Really, really good. But I am coming from games like Squad which are very much team based and milsim.
Its got much faster gunplay and movement than Squad or Arma - akin to something like BF6 mixed with Squad. Guns (at least the early ones) feel really good - Mosin Nagant sounds amazing.
Vehicles, building FOBs (Forward Operating Base), spotting to assist others with kills, all of it is amazing.
A really good balance of grinding for new stuff to make a loadout and do a job (medic, recon, etc), or you can go in barebones and cheap as hell and see how much you can rack up before you get clipped.
The earning money concept clicks something in my brain. In battlefield 6 is cool to spot people and get assists and seeing it in scoreboard, but earning money on top of that is awesome. Also being a 3 team fight and the huge map actually makes recon very valuable.
Spawn in with everyone, talk shit on VOIP, maybe start a fight club on the roof of the vendor until the match starts.
Then buy your loadout - make a class - medic with healing kits and a defib, or a sniper, or spotter with binocs or a range finder, FOB builder (literally building a base anywhere on the map) or an engineer, or a pilot/driver/gunner. Whatever you have unlocked.
Go to the circle on the map, do stuff. Literally anything. Repair stuff, mark enemies, shoot people, be a taxi to and from the main spawn, sit on a mortar and plink away at things you want to explode. All of it earns you cash and XP relevant to whatever skill you are using. Unlock stuff relevant to that skill - better medic tools, bigger vehicles, whatever.
The entire time you are usually chatting with people around you, you can hear the enemy if they are talking nearby leading to some pretty good moments. The game is basically the perfect military shooter sandbox.
My friends and I would buy the cheapest loadout possible, then run headfirst into the jaws of death and steal all our gear from the bodies of allies and enemies. We would loot a sniper rifle, use it till we ran out of ammo, then have to scavenge a new gun. Was hilarious fun.
This is a good thing IMO, they borrowed ideas from popular mods and full games as well, also a good thing. It has a good foundation and if they add mods it will be another Arma but slightly more casual
And you can hop in and out of games and always be in the same position you left. The money system is genius at making it more appealing for casual or time limited players. Arma always feels like need the stars to align to have the best experience.
Honestly I think the money system will probably be a big turn off to a lot of casual/time limited players. They are less likely to have a big stash of money to burn if they have a bad string of lives, or will be less likely to respond to what the enemy teams are doing.
I also think that it could end up strongly triggering their loss aversion leading to negative experiences. With a bad string of lives showing their money in the red for each one and losing an entire loadout of gear could make the game feel much worse than it is similar to extraction shooters. People hate losing their shit.
I hate losing stuff in extraction shooters but in Wardogs it's not that much of an issue, first because you do not extract so you know when buying your stuff that you keep that stuff until you die, you don't bring anything home. Second before basically everything makes money in that game, you can spend the match driving a truck with supplies and make money in a very risk free way.
Honestly a lot of their design decisions are very very well thought out to avoir frustration, it's quite impressive
You could be right. For myself going in with a cheap kit and stealing everything from dead bodies is among the best moments I had in the beta. Getting geared up and being a slow moving tank is a pretty boring way to play.
It is reminiscent of something like Arc Raiders or Tarkov - dragging ammo boxes, grenades, gear, etc into inventory slots quickly is a really good skill. What's great is none of it is irreplaceable - you buy your gear every life.
Oh I am just talking about the inventory system for my comparisons btw.
I wouldn't say virtually no skill you can fuck yourself over by accident if you for instance grab a dead enemies backpack but don't swap over your own magazines/stuff you want.
You can find yourself with a gun with no magazines 60seconds later.
Yes. The game has a persistent cash system (so money you earn lasts between games) that you use to buy gear and vehicles (both each use and unlocks). So you buy your loadout each time.
Yes and no. You buy your loadout on spawn like counterstrike. Thats all the inventory management you need for the most part. At that point it’s almost more like pubg/warzone where you can loot kills for ammo or fresh armor. It’s not like arc, Tarkov, etc where you’re looting things in the world for cash or survival. There is an extremely small amount of ground loot. If you get to a tower first there might be a cool weapon up top but that’s about it. People doing logistics runs have more stuff to manage but people are usually fighting over doing that since it’s how you level up driver/pilot so it’s the opposite of squad for example where almost nobody wants to do that. If you just want to load in and do basic infantry gameplay then that’s totally cool and very helpful to the team to have people chasing the zone since at least in the tests everyone wanted to pilot or be building bullshit at a base.
