Wipes should not exist

Let's talk about wipes. They should not exist. Because they are just a mechanism to cover up a symptom of a flaw in the game.

That flaw is predictability. Predictability is the enemy of excitement. All video games use the idea of intermittent treasure some various degrees to keep players entertained. And the genre of the game does not matter. Here is an example:

RPG:

• Player finds a monster's cave.
• Player fights the monster.
• Player kills the monster and loots its corpse, or its valuables, which might be contained in a treasure chest.
• Now this is the important part: The player does not know exactly what is in that chest.

You can find something nice but you do not know what it will be. This part alone is the motor that drives most gameplay systems in practically every video game there is. Looting monster corpses, mining rocks, searching containers, scanning with radar, sneaking around a corner. All of these things you can do in a video game have an unpredictable core to it.



Every RPG game has some monster you kill for a reward, which is randomized within certain brackets. If you turn that corner and sneak through a hallway in a horror game, you don't know if the alien/werewolf/werehamster will attack in that situation.




So how does that relate to EFT? In EFT you kill monsters (other players and scavs) and loot the treasure they carry or guard (guns, ammo, armor, medical items). But this uncertainty of what you find also carries over to a strategic (or "meta" as the kids call it) level. But this is a bit more abstract. When you find a shotgun in EFT, does that excite you? It propably would 1 hour after a wipe. It can be sold or used for combat. But a bit later, shotguns are considered useless by most players.
Would finding an AK-74N excite you? I would assume it woul be moderately exciting, regardless of how "late in the wipe" you find it. It is a solid weapon for any situation.

So let's establish that an assault rifle is more exciting than a shotgun. So how about we guarantee you as a player to get an AK-74N for every scav you kill. Would that be exciting?

It would be for a short time. But then the problem of predictability will deflate all the excitement. Imagine you would know exactly what stuff you will find in a raid. If every loot container, be it a corpse or wooden crate, would carry very specific and predetermined loot. Imagine, you shoot 3 scavs, you get 3 AK-74N. You open a wooden crate, you get a handguard, and so on.




That would be boring. Because our minds crave that excitement of finding something uncertain. Let's bring this thought to the strategic layer of the game. It is late in the wipe, you just got out alive of Interchange with 150k worth of loot. What will you do? Use that loot? I guess you won't, instead you might sell it all to liquify that gear into cash and then you will buy exactly what you want. No improvisation, managing of shortages, making due with what is available. Straight conversion to money, and then to the favorite gear. And what is that?

It is predictable.

This is why we get bored "late in the wipe". Because loot becomes a liquid substance, easily converted into cash by AI traders that happily provide stable inflated prices to items no player would ever buy for that price. A guaranteed, safe income.

And not dynamic.


Dynamic. That sounds very exciting.

"Adapt to the economy". That is what the game promises on the features list. That should fix all the problems with predictable gear. Yes it should and it would have. But then this happened:

What game should be is a dynamic market where every day is unpredictable, then there is no need for a wipe. That means there has to be a completely dynamic market where prices can very violently increase to a level where players are forced to either pay a lot of money for what they want or be forced to find the item themselves.

• Totally dynamic market, no regard for "fairness" (weak players who demand equal chances against someone who spent more money on gear.
• Remove the supply from traders, and put it into the maps as loot to find.
• Remove ability to sell guns to the AI, only allow selling to other players.