OK so far my impressions after about 2 - 3 hours of gameplay:
It's a pretty solid package overall. There are some issues of course but I think given the entirety of the BETA as a whole they are minor.
Cons:
I agree that Conquest is a bit off. I do like the point focus on PTFO however I think you should get more points for kills, resupplies, revives (teamplay stuff), etc.
I also don't think Squad Leaders get enough points for calling objectives.
Horseback seems to have a rather large hitbox to enemies so you can be killed by close proximity to a guy on horseback rather than being hit by him. As for horses in general I think they take a bit too much damage to bring down but you can bring then down which is pretty cool honestly.
Lastly I agree that tanks seem a little OP but that may be because I've been pwnd mercilessly by them today.
Joining on friends is also surprisingly difficult so I'm not sure if it's just that way or if we just don't understand how to use it to full effect yet?
I'm actually a bit disappointed with sounds which I never thought I'd say. The sounds themselves are amazing overall but when you lower your volume a bit to communicate in TS the sounds really come across as distant.
A lot more than BF4 does anyway.
Pros:
Dynamic weather effects are absolutely awesome and really change up the battle. Terra deformation is in full effect as well which makes for some interesting duck and cover areas should you get in trouble.
The map is awesome as is a lot of the ingame ui. It's not perfect but they've made a lot of headway so far.
The game looks and plays amazingly smooth. I had no issues at all overall however loading into a new server seemed to slow things down a bit temporarily for me. I could see a rather large drop in frames but it was gone within moments.
I didn't notice any rubber banding, being shot around corners, or other issues. Of course I never noticed them in the BF4 BETA so it could be because we're in servers where ping is still pretty low overall.
Hopefully they learned from the horrible netcode of both BF3 and 4 and gave us decent polling rates like BF4 now has available.
Verticality so far is perfect. In WWI they had no sky scrapers so you no longer have to worry about people RPG'ing you as they parachute from above. The same can be said about snipers, no more spawn beacons allowing snipetards to camp on inaccessible buildings.
Everyone is reachable now which is great.
Gameplay is fun and quick paced as with any BF game. Overall it just feels like a BF game so if you like that then you'll be right at home.
...
So far this is a great first impression.
