I'm really enjoying this wipe, tbh. It's not everything I wanted, I was mostly looking forward to the loot table changes which just aren't there but the FIR is honestly amazing. A little background first, I've played since the beta started, I don't enjoy questing, I don't enjoy having everything in the game either, I find the game most fun when I'm struggling to earn money and have to make financial decisions instead of just running end game gear every raid. These are my thoughts on the current state of things…
- FIR Change – I love it. Sure it's frustrating at times but that's what makes it great, when you manage to get out with big ticket items. Used to be I'd kill someone who had amazing gear and I'd sell it on flea and buy my same loadout over and over for efficiency. Now it's more economic to run the slicc plate and altyn since it's hardly worth much to traders, so I actually get to use gear I couldn't justify using before! It makes raids more intense as well instead of only the first 2 minutes being relevant and stressful.
- Audio – I can hardly tell a difference, but I like the audio in this game. Vertical is better now, sure. There's some bugs, fine. I still find stealth plays too difficult because of how loud you are when you're walking slowly, I mean people can hear me ADS from 3 rooms away, what the hell? So I've given up on stealth entirely and just run around big dick style gathering intel and trying to make plays, I do way better now but I miss the stealth element I get in other games. I'd add a way to ADS slowly but quietly and overall adjust volumes to more encourage stealth plays.
- Economy – I still find the economy to be too easy. A bad player can easily make enough in one loot run to run a full end game gear loadout, I wish things were more sparse.
- Looting – I really just can't wait for dynamic loot, because right now I spawn into a raid and instantly feel rushed to get to techlight or whatever, like if I don't instantly bee-line it to the static spawns while disregarding my own safety then I miss out on the mad profitz. I can't wait for loot to be more spread around throughout all of interchange for example so that raids are longer, combat is spread out, fights take place in other areas I've never even seen people near, ect. This is my biggest want in the game, dynamic loot that encourages exploration instead of hoping for the best spawn and sprinting to the statics.
- Cheating / Performance – You deal with what you have to, I haven't found cheaters to be too much of an issue but they definitely are noticeable! Performance is good too on my end at least.
- Miscellanious – There's lots of small detail things that BSG seems to keep low on priority lists that I'd like to see focused on, mostly UI issues. It's whatever they'll get to it but there's a lot of low hanging fruit for the devs to just get over with that would make my experience better.
Overall I'm really happy with this wipe, though still underwhelmed at what actually changed. I can't wait for dynamic loot, and I hope the economy continues to become more difficult and scarce.