I'm a lowly level 28, on my first wipe, so take this all with a grain of salt, but I'm basing my opinion off the hours of streams I've watched, discussions here, and discussions on discords for some of the bigger streamers. I've gotten both positive and negative feedback on this so I will start with a big caveat: I know the AI is broken and needs to be fixed for this to work.
Problem: Right around now, there is a large chunk of the player base that has hit their endgame. They have the rubles, they have the kits, they have the traders maxed out and their hideout is near completion. What's left? Only PVP really. Exit camping increases. It becomes very difficult to play some maps for quests (i know, tarkov) but I hear a lot of complaints about "nothing left to do cept kill timmys".
Suggested proposals: New maps, arena, more late-game quests. I think all of these things are great, but I have another thought…
Challenge Mode.
Whats this?
Imagine you load into Customs (or any other map, for that matter) and you are faced with the following:
- No Player Scavs
- Every normal Scav is a Raider/Rogue (minus their wallhacks and aimbots)
- Each map guarantees 2 boss spawns, but with more footsoldiers
- Only 6-8 total PMC's
- AI reacts to gunfire within a larger radius and responds
- Increases difficulty of gunfights, increases fear of death
- All enemy AI is buffed by x% (maybe 10-20%?) to increase fight difficulty
- Every map has a chance for a rare Boss spawn, where two bosses show up together with their footsoldiers
- PMC's have to be solo or duo, no 3-4-5 stacks – and you don't spawn with your Duo partner.
- Death puts your PMC on a 30-minute cooldown
- Loot across the map is increased in value, aka, higher likelihood of rare spawns
This sounds like an absolute nightmare to me, but some of the vets I chatted with thought this could be a fun challenge mode. One suggested this should be an offline mode to run with friends with no risk, which could also be a good idea.
