I have only played this GZW update (and just this update on PVE) for about 140 hours and I cannot recommend this game, I wish I could. It has good bones and it looks pretty but I regularly feel like my time is wasted.
Half of my playtime is probably in inventory or deciding where to drop/quest. Any good reasonable loot or quest area will take at least an hour of dedicated time and most places if they have good loot are usually already empty by the time you walk through two miles of jungle from the helicopter drop point. I find myself walking through jungles and sorting inventory in base more than I am shooting bad guys, which as much as it's atmospheric, it kind of stinks. Like any extraction shooter it's not fun to lose your stuff after a death, but being put in a coma with a death button waiting for someone that will never save you is a pretty sad end as a solo player.
Then you have to repeat the same handful of quests for trader exp which is a real grind with around 3k-4k exp for a level up and each quest could give only 80 to 300 exp each time and that's if the trader you want has a quest that's worth doing which is not often. And the only way to get new quests in that section of the map is to do more quests which just adds to the problem, it would be nice to be able to decline or reroll missions.
Also when you die you have one chance to find your body and loot it otherwise it's gone for real so it creates a panic loop when you respawn with nothing thinking, "I have to go back to get my stuff!" It's like falling down the stairs to retrace your steps.
So yeah, I think there's some good bones and gunplay the systems in place work well but only as a means to an end, it's to take your time and gamble it for progress. This is not worth my time anymore. The guns are cool, sound good and the ballistics and body damage system is neat but I don't see those things influencing my choice in playing as much as the time sink annoyances do. Also you cant add someone as a steam friend through this game which I think is strange.
Also asking players of your game to not play the game and watch it on Twitch so that they can get persistent outfits in the game screams to me that this is literally a promotion for Twitch itself, not GZW. Talk about a waste of time, 10+ hours of watch time AND paying for subs for each part of the promotion is just predatory to those who just like the vibes, when they could easily implement a vanilla version in-game for everyone and do this Twitch event with a fancy version rather than a limited-time paid skin only.
