Deep Dives - Solo vs Multiplayer

[koan]

I love the rewards. Weapon overclocks, cosmetics, (...) mineral containers, and I feel a strong compulsion to complete both deep dives every week. I hate the idea that I'm missing out on potentially sweet weapon builds by not participating, and so I've completed every single one since the update. The only issue I have is one that a lot of people may not share with me, but nonetheless, I'll share it here.

Out of every single Deep Dive and Elite Deep Dive that has been released, I have completed 2, of the lot, with other people. The vast majority of the Deep Dives I have played have been solo.

I've solo'ed nearly all of the deep dives since day one. The risk of playing with a full team of random people that may or may not be good enough to complete the challenge is simply not worth the reward when you take into consideration the massive waste in time if you lose. At least if you solo, you have a companion that does as you say immediately, making optimal and timely progression as thorough as you can manage.

Keep in mind that in theory, having a group of strong, experienced players is the intended method of completing these events, and doing so should increase your odds of completing them. I have found this to be easier said than done when it comes to finding these people. Finding players like this is very doable, but that takes time and you may end up needing to leave the game to do so.

If you do have a squad who share concern about nitra prioritization, quick objective completion, and teamwork, then you have the ideal squad and this should be a walk in the park. In my experience, though, the criteria needed is not easily detectable in players before the start of the dive. So you just have to hope that your team of supposedly experienced, promoted dwarves can handle it... and if they can't, you've wasted so much time you may as well have logged off and read a book.

My point of this post is to highlight the disparity between solo and multiplayer when it comes down to the deep dives. There's no reason to go through the trouble, and take the risks associated with completing them with other players. You can solo them with relative ease and doing so will almost guarantee you those rewards... But it's very boring. Going through the trouble of completing them in multiplayer gives you no meaningful rewards. Perhaps if this were the case, and you were given bonus infused matrix cores (or something) upon completion with other players, this disparity would be fixed and players would be more compelled to play with others.

TL;DR - With how much effort it takes to complete Deep Dives in multiplayer, you may as well go the easy rout and complete them solo.

Am I the only person who's detected this? What are your thoughts? Do you prefer going solo or in a team? What's your experience in finding a suitable team?

[dimi]

Originally posted by PsychicSploob:

There's no reason to go through the trouble, and take the risks associated with completing them with other players. You can solo them with relative ease and doing so will almost guarantee you those rewards... But it's very boring.

I completely agree. I'm at the point where I don't really care about the deep dives anymore. I want to play the game to have fun, but as you said, solo play is just too boring and I don't want to even attempt deep dives with randumbs anymore after I got kicked from one late in the deep dive.

Originally posted by PsychicSploob:

Keep in mind that in theory, having a group of strong, experienced players is the intended method of completing these events

Citation needed, I didn't read anything about the devs' intentions. Although I agree that based on how things are, it looks that way. But I have a faint hope that this wasn't their intention.
I loved this game because it is encouraging and enabling playing with random people online. The way the deep dives work, again as you said, disencourages you to play with randoms, it's of course viable, but with the required higher time investment, if you join a toxic team or host, you'll lose more.
I think the way the deep dives work should be redesigned, because with the next update I don't see myself even attempt edds, not because they are too hard, but the rewards for it is just too low for me, especially if I have to play solo or join randumbs. Although frankly I don't really care too much about earning a single new beard for a single class or a bosco skin and a couple of (most likely) useless overclocks for a few hours of play. But that's my subjective opinion.

[FeelZeSchadenfreude]

Finding a suitable team consistently just takes a combination of effort, ruthlessness, and personal capability that not many people have.

If you just open a lobby for EDD and see what comes in, you'll be spending a long time playing whack a mole kicking people, or failing over and over if the EDD isn't abnormally easy like the current one. Most of the playerbase does not play Haz5 on the harder mutators, and won't do well in Haz5 equivalent EDD with said mutators.

Your best bet is just to be a Haz5 regular that knows other Haz5 regulars. Or, if you can't spam your friends list, early in the refresh cycle just start up the core hunt missions on Haz5, see the randoms you get, kick the weak links, then queue for EDD once the assignment is done.

Players won't feel compelled to play with others if you add more rewards for completing it in a team. After all, you need to actually *win*, and no teammate is often better than a bad teammate due to scaling.

[Mortal]

Same problem here, usually i play Deep Dive Elite alone because most players are really bad. =(

[Cactus-Cat]

I finished all normal and elite Deep Dives with random players. So far I have finished all of them on the first try, except one EDD were a Bulk Detonator spawned 10m away from the Uplink zone.
And I tried to finish a EDD in solo mode only once, but I somehow always died to an earthquake and exploder combo.
This experience told me to always avoid to play any Deep Dive alone. I rather play with random players than with Bosco.

[koan]

Originally posted by Lokimut:

I finished all normal and elite Deep Dives with random players. So far I have finished all of them on the first try, except one EDD were a Bulk Detonator spawned 10m away from the Uplink zone.
And I tried to finish a EDD in solo mode only once, but I somehow always died to an earthquake and exploder combo.
This experience told me to always avoid to play any Deep Dive alone. I rather play with random players than with Bosco.

You should buy a lottery ticket with luck like that lol

[Gottfried]

Originally posted by Lokimut:

I finished all normal and elite Deep Dives with random players. So far I have finished all of them on the first try, except one EDD were a Bulk Detonator spawned 10m away from the Uplink zone.
And I tried to finish a EDD in solo mode only once, but I somehow always died to an earthquake and exploder combo.
This experience told me to always avoid to play any Deep Dive alone. I rather play with random players than with Bosco.

