{"data":{"items":[{"id":"b448a9c8-1324-4794-8229-726efda8ff8f","excerpt":"15 Changes ARC Raiders Needs for Long-Term Player Retention — Feedback From a Day-One Player — As someone who has been playing ARC Raiders since the beginning, I wanted to put together a list of changes, ideas, and suggestions that I believe could significantly improve the game, increase player retention, and make the ","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/ArcRaiders/comments/1vkdjjx/15_changes_arc_raiders_needs_for_longterm_player/","role":"pain","weight":1.5544517,"occurredAt":"2026-08-10T06:58:59.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"ArcRaiders","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.6150148,"sentiment":-0.5,"confidence":0.9625,"matchedPatterns":["frustrating","missing_feature","manual_process"],"statement":"If you guys agree or think I’m missing anything, please leave a comment and upvote so we can get this in front of to u/embark These are not meant as complaints for the sake of complaining.","title":"15 Changes ARC Raiders Needs for Long-Term Player Retention — Feedback From a Day-One Player","body":"As someone who has been playing ARC Raiders since the beginning, I wanted to put together a list of changes, ideas, and suggestions that I believe could significantly improve the game, increase player retention, and make the overall experience more rewarding. If you guys agree or think I’m missing anything, please leave a comment and upvote so we can get this in front of to u/embark \n\nThese are not meant as complaints for the sake of complaining. They are suggestions from the perspective of a long-time player who wants to see the game succeed and continue growing.\n\n**1. Saved Loadout Presets**\n\nPlayers should be able to create and save multiple loadout presets that can be equipped with one click.\n\nA significant amount of time is currently spent rebuilding the same kits, selecting the same consumables, and managing equipment between raids. Saved presets would reduce unnecessary menu time and allow players to spend more time actually playing the game.\n\n**2. Completely Overhaul Special Game Modes**\n\nSpecial game modes need to feel substantially different from the standard gameplay loop rather than simply being slight variations of normal raids.\n\nThey should have unique objectives, mechanics, rewards, enemies, and dramatically improved loot.\n\nIf a mode is intended to feel special, its rewards should reflect that.\n\n**3. Introduce Genuinely New Game Modes**\n\nARC Raiders has an excellent foundation for many different types of modes. Embark should experiment much more aggressively with that potential.\n\nPossible examples include:\n\n* Horde survival\n* Wave-based/ round based special survival modes\n* Territory-control modes\n* Boss hunts\n* Large-scale PvE-only raids\n* Matriarch and Queen raid encounters\n* High-risk extraction modes with an entry fee or buy-in\n\nLarge PvE encounters could be especially exciting. Imagine dedicated raids against Matriarchs, Queens, or entirely new ARC bosses where coordinated squads fight for significantly larger quantities of cores, rare materials, and exclusive loot.\n\nA high-risk mode with an expensive buy-in could also create an entirely new endgame loop, provided the potential rewards are equally substantial.\n\n**4. More Dynamic Events During Raids**\n\nIndividual raids need more unpredictability.\n\nPlayers should occasionally encounter unexpected bosses, ARC invasions, roaming convoys, rare objectives, emergency events, environmental changes, or map-altering events.\n\nThe goal should be to make players feel like almost anything could happen when they enter a raid rather than knowing exactly how the match will unfold before it begins.\n\n**5. Dramatically Improve Key-Room Loot**\n\nKey rooms need a major loot overhaul.\n\nAt the moment, keys often do not feel valuable enough to justify finding them, carrying them, or going out of the way to use them. This is especially disappointing during higher-risk raids.\n\nKey rooms should be extremely rewarding in normal raids and exceptionally rewarding during night raids.\n\nFinding a key should create excitement. Opening the corresponding room should feel like a meaningful moment.\n\nThe reward needs to justify the rarity, risk, and effort involved.\n\n**6. Create a Much Deeper Endgame**\n\nARC Raiders needs stronger long-term goals for players who have already accumulated gear, resources, and experience.\n\nPossible additions could include:\n\n* Extremely rare gear\n* Ultra-rare trinkets\n* Collectibles worth 100,000, 500,000, or even 1,000,000 credits\n* Equipment tiers above Legendary\n* Difficult endgame missions\n* Prestige challenges\n* Rare boss rewards\n* Long-term account progression\n* Exclusive cosmetic or equipment rewards\n\nFinding an extraordinarily rare item should create one of those memorable moments where a player immediately wants to show their friends what they found.\n\nARC Raiders needs more of those moments.\n\n**7. Improve Inventory, Crafting, and Stash Management**\n\nInventory management should become much faster and more intuitive.\n\nUseful additions would include:\n\n* Quick equip\n* Auto-sort\n* Favorite or protected items\n* Better equipment comparison\n* Improved filtering\n* Faster stash organization\n* Reduced menu friction\n\nMost importantly, players should have the option for crafted equipment to go directly into their currently equipped loadout.\n\nIf full loadout presets cannot be implemented immediately, this should be considered a minimum quality-of-life improvement.\n\nCurrently, too much time is lost crafting an item, navigating back into the stash, locating it, and equipping it manually.\n\n**8. More Maps and More Meaningful Map Variations**\n\nThe game needs more maps, but existing maps should also have more meaningful variations.\n\nMap conditions should not simply rotate through a predetermined loop. Especially during peak play hours, players should have access to more variety.\n\nDifferent variants could change:\n\n* Enemy populations\n* ARC density\n* ARC types\n* Objectives\n* Environmental hazards\n* Loot tables\n* Boss frequency\n* Extraction strategies\n* High-value locations\n\nCertain events also need balancing.\n\nFor example, Bird City currently does not feel rewarding enough relative to the additional danger. If the event is going to significantly increase the number of flying ARC enemies, the loot needs to justify that risk.\n\nAlternatively, the amount of flying ARC should be reduced.\n\nTrying to loot rooftops while constantly being attacked by flying ARC often creates frustration rather than interesting difficulty.\n\n**9. More Meaningful Progression**\n\nProgression should increasingly change the way players approach the game rather than simply increasing numerical stats.\n\nPlayers should unlock meaningful build options, specialization paths, equipment interactions, and abilities that create genuinely different playstyles.\n\nA strong progression system should make a player at 100 hours feel mechanically different from that same player at 20 hours.\n\n**10. More Cooperative PvE Content**\n\nARC Raiders should lean further into challenging cooperative PvE.\n\nThere is enormous potential for encounters that require:\n\n* Defined squad roles\n* Coordination\n* Positioning\n* Specialized equipment\n* Communication\n* Different builds\n* Team strategy\n\nDifficult PvE content could give experienced squads something substantial to master beyond the standard extraction loop.\n\n**11. Regular Limited-Time Modes and Events**\n\nLimited-time events should happen frequently enough to give players consistent reasons to return.\n\nThese events should introduce unusual mechanics, valuable rewards, unique objectives, or temporary changes to existing maps.\n\nThe game needs recurring moments where players think, “I need to log in and try this.”\n\n**12. Make High-End Loot Truly Exciting**\n\nLoot needs a stronger sense of identity and excitement.\n\nThere should be more:\n\n* Unique weapons\n* Rare weapon configurations\n* Chase items\n* High-value cosmetics\n* Rare attachments\n* Powerful pre-built weapons\n* Exceptional boss drops\n* Truly valuable containers and reward locations\n\nFor example, Launch Tower loot currently does not always feel appropriate for the amount of risk and effort involved.\n\nFinding something like a Stitcher II is not particularly exciting when players can already craft comparable equipment themselves.\n\nInstead, imagine occasionally finding something like a fully upgraded Bobcat IV with a Kinetic Converter already installed.\n\nThat would immediately make players excited to search high-value areas.\n\nHigh-risk locations need rewards players cannot easily reproduce at their workbench.\n\n**13. Better Social Features**\n\nARC Raiders would benefit considerably from stronger social systems.\n\nPossible additions include:\n\n* Improved squad finding\n* Looking-for-group tools\n* Clans\n* Persistent groups\n* Social hubs\n* Better recent-player functionality\n* Easier ways to stay grouped with good teammates\n* Clan-based challenges or progression\n\nExtraction games become substantially more engaging when players can build communities within them.\n\n**14. Strong Anti-Cheat With Zero-Tolerance Enforcement**\n\nCheating needs to be addressed aggressively.\n\nIn any competitive game, cheating is frustrating. In an extraction game, however, the consequences are significantly worse because players can lose equipment and resources they spent considerable time acquiring.\n\nStrong detection, rapid enforcement, and a clear zero-tolerance policy are essential for maintaining player trust.\n\n**15. Make Seasonal Resets Significantly More Rewarding**\n\nSeasonal progression can be useful for refreshing the economy and giving players another reason to return, but resets need to feel rewarding rather than punitive.\n\nAt the moment, I personally see very little incentive to voluntarily reset my progression.\n\nFor a reset system to work, the permanent rewards need to be substantial.\n\nPlayers should feel like they are trading temporary progression for something meaningful and lasting.\n\nPossible incentives could include:\n\n* Permanent account bonuses\n* Exclusive cosmetics\n* Permanent stash improvements\n* Unique titles or badges\n* Prestige progression\n* Special weapon skins\n* Additional character customization\n* Permanent crafting benefits\n* Exclusive rewards unavailable elsewhere\n\nA player should look at the reset rewards and seriously consider whether the permanent benefits are worth starting over.\n\nRight now, that incentive does not feel strong enough.\n\n**The Three Highest-Impact Changes**\n\nIf I had to narrow everything down to three priorities, they would be:\n\n**1. Saved loadout presets and significantly better quality-of-life systems**\n\nReduce downtime and get players back into raids faster.\n\n**2. Dramatically better game modes and events**\n\nGive players genuinely different experiences instead of repeatedly sending them through slight variations of the same gameplay loop.\n\n**3. A much deeper and more rewarding endgame**\n\nGive experienced players rare items, difficult challenges, meaningful progression, and long-term objectives worth pursuing.\n\nUltimately, ARC Raiders needs to solve two problems at the same time:\n\n**“How do we reduce the frustrating downtime between raids?”**\n\nand\n\n**“Why should someone still be excited to play after 50, 100, 500, or even 1,000 hours?”**\n\nIf Embark can answer both of those questions effectively, I think ARC Raiders has the foundation to remain compelling for a very long time.\n\n","offTopic":false},{"id":"5d1a60c8-72f5-49e8-b7c1-4ec214685d00","excerpt":"After almost a year, this is why I can no longer recommend Broken Arrow — TL;DR:\n\nBroken Arrow has an excellent core concept, but after more than a year I believe its multiplayer foundation is still fundamentally unfinished. New players are poorly taught, casuals and competitive players share one queue, solos face coor","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/BrokenArrowTheGame/comments/1vo95a6/after_almost_a_year_this_is_why_i_can_no_longer/","role":"demand","weight":1.5014555,"occurredAt":"2026-08-14T14:41:07.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"BrokenArrowTheGame","intent":"tool_discovery","painScore":0.62935853,"sentiment":-0.52882206,"confidence":0.92150104,"matchedPatterns":["looking_for","terrible","frustrating","missing_feature"],"statement":"The lack of a casual queue puts beginners into competitive games.","title":"After almost a year, this is why I can no longer recommend Broken Arrow","body":"TL;DR:\n\nBroken Arrow has an excellent core concept, but after more than a year I believe its multiplayer foundation is still fundamentally unfinished. New players are poorly taught, casuals and competitive players share one queue, solos face coordinated 5 stacks, visible ELO is attached to an environment that cannot consistently protect competitive integrity, matchmaking prioritizes getting games started over match quality, networking remains inconsistent, and the objective/scoring systems create conflicting incentives. For a game that asked around €50 as a full realease, I expected these foundational systems to be much further along.\n\nMy frustration with Broken Arrow is not about one patch, one unit, one loss or one bad match. It is the accumulation of many problems I have experienced over a long period of time, and many of the of the problems I want to discuss are connected to each other. Reducing all of that to a few sentences would miss the point of why I've reached this conclusion.\n\nThis is going to be a very long post. I know that, and I don't expect everyone to read it.\n\nIf you don't want to read something this long, that's completely fine don't. I'm not asking anyone to spend their time on it if they aren't interested.\n\nI also want to be transparent about the way this post was written. **English is not my native language, and I used AI to help me organize my thoughts and formulate them into clear, understandable English.** The experiences, opinions, arguments and ideas expressed here are mine; AI helped me structure and communicate them more effectively.\n\nThere was simply too much I wanted to say, and I wanted to express it as accurately and understandably as possible rather than allowing language or organization to get in the way of the actual discussion.\n\nMy intention with this post isn't just to complain. I've tried to think seriously about the problems I see, why I think they happen, how they affect different types of players, and where possible, what alternatives might be worth considering or testing.\n\nI hope that by taking the time to think about all of this, organize it properly and communicate it as clearly as I can, I have been able to contribute and serve the community and the game in the best way I personally can.\n\nI'm not expecting everyone to agree with me either. These are my experiences, observations and opinions. I'm perfectly open to people seeing things differently, challenging my reasoning or proposing better solutions.\n\nFor anyone who does want to read it, this is my attempt to explain as honestly and comprehensively as I can why, despite still seeing enormous potential in Broken Arrow, I can no longer recommend the game in its current state.\n\n# 1. €50 full release, but too many foundations still feel unfinished\n\nI want to start with the price because I think price changes the standard by which a product should be judged.\n\nBroken Arrow asked around €50 at launch.\n\nFor the first commercial game from a studio without a long established track record, that is an extremely confident asking price. It puts the game firmly into premium-price territory and naturally creates premium expectations.\n\nI don't expect perfection for €50.\n\nI don't expect every balance problem to be solved.\n\nI don't expect zero bugs.\n\nBut I do expect the basic foundations to be mature enough that the game can consistently deliver the experience it is selling.\n\nThat means stable performance, reliable networking, sensible matchmaking, decent social functionality, proper onboarding, a clear competitive structure, effective safeguards against cheating, protection of match quality and a coherent multiplayer ruleset.\n\nThose are not luxury features in a multiplayer-focused 5v5 wargame.\n\nThey are the foundation.\n\nThere are studios in this general genre that have spent many years and multiple titles building expertise in large-scale RTS/wargame design. Broken Arrow entered the market as Steel Balalaika's first game and still had the confidence to ask close to €50.\n\nThere is nothing inherently wrong with a first-time studio charging €50 if the product justifies it.\n\nMy problem is that, looking at how many fundamental systems still feel unfinished or are still being experimented with, **it often feels like I bought into Early Access without being told I was buying Early Access.**\n\nHad Broken Arrow launched explicitly as Early Access, I would judge many of these problems differently.\n\nEarly Access communicates:\n\n\"***The core game exists, but important systems are still being developed. Expect experimentation, instability and major structural changes***.\"\n\nFull release communicates something else:\n\n\"***The product is ready***.\"\n\nFor me, Broken Arrow was not ready enough in the areas that matter most to justify that message.\n\n# 2. One matchmaking queue trying to serve completely different players\n\nMy biggest problem with Broken Arrow is probably its matchmaking philosophy.\n\nQuick Match is effectively trying to be too many things at once.\n\nYou have complete beginners, casual players, experienced players, competitive players, solos, duos, smaller premades and coordinated five-player teams.\n\nThey are all pushed into essentially the same matchmaking ecosystem.\n\nThe result is predictable chaos.\n\nNew players get thrown into games with veterans.\n\nSolo players can face coordinated premades.\n\nCasual players looking for a relaxed experience or wanting to experiment are sharing the same environment with people treating every match as serious ranked competition.\n\nSomeone testing a new deck can affect the ELO of teammates who care deeply about their rating.