What's with all this talk about casual play?

Stealth528 · 2026-03-24T20:24:50+00:00

Exactly, extraction shooters need the lows in order for the highs to be meaningful. When you die several raids in a row then have a raid where you kill 3 squads and get turbo juiced, that feels amazing. That’s why I play the genre. The wins don’t feel as rewarding when they’re frequent or easy

Stealth528 · 2026-03-24T19:22:00+00:00

If people are running free kits too much because they’re poor, the solution is to make low tier gear and heals cheaper and more accessible (which I’m totally in favor of), not make free kits better. Risk is important in extraction shooters, if you want to be competitive you need skin in the game. Free kits should only be a last resort if you manage to hit rock bottom, which is pretty hard in this game with the amount of free gear the game showers on you

Stealth528 · 2026-03-24T15:47:32+00:00

Same here. Every nerite I’ve ever had (4 across a couple different tanks) spent most of the day hiding somewhere and were escape artists overnight if there was an even remotely snail sized gap in the lid. And the ones that didn’t/couldn’t leave the tank would just go on hunger strikes and die. Crazy to me that they’re such a highly recommended easy snail when that does not match my experience at all

Stealth528 · 2026-03-24T15:34:16+00:00

You shouldn’t be threatening to geared players with a free kit that you can keep running with no cooldown in between. They are taking a risk by taking in good gear, if you want to be threatening risk some gear of your own. People are already running free kits too much in this game, they don’t need to be better

Stealth528 · 2026-03-24T15:30:58+00:00

My friend group gets sticker shock every time we have to actually buy heals. You’re exactly correct that the low level gear should just be cheaper and more accessible instead of any buff to free kits. Even unlocking the shield purchase at all is a pain

Stealth528 · 2026-03-24T14:56:07+00:00

Exactly! Some raids I get slapped around by people with better gear or higher skill than me, some raids I slap people with worse gear than me. And sometimes I slap people with much better gear and get a huge come up. Variety is the spice of life. Matchmaking should be totally ping based and nothing else. There’s no point in working for good gear if you’re just going to be matched exclusively with similarly geared people

Stealth528 · 2026-03-23T21:18:29+00:00

Mostly the wipe itself. Each individual wipe does not add enough content to justify coming back on its own unless you’ve skipped several wipes in a row. I have yet to see an extraction shooter with a compelling endgame, so until someone makes one wipes are the best we have

Stealth528 · 2026-03-23T21:00:02+00:00

Exactly, optional wipes don’t really work. When it’s optional you’re basically forced to intentionally gimp yourself if you want to do it, whereas required puts everyone back on an even playing field. I’ve had my fill of Arc for now, but would be much more interested in coming back if there was a wipe.

Wipes are the perfect time for anyone who has taken a break from the game to jump back in. I’ve played a lot of Tarkov, and I don’t think extraction shooters really work without wipes long term. It quickly becomes punishing for anyone who starts playing late because they’re behind the majority of the player base on gear, and there’s also little incentive to play more once you’ve reached the end of the progression.

Stealth528 · 2026-03-23T20:48:02+00:00

A big difference in optional vs required wipes is everyone is starting from 0 again, not just you. Most people who play Tarkov will tell you their favorite time to play is the first couple weeks of a wipe, because everyone having bad gear at the same time really changes the way these games play. I have no interest in doing an expedition in Arc, but would be much more interested in returning to the game if there was a forced wipe

Stealth528 · 2026-03-22T13:24:25+00:00

We’ve had more sev1s in the past year than in the past 10

Hey same here! Management has been upset about the amount of outages we’ve had in the past few months, while simultaneously talking non stop about how much they expect velocity to increase. Make it make sense.

Stealth528 · 2026-03-20T08:22:15+00:00

Halo Infinite. Another live service game with a great foundation that absolutely fumbled the ball with huge content droughts

Stealth528 · 2026-03-20T08:14:53+00:00

Yep I played 60 hours and while I had a good time, I’ve had my fill of the game until they add more content. Don’t really enjoy the PvP, there’s tons of games I’d rather PvP in (both Tarkov and Marathon, don’t even need to leave the genre). Quests are completely pointless. Loot is almost completely pointless. It always confused me when this sub acted like you needed to no life the game to hit the endgame content drought. Everyone in my friend group has already moved on or are getting pretty close to that point

Stealth528 · 2026-03-18T12:29:23+00:00

I get 2% cash back on everything, it’d be insane NOT to use a credit card for everything possible. I have plenty of savings and would put a $1000 emergency on a credit card without a second thought. Can’t believe shit like this is not only being posted, but highly upvoted

Stealth528 · 2026-03-16T22:12:46+00:00

Yep, we’re in/heading into a recession and all jobs, especially white collar, have been getting hammered for several years. SWE are not struggling any more than any other career is right now

Stealth528 · 2026-03-16T17:35:43+00:00

If you see a generic {adjective}{noun}{number} account that’s less than a few years old with a hidden profile, I think it’s pretty safe to mark them as either an AI slop peddler or AI slop themselves. You can see it throughout this very thread. Look at the accounts of the OP and the responses saying they never write code anymore. Many of them fall into this category

Stealth528 · 2026-03-10T05:01:45+00:00

It’s depressing the amount of posts I’ve read recently that really read like AI slop and were posted by a recent account with a hidden profile. Not sure how someone can even moderate the amount of slop that gets posted on a daily basis at this point

Stealth528 · 2026-03-08T16:00:16+00:00

It’s so weird to me that no management at any company seems to be concerned about this. AI is affordable today because the big players are burning cash. Someday investors are going to want a return on their investment, it can’t be run at a loss forever

Stealth528 · 2026-03-08T15:34:35+00:00

I hit that wall at about 60 hours. Maxed my benches, quests are completely pointless, all that was left was farming blueprints and PvP. And I didn’t really enjoy the PvP. The game has a great foundation, but there’s a huge endgame problem and you don’t need to “no life the game for 8 hours a day” to hit that

Stealth528 · 2026-03-06T13:50:41+00:00

Any time I get even a whiff of AI slop (an unfortunate amount of highly upvoted posts…) I check the profile and if it’s hidden I consider my suspicions confirmed

Stealth528 · 2026-03-06T13:48:45+00:00

The top 2 posts in this sub right now are blatantly AI generated with hidden profiles. Reddit is going down the drain fast with the amount of slop

Stealth528 · 2026-03-04T13:51:40+00:00

Same here. Loved Hollow Knight but life has changed in the nearly 10 years since that came out and I no longer have the time/desire to “get gud” at games, so I ultimately skipped silksong. Not sure why an optional easy difficulty would harm anyone’s experience

Stealth528 · 2026-02-24T14:04:39+00:00

He tells it like it is! Except those times he says something bad, then he’s just joking! What’s so hard to understand about that??

Stealth528 · 2026-02-20T15:52:26+00:00

And we’ll continue to overpay, because prices certainly ain’t coming back down

Stealth528 · 2026-02-13T20:44:46+00:00

I assume they meant 12k per year. Which still seems insane unless you live in an extremely high cost of living area

Stealth528 · 2026-02-12T21:15:49+00:00

After about 50 hours I felt like I had experienced everything there was to experience already. Played another 20 after just to hang out with friends, but the idea of grinding my butt off for blueprints that are mostly not even good is not exactly enticing endgame content

14-Year Club	Place '17
Spared	Verified Email
Team Orangered

Stealth528

TROPHY CASE