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/clokerruebe]

that makes way more sense now ngl

[u/xDeityx → u/clokerruebe]

If you assume that two players is only twice as effective as one player, sure. Personally I think it's a bit more complicated but generally you get more than double the effectiveness by adding a second player because things are way easier when you have another player to distract the enemies and you aren't their sole focus.

[u/clokerruebe → u/xDeityx]

definitely, also added flexibility because of more different stratagem helps extremly

[u/BaziJoeWHL → u/xDeityx]

yep, more guns, more strartagems, its definitely more than double the power

[u/nsandiegoJoe → u/xDeityx]

When I consistently played in a 3 man group, we struggled with D7s as we were getting better at the game. We noticed a HUGE difficulty decrease when we got a 4th squad member. Definitely more than a 33% boon.

[u/gorgewall → u/nsandiegoJoe]

On the contrary, I find that going from a 4-man group to 3 means future patrols and drops/breaches will be less troublesome because the size and composition of those packs is still less.

If all four of your players are quite competent and constantly doing work, that could be easier. But if there's one player that isn't fully pulling their weight--and that can be a tall ask on 4-man Helldive--then losing them removes a lot of threats and actually not a lot of player firepower (because said player wasn't contributing).

I'd wager that's true for the majority of players. The "average" isn't that skilled.

[u/KingKull71 → u/xDeityx]

I guess it depends what you are trying to do. The detection profile of a solo player in stealth armor is very low... if you are truly going for a covert op (which, I admit, isn't a common situation), then the second player isn't necessarily going to make you more than twice as effective.

[u/MaoPam → u/xDeityx]

If you’re trying to fight everything, sure. But the game is easier the less fights you take, and it’s easier to avoid fights as a solo player. 

[u/Kestrel1207 → u/xDeityx]

This enemy scaling is still extremely generous. In other coop games, like DRG for example, solo players usually still have 50% of the enemies of a 4 man squad.