Feedback 1.60+

[Kamikaze_Llama]

Hi. Gave this a try, and here's some detailed feedback. Longtime shooter player here, since DOOM / Marathon.

Some good things first:

1. The scenery is an absolute love-letter to the setting. Bravo.
2. The weapons, while perhaps not balanced well (see below) certainly look good.
3. The central hub feels almost perfect; not too big and sprawling, not too small and un-detailed.
4. The level design of the train level was really quite something.

Now, I'm going to get into some critique. All of this is, naturally, my opinion. I haven't beat the game yet (and I don't know whether I will or not) so it's reflective of the current state of my play-through, which is four missions in. At this point, I feel like I've gotten to see a lot of the big mechanics and have something meaningful to say about them.

1. The shooter part feels much more DOOM than tense and tactical, and I honestly feel like that could've been improved a great deal.

A. Most shooters give the player greater accuracy when looking down iron sights and crouching without moving; so far as I could tell, only iron sights matter. So there aren't a lot of reasons or opportunities to use long-range sniping, so far as I could tell. Autoguns and bolters lack semi-auto fire modes, further limiting the player's ability to engage at range.

B. Damage values are a bit strange. The shotguns, in particular, feel really weak, considering they can hardly hit the broadside of a barn and have low rates of fire. Grenades seem more likely to hurt the player than to be helpful in most situations. The bolter is 100% better-feeling than the autogun, simply because it doesn't require headshots to be reasonably lethal.

C. Damage taken feels very odd. The shield is supposed to block damage, but it doesn't really do so; so far as I could tell, it's only blocking a percentage of damage, rather than stopping it outright. It also doesn't feel right; it's just a secondary layer of other-damage. It'd be a lot more interesting if it could take a hit or two, absorbing all damage, but then stayed down for a while, rather than how it works now.

Damage mitigation appears to be built around chain-kills and other DOOM Eternal-esque mechanics. This doesn't feel right, to me, given that the player isn't frequently fed large numbers of easily-killed enemies to make the mechanic work well.

D. The Takedown mechanic would've been brilliant, if stealth was a real option. However, so far as I could tell, killing one enemy "alerts" all of them in a wide radius around them, regardless of whether they have LOS, etc., so there is little point in getting close enough to use Takedown, unless you just happen to be close enough to an enemy to use it for a free kill.

E. Movement feels a bit too loose, and I frequently feel like I don't have crisp response.

F. The time it takes to aim down the sights is too long, and it's annoying, since it's almost entirely necessary if the enemy's more than 5 meters away.

G. It's a bit unintuitive how / where the grapnel can be deployed. It feels like can only work on a few special ledges, but it's not obvious.

H. The parkour-like moves are neat when they're required.

I. Suppressors don't allow for much in the way of stealth play.

J. Sponge enemies (thus far, Mechanicus and Ogryn) aren't terribly interesting.

K. Enemy dogs are either utterly frustrating (come around a corner, a dog's on top of me immediately) or easy.

L. The player's Cyber Mastiff is really quite neat, and I just wish the cooldown wasn't so long.

M. The equipment modification / buying / selling systems have extremely confusing UI's. For example, it's hard to compare Weapon A to Weapon B, because you can't view their stats without going back and forth between Buy and Sell modes. So far as I could tell, the weapons in the shop were the same base stats as the weapons you can find, plus <some number related to what upgrades were applied>.

The weapon upgrades via the Mechanicus were also confusing. What's "Handling"? The game doesn't tell you. I presume it's "how fast you can enter / leave Iron Sights / pan around" but it's not explained.

In general, it's hard to tell what most of the things do, other than Accuracy, which is also undermined by being a vague bar rather than some concrete numbers, like "3cm spread at 10 meters" or something like that.

It's also weird that weapons have range values. I get that somebody thought that would be a good idea, but it's just kind of off-putting, honestly. I'd rather have had something that traded damage for accuracy or whatever, rather than feel my suspension of disbelief melting at the idea that a shotgun's pellets magically disappear after 5 meters, lol.

N. Enemy AI is pretty rudimentary. I kind of wish they showed up in bigger groups, but weren't omniscient and couldn't see the player through every obstacle the moment combat starts.

O. On the plus side, enemy equipment is varied thus far and interesting. I like the shield enemies, and the enemy with a jetpack is cool, etc.