\n\nA coordinated team can enter with predetermined deck compositions, lanes, responsibilities and voice communication while five solo players may spend the opening minutes just figuring out who is going where.\n\nThen a visible rating number is placed on top of all of this as though every participant is competing under equivalent conditions.\n\nThey aren't.\n\nThis creates frustration from every direction.\n\nThe casual player gets shouted at because someone else cares about ELO.\n\nThe beginner gets destroyed before understanding why.\n\nThe solo player feels punished for not joining a premade.\n\nThe competitive player gets frustrated because matchmaking has given them teammates with completely different intentions.\n\nAnd the coordinated team is simply using the tools the game gives them, so blaming those players personally doesn't solve anything either.\n\nThe system itself creates the conflict.\n\nInstead of creating environments for different types of players, the game throws everyone together and expects matchmaking to reconcile fundamentally different expectations.\n\nIt doesn't.\n\n# 3. Solo players and coordinated 5-stacks should not share the same competitive measurement\n\nA coordinated five-player team using voice communication has a structural advantage over five strangers.\n\nThat isn't an insult. That's simply what coordination does.\n\nA premade can coordinate deck composition, reconnaissance coverage, lanes, air defense, artillery, air support, target priority, reinforcement timing and combined pushes.\n\nFive strangers might not even speak the same language.\n\nThey might have three players wanting the same lane.\n\nThey may have no idea what their teammates are bringing until the game starts.\n\nOne player might barely communicate.\n\nAnother might disconnect.\n\nAnother might be playing their fifth multiplayer game.\n\nThose are fundamentally different competitive environments.\n\nYet Broken Arrow attaches the same public ELO system to both.\n\nSo what exactly is that number measuring?\n\nIndividual skill?\n\nTeam coordination?\n\nWho regularly plays with stronger friends?\n\nWho primarily solo queues?\n\nWho received better random teammates?\n\nWho suffered fewer disconnects?\n\nThese variables contaminate what is supposedly an individual rating.\n\nI have absolutely nothing against people playing with friends. People should be able to play together.\n\nThe solution isn't banning groups.\n\nThe solution is giving different forms of competition their own legitimate environments.\n\nI would much rather see:\n\n**Solo/duo ranked → individual competitive ladder**\n\n**5v5 team ranked → coordinated team competition**\n\nThat allows both to exist without pretending they measure the same thing.\n\nIf Broken Arrow wants visible ELO to matter, the environment feeding results into it needs enough competitive integrity for that number to mean something.\n\n# 4. Premades can distort what individual ELO represents\n\nThere is another consequence of mixing solos and premades: **ratings can become distorted by the environment in which they were earned.**\n\nI constantly see players complain:\n\n\"My teammates are terrible.\"\n\n\"I can't climb because of randoms.\"\n\nAnd I understand that frustration. One weak lane can have a large impact in a 5v5 game.\n\nBut the common response is then:\n\n\"I'll find reliable players so I don't have to deal with random teammates.\"\n\nThat is completely rational if grouping protects your ELO and reduces matchmaking uncertainty.\n\nThe problem is what happens when everyone starts doing it.\n\nThe cycle can become:\n\n**Solo queue feels unreliable → players blame teammates → they form premades → coordinated groups win more consistently → individual ELO rises → less time is spent developing the skills needed to perform with strangers → solo queue becomes less attractive → more people form premades.**\n\nEveryone wants better teammates, but if everyone's solution is to avoid random teammates, **who is actually becoming the better teammate everyone says they want?**\n\nPlaying well with strangers requires skills too: adapting to unfamiliar decks, recognizing what the team needs, supporting another lane, communicating quickly, changing your plan and performing without predetermined coordination.\n\nA fixed 5-stack tests something different. You know your teammates, can use voice communication, build complementary decks, establish roles and rely on people whose behavior you already know.\n\nThat is legitimate **team skill**, but it isn't identical to individual adaptability.\n\nImagine two players displaying 2200 ELO.\n\nOne reached it primarily through solo play.\n\nThe other may perform considerably lower in a random environment but regularly plays with a strong coordinated group and also reaches 2200.\n\nBoth ratings reflect real wins, but they were produced under very different conditions.\n\nNow put the second player back into random matchmaking. Their performance may no longer match what teammates expect from somebody displaying 2200 ELO.\n\nThen someone thinks:\n\n\"How is this person 2200?\"\n\nThey blame random teammates and decide to form a premade themselves.\n\nThe cycle repeats.\n\nThis can also hurt solo queue itself. If many experienced, communicative players escape random matchmaking by forming groups, the remaining solo pool can become less reliable, which then appears to prove the original belief that solo queue is terrible.\n\nIndividually, grouping is rational.\n\nCollectively, it can make the problem worse.\n\nPeople sometimes call this ELO inflation, although what I mean more precisely is **rating distortion**. The results are real, but the same rating may represent performance produced under radically different competitive conditions.\n\nI'm not saying everyone in a premade is carried. Some groups consist entirely of excellent players, and playing with better teammates can genuinely teach you a lot.\n\nMy criticism is that **individual performance and coordinated team performance are being represented by the same individual metric.**\n\nSeparating solo/duo rating from 5v5 team competition would give both achievements clearer meaning.\n\nA high solo/duo rating tells me:\n\n\"This player consistently performs at this level under significant teammate uncertainty.\"\n\nA highly ranked 5v5 team tells me:\n\n\"These players are exceptionally good as a coordinated unit.\"\n\nBoth matter.\n\nThey simply measure different forms of skill.\n\n# 5. The game should have","offTopic":false},{"id":"9ed54dbd-6313-4090-9fe2-134be4902ffa","excerpt":"What 15,649 TFD Comments Say About Why Players Leave, Return, and Leave Again — I analyzed a corpus of 15,649 YouTube comments and replies from 13 videos discussing the state of The First Descendant, why players stopped or reduced their playtime, and how opinions changed over the game's lifecycle.\n\nThe dataset contains","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/TheFirstDescendant/comments/1vsr6qd/what_15649_tfd_comments_say_about_why_players/","role":"pain","weight":1.4704574,"occurredAt":"2026-08-19T16:21:56.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"TheFirstDescendant","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.48156914,"sentiment":-0.33333334,"confidence":0.9925,"matchedPatterns":["how_can_i","i_hate","frustrating","missing_feature","still_cannot"],"statement":"They may have similar account strength and still no longer share the same reason to run the same content.","title":"What 15,649 TFD Comments Say About Why Players Leave, Return, and Leave Again","body":"I analyzed a corpus of 15,649 YouTube comments and replies from 13 videos discussing the state of The First Descendant, why players stopped or reduced their playtime, and how opinions changed over the game's lifecycle.\n\nThe dataset contains 9,341 top-level comments from 8,184 unique authors and spans discussions from TFD's launch period through 2026. The analysis was compiled on August 17, 2026.\n\nTL;DR\n\n* **Repetition is the strongest recurring signal**, appearing across all 13 videos — but the deeper complaint is not simply “too much grind.” It is repetition without enough experiential variation.\n* **Acquiring a build and having something meaningful to do with it are separate problems.** Many comments move from “How do I get this?” to “What do I use this for?”\n* **More content does not automatically mean more gameplay variety.** Different rewards, regions or modifiers can still ask players to solve essentially the same gameplay problem.\n* **A meaningful portion of disengagement looks like dormancy rather than rejection.** Many former players still like the combat, characters or foundation and remain willing to return.\n* My overall interpretation: **TFD has many answers — Descendants, weapons and builds — but not enough different questions for those answers to stay meaningful.**\n\n**## 1. Repetition is the strongest signal, but “too much grind” is an incomplete diagnosis**\n\nThe broadest recurring complaint in the corpus is repetition. Conservative heuristic coding tagged 1,539 of 9,341 top-level comments, or about 16.5%, for repetition/grind. More importantly, the signal appears strongly enough in all 13 of 13 videos.\n\nThat sounds like a simple result: players dislike grinding.\n\nBut the comments are more complicated than that.\n\nA number of people explicitly compare TFD with Warframe, Destiny, Diablo, Vermintide, Darktide, and other games built around repeating activities for long periods of time. Some of them have hundreds or thousands of hours in those games. Their argument is not necessarily that repetition itself is unacceptable.\n\nThe distinction I kept seeing was closer to:\n\n**Repetition is not automatically the problem. Repetition without enough experiential variation is.**\n\nA grind can remain enjoyable when repetition creates mastery, different situations, social interaction, meaningful intermediate goals, or enough moment-to-moment variation that individual runs do not collapse into autopilot.\n\nA bad grind has the opposite effect: the player's main objective becomes reducing the number of times they have to play the activity.\n\nThis also helps explain why complaints about “grind” can refer to several different things at once:\n\n1. The time cost is too high.\n2. RNG makes the time cost feel effectively uncapped.\n3. The repeated activity itself is not enjoyable enough.\n4. After the grind is finished, the reward does not unlock a sufficiently different reason to play.\n\nThose are different problems even though players may use the same word for all four.\n\nThat is why simply improving drop rates can make sentiment noticeably better without necessarily solving the deeper issue. A higher drop rate reduces the amount of repetition required. It does not automatically make the underlying activity something a player wants to return to after the reward has been obtained.\n\nThe distinction matters because a tolerable grind and a good grind are not the same thing.\n\nA tolerable grind minimizes how much repetition the player must endure.\n\nA good grind can make the repeated experience enjoyable enough that minimizing it is no longer the player's only goal.\n\n**## 2. Acquisition and utilization are two different problems**\n\nOne of the clearest patterns across the videos is that burnout can happen at two separate stages of progression.\n\nBefore completing a build, the player asks questions such as:\n\n\\- How do I obtain this Descendant or weapon?  \n\\- Where do I farm the materials?  \n\\- How many Catalysts, rerolls, duplicates or other resources do I need?  \n\\- How long will the process take?  \n\\- How much RNG stands between me and the thing I want?\n\nThose are acquisition questions.\n\nBut after the build is complete, another group of questions starts appearing:\n\n\\- What do I actually use this for?  \n\\- Where does the completed build matter?  \n\\- What different experience does this character enable?  \n\\- Why should I build another weapon or Descendant if most activities are solved in roughly the same way?  \n\\- I finished the farm. What is the next reason to play?\n\nThose are utilization questions.\n\nThat distinction is important because a game can make major improvements to acquisition while leaving utilization relatively unchanged.\n\nRecent comments in the corpus do acknowledge that some farming friction, pity systems, quality-of-life features and new-player progression have improved over time. That matters. The research does not support saying that TFD simply “never fixed anything.”\n\nBut friction fixes and motivation fixes are different kinds of work.\n\nA friction fix asks:\n\n**“How do we make this less frustrating to do?”**\n\nA motivation fix asks:\n\n**“Why does the player want to do this in the first place?”**\n\nMaking an item easier to obtain can improve the first question while having little effect on the second.\n\nThis is also why I think “TFD needs more endgame” is too vague by itself.\n\nAn endgame activity can exist on the menu and still fail to solve the utilization problem if it is primarily a harder version of an existing loop, or if its main purpose is to unlock yet another progression layer.\n\nThe important question is not only whether endgame content exists.\n\nIt is whether finishing a build changes the kinds of experiences available to the player.\n\n**## 3. “Nothing to do” usually does not mean the menu is empty**\n\nOne of the easiest phrases to misread in the corpus is “there is nothing to do.”\n\nTaken literally, it makes little sense. TFD contains missions, bosses, farming routes, progression systems, weapons, Descendants, seasonal objectives and various things that can still be completed.\n\nBut when those comments are read in context, “nothing to do” often means something closer to:\n\n**“There is nothing I actively want to do once I no longer need the reward.”**\n\nThat is a difference between **content availability** and **content desirability**.\n\nA player can still have:\n\n\\- weapons that are not fully upgraded  \n\\- Descendants they have not farmed  \n\\- medals or titles they have not earned  \n\\- records they have not completed  \n\\- resources they could continue accumulating  \n\\- progression systems that are not technically finished\n\nand still feel that they have “nothing to do” if completing those remaining goals requires repeating activities they no longer enjoy.\n\nCompletion percentage is therefore not a complete measure of perceived content depth.\n\nA game can have a very large checklist while still feeling narrow if most of that checklist is completed through the same gameplay language.\n\nThis is also how apparently contradictory comments such as “the combat is fun” and “the game is boring” can both be true.\n\nA player can enjoy shooting, movement, grappling, skill effects, animations and character fantasy at the scale of seconds while becoming tired of the same routes, spawns, objectives, optimization logic and reward structure at the scale of hours or months.\n\nMoment-to-moment gameplay and session-to-session structure are different layers.\n\nThat distinction becomes especially important in a live-service game because it helps explain why people can leave while still saying that the foundation itself is good.\n\n**## 4. More content is not necessarily more kinds of gameplay**\n\nAnother recurring disagreement is whether TFD actually lacks content.\n\nOn one side, the game clearly has more missions, bosses, systems, regions, weapons and Descendants than it did at launch.\n\nOn the other side, people continue describing the experience as repetitive.\n\nThose statements do not necessarily contradict each other.\n\nThe more useful question may be:\n\n**How many genuinely distinct activity identities does TFD have?**\n\nImagine an update that adds a new region, several weapons, another progression system, one boss and a new Descendant.\n\nThe quantity of content has objectively increased.\n\nBut if all of those additions ultimately feed the same loop:\n\nfarm faster  \n→ build stronger  \n→ clear faster  \n→ farm the next thing\n\nthen experiential breadth may increase much less than content quantity.\n\nSeveral comments describe activities with different names, modifiers or rewards as still feeling like variations of familiar patterns: linear speed-running, wave clearing, AoE spam, boss nuking, repeating a room or route, or “old content with something added.”\n\nThis is not an argument that those additions have zero value.\n\nIt is an argument that **content cadence** and **experience cadence** are different.\n\nContent cadence asks how often the game adds new assets, regions, items, characters and systems.\n\nExperience cadence asks how often the player receives a genuinely different kind of activity.\n\nA live-service game can have a high content cadence while still having a relatively low experience cadence.\n\nThis also changes how “more content” should be evaluated. Instead of counting only how many things were added, other useful questions are:\n\n\\- How many new kinds of decisions were introduced?  \n\\- How many new forms of cooperation became relevant?  \n\\- How many builds gained a new reason to matter?  \n\\- How many new failure states or pressures appeared?  \n\\- How many reasons to play exist independently of acquiring the new reward?\n\nThat is the level where the recurring variety complaints start making more sense.\n\n**## 5. TFD may have a collection-expression problem**\n\nTFD has a major strength: a broad collection of Descendants, weapons, skills and build fantasies.\n\nBut collection creates more long-term value when owning different tools allows the account to solve different kinds of situations.\n\nIf most activities primarily reward some combination of:\n\n\\- movement speed  \n\\- AoE  \n\\- burst  \n\\- boss DPS\n\nthen characters designed around:\n\n\\- healing  \n\\- defense  \n\\- taunting  \n\\- zone control  \n\\- stealth  \n\\- sustain  \n\\- resource support  \n\\- team utility\n\nhave fewer contexts in which their differences can become important.\n\nThis can create a balance problem that is partly external to the character.\n\nOn the surface, the community may say a particular Descendant is weak and needs a buff.\n\nSometimes that may simply be true.\n\nBut another possibility is that the game rarely asks the type of question that character is built to answer.