Intro So I have played the Beta quite a bit I would say, I have reached level 24/25 so I think I got a good feel for the state of the game. Overall it felt fun but there are some things which need to be addresses. Melee weapons Melee weapons felt okay, they all kinda felt samey though, run speed wise there didn't seem to be much difference and it was mostly down to damage, with the Chainsaw being the clear winner as it can easily 1 shot people with the right click. I think perhaps a bigger difference in terms of run speed would put each individual melee weapon apart from each other but overall I thought they were fine as they are. Rifles Now compared to Melee weapons rifles felt quite different from one counterpart to another. The Sherlock was quite nice to play with, especially if you upgrade it in accuracy but it really felt like a pea-shooter, it's quite low damage and I think a slight damage increase would make it a bit nicer, I understand it's meant to be a low damage highly accurate gun as it is but the kill time with it on a full health player is quite awful. Pepper and the other gold MP5 looking rifle felt quite good, nice damage, decent accuracy and rate of fire this was clearly meta as I found most people using this variant of rifles. The Hornet in contrast felt awful, high damage, but horrendous accuracy and snail like rate of fire made it quite bad to play with in my opinion I think the Hornet would become a lot better with a bit of a fire rate buff. Shotguns Shotguns in general felt quite underpowered. I saw someone say in game this was due to the pellet count being decreased, which if so, I think is quite a roundabout way of nerfing the damage of shotguns, but either way they felt quite underpowered and I never once managed to 1 shot people with shotguns even at really close rage, which is a little concerning considering there is an achievement from one shotting people multiple times in a match with the shotgun in the game. The Bombard felt the best shotgun to use as it has a nice balance of power, accuracy and mag size. The KW felt like a pea shooter, but I guess it does have a larger mag size and a faster rate of fire to make up for it? The Driver felt okay? I can see the niche it's trying to fill in the game but honestly due to shotguns in general feeling quite underpowered I think people will just overlook it. Snipers So I didn't actually play with the Mist but I did try the Sea Eagle and the Venom so here are my thoughts on them. The Sea Eagle feels good, able to one-shot, with quick zoom in and high rate of fire, perhaps the rate of fire could be nerfed just slightly, not make it as slow as the Venom but perhaps just slightly slower than what it currently is. The Venom was probably my favourite of the two, yes it reloads much slower and zooms in slower too compared to the Sea Eagle but once you upgrade it in damage and it gets up to 3000 power it will literally one shot people if you hit them anywhere on the body (should probably be nerfed when hitting people in the legs and arms so as to not be able to one shot them there) which felt quite rewarding. Again unfortunately I didn't play with the Mist so I can't give my thoughts on it >W< MGs MGs as they stand feel very balanced, you have the crank which is a high power MG but with a slow wind up time, and the firefly which is the opposite, lower damage output with much faster wind up time and then the DareDev which sits nicely in the middle. I don't think MGs need any buffs or nerfs as they stand they feel quite nice to play with to be honest, they fill their role quite nicely. Bazookas and Grenade Launchers Honestly these two categories felt so much better than what I remember from them from the Surge days. The nerf to Blast radius and damage was quite nice, they are still quite usable especially when used to create space between you and your opponent or trying to get someone to pop out from behind cover. In my opinion these two categories of weapons are at the moment in quite a nice state, perhaps some people might argue for a larger blast radius whilst keeping the lower damage or slightly higher damage but keeping the lower blast radius but in my opinion they felt nice, not too powerful but not useless either. Upgrade System I think the upgrade system as it stands feels alright, quite the change from the old one, but I think this one is much fairer, giving players options on how they choose to use certain weapons and build those weapons according to their playstyles whilst still keeping them fair. I hope we don't see a return of the fail mechanics of the upgrade system though I think that if we have the required amount of currency and resources (battery charge) the upgrades should always go through. Although a suggestion would be to perhaps have 5 levels of upgrades, with each one allowing you to upgrade your weapon slightly in a certain stat, so for example I could get 2 power upgrades on a sniper and then 3 reload speed, or 1 in power 2 in reload speed and 2 in zoom in speed, etc... these exact numbers for the stat changes in each upgrade could be determined by the devs, I don't think I'm really in a position to make a call here, but I would say enough to where there would be noticeable change. Miscellaneous With regards to tank sets, going full tank on parts, I think as the snipers stand at the moment, it's fine? You are able to tank a sniper shot to the body from a Sea Eagle whilst a Venom will still 1 shot you. I think this is fair as the Venom has obvious drawbacks compared to the Sea Eagle but when you take into account other weapons, full tank sets can make fights a lot longer, for example if someone is using the Sherlock or a shotgun, but I think this is more down to tuning those weapons so that they are a little more reliable than nerfing tank sets. I found that the middle ground option on parts as the most appealing one for me, you still get a decent amount of extra HP whilst still getting a run speed boost, I really didn't feel compelled to switch to either a full tank set or a full run speed set as the middle ground option is quite nice, perhaps I would play a full speed set if I was mostly focusing on capture the battery but other than that I see no other reason to play it. I think the removal of the damage negation stats (bullets and explosive damage) is good, I think these have no place in the game. Accessories felt good they give a little extra ammo on certain weapon types of your choosing whilst not making your ammo reserves seem almost endless. With regards to health and ammo drops I think having them on fixed points on the map is fine, but I would also like to see them being dropped by players once you kill them like they used to back in the day, I think this wouldn't force you to play around certain spots as much and allow you to keep you going a little longer too. With regards to bugs I didn't really encounter many, I know there are some people which will still remember old glitches and how to go through walls on certain maps but I cannot speak for those things. There was one bug which I encountered on my first match. It was on Chess and every time I killed this one Sophitia her textures would bug out and kinda tear across my screen, unfortunately I don't have a picture of this to show and I have no clue whether it was due to a certain part they were wearing or what but it was really only this one Sophitia player and I never encountered that bug again during my time in the beta. Conclusion Overall I had fun in this beta. There are some issues which need to be addressed in regards to weapon balance but overall I think the game is in a decent state. I'm sure I would've enjoyed it even more if there was a sense of real progression, which we will obviously get once the game fully releases. On a side note I think the new level badges are okay but not as great as the old ones, I think the olds ones had more attractiveness to them, they were more appealing, but I don't think these new ones are awful either, I only managed to see the ones up to like level 30 ish as there were some level 30-40 players in some lobbies. But all in all, I think this was a positive beta, some good changes done to the game from what I remember from Surge, I unfortunately didn't get in the first beta so I cannot compare to that but yeah, thumbs up from me. Hope to see some more positive changes in the next phase of the game be it a closed or an open beta 🙂