Helldivers 2: Post Nerf Solo Helldive (Search & Destroy /// All Clear /// Stealth /// No Deaths) 

It does seem really counter-intuitive to make enemy patrol spawns larger on solo/low-player-count dives. Solo play is already difficult and this just makes it harder than it already is. In spite of the people you see online, like Sarge, that appear to complete solo dives easily, it's actually a very difficult task that most players will never be able to do; he makes it look easy, when it's absolutely not. Further, when you play with a full group, not only will there be fewer patrols overall (which makes it inherently easier), but you also have four other players to fight alongside, making it even easier than that. It just actively punishes solo players for playing solo. The only logic is that the devs are actively trying to discourage solo play for whatever reason.

Helldivers... How was Monday?

@@Armameteus I think fewer players still mean fewer enemies, right? It's just that it's no longer the case that 1 player equals 1/4 of the enemies of a 4player group. This IS a lot but it seems on par with Helldive difficulty that's full clear and the timer ran out for 4 players. Maybe exactly equal to that many but I certainly hope not, I hope it's still less than what a 4player group would get.

@@Armameteus There aren't 'fewer patrols overall' with a full squad of four, they remain at baseline value. Patrol amounts are not reduced as much as they were pre patch with less than four players however. From the patch notes, my bold: "Patrol spawning has been increased when there are fewer than 4 players. The fewer the players the bigger the change. *For 4 player missions there will be no change* compared to before.The biggest noticeable change will be for solo players at higher difficulties"

@@Armameteus Your closing sentence may actually be official policy by the devs. The patch notes state that they scaled it such that for four players the patrols are unchanged. The change only applies for 1-3 players with the change being less drastic the closer to 4 players you get.

Actually, in the last video I watched, they did spot Sarge - still made extraction, so ...

I don't feel like Localization Confusion even works half the time. Sometimes I'll get about the same amount of patrols, other times I will be overrun from the get go and feel like I'm getting patrols faster.

Yeah, especially when you have to complete a multi-step objective like the SAM site or defend a hellbomb. Patrols literally come out of nowhere so you either have to be super sneaky or have some serious firepower to mow them down. I'm not sure if this is a step in the right direction tho.

​​@@Sarge94 this is my problem with it. Dunno about bots, but on bugs I got patrols that not only came from nowhere-- but they had homing pathing and stayed locked on me even long after I had broken line of sight for an eternity. They would eventually chase me down as I was the only thing slowing down when my stamina depleted-- and I was using a jetpack too. Pretty much if I got spotted by any mob I couldn't wipe, they'd chase me until I was dead even without line of sight, and being far af away at some points. All the patrol changes do is make the game difficulty feel artificially high and gamified. Kills all immersion to have patrols obviously "just spawning." Before they most of the time at least appeared to actually be on set patrols-- and ofc clearing out parts of the map offered some comfortable zones/directions but now you just get flanked constantly by spawns that feel like they came out of nowhere, reminding you it's just a crummy videogame mechanic and not an awesome dynamic battlefield like it always has in the past to me. Obviously there have always been some elements that inevitably feel gamey after hundreds of runs-- but it seemed like AH was all in on immersion so this is just a really misguided change imo. Game was plenty hard-- there aren't THAT many players out there like you making solo helldives look easy. Lol. Now it's just kinda unfun. I'm really burned by this patch. I like playing solo so much but I even swallowed my pride and tried a difficulty or two lower than my normal lvl7-- and even those had enemy patrols spawning out of my ass. Lots of enemies were much more aggro as well-- hunters felt like they had meth and roids at times. Idk... 😬

basically the devs said that for solo players you were only getting 16% of the patrols instead of 25% of the patrols (1/6 instead of 1/4) so the solo nerf was just to make the balancing more linear, they explained it pretty bad but honestly even then it wasn’t even necessary to add this

