After playing around 15+ hours I got really mixed feelings after playing dozens of mmos out there...
My feelings and take on few game aspects/mechanics (so everything is subjective and personal opinion):
World exploration:
Whole mechanic of exploration and speed of character + lack of any sprint mechanic / mount system feels like it was made intentional to create feeling of "big world".
Thus after a while it just feels tedious when traveling from quest to quest.
Hope they listen to people and implement some of faster movement mechanics ( seen quite bit chunk of topics about mounts / lack of sprint )
I understand there is teleport mechanic but it's completely useless once out of settlement (yet again as mentioned above probably intentional)
Quests:
Gonna be real, boring fedex quests so far till level 17 that I have obtained. I spent more time traveling back and forward between quest givers than finishing quests itself
PvP quests are nice change of pace but gets boring and could be turned into PvE faction quests since they don't involve any PvP (more like, go investigate, gather this that). Killing players give more rewards than these quests do at least it feels that way for me.
Campaign quests? I've seen them at start then started doing side quests and never came back again at least for now....
Group play:
Wanted to start from level 1 with your friends? Well... devs had different idea, me and my friend got sent to different starting point and then to different outposts (campaign quests seems to have different npc turn in point too). Bad design there for me.
The closest to any group play so far I've had been so called "PvP quests" as people try to group to avoid dying and failing them all at once.
Probably could go to different outpost and check if me and friend have same quests but doubt it looking at where my side quests are sending me and amount of quests available (could be wrong, checking so many things at same time)
Combat:
My biggest dissapointment so far.
I remember that a lot of developers are from Guild Wars 2 production and thought that combat would be more dynamic than this....
A lot of skills are very unresponsive (clicking multiple times for them to activate) or very sluggish/slow or even they just lock you in animation, very opposite of dynamic gameplay. Point and click target systems are more enjoyable than this.
Dodging seems to be weird, it either works or it doesn't most of the time it feels like it's just too short and certain dodging skills are useless.
I'll give rapier as example that I've been using: You got normal dodge then you got additional skill dodge. On paper it feels great but when you constantly get damaged when you dodge to sides and it only works when you dodge backwards (it's extremely short ranged high cooldown) you start to think that something isn't' exactly right.
Did I mention it's only 3 skills per weapon set you can set and then passives only?
Pretty "basic" I feel like mobile games these days have more variety.
Why I say basic? Well late/end game builds are going to be very boring since they're going to be exactly the same as starting ones (main differences on weapon sigils from what I've noticed)
Small update (remembered just now):
Apparently there is stagger in PvE when you get hit by monsters and one doesn't exist in PvP, weird very weird
Weapon balance:
It already feels like there are metas and certain weapons are made for group play and others for solo play. Main problem with this is that some of weapons scale from certain stats so if you specialize for example in full dex build then you are locked in single melee weapon:
Rapier and that's it. Rapier is slight dissapointment for me, feels slow and animations are very long a lot of bow animations are very clunky and unresponsive or lock you in place (splint arrow was perfect now its just meh)
We do get that distance combat tho which has biggest use in group fights. Tradeoffs I guess
Now if we would go into strength builds we got way better and more interesting weapons to choose from:
Sword/Shield - Great PvP and PvE, lunges, blocks, dashes and stuns. I enjoy it but not my gamestyle. It also feels faster than rapier
Hatchet - ever seen one angry viking running without shield? Yea basically you turn into that guy. Fun/fast hitting build that can also have ranged combat included (just misses shield usage or 2nd hatchet, feels weird to have free left arm with shield on your back)
Hatchet has 1.5% scaling per STR point and 1% per DEX point which might seem like viable choice for DEX build but will be waaay stronger later with STR build -150 points in STR gives 225% scaling vs 150% from dex which is 75% difference. Huge isnt it? Wouldn't bother making myself weak and not get max gains which matters in PvP
Hammer - Haven't tried but feels like CC monster AoE for group fights
2H Axe - Same as above didn't try so can't say yet.
