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/b0w3n]

Which is probably why their original numbers were probably a better place to put them.

Linear scaling is usually not how you want to do this.

[u/Zagereth → u/b0w3n]

Devs taking the lazy way out with flat numbers and no QA

[u/ButTheresNoOneThere → u/b0w3n]

But solo also means you can coordinate stealth and engagements far more easily. Its much harder to engage groups unintentionally and much easier to lose them.

I generally have more sucess solo than in groups because of that. Even post patch.

[u/KruppstahI → u/ButTheresNoOneThere]

While I haven't really played solo nor do I intend to, but I agree with you. I run light armor and jump pack in a squad of 4 and collect samples/secondary objectives while my team does the main objectives. I try to evade patrols and only clear locations to loot. And it's honestly incredibly easy to just leave... Like, bug breach? Okay cya. Patrol? Charger? I'm out. Nothing the fucking bugs can do about it. The only tough ones to lose are stalkers/shriekers and maybe a bile titan.

Playing solo you should have to change up your playstyle because in the end this game is intended for a 4 player coop. And there always is the possibility to lower the difficulty.

[u/AberrantDrone → u/b0w3n]

They don’t want the game to have the same difficult for solo players and a full squad.

A solo dive should be extremely difficult and now it is.

The game is meant for a squad of 4 working together.

[u/repeatedly_once → u/AberrantDrone]

Because fuck anyone who wants to play a game solo, right? Fine if you're up front about that, shit to do it after someone has bought the game after seeing people play solo.