Hello,

I'll try to summarize my feedback and personnal thougt after 51 hours of alphatest.

I've spent 51  hours of alphaplaying as a crusader. I've done both solo and coop missions. My only character, crusader rank 26, has tested all weapons and armor he could.

• Ingame chat : need improvements, in all aspects, both appearance, custom options and reactivity. And the damn tool has to stop to change default channel each time you enter or exit from party / mission.
• Crash while in missions : won't be a problem if character  wasnt automatically team kicked, unable to join back.
• Attack range from enemies : it feels really unfair and really crazy to be attacked from more far than the longest ranged weapons allow to character.
• Weapon sound : not really good nor bad. But i dont feel the power, the thunder or the emperor rage when using boltgun nor HB, or any other weapon.
• Melee : definitely need improvement, both in reactivity/speed from skills, than damage. You kill faster and easier from cover than in melee, where damage from enemies disintegrate you in seconds. 2 handed need more Aoe / range. All melee weapon need serious adds in the mobility/speed department.
• Ranged combat : Heavy weapons like HB feel so weak. If my character has to move so slow and be a dead snail because he's wearing one, it should result in bigger damage over time than with autogun (who's faster to use, more reactive and allow  faster moves). I really hope we wont see the eternal dumbness of absolute balance between weapons, in WAR 40K : martyr. Pistol can't be equal to autogun or bolter, who can't be equal to heavy weapons. Weapons should be differencied through perks and side effects : faster / slower moves, skills reactivy, ammo capacity, global swiftness, variety of skill, QoL effects, etc (applies both to melee and ranged weaponry).
• Skilltrees : they look interesting, and testing some of them felt rewarding so far. Thoerycrafting looks promising on the long term.
• At least 2 skill trees are missing so far, imho (may be i haven't unlocked them yet) : Range increase for ranged weapons and piercing effects. We need to be able to slightly increase effective range of weapons (tactical aspect, distance management), from 1/2/3/4/5 meters for short range ones, and 2/4/6/8/10 meters for long range ones. Also, piercing effect is missing : all projectile could have a low % to pass  through a killed / harmed target, and inflict 50% of it s damage to the creature behind. Skilltree would improve both probability% and damage, for multitargets piercing round and short effect (proc on condition) of a 100% piercing chance for a few seconds. (note : i haven't tested all skilltrees nor unlocked them. So my observations may to appear irrelevant, if what i'm asking for is already integrated to the game).
• Gauss and electrokinetic weaponry : any chance to see it implemented ? Maybe it's not fully warhammer 40K native, but i dont see any problem to integrate them. (don't have the time to check my tomes, i'll let more accurate peoples check this).
• Where's the power  gauntlet ? (1 handed version and heavy versions).
• Where are elemental damages ? There's fire and poison. But what about frost and electricity (considering laser is heat) ? Maybe with psyker ? Or warp damages replace some of the classical elemental damage types ?
• Armors : the missile skill from demolition armor is 60 sec CD. The jump from assault armor is 5 sec. The gap is too huge. Factor in the far better damage mitigation from assault armor. So near everyone is using assault armor. Ive done around 150 missions, and i rarely see anything else than crusaders with assault armors. Wonder why ?
• Solo campaign. I can understand the goal behind it. But being able to play a story with friend, in coop, is often my main center of interest. I hope you will solve this, by allowing story mode being playable in team. Maybe you could integrate a positive / negative  bolster mode for story / campaign ? (instead of limitating it to solo mode). I.E. : a power rating 1200 character want to help a power rating 300 character to progress through it's story. The story is at a theorical PR of 400. So both of them could  be temporary up/downgraded to PR400, just for mission. Remember about city of heroes / city of vilain level adaptation, allowing players to play TOGETHER without restriction , no matter the level gap. It was a huge argument in favor of teamplay, allowing real life friends to play together even if some were hardcore players, and other didn't have much time because of work, familly, kids. And i really  think that the goal of a well rounded coop game is to ensure peoples will be able to play together, without any limitation. Of course, XP acquisition through this method has to be controlled, to limit excessive powerleveling or no leveling at all. A reward is always needed and due, but in a fair way / quantity. And think about the fact that it's a good argument to sell MORE games !
• We need to be able to steal dreadnought, and pilot them ! (or  build some ? for specific robotic mission ?)
• Turrets stolen to ennemies feel weak / slow / unreactive, most of time.
• Heavy weapons bullies hit like trucks. I'd really like my HB or other HW hitting half hard ! Actually, heavy weapons seems to incarnate a speed movement penalty, nothing else.
