To preface this, I absolutely love the game and want it to be the best and most fun it can be.

I wanted to gather my thoughts and feedback into one post. For context, I have finished the campaign solo on the highest difficulty, have all steam achievements and spent dozens upon dozens of hours in operations and a few in PvP.

Now, there are a lot of points where the game can improve, from smaller to bigger ones and points of possible frustration that can be remedied.

Let us begin with a few smaller issues.

Matchmaking should consider your selected class​

• ​Way too many times I wanted to play a chosen difficulty with a certain class (especially when I have nothing else levelled up enough for said chosen difficulty), only to end up in a lobby where someone is already playing my class. This just ends up in me having to leave and requeue in the hopes of finally getting into a lobby where I can actually play the class I want/have levelled up. This sometimes happens several times in a row creating annoyance and frustration. Matchmaking should ideally prioritize putting you into lobbies where no one else is playing as your selected class.
• While we are talking about matchmaking, please allow us to choose whether we want to join another players lobby or open our own. Having this option would be quite nice.

Edit squad mouse cursor

• On pc, for some reason if you are on your barge and want to edit your squad by pressing "Y" to for example invite someone, your mouse cursor is removed and you have to navigate around with your arrow keys and "Enter". This feels very...bizarre? Why not just allow us to use our mouse to click on buttons?

It shouldn't always be holding "E" to interact

• In moments like opening the armoury on the barge, or editing your presets, I find it pretty annoying to have to hold "E" or mouse click for no reason instead of just being able to click on it and get to the menu I want to. If anything, why not make it an option so people can simply choose what they prefer?

Controller cursor slow-down on hover

• When switching to controller (which I sometimes do), I noticed a very heavy slow-down of the cursor sensitivity when hovering over options or anything clickable. This is extremely annoying, especially when you are trying to customize your armour or colours. Why is this a thing? Why not have a sensitivity slider for this? Let us disable or adjust this.

Carnifex melee attack telegraphs

• I'm not entirely certain if it's not just me, but it feels like the carnifex has barely any telegraph for it's melee attacks. It feels nigh impossible to pull of a dodge or parry because it instantly swipes instead of telegraphing it before attacking.

I would like to see more audio cues and settings

• Please add audio cues to important mechanics like parry. It can be very hard to notice attacks coming from behind you (more to that under another point) so audio cues would help a lot.
• Please let us adjust the audio cues like enemies calling for backup separately from everything else. Being able to separately increase or ideally even boost these sounds would allow people to adjust them based on their own hearing so they can better identify them.
• Please allow us to change the FoV. Some players are really sensitive to FoV and are used to adjusting it to a value they are comfortable with.

Better visual indicators for attacks from behind

• The visual indicators for parry or dodge attacks from behind, especially the blue parry indicator are way too small and unnoticeable. Especially when wielding a thunder hammer or power sword, which have blue vfx, the small and timid blue indicator for a parry attack from behind is barely noticeable, especially in hectic combat. Both should be a lot bigger and signify their urgency via an effect like a sort of blink (Previous point allowing us to increase audio cues could also help with audio cues for these attacks, if they have any). Same as other mentioned things, this could be something added to the settings where people could adjust the size of the indicators.

Visual parry indicator duration should be indicative of the perfect parry window

• Usually when utilizing visual indicators for something like a parry that has perfect parry windows, you want this window to be visually represented. Especially so if the duration of this window can be changed by various means. Considering regular attacks are parry-able, only special "perfect parry opportunities" are getting the blue visual indicator treatment. If so, the duration of this indicator should be the same as your current perfect parry window. Seeing a blue indicator alerting you of a perfect parry attack, using parry only to then not hit it even though you parried within the time the visual indicator showed causes confusion and/or frustration. "I pressed parry when it told me to parry, so why did it not parry?". Something other games might do that have a perfect parry window in a parry mechanic is to have the visual indicator not only represent the general parry possibility, but also represent the actual perfect parry window, by for example having a gradient vfx or an effect similar to timed beats in music rythm games within the overall parry indicator. In this game I think the blue indicator should simply have the duration of your perfect parry window, since attacks are parry-able in general already.

Skippable cutscenes

• As much as I appreciate quality cutscenes, I never understood the choice of skipping them with "Enter". Why do I have to move my whole hand to the other side of the keyboard, when they could just let us skip it with "Spacebar"? I can skip the intros when starting the game with it, so why not the actual cutscenes? Please allow us to simply rebind how we skip cutscenes or change it to "Spacebar" to reduce needed hand movement. 
• While we are on this topic, I don't see a reason to not add an auto-skip option that automatically votes for skipping cutscenes. When playing operations, you will see the same cutscenes over and over again, which can easily get very stale, no matter how good they are. An auto-skip option here would go a long way.
• I am not sure I understand the choice behind the operations mode mission launch cutscene (The Thunderhawk launch) before the loading screen. It is the same exact cutscene with every mission. Why does it exist? The amount of time lost when playing operations mode for dozens of hours adds up. I like the sense of immersion it adds, but was there really no way to have the cutscene be an actual part of the loading screen? It just feels like wasted time at some point seeing it every time before the game starts loading the actual mission instead of it starting to load directly after starting the mission.

