After a long day of playing the game, I’ve finally realized as to why Yukon is my favorite map. No, it is not the map layout, with almost all the important locations in the bottom-left corner of the map - fuck the layout. No, it is not the actual difficulty of surviving it - just suicide and bank XP until you can set up a decent lettuce farm. No, it is not the limited selection of guns and clothes that is considered a good thing by some.
This game-changing attribute all boils down to a single, particularly well-known, nefarious item - the Horde Beacon. Looting the military base and killing the mega, grabbing 2 chemicals and a blowtorch from the gas station, and leveling up crafting 3 is enough to grant you vast amounts of the best loot in the entire game. Even worse, the amount of items rewarded scales with the amount of participating players. A group of 10 will get 22 items from a single horde beacon.
And even then, you don’t need to be a large group to utilize the Horde Beacons. Just doing 1-2 with a friend is more then enough to raid any base but an expertly-crafted honeycomb. Horde Beacons are the reason why nakeds are sniped with total disregard for ammunition. Horde Beacons are the reasons you get raided overnight, every night, at 5 AM. And ultimately, Horde Beacons are the reason why this game is not about survival.
Full-blown, tryhard clans will always exist. They rise to the top due to their knowledge of the game, high levels of skill, excellent teamplay, and too much free time. But the reason as to why they can dominate to such an extent is the Horde Beacon. I’ve met a couple of clans in my time on Yukon. I’ve killed them, and they’re killed me. But unlike all the other maps, the loot disparity between me and them was never absurdly high. There is a vast difference between 50 C4 and literal neverending amounts of all and any raiding gear.
If there are any server owners open to change, consider disabling Horde Beacons. ̶A̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶R̶o̶c̶k̶e̶t̶ ̶L̶a̶u̶n̶c̶h̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶d̶e̶s̶p̶a̶w̶n̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶s̶o̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶s̶p̶a̶w̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶,̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶v̶e̶r̶t̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶s̶e̶r̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶v̶a̶n̶i̶l̶l̶a̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶s̶l̶o̶t̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶r̶d̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶s̶o̶n̶.̶