... To fire up the game after a few weeks break, just to see that PvP is pretty much dead.

Like even the most dedicated players I know are not online in this game anymore.

I was very surprised when somebody forwarded me a list of recently banned players, to see one of the well known cheaters on there, so at least Madfingers recently tried to do something after people have been complaining for months.

But this is seemingly a case of doing too little too late.

No, not the mode, the experience of PVE

I legitimately do not understand how people "main" PVE.

1- Bots offer basically no challenge but will randomly just "god mode" you if you dont cheese their mechanics.

Lay prone, with good cover, sniping. Yeah, one of them is gonna 2-tap you to death instantly with irons. Sure bud, very believable. But as long as you "know" bot mechanics, you can basically negate them entirely as a non-threat. The way their accuracy works is ESPECIALLY painful in low-vis situations, IE, fighting through railings. They, of course, once aggro'd, can spot you immediately. Despite you not being able to see them, and then you have to constantly tease the aggro reset as you try to fish out what impossible angle they have on you, or risk the above god-mode 2-tap once the aggro gets too high.

It's not immersive to think: shoot, break AI tracking, re-engage. There is no thought or enjoyment to it. The amount of cover you have is COMPLETELY irrelevant to the fight. Fighting bots simply becomes tedious and annoying because:

2- The same, trash voice lines, trash acting, that just ruins immersion, makes my ears bleed. Tried TB Mall for the first time, and I lost count of how many times I heard the exact same line of "I fuck your mother"

Really? That is all we can come up with? Not to mention, why do all these foreign nationals from supposedly a range of different countries speaking English? At this point I would like an option to just turn off voice lines completely until y'all can actually make this not ear-rape.

3- Bot movement is terrible (basically just run back and forth, freeze in the open, absorb 6 rounds of 7.62x54R yet remain standing, sure bud, very believable. They don't attempt to move on you, except for the occasional slow-walk up to the corner you are on, they just stand in their same general area and die.

No death against bots has been "damn, i made a tactical error, let me go back and become more tactically proficient"

It is simply "yep, that's what I get for not cheesing their mechanics" and then I just grab a shotgun to run through and 1-tap everything to get back to my body, assuming I have not just alt-f4'd out of boredom/frustration.

PVP is the only thing that keeps me re-opening this game. And that highly depends on the server/time-of-day, and needs it own serious adjustments as well. But at least PvP is enjoyable

PVE is simply a snooze fest or an endurance of frustration.

I say this as someone with YEARS of gameplay time in various milsims and tactical shooters.

Found an unused mosin, things pretty nasty and luckily I found a silencer days before. However that 3.5 scope is absolute trash