Comparing these 2 build types I see that STR ones have more CC and are more PvP oriented while DEX one melee weapon is in weird position or being DoT/Crit build possible with high skill ceiling but feels like it is very lacking compared to other melee weapons (1.5 sec stun with 20 cd and gap closer that should fly forward for 10m but jumps for around like 2-3?)
Not saying it's horrible. I enjoy my bow instead. Rapier feels very mediocore and clunky combat system doesn't help it.
I might just go trapper musket or AoE Bowman with poison/bleed/slow effect as they seem interesting builds with self speed buffs (at least bow have them) to keep yourself at distance.
Hope they add more dex melee weaponry like 1x/2x Shortsword or Shortsword/Dagger combo or even maybe 2 Daggers, anything else than Rapier itself or it's ranged combat for me
hiding behind my buddies
Sound:
Pretty surprised, seems very nice. Good positioning an directional, music is also very nice. Can't say anything bad and don't want to.
Crafting:
Very Guild Wars 2 like which is good, nothing bad there. Highly enjoyable
Small update (remembered just now):
The only thing I would change would be salvaging. It should allways give back some resources. Right now it's better not to pick up items or sell them on market rather than have chance of getting some resources back
PvP and you:
Wanna do 1 vs X? Forget it, due to combat system if 2 people have enough "smarts" you won't win unless you outgear them. Most people use muskets, you will get spam shoted before you get close/run away
Game is build around group PvP you can see that from start.
Ganking people will be very minor unless it's people that bully lower geared people
Trade Market
Another tedious and surprisingly bad design...
Each city/outpost is not connected to each other meaning if you want to buy certain items/weapons YOU HAVE TO go to other town or teleport to it. This means you are vulnerable to loosing chance in BUYING good item.
You can teleport your storage items between cities but there's a catch YOU HAVE TO BE IN FACTION CONTROLLED ZONES (Adjected zones have to be connected to each other).
Transporting large quantities items to your main city later on in high level locations where you will reside most likely 90% of time will be pain and another huge time sink
Hope market is connected world wide even if it means additional fee that I have to pay to obtain items
Crazy old games have better market system than this one....
Overall feelings for now at least:
I feel like If I turn myself into Crafter/Gatherer/Trader I will enjoy myself more in this game than trying to do any combat.
Game feels weird for a game that is around month from full fledged release. There won't be any major changes 100% to any of systems just few slight tweaks.
I also don't understand how this game has anything of "survival" inside it. Might be just me
You can completely avoid PvP if you want to for now and just never care about it.
You can also do a lot of different activities but nothing new or ground breaking. Game feels like solid 6/7 out of 10 depending how I would treat combat system. It also gives heavy feeling of monetization inside shop which gives me bad vibes( Imo it might be okay due to GW2 devs if it stays on skins and xp boosters that get introduced waaaay later ).
Overall it might not be bad game, maybe even decent one just slightly overhyped like cyberpunk 2077 was (kidding that one was WAAAAAAAAY too overhyped) Feels lackluster for AAA in terms of money studio (they did scratch their 2 games before which feels weird)
On the other hand, theres plenty more other MMO's that offer the same if not more with better systems (Yes yes, they got polished after release, but how many years will it take here?) Few that I think are better and richer in content in my eyes:
1. GW2 - Great combat system, story, PvP activities (WoWoW - world vs world vs world which feels like fort combat in NW just split on 3 factions instead), skill system
2. ESO - More polished version of NW in my eyes. Both have wooden combat but ESO feels more dynamic with more "whoompf"
3. ArcheAge - It might be P2W to this day but is one of most rich content games ever created. Great PvP (lot of different activities), Good target system combat system, very dynamic PvP/PvE. Quests meh (it's KR game they never cared about these too much)
2 first ones would be my recommendation to go play after CBT of NW and compare before buying the game
That's it from me for now, still got like 10 days of access to test and maybe change my mixed mind about the game
What are your thoughts? Would love to see other people point of view.