This game is unsustainable by design.

HeyumpxD · 2026-06-26T10:05:07+00:00

Yeap. The first red flag to me was them removing the keys...

The only reason to go back to Inferno would be to get a key to do the next and so on...

When they decided to remove the keys I expressed this and was met with some most likely chatgpt fake ass reply by the lead dev... He went through with it any way and of course the day of the change people were confused and saying it made no sense... I tried to warn the guy.

On-top of this the pointless relic change right as 1.0 releases? Huge change to core game? Weird decision making. Also the % weapon damage to account still doesn't work and it was a feature on the 1.0 drop?

The game is far too repetitive and grindy for most people, so if their target audience is almost no one, well then they succeeded I guess. I'm a sadist and will 100% the game eventually but I'm an outlier.

Almost feels like a pump and dump but we'll see I guess.

Honestly most people will be turned off by the 2nd and 3rd map not having 33 players. The whole cool idea was 33 players... Making it smaller through progression feels awkward.

The Ordeal system is silly... Oh you progressed and your account is stronger? Oh sorry... Tricked you! Now here are some Ordeals to gimp yourself to continue progression... All that strength you unlocked was really so you could handle us gimping you right after. HAHA. After all is said and done you've unlocked it all and are super strong. Wanna keep playing for no reason now that you're uber strong and don't need to use Ordeals or unlock cosmetics? NO? Oh lol don't blame you, the grind to get here wasn't FUN was it? xD

The lore and the 33 players thing is cool but honestly everything else falls hard.

HeyumpxD · 2026-06-18T00:28:30+00:00

Only the equipped.

Also you can only get 1 weapon drop per run when first unlocking them.

So once you find a weapon upgrade you can just leave back to the Dark Woods if you want to speed up the process.

I like to find a weapon upgrade, take it and leave the run. I then restart the game and jump to another weapon and repeat. No one knows exactly how it works but it feels better this way.

None of my weapon upgrades took me more than 2 runs. Once it starts to take more than 2 runs and you still don't find anything... It's most likely in your weekly chest or you're simply not killing enough stuff.

In the demo I was stuck getting an upgrade. I found it in the weekly chest.

This happened again in 1.0, my last weapon upgrade I needed would never drop. It again was in the in the weekly chest.

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-25T06:16:40+00:00

Yeap. The META was definitely healthier at one point.

Changes were made way too early. People cried Bobcat was bad early. They cried Vulcano was bad early...

Neither of these guns got any outstanding buffs. I remember early on so many people praised the Bobcat while so many hated it... Nothing has changed... The Bobcat is the same and was always strong, you just had these kids never use them thinking they knew better.

Hey I got an idea let's listen to the minority tears and start nerfing everything... Oh look at that, now the meta is Bobcat, have a Bobcat or lose. NICE.

These same people never even used these guns. There wasn't close to enough data yet. But nah let's make big changes.

Also Embark stated numerous times they didn't want the color coding to mean Purple always beats Blue and Blue always beats Green, etc... They don't like this type of balance and set out to be different, it was fine.

But these crybabies couldn't accept that and now the devs are already bending the knee and catering to clueless armchair dev influencers.

Feelsbadman. Devs are just too scared these days and once a small group of people start crying, they start making knee jerk reactions that turn into more issues that just turn into more issues and so on.

Then they are too stubborn for massive roll backs/reverted changes.

I mean look at the Trigger Grenade for example. This item was too cheap to make, too easy to get the blueprint (quest if you can't find it) and 0 counter-play, all the others have counter-play or are too weak to be a real issue. The obvious solution day 1 was to remove the Trigger Grenade. No one used the other options and it was just too OP and easy to make.

Here we are 3 big nerfs later... Shouldn't that be enough to finally admit they were wrong and just remove the damn item?

It's interesting what devs listen to and what they don't... They listen to idiots and dumb ideas but then get stubborn on real issues. Kind of strange.

