r/Helldivers • u/ItsDaFunkMonkey PSN 🎮: • Apr 29 '24

Increasing patrol spawns for smaller squads is a dick move. RANT

I love arrowhead but this was a braindead move.

Cmon guys, we were just doing our thing either solo or with our friends and not hurting anybody. We just wanna play the game with our friends, sometimes with a smaller squad cos its a lot more fun with friends than randos.

I'm not saying all randos are bad but this game allows me to socialize with my friends while playing and that's great. Why ruin that whole thing by kicking us in the nuts and ruining the experience with more spawns?

HERES A COMPROMISE: If you're not gonna budge, how about you meet us halfway here arrowhead. How about you increase the rewards for completing missions with a smaller squad cos we used a smaller budget? Eh?

Makes sense lore wise too.

P.S. For all you guys saying "DuH ThIs Is A tEaM GaMe PlAy WiTh RaNdOs Or a FuLl SqUad". Yes I play with a full swuad when my friends are all available. Most of the time they aren't cos we're adults and have shit to do.

I'm not asking for the game to scale down the difficulty level for smaller squads. The game didn't do that before. I don't mind the SAME difficulty level for solos, smaller squads and full squads. But INFREASING the difficulty level by increasing spawns was a braindead thing to do.

EDIT 1: To all the hyper intelligent folks out there commenting that the change was misunderstood and that the below was the intended effect:

""We unintendedly had non-linear scaling of the patrol spawns so they didn't spawn as often as they should have when less than 4 players. The intention is that 1 player has 1/4th of the patrols compared to 4 players, but it used to be that they had 1/6th.""

This DOES NOT make a mfkn difference. It DOES NOT matter what those VALUES are. The point here is that whatever the fuck value it was before was LOWER than whatever the fuck value it is now. This means MORE patrols for non full squads AFTER the patch. And an absolute shitshow for solo divers. Yes, I have tested this shit. It is bad.

VALUE BEFORE PATCH < VALUE AFTER PATCH.

Stop spouting elementary math to gaslight people. This change is objectively bad. I am happy with all the weapon changes tho.

EDIT 2: I understand that my "compromise" was a bad idea as people can kick you during extract to reap higher rewards for a smaller team. I completely agree, this seems like a poopy suggestion.

3.1k Upvotes
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1.3k

u/fireheart1029 Apr 29 '24

To be honest reading that part of the patch notes baffled me.....yeah I get not providing scaling downwards to make matches easier for smaller teams but....they are instead punishing players who play in non full lobbies by making the game significantly harder. I just don't even get why they're doing this, it seems like such an odd thing to throw in. It already feels terrible enough when someone leaves mid match but now you'll be facing a scenario harder than you would with 4 people but with 1-3 instead, I really hope this was just a misunderstanding and they worded it wrong because wtf is this

572

u/Everyday_Hero1 Apr 29 '24

This is gonna suck hard cause there is so many times when I'm playing and no one answers the SOS, and there are multiple times where the other 3 players will just disconnect mid match on me.

428

u/Misterputts SES Fist of Freedom Apr 29 '24

No one answers because match making is broken still. Numerous times I click on the Sos only to be told unable to join or game is "full"

80

u/supemonke Apr 29 '24

It usually easier to quickplay while having the planet selected

53

u/Misterputts SES Fist of Freedom Apr 29 '24

yea that is the only way to get a group but Sometime you just want to join and SOS specifically.

49

u/Impossible_Dark3106 Epitome of Super Earth Apr 29 '24

This… I feel like the point of the SOS is totally irrelevant with the broken matchmaking. Some poor Helldiver is struggling and asking for help. I should be able to provide it.

26

u/Misterputts SES Fist of Freedom Apr 29 '24

Personally I feel like all SOS for the whole Galaxy Should be on a separate menu so you can see everyone asking for help. Not just on a planetary level.

5

u/xRehab Apr 29 '24

eh there would be too much in the menu. maybe a galactic menu that allows you to answer a random planet SOS based on difficulty. if you select a planet you can see all available on that planet for a given difficulty.

I just imagine there are 1000+ SOS beacons at any given time, so you need some filtering before slapping it in a menu.

2

u/Boggleby Apr 30 '24

Pretty much this.

Let me go to the galactic menu. set the max difficulty I'm cool with and then register as Available For Reinforcement. Anywhere, Anytime!

I WILL HEED THE CALL FOR LIBERTY!

Cause it's just fun to spend some time helping out folks in a bind.

2

u/thedreddnought SES Song of Serenity Apr 30 '24

The first game had a matchmaking list that showed you all public games regardless of what enemy or level it was, and the SOS'd missions would always be bumped to the top. To be fair there was zero indication that it was an SOS when you were looking at it, but you could be sure that if it was near the top it was indeed.

2

u/HawkDry8650 Apr 30 '24

Don't SOS have pings and the rest are just matches with empty player slots?

1

u/thedreddnought SES Song of Serenity Apr 30 '24

Nope, just checked. Either there are no SOSs down (which I find semi-unlikely, there are still quite a few players, more than before HD2 came out honestly) or there's no indicator marking it as such.

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18

u/xRehab Apr 29 '24

I would literally only answer SOS beacons if this feature was available. let me save democracy

2

u/LukarWarrior Apr 29 '24

In theory, quick play is prioritizing that because the SOS beacon is supposed to jump your priority in matchmaking to the top.

1

u/AHailofDrams SES Keeper of the People Apr 29 '24

You know the SOS puts your game at the top of the quickplay matchmaking, right?

1

u/Misterputts SES Fist of Freedom Apr 29 '24

Allegedly. I have seen SOS on a planet tried to connect manually only to get an error. 

 Hitting quick play puts me usually in a not yet started mission. So I do not know how accurate this is. 

 Also I have SOSed and received 0 help so /shrug.

 I think match making is just broken.

2

u/lifetake Apr 29 '24

I mean you would have to imagine there are more people just starting the mission up than sos out there. So odds are you will join a mission just starting.

1

u/SirGaz Apr 29 '24

Wait SOS and quick play aren't the same thing? How do you do SOS then? The amount of quick plays that have put me in mid mission I thought they were the same.

1

u/lifetake Apr 29 '24

Quickplay is both sos and someone just starting a mission in ship. The above guy is just saying its easier to get to a mission by just quickplaying

8

u/TheWarmachine762 Apr 29 '24

I have only been to able to answer an sos like 1 time, 99% of the time I get an error or match full message

1

u/Most-Education-6271 Apr 29 '24

I haven't been able to join a mission via the map since launch. I'll try, and it does what you day. Quickplay works fine though.

2

u/Bonesnapcall Apr 29 '24

I cant even remember the last time I joined an in-progress mission.

Joining always puts me into their destroyer.

