Expanding and maintaining the player base: PVE Rookie Mode and Objective based gameplay

April 6, 2020

Hey guys, I absolutely love the realism and gritty asymmetric combat this game entices, however i found it is VERY hard to initially get and KEEP a wave of new players in EFT. I suggest expanding many of the already strong PVE aspects in EFT and allow for more content to also benefit experienced competitive players.

In the gaming community there is a large consensus in the gaming community seems to be that EFT is a game you buy once, but only really play a dozen times, and is sort of a waste of money despite being really good. A wide consensus of many owners is its "Awesome to watch, but painful to play as a new player (or have a very good team to play with)".

In my experience, like many others saw pro-gamers playing with full maxed out kits and thermals, and said "Wow, i want do that". I got into my first match and finished loading, then wrecked by a high level player who i never had a hope in hell of killing. despite one or two sneaky extractions this was a repetitive and frustrating experience that characterized the game. I then did a few more poo games, ran out of gear, did some scav runs, got killed by player scavs, and left EFT for a long time. The game was basically inaccessible to me as a new player with a job and family as I can't afford to waste days of time alone in offline mode to stand a small chance of survival. I only returned when i found a 5 man stack with VERY skilled players with excessive amounts of gear. Many of my other friends abandoned the game for the SAME reasons and even with a team were reluctant to rejoin the game.

I strongly suggest expanding on already existing content - PVE elements and revamping offline mode into a PVE rookie mode for new players with other players to develop skills in a meaningful way and maintain new player who buy the game, and play with friends without constantly being crushed by experienced players in unwinnable firefights. This mode would not have friendly fire, and dead friendly players would be un-lootable, but players would be placed in a squad of randoms from their region/server, and work towards objectives. the objective modes could also be used in competitive PVP and have bounties and caches of random high tier loot attached to their successful competition.

Rookie (PVE) mode progress would be a separate Rookie beginner mode, intended as a starting platform for new players. Players would gain exp, loot and tasks separate to Competitive, so players can actually learn. The mode would also have a chat and push to talk system. players spawn with maps. Pro players can play competitive full blown mode with a separate tracked progression and stats, and a separate PVE mode without friendly fire and being unable to loot dead friendlies. If they die they lose their gear, they get exp, they can loot, and do tasks separately. Basically this would be a learning environment, but with the incentive for players to eventually leave and play Competitive PVP once they meet some friendly team mates to team up with.

In this mode there could be additional objective modes that could be also brought to competitive:

Overrun - Scavs attacking players held up in a structure, players automatically extract if they survive long enough - say 15-30 minutes.

Siege - capture a structure and retrieve some documents inside (and a key to open the extract inside the structure) then extract

Bounty hunt - team up in a squad (no FF) attacking a fortified location in a hostile region to kill a heavily guarded boss character or two and extract for a large bounty, (in competitive this could also include scavs, but the scavs cant loot and get a elimination bounty if they kill a PMC and or if all PMC in the squad die.

Hostage extraction - similar to the above, but one player must carry the hostage limiting them to only a pistol and being unable to sprint. Possibly also causing extra exhaustion requiring players to swap over in extracting them, while fighting scavs to a extraction point. VERY hard, but VERY good rewards

Scavenge rush - a mode where players go in with just a pistol, theres a small area of the map full of loot (possibly a plane crash) with many lightly armed scavs spawning in, and in higher numbers over time. Good way to get gear, but decent chance of death if you stay too long.

These objective modes could also have a skull rating system - high rating higher risk and reward! One skull means enemies have poo scav gear, three means theres still some poo geared scavs, but more enemies, and enemies with better gear with a few with high tier loot. The rewards would be both currency and loot, players would earn some cash for killing the targets, but would get far more if they extract.

I appreciate hardcore competitive players may grip as there will be less poorly equipped noobs to stomp, but as there progression in Rookie mode/ PVE will be separate to Competitive, plus these new modes will revitalise the game for pro-players who feel the games getting a bit stale.

Edited April 6, 2020 by SRow

April 7, 2020

I like the "game mode" system you are suggesting. Kinda make them team PVE quest you can accept at a dealer. Accepting a quest at Prapor for 3-5 PMC's to get cases of RPG's or boxes of ammo from a location on customs with scavs/raiders protecting the boxes.

