Pretty much cleared all of the beta content tonight with my wife and a friend, and had a great time.
Pros
-The graphics and performance are really good. Yes there is a downgrade from E3 2013, but it still looks great, like a 2016 title should. It also runs smooth at 60fps on my 970 and 4590 with everything maxed minus a couple minor settings down a notch.
-The attention to detail is pretty damn amazing. When I went into apartments and such, each one feels unique, not cut and paste, and the way there are so many objects around in the environment and whatnot really helps with the immersion. Also how you can just walk into stores off the street and they are fully modeled and detailed. It's amazing how a game can cram so much stuff on the screen like this, and then you have games like H1Z1 where each house is a copy paste and has a table and 3 chairs and a bed and you still get massive FPS drops. They really pushed the envelope in this regard.
-There is very little repetitiveness in the world as each street even has it's own "theme" whether it's a hazmat street, a street which had a traffic jam when shit hit the fan, an army street, little korea town, a christmas decorated park street, etc etc. They really fleshed out the world.
-The time to kill isn't bad on PC. I was a little worried about bullet sponge enemies, but compared to Xbox videos I have watched, on PC I can clear firefights a lot faster being able to aim with a mouse.
-Supposedly they will be adding free content as time goes on. Will believe it when I see it, but it's nice to know hopefully not everything will be DLC.
Thoughts and concerns
-I am a little worried about the extent of content. As I said, with my wife and friend we ran through the entire beta content, including exploring all of the Dark Zone, and gearing myself in a full set of blues, in about 8 hours. Granted this is only a small portion of the game, is there going to be longevity and stuff to do? Will there be a carrot?
-I hope that there are more unique type weapons deeper in the game. There are a lot of weapons with "more better" stat, but having some unique properties would be nice, ala Diablo 3. Hopefully set gear as well.
-Hopefully they add more enemies and chests to Dark Zones. Right now, towards the end of the night, our group was running around for 5-10 minutes at a time between finding enemy NPCs. Word is that servers were bugging out tonight, as supposedly earlier today there were enemies everywhere, so I'll just have to wait and see on that one.
-I know Ubisoft is the publisher, but Massive is the creator of this game. I wouldn't compare it to the same level as other Ubisoft games like Watchdogs or AC Unity. This is already much more polished in beta.
I have pretty much come to the conclusion, that I have been looking at this as an MMO-lite, when I need to be looking at it (probably) more as a single-player coop type game with some PVP and probably get my moneys worth out of playing 80-100 hours or whatever length it ends up being. And if I look at it that way, really I have no problem justifying the purchase, because I did have fun, time flew by, and other good single-player games I pay $60 for and play 20-30 hours and feel I got my money's worth. If they do end up having enough content that it is MMO-like, similar to Diablo 3 or such, then it is just added value, but as it stands it is fun with friends. Also, you can get this on cdkeys.com right now for like $35, and supposedly the next Nvidia promotion is The Division, so ebay will have cheap keys for sale as well. For $30-$40 this will be a definite buy for me.