@the100thmonkey Thanks for your well thought out response. I should at least explain some of my thinking in response.
Has anyone actually said that? I don't think they have. What people have responded to, in this thread and elsewhere, is people saying that the combat is too difficult and therefore is not fun. Alternatively, they have said that in order to succeed in combat they have to do things they find not to be fun, which is a personal opinion. In the case of the latter, personal playstyle is sufficient to explain it, IMO. For instance, I have no idea how someone can play a Battlefield game as a sniper humping a hill 400m away from the nearest flag and get 4 kills per round. Clearly, however, some people enjoy it enough to spend their time doing it.
This is a fair point. I'm somewhat hijacking the thread here. I think it was the third of fourth response that triggered me writing mine. I've taken on the FPS combat as my crusade, so I am always thinking about it.
You make a comment later about your strawman reference, but I'm not sure how to interpret it, to be honest. If you're introducing it into the argument in order to get someone to defend the proposition, you're asking people to defend a proposition they haven't actually made. If you introduced it into the argument because you really believe people have said that, and think it's an illogical argument, then it doesn't take your argument further -- people haven't said it.
Not a specific response. It's why I called it a Strawman. A lot of arguments can be boiled down to "The combat is good. You just have to get good at it."
Is there one single response that truly encompasses the Strawman? I haven't looked through every post in this thread, there are a few on the first page that brush close.
The Strawman has definitely been made in other threads. I understand that it is not this thread specifically.
TTK is rather high, but that works both ways - I think it's intentional so that the forum dads* players who aren't particularly experienced with FPS combat aren't just outright slaughtered: The first thing to learn is how to not die, and a high TTK/TTD does help with that - the lower the TTK, the more players will perceive combat as punishing. I wouldn't oppose a somewhat lower TTK, but I'm not sure the devs want their first foray into FPS combat to be perceived as instagib OP trolling. Perhaps this goes some way towards explaining your dissatisfaction with TTK that you express. Other people have discussed what they like about combat, either explicitly or implicitly, by making guides, responding to posts and trying to help people git guder (and there is room for suggesting that someone become better at combat in discussions about combat in Odyssey.)
Only Frontier will know for sure, but I am thinking along the same lines as you. It might have been designed this way to help certain players learn. But it also might have been to incentivize the Grind.
One good argument for that assumption is that there isn't much to do outside of the grind. Not so much that there literally isn't, but that Frontier thinks there isn't. So they create the Grind and pad the grind so that players are stuck in a loop.
In the case that you present. I wouldn't necessarily agree that it teaches players not to die, at least, not effectively. It might actually get them locked in bad habits(not using cover, not using shield generator grenades). I find this the case personally.
The Soulsborne types of games have the opposite approach, but with the same end. You typically learn pretty quickly how to not die, or determine that the game isn't for you.
I read your post before (and disagreed with some aspects of it at the time but didn't respond). With regard to CZs as the centre of balance, I don't agree: Scavengers are frankly squishy. Conflict zones can (and arguably should) be much more difficult. It's much easier to manage how the NPCs engage you in a massacre mission than it is in a CZ. The Vulture drops can be brutal - one minute you're capping a flag and reloading, the next you're fighting off 6 soldiers on your own. I'd also point out that there may be design and use decisions you haven't considered. I did my first few raids and CZs to understand their mechanics; I only really do them now in a targeted manner to support minor factions. In that respect, even a trivially easy mission to massacre scavengers is interesting and fun because it furthers my goals in other ways. Maybe try a speedrun? My current record is less than two minutes in combat to kill 7 scavs. You've been grinding - you said so yourself.
I actually disagree here. I have done a lot of Combat Zones in the Alpha. Not much has changed about CZs since the Alpha, or at least nothing game changing, so I think those experiences are still valid. Although, I will admit that I didn't necessarily bring up the fact that I did a lot of CZs in any my posts. That was my mistake.
Combat Zones will be populated by enemies of all Ranks 1 through 5. I've seen and fought rank 5, but I have never actually seen rank 4. I am assuming that if there are ranks, 1, 2, 3 and 5, that rank 4 has got to be in there somewhere.
Scavengers are usually Ranks 1 through 3.
You might have been fighting low ranked Scavengers and high ranked Combat Zones. In my experience, there was no noticeable difference between the same rank in combat zone or outside of one. In terms of AI, equipment, or TTK.
I generally found Combat Zones to be less frustrating then combat outside of Combat Zones.
What I have been doing most recently, is raiding Anarchy settlements, solo(not scavengers, but it is similar enough).
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