\n\nIf the solution to every underused character is more damage so that everyone approaches the same clear-speed benchmark, the roster can become numerically stronger while its identities become less distinct.\n\nA different diagnosis is:\n\n**Not every weak character needs to become a better answer to the same question. Sometimes the game needs to ask different questions.**\n\nThis is what I mean by **Collection Without Expression**.\n\nThere is also a useful distinction between two kinds of collection:\n\n**Collection as progression:** owning another Descendant or weapon means the account contains more things.\n\n**Collection as capability:** owning another Descendant or weapon means the account can solve more kinds of situation.\n\nIf collection mostly expands the first, a large roster can still converge on a small number of meta choices in most activities.\n\nIf collection expands the second, an older character or weapon can become relevant again because a new context values what it already does, without requiring a direct numerical buff.\n\nThe quantitative layer gives this idea some additional support.\n\nGameplay-variety complaints and collection-expression complaints co-occurred in 51 top-level comments, about **11.3 times the rate expected if the two tags were fully independent**.\n\nPost-build-purpose and collection","offTopic":false},{"id":"4e88a906-69ef-4c81-8a0e-ea318edef1cd","excerpt":"Stop comparing Pokémon Champions to Showdown, they're not the same game, and Champions deserves more credit than it's getting. — Day one complaints are a plague for Pokemon games at this point, but the discourse around Champions right now is genuinely frustrating, because a lot of people are dunking on it for the wrong","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonChampions/comments/1shhz0h/stop_comparing_pokémon_champions_to_showdown/","role":"pain","weight":1.3384941,"occurredAt":"2026-04-10T09:49:18.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"PokemonChampions","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.4239299,"sentiment":-0.0989011,"confidence":0.94,"matchedPatterns":["why_doesnt","frustrating","missing_feature"],"statement":"**\"Why can't we just have the full pokemon roster...I want my scrafty!\"** The limited roster is probably the most common complaint I see, and I think people have it completely backwards.","title":"Stop comparing Pokémon Champions to Showdown, they're not the same game, and Champions deserves more credit than it's getting.","body":"Day one complaints are a plague for Pokemon games at this point, but the discourse around Champions right now is genuinely frustrating, because a lot of people are dunking on it for the wrong reasons or worse, holding it to a completely unfair standard.\n\nAs someone with very limited experience with VGC, Champions is clearly designed with accessibility at its core. It breaks down the massive barrier to entry that mainline Pokemon games have always had, stripping out the tedious grinding and the convoluted team-building process that used to stand between a new player and competitive gameplay.\n\nI tried Showdown and I was immediately thrown to the wolves. Veterans running optimized meta teams, legendaries stacked on every roster, the same cookie-cutter builds recycled game after game, and experienced players using every trick in the book to dismantle anyone who didn't already know what they were doing. It felt like you were against a wall, not a learning curve.\n\nChampions feels like the version of competitive Pokemon that actually wants you to be there. It meets new players where they are instead of demanding they already know everything before they start and I feel that point is overshadowed by all the hate this game has been getting.\n\n\n\n**\"Just play Showdown, Champions is so much worse..\"**\n\nComparing them is just pointless, people have their preferences and that's fine - if you like Showdown, then play Showdown. No one is forcing you to like Champions. Showdown is a browser tool built by the community for the community. There's no real gameplay, progression, stakes or any personality. Champions is an actual product, a battle focused game built around familiar mechanics designed to create an environment for both new and experienced trainers Pokemon Champions. These are serving completely different audiences and completely different purposes. One is a sandbox sim, the other is a polished competitive platform with a ranked ecosystem, casual modes, private battles, and real VGC integration.\n\n\n\n**The monetization fears were largely wrong.**\n\nBefore I even downloaded the game, I was seeing posts warning me about predatory monetization, being bombarded with purchasable content from the moment you log in, pay-to-win mechanics, feeling pressured to spend money just to compete. I went in braced for the worst. It's massively exaggerated.\n\nThere's no storefront shoved in your face at login. Yes, a shop exists but it's not the focal point, it's not aggressive, and none of it is pay to win. There's a premium Battle Pass available if you want it, which includes some starters, Mega Stones, and a few things to speed along the 'gatcha' side of team-building but that's a personal choice, not a necessity.\n\nHere's what actually happened in my first four hours playing completely free-to-play; I have over 20 Pokemon, I've put together several different teams, and every one of my Pokemon has solid movesets, good natures, the right abilities, and proper EVs. I spent my free VP on cosmetics and a few recruitment spins, both entirely optional and I never once felt like the game was asking me to open my wallet to keep up. The doom-posters were wrong on this one and Champions is one of the fairer free-to-start competitive games out there right now, and that deserves to be said.\n\nLet's keep in mind here, this is a FREE TO PLAY game. You've not had to fork out money to get the game, it's ready to play and available to all who want to give it a go. As with anything free, there will be in-game purchases available to help support the game but what's being buried under all the noise is that there is nothing you can purchase to gain an advantage over any other player.\n\n\n\n**\"Why can't we just have the full pokemon roster...I want my scrafty!\"**\n\nThe limited roster is probably the most common complaint I see, and I think people have it completely backwards. Yes, there are only limited Pokemon available at launch but sit with that for a second. There's enough variety to keep team-building interesting and give veterans plenty to work with, while not being so overwhelming that a newer player feels like they need a spreadsheet just to know where to start. A full thousand plus roster on day one sounds great in theory, but in practice it just fast tracks the same stale meta teams that plague every competitive format. The same ten Pokemon dominate, the same builds get copied, and creativity dies.\n\nA limited roster forces people to actually think as you can't just import a tried-and-tested team from Smogon and coast, you have to explore what works, experiment with combinations you might never have considered, and find your own solutions. That breeds genuine creativity in a way that an open roster environment rarely does.\n\nThere's also something to be said for the long game here. More Pokemon will be added over time, and having that to look forward to keeps the game feeling alive. Getting everything handed to you on day one is a fast track to boredom whereas a steady rollout means the meta evolves, the conversation stays fresh, and there's always something new around the corner.\n\nAnd for newer players specifically, a limited roster is a gift. It gives you the space to actually learn the Pokemon that are available, how they work, what they threaten, how to counter them before the pool expands. This is how you build real game knowledge, not by being dropped into an ocean on day one.\n\n\n\n**\"Where are all the items, we're missing life orb, choice band etc.\"**\n\nThis circles back to the same argument as the roster; this is a live service game in its first days of existence, not a finished product frozen in time. These items will come. Expecting a complete, fully-stocked competitive sandbox on day one of a game explicitly designed to grow over time is just setting yourself up for disappointment. The core battle system is solid, the foundation is there and the rest gets built out.\n\nIt's also worth noting that the absence of some of these more powerful items actually levels the playing field right now. Life Orb and Choice Band for example in the hands of a veteran with a well-optimized team is just another barrier for newer players trying to find their footing. The current item pool keeps things a little more grounded while the player base is still figuring the game out and it's heling make people get creative with what they do have rather than defaulting to the same item combinations that have dominated competitive play for years. Missing items are a valid observation but treating it like a dealbreaker for a game that just launched and is built to expand is just impatience dressed up as criticism.\n\n  \n**\"There's no 6v6, this game sucks..\"**\n\nVGC has been a doubles format for years. The core competitive Pokemon experience that Champions is built around has never really been 6v6 singles that's Smogon's domain, and if that's your preferred format, Showdown exists and will continue to exist for exactly that reason. Champions isn't trying to replace that as it's building its own competitive ecosystem around the format that the official VGC scene actually uses.\n\n6v6 could absolutely come down the line as an additional mode. Plenty of competitive games launch with a focused ruleset and expand their format offerings over time. Expecting every format to be available at launch is the same impatience we've seen with the roster and item complaints. What's here right now is tight, focused, and works well. \n\n6v6 fans aren't wrong for wanting it eventually and I personally would enjoy that format as someone whose experience predominately revolves around story mode . But acting like its absence makes the game broken or unplayable ignores what Champions is fundamentally trying to be is just ridiculous. \n\n  \n**\"So many bugs in this game, it's unplayable\"**\n\nAre there bugs? Yes. Is that surprising for a game that launched two days ago? Not even slightly.\n\nEvery major game launches with bugs. That's the reality of modern game development but calling the game broken or unplayable over launch bugs that will almost certainly be ironed out in the coming weeks is just par for the course outrage at this point. I personally haven't experienced any bugs so far or anything that's breaking my gaming experience.\n\nGive it time and judge the game for what it is once the dust settles, not for the rough edges that come with any fresh launch.\n\n  \n**Consider the demographic here.**\n\nSomething that seems to get completely lost in these conversations is who Pokemon is actually made for. This is a franchise built for kids let's face it. It always has been. The anime, the card game, the mainline titles and the primary audience is young people picking up their first Pokemon game and falling in love with the world. \n\nThe hardcore competitive community is a passionate and vocal subset, but they are not the target demographic, and designing a game around their expectations at the expense of everyone else would be a massive mistake.\n\nThink about what the current Showdown experience looks like through the eyes of a ten year old who just wants to battle with their favourite Pokémon. You're thrown into a pool with a thousand Pokemon to choose from, complex EV and IV spreads to optimise, held items that completely change how a Pokémon functions, abilities that interact with each other in ways that take hundreds of hours to understand, generational gimmicks stacked on top of each other, and veteran players running meta teams they've been refining for years. That's not an introduction to competitive Pokémon, that's another wall with a sign on it that says \"not for you.\"\n\nChampions strips all of that back deliberately. A manageable roster, a streamlined team-building process, no IV headaches, and a relatively level playing field at launch. That's thoughtful design. It's building a front door that younger and newer players can actually walk through instead of bouncing off immediately.\n\nThe veterans complaining online have years of knowledge and experience. They forget what it felt like to know nothing.\n\n  \n**THIS GAME IS A FANTASTIC ADDITION TO THE POKEMON GAME FRANCHISE.**\n\nI've spent my entire Pokemon life avoiding competitive play. The learning curve always felt insurmountable with the sheer volume of Pokemon to learn, typings to memorise, abilities to understand, the endless debate over what's meta and what isn't, the team building rabbit holes. It was exhausting just thinking about it, so I never bothered. Champions turned that noise down to a level where I could finally just play and that alone is worth celebrating.\n\nThe graphics and animations genuinely look great, and the player customisation has enough options to actually feel personal and that's clearly only going to expand over time.\n\nThe thing I've enjoyed most is something harder to quantify with a large portion of the player base being newer and less experienced, matches actually feel fun. There's no sweat fest energy, no feeling like you're being disrespected by someone who has ten years of competitive experience and came to prove it. I built my own team with no guides, no tier lists, no copying builds from Smogon and I won matches with it which felt amazing. That felt genuinely great in a way I didn't expect. Seeing opponents make questionable decisions and realising I was actually reading the game better than them in those moments was its own reward. It sounds small but it means everything when you're new.\n\nThe Battle Pass and ranking system also give you something real to work toward. I can see exactly where my current skill level sits, and if I want to climb, I know I have to actually improve. That's a healthy, motivating loop and it's one that keeps me coming back.","offTopic":true},{"id":"7d36573a-32c5-4aee-ad49-218c08a571d7","excerpt":"Feedback After Hitting Level 75 — # After finishing almost all the content and spending my time grinding stash value for expeditions, these are the things that stand out as problems the game should address. I’m putting this out there to see if others agree or if I'm talking out of my ass.\n\n# 1. Late Spawns\n\nLate spawns","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/ArcRaiders/comments/1p0iljd/feedback_after_hitting_level_75/","role":"pain","weight":1.3205345,"occurredAt":"2025-11-18T17:46:35.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"ArcRaiders","intent":"problem_report","painScore":0.520769,"sentiment":-0.074074075,"confidence":0.86833334,"matchedPatterns":["terrible","frustrating"],"statement":"The fact that you can get a Hairpin I out of a locker feels terrible.","title":"Feedback After Hitting Level 75","body":"# After finishing almost all the content and spending my time grinding stash value for expeditions, these are the things that stand out as problems the game should address. I’m putting this out there to see if others agree or if I'm talking out of my ass.\n\n# 1. Late Spawns\n\nLate spawns drag the experience down more than anything else. Loading in up to **11 minutes late** turns any planned objective into “extract and reset.” It’s demotivating to bring in gear for a specific reason only to hit the ground with less than 20 minutes on the clock, 800 meters away from your objective.\n\nHonestly, either remove late spawns entirely or limit them to free-kit players only. Yeah, that’ll probably cause more free kit rushing, but that’s still better than ruining geared runs before they even start.\n\n# 2. Free Kits vs. Geared Players\n\nWhile we're on the topic of Free kits I really think they need their own queue. Right now, geared players get swarmed by people who have zero risk and everything to gain. If you make noise fighting ARC or another player, suddenly the whole lobby of risk-free players is sprinting at you and they absolute do not care if they die in the process.\n\n~~Edit: As people have suggested in comments, a good way to combat this would be to put timers on Free Kits so you can't just spam them all day long with no risk.~~\n\nEdit: Obviously this one \\^ is extremely polarizing, and probably not the best solution. \n\nThere’s a massive difference between someone who cares if they live and someone who doesn’t. Those two approaches shouldn’t be thrown together.\n\n# 3. Terrain and Mantling\n\nThe terrain needs a serious consistency pass. Some rocks can be mantled, others that look identical can’t, and a lot of attempted mantles just send you sliding back down. The same happens on some rooftops and ledges.\n\nIt’s incredibly annoying to try repositioning in a fight only to get reset to the bottom because the game decided that one rock wasn’t climbable today.\n\n# 4. Trials (Weekly Challenges)\n\nWe just had our **third week** in a row with a task requiring you to damage some variation flying arcs, which can be spammed with Snitch Scanners in night raids for tens of thousands of points with almost no risk.\n\nIt kills any sense of competition when half the bracket is just farming a gimmick while everyone else is trying to do the challenge properly. Trials either need a redesign or at least more differed rotation that isn’t so easy to exploit.\n\n# 5. Weapon Balance\n\nSome guns just don’t sit right in the current meta. The Venator feels ridiculously overpowered compared to some of the other more situational Tier 2 guns, and the Rattler feels bad to use because of the low damage and tiny base mag. There are plenty of early game alternatives that perform better in every way.\n\nMost weapons feel fine, but these two guns stand out enough to drag down the rest of the roster. I feel like making the Venator actually reflect the ammo that you're using (2 bullets per shot instead of 1) would bring it back in line with the rest of the guns. Being able to sling double damage at people with no repercussion is fun, but ultimately not good for the long run.