About Gray Zone Warfare currently in Early Access

[Rodrigo F.]

The missions are very simple and silly. I played 130 missions. Get a document and go back, find the body and go back, kill the enemy and go back, find the item and go back... Few tasks have different mechanics.

All the tasks end up being very similar, because you always invade the same places over and over again and the BOTs are almost always in the same places.

The game is very empty, lifeless, huge areas, but without anyone, only in the cities you find a few BOTs. None of them react to light and react to sound very badly.

Loot? There are very few items.

PvP? It is almost non-existent, what will happen is that you land in a landzone and have an enemy player waiting to kill you, because he can hear your heli coming from miles away. Some people will say: there is no LZ Camp....
A few months ago I played on the NA server and saw 2 players from my faction standing for more than 10 minutes in LZ Echo 3 waiting for enemies.

[flemming]

Well I for one is having a great time. yes mission are not a fountain of creativity... but that doesn´t matter to me.. What I really enjoy is the teamwork. To meet total strangers and help them out with a mission.. or the other way around. I have had someone help me clear FN and also give me the key I needed to finish a mission... just amazing. Can´´t wait to see how this game develops :-)

[Merlin - 16AAB]

Loving the game, my experience is totally the opposite of the OPs. Have a plan in your head (especially your escape route should the plan not work out), tool-up for the mission specifics, create the perfect M4/AK or whatever, soak in the atmosphere of the surroundings and the dangerous AI, free heli rides ... what's not to like?

[Rodrigo F.]

Add to what I said earlier, immortal BOTs and respawn in the wrong places (on the roofs of a house).
And yes, in some cases they can kill you

[Jonathan J. O'Neill]

Originally posted by Rodrigo F.:

Add to what I said earlier, immortal BOTs and respawn in the wrong places (on the roofs of a house).
And yes, in some cases they can kill you

Those are bugs and are actively being fixed. Immortal bots are a rarity and they've already addressed several bots appearing on roofs. If you spot others, report them via the feedback form:

https://support.madfingergames.com/hc/en-us/requests/new


As for your original points, the game is PvE-centric with PvP mode added on for those actually interested in killing other players. I would not expect an amazing PvP experience any time soon.

As for it being empty, yes, it is. For now. AS the game updates, new PoIs, more places to explore, more places enemies will be are planned. Right now, the game is in pre-alpha and is sitting at around 30% complete. We're nowhere close to what the end result is planned to be, based on the roadmap and dev streams.

Not sure what other tasks you're expecting right now. It's a realistic tactical shooter. Raiding locations for HVTs/intel is pretty much what you do in the military (aside from foot patrols) when you're not standing down for 90% of your deployment..

[Hell_MINTH]

I'll throw my thoughts here. I bought in shortly after EA release, and played for the first few weeks it was online (not much since). I love tactical shooters, and thought that the approach GZW was taking seemed refreshing, the whole mechanical setup of three opposing mercenary factions operating in one contiguous, real-time zone, completing Tarkov-like tasks, with no loading screens and helicopter insertion. On paper, a very solid idea.

In practice, to me, it feels like a tactical-shooter Disneyland theme-park. For example, let's say you need to take out a high-value target (HVT). The process begins with "wait in line for your insertion chopper". Once you get in, oh BALLZ, somebody's already been here. Wait in line for your exfil-chopper. Fly back home (at this point enemies in the area respawn for the next person to "ride" the HVT experience).

Let's try an intel mission... wait, no key. We've all been there... looking for that key for a real-life week. Fly in anyway in the hopes somebody opened the door, as it is really your most realistic chance of fulfilling that task. In a non "theme park", you'd probably have access to C4/thermite and would not be stopped by a door, or one of the goons you shoot would have it, or it'd be on a table or in a safe somewhere.

Lastly, servers are really a matter of luck. Sometimes they are laggy as heck and don't seem to properly register hits, sometimes they are empty, fast, and fun.

Bottom line, were I to review it today, I'd give a negative review. I gave it try after try and just felt like the game wasted my time at every opportunity not being able to fulfill tasks for reasons out of my control (no key, area already cleared, helicopter wait was horrendous today and I didn't have enough RL time to finish). My experience is that while the novel mechanics this game presented seemed really cool, in execution, they were not fun at all for me. The faction lock presents an unnecessary hindrance to getting all of my friends to play (since we have to have the same faction), and server matching timed out as much as it succeeded. Planning a gaming session involved 4/5 of our time planning, connecting, and infiltrating, and 1/5 actually playing tactical-shooty game.

All that negativity aside, I will add a positive note, the initial experience in the starter zone was hella-fun, excellent. It didn't suffer from the time-wasting mechanics that rear up when you move to the later zones. You could fly in quick, get your sh!t done, and fly out. You could immediately tell (since the beginner zone is your faction only) whether or not the area was cleared on your current server from a quick map check. Felt more "real" and less "Disneyland", so maybe there is something to work with here.

I haven't left a negative review, as with active development and all, I don't feel it would be fair to do so, but IMHO the only solution I can think of for all of the problems I encountered with the game is to open up the game to private servers. Then at least, I can configure my own tactical-shooter Disneyland for myself and my crew to play as we want to, and we can control lag and hitscan issues by scaling our own servers as needed and controlling client connections, equipment available (such as keys), and faction association (so that we can always play with anybody in our crew that day). My understanding is that this isn't planned, but I sincerely hope that they reconsider that as they move toward 1.0.

[flemming]

Originally posted by Rodrigo F.:

Add to what I said earlier, immortal BOTs and respawn in the wrong places (on the roofs of a house).
And yes, in some cases they can kill you

play something else.. problem solved.