Impressions?

[quinch1199]

Interested to hear your thoughts after the CBT. For me it seemed a relatively stable game and I found no game breaking bugs, the game area will be VAST!  Product placement (military gear) is also huge...they have a serious deal with 5.11 and Crytek ... I liked the missions and that the world around you spawns side mini-missions as you go along. Its certainly best played in a group however and I'm not sure how the scaling works. 

Unfortunately you CAN complete all the missions just going in like Rambo...I would have preferred if taking that route had been punished massively myself. Stealth take-downs and wiping an objective down to the last man without raising any alarms is such a great feeling!

Engine wise the game ran very well on my "medium powered" rig and I was thankful for that. Details were stunning visually. I'd say the Ai needs tweaking a little as some in my experience managed to get stuck on objects for example. Choice of difficulty is great, as is HUD options.

Finally character creation you can go back and change! 

Nice range of weapons, all felt different though I pretty much stuck with the H&K416 throughout. 

Looking at the size of game being offered and IF each region is as populated with missions and tasks as the one shown in the CBT then this game is amazing value!

Just a couple of gripes. There's WAY TOO MANY vehicles on the roads! Its Bolivia not Los Angeles!?! Car driving physics are a little too light as well. I would have liked the different plate carriers to have an actual in-game impact such as more armour and ability to take more hits rather than just aesthetics as they appear to be at the moment....maybe on release they will be. 

 

[supercat]

So far loving it. I like co-op shooter, customisation, open-world, and no spoonfed gameplay. This game just hits right on me.

Character creation comes weak, but the clothing and the gun comes with tons of skins (you can even apply skin to parts) definitely make up for it.

I'm not sure about finishing missions as Rambo. Perhaps that's PC shooter thing where some people have god-tier precision to the head. I played on PS4 and of course we have these 'Rambo' types who would raid places down and fail a few seconds later. Talking about 'Rambo' players; that and 'mission saboteur' kind of players were seen during my period of Closed Beta and honestly, this gives me concern of what this game's matchmaking is filled with in the future.

Indifference of effect of body armor worn comes off non-sense and weird at first, but during the gameplay, I felt it is actually just right. This way players can express their character freely and not bound to the highest tier armor to negate enemy's damage while Ubisoft will try to 'rebalance' the enemy to negate back said armor's effect and eventually will make the game imbalanced and making other armor options is no longer viable because the game balance nods too much to the highest tier armor. (This happened in GTA Online with their heavy armor. That game is an ultimate mess in terms of game balance and effectively put me, a once GTA superfan, away from it.)

Closing words, I'm looking forward to play the full game, but I'm afraid they'll screw it up with patches just like what Massive did to Division.

 

[quinch1199]

I'm not sure about finishing missions as Rambo.

When you get a guy in your group obsessed with immediately stealing helicopters, especially armed ones... you can "Rambo" every mission. Trust me...its not fun at all...least not for me and I made a note never to let the guy in my group again!

Indifference of effect of body armor worn comes off non-sense and weird at first, but during the gameplay, I felt it is actually just right.

The armour resistance and kill times seemed just right I agree and it would be difficult and potentially annoying to some to have to "unlock" armour for better damage resistance but mainly I was thinking of the last heavy body armours available....the ones with the shoulder guards. Of course maybe the trade off would be lower stamina

 

[supercat]

When you get a guy in your group obsessed with immediately stealing helicopters, especially armed ones... you can "Rambo" every mission. Trust me...its not fun at all...least not for me and I made a note never to let the guy in my group again!

Definitely not fun.

I mean, I personally hate dragging things around and finish things slow while it could be faster. But in this game, doing things like recon, sniping, waiting the target, picking the correct spot, etc feels necessary and that's why I love it.

My biggest concern of the game, however, is the amount of chance for people to be a dick in this game.

 

[quinch1199]

My biggest concern of the game, however, is the amount of chance for people to be a dick in this game

That danger is HUGE....just don't allow randoms to join your session.

 

[DeadSockPuppet]

My biggest concern of the game, however, is the amount of chance for people to be a dick in this game.

So, you're afraid of some Leroy Jenkins action?  That's understandable.  Just let those asshats get killed and don't revive them so they have to wait 60 sec and then respawn somewhere else.  If they're a real tool, they'll get pissed when they're down and drop from the group.  

 

[DeadSockPuppet]

Overall, really liked the game.  I was a huge fan of GR:FS and this game feels just as fun as that l, sans the PvP component.  

CHARACTER CREATION:

Character customization was excellent and for a beta I probably spent Like 20-25 minutes too much on making my toon.  Tons of stuff that you can do and I know when the full game drops that I'm probably end up spending a fair amount of time on creating my first toon.  

