"The Blueprint Conundrum" is Destroying Destroying Expeditions and Killing the Game!

The most hottest topic out there on Arc Raiders is, of course, the Blueprint Conundrum. They are:

too scarce,
too rare,
too random,
too many duplicates,
and so on.

Here is my petition to change the way blueprints are dropped and how they work in this game.

There are numerous problems with the BP mechanics which the devs should consider fixing to make the game better for the community. I know some people argue that we cannot dictate how the game should be, but sorry, not sorry, customer is right here. The Devs rely on consistent high player count.

Anyway, to the point.

1) Blueprints are too rare. Blueprints ought to be in this game as a starter problem: it should take about 20-50 hours to gather them all and then you have accomplished this starter challenge, and now you can finally start looking for the items they need. Instead, now the BPs are END GAME CONTENT. You run infinite number of loot runs, lockers, chest, breaches and so on, just to find that one single blueprint out of 74, and they drop like on every 20th run. Just too few. Remember, people (and devs) they are just the BLUEPRINTS, just the ability to even craft them, not even the items themselves yet. IF it takes 100-200 hours to get them all, many people have quitted this game before even seeing some blueprints. It is unreasonable that one can get to 75lvl before seeing even 10 blueprints in total. The average seems to be that people have about 50 percent of all BPs after playing the game moderately. This is too much. BPs are STARTER CONTENT, not END GAME.

Especially weapon mod blueprints are so hard to find that most people don't bother engaging with either ARC or RAIDERS because they have to rely on simply being faster looters. Blueprints should be semi-guaranteed from some containers, so people WOULD FIGHT OVER THEM. As it is now, people just run around and open as many as they can and then stash them away in safe pocket, which creates no engagement with anything.

2) Blueprints are a chokepoint for this game. The less blueprints there are, the less there are people willing to use the guns they have. This means just a game where people have million weapons in their Safe, but no one uses them or gets them to the circulation in the lobbies for other people to grab, steal or whatever. This stagnates the circulation of goods among players, and means that when one goes to the lobby, its futile to bring good weapons, since you just get killed by random white weapon rat.

I think the devs have forgotten that blueprints are just BLUEPRINTS in the game. They don't mean you have the weapons, its just the BLUEPRINT TO MAKE THE GUN. Why have they made the blueprints the chokepoint, and not maybe like the weapon parts itself.

The mechanics of CRAFTING the weapon are already reasonably difficult: you have to find the parts, fight for extraction, then craft the weapons, then REPAIR them, then have the skills to survive with the weapons. This all takes so much effort and gameplay loops to maintain. But the Gameplay loop of BLUEPRINTS is just to run with a light shield, bad weapons, and resort to the SAFE SLOT to get them. This creates people running with next to nothing to offer to the lobby, just running and spamming search on most containers, taking nothing but BPs and then stashing them away safe to the pocket, ready to die.

3) Duplicates undermine the whole system. With the rate that BPs drop, duplicates simply make it ridiculously difficult to obtain the right blueprints. Duplicates are unrewarding, unmotivating, unfun, and their monetary value means people just steal them away even though they don't need them.

I think the Blueprints ought to be buyable from some vendor with like 1 to 5 known blueprint ratio or something like 500k money or at least craftable with some high tier items. It is ridiculous to not see blueprints for basic things like Silencers ever in whole of 200+ hours of gaming, all the while my inventory is full of purple modules and crafting items I can never use because I have no blueprints.

4) Lack of Blueprints scares people away from Expeditions and wipes. Fourthly, and most importantly: Number 1 reason for people to not do Expeditions is the scarcity of blueprints (after surveying hundreds if not thousands comments and forums).

People who don't do the expedition hoard all the good weapons while the ones that do are even more disadvantaged. Rats become fatter, while the laborious achievers have to grind and grind and grind to get the BPs and the guns they used to use. This means that the tryhards simply start killing people even more and not loot containers, which sets the PvP raiders and PvE rats further apart!

The Expeditions are what the devs want, I think? To reset the over-saturation of good weapons in the lobbies and in circulation. But the whole Blueprints reset and their scarcity simply means that not many will do this.

5) BLUEPRINTS SHOULD NOT BE THE ENDGAME!

Between each Expedition/Wipe cycle, if the blueprints are the last thing to accomplish, why would I even try to get them at the end, since I know they will be wiped. This is very backwards progression and achievement system, when everything else can be accomplished in each Wipe cycle, but still the BPs remain undiscovered.

** This means that I don't have the Blueprints at the start or middle of the game season cycle when I actually need them, and then when I am close to Expedition and nothing to do but PvP, I have to just run around and find them although I will never have the opportunity to use them**

This is so unbelievably backwards that this must be changed.

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TLDR; Improvements:

- Make BPs start or middle game content, not endgame!

-I think you shouldn't be able to pick up duplicates. IMO, they should be just available for picking for those who don't have them.

- Or no duplicates.

- No Blueprint wipes on Expedition

- Higher drop rate or semi-guaranteed locations to motivate engagements as either PvP or tactical sneak looting.

- make it possible to trade, craft or buy them.

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Thank you all for reading and I hope this post would work as a discussion platform for solving this Blueprint Conundrum forever.

Good luck Topside, All!

P.S. For all those people about to say extract games are hardcore and scarcity is good. Yes, but scarcity is here in the WRONG PART OF THE GAME. Like I argued already, weapons and rest of the gear is already hard to maintain and obtain. Blueprints are just unfun part of the game, a non-mechanic and source of unnecessary running around.