! cqs

Physical markets pricing based on futures instead of supply and demand is going to lead to inventory drawn downs that are dangerous, especially when we consider that futures are trading on the misguided hope that Trump and Iran sign a deal before May is out.

The Strait is not going to open until boots are on the ground in Iran. We are going to have to get other countries involved like Europe, Japan, Korea, and maybe even China to get Iran to open the Strait.

The only out I see is the US giving up. If the US gives up its attempts to collect the Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) and they end the Iranian blockade, then it seems Iran will be willing to open the Strait. But, then the US will have to deal with Iran further because we don't know to what extent the Iranians will want reperations for the war, or lifted sanctions (what sanctions even remain though), or want to set up a toll booth, or whatever else their hearts desire seeing as they found their "nuke" afterall.

I actually don't know if Trump is willing to copitulate like this. At first glance, I would say no way, but I also don't know how much he understands the oil crisis being created by the Hormuz closure. If Trump does know, then he might back off to open the Strait because he knows this war is incredibly unpopular and we haven't even gotten to the good part which is what's going to happen this summer if the Strait isn't open. But as we all know, Trump is an addled old man who hates admitting he is wrong.

So, where does that leave us? The largest economic crisis to hit civilization since the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Am I being hyperbolic? No, not at all, and everyone in here should be aware of this because we all know oil is the world's oxygen, and something between 10% and 20% has been effectively cut off along with other important resources like helium, LNG, and fertilizer in similar percentile amounts. The Oil Crisis of the 1970s saw a 7% disruption. The Oil Crisis of 2022 saw a 3%-5% disruption.

Oil got to $130 a barrel in 2022 with a tank of gas on average in the US was $5.01. Futures right now are bouncing between $90 and $110, and gas is at $4.56 as of May 6 and according to AAA.

So if we compare that incredibly recent event (2022) with the current one, we see that markets are behaving foolishly, like absolute fools. The hopium they are smoking is outright dangerous.

A barrel of oil should be $220 or higher in the physical market and futures should be at $130 or higher in order to create the demand destruction needed to make sure we have SOME oil available to us. The draw down we saw in the US alone was staggering. API and EIA reporting an 8.1 million barrel draw down last week according to their May 6 reports, and the estimate from analysts was 2.8 million barrel draws. So, that tells us these people are not properly accounting for this for some reason. America is also in a much better position to weather this storm than Asia and Europe.

Then, even if the second I post this the Strait is opened, we have a month before the ships reach their respective destinations if everything goes okay. The Strait is still mined by an unknown amount in unknown locations so not all the lanes will even be open for transit. Clearing these mines could take months 6 or maybe a year. And, we have not accounted properly for the destruction of oil infrastructure in the Persian Gulf.

Iran on Monday bombed the Fujairah oil inventory site in the UAE and there stores were already down 67%. Oh, don't forget that Iran will likely have to shut down oil pumps or light them on fire because they are running out of storage. This will have to happen in the coming days. Reports are saying they are basically finding any tank they can at the moment to store this stuff.

The crisis could really only get bigger if the Strait leading into the Suez was cut off and Iran bombed the rest of the oil infrastructure in the region. God help us if Iran bombs the Ghawar Field in Saudi Arabia. A nuke might be better.

No one is properly accounting for this crisis. It's like climate change, or the guy that stared his naked eyes into the open reactor of Chernobyl while everyone else was like "Oh, it's just a mild amount of radiation. Everything is under control."

I really really don't understand why the futures markets are trading like this. Even if Trump says "Okay, keep the HEU and here's your sanctions lifts and here's 1 Billion dollars, so sorry for bombing you" its going to take months if not years to get "back to normal".

Short Everything.

The game has turned into something completely different for me ever since I accepted PvP and enaged with it.

Every trip up top is a truly new experience. My loot management requires thought and some planning. Its not as hurtful as I thought to lose gear. Some interactions make me tilt because ya know how'd that guy kill me! but its honestly become a whole new game for me.

When you don't die often, the game play is kind of weird. Embark never intended you to just collect gobs and gobs of items like this with gigantic stores of wealth in your inventory. They expected you to die a least once every 10 matches if not more than that, but I can routinely go 20 or more matches with no deaths due to firendly raiders with defibs.