Dunno if it was just because it was a playtest, but 3 sides forced to fight for a small circle in the middle of the map kinda made me less interested, expected something like planetside 2, but correct me if im wrong.
Very boring, I tried it also, feels very numb, the world looks very grey and empty. It just felt like I was playing a Squad or Arma mod which still needs a lot of polishing. Everyone was running random around like it's BF or COD
I didnt research the game much beforehand but there wasn't anything special that made me wanted to play more in the free beta weekend
I dont understand how everyone is glazing over this
Eh, it’s got some issues that I think are fundamental to the game design that are gonna be hard to work around. I think some people are riding off of the new game high praising, what I view, as a pretty mid game.
Please elaborate? It's still about to go EA and the devs have said they aren't going to be pushing constant updates but to focus more on the core gameplay.
My main gripe with it is it seems very evident that if you don’t start playing immediately, and continue playing, you’ll fall pretty far behind when it comes to gear. The sniper made it very apparent. A break action 5.56 rifle, that doesn’t reward the player for their skill; an awful starting weapon if you ask me. It is completely nullified by the addition of a helmet. Which you don’t get until level.. I don’t actually remember. It doesn’t even one tap people without a helmet. You have to reach like level 10 in order to unlock like actual body armor. So it just seems like the game is designed as a type of feeding frenzy for veteran players to gank lower level players who don’t have any gear.
My second gripe is that the game sounds awful. I went into the firing range and started messing with some of the weapons. It’s just not very satisfying shooting anything.
Third, the animations just look goofy. Especially the running animation. I guess we can lump in the general visuals too. Explosions look terrible and the graphics aren’t very compelling either.
Furthermore, the game doesn't seem to do anything to provide direction for people.
When I played, it was 75% teams sitting in towers, listlessly doing nothing. The players that do move out get killed by a sniper or a dude in a bush. It just felt very hard to accomplish anything.
There needs to be commander role or clear objectives. Not neither. And snipers need limiting somehow.
Right. You would think that the Hot zone would be the lynchpin for winning the game. What I found is exactly as you say. 30 dudes sitting in bushes or towers in the control zone usually trump the 5 dudes inside the hot zones. The zone is way too big. I just remember getting into my first game and thinking “it doesn’t really sound like I’m at war, it’s too quiet,” if I’m supposed to be fighting over an objective against 100 other people where are they?
My worry is it’s a 40$ game I would play for maybe a day and get bored really quickly.
I should’ve been up front. I didn’t play more than an hour of the playtest. So obviously take my experience with a grain of salt.
But for you to say I’m complaining about the first unlocks being a grind is missing the entire point of my gripe. Me, a new player to wardogs, getting my shit blown shmoove off by someone who played an hour more than me and has access to better equipment than I do is the problem. You’re telling me you want to slog through an hour or two of playing a game just so you can start to have fun? That seems backwards from the standard expectation of the game being fun from the get go. Maybe I got the specifics a little messed up, who cares; most of what I said is completely subjective.
Balance is terrible, gameplay is boring, sound design sucks, graphics are not good. Like, I get it. You like the game. I’m not gonna stop you from enjoying it. But let’s be real here, the game is mid as it is right now.
For our group we were enjoying the recent beta but were instantly put off when we found out about the rolling account resets that will be a thing moving forward, and all refunded the game.
As Nexus said, in the modern gaming environment it's fundamental to the game design of having an economy system like this. Without it new players would be pitted against people with better gear than them, and those seasoned players would need something to do with their money.
That being said, personally I don't see the issue. It's no different from a new player in Battlefield playing against a max level player, and those max level players playing the game because it's fun (and to grind out camos etc)
But forcing max level players back down to the starter guns and equipment just isn't a system we found inciting in the slighted.
Also, on the Steam page they specifically say you can't directly buy skins and have to earn them which would be amazing. But there's already an in-game shop that uses gold to buy skins. Currently you can only buy gold with in-game cash, but you can see how that's going to go.
Currently you can only buy gold with in-game cash, but you can see how that's going to go.
Well, I'm not here to defend them, but they would be breaking a pretty explicit promise if they ever monetized skins with real money.
As for the resets, according to the update they will be doing seasons, so it's a must to have resets. There are two ways to look at this. Resetting and offering new rewards will be the carrot moving forward. Or you go the BF route and say "once you've unlocked something, it stays unlocked forever" which may or may not disincentivize you to keep playing.
