Balance.
The problem with ABI is that it doesn't juggle challenge level to ability level very well. For most players 1v4ing is unreasonable, while fighting AI ( and player bots ) is trivial. It's frequent that the player isn't very engaged or immersed because their chance of winning or losing is too low. They need to bump up the AI lethality to what it was in S0 while also making PvP fights more reasonable for individual players.
Team size should be reduced to 3 across the board, the devs have done many patches that disproportionately buff teams and lowering it from 4 to 3 instantly lessens every problem involving squads.
Another problem causing lack of player engagement is the match length. A large portion of the match is spent waiting for the clock to force the disadvantaged player to make a move. You essentially get threatened with a time tax, forcing you to wait 20+ minutes for them to move or give up your own good positioning.
The match timer should be lowered from 35 minutes to 30 minutes, and for the last 5-8 minutes, bots continually spawn with increased aggression, similar to the new TV station mode coming out tomorrow, to discourage the player from staying in the raid while simultaneously giving them more information to make them feel more confident in moving. It would also be immersive as the scavs would be calling in reinforcements rather than the map just feeling dead after most players are dead.
Bosses should spawn much more frequently, probably every match on Forbidden, 30-50% on LD.
Player bots shouldn't be pretend players, instead they should be a specific non-player PMC faction. They should be as hard to fight as old bosses while also giving good rewards.
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These changes would do a lot to improve the game in the right direction. I don't think the devs were right that players want strict PvE gamemodes. They just want SOME semblance of PvE, which has been stripped from the game over patches, and also more reasonable PvP for the individual player, which has been worsened over many patches.
Posted Jun 30, 2026, 2:44 AM UTC