u/LucatIel_of_M1rrah

I have accepted the game will never be finished and even if it gets a 1.0 sticker slapped on it the game will never function as Ue5 is simply not an engine capable of making the game work the way it should due to AI actor limitation. Something the STALKER 2 devs learned the hard way as well.

But maybe the game inspires some company with actual funds and a large dev team to make a PvEvE style scav game in an engine that can handle it.

For those that don't know the original vision and prototype was one huge interconnected map with a battle simulation raging across it that you ventured out into. Enemies didn't just spawn 20m around you out of sight they were engaged in the battle with actual objectives across the front. Imagine an RTS layer being played by two CPU commanders and you just ran around in that battle.

With smarter choices in the beginning maybe one day we would have got that game from the devs, but I doubt we ever will.

This sub is easily the most hostile place for any new player and serves solely as a place to encourage new players to keep feeding their kits to sweats, while being fed fantasies like you can beat geared teams with free kits as a random fill. Or that you don't need a Mizzriah, D54 and bubbles, you can use whatever and still win. These are fantasies born of a misunderstanding of the tiers of being "geared" or out of genuine malice to try and keep fresh victims in the ecosystem.

There are basically 4 main tiers of gameplay.

Top tier: Mizzriah's + D54/Bully/DRVVISH 2x Recon three stack with multiple bubbles each.

• Nothing but an equally geared team has any hope of beating this squad. I don't care about that one time you caught 3 of them in a bag and killed them, or that one time you third partied them and cleaned up the last guy who was weak. STOP making excuses, STOP thinking that one time in your 400 hours of gameplay means they can be beat. I have done both of the above but to think its common or expected is beyond coping.

Low tier: Organised 3 stack with purple gear but not running Mizz/D54/Bully/Bubbles or a Recon.

• Will beat the above team once every 100 tries and beat any team below most of the time but can be beat with a decent pick and play. The gulf in power between this team and the above team is orders of magnitude.

Dumpster tier: Most fill teams regardless of gear being run.

• There is a high probability of there being a communication break down, a weak link who has bad gear or someone making a throw play due to no team cohesion. Will lose to basically everything given the right circumstances. Most commonly seen as that team where 1 guy randomly has blue shields when the rest are purple, or 3X blue shields. This is the tier people here post clips of killing thinking that they have killed a "geared squad".

Actual Hell: Random fill free/green sponsored kits.

• Might beat the above team once every now and again. Maybe 1/5 tries if you are a good player. Might beat low tier once every 100 tries and will realistically never beat the top tier.

The gulf in power between these teams is so extreme and most people realistically sit in dumpster tier. When 90% of your player base is just being destroyed in Cryo by the top tier teams they lose the will to play it. Meanwhile the remaining maps are just not engaging enough to hold players long term and are often filled with top teams during the week anyway.

The game NEEDS to protect the dumpster tier and below (the 90%) from the top 9% (low tier) and the 1% (top tier) to ever have any hope of retaining new players. The player base is so small now that level based match making isn't working (not that it ever did), and more and more lobbies are filled by the top tier teams.

• A big part of this is going to be fixing the gulf between taking random stuff and taking the best stuff. The Mizz needs to be properly nerfed. Revert the fire rate buff. Base miz without slick mags is as strong as the gun needs to be. Remove bubbles. They are toxic for gameplay and turn every fight into a cqb stat check of do you have a Miz or not. They are honestly the most destructive thing to gameplay along with the Recon buffs and invalidate any ranged play beyond 20m. D54 and Bully are the kings and other things need to be made viable (like the magnum getting a nice buff into viability).
• Recon needs to be nerfed. Being able to find weaker teams anywhere on the map is super toxic for gameplay. Her ult should probably alert you to a player but not show what tier of shields they have and only indicate they are a player after being hit by 2 or even 3 consecutive pulses.
• The game needed SBMM at launch and still does. This season is a wash. All the new players tried the game, got dumpstered by sweats and quit. Next season do another free week, advertise SBMM and see how much better retention is when you don't have turbo sweats farming the noobs. To everyone saying they were in protected lobbies, they were not for long. In random fills I got matched with brand new players (told me on mic) who didn't even know how to heal at the start of the season and was killing lobbies filled with them.
• IF the player base grows implementing high stakes versions of the base maps (Like Night Marsh) and attaching a gear ante is a way to create modes for the turbo sweats to play without destroying the rest of the game.

