I really just want to give a little summary in this post, regarding the current state of the game at the end of the beta phase. What I personally like and don’t like and how I think things can be implemented better, or at least how I think it could have been done better.
Progression: is ok as long as you only play one character. But since there are 4 classes in this game and most of the players will like to play all classes there should be a way to speed up the progression for all subsequent characters.
2 1/2 possibilities for this would be: an XP boost for all second and further characters based on the number of characters already created and levels attained, the possibility to use charms across characters and thus getting a benefit for the trait with bonus experience as well, and a shared inventory (this would be the 1/2 solution because the Ogryn has his own weapons) which at least allows a cross-character selection of standard weapons.
Missions: The maps are really nicely designed, seem appropriately varied for the setting, and also have a good, if expandable, selection of events (scan, repair, raid missions, etc.) as well as the ability to select additional events like bonus hordes, darkness, and fog. However, I don’t understand why this is dictated by the mission hub and you can’t choose the map, the bonus objectives (scriptures/grims) or the difficulty, especially since the, again character-specific, weeklies sometimes require you to collect these objectives or play certain maps and then you only have the option to wait in real time for a hub reset and hope that there is a mission that matches the player’s skill level. It was already demanded in Vermintide 2 to leave the design of the missions to the player, keyword: deeds carfting. Unfortunately, FatShark doesn’t seem to have fully grasped the player’s desire to make independent decisions.
Bosses: at the moment there are 2 monstrosities that appear randomly in the level and are unavoidable, the Beast of Nurgle and the plague Ogryn, an avoidable boss, the Demonhost and unfortunately only one map boss in assassination missions.
The latter is a bit sobering and I really hope that more will follow here, because just banging around on shields gets really boring in the long run, in the current design the different armament hardly plays a role with these, unfortunately these bosses, despite varying names, are all small Skarrik Spinemanglers. To my regret I couldn’t see any trace of the chaos spawn in the launch trailer released today, which at least appeared in the render trailers before… I really hope there will be more to come.
Items and Rewards: First of all, I think it’s good that there are no more lootboxes, instead you can buy what you want in a store. Unfortunately, the shop doesn’t offer everything, so you have to wait for a reset in real time. In addition, the items available there are usually bad.
To what extent this problem is changed by the crafting system, I can’t say at this point.
After successful missions you occasionally get an Emperors Gift and I really have no idea what that is for at this point… it’s completely random and usually just garbage.
After level 30 there are also no real rewards for completing a mission, at this point there is just something missing, be it skins for completing X missions to have a goal to work towards or a prestige system… Increasing bars and numbers can be really motivating.
The Weeklies: Should also be cross-character, as these are likely to be too time-consuming for the majority of players with 4 playable characters, which they will certainly want to change from time to time. Furthermore, there are weeklies in different extents. I think it would make sense to have a kind of milestone principle for the individual weekly, as well as for the overall completion, which staggers the rewards based on progress.
Skins and UI: I like it when skins are associated with challenges (called penances). However, if there is the possibility to unlock the same skins in other color schemes simply via the store, this unfortunately leaves a bad taste and takes away the value of the whole thing. Weapon skins were previously only available via the store. The UI for them is not quite clear to me, there is again an extra slot for all recolors of one and the same base skins, rather than simply selecting the color via a dropdown menu. For the weapon skins, the solution is better, even if it was implemented in too many submenus in my opinion.
The weapon abilities and properties are partly hidden behind cryptic symbols. When comparing weapons in the store, they are listed next to each other. Perhaps a different design could have been chosen here, which allows overlaying the individual bars of the weapon stats to have a better direct comparison, such as in the unit comparison in Total War Warhammer.
50 Shades of Lasgun: The weapon selection in this game is a bit artificially stretched in my opinion. There are some different Marks of the individual weapons, but these only cause confusion, because everything sounds and looks similar and at the end of the day you don’t even know what distinguishes Mk II from Mk VII. I think here it would have made more sense to individualize the “basic version” of the weapon by the player with attachments, as it is the case for example in Alien Fireteam: Elite and other FPS or also GoW (in the case of the melee weapons). You would then be able to customize and replace stock, barrel, magazine and scope (Ranged) or grip, pommel, edge, or something like that ( Melee). That would add to the variety and individualization to the own play style I guess. But in principle, it doesn’t matter anyway, because the current balancing only amounts to a selection of 2-3 of the “end game” weapons of which there is only 1 variant.
This summary has no claim to completeness, but is only a criticism of the points that seem most important to me personally, which have probably already been mentioned elsewhere, but which I wanted to show here once again in summary with the solutions that seem best to me.
Thanks for reading and see you soon on the Mourningstar 
