Adjustable enemy density

[Valfaun]

I wonder, would it hurt the game in any way if we could manually adjust the enemy density in solo play? I don't even care about the drops, I just want to fight against Steel Path mob density without the Steel Path enemy levels and modifiers sometimes and I want to do it alone. It would simply be more fun and some frames only really thrive when facing lots of enemies

[quxier]

1 hour ago, Valfaun said:

I wonder, would it hurt the game in any way if we could manually adjust the enemy density in solo play? I don't even care about the drops, I just want to fight against Steel Path mob density without the Steel Path enemy levels and modifiers sometimes and I want to do it alone. It would simply be more fun and some frames only really thrive when facing lots of enemies

+1 Even on SP, density is sometimes bad.

[Nekomian]

My only concern with adjustable densities is some systems already struggle to spawn enough as is (both in SP and Circuit), since all of the entities follow their own AI routines and pathing and it can add up very quickly. If they could better optimize some of the routines I'd see no problem with it though, up to some high number cap so it's not too limited but also not breaking the game with like 200 enemies at once. I could see problems with this if users have a choice of density and it does different things across different systems, causing a lot more aggression towards "less performant" systems for hosting since they'd impact drops and resources and stuff, so that really would need to be resolved first.

[(PSN)Nierou]

It definitely needs to happen for survival, it shouldn't be complete RNG if you can manage to go 20 minutes and even then killing the trickle of enemies makes it feel like a drag. Farming for ambassador BP is a real chore and I have had runs where I burn all the air supply and the handful of enemies don't drop any forcing me to extract. 

Even if they don't make it SP equivalent, even just copying Duviri's survival spawn would go a long way although they should not reduce the drops like duviri since you can get scarily close to 0 no matter how many you kill.

[quxier]

2 hours ago, Naroxas44 said:

My only concern with adjustable densities is some systems already struggle to spawn enough as is (both in SP and Circuit), since all of the entities follow their own AI routines and pathing and it can add up very quickly. If they could better optimize some of the routines I'd see no problem with it though, up to some high number cap so it's not too limited but also not breaking the game with like 200 enemies at once. I could see problems with this if users have a choice of density and it does different things across different systems, causing a lot more aggression towards "less performant" systems for hosting since they'd impact drops and resources and stuff, so that really would need to be resolved first.

I wonder where that argument about system struggling with AI density comes from? I'm running game on old & weak pc. Yet I don't see difference between normal and sp. On other hand every time Lotus or someone talk my games goes from ~25fps to 1/2 of that.

[Valfaun]

4 hours ago, Naroxas44 said:

My only concern with adjustable densities is some systems already struggle to spawn enough as is (both in SP and Circuit), since all of the entities follow their own AI routines and pathing and it can add up very quickly. If they could better optimize some of the routines I'd see no problem with it though, up to some high number cap so it's not too limited but also not breaking the game with like 200 enemies at once. I could see problems with this if users have a choice of density and it does different things across different systems, causing a lot more aggression towards "less performant" systems for hosting since they'd impact drops and resources and stuff, so that really would need to be resolved first.

Hm... I haven't really noticed any issues with spawns on Steel Path myself, but I probably kill slower than most players. Like, yeah, if I eradicate half the room at once in a Survival then it'll take a couple seconds for new spawns to flood in, but that's about it. Again, though, I know there are skilled players who kill much faster than I do. 

I wouldn't ask for freely adjustable mob densities. Rather, just like... a selectable player count scaling, if that makes sense, from 1 up to 4 players. So it would top out at Steel Path mob density, which as I understand is equivalent to that of a full squad in Normal Mode. Spawning even more beyond that might get excessive indeed and cause various performance issues as you noted. 

I specifically suggested the whole thing to only apply for solo play, primarily because I figured that having 4 levels of mob density would otherwise cause matchmaking issues and fragmentation of the player base. 

[Luka-Song]

On 2023-07-10 at 5:55 PM, Valfaun said:

Rather, just like... a selectable player count scaling, if that makes sense, from 1 up to 4 players

I definitely would love that. As someone who plays almost exclusively solo, some mission types (cough cough excavation cough) are awful and sometimes even impossible in solo.