Unfortunately I think that you are right here. Personally I love that this game isn't a speed run style ARPG and I find the pace refreshing as I want my position in the fight to be as important as the enemy type I'm engaging and the weapon I'm using. I think that your concerns are valid as far as potentially alienating people who think that "slow" game play is all that this game can offer as this doesn't fit the genre norm.

I can't believe we have to hear this crap again. So basically, you want your heavily armed & armored crusader to be able to sprint around the map from the get go, like a lightly armed & armored assassin. You can't have it both ways dude. Either work for the speed improvements or play your crusader "light".

Starting: they do, in fact, have several pieces of DAoT wargear--that's what is known as "archeotech", and there are hints that the Dark Angels actually have huge troves of it in The Rock, for example. For that matter, the AdMech hoards it actively. Any STC fragment, working archeotech item (even as simple as an ancient blender) are hoarded, studied, and then locked up. Not reproduced, locked up. Because it can't be trusted. See next paragraph.

The rebellion on Mars is the reason, the birth of the DarkMech. Technology can't be trusted. Scrapcode that can melt your brain and turn your pocket dataslate into a bomb, or infect a starship and turn it into a daemon engine. So, yes, they can still produce tried and tested patterns (albiet slowly), they canonically don't actually know what they're doing, they're following ritual patterns known to produce an item safely.

Archeotech doesn't come from Terra, either. The vast majority of (canon and well-established) archeotech comes from worlds found during the Great Crusade, or Rogue Traders plying the fringes and discovering dead/lost human worlds. It was already well documented that Terra was basically a wreck with nothing of value when the Emperor decided "I'm done sitting around watching" and kicked off the Unification Wars, Mars was a treasure trove of gene-locked vaults for starters (volkite weaponry, grav-technology, the STC templates for the Land vehicles, discovered by Magos Land, etc) but even they lacked many things. Things that were discovered off-world.

As to the "Catachans aren't the same", if a specimen can lift a two hundred pound weapon and ammo and move at the same rate of speed, then yes. Physiologically their strength does not differ from an Initiate. Which is what I stated. Adding silly arguments about how the Catachans lack a Betcher's Gland is just pointless obfuscation.

When it comes to Sisters of Battle, the fluff has been largely consistent from the beginning--their "heavy weapons" are largely man-portable. They rely on flamers and bolters, heavy flamers, and not a lot in the way of foot-mobile stubbers/heavy bolters/lascannons that weigh down most soldiers--their kit is largely things that an unenhanced (but large) Guardsman can carry. They are the Emperor's Torch, burninating all the things with holy promethium.

For more information, do a quick search for either 1d4chan's AdMech article (has a brilliant essay on why tech is so screwy) or the Lexicanum entry on the Horus Heresy and then the Admech Rebellion sub-article. It's faster than giving a list of codices and novels that you'll invariably ignore, as most people do.

Bow down before the Emperor's Grognard, he of no life, for he has spoken.

Since it won't let me edit my post to add this little nugget I forgot to mention...

The comment you made on Tactical Dreadnought Armor?

Yeah, they're producing the "cheap" variant now. The one that was developed from reverse-engineered DAoT heavy labor void-suits. They have no idea how to crank out Cataphractii armor, or any of the Heresy era walking armory variants (which had their own void shield emitters on top of an arsenal that would make an Oblit drool).

Note how I keep bringing up reverse-engineered DAoT stuff? It's a lot more prevalent than you'd think. Grav weaponry is suspected of being personal heavy object manipulation tools from the DAoT that got weaponized, too.

As to Cawl? More Wardian era Heresy, made palatable by the fact that he's a gigantic basement dweller and Rowboat Girlyman has been actively disappointed in what starchy uptight idiots his children have been. This is how GW moves the plot forward... not by adding real interesting lore, but by injecting it with a dose of noblebright that comes across as more Mary Sue escapades.

Starting with your last note first: that was snark regarding that it's always ignored when I make reading lists. Nobody ever bothers to read any of them, so I've just stopped trying.

