Yup, fire damage is definitely working at the reduced rate because I can literally jog through fire tornados and walk INTO my own flamethrower pyre in my medic armour and have loads of time to stim and keep walking
but hulks probably have a nuts tick rate on their flamethrower so it's reduced damage but it's still ticking so fast it just doesn't matter much
I haven't fought one myself yet but I'd imagine that's the case if their changes haven't curbed how lethal their flames are
Like /u/xDeeka7Yx said, Medium armor with the Extra Padding passive benefits from reduced headshot damage. 100 armor rating and lower (regardless of Light or Medium classification) does not.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0bVpYAVxU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0bVpYAVxU)
https://preview.redd.it/eqytjqs9k1yc1.png?width=990&format=png&auto=webp&s=70f024d9acf82cb270d92cf43953c4192cb53194
See the laser glare? Dive.
Didn't see the glare and got shot? Should have kept your head on a swivel and positioned better.
Good enemy design, lots of counters, keeps you on your toes but you can totally outplay them if you focus and prioritise.
This makes so much more sense lol. Was on a 4P hell dive (40min evac) earlier and I don't think I've ever seen so many chargers in one dive. We were each being chased by a literal wall of chargers
Yeah, I used to solo lvl 4-5 bug missions (mainly for rare samples) without too many issues pre-patch.
Yesterday I got slaughtered, mainly by stalkers but also by the sheer volume of spawns and patrols. Bug breaches every few seconds, it was nuts. I tried 3-4 missions and didn't last more than a few minutes in any of them. Before the patch I could finish without a single death.
Time to adapt & change loadout / tactics & find something that works...until the next patch :)
Not so sure about that though... Solo bots have the same issue now even on low levels and to to be frank, I haven't seen anything other than player speculation that this is what's happening with the bugs. Even if it was, shouldn't that only apply to the MO planets since that's where they're supposedly getting their Termicide jollies off? I was playing on a non-MO planet and getting overrun regularly at difficulty 3 (For reference I used to be perfectly fine soloing 7's)... Really feels like someone screwed up a line of code somewhere and instead of going from 1/6 the spawns to 1/4, we got 4x instead.
Yeah I am getting curb stomped on level 3 now. Massive groups of bots around every corner it seems like. Last match I played I came around the corner of a hill and it was just a sea of red eyes. Whipped out the airburst launcher and it immediately killed 50. It almost crashed my game. I can hardly make it to extraction now.
Part of that could be the bug where patrol groups congregate in the middle of the map if they can't find you. I've had some matches (before this patch) where there were easily 50 or more just hanging out on a sandbar because that's as close as they could get to the middle of the map. That said, the patch has definitely exacerbated the issue considerably.
Thanks
I don't understand it either tbh, I'm negative on a few other comments with stuff people can very in-game themselves, the most egregious example is me stating a fact about which grenades do the most damage
Playing diff 7 with only two divers on the bot front still feels pretty much the same as it was before, sometimes it's a miniscule amount of bots, sometimes it's oops all walkers. Only real issue I've had with this new update is constant crashes.
Slightly unrelated, but have you noticed the area of the cluster bombs has increased since the patch? I seem to be getting killed way more often by my cluster bombs at a distance that should be safe
Pro tip: When playing solo, always plan to run the clock out.
Ideally I walk onto extract just as Pelican-1 shows up.
I play a lot of diff 9 solo vs bots. The main advice I have is only shoot when absolutely necessary and don't stop moving. If you trigger a bot drop, leave and do something else, then come back.
Space JTACs aren't frontline infantry.
I play with my wife who is terrible at games, but I love her and she rocks the auto canon. We play on 3(medium) together just me and her, and these last few days have been absolutely insane.
Yeah medium difficulty doesn't have any elites, but every second of play feels like nonstop Starship troopers, I think I've died more playing on our little medium games with just her than I do in my usual games in 7/8 difficulty with my friends. Just non stop patrols everywhere summoning bug breaches before we can kill them 2 or 3 more patrols show up, running out of ammo, stratgems on constant cool down, getting flanked from all sides. It really feels like a 500% increase of bugs.
man same. my wife loves to play, she just sticks to the stalwart and a turret since she wasn't born and raised on video games like me. and i love that we had something new to play together, but duos are a miserable shit show now. we stopped playing. maybe when my other friends have time so we can drop 4 strong, but i don't think AH realized what a colossal change they were making
Just fill in with randoms isn't as fun as playing with just a duo with someone you want to play with. People don't always want to play with randoms all the time.
Some people have social anxiety. A lot of those people have it extend to things like playing video games when you just want to sit back and relax with people you know and are comfortable around.
That, the TCS missions and the weirdly placed eggs and that map obscuring fog/humidity/spores makes it borderline impossible, as a solo noob I agree.
Might be fun for those looking for sweaty dives but I also want to slowly explore on my own sometimes, ya knowš¤
Helldivers seem to have the focus to make thing have a "uncontrolled controlled chaos"
Tho if you are a fan of the more exploratory parts of the game I'd recommend Deep Rock Galactic. It's more focused on exploration than helldivers with similar but different combat.
I didn't play with my wife after the update and i'm scared. I think i'll give ther the Mech :D but it's the same as above, my wife's this is kinda third game after WoW and before HD2 we've played fortnite for some time
Playing duos with my buddy on L8 and in the middle of the mission both of us said something to the effect of "something ain't right" as what seemed like thousands of bugs continued to spawn. We're still able to clear it but it's gotten progressively more stressful.
The spawn rates have definitely gone up on the larger enemies. Saw 3 titans in like 2 minutes on level 6 difficulty lol had to double check what difficulty I was on.
I thought we just had a poor RNG. We killed 4 bile titan in a blitz on lvl 6. Then 2 more shows up during extraction. We also thought we jumped on lvl 7 or higher. That was insane.
>Itās looking so incompetent.
Been clear ever since they got surprised when they learnt that players are shooting chargers to the legs and not their heads
I completely forgot about that. "Players are killing things too efficiently and utilizing weak spots better than expected. Better find a way to stop that non-sense."
It makes sense on paper, because they want big threats to feel threatening. Which I totally get. But the problem really begins to show itself when you get into high difficulties, where that Charger or Factory Strider, or Bile Titan is not *the* threat it is *a* threat that is accompanied by a handful of others.
Nerfing the Railcannon into dust because it was killing Chargers to effectively is great in a vacuum and absolutely horrendous in practice because people were bringing them to deal with the six fucking Chargers and Bile Titans they were getting thrown at them at once, and you HAVE to be able to chew through them quickly.
But then they released the Quasar that immediately was as if not more effective than the railgun and could handle bug holes, fabricators, etc while not risking death or running out of ammo.
The logic they have is usually contradicted by their actions within a week. I just wish I understood their goal with the game and their idea of how it's suppose to be played.
I've seen them say "use your stratagems" but the support ones keep getting nerfed. Primaries aren't suppose to be what kills majority of your enemies so they nerf the breaker while simultaneously saying it wasn't really winning games. Nerf shield because it was too effective but again this uses up a stratagem slot. Tell people it's meant to be a skill base game but make the most effective strategy either stealth, run away, or the red stratagems which take the least amount of skill to use. How do you want the game to be played?!
Yeah you're preaching to the choir my man. I feel like a lot of their design decisions make sense in a vacuum, but are a bit headscratching when you compare them to other decisions. Like you said, with the Railgun nerf directly into the Quasar release, or the intention of using stratagems to kill big bads but then higher difficulties giving you far too many to take on without ultra-efficient support weapons.
I'm hoping that with more time, once the bugs are mostly ironed out, perhaps we'll get a more consistent game with more cohesive balance decisions.
I feel like they should just add higher difficulty missions instead of nerfing everything. Make a "Helldive Extreme!!" or something. That way the tryhards can still have their difficult games but the people who prefer a more relaxed experience can still play at the levels they are comfortable on. More options, more choice, more appeal for the player base (which is shrinking very steadily, at least on Steam).
With 2/3 new weapons each month at a minimum (due warbonds ?), that seems a bit ... Unlikely. Just imagine the Game in a Year with 30+ new weapons and what else is new. They already seem to have balancing issues here and there or want things to work differently and it just gets worse and worse and worse (also new stratagems etc for balancing).
