Quick Q for the devs, what was the design team thinking designing a system where players voluntarily let themselves be murdered to increase chance of good loot? Being afraid of dying is a thing up until lvl 5 maybe, varies most likely from player to player. At lvl 20+ no one gives a damn. Grind dying, strange recipe. Worst design I encountered this year…
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Yes, very bizarre.
But then the way the whole thing was sold was a bit off. If memory serves, they said something on the stream that amounted to, “If the machine kills you, it improves itself.” For some reason, that strikes me as really odd (“Why would it do that? If it was able to kill me, it is clearly good enough and doesn’t need to improve, it only needs to git gud if I defeat it!”), even though that’s exactly the same way player XP work. I wish they’d just phrased it differently, “It learned from the fight what works better and what didn’t work so well, and now it is a tougher enemy to fight.” Same mechanism, much less awkward mental model. YMMV.
But as you said, it’s weird in gameplay terms as well. You’d expect for it to come back stronger after getting killed (i.e. “the machine hive learns from the experience of what didn’t work, and sends a new machine with adapted programming”) to keep up the challenge:
“You bested the machine, the machine gets better (or its replacement is better, if you prefer), so you in turn also have to get better.
But as each successive machine’s programming improves, so does its weaponry, and if you’re lucky, you may salvage some after defeating that arch-enemy.”
And that’s another thing. Is it me, or does “Rivals” sound awkward? What are we competing for? The land? Nemesis or arch-enemy seem to have more clearly fitting connotations. Again, your mileage may vary.
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Even the catch phrase for the game is “living is winning” 
Whenever I’m below 50 percent health and near a church, I just kill myself instead of using medkits. A bit of a design flaw. There should be a punishment for death.
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100% should be, i personally don’t take that route and just burn medkits then farm them. I don’t hate on it though, the devs have left it like that for a reason to not alienate newer players that maybe get stuck in death loops.
Maybe if a “hardcore” mode were ever introduced we could see players losing all inventory except equipped weapons on death or something for those striving for a challenge.
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Yeah, because of that I have a plundra full of simple medkits. 
And Xezr has a hardcore challenge which is pretty good, so I recommend checking that out.
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I suppose you can abuse the system like that, to get a Machine to level up, but it’s tedious and if you’re nowhere near a safehouse it wastes Adrenaline Shots. I considered it myself, then quickly realised how boring of a method it was.
Feels better to roam about, have each region create their own Rivals and take them on.
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With the time to take the enemies to respawn, farming adrenaline and being suicidal seems still the least resistance way… its fracked up man, it really is…
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I already stated elsewhere that I’m very opposed to this, but fortunately, the new weapons have a relatively high drop rate (I guess around 25% for lvl 1 rival). After 3-4 gaming sessions, 1 week after release I have all experimental weapons except the AG4, and some of them even in excess. And that’s without ever letting myself die. 
You COULD do it that way if you’d like, but Rivals weren’t really added with the intention that people frentically farm them in that manner (although it’s of course expected for now with it being a brand-new feature). Of course we know that our most dedicated fans will want to “powergame” somewhat to get everything they can ASAP, but we’d envisioned Rivals being an addition that players can more organically experience on their travels.
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Hello @Avalanche_Graham heck I am just trying to survive while avoiding finishing the story (I do not want it to end)…Can you give us some numbers broken down by platforms as to how many Rivals have been killed vs Players killed by Rivals?
Thanks,
SPP