Hazard 5 + all modifiers review

[babuk.fracal]

So

After giving a shot to the various mission types at the current maximum hazard here are my thoughts for each mission type and each modifiers.

Mission types :

Mining expdedition :

The short variant can be fun, the bigger variant can be quite the trouble
Overall, this is nice on the maximum hazard but getting the first resup can be very rng dependant on the longer variant.

Egg hunt :

Weirdly enough this was one of the mission I liked the least during this, small caves have always been dangerous but its even more true here.
Most of the time, the cave generation doesn't feel adapted to what you have to do.
Sure you could sit in a tunnel and fend everything, but wheres the fun in that.
8 eggs drag on

Refinery :

Main issue here is the start, spittballers and barrage infector are way too numerous, tanky and deadly for the kind of situation the game throw at you here.
Especially if your build isn't great against those.
Aside from that, the mission is pretty good in this setting.

Salvage :

The start isn't as rough as I feared, the uplink and refuel are really challenging but in a very good way.
Its hard but as expected.
The rest of the mission is pretty normal.

Point extraction :

A bit of a mixed feeling, Its not that special but can quickly go overboard depending on your team.
I guess I can say that its good since it plays like usual PE but more intense.

Escort :

The travel and refuel are fine, as long you have enough crowd control.
The heartstone itself can be very tricky.
Main issue is dotty resistance, its health lower very quickly unless you always keep an eye and manage to fix at the right time and have a good gunner that use his shield correctly.
Also the flying rocks phase is a bit too absurd with 4 players.

Elimination :

Probably the least interesting one
The main thing is fighting dreads but the modfiers don't do much for them and just make the mission tedious because it mainly affects the groups spawns.
Classic and hiveguard don't feel that different, twins are very annoying because of player vulnerability.

Sabotage :

It does make the hacking part more interesting but it doesn't make them less repetitive.
Also I am very disappointed that the caretaker fight isn't that different.

Deep scan :

Maybe the most interesting one.
Swarms stops when you connected all the scanners which means you are heavily rewarded for your speed.
The drillevator doesn't feel unfair most of the time.
Main nitpick would be like refinery, the start being too rough, but the difference in the cave generation tend to make up for it.

Modifiers :

Aggressive enemies 2 :

The best one honestly, having all the enemies run that fast is great for a game like this.

More enemies 2 :

Usually great, main issue is when the game decide to spam a bit too many of some specials and stationnaries, don't be surprised to play a mission as if it has mactera plague sometimes.

Player vulnerability 2 :

Very interesting but could be better.
Enemies that can two/one shot you despite not having a very limited way of dealing damage like bulks can be very weird.
The increased friendly fire damage shouldn't be a thing.
For the rest its pretty good.

Tough enemies 2 :

The worst one
it kills build variety
And it makes a lot of moments and fights not harder but just longer and therefore boring.
This one is not interesting.

Events :

Most of them share a similar issue to dreadnoughts, they arn't buffed in an interesting way.
Events that spawn enemies tend to be very overtuned.

["Donut☆]

Originally posted by babuk.fracal:

Also the flying rocks phase is a bit too absurd with 4 players.

This is something I've noticed too and it's definitely something they should look at. The modifiers shouldn't affect the rocks in my opinion.

[Iluszachane]

Originally posted by "Donut☆:

Originally posted by babuk.fracal:

Also the flying rocks phase is a bit too absurd with 4 players.

This is something I've noticed too and it's definitely something they should look at. The modifiers shouldn't affect the rocks in my opinion.

I think it's fine for that modifier to affect the rocks, and I think that players who don't know how to prioritize/handle the rocks shouldn't be playing H5+ Escort with max enemy spawns.

[SamuraiCheems]

Originally posted by babuk.fracal:

Player vulnerability 2 :

Very interesting but could be better.
Enemies that can two/one shot you despite not having a very limited way of dealing damage like bulks can be very weird.
The increased friendly fire damage shouldn't be a thing.
For the rest its pretty good.

Tough enemies 2 :

The worst one
it kills build variety
And it makes a lot of moments and fights not harder but just longer and therefore boring.
This one is not interesting.

You find toughness to be the worst? Interesting, I think player vulnerability is the most annoying one by a long shot, just feels unbalanced compared to the others. The toughness modifier is my 2nd least favorite, but I would only disable it for dreadnaught and caretaker missions, other then that I have no issue with it. How do you deal with player vulnerability to make it your second-most annoyance?

[kestrel]

player vulnerability is the worst by far, having to treat every single enemy like it's a bulk detonator just gets exhausting, and combined with aggressive enemies it can legitimately feel unplayable at times
theres a difference between fun and interesting difficulty and just making everything oneshot you. that's not hard, it's just stupid. there's no sense of target prioritization when even a grunt can 1tap your shields

a lot of modded difficulties focus on creating interesting wave patterns with more diverse enemy combinations and in my opinion that's what GSG should've taken inspiration from rather than just fattening up enemy stats and calling it a day
H5+ being built on the back of H5 means there's still a lot of downtime where nothing happens a lot of the time

also tough enemies 2 is the biggest demonstration of why modded has reduced resupply costs, i do not want to spend %20 of my ammo killing one praetorian

[babuk.fracal]

Originally posted by EntirelySoulless:

Originally posted by babuk.fracal:

Player vulnerability 2 :

Very interesting but could be better.
Enemies that can two/one shot you despite not having a very limited way of dealing damage like bulks can be very weird.
The increased friendly fire damage shouldn't be a thing.
For the rest its pretty good.

Tough enemies 2 :

The worst one
it kills build variety
And it makes a lot of moments and fights not harder but just longer and therefore boring.
This one is not interesting.

