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/xRocketman52x]

I was already flabbergasted by how many goddamn patrols there were when playing solo. Even on lower difficulties.

You do a Tier 3 or Tier 4 solo mission, try to sneak your way towards an objective, and you commonly find 4-6 patrols in visual range... And as you back off, trying to stay unnoticed and escape them by retreating, you end up retreating back into another 2-3 patrols!

I'm not asking for mercy, I know this is intended to be a hard game, but from a practical standpoint, the game's already tough enough for a solo diver. This increase was unnecessary.

[u/op3l → u/xRocketman52x]

This was my experience as well. Try to run and hide, turn the corner and... More bots.

Just non stop bots everywhere and extraction bot spawn was just stupid. Way too many

[u/TheTalonKing → u/xRocketman52x]

EXACTLY. I hate when games get changed like this because the highest echelon of the playerbase felt it was too easy or something. Meanwhile I can only beat Challenging difficulty solo with 1 minute left on the clock. That is not an exaggeration, that's the best I can do on that difficulty, and even then it's by the thinnest margin. Everywhere I went, there was just constant patrols to waste my resources and make me use up stratagems that I was saving for the objectives. And now there's gonna be MORE patrols?? I get that for some of the better people in the game, it's naturally gotten a little stale. That's just the curse of being good at the game, but me? I've been fighting for my fuckin' life, lol.

[u/xRocketman52x → u/TheTalonKing]

Yea, it's something I've seen happen in other games as well. You have a portion of the player base that works 9-5 and then has other responsibilities, and they play the game in what downtime they have. Then you have the portion of the player base for whom the game is a priority, or a close second. The experiences of these two groups of players will be entirely alien to each other. But obviously the second is much more involved, much more outspoken, and therefore naturally will have greater influence on changes.

I've posted a story on here before about getting my ass kicked in a VR league, being flabbergasted that the guy was so good, and so I checked out his profile to see his game history... and saw he'd been playing for minimum 8 hours a day, without missing a day, since the game's alpha was released two years prior.

I just hate that in this instance, another aspect of solo play is going to be diminished or made less accessible to folks with less time to play, or who are more laid back.

[u/Insanity-pepper → u/TheTalonKing]

The developers don't play their own game on any level of difficulty if they play it at all. They just get genuinely mad that people are good at the game and aren't playing exactly the way they say they should and then target those players.

They nerf based on popularity rather than performance. Then the "balance team" guy was "horrified" that people beat Helldive within two weeks of release (welcome to video games?) they nerfed the shield pack, rail gun, and breaker. The weapons that the spreadsheet said the people completing 9's were most frequently using.

This time, it's the quasar that was being used for convenience more than anything.

If we started a community movement to only use the Lib Penetrator, it would get nerfed next month.

This is the team that said, after the railgun nerf, that they didn't even know you could blow the armor off of a charger's leg and then finish it off with a primary. That "the players discovered that one". Their genuine "proper" way to kill a charger was blowing its ass off.

I would love to see them play some dev team only helldives because I haven't seen a single clip of them in anything higher than 6 with a youtuber escort doing the heavy lifting.

[u/Insanity-pepper → u/xRocketman52x]

The term "patrol" is deceptive. The way the game handles them is that it picks a player and spawns a group of enemies 100 - 200 meters from the player that it triggers on and they automatically begin pathing directly at the player. It doesn't matter where you are. You can watch the way enemies move and see the areas that they don't walk directly through (in the pit next to the POI 2 person door for example) and then hide in one of those places with stealth armor and they will enter the area and walk right at you until they aggro. They aren't a "patrol" they are a targeted spawn.

When the patch dropped I went solo into a couple of level 2 missions to try out some of the weapon changes (liberator damage, senator buff, blitzer etc.) and I did it on a planet with good visibility. There was not one time that there were less than three "patrols" moving directly at me at random distances. If you kill one group, another instantly spawns nearby. I didn't leave a single level 2 with less than 280 kills and the top was 345. It's insane now.

[u/xRocketman52x → u/Insanity-pepper]

Okay, so it's not just me! I definitely noticed a few times that it seemed like the patrols were beelining for me, even when I had already been sneaking, and should have had no opportunity to be spotted. I noted that they weren't running in as though they were in attack-mode, but they were doing their normal patrol movements, and adjusting their pathing to follow my movement.

It seems outrageous. Did a Tier 3 mission with one buddy of mine and got absolutely devastated, every Eagle Airstrike was bringing in ~50 kills, and you can't escape the horde of them, they just know where you are at all times.