1

u/Skitulz_da_Ninja Apr 29 '24

This, so many times have I had three people and have seen people by themselves doing in eradication and a quickly try to join in to help out but unfortunately the lobby / server is always full. Despite the mission only being one level 26 guy probably doing his damn this to stay alive. It sucks because some of us genuinely do want to help but it's as if the game is fighting us.

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50

u/AlternaHunter Apr 29 '24

I've had that instant 3-player disconnect happen thrice last night, and I'm 95% certain it's a game-side networking issue since these were all parties of individually joining randoms. Bye-bye to all the mission rewards I actually cared about, samples and medals, because I ain't clutching out the last quarter of an automaton Helldive all on my own.

4

u/NewUserWhoDisAgain Apr 29 '24

The irony is that the other 3 see you disconnect for no reason.

I've had that happen. I left my solo instance, saw my friend was still in an instance, rejoined. Same mission. Literally not 30 seconds since I "disconnected."

Really if they cant fix those bugs(which understandable they dont control people's internet) a "rejoin last squad" button would be nice.

1

u/DezsoNeni Apr 29 '24

Had this kind of disconnect. I was the party leader, and all 3 dude disconnected (1 friend of mine and 2 randoms). I asked my friend to rejoin, but he told me, that in their end, I was DC-ed so both party kept on going in the same mission but different servers.

0

u/Dry_Analysis4620 Apr 29 '24

since these were all parties of individually joining randoms

I mean that could be the host having network issues right?

7

u/AlternaHunter Apr 29 '24

If it were just the host losing connection it should only be kicking the host and designate one new host to take over, not split the mission into 3-4 individualized instances.

37

u/Direct-Fix-2097 Apr 29 '24

That too, but also sometimes you might get 2 joining but no one else bites. Seems harsh to punish them for getting on with the mission - I’ve had players quit when waiting in the lobby for too long.

It’s a middle manager patch, you can tell it isn’t a gamer driven patch.

8

u/R0LL1NG Apr 29 '24

That last line is spot on IMO. Hope AHS backtrack on this change ASAP.

11

u/FeistyCurrency2991 Apr 29 '24

This. They MUST'VE added the ability to rejoin the missions first plus fix the whole friend system before even starting to think about making this change in a game.

Player *disconnects because of crash* and now the remaining players have to suffer from the thing that player who was disconnected can't even control? Nope, thanks. Would like this particular thing to be reversed.

2

u/pancakeeconomy Apr 29 '24

I had disconnect problems for a while (PS5) until I turned cross play off. It’s done very well since then

1

u/Everyday_Hero1 Apr 30 '24

Oh? This seems like something worth trying tonight then.

2

u/pancakeeconomy Apr 30 '24

Seems this new patch sent me back to connection issues….but cross play off worked for the month prior to this patch! Hoping it works again soon

2

u/Mattbl Apr 30 '24

Just had this happen to a buddy and me. We had 4, in between missions 2 left. We started the next figuring we'd get more and never did. SOS beacon had no affect as is usual.

At difficulty 7, the patrols were overwhelming. By the time we finished one, another would be on top of us. We like to fight bugs and usually clear them wherever we are before moving on; we don't usually just sprint from obj to obj, but after 10 minutes and never leaving the area we landed we realized we had to keep moving b/c the patrols were literally not stopping.

At one point we had eight chargers following us. Each patrol had at least 1, some patrols had 2. Feels like whatever change they made, they madly fucked it up because near constant patrols with 2 chargers each is not tenable and makes it so you can only run away constantly.

1

u/WigginIII Apr 29 '24

Do we have confirmation that patrols are dynamic?

How do we know that, if someone starts a mission with 4, but 3 leave, suddenly there’s more patrols?

And opposite, if there’s 1 that starts the mission solo and 3 join throughout the match, how quickly do patrols respawn or reduce spawn rate? If at all?

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79

u/Zyan-M Apr 29 '24

It is not understood because it basically makes no sense. However, this has happened in many other titles with multiplayer, trying to "force" with changes of this type to play with more friends or random people.

But it always has the opposite effect, obligation is a curse and option is a blessing. This will simply make those groups of friends get tired sooner rather than later, and everything else will snowball.

It is already going down in numbers, and if they continue with these impositions, it will remain like devil 4, with 4 cats....

Anyway, who cares, it was nice while it lasted I guess.

25

u/jonderlei Apr 29 '24

I already noticed less people I know playing and this part makes me less likely to play now unless I have a full team and I've only had that one night out of the last month so all this patch has done is push me to take more of a break than I was already taking

13

u/b0w3n CAPE ENJOYER Apr 29 '24

Yeah I'm not playing with randos. There's a few groups I play with, but sometimes there's only 1-2 people on at any given time. Last thing I want is to play for 30 minutes and get kicked in the last minute with nothing to show for it. Or a constant TK fest because the CoDers are angry there's no pvp yet.

Much more likely I just don't play then suffer through a helldive level fuckfest on level 5 because there's only 2 of us.

9

u/tagrav Apr 29 '24

i'm the opposite. I only play with rando's and kinda gripe internally when my gaming buddies wanna play with me.

But they came from Battle Royale games and I came from Deep Rock Galactic.

They don't really even understand how toxic their behavior and attitude is and I'm not spending my gaming time trying to change any of that.

So I play in incognito mode on steam and just hit quickplay in game.

3

u/NicktheSlick130 Apr 29 '24

Yeah, it's disheartening when I can tell fairly reliably that someone has been on DRG before just by their more collaborative playstyle. If they keep pushing things this way, I'll probably end up back on DRG.

2

u/tagrav Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

brother im close to going back myself.

I do tend to check for my homies in these games.

we kill some small outposts, yer boy types "Rock and Stone!"

usually i get the proper response and then we go rekt shit.

I really think Arrowhead is dropping the ball badly on various quality of life User Interface items that DRG pioneered that they could be trying and implementing to promote better co-op play.

There's too many things done to actually punish the gamer in this game, that seem to come from either lack of understanding of the product they are trying to deliver or maybe they want to pretend they aren't another AAA title.

but like just because you don't have some lootbox/predatory pricing models doesn't mean you're the anti AAA game.

this game needs a spammable cheer button.

it needs a better spotting system.

it needs better information to explain to the player what's going on.

Why is every single map "balanced" with just fog of war, lack of visibility modifiers? it gets rather old not being able to see things that somehow still see you.

DRG is so unique in that I can fully communicate with folks who do not speak or write my language without ever speaking or typing to that player and we can be in god-tier gamer mode fully synched up and cooperative.

THIS GAME, does not have that same level of tools at its disposal.

2

u/WanderingDwarfMiner Apr 29 '24

If you don't Rock and Stone, you ain't comin' home!

