Player-Count-Based Scaling Needs To Be Implemented

[Vaskadar]

Currently, there is a disparity between the difficulty of the game when you have a full squad, vs. when you are running solo. There wasn't as much of one pre-update 7, but it's still very present. Matching the difficulty to the player count will be very hard to implement, but games that seem to do player count difficulty scaling decently (definitely not excellent, but it's better than nothing) are games like Killing Floor. More players? More enemies and more powerful mini-boss enemies. Mooks are fine to be slightly buffed, but the more there are, the better.

Player joins? More enemies, and more dangerous enemies spawn with the next influx of mooks. Player leaves? Less mooks, less dangerous heavy types. The balance will take time to implement, but scaling is a must for co-op games.

It should be somewhat challenging to solo, but possible to get through. It should be challenging for two, three, and four players respectively, considering their potential damage output, etc.

Edited April 7, 2013 by Vaskadar

[MJ12]

Yes. This. So much this.

I think because I primarily play solo I go and see people talking about how the game is way too easy and I just boggle and go 'wha?'

And I'm sure there are people on the flipside who boggle at the idea that the game could be challenging because they only run in four-man groups.

Something like +25% enemy count, +50% damage, and +25% HP per extra player past the first maybe? That'd feel about right IMO but might need tweaking.

[FrostWolf]

Scaling could work but it make drop ins a little slothiest.

The thing we have to keep in mind is that the enemies are designed around keeping the various weapons viable for most of the game.

Any massive tilt in enemy stats and suddenly you'll have Weapon/Frame tiers revolving around DPS

Which just leads to everybody having a Lancer or Harrier

Edited April 2, 2013 by FrostWolf

[LunarWind]

Please, do not simply give enemies flat +HP and +dmg boosts.

This ruins the 'feel' of the game.

It isn't as much fun when it takes you an entire clip to down a single grineer lancer. You want to be able to kill them just as fast as when solo, so that you still feel powerful, still feel like a Tenno, a master of warfare.

If anything, scale the reinforcement waves to player count. Should be fairly easy.

1 player = 75% enemy count.

2 players = 100%

3 players = 150%

4 players = 200%

Note: this only affects the reinforcements. The number of enemies strolling about a room before you get there should be unchanged. This encourages solo players to be more stealthy, having to avoid some enemies rather than kill absolutely everything they encounter. Because, you know, ninjas in space. A one-tenno operation should be lightning fast and surgical in nature. Leave it to the 4-man fireteam to clear the entire base and leave nothing but stains and wreckage.

Make it so that solo runs are truly challenging, duos are tough, and 3-4 person groups will rarely wipe, but may have more frequent deaths.

This is because the more people in the game, the less it means to have someone go 'down'.

[FatRefrigerator]

Make it so that solo runs are truly challenging, duos are tough, and 3-4 person groups will rarely wipe, but may have more frequent deaths.

This is because the more people in the game, the less it means to have someone go 'down'.

This is a big part of player count scaling, when you're by yourself, you either drop a revive or start the hell over. With 3-4 you might go down twice as much but you have 2-3 people that can pick you up.

[LordLokai]

Yes. This. So much this.

I think because I primarily play solo I go and see people talking about how the game is way too easy and I just boggle and go 'wha?'

And I'm sure there are people on the flipside who boggle at the idea that the game could be challenging because they only run in four-man groups.

Something like +25% enemy count, +50% damage, and +25% HP per extra player past the first maybe? That'd feel about right IMO but might need tweaking.

no please no... i hate difficulty just makes enemies bullet sponges... if going to scale difficulty based on number of players you make it by using calculated packs of specific enemies, and making the AI SMARTER! one thing i hate is games like border lands 2 where solo entire game is manageable then throw a group in there and takes you an hour to kill an enemy because he has 2 bazillion life... sorry but i HAAAAATE this!

Make yoru AI better, make enemies smarter... love to see... stuff like...in the presence of a commander, all greenier gain special abilities... based on type. Grunts would gain a small regen shield, snipers gain a special damage shot, napalms gain multi-rocket, heavy gunners can lay down shields(like the volt). This suddenly turns a sqaud of enemies into something to be feared and have them work together, take positions ect...

just do not make them super spoonges are just as stupid as can be...