Customization presets

• Please add the option to delete presets. Maybe we want to make a preset based on an existing chapter with slight changes. If we already have all slots used, we cannot use it as a base but have to manually change everything.
• Add more preset slots. Having only 4 preset slots feels extremely...limited, especially for the colour schemes. I would like to see them increased to at least 8.
• Allow us to name presets. Being able to do this would allow us to add some personal flair to our presets, like making up our own chapter.

Weapon-specific perks and loadouts

• I fail to see why perks for a class aren't bound to a selected loadout. There are weapon-specific perks, like Tactical's "Plasma Boost", affecting the Plasma Incinerator ONLY, yet your chosen perks aren't connected to your loadout at all. So if you want to switch to a different weapon in a mission but have this perk, you will lose out on performance. An alternate perk in the same column affects bolt weapons. If we could bind selected perks to loadouts, for a Tactical you could make a bolt build and a plasma build and switch between them using a loadout pod in a mission. Please either make this change in general, or even better, allow us to manually bind a perk tree with it's selected perks to a specific loadout.

Weapon build variety

• I feel like the perk trees for weapons are very restrictive. Because you need a previous perk to get the perk after it and can only switch "lanes" at certain points (which will also use 1 more mastery point for each switch), we can't really do anything other than to follow the "lane" with only slight variation. Instead, why can't most perks not work in a similar way as the class perks do? Choosing 1 perk from a specific column, rather than having to follow a "lane". This would give as a lot more freedom in customizing our weapon builds.

Weapon sharing

• Why can't I use a plasma pistol as Assault? Why can't I use a power sword as Tactical? While I do understand why certain weapons are locked behind certain classes, since they exemplify the identity of that class (Long-range weapons for Sniper, heavy weapons for Heavy, thunder hammer for assault), I fail to see this as a reason in some of the weapons. I would love to use a plasma pistol as assault or a power sword or combat knife as Tactical. Considering this being PvE, why not allow us a bit more freedom in our choice of weapon without encroaching on class identity?

Armoury data on armoury hall screen

• Why is your collected armoury data not shown on the main screen of the armoury hall, or even when customizing? I can see it next to the regular currency when I walk around and open the overview (tab on pc) and I can see it when in weapon customization, but not in the actual main screen of the armoury hall. There is way enough space in the top right to simply show it there as well. Minor QoL point.

In-mission banter

• Now, I do appreciate good voice acting but after playing operations for dozens of hours and hearing the same voice lines over and over again, I would really appreciate an option to simply turn off the banter. Please allow us to turn the banter off so we can wholly focus on our mission to eradicate our enemies after having done so for a long time already.

Elevators closing before pushing the button

• I honestly dislike that elevators you enter close as soon as every member is in it, rather than only closing when someone pushes the button. More times than I would like, we saw supplies or even armoury data in the corner only after already being locked into the elevator even though no one has pushed the button yet. Please change it so that only pushing the button closes the elevator and you can go back out again before that happens. It is a point of possible frustration that can be easily removed.

The ping system needs improvement in accuracy

• Enemies should always take priority when it comes to pinging. Way too often I come into a situation where I want to ping a specific enemy for one reason or another only to not be able to. Either the ping looks to a squad member that is next to where I am aiming or instead of marking the enemy I have my crosshairs on, it pings the objective marker nearby.

Allow Heavy to maneuvre when aiming

• The slow while being in aim mode is already enough of a trade-off. Restricting the players ability to respond to attacks just doesn't feel good from a gameplay perspective. Having to quit the aim mode so I can dodge feels awkward. Allow us to sprint/dodge/parry out of aim, like with other classes. If you want to have a trade-off for being able to use the heavy weapons, increase the challenge and don't restrict the player's agency.

Keybind improvements

• Please add double keybinds, so we can have 2 different keys for the same action. It is a nice QoL functionality to have, albeit in very specific situations. Nice nonetheless.
• Separate some of the actions and split them so we can use different keybinds. The most annoying one here is when something is happening and the game wants you to pay "attention" by pressing the ping button. But... what if I want to ping something? I just can't while something on the map is happening, which can cause frustration. This could very easily be avoided by not having both actions have the same keybind or allowing us to separate them. They are different things after all.

Barbed Strangler hitboxes

• The hitboxes of the barbed strangler "mines" (the ones with the barbed vines around it) start hitting you way before you visually touch them. This really should be fixed. You can stand next to one without touching it and it starts damaging you.