Now that I die every 3rd trip or so though, the inventory management, and what I am looking for each trip, is completely new and different. I'm using more diverse weaponry having to consider both arc and raider threats. I have to balance wanting to be prepared with not losing tons of items. I don't full stack smoke grenades anymore for example and just rbing 2 or 3. I have a raider hatch key in my safe pocket pretty much permanently. I have to be careful about what I purchase from the shop and when. Some games are just seed games or expensive item rounds to refill those stores.

It IS very jarring and heartwrenching when you lose some quality items. I decided to risk running my level IV stitcher that had the gold attachment that makes it shoot faster, an item that you cannot make and I only had one, and I lost it without really getting to use it thanks to a guy who jumped me good. And of course lots of people want to trick you.

I've also noticed a lot of PvP people are just straight up toxic. They have gamertags like "P***yHunter69" and call me slurs and the N word etc. So that's definetly a negative and I do not know what Embark's aproach to banning these people is.

I also might shoot someone on sight and that guy gets REALLY mad at me. I mean calling me every name in the book for shooting him when he wants to be friendly etc. It's so hard to trust people and sometimes people just come up on me and it spooks me.

But gameplay wise, it really feels like "Oh this is what they wanted" I don't know if it will be for everyone, but as a 32 year gamer who has played so so many games, I am thoroughly enjoying this new game I have uncovered basically.

Also, as a tip, here is my "loop":

Trip 1: Mostly full kit, get kills, get stuff.
Trip 2: If died in trip 1, Identify items needed to replenish, snatch and grab operation
Trip 3: If died in trip 2 and stores are low, games turns into a stealth mission where maybe I bring a hairpin and some bandages and just try to loot specific locations for specific items, them flee.

Oh, also, the game provides you with SO many ways to escape, like if you don't want to kill a guy, it is so easy to throw smoke grenades and vanish.

Middle aged gamer here who is new to extraction shooters and played the hell out of Arc Raiders.

I get the sense that Embark is having a difficult time blanacing their game because players are not playing the game how they thought, or possibly intended. Extraction Shooters, it seems to me, get their fun from the fact that all your stuff is lost upon death. Games like Escape from Tarkov then become a kind of "World's Greatest Game" where players hunt or become hunted by others. You need to get in, sneak or out shoot your oppenents, get the loot, and get out.

Embark wants you to have an exciting high stakes adventure each time you go topside. That's why they show you the map at the end of your round. They want you to loot the Water Testing Annex, kill some ticks, sneak past the rocketeer or leaper to the Control Tower where you will try to loot it and maybe just barely make it out alive as one or more raiders try to kill you to take your things, then escape to a raider hatch or try to defend your extract from arc and raiders.

It reminds me of what Dr. Disrespect said once about a Battle Royale he was reviewing. He said "it doesn't feel like there is a good story. Fortnite has a good story. You drop at this POI, travel to others, where each one can give you a different engagement experience, you get new exciting loot with each victory and the next game could tell a completely different story, or the same if you want it to." (huge paraphrase obv)

But players are playing weird and ABMM kind of enables it. Raiders have developed an almost cult-like ideology around being friendly and not shooting other raiders to the point that people get pissed at you for even trying it. This makes the obtaining of loot incredibly easy. Arc are also not that big a threat IF you are fighting with one or two other people.

I've been making the joke with the recent update that there's no way Humans lost to the arc, because now that everyone is trying to get damage for the expedition, its a straight up Arc genocide topside. Me and two other guys completely embarassed this leaper and vaporizer last night in Riven Tides.

But they have made some changes since the start of the game to make the game just straight up more difficult. Comets, Flamers, more aggressive Rocketeers, shredders on every map now. And the most recent changes to the Photoelectric Cloack, Weapon Durability, and what seems like a change to hornet-wasp swarms are all indicators that Embark intended you to die more often than you are.

The Weapon Durability change in particular seems to be a direct result of a lack of death on our part. They are effectively giving you a "you didn't die" tax on your loot because now you HAVE to burn through material to repair your weapons.

This game's player base is very mixed about what kind of game they want. Some like r/ArcBabies are clearly pro pvp all day long. Others want a more relaxed chill experience. Some people legitimately want to decorate their raider and loot containers and hang out with people, not fight for their lives at every turn, which those of you that have tried full on pvp know the feeling and sometimes thats super fun and sometimes its not.

I think as this game evolves, we are going to get a lot of interesting balance changes like this as Embark tries to figure out what they've created.