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[Dostoevsky]

The hub was also oddly large for how few things there were in there. It was pretty, sure, but VT2's had character while also putting much less legwork between the mechanical items of interest.

I hope they have different weapon types open up earlier for the characters. Having a single gun option with tiny differences in stats as the option for my ~3 hours of playtime was pretty disappointing.

[Persus13]

My thoughts on the beta were pretty similar to you nenjin, particularly the bare-bones nature of the hub, not being in the same hub as your strike team, and the gameplay being similar but slightly different.
A firing range on the hub like VT2's dummies feels sorely needed and its my hope that they took out a bunch of stuff for the beta or at least plan on putting a bunch of stuff in eventually.

I hope they have different weapon types open up earlier for the characters. Having a single gun option with tiny differences in stats as the option for my ~3 hours of playtime was pretty disappointing.

They said the weapon selection was limited for the beta and that launch will have around 70 weapons, so hopefully you can mess around more with weapons. I'm pretty sure a psyker teammate had a shotgun in one of my games instead of a pistol, but I didn't play far enough with that class to see one.

[nenjin]

And lastly I'd add....

I enjoy the Toughness mechanic. It's not purely "a regenerating shield over your health." Think of it like armor from basic ass DOOM that regenerates. It blocks MOST of the damage that comes in, but not all. Say, 95% of the damage you take gets subtracted from toughness, and the other 5% hits your health. Once you're out of toughness it fully hits your health and that's where the game starts to feel like Vermintide, where a single dude hitting you in the back takes anywhere from 15 to 50% of your health depending on how nasty they are. Toughness gets replenished very minorly by killing guys and a few other things. But by and large it regenerates by staying close to your team. Do that, and your toughness is generally there and protecting you unless you take a big hit of damage all at once.

I like it because it's not regenerating health or pure overshields, it's actually like armor, which is "a lot but not total protection." And that you have to stay in Squad Coherency to get the most out of it,  so it rewards playing tight with your team, which I really appreciate. One of the crappier parts of high level VT2 is when people get so good they don't need their team anymore. They just dodge and melee and race around playing the most self-sufficient and mobile classes, and team play to them is mostly for bosses or when they feel like it. DT can still be like that but it's a lot tougher to get away with it.

So Toughness comes in really, really handy for all those las shots coming your way. As long as you have toughness they sting, but the kind of sting that gets you to take cover instead of setting you back your whole health bar. Now, if you're OUT of toughness.....that's where shit gets immediately real and you can be killed out in the open very quickly. Being targeted by a group of ranged enemies while you have no toughness, even if you're in cover, can get you killed. It's a nice variety of going from feeling invincible to feeling vulnerable quickly.

A firing range on the hub like VT2's dummies feels sorely needed and its my hope that they took out a bunch of stuff for the beta or at least plan on putting a bunch of stuff in eventually.

This was such a WTF moment for us. When you were waiting for people in VT2, testing your build on the dummies was THE thing you did. In a brand new game, with tons of weapons with special behaviors and yadda yadda, DT needed those training dummies EVEN more.

I can see a couple reasons for their absence though.

#1. With 60 people in a shared hub, you can't have all of them firing their weapons and throwing grenades and what have you. It'd be bedlam, people's frames would tank, it'd be noisy and crazy.
#2. The numbers behind things are all probably bullshit right now so it's probably best not to show them.

That said...they have the Psykhanium. Like, an instanced place for you to test your shit before you play, and work on basic game handling without the pressure of being in the level. That was the NO DUH place to put an instanced training room. But they didn't. It's just one more in a pile of things VT2 did that I immediately noticed the absence of in DT.

[Shooer]

The hub felt very incomplete.  Like features were turned off for beta.  There were definitely characters there who you should have been able to interact with, my guess is they'll have more stores and the crafting when turned on.

[nenjin]

I think it's just the weapon modding station. (I don't think there will be crafting like in VT2 but I guess that remains to be seen.) That station with the servitor was the only thing that clearly looked like it was turned off in the beta.

