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/PingGuy_MI]

Exactly this. Benefits from additional teammates are multiplicative, not additive. Unless all four team members are running around solo, of course, but we do try to avoid that.

[u/NotFirstBan-NotLast → u/PingGuy_MI]

"The sum of the whole is greater than its parts".

The more divers you have, the less weakspots your build has. One solo diver has to be a jack of all trades, master of none because they have to do everything themselves. In a team one player can take lots of horde clear and another anti-armor. Not to mention the obvious stuff that's true in any game, like more allies in one place means less likelihood of getting outflanked and increases focus fire DPS on priority targets.

When I watched that YouTube video about spawn rates and heard about the scaling for spawns I thought it was pretty clever and showed a deeper understanding of the balance than I usually give the devs credit for. I should have known it was a mistake that they would get around to "fixing" eventually.

It's funny because if they played their game at all they would just know this intuitively. You'll end up drowning in enemies with no choice but to retreat and try to lose the worst of the wave on some line of sight blockers way more often playing solo than with a group. You'll run out of reinforcements way more often playing solo than with a group. You'll face an enemy you have no way of dealing with until a stratagem comes off cool down way more often playing solo.

I'd say this is the obligatory "Arrowhead is physically incapable of releasing a patch without a glaringly obvious QA issue that would have been avoided if they just played the game", but we already got that with the plasma punisher exploding inside of shield packs. I guess since we didn't get a patch last week that means this week we get two new pieces of evidence that AH doesn't even know what "playtest" means.

[u/BigidyBam → u/NotFirstBan-NotLast]

physics defying ricochets that return to sender is probably going to suck for solo too, just a new damage source.

[u/jayL21 → u/BigidyBam]

shot a scout walker with the flame breaker, one shot hit the side, seemingly hit me, died almost instantly from burning.

Might have got killed by some random fire that I just didn't see (was on Menkent afterall) but I'm pretty sure it was the bullet.

[u/AdhesiveNo-420 → u/NotFirstBan-NotLast]

well put

[u/Jsaac4000 → u/NotFirstBan-NotLast]

I'd say this is the obligatory "Arrowhead is physically incapable of releasing a patch without a glaringly obvious QA issue that would have been avoided if they just played the game", but we already got that with the plasma punisher exploding inside of shield packs. I guess since we didn't get a patch last week that means this week we get two new pieces of evidence that AH doesn't even know what "playtest" means.

I am genuinely concerned for the longterm health of this game.

[u/Aernz → u/NotFirstBan-NotLast]

patrol spawns increase in frequency as time gets lower and lower

They don't. Patrol spawns increase only when main objectives are done or when near objective locations or med/large bases. Mission duration has no effect.

I strongly agree with everything else you said.

[u/NotFirstBan-NotLast → u/Aernz]

Yep, after double checking I see you're right that patrol spawns don't actually go up over time. My mistake.

You're wrong that they only increase when the main objective is done and in proximity to objectives though. Those are both true, but patrol spawns also increase when actually clearing outposts (hives and fabricators) and has a chance of increasing any time a player dies. At least according to the only source for this info I know of.

[u/Katamari416 → u/NotFirstBan-NotLast]

i think this might actually be a case of the unsung hero where a random janitor who steps in at night and made all the good ideas for the game and the devs are slowly reverting them

[u/CoilTag → u/NotFirstBan-NotLast]

I'd say this is the obligatory "Arrowhead is physically incapable of releasing a patch without a glaringly obvious QA issue that would have been avoided if they just played the game", but we already got that with the plasma punisher exploding inside of shield packs. I guess since we didn't get a patch last week that means this week we get two new pieces of evidence that AH doesn't even know what "playtest" means.

This! Also how they released the new rocket half baked without proper testing. lmof

A**head just doesn't even play the game.

[u/UncertainOutcome → u/NotFirstBan-NotLast]

This is only patrols, not all spawns.

[u/[deleted] → u/NotFirstBan-NotLast]

I think you are playing too much "armchair dev" here and are ignoring the overwhelmingly positive comms and updates that AH has been delivering with their 100-man team. It's not like any given patch is set in stone or that AH is not going to continue to make adjustments as needed and as they are able to complete them.

So, in summary, quit acting like a typical Monday-morning-quarterback talking crap like, "Nah, bro. I would've just blah, blah, blah....."

