Saw the other Maelstrom post and my comment ended up turning into a novel. Maelstrom, despite being a fun mode to play, is plagued with numerous issues.

Grinding vs Diamond

This is one thing that everyone will point out, as people can drop in with an op of any level. While I think skill is a bigger factor in how well someone will do, lower levels still lack the bonuses that higher levels provide, such as extra move speed, damage reduction, reload speed, etc. This can make a difference in tight situations, limping on at low health instead of just getting downed.

Ironically, Maelstrom is also one of the best places to level up. Maelstrom exp payouts are probably the highest in terms of time and effort put in. So while you really should be using a level 9-10 op (level 10 perks can be game changing), it's more worth your time to use an op a bit lower. I don't blame anyone who wants to take advantage of this.

So you now have two groups, one that wants to push and grind for diamond, and one that wants to just get some exp. Diamond grinders will dislike players sandbagging for only their benefit, while exp grinders will often get dragged further than they want and be in risk of dying. The goals of both groups don't align, and makes games harder than they need to be.

Better matchmaking options should really be implemented, but the game in general needs better matchmaking right now.

Randomization

Maelstrom isn't even properly seeded, and it throws off how the mode is played. It's supposed to be an identical run every time (a point that Ubi even touted), with operators, objectives, objective locations, and refill locations remaining constant. But at the same time, archies, their location, and nest placement is still randomized. I still remember three times there were very "wtf?" randomizations:

1. Week one, the map could roll to spawn apexes right outside the airlock stairs on subarea 4. This only happened once, and no other runs that week placed apexes on subzone 4. Which was frankly bizarre at the time and even my teammates commented on it.
2. Week three, subarea 7 with the sabotage. The majority of times on that subzone, it was a bullet hell as tormentors would light up the area as you tried to defend the charges. But then during one run it decided to switch them for lurkers. It made the subarea a complete joke, and it honestly felt like I cheated getting diamond that week.
3. This week (4), I've noticed that nests on the nest tracking objective are still being randomized. I have no clue why, given that as an objective it should absolutely be the same every time like every other objective. Funny enough, even Ubi's Maelstrom trailer says that nests should be in the same location, when in-game they're not.

This throws off the supposed seeded nature of Maelstrom, and can even lead to certain runs being easier or harder than others. Which feels neither fair or fun.

Resets & Rewards

Resets and rewards aren't handled properly, and are changing on a weekly basis with no communication from Ubi. Your current rank used to reset every run, and would track the highest of that week. Today it was suddenly changed to always reflect your current seasonal highest, with no mention from Ubi whatsoever. That or it just never reset from last week, which is opposite of the behavior from previous weeks.

Rewards are also a point of contention. Since before day 1, Maelstrom was going to reset rank and rewards every week. This was quickly pointed out as a bad idea, as you could potentially grind for something and loose it the next day. But when the roll over came, both rewards and rank didn't reset. This wasn't announced or elaborated on, outside of a snarky "(...) now you are complaining about keeping them?" from Ubi. The problem wasn't that we weren't loosing rank/rewards, but that we lost a reason to play. Sure it's nice to keep the headgear, but our rank too? That's now two reasons that would have kept players coming back removed. The headgear change felt like a last-second Band-Aid fix, temporarily solving an issue that quickly ballooned into a problem.

Adding the RC felt like a pity reward, as you only need to hit bronze. It only takes a few objectives to complete it, and is downright easy. And even the weekly goal of just hitting Diamond under your current rank tab was just straight up removed. At this point all that's left is "for fun". This only complicates things as now there's three groups of players playing Maelstrom, one of which could care less what happens. And that "fun" is really dependent on your teammates not being either clueless or toxic. Even then, since Maelstrom is seeded, it does eventually get boring doing the same run for the nth time. It's more fun to just play the current assignment, as that contains very unique gameplay changes.

Something as simple as a counter of Diamond completions would give people an incentive to keep playing Maelstrom. Or slap a number on the helmet to show your total weekly completions. Or only give headgear to the op that you completed with. Literally anything would be a welcome change.

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