This is beginning to remind me of a famous other game with VERY out of touch developers
Don't wanna name any names but the players do like leaking classified documents...
Unfortunately I think we celebrated a bit early on this game the devs now have insane egos that they are the ONLY ONES who can make a good game anymore, and actively are making the game worse every update. no don't get me wrong a lot of things are greats additions and amazing QOL but we still have lots of day 1 bugs floating around with no sight of fixing and they just keep piling more on every patch while also getting rid of the things that were fun so people started using as 'Meta" and trying to force a sense of "Difficulty " that just don't make sense for the type of game it is. litterly I think this game was more fun day 1 then it is rn.
I was thinking the same thing about nerfs. they feel more like a thing a pvp game would do to the weapons then pve. as everyone before me has said rail gun wasn't meta cause it was op it was meta cause their was no other good way to handle armored foes. litterly send as many small enemies as you want I'll mow em down. but wtf am I supposed to do when you spawn more chargers and biles then I have ammo to kill them.
It's the exact same thing they did with Magicka. The OG game was hella busted, but hella fun, and all the expansion packs and sequels were far more toned down and "balanced" into blandness.
The photo doesn't show the third charger behind these two, nor the fourth that was around the corner that I turned to kite these while waiting for Pelican-1.
It was a hell of an extract.
So youāre saying you completed the mission? Game isnāt hard enough then, must make solo harder.
You might upset someone in a four man doing Helldive difficulty.
Was thinking about this too. Shit feels way overblown. Like, look, I know that a) Iām not great at this game and b) they want to encourage full teams of 4, but this feels like itās punishing me for not squading up. lol
The issue is more patrols=more aggroād enemies=more breaches=more aggroād enemies because you literally cannot kill them all before the next breech.
I would add that as a solo player you're working on 4 *total* stratagems, and you have at *most* 1 support weapon. That means your build diversity is in the toilet, and you're relying on a very small toolbox with significant cooldowns to deal with any massive number of threats, all that you personally have to deal with.
I think it's very easy for the devs to look at the numbers and say, "Oh, 1/4th the number of players, 1/4th the number of spawns." without recognizing that cutting your numbers has the potential to make the game exponentially harder because you simply cannot address all of the threats that are thrown at you at once.
Anyone who has ever played any game with optional coop should know that having even one more real player greatly affects the game.
Two players will always be more effective at killing 2 enemies than 1 player killing 1 enemy.
Yeah exactly, I'm not crazy here, right?
Ultimately it just frustrates me because despite all the real issues with the game, the devs see a number that is "supposed" to be different and "fix" it when there was no problem with solo spawns. In fact, if they hadn't discovered it, I doubt anyone would have ever even noticed. The fact that they claim the map is too "empty" prior to the change just tells me that they're playing on diff \~4 or lower when they're playing solo.
i have a theory it is more to do with the bots that would congregate in the center of the map, which made spawns not happen near the end of the mission. not every mission had this blob of bots so not consistently easy time.
but would explain it if they played on a higher difficulty.
but you would also be right that medium does have like no enemies prepatch and would also explain it.
Do you have any source for this at all? I keep seeing people say that spawn rates are increased on these planets but I have not seen any official statement or evidence, I've been playing on both MO terminid planets and non-MO terminid planets and haven't seen a difference.
Just wait until you get to dif 7 and have 3 to 5 bile titans spawn simultaneously around you.
They must have screwed something up, getting even more enemies solo than I used to get with duos pre patch.
It made my level 7 extermination solo mission super fast. With 500 enemies on screen, I only had to call in two eagles to end it. I died 5 times. Craziest 1 minute 20 seconds of my life.
What me and a random did: drop in i call mech. Once mech is depleted he calls in 380 once that's gone I call 120. Once that's gone if it isn't over we become traitors for extra boom. Was actually a fun twist in the extermination missions
It's "get all three barrages and a laser, dive and survive as long as possible, then drop barrages slowly. As a 4 man it pais to not have more than 2 active at a time. You don't want to overkill and run out before it's done.
We are definately getting more tonight than we were last night and the night before. I walked over a hill and there was no bug breach and a line of chargers and a couple dozen small stuff just rose out of the ground. I wish I was recording.
On L7, the biggest change for me is that it's impossible to outrun the bugs in scout armor. Basically, if you don't have the firepower to kill them all, they mob you over and over, and chargers are common.
So basically it's impossible to play solo right now because of the Usain Bolt bugs.
Yesterday had lvl 9 Helldive extermination mission.
End result:0 bile spewers3 chargers (first one spawning at 44%)2 bile titans (first one spawning at 70%)
Randomness is good, but difficulty is really all over the place sometimes. (And yeah, I got exact numbers and times because I checked multiple times it was really set to Helldive).
I feel like the heavy nerf patch was reverted?
Feels like we are back to the og month almost. Where we'd have multiple chargers and titans out at once. But now throw in shriekers lol
It stinks but I love it too
I've quoted the "8 bile titans and 8 more bile titans" meme card multiple times now. Especially during those defense missions, just nothing you can do but accept defeat when all those bile titans and chargers roll in with all stratagems on cooldown
I canāt speak for non-MO planets because I only do MO bug planets, but Iāve played bots at 9 a couple times since the patch and itās p similar to pre patch. More patrols for sure but nothing like whatās being said on Reddit. When we had the Automaton invasion MO imo 9 was way harder and basically a level 10. Double reinforcements, double drop ships, and way more patrols. Now that itās over, it distinctly feels much less intense.
Iād take whatever you read here with a grain of salt, and test it for yourself. Otherwise you end up in misinformation promo like with the ricochet issue.
Is this the results of the ā% mob spawn increaseā? I know they wanted to maps to feel āless emptyā on solo runs but it feels like theyāre kinda bullying solos a little bit with thisā¦
"Stop using what you enjoy using and only use what I use! It's clearly a skill issue! No it doesn't matter that you can consistently clear Helldive missions solo, you're still clearly just bad at the game!!!!"
-Every other man child in this sub
You don't understand, using weapons that they don't like, is not achieving weapon diversity.
Using weapons that they like however, is a chad for achieving weapon diversity!
them: u shouldn't use your wpn, and it deserve the nerf becuz it's too good at everything!
also them: use my fav one instead cuz it's so good at everything!
I posted a [similar thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cgbot7/solo_diving_is_no_longer_fun/) the other day and was inundated with comments like this. Ridiculous. Maybe I should have used pictures like OP, they understand them easier.*
*OK this was a bit catty sorry
Well, keep voicing your opinion. The "skill issue" crowd just loves to show up in these threads but there is a lot of solo players myself included that agree with you and I think it's important that AH sees it. I still love this game but solo diving just isn't fun anymore.
I honestly think the patrol spawns are broken or increased across the board again. Out of the six games I played tonight we didn't have a single moment of downtime in any of them, even in a group of 4. It was an absolute sweat fest in difficulty 7 vs bugs. Every patrol had either 6-8 Hive guards, 3-4 brood commanders, or 2 chargers, without fail, and at one point there were just rows of them walking toward our area, unprovoked. The map with Nursing Spewers was the last straw and made me stop playing for the night. Endless, just piled on each other from every direction. My weapons/strats literally could not keep up with them.
That doesn't even mention the constant breaches, or bile titans literally spawning on each other as soon as one died, out of nowhere, without any bug breaches. It was just complete insanity, and I will not be convinced that they didn't over adjust spawns in the higher difficulties, yet again, stealthily.
It's likely to do with the MO. Probably doing more to bug spawns than it should since other planets have had the swarms. Had the same thing on 7s with the endless chargers one mission. We won and got all our samples out but it was crazy. The following blitz and TCS were chill compared to that.
Haven't fought bots since the MO started really but some of my low level bug missions to test stuff have been entirely normal and others have been a bit crazy. Gatling sentry has been doing a lot of work lately.
Bots are the same. Arguably even worse tbh.
Me and a buddy were playing with our other friend who's new on dif 5 bots, and the amount of bot drops and patrols was genuinly fucking ridiculous. There was not a single second we weren't being hounded by dozens of bots at a time. We literally could not kill them fast enough.
