genuinely confusing.
This last section are things that I can help but scratch my head about, im left looking at the choices that were made here, and im stumped. I cant figure out a single logical reason as to why this was done, why this was chosen, it stikes me as a “We tried to reinvent the wheel.”
*Loot: Why this changed from getting random drops, to only being able to get stuff from the vendor is beyond me. I for the life of me, can not figure out why you all did this. VT2 had a wonderful loot system, especially when crafting was added into and up to red quality items. It is my hope that with the full drop we will see this be fully flushed out and right now in beta we are just seeing a stripped down version of it, Until then though, im left wondering.
*Item levels: Another head scratcher is the change in item levels, with the number not reflecting power level but stats, and having randomly rolled attributes on your weapons, it seems like its just going to result in endless grinds to simply endlessly grind. Again, i don’t know what crafting is going to be like, so until this this one is a head scratcher.
I thank you if you read this, and hope someone at fatshark found this input valuable and or helpful from a long time fan of the games. If you do or not thats fine to, im just here to let you all know what i think. Im sure some players will agree with me on some points, disagree on others, or think im a complete noob and everything i say is wrong and heresy. Thats also fine.
I lookforward to seeing how the game develops, what we see for levels, and what content is added.