This is a bit of a negative post but man I had to get this off my chest. My experience with starting off in the late wipe is extremely negative, I managed to get to level 41 from 18 where I stopped playing but the past couple of weeks have been brutal to say the least.
The punisher harvest task probably had something to do with it but man everyone runs good ammo these days. More than half of my deaths is to M80 and the other half is a combination between 855a1, flechettes and some other ammo that makes wearing helmets basically obsolete. I know everyone is going to say "helmets are for scavs" and to that I could not agree more because every PMC I run into will kill me basically instantly.
Dying in many cases just feels so shit because it's always someone who stands still in one place and laser beams you without you ever having a chance to react. Most of the fights where I actually hear people move around is usually squads but when you hear 2/3 sets of footsteps surrounding you and coming from multiple directions and you basically have to guess which direction to point your gun at and pray the person coming from that direction shows first instead of his teammate behind you. By that time if you manage to kill him, his friend is already ready to shoot you in the back or push you when you have to reload.
It seems like high level ammo is much more readily available than high end armors, as the only armors you can really buy for a decent price that aren't locked on flea are only class 4, which does basically nothing at this point. Class 5s that are easily available are garbage like the Korund which has extremely high destructibility and can only take a couple hits before it's zeroed out. Class 6 which is basically mandatory to run if you want any shot at survival, are either too expensive or straight up unavailable.
Personally if you ask me what I prefer, between restricting ammo and restricting armors, I would much rather make it so that ammo is more restricted and armor much more available. Let's face it: besides a few rats who spend 80% of their raid hiding in a dark corner, everyone else prefers longer fights and higher survivability. Getting away with your life seems more rewarding than being denied a kill and wondering if you will ever catch that guy again.
Helmets need to be updated too in my opinion. I feel like helmets should be more easily obtainable and you should be able to tank headshots from fully automatic rifles a bit more frequently and easily than currently. There should still be viable one shot options for sniping but generally, spraying and praying that one bullet is gonna hit seems a bit bad. The only helmets you can count on are the ones that don't take headsets and make you effectively deaf which is considered the perfect trade-off, but honestly for the sake of fun I would rather have a helmet that can save me from an M4 round AND allow me to hear reasonably far. Maybe it's a lot to ask but I think it all comes down to this one thing: we all enjoy the early wipe more than the late wipe and there is a reason for that.
The reason is you don't die in 0,2 seconds before you have a chance to react because everyone basically has to run shitty ammo and as a result of that you can tank an extra few shots which makes fights much more tense and as a result much more fun.
I really hope the devs at some point consider making armors a bit more available and high pen ammo a bit less available so that you don't end up seeing nothing but M80 and 855a1 past a certain point of the wipe
