I post some version of this every time this topic comes up, and people always hate hearing it, but extraction shooters absolutely NEED casual players if they want to survive long term. The problem is that extraction shooters don’t really have the same kind of passive player retention that a lot of other live service games do. They need a constant flow of people coming in, losing gear, finding gear, buying shit, populating maps, etc. Once that flow starts drying up, the game starts eating itself. And history has shown pretty consistently that the hardcore PvP crowd is not enough to sustain these games by themselves. A lot of those people are there specifically because they like hunting other players. Once the casuals leave and every lobby is just full of other turbo-sweats doing the exact same thing, suddenly it’s not nearly as fun anymore and THEY start leaving too. The reality is that like 99% of people do not have the time to seriously grind an extraction shooter. You know that teammate you get who is just fucking terrible and you’re sitting there wondering how someone can possibly be this bad at the game? There’s a pretty good chance that dude is a 38 year old dad who just put his kids to bed and this is literally his first match since last Saturday. Most people are like that. They play a few hours here and there. They don’t memorize every spawn, every loot route, every ammo penetration table and every sound cue. And when those people realize that their two hours of free time are going to consist of getting farmed by someone with 1,500 hours, they don’t “git gud.” They uninstall the game. That’s why PvE modes are so important for this genre. Give those people somewhere they can learn the maps, progress, screw around with gear, fight AI, and actually enjoy the game without having to treat it like a second job. And the funny part is that PvP players always insist that this will somehow destroy the game. It doesn’t. It has basically zero effect on their ability to queue into PvP and shoot other people. What it DOES do is remove a chunk of the food chain, and I genuinely think that’s why some people get so unbelievably mad about PvE modes. A lot of people like to think they’re way better at these games than they actually are because there’s always some poor bastard below them with 20 hours in the game who brought in his best kit and has absolutely no idea what he’s doing. Take that guy out of the lobby and put him in PvE, and suddenly the “good PvP player” is getting matched against people who also know all the spawns, also know the meta, also have good aim, and also came specifically looking for a fight. Suddenly HE is the timmy. PvE doesn’t ruin PvP. It just gives the bottom of the food chain somewhere else to go, and a lot of people get REALLY uncomfortable when they realize where that leaves them. And the alternative isn’t that all those casuals eventually suck it up and move over to PvP. They just stop playing.