Presets in Operations/Eternal War

• Please allow us to copy our presets from Operations to Eternal War and vice versa. It can be rather frustrating not being able to use the same ones and having to start from scratch.

Waymarks for Objectives Handholding

• The waymarks leading you to objectives can feel like "in your face" handholding. Rather than just showing where your final destination lies, it shows you the way to it. The markers lead to every corner, then move on to the next corner until you reach the endpoint. Coupled with the objective marker taking priority when pinging, preventing you from pinging enemies (like priority targets), this can be very annoying and frustrating. At least give us the option so it doesn't lead us all the way, but instead simply marks the end location where you need to end up (like a terminal for a door instead of leading you there step-by-step). A lot of frustration could be solved here by improving the ping system as well.

Assault Jump Pack Dash and regular Dodge

• Aside from other issues I have encountered with Assault's Jump Pack during Operations, like unresponsiveness, I feel like it might have been better to have the Jump Pack Dash simply replace the regular dodge. This would eliminate points of frustration when trying to use the ability, but for reasons, be they connectivity issues, lag issues, performance issues or straight up unresponsiveness you accidentally dash instead of jump using up a whole charge. The game builds up your muscle memory to dodge with your dodge button, not the ability button. Perks that give you boons for perfect dodging with the jump pack dash kind of work against this built up muscle memory. Assault could just have a slightly improved dash over other classes and have the jump pack always jump as the ability.

Campaign Completion Reward

• After finishing the campaign solo on the highest difficulty, I was left a bit disappointed that there were no unlocks at all. I mean, you receive a new helmet at the end, so why not at the very least unlock that helmet for customization across the game modes? Feels like an obvious choice.

Campaign Customization Slots

• In the campaign, when trying to customize Titus, I noticed that aside from the default skin, I had one more from a DLC. Next to those though, were 2 empty and unavailable slots, that were never filled with anything, despite at this point having all achievements. This feels a bit...confusing considering I don't remember a word anywhere that more are going to be added for the campaign. Even if this was the case, why are those 2 unavailable slots showing now? It created the expectation in me that I can unlock more customization for the campaign while going through it only to be left hanging.

Campaign Overview Shortcuts

• So, when you are in the campaign and open your overview (on pc hold tab), you can see 4 shortcuts for Armoury Hall etc. Now aside from the Dataslate Repository, I never noticed them actually being available and useable. I really don't understand why they are shown in the first place if they cannot be used anyways. As with the previous point, seeing this early on in the campaign created expectations that then weren't met, causing points of frustration that could have been avoided.

Now, let us go over the biggest gripe I have with this game. 

The 3 immediate response mechanics and how they are handled

The game is a hectic and fast-paced horde shooter with countless enemies that uses 3 immediate response mechanics (Dodge, Parry and Gun Strike), two of which are basically unpredictable and sudden attacks.

The problem is with how the game handles the actual responses to those mechanics, meaning the execution of Dodge, Parry and Gun Strike. As it is, you are animation-locked into pretty much everything and neither Parry, Dodge nor Gun Strike will cancel you out of your animation reliably. Parry can cancel you out of most, while also locking you into the parry, which magically can be cancelled by Gun Strike, but not Dodge. These 3 responses should give you i-frames on successful execution and always cancel you out of your animation, hear me out.

Having no animation cancel preventing you from immediately responding to these immediate response mechanics is not at all suited for this type of game. It is actually quite the opposite and works against it. This would be more suited for a slower and more methodical game, such as Black Myth: Wukong. In Wukong, you have no input queue and can easily animation-lock yourself, having to wait until the animation is fully done before being able to make another input. But Wukong is a slower, less hectic and more methodical game allowing you to observe your environment as well as your opponent's movements and react accordingly. It is deliberate. It works here because the mechanics and game themselves are more deliberate and methodical, relying less on spontaneous muscle memory responses and more on observation and executing moves carefully.

It does not work in a hectic and fast-paced horde shooter. A core part of the gameplay in a game like this is quick and immediate responses and adjustments on the fly to what is happening in any given situation while fighting. A lot of it is muscle memory, meaning doing things reactively rather than thinking about them before doing them. To do this effectively, you require full agency over your character's movement. Dodge, Parry and Gun Strike should immediately cancel you out of whatever animation you are in right now and allow you to respond immediately to a given immediate response mechanic. It is fine if these 3 cannot cancel out each other, since it is a system of rock, paper and scissors decision making. You see fist (blue parry indicator), you need paper (executing a Parry) (In this case a Dodge could be fist resulting in not losing, yet not having done the ideal solution). If you choose the wrong response, you will feel it. A middle ground solution would be to be able to use the other two mechanics earlier than lets say regular attacks, yet not instantly.

