Update July 2024

hard flip to yes. admittedly in that time I swapped in a 4070Super and invited my friend to play, but the improvements made to the base game are now very much worth the price. skill trees seem properly fleshed out and realized, the mechanicus weapons alteration makes sense, currency is shared between all your characters, penances play into a free pseudo-season-pass unlock system that actually has sweet stuff on it.

complaints from belowe : HitReg seems to work much better; Sniper LOS breaks seem to actually work, Im not getting dogs grabbing me through walls anymore. Still cant solo bust out of trapper nets which is kinda weak. skill and class redesigns seem to work better and Im having much better moments with team members. IDK. It seems like a much better animal than it was at release.

===

Now I've hit 30 across all 4 classes....

This is dismal. Its painfully clear that the only people working at fatshark are asset creators and artists. paid skins aside, the game is gorgeous. its a shame that the actual mechanics are implemented like ♥♥♥♥.

Hitreg and other mechanical messes :

1. Snipers will hit you through walls, barrels, and at anything up to 90 degrees from where their laser sight shows.
2. expect to get the ding-ding hitting armor noise no matter where you shoot an armoured enemy. Sheild? face? back? doesnt matter. ding ding.
3. Hounds can and will leap through walls to get you.
4. Mutie can and will grab you through walls.
5. Muties can literally run past you and somehow pick you for a beating up 1-2 seconds after that.
6. You can hit and kill trappers before they fire, and still get webbed.
7. Interrupts are not registering properly server side.
8. Expect to randomly fall through the map if you're attacked by a control-using mob (dog, trapper, Mutie)

A bunch of stuff is still broken or unfinished :

1. Crafting : 'coming soon' on 2/4 options.
2. Vet Covering fire : doesn't work
3. Melks rewards don't accurately reflect your actions, which tells me that server-side event logging doesn't work, which is absolutely wild to me.

Design choices: the lack of imagination here is really wild. its like nobody at fatshark has played a coop game other than vermintide 1 or the original L4D.

1. Trappers are busted - they're either a momentary annoyance or they'll steal 15 minutes of your game. For gods sake put in a mash-x-to-free-self button and modify how many mashes it take per class.
2. Map Modifiers : the lights out modifer was removed because the community ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and moaned. It was a great modifier, but fatshark literally put the same modifier on every single available mission. for weeks. How is that fun for anyone? who in their right mind thought that was the best implementation? I just want to speak to your project manager. I just want to talk, I swear to god.
3. The weapon shop. The rotating, low-availability, low-relevance RNG weapon shop literally pushed the community to make a browser plugin so they don't have to log in every hour in the hope that there's a class relevant weapon for sale for them. I've gone nearly ten levels waiting for replacement flamers and Psyker staffs. I keep getting gold-tier weapons that are completely irrelevant to my class (autoguns for Psyker being the worst example) or playstyle (laspistol for zealot) and what can I do with them? nothing. There's no shared stash, so I cant get them to other characters. I cant break them down into crafting components. I can sell them. That's it.
4. Challenge spikes & variation : Would it have killed fatshark to have thrown in some randomizers for enemies. we have one assassination mission which ends with a dude with an energy shield. You couldnt slap a health bar and some random effects on an otherwise standard enemy, scaled them up 10% and let them drop something useful? Have any of them ever played any other RPG, ever?
5. No procgen. Look, the maps are beautiful, but there's 7 missions and the maps are visually very samey. after a while you can run the layouts in your sleep. and can we talk about the missions? we have 4 Use Your Scanner treasure hunts. Carry the Can To The Place, Kill This Guy and Babysit Your Cypher-Indent Skull.
6. The plot. I dont know what Dan Abnett contributed to this project, but what are all these cutscenes aboard the Mourningstar for? they went nowhere, unlocked nothing, changed nothing. at L30 you could have given us a hunt-the-traitor mission on the ship or SOMETHING to cap what is basically the 'end' of the current game, but nope. nothing. The L30 cutscene is the same for every class; the traitor is always the same model. You really couldnt be bothered to do something different so that dragging each class through the grind to 30 actually feels like an accomplishment? We gather no clues. we do no work. we just go through these cutscenes where people like Morrow tell us they need "more" and what do we do? go right back to one of our 4 mission types like that conversation didnt even happen.
7. The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Stupid 'Live Service' currency Melks currency isnt shared across characters : so in the unfathomably rare situation he's selling something you might actually want for one class, but you can only afford it with another? no dice. unfortunate. crafting materials, currency, loot is all locked to a single character.