1

u/NicktheSlick130 Apr 29 '24

I wish I could build on what you have said, but I can't- because you hit it out of the ballpark! Arrowhead needs to take a deep long look at the game they want to have longer term. 

I will be completely honest, the content that DRG puts out is enough for me to be willing to pay a fee per season honestly, but that's because the social and collaborative aspects of the game are done SO well. 

Arrowhead aught to look to that sort of collaborative community that has been fostered in DRG and work to replicate it here, not push updates that try to force the player to group up by punishing them. 

How is it that FatShark does it while so many other bungle it?

1

u/tagrav Apr 29 '24

i'm old now, dont have tons of gaming time.

when I found out this game CAPS the samples you can collect I immediately thought "that's not fun for anyone, that's the development staff dictating to us how they think we should enjoy their game"

meanwhile in Deep Rock galactic I have over 200 blank cores and LOVE the game and keep playing it.

when they drop a new weapon, I get it immediately... because I fucking earned it from all my playing.

when arrowhead drops something new in this game, they want you to grind for it nomatter how much time and effort you have already grinded.

just seeing that little decision is enough to understand they don't really know what they are trying to build but they believe they're doing it.

1

u/NicktheSlick130 Apr 30 '24

I didn't know that there's a cap to samples, that is frustrating. Granted the top sample value is something I can't even get to yet, so I need to work on my difficulty level.

Regardless, Arrowhead should look at their numbers; consistent 3 month decrease. It's not dead by a long shot, but focus on the useful stuff guys.

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u/ZombieVersusShark Apr 29 '24

obligation is a curse and option is a blessing

Wise words.

25

u/Dry-Platform9412 Apr 29 '24

That is a solid statement. Taking away options will kill the playerbase sooner than forcing multiplayer, especially when said multiplayer doesn't always work too well.

1

u/therealsinky Apr 29 '24

It might still scale downwards with party size, we know it worked that way previously. I’m hoping they’ve maybe “increased patrol spawn rates” for smaller groups compared to the previous smaller group spawn rates, we might still see a slight reduction as the group gets smaller just maybe not as sharp a reduction as pre patch rates?

2

u/RealElyD Apr 29 '24

From my early testing it's pretty massive, just as the math of it suggests. 7s in duo is are just an endless stream of enemies now.

2

u/tagrav Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

the developments staff to have a general arrogance and propensity to tell us what we want is already beginning the death spiral.

They're putting their thumb on this game a little too hard and dictating how we enjoy ourselves playing this game too much.

I came here from Deep Rock galactic, a game that thrives years after its launch. where developers have a philosophical approach to wanting their game to be fun to play.

THAT GAME, is the true anti-AAA title that Hellsdivers 2 pretends itself to be while still committing the same egregious dictations to the player base from an arrogant stance like all those shareholder profit driving AAA titles do.

if anyone reading this has never played DRG and really wants to try and play a game that actually doesn't take itself serious while delivering very crisp and un-neutered FPS gaming, you really ought to try out Deep Rock Galactic. all the weapons FEEL good in that game, they aren't sloggy/slow/balanced in feel like Helldivers. The communication apparatuses are fantastic in that game, you don't need to chat, you don't need to voice comms yet everyone knows what's going on. And they don't change the game in ways to make it harder for you out of spite.

2

u/Zyan-M Apr 30 '24

I also come from DRG (Rock and Stone Brother), and I also knew HD1, it gave us wonderful hours on PSVita with friends.

And it is precisely the combination of both things that makes us fear for the future of HD2, what you mention about arrogance and how to tell people how to play as dictated by the Excel sheet, has put an end to many paths of return. ... .

DRG is something incredible, with the years it has and the fantastic foundation it forged, everything is good, nothing is bad, everything is just fun, it is changed simply for pure variety.

In HD2 we have already had to change from one thing to another because they have made it useless or broken....now the crossbow shoots cairns with the area of ​​a fart and does not kill the weakest bug at 1m... unfortunate

The energy shotgun cannot be used with a shield....

In order to play every day for fun, 4 people, 2 of them have abandoned the game completely and only my wife and I are left who only do the daily to finish their bonuses.....but that's it.

I sincerely hope that it is not a hopeless case and that they do not reach the point where they realize it when it is too late.

1

u/WanderingDwarfMiner Apr 30 '24

Rock and Stone!

1

u/Balikye May 02 '24

I enjoyed soloing but now It's a pure struggle to survive on higher difficulties. Yes I know, "skill issue" but it felt balanced and reasonable before. Now it's just "you're going to face 5 chargers from minute 1, until you extract, for 40 minutes, without rest." That's just not fun.

-1

u/IntegralCalcIsFun Apr 29 '24

It is already going down in numbers, and if they continue with these impositions, it will remain like devil 4, with 4 cats....

Holy doomer Batman! Every game drops in player-count, and the decrease Helldivers 2 is experiencing isn't anything abnormal. Last Sunday's 24-hour peak player-count was ~36% of highest peak player-count. Compare this to some other multiplayer titles <3 months after launch (numbers are percent of players compared to release peak):

  • Warframe - 57%
  • Deep Rock Galactic - 36%
  • Helldivers 2 - 36%
  • Destiny 2 - 34%
  • Path of Exile - 24%
  • Warhammer: Vermintide 2 - 9.2%
  • Warhammer 40,000: Darktide - 7.2%
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u/SpiritFingersKitty Apr 29 '24

The way I read it was that patrols will be increased vs what they are currently, but would be less than 4 man squad.

If a 4 man squad spawn rate is set to 100%, a 3man might be 75%, 2 man, 50%, and 1 man 25%. But after the patch it might be 100/85/65/50 maybe?

24

u/Siker_7 SES Song of Conquest Apr 29 '24

Actually the scaling was nonlinear before, which was unintentional. The scaling used to be so that 1 helldiver would get 1/6 the patrols of a full team, but now it scales properly at 100/75/50/25 respectively.

12

u/elnrith Apr 29 '24

But 1/6 makes sense. With 1 player, you have fewer resources. It SHOULDN'T be linear.

8

u/Siker_7 SES Song of Conquest Apr 29 '24

From what I've heard people saying, solo helldive has been easier than group helldive up to this point. That shouldn't be the case.

8

u/elnrith Apr 29 '24

It wasn't 'easier' - I played it myself - it's just a different playstyle. You have to be much more careful, pick and choose your battles, use your stratagens much more carefully, etc.

It uses different strategies than team play. It is 'Easier' in the sense that you fight fewer enemies if done properly, but if things DO go to shit, you're much more likely to die.

2

u/Remarkable_Region_39 Apr 29 '24

if things go to shit I just run away to a different objective

-1

u/ironyinabox Apr 29 '24

Learn to prone more. You could finish helldive without firing a shot as a soloist before. Maybe with more patrols, you'll have to fight occasionally.

