I mostly run with friends while in the DZ and I only did it for a couple hours last night, but I can definitely tell my friends are more trigger happy than they used to be. We went rogue every now and then if we didn't have much to lose and were bored of pure PVE. There's definitely more incentive to do it now than there used to be. I try to take pity on solo'ers at extraction points though and just leave them be since I know how hard it is sometimes to get gear extracted by yourself.

@neozeon

No matter how punishing the game is for going rogue, eventually there are going to be players with so much of everything that can be lost by going rogue, that it isn't going to matter. Risk / reward setups are only effective if the risk can't be outweighed by an abundance of previous rewards.

The fact that well-organized full parties of players can essentially bully lower level solo players is so much more morally objectionable to me than any social issue qualms people might have with this game. Has anyone written anything about that? From the first first reveal of that fact, I was definitely on the "this is kind of fucked up" train when it comes to how this game allows--and somewhat encourages--griefing.

Of course, I'm sure it also does lead to some pretty satisfying moments when things don't go well for the "bad guys."

@karlhungus01: As someone who often gets stuck without a crew (My work hours suck, yay!) and has to play solo, I appreciate the mercy on your part! It does seem to be a rarity though, at least when I'm on there.

@spaceinsomniac: Great video share: Some classic "signature link" skill use right there! Not sure why the people made it so obvious that they were going to go rogue though. That seemed telegraphed as all Hell...

Regardless - I would be a lot more forgiving of the ability to grief other players if the Dark Zone wasn't such a bigger part of the game later on. Sure, you can run the dailies, but once you hit max level, there really isn't any good hope for loot unless you enter the DZ itself. Again, it could just be bad timing on my part, but running solo in the DZ right now seems like a death sentence. That's made worse by the newer daily and (weekly) challenges requiring you to enter it to begin with. I'll stick with the game since I enjoyed it enough to hang around this long, but the lack of any real penalty for going Rogue, especially as part of a group, is definitely causing me to second guess firing it up.

It's a bit of the Wild West out there in my experience. To be honest, I don't feel like its worth going into the DZ solo anymore. They seem to have increased the damage/health of the enemies a noticeable amount. I was easily running solo when friends weren't on in DZ 6, now I get chewed through by AI with prejudice, it's still doable but I have to be much more careful and never let AI on more than one side of me. Add to that people that if they see a loot bag and you are solo they just go rogue. Most of the DZ's I've been in have 2-3 rogue groups at any given time now, especially when supply drops come down, even though the rewards from those aren't that great. I had a bunch of fun the other day running through there in a group of 4 though. Keep in mind my Gear Score is around 175ish so your results may very depending on where you are at, my teammates were 190+ which helped.

I was very hesitant to go rogue before the patch, but that's largely gone away. I ran into a contradiction of a person, a nice bully, the other night. He invited me to his team and proceeded to mow down most every person he saw, sometimes screwing with them beforehand, sometimes inviting them to join us, sometimes downing a guy and standing there not killing them until their timer runs out or they give up, and one time camping a spawn point to kill a particularly stubborn person ~14 times in a row. His carefree way of doing it gave me some perspective on what to expect in the DZ. You'll run in to nice people, people who will kill you just to mess with you, and sometimes those are the same person, and none of it is so serious that you should dwell on anything that happens too long. It's seems like an anything-goes anarchy that I've grown to like a lot.

@hestilllives19: That's been about my experience too. There are some cool moments that the design of the DZ can create, like a tense standoff as my group just the two of us hung around a four player squad while waiting for the extraction helicopter, but it seems to be that you either have a large group and you live...or you're less than that and you get stomped. I'm gear level 169 now, but I still feel like they absorb bullets and I go down within a few seconds. Not a fun time, more or less. I can't really see the point of supply drops either: I'm assuming that, besides the challenging difficulty missions, they're the only way to get Gear Set drops? Why lock something like that to the DZ? It's just going to turn already trigger happy players into supply drop camping monsters.

@catsakimbo: That sounds to me like the kind of person I would love to never encounter in the DZ to be honest. I know a lot of people have been trying to claim that it's some kind of social experiment in there, but, ever since the patch, it's just been down to one simple thing: If you give a person the means to be a ****, they'll be a ****. That being said, I do try and not let it bother me much. I have, however, been gunned down so many times when I didn't even have loot that it can be difficult to enjoy the late game anymore.

I can share a fun story though:

My cousin (Gear Level 172) and myself (GL 169) were playing earlier today and I was helping him do some of that weekly challenge; namely the "Kill 50 Cleaners In The Dark Zone" portion of it. As we were wandering around, just looking for dudes with flamethrowers, we managed to get some loot. Having seen a bunch of skulls on the radar, we figured it would be best to loop around to a distant, and hopefully safer, extraction zone. As we make out way up there, the extraction is called by someone else. The two of us make our way up and, not seeing any rogues, we do the customary Jumping Jacks to prove we're cool to the crew of three, and one random dude, that were there. Everyone is doing their jacks, having a grand old time, when a sticky bomb blows up just behind them. They swerve and shoot at the rogues, miss, and then clip some other agent who was not in their party...who turns and wings us out of confusion. Everyone, save my cousin and myself, go rogue at once. I pop the survivor link and the two of us book it out of there, barely alive. All eight of them end up getting killed. Every last one. It was nuts. We doubled back, grabbed the loot from who we could and filled up that rope with two separate loot bags each! After that? Oh we ran of course! Ran as fast as we could. Then it became a game of cat and mouse as we tried to sneak back to a checkpoint without becoming hostile to anyone (and therefore being locked out of leaving the DZ till "combat" was over). It was intense. That last stretch felt like a splinter cell game: Sneaking from cover to cover, moving when they weren't looking, that kind of thing.

Nah, but I've seen a lot more hackers though. Seems like most of the people going rouge are hackers who bait you into shooting at them, marking you as rouge, and then destroying your entire group without taking a scratch. That's happened to me a few times and I've seen it done to a few others, too. That's been way more common than just a random person or group deciding to go rouge. There just doesn't seem like there is that much incentive to do it unless the others just make a huge mistake and give you the opportunity. With high-end loot dropping so often now you'll end up with a better run if you just work together. Going rouge and picking fights is too much of a risk without much reward anymore.

As a solo player it was a problem for me even before the update. I think what's happened since the patch is the players who already had the beast gear now have better best gear, but the end result is still the same. You could argue that it wasn't designed to be an SP game (although from what I've read it seems like a fair number of people have been playing it solo), which is fine I guess, but it's frustrating to know there's a bunch of good stuff I could be getting in the DZ but probably won't because I'm not running with a crew.

I had hoped the introduction of gear level brackets might alleviate the problem a bit, but I think the bracket is just 160+ so it's not really much help if you run into someone who is still way higher level than you. It would be better if they made it a bit more granular, so after 160 there were separate brackets every 10 levels or something like that.

Yeah, they exploited the hell out of the incursion and now can run around with impunity.

Now that talent stacking has been discovered. Nearly EVERYONE is rogue since you can kill anyone in a few shots. My radar was full of red skulls last night. Most scaried I've been of the dark zone ever.