The only other thing that I think might be in full release at some point but wasn't in beta....private quarters. It was a thing sort of VT2, and it'd make a lot of sense for DT. (Since there's no keep to decorate, either your character is your keep....or they'll give you some private quarters to spruce up. I think some of those doors might be where you access them, at some point.)

[nenjin]

Another thing that really got me about the beta, and was the first big hit to my confidence in release....were the cute mission ending cutscenes that last maybe 4 or 5 seconds. They're supposed to be cool and dynamic and show your characters moving or doing things like standing at the ramp of the Valkyrie or running as a group.....and I swear, I haven't seen in engine cut scenes this janky since the early 2000s. The timing is so off I though my game was lagging the first couple of times. But no, it's just super choppy and janky. The way the cutscenes are "editted", the action seems to cut scene to scene randomly at times. Like in one shot your guys are running and then it abruptly cuts to them standing in the 4 corners of the troop hold inside the Valkyrie. That one was funny because it made it look like the first thing our characters did after evacing was getting as far away from each other as possible.

One common shot I saw a lot of was from inside the Valkyrie looking out the ramp. You can see one character on the right standing by the ramp, and to the left is another sitting on a bench. It's hilarious to go from a desperate, bass-pumping scramble to reach evac, to immediately cut to a character sprawled out on a bench with their arms crossed over their chest, looking like a bored teenager.

The cutscenes were so rough they were kind of laughable. The small one at the start of the mission is mostly fine but it's just one shot of them walking 4 abreast. The more complicated evac cutscene though.....phew. If they don't clean that up before launch, they best just make a black screen that says VICTORY or something. It would be less embarrassing than what I saw in beta.

(This post is really just a cry for help. I wish they'd left the beta up for longer. Despite all the problems, I just wanna get back to Tertium and cleanse the hive.)

[Folly]

My two biggest gripes from the beta, janky weapon swapping and transparent barriers.

I vaguely remember having issues with weapon swapping from Vermintide. When I'm shooting at a distant enemy, notice another enemy snuck up behind me and I need to switch to melee quickly to respond but my guy just keeps fiddling with his ranged weapon as he's getting his face beat in; that irks me every time.

Almost every short-wall that we're intended to take cover behind has huge gaps, often being made up of nothing more than thin metal bars, and yet they seem to completely block projectiles and skills. It took some getting used to before I realized that I could be safe crouching behind these walls despite the huge gaps. But I never seem to get used to enemies doing the same, and me being unable to shoot them despite having a huge opening.

But yeah, overall I'm still very eager to get back to the cleansing.

-An orbital bombardment would cost more than all the lives in this hive are worth!

[nenjin]

Weapon switching outside of being hit actually felt really smooth and responsive for me, surprisingly so. To the point I started trying to switch too early too often and bungling myself up. But I agree the derpiness during taking damage is a little frustrating. I seem to remember the same behavior in VT2. It's just here you've got an actual weapon with actual amounts of ammo that you actually use, so we're probably feeling it more.

Almost every short-wall that we're intended to take cover behind has huge gaps, often being made up of nothing more than thin metal bars, and yet they seem to completely block projectiles and skills. It took some getting used to before I realized that I could be safe crouching behind these walls despite the huge gaps. But I never seem to get used to enemies doing the same, and me being unable to shoot them despite having a huge opening.

I feel like I had the opposite experience. I routinely felt like I was getting shot through gaps, like no half cover was actually good enough. And I felt like I could shoot enemies through multiple pieces of cover (with the lasgun anyways) as long as it looked reasonable. I remember only one specific piece of cover I tried to shoot through, between two concrete barricades, where it ate all my shots. Otherwise....I constantly felt like I was getting nipped through holes in cover, or was getting the top of my head clipped, or something.

And I do recall on the last night we were spending an awful lot of time in an event area, where there's the spiral staircase surrounded by chainlink fence and you gotta hit a button and wait for the door to open? I was sniping from up there and killing guys (again, lasgun) while my friends reported they couldn't. I was shooting through chainlink and sometimes even the platform they were standing on and getting hits on the guys on the very bottom floor. And the enemies for sure are able to shoot up through the floor and chainlink, which is super obnoxious in every level they can do it.