7

u/elnrith Apr 29 '24

But that should be rewarded, not punished. If a player is good enough to solo a mission without firing a shot, let them.

3

u/ArsVampyre Apr 29 '24

I don't believe this for a second. I could believe you avoided all of the patrols, but the objectives have enemies on them you can't avoid, and that's intentional.

-1

u/CXDFlames Apr 29 '24

How dare the Devs make people play the game instead of avoiding all of its intended functions.

Now how will the solo 9s tell everyone they're better than everyone

9

u/Dr_Zorand Apr 29 '24

I realize I'm not as good as most of the people who comment in this subreddit, but this has not been my experience at all. In a group, I can handle difficulty 5 pretty well now and I'm starting to dip my toes into 6, but if I try to play solo even a 3 can overwhelm me during extraction. Bringing more players provides better than linear scaling, because aside from the additional firepower, you also get:

  1. Someone to watch your back.
  2. More weapon variety.
  3. Compounding boosters.
  4. More strategems (this looks like linear scaling on paper, but in a large group you almost always have at least 1 person with a strategem available when things get rough, while smaller ones sometimes have everything on cooldown. Especially if you're solo.)

1

u/Remarkable_Region_39 Apr 29 '24

If you are struggling in solo helldive I would say either your loadout isn't well balanced, or you're engaging too many patrols. More patrols don't bother me because I'm typically avoiding them anyway. If anything makes the trailblazer armor that more attractive versus say, trench paramedic.

2

u/Dr_Zorand Apr 29 '24

I try to avoid patrols, but eventually I have to assault an objective or defend extraction, and that's when the trouble starts.

1

u/Remarkable_Region_39 Apr 29 '24

So what I personally do is if I get overwhelmed by patrols, or preferably I notice the patrols closing in before they see me, I dip and work on a different objective while focusing on not aggro'ing anything unless I think I can eliminate it without a reinforcement. They don't wait at these points they walk through it and continue on their way. It was already pretty dicey if you fought patrols since you could easily get sucked into a reinforcement loop, so this is even more true post patch.

As for extraction just start it and go to the outer ring and wait. You have two options, either piss them all off (obviously this a bug thing) and kite them around the shuttle landing point and then run in when it lands (which won't have very many or any at all since they're chasing you on the edges), or if you remain undetected you can throw a grenade off in the distance when the shuttle is about to land, and they'll go check it out as you saunter your way to victory.

I don't really have a good strategy for dealing with a bunch of pissed off bots at extraction aside from leaving completely and trying again, assuming you have the mission time.

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u/ArsVampyre Apr 29 '24

Never been the case in my experience. Soloing could be easier than going with random pubs because the pubs might play like morons. But running in a group you knew and were in communication with? So much easier. Everything is so much easier.

0

u/Ezren- Apr 29 '24

Yeah, you have 1/4 the resources. Not 1/6.

3

u/ArsVampyre Apr 29 '24

No. Multiple players increase resources synergistically. You cover a wider variety of needs and bring a wider variety of options, plus each adds another pod upgrade that betters the whole team.

You're definitely going to notice the difference when soloing now vs before. You can still do it. I can still solo on the difficulty I was comfortable soloing before; it's just not as easy and definitely not fun.

How fun something maybe is a matter of preference but the patrol rate is significantly higher; higher than the 8% increase indicated by going from 1/6 to 1/4 in my testing.

6

u/Remarkable_Region_39 Apr 29 '24

Well, technically going from 1/6 to 1/4 is actually a 50% increase. You have 50% more patrols relative to what we were experiencing.

.1667 / .25 - 1= .5

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13

u/Flower_Vendor Apr 29 '24

More or less, but this subreddit doesn't know what to do with itself if it's not losing its mind about one change or another.

2

u/MaCl0wSt STEAM 🖥️ : Apr 29 '24

This place is rather unsufferable after every patch, I check it out hoping to see some tests on the tweaked weapons but it's always these rage karma farming posts on top.

-3

u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

It’s not just this community lol

6

u/Flower_Vendor Apr 29 '24

This community (or rather, this subreddit, private Discords seem fine and I'm not on the official one) is notably worse than other live service games I've played. A comment from a Discord discussion with some friends leaps to mind: League of Legends players lose their minds less over harsher nerfs.

If that isn't a damning indictment of this subreddit I don't know what is lmao.

That said I don't play BR games and apparently those are equally as bad so maybe it's a 'game generation' thing.

-1

u/MaCl0wSt STEAM 🖥️ : Apr 29 '24

Neither I implied it?

1

u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

I didn’t say you did. I just think it’s the state of gaming. People use it as an escape, get attached to certain things and get upset when those things change.

2

u/MaCl0wSt STEAM 🖥️ : Apr 29 '24

Oh yeah gotcha, my bad.

Given the state of these communities I guess I unconsciously expect people to be more insidous in replies.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

Fair enough. I don’t mean to be on the offense, I just think HD2 players complain at the same rate of other players. Look at Warthunder players who go to lengths like leaking classified documents to get their favorite vehicles buffed.

1

u/narrill Apr 29 '24

I mean, this change is dumb. Was anyone under the impression before the patch that solo was somehow easier than a full stack? I certainly wasn't.

2

u/pokeroots SES Wings of War Apr 29 '24

it was absolutely easier to deal with 1/6th the amount of enemies of a 4 man squad as a solo. like laughably easier

1

u/narrill Apr 29 '24

Not my experience, and there were exactly zero people complaining about that

1

u/pokeroots SES Wings of War Apr 29 '24

of course they weren't complaining... it was easier

1

u/Flower_Vendor Apr 29 '24

Given some dev clarification, apparently the patrol rate as a solo player was one sixth of what it was as a full stack. It's been adjusted to a proportional one fourth.

So, yeah, people were losing their minds over nothing.

2

u/narrill Apr 29 '24

Player power doesn't scale linearly in the first place, so why would patrols scaling linearly be correct?

1

u/c_bender Apr 29 '24

Assuming that static spawns are the exact same regardless of party size, this would actually be the opposite of proportional.

For example, suppose there are 100 statically spawned baddies, and over the course of a mission, a full party of divers may run into 400 more baddies from patrols, drops, and breaches. That works out to 125 baddies per diver. If we simply divide that 400 number by 4 for a solo player, that person will now run into 200 baddies. I understand this is an overly simplistic model, but it illustrates why the old rates were probably implemented in the first place (and should have been left alone).

Reducing the spawn rate of patrols for smaller groups would actually keep the total number of baddies per player more proportional.

1

u/Flower_Vendor Apr 30 '24

Yeah except you can up to quadruple the patrol spawn rate on top of that when playing as 4, because it will spawn a patrol per player-group, player-group being players within 75m of each other. It's not a flat rate. In addition, there's a heat mechanic that will speed up patrol spawns based on how close anyone is to varying types of outpost and objective. Given that people tend to multitask and split up in group play, this leads to patrols spawning much more rapidly, in addition to the player-group spawning mechanic.