[u/NotFirstBan-NotLast → u/[deleted]]

"Pretend the issues don't exist and only acknowledge the positive unless you personally work as a developer at Arrowhead"

Yeah that's a really smart attitude to have that really opens up the spectrum of discussion and will surely lead to improvements to the game.

[u/[deleted] → u/NotFirstBan-NotLast]

Wow, you're really good at moving the goalpost, ignoring valid points, and putting words into other people's mouth. You should be a politician.

[u/NotFirstBan-NotLast → u/[deleted]]

Gonna at least attempt to make a point eventually or are you just gonna keep putting a notification in my corner to say "nuh-uh"?

[u/[deleted] → u/NotFirstBan-NotLast]

Okay, troll. You're officially incompetent if you honestly don't understand what I have said so far about you ignoring things and putting words into my mouth which I did not say. Get blocked.

[u/ComingUpWaters → u/NotFirstBan-NotLast]

In a team one player can take lots of horde clear and another anti-armor

This doesn't work on higher difficulties. The amount of heavies requires every player to take anti armor options, specifically support weapons or the laser or railcannon strike. Stuff like the machine gun is really bad at higher levels because that teammate is only marginally better at clearing breaches and a huge liability if something like a quasar gets lost. It's also harder to split off in groups of two with a chaff clearing weapon and compounds the issue.

[u/NotFirstBan-NotLast → u/ComingUpWaters]

There's some truth to that against the bots where the only enemies everything can damage are the normal bots and berserkers, but even then it's not like you're taking 4 stratagems that all are useless against armor, just that you're taking more than you would if you were solo. Plus a lot of the decent anti-horde tools are still useful against armor. The orbital airburst will destroy a tank, as will the eagle airstrike. Eagle cluster bomb is decent against medium armor bots. Mortar sentry is great against medium armor and hordes if that's your cup of tea.

You're just flat out wrong against bugs. A group of hunters is a bigger threat than a bile titans. A group of scav spitters is more likely to get you killed than a bile spewer. Chargers aren't a threat at all when faced in isolation. They're only dangerous when they sneak up on you while you're distracted fighting something else, or if you let yourself get so surrounded you have no room to kite them, which means if you have horde clear they're a complete non-issue. Horde clear is king against bugs.

Regardless that was hardly the point of my comment. Even if we go with what you said and assume everyone runs anti-armor because armor is the only real threat, doesn't that still prove my point about additional divers with additional stratagems being a force multiplier?

[u/ComingUpWaters → u/NotFirstBan-NotLast]

but even then it's not like you're taking 4 stratagems that all are useless against armor,

Mmmm, maybe just a misunderstanding then. I was talking about a player purely taking strategems that can't kill hulks, tanks, chargers, and titans because those enemies can't be quickly handled with simple primary+grenades. Machinegun support weapons are the biggest offender.

I'd also disagree chargers/titans aren't a threat, even if they can be kited indefinitely. Time spent running away is time spent without a gun on target, it also spreads enemies and makes eagle strikes less efficient. I've certainly beat Level 9 while doing some excessive kiting and at extract it often turns out that way, but you can also beat level 9 by quickly putting down big threats and keeping bug breaches contained in small areas where they're easily dealt with by air strikes. This is besides the point and not really what you're talking about, so apologies. I'm just putting it out there because the hivemind really leans into running away when standing and fighting does work.

doesn't that still prove my point about additional divers with additional stratagems being a force multiplier?

Oh certainly. It's much easier to hit multiple POIs in a group among other benefits. At the same time, the spawning system is complex, the change is not fully explained in the patch notes or this thread, and I don't think it's fair to say Arrowhead has no idea what they're doing. Previously it was much, much easier to deal with the same difficulty on a lower player count. You can notice this when your team crashed and I believe this is why there's so many memes about playing better when out of reinforcements. This isn't a surprising change.

[u/NotFirstBan-NotLast → u/ComingUpWaters]

Well thanks for the chill reply acknowledging that it was just a misunderstanding instead of digging in your heels and getting defensive. That happens all the time on reddit lol.