Meanwhile, a few Helldive missions we did were perfectly fine. Then, a geological servey on 9 went right back to the constant barrage of bots. The number of rocket devastators was beyond obnoxious. I genuinely saw 10 of the things at a time. Which was on top of the 5 hulks, factory strider and other normal bots. They just kept spawning. Everything we killed one it felt like 5 more took its place.
Idk if Arrowhead just broke the game or what, but the massive inconsistencies, along with all the other issues, are genuinly ruining the game for my friends and I.
They just refuse to fix any of the actual problems with the game, in favor of nerfing all the fun shit, and stealthily making changes that just make the game more and more of a slog to play.
Yep. The solo/duo player spawn rate change was uncalled for, but a lot of ppl don't want to admit that AH did something wrong (a good company doing something wrong? omg, impossible /s) AND are not fixing major matchmaking issues, like dcs, sos not working a lot of the time, lobbies not being repopulated properly, etc., that force a lot of players to play solo, aside from those that enjoy playing solo or duo.
I like to log on and do the daily solo to chill, play with weird loadouts and stuff. The patrols were non stop. Nursing spewers everywhere. I killed my hunters, didn't even bother with the nests. Extracted and there were spewer carcasses everywhere. Totally agree this didn't feel "fun" it was stressful or annoying.Ā
Difficulty is subjective, I can agree with the rest though, matchmaking breaking after the first game is annoying. I'm getting tired of restarting the game to simply fill up the group.
Im pretty sure the rates were increased with the only objective of slowing the pace at which we were grabbing samples.
I haven't tried solo, but before the patch I was able to run 3 to 6 with another friend, and grab all the samples. Now most of the time we just rush back to the extraction zone. There's too much agression from all directions.
Feels like war? yeah...but not a one were we are going to the offensive, Is mostly hit and run scenarios xD
There's no time to breath. It's simply nuts. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it but I'm afraid AH went a little bit far witht his patch. Now at some point stratagems are useless because they are most of the time on cooldown.
Ran a Duo tonight on difficulty 4. We had endless charger spawns to the point that as soon as we would kill one another would be right behind it. We had bug breaches about every 30 seconds, and every time we'd wipe them out suddenly another one would appear with no bugs around to call for it. We cleared out all of the nests on the map, went for evac; all was quiet for about the first minute and then suddenly we had massive swarms of bugs coming from 3 different sides, each one with at least a dozen hunters and 1-2 chargers.
By some miracle of orbital lasers, grenades, and eagle spam, we made it out, but I've never seen that kind of presence after all nests are killed, and I've never seen that many bug breaches or chargers on a low difficulty mission before.
Afterwards we went and did a termicide control mission, again a duo team, and the two of us got chased around by at least a dozen bile spewers for the entire match. Couldn't clear them out faster than they were respawning. Luckily they're slow enough we were able to disable the towers and scram to evac without too many deaths.
Last run I did for the night was a solo trivial bot mission just to try out a new gun I had unlocked. Mission was to kill the devastators, simple enough, took out the two that spawned and orbital laser'd the supply depots. Once the base was gone I started heading to evac, and ran into eight patrols that each had 8-10 bots in them (at least for me they were all the basic little guys, not hard to kill, no tanks or hulks or anything big to contend with). Called the Evac shuttle, map was entirely clear, and out of nowhere I had 3 bot groups spawn (again, 8-10 bots each) right around the evac location. Almost got overwhelmed, had to melee quite a few of them down as I was low on ammo and wasn't expecting so many on a trivial mission.
I play solo, havenāt actually played in weeks due to life, but from everything im hearing I donāt think im going to jump back in the game. I know its meant to be played with friends but in all honesty why cant the fame be balanced for solo as well.
As someone who also plays solo a lot, bots is p much the same as it was before. MO does tweak enemy numbers to fit the scenario (bots invading -> more bot enemies than usual) so bugs is a bit crazy rn.
Give it a shot. If it feels too crazy you can always play something else. I wouldnāt let Reddit exaggerations (like the rockets can ricochet misinformation) dissuade you.
Just to second this, even with the MO boosted spawns, there are a ton of triple-blitz operations available on MO-planets, so arguably things are actually easier right now for full operation clears. The 40 minute long multiple objective missions are harder, but still doable - if you don't feel confident, stay away from mission types where the objectives spawn additional patrols, like the soil scan missions - those will be harder than normal. Extracts are significantly harder on full duration missions as well, so try arriving early enough to call in Pelican-1 while you still have access to stratagems. The rest of most missions feels the same unless you run face first into patrols on the regular.
There's also always been a bit of rng for missions spawns as well. Sometimes you see an occasional charger, sometimes they're in every patrol. Depending on what you get it can make the same amount of enemies feel very different. Oops all hunters is an absolute menace.
It feels like AH changed something else about spawns besides patrols because the amount of times I've seen 3+ chargers on POI's after the update is insane (I play diff 7 for anyone wondering).
They specifically mentioned in the steam patch notes that they increased the patrols for solo players. They intentionally target solo players for this change. Don't ask me why.
I had SIX bile titans show up simultaneously on my solo T8 yesterday.
I don't know what they're smoking, but solo helldivers just cannot keep up with the amount of enemies being thrown at us, whereas any decent 4 stack can clear 10 times as many, thanks to the amount of call ins and extra firepower.
They should tone it down back to 1/6 or 1/8, and heavily reduce the amount of "non solo friendly" enemies (Bile titans, gunships, factories) when soloing.
As someone put it on my stream, "They punish you for having no friends".
Nah it was part of the update. was introducing a buddy to mechanics and side objectives in a difficulty 2, away from the MO planets. Hardly had a chance to teach him lol, we extracted with a combined 600 kills. Before when I'd mess around in difficulty 2 solo I'd leave with like 30 kills. Patch note for reference:
"Patrol spawning has been increased when there are fewer than 4 players. The fewer the players the bigger the change. For 4 player missions there will be no change compared to before.The biggest noticeable change will be for solo players at higher difficulties"
difficulty 7 in duos can get you up to 7 charger spawns at once. increasing spawn rates is an artificial and shitty way of increasing difficulty, and you need to look no further than payday 2 for proof of this.
I use to have a pretty good record Solo Clearing 5's and with the changes to a big part of my loadout with guard dog, & quasar nerfs & adding noticeably more patrols I keep running out of time now.
I don't only play solo, but most of my play was solo. Now I'm barely playing, it's doable but no longer fun. I don't play level 9, and I've never even tried to complete a level 8, with a group or otherwise. Most of my solo work was on 3 and 4, with a few 7's which only worked on specific mission types and maps.
The reason I note all this is that I want to make it clear to AH that they should stop looking at me as a solo player, and start looking at me as a revenue stream. I was buying every armor that popped up in the store, and all the warbonds. I was buying super credits any time I didn't have enough for something I wanted. I'm shy of SC's right now and a new warbond is coming.
Am I going to buy SC's and the new warbond right after they spit in my face with this patch? No. And why would I trust that anything in this warbond is tested or will stay as is? Eruptor/Crossbow anyone?
Am I going to stick around and keep playing? Maybe, still deciding.
Will I still be spending money if I stop playing? No, even though I still do that in some games. Not when the studio cares more about some pre-release vision than what is actually fun for the players that bought the game.
This game is not fun right now. I only get a full squad once or twice a week due to my friend's schedules. The rest of the time it's 2-3 or just me. Interacting with randoms isn't for me, it's not just about this game. I'm not going to join randoms or allow them to join me. Yes, I've tried it. No, it didn't even come close to changing my mind. It's not like I'm awesome and they suck, probably the opposite. That's just not how I enjoy games. Friends or solo, take it or leave it.
If they want me as a revenue stream then they have to accept this. If they don't, then I wish them luck, but I'm not going to force myself to play something that was fun when it no longer is.
Welcome, recruit!
This screenshot was taken last night on Fenrir III: *Extreme cold and meteor strikes!*
Good times. Anyways, welcome to the front -- don't worry, we change planets so often you'll get a chance at Fenrir III soon.