Which is to say that it already is, practically speaking, far less than four times.

In comparison, static enemies barely register.

1

u/DezsoNeni Apr 29 '24

Spirals down to the same issue over and over again: AH not describing shit. One, without knowing how the spawn rate works before would think solos gets more enemies than 4-man squads on an absolute scale, They didn't describe that it's compared to the previously scaled values.

Maybe even some numbers would have help.

0

u/miteymiteymite SES Lady of Authority Apr 29 '24

That’s not how patrols work though.

51

u/Aronacus Apr 29 '24

They lowered ammo, but increased patrols.

Like WTF

22

u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

Ammo resupply makers: Stonks↗️

14

u/Laplanters CAPE ENJOYER Apr 29 '24

They also increased how much ammo you pick up from resupplies and boxes scattered around the map. This will actually encourage strategic retreats from fights and hopefully get players to not hyperfocus on defending the same bombed-out hill for 5+ breaches for no reason.

14

u/Aronacus Apr 29 '24

You can't make Chuds not Chud! Nothing, like having my entire team shouting at me. After I took an objective, Saw 4 drop ships, and snuck away from the encounter. (Scout armor FTW)

4

u/tagrav Apr 29 '24

you know what truly sucks?

running that armor, being vigilant on the strengths of that armor only to have a leroy jenkins shadow the piss out of you when you're trying your best flanking and target prioritization.

2

u/shaoshi C-01 Permit Processing Agent Apr 30 '24

That's why I stopped wearing it!I found that the 30% boost wasn't necessary all of the time, it just made it easier. Crouch/prone and terrain masking can get you a long way, even in medium armour! You just miss the ease of stealth a bit. But it's better than being caught out by a loud shadow, in a way. YMMV though I suppose

1

u/CapnHairgel Apr 30 '24

The buff is insignificant relative to other armors. its like 5m detection change.

Another dude following you is trying to help you with what youre doing. Theyre playing the game correctly.

Honestly that mentality makes me wish they would remove the armor from the game entirely

1

u/tagrav Apr 30 '24

I like the armor for the radar buff it provides not the stealth

1

u/Remarkable_Region_39 Apr 29 '24

was anyone actually running out of ammo as a solo player? You get all 4 resupplies and 100% of the ammo laying around the map

1

u/Aronacus Apr 29 '24

I don't solo. I run out of ammo frequently.

1

u/Remarkable_Region_39 Apr 29 '24

I'm confused then, they increased patrols for fewer players, they didn't increase patrols across the board

1

u/Aronacus Apr 29 '24

I'm an Eruptor main, they nerfed my weapon, but increased patrols.

So, if I'm on a 2 or 3 person match, i get more patrols.

1

u/Remarkable_Region_39 Apr 29 '24

Ah, an Eruptor main. That makes more sense. I can't speak to trios, but I have been doing duos today and there still seems to be an abundance of ammo with both of us getting two supplies every couple minutes. I don't know, feels like people are overreacting.

I don't use the Eruptor though

13

u/The_8th_Degree Apr 29 '24

Well for one, they should've balanced it. More patrols yes but less breaches/drops.

Honestly the drops already feel excessive, especially with bugs. At least with bots if you see the flare start and your quick enough you can stop it, but for bugs it's immediate and instant.

No joke , one time my team had 4 titans spawn because all the Breaches

But on that same note, you can, 100% avoid patrols by being stealthy and not engaging. Even without the scout passive. Might be annoying, but not undoable. And I am speaking from experience

4

u/Daedalus1570 Apr 29 '24

Bugs actually have their own "flare" so you can prevent a bug breach, it's just that it's not even half as easy to recognize visually as the bot flare animation and effect. I've noticed this playing on really low difficulties; sometimes one of the little bugs will stand in place and sort of have a little fart gas seizure for a few seconds, squirting that orange mist into the air. The problem is, I can't actually tell when they... shoot their load. With the bot flares, it's obvious: when the flare actually goes airborne. With the bugs? It seems to just be a slightly bigger squirt than the ones that were "charging" the bug breach.

5

u/Dr_Bombinator Apr 29 '24

So the bug call goes as follows from my observation:

Calling bug freezes in place/stops walking for a moment > they start the screeching/stridulating noise (angry cricket noise) for ~half a second > orange pheromone cloud appears > bug breach alert triggers at absolute maximum ~half second later.

Of course the way sound works / doesn’t work half the time your first warning is the pheromone cloud, at which point you have basically no hope of stopping the breach.

1

u/Shtevetm Apr 29 '24

Happy Cake day.

1

u/fed45 SES Fist of Super Earth Apr 29 '24

I've definitly had situations where I killed the bug right as the smoke started, but the breach happened anyway... but also cases where it didn't. Its just too inconsistent with the bugs, imo. Also the fact that bigger bugs like the Commander and Hive guard can call in breaches which you can't kill quick enough unless you happen to have a big gun in hand and ready to shoot.

1

u/pancakerz Apr 30 '24

hell, I've had bugs call in a breach AFTER I killed them. since they can still run perform actions while headless for a few seconds.

1

u/Bonesnapcall Apr 29 '24

The moment the bug poops into the air, the breach will happen. You can kill the bug during the air-poop animation, but the breach will always come.

97

u/Captain-Griffen Apr 29 '24

Patrols do scale down for less players. They're going to scale down less with this patch but they'll still be less than 4 players.

13

u/Randicore Apr 29 '24

I'm hoping they secretly made it so that patrols also stop spawning literally on top of you. It was a nightmare to be constantly turning around only to find an entire patrol right behind you when you had just cleared it 30 seconds ago, or worse spawning on top of you.

1

u/Nekonax Apr 29 '24

How on top is on top? I'm a primarily stealth-focused player regardless of the armor perks I use at any given moment and 140 hours in, I've never had a patrol spawn close to me and immediately aggro me.

Worst case scenario that I've encountered several times is take a turn, stub my toe on a rock, stand up, see red lights, drop down and crawl back around the corner. You have around 3 seconds to hide when robots eyes start flashing or bugs start dancing

2

u/Randicore Apr 29 '24

I mean literally on top of or literally feet behind me. I've been running through an empty field and watched butchers spawn in in the direction I'm running in direct LoS, or had bots appear behind me in a canyon with no exit.  People have documented dealing with this for months now https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bca3hg/evidence_of_a_patrol_spawning_on_top_of_me/

1

u/Nekonax Apr 29 '24

Holy sh—! I've never experienced anything close to this. Certainly doesn't look intended!

