~3,700 hours in. Started playing on Day One (Dec. 17th, 2021).

[PROS]:

- Great Sound Design
- Impactful, Hard-Hitting Gunplay
- Detailed Map Environments

[CONS]:

- Forced Crossplay with Consoles + Censorship of nudity. The Devs sold out essentially to appease ratings boards and abandoned the original dark, gritty, realistic vision JUST TO GET THE GAME ON CONSOLES - which NONE of the PC Community even wanted in the first place.

- Lack of a censorship toggle on PC.

- Serious lack of meaningful Developer communication here on Steam, where most of the player base is. VOID would rather communicate on social media and Discord (ew).

- Hard Mode is absolutely unrealistic in every way. Suspects have inhuman reaction times (~50ms), eyesight, and accuracy. Genuinely wish they'd remove the difficulty selector and just have each faction have differing accuracy and reaction times - as long as they're within a realistic range (~200-300ms).

- Suspects STILL don't hide in closets or under beds or tables EXCEPT ON 213 Park Homes. That's literally the ONLY map where they hide - and even then, they barely do it.

- VOIP in Co-Op constantly breaks, leaving me to restart the game and my PC over and over again just to get it to work. In addition, the new VOIP system sound is inconsistent, When teammates move further away from each other, it becomes REALLY difficult to hear them over the "radio", which leads to poor comms during a mission. When teammates are standing directly behind me, I have a very hard time hearing them unless I turn my character to face them directly - not the best for trying to communicate during a firefight. It's not their Audio settings or Mic Gain - it's the unreliability of the new VOIP system. The old system of VOIP (back before the Console release) had no proximity-based effects - it was just regular VOIP - and was the best. I could hear teammates clearly back then, no matter how far apart we were. We seriously need that system back.

- Epic Online Services Matchmaking integration with this game upon Console release was a mistake. Steam P2P was much more stable and reliable. So many of us are having issues with EOS disconnecting, endlessly authenticating, etc.

- Lack of a Server Browser, which should be a really basic feature to implement.

- Lack of extensive door-breaching tools (like the Halligan Bar or Det-cords).

- Lack of a meaningful Melee mechanic. As it stands, all the "Melee" does is muzzle-tap people, and it's incredibly ineffective and weak. We should be able to forcefully punch or shove Suspects back when necessary - because right now, if a Suspect closes the distance with a knife (or even their gun), we really can't do anything to get them off of us, and we end up dying because of it.

- Lack of a tactical (3-5 second) sprint for engagements where we need to move fast - such as getting shot at and having to get into cover quickly. The Suspects can run, but we can't.

- Lack of dynamic lighting. Lights in this game are baked in, meaning we can't shoot them out.

- Unnecessary Ranking / Scoring system that trivializes, rather than enhances the gameplay experience. Wish they'd remove it altogether. Attempting to get S-Rank is just nonsensical and unrealistic. All we really need at the end of a mission is a stat screen that reads: "Suspects Arrested / Suspects Killed / Civilians Rescued / Civilians Killed". No weird scoring system. No ranks. Just those four stats. Keep it simple PLEASE.

- Achievements are dumb and meaningless as well. Wish they'd remove them completely. They add nothing to the game of value.

- The majority of Maps (Missions) are WAY TOO LARGE and not emblematic of something a 5-man SWAT Team would encounter IRL. In contrast, there are NOT ENOUGH smaller house-centered missions (High-Risk Warrants, Drug / Weapon Busts, Domestic Violence Situations, Hostage Situations, etc.) - Adding in smaller missions would greatly benefit the game in terms of immersion - because the large maps we have right now are very immersion-breaking.

- The overarching story threads are far too outlandish.

- Unnecessary Commander Mode.

- The 'Elephant' Mission is supposed to be an "Active Shooter" scenario - yet there's 4 gunmen, 2 bombs to disarm, and on higher difficulties there are door grenade traps (which logically doesn't make sense). In real-world Active Shooter scenarios, there are no bombs to disarm, no door traps rigged, and there's ONLY ONE GUNMAN.

- Lack of larger team sizes. This is one of my biggest gripes with the game: 5 PLAYERS IS NOT ENOUGH! Give us the ability to increase the Lobby Player Limit in Co-Op to 8, 12 or 16. That would be much more realistic and immersive.

- Removed Maps from Early Access such as Wenderley Hills Hotel, the old Port Hokan, and the old Cherryessa Farm. All three of these maps could be integrated back into the game WITH NO CHANGES and they would fit fine. Terrible idea to remove them in the first place - Wenderley Hills Hotel was my absolute favorite Map back in Early Access.

[CONCLUSION]:

I used to love this game, but the immersion-breaking issues, persistent bugs, oversights regarding quality control, lack of meaningful communication from the Devs, and other problems with this game have led me to just...not want to play it anymore. I'm tired and burnt out. I feel like VOID isn't listening to what the community really wants. I wish this game had a legit, competent competitor with the same Sound Design, Graphics and Gunplay - but with better immersion, smaller maps, less bugs, more realistic AI, etc.

Oh well.