Overall, the shooter part is... ok. I was kind of hoping for a more realistic, low-TTK experience with more emphasis on stealth, sniping and tactical approach to fights, but it's all right, if a little uninspiring.



2. Audio for the game is a major weak spot.

If you're one of those people who shuts off in-game soundtracks the moment you can, like I am, you'll immediately notice the complete lack of contextual sounds in the environments of the game. There were many times when the amount of quiet felt like a game from the 1990's. The world of Necromunda should always have a lot of white noise and machine sounds in it- fans whirring, drips of water, electrical hums, etc.- but it feels pretty dead with the soundtrack of Generic Metal off.

This is the kind of problem that doesn't take much money to fix; set up some foley sounds and attach them to Actors and play them occasionally if the player's in range. Even a small amount of this would make a vast difference.

Enemy movement sounds also need some love; it was hard to get audio cues for dogs, for example, because they didn't have nice audible claws-hitting-metal sounds as they moved.

3. I'm really hoping the game's going to open up and start giving me procedural missions to do soon, if I keep playing. A linear adventure in this setting is a waste of all that artwork; there should be an opportunity for players to take their time, farm gear and generally get ready for harder fights.

By the fourth mission, I've basically upgraded one gun, and that's eaten most of the cash I got from the early missions; I haven't had enough left over to explore the cybernetics or anything else. The way things work thus far, it's making me have serious choice anxiety, rather than have fun experimenting.

4. The controls and video settings are... weird.

First, the controls:

A. Mouse look speed is absurdly too high until tuned way, way down. It's not easily tuned, either, as it requires messing with three different sliders.

B. Whoever thought "duck" and "slide" should be on the same control and hard to make sure we're "ducking" rather than sliding (by setting the velocity requirement for "slide" a bit higher) got that small detail frustratingly wrong, in my opinion.

Secondly, video:

A. I wouldn't have ever figured out how to set up 4K if I hadn't read the forums here. It's completely silly that, to set our screen resolution, we have to set Windowed, then set it, then set Fullscreen.

B. Huge kudos for including AMD's RTX for non-nVidia users. I'm using an nVidia product but I tried it out and it actually runs quite well!

C. Typically on Unreal titles, one of the major performance tweaks is shadow quality / range of cascades, etc. That setting's not available, unfortunately.


5. Where do all the enemies come from? In many zones, they just appear to be teleporting in on timers, over and over again. Once in a while, in an arena where it makes some sense, it's OK, but I think it was over-done.



Overall, if I had to give this game a review right now, I'd probably give it a thumbs-up, simply because I think that you folks put your hearts into the visual depiction of Necromunda, if nothing else.

As a shooter, it's all right, but I kind of wish it was trying less hard to be a DOOM / Titanfall-esque run-and-gun experience and was more focused on stealth and high-intensity, low-TTK fighting outside setpieces, personally. I can tell from looking at the cybernetics upgrades that there is a lot of emphasis on close-range button-mashing, but that's not really my thing.

[RENGOKU]

So is the 1.60 saying how long you’ve been playing?

[Kamikaze_Llama]

3 hours, according to Steam. Minus staring at things in the hub and all that, etc. So, long enough to have a first impression and see most of the jank reviewers were referring to in the Steam reviews, but I'm maybe a quarter through the game.

Not sure if I'll finish it; I'm on the mission with the bizarre junk-landscape and the Wall of Miniguns, and it's not obvious what I'm supposed to do with the Mechanicus robot there, and honestly, that level's just not terrifically fun thus far, as it's consisted of waves and waves of enemies, frustrating attempts to use the grapnel, etc. that kind of sucked a lot of the joy out of it.

I really enjoyed the train mission, because of the huge levels, if nothing else, though it would've been so much more fun if stealth worked.

And yes, I'm sure that if I really loved DOOM Eternal style play and waves of enemies, I'd be much more thrilled. That's definitely a matter of taste; I'd rather have no waves except for a few setpieces, but double the damage, both for the player and enemies, so that combat felt more risky and less like a gradual grinding-down of my health bar.

[RENGOKU]

So just to get out in front of you stealth is not a thing in this game I forget which button it is but it will tells you info on whatever your are looking at and it says suppressors make accuracy when doing things like wall-running better it’s not actually for stealth.

