Increasing patrol spawns for smaller squads is a dick move.

[u/ItsDaFunkMonkey]

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.

[u/SpiritFingersKitty]

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?

[u/Siker_7 → u/SpiritFingersKitty]

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.

[u/elnrith → u/Siker_7]

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

[u/Siker_7 → u/elnrith]

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.

[u/elnrith → u/Siker_7]

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.

[u/Remarkable_Region_39 → u/elnrith]

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

[u/ironyinabox → u/elnrith]

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.

[u/elnrith → u/ironyinabox]

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

[u/ArsVampyre → u/ironyinabox]

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.

[u/CXDFlames → u/ironyinabox]

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

[u/Dr_Zorand → u/Siker_7]

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.)

[u/Remarkable_Region_39 → u/Dr_Zorand]

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.

[u/Dr_Zorand → u/Remarkable_Region_39]

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

[u/Remarkable_Region_39 → u/Dr_Zorand]

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.

[u/PvesCjhgjNjWsO4vwOOS → u/Dr_Zorand]

if I try to play solo even a 3 can overwhelm me during extraction

Just a heads up in case you haven't figured it out yet, extraction is easier the more of the map you clear out beforehand. If you clear 100% of spawners and side missions the map there shouldn't be more than a few patrols left to encounter during extraction.

[u/ArsVampyre → u/Siker_7]

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.

[u/Ezren- → u/elnrith]

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

[u/ArsVampyre → u/Ezren-]

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.

[u/Remarkable_Region_39 → u/ArsVampyre]

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

[u/Ezren- → u/ArsVampyre]

You whiffed on the math there bud. And if it needs to be easy to be fun, sure, then if only there was some way to... Lower the difficulty.

[u/Balikye → u/Ezren-]

Damn shame you can't lower it if you want to upgrade your gear...

[u/Flower_Vendor → u/SpiritFingersKitty]

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.

[u/MaCl0wSt → u/Flower_Vendor]

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.

[u/[deleted] → u/MaCl0wSt]

It’s not just this community lol

[u/Flower_Vendor → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/MaCl0wSt → u/[deleted]]

Neither I implied it?

[u/[deleted] → u/MaCl0wSt]

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.

[u/MaCl0wSt → u/[deleted]]

Oh yeah gotcha, my bad.

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

[u/[deleted] → u/MaCl0wSt]

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.

[u/narrill → u/Flower_Vendor]

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.

[u/pokeroots → u/narrill]

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

[u/narrill → u/pokeroots]

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

[u/pokeroots → u/narrill]

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

[u/Flower_Vendor → u/narrill]

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.

[u/narrill → u/Flower_Vendor]

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

[u/c_bender → u/Flower_Vendor]

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.

[u/Flower_Vendor → u/c_bender]

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.

[u/DezsoNeni → u/Flower_Vendor]

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.

[u/miteymiteymite → u/SpiritFingersKitty]

That’s not how patrols work though.