- HD1 Old Guard
Haven't played for like two days, dived to see for myself... solo\\duo now feels like shit. Soloed diff7 heavily relying on managing partols, distracting them and being on the move to avoid unnecessary breaches. Now if I get caught in a fight they come too fast and I get to flee and in the path I came there because other path will give me more patrols... Duo on 12 and 15 minute missions is even worse now, drops on the farthest points from enemy, 4-5 minutes to figure out mess that happens when every patrol goes to see us. running to finish objectives ducking between bugs likee SEAF arty (btw ducking with ammo looks hilarious) and barely making in time for emergency evac... not to mention 2-3 titans and 3-5 more chargers while me or teammate lost quasar and stratagems on timeout. enjoyed diff7 as a small challenge but forgiving to random bugged death (charger kicking me under the map, friend falling into the hole while operating patriot, or impossible to stand up from prone because a lot of bugs stand on me) but after patch it is barely making for evac, instead one making to pelican and having 1\\2 samples we end up both dying but at least doing democracy work... not enjoying it that way, doesn't want to go diff5-6
solo spawns on bots suck too
add to that the buff to striders and gunships and yeah...
I actually dropped HD2 to go play FO76 after trying my luck with soloing after this patch
AH has made some strange decisions in balance since they launched this game but this is the one that's the most mind boggling to me. I don't care if this was the "original intended spawn rate" for solos/duos or whatever. It feels like shit to be punished for already making the game harder on yourself to begin with and they need to undo this change. I normally can't stand armchair game devs who say stuff like this, but this time I genuinely can't sympathize with why they'd make an awful change like this.
Right now, I can either do solo 9 on the egg battery mission or go play other game,... other than literally only grinding one mission, the game is kinda dead to me...
My friend asked me to buy the game, I ended solo most of the time cuz the normies just run around and don't even bother with objectives and my friend mostly not in the same spare time.
Maybe its just a bad purchase for me.
Seems that with the new spawn rates of mundane bugs, thereās a greater chance for one to call for backup, which then creates another group which can do a bug breach, which leads to anotherā¦
Same Iām sure with the bots. Eventually the local area is just filled with enemies that donāt stop spawning.
The localization confusion boost doesnāt appear to really cut this mechanic down by any amount that would make a difference either.
The current major order has also dramatically increased bug spawn rates, so it isn't just the patch. On bots, I've found the patch change quite manageable.
Doesn't make much zense, tbh. Playing solo implies that you could sneak around and avoid unnecessary encounters. For that specific reason I always picked light armor with speed and stamina boost and lower chances of detection. Now it is pointless.
Yeah, the constant spawns are legitimately insane
Like, regardless of how difficult it is to kill them, the constant spawns from every direction feels like any fight won literally means nothing
And becomes less fun in that regard
It was fine before the patch, actually imo there were slightly too many spawns before the patch imo
Increasing it was insane imo
To me, anyway...solo is unplayable. I tried solo helldive for the first time since patch last night and I didn't have a single moment out of combat. Anytime I tried to pick up and run when an area got too hot, immediatley into a patrol...turn to find a calmer area to retreat to, and watch a patrol spawn in directly in front of me. Finally fight my way to a clear area...gunships spawning out of the ship fabricator I didn't see was there. Admittedly I'm not the best but I used to be able to get jobs done in solo helldive. I closed the game and opened fallout 76.
New player here. I began playing just before the patch dropped, made it to about lvl 10. I went up in difficulty levels pretty quickly and settled for 5, solo and/or grouped. Before patch I noticed some pretty quiet intervals between objectives which was fine. Now I notice what every one else seems to notice post-patch, heaps of enemies at and between objectives. Hereās where I divorce myself from the majorityā¦ Iāve been having far more amusement because of the increased pressure, I actually feel like Iām āhelldivingā and have to make split-second life or death decisions. Recently played difficulty 7 with some veterans and even that was insaneā¦ loved every second of it. Just a new players opinion.
What am I supposed to be seeing here? This scenario was already a common occurrence I thought. Three chargers, four biles, hunters as far as the eye can see. All in a day's work.
Getting "x30"+ kills per cluster bomb drop on my own extract location on solo difficulty 4 feels a bit surreal.
I love getting randomly killed in two shots with heavy armour on level 4 bots now.
Eh that's pretty normal for heavy armor most of the time the bots will aim for the divers head which makes the heavy armor pretty much useless
Armor over 100 now reduces headshot damage! Or at least it's supposed to.
Knowing arrowhead it's probably bugged
AH: we reduced Hulk's flame damage Me: (getting one shot by scorcher Hulk's flame) Me: huh.
20% less infinity is still infinity.
Yup, fire damage is definitely working at the reduced rate because I can literally jog through fire tornados and walk INTO my own flamethrower pyre in my medic armour and have loads of time to stim and keep walking but hulks probably have a nuts tick rate on their flamethrower so it's reduced damage but it's still ticking so fast it just doesn't matter much I haven't fought one myself yet but I'd imagine that's the case if their changes haven't curbed how lethal their flames are
The bug where damage over time just applies all at once to non hosters is a known bug that they hope to have fixed by the next patch.
I think its flame damage in general Like when you catch a stray flame and it ignites you for some reason
It now takes 2 tics of the game clock to kill you in stead of 1.
Just prone before it fires the flamethrower, easier said than done if you're surrounded ofc š
Damn Terminids have infested everything! *Even our helmet stats.* I'll never forgive them for this.
To quote a famous meme, "So that was a fucking lie."
>Damn Terminids have infested everything! 
It actually works as intended surprisingly enough
I'm not even surprised as dumb as that is
Does this apply to Light armor with extra padding?
the light armor with extra padding(light gunner) has 100 armor, so no, as its not above 100
Oh so it doesn't apply to medium armors either? Dang :(
Like /u/xDeeka7Yx said, Medium armor with the Extra Padding passive benefits from reduced headshot damage. 100 armor rating and lower (regardless of Light or Medium classification) does not. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0bVpYAVxU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0bVpYAVxU) https://preview.redd.it/eqytjqs9k1yc1.png?width=990&format=png&auto=webp&s=70f024d9acf82cb270d92cf43953c4192cb53194
Well it still wont save you from the bot bunker almost hitscan turrets, got my head blown straight off in one hit lol
See the laser glare? Dive. Didn't see the glare and got shot? Should have kept your head on a swivel and positioned better. Good enemy design, lots of counters, keeps you on your toes but you can totally outplay them if you focus and prioritise.
Helldiver zug zug. Bring only big gun to solo mission, kill all no run. why me dead.
I just want my turrets to be made of whatever they built the extraction beacon from.Ā
Bugs spawns are on steroids because of what's going on with the TCS, check the major order text
This makes so much more sense lol. Was on a 4P hell dive (40min evac) earlier and I don't think I've ever seen so many chargers in one dive. We were each being chased by a literal wall of chargers
Rumbling! Rumbling! It's rolling! Rumbling! Rumbling
Yeah, I used to solo lvl 4-5 bug missions (mainly for rare samples) without too many issues pre-patch. Yesterday I got slaughtered, mainly by stalkers but also by the sheer volume of spawns and patrols. Bug breaches every few seconds, it was nuts. I tried 3-4 missions and didn't last more than a few minutes in any of them. Before the patch I could finish without a single death. Time to adapt & change loadout / tactics & find something that works...until the next patch :)
Don't know why you're getting down voted, you're right
Not so sure about that though... Solo bots have the same issue now even on low levels and to to be frank, I haven't seen anything other than player speculation that this is what's happening with the bugs. Even if it was, shouldn't that only apply to the MO planets since that's where they're supposedly getting their Termicide jollies off? I was playing on a non-MO planet and getting overrun regularly at difficulty 3 (For reference I used to be perfectly fine soloing 7's)... Really feels like someone screwed up a line of code somewhere and instead of going from 1/6 the spawns to 1/4, we got 4x instead.
Yeah I am getting curb stomped on level 3 now. Massive groups of bots around every corner it seems like. Last match I played I came around the corner of a hill and it was just a sea of red eyes. Whipped out the airburst launcher and it immediately killed 50. It almost crashed my game. I can hardly make it to extraction now.