And make it a team victory, so if you die, you only loose your gear, unless your buddies brought it back with them. You still get part of the reward as your team completed the quest. Reward based on the amount of ammo boxes your team returned to prapor.

Maybe making it so the "Team" had specific roles you had to fill. So you have to have a dedicated marksman, who had to have a DMR. A CQB guy with a short weapon, with low caliber rounds. A LMG guy for suppressing the scavs.

On another topic to "Fix" the game. I would suggest that making a matchmaking system, based on PvP kills.

matching people based on the number of how many players they have killed vs how many times they been killed by a player.

Discarding the kills/deaths vs AI scavs completely. Scavs are easy to kill... they should be.

Doing this, would make sure you always face players around your own level, if you get better at the game, you'll face tougher/better players. If you suck at it, you will face other people who suck at it.

This way you can still face geared players, but they might not be great FPS players.

The system right now, is broken. A new player level 1, doing his first run ever on customs can get matched up against players like Pestily with 5000 hours in the game... Weird system.

Anybody disagreeing with matchmaking based on PvP Kills/Deaths, are the people who needs to bash noobs to feel better about themselves.

Any thoughts on this idea?

Also to combat the issues with the fleamarket.

You start with the 3 slots as normal, but you don't get more sales slots by selling at the fleamarket. It's also a stupid system, when you have sold for 1.000.000.000 rubles you get 1 slot more... How is new players gonna loot for 1 billion rubles?

What they should do, is make it quest based. Do a level 17 quest for Ragman, get two comtac's and 1 slot extra to sell from.

That would cut a lot of bots out of business... If they only could get to the max slots when they have done all quests in the game... Also who needs 1000 sales slots... noboby just playing the game. it's only bots and resellers.

You could make it so that you could only sell 1 weapon per sales slot you have. And maybe 2 attachments per slot. 120 rounds of ammo depending on the type.

Seeing someone selling stuff sold out from vendors, for massive inflated prices is dumb as well.

Just make it so that all stuff from vendors have a max of 3 per reset, but it's locked to your account so it'll never sell out unless you bought it.

Edited April 7, 2020 by LasseNielsen
Missed an idea

April 12, 2020

I couldn't agree more!! I constantly run up against players who are armed to the teeth with the best possible gear and who i have no hope in hell of killing unless the disconnect or afk. I think this is why there are a lot of hackers coming into the game as low tier players want to win, but feel they don't have a chance without assistance.

The other addon may be a community good will type system where players can be rewarded by taking other low level (say under 10) PMCs them on a raid and taking them to set map locations, then get paid based on how many extract alive?

I feel like additional modes would really add a lot to the game, im just weary of people TKing to take gear and leave so I'd make it so you cant loot team mates and automatically insure them (as a favor from prapor for taking his task). Ive had this a few times even as a low tier player. join a randoms group, spawn, get executed and looted.

I like the idea of a quest based system for the flea market. Combatting bots would be good. they could set up a algorithm to look for automated activity, as im sure the bots are very automated.

April 13, 2020

On 4/6/2020 at 5:52 AM, SRow said:

Hey guys, I absolutely love the realism and gritty asymmetric combat this game entices, however i found it is VERY hard to initially get and KEEP a wave of new players in EFT. I suggest expanding many of the already strong PVE aspects in EFT and allow for more content to also benefit experienced competitive players.

In the gaming community there is a large consensus in the gaming community seems to be that EFT is a game you buy once, but only really play a dozen times, and is sort of a waste of money despite being really good. A wide consensus of many owners is its "Awesome to watch, but painful to play as a new player (or have a very good team to play with)".

In my experience, like many others saw pro-gamers playing with full maxed out kits and thermals, and said "Wow, i want do that". I got into my first match and finished loading, then wrecked by a high level player who i never had a hope in hell of killing. despite one or two sneaky extractions this was a repetitive and frustrating experience that characterized the game. I then did a few more poo games, ran out of gear, did some scav runs, got killed by player scavs, and left EFT for a long time. The game was basically inaccessible to me as a new player with a job and family as I can't afford to waste days of time alone in offline mode to stand a small chance of survival. I only returned when i found a 5 man stack with VERY skilled players with excessive amounts of gear. Many of my other friends abandoned the game for the SAME reasons and even with a team were reluctant to rejoin the game.