The heavy bolter, with ammunition and tripod, weighs (canonically) about 200 pounds (they usually list it as between 86 and 92 kilos, at approx. 2.2 pounds per kilo). This is a not-insignificant amount of weight--the M2 Browning is a much smaller weapon (though very pretty in person) and it weighs about half that with full kit. I will concede that there is a chance that the fluff writers have no real sense of scale when it comes to weapon weights, however--I doubt I'll ever get a genuine Gyrojet (the inspriation of the bolter) on my workbench but I've smacked enough gear with a hammer to know that no smallbore slugthrower should weigh 20 pounds unless it's a squad automatic (per the generic autogun, 5mm is close to 5.56mm NATO in terms of bore size and canon cartridge size, and I can speak with authority that 100 rounds does not add fifteen pounds to a firearm).

One of the issues that these discussions cause come from inconsistent fluff. Almost everything I've read has stated that while they're superhuman, Scouts lack a lot of the hardening that a century or two of battle adds--they're green recruits, and are always treated in fluff as such--a top-tier physical specimen (such as the nearly abhuman Catachans) has more than once beaten a scout in an arm-wrestling contest. I bring this up as a relevant aside: FFG did an abominable job when it comes to equipment weights. Dreadnought armor weighs a little less than 500 pounds (245 kilos, as per Deathwatch and Black Crusade)... for several inch thick ceramite and adamantium, both of which being materials that have been stated as being denser than steel in technical spec lore.

The Ordinatus are... close to what the AdMech generally refer to as Hereteks--and for the reason that again, innovation is heresy and dangerous. Ordinatus are generally built, used once, and mothballed, because tampering with technology has, time and again, caused huge issues for the Mechanicus (back to the rebellion on Mars during the Heresy). The same goes for the Legios Titanicus: entire forge worlds toil for centuries to build a single Titan, and the most powerful of these are holy relics, barely understood and unable to be reproduced (Imperial Armor mentions this, among other splats) due to the titanic (pun intended) efforts required to build their reactors, targeting systems, and central cogitators. Being able to follow an instruction manual to assemble it does not mean that one understands the processes behind them (see: Russian weapon manufacturing during the second World War); these specialists simply have access to (most of) the IKEA assembly guide.

Things that we take for granted, changing the stock on your rifle for example, constitutes a horrendous breach of holy protocol. They learned the hard way (in fact, another interesting treatise on the AdMech proposes that almost all tech in the Imperium is, to some degree, "smart"; which would explain why command phrases couched as ritual prayer seem to actually improve the function of your lasgun or Leman Russ) that tampering with things unchecked causes problems. What they know of the Long Night, is that many human colonies were smashed by the Men of Iron; in-universe this is justified as being suspected of Abominable Intelligence overuse that led to their robotic servants rising up. During the troubles on Mars, simple things like autopistols were becoming sentient, which lends some creedence to the theory that the "Machine Spirit" is, in fact, simple smart tech. And, for that matter, the AdMech is also incredibly dishonest. The Land Raider does not possess wetware, it actually has a rudimentary Abominable Intelligence (this used to be presented as the rule where crew stunned hits would still allow the vehicle to function). The Inquisition looks the other way, because to remove the Land Raider from service would cripple the war effort on nearly every front.

Fun fact: the Land Raider's design was originally for a civilian vehicle.  One must wonder what colonists were expected to find during the DAoT when a civilian vehicle became proof against most small arms (and anti-vehicle) fire--for that matter, many common (and uncommon) Imperial weapons were destined to be colonist-built gear... as a gun nut and gunsmith (meaning I love me some dakka), I have to ask...

What exactly did humanity during the Diaspora expect to find in the universe?!

Older Ragnar novels, for starters--almost anything involving the Space Wolves outside of their Horus Heresy novels. Space Wolves arm-wrestling guardsmen back when they weren't quite so... WOLFWOLFWOLF. Back when they drank and caroused and were actually loved by the guard because they'd go out of their way to keep the squishies alive.