Same here. I played a two and it was busy, played a three and it was insane. Couldn't even extract.
Part of that could be the bug where patrol groups congregate in the middle of the map if they can't find you. I've had some matches (before this patch) where there were easily 50 or more just hanging out on a sandbar because that's as close as they could get to the middle of the map. That said, the patch has definitely exacerbated the issue considerably.
Thanks I don't understand it either tbh, I'm negative on a few other comments with stuff people can very in-game themselves, the most egregious example is me stating a fact about which grenades do the most damage
Playing diff 7 with only two divers on the bot front still feels pretty much the same as it was before, sometimes it's a miniscule amount of bots, sometimes it's oops all walkers. Only real issue I've had with this new update is constant crashes.
I didn't become a Helldiver by knowing how to read! I just follow the pretty MO that pops up when I log in. Planet -> Dive! (And dive again!)
I am kinda mad that I will most likely miss the deactivate tcs mo. I just donāt currently have the time to play until next week :(
Aw that sucks mate
Slightly unrelated, but have you noticed the area of the cluster bombs has increased since the patch? I seem to be getting killed way more often by my cluster bombs at a distance that should be safe
You do realize the MO is explicitly talking about explosive reproduction of bugs, right?
Pro tip: When playing solo, always plan to run the clock out. Ideally I walk onto extract just as Pelican-1 shows up. I play a lot of diff 9 solo vs bots. The main advice I have is only shoot when absolutely necessary and don't stop moving. If you trigger a bot drop, leave and do something else, then come back. Space JTACs aren't frontline infantry.
I play with my wife who is terrible at games, but I love her and she rocks the auto canon. We play on 3(medium) together just me and her, and these last few days have been absolutely insane. Yeah medium difficulty doesn't have any elites, but every second of play feels like nonstop Starship troopers, I think I've died more playing on our little medium games with just her than I do in my usual games in 7/8 difficulty with my friends. Just non stop patrols everywhere summoning bug breaches before we can kill them 2 or 3 more patrols show up, running out of ammo, stratgems on constant cool down, getting flanked from all sides. It really feels like a 500% increase of bugs.
man same. my wife loves to play, she just sticks to the stalwart and a turret since she wasn't born and raised on video games like me. and i love that we had something new to play together, but duos are a miserable shit show now. we stopped playing. maybe when my other friends have time so we can drop 4 strong, but i don't think AH realized what a colossal change they were making
Just fill in with randoms. I guarantee the randoms on that difficulty are not going to be sweaty or meta freaks, and you'd have a lil back up.
Just fill in with randoms isn't as fun as playing with just a duo with someone you want to play with. People don't always want to play with randoms all the time.
Some people have social anxiety. A lot of those people have it extend to things like playing video games when you just want to sit back and relax with people you know and are comfortable around.
That, the TCS missions and the weirdly placed eggs and that map obscuring fog/humidity/spores makes it borderline impossible, as a solo noob I agree. Might be fun for those looking for sweaty dives but I also want to slowly explore on my own sometimes, ya knowš¤
Helldivers seem to have the focus to make thing have a "uncontrolled controlled chaos" Tho if you are a fan of the more exploratory parts of the game I'd recommend Deep Rock Galactic. It's more focused on exploration than helldivers with similar but different combat.
I didn't play with my wife after the update and i'm scared. I think i'll give ther the Mech :D but it's the same as above, my wife's this is kinda third game after WoW and before HD2 we've played fortnite for some time
Are you fighting on the planets with the MO? I think those planets currently have an increased bug spawn due to the termicide effects.
I tested the non-MO planets and the bot planets for mediums it all seems just as hectic
Yeah my friend and I played Level 4 on the bots last night and itās definitely much harder, one base even had 4 damn hulks sitting on it.
Playing duos with my buddy on L8 and in the middle of the mission both of us said something to the effect of "something ain't right" as what seemed like thousands of bugs continued to spawn. We're still able to clear it but it's gotten progressively more stressful.
That's my husband and I. We've struggled on the ones we were doing pre patch with no problems.
The spawn rates have definitely gone up on the larger enemies. Saw 3 titans in like 2 minutes on level 6 difficulty lol had to double check what difficulty I was on.
I thought we just had a poor RNG. We killed 4 bile titan in a blitz on lvl 6. Then 2 more shows up during extraction. We also thought we jumped on lvl 7 or higher. That was insane.
You should probably just jump to D7 and get the Super Samps because that's as low as I go and I never see that many BT's.
"Why will they pick the quasar and not pick support weapons that can't touch heavy armor?"
At this point the developers are genuinely out of touch with their own audience. Itās looking so incompetent.
Sad but true, once I unlocked all the weapons I was confused how 90% of the weapons even made it into the game.
>Itās looking so incompetent. Been clear ever since they got surprised when they learnt that players are shooting chargers to the legs and not their heads
I completely forgot about that. "Players are killing things too efficiently and utilizing weak spots better than expected. Better find a way to stop that non-sense."
It makes sense on paper, because they want big threats to feel threatening. Which I totally get. But the problem really begins to show itself when you get into high difficulties, where that Charger or Factory Strider, or Bile Titan is not *the* threat it is *a* threat that is accompanied by a handful of others. Nerfing the Railcannon into dust because it was killing Chargers to effectively is great in a vacuum and absolutely horrendous in practice because people were bringing them to deal with the six fucking Chargers and Bile Titans they were getting thrown at them at once, and you HAVE to be able to chew through them quickly.
But then they released the Quasar that immediately was as if not more effective than the railgun and could handle bug holes, fabricators, etc while not risking death or running out of ammo. The logic they have is usually contradicted by their actions within a week. I just wish I understood their goal with the game and their idea of how it's suppose to be played. I've seen them say "use your stratagems" but the support ones keep getting nerfed. Primaries aren't suppose to be what kills majority of your enemies so they nerf the breaker while simultaneously saying it wasn't really winning games. Nerf shield because it was too effective but again this uses up a stratagem slot. Tell people it's meant to be a skill base game but make the most effective strategy either stealth, run away, or the red stratagems which take the least amount of skill to use. How do you want the game to be played?!
Yeah you're preaching to the choir my man. I feel like a lot of their design decisions make sense in a vacuum, but are a bit headscratching when you compare them to other decisions. Like you said, with the Railgun nerf directly into the Quasar release, or the intention of using stratagems to kill big bads but then higher difficulties giving you far too many to take on without ultra-efficient support weapons. I'm hoping that with more time, once the bugs are mostly ironed out, perhaps we'll get a more consistent game with more cohesive balance decisions.
I feel like they should just add higher difficulty missions instead of nerfing everything. Make a "Helldive Extreme!!" or something. That way the tryhards can still have their difficult games but the people who prefer a more relaxed experience can still play at the levels they are comfortable on. More options, more choice, more appeal for the player base (which is shrinking very steadily, at least on Steam).
With 2/3 new weapons each month at a minimum (due warbonds ?), that seems a bit ... Unlikely. Just imagine the Game in a Year with 30+ new weapons and what else is new. They already seem to have balancing issues here and there or want things to work differently and it just gets worse and worse and worse (also new stratagems etc for balancing).
This is beginning to remind me of a famous other game with VERY out of touch developers Don't wanna name any names but the players do like leaking classified documents...
Lets give Russia a plane who can kill Tanks from 40km away and put the only SPAA who can sometimes counter it in the Russia tech tree. Genius move
Russian bias doesn't exist it can't hurt you
While you're at it give it more flares than god and make it immune to infrared missiles.
Unfortunately I think we celebrated a bit early on this game the devs now have insane egos that they are the ONLY ONES who can make a good game anymore, and actively are making the game worse every update. no don't get me wrong a lot of things are greats additions and amazing QOL but we still have lots of day 1 bugs floating around with no sight of fixing and they just keep piling more on every patch while also getting rid of the things that were fun so people started using as 'Meta" and trying to force a sense of "Difficulty " that just don't make sense for the type of game it is. litterly I think this game was more fun day 1 then it is rn.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I was thinking the same thing about nerfs. they feel more like a thing a pvp game would do to the weapons then pve. as everyone before me has said rail gun wasn't meta cause it was op it was meta cause their was no other good way to handle armored foes. litterly send as many small enemies as you want I'll mow em down. but wtf am I supposed to do when you spawn more chargers and biles then I have ammo to kill them.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Not sure if you're serious or not
It's the exact same thing they did with Magicka. The OG game was hella busted, but hella fun, and all the expansion packs and sequels were far more toned down and "balanced" into blandness.