Obligatory:

• I am not skill issued when I gear up with the boys I roll over lobbies.
• It's possible to complain about something while also being good at the thing.
• If you don't see this as a problem you are likely in the top tier or more likely low tier but think you are top tier, and just want to keep pub stomping and don't care the game has 0 new blood.
• Saying, "just adapt", "its fine as it is", "git gud", "skill issue", has gotten us to where we are today. 0 new players, back to 10K concurrent max 2 weeks into a new season. At some point you must realise you can't just keep gate keeping the game.

Just played a match where a full purple murder squad basically in end of season gear killed every team on Perimeter. Our third survived them jumping us and hid. When he came back to rez us we still had out full kits minus blue meds.

The season is less than 24 hrs old and we have murder squads so kitted they don't even feel the need to take blue backpacks or shields or even green meds, roaming around on perimeter looking for teams to farm.

They extracted just before final to ensure no one made it out.

Was fun while it lasted I guess. I was hoping for at least a week maybe 3 days at worst, not less than 24 hrs before it turned back into end of season state. Good luck to all the new players lol.

Pinwheel is basically Dire Marsh Lockdown or Perimeter Signal Intercept but it has a 100% spawn chance and rewards 10X the amount of loot. It's just a map event that's always there.

Outside of early season farming tier 0/1 mats that only spawn on dire or Perimeter there is 0 reason to ever play these maps. There isn't even that high of a chance the events spawn and when they do they reward the equivalent of one box from one wing of Pinwheel.

Season 2 needs to continue to make Perimeter and Dire into actual maps people run by choice. This means:

• More events with more rewards.
• More threatening enemies (hinted at possibly being a thing on Night Dire)
• More loot at the POI's.

Beyond week 1 and 2 running exclusively Outpost on weekdays and then Cryo on weekends is pretty grim in terms of variety.

Maybe Bungie is making a "high stakes" queue which will be the night versions of each map, which would be sick, but the game needs this now not 3 seasons from now.

Prior to last patch every single game was on foreign servers as an OCE player. Every queue was 10m and resulted in being on the Asia server (moderately bad ping) or the USA server (terrible ping), had a guy from middle East in one game as well. It just always wanted you to be against players of your level, server be damned.

After the most recent patch most matches are on OCE server BUT you are against people of any season rank and the server is never full. Most games have 1 or 2 other teams in them max. Had one Outpost run with 1 other team and 0 Rooks spawned. It was basically PVE.

This has confirmed some things. The games maps do not function well with the current number of teams. Outpost with 3 teams feels like an extraction shooter not TDM with spawn rushing 30 seconds in. You feel like you can actually get around the map and get stuff done without the need to spawn rush and clear the map to feel safe.

Perimeter with 2-3 teams feels a little lifeless and Dire with 2-3 teams feels empty. Also as much as people don't want to hear it the games PVE is not even close to engaging enough for a PVE mode without heaps of new enemies.

For the more "casual" players, games with only 3 teams total on Outpost and 4 on the other maps feels great. You can hit your first POI and not be in immediate danger of being spawn rushed.

Something for Bungie to consider for next season.

Every match is on foreign servers. Wait times are 10 minutes. Every match is nothing but purple shield death squads running around playing TDM. Outside of free kit que the game is basically unplayable. Any squad not in full gear just gets rolled over in milliseconds. Even if you think you are geared you are not when the gold mod ARES gangs turn up and 1 shot everyone while spamming 40 nades on perimeter.