There are caveats to the Treaty of Olympus Mons. Anything involving gene-tampering (especially tweaking the human genome to accept xenos gubbinz), Abominable Intelligence, or warptech falls under "our" purview. Introducing a sanctioned piece of technology is.. stagnant, nearly--there is a huge difference between introducing a sanctified STC template, and introducing a completely new technology using previous knowledge.

Looping back to the stock issue--the lasgun is considered one of the simplest, most pure designs known to the Mechanicus. It's hard to screw up at any level, and they're more comfortable "rushing" new patterns (see Elysian bullpup lasguns). But for an Enginseer in the field, or worse yet a mere Guard armorer, to change or modify the stock is an executable offense. More complicated (relatively speaking) procedures (like when I smoothed the feed ramp on my "stub pistol") are outright heretek. Wetware in this case refers to the organic cogitator, which is either vatgrown or harvested from criminals in a process that seems to be an offshoot of the practices used to create servitors.

That said, the AdMech gets away with a lot they shouldn't--they're responsible for countless Genestealer cults with their Magos Biologis adepts tampering there, and more than once they've awakened a Necron tomb world. I think that has a lot to do with more recent lore showing the Inquisition watching them a bit more sternly.

Huh, that is a bit weird.

Space Wolves are a non-Codex Chapter and their Scouts are actually amongst the best given that the Wolf Scouts are NOT drawn from the Neophytes but actually long serving Veterans. At that point they are even more apart from regular Humans that most others.

In fact Space Wolve Neophytes are a special Case for they get their Implants Sooner than pretty much any other Chapter Neophytes given that they, as Blood Claws, are already equipped with the Black Carapace and deployed in Power Armor.

In Regards of their physical Prowess I think the Battle of the Fang portrayed a few of them and they would just Crush pretty much any regular Human.

As for the Stuff the AdMech gets away with - that has not changed much to be honest. Nobody likes to mess with them, not even most Inquisitors. They somewhat just "react" to their screw ups like they did during the Anphelion Project. The stuff you can do is proportional to the rank you have so we can expect the higher echelions to do some super crazy stuff. Also lets not forget the Afriel Strain. In the End it boils down to: Does it work. If it does you may just avoid any sanction, if not you may be disassembled. So ultimately it is a bit difficult to get innovations going, yet there are certainly many accounts where they did.

For starters, I'm not sure why you got a downvote there... that was a pretty solid reply.

Around M39-M40 (having difficulty remembering "specific" dates), more than one Segmentum conclave decided to keep a very close watch on the AdMech explorator fleets because they keep pushing the button and waking up Necrons. It falls under the threat level that they won't tolerate, and canonically at least two fleets have "disappeared" because of it. It boiled over into a lot more paranoia and finger pointing, and certain Inquisitor Lords relish the opportunity to dismantle the works of Magi that don't fit their puritanical worldview (or are more politically powerful). The Afriel Strain was "permissable" because unlike all of the screwups every time they try to splice ork/nid/eldar DNA in, they just cloned Imperial heroes--the goalpost moves a lot for them, dependant on their superiors, the temperament of the Inquisition Lords, even the High Lords of Terra should they catch wind of it (see: Eversor and the built-in genetic I'M A BOMB! button).

They do have their own Inquisition-style branch, though. What the Inquisition misses or never hears about, these dudes see and dismantle. From the first Kronz codex, we have one of the first canonical instances (that I can recall) of these "black Valkyrie" magi--they took the idiot that started tinkering with Necron stuff and locked him up because he stumbled across the then-canon realization that the Omnissiah parked on Mars under the Noctis Labyrinth was, in fact, the Void Dragon. Yeah, Empy single-handedly beat down a C'Tan god and stuffed it underground, so anything involving that is Grade A Heresy; do not pass go, do not collect new mechadendrites. They've appeared time and again during other troubles as agents of the Fabricator General, at one point (presumably intentionally) alerting Colonel Schaefer of Last Chancers fame as to yet another biologis experiment gone wrong when they couldn't contain the threat themselves.

