Still very new to the game and wondering what's the best or popular ways to spend those tickets?
Edit: I play both modes, but definitely want to get more involved in operation eventually.
I am quite new to the game (3 weeks in) but had previous extraction experience in Tarkov (SPT mod only, cuz I doubt I can fight with 8000 hours sweat there) and Marathon, so I understand the "dying a lot" part of the game.
It's great that this game has easy with AI bots as a floor for even the most casual player to play and enjoy, but it seems that normal is like 100x harder than easy based on what I read here.
It makes me wonder, if people are already going into normal with high cost loadout, then who the heck are waiting for me at hard?
Do capable players with high cost loadout go to normal because of rampant cheater problem at hard, like players with skills to play at hard, but cockblocked by cheaters? Or hard is for the mega-rich with even higher tiers of loadout forcing the budget-oriented sweats to stick to normal instead?
Edit: I totally understand the diff between easy and normal because easy plays like casual slopfest and you can easily play very badly but still win against bots, like one just doesn't learn how to play extraction in easy, while I am sure normal plays like "regular extraction shooters".
Coming from Marathon, which somehow imo is the closest to DF due to both of them having character abilities and squad-based, I can easily see the play style and skill level of the regular easy lobbies aren't going to survive in a regular extraction environment. I said it is good to have easy for casuals here because Marathon has none so the "base experience" is normal of DF and all casuals just quit.