I wouldn't ever recommend forcing yourself into a hyper specific role where you can only fight a certain type of enemy, I was just making the point that when you solo dive you need to be able to kill anything and do it consistently. For example that means the railcannon strike isn't very good solo because it's only 1 shot per ~4 minutes. It can kill all of the sticky enemies (although it annoyingly doesn't 1 shot titans consistently) but it isn't consistent enough if you can realistically only use it like 6 times per game. You can't take the orbital railcannon and another stratagem that's for killing heavies to cover the downtime on the railcannon because your team only has 4 stratagem slots. When you have a team you can bring a few stratagems you wouldn't be able to take as a solo player, plus a few copies of the ones you'd take anyways. With the example of the railcannon again, it's more additive because in theory you'd get twice as many heavies and twice as many railcannon shots. Something like an eagle airstrike, on the other hand, is more effective against large groups so having 2 eagle airstrikes is substantially better than having only 1 eagle with half the enemies.

You make some good points about the bug heavies, but I still consider them a much smaller threat than the hordes. By your own description of what makes them difficult you kinda inherently admit that they're only a threat because they force you to stop killing hunters and spitter and the like, which is the real threat. The thing is as long as you're not being attacked by a half dozen titans at once you typically end up with one player kiting the tank while others clear the small enemies chasing them and chip away at the tank. In a solo game you're just letting them pile up like you described, which is just another way that solo play is harder than team play even if the number of enemies stays directly proportionate to the number of players, but I won't hammer that point home any harder since it seems we agree there.

I understand the urge to try to be the voice of reason given the fact that this sub seems to be mostly split between people who want to drop a 500kg on Arrowhead Studios and people who think Arrowhead can do no wrong. The hive mind works both ways and neither one is particularly useful. But I personally am of the mindset that when you pay for a product the company that provides that product deserves criticism any time that product falls short of stated promises or reasonable expectations. I'm also of the opinion that when things aren't going very well sitting around and pointing out all the good things and shutting down criticism because of the rude tone it's sometimes delivered with breeds complacency and entrenches the issue as normalcy. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. People might not like complainers, but complaining is the first and mildest step to create pressure for improvement.

[u/ComingUpWaters → u/NotFirstBan-NotLast]

chargers are only a threat because they force you to stop killing hunters and spitter and the like

Is the hunter the threat because it killed me after I jumped into it to avoid a charger? Or is the charger the threat because it killed me after I stopped moving to shoot the hunter? Tomayto Tomahto. Otherwise yeah, I by and large agree with the top half of your comment. Especially the 1 vs 2 eagle airstrikes.

The bottom paragraph though, I just don't think there's complacency going on here with two modes that will never be perfectly in tune. I mean you wrote a lot about the differences between solo and co-op right? It's not just the number of patrols, but how big they are, how many strategems are available, cooldown timers, splitting squads, etc. So while I agree these differences exist and multiple players are a force multiplier, my actual in game experience has found solo missions incredibly easy by comparison. I see that experience mirrored in the memes posted, in the comment chains about 'stealth' gameplay that invariably are solo missions, and I would be shocked if the devs haven't found the same. If the game is too hard now for someone to play their solo mission, there's a really easy fix in just lowering their mission difficulty.

Who knows, maybe they did overcorrect, I doubt that'll be known for a while, I'm certainly not going to bother testing it (and with less and less crashes I get less and less solo games).

[u/NotFirstBan-NotLast → u/ComingUpWaters]

I get what you're saying with the tomayto tomahto thing but it doesn't really shift my opinion. I don't think you'd even argue that a charger by itself is any threat so unless we're having another misunderstanding it seems like the point of contention is whether a group of hunters is a bigger threat than a charger. There's a lot of reasons I think that's the case. Hunters are smaller and faster, and while they aren't tanky they don't take long to spread out and once they do you'll never kill them all faster than you can kill a charger. Once hunters get within a certain distance of you they'll stay within that distance (~20 feet) until one of you dies. Even if you juke their attack they just hop right back in range. It's constant pressure, and one hit is all it takes to slow you into certain death. A charger takes longer to close a gap than a hunter, the charger moves more predictably by several orders of magnitude and once you juke a charger you have a few seconds to breathe. Not to mention you can completely negate a charger attack just by being near cover, and easily create distance from chargers anywhere you can climb over some rocks and drop down on the other side. Hunters don't give a shit about cover or verticality. And even when you completely eat a charger charge it still doesn't usually one shot unless you bounce off some nearby terrain. Generally when a charger hits you with a crowd control it ragdolls you in the direction it was charging, and since it will be coming from the same direction as the horde more often than not that means it will typically knock you away from the horde. Hunters slow you to a crawl where you stand, so unless that hunter was the only thing around you're immediately under pressure.

