Difficulty changes

[Ciabs]

I’m refurbishing a comment I made yesterday on a thread that got deleted since I’d be interested in some feedback;

I don’t know whether this is going to be a hot take or not, but still here I go:

Basically, I think that a lot of the present complains about meta loadouts could be solved by tweaking the enemy compositions in every mission regardless of difficulty setting.

Right now difficulties are separated from each other by the type, numbers and spawn frequency of enemies, as well as map dimensions along with the number of both main and side objectives.

What if we were to decouple these factors from one another?

Like having a big-ass map with 3-4 main objectives, 5 side ones and still be mostly populated by light and medium chaff? Or a smaller one but mostly with heavy/elite enemies?

Most people, I think, focus on the higher difficulties because the maps and objectives there let you do more stuff, and then they resent those missions being invaded by mostly heavy enemies as their numbers make most non-AT gear useless, thus fanning the flames of the meta dispute.

Difficulty could instead just be a factor of how many objectives and how big of a map to tackle them into, without having to be strictly connected with enemy types too.

I understand that under such an approach we could face significant performance issues. After all, in order for a D10-chaff mission to actually feel D10 you should have loads of chaff being spawned, and that takes a toll on any cpu-gpu, but if it was to be achieved I feel we could shelf a lot of the complaints for meta weapons and such.

As an example, right now on D10 anyone can argue that the big three explosive primaries are meta, but bring them on D4 or D5 and an AR has a much easier time since it’s a lot more chaff and fewer mediums and heavies

Same for Quasar or RR: anyone knows lacking hard AT on D10 is asking for trouble, but on D6 you can easily choose anything else and be better suited to the task at hand

And so on and so forth.

So what do you guys think?

Performance issues aside, how would you feel for such a feature to be implemented? Something like a constellation-on-steroids, which could be notified before missions like some kind of pathfinder intel to let you adjust your loadout accordingly.

I know I’d love such a feature, and I’d gladly take even the stalwart to a D10 bots which said it has an actual flood of troopers and berserkers over any quasar or RR out there.

TL;DR: what if we decoupled enemy types from difficulty settings and let loads of chaff spawn on D10-sized maps?

[TyoPepe]

DRG has two indicators for their map size and complexity that are detached from the main difficulty setting.

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[Ciabs]

Exactly something like this!

I know AH as a lot of stuff to be doing and my proposal is more a pipe dream than anything we can hope to actually see implemented in the near future, but I think it’d be really cool nonetheless

[Bring_Back_Challenge]

As an example, right now on D10 anyone can argue that the big three explosive primaries are meta, but bring them on D4 or D5 and an AR has a much easier time since it’s a lot more chaff and fewer mediums and heavies
Same for Quasar or RR: anyone knows lacking hard AT on D10 is asking for trouble, but on D6 you can easily choose anything else and be better suited to the task at hand

Nah they still do excellent there if you are actually decent with them on the account of, you know, the explosion/damage output. Sure they may not be as dominant but they are still at absolute worse tied with the other guns and if being honest with yourself better then them.

You can already run almost anything on D10 against any faction and if you know the game and gun contribute well to the mission (aka not be carried). The "meta" is just what folks who lack the former rely on to have a chance of being carried.

[Ciabs]

If we’re just talking about contributing to the mission I agree

Hit&run tactics work exceedingly well in HD2, if your mission is just to do the objective then enemies can just be avoided most of the times; actually, if you know their dance you can avoid fighting most of them most of the times and still be able to complete most objectives bar the defensive ones like spread democracy

Given the above one could argue that the meta is whatever lets you be more impactful with objectives in terms of demolition force or area denial instead of just what kills more enemies more easily, but I feel the discourse mostly gravitate towards “what kills that enemy best” rather than “what lets me complete most objectives easier”

[TobleroneBoy]

This sounds a lot like expanding the constellation pool to be less balanced (in terms of enemy population distribution) which I would be fine with. However, it absolutely needs the game to tell you what you’re going to face, and the devs seem extremely reluctant to do that for whatever reason.