Leaderboard

BETA thoughts: This open beta is heavily neutered from anything I've seen in videos. You only get access to 2 skills on the medical tree, and the first skill on the other two trees. You can't even look at perks and other abilities because they hit you with scramble vision on the menu. Open Wold PVE Not much here. You get one main mission for the medical branch and some side missions that are really a quest chain of uneventful investigation leading up to a decent encounter. There are also some random encounters that vary in degree of length. The main mission was relatively short. You moved through 4 different sections fighting off enemies leading up to a boss. Playing it on hard made the end reward better, but the loot drops during the mission seemed marginally better if it was at all. The enemies were a lot tougher and more aggressive however. Walking through the city you can stumble upon random bad guys, but there are actual locations marked called encounters. I think you can frequently get these from a situation board in your base of operation, but I cant refresh these in the beta. Some are as simple as taking down a few guys, others consist of helping a task force secure an area (kind of a horde mode). A few get interesting as they have a timer on them. These start out as unoccupied rooms with scanners you must search for and activate. When that is done you have to make your way across the roof tops to upload the data... of course enemies stand in your way while the timer is running making things a bit intense. These were probably my favorite encounters. Since I'm a completion junkie... I'm probably having more fun with the beta than I should. There are a bunch of collectibles laying around from intel files to survival guides. Now that I've cleaned the map of everything to do gun battle wise, I've been exploring picking these things up, and finding random echos. I even managed to find some blue armor in a subway crate in a dark corner. There is also FASHION! the GW2 in me came out running open world with a friend... we'd be on our way to a side mission only to see an apartment door open. That means looting time! You can go into certain places and loot fridges, kitchen cabinets, closets, dressers, and file cabinets for random items including fashion ware. Hats, Pants, Shirts, Jackets, and Boots are all cosmetic options that have no bearing on stats. There are gun camos too but I haven't found any yet. We spent a few hours just looting for clothes losing sight of our objective. You can also gain items like these from NPCs in need... they come up to you begging for a med pac or random consumable. They'll drop you a cosmetic or a shitty piece of white equipment. Its a gamble. The Dark Zone Its only the beta, but there wasn't as much douchery going on as I thought there would be. Thats because you're making yourself a huge target going around killing other players. The loot in this game works like Destiny. Only you can see what loot dropped for you. Killing enemies drops loot for everyone, but the quality may vary between players, that doesn't change in the dark zone. The only way other players can tell that you have loot is by a yellow satchel that hangs under your normal backpack. There is no indication on what is in it. Once you kill someone you are marked red on everyone's mini map for an allotted time, and players can also see you through walls. You make yourself a massive target. If you're going to go rogue, the best time to do it is when people are extracting, that way you can hook your loot and secure it before you are killed. This is also why you should never extract with players that aren't in your party. Extractions alert everyone in the area, also marking it on the map. The chopper takes a full minute to get to the site, and then lowers a rope to hook your loot bag on. You have to hold square to do this and it takes a good 3-4 seconds to complete the action. Any number of things could go wrong at this point... The place my group extracted was on top of a parking garage. (There are designated extraction areas, you cant extract anywhere you want) We had a clear vantage point over the entrance to the top floor in case someone decided to come up and try to be hostile... but just watching an entrance doesn't always work as one poor solo player found out. After we extracted our loot successfully, a solo player ran up to perform his own. My buddy wanted to kill him, but I decided against it since he was a lower level than us and probably had nothing of value. He gave us the surrender emote to let us know he just wanted to extract and we started to leave... next thing we know he was downed, so we run back up only to see 4-5 elite NPCs have spawned and were tearing him up. I quickly revived him and we took them all out for some more loot. It was an interesting experience clearly to keep you on your toes from corner camping vantage points while you extract. I definitely would not recommend soloing the DZ. Killing NPCs gets you levels, and technically you could just do that and collect the DZ currency they drop... but if good equipment drops it would be hard to pass up, and dangerous to extract. Oh aslo, your DZ bag can only carry 6 items so you're going to have to extract regularly whether you like it or not. Weapons Assault Rifles: Not a fan... mag is way too small and runs out quickly. Long reload times that could possibly be helped by later attachments. Shotguns: Once I got the semi-auto, I was tearing it up. Really good for CQC. There are enemies that have baseball bats and golf clubs that will rush you. They do A LOT of damage if they hit you so its imperative to have a good close range option. In the DZ these rushers were ultra aggressive and fast. SMGs: I picked up a Vector and I am loving it. More so than the shotgun, but that's because its a higher level quality than the shotgun I had. The mags last longer than ARs and you get the same range about. I wouldn't be surprised if they got a range nerf TBH. They still would make a good CQC if this happens. While they melt enemies fast, they don't have the stopping power that shotguns have. A shotgun will make someone do a full second of stun. Sniper Rifles: High damage, very slow rate of fire. You can't run this with a shotgun, they both fire too slow, You'll have to roll with an SMG if you want to snipe.... or just snipe with a marksman rifle. Markman Rifle: Screw ARs, this is where its at. They have close to the damage of sniper rifles, but a faster fire rate and bigger mag. reload times are slow like ARs, but 2 body shot kills, one head shot kill more than makes up for it. It also suffers the same drawbacks as snipers as the 3rd person ADS reticle widens massively while moving. LMGs: Haven't had one drop yet.. but i imagine they do some heavy suppression. I suppressed a few enemies with my SMG and its a good tactic for letting someone else flank. Or to bull rush if you're solo. They wont come out of cover when the suppressed indicator is up. Its like a heavy handed stun. Pistol: Pistols are pure crap so far.. but with reason. They are your backup weapon and they have infinite ammo. Really low damage. The attachments alter the stats of your gun to varying degrees. Optics better your zoom, but also add critical damage % gains. Grips do similar things as well, but extended mags suck and are pointless. They only give you 1 extra round for every weapon type except SMGs which give you 2. You're better off with the heavy spring mag that increases fire rate. If you're gonna use extended mag, it would only be worth it on a shotgun for that extra round. Suppressors only decrease your threat level... not really sure what that is yet. Maybe its aggro. Skills Like I said you only get access to a few skills. Your Base of Operations help you upgrade these skills. Doing missions and collection parts will help you do this in the full game. The first skill on the medic tree is the only one you can upgrade in the beta. Its basically vision pulse from BO3/pulse scan from Battlefront. The upgraded versions add modifiers. The one I went with added critical damage when hitting marked enemies. This was actually a really nice perk tbh. Giving everyone a DPS boost is never a bad thing. The first aid skill is going to be hard not to have for any player. While you can have consumable med packs, you can only carry 3 at a time. First aid lets you heal yourself or drop an AoE on teammates to heal them. I saw that you can upgrade the AoE heal to revive downed teammates without having to be near them which will be very useful for a dedicated healer. The sticky bomb was ok. I really wanted to try the seeker mine, but its locked for the beta which really disappointed me. I didn't bother with the riot shield, it seemed pointless since there is plenty of cover provided during gun fights. Thats all I can say for now. I can't wait for this game to come out... even this small bit of content was very interesting. I also saw a "Dailies" tab in the options/inventory/info panel which has me excited.