It's kind of a charlie foxtrot, but when you dig in deep enough the AdMech really doesn't get away much. Certain very powerful figures might, though Cawl has been explained as having been essentially living under a hidden rock doing all of this, and then with Rowboat Girlyman popping back up, a Primarch has the sway to go "Don't care, your rules are stupid, shut up". Largely, even being the chief fabricator of a forge world is little protection, should you start dabbling in heretek. Sanctions placed on the worlds is partly responsible for the mass migrations and growing numbers of DarkMech in the Eye of Terror. The AdMech's stringent holy dogma are to blame for Failbaddon getting more tinker gnomes on a regular basis.

Post-post addendum: The Inquisition's power varies vastly depending on who has the reins in terms of production, as well. During the Wardian Heresy, the Inquisition was gunning hard for the Space Wolves; by the time he left they were in open warfare with the Grey Knights. Shortly after he left, someone sick of Ward's Mary Sue BS decided to let the Space Wolves roflstomp the Knights because hah, your guys suck Ward! Ahem.

Inquisitors also do tend to disappear when investigating a CERTAIN CHAPTER THAT HAS NEVER HAD HERESY, THEY SIMPLY MISPLACED THEIR HOMEWORLD DURING A VERY ACTIVE GAME OF HIDE AND SEEK, AND IT WAS NOT DESTROYED, JUST HIDDEN VERY VERY WELL.

Ill give you two arguments from two different perspectives:

Fluff - We are wearing Power Armor and getting around with that heavy weapon should be no problem. Heck, some Catachans carry a heavy bolter by themself and keep up with their Squad.

Gameplay - Being slower servers NO purpose other than to annoy you. You do not trade greatly improved lethality for speed or anything. You are just slower because the weapon says it is supposed to be heavy and even then we should ask ourself what purpose does it serve to slow down a player that much? Is it fun? Well I must say no. Is it immersive? Well... as immersive as a single Inquisitor killing half the Death Guard is... right?

Fluff counter: Catachans grow up in an environment that actively tries to kill them from birth, and a good number of them have physiologies very close to that of a full Astartes initiate (for those in the back, that'd be the Scout company marines) and that's why they can lug it around like a marine scout. The average man simply cannot lug that heavy bolter around without power armor, and lacking the black carapace interface standard power armor has to be somewhat slower lest it injure the wearer. No, really. Not to mention most examples available to the Inquisition are older than dirt (in some cases this is literally true, when someone is issued a DAoT suit that is older than some newly formed planets), and as such don't work as intended because, well...

The Adeptas Mechanicus is bad. They have good reasons for it--there's a blurb floating around somewhere that breaks down why innovation is anathema--but they're bad. They don't know how half of it works, and patch-build stuff to rig up fixes. This is also why plasma weapons overheat, they aren't even sure how it works anymore, they just know how to assemble the gubbins.

There are some ways to counteract this--MIUs (for those in the back, Mind Impulse Units) can sometimes be built into a masterwork suit of power armor in a way that gives them a fraction of the fine control of an Astartes suit, but this is difficult and barely understood. See a theme here?

That being said, I also do not care for having to split my skill points in order to choose between moving faster than a drunken grox or being able to dish out acceptable amounts of damage so you're not totally wrong... you're just choosing the wrong fluff to support your statement.

You are getting your fluff horrible wrong here.

Astartes Scouts have nothing in common with humans in regards of physiology. Any Scout that gets deployed to combat already has the FULL compliment of Astartes Implants MINUS the Black Carapace that is required to Operator their Power Armor.

A Scout makes a regular Catachan pale in comparison. And those that come close in some regards are also HEAVILY augmented.

As for the lack of the Carapace it is true that this limits the reaction time of the Armor, yet we are speaking here about Astartes too, warriors with a reaction time that already is a fraction of that of a regular human.

Just look at the Sororitas. They perfectly carry their Heavy Weapons on a Personal Level - thanks to their power armor.

As for the Power Armor that is issued to the Inquisition you have a huge variety of possible patterns. Some are custom made for each inquisitor, some are "inherited" yet still maintained quite nicely - thanks to the power base of the Inquisitor.

Also keep in mind our Inquisitor is already on such a level that he commands a warp capable ship - not many inquisitors actually DO have that much power projection. As for maintenance we do have quite the competent Man even on our Hub.