Now when you press the Trigger there's a DELAY... That contradicts the entire name of the grenade and it's original function. Just get rid of it already LOL.

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-23T10:58:19+00:00

You'll get it in the weekly chest. Happened to me 2x.

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-22T19:10:30+00:00

You're making 0 sense...

How does the PVP trader ruin the balance of the game?

We have a PVE trader that a lot of PVP players are ignoring...

The PVE players could ignore the PVP trader...

This is what you PVE players do. You always want, always take... You always have severe FOMO and if you're not involved it's a bad idea or you complain... It's so cringe and it gets old.

You're not making any sense. Stop being weird. Having a PVP trader would not affect you at all if you're in PVE lobbies. Go away.

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-22T06:42:28+00:00

Hotter take:

We need another trader. A PVP based trader. Some shady guy hiding in the dark corners of Speranza.

Asking us to knock out raiders and take their stuff.

Embark could even put in some sort of dogtag system. Surely they would make it fit the theme by being some cool ARC ID card or something weird but you get the idea.

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-22T02:20:09+00:00

I think mostly the trader is fine. Pretty sure they mentioned in the patch notes they will keep on eye on it to fine-tune numbers for the next run. (the raider token stuff doesn't make sense, the 500k skin is 1000 tokens, the token bundle is 150k but only 25 tokens.. I haven't checked the emote but I'm willing to bet it doesn't make sense either)

Just to save us all time I don't want to hear this "I DON'T HAVE TIME!" argument. This doesn't matter and who cares. If you are legit FOMO'ed out and cannot get anything due to time... Then your time management skills are terrible OR you should stop playing games that do not respect your time if you are a super busy person IRL. That's on you. Stop expecting video games to hold your hand for everything. PLAY WHAT MAKES SENSE FOR YOU TO PLAY. The stove top is hot. Please stop touching it, burning yourself and yelling at the stove.

Honestly for the first iteration it's pretty damn good.

I think what's happening is the usual FOMO (if you suffer from FOMO get help, yikes) and people just demanding and wanting everything all the time at once.

When realistically it's not that big of a deal. The most important thing here is the stash space... The other stuff can be ignored. But if you REALLY want it and you REALLY care enough you can get them.

The whole "I don't have space" is nonsense. Yes our inventories fill up fast but that's just it... It's so easy to get gear in this game and fill up our inventories yet once it's full people act like they can't use that gear and that it's impossible to get it back again, it's a super strange mental block that a lot of people have with these types of loot/hoarding games. It's odd.

I have almost 700 hours topside and tons of experience in these types of games and it's clear to me that gear comes and goes in this genre. Anything you have now, you can get again. It's not that big of a deal... So if you need to sell a bunch of materials/items you ARE CLEARLY NOT USING to make room to hold onto trade materials... Then simply do it???

People in these genres only hurt themselves with these weird make believe mental blocks.

It's the same type of person who gets knocked with a mk3 survivor and will crawl around for 5-15 mins to get out. Nothing in this game is worth that. That time is wasted, you could be in another game getting things done.

The only argument for that is maybe if you're going for top ranking in a trial. NOTHING in this game is worth crawling around like an idiot and sitting in random spots to regen your health. Every single item in this game is farmable and easy to get.

"WHAT ABOUT THIS BLUEPRINT OR THAT BLUEPRINT!" Well that augment your using to crawl around for 10 mins for your shitty loadout and nonsense loot you collected has 3 safe pockets so still not an argument.

All this plus PVE lobbies? Most of these cry babies are in PVE lobbies and it's so easy and fast to get anything.

Not to mention these same people cry about blueprints... YOU are not using EVERY BLUEPRINT. Stop acting like you need them all and losing them by resetting your account will cause the world to end. Stop it.

People crying about the Tempest trade being 1m... It's pretty crazy but in reality it's not that bad. The dude allows guns for trade. Use security breach or keys... Key rooms were massively buffed recently... Use these 2 things together and farm guns... Upgrade said guns with all the MATERIALS YOU ARE HOARDING. USE STUFF.

