Wonderful, but...

[bobfairmead]

You who created this should feel proud. It is a marvellous achievement. Not only could I not write the program, I didn't even imagine the concept. It is wonderful. But there is a but. Well, a few, actually.

I have played Half Life 2 and its Episodes to death, and I know it very well. And I know that in Synergy...
- enemies are (four) times harder to kill
- there are many more enemies than in the same part of the actual game, not only Combine soldiers, but also Striders and Hunters
- there are fewer powerups - ammo, health, etc
- enemies do not behave as they behave in the actual game **

What you have created is a huge achievement, but you have removed the gameplay.
One of Half Life 2's greatest attributes was that it was always doable, and victory was always assured. There were some frantic times, and death was a regular visitor, but, mostly, it was a cruise and a pleasure. Synergy is just die after die after die. And that's not fun. Half Life 2 is a fun game, take away the fun and there is no game.
This will probably be the only complaint of its kind. This is because other gamers would be far too frightenedly macho to make such a claim. I'm too old and secure in my masculinity to give toss about macho. You have made it too hard, and removed the fun part. I liked the fun part.
The basic concept is brilliant, changing the gameplay is just wrong. It's not as if you don't have Level to play with. Easy in Synergy should exactly match Easy in Half Life 2, and so on. If you want to increase the difficulty, then just add another Level, or Levels.
I have absolutely no idea how easy or difficult it will be to edit the programming, but please edit it to match the original in gameplay.
I have stopped playing Synergy, and now only play Modular Combat with others, but we like to play cooperative now and then.
Thank you.
But, seriously, Well done.

** The Bridge. In the original game, the ship flies around the bridge allowing me to change position to shoot the thing down. In Synergy, the ship remains in one place, hiding behind the bridge's substantial metal work, and is much much much more difficult to shoot down. It's a different game, and not one I want to play. Soz.

[crobb]

Synergy is completely doable, you're just bad at the game. They're still stupidly easy to kill. They're coop tweaks so the game isn't overly easy. There's like 8 players and if the ship flew around as normal, it would get gangraped. If you're playing with just a friend check in the server hosting settings and there should be a checkbox for classic mode or something, which disables all coop tweaks.

[Axipixel]

The balances and changes in Synergy are in there for good reason, mainly not to make the game too easy when there are a ton of players running around. I already often play Synergy on the highest difficulty almost completely alone with someone else joining me being a rare occurance

[jonnyquattro]

"Vintage mode" is what you want. In the create server dialog. Removes all the extra BS you may not like. It's currently only complete till ravenholm. Still a WIP. Also the AI has to be slightly changed for multiple players. Sorry but - Not sorry. We're still working on things regardless. Give it time. Hopefull you'll revisit the mod again one day.

[{99th}Jaybird5678]

soooo wait i dont understand... you cant just do classic mode and lower all the enemies? im sure about all of the steam community can do that. if you cant do that then theres something wrong