\n\n# 6. Stella Montis Spawns\n\nStella Montis is genuinely a great map, but the spawns are a mess. You can literally spawn within a few feet of another player, and whoever’s PC loads the frame first wins. I’ve been shot in the back of the head before I could even turn.\n\nThe map is fun regardless of playstyle, but the spawn system needs a full overhaul. Either lower the number of players on the map or space the spawns out more.\n\n# 7. Quest Rewards and Loot Handling\n\nQuest rewards feel out of touch with the effort required. For example, Tian Wen sends you into Stella Mortis to deliver two pink items and then hands you basically nothing. Several traders do this, forcing you into high-PvP areas only to reward you with a low-tier item or something completely useless.\n\nOn top of that, container searching still has a weird issue (could be intentional but I couldn't possibly imagine why) where items drop onto the floor after searching a quest container.  It’s a small thing, but it adds unnecessary irritation, and feels like a very clunky system, in a game that’s otherwise very polished.\n\n# 8. Persistent Bugs and Unaddressed Issues\n\nThere are a lot of lingering bugs that have been reported repeatedly that still haven’t been meaningfully addressed. the door exploit, broken or inconsistent interactions, odd hit registration moments, and various physics bugs all stack up over time. The Stella patch addressed bad hit reg and I personally haven't experienced it as much since then, but it still exists when fighting players with a worse connection than you and makes PvP really frustrating sometimes.\n\nIndividually these issues aren’t game-breaking, and I completely understand that these fixes take time. However, they make me feel like they're not focusing on fixing bugs. The door exploit has been an issue for the last 2 weeks with no real mention of it from the developers. Cleaning up these problems would go a long way toward making the whole experience feel better.\n\n# 9. Key Room Loot Inconsistency\n\nKey rooms are all over the place in terms of value, and it feels bad to spend time collecting keys, especially rare ones, just to open a room with mediocre loot. The reward rarely matches the effort or the key’s rarity.\n\nWhen a “rare” key leads to a room with basically the same loot as a free crate, it kills the excitement of hunting keys entirely. These rooms should be consistently rewarding enough to justify the time and risk it takes to access them. Lets take Dam Surveillance for example, a mid-tier key. Sometimes, you get a backpack, weapon crate, and grenade case all in the same room. Sometimes you get one of the three. I'm fine with random loot, but at least make it worthwhile to use the keys you find. If you go right outside of Dam Surveillance there's a smaller room that almost always spawns a weapon crate. Why would I ever risk opening the door and using my key if I can just get the same or similar loot from the rooms around it?\n\n# 10. Confidence in the Game’s Direction\n\nDespite all of this, the core game is strong enough that it’s worth sticking with for a *very* long time. The foundation is solid, the gameplay loop is fun when everything lines up, and the community clearly cares about the direction things are heading. Player interactions in this game are everything, and they really really make me want to keep playing every time I login. Even at the point I am now, which is basically get the loot simulator, I'm having an amazing time.\n\nIf they continue tightening the rough spots, addressing issues as they come up, and refining progression and rewards, the game has the potential to become something incredible long-term. There’s a lot here worth believing in, and I can't wait to play this game for a long time to come.\n\nI had an 11th point about skill trees and balancing them, but I feel like that could be an entirely separate post of its own. I will say though, that some of the skill trees feel much worse than others...and since the Security Locker nerf, I'm not sure that's what I'm going to focus after this next expedition window.\n\nI wanted to believe the lockers were still good loot, but after hitting probably 100+ in the last few days I'm convinced they completely ruined them. I should not be getting 8 mid-tier crafting items, white bandages, and terrible grenades in something that takes me 36 levels to acquire. The fact that you can get a Hairpin I out of a locker feels terrible.\n\nLet me know what you think! I could be completely wrong, and if I am I'm open to criticism, but these are some things I think need to be addressed that would go a long way towards ensured future success.\n\nEdit: added suggestion for free kit balancing, changed Mortis to Montis (whoopsie)","offTopic":false},{"id":"09541a78-e0fd-4d2e-b825-01fe4d3dad66","excerpt":"A Hater's Preview of Season 2 — Alright, so I don't expect anyone to take my word for it, but I was actually one of the real sweats in S1, playing in pretty competent competitive stacks flocking from other extraction shooters, CoD and Apex. We quit \\~ 1 month into S1 because:\n\n– It got boring for us: no leaderboards, l","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/MarathonHate/comments/1tvr6um/a_haters_preview_of_season_2/","role":"demand","weight":1.315583,"occurredAt":"2026-06-03T14:33:59.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"MarathonHate","intent":"alternative_search","painScore":0.3668395,"sentiment":0.37931034,"confidence":0.9625,"matchedPatterns":["frustrating","alternative_to","missing_feature"],"statement":"# 1.4 The New PvP-Lite Mode Honestly, this new PvP lite mode that places just one player crew in the Night Dire marsh, and then adds solo Rooks as late spawns, is not just a step in the right direction, but a massive leap: – **A viable alt…","title":"A Hater's Preview of Season 2","body":"Alright, so I don't expect anyone to take my word for it, but I was actually one of the real sweats in S1, playing in pretty competent competitive stacks flocking from other extraction shooters, CoD and Apex. We quit \\~ 1 month into S1 because:\n\n– It got boring for us: no leaderboards, lackluster end game content and ranked\n\n– It got boring for the audience: most people I played with would stream for a living, and admittedly the audience wasn't very excited to watch them steamroll autofill lobbies with only occasional decent firefights happening in Cryo.\n\nOverall, from my observations, most extraction shooter sweats and streamers quit Marathon for the exact same reasons: there was nothing to grind for, and the competition wasn't consistent enough to entertain the viewers.\n\nI mean, take it or leave it, I'm just providing this disclaimer to – hopefully – provide some insight into where I'm coming from with my feedback, i.e. a player who has rather comprehensive knowledge of the game, and whose grudge is with Bungie's poor treatment of Marathon, not Marathon itself.\n\nSo here's my **SUBJECTIVE** feedback based on my first day in Season 2. It's a reaaaally long read – I've tried my best to segment and format it, so you can just skip through the headers and read any bits you might be interested in, and then get back to it to read the other bits. I've also left some TL;DR 'quotes' for every section of the text for your convenience if you just want to skim it. Or skip this post altogether – that's cool too.\n\nWould also be great if someone decides to chime in with their feedback without the fear of being swarmed by glazers or banned for 'bad faith'.\n\n# 1. The Good\n\n# 1.1. The Cradle\n\nI'll bite back the 'this is how it should've been from the very start' comment. But Cradle is a massive improvement for two main reasons:\n\n– **It disentangles character progression from the tedious grind fest that was Season 1:** where you had to farm rep and resource to unlock shell upgrades that affect your game dramatically.\n\n– **Flexibility:** you can redistribute upgrade points for free to adjust to map conditions, your shell, or just experiment with builds. This is refreshing.\n\n– **It Solves the 'Hoarding' problem:** selling gear wasn't really feasible in S1, but now you can covert pricey gear that you don't like, or strategically 'invest' the gear you like, into upgrade points.\n\nWe are yet to see how it works in terms of 'balance' and scaling, but credit where credit is due – **the Cradle is, hands down, the best character upgrade/progression system I have seen in an extraction shooter.**\n\n# 1.2 The Sentinel Shell\n\nSentinel, the new shell, is a healthy person's Recon, and what the game desperately lacked – a crowd control and area denial class that allows your crew to lock in and say, 'Fuck off my property!'. It's like Jaeger from Siege had a passion baby with Wattson from Apex, and stole the iconic motion tracker from Aliens.\n\nThe only major downside – one I can't really attribute to the class itself, but rather the 'trio synergy' game design – is that Sentinel relies heavily on coordinated teamwork. The only way you can relay the motion scanner's readouts is via the voice chat, and his entire kit revolves around strategic positioning and patience – something you usually don't get with mute autofill troglodytes. It's totally viable for a solo run though, although not as 'hot' as Thief or Assassin for obvious reasons.\n\n>**TL;DR:** Ultimately, like I said the drawbacks listed aren't the drawbacks of the Sentinel design, more like side-effects of the game's flaws. As a Shell class – this is by far the most interesting one, but most importantly – it will definitely upset Season 1's endgame team fight meta.\n\n# 1.3 Night Dire Marsh\n\nMany people, myself included, initially downplayed the Night Marsh as a 'duh, no big deal', citing that every other extraction shooter had 'night versions', and it was more of a default expectation in the genre than a feature. But there's a twist!\n\nOne unprecedented thing Marathon had in spades, much owing to its masterful visual and sound design, was the eerie suspense somewhat reminiscent of survival horror – one you can enjoy especially well in otherwise lackluster solo runs. Sadly, Season 1 didn't really take advantage of that 'feature'. But the Night Dire Marsh plays up to that 'survival horror' creepy vibes massively.\n\n>**TL;DR:** The new mode is not just the 'same map, but dark, and enemies slap harder' formula you see in Delta Force, Arc Raiders or Hunt. It's more of a genre flip: the layout is different, the objectives are different, and the environmental hazards – both the NPCs and the feral Rooks – are so bad it naturally incentivizes a more cooperative (or at least avoidant) play style between runner crews.\n\n# 1.4 The New PvP-Lite Mode\n\nHonestly, this new PvP lite mode that places just one player crew in the Night Dire marsh, and then adds solo Rooks as late spawns, is not just a step in the right direction, but a massive leap:\n\n– **A viable alternative to the 'winner takes all meta':** whether it was Bungie's plan or not, the most viable Meta in Season 1 was playing the small maps like a 'zero sum' battle royale: gambling to wipe out other teams before switching to PvE objectives. This wasn't neccessarily a bad thing, but it certainly subverted the genre-defying expectations for the majority of players, and got old real fast for the death squads mopping the lobbies too. This mode kinda allows you to experience Marathon via the 'slow burner suspense' filter of Hunt and Tarkov, rather than a fast-paced free for all 'all or nothing' shooter.\n\n– **The thrill of curated PvP:** it's not entirely a carebear PvE mode, since you have the looming threat of player-controlled rooks spawning late into the run.\n\nOn the one hand, the rooks serve as wildcards: they can be shitty target practice dummie, or apathetic opportunistic scavengers, or they can be killing machines stalking you in the dark. They can run solo or they can team up to swarm you. That's the thrill.\n\nOn the other hand, the 'safe' component of this mode is that it gives you and your crew more agencies in stacking odds in your favor: you have better shells, you can choose to bring in better gear (well, you can't NOW that it's an experimental sponsor kit mode, but maybe in the future – that would be a factor), and you are, in fact, a team. So whether you start the run at a massive PvP advantage or serve as each other's handicap is entire up to you – and this is great for autofill dynamics\n\n– **Bunny slope:** considering that you kinda have an advantage as a runner in this game mode, this mode could serve as a sort of 'live training' for players to build their PvP confidence under conditions that might not be more forgiving than the classic modes, but at least in PvP-lite the outcome of every PvP engagement is primarily your merit... or fault. But never a matter of bad luck or random chance, because in this mode you have the agency as the runners.\n\n>**TL;DR:** It's a great 'PvE with the suspense of PvP wildcards' mode for building PvP confidence, learning teamwork, and experiencing Marathon through the classic extraction shooter 'slow burning thriller' pacing pattern.\n\n# 2. The Bad\n\nOne thing: freebies. If you go for a 'wipe' – then stick to it unconditionally. Marathon's Season 1 was infamous for its 'snowballing' meta and the disparity between pre-made trios and autofill players, 'sweats' and 'casuals', and over the span of the season the problem - fuelled by a shrinking player base and lack of any skill/gear-based matchmaking – would become exponentially worse, and the division more stark, as one pluarity of players used the gear to quickly scoop the cream and fill their vaults with high end kits that allowed them to stearoll their counterparts on a regular basis.\n\nNow, a lot of people might brush off the post-season rewards for >lvl 70 runners as a 'no big deal' and a 'it's just a purple shield man', but it is a big deal. Three purple shields on a coordinated team can take you to the moon and back after a wipe, shit, it took me far enough to stack my vault full of gear I had no business stashing on the opening day, and I played as a solo in autofill.\n\nAnd after the 'server issues', Bungie made it worse by showering us with a shit ton of mid to high grade sponsored kits – a very unnecessary injection into the 'natural order of things'. Wanna guess where that 'good stuff' ended up when newbie players brought them on Tau Ceti IV's surface? Yup, in the vaults of 'sweats' who looted them off their corpses. I personally converted a shit ton of blue gear that I got from newbies who had no idea how to use it into Crucible upgrade points.\n\n>TL;DR: I wish Bungie just gives up on gifting freebies and especially on the post-season purple gear rewards. Either that or makes wipes optional like in Arc Raiders, but they would have to work something out with the matchmaking first, because it just feeds the existing issues more than it solves the sting of losing gear.\n\n# 3. The Ugly: Matchmaking and The Autofill Experience\n\nI can't repeat this enough: the absolutely idiotic, nonsensical matchmaking system is Marathon's self-inflicted anathema.\n\nDon't get me wrong, I absolutely do not mind the lack of SBMM. Or gear-based MM/gear value limits/requirements per map/condition. Let alone the lack of ABMM (it's an abomination). But there has to be at least some sort of matchmaking curation in a game.\n\nTo cut a very long story short, Marathon – by design – relies extremely heavily on coordinated teamplay and at least some form of skill/gear parity within the crew. In everything: from how the Shell abilities are designed around the synergy idea to the short TTK that favors focus fire, to the in-game objectives/events and map design that revolves heavily around coordinated actions.\n\nFor a game that puts such a big stake on team cohesion, it is not just surprising, but outright shocking that Marathon does not allow you to curate your team experience as a solo player via a built-in LFG tool that would allow you to fill your team based on mic/objective/playstyle/gear preferences BEFORE you gamble your kit on autofill.\n\nYes, you can get lucky and reasonably successful in autofill if you end up with teammates that know what they're doing, even if they're not using the mics. It's not as good as a pre-made stack, but it's reliable enough. But you're just as, or even more so likely to end up with a clueless sponsored kit dumbass or someone nowhere near your skill/gear level. Worse still – you might load into the map with CONFLICTING contracts.\n\nThis isn't just a 'muh teammates bad' rant – trust me, it would be even worse if YOU are the clueless dumbass still learning the rope pressured by a solo sweat daredevil that spearheads you into the devil's asshole and expects you to pull through, while the third player is blasting gangsta rap through his mic and speakers combo saying he's just 'here to chill man, it's a game'. It's gonna be equally frustrating for the three of you.\n\nNow, you can say, 'but you can use discord to find a group' – why should I have to go through that Discord LFG mummery, if I can do it in the game in, say, Delta Force, or – God forbid – Destiny 2?\n\nOr you can say, 'But you can just add competent runners you meet in autofill to your friends list' – but dude, come the fuck on. I don't have the time to do blind auditions for 'proper teammates', and even if I did – why would I waste it on something like that, if there's a perfectly functional and field-tested alternative that exists in other games, including Destiny 2?\n\n>TL;DR: the current matchmaking system leaves you NO AGENCY as an autofill player. None. What's worse is that it leaves Bungie with no agency in curating the game experience for the majority of players either. And if you can't curate it – you can't control the customer's expectations or influence/predict th","offTopic":false},{"id":"ef51e59b-851b-4524-aead-44fe2ee95efb","excerpt":"BF6 after 100h; the good, the bad, and the meh — I finished the last challenge yesterday and have some thoughts before S1 launches tomorrow and with being over 100h maybe someone will find this useful.\n\nThis is all subjective and excluding single player campaign\n\n**The Good**\n\n\\- The climate of the game; It is amazing ","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/Battlefield/comments/1ohbslg/bf6_after_100h_the_good_the_bad_and_the_meh/","role":"request","weight":1.2126,"occurredAt":"2025-10-27T11:24:43.