Today I saw a player deliberately rocket a friendly officer (a bot) in order to steal his VSS Vintorez. He did this quite brazenly in front of other players.

What is the view of the developers and players of this practise?

The player did this after the victory notice had come up, in the thirty seconds before the next map started. Does this make a difference?

This is something I expected to happen sooner or later (I wonder that I didn't see it earlier, even though I am pretty sure it's not the first time this happens ).
That's not cool for sure. Best thing would be that friendly elites wouldn't drop rares at all.

Haha, I see this happening sometimes. Drive over with jeep, rubberize, C4...

I dont like that.

Good idea is that friendly kills won't drop rares.

Well, RUNNING WITH RIFLES is a dangerous game, the war is a dangerous occupation and it also has its ugly face.
I personally if I see a wounded teammate, no matter what he is - either real player, an elite or ordinary soldier am trying my best to help him even risking my life.
But........ the coin has two sides, so, blame me if you want, but sometimes I've done the same, especially for his vest if I have no any/damaged.
Anyway, in the matter of fact this actually happens very rarely, so I'm sure - all those friendly elites doesn't suffer from poor health.

_________________
"Ad cogitandum et agendum homo natus es"

I work quickly, cheaply and qualitatively. You can choose only two of the three options.

i steal them from player squads and lure them to a nice place to give them some love >:3

I think making it so that friendly officer's didn't drop rare items upon being team killed would solve this.

That said, I haven't seen it done before in my small experience.

Wald

It looks as though having the friendly officers drop no weapon, or bog-standard versions of the rare weapon they're carrying, would be the way forward. If you're a player who plays by the spirit of the game and doesn't team-kill friendly officers, then you probably wouldn't even notice the change.

I think it's human nature that if a loophole is there to be exploited, there will be people that do so, regardless of whether it's "right" or not. So it's best not to have the opportunities present themselves.

If i may, when i first got this game and played SP my thought was 'those rare guns are a tad too... rare ?'. I think this is where killing friendly elites comes from. New players (with say, under 10 hours play time) see all those shiny high rank players with rares and want to at least try them out too. But there is not enough enemy elites to go around for everyone to have a taste. I actually thought a fair bit about this, and I had a few ideas, they might not be that great or might've been discussed in the past. Anyway , here goes :

- have more than 1 weapon in secret crates - if it's an AK74U crate have a couple of them for example.
- increase chances of enemy elites spawning (might prove to be a mistake since it affects the balance).
- introduce some sort of a 'shop', i was actually thinking a vehicle with a random chance of spawning, think along the lines of a black market armory truck where you could buy rares with a steep price increase, say 200 or 300% of weapons actual RP value. This would still keep rares rare, but would at least let more players have a taste.

I actually have killed a friendly elite myself to get a VSS simply out of frustration - i lost mine and had no opportunity to get another one for a long time and it just got to me. Not proud of it but there it is.

rambo hunting season is open again boys 8)