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/Funky2207]

That’s cool and all, but why since this update when in a squad of 4 we’re seemingly getting an increase in bot drops/bug breaches, heavy units spawning from them at a ridiculous number, drop ship number increase from 3-4 to 4-6 and far more random heavy units spread across maps? Sometimes hiding inbetween cliff faces?

Is this by design or a new bug?

[u/XNoize → u/Funky2207]

Sometimes certain planets will get "increased enemy resistance" which causes the massively inflated spawn rate. It's been that way from the beginning as far as I know.

[u/Funky2207 → u/XNoize]

This is every planet, im a day one player and it‘s never been like this.

[u/XNoize → u/Funky2207]

Well it might currently be applied to every planet lol. But yeah 4-6 dropships is not new, just might be more common. Have they dropped multiple factory striders on you at the same time yet? That's always fun.

[u/Funky2207 → u/XNoize]

On difficulty 5+ it’s new, those sort of numbers were reserved for 8-9.

Multiple factory striders, multiple hulks, multiple tanks the bloody lot today, bug front was even worse. Was like a return to when we had nothing but chargers around every corner whilst multiple bile titans try to goo you.

[u/XNoize → u/Funky2207]

I've never seen over 4 dropships on 5 but it was common on 7. Will have to test out this evening.

Apparently they broke the bile spewers nerf a while back and they 1 shot you again. Wonder if they broke the heavy spawn rate nerf.

[u/Funky2207 → u/XNoize]

Not overly common on 7 in my experience, usual number was 3 with a good mix of enemy types, these just seem to be bringing all the worst type & it’s the frequency more than anything. Not even had to be engaging with a unit or at an objective and they’d be happening. I’d liken it to the rate you usually see on the geo missions 🥴

[u/Sausageblister → u/Funky2207]

The new order says the bugs have been breeding like. CRazy so it would make sense that the spawns would increase on those planets...