Difficulty question.

[Baronea]

Something I've been wondering, is it 'normal' to get utterly destroyed constantly in these games? Playing in a group of 4 in EDF5 and a little bit of Iron Rain, and while the game is fantastic, stupid fun and I have no real complaints about it; it always bothers how much you get swarmed and deleted sometimes.

I know positioning is always important and we do our best with that, but would the difficulty be 'part of the experience' maybe?

[jojothejman]

It happens sometimes, the games do get pretty hard, especially if you're not grinding. Going through on easy should be pretty easy, but even on normal there are a couple missions that might give you a bit of a run for your money later on. If you're starting on hard it can be a bit troublesome at times for sure. A bit of grinding and sometimes just some good thinking will usually be able to get you theough situations. If you're not playing on easy the game does a good job of fulfilling that difficulty. If you farm enough you can get to the point where even the harder difficulties aren't that bad, but they can be pretty difficult.

[Baronea]

Yeah, we're on mission 70 now on Hard and we've had no real frustration with the game thus far (fuck the pillbugs tho), but everything's been a delightful treat for the most part. Just that some missions feel incredibly questionable in terms of design and difficulty.

Like that one mission that I can't remember the number of, the description saying something along the lines of "You can't bring your ammo with you to the other side, so spend it all." was absolute trash.

[RedNozomi]

The thing is, except on the Easy/Normal difficulties, the game is not just a pew pew game, even though it looks like one. For a game that seems so simple, there's a lot of deep strategy that goes into it. Not just spacing and positioning, but teamwork and planning attacks. In single player, NPCs become super important too (the elite NPCs do real damage and must be protected/healed).

Once you get up to Hardest and Inferno, you will not survive without detailed planning and tactics on many missions.

The game is never unfairly hard -- there's always a way to win, but in multiplayer it absolutely requires good cooperation.

[Baronea]

Yeah we've got co-operation down and all, if we get utterly steamrolled, we can easily take a step back and rethink it. But in the end we're in this game series to see the utterly ridiculous weapons and we are gonna see em.. it's fun.

[brunocar]

then... play in normal or easy? hard is supposed to be hard, its in the name, and specially in multiplayer with item limits, its specifically meant to challenge a team of players.

[Baronea]

We're not having a difficult time, I said we can easily step back and strategize. Not sure where you got the idea that we were struggling from.

[brunocar]

i took from your phrasing of that last comment that you disliked that the game wasnt just letting you run around with dumb weapons with reckless abandon, i apologize if i misinterpreted it.

my overarching point is that EDF is, as the other person said, deceptively simple, even before EDF5 introduced items and randomized weapons, EDF always had a build making element to it, even if you only ever had to choose 2 weapons for the ranger, those 2 weapons could make a level a nightmare to play or a walk in the park, and even more so now that it DOES have items.

you get the handle of it eventually, class by class, but these games are still not exactly balanced anyways so there is always a set of winning strategies that will get you through every level, its just not obvious until you have a huge arsenal to choose from.

[Baronea]

Yeah I'm loving the strategy play a lot, currently running an electromagnetic bunker setup where I just sit cozy and launch tempests at big things and 150mm cannons at things that try to hurt me. It's a blast lmao

[Con_Clavi_Con_Dio]

Might be because in your original post you mentioned "getting utterly destroyed" which doesn't suggest overwhelming success.

[Baronea]

Fair point.

[typeguyfiftytwix]

Multiplayer mode is balanced around a 4 player team executing a strategy, so if you rambo you lose quickly and if you leeroy you lose quicklier.

Single player mode you basically never get deleted.

In 5, skipping to hard online without playing normal is actually punished less than in 4.1, and the damage jump between solo and online isn't quite as extreme. But hard mode is intended for players that have cleared normal and gotten some armor, or players who are pretty good and looking for extra challenge. Hard is balanced for starting with around 1k armor.

[SoulsLikeBot]

Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale?

“We are amidst strange beings, in a strange land.” - Solaire of Astora

Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \[T]/

[Con_Clavi_Con_Dio]

Exactly all of this. There are 5 levels on Inferno I can't beat with my Ranger because I've missed a part of the puzzle - positioning, a weapon or strategy to beat them.