This is unforgivably dumb. it doesn't respect my time as a player.

Lastly : Co-op game design

It is genuinely surprising that they built the weekly & penance stuff in some sort of vacuum, like there arent other co-op 4 person games out there with great examples of how to build content goals that promote hero moments and achievements where it feels like everyone is winning. Almost all of the penances are designed to be zero sum achievements. unless the entire rest of your team wants you to get them, and is working with you to make sure it happens, you wont get them. and what do they get for helping you achieve these ridiculous goals? Nothing. the entire game is like that. there's no reward for cooperation. just punishment for wandering out of coherency range.

Ogryn penances are the only ones that make sense from a co-op standpoint. a lot of the game doesnt foster hero/MOTM victories. There's no class perks / ULT / defining utility differences that allow a player to really come in clutch when the pressure is on; you cant come in clutch by lets say : Ogryn : shield drop, Zealot : Rallying Cry, Veteran : supply redistribute / weapon overcharge, Psyker - Corruption flush / health regen.

It feels super weird to die, spectate other players and either immediately know if you're in for a long, boring wait before you're rescued, or if they're gonna wipe. I don't think I've ever spectated once in this game above Malice and been excited to see if a teammate can pull us out of the fire.

There seems to be all this focus on revenue driving, or 'lore accuracy' whatever the hell that means, but little to no focus on fun, or building a co-op environment where people are actively incentivised to co-op and be helpful. If you want us to work together, why cant we change loadouts onboard the dropship before we head into a level, to make sure the 3-zealot-1-psyker team isnt just 4 flamethrowers?

There's not even class-to-class synergy damage stuff beyond a very poorly implemented bleed debuff. The best example of how to make class synergy plays fun I can think of being Mass Effect; Why cant my psyker knock people into the air, and if they're shot by a veteran while airborne, it counts as double damage or something? Simple ♥♥♥♥. make me want to work with my team. Make me want to set them up for success! Give me a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ For The Emperor! button so I can get hype about good shots, clever plays, and mock dumb deaths. You know, design a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ GAME!

