​​People need to stop complaining about the difficulty being too hard. Plenty enough people have completed every mission on Ruthless myself included, some even with 0 damage taken. Some people will never be able to complete the Highest difficulties and that is FINE. What needs to change is the weapon progression system and rewards for higher tier missions. You should be able to get through all the weapon levels at least on the Substantial difficulty. Maybe add additional rewards like cosmetics and being able to progress faster on Ruthless and above. BUT Difficulty being as it is, is completely fine for now and if YOU find it too difficult you can lower the difficulty at any time. There will always be players on different skill levels and so there should also be options for those people. Not every difficulty is meant for everyone.

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Karatsuki wrote:

​​People need to stop complaining about the difficulty being too hard. Plenty enough people have completed every mission on Ruthless myself included, some even with 0 damage taken

This is actually a point of contention.  I just last night looked through my PS5 achievements out of curiosity, and only 5.5% of players have completed an Operation on Ruthless Threat difficulty.  To give you an idea, 10% of Steam players have apparently gotten all Elden Ring achievements, which includes killing every difficult boss in the game.  Now, Souls games attract a more intense crowd, so the extremes of the curve are going to be a bit thicker I'd imagine, but 5.5% having done a Ruthless op to completion felt surprisingly low to me.

Maybe that's the sort of distribution that they're OK with, and I know it's still early with SM2, but I think it's important to note that Ruthless is actually only completed by a relative select few of the population.  It also could be a chunk more on Steam, I didn't buy it on PC, but I wanted to provide the data point.

"Difficulty is too hard" is really just a mismatch of expectation vs. reality.  A certain volume of "this game feels too hard" could indicate a number of different things, and even if the playerbase isn't articulating their experience very well, there's some value in that sentiment.

Steam Achievements...
5.3% have completed any mission on Ruthless.

2.5% have a maxed ranged weapon.

1.7% have a maxed melee weapon.

20.3% have won a PvP match.

More people have won a PvP game than have completed Ruthless...

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Bumwhistler wrote:

Steam Achievements...
5.3% have completed any mission on Ruthless.

2.5% have a maxed ranged weapon.

1.7% have a maxed melee weapon.

20.3% have won a PvP match.

More people have won a PvP game than have completed Ruthless...

Interesting how that's near identical to PS5, which also has a 1.7% completion rate for maxing a melee weapon, and also a 3.4% completion rate for hitting the level cap for a class.

Again, *maybe* that's OK for the devs, but if they're looking to add another difficulty, I don't know that they want to target only 5% of the playerbase with new content.  

Yeah, it may still be too early to tell for sure.  I'm a 39 year old father of 2 young'uns with a full time job, but once everyone is in bed I have a couple hours to slam games each night, and my sweaty tryhard carried me into the higher difficulties.  I love data, so I'd enjoy watching these numbers over time.

The issue here is there are hugely overpowered elements that trivialize Ruthless operations. Such as Melta health exploit, Banner being a literal full heal, etc. Mere completion with exploiting these features is likely not a good metric.

There is also the fact that there is a huge difficulty and gameplay difference between, say, Inferno and Reliquary. The Tyranid missions are played literally 10x more than the Chaos missions. This too is a sign of problems rather than looking at 5.3% having "mere completion of at least 1" as a positive metric.

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ledarsi wrote:

The issue here is there are hugely overpowered elements that trivialize Ruthless operations. Such as Melta health exploit, Banner being a literal full heal, etc. Mere completion with exploiting these features is likely not a good metric.

There is also the fact that there is a huge difficulty and gameplay difference between, say, Inferno and Reliquary. The Tyranid missions are played literally 10x more than the Chaos missions. This too is a sign of problems rather than looking at 5.3% having "mere completion of at least 1" as a positive metric.

Its not positive or negative, its just too early. Majority haven't finished the campaign. I have multiple classes maxed including Assault and Bulwark. The Melta is going to get fixed and I'm sure the amount of these threads will rise. I think the main problem is one I found when I was first levelling.