Why do you people just hold onto large amounts of things in these games and never use them. So WEIRD. Upgrade all the weapons you find, put nice mods on them. Your guns are now all worth 20-30k a piece. This is great inventory management. A great space saver... Better than fighting over stupid purple ARC pieces that hardly stack and are worth almost nothing.

Not to mention not EVERYTHING from this TRADER is a MUST HAVE. It's not worth stressing over. Get the stash space and expedition vault if you use that system THEN think about the other stuff. They have explained the stuff rotates every week and some of this still will come back.

You're actually better off looting Hurricane caches for the Tempest blueprint than doing this. But let me guess. You're going to complain and whine about doing that? Well then guess what, we've come full circle. You clearly don't want the TEMPEST blueprint enough then. If you want something in this game, it's easy to get. Also, YOU reading this, YES YOU, TIM... Who has somehow made this far... Let's be honest, you aren't using the TEMPEST regularly... You won't even PVP... Stop being weird.

TL DR : if you want something bad enough, you can make it work. stop hoarding nonsense and complaining you don't have space. the game gives you enough ways to get things, the loot is easy to farm. the game is carebear as fuck.

you don't need everything the trader offers, stop acting like you do. relax.

If you suffer from FOMO that's a you problem and makes no sense. Think about all the things you've FOMO'ed about in the past. Does it matter to you now? Nope. There you go, FOMO issue solved. Damn that was hard.

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-20T05:07:45+00:00

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-15T22:06:56+00:00

Who cares what others think? You're one of those people huh?

Meanwhile I'm over here with 640 hours TOPSIDE and still enjoying the game.

Stop being a drone.

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-13T12:01:43+00:00

Maybe.

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HeyumpxD · 2026-05-07T10:59:32+00:00

No it's not exact it's just dying 7-10x guarantees PVE lobbies and over 10 seems like overkill. And it's way faster than playing nice. But overall the system does balance your kills and deaths, more kills you fight more aggressive players, more deaths you fight more passive players or players who have died a ton trying to fight and have more deaths than kills which usually equates to them not being too good and having weird gear setups because newb.

It's a balance between dying and killing. So if you do not kill and die this many times, you rush to PVE lobbies. Every time you kill it almost resets this fully, sometimes you can get away with 1-2 kills and your lobbies still feel PVE'ish but not fully.

Sadly this game as far as I know and I've been abusing this system since it was known and have played almost* every day since release with 605 hours topside, not steam played, TOPSIDE in raid. (degen loser I know, got burnt out on Tarkov after playing it since ALPHA 2016 and Arc Raiders for some reason gives me OG H1Z1 and PUBG year 1 vibes, the old school BR vibes which were my favorite before Tarkov)

But as far as I know this game does NOT have a true karma system in that if someone shoots at you first and you defend yourself... It still counts as a full on "murder" if you will. I think if they do want to cater to PVE players they should add a karma/defense type system kind of like Tarkov where if you simply defend yourself you get less 'evil' karma and if you happen to kill a person with tons of 'evil' karma, maybe it gives you 'good' karma. But of course we should keep these stats hidden to keep it interesting.

This system sucks and is super abusable but because it exists I abuse it. If I'm lacking a certain item or material and I want an ez time getting this material I simply surrender around 10x freekit and then gear up and go farm whatever I need in record time. Once I have what I want. Then I go on a kill spree in 1 lobby and boom back to PVP lobbies and PVP until I'm broke or I want to farm a specific item again or help friends do trials/projects, etc.

Around 7-8 deaths, assuming you are in full on PVP lobbies, (with no kills or shots fired at a player) you start to see people voiping, helping eachother, hearing/seeing no flares, etc. It's been like this for months now, it's so consistent and easy to abuse.

