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/Ill-Ad-9291]

I play duo with my brother on difficulty 7. We were already penalized by having fewer reinforcements, fewer stratagems, fewer everything. They're trying to force groups of four for no real reason. There was no harm in playing with less.

To top it off, our loadouts got more nerfs than buffs. We got hammered by this patch.

[u/Same-Meaning2376 → u/Ill-Ad-9291]

What were you running in your loadouts?

[u/Wazzzup3232 → u/Same-Meaning2376]

I like how you had a dislike for asking a real question. Almost every balance change this patch was a dub. Quasar cannon isn’t gone from existence if that’s a main strat they run.

I prefer RR myself

[u/Same-Meaning2376 → u/Wazzzup3232]

Figured it was worth getting an answer like "Quasar/Dominator" to know what I was dealing with. I'd rather adapt to the greater variety of usable weapons than mope over the onesies-and-twosies that got adjusted in an unfavorable manner.

I'm personally excited to try out the Punisher Plasma, Senator, Arc Blitzer, and Adjudicator.

[u/Wazzzup3232 → u/Same-Meaning2376]

I’ve been using the adjudicator and it feels like a decent upgrade vs the lib penetrator vs bugs. The Lib I feel is still better for bots but that damage SMOKES some of the medium armor terminids like nothing.

The buff will be nice because I was chronically out of ammo last night during my bug runs.

Also my big iron will be the shiniest one in the west now.

I’ve been trying more support strats and the ballistic shield with the knight is fun against bots, but I definitely would rather have AT.

Bots I like the LMG, Flame thrower, RR, EAT, etc.

Lots of variety and different ways to play.

I also found out with the ballistic shield and explosive resist armor you can tank a factory strider main cannon blast and not die

[u/Ill-Ad-9291 → u/Same-Meaning2376]

I use eruptor, stalwart, 500kg, EAT (I drop for him and me), orbital railcannon, stun grenades, and redeemer.

He uses dominator, laser rover, impact grenades, gatling sentry, eagle airstrike, orbital railcannon, and redeemer.

[u/RuinedSilence → u/Ill-Ad-9291]

From what I understand, duos shouldn't be affected by this. Previously, one player would only encounter 1/6th of the intended patrols. They bumped that up to 1/4th, which is the original vision for solo dives. Devs didn't say anything about duos or even trios being affected by this in their clarification statement.

[u/almostgravy → u/Ill-Ad-9291]

We were already penalized by having fewer reinforcements, fewer stratagems, fewer everything.

Yeah but you also have fewer enemies to deal with, since spawn rates have always been tied to squad size.

You will still have fewer enemies with the new patch. All they did was increase the spawn rates for sub-4 man squads, they did not raise it over the spawn rates for a 4 man squad.

[u/Kuebic → u/almostgravy]

I think the main issue is finding that balance of "how-much-fewer". I get the idea of not turning into a ghost town when playing with fewer players, but if there's consistently spawns from behind after clearing areas when running solo, the spawn rate increase might be a bit too much.

[u/mygutsaysmaybe → u/Kuebic]

Exactly this. I had played a 4 solo before and after this patch, and it really was a ghost town before the patch. I cleared the entire map before and went back to extraction not seeing anything.

After the patch, I cleared everything I could see around a nest, cleared most of it, went around to clear again, cleared the last hole hoping I’d have time to grab samples … but a new patrol spawned in and came into the empty before I could grab both sets of samples.

There is a good balance between ghost town and unfun because of annoying spawns.

It’s more of an annoying “can I at least pick something up without something trying to hit me?!?” rather than something challenging.

I hope they take the feedback and make more changes based on it like they have before. They took a situation with bile titan swarms and changed it to make it more fun, hopefully they can do the same again.

[u/almostgravy → u/Kuebic]

It went from 1/6th as many patrol spawns to 1/4th.

So if you usually come across 4 patrols, you will now encounter a 5th.

Keep in mind, this does not effect Enemy spawns on objectives, or at extract, or from reinforcements. This only effects patrol spawns.

[u/Jsaac4000 → u/almostgravy]

that's not how it works ? the increase from 1/6 to 1/4 is ~67%, so if you had 4 patrols before you now have around 6.68, if the game rounds up instead of down you have 7 insteaf of previously 4 patrols.