I completely agree. Making the game harder is a good idea, but the current CLE feels more frustrating than challenging. There's no real sense of progression anymore.

I have over 10,000 hours on official servers, and since the Road to Badlands update, starting a new run just isn't enjoyable. Houses and police stations (up to Tier 3) are often empty, police vests are extremely rare, and after hours of looting you can still get one-shot by a BK-18 or Repeater because you have no protection.

Server hopping makes it even worse. Players gear up on low-pop servers, then switch to high-pop servers to PvP. Fresh spawns have almost no chance because they can't find enough loot to compete. The world feels empty, and instead of encouraging exploration, the current system pushes everyone back into the old "rush NWAF/Tisy" meta.

I really hope the CLE gets rebalanced.

Just Play