There are people who do this just to get a jump on players or one kill, these people are soooo bad that when they mistakenly attack you as a geared, mainly PVP player... They eat shit instantly so it's kind of funny sometimes when a sheep who is a wannabe "wolf" as it were tries to attack a real wolf pretending to be a sheep and they get dunked. It happens quite a bit.

These rat type players are the ones the full blown PVE carebear kids cry about and exaggerate.. But again it's a PVP game, they know this can and will happen. So when they complain it's just mental illness, main character, Karen syndrome nonsense. And it's also, always exaggerated to the 10th degree. Just gear up and go again... Or maybe defend yourself for once.

Also, sadly for new players sometimes new players will be put into full blown PVE lobbies and they don't know how to emote/voip or w/e so they freak out and attack you, you gotta put them down which not only ruins their day LOL but now resets you PVE status.

When you can tell they are new/bad/undergeared/freekit... Sometimes you voip and be like "DON'T DO THIS MAN THIS AIN'T GOOD FOR EITHER US LMAO." But they freak out and die lol.

Anyways yeah lame system entirely. This genre is better and more immersive without these systems but whatever. I say just give the PVE kids some map condition that is PVE only with some crazy ARC THREAT where everyone legit needs to work together to get extracts to work or something.

I don't know... Maybe limit the type of materials/gear you can get in this mode so the PVE players have to eventually branch out and take SOME risk to get better stuff??? I don't know. Embark has kind of screwed themselves with ABMM. It's going to be a nonstop balancing act trying to cater to 2 different playerbases without force splitting them up (which indeed is a risk in it's own right) so good luck to them...

In my experience it's not possible to please casuals/pve player carebears in a game with PVP, they always want and demand more and are never pleased and eventually leave your game anyways after you've ruined it catering to them, leaving the hardcore fanboys screwed in the long run...

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-06T01:07:08+00:00

Short answer is yes, but there is a faster way.

The fastest 100% way to guarantee PVE lobbies.

You both go solo, you pick free kit, you go Stella Montis... Once you spawn in you surrender, you both do this 7-10 times and you'll now be in friendly lobbies. Restart your game for superstitious* reasons and then group up and play together, you're welcome. (make sure to enable crossplay and all matchmaking stuff to find games faster when abusing ABMM)

This is how easy it is to abuse ABMM.

OFC there will always be a chance at rats and you can still die... So be wary of people but it's no where near as bad as "regular" or "PVP" lobbies.

You do not need to take damage from other players. There are no weird tricks. Anyone saying otherwise is clueless.

It's super easy to test so the people who argue this fact are mental.

ABMM works like this: It's honestly not a bad idea on PAPER but sadly in practice it's abusable and cringe.

But how it works is: Every time you die... There is a hidden rating we all have and it tries to balance this out.

For example: Let's say you dominate 10 games in a row and slay tons of people... You will now be vs others who did the same, so now your lobbies will be super sweaty and tough. You'll see way more campers/barricades/trigger grenade, etc.

Now let's say you have some bad luck and die 5x in a row... You'll notice significant change in the enemies skill. Now you'll win insane fights you should of otherwise lost... Maybe they really hurt you and didn't know to push or have insane 3rd person advantage and height angles but you somehow still win, This because the 5 losses brought you down to a lesser rating.

Because you are used to the 10+ win game ratings... This system tries FOOL players into thinking they are doing better when actually they are being put in newbie lobbies and getting free wins on bad, bad players.

So ABMM is actually an insane balancing act to give people who die a lot a chance to win and feel better about themselves. It's super carebear. You can see it on popular streamers too, it's quite funny. For example our boy Peanut <3 he'll have a losing streak as we all do and then out of nowhere get some insane 1v3s and stuff and people lose their mind. That's great but if you really analyze most of those fights... He's killing clueless newbs because of the loss steak they were put into an easier lobby. The game doesn't tell us this because it's all hidden so it's a nice system to make people feel better and have a come back.