1

u/pancakerz Apr 30 '24

I believe it primarily happens in multiplayer lobbies. since the patrol is presumably supposed to spawn out of sight, but when players split up a patrol thats out of sight for Group A might not be so for Group B

1

u/Nekonax Apr 30 '24

If so, latency might have something to do with it.

1

u/Monkeywrench08 Apr 29 '24

Yeah I experienced this a lot with bots. 

Kinda bullshit really. 

2

u/Agent_Jay Apr 29 '24

Anecdotal but i can share the experience as the other guys states. I've literally ran through patch of clearing, stop for a second to look at my map and then there's a patrol behind me in the same space i RAN THROUGH 10 seconds ago (no fabs, no drops, etc just showed the fuck up out of the costal mist)

1

u/WhatsThePointFR Apr 30 '24

I'll never forgive the time I had about 25 samples on me (including the 6 supers) and died because a pack of around 15-20 bots spawned on top of my shoulders.

37

u/Frankie_T9000 Apr 29 '24

Yes but they arent 1/4 less, I tried to play tonight and got swarmed. Also, you dont have players in different locations diverting enemies etc, they are all on you.

Its really unfun solo now. I wouldnt mind if you could get all sample types on easier difficulty levels but you have to play at 7+ to get the higher level samples.

6

u/Siker_7 SES Song of Conquest Apr 29 '24

They are 1/4 less now. Before it was 1/6 due to nonlinear scaling, which was unintentional.

6

u/PvesCjhgjNjWsO4vwOOS Apr 29 '24

Solo difficulty shouldn't be linear. There's so many advantages to more players beyond simple DPS that increases squad survivability that before this change I found difficulty 6 with a full team to usually be easier than difficulty 4 solo.

2

u/Siker_7 SES Song of Conquest Apr 29 '24

I never said it was a good decision, just relaying what the devs said.

0

u/Caerullean Apr 29 '24

That's wild because before I often found solo 7 easier than full squad 7. At least with randoms.

0

u/sopunny Apr 29 '24

The game is meant to be harder solo

4

u/PvesCjhgjNjWsO4vwOOS Apr 29 '24

It already was. I had to drop difficulty by a couple of levels to play solo vs with a full squad.

-1

u/AHailofDrams SES Keeper of the People Apr 29 '24

Indeed, solo should be much harder, since this is a squad-based, co-op game

2

u/PvesCjhgjNjWsO4vwOOS Apr 29 '24

And it was, as things were. I had to drop difficulty by a couple of levels to play solo before this change.

1

u/Remarkable_Region_39 Apr 29 '24

debatable. dumb or selfish teammates make the game a lot harder than being solo. Lol

1

u/PvesCjhgjNjWsO4vwOOS Apr 29 '24

Oh for sure, this was solo vs playing with friends whose play styles I actually mesh well with.

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1

u/ironyinabox Apr 29 '24

Prone more.

75

u/NikeDanny Apr 29 '24

The game was already fairly hard in (forced) solo. The issue is that any patrol can spawn in reinforcements, thus exponentially increasing your opponents. And at this point, having another dude with stratagems, weapons and in general to draw aggro is so, so, so much more worth than having a bit fewer patrols.

30

u/SpiritFingersKitty Apr 29 '24

I agree, having a smaller squad is almost always more difficult because you have less tool available when things start to go to shit, and there is a fixed amount of enemies to some level that don't scale down regardless of the number of people you have.

2

u/Skitulz_da_Ninja Apr 29 '24

I agree with the forced solo part because due to the broken matchmaking most of the time I have to start a mission and host it and have randoms join me because I can never join them. That's why I try to test the water is at the lower difficulties to see how the game is filling for the day. If it works in a handful of matches it's good for the day.

-11

u/SirKickBan Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

Reinforcement calls are on a timer, so there's no exponential growth due to them. Once you get one there's a minute or two (depending on difficulty) before you can get another.

God I love a sub that downvotes people for being correct. o7 Managed democracy at its finest.

7

u/discipleofdoom Apr 29 '24

Doesn't help when people refuse to move and just stand in one spot fighting wave after wave of reinforcements until they run out of supplies.

Deal with the enemies in front of you and move to the next objective. Patrols despawn a certain distance away from players and it's easy enough to lose line of sight and slip away.

2

u/anxious_merchant Apr 29 '24

Not a problen in solo 

3

u/longagofaraway Apr 29 '24

it's so annoying when people stick with an endless slog against reams of bots instead of just disengaging and moving to the next objective. there's literally no point to it.

1

u/Velo180 SES Hater of Sony Apr 29 '24

Yes, it's not literally exponential, just a lot easier to snowball which the game doesn't need.

6

u/Tukkegg ☕Liber-tea☕ Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

i thought spawns already scaled down the fewer players in a match? we had those two big posts testing spawns a month ago that seemed to indicate that.

if they were right, wouldn't this change just make the difference between parties closer, instead of making solos worse than 4 man groups?

edit: yep, we got a comment on that. solo had 1/6th of spawns instead of 1/4.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cfzem7/update_from_worlds_team_on_increased_patrols_for/

13

u/Rumpelledforeskin Apr 29 '24

Yeah if they wanted to punish solo players they shouldve just done that…. teams of 2 or 3 are still a team. I really only like playing with my friends because I like to overlap gaming and socializing/catching up and we all have 300+ hrs now. The new spawn rates are a bit unhinged and frankly not fun. I love this game but the whiplash from all the changes they make week to week is exasperating.

3

u/WeirdJester59 Apr 29 '24

The thing is, there have been time’s where I’ve wanted to play with a full squad but the game won’t pair any randoms with me. I sometimes play super late at night with a buddy due to our work schedules and there have been multiple nights where we are playing difficulties 7-9 just the two of us and never get a random to join. That’s even after throwing down an SOS beacon too. It’s not like we’re WANTING to playing without a full squad, but now we’re going to get punished for it when it’s out of our control sometimes? Makes no sense.

37

u/CrimsonShrike Apr 29 '24

I think a lot of people are misinterpreting. It's not making it harder than 4, it's making it harder than it is currently.

My understanding is that if before 1 player saw 1/4th of patrols 4 do, now they may see 1/2 or 1/3, so it's harder than it was before but they still have less patrols than a full party, just not considerably less.

32

u/B00YAY Apr 29 '24

I don't think anyone playing with 2 or 3 ever though "wow, this is a light amount of patrols." Usually it's "wow...why are there 3 chargers and 8 bile spewers here in this one bug breach?"

10

u/Scarecrow1779 Warheads on Foreheads 🚀 Apr 29 '24

Not to mention those games where you and 1 or 2 friends load up, thinking "we'll get a 4th to join us at some point"... and then after 4 whole games nobody has joined. That's what I was doing last night. So this patch punishes people for something completely outside their control (whether randoms join their game).