You find toughness to be the worst? Interesting, I think player vulnerability is the most annoying one by a long shot, just feels unbalanced compared to the others. The toughness modifier is my 2nd least favorite, but I would only disable it for dreadnaught and caretaker missions, other then that I have no issue with it. How do you deal with player vulnerability to make it your second-most annoyance?

Originally posted by kestrel:

player vulnerability is the worst by far, having to treat every single enemy like it's a bulk detonator just gets exhausting, and combined with aggressive enemies it can legitimately feel unplayable at times
theres a difference between fun and interesting difficulty and just making everything oneshot you. that's not hard, it's just stupid. there's no sense of target prioritization when even a grunt can 1tap your shields

I will always prefer taking more damage over having to deal more damage.
And I guess playing something like payday 2 where you end up fighting a ton of ranged enemies with overtuned damage heavily affect how I see this.

I found it unfair at first but got used to it.

Crowd control and target priority mostly.
Even in this, there are ways to make sure the crowds are not the highest threat.
Meanwhile, you need to be extra carefull towards hvt's and things alike
Main thing though is the difference between solo and multi.
There are ways to handle everything in solo.
Meanwhile in multi, its just best to focus on some aspects of your build.

For exemple, while taking driller I simply prefer having a ton of crowd control so that my team can focus on what they can easily deal with.

Originally posted by kestrel:

a lot of modded difficulties focus on creating interesting wave patterns with more diverse enemy combinations and in my opinion that's what GSG should've taken inspiration from rather than just fattening up enemy stats and calling it a day
H5+ being built on the back of H5 means there's still a lot of downtime where nothing happens a lot of the time

also tough enemies 2 is the biggest demonstration of why modded has reduced resupply costs, i do not want to spend %20 of my ammo killing one praetorian

While I do consider modded to be better when you are looking for a custom difficulty, I prefer to avoid comparing the two too much.

Haz 5 + hasn't existed for years and been tweaked by many players.
And its not handled by what I would call...
Dopamine addicts.

I am the kind of player that like to check every part of a community.

And drg do have that one part of the community that got bored of vanilla and always want a bigger challenge.

I am not against dealing with a bigger challenge, but I am very disturbed by people who think they always have to play with the most difficult thing.

(Btw this isn't just for drg modded players, this also apply to pretty much any person that ruin the game for themselves by always wanting more)

And the differences between modded and haz 5+ are a big proof of that.

Aside from PE, I think gsg doesn't want to change the usual pattern/rythm of the game.

[tcpl]

What do you guys think of tougher enemies being reworked as a resistance to non-damage status effects, kind of like an unstoppable perk for bugs, so that at two pips stun/fear/phero last half as long, slows are half as effective, etc. Maybe 50% is too harsh, as I wouldn't want the effects to be useless, but you get the idea. Maybe a per-effect duration reduction, so that the more egregious effects like phero are more punished than others.

[kestrel]

Originally posted by babuk.fracal:

I will always prefer taking more damage over having to deal more damage.
And I guess playing something like payday 2 where you end up fighting a ton of ranged enemies with overtuned damage heavily affect how I see this.

in the context of DRG specifically there's a limit to how much damage bugs can realistically do before it goes from hard to stupid

if we were talking about singleplayer games, which have consistent enemy spawn locations and you know what's going to happen ahead of time on repeat playthroughs, i would agree with you %100. but DRG is very random and chaotic, levels are randomly generated and what types of enemies you get changes between missions. that's not a bad thing obviously, but i think more/aggressive enemies adds to that behaviour and player vuln/tough enemies takes away from it. that's why so many more people are running the former modifiers over the latter

While I do consider modded to be better when you are looking for a custom difficulty, I prefer to avoid comparing the two too much.

Haz 5 + hasn't existed for years and been tweaked by many players.
And its not handled by what I would call...
Dopamine addicts.

I am the kind of player that like to check every part of a community.

And drg do have that one part of the community that got bored of vanilla and always want a bigger challenge.

I am not against dealing with a bigger challenge, but I am very disturbed by people who think they always have to play with the most difficult thing.

(Btw this isn't just for drg modded players, this also apply to pretty much any person that ruin the game for themselves by always wanting more)

And the differences between modded and haz 5+ are a big proof of that.

Aside from PE, I think gsg doesn't want to change the usual pattern/rythm of the game.

i understand, a lot of modded players have pretty annoying dispositions (PDRG in particular is insufferable) but the fact is people who make modded diffs have spent a lot more time refining and improving the gameplay
H5+ will likely never reach the level of refinement and customizability that you can get from using custom difficulty, and that's fine, i don't expect it to. what we got was a great starting point but i still think it needs a lot of tweaks and rebalances

[kestrel]

Originally posted by tcpl:

What do you guys think of tougher enemies being reworked as a resistance to non-damage status effects, kind of like an unstoppable perk for bugs, so that at two pips stun/fear/phero last half as long, slows are half as effective, etc. Maybe 50% is too harsh, as I wouldn't want the effects to be useless, but you get the idea. Maybe a per-effect duration reduction, so that the more egregious effects like phero are more punished than others.

nah i dont like that, it would change the game too much

personally i'd be fine with tough enemies only applying to enemies with player scaling (like most HVTs) whilst leaving grunts and mactera alone

[Iluszachane]

Elimination with Toughness 2 was a blast today, to my surprise. We were going through ammo like crazy, had to dispatch Scout in the middle of the final battle to go scrape nitra off the walls for a clutch resupply, barely made it out. Just like the good old days.

[babuk.fracal]

Originally posted by Iluszachane:

Elimination with Toughness 2 was a blast today, to my surprise. We were going through ammo like crazy, had to dispatch Scout in the middle of the final battle to go scrape nitra off the walls for a clutch resupply, barely made it out. Just like the good old days.

It would be more fitting to share your experience in an elimination with all the modifiers turned on.