I loved HW 1 so much and play it for hours on end, I still play it to this day! The game mechanics of it are what has kept me playing it for so long. I was so excited for this beta to come out and tbh I was disappointed. I have hope that the final version of this game could be good though, that's the point of having the beta right? There are some good things about this game though.
1) The introduction of more units to this game.
This is arguably the best thing about the beta, I'm going to stick it out in hopes that all the bad parts of it will become good. One of the few things I didn't like with HW1 was that there were only 3 units in each of the different buildings. So thank you for adding more!
2) The artwork for the buildings and the troops looks pretty cool.
Never hurts to update those and it caught my eye at first.
3) The new game mode.
I would definitely not recommend this game mode to be the highlight of the game at all, but having this and multiple other game modes(possibly even 4v4 or 5v5) would give a good amount of options to choose from. They're all different types and strategies to pick from, and this would be a fun one occasionally. It would also be nice to make it so tickets are lost/gained at a slower rate.
4) Power nodes
I love this idea of having more tactical points to capture! It makes getting resources less of a focus so more time can be put into training/upgrading units and implementing strategies.
Now to the things that I personally did not like about the game.
1) The lighting and color scheme.
The idea of having an updated look to the game is good but it was not put into action very well. It is difficult to tell who's units are who's and it was also difficult to see things in general. There needs to be more contrast in color since the whole point of this game is having different teams fighting each other. Being blatantly obvious who is on what team like HW1 had was very nice. Especially when there were multiple players spread throughout the battlefield. Also the weird shield thing on the outside of the map just looks dumb, please get rid of this.
2) The controls
I don't see any reason the controls had to change, there was nothing with how they flowed in HW1. Why fix something that isn't broken?
3) The battling mechanics
I'm not sure what happened to the mechanics from HW1 because the way all the fighting happened in that game was great. For the lack of a better word it feels sloppy to me. To me it felt like the units weren't matched up correctly and we're kind of just shooting wherever. I want the control we had from HW1, and even the sound effects. There was just absolutely no need for this change and this is probably the worst part of the beta for me.
4) The new resource power
This was just a dumb move, if the tech level can be upgraded via the base, why add another resource? This isn't farmville I just want to have massive armies and epic battles. I don't want to focus my time and base slots on getting resources. Yes resources are definitely part of the game, but having too many to collect and focus on getting changes the point of the game. Either get rid of the power feature completely and just have tech level upgraded in the base or get rid of them both and go back to the reactors.
5) The population
The default population size is bigger and that is great, but that has done nothing because the population needed from each unit has gone up. I would love to see an even higher default population and putting the population needed by each unit back down to how it was. Or just exponentially grow the population and leave the units how they are, either way please don't advertise about bigger battles if this is what you give us.
6) The minimap and miscellaneous
I miss some of the minimap features like having flashing red marks when I'm being attacked and other markers like that the minimap used to have. It was also nice to have building health displayed and which units had the secondary ability available.
I loved the first Halo Wars game so much and hope I can love the sequel the same if not even more! There's just been some unnecessary changes from the 1st one to the 2nd one and it's disappointing to see it go that way. Basically, I think a lot of us fans would agree we want to see the mechanics and lighting techniques of the 1st one but add bigger armies, more unit types, and an awesome new story!
I'm sure there are good and bad things I missed but I just wanted to give some feedback on my thoughts. I will still be buying the new game because I loved HW1 so much, I just hope I won't be disappointed by giving you my money. This is just the beta after all and anything could change up until February!