I would address more of the stuff you brought up but you brought up so much I really don’t even know where to start

Edit so I just saw that you really don’t like doom eternal if you can still refund it do it, because if you don’t like doom then you will not like this game because that’s what this game is

[Kamikaze_Llama]

Yeah, it definitely has that vibe. I thought DOOM Eternal was all right, and don't get me wrong, that may have been the right answer for people buying this.

I won't refund it, though; I prefer to support the developers and who knows, maybe their next game will be in the same setting but allow for more diverse playstyles :)

[RENGOKU]

Originally posted by Kamakazi_Llama:

Yeah, it definitely has that vibe. I thought DOOM Eternal was all right, and don't get me wrong, that may have been the right answer for people buying this.

I won't refund it, though; I prefer to support the developers and who knows, maybe their next game will be in the same setting but allow for more diverse playstyles :)

To me they both kind of have the same learning curve hired gun not as much but people were really complaining how difficult this gane got In later levels at least as far as the bounties were concerned and that’s because you really do have to use everything to your advantage which is something I genuinely like I feel like this game is a lot more forgiving than doom tho.

As far as your like description of what you want to be enemies health to be do you mean more like COD style thing where you have to be more tactical and the enemies can kill you as fast as you can kill them type of game?
I’m not really sure that is something Warhammer is really ever going to get it even if you’re planning as an imperial guard who is just human the stuff you fight on a normal basis is so bad $&@! crazy would be kind a hard to make that possible

[Kamikaze_Llama]

I'd have liked a COD-style TTK against ordinary humans, and a lot more emphasis on stealth. Of all the 40K settings, Necromunda's the one where being Rambo makes the least sense; in the original game, getting carapace armor was a huge deal! Like, having to shoot people in the face multiple times really shouldn't be a thing, and little mechanics, like calming down the accuracy on the first shot if you're not moving and aiming down sights would encourage precision shooting. I felt like a lot of the weapons would've been better-balanced if they'd at least offered a way to be reasonably accurate at ranges (well, that, and the shotgun just plain needed a buff, imo).

I totally understand that if you're fighting something crazy-powerful (for the Necromunda setting) like a Space Marine or an Ork, they should be bullet sponges; I was even OK with having to shoot the Mechanicus robots in the face 50 times, until I realized that this was going to happen over and over and over again, rather than being an occasional setpiece.

But stuff like plasma guns that don't one-shot unshielded people? Nah. I'm not a big fan of making a game "harder" by limiting ammo and requiring the player to put millions of rounds into targets, personally; it would have played with a lot better tension if it took just a few hits to kill the player, their Refractor Shield was their equivalent to COD's magically-regenerating-health system, and you really wanted to avoid fights against multiple enemies, especially on the harder levels, because enemies became more accurate or started using weapons that could take you out in a hit or two, putting the emphasis on killing quickly and quietly, rather than jumping in to CQB with power-up mechanics.

Note, I'm not saying any of what was done is necessarily *bad* per se. It just didn't quite gel for me. After finishing the train, I didn't feel the urge to keep going and see one more level, because how it was playing out was pretty obvious (enemies will get more hitpoints, you'll need to find a gun with higher damage stats and stack armor and use the Bionics to get kills up close) just wasn't my cup of tea. That's just too bad, considering that I really was enjoying the scenery.

[Mayan King]

your review is good enough, it has certain points that I agree.

[[NeW]Spiked]

But...plasma does one-shot most unshielded enemies, with the pistol or rifle. TTKs are very low for most enemies, even on Oldschool. There's not even much investment required to get your weapons to max damage, the difference at +3 isn't huge, most damage buffs come from just a couple of upgrades to your gun.

Fair enough if the gameplay doesn't click for you, but feel you've maybe jumped the gun if you thought everything was going to become bullet spongey - it's just ogryns, ambots, and bosses.

I agree with your points re: stealth though, silencers are more useful for keeping your vision clear rather than stealth kills which is a shame. The Wolfenstein reboots did a good job of incorporating a stealth playstyle into a movement-based shooter, so I think it is possible to the marry the styles. The most you can get for a 'tactical' playstyle in Necromunda is making use of the grappling hook to reach some nice sniping positions to pick off enemies.