At best it seems inconsistent, buggy or who knows what. Maybe there's actual projectile penetration that varies by weapon, completely unmentioned. (How nuts would that be?) My general feeling though is their meshes are pretty fine, and things that look like you can shoot through them but can't are in the minority.

Another bit of jank I felt were my push block animations. I tend to aggressively push block in VT2 and here it just...looked weird and didn't feel right, like push block attempts just kinda mushed together, and my recovery seemed super slow....just weird and janky.

But yeah. Legitimately excited to play more. My appreciation for the setting and environment work kind of grew more by the end of the beta. If you'd have told me this was a Necromunda game I'd have been like "Nailed it." I think our expectations and experience from Vermintide has biased us a bit for what we expect levels to look like as you progress through them. After the 100th time, will we start recognizing DT levels the way we do VT2 levels? There's a few spots in maps from the beta where we got our clocks cleaned that very clearly stick out in my memory.

[Persus13]

Weapon swapping being awkward was mainly noticeable to me on the Psyker, since you're regularly swapping between three different weapons and its harder to quickly swap over to your psychic abilities. I think its the only class I don't feel comfortable with my ability to play as at this point.

It was frustrating that some weapons claimed they had a bayonet special attack, but all the special did was turn on the flashlight. Shoving back with a ranged weapon to then switch to melee feels like what they were aiming for, but I never pulled it off.

I'm excited to play more, but also excited to get the soundtrack whenever it is available.

[nenjin]

I'm excited to play more, but also excited to get the soundtrack whenever it is available.

Have this link while it lasts. (Fatshark or someone has been DMCA'ing them.) Arguably the best track in the beta IMO. I noticed the music and appreciated it over most of the game. But as many people have reported, this track stopped them in the middle of the fight to notice it. By the Throne, it slaps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5gPRWYC-As

It was frustrating that some weapons claimed they had a bayonet special attack, but all the special did was turn on the flashlight. Shoving back with a ranged weapon to then switch to melee feels like what they were aiming for, but I never pulled it off.

I can't tell if it was saying it DID have a bayonet or it COULD have a bayonet. Either way, it goes to my gripe about unlabeled, icon-driven information with no tooltips about game mechanics. It was annoying in Vermintide and it's annoying here.

And yeah, a bayonet stab would have come in real handy. Multiple times in the beta I would be unloading at a guy running toward me, see I wasn't going to kill them in time, dodge backward out of the way of their attack and it would still hit me even though I can freaking see the head of the weapon out in front of me. I feel like after this many years of VT I can feel when something ain't right, and that sure as hell looked wrong to me every time. If I'd had bayonet I would have just stabbed them in the face as they came in.

[scriver]

I have to areas of interest I'm wondering about:

1, How is the different "classes", or whatever they call them?

2. Character Customisation. I believe they promised it, what is it like?

[Persus13]

I'm not a good judge of balance at this point, so my main impression of classes is how they felt to play. I enjoyed the 4 different classes, with the possible exception of Psyker. Psyker I need to play more to learn how to use their magic abilities. I'm just not sure what the Psyker's crowd control abilities are, because their revolver and their psyker abilities mainly seem to be focused on single-target kills. There was a game I played with 3 psykers and a zealot and that was the one time I felt like the party composition increased the difficulty. But popping the head of a mauler with a psyker was incredibly satisfying.

Most of my playtime was the Veteran Sharpshooter because blasting away with a lasgun and grenades was pretty fun, and their F ability highlighting specials is nice for finding and killing the sniper or whatever your teammate is calling out. A grenade in the middle of a horde is so much fun to see.

Two of my friends were having a good time having the ogryn knocking down enemies for the zealot to come in and kill while I took out guys at a distance. Obliterating a group of ranged guys with the ogryn's shotgun, knocking a horde down with the ogryn's F ability or dashing in as a zealot to bash a special all felt great.