CHARACTER PROGRESSION: 

The progression system seemed to be pretty easy to use.  You'd level by using skill points and then points similar to the tech, med and security points from the Division.  It was easy enough to interrogate suspects to find out where skill points were and almost as easy to get the other points from side missions.  Once you had the points it was easy to see what the cost was for each upgrade and your toon showed you what skills you could unlock with your current character points.  I'm not positive if you'll ultimately unlock everything (like the Division) or if you'll have to watch your points and spec into a certain role like a true RPG.

MAP:

I thought the size of the map was great (more than enough for a 72hr beta) and the full game should be excellent.  Really gave me a FarCry 4 feel and that was nice.  If I remember right there's supposed to be like 27 areas, and if they're the size of the beta playable area, then the final map will be like 3x the playable and unplayable map from the beta.

VEHICLES:

I liked the many vehicles and spent a good deal of time tinkering with different rides.  My only concerns are that the guns on the choppers are practically useless, vehicles are beast and can (unrealistically) pretty much go anywhere and I'm not sure I really figured out how to fly a plane.  I tried the plane stealing mission like 3-4 times and ended up crashing the plane each time.  

CONTROLS:

While it took a little bit to get used to the controls and the difference they have from the Division, gunfire felt really good and I liked the way the guns shot & hit targets.  With the exception of some odd feeling vehicle controls, most everything felt intuitive to me and easy to use.  It would be nice to snap to cover and shoot around corners a little better, but to me this isn't gamebreaking.

WEAPONS:

The gunsmith was nice, but I'm not sure how "realistic" it is to be able to rebuild your weapons on the fly.  I'm on the fence about having to find weapons and mods, it makes players work to get items, but as a highly trained and outfitted operator you'd think you'd go into the field with a lot more weapon options.  

The one thing that I really didn't get to test was the bullet drop.  I never really got a good scope for my sniper, so most of my combat was in close enough range for bullet drop to be negligible.  I did pick up a sniper with a good scope at the Unidad base, but I never really got to a point where I could use it and then was killed (causing me to lose the gun) before I got to a place to use the rifle.

MISSIONS: 

The missions and side missions were ok in my book.  We only saw a small section of the game - mine said I had stopped 5% of the Cartel after completing 6 story missions, which implies 120 story missions (.05x = 6, x = 6/.05, x = 120).  Hopefully the total selection of missions has a little more variety, otherwise I'll start to agree with critics that say the missions are repetitive.  

SP vs. CO-OP:

I played probably just as much solo play as I did in co-op, and my co-op was both with friends and matchmaking.  The game is definitely more fun with friends, or randoms if they've got their sh*t together.  Like the Division, you can play the game solo, but it just doesn't have the same fun factor alone.

The biggest benefit of co-op is being able to sync shot from the start.  Being able to get all 3 AI players to sync shot is buried behind upgrades and would take a handful of missions to unlock if you're playing solo and requires you to ignore other skills (from firearms, stamina, drone, etc.) in order to "fast-track" and unlock the 2nd and 3rd NPC for sync shot.

BUGS:

There's three issues that I had with the beta, but only two were with the actual game.  The first one was that I was unable to send invites to friends.  I tried a handful of different things on both my phone and a PC and never got them to work.  I tried checking the Ubi help and didn't find a fix, but it appears this was an issue that other players had to.

The only real bugs I had were issues with the sound and issues with using the sights on my weapons.  Twice I had the sound partially drop or become muffled.  The next time I died it reset back to normal, but other than that I couldn't find a fix.  

The gun sights was similar.  My group was in a fire fight and all of a sudden when I pulled up my weapons and clicked the stick to scope nothing would happen.  They stayed like this for a couple of minutes and I think resolved itself either after driving to a safe house or after fast traveling to it.

I reported both bugs on the beta site.  The audio bug wasn't specific to me, as one of the guys in my squad had the same issue, but I didn't come across anyone else that had the sights issue.

OVERALL:

As I said, I really liked the beta and am glad that I have preordered it.  I can see myself playing it for a good while and can't wait to get into a second beta and/or the final game.  

One thing to consider, which was pointed out on SitRep Radio's Special Edition cast on Wildlands, this beta build is probably from December, since they had to get it cleared through Sony and MS certifications.  That being said, I doubt they stopped working on the game after the beta build so hopefully some of the bugs and quirks of the game will be worked out before the final game.  

 

[quinch1199]

@DeadSockPuppet - some great points. Likewise I didn't experience many bugs either but ... to be honest ... I feel the majority of bugs/exploits that were found and started all the criticism in The Division were found by players who are DEDICATED to finding such things and go to a game with the express idea of pushing it and finding exploits. Like me, you just play the game! So the only bug I found was the audio fall-off bug after death.

You die, respawn but audio remains "muted" for far beyond the time it should and often through that play session.

I don't think I can see myself playing this single player at all when it goes live. The multiplayer experience was so much better as it just made single player awkward to me. Luckily even the addition of one other player makes all things possible if you play in real GR style (recon, plan, deploy, execute).

The ultimate game map size appears just .. staggering..and I'm really hoping I can afford to pre-order.