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"Battlefield","intent":"problem_report","painScore":0.29,"sentiment":0.5135135,"confidence":0.94,"matchedPatterns":["frustrating","workaround","praise"],"statement":"Supposedly there is a workaround that but I did not work for me or a lot of people.","title":"BF6 after 100h; the good, the bad, and the meh","body":"I finished the last challenge yesterday and have some thoughts before S1 launches tomorrow and with being over 100h maybe someone will find this useful.\n\nThis is all subjective and excluding single player campaign\n\n**The Good**\n\n\\- The climate of the game; It is amazing so far. Obviously this is pre pb and the skins (see **The meh**) but while there are bits that do not work so well, the atmosphere of the maps coupled with the combat is fantastic\n\n\\- Weapons and weapon progression: I personally do not see the issue here, majority of the weapons are very viable from mastery 3 onward and while it is very annoying to wait for some attachments and the amount of scopes is bad (see **The bad**) is daunting 99% of weapons are viable and fun with some niche for them.\n\n\\- Gunplay; When it works (see **The bad**) is amazing and reminds me of peak BF4 and I truly see the potential of this game in the future \n\n\\- Escalation; Probably my new favourite mode so far. As a fan of breakthrough (operations from BF1 my beloved) this fulfils my need for a bit more structured big scale combat.\n\n\\- Sound and voice acting; I don\\`t think any bf had bad sound too it but everything sounds so satisfying. The voice acting is fine (nothing will beat BF1)\n\n\\- Animations: They are good, dragging a downed teammate to safety while hearing gunfire  and explosions over your head is peak bf experience \n\n\\- EA/DICE comms; I like that they actively respond to a lot of our feedback. There are areas they stayed suspiciously silent (see **The bad**)\n\n**The meh**\n\n**-** Skins; They are fine (so far!) I\\`m a fan of more grounded combat and the ones presented for season 1 are not bad imo (I might get lynched tho haha) **HOWEVER** it is a slippery slope to getting the Santa Claus again and we need to be very vocal about it. Weapon skins are so unnoticeable I kind of don\\`t care as long as we don\\`t get 3d animated sound cue whatever gun skins. I think R6 did it very well (with the exception of those 3d skins). Bf was always an arcade shooter so no need to stay fully grounded and realistic (play ARMA for that) but don\\`t go fully COD please.\n\n\\- Maps; I think they are OK. They are a little bit on the smaller side, **HOWEVER** there are maps that are absolute peak like Siege of Cairo.  **BUT** some maps and objectives are completely bs and unbalanced (last sector B point on Rush on Firestorm is total bs where the defending team not only gets 2 tanks while the attackers get nothing (!!!) but it\\`s positioned in a way that defenders can safely defuse until the attackers fully surround the building which rarely happens. Call me crazy but I like Liberation Peak\n\n\\- Weapon balance; I think all weapons are more or less balanced. I think LMG currently suffer the most as suppression has been changed(see **The bad**) (the enemy has to have less than 100hp, only then it will work and you need to shoot 5m around them). And SMG should not be able to outgun them/AR at long distance \n\n\\- Vehicle combat; As with most bf games this is very difficult. I like the current selection but in my opinion a few vehicles are in troubled spot:\n\n1. Helicopters are both too weak and too strong. This has been a thing with every bf game that had helicopters, they are very difficult to balance and I believe no one wants the repetition of 60-0 kill streaks from BF4/2042\n\n2. AA guns just are bud, the range of the gun is too short and relying on rockets is too little since a decent pilot will flare and leave before you can shoot the second one.\n\nThe rest seem fine imo.\n\n**The bad**\n\n\\- Netcode; I see that a lot of people and me included cannot play big modes because of packet loss and rubberbanding. Supposedly there is a workaround that but I did not work for me or a lot of people. This disqualifies a lot of people from the most fun modes. Supposedly that is due to 60hz servers move from 30hz but I\\`m no specialist. 5 hits rejected in a row is not fun\n\n\\- Drone glitch; It simply ruins the game you are currently in and every 2nd game has them atm making Sotek unplayable, and the silence from DICE is very weird.\n\n\\- Challenges; they are the most dogshit, AI generated bs I have seen in my life. I have not yet finished all the class assignments because the numbers are waaay to high and honestly unfun to play. Some of them force you to play in a very specific way (like the suppression challenge, sitting back with snipers and shooting around not at enemies) that actively harms your team. I know they are tackling that with the next update but god damn\n\n\\- Gender locked classes; It just sucks. I don\\`t mind playing as a woman but exclusive gender classes are stupid \n\n\\- Rangefinder; I\\`m by no means sniper pro/expert but it reduces the sniper class to use rangefinder and boom easy headshot\n\nI think a lot of people shit on this game because they look on rose tinted glasses from BF4 at the end of development but we have to remember its early stages of this game. I\\`m by no means a EA promoter but we have to be productive about our feedback and how we voice it. \n\nI love this game I will keep playing this game and if you are reading this in like 2y checking if this game is worth it on a sale or something, unless something extremely bad happens the answer it: yes it is worth it.","offTopic":true},{"id":"252b8cdd-b93b-407b-8d4c-2960023b22fa","excerpt":"My biggest concern for the future of this game is it's genre — So I been playing Wardogs in a way and quantity like I haven't played all the way back in 2017 with something like Arma 3. Games like Squad or Insurgency being more recent but definitely not as thorough. Usually a feeling like that is dominated by simply no","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1vv5424/my_biggest_concern_for_the_future_of_this_game_is/","role":"request","weight":1.1253768,"occurredAt":"2026-08-22T06:51:33.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"WarDogs","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.39,"sentiment":0.54545456,"confidence":0.8096236,"matchedPatterns":["why_doesnt","frustrating","missing_feature"],"statement":"In the end I dread that one day, I'll see a tank or some other experience that used to be unique and I'll think to myself: Why doesn't seeing this bring me joy?","title":"My biggest concern for the future of this game is it's genre","body":"So I been playing Wardogs in a way and quantity like I haven't played all the way back in 2017 with something like Arma 3. Games like Squad or Insurgency being more recent but definitely not as thorough. Usually a feeling like that is dominated by simply nostalgia but Wardogs, maybe even as the first game of that type in my life, gets dominated by the actual gameplay and what it offers. Not because it doesn't educe these feelings of nostalgia or doesn't do so enough, but simply because everything else in the game is just so, so much more prevalent in its role of giving me joy. From the gunplay to the Teamwork to the communication to the systems like material management. Overall it seems like I perfectly fit in that Battledad demographic the game advertises to and I couldn't be more thankful for that.  \n  \nHowever, this leaves me concerned. As a \"Veteran\" of these types of games I have seen what happens to them over time and I just really, really can't help but to think about that every time I get breathing room within a round. And there is a lot of breathing room, so it ends up me thinking about the possible future of this game more than staying in the present which, given it haven't even been 24 hours since \"release\", is making me worried.  \n  \nBut what is it that I am worried about? Now I don't want to take you back to the 15-or-so years I now spend playing these types of games and give you a detailed description of my life, this isn't a cooking recipe you find online, so I wanna put it short:  \n\\- The fun vanishes, tho differently then how you'd expect.  \n  \nObviously the fun fading isn't anything unique to this genre, you play something for long enough it becomes boring and eventually you'll move on something else, that is normal. However usually it ends with you just, forgetting the game. You possibly wouldn't even remember when you last played it because it didn't happen consciously, you just went on with time.  \nThis however is different for these more Mil-SIM games, in my experience at least, because how drastically the fun shifts and it is exactly what I am afraid to see in Wardogs.   \n  \nThe easiest way I can put this is by saying: Things that are fun now become an expectation later on and forefilling expectations isn't fun, its a minimum and possibly a chore.\n\n  \nEasily the best example I can give are the resources needed to operate the Towers. As we are all new and either don't have stuff unlocked or the experience to fully use the offered things we could do, seeing one of these big Helicopters dropping these big supply crates is a joy that can rally the entire team and inflict a positive hysteria of sorts that reminds me of the classical \"Mens wish to have a last stand\" fantasy as we use that surprising advantage to push back what previously was thought to be a lost game.  \nOverall the game is at a current state where it's \\*fun to lose\\* because you think of every advantage, even if the enemy has (like a tank or an armed chopper) as this new experience that, even if you and apparently none in your team has the means to deal with, is just so awesome to witness.\n\nBut after all this, why do I think it's an issue? Well because I have seen all of that before, most noticeably in Squad. While this game definitely doesn't offer as much as Wardogs do, it still comes close pretty close to make a comparison and estimation valid enough to at least worry about that the issues it had could also come to Wardogs. And that issue, like I said earlier, is just that these things we see as awesome now, just become a given later on.   \nWith more and more people unlocking new equipment and getting experience these things become the norm rather than the exception at some point. That alone isn't an issue, progress is a given obviously. But with all that comes some sort of Meta. Not necessarily in the way you'd see in Competitive Games but some sort of proven and thus expected routine in a round will develop eventually, regardless of the genre. But the Genre Wardogs is in has the additional issue that it widens a large gap between new and experienced players. While you get curb-stomped in every game when you're new, most of the time it's your own skill that lacks. If it is caused by something that the enemies have that make them win automatically, it's usually considered a poor game mechanic. However in the genre Wardogs is in, that very gap in available tools is unfortunately the norm and I'd say that very thing is exactly why you see games like Squad or Arma be sorely upheld my Veterans with new players being essentially none existent.   \nThey just don't get a chance to even include themselves in the loop that the experiences players have come to expect, so why trying to learn said loop if you can't participate in it anyway. This issue gets even more so increased by the economy system Wardogs has, and while the seasonal wipes will definitely be the points where newer players will think \"now is the moment to join in\", this seems just a bandaid to a self inflicted wound.   \n  \nIn the end I dread that one day, I'll see a tank or some other experience that used to be unique and I'll think to myself: Why doesn't seeing this bring me joy? It used to be, now I feel nothing when I see it but frustrated when I don't. Neither are a possible good outcome. And that'll be the day you notice the game just isn't fun anymore. This is the ultimate issue of games like these and while I do, and will continue to, enjoy the game especially this weekend and the days after the actual release as progress isn't carried over and everyone starts from 0, in the end I do think this genre is, and always will be, doomed to an other-than-satisfying end.  ","offTopic":true},{"id":"ddf8899e-d251-483d-95b1-9fb4557f1cc6","excerpt":"It's time for everyone to accept the game has failed on a fundamental/conceptual level and no amount of small changes are going to make any meaningful difference at all — Just to give some context I have gone from:\n\n- Hyped as fuck after initial announcement\n\n- Disappointed as fuck after playing the alpha last year\n\n- ","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/Marathon/comments/1vrhlfz/its_time_for_everyone_to_accept_the_game_has/","role":"pain","weight":1.0791667,"occurredAt":"2026-08-18T06:51:07.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"Marathon","intent":"problem_report","painScore":0.48,"sentiment":0.32258064,"confidence":0.7291667,"matchedPatterns":["frustrating"],"statement":"It seems like every day I see 10 new posts detailing \"the problem\" with the game, and most of the time it's something incredibly specific: the progression is too slow, the loot isn't good enough, my teammate was annoying, a rook killed me…","title":"It's time for everyone to accept the game has failed on a fundamental/conceptual level and no amount of small changes are going to make any meaningful difference at all","body":"Just to give some context I have gone from:\n\n- Hyped as fuck after initial announcement\n\n- Disappointed as fuck after playing the alpha last year\n\n- Hyped again after Arc Raiders had the depth of a puddle\n\n- Modestly enjoying the game in S1\n\n- Haven't played the game since\n\nLets also remember the game launched to peak player count that was never particularly high, and has only gone down since despite active intervention by the devs, new season starting, new runner, new modes, etc... Bungie has clearly failed at trying to stop the bleeding.\n\nThe game has *some* incredible fundamentals: a striking visual design, fantastic gunplay, a fantastic and deep lore. But clearly the game has major issues that no amount of \"experimenting\" (which is insane to me that Bungie has the gall to say they need 'experimental modes' for a game that was developed for so long and with a budget exceeding most AAA hollywood films) is ever going to fix.\n\nIt seems like every day I see 10 new posts detailing \"the problem\" with the game, and most of the time it's something incredibly specific: the progression is too slow, the loot isn't good enough, my teammate was annoying, a rook killed me at exfil, the new game mode is bad, etc. and every time it's hailed as THE reason the game has failed. But lets be honest with ourselves, most of these issues are things you have to engage with the game for dozens of hours to get a feel for. The sales numbers were already not promising, but just looking solely at the decline in playercount you can see that people just dont like the game, or more of them would be playing it.\n\nYou can't say it's due to PvPvE general toxicity, or to the extraction genre, or because you had a shitty crew fill team because all of these things exist in other successful games. Arc Raiders is such a good example, IMO the game sucks ass because there simply is no progression at all (all anyone works towards is an expedition, so that...they can do another expedition?) and because the introduction of ABMM means there is no such thing as emergent gameplay, the lobby you're placed in is designed to be predictable. Marathon doesn't have those issues and yet it is orders of magnitude less successful. So why is that?\n\nFor the vast majority of players, the game simply isn't a lot of fun. For anyone to achieve anything in this game, they basically have to exfil (though I do acknowledge you can progress by completing quests that dont require exfil and you can gear up that way). And at the end of the day, exfilling is simply too hard for your average player due to several compounded design decisions.\n\nI said after I played the alpha that the game doesn't know what it wants to be or who it wants to appeal to and although they've refined the experience since then, it ultimately still rings true:\n\nTheorycrafting builds doesnt make any sense in a PvP game where you lose the build immediately on death.\n\nTrying to just enjoy PvE looting doesnt make any sense when you have such a slim chance of actually extracting your gear (also most gear you find is shit).\n\nTreating it purely as an arena PvP shooter doesn't make any sense when TTK is blink-of-an-eye and where you have to then spend resources making a build and deploying into the next match after you die (unless you just want to go free kit - but then why is it a build-based extraction shooter).\n\nThere are zero social elements beyond prox chat (which Bungie *hadnt considered* until only a few months from launch - kinda says it all).\n\nThe solo experience is not very enjoyable either. So who's left to really enjoy it?\n\nIt really feels to me like Bungie had an extremely idealistic vision where people would die and just immediately go next without caring about the loss. they give you lots of free equipment to make up for whatever you lose, to reduce how punishing it feels, but this creates its own problem: should i or should i not be attached to my gear? if im attached to it then it sucks ass to lose it SO quickly (again TTK is insanely fast), and if im not attached to it then why do i even care about looting anything in the first place?\n\nthe scenario we are in is the scenario that i think anyone with a functioning brain could have predicted when they saw the design of the game in small maps built to encourage PvP where battles last only a few seconds: the only people that can enjoy this experience are the premade trios who can easily and reliably kill everyone else in their lobby. all other playstyles are too unenjoyable for one or multiple reasons. you need to either have the resolve of a saint to not get disheartened when you are killed yet again, or you have to not be getting killed. the persona Bungie built this game around of the player who wants good loot but doesn't care if he loses it just doesn't really exist.