@@imashamed5194 we've all heard that line and it doesn't make it a solid excuse. Why would you believe them anyway at this point? They seem to be pulling an obvious bait n switch-- sunsetting good gear so people are more motivated to keep getting new warbonds every month. Didn't even have the respect to let us have the most recent one for an entire month before kicking it in the balls. Harshly nerfing stealth/solo and artificially increasing difficulty is another obvious way to motivate this power creep fomo warbond-chasing. The whole "git gud and play as team as intended" excuse is so weak. Bet the next warbond has "insane new best sick epic weapons" in it, lol. I really enjoyed the crossbow even though it wasn't a super optimal choice-- but now it's such garbage there's just no point. Why did that need a nerf? The "buffs" to it don't make up for shit...

@@imashamed5194 except that isn't even how the patrol spawns work. In order for you to get 4x the amount of patrols with 4 players, every player would need to go off on their own basically. As long as you're within 75m of another player, it "links" you two together and considers it a single group. So if 4 players are all within 75m of each other, even in a line where the ones on the end are as far apart as possible, it would still be a single player group, and would only spawn the enemies for 1 group, the same as one player. If, say, you split up into two man teams and tackle half the map each, then those two groups would get separate patrol spawns, equivalent to two players worth of spawns. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Zp8xuf_dLDw.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xXr-72xMtSY.html These two videos provide an excellent in depth explanation as to how it actually works, if anyone is curious.

Thanks for watching!

They were just about perfect before that patch. Now, they're out of hand and ruining the feel of the game.

Agreed. Probably the worst change in the latest patch.

16:10, i was using a shitty monitor. Just got a new one tho, so 16:9 from now on with some better refresh rate. Can't really answer the last two questions, you would have to ask Joel.

this guy gets it

They dont they hate nin linear progression of difficulty

The long one or the short one?

@@Sarge94 The long one. Where you have to go through the whole map.

Soon 😉

He's one of the Astartes Scouts. It's just a usual tuesday for them.

Agreed. Doing objectives alone with patrols spawning all around you is pretty frustrating.

The worst is reading all these people talking about "they made it fair!" Like, bro... it's a PVE game. There's no FAIR/UNFAIR. I absolutely hate the patol change so much, and I haven't seen any developer even address the solo player base, who I've yet to see ONE person talk about "how they like they the change". No solo player likes it. That's all you need to know.

They probably want people to play with other toys. Nerf the things that work to encourage players to play with other things. Legit answer and motivation here. And don't forget that, if Sarge can do it, we ALL can do it soldier! OR DIE TRYING!!! For Democracy!!!

It was easier than intended. If you played solo before, you got 1/6 the patrols as a four person squad, so they rebalanced it so that you get 1/4 the patrols now. It ends up being a nerf to solo, but when you hear it this way, it makes sense. They just didn't explain well in the patch notes

These are all poor excuses. In reality the game wasn't too easy and only players that dedicated a lot of time and got really good could actually pull these high level solos off at all. Why would anyone watch these videos if it was just "meh, everyone can do that"? Lol, it wouldn't be impressive if a ton of people were doing it. Vast majority of players can't survive lvl9 even with a full squad. Games aren't balanced off the top 1% of players, especially not pve squad games.

Well... lvl9 is the highest difficulty... highest difficulty means........... that it SHOULD BE DIFFICULT SOLDIER!! That's it. I do not consider myself as a hardcore player, and I can totally end a lvl 8 solo mission against automatons (not terminids). You need to know your ennemy, how they behave, and AVOID fights. That's the point of sneaky solo gameplay. Just watch Sarge doing. Is not fighting AT ALL. If he must fight, he use stratagems and run away from aggro. He learned the game. Have you ever try? You should if you didn't, that's another game. I'm sorry but, lvl 7 / 8 / 9 need to be difficult... what is the point of a MAXIMUM DIFFICULTY LEVEL, if everyone can accomplish the mission without struggle? To conquer without danger, we triumph without glory. And don't forget: that's only a game, helldivers. Don't be too serious about it. There will be more patches, there will be more weapons... there will be more stratagems, more nerfs ans more upgrades. The game will change in your direction, but also in the opposite... that's just a game.