[MJ12]

no please no... i hate difficulty just makes enemies bullet sponges... if going to scale difficulty based on number of players you make it by using calculated packs of specific enemies, and making the AI SMARTER! one thing i hate is games like border lands 2 where solo entire game is manageable then throw a group in there and takes you an hour to kill an enemy because he has 2 bazillion life... sorry but i HAAAAATE this!

Make yoru AI better, make enemies smarter... love to see... stuff like...in the presence of a commander, all greenier gain special abilities... based on type. Grunts would gain a small regen shield, snipers gain a special damage shot, napalms gain multi-rocket, heavy gunners can lay down shields(like the volt). This suddenly turns a sqaud of enemies into something to be feared and have them work together, take positions ect...

just do not make them super spoonges are just as stupid as can be...

Look, AI is actually the hardest thing to scale. I'd like good AI too but it's really processor-intensive. In fact, AI would scale easier the fewer players there are for various reasons.

Also, +75% HP with 4 players wouldn't make things bullet sponges. At most a guy who takes 1 hit to kill may take 2 hits to kill now doubling your time to kill (and that's an edge case) I wouldn't call that 'bullet sponging' at all, especially since the trick here is the aggregate HP is going up because numbers are increasing. I didn't want to make it 100% more spawns because then you might cause your average computer to catch on fire and explode.

The main point is that you now have 1.75 * 1.75 = 3.06 times the HP you have to burn through in toto, plus those guys are dealing more damage (so you go down more easily). Anything that gets roughly the same result (i.e. a team of 4 is facing around 4 times the DPS and 4 times the health, more or less) is good.

[HvcTerr]

I wonder... I wonder if you could somehow offload some of the AI processing to the other player's clients. The game probably already pushes a large portion of the server's data to every player (and probably not that much data compared to some games.)

Not impossible, but the latency means it'd only work for certain operations like the pathfinding of more-distant enemies.

Edited April 2, 2013 by HvcTerr

[Alienami]

My friend was just assuring me today that Defense missions scale.

Bosses also scale.

The rest, that is the issue.

Edited April 2, 2013 by Alienami

[Vulturnus]

Yes. This. So much this.

I think because I primarily play solo I go and see people talking about how the game is way too easy and I just boggle and go 'wha?'

And I'm sure there are people on the flipside who boggle at the idea that the game could be challenging because they only run in four-man groups.

Something like +25% enemy count, +50% damage, and +25% HP per extra player past the first maybe? That'd feel about right IMO but might need tweaking.

How is that balanced scaling? the problem lies with how high levels are able farm lower level planets with other people. Your proposed scaling means anyone that is new to the game will be unable to cope playing with other new people due to enemies suddenly getting up to +75% count +150% damage +75% hp depending on the players.

Want more challenge? Add more AI abilities, give heavies boss like abilites (time stop, icewave etc)

Edited April 2, 2013 by Vulturnus

[Vaskadar]

no please no... i hate difficulty just makes enemies bullet sponges... if going to scale difficulty based on number of players you make it by using calculated packs of specific enemies, and making the AI SMARTER! one thing i hate is games like border lands 2 where solo entire game is manageable then throw a group in there and takes you an hour to kill an enemy because he has 2 bazillion life... sorry but i HAAAAATE this!

Make yoru AI better, make enemies smarter... love to see... stuff like...in the presence of a commander, all greenier gain special abilities... based on type. Grunts would gain a small regen shield, snipers gain a special damage shot, napalms gain multi-rocket, heavy gunners can lay down shields(like the volt). This suddenly turns a sqaud of enemies into something to be feared and have them work together, take positions ect...

just do not make them super spoonges are just as stupid as can be...

Where in my first post did it say to buff their health? Buff could be anything ranging from enemy type to damage output. Sponges are a crappy way of making a game harder, so yeah, I agree with you on the sponge part. I'd rather see just a buttload more enemies with scaling. Oh, and make difficulty levels actually mean something, like, more dangerous enemy types and better loot.

Risk vs. Reward needs to be a bigger part of the game. Reward especially.

Edited April 7, 2013 by Vaskadar

[Blightfall]

I agree with this completely. I think a good solution is to just spawn more enemies, but not tougher ones. We still want to be able to one shot the grunts with a well placed charge slash but let it still be difficult. And with more enemies comes more sub bosses, which are fun to deal with in a group. I almost feel like I'm being punished for playing in a group because it gets so easy and you can have one rambo frame run way ahead and kill everything.

Or maybe the enemies deal more damage the more party members there are? That one is a toss up and may just cause problems though.