There is also some inconsistency. All three mechanics are designed in a way to build muscle memory, so you can quickly respond. They are immediate response mechanics that happen in an instant after all. Yet, because for example Gun Strike doesn't actually give you enough i-frames, committing to one can harm, even kill you because other enemies can simply attack you while you are stuck in the animation, your muscle memory having committed to an action before thinking about it since well, that is the benefit of muscle memory and why you can respond quickly with it. This directly goes against the point of the mechanic being "immediate" because you now need to think about whether or not a Gun Strike is worth it or actually the wrong choice all the while everything else around you keeps happening. All three immediate response mechanics should give you plenty i-frames if you respond to them correctly and successfully execute them. Pulling these mechanics off correctly should be rewarding, not punishing.

Introducing immediate response mechanics while not giving you the agency to always immediately respond appropriately creates a lot of friction between these systems that generates frustration. One side wants you to be slower and more methodical, the other to quickly and instantly respond. The pacing this game wants to set is to aggressively keep attacking to create opportunities to restore armour. But if you aggressively keep attacking, you will lock yourself into (mostly attack-) animations and won't be able to actually utilize the opportunities you worked to create or even get punished for doing so as described earlier. There have been times where I had full hp and armour, committed to an attack and out of nowhere enemies wailed down on me or shot me from afar while I was stuck in the animation reducing my hp to around 10% by the time I could move again without me being able to do a single thing about it. Another example is starting an attack and while you are stuck in the animation, the enemy starts an attack of their own and pulls it off before you can move your character again to for example dodge. This is not something you could have responded to in any way because you were already locked in an animation at the time the enemy started the attack. Moments like these are simply unnecessarily frustrating. This would all be solved by having Dodge, Parry and Gun Strike cancel you out of your animations so you can instantly use them.

This part of the game feels like it is working against the entire rest of the game instead of supporting and enhancing the flow and pacing it wants to set, creating points of friction that generate frustration and feelings of helplessness over the lack of agency over your character's movement. Please consider adding i-frames and animation cancel to the 3 immediate response mechanics. This would give us players more agency over our gameplay and be rewarding when using the correct response for a given mechanic.

If having these three mechanics cancel you out of your animations and giving you i-frames on successfully executing them makes the game "too easy", I can only say "Balance the game, not the player".

Suggestions for additions

"Achievement"-bound cosmetics

• While I do appreciate being able to earn cosmetics, I feel like the game could do a better job at this and hope future cosmetics will do so. Add cosmetics that we can unlock with special achievements, things that challenge us. Think Vermintide 2 with some cosmetics being locked behind more challenging high difficulty achievements. "Complete a mission on ruthless without anyone going down", "Complete 5 mission on ruthless difficulty", "Complete 01: Inferno on ruthless difficulty without using flammable pipelines in the finale" are just a few quick examples.

​Basic idle emotes

• I would love to see the addition of some basic emotes like a salute. Just to do something while waiting on people to get ready so it isn't just a dry and boring standing around waiting.

Bot improvements/enhancements

• Please allow the bots to use our own classes/loadouts and customization presets, rather than them always having their default look.
• Giving us some simple command over the bots, like pinging an item and telling a bot to pick it up. Could also add the functionality to tell a bot to pick up stimms, which they can then use on you when you are low health.

DLSS3/FSR3 with Frame Generation

• Both DLSS3 and FSR3 with Frame Generation are listed in the FAQ to be added after launch, yet they aren't on the roadmap. Considering how CPU-bound the performance of this game is, frame generation could work actual wonders here. I am certain it could save mine and a lot of other people's low performance. I hope they get added quickly, but it worries me a bit that they haven't been mentioned since the FAQ.

​Weapon statistics

• What would be a really great addition would be weapon stats. Give us a screen for each weapon where we can track the amount of kills, faction kills (X Tyranids killed, X Chaos killed), specific kills (X Terminus kills, X Majoris kills, X Lictor kills etc) and things in general we did with that weapon. You added an achievement to kill 25 enemies as Tactical with every primary weapon. This is a bit annoying to do since we do not have a way to actually track how many kills we got with which weapon. Seeing stats for weapons would also allow for the player to build a better "connection" with specific weapons. For example if someone really likes a certain weapon, they will get satisfaction from seeing the stat numbers going up over time reflecting their use of the weapon and their progression in the game.

I am looking forward to future updates to this game and really hope they will introduce changes and improvements based on received feedback.

I was actually gonna make a post talking about how its hard to get out of heavy stance in time to dodge. I'd also like to be able to customize the npc marine's but your feedback is great. I'd also like the ability to break through enemy guards and stagger enemies mid attacks cause with a heavy bolter its hard too, or maybe have life the armor of a heavy and bulwark be more resistant than a tactical but that's just what I want. I love this game though. 

last point: why does killing a majoris not give two armor like the campaign?