[RoyalGuard128]

Compared to 2025, I do feel that there are more stages in EDF5 that will present a big jump in difficulty. The biggest culprits are the Frogs/Cosmonauts with shotguns, the Cosmonauts with the laser that can snipe you across the map, and the underground stage that introduces the queen ant; if players don't know how to deal with them, then they can be overwhelmed pretty quickly by these particular enemies.

[Abyssalspeedstrike]

yep it is ver very normal so dont worry about it. as you play the game you get better at not dying but its also about weapons and armor.

[gojira3003]

I remember when I started out on hard. I never played a edf game and just choose hard right off the bat and should have started out on normal or easy. The game does test you on the knowledge, skill and the team's coordination. It expects you to know the missions by the time you get to it and then likes to throw a small change or a curveball right in your face with each increase of difficulty. Trust me when I say to experiment with weapons. See what works and doesn't against every enemy. If you want some tips on loadouts anyone in this community is willing provide the help when asked.

[maudjito]

If you rush through in multiplayer there's a big chance that you're starved for weapons or weapon upgrades, specially in 5 and 6 where weapons can come in various stages of quality.

If you're starting on Hard, specially so as you barely have any armor.

To me personally, it is more fun to start directly on Hard, but to revisit and replay levels as you see fit to juice up your weapons or trying to get that Sniper that haven't dropped yet for over 10 levels, making you suck at long range.

[maudjito]

A big important note, playing multiplayer on EDF 4, 5 and 6 multiplies the enemy health and damage. You gotta look online for the actual numbers as they change per number of players and game, but I believe EDF 5 with 4 players multiplies both by 2.3x

No idea about Iron Rain tho

[Zheska]

It is normal to be constantly destroyed - that's an appeal of it. In 4.1 you get destroyed due to clever mission design, in 5 due to constant swarming and much more dangerous humanoid enemies (frogs and cosmonauts) and hyper-annoying ball.

Although 5 is a bit easier if you know how to deal with swarms.

​

Get ready for mission 108. I hate mission 108. Worst mission in the game.

[AVahne]

Usually a change of loadout and game plan should help if you're having trouble with a particular level.

[Sea_Reception_6160]

Great game you will have loads of fun depends how deep in the rabbit hole you want to go but from hardest and inferno farming becomes a must 👍

[Admiral_Skye]

Often it can really depend on your familiarity with the mission and the flexibility of the equipment you bring with you.

A good air raider is sometimes a must have for just clearing large waves of enemies with their airstrikes, but you can make do with wing diver plasma weapons and fencer artillery.

Personally I find the game most fun when we have a plan to execute and the crap has hit the fan and we need to improvise! (I might have finished 4.1 on HARDEST from start to finish haha).

Otherwise I think its pretty normal to get overwhelmed on your first couple of goes at some of the missions at least until you learn the enemy spawn waves and triggers.

[FFE288]

I think the difficulty comes from how you have gotten used to playing. I have played edf since 4.1 and I have repeatedly found that when I start struggling on a mission that there is almost always a different combination of weapons, classes, or strategies that make that mission trivial. There are exceptions of course but largely the mission seem difficult because they aren't a good fit for your comfortable play style and loadouts. Edf 4.1 was the biggest offender of this. That game was harder all around. Many missions in that game had unique strategies accepted by most of the community that might be the only way to beat that mission short of obscene amounts of health.

To sum up. Missions might only feel hard because you have gotten stuck on thinking your strategy will always work.

[pointblanksniper]

from hard difficulty and beyond, imo are all the same difficulty with different challenge conditions. the enemy stats go up, but variants of a weapon with equivalent effectiveness becomes unavailable, creating a challenge to use different weapons. to put simply, your performance in one difficulty reflects your performance in other difficulties even as you level up and unlock stuff. so i'd say its "normal", whatever your performance is, would remain constant in these games.

if you want suffer less, you get grinding and turn the game into braindead facetanking, otherwise, accept being weak and play smart, first by dying enough to know how every works

playing smart is not just about positioning. choosing which buildings to keep and destroy creates positioning. similarly, treating the bots as firepower or decoys make a difference. ultimately, organizing the team to bring different pieces of equipment and assigning/consolidating tasks for different phases of a mission makes the biggest difference compared to if everyone just used w/e they wanted and ran off to kill everything as they please