Also we are most certainly not using DAoT Suits - those things if they even existed - would pretty much blow everything out of proportion. Keep in mind that the actual power armor patterns were pretty much developed AFTER the unification wars on Terra with their prototypes being employed by the Thunder Warriors and probably other Tribes of Techno Barbarians.

Another thing to keep in mind: Older more often than not equals better in the Universe of WH40k anyway.

As for the Adeptus Mechanicus your observation is also pretty flawed.  Based upon facts established in different books they do very well know their stuff. The thing is this knowledge is quite localized for each forge world is competing against another one and normally such knowledge is mostly reserved for high ranking members.

The Adeptus Mechanicus is STILL producing Tactical Dreadnought Armor, Titans and Battleships.

As for the most recent development the Adeptus Mechanicus, thanks to Belisarius Cawl, actually made quite some progress, most notably in regards of the Primaris while Plasma Technology - across all branches of the Imperium - is now safe to use unless you overcharge it.

As for the MIUs, those things can be integrated with pretty much anything. The more important part here is actually the quality of the MIU. Yet for someone like the Character we play this is actually not that hard to get. I guess you are referencing to the Dark Heresy RPG books where mere akolytes could get their hands on MIUs while we now play a full inquisitor.

An Inquisitor that was trained in melee by an Astartes.

An Inquisitor that was taught the Docrines of SEVERAL Assassin Temples.

etc.

We already ARE an extreme Snowflake in regards of the Warhammer Fluff for some of those things are quite unheard of.

Just walking slow is something different entirely from having a slow pace to introduce players.

Combat will still be as slow as it is right now.

Also we might get a tutorial anyway. This Alpha is to playtest the game as is and that certainly does not include getting in people that are completely new to ARPGs.

Thing is: Most modern ARPGs, as I said earlier, have a reasonable base speed from the very start. Something you can improve marginally if you so choose. This happens mostly with skills/items that would improve that stat anyway due to certain items rolling it rather often without conflicting other stats. Spending your first 5 levels into movement speed so you don't fall into a coma is imho a rather bad advice regarding character building.

There should be a difference between improving convenience and improving performance. D3 hit quite a good mark with its reworked Paragon System.

Oh boy, this will take some time.

Archeotech is not necessarily DAoT Tech. The Term broadly describes ancient Technology that was deemed lost on many accounts. Keeping that in mind Archeotech may originate from the DAoT, the AoS or GCE. Regarding Power Armor, as I said, those were mostly introduced during the Reunification Wars based upon crude patterns of Technobarbariens that were later refined into the Armament of the Thunder Warriors. Militarized Power Armor of that quality was, from what we have, not a big thing during the DAoT which can also be brought back to the fact that it was the Man of Iron that were responsible for such matters and those most likely had no use for Power Armor in the first place. Thus most Human Sized Power armors will most likely originate from Eras after the AoS.

As for your Canon: The Admech HAS Specialist that do know what they are doing. Prime Examples are the Centuria Ordinatus or the Collegia Titanicus, more precisely its somewhat hidden Building Division. Also you dismiss the fact that Adeptus Mechanicus Rituals actually can have "effects" that are borderline magic. Not everybody can unjam your gun just because he said some words. Not everyone can awaken a war machine of mass destruction with the chant of a choir. Also you ignore Belisarius Cawl, the Guy that reinvented Bolt Weapons, introduced a new pattern of Power Armor and brought back mass produced Grav Tanks to the Imperium. Not to mention that he improved the entirety of Astartes creation process.

Also a Catachan, even with such a feat of strength, has nothing on an Scout. You broadling speaking of Initiates now makes me think you are mixing up Aspirants and Neophytes. Where Aspirants have not recieved the gene-seed yet. A Neophyte that is cleared for combat within a Codex Chapter may be still developing some of those Organs yet he does not just have the Betcher's Gland as you said but also 17 other implants excluding the Black Carapace. Amongst those the Biscopea that improves their strength to absurd levels that are beyond normal humans. In addition it is worth mentioning that a human sized Bolter weights more to a 100 pounds than your estimate of 200 pounds or what weapon where you specifically talking about? A Scout btw lifts a few hundred pounds easily, some already a ton. This is no "silly" argument but literally the difference between a "Demi-God" and a Human.