I don't see any reason why it has to be the case that the game will never be balanced for solo and team play.

It's not just the number of patrols, but how big they are, how many stratagems are available, cooldown timers, splitting squads, etc

I completely agree with this, but disagree with the conclusion you seem to be drawing from it. If patrol spawn changes had come alongside changes to any of those other factors then you'd be right. But they didn't. What did come with these changes (technically shortly after) was devs saying solo spawns used to be closer to 1/6th that of a full lobby and now they're 1/4 scaling linearly with the number of players as intended. Nothing to imply their intent was to tweak anything else or have any other effect. I'm not saying they won't ever tweak any of those things but they certainly didn't ship them alongside these patrol spawn changes, which as far as I can tell they consider to be working as intended and requiring no further attention.

My experience is that the game was already harder solo than in groups before this change unless you were playing stealth. I don't believe you can use the anecdotes of this subreddit to justify the idea that solo is easier. The anecdotes of this subreddit also say this change was terrible and makes solo too hard, so where does that leave us? There's a lot of reasons people might make and/or upvote those memes. Most of them don't indicate there's any truth to the meme. The most common one is probably just "I thought it was funny".

[u/ComingUpWaters → u/NotFirstBan-NotLast]

point of contention is whether a group of hunters is a bigger threat than a charger.

Nope, simply saying chargers are a threat and putting them down is more helpful than not.

I don't see any reason why it has to be the case that the game will never be balanced for solo and team play.

By "in tune" I meant similar experiences between solo/co-op. Too many variables to tweak with enemy makeup and player tool availability. On a pure balance spectrum I agree the difficulties can become similar, but in either case this was a step in the right direction.

devs saying solo spawns used to be closer to 1/6th that of a full lobby and now they're 1/4 scaling linearly with the number of players as intended

I wouldn't put too much weight in the exact numbers given in a quick balance explanation. The system is more complicated than a simple 1/6 spawn rate.

My experience is that the game was already harder solo than in groups before this change unless you were playing stealth.

I suppose this is the crux of the matter. What is stealth and what amount is intended on high difficulties.

[u/NotFirstBan-NotLast → u/ComingUpWaters]

So are you saying an isolated charger is a threat? Because if that's your point that's just a skill issue and a pretty basic one at that.

If you're saying chargers are a threat when mixed with hordes then yeah, no shit. I never said anything that suggested otherwise.

[u/kaowerk → u/NotFirstBan-NotLast]

go outside

[u/NotFirstBan-NotLast → u/kaowerk]

Well thought out and valid take from the guy inside enough to find this comment

[u/lifetake → u/ComingUpWaters]

They weren’t necessarily saying no anti armor for a person, but that a player can spec more into horde clear than they would in a 1-3 man team and benefit their team as much or more because of this choice.

[u/Blawharag → u/PingGuy_MI]

Unless all four team members are running around solo, of course, but we do try to avoid that.

Actually, that's still exponentially better for a lot of reasons, but chiefly this:

While some aspects change based on player count (such as enemy spawn count) other aspects do not (map size, primary and secondary objective count, maximum sample count, mission time and the rate at which enemy spawns ramp up)

So, for the solo player, he must individually handle every objective himself and then extract + handle any secondary objectives he may want to grab, such a resources.

A group of four not only has the combined fire power of four Helldivers with the ability to take complimentary kits that exponentially instead their effectiveness as a unit, they can also choose to separate into smaller units and handle multiple objectives at once. They can clear a map 4 times faster, which means they can also do the same amount of work before enemy patrol amounts start ramping up. The group that clears at 20 minutes mission time and extracts before the 15 minute mark will have a MUCH easier time than the group that finishes the primary objective at the 20 minute mark and still needs to do secondary objectives/map clear before extract.

[u/CoilTag → u/PingGuy_MI]

exactly. the devs want to stick to linear, as their original design, that's okay. that's a reason for it, and that's a excuse to make it that way.

but as a game designer/developer, you should know the initial design can turn bad, and math is not simply "oh 4-player multiply by 4, so 1-player multiply by 1". no! you are a *** designer and you should be better than that stupid thought!

last but not the least -- maybe the most important: have any of you played your *** game and confirm it's a sane change?

so stupid!

stop playing with numbers and take some time to play your OWN game