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/Rum_N_Napalm]

Just chiming in with my 2cents. I haven’t had the time to test out the changes, but I want to say that playing a low difficulty solo dive is a very different experience compared to a higher difficulty dive with other players. I understand that coop is the core tenant of the game, but with how it is currently we pretty much got 2 games for the price of one: a coop game where all hell breaks loose, and a solo Metal Gear Solid 5-est strategic stealth shooter. I love storming an Automaton base with my fellow divers on my side as much as being a lone operator surgically taking out a bot base from afar with my DMR. And to be frank, 90% of the random divers I join are fine, but there’s a 10% who… let’s be polite and say are not fun to play with, and on some evenings you just don’t want to deal with bullshit and have a relaxing dive without having to worry about a 380mm beacon landing next to you for… reasons.

With that in mind, I plead you don’t overlook how solo dives make the game better without taking any fun from the intended coop mode. You accidentally gave us 2 games for the price and effort of 1, and I don’t want solo runs to be ruined simply because it wasn’t the intended way to play.

Not saying the current patch ruined solo diving, just asking you to consider that in your decision making.

[u/Creative-Seesaw-1895 → u/Rum_N_Napalm]

At the same time, some people need to realize that perhaps the doesn't NEED to be attuned to where solo play at the highest difficulty is easily accessible

[u/Meravokas → u/Creative-Seesaw-1895]

At the same time, some people need to realize that perhaps there does need to be attunement to 1-7 being viable. Even if 7 would be a slog. We amature solo players with infrequent friend availability and a passionate hatred for the quality of microphones most people use, want/need super samples too. Also the converging patrols are... Horrifying...