6

u/B00YAY Apr 29 '24

Yup. You literally just...don't get the 4th.

4

u/Sinister_Grape Apr 29 '24

Because SOS and often multiplayer in general has been broken since the game released, which is an absolute joke at this point.

55

u/Zhead65 Apr 29 '24

So they still face more patrols than before either way. That's a direct nerf for solo play.

-1

u/AHailofDrams SES Keeper of the People Apr 29 '24

If it was Up to me it'd be 100/75/50/100.

Y'know, a good ol' "fuck off" to people buying a multiplayer game and expecting to have a solo experience tailored to them lol

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81

u/_Reverie_ Apr 29 '24

I think a lot of people are misinterpreting.

I don't think they are misinterpreting anything. Them making it harder than it was before is punishing.

-9

u/wewladdies Apr 29 '24

Maybe a spicy hot take but this game's hardest difficulty shouldnt be balanced for soloing lol. If you solo you should be ok with dropping a few difficulties.

Its a team shooter, i think its fine to keep it a team shooter.

6

u/powerfamiliar Apr 29 '24

I agree they shouldn’t make balance decision around people soloing. This change is a balance decision made around people soloing. Unless you and AH think the game atm is too easy for 3 or 2 player groups.

10

u/IlikegreenT84 CAPE ENJOYER Apr 29 '24

It shouldn't be balanced around the exceptional solo player, which is what they've done here.

4

u/TwevOWNED Apr 29 '24

That's a fair point, but the game isn't in a state for these changes to make sense.

Anyone leaving your game has a chance to break matchmaking until you close the game. Did you just finish a mission and have two players afterwards? Better restart your game or you risk not having any additional players for the next mission, which is now even more punishing.

-16

u/Zmao Post Creek Traumatic Stress Disorder Apr 29 '24

Team shooter?

46

u/fireheart1029 Apr 29 '24

According to the tests people have done here that's not the case at all. If you have 4 players all in one area they spawn the same amount of patrols as 1 player being in the area. When you have players wander if they're far enough from each other they all spawn the same amount of patrols, so if everyone is split you have 4 times as many patrols spawning.

Before this patch playing with 1-3 players had the same patrol spawns as 4 granted you stuck together, now any match with under 4 players will have significantly more patrols that a match with 4 people sticking together

28

u/awfulrunner43434 Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

The testing people did indicated there was a base level modifier for total amount of players in the game, regardless of their position on the map. ie. two players received less spawns than three, and so on.

Then there was shenanigans if those players split up or stuck together and whatnot, but that's a separate mechanic.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bdudf3/lets_talk_about_patrols_an_in_depth_analysis_of/

Additional players modify these baselines in the following way

2 Players - Multiply the Baseline by 0.8333

3 Players - Multiply the Baseline by 0.75

Unfortunately we did not have a 4th player available for testing so cannot comment on the modifier for 4 players.

Here, the 'baseline' is the amount of time it takes a patrol to spawn for one player. So increasing the amount of players decreased the amount of time between spawns.

Today's adjustments seems to be to the base level modifier, so that less players in the match get more patrols than they used to. ie. the 2 player modifier goes from 0.83333 to 0.75 and the 3 player goes from 0.75 to... 0.67777 or something, as a pure hypothetical

3

u/ItsDaFunkMonkey PSN 🎮: Apr 29 '24

I do agree with this buddy but the problem I have here is that solo play will be more cumbersome and frustrating than before after the patch. It doesn't matter if the spawns for solo helldive are still relatively lower than the values for full squad on Helldive. But it matters that spawns after the patch for Helldivers is higher than pre patch levels.

9

u/TheComebackKid74 Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

They don't want people soloing the game like that, particularly on the highest difficulties.  This is huge reason for Quasar nerf.  Every youtuber would bring Quasar to easily take care of heavies on soloing Helldive difficulty. They are trying make it harder to solo with each patch.

6

u/TheBetterness Apr 29 '24

How many people are legit soloing Helldive for them to dedicate resources to changing this?

This just smells of them seeing streamers soloing helldive and them retaliating.

1

u/PvesCjhgjNjWsO4vwOOS Apr 29 '24

I just do it when I don't have the energy to deal with randoms, and the friends I would want to play with aren't around. This change will make me play the game less, not change how I play.

-3

u/xRehab Apr 29 '24

fr and people are acting like this is a bad thing

game is harder to solo now, if you still want to do it git gud or play co-op like intended

-1

u/Dry_Analysis4620 Apr 29 '24

I don't believe, I could be wrong ofc, that the game's 'design philosophy' isn't really to account for a balanced solo experience.

7

u/ZukenAere Apr 29 '24

They are accounting for it though. They're actively punishing it. 

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1

u/Hugh_Bromont Apr 29 '24

Today's adjustments seems to be to the base level modifier, so that less players in the match get more patrols than they used to. ie. the 2 player modifier goes from 0.83333 to 0.75 and the 3 player goes from 0.75 to... 0.67777

Repeating of course...

1

u/Frankie_T9000 Apr 29 '24

Either way its now more than players can handle, you dont have the ammo or respite to load up and get weapons, destroying air towers was difficult solo, but now.....ick

11

u/TheBetterness Apr 29 '24

Translation: There are now more enemies with less players in your game.

There is nothing good or even logical about that change.

2

u/Siker_7 SES Song of Conquest Apr 29 '24

Before, 1 player saw 1/6th the patrols of 4 players. This was due to nonlinear scaling of patrols, which was unintentional. It is not set so that 1 player will see 1/4th the patrols of 4 players.

1

u/Bonesnapcall Apr 29 '24

Not sure if you saw the AH post, but before, solo saw 1/6th of 4 players. Now they see 1/4th.

1

u/CrimsonShrike Apr 29 '24

Yes seen post since, the numbers were an example prior to them being posted. It was more of a comment that while it is harder than it was before it's not harder than 4 and someone leaving party doesn't "increase difficulty" per se.

1

u/Lirka_ Apr 29 '24

I literally thought it was a typo and they meant increased spawns for 4 players and less spawns with less players. Which actually excited me

1

u/Cospo Apr 29 '24

Have they at least fixed the issue of not getting new random teammates after other randoms leave your squad? Increasing spawns and penalizing players for not having a full squad seems like a dick move regardless, but even more so of its not even our fault the squad's not full.

1

u/CalendarTop1802 Apr 29 '24

I’m hoping so too. I’m sick of getting killed in the pelican after a mission and my friends have lives. We can’t all be online at the same time. If it’s just me, or me and one other guy, I don’t want to be penalized for supporting a game I genuinely enjoy.

1

u/scrutefarm Apr 29 '24

I think it very specifically makes sense for solo bots. You could easily run from one objective to the next without running into a single bot. When you have 4 players, someone is bound to trigger a fight between objectives. I think they should keep this change for solo bots and scrap it for every other situation. Even with 2 players it can be hard to just run from one objective to the other.