I strongly suggest expanding on already existing content - PVE elements and revamping offline mode into a PVE rookie mode for new players with other players to develop skills in a meaningful way and maintain new player who buy the game, and play with friends without constantly being crushed by experienced players in unwinnable firefights. This mode would not have friendly fire, and dead friendly players would be un-lootable, but players would be placed in a squad of randoms from their region/server, and work towards objectives. the objective modes could also be used in competitive PVP and have bounties and caches of random high tier loot attached to their successful competition.

Rookie (PVE) mode progress would be a separate Rookie beginner mode, intended as a starting platform for new players. Players would gain exp, loot and tasks separate to Competitive, so players can actually learn. The mode would also have a chat and push to talk system. players spawn with maps. Pro players can play competitive full blown mode with a separate tracked progression and stats, and a separate PVE mode without friendly fire and being unable to loot dead friendlies. If they die they lose their gear, they get exp, they can loot, and do tasks separately. Basically this would be a learning environment, but with the incentive for players to eventually leave and play Competitive PVP once they meet some friendly team mates to team up with.

In this mode there could be additional objective modes that could be also brought to competitive:

Overrun - Scavs attacking players held up in a structure, players automatically extract if they survive long enough - say 15-30 minutes.

Siege - capture a structure and retrieve some documents inside (and a key to open the extract inside the structure) then extract

Bounty hunt - team up in a squad (no FF) attacking a fortified location in a hostile region to kill a heavily guarded boss character or two and extract for a large bounty, (in competitive this could also include scavs, but the scavs cant loot and get a elimination bounty if they kill a PMC and or if all PMC in the squad die.

Hostage extraction - similar to the above, but one player must carry the hostage limiting them to only a pistol and being unable to sprint. Possibly also causing extra exhaustion requiring players to swap over in extracting them, while fighting scavs to a extraction point. VERY hard, but VERY good rewards

Scavenge rush - a mode where players go in with just a pistol, theres a small area of the map full of loot (possibly a plane crash) with many lightly armed scavs spawning in, and in higher numbers over time. Good way to get gear, but decent chance of death if you stay too long.

These objective modes could also have a skull rating system - high rating higher risk and reward! One skull means enemies have poo scav gear, three means theres still some poo geared scavs, but more enemies, and enemies with better gear with a few with high tier loot. The rewards would be both currency and loot, players would earn some cash for killing the targets, but would get far more if they extract.

I appreciate hardcore competitive players may grip as there will be less poorly equipped noobs to stomp, but as there progression in Rookie mode/ PVE will be separate to Competitive, plus these new modes will revitalise the game for pro-players who feel the games getting a bit stale.

I get what you are saying.. But you have to understand, this is not an ordinary fps game.

BSG is trying to make a fps game as realistic as possible. So if you look at it with a realistic perspective. You can never choose your enemy.
So if you bring a knife to a gun fight, thats your fault. And if you die, you die.. that simple.

And I get that you have a job, wife, and kids. And can't spent hours and hours in the game everyday. I totally get that.. Im in the same boat.

But this game isn't made for casual players.

April 13, 2020

That the game isn't for casual players is not a very good argument. Unless you want to pay a monthly subscription for it.

This game can't make it long term on the same player base. If new players get stomped so hard, that they basicly give up the game, playing against the better players/better geared players. They will not get their friends to play, if they don't feel they have a chance at winning.

Since the drops, the game has seen a massive influx of new players. Giving a lot of money to continue Developing the game, adding servers and new content. But it can't continue catering to the old players, if the new players aren't enjoying the game.

It's quite a simple solution, add a matchmaking system that match people on their playerbased kill/death ratio.

That way you are always pittet against players on a similar skill level.

If you decided not to bring good gear in, thats on you.

But pitting the best in the world against completely new players. Isn't Hardcore, it's just bad business, you are giving new players a terrible experience of the game.