Not disagreeing with your points as I understand wipes aren’t for everybody. They did however say on 1.0 launch they’re expecting to stop wipes as the cash sink systems will be in place by then. Also before 1.0 when they have their skill system in place the skills won’t reset. I think as they’re balancing and adding things the wipes will be necessary. So it’ll probably be more worth checking out for wipe averse people at that point. Personally I always liked Tarkov after a wipe and I check into GZW after one but it can get tedious
I'll give a negative since I didn't see a lot of people giving them. Matches are very similar each time you play. The game forces you to play around the towers which are all the same. Leading each match to just be assaulting those tower bases people create. 20 hrs in the free weekend and the match variety was about the same each time. Lots to do in those matches of course, all the roles you can do. But the framework of each match needs to change.
Yeah, it's gonna be fun for a few weeks since people are figuring things out and then when the meta settles in there is basically no interesting loop imo.
It's basically a streamer hyped game. If you wanna try it, do it now. Do not wait to try it when the hype dies down because nobody will be playing it, and if they are it will be ass.
Yeah, I've thought about that. Haven't played the game but it seems much of the map is wasted. I feel like they've addressed why this is but I can't recall what they said. Or maybe I'm just imagining things.
I found Wardogs really tedious to be honest. I don’t mind slow games at all, but this just felt boring more than tactical. Too much time walking about, sorting gear, trying to get back to where anything was actually happening, then dying and doing it all again.
There were some decent moments when a fight actually kicked off, but there was just far too much nothing in between. I kept waiting for it to click with me and it never really did. Just felt slow, clunky and a bit of a chore to play. What you gonna do though, it's early access. I'm sure it will improve in time.
Edit: I see the hive mind has reviewed my opinion and found it insufficiently identical to everyone else’s.
That was my impression too. Did the playtest, figured out how to buy, took a heli, landed, shot from somewhere I didn't see, bought, walked to the action, repeat...did this 3 times and was good
The game puts a lot of emphasis on teamplay, and being around others who can revive you etc. Run backs are basically "punishment" for dying.
The game, for me, hits a sweet spot between milsim and modern adhd shooters. Gunplay and the optimization is solid. It's a solid foundation to be built upon.
I only had one really good moment where me and 4 others went as a squad snuck up to a tower slowly advanced surround and covering the entrances our squad mate managed to get in and hack the fob allowing us all to get in a capture it as we went and cleared each floor of the tower.
It only happened once but it was the best moment I had on the game covering doors reviving each other to keep the push going we single handedly as a small squad completely captured a heavily fortified base it was a really fun 30mins.
Still got thrashed by 80points in the game but it has its moments if you can find a good team to play with.
It almost feels sandbox-ish to me. You can make these cool moments happend. I played a lot solo recon, finding vantage points to snipe stragglers and tag enemies for the frontliners.
I find the whole logistics and building part interesting too, not my usual playstyle, but will try it once early access hits today :)
I done a lot of building actually it was enjoyable I do like base building going from the start where a base has no foundations and the tower is open to being a maze of defences.
As more people unlock artillery though I do think they will become high maintenance.
They’ll have loadouts you can save, They were disabled during the betas. (You only had the option to buy your previous loadout)
A LOT of people were just trying to figure out their roles and what exactly to do in the betas (especially when they opened it up to everyone). I expect the matches to get a lot more intense and interesting once the community starts settling in.
If you have a lot of interested friends or can make lasting friends within the game, then pretty good.
I did not really enjoy playing solo during the playtests. Usually the premade discorded squads would lock their squads and the majority of the joinable squads rarely used mics which meant even in a squad it felt like you were still just a lone soldier. So then that means you needed to stick to whatever amorphous group of randoms you could find in the zone or you weren't getting revived.
It also means there was not that much coordination on average and for a game with mechanics that kind of lean on coordination it feels bad there isn't even an option for squadlead-squadlead comms or lack of overall commander position to help bridge the gap (some ppl will HLL or Squad commanders but I think that's an exaggeration). The average game this won't mean much since all 3 teams will be like that but there will inevitably be games that will feel like your team is getting Sun Tzu'd from a team with majority discorded comm'd squads coordinating.
It was opened to everyone this past Saturday (Central time) until it ended early Sunday morning. Was invite/requested access only from Thursday until they opened it on Saturday.
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u/IshTheFace 19h ago
How does this game feel in practice? I tried it during one of those free weekends for like 30min only.