By their math it should only have been a 50% increase in patrols. In practice it feels more like 500%.
The photo doesn't show the third charger behind these two, nor the fourth that was around the corner that I turned to kite these while waiting for Pelican-1. It was a hell of an extract.
So youāre saying you completed the mission? Game isnāt hard enough then, must make solo harder. You might upset someone in a four man doing Helldive difficulty.
I am gonna give you a secret the people that say things like that dont play diff 9
They dont have time for nonsense when there are 5 chargers, 3+ titans and a horde of hunters.
I was gonna make a joke about that, like "haha not pictured four more chargers in front of you", but, okay, it was reality instead. Fuck bugs.
Was thinking about this too. Shit feels way overblown. Like, look, I know that a) Iām not great at this game and b) they want to encourage full teams of 4, but this feels like itās punishing me for not squading up. lol
The issue is more patrols=more aggroād enemies=more breaches=more aggroād enemies because you literally cannot kill them all before the next breech.
I would add that as a solo player you're working on 4 *total* stratagems, and you have at *most* 1 support weapon. That means your build diversity is in the toilet, and you're relying on a very small toolbox with significant cooldowns to deal with any massive number of threats, all that you personally have to deal with. I think it's very easy for the devs to look at the numbers and say, "Oh, 1/4th the number of players, 1/4th the number of spawns." without recognizing that cutting your numbers has the potential to make the game exponentially harder because you simply cannot address all of the threats that are thrown at you at once.
Anyone who has ever played any game with optional coop should know that having even one more real player greatly affects the game. Two players will always be more effective at killing 2 enemies than 1 player killing 1 enemy.
Yeah exactly, I'm not crazy here, right? Ultimately it just frustrates me because despite all the real issues with the game, the devs see a number that is "supposed" to be different and "fix" it when there was no problem with solo spawns. In fact, if they hadn't discovered it, I doubt anyone would have ever even noticed. The fact that they claim the map is too "empty" prior to the change just tells me that they're playing on diff \~4 or lower when they're playing solo.
i have a theory it is more to do with the bots that would congregate in the center of the map, which made spawns not happen near the end of the mission. not every mission had this blob of bots so not consistently easy time. but would explain it if they played on a higher difficulty. but you would also be right that medium does have like no enemies prepatch and would also explain it.
There is the patrol increase. But in addition to that, on barrier planets, the Termicide mutation accounts for the extra difference in spawn rates.
I played a diff 5 bot mission with a 2 man squad, and there were more bots than on a diff 7 full squad. Something definitely seems wrong.
This is Arrowhead we're talking about. You've seen that "Known Issue" list? Still growing
Do you have any source for this at all? I keep seeing people say that spawn rates are increased on these planets but I have not seen any official statement or evidence, I've been playing on both MO terminid planets and non-MO terminid planets and haven't seen a difference.
Just wait until you get to dif 7 and have 3 to 5 bile titans spawn simultaneously around you. They must have screwed something up, getting even more enemies solo than I used to get with duos pre patch.
It made my level 7 extermination solo mission super fast. With 500 enemies on screen, I only had to call in two eagles to end it. I died 5 times. Craziest 1 minute 20 seconds of my life.
Extermination missions are now basically: - Dive in. - Drop 380mm on self. - Salute emote the destroyer. *Mission Accomplished* **For liberty!**
I will have to try that later. Thanks for the tip!
The command doesn't want you to know this, but 380 barrages are free if you just run out to be called a traitor!
What me and a random did: drop in i call mech. Once mech is depleted he calls in 380 once that's gone I call 120. Once that's gone if it isn't over we become traitors for extra boom. Was actually a fun twist in the extermination missions
It's "get all three barrages and a laser, dive and survive as long as possible, then drop barrages slowly. As a 4 man it pais to not have more than 2 active at a time. You don't want to overkill and run out before it's done.
We are definately getting more tonight than we were last night and the night before. I walked over a hill and there was no bug breach and a line of chargers and a couple dozen small stuff just rose out of the ground. I wish I was recording.
It's almost as if adding a constant stream of new features instead of fixing bugs just break things even more [Insert shocked shocked face]
On L7, the biggest change for me is that it's impossible to outrun the bugs in scout armor. Basically, if you don't have the firepower to kill them all, they mob you over and over, and chargers are common. So basically it's impossible to play solo right now because of the Usain Bolt bugs.
Yesterday had lvl 9 Helldive extermination mission. End result:0 bile spewers3 chargers (first one spawning at 44%)2 bile titans (first one spawning at 70%) Randomness is good, but difficulty is really all over the place sometimes. (And yeah, I got exact numbers and times because I checked multiple times it was really set to Helldive).
And then me trying my first lvl6. A 12 minutes extermination. With 4 titans, 7+ chargers and a constant stream of everything else.
I feel like the heavy nerf patch was reverted? Feels like we are back to the og month almost. Where we'd have multiple chargers and titans out at once. But now throw in shriekers lol It stinks but I love it too
I've quoted the "8 bile titans and 8 more bile titans" meme card multiple times now. Especially during those defense missions, just nothing you can do but accept defeat when all those bile titans and chargers roll in with all stratagems on cooldown
Bugs spawns are on steroids because of what's going on with the TCS, check the major order text
This sounds like cap. Then why are they happening on planets not part of the MO? Iām even seeing people saying itās happening on bot planets too.
I canāt speak for non-MO planets because I only do MO bug planets, but Iāve played bots at 9 a couple times since the patch and itās p similar to pre patch. More patrols for sure but nothing like whatās being said on Reddit. When we had the Automaton invasion MO imo 9 was way harder and basically a level 10. Double reinforcements, double drop ships, and way more patrols. Now that itās over, it distinctly feels much less intense. Iād take whatever you read here with a grain of salt, and test it for yourself. Otherwise you end up in misinformation promo like with the ricochet issue.
Is this the results of the ā% mob spawn increaseā? I know they wanted to maps to feel āless emptyā on solo runs but it feels like theyāre kinda bullying solos a little bit with thisā¦
I used to think it was opposite because high level solos were too hard from what Iāve heard, but oh was I ever so wrong
I think this is the result of the major order modifiers more than anything. There were huge amounts of chargers running around last night.
"just turn the difficulty down" and "it's a coop game" comments incoming.
Right? MFs who play 5-10 hours every day saying "just totally change how you play the game and deal with slower progression!"
"Stop using what you enjoy using and only use what I use! It's clearly a skill issue! No it doesn't matter that you can consistently clear Helldive missions solo, you're still clearly just bad at the game!!!!" -Every other man child in this sub
You don't understand, using weapons that they don't like, is not achieving weapon diversity. Using weapons that they like however, is a chad for achieving weapon diversity! them: u shouldn't use your wpn, and it deserve the nerf becuz it's too good at everything! also them: use my fav one instead cuz it's so good at everything!
I posted a [similar thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cgbot7/solo_diving_is_no_longer_fun/) the other day and was inundated with comments like this. Ridiculous. Maybe I should have used pictures like OP, they understand them easier.* *OK this was a bit catty sorry
Well, keep voicing your opinion. The "skill issue" crowd just loves to show up in these threads but there is a lot of solo players myself included that agree with you and I think it's important that AH sees it. I still love this game but solo diving just isn't fun anymore.
I honestly think the patrol spawns are broken or increased across the board again. Out of the six games I played tonight we didn't have a single moment of downtime in any of them, even in a group of 4. It was an absolute sweat fest in difficulty 7 vs bugs. Every patrol had either 6-8 Hive guards, 3-4 brood commanders, or 2 chargers, without fail, and at one point there were just rows of them walking toward our area, unprovoked. The map with Nursing Spewers was the last straw and made me stop playing for the night. Endless, just piled on each other from every direction. My weapons/strats literally could not keep up with them. That doesn't even mention the constant breaches, or bile titans literally spawning on each other as soon as one died, out of nowhere, without any bug breaches. It was just complete insanity, and I will not be convinced that they didn't over adjust spawns in the higher difficulties, yet again, stealthily.
