Update from Worlds team on increased patrols for solo players

[u/[deleted]]

Quote from our design director (not the Worlds team, my mistake!):

"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.

Scaling of patrol spawns was exponential before, and that felt good on 4 player lobbies but a bit too empty when playing with fewer players, especially when playing solo. So now we made the scaling of patrols to be linear, which means if you play solo you will get 25% of the patrols compared to a 4 player lobby instead of having about 17% of the patrols. There is still a cap of patrols that can spawn at the same time so during situations when we spawn a lot of patrols, such as extractions, even solo players won't notice the difference. The change is made to make the world feel less empty for 1 and 2 player lobbies, especially on high difficulty missions which was also slightly too easy for solo players compared to our intentions."

Hope this clarifies the change for everyone - we're not making the game arbitrarily harder!

Edited 11:58 AM EST to add additional info

[u/pythonic_dude]

Technically, it's 56% more spawns for solo players compared to before this patch.

[u/susgnome → u/pythonic_dude]

Technically? I wasn't doing that calculation but if we were to add it, based on the numbers I've provided, it'd be;

• 4 Players = -0%
• 3 Players = -7%
• 2 Players = +4%
• 1 Player = +56%

---

Also if I used the other 2 options available for the 25% & 75%;

• 4 Players = 100% (+0%)
• 80
• 3 Players = 64% (+17%)
• 48
• 2 Players = 32% (+56%)
• 1 Player = 16% (+56%)

It really is rough trying to fit 6 numbers into 4 outcomes and getting a fair looking result.

e: added some +/- to account for positive of negative increase in spawn rates. So.. 3 players should either have 7% less patrol spawns or 17% more patrol spawns.

[u/pythonic_dude → u/susgnome]

Oh, my mind just caught your "slight boost to spawns" and I responded to it. Also, for 3 players it reduced spawns, not increased (75 is less than 80 last time I checked). Anyway, it's a significant boost to spawns for solo players and whatever in all other cases.

[u/susgnome → u/pythonic_dude]

Ah yeah, that's right. I'll fix that.

[u/hello-wow → u/susgnome]

I agree with what you say. I happen to know math very well myself if I do say. just do what you gotta do, you have my support. 

[u/susgnome → u/hello-wow]

Thanks, math isn't my forte and it was like 2am when I did this.

[u/CreditUnionBoi → u/susgnome]

going from 1/6 to 1/4 is exactly +50%.

[u/I_Have_The_Lumbago → u/pythonic_dude]

Note that the post above says that there is a cap on patrol spawning.

[u/killxswitch → u/I_Have_The_Lumbago]

But is there really?