Stonewood is a disaster zone at this point…

I have read some things in here about traders in Stonewood. I generally don't participate in those conversations because I just don't do much in that zone.

This last week I decided to fire up a 2nd account and redo at least the Stonewood Storm Shield Defenses and hopefully Stonewood Endurance. I was curious how much the game changed at low level compared to when I leveled up a few years back. (since then, exp curve got nerfed, evo mats got buffed, husks got nerfed, etc)

I made it to PL 20 and unlocked Stonewood Endurance so far. I played every game public. Dozen Play With Others missions and the rest I just picked the mission or map I needed for the main questline.

What was cool is the number of players. Every group had people in it, at least on NAE server. Most of the time the group filled up.

What sucked was there were people wanting to trade in every single mission. Worse, most of the time they leave after they finish trading with another player. For some reason Rescue the Survivor missions seemed to be the exception. Everybody stuck around to the end for those, which confuses me, but whatever.

Traders did attempt to box me a couple times, but most of the time it was people on the mic asking to trade.

I also opened up my Storm Shield Defense missions to public, and waited for people to join. I think across the 10 I completed I had 2 players total join and actually help/stay to the end. The groups filled, but again everyone was asking to trade. Sometimes they traded with each other for 5-15 minutes, but then just bailed when they were done.

I got the impression that if you were a legit new player, and hadn't watched any of the crap on YouTube in regard, that you would assume trading was a thing and probably just go along with it. Seemed like folks of all ages were getting wrapped up in it judging by the voices on the mics.

Overall this was depressing. When I leveled up your SSD group was pretty much guaranteed to fill, and everyone that showed up was going all out to brawl with the husks. If you were at a transition point between zones, that group would stick together and walk you into the new zone and complete the rocket and the first SSD for you. I had complete strangers build my Plankerton 1, Canney 1 and Twine 1. I didn't even ask them to do it, they just… did.

I dunno, It is hard for me to imagine being a genuine new player and walking into this mess. I also have no idea what to do about it. I suppose on the bright side I have some 130's with crappy perks that do silly amounts of damage now. I think the way zones effect weapon damage got tinkered with. Seeing about 300%+ more damage with a 130 than what I get with level appropriate weapons. That ain't helping things either…