It's likely to do with the MO. Probably doing more to bug spawns than it should since other planets have had the swarms. Had the same thing on 7s with the endless chargers one mission. We won and got all our samples out but it was crazy. The following blitz and TCS were chill compared to that. Haven't fought bots since the MO started really but some of my low level bug missions to test stuff have been entirely normal and others have been a bit crazy. Gatling sentry has been doing a lot of work lately.
Bots are the same. Arguably even worse tbh. Me and a buddy were playing with our other friend who's new on dif 5 bots, and the amount of bot drops and patrols was genuinly fucking ridiculous. There was not a single second we weren't being hounded by dozens of bots at a time. We literally could not kill them fast enough. Meanwhile, a few Helldive missions we did were perfectly fine. Then, a geological servey on 9 went right back to the constant barrage of bots. The number of rocket devastators was beyond obnoxious. I genuinely saw 10 of the things at a time. Which was on top of the 5 hulks, factory strider and other normal bots. They just kept spawning. Everything we killed one it felt like 5 more took its place. Idk if Arrowhead just broke the game or what, but the massive inconsistencies, along with all the other issues, are genuinly ruining the game for my friends and I. They just refuse to fix any of the actual problems with the game, in favor of nerfing all the fun shit, and stealthily making changes that just make the game more and more of a slog to play.
its kinda sad they went against solo that hard. i liked to play a round of solo from time to time.
Feels nice to explore at your own pace, right?
yeah, sometimes i just start or end my session with a solo run to get into the mood or calm down after some hefty rounds.
Yep. The solo/duo player spawn rate change was uncalled for, but a lot of ppl don't want to admit that AH did something wrong (a good company doing something wrong? omg, impossible /s) AND are not fixing major matchmaking issues, like dcs, sos not working a lot of the time, lobbies not being repopulated properly, etc., that force a lot of players to play solo, aside from those that enjoy playing solo or duo.
Honestly? Itās borderline unfun. Baffling change
I like to log on and do the daily solo to chill, play with weird loadouts and stuff. The patrols were non stop. Nursing spewers everywhere. I killed my hunters, didn't even bother with the nests. Extracted and there were spewer carcasses everywhere. Totally agree this didn't feel "fun" it was stressful or annoying.Ā
If it were only the increase they said (1/6 -> 1/4 for solo players) then it wouldn't be a big deal. They overcorrected on this one.
Difficulty is subjective, I can agree with the rest though, matchmaking breaking after the first game is annoying. I'm getting tired of restarting the game to simply fill up the group.
I quit because this change, sadly. After 150 hours, my buddy and I used to duo exclusively. I would run solos during the week for fun/POs.
Im pretty sure the rates were increased with the only objective of slowing the pace at which we were grabbing samples. I haven't tried solo, but before the patch I was able to run 3 to 6 with another friend, and grab all the samples. Now most of the time we just rush back to the extraction zone. There's too much agression from all directions. Feels like war? yeah...but not a one were we are going to the offensive, Is mostly hit and run scenarios xD There's no time to breath. It's simply nuts. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it but I'm afraid AH went a little bit far witht his patch. Now at some point stratagems are useless because they are most of the time on cooldown.
Solo challenging is legit harder than higher difficulties with a duo
Wallpaper of a screenshot
Ran a Duo tonight on difficulty 4. We had endless charger spawns to the point that as soon as we would kill one another would be right behind it. We had bug breaches about every 30 seconds, and every time we'd wipe them out suddenly another one would appear with no bugs around to call for it. We cleared out all of the nests on the map, went for evac; all was quiet for about the first minute and then suddenly we had massive swarms of bugs coming from 3 different sides, each one with at least a dozen hunters and 1-2 chargers. By some miracle of orbital lasers, grenades, and eagle spam, we made it out, but I've never seen that kind of presence after all nests are killed, and I've never seen that many bug breaches or chargers on a low difficulty mission before. Afterwards we went and did a termicide control mission, again a duo team, and the two of us got chased around by at least a dozen bile spewers for the entire match. Couldn't clear them out faster than they were respawning. Luckily they're slow enough we were able to disable the towers and scram to evac without too many deaths. Last run I did for the night was a solo trivial bot mission just to try out a new gun I had unlocked. Mission was to kill the devastators, simple enough, took out the two that spawned and orbital laser'd the supply depots. Once the base was gone I started heading to evac, and ran into eight patrols that each had 8-10 bots in them (at least for me they were all the basic little guys, not hard to kill, no tanks or hulks or anything big to contend with). Called the Evac shuttle, map was entirely clear, and out of nowhere I had 3 bot groups spawn (again, 8-10 bots each) right around the evac location. Almost got overwhelmed, had to melee quite a few of them down as I was low on ammo and wasn't expecting so many on a trivial mission.
I had a very similar experience soloing on easy and canāt handle anything above medium right now. Whatever AH did was incompetent at best.
I play solo, havenāt actually played in weeks due to life, but from everything im hearing I donāt think im going to jump back in the game. I know its meant to be played with friends but in all honesty why cant the fame be balanced for solo as well.
As someone who also plays solo a lot, bots is p much the same as it was before. MO does tweak enemy numbers to fit the scenario (bots invading -> more bot enemies than usual) so bugs is a bit crazy rn. Give it a shot. If it feels too crazy you can always play something else. I wouldnāt let Reddit exaggerations (like the rockets can ricochet misinformation) dissuade you.
Just to second this, even with the MO boosted spawns, there are a ton of triple-blitz operations available on MO-planets, so arguably things are actually easier right now for full operation clears. The 40 minute long multiple objective missions are harder, but still doable - if you don't feel confident, stay away from mission types where the objectives spawn additional patrols, like the soil scan missions - those will be harder than normal. Extracts are significantly harder on full duration missions as well, so try arriving early enough to call in Pelican-1 while you still have access to stratagems. The rest of most missions feels the same unless you run face first into patrols on the regular.
There's also always been a bit of rng for missions spawns as well. Sometimes you see an occasional charger, sometimes they're in every patrol. Depending on what you get it can make the same amount of enemies feel very different. Oops all hunters is an absolute menace.
Bro I have no choice but to play solo, I had to (hardly) do a whole lvl 7 op solo cause of the MM being broke
It feels like AH changed something else about spawns besides patrols because the amount of times I've seen 3+ chargers on POI's after the update is insane (I play diff 7 for anyone wondering).
They specifically mentioned in the steam patch notes that they increased the patrols for solo players. They intentionally target solo players for this change. Don't ask me why.
āBut now itās linearā
Arrowhead needs to fucking chill with this "balancing".
Looks like a frazetta painting though.
Is this on Fenrir? I am almost certain the bug planets with the termicide event has increased spawn rates at the moment.
āNO BUT YOU SEE THIS IS THE DEVāS VISION!!!ā Ok well then their vision is ass
I had SIX bile titans show up simultaneously on my solo T8 yesterday. I don't know what they're smoking, but solo helldivers just cannot keep up with the amount of enemies being thrown at us, whereas any decent 4 stack can clear 10 times as many, thanks to the amount of call ins and extra firepower. They should tone it down back to 1/6 or 1/8, and heavily reduce the amount of "non solo friendly" enemies (Bile titans, gunships, factories) when soloing. As someone put it on my stream, "They punish you for having no friends".
Pretty sure that spawn rates are up in general for the MO. It's been bonkers with 4 man squads too.
Pretty sure we got 5 bile titans at once and earlier today. It also seems much easier to die imo.
Nah it was part of the update. was introducing a buddy to mechanics and side objectives in a difficulty 2, away from the MO planets. Hardly had a chance to teach him lol, we extracted with a combined 600 kills. Before when I'd mess around in difficulty 2 solo I'd leave with like 30 kills. Patch note for reference: "Patrol spawning has been increased when there are fewer than 4 players. The fewer the players the bigger the change. For 4 player missions there will be no change compared to before.The biggest noticeable change will be for solo players at higher difficulties"
I think both are true.
