According to the game I have played for 3 hours now. I'm just going to post a bunch of stuff as I think about it.
It's pretty fun. I haven't seen any other people or chat since my initial log in though, but maybe that means that other players are only seen in certain areas?
still kind of lost some gear stats.
The stuff I read says there's 4 classes but you don't seem to get to choose in the beta. no idea what class I am playing. I have 3 ability trees, 1 is healing, 1 is tech, and 1 is security. healing allows you to heal yourself and others with abilities instead of items. Tech gives you additional weapons I think, like the 1st unlock is a sticky grenade that is remote detonated, and secuity's first skill is a riot shield (you can only use the pistol when this out and seems to increase defense by 10%. Healing also gives your pulse ability to detect enemies and also gives you a temporary boost to damage and maybe accuracy. you can then upgrade the abilities, like pulse you can do more damage, or have it increase range and detect loot, or see if anyone has sent a pulse to detect you (this seems like a PVP type skill imo. There are perks and talent tabs but they are not active in the beta so not sure what they do but i assume it's added abilities or passive bonuses, etc.
you get 3 weapons to carry on you, but they have to be different types, like SMG, Assault Rifle, and sidearm. 1 thing that is kind of cool is that the pistol has unlimited ammo while everything else is limited. I tend to get low on ammo, but they have restock crates at various points in the city that will refill your ammo completely. you also get different grenades, like explosive and flash bang, incendiary.
I've found a bunch of weapons but only upgraded my sidearm so far. the starting weapons are better than everything I have found so far. there appears to be weapon rarity and different stats for weapons. you can get add-ons for each weapon like scopes, fore grips, laser sights, extended mags, suppressors, compensators, etc. These add things like accuracy, stability, increase ammo in the mag, make reloads quicker, etc. 1 thing the suppressor does is reduce threat.
you can get different equipment like armor in traditional mmos - gloves, chest armor, masks, backpacks which not only add armor but also add carrying capacity. All these items also can have stat bonuses, like +xp, + defense, +hp, etc. you also get water, energy bars, soda, and other foods. these give temporary boost to stats, like more damage and stuff like that. you'll also come across NPCs that will ask for food or water and if you give it to them, you get XP.
1 of the first things you do is go to your safe house. apparently this is a place you can upgrade to unlock more skills and stuff, buy/sell/store gear, restore health and ammo, etc. 1 thing that i like is that there are separate wings to the safe house that correspond to the skill trees and you get a special currency for each one, so its not like you have to really pick and choose how you upgrade. you can decide to do missions that get the currency for say the medical wing that so you can upgrade that and get more healing skill trees upgrades.
As you're running through the streets you might run into the enemy factions (AI) and have to assist friendly forces, rescue hostages, etc. there are some missions like the one I did just earlier where I have to restore water to a section of town. its a multi-part mission in that you have to turn on the water, defend against bad guys, stabilize the water pressure, fight more bad guys, stabilize again at another location, fight more bad guys. There's story missions and side missions, plus the little event missions that pop up, like the hostage rescue, etc.
I like the graphics, they are nice and varied for being in a city. Some cool weather effects with snow I have seen so far. I am using a 1920x1080 monitor but my video card has some kind of virtual setting where I can actually set games at a higher res and then it scales it down to 1080p. I guess it's supposed to make it look better? Haven't really test it yet but the game initially set me at some 3200xsomething res and i guess fairly high settings. I was getting about mid 30s fps. i decided to increase everything to max and was getting like 24 fps. I lowered to 2400x1440 or something res and now i'm getting like high 40s fps.
the game runs smooth, no major bugs or hiccups that I have seen yet. not sure if it's a bug but sometimes when you try to loot something it seems like the animation doesn't work and you get stuck in a loop (if you let go of the loot key it stops so it's not like it breaks the game). I found if I back up and try from a further distance it works ok then. thats the only issue i found so far.
one thing is that you can climb over stuff, climb walls, climb ladders to get to higher locations etc. so it adds some verticality (is that a word?) to the game.
combat - its ok, nothing great. you use a cover system to hide behind stuff and can lean out or shoot blindly. enemy AI is pretty dumb. they will use cover for the most part. some throw grenades so you can't always stay in 1 spot. some enemies are melee and they'll rush you as well. Combat is fairly easy, just hide and shoot for the most part so it kind of gets a bit repetitive there (also the enemies are pretty much always the same, not much variety other than the 2 factions, slight differences between the types of enemies, and the weapons they use. some missions make it hard since there's quite a few enemies to fight. there's also stronger enemies (like bosses or elites from other games that are harder to kill and might have some kind of special weapon). Something cool that I have seen is that the 1 enemy faction has flame throwers and you can ignite the fuel tanks and cause the dude will blow up in a big and very awesome explosion. there seems to be other environmental things to help you as well, like gas tanks that can explode and cause extra damage.
you do have to aim your weapons so it is sort of fps-ish in that aspect and head shots seem to do more damage but not instant kills. enemies have a health bar and you can see the numerical amount of damage done to the enemy over their head (you can turn this off if you want). so it's very much like an mmo in that aspect as well.
I haven't died yet so not sure how that works.
I found the PVP area (dark zone). There is actually a mission to locate it. there were 2 different entrances that I found, labeled dark zone 1 and 2. before the entrance there is an ammo restock crate and a vendor that sells items that you can only buy with currency earned in the dark zone (other mmos have similar things).
Map seems huge, tons of things to explore and do and find but we only have a small portion of the map to explore in the beta. you can go inside some buildings for missions or just to find loot. there's even like the subway system you can go through as well as sewers. There's a fast travel system as well but not sure how that works. I have only fast traveled to my safe house so far. any questions ask and I'll try to answer.
I think I would buy this, especially if I had someone or group of people to play it with. I think it could be fun. would like to see a bit more variety or something where I needed a group of people to accomplish something. Haven't seen that yet and like I mentioned, not sure where or when other players come into play as I haven't seen anyone in the game world, or even any chat in the last 2 hour session I played.