Further down the line your perception of the Armament of the Sororitas is just deeply flawed. You are right that they mostly bring man-portable stuff. Thing is. Heavy bolters are (wo)man portable for them. In fact they have an entire troop category for that called Retributors that can be compared to Astartes Devastators. Equiping a Squad with Heavy Bolters is just regular stuff for them.

For someone that reads on those sides you did miss quite alot. (Little come back regarding me ignoring most codices and novels that stand right next to me on the shelve ;))

@AIRSICK HYDRA

Yes, this game feels horribly slow to me. To a degree where it severely impacts the enjoyment I can pull from it.

I had the best time with it back then when I ramped it to 5 times it regular speed.

I do want to like the game yet I can not ignore the feeling that so many things are wasting my time.

Be it the tremendously slow movements (You can even watch your Grenades in slo-mow wobbling through the air...) or the crafting time that has been introduced for some reason.

They again and again say this is no MMORPG, so why do we need a dedicated MMORPG mechanic like friggin crafting times? Why do we need to crawl over the map? At regular pace I am watching more TV Shows on my second screen than actually playing with input.

What works do you refer to regarding the Scouts? A Scout-Sergeant may see them as bloody recruits yet pretty much anything I remember about them, including their creation within the Codex, makes them far superior to most human Veterans. Not only do they come from some of the worst Worlds that them self may rival worlds like Catachan but they also have to go through the Trials of the Chapter.

Once they are deployed they pretty much rival any regular human in training with the added benefit of haven a vastly superior physiology. I give you that the Fluff at parts is inconsistent yet in such cases we can take the crunch and that crunch gives the Astartes statline to the scouts, not a human one like the Catachans.

And indeed the Adeptus Mechanicus meddles with borderline tech heresy if they create new stuff. The thing is they do. The thing is there are plans to actually introduce new things, it just takes a tremendous time to get sanctioned unless the Lord Commander is backing you. As with any sort of heresy you just need to be powerful enough to get away with it and there are plenty Arch Magi that fill this role. Your example about the rifle stock is actually quite good - because we DID have several new Lasgun Patterns within recent history. (Over some thousand years). As for you saying a Land Raider has no wetware we also do have other accounts that still support that though, the case where a Land Raider was supposed to be angry on Ryns World and killed quite a few Orks on its rampage.

As for the Inquisition. They look the other way simply because there needs to be a big reason to meddle with the AdMech. Especially since they hold their own domains and still keep privileges of the Treaty of Olympus Mons. 

As for the overengineering of the Land Raider: There are some old obscure books that hint at pretty much any Human Colony having a few Titan Legions as their regular home defense force. During the DAoT humanity was absolutly the uncontested ruler of the galaxy. The questions and fluff-implications of such a strong humanity have to be mostly ignored though for that makes it quite hard for other races to find their niche in that time-frame.

But actually the game is a speed run style ARPG too. The fact that we can just stack stats on gear pretty much kills a strategic approach anyway. Currently sitting at account level 4 again and I did not actively use cover once.  You can just bumrush and "speed run" it anyway. Its just slower than it necessarily has to be.

Being slow paced does not automatically translate to being strategical. First it is just slow.

All the "strategic" layer we have so far, that is kiting, is pretty much essential for ANY major ARPG right now unless your gear/build trivializes the current difficulty anyway. Ofc we can stretch it and also claim that standing behind some cover is some elaborate strategy yet I would not go so far.

Imho a better thing would be raising gameplay speed overall and bringing base speed to a more acceptable level so you don't have to sugar coat it in the first place. In regards to many other skills, investing into movement speed just for the sake of not getting bored while actually playing is the wrong solution here.  

Further down the line just get rid of the speed penalty for heavy weapons for it serves no purpose. Heavy weapons do not offer any meaningful increase in power compared to regular weapons that even remotely justifies the pain in the ass crawling.