\n\npeople like to say that the average gamer dad with 2 hours of gametime to play per week after work is the reason this game isn't successful, and maybe to some extent they are right, but even other personas don't like the game. i literally bought the game for 1 friend and convinced another one to buy it, and i managed to play with them both for ONE session before they both went back to just wanting to play fortnite as a trio instead. the one who bought it played it like 5 times, only with me, never solo, and we are both good at shooters and yet they had no fun with the game at all and dont want to play it again because they got dumpstered in every match - and i cant blame them, because we can just boot up a FREE game in fortnite and experience looting, shooting, movement/mobility, sweats, noobs, winning and losing and almost all of it is actually fun.\n\nMarathon by comparison basically only feels good when you are winning and 99% of the time you aren't winning unless you have the lobby's optimal combination of raw skill AND good gear. \n\n**tl;dr the game, by design, can only appeal to those that have the time, the team, the loot and the ability to kill everyone else in the lobby.**\n\nI said a few months ago that the game wont get a resurgence until it goes free to play and i was [told that everyone was waiting for the new season](https://www.reddit.com/r/Marathon/comments/1sxrhff/as_a_solo_player_its_hard_to_justify_playing/oiqzs8y/?context=3) (LOL). making it f2p will at least mean it opens the game up to people that have the TIME to either get good or not care about their losses (but not they money to buy it), but all the other issues are going to remain until the game gets a ground-up overhaul - and i think looking at Concord, Sony is more likely to just cut their losses before then - but I'd love to see it happen because the game really does (or at least did) have potential.","offTopic":false},{"id":"401daa07-a8e1-4b1b-b27f-f0e5c6b606b6","excerpt":"200 Hours In—Here’s What Arc Raiders Needs for Long-Term Playability — # After 200 Hours of Gameplay, Here Are My Suggestions to Increase Long-Term Playability\n\nFirst and foremost, the first two weeks were magical and we were all living in the good ole days. It's been a long time since I've been so enthralled in a game","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/ArcRaiders/comments/1pdi8yb/200_hours_inheres_what_arc_raiders_needs_for/","role":"pain","weight":1.0365714,"occurredAt":"2025-12-03T22:13:56.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"ArcRaiders","intent":"problem_report","painScore":0.51,"sentiment":0.64705884,"confidence":0.6864711,"matchedPatterns":["terrible"],"statement":"The spawns are AWFUL.","title":"200 Hours In—Here’s What Arc Raiders Needs for Long-Term Playability","body":"# After 200 Hours of Gameplay, Here Are My Suggestions to Increase Long-Term Playability\n\nFirst and foremost, the first two weeks were magical and we were all living in the good ole days. It's been a long time since I've been so enthralled in a game. This is the most fun I've had in 10+ years. I really wanted to thank Embark and the community for giving me that experience. It's a truly unique game and I definitely got my $40 worth.\n\n**BUT…**\n\nSome tweaks need to be made if they want to make it a long-term “play it for years” type of game.\n\nBefore you jump down my throat with “oh another 200-hour guy saying the game isn't good,” that’s not what I’m saying. I *love* the game. I’m saying if they want long-term playability, these are the things I’d suggest.\n\nAlso, I’ve completed all quests, reached max rank in the trials I care about (got the skin), finished my caravan, have damn near all the blueprints, and I’ve got more loot and money than I know what to do with. Just putting that out there before someone says I haven’t tried everything.\n\n\n\n# Problems Holding This Game Back From Long-Term Playability\n\n\n\n# 1. There is literally zero reason to wipe.\n\nEveryone *should* be hyped for the wipe…a chance to head topside for a fresh experience... except there’s no actual reason for it.\n\nThe Kettle was the first gun I ever loaded into the game with, and it’s still the gun I take into every raid now. No recoil, shoots fast, has range, accuracy — it does everything. Player? A few shots. Arc? Shoot the rotors. Leapers and Bastions? Screw it, just run around; they’ve got nothing I need.\n\nSo what’s going to change after the wipe?  \n\n\n**Nothing.**  \n\n\nIt’ll still be free loadout + Kettle city just like it is now. Might as well play COD.\n\n\n\n**How do you fix it? See below.**\n\n\n\n# 2. The spawns are AWFUL. Like genuinely awful.\n\nSpawns should be in set waves of players. First wave is dudes who are kitted out, no free loadouts allowed. \n\nSecond wave with about 10 minutes left should be free loadouts and dudes with kits below a certain threshold of value. \n\nYou wanna spam free loadout, fine, you get a shitty kit and you only get 8-10 minutes to slurp some second hand garbage loot. \n\nTHAT’S HOW FREE LOADOUT SHOULD BE. IT SHOULD BE BAD. \n\nYou gotta grind for those come ups and maybe get lucky on a purple someone missed. \n\nYou should not be able to quest or do trials on a free loadout. I'm not saying to hard lock it out, I'm saying if you wanna load in free and try to do matriarch or arc probe trials, good luck bud she's already dead, or good luck hitting that arc probe trial score with 9 minutes in raid. This will force people to run gear and make the game infinitely more fun. \n\n80+% of the players in any given raid are free loadout. If you can run around and successfully play the game easily on a free loadout and just spam it...then what is the point of doing anything else? Why loot? Why literally do anything but grab a free loadout and go fight?\n\n\n\n\n\n# 3. The game has been balanced to death. No fun allowed.\n\nWhy was the Hull Cracker nerfed?  \nYour strong guns should be **strong**.\n\nThe Toro is basically just as good as Vulcano. Bobcat vs Stitcher is basically a side-grade. These guns should NOT be balanced evenly.\n\nYou are not providing the player base any reason to use these weapons. Why, because someone's gonna cry they died to someone with better gear. \n\nTHAT'S THE EXPERIENCE. \n\nThat's what makes finding that sweet blueprint or piece of loot so special, because now you can stop hiding and bushes like a little rat and go out and be the big dog until an even bigger dog comes and kills you, then you have something to strive for, a new goal.\n\nRight now nothing feels worth grinding for.\n\n\n\n# 4. The skill tree sucks.\n\nI haven’t put a meaningful point into anything past like level 45. Once you get lockers and stamina stuff, the rest is pointless.\n\nWe need **impactful** skills like:\n\n* Reduced revive time\n* Max health increases\n* Faster med use\n* Faster reload\n* Faster zipline ramp speed\n* Reduced footstep noise\n* Faster sprint\n* Stealth vs Arc\n\nStuff people ACTUALLY want — stuff you would feel bad losing on a wipe, giving you a reason to grind again.\n\nBut they won't do it because “balance.”  \nIt’s not supposed to be balanced. It’s called **progression**.\n\n\n\n# 5. Fix the desync.\n\nNothing else needs to be said.\n\n\n\n# 6. Rocketeers are overtuned and obnoxious.\n\nWhy is their aggro time so long?  \nWho is enjoying hiding in a bunker for 5 minutes while my eardrums get shredded by that propeller noise?\n\nYou can make them strong, fine — but at some point I’d like to concede the fight and move on with my raid without sitting in a bush for half the match.\n\n\n\n# 7. Endgame is basically non-existent.\n\nI know they’re working on it, but right now the trials hit a hard ceiling because of raid timers and ARC respawn timers. It makes leaderboard pushing unfun because there’s literally only so far you can go.\n\nAlso:\n\n* We should be able to click someone’s name on the leaderboard and see their individual scores\n* Why do 4 of the top 5 tiers get the same reward?\n* The reward skin is below average\n\nPeople do hard raids in WoW because they want the sick mount.  \nGive us something that actually feels worth grinding.\n\n\n\n# TL;DR\n\nGame is awesome. Had an amazing time. But at a certain point there’s no reason to progress.\n\nThis could be fixed with:\n\n* Gear balancing changes\n* Free loadout nerfs\n* Spawn wave adjustments\n* A reworked skill tree\n* A meaningful endgame\n\nI **WANT** to put another 200 hours in. But right now there’s just no meat left on the bone.","offTopic":false},{"id":"e2de2b54-f87c-437d-b631-1d29a0d8d70b","excerpt":"Most of Marathon's issues could be massively alleviated in a single patch and I have no earthly idea why it's not being done — I think the big issues are pretty well understood by now:\n\n1. Game plays like a BR with PvE tacked onto it. Lobbywipe meta yadda yadda.\n2. Game is too punishing.\n3. No PvE mode\n4. Game basicall","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/Marathon/comments/1vnq22w/most_of_marathons_issues_could_be_massively/","role":"pain","weight":0.99746436,"occurredAt":"2026-08-13T22:54:46.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"Marathon","intent":"problem_report","painScore":0.48,"sentiment":0.07692308,"confidence":0.6739624,"matchedPatterns":["frustrating"],"statement":"The frustrating part is that a lot of these problems are being made worse by relatively small design decisions.","title":"Most of Marathon's issues could be massively alleviated in a single patch and I have no earthly idea why it's not being done","body":"I think the big issues are pretty well understood by now:\n\n1. Game plays like a BR with PvE tacked onto it. Lobbywipe meta yadda yadda.\n2. Game is too punishing.\n3. No PvE mode\n4. Game basically requires two friends to play. Autofill is hit-or-miss, Discord LFG is asking too much of the average player, and even when it works you have to keep doing it because people leave. All in all: shit experience.\n5. Loot is shit.\n\nThe frustrating part is that a lot of these problems are being made worse by relatively small design decisions.\n\nObviously, actually fixing Marathon is going to take bigger reworks. Maps especially. But there are smaller changes that could at least treat the symptoms in the meantime.\n\n\n\n# 1, 2 and 3 all get massively amplified by forced PvP\n\nFighting AI is loud. Events are extremely loud.\n\nMoving around the map is loud with turrets and ticks and whatnot.\n\nExtracting is extremely loud.\n\nOpening Pinwheel is loud as hell.\n\nKeys are loud as hell.\n\nAll of that broadcasts where players are, which feeds directly into the lobbywipe meta and makes avoiding PvP way harder than it needs to be.\n\nPvE, including its subpar rewards, is just PvP bait right now\n\nWhy not just reduce some of this?\n\n* Remove alarms\n* Remove turrets\n* Make extractions silent\n* Make silencers easier to acquire so stealth gameplay is more viable\n* Lower player counts a bit so teams have more breathing room off spawn and wiping the entire lobby becomes harder\n\nI don't think all of these need to happen exactly like this, but the general point is that the game currently goes out of its way to artificially force PvP for PvP's sake, instead of allowing for exploration, looting and uncertainty, which IS THE WHOLE POINT of extraction games.\n\nThat doesn't have to be the case.\n\n\n\n# This also ties directly into problem No. 4: solos\n\nThe lobbywipe meta largely doesn't exist in solos.\n\nIt plays much less like a BR.\n\nBut for some ungodly reason, the game is actively not balanced for solos.\n\nEngaging with AI, and especially events, becomes unreasonably bullet-spongy, dangerous and generally unfun.\n\nAssassin also poses a big problem because it can avoid PvE almost entirely, and smoke is a massive cockblock unless you're running Thief.\n\nIf you're saying Assassin isn't a problem because you can hear invis, you are wrong, but I'm not turning this already-too-long post into an Assassin thread.\n\nAnd this is the annoying part: making solos substantially better doesn't seem like it would require some enormous rework.\n\n* Scale UESC health down in solos.\n* Straight up REMOVE Assassin from solos.\n* Combine that with the general removal/reduction of alarms and forced noise.\n\nThat alone would massively improve the experience and offer something much closer to a true extraction mode that isn't constantly plagued by BR-esque gameplay.\n\nIt would also basically solve problem No. 4 entirely for a huge number of people.\n\n\n\n# More on No. 2: dying is too punishing because there are no small wins\n\nA big reason dying feels so bad is that a failed extract usually wipes out almost everything you accomplished that raid.\n\nThere are barely any “small wins”: ways to make some progress even when you die.\n\nIf I managed to stash one valuable item, finish a contract or move some progression forward, the raid wasn't a complete waste even if I died.\n\nMarathon offers almost none of that right now, but it easily could.\n\n* Allow multiple contracts to be active at once.\n\nIdeally, let us activate all of them. But even just giving solos three contract slots through the existing trio UI would be an improvement.\n\nI think the game needs a safe pocket eventually. But DCONs already exist, so there's another option in the short term:\n\n* Let us send loot to the stash with DCONs\n\nThe way to make the game less punishing is **NOT** to shower people in loot.\n\nThat just short-circuits progression and wrecks the economy.\n\nThe better solution is to make **LOSING** more palatable by giving dying players some kind of small win.\n\n\n\n# Problem No. 5: loot is shit, but \"just buff loot\" isn't really the fix\n\nThis also ties back into forced PvP.\n\nBecause loot is shit, people seek out PvP instead of looting.\n\nSo people say: buff loot.\n\nAnd yeah, sure. Especially this deep into the season with the economy where it is.\n\nBut that's a double-edged sword.\n\nBut showering people in good gear just skips progression. I'd rather have more small wins and smaller losses than hand out free gold guns everywhere.\n\nWhat I'd rather see is \n\n* Make barters more important instead of putting the reward directly in the box.\n* Tie barters more heavily into faction progression.\n* Improve them as you level factions.\n* Add more random-ass items to the loot pool that can be bartered for juicy stuff.\n* Stop making basic heals/ammo compete with progression for the same salvage. I shouldn't have to choose between stocking basic shit and progressing my character.\n* Let us trade lower-tier salvage up into higher tiers. That keeps low-tier locations relevant while still giving better players a reason to hit dangerous high-tier areas for faster progression. You'd almost get a kind of soft/pseudo-SBMM out of that: sweats naturally gravitate toward the high-risk shortcut while weaker players can grind the same progression more slowly in safer areas.\n\nI should be excited to find some random item because I know I'll need it for something later.\n\nAlso worth adding are more long-term loot-sinks and chase-goals:\n\n* More stash upgrades for salvage \n* Codex upgrades for salvage \n* Completed Keys for salvage\n\nA real fix goes beyond the scope of a small patch and requires a bigger economy reset.   \n\n\n# What I actually want from a match\n\nIn an ideal world, I want to be able to load into a match, make almost no noise outside of my silenced shots, fill my bag with stuff that actually progresses my character, and extract quietly.\n\nWithout destroying the economy in the process.\n\nThat sounds much more appealing to me than constantly being funneled into another lobby-wide PvP chain reaction.\n\nAnd if I want PvP? Put the best shortcuts and loot in places like Pinwheel and let me fight over them. PvP should be the high-risk, high-reward route. Not something I'm funneled into at spawn or extract.\n\nIf I avoid it, I should still be able to progress. Just slower.\n\nAnd if I die? Maybe I completed a contract. Maybe I DCON'd one useful item. Maybe I moved a barter or upgrade forward. It should be rare that a 20-minute raid ends with literally NOTHING to show for it.\n\nThe healthier loop I have in mind is basically this:\n\nYou spawn near a POI without another team immediately on top of you. Now you choose. Loot your area and bank some incremental progress. Rush someone else's area and gamble on PvP. Or head toward Pinwheel/an event for the high-risk, high-reward play.\n\nIf you stay and loot, you've bought yourself a little breathing room and a chance to DCON something before moving on. You can still get pushed, obviously, but the game isn't deliberately engineering that fight from second one.\n\nThen you decide whether to leave, keep looting, or go chase the bigger prize.\n\nTo be clear, I still think the maps need a proper rework for this loop to really work. I'm talking about short-term changes to incentives: increase the odds of having a quieter raid, give people room to make choices, and increase the percentage of raids that feel at least somewhat successful.\n\nThat's the biggest pain point rn.\n\n  \n\n\n# Tarkov gets this part right\n\nFor loot, I'd genuinely look at Tarkov for inspiration.\n\nPlaying Tarkov this season, there are HUNDREDS of random items I'm happy to find because I know I'll need them later for a quest, upgrade or barter.\n\nHalf the time I don't even play enough to reach whatever I was saving them for. I still hoard them.\n\nThat's the important part.\n\nRandom non-combat junk needs to feel good to find because I know it's getting me somewhere. And I can make that progress while mostly avoiding PvP if I want to. I can loot shitty low-tier areas while the chads murder each other over the good stuff, fill my bag with random crap I actually need, and leave.\n\nI'm progressing either way. They're just progressing faster if they win the dangerous fights.\n\nIt doesn't break the early-game economy in the same way that dropping straight-up good gear everywhere does, while still retaining that feeling of finding \"good\" loot. (Tarkov is a shit game in plenty of other ways. I'm talking about loot here.)\n\nMarathon tries to do this with salvage, but it feels too compressed. The same handful of currencies/items do too many things, so individual finds rarely feel interesting and the stuff you barter for is kinda shit anyway and lower tier salvage is entirely disconnected from higher tier barters.