Same experience here. I really cant relate to all these people here that only encounter seemingly stupid randoms.

[phenir]

I do the deep dives in a duo. Enemies aren't much tougher or more numerous than solo but the other player is much more useful than bosco where it counts, in a fight.

[Matt]

Originally posted by PsychicSploob:

There's no reason to go through the trouble, and take the risks associated with completing them with other players. You can solo them with relative ease and doing so will almost guarantee you those rewards... But it's very boring.

My reason is fun. I haven't played this game solo since the tutorial. I'd rather lose than play solo. Consider it variable difficulty. :D Or the mythical hazard 6.

Having played with you, I know you can solo carry regular dives regardless of who you're with. Elites maybe not entirely carry a 4 man on your own, BUT, what's 10-30 mins extra time spent having fun with a little risk vs. being bored with no risk?

All but one week, I've cleared the elite dive with randoms first try.

[Ataxio]

This is exactly why I only play heavily team oriented games with my crew, nothing and nobody can compare.

Tried one game with randoms, it was meh. No communication over voice or text, I did the only talking. However this game is not nearly as punishing as say... Guns of Icarus. Partly why that game died is because the player had little to no control over being able to form their crew or lock in say 3 out of 4 people. Here we do and its great. The more control the player has the better.

Keep saying "Yes" to the player devs, you are doing great things!

[Syncourt]

I complete them solo first as well, just to make sure I get the OCs out of the way. But then I will help others on my friends list to complete them in co-op, which are all people I've played with who are more or less hazard 5 capable and fun to play with. I've never done them with complete random teams, though I do usually leave extra slots public if we have any.

If you take a really good team with you, it's much easier than solo. I dont see a problem with choosing to play this way.

The thing I do find that makes solo so easy though is that bosco revives reset per map and that you can use resupply pods 4 times. I really think this should change and resupplies should only have 2 uses in solo at the most.

[RamsesIICP]

If all you want is the reward then solo is the easiest way, but the game is more entertaining with randoms. The goal for me is to have fun, and figuring out your companion's strengths and weaknesses, scrambling to rescue them, teaching them new skills, and saluting them when you succeed is a blast. Grinding slowly through a mission avoiding most of the enemies just to get some random component that has at least 50% odds of being useless isn't that interesting to me.

[koan]

Originally posted by Syncourt:

If you take a really good team with you, it's much easier than solo. I dont see a problem with choosing to play this way.

Just to clarify, I don't mean to suggest that playing the Deep Dives in multiplayer is a bad idea or that it is a problem somehow! I would love to play Deep Dives in groups, and I often do end up helping my friends and such get their overclocks in much the same way you describe in your post. As Matt said, I do think that playing with less experienced players can be fun and I see it as a variable in difficulty.

At the end of the day, though (or should I say 'at the beginning of the week?'), when it comes down to the rewards, I do as you do and complete them solo to be assured the cores. I just think this process is a little boring and that is my only gripe. I would prefer to play in multiplayer, but the risks are a bit heavy, especially as someone who doesn't always have enough time to attempt multiple tries.

[=Snappy=]

I agree that it's kinda a shame that certain things in this game are easiest solo. It's lonely (and dark/scary) in the mines with no one but useless bosco, silent molly, and that twit in mission control keeping u company. (...And the bugs of course.)

In DDs and EDDs tho, I don't think I have done any solo.

I have played all w/ basically randoms and while I have had a couple that were doomed from the get-go, and a couple that were uber-elite, most were near the middle of the curve.

Talking EDDs, even random teams have been more toward the skilled end of the curve. Nitra prioritization? I mean .. come on! You're not going to win an EDD if u screw around / don't have a team that has at bare minimum a "haz 4" grasp on this game. Only 1-2 times did I have total clueless ppl on my team, and that was earlier, soon after the update came out. By now, I think the ppl who truly can't hang at EDDs have probably figured out that nobody can carry them thru this, and they just stay away.

Also FWIW, I have done the EDDs at two extremes: a couple, within the last 12-16 hours before the weekly rollover, and a few, within the first 12-16 hours after the weekly rollover. Take a guess which time slot tends to attract the more-elite players... ;)

As for normal DDs, I think I have only had a team legit fail, once. Though there have been a 2-3 times in DD/EDD overall that have been abortions cuz someone dropped/quit/etc.

[0ptimistPrime (the Gray)]

Originally posted by Matt:

Originally posted by PsychicSploob:

There's no reason to go through the trouble, and take the risks associated with completing them with other players. You can solo them with relative ease and doing so will almost guarantee you those rewards... But it's very boring.

My reason is fun.

This was my response as I was reading through the OP.

Yeah, you can complete the Deep Dives solo and you have more control over how that plays out. But in my experience it takes longer and, as you said, it's boring.

If someone wants to do it the longer and more boring way, by all means go for it. There's nothing wrong with doing Dives solo, nor is there anything wrong with wanting to do them solo.
If you want to take a little risk and have notably more fun, then I recommend doing it with other players.

Even if you fail some attempts, the reward is entertainment. I have fun playing the game even when the mission is a failure and I get beans for experience/gold. But I don't feel an overwhelming desire for XP/Gold anyway. And if I run Dives with other players and for some reason I still don't complete the Dive by the last 1-2 days, I can choose to solo it at that time.

[RainingMetal]

First Deep Dive I did was solo because I didn't know people couldn't join mid game. Sadly, this was the one with the ghost Detonator. So for that mutation, I wouldn't do it solo.