Well it’s funny you mention ttrpg, because most of these work through a strong interaction between all players, GM included. Thus, what matters is what is considered fun by everyone at the table, and if one person having a weighted dice somehow makes sense, the right table will allow it.

Anyway, this is secondary, the point is that the pros and con balance in this is not in the favour of arrowhead here, they “outlawed” about everything from the get go, through the questionable change of anti cheat. I definitely agree with your example of the collect mission that got cheated through, but they could have used inspiration from other titles, from lobby browser allowing mods or not, even excluding those with flagged mod from interacting in the global campaign. They could have reached the modders of the most endorsed mods, worked with them somehow. They could even have made the mod support official and integrated, thus having stronger overview of who plays with what, with strong filtering. I’m thinking of Deep Rock Galactic here for example.

I’m just saying than in a normal PvE, apart from the economic side, you can’t really “cheat”, as in you are not impacting others. Cooperative PvE games only have to handle how players are able to team up or not regarding their preferences (kind of like finding the tight table for a ttrpg), and there are many ways of doing so, that arrowhead has not yet shown interest towards

Dude it’s a PvE game, and there are quality of life issues blaring since it first launched that were fixed in weeks by solo modders, don’t blame people for wanting a game working as intended Cheating is very clearly far far down on the list of reasons people mod the game

I mean, you’re very within your right to dislike it, but how do people customizing the experience to their taste mainly in solo and private lobbies affect you in a PvE game ? I must admit I’m skeptical about arrowhead on this one, even though I play vanilla, a lot if my friends with more playtime had made the jump to UI and quality of life mods, sometimes custom difficulties too…

A bit afraid, it looks mostly good but I worry about power creep, the passive seems insanely strong, and the weapons seem at least good. I guess we’ll see ! I hope this isn’t a Democratic detonation 2 situation, where it becomes almost indispensible to have for any good loadouts (and I say this as an eruptor enjoyer)

Thank you for taking the time to express your thoughts more in depth, it makes a lot of sense, and I now think I was a bit too certain while writing my initial answer. Of course, different people care for different experiences, and that’s absolutely fine :)

It’s true that I took a bit of a shortcut in my previous statement, I shouldn’t have been so absolute.

And as a sidenote, I believe that I read somewhere that the intent of having sleep not activated by default in MP was also somewhat of a counter to not having timeskip, allowing players to “use” all of their available time (though as you said, you’re still just waiting so I’m not entirely convinced by the argument)

I couldn’t disagree more, I love the game and think it’s first and foremost a solo experience. I have around 500 hours in, and about 400 are exclusively solo, in various games since build 38. It’s in single player where the truth of the apocalypse hits you, the dread of being alone against the world knowing you will fail but not knowing how and when… Even the sleep mechanic is exclusive to single player and drastically changes how you can approach the game, sticking closer to the gritty realism themes. Multiplayer, even in really harsh settings, often ends up with a somewhat trivialised survival, and sort of a devaluation of defeat. Unless you want to play it hardcore and reset if anyone dies (which can be understandably upsetting to some), you’ll just respawn a character, get your stuff back, and you’ll only have lost some xp and time which your mates can help you power through, instead of a entire “life” you really cared about.

Don’t get me wrong, multiplayer can be heaps of fun, but I truly don’t think it’s the core of the game, and I’d really encourage you to try your hand at some solo play if you can be convinced :)

Perhaps a 1 user bump to their online user count, so really nothing of importance, like to other said, enjoy yourself with what you already payed for, and rub in that publisher’s face that they didn’t make anything good since ;)