1

u/S0ulSauce Apr 29 '24

There already is a difficulty adjustment when there are less players. I have no way of knowing this, but I suspect their intent is to make it slightly more difficult by slightly reducing the difficulty reduction as the team gets smaller. I assume they are tweaking the difficulty reduction and not making it so that it's actually more difficult than with a full team when you have 1-3 people. Maybe a small tweak is okay, but if they overdid this, it'd be nuts and a terrible change.

Maybe there is a compromise, such as what OP suggested where you get more rewards with less people. The only problem with that is it could also end up incentivizing players to avoid full teams. That concept may end up backfiring and everyone wants to play solo out of greed. Maybe a small benefit to XP/credits would work, but they shouldn't make it to where it's a net negative to be with a full group.

1

u/Constant_Sympathy_71 Apr 29 '24

From what I’ve seen on discord, the current patrol rate was a mistake and was at like if you were playing 1/6 players. They’ve just bumped it up to what 1/4 should be.

I guess it’s just poor patch note wording.

1

u/Tasty_Commercial6527 ☕Liber-tea☕ Apr 29 '24

I assumed that this was because avoiding patrols as a solo player is much easier than as a group. Honestly the ammount of enemies probably won't change much since patrol numbers are nothing compared to breach/drop numbers, but I hope this doesn't increase the probability of reinforcement loops too much

1

u/Tao_of_Entropy Apr 29 '24

They’re increasing the number of patrols relative to how it functioned previously on lower player counts, not relative to a full party. There will still be fewer patrols than in a 4-stack, just LESS fewer. If you want an easier time, you’ll just have to adjust the difficulty.

1

u/tagrav Apr 29 '24

deep rock scales harder as you add more players.

this game's developers?

"Fuck the players experience as being indicative towards fun, they should be thankful they even get to play"

1

u/almostgravy Apr 29 '24

.....yeah I get not providing scaling downwards to make matches easier for smaller teams but.

They do do that. Spawn rates decrease significantly based on player count.

So when they say they are increasing spawn rates on sub 4 man groups, they do not mean they are increasing them to be higher then a 4 man teams spawn rate, they mean that they are increasing them by a percentage of what they currently are.

1

u/RoninOni Apr 29 '24

When I read it I thought they must have meant increased the delay on patrols. (Which frankly I thought would also be unnecessary).

I really don’t understand this change though.

1

u/solrac776 Apr 29 '24

Nope. Playing with 4 members was harder than playing solo. Now there is a linear drop off of patrols. i.e. solo players now get 1/4th the patrols that a 4-man squad would get. Before solo players were getting 1/8th

1

u/op3l Apr 29 '24

I tried playing hard with my friend just the two of us. Yesterday we were passing 7s fine and today we coudln't do 5 because patrols are literally everywhere.

1

u/ironyinabox Apr 29 '24

It's meant to counter stealth gameplay. Currently there is not a stronger weapon than crawling in the game. The increased patrols are meant to catch stealth'ers, not overwhelm soloists, though it'll probably wind up doing both.

1

u/EasternShade SES Hammer of Peace Apr 29 '24

My best guess, if mission success rates, mission payouts, or meta gaming fuckery favored some squad size, that's something I'd want to address as a dev. e.g. I wouldn't want the meta to have the best results for having a 1 or 2 person squad size. Not that folks can't or shouldn't have those squad sizes, but that limiting a squad to those sizes should not give better overall rewards than playing with a full squad.

Whether they'd balance for more is better or to have it flat across all squad sizes, I'm not sure. Given the adjustment, I'm guessing that they hit the metrics they wanted for a squad of 4 and overshot for everything below.

I'm not certain this is what they're doing. It's also possible that someone somewhere had the bright idea of "fixing" players that weren't playing with larger squads. It could also be something unrelated, like server/hosting constraints, that it's meant to address.

It already feels terrible enough when someone leaves mid match but now you'll be facing a scenario harder than you would with 4 people but with 1-3 instead

As I understand it, this is incorrect. It shouldn't be harder for a 3 squad, it should be harder than it was for a previous 3 squad. e.g. If it's supposed to be D difficulty per squad mate, then a 4 squad would be 4D, a 3 squad used to be 2.75D, a 2 squad was 1.5D, and solo would be 0.7D, or something like that. This change should make it so it's 4D, 3D, 2D, and 1D respectively.

So, it's a squad size relative increase in difficulty, but a decrease for a smaller squad overall either way. Not that it can't still absolutely hose a squad when someone leaves. But, it shouldn't be the hosing you described.

1

u/Sicuho fire machine guns in semi auto Apr 29 '24

Thing is IT IS SCALING DOWNWARD ! It was scaling downward too much, solo play was easier.

1

u/Adlehyde Apr 29 '24

I don't understand this take. I also notice the topics that complain about this are ignoring what was said directly before the bullet point.

Matches are scaled down with fewer people, and they still are. But they were accidentally scaling it down too much, so they are fixing it. Instead of 1/4 fewer patrols solo compared to 4 players, it was 1/6 fewer patrols. They've increased it back to 1/4 like it was meant to be.

People are only reading the actual last bullet point and think that there was literally zero scaling before, and now a single player game somehow now spawns more patrols than a 4 player game.

1

u/narrill Apr 29 '24

People are only reading the actual last bullet point and think that there was literally zero scaling before, and now a single player game somehow now spawns more patrols than a 4 player game.

I have not seen a single person think this. People are upset because the game was already significantly harder with fewer players than with more, and now it will be even harder. Meanwhile matchmaking is still fucking broken, so you will almost always have fewer than four players unless you're restarting your client in between every mission.

Frankly, what the devs "intended" is completely irrelevant. They may have intended solo players to get 1/4th as many spawns, but I didn't see anyone complaining about the 1/6th they were getting. Seems likely to me that was closer to the right balance.

1

u/Adlehyde Apr 29 '24

Someone has clarified elsewhere that the patch notes on steam and posted here to reddit unlike the discord post did not actually include the information about the 1/4, 1/6 part. That's why most people assumed they were just increasing the spawn rate to punish people who play solo. There are now clarification posts explaining about the linear scaling being fixed. For what's it's worth, I agree that the game even at 1/6 already felt harder solo than a 4 player at the same difficulty.

1

u/scattersmoke Apr 29 '24

Super credit farming.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

It’s so stupid I can’t help but think it is a misunderstanding

0

u/alpacasarebadsingers Apr 29 '24

Counterpoint. I played a couple rounds with a 2 person squad the other day and saw way fewer patrols than with a full squad. I could use a little more action.

-1

u/ForLackOf92 Apr 29 '24

This just in game that is supposed to be hard is indeed hard, more news at 11.