\n\nAnd then once Cryo opens up, a lot of the system basically stops mattering completely.\n\n\n\n# Basically\n\nNone of this “fixes Marathon.” The maps still need work, the economy still needs work, and longer-term systems still need work.\n\nMy point is that some of Marathon's worst problems are being actively amplified by much smaller decisions that don't require redesigning the entire game.\n\nAnd I think doing so would make Marathon feel a lot more like an extraction shooter and a lot less like a BR with PvE tacked onto it.\n\nAnd this is why I don't think Bungie should wait for some giant rework to address all of it. A lot of these are exactly the kind of changes I'd want as part of a bigger rework anyway, so ship the rough version now and iterate later.\n\nI'd personally come back for a midseason patch that did this. It buys time for the bigger Season 3/4 changes while making the game noticeably less miserable in the meantime.","offTopic":false},{"id":"75f2e657-83e7-4e05-873a-17ef0f3de327","excerpt":"Stella Sora's core gameplay is stagnating, and I can no longer use the term \"side game\" to justify so much wasted potential (Long rant) — TLDR: Stella Sora is currently on a decline in its Tyrunnybase & revenue due to:\n\n* Its primary roguelite mode \"Ascension\" having terrible replay value & is too easy, serving as a tr","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/StellaSora/comments/1usog8x/stella_soras_core_gameplay_is_stagnating_and_i/","role":"request","weight":0.9916667,"occurredAt":"2026-07-10T13:57:10.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"StellaSora","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.36,"sentiment":0.14957984,"confidence":0.7291667,"matchedPatterns":["missing_feature"],"statement":"* A stagnant core gameplay with lack of engaging core gameplay content, replay value & not enough meaningful updates.","title":"Stella Sora's core gameplay is stagnating, and I can no longer use the term \"side game\" to justify so much wasted potential (Long rant)","body":"TLDR: Stella Sora is currently on a decline in its Tyrunnybase & revenue due to:\n\n* Its primary roguelite mode \"Ascension\" having terrible replay value & is too easy, serving as a trimmed down Umamusume career mode for the sole purpose of producing builds for other content.\n* A stagnant core gameplay with lack of engaging core gameplay content, replay value & not enough meaningful updates.\n* Yostar's questionable decisions to keep relying on limited-time content & hypercasual minigames instead of producing more engaging permanent repeatable combat content\n\nSome of my proposed solutions:\n\n* Instead of playing Ascension for builds, replace it with a pick-X point allocation loadout system\n* Change Ascension into an independent roguelite mode, with an endless mode & a difficulty that doesn't require resource investment\n* Shifting core gameplay loop from dailies to weeklies to reduce burnout\n* Put serious effort into building a solid core gameplay loop & decent permanent content lineup instead of relying entirely on limited-time events & hypercasual minigames. Events should enhance the core gameplay, not replace it.\n* *(There's actually a lot. Scroll to Section 4)*\n\n\\--\n\nhttps://preview.redd.it/dkv0mpab1ech1.png?width=1489&format=png&auto=webp&s=4cb862d5ff87ba9df772be81811823e6595d0a95\n\n\"It's a fun side game\" is the most common praise many Tyrunnies gave for Stella Sora, thanks to its excellent stories, fast 2-minute dailies & F2P friendliness for character collection.\n\nHowever, if this is enough for a mobile game to thrive in 2026, there wouldn't be a [decline](https://reddit.com/r/StellaSora/comments/1uknk1g/june_2026_mobilegacha_revenue_bad_news/) in active Tyrunnybase & revenue. The reality is that a side game still needs to be not just daily chores but an engaging video game, and Stella Sora, despite having the foundation & potential to become better, is failing to take advantage of it, which I believe is the main reason that's leading to its decline.\n\n*(Note: English isn't my first language. This post isn't written by Neo Grace Clankers because they can't play the game. Also, I won't talk about the stories.)*\n\n# 0. The core gameplay loop\n\nFor those non-Tyrunny who don't know, Stella Sora's gameplay loop revolves around playing the roguelite mode \"Ascension\". You climb a monolith, kill monsters while acquiring random Potential Cards (buffs) & music notes (stat boosts). At the end of a run you get a \"record\", basically the result of your run, which serves as a \"loadout\" to clear other content.\n\nIf this gameplay loop is fun for a long time then Stella Sora would truly be \"Blue Archive with better gameplay\" just like all the pre-release hype. In fact, this game's already had a solid combat system, and the Potential cards theoretically could open a wide range of build diversity.\n\nhttps://preview.redd.it/j8hinymf1ech1.png?width=1197&format=png&auto=webp&s=d2fa495744ad5decaa480c41cd6f4ff02fc9f5b1\n\nHowever, you can only see the cracks once you've played the game for a while.\n\n# 1. Ascension's problems\n\nOne important aspect of a roguelite is replay value, yet Ascension fails on this aspect.\n\n* There are no alternate paths to provide variety between runs. Only differences are monolith NPC dialogues, some of which requires you to gamble for benefits.\n* Once you have well-built characters, Ascension becomes too easy. Everything dies in 1 or 2 hits & there's no feeling of challenge anymore.\n\n[Me nuking Difficulty 8 Floor 20 boss. I never pull for limited discs \\(weapons\\).](https://reddit.com/link/1usog8x/video/2mtqh5fu1ech1/player)\n\nThe entire game mode now only exists for the sole purpose of producing \"records\", so, naturally everyone just plays \"Quick Battle\" (a.k.a. Ascension sweep mode) to quickly get their builds.\n\n[Quick Battle gameplay](https://reddit.com/link/1usog8x/video/n7o6sya02ech1/player)\n\nBut there's a problem.\n\nIn many RPGs, you use your existing builds to engage with the game's content, learn & master core game mechanics, all while slowly working towards your next target build or optimizing your current build. This creates a fun, addictive loop of progression & mastery, where not just your characters are getting stronger, but you become a better player as well.\n\nIn Stella Sora, however, \"Quick battle\" means what's left of the Monolith climb is just picking random potential cards. There's no engaging with core game mechanics, no mastering the characters, just mindlessly sitting inside the elevator & hearing Portia's whines while praying the Monolith to drop the potential cards that Maygii recommends instead of the same potential cards the Monolith somehow keeps giving you.\n\nIt's basically a trimmed down Umamusume career mode, and it's not fun to continuously be f'd by RNG, especially when this game's already had [rigged Emblem drop rates](https://stelladb.pages.dev/emblem).\n\n[Where is my Touch of Nature affix, Yostar?](https://reddit.com/link/1usog8x/video/e6jwm5jf2ech1/player)\n\n# 2. A stagnant core gameplay & questionable development priorities\n\nAlongside Ascension, Stella Sora has 7 other combat game modes, but none of them are without caveats:\n\n* Bounty Trials & Event stages are your average gacha sweep chores: too easy, play once then sweep forever\n* Proving Grounds, the weekly boss mode, is too easy & repetitive\n* Cataclysm Survivor, the rotating bi-weekly Bullet Heaven game mode, is too easy\n* Menace Arena, the permanent endgame tower game mode, only opens 2 elements every day (aside from Monday which opens all elements), has repetitive stage design, and cleared stages cannot be replayed (nor have any good reason to).\n* Boss Blitz is monthly rotating Leaderboard PvE DPS race against Ascension bosses (a.k.a. meta & adult card), with only 2 bosses available during the whole month, and most casuals only replay when their rank goes down.\n* An Echoing Finale, Yostar's version of Blue Archive's Total Assault mode, is only available once every month for 7 days, with only 2 bosses have been created, and again, most casuals only replay when their rank goes down.\n\nThe bottom 3 are the only ones offering a challenging experience, and in order to have a build for those modes Tyrunnies have to play....... Ascension. This content lineup won't be able to entertain an average Tyrunny for more than 15 hours. For a \"2025 AA live service\" no way this is enough.\n\nThat's not to mention other fluffs like:\n\n* 2D Skins (a.k.a just a new portrait/wallpaper) ([reference](https://reddit.com/r/StellaSora/comments/1oc363r/oh_boy_no_model_change_for_combat/))\n* Copy & pasted Heartlink date events, with Special Memories appearance being RNG-based even with correct choices ([reference](https://reddit.com/r/StellaSora/comments/1obyfdh/are_all_dates_copy_and_pasted/))\n* Gifting being limited to 10 per day\n* \"Friends\" feature serving no purpose other than being free stamina nodes\n* Stamina bottles having expiration dates\n* Character's \"elements\" serving purely as an archaic tool to limit their viable content, in the era where Genshin's elemental reaction system exists.\n* Scarce resource during early game\n* Questionable balancing since Shia's AA1 Dash tech (in my opinion)\n\nAnd after 8 months of development, what has the game received?\n\n* 12 new characters, which there's not enough combat content for Tyrunnies to have fun with\n* New skins, some of which are 2D\n* Chitose buffs & Freesia nerfs\n* Emblem Tempering, which you can only earn 2 chances of upgrading affixes per story event, and doesn't solve the problem of the emblem stat pool being rigged towards useless stats.\n* Difficulty 8 for Ascension (still too easy, and doesn't change the fact that people only play \"Quick Battle\" for records) + some QoLs\n* Rotating elements for Cataclysm Survivor.\n* Rotating Boss Blitz & An Echoing Finale seasons\n* 1 new Boss for Boss Blitz (Hazana)\n* Summit Show, where Tyrunnies duel against a Trekker Boss with selectable modifiers, is limited-time, and so far we've seen exactly 2 events released against [Nahona](https://reddit.com/r/StellaSora/comments/1psu5fr/summit_show_event/) & [Firefly](https://reddit.com/r/StellaSora/comments/1sih89w/version_19_update_preview/).\n* The same boring event stages\n\nThat equals to a grand total of 1 new limited-time game mode, and 0 new engaging permanent game modes...\n\nSo, after 8 months, this \"AA live service 2.5D ARPG\" is still lacking engaging \"2.5D ARPG\" content, especially permanent repeatable ones, all of which are vital for a live service game. Yet, Yostar chose to release not 1 or 2 minigames...\n\nhttps://preview.redd.it/4gx6hnd53ech1.png?width=3411&format=png&auto=webp&s=f42afc738ebbfe926460c8f8b562336342c72ae2\n\n...but **10 of them**?!\n\nWhat makes these hypercasual minigames, that have 0 replay value once all challenges have been completed, to deserve attention over the core gameplay that's set Stella Sora on the map? This game's already had the foundation & potential to become \"Blue Archive with better gameplay\", and Yostar literally chose to throw away that chance.\n\nThat's why, even though I want to enjoy the game more, I just can't. There's not enough there.\n\n# 3. \"It's a side game, what do you expect?\"\n\nhttps://preview.redd.it/kxtlsv9p3ech1.png?width=1268&format=png&auto=webp&s=e8360e9aa4541ec724b2ea18d1f6ae0de2a89279\n\n\"Side game\" is not a genre.\n\nI almost only hear the term inside the gacha gaming community. The idea that a live service game can get away with repetitive chores & a lack of replay value because \"it's a side game\" is something I rarely see elsewhere.\n\nHowever, if \"side game\" simply means something you play here and there alongside a \"main game\", then even grindy ones like Warframe Mobile can still be your \"side game\" if they allow you to have fun with a few sessions here and there ([reference](https://reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/13fiflk/is_warframe_casual_friendly/)). Likewise, casual ones like CoD Mobile can be your \"main game\" if they offer enough quality content or replay value.\n\nThose games have their own problems, but \"neglecting the core gameplay in favor of less meaningful content like hypercasual minigames\" isn't one of them.\n\nI came to Stella Sora not because of those hypercasual minigames nor it being designed to be a \"side game\", but because of its Princonne-like theme + BA-like art style & its 2.5D roguelite ARPG gameplay that I've never played before (a.k.a what Yostar advertised in [their gameplay trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs40AGfEv60)). It may be a \"comfy side game\", but as a regular mobile game, right now it's just another visual novel with repetitive sweep chores.\n\nSpeaking of regular mobile games...\n\nhttps://reddit.com/link/1usog8x/video/v0hptxca3ech1/player\n\nDo you seriously mean to tell me during the early 2010s, among classic mobile games that have a solid core gameplay like Angry Birds, Bad Piggies, Fruit Ninja, Cut The Rope, Asphalt 6,... that fast dailies, autoplay, sweep & hypercasual minigames would've been enough to be a good mobile game?\n\nNo.\n\nIt's because now that the mobile game market has been dominated by freemium titles that are riddled with microtransactions, intrusive ads & [all sorts of manipulative tactics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4), and gacha games have been burning out their players by conditioning them to repeat the exact same chores, beating the exact same stages & clicking the exact same menus *every single day*...... fast dailies & hypercasual minigames are like honeymoon phases of a new gacha game.\n\nImagine [asking for autoplay & sweep](https://reddit.com/r/gachagaming/comments/1dlec16/i_would_be_very_happy_if_more_gachas_had_sweeps/) in Fruit Ninja or Jetpack Joyride, people would question why you're even playing the game at all. Yet here we are with the gacha game market, when some of Umamusume JP's most celebrated updates include [auto dailies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bah-RG3nLOI) & [idle training](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtsZRs75lOY). The \"2025 Mobile","offTopic":false},{"id":"41bbfab2-bf6a-4dc4-941f-fbdd97d83842","excerpt":"The problem with Wuthering Waves endgame — Hello everyone. I am a new player who started during 3.1 in February. This is my first ever gacha and my first live-service game overall. I am NOT a game designer, this is purely a consumer perspective. \n\nSince I started, I have finished the main story, built a few working tea","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/WutheringWaves/comments/1spr2fy/the_problem_with_wuthering_waves_endgame/","role":"request","weight":0.94677967,"occurredAt":"2026-04-19T12:01:11.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"WutheringWaves","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.36,"sentiment":0.8095238,"confidence":0.6961615,"matchedPatterns":["missing_feature"],"statement":"The only thing missing is a place where those pieces exist at the same time in a repeatable format that makes it worth spending time, energy and money to actually get good at.","title":"The problem with Wuthering Waves endgame","body":"Hello everyone. I am a new player who started during 3.1 in February. This is my first ever gacha and my first live-service game overall. I am NOT a game designer, this is purely a consumer perspective. \n\nSince I started, I have finished the main story, built a few working teams, and played through Tower of Adversity, Whimpering Wastes and Fantasies of a Thousand Gateways. I have also spent a decent amount of money. I am writing this post because I like the game and want to spend more time and money in it, not less.\n\nFor transparency i will add that i have used AI to clean up the post a bit, but the ideas and thoughts presented here are my own.\n\n### TLDR\n\nThe endgame is uninspired. Every mode boils down to \"kill difficult enemies in an empty room within a time limit.\" This format wastes what this game actually does well. The combat is fantastic, the environments are great, and traversal is fun, but you never get to experience them together outside of story content. A proper endgame that combines all three would make character investment feel justified in a way it currently doesn't.\n\n### What WuWa does well\n\n- **Character design.** The characters are why I started playing and why I spend money. Animation, VFX, and voice acting are all great (I play English, but I hear JP and CN are just as good).\n- **Combat.** Genuinely fantastic. Easy to learn, deep enough to invest in, and you feel awesome no matter what you're doing. The combat isn't what made me start, but it's what keeps me playing.\n- **Story.** Has no right being this good. I've been genuinely shocked multiple times at the quality of writing in a game whose core loop is collecting scantly clad women (and men).\n\n### The problem: how a patch actually plays out in my experience\n\nThis is what a patch looks like for me:\n\n1. New character revealed. I fall in love with the design and get hyped.\n2. Patch drops. I pull, maybe spend extra money. The character is awesome and novel.\n3. I spend time and resources building them. Making them stronger is fun.\n4. I explore the new region and play the story. Environments are nice, traversal is fun, puzzles are chill. Great times.\n5. Character is fully built. Overworld is cleared. Every enemy dies in two hits.\n6. I think: \"Okay. The preparation is done. My team is finally ready for the hardest content. This is what I've been building for.\"\n\nThen I enter the endgame:\n\n- **Tower of Adversity**: enemies in a box with random non-descript buffs. Difficult but bland.\n- **Tactical Hologram**: an (admittedly very good) boss fight in an arena with zero context. Difficult but bland.\n- **Whimpering Wastes**: enemies in a box with random non-descript buffs. Difficult but bland.\n\nAll that effort, and this is the reward? Why did I bother getting this cool character if I can't use it for something actually interesting?\n\n### Why this bothers me\n\nThree things this game does well: combat, environments, and traversal. But you never actually get to experience these three gameplay elements together, you only ever get to use them one or two at a time.