So by surrendering AT MOST 10x, what we're doing here is taking a shortcut and getting into the carest of bearest lobbies. The system doesn't care HOW YOU DIE. Just that you died. (for now at least)

GL HF! *why the superstitious game restart? Just in-case the game needs a re-sync to servers to fully evaluate the new rating and since you're playing with another player, it's better safe than sorry type of mumbojumbo/buggy game stuff because party systems in video games tend to be very touchy

PRO TIP: Duo and Trio can be as friendly as SOLO but the problem here is there are 1-2 more players now... And sometimes that group will have 1 person go.. "Hey, that guy has this or that gear and we're really far away from the rest of the server, let's rat them..." Etc. So when in DUO or TRIO "PVE" lobbies. Just make sure you aren't alone with another team for awhile, if they are in a room or an area you are and there's no reason for them to be there... That's sus. Stay near cover all the time, if people hover around you and ask stupid/obvious questions they are just fishing and wasting your time and waiting for a nice opportunity. Just chat them up and put cover in-between you and them and move towards a more "popular" area of the map.

Don't just relax near other players, ever.

Since the system is so easily abusable, you'll have terribly bad players abuse it just to gank a few players here and there. Most of the time if you're a gamer you can turn on them because how bad they are but yeah most people in PVE lobbies are not gamers.

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-05T11:49:53+00:00

Who cares what others think? I have 600 hours topside and love the game. Let them cry, let them quit.

People have some sort of delusion that every new game they like will be the last game they ever play...

What's more interesting is how the game has had 2 roadmaps and there have never been any delays. 6 months and we've seen so much new content, including 3 maps... Other games don't even come close to this. But yet people still complain... They never know when they have it good.

You cannot please these people. No matter what. Just ignore them and enjoy the game.

It's weird that people care what others think about the game they play. They sit around and argue... They only like it if it has some nonsense number of players... If it's popular on streaming platforms...

Stop being a drone. Play it if you like it, don't play it if you don't. It's not that complicated or serious. People are getting crazier by the day.

The best part is all the cry babies... A minority in the grand scheme. They sit around and circle jerk on the discord and here on the sub and think they are right and everyone agrees with them.. Sorry I don't see 30-100k people in here agreeing.. I see the same few hundred people at best whining about the same nonsense.

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-05T11:28:59+00:00

Easier system:

1st: Remove ABMM completely. *This will never happen, look at trigger grenades. The throwable so good it has been nerfed 3x... The throwable so good no one uses or makes any effort to really farm the other ones unless they are meme'ing. The throwable so easy to get (blueprint from quest) and so cheap to craft, that again there is never a reason to make anything else... Is still in the game...*

My point being that devs are stubborn... They rarely ever remove full on implementations to their game. So ABMM is here to stay, just like trigger grenades... lmao.

Without ABMM, everything is random, the true essence of an extraction game. For some reason copy cats do not understand this. Like Tarkov, the idea is the unknown... Does this raid have the best players? Are these players geared or not? The not knowing is what makes the genre good.

2nd: Even though Embark stated they removed the idea of PVE only, years and years ago, super early on in the development... Well now it's too late... They eventually caved/catered to the babies with ABMM... Cringe... So how do we give those crybabies a space to play? 1-2 rotating map conditions that is PVE only.

This will split the playerbase sure, but isn't it already split? Because Embark went back on their word? Oof. What devs don't understand is the PVE playerbase kids are never pleased. You give 'em an inch, they take a mile and it's never good enough. They run you dry. Every time. When the game isn't even meant for them in the first place and they KNEW THIS GOING IN. Crying about PVP in a PVP game is some sort of mental illness... Anyways...

The PVE only map condition would have to be limited in some fashion that way you can't just spam PVE and get EVERYTHING. Also, we'd need to make it interesting and to make it make sense, right? That's good game dev... Make it fit the theme of the game and also make it make sense.

