This is most egregious on Ashen Mesa but holds true for all of the maps. After enough time playing you can accurately guess what enemies will appear where and exactly when due to them being triggered by player distance. The entire illusion of a war being fought around you falls apart and any interest in sitting around and observing feels pointless when it's all so very... Linear and scripted.

Currently you can actually farm money, water and reputation extremely easily by taking the Thief In the Night Quest and killing the Europan thief that consistently spawns in one of two spots on Mech Trenches for his prized alcohol.

For a game that thrives on its AI interactions and a sense of "war voyeurism" this seems like a key flaw with the current version of the game that I hope will be improved upon.

I can walk through Ashen Mesa and say, "Okay, two squads are going to fight in that corner over there... There it is. Now a couple of drones in the distance. Yep. Now there's going to be an exo and Europan infantry at the start of the chain link bridge, and then a bunch of cyborgs across that at the extract..." and most of the time I'll be right!

It's like the damn cafe scene from Groundhog Day.

I can also guess that on the catwalk off to the right of the City Ruins Ashen Mesa entrance I will find neuro uplinks and pictures, and teddy bears all over Scrapyard Nexus. It's something that extends to item variety and spawns.

I'm sure this'll something that'll improve in time, but I haven't seen anyone else make a thread specifically on this issue and figured I may as well be the one.

It's like playing PvE Tarkov without any mods where the bots spawn in the exact same spots every time.