Feedback on a fix for difficulty being lowered after mission restart

[Dmitriy]

The issue was reported here.

This bug is causing game difficulty to become lower after a mission restart. Now mission restart will not lower difficulty. It is proportionally increased with the number of players. This fix is quite balance changing. 8-player games on Brutal will become much harder. 4-player games are slightly affected too. As this issue was present since Alien Swarm we want to hear your feedback to decide whether we keep the change or revert it to how it was before.

[Bounty]

From what I've tested I can say it'll definitely affect rushers in 8 player coop

[Orange]

Drones should have hp based on difficulty only, not less with game bugs, not more with overplayers.

[ʇlɐS uoʇɹoW]

This ,,fix" effect railgun, marksman rifle and desert eagle, now if 5th or 6th player join this weps turn into trash :/

[Orange]

game turned to trash indeed, good job

[Roberta]

Цитата допису Orange:

game turned to trash indeed, good job

every modern game has a difficulty step if you find it hard to play, you put the difficulty lower if you are spoiled by how easy it was to play unbalanced simple cards or your level of game trash, it is your problem. Even the first version of the game had a step difficulty balance, 8 players greatly spoiled the complexity of the game and made a margin in the direction of the marine. Especially it opens up the potential of the game, allowing you to introduce new weapons.

[ʇlɐS uoʇɹoW]

Цитата допису Roberta:

Цитата допису Orange:

game turned to trash indeed, good job

every modern game has a difficulty step if you find it hard to play, you put the difficulty lower if you are spoiled by how easy it was to play unbalanced simple cards or your level of game trash, it is your problem. Even the first version of the game had a step difficulty balance, 8 players greatly spoiled the complexity of the game and made a margin in the direction of the marine. Especially it opens up the potential of the game, allowing you to introduce new weapons.

Giving more hp and making half of weapons even more useless isnt real difficulty step, now it feels limited even more what to pick while joining 8 players server and dont tell me that joining 4 players server or lower difficulty is viable solution for it.

[Roberta]

Цитата допису Morton Salt:

Giving more hp and making half of weapons even more useless isnt real difficulty step

Yes, this is the step of difficulty. On the map spawn a certain number of enemies, your weapon on all your ammunition deals 6000 damage, this is enough to destroy all enemies, joins the second player and the Marines get a fantastic advantage against others because the total possible damage with the same weapon will grow to 12000, then connects another 6 players and the total number of HP enemies is not enough to fight versus marines. If you increase the number of aliens it will lead to a load on the server and lag. Btw some map increase number aliens, and this lead to lags and increased number are not enough to cover all damageю One map contains ~200 enemy, than 8 players must change to ~1000 aliens?

[76561198395341547]

ok let me clear up something here, I think there is a slight misunderstanding.
This is a FEEDBACK thread on the changes introduced as required by Dmitriy.
Everyone is welcome to give his opinion(or not), whatever the playstyle :
if you're a gl rusher, a flamer rusher, an ASBI player, a lvl 1 challenge player, or even if you fit none of those categories or another one I can't recall at the moment.

Every opinion is worth it, although it's best if you give context to your feedback.

Please avoid discussing other people's opinions in an aggressive manner, and avoid over-arguing for nothing or for trying to be "right". There is no right or wrong when it comes to what one person enjoys as a playstyle. Try to stay constructive instead.

Thank you very much for all provided feedback so far.

[Revenant]

If seriously this changes with hp doesn't make sense,because worst weapons gets even more worst,became trash.Bad balance.This update only for flamer nubs.So you want to offer gameplay with flamers on ASBI?No,thanks.Fix the bug,dont touch hp.

[Nyu]

stay with the fix = kill the game.
gg

[Ax-now]

I quite agree with Orange, the difficulty should be the same if there are 4 players or 8 players, it should be evaluated only according to the difficulty chosen.

[Xero]

This fix would kill most if not all weapons such as (railgun, marksman rifle, devastator) which are generally only viable on certain characters to begin with (crash, wildcat).

Basically it would kill certain unique playstyles which would cause them to fit the mold of say gl/ammo crash or minigun wildcat, losing their unique playstyle.

The reason medrifle update (which I was wrong about) was so good for bastille is that it gave him a certain playstyle unique to him, this update would kill unique playstyles to certain marines like wildcat or crash.

So I concur with orange, nyu, rev, morton, and ax on the update, don't go through with it please.

[Eerie-Eg]

Also need rebalance for tier 1 and tier2

[ZaidusRecon]

Personally, I would like both
-the actual difficulty to be dependent only on the selected difficulty
-the unique playstyles, and especially one-shot weapons, to be valid on these difficulties.

Of course this would require more rebalancing than merely the subject bug/fix.

I can't say anything about the higher difficulty tiers, I don't really play those.

As for assisting players in repeated attempts of a difficult mission, perhaps other features should be pursued. I for one prefer to overcome a challenge by improving myself, not by gaining an unfair advantage.

[Nyu]

i played today.
even on vanilla brutal this weapons are complet trash now if 8 player play:
Techrifle (even with crash)
Rifle
Heavyrifle
Pistols
PWD
Autogun
Minigun (wolfe is playable with it)
Sniper
Railgun
Deagle
Devastator
shotgun
GL-, FLAME- and Standartturret
Healbeacon

weapons that are still okay or good
Tesla
Iceturret
Chainsaw
Ammo
Medgun
Medigun
Medicrifle

weapons that are even more OP:
Flamer
Grenadelauncher


Chars that are bad now:
Crash if not GL
Sarge if not GL
Bastille if not Medrifle (double or with ammo) and GL
Wolfe if not GL
Wildcat if not GL
Jaeger if not GL
Vegas if not GL and chainsaw


also bad placed Firemines and Gasnades dont kill anymore on Brutal Vanilla.


Meelee in Brutal vanilla on normal drone:
vegas: 3 hits
jaeger: 4
everyone else: 5 or 6



all variety that was possible got killed.
Everything that is not Grenadelauncher is bad now.
Flamerkiting is even a cheesier strat now and OP as heck with gl combi.

only weapons you can trust if people join and leave (enemies HP scales changes every round), are flamer tesla GL and ammo now.


everyone who defends this change, has no gamesense and has no plan how to play this game (or just likes that GL got "buffed")

EDIT: VINDI IS MEH