Update July 2024 hard flip to yes. admittedly in that time I swapped in a 4070Super and invited my friend to play, but the improvements made to the base game are now very much worth the price. skill trees seem properly fleshed out and realized, the mechanicus weapons alteration makes sense, currency is shared between all your characters, penances play into a free pseudo-season-pass unlock system that actually has sweet stuff on it. complaints from belowe : HitReg seems to work much better; Sniper LOS breaks seem to actually work, Im not getting dogs grabbing me through walls anymore. Still cant solo bust out of trapper nets which is kinda weak. skill and class redesigns seem to work better and Im having much better moments with team members. IDK. It seems like a much better animal than it was at release. === Now I've hit 30 across all 4 classes.... This is dismal. Its painfully clear that the only people working at fatshark are asset creators and artists. paid skins aside, the game is gorgeous. its a shame that the actual mechanics are implemented like shit. [b]Hitreg and other mechanical messes :[/b] 1. Snipers will hit you through walls, barrels, and at anything up to 90 degrees from where their laser sight shows. 2. expect to get the ding-ding hitting armor noise no matter where you shoot an armoured enemy. Sheild? face? back? doesnt matter. ding ding. 3. Hounds can and will leap through walls to get you. 4. Mutie can and will grab you through walls. 5. Muties can literally run past you and somehow pick you for a beating up 1-2 seconds after that. 6. You can hit and kill trappers before they fire, and still get webbed. 7. Interrupts are not registering properly server side. 8. Expect to randomly fall through the map if you're attacked by a control-using mob (dog, trapper, Mutie) [b]A bunch of stuff is still broken or unfinished : [/b] 1. Crafting : 'coming soon' on 2/4 options. 2. Vet Covering fire : doesn't work 3. Melks rewards don't accurately reflect your actions, which tells me that server-side event logging doesn't work, which is absolutely wild to me. [b]Design choices: the lack of imagination here is really wild. its like nobody at fatshark has played a coop game other than vermintide 1 or the original L4D.[/b] [b]1. Trappers are busted [/b]- they're either a momentary annoyance or they'll steal 15 minutes of your game. For gods sake put in a mash-x-to-free-self button and modify how many mashes it take per class. [b]2. Map Modifiers [/b] : the lights out modifer was removed because the community bitched and moaned. It was a great modifier, but fatshark literally put the same modifier on every single available mission. for weeks. How is that fun for anyone? who in their right mind thought that was the best implementation? I just want to speak to your project manager. I just want to talk, I swear to god. [b]3. The weapon shop.[/b] The rotating, low-availability, low-relevance RNG weapon shop literally pushed the community to make a browser plugin so they don't have to log in every hour in the hope that there's a class relevant weapon for sale for them. I've gone nearly ten levels waiting for replacement flamers and Psyker staffs. I keep getting gold-tier weapons that are completely irrelevant to my class (autoguns for Psyker being the worst example) or playstyle (laspistol for zealot) and what can I do with them? nothing. There's no shared stash, so I cant get them to other characters. I cant break them down into crafting components. I can sell them. That's it. [b]4. Challenge spikes & variation :[/b] Would it have killed fatshark to have thrown in some randomizers for enemies. we have one assassination mission which ends with a dude with an energy shield. You couldnt slap a health bar and some random effects on an otherwise standard enemy, scaled them up 10% and let them drop something useful? Have any of them ever played any other RPG, ever? [b]5. No procgen.[/b] Look, the maps are beautiful, but there's 7 missions and the maps are visually very samey. after a while you can run the layouts in your sleep. and can we talk about the missions? we have 4 [i]Use Your Scanner treasure hunts. Carry the Can To The Place, Kill This Guy and Babysit Your Cypher-Indent Skull.[/i] [b]6. The plot.[/b] I dont know what Dan Abnett contributed to this project, but what are all these cutscenes aboard the Mourningstar [b]for?[/b] they went nowhere, unlocked nothing, changed nothing. at L30 you could have given us a hunt-the-traitor mission on the ship or SOMETHING to cap what is basically the 'end' of the current game, but nope. nothing. The L30 cutscene is the same for every class; the traitor is always the same model. You really couldnt be bothered to do something different so that dragging each class through the grind to 30 actually feels like an accomplishment? We gather no clues. we do no work. we just go through these cutscenes where people like Morrow tell us they need "more" and what do we do? go right back to one of our 4 mission types like that conversation didnt even happen. 7. [b]The Fucking Stupid 'Live Service' currency[/b] Melks currency isnt shared across characters : so in the unfathomably rare situation he's selling something you might actually want for one class, but you can only afford it with another? no dice. unfortunate. crafting materials, currency, loot is all locked to a single character. This is unforgivably dumb. it doesn't respect my time as a player. [b]Lastly : Co-op game design[/b] It is genuinely surprising that they built the weekly & penance stuff in some sort of vacuum, like there arent other co-op 4 person games out there with great examples of how to build content goals that promote hero moments and achievements where it feels like everyone is winning. Almost all of the penances are designed to be zero sum achievements. unless the entire rest of your team wants you to get them, and is working with you to make sure it happens, you wont get them. and what do they get for helping you achieve these ridiculous goals? Nothing. the entire game is like that. there's no [i]reward[/i] for cooperation. just punishment for wandering out of coherency range. Ogryn penances are the only ones that make sense from a co-op standpoint. a lot of the game doesnt foster hero/MOTM victories. There's no class perks / ULT / defining utility differences that allow a player to really come in clutch when the pressure is on; you cant come in clutch by lets say : Ogryn : shield drop, Zealot : Rallying Cry, Veteran : supply redistribute / weapon overcharge, Psyker - Corruption flush / health regen. It feels super weird to die, spectate other players and either immediately know if you're in for a long, boring wait before you're rescued, or if they're gonna wipe. I don't think I've ever spectated once in this game above Malice and been excited to see if a teammate can pull us out of the fire. There seems to be all this focus on revenue driving, or 'lore accuracy' whatever the hell that means, but little to no focus on fun, or building a co-op environment where people are actively incentivised to co-op and be helpful. If you want us to work together, why cant we change loadouts onboard the dropship before we head into a level, to make sure the 3-zealot-1-psyker team isnt just 4 flamethrowers? There's not even class-to-class synergy damage stuff beyond a very poorly implemented bleed debuff. The best example of how to make class synergy plays fun I can think of being Mass Effect; Why cant my psyker knock people into the air, and if they're shot by a veteran while airborne, it counts as double damage or something? Simple shit. make me want to [i]work[/i] with my team. Make me want to set them up for success! Give me a fucking [b] For The Emperor![/b] button so I can get hype about good shots, clever plays, and mock dumb deaths. You know, design a [i]GOD DAMN GAME![/i]