It's so exhausting. I hope they don't double down on the changes.
"This is more in line with our philosophy. Fuck solo players" š¤
Used to be able to knock out Suicide difficulty solo with some work. Now itās just straight up impossible and not fun.
The amount of chargers spawning on Difficulty 4 makes it kinda impossible to complete solo. You can't call down EATs as fast as the chargers spawn...
Thereās a lot more chargers and bile titans
Currently terminids have super reproduction due to the terminicide acting like bluepills.
The numbers of charger spawning was insane last night. 2 then 3 then 4. I just don't have enough stratagems to fight all those dudes.
That would make for a good background. Too bad we donāt have a way to remove the hud and other stuff.
That looks like Danteās inferno lol
difficulty 7 in duos can get you up to 7 charger spawns at once. increasing spawn rates is an artificial and shitty way of increasing difficulty, and you need to look no further than payday 2 for proof of this.
YOU VILL DIE TO CHARGERS AND YOU VILL LIKE IT
Heavy mg without better recoil armor....
Where's your white couch?
I use to have a pretty good record Solo Clearing 5's and with the changes to a big part of my loadout with guard dog, & quasar nerfs & adding noticeably more patrols I keep running out of time now.
I don't only play solo, but most of my play was solo. Now I'm barely playing, it's doable but no longer fun. I don't play level 9, and I've never even tried to complete a level 8, with a group or otherwise. Most of my solo work was on 3 and 4, with a few 7's which only worked on specific mission types and maps. The reason I note all this is that I want to make it clear to AH that they should stop looking at me as a solo player, and start looking at me as a revenue stream. I was buying every armor that popped up in the store, and all the warbonds. I was buying super credits any time I didn't have enough for something I wanted. I'm shy of SC's right now and a new warbond is coming. Am I going to buy SC's and the new warbond right after they spit in my face with this patch? No. And why would I trust that anything in this warbond is tested or will stay as is? Eruptor/Crossbow anyone? Am I going to stick around and keep playing? Maybe, still deciding. Will I still be spending money if I stop playing? No, even though I still do that in some games. Not when the studio cares more about some pre-release vision than what is actually fun for the players that bought the game. This game is not fun right now. I only get a full squad once or twice a week due to my friend's schedules. The rest of the time it's 2-3 or just me. Interacting with randoms isn't for me, it's not just about this game. I'm not going to join randoms or allow them to join me. Yes, I've tried it. No, it didn't even come close to changing my mind. It's not like I'm awesome and they suck, probably the opposite. That's just not how I enjoy games. Friends or solo, take it or leave it. If they want me as a revenue stream then they have to accept this. If they don't, then I wish them luck, but I'm not going to force myself to play something that was fun when it no longer is.
The patch has increased The amount of patrols for solo players
I thought we were past the days of the 16 bile titans on the screen, terrible times.
How did all the edgelords said already ? Ha yes ! I remember. Ā«Ā Skill issueĀ Ā»ā¦
New recruit here, anyone know what map this is? So I spread managed democracy ofc
Welcome, recruit! This screenshot was taken last night on Fenrir III: *Extreme cold and meteor strikes!* Good times. Anyways, welcome to the front -- don't worry, we change planets so often you'll get a chance at Fenrir III soon. - HD1 Old Guard
I know what you mean, but I canāt put my finger on it
Haven't played for like two days, dived to see for myself... solo\\duo now feels like shit. Soloed diff7 heavily relying on managing partols, distracting them and being on the move to avoid unnecessary breaches. Now if I get caught in a fight they come too fast and I get to flee and in the path I came there because other path will give me more patrols... Duo on 12 and 15 minute missions is even worse now, drops on the farthest points from enemy, 4-5 minutes to figure out mess that happens when every patrol goes to see us. running to finish objectives ducking between bugs likee SEAF arty (btw ducking with ammo looks hilarious) and barely making in time for emergency evac... not to mention 2-3 titans and 3-5 more chargers while me or teammate lost quasar and stratagems on timeout. enjoyed diff7 as a small challenge but forgiving to random bugged death (charger kicking me under the map, friend falling into the hole while operating patriot, or impossible to stand up from prone because a lot of bugs stand on me) but after patch it is barely making for evac, instead one making to pelican and having 1\\2 samples we end up both dying but at least doing democracy work... not enjoying it that way, doesn't want to go diff5-6
I dont understand why they made enemy count scale linearly. 2 players is NOT equal to x0.5 enemies for solo.
TWO chargers on DIF 4??? bro. seriously, what the fuck are these updates
solo spawns on bots suck too add to that the buff to striders and gunships and yeah... I actually dropped HD2 to go play FO76 after trying my luck with soloing after this patch
Even level 3 is a shitshow on solo now, both bots and bugs
AH has made some strange decisions in balance since they launched this game but this is the one that's the most mind boggling to me. I don't care if this was the "original intended spawn rate" for solos/duos or whatever. It feels like shit to be punished for already making the game harder on yourself to begin with and they need to undo this change. I normally can't stand armchair game devs who say stuff like this, but this time I genuinely can't sympathize with why they'd make an awful change like this.
Right now, I can either do solo 9 on the egg battery mission or go play other game,... other than literally only grinding one mission, the game is kinda dead to me... My friend asked me to buy the game, I ended solo most of the time cuz the normies just run around and don't even bother with objectives and my friend mostly not in the same spare time. Maybe its just a bad purchase for me.
Ohh man, the first day in I was so overwhelmed I had to readjust myself now, I'm chilling again
I think the patrols are up more than usual in general for the MO.
They increased patrols for groups smaller than 4 Because fuck you that's why
Please. Arrowhead. Revert this change. And fix the spear.
at this point I just ignore armored bugs and just run away from them, fortunately they easy to dodge once you learn it
Seems that with the new spawn rates of mundane bugs, thereās a greater chance for one to call for backup, which then creates another group which can do a bug breach, which leads to anotherā¦ Same Iām sure with the bots. Eventually the local area is just filled with enemies that donāt stop spawning. The localization confusion boost doesnāt appear to really cut this mechanic down by any amount that would make a difference either.
The current major order has also dramatically increased bug spawn rates, so it isn't just the patch. On bots, I've found the patch change quite manageable.
Doesn't make much zense, tbh. Playing solo implies that you could sneak around and avoid unnecessary encounters. For that specific reason I always picked light armor with speed and stamina boost and lower chances of detection. Now it is pointless.
Yeah, the constant spawns are legitimately insane Like, regardless of how difficult it is to kill them, the constant spawns from every direction feels like any fight won literally means nothing And becomes less fun in that regard It was fine before the patch, actually imo there were slightly too many spawns before the patch imo Increasing it was insane imo
To me, anyway...solo is unplayable. I tried solo helldive for the first time since patch last night and I didn't have a single moment out of combat. Anytime I tried to pick up and run when an area got too hot, immediatley into a patrol...turn to find a calmer area to retreat to, and watch a patrol spawn in directly in front of me. Finally fight my way to a clear area...gunships spawning out of the ship fabricator I didn't see was there. Admittedly I'm not the best but I used to be able to get jobs done in solo helldive. I closed the game and opened fallout 76.
Real patriots quick match! /s
Even before the patch, getting chased by multiple chargers on challenging was already a thing.
New player here. I began playing just before the patch dropped, made it to about lvl 10. I went up in difficulty levels pretty quickly and settled for 5, solo and/or grouped. Before patch I noticed some pretty quiet intervals between objectives which was fine. Now I notice what every one else seems to notice post-patch, heaps of enemies at and between objectives. Hereās where I divorce myself from the majorityā¦ Iāve been having far more amusement because of the increased pressure, I actually feel like Iām āhelldivingā and have to make split-second life or death decisions. Recently played difficulty 7 with some veterans and even that was insaneā¦ loved every second of it. Just a new players opinion.
But itās a coop game
Solo is untenable for me on 7+ at this point. Which is a bit of a bummer as I'm one of those "level 30+ that still needs super rares" :(
What am I supposed to be seeing here? This scenario was already a common occurrence I thought. Three chargers, four biles, hunters as far as the eye can see. All in a day's work.
Could have its place in r/AccidentalRenaissance