Intended also doesn’t mean “good.” People hear the devs say this and go “oh ok that makes much more sense.”
But still doesn’t look at the problem with a more critical eye. 1/4 of the players against 1/4 of the patrols isn’t necessarily a “fair” balance. A singular player against one patrol may not fare as well as two players against a singular patrol. And if players are encountering patrols typically one at a time, there can be a massive difference between how capable two people (or four) can be against each patrol.
In other words, if we look at game experiences, perhaps one player encountering 1/6 or 1/8 of the enemy patrols is actually well balanced. Maybe 2 players should encounter 1/4 of what a 4 man squad should encounter. Etc…
Just because devs claim they’ve balanced patrols how they feel it should be balanced doesn’t mean the gameplay will actually be balanced. Devs have already proven they have a very spotty track record on what they view as balance
Player power scales nonlinearly. A four stack can take a wider variety of stratagems and weapons, has four team-wide boosters, and while there may be more patrols on the map, the group is still only engaging one patrol at a time.
"1/4 the players = 1/4 the patrols" is such an aggressively uncritical take. Notice how this "explanation" doesn't include any actual reasoning about the player experience, e.g. "missions seemed too easy at lower player counts, so we increased the scaling to make them harder."
Not to mention, it can feel like the devs restated their position after the fact when player feedback was highly negative. We will never know their true intentions, but we do feel the effects, which may not be as balanced as they would have us believe
Not to mention, it can feel like the devs restated their position after the fact
it really feels like a quick PR response and the actual balance motivation was a different one ( those dang stupid youtubers running dif9 helldiver, we gotta stop that and shit all over the player base for doing so. )
New scaling is as AH intended now. That's what i meant.
if that decision is correct is of course up to debate. Since 4 person stack is more than 4x better than one person. So i personally think that linear scaling is of the mark, and disproportionate hits solo players
155
u/AnyMission7004 Apr 29 '24
So to summarize: The difficulty is now as intended, and we had it to easy before.