• LFG tool : need to integrate rank range, PR range, mission type, etc ... We need to be able to launch mission when 2 or 3 peoples hit 'ok' button. And mission need to be reachable for a 3rd or a 4th members, even if already launched.
• What about TPs or FPS view modes ? As options ? I'm asking this for two reasons. First, when commanding / controling heavy turrets, i appreciated the view / rendering. Second, FPS view is the game mode that doesnt drive me to sickness. I know and understand  how / why this game is not and won't be a FPS (and shouldn't be). But sometimes, i really dont understand why the addition of an already integrated option isn't fully allowed to players, especially considering health parameter / QoL and gaming experience  (photo-epileptic, to name it).
• Cabal war : i've no idea of what will be implemented , and how. I just hope that the defenders will have the possibility yto us turrets dans dreadnoights they've build ?
• Enemy Factions : What kind of race / faction can we expect on the long term ? Eldars ? Dark eldars ? Tyrannids ? Genestealers ? Orks ?
• EDIT : on coop, add a marker when a character is dead / can be reanimated.
• EDIT : jump attack from assault armor : pathing is crazy sometimes. Cant go from a room to another, or cant jump 3 meters ahead, even if there's no obstacle.
• EDIT : thinking of HB (after further testing). It feels too slow, imprecise, gimmicky (both on effect and skills variety) and too few rewarding in terms of damage, considering the movement speed penalty. 1 should be regular attack 2 a burst single target attack, 3 a burst area attack and 4 the actual salvo CC attack. Just my point of view.
• EDIT : i just crashed on the last objective from mission (boss at maybe 10% life). Having to do ALL the mission again is a huge fault, and asking to player to do ALL again while a crash occured at 1% from the end is trash. I really hope such features won't come with game on release.
• EDIT_2 : I'd say there's one more missing skilltree. A generic one, which always work. and since the existing skilltree are incremental (more than multiplicative) in their effect, it would perfectly fit. Let's call it the gamer skilltree (as a bonus for alpha tester maybe, once game is released?) : 
  • first line : 3 points for 1/2/3 for a grand total of +6% to account xp
  • second line :  3 points for 1/2/3 for a grand total of +6% to rank xp
  • third line : 3 points for 1/2/3 for a grand total of +6% to global PR
  • fourth line : 3 points for 1/2/3 for a grand total of +6% to fate and money gains
  • central spot (once the 4 lines are completed) : 
• EDIT_2 : thinking about the flat and linear +30% HP per character in team. I dont think it's a good option, especially linear. I'd more think about +10% for 2 ppl in team, +25% for 3 and +50% for 4 ppl (+10/+15/+25 = non linear). Why ? Cause it softly kills the interest of playing  in coop. Encouraging peoples to play together is also a part of a game's rules and virtue.  There's another advantage to combine non-linear mod. to mob's HP with PR. A team will have to consider the number of teamates AND the difficulty they want  / can handle. As a last argument, i'd say that linear increase in mob's HP is a love killer : no matter how strong you are or how well your organize with peoples, it's like the world is always stronger than you, proportionnally and with a huge margin. Personnally, i prefered when mob's HP was constant, allowing bigger teams to deal with higher rating missions. And again, PR filter alone (for incoming / outgoing effects) was genius and self sufficient to a very balanced game (as long as peoples can roll higher PR mission when they are in a full team).
• EDIT_3 (29/09/17) : i experienced many crash / log out while in mission. For every occurence, (and for the first time) i've got he opportunity to join back inside mission : excellent !
• EDIT_3 (29/09/17) : i didn't insist enough about the fact : i very much appreciate that skilltree arent attached to specific weapons or armor, but to effect categories. Keep this up ! It allows for very interesting build management.
• EDIT_3 (29/09/17) : After further testing, i must admit that if i dont like the idea behind the +30% to mob's healthpoint, it seems to work.
• EDIT_3 (29/09/17) : after re examination of the heavy weapon pool, i must admitt that HB in particular works well in terms of crowd control and inside team. If i don't like the actual 'balance' of separate weapons, i must admit that there's a 'global' balance of the weapon pool. And i'm aware that touching one, will deeply affect all the game and the aforementionned 'weapon pool global balance'.
• EDIT_3 (29/09/17) : the game is so great ... i can't stop thinking to semi open world = huge static map with more than 4 players. Future will say !
• EDIT_3 (29/09/17) : weapon swap= too sluggish and laggy, for me. It interferes a lot with the need and will of active and reactive / adaptative gameplay.

That's all for the moment. I'll try to update as alpha will progress. But for the moment, the game looks very promising, being extremely enjoyable.

And as a 40+ y.o. old school pen and paper RPG player & games workshop stuff fan, it's the first time i feel like i've put my hands on the so long awaited true online game, that fully render the warhammer 40K unniverse and gameplay.

Keep on the greatness !

PS : Please forgive spelling, grammar etc. I'm not english native, and writing this was a defy, for me. Thanks for reading it.