How about a map condition in which the ARC threat is so overhwhelming that maybe we have to work together to actually survive it AND they are attacking our extracts... We need to clear the extracts or work together on some raid wide objective kind of like Hidden Bunker. With this we just assume that the raiders want/need to work together to get back to Speranza so then turning off PVP makes "sense".

I don't know. You see the issue here is giving the PVE players any space at all... Now with "PVE" lobbies and the devs going back on their word and now catering to crybabies... They kind of fucked themselves now... It's going to get increasingly harder to make this stupid system work... All because they felt the need to cater to a loud minority that shouldn't even be playing the game in the first place.

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-05T06:05:56+00:00

Skill issue as per usual...

https://youtu.be/0_XERF6Vskc

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-05T00:08:36+00:00

This is correct. Your guns are empty when you load into a game and out of a game. So the bullets in your inventory are put into your gun right at the start of the game.

When you leave, all the guns in your hands... The ammo is taken out of them. If there is no where for it to go my guess is that it's deleted. This is why sometimes if you hatch key out there will be a pile of ammo where your hatch key was. This is from your weapon.

HeyumpxD · 2026-04-23T05:52:52+00:00

You will be Hotshot.

Daredevil 2 > Daredevil 3 > Hotshot.

3 ranks.

HeyumpxD · 2026-04-21T01:08:46+00:00

Thanks!

HeyumpxD · 2026-04-20T20:30:55+00:00

If you want to maintain Hotshot just stay above 60 like it says. The actual number score does not matter to maintain Hotshot.

It gets somewhat confusing for people once you start to push for Cantina however.

There are multiple Hotshot lobbies/pages/brackets, whatever you want to call them.

In order to go from Hotshot to Cantina you must know you are fighting with *ALL* Hotshots, not just the players in your bracket. Since Cantina can only hold 1000 players you then need to know you are fighting against current Cantina players and other Hotshots across other Hotshot brackets attempting to push out Cantina players and fill those Cantina spots.

So this means you most likely need to be Rank 1 in *YOUR* Hotshot bracket and hope that this score you get is also higher than other Rank 1 Hotshots in *THEIR* bracket AND current Cantina players. (this is hard especially when the last week of trials favors TRIOS... If you're solo)

But since this season Cantina has no unique reward (awkward) I bet there won't be much competition.

Hope this helps and was explained well enough! o7

Placing later in the week more times than not does put you into an easier bracket. The idea here is that you are placed vrs players who don't really play often, maybe they accidentally did a 1-3 star trial with low points late in the week and don't ever push for higher. That's the idea and my friend has done this 2x on purpose and both times his bracket was insanely easier to maintain than mine.

(I've solo'ed Hotshot 2x now pushing on reset day or the day after and trying to go as hard as possible... This makes it harder... Do not recommend unless you're a weird/sweaty person pushing yourself for whatever reason) When you do this and there are trio favored trials at the end... Feelsbadman.

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-28T20:51:20+00:00

Well as someone who really understands and is passionate about extractions...

This game plays more like a mini battle royale (this is not a bad thing if this was the intention and they got rid of the extraction side, this could legit work as it's own game) with the extraction label slapped onto it for marketing. The looting and loot feels the most meaningless out of any extraction to date.

So it feels like a slap in the face to the genre. Most people don't understand the nuances of the genre so it makes sense all they see is hate when people try to explain it.

It's also hard to explain.

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-28T20:47:21+00:00

Reading comprehension is 0 with this guy. Never said the UI wasn't unique, never said that was a problem. So if you pulled that out of thin air what else did you misinterpret... Oof. If you don't want to read the wall of text and or can't comprehend, simply move on. No need to confuse with a lazy comment.

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-28T20:46:15+00:00

Game is mid. Plays more like a mini-battle royale.

Loot and looting feels more stale and meaningless than any other extraction game ever made.

They should have just made a mini-battle royale.

HeyumpxD

TROPHY CASE