@@Zir0w... they always have been hard-- wtf are you yapping about? Yeah-- anyone that successfully solos high levels knows about picking fights and avoiding as much engagements as you can. But now it's a crapshoot if you're going to get homing tracked across the map by obvious new spawns (immersion dead-- no attempt to even make it seem organic-- feels gamified af). I've had bug patrols that never lost track of me no matter how far across the map I fled with a jetpack. Suddenly feels like cookie cutter trash NPC AI stealth detection where you get seen and suddenly an omniscient hive mind alerts every enemy and gives them wallhacks lol. "Be careful not to sound the alarm" vibes. If I wanted that trash I'd dig up some of the umpteen thousand games that have already been made like that. Stealth was sweet before but sometimes it just straight up doesn't work now in my experience-- even Sarge will probably experience this at some point. But yeah... game balancing isn't done off the top 1% of players anyway-- and obviously like with everything more people claim to be better than they are. Fact is, no one would care to watch solo helldives if it weren't quite impressive and difficult in some right. That kills any talking point about how the game was "accidentally too easy." Shit, a lot of players still struggle with 7-9 with a full squad-- not that I'm putting them down, just saying. So yeah, not accidentally too easy-- more like "accidentally too fun and successful." Seems the devs are determined to correct that. That's an L.

True. Player base will eventually drop and a lot of people will be kinda forced to play solo. I don't think this is the way to go.

Previously solo players were getting 1/6th of the patrols that a full squad saw. Now its 1/4. Seems pretty fair to me. Can always play lower difficulty if needed. This reeks of ego

Toxic

​​@@InvaderTroywhat's FAIR about a PVE game? Are you upset that solo players were happier before the patol change? Also,I don't even play on level 9, ego has nothing to do with it. Level 4 missions are now a fucking nightmare, where before I could solo a level 7 60% of the time. Now I'm getting smoked at level 4 and getting 400 kills.

​@@Coach_BrianI agree 100%. Extractions have become a damn nightmare with how many enemies completely flood the zone

It nerfed solo players by adding more enemies bro

@@kyogrecrown5869 Randomization localizer

The booster doesn't affect patrols as far as i know, only dropships.

"post nerf solo"

The "nerf" is artificial, patrol spawns were bugged to be 50% lower than they should for solo play.

you haven't played the game since the change, atleast not by yourself. what rubs me the wrong way is how people get toxic and tell people to get good instead of trying to understand where they come from and don't even play the game to know how bad it it. you now have to play stealth at higher difficulties. this is a very limiting way to play the game and is unbalanced. not just pick and choose your battles strategically but literally avoid everything. whats worse is it also forces you to use meta builds because you literally need to reach a specific time to kill on all the enemies in an area or a new patrol will be there before you finish the first one with reinforcements called again and again, it has nothing to do with skill now, the game mechanically dps checks you now, i don't want tk use autoCannon and scorcher but now the game ks punishing me. there were already times prepatch where rng could get out of hand and a perfect storm of enemies trickling in too quickly to keep up at an objective. with a 50% increase this makes the chances exponentially more often is not every encounter. what compounds this is that the more enemies in a fight the longer it takes to clear because you have more enemy fire to avoid limiting where you can take cover and aim, add that with rockets constantly spamming with more and more enemies ragdolling you throw walls and you got a shitshow, this is on a lower difficultiy, its all snowball all over again. im not even going to go into how multiple players exponentially make your team stronger than 1 player yet the same amount of enemies per player is the incorrect way to balance. without an ai change to be added to this increase, a lot of people are not gunna have a good time on solo. solo was ready at a disadvantage with limited stratgem coverage, and only 5 lives

Best take hope dev sees it

This is such an ignorant response as this change doesn't affect just purely solo players. Also your math is incorrect.