\n\n- In endgame, the **combat** is challenging, but the environment is a simple arena/skybox. There are no meaningful decisions beyond your rotation. It becomes a training dummy with extra HP.\n- In story and open world, the **environments and traversal** shine, but your character is so over-specced that combat becomes trivial.\n\nThere is no mode where all three exist at once. That gap is the whole problem.\n\nI feel this is a trap a lot of games with great *systems* fall into. The core system is so good that the devs forget to build a real game around it.\n\nTake one of my favourite games: War Thunder. The vehicle models are fantastic, the simulation is deep, and the combat is actually really impressive(despite the communities bitching, but that's another matter). What do the devs do with all that? Put players in a box and tell them to kill each other. A great core system but bland content makes War thunder an just ok game, even though it could have been amazing with relatively little effort.\n\nOr imagine League of Legends, but with no jungle, no lanes, no towers, no minions, no shop, no anything. Just champions hitting each other in a featureless room. It would probably still be fun, because the combat is that good. But the game would be a shadow of itself and would never has been as successful.\n\nThat's where WuWa endgame lives. It's League without the map.\n\nBTW: *Of course I get that the situation is not at all like LoL. Wuwa is live service, and the story and limited time events are the lifeblood of this game, but my point still stands that an improved endgame would give players a reason to stay and play the game after the content of the latest patch dries up.*\n\n### What an actual endgame would need\n\nI am not a designer, so this is directional, not prescriptive:\n\n- **Difficult combat against interesting enemies.** The current endgame already nails this.\n- **Let players bring their built characters.** No Fantasies-style pre-set loadouts. Min-maxing has to matter, or there's no reason to do it.\n- **A map that is a gameplay element, not a backdrop.** Interactable terrain, traversal as a core mechanic, environmental factors that change how you play.\n- **Macro-level decisions.** Strategic choices that go beyond rotation optimization and actually affect outcomes.\n- **Replayability through variation.** Open-ended enough that no two runs play the same, driven by player choice rather than just RNG buffs.\n\n### One concrete example: Sonoro Collapse\n\nAgain, not a real pitch, just a demonstration of what COULD be done.\n\n**Premise:** your team infiltrates a Sonoro Sphere to destroy its core. Destroying the core destabilizes the Sphere, which begins to collapse. You have to extract before it finishes collapsing.\n\n**Structure:**\n\n- A multi-lane dungeon with branching paths and mini-bosses gating each lane.\n- Random events across the map that grant positive effects (buffs, shortcuts, map reveals) or let you avoid negative ones (hazards, reinforcements, blocked extraction routes). You can't reach all of them. You have to choose.\n- Optional terrain prep during infiltration that makes extraction easier. Set up grapple points, gather keys, etc. Skip it to save time, and the escape becomes more difficult.\n- A core destruction phase in the center as a traditional boss encounter.\n- An extraction phase where the collapsing Sphere forces real use of your traversal tools under pressure. This could be a creeping damage zone or simply a timer, or something more cinematic like destructible maps reshaping.\n\n**Scoring on multiple axes:**\n\n- Time to completion.\n- Bonus objectives completed (for example by finding \"Black Shores research samples\").\n\n**Why this works:**\n\n- You bring your own builds, so core progression matters.\n- The map is a gameplay element, not a skybox.\n- The prep-affects-escape loop and choice of different routes and mini bosses forces the player to make real decisions instead of pure DPS checks.\n- Multiple scoring axes mean you can replay to optimize for different dimensions.\n- It has some context in the existing lore. Sonoro Spheres and Black Shores research are already in the game. Kuro wouldn't have to invent anything new, just deploy what they already built.\n\nAnd this is just one example. The design space is massive: tower defense modes protecting objectives against Tacet Discord waves, open world bike intercepts with fast travel disabled, escort missions, co-op dungeons that split the team across lanes. The specific mode doesn't matter. The principle does: use the systems this game already has, together, in repeatable content.\n\n### Closing\n\nThe pieces are all there. The combat is fantastic. The characters are great. The world and story are great. The only thing missing is a place where those pieces exist at the same time in a repeatable format that makes it worth spending time, energy and money to actually get good at.\n\nKuro seems to be pretty good at listening to player feedback, so my hope is that if enough of us repeats this feedback, maybe a more interesting endgame becomes a priority in a future patch.\n\nAm I completely out of sync here, or have others felt the same way? I am interested to hear what veteran players feel about the endgame as well. :)\n\nThank you for reading.","offTopic":false},{"id":"0ebf0136-ab31-4c55-a735-b2d2db3e7d42","excerpt":"My journey after 300 games. [rant] — Hello. I've been playing mainly classic, I've hit 300 games. I'm 1000 SP Legend. Here are my two cents about the gamemode.\n\nI want to first shoutout feralpony for being an amazing person, talking to me and listening to what I had to say, and phreak, and everyone for working hard on ","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/LeagueClassic/comments/1vuwi85/my_journey_after_300_games_rant/","role":"request","weight":0.8944616,"occurredAt":"2026-08-21T23:44:41.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"LeagueClassic","intent":"feature_request","painScore":0.3,"sentiment":0.45454547,"confidence":0.68804735,"matchedPatterns":["wish","missing_feature"],"statement":"don't take it so serious' - but you're missing the entire point here.","title":"My journey after 300 games. [rant]","body":"Hello. I've been playing mainly classic, I've hit 300 games. I'm 1000 SP Legend. Here are my two cents about the gamemode.\n\nI want to first shoutout feralpony for being an amazing person, talking to me and listening to what I had to say, and phreak, and everyone for working hard on this.\n\n(this is from EUNE pov)\n\n1. Matchmaking.\n\nThis is the biggest, BIGGEST problem right now. Me, as a Legend 1000 SP player, can get matched against a salt 4 player with 1 win and absolutely decimate him. But this can also happen on my team. People picking kassadin thinking he's insane, or just a botlane that plays bot like it's modern, then gets stomped by the diamond 1/legend duo bot lane.\n\nThe game is VERY fast, often ending in literally 5 minutes. People often pick early game champs like TF and roam and just end the game before it's even started. From personal experience, since I used to play 20 games a day, I used to get dove on repeat by people who know me, even with streamer mode.\n\nThese past days have been absolutely miserable for me, losing more than I win, gaining +11 and losing -18 - forcing me to play fill to even stand a chance of climbing further.\n\n2) Balance.\n\nBalance is okay. I am glad we're finally gutting the problem champs like blitz, eve, trynda AGAIN. I have no clue why they're allowed to exist in their state. But personally I think the balance overall is okay. There's some outliers like mid zilean but no one plays him except for u/RidiculousTool so we're fine.\n\n3) Meaning.\n\nThere is...no meaning to classic. Sure, I got 1000 SP Legend. Sure, I got my classic pass and levels all done. Sure, I got everything completed, with 20 rune pages, all runes unlocked, everything unlocked. But....that's it.\n\nThere is no point in grinding, not even a leaderboard. It would help to a degreee sure but I kind of wish there was \\*something\\*.\n\nYou could argue 'oh, but it's a for fun gamemode! don't take it so serious' - but you're missing the entire point here.\n\n4) Content Draught.\n\nI know this horse has been beaten to death by now, with countless posts here about it, but I feel like the pace of which the champs are released is....left wanting. Sure we got the three ninjas, and next patch we're getting nothing, but after that we get another bundle. I wish we could've gotten the fan favorites, like Irelia, Fiora, Mordekaiser, Orianna, Talon, Zed, so on - but hopefully we can decide that with the votes. Maybe.\n\nOverall, I think Classic is going okay, I just wish Riot would put more emphasis on retaining player attention. Queue times are still kinda iffy in exchange for poor matchmaking. Alas, one can only hope for a brighter future.","offTopic":true},{"id":"ff7c6fc0-a688-474e-b5c2-11c31d02235f","excerpt":"A Returning Player's Ramblings Into The Void — According to steam, I bought Dead by Daylight in the summer of 2019, buying the Plague and Jane dlc that had recently come out. Looking back, I think I got into DBD because evolve went under. I was fascinated by that game as a kid, but being a middle-schooler with helicopt","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/deadbydaylight/comments/1vu5bt7/a_returning_players_ramblings_into_the_void/","role":"pain","weight":0.8919677,"occurredAt":"2026-08-21T03:48:57.000Z","sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","credibility":0.62,"venue":"deadbydaylight","intent":"problem_report","painScore":0.5175472,"sentiment":-0.018867925,"confidence":0.5877693,"matchedPatterns":["terrible"],"statement":"My reactions are horrible, I'm blind as a bat and deaf as hell.","title":"A Returning Player's Ramblings Into The Void","body":"According to steam, I bought Dead by Daylight in the summer of 2019, buying the Plague and Jane dlc that had recently come out. Looking back, I think I got into DBD because evolve went under. I was fascinated by that game as a kid, but being a middle-schooler with helicopter parents, I never got a chance to play it before servers shut down. But my disappointment eventually grew a new interest: this other asymmetric badass M rated horror game where one player hunts down four survivors. As it turned out, a lot of my friends had already been running SWFs for quite a while. So, I became the killer for their Kill Your Friend matches. My earliest memories of the game are getting ruthlessly bullied by my friends who had no qualms bringing iri keys and map offerings to really put me through the ringer. Outside of that, I mostly watched content on the game, keeping up with it through the perspectives of professionals and creators.\n\nThen I stopped for quite a while. At some point I changed computers and DBD just wasn't on the list of games I felt like redownloading. My friends still played occasionally, but I was pretty sure they'd lose interest like they did with most games. A new 1v4 would eclipse the genre and DBD would be forgotten.\n\nSix years later. My friends are still playing DBD, the game has gone from 15 killers to 41, and all the sudden DBD is celebrating it's 10 year anniversary. But most interestingly, there are no other games in the genre. I've heard whimpers of other games trying to cash in- I mean take a crack at DBD's throne, but let's be honest: none of them have even come close. So, when I hopped in discord (I can't believe my friends used to VC through Xbox game app) to all my friends in a game of DBD, I finally fished through my steam library for this forgotten game.\n\nOk enough setup - what is this an internet recipe? Let's get to the point.\n\nI am by no means an experienced player. Before my 5 year sabbatical I barely scraped 100 hours on this game and was never what you might call good. But I'm not a middle-schooler playing an M rated horror game to rebel against my parents anymore; I'm an aspiring game designer with a serious case of Overthinking. So, as I went from getting bullied in customs (some things never change) to getting bullied in pubs, my mind went over all the ways the game had changed. All my thoughts, feelings, and memories of this weird game that had somehow survived the most unstable genre of all time swirled around. From zero hook blowouts to 4k stomps, my killer main reflexes kicked back into gear and after nearly doubling my previous playtime in barely a month, I might explode if I don't dump my thoughts somewhere.\n\n1. **The Tunneling Problem**\n\nThis might sound strange from a killer main, but I actually hate tunneling. I am exceedingly casual. I want to have fun and part of my fun is knowing that other players are also having fun. So, eliminating one player from the game and sending them back to queue (or worse, forcing them to spectate their SWF for 15 minutes) puts a bad taste in my mouth.\n\nBut tunneling is just. Too. Good. DBD has gotten fast. Way fast. Gen rushing has always been a problem, but I remember when Corrupt Intervention was a midtier perk. Now it feels like a requirement if you want to keep the game from ending in 2 minutes. One less survivor and suddenly you have a lot more breathing room. But the game is balanced so delicately on the 1v4 tightrope that a single kill can be the deciding factor of a match.\n\nEven if you don't get the kill, the threat of putting the survivors a player down is so impactful that it's often enough on its own. Other survivors will take prot hits, bodyblock, sabo, or otherwise do anything that isn't completing a gen. And that survivor on death-hook is gonna play way more passively. Ironically, you don't chase and hook survivors to end the game, you do it to slow the game down. Making survivors heal and unhook is the second best tool in that arsenal.\n\nThe first best?\n\nBEING ON THE FUCKING GENS.\n\n2. **The Anti-Tunnel Problem**\n\nI am casual. But I am also only human. I don't like getting stomped, and when I get teabagged or flashlight clicked, I lock in like there's a million bucks on the line. But no amount of locking in will give me 5% haste, break all the pallets and block all the windows, and no amount of tunneling is going to delete decisive strike, dead hard, shoulder the burden, and whatever else the survivors are gonna throw at you if they see you trying to tunnel down one player. There's too many resources now, and I don't just mean perks. Draining every pallet on the map used to be. Idk, actually possible? But now there are so many pallets all over the place on every part of every map. Not like pallets matter anyway when the survivors can just loop on a T and L wall. Taking a chase is so punishing, even when you get a hook from it. Survivors don't have to question what resources are worth using because they simply always will be.\n\nThe 1v4 equation feels so much more impactful. The killer is by default losing from the second you say go. Even if it just takes 30 seconds to down and hook a survivor, that chase gives 30 seconds to every other survivor and suddenly the killer is a minute and a half behind. It just isn't possible to beat a competitive survivor team in a straight 1v4, but it also isn't possible to tunnel against a competitive survivor team with how many resources they have at their disposal.\n\nIn a purely competitive setting where both sides of the game are playing to win, tunneling is the best strategy, but it's so difficult to pull off now that even if you *can*, smart or coordinated survivors are gonna punish you for every second you spend trying to get that one player out of the game. This is mainly the difference between SWF and solo survivors but my point stands. Chases have gotten so unrewarding that if I see a survivor take a hard turn away from the rest of the gens (even if that survivor is injured, on death hook, and exhausted) I already know that it's not worth chasing because three gens will have popped by the time I get that hook.\n\n3. **The Difference Between Winning and Not Losing**\n\nTo be clear, I'm not saying this because I'm losing: I'm saying this because I'm winning without getting better. I am the worst mechanical player you will ever see. My reactions are horrible, I'm blind as a bat and deaf as hell. But with the state of the game, what good is mechanical skill anyway? It's far more effective to just proxy gens until I stumble into a free down. But when I 4k because I slowed the game to a crawl and \"The wolf only needs to be lucky once\"ed my way into a win, I don't feel satisfied. I didn't improve and the skill of individual survivors didn't even factor in.\n\nThese are all the personal experiences of one killer main, but it's a major part of what's shaping the meta and the game as a whole. Killers with chase powers aren't good because of their chase powers - they're good because they can justify taking four gen regression perks. Killers no longer play to win, they play to not lose. This problem is why certain killers (and playstyles) exist in such a toxic state. Killers like Legion and Skull Merchant who don't exactly *win,* they just don't *lose*.\n\nYou can't interact with something that isn't happening. You can't play around something that isn't happening. Legion is going to deep wound all four of you and run around the map pressuring gens and there is nothing you can do about it. Skull Merchant is going to run between her drones pressuring gens and there is nothing you can do about it.\n\nThis isn't unhealthy for survivors and this isn't unhealthy for killers: it's unhealthy for the game. It's always been an issue. Since the game came out survivors have won by sitting on gens not interacting with the killer. But I see this problem getting worse instead of better.\n\nDead by Daylight hasn't always been my favorite game, but it's a game I've always found so interesting to analyze and think about. I'd hate to see it falter because of something that seems so obvious, but maybe it's all just in my head. I'd love to know what other people think. I don't feel experienced enough to offer ways of fixing this, especially not easy ones, but maybe this can get the juices flowing for someone smarter.\n\nRegardless, I hope this game has at least another decade in it.","offTopic":true}],"breakdown":[{"sourceKey":"reddit","sourceName":"Reddit","count":15}],"total":15}}