Character customization could refer to a couple of different things. When you make a new character there's a character creator where you choose what planet your from, why you're a convict, what voice personality you'll have, and customize your characters appearance, normal stuff like hair, skin tone, etc. but also stuff like tattoos and scars. I liked it and got characters I was pretty happy with but it wasn't as extensive as some other character creators I've seen.

Then in game there's cosmetics for what gear you're wearing, stuff like headgear, torso, pants, weapon appearance, stance, etc. However the beta didn't drop a lot of cosmetics, at least at low-levels, so outside of getting a cool jacket and seeing other people in the hub with some cool gear, I didn't engage with this aspect.

[nenjin]

Classes differ by:

What weapons they're able to use (many overlap.)
What Class Special Ability they get.
What Class Talents they can unlock.
Appearance options and voice acting.

I feel like classes aren't as dramatically different from each other as they were in VT2. But it's early days yet.

Zealot is mostly a melee rush down survivalist. I think they were the most popular class during beta, due to the mobility of their class skill and that it replenishes their toughness when used.
Veteran is a ranged specialist with auto-replenishing grenades (if you choose to spec that way.) Gave Zealot a run for their money for most played class.
Psyker is a psyker. Mostly for exploding single target's heads or creating a little warp explosion using their staff. They were IMO the 3rd most played class.
Ogryn is big, and is somewhat akin to the Zealot for their rush attacks. While I saw a lot of Ogryns the first day of the beta, by the 3rd day I'd almost forgotten they were in the game because it had been many games since I'd played with one.

Customization is, as mentioned, headgear, chest and legs. Then you also have a portrait frame you can set, and "insignia" slot that wasn't available in beta, one other slot that wasn't clothing that I can't remember the title of, your idle stance animation. You also get to pick your face, hair style, skin tone, model size, eye color(s), and answer some basic RPG background questions that may or may not affect what kind of responses your character gives when the characters are talking to each other. You can pick from one of three voices per character.

And then you can also customize your gun with different attachments, color patterns and charms you can hang off them.

I think that's most of what's coming.

[Shooer]

I'm not a good judge of balance at this point, so my main impression of classes is how they felt to play. I enjoyed the 4 different classes, with the possible exception of Psyker. Psyker I need to play more to learn how to use their magic abilities. I'm just not sure what the Psyker's crowd control abilities are, because their revolver and their psyker abilities mainly seem to be focused on single-target kills. There was a game I played with 3 psykers and a zealot and that was the one time I felt like the party composition increased the difficulty. But popping the head of a mauler with a psyker was incredibly satisfying.

The psykers crowed control power was it's F ability.  It creates a shockwave that throws most enemies to the floor and it has a good range too.  It also removed your build up of perils of the warp so you could keep head popping.  Also, the revolver has strong pass through and can take out multiple enemies in a line.

I liked the psyker most of the 4 classes, but hated weapon swapping between sword and head pop.  Headpop needs to be on 3 or a mouse button and not G(and only G).

[Persus13]

The shockwave ability was useful for clearing out your peril, and knocking down things is nice but just delays the problem. I think if I had a better melee weapon on my psyker I'd like the shockwave more. Because my melee attack felt wimpy even compared to my Sharpshooter's.

In the trailers they also showed an AoE psyker ability, but I wasn't sure if that was based on a particular weapon or something else.

Zealot is mostly a melee rush down survivalist. I think they were the most popular class during beta, due to the mobility of their class skill and that it replenishes their toughness when used.
Veteran is a ranged specialist with auto-replenishing grenades (if you choose to spec that way.) Gave Zealot a run for their money for most played class.
Psyker is a psyker. Mostly for exploding single target's heads or creating a little warp explosion using their staff. They were IMO the 3rd most played class.
Ogryn is big, and is somewhat akin to the Zealot for their rush attacks. While I saw a lot of Ogryns the first day of the beta, by the 3rd day I'd almost forgotten they were in the game because it had been many games since I'd played with one.

Interesting. I felt like I saw sharpshooter the least, but that may have been because I was playing one myself.