Solos. I got to the point where it’s basically impossible to even start a match. My last mission is the one where you need to find an extremely rare item on Stella Montis, and I loathe it for the same reason I did with the previous (awfully similar) mission: everyone will shoot you in the back there, always impossible to anticipate.

So Stella is one thing.

But at this point no matter which map I choose, not even TWO minutes pass, and I get my shield blown off from behind, from a dark corner, from behind a building I couldn’t even see before, and I get rushed by some troglodyte, at which point I’m fighting at a disadvantage.

This all started 2-3 days ago. Raider flares and dead bodies all over the place. What is going on? It’s like everyone has suddenly gone feral. Was there some change I’m not aware of? I understand it’s a PvPvE game, but up until last Friday it’s been usually a mix of friendly and hostile interactions. Now it’s pretty much guaranteed I would get shot from behind a corner before I could even react and then get rushed, every single game, no matter what. Bloody frustrating. I can’t even just look for friendly players to team up with, because the first one I see is usually the one that camps me down. It feels like something had changed recently, but I don’t remember seeing anything related.

  • TetsuoMEnglish
    3·
    8 days ago

    Yes, i think the mission to damage players is really bad if you are a pacifist player. Also by damaging people you are breaking their gear which I think is kind of annoying.

    I would suggest asking nicely to other players if you can shoot them for the challenge (only if you already are on friendly lobbies) and give them some heal afterwards. But to be honest creds are useless for me. I easily reach the soft cap of 800 creds and when I do I usually get a guitar or a hatch key so that I can start to collect creds again. I usually don’t do damage for the PvP damage and I sometimes do PvP myself so I can complete some of them.

    Also to be fair with the devs, a system that can reliably detect who is the aggressor on an encounter is very difficult to design. People could be taunting other players on proximity chat. Sometimes players shoot Arcs close to you and can inadvertently create a conflict. Sometimes rats fail so hard they deal me no damage and I kill them. In that case the game will definitely think I’m the one that attacked. For such a system to work you would need to detect when someone is shooting at you (even if they missed) and flag them as the aggressor just for the concerned players but not the others. It gets incredibly difficult if you have to account with random solo players banding together.

    So the system right now is really dumb, I think it just looks at the average damage you dealt on games and put players with the same score on your lobby.

    But also I have to warn that this is not an accurate science (to quote the devs) even some pacifist will seize opportunities if they see you with some good stuff.

    For instance, one guy in a super friendly lobby on locked gate heard me dying to a rocketeer and said in chat that he would defib me. He came close and straight up finish me. Technically he didn’t deal any damage to me but still betrayed me and took my loot.

    And when I get a hullcracker in a raid I’m attacked more often.

    Anyway, good luck topside :)

    • Dicska@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      7 days ago

      Yeah, I get the bit about the difficulties of spotting the real aggressor. I just hope that it will get a bit more nuanced over time, because I would rather have something between the completely peaceful kiddie pool and the full on blood bath.

      By the way, I applied the tip about becoming a moving target at Stella, and now my lobbies seem to be rather chill again - I’m really thankful for the recommendation above.

      I’m also aware of the equipment breaking, but assuming I want to do the feat about damaging players, I don’t have too many, even less harmful options. In fact, I have done the bit about asking players to take some damage, but that’s at least as slow as shooting two people once in the last few seconds. Also, if your shield breaks from one shot, then chances are it would have been expensive to fix it without, regardless.

      And yes, I also spend most of my creds on hatch keys and instruments, but I like to hover it around 650-700, so that I can buy most of the stuff that comes with the next pack or whatever, and by the time I max it out, I usually end up using a key or losing an instrument, so at least it’s another thing that keeps me playing.

      About opportunitists: gah, that must have been annoying! There was one, ONE case where I wasn’t sure about how to use the defib, thought that I had it in my inventory, so it must be active, and accidentally pressed left click (or use? - EDIT: Use.) on a downed player. Well, it didn’t res them : ).