You have to get to complete the next tier to unlock that tier's weapons. There should be a chance of obtaining the next tier's armory data during previous tiers missions.

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Bumwhistler wrote:

Steam Achievements...
5.3% have completed any mission on Ruthless.

2.5% have a maxed ranged weapon.

1.7% have a maxed melee weapon.

20.3% have won a PvP match.

More people have won a PvP game than have completed Ruthless...

That's because PvP doesn't scale your opponents health and damage up to ridiculous levels, while starving you of resources and weakening their effectiveness to boot. You are both on a consistent playing field from match to match. In PvE, that is not the cse.

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Barricade133 wrote:

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Bumwhistler wrote:

Steam Achievements...
5.3% have completed any mission on Ruthless.

2.5% have a maxed ranged weapon.

1.7% have a maxed melee weapon.

20.3% have won a PvP match.

More people have won a PvP game than have completed Ruthless...

That's because PvP doesn't scale your opponents health and damage up to ridiculous levels, while starving you of resources and weakening their effectiveness to boot. You are both on a consistent playing field from match to match. In PvE, that is not the cse.

TBH what I read from this was that the PvP playerbase is bigger than I would have thought.

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ledarsi wrote:

The issue here is there are hugely overpowered elements that trivialize Ruthless operations. Such as Melta health exploit, Banner being a literal full heal, etc. Mere completion with exploiting these features is likely not a good metric.

There is also the fact that there is a huge difficulty and gameplay difference between, say, Inferno and Reliquary. The Tyranid missions are played literally 10x more than the Chaos missions. This too is a sign of problems rather than looking at 5.3% having "mere completion of at least 1" as a positive metric.

I wouldn't call it positive either, necessarily.  In fact, I wonder what the percentage would be without the current overhealing bug.  If only 5.5%ish are completing even just a single Tyranid Op on Ruthless, with all the videos calling out the most powerful builds/weapons/tactics, that speaks to either the interested audience, or the remaining difficulty still being too high for a number of people, or a combination of both.  

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Barricade133 wrote:

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Karatsuki wrote:

​​People need to stop complaining about the difficulty being too hard. Plenty enough people have completed every mission on Ruthless myself included, some even with 0 damage taken. Some people will never be able to complete the Highest difficulties and that is FINE. What needs to change is the weapon progression system and rewards for higher tier missions. You should be able to get through all the weapon levels at least on the Substantial difficulty. Maybe add additional rewards like cosmetics and being able to progress faster on Ruthless and above. BUT Difficulty being as it is, is completely fine for now and if YOU find it too difficult you can lower the difficulty at any time. There will always be players on different skill levels and so there should also be options for those people. Not every difficulty is meant for everyone.

No, but when progression is locked behind a difficulty you can't complete. And said difficulty is more tedious than difficult at the moment because the weapons you need to mitigate the increased health pools of your enemies need to be completed first, then the tedium needs to be addressed. Enemy health and the healing bugs are gonna be looked at and checked in tandem with Bolters getting a buff of sorts so we'll se where things fall after that. But simply adding the Vanguard's 25 execution health regen of 10% across the board would greatly help alleviating many of the pain points. Which should also be addressed.

This is what I'm talking about here
The problem is NOT the level of difficulty but the fact that they lock the progression behind that difficulty. I love the challenge it brings and I'm looking forward to Lethal very much but if they start lowering the difficulty just a few weeks after launch its not looking good for the hardcore players in the long run. They should be giving people more options on where to get the relic tier upgrades or maybe just remove them from Ruthless alltogether and add different rewards for those who complete these higher difficulties.

The thing is, it was never supposed to be easy to complete ops on Ruthless it was supposed to be a badge of honor but I think the devs just overestimated how many people would be actually able to complete them. And even then people need to realise that if you can't do it you either get better at the game and try again until you succeed or you just play on the lower difficulties. In NO WAY is it mandatory to unlock the last tier of weapons. Games like Destiny do this on multiple different modes like Master mode raids and Grandmaster nightfalls which have completion rates around 5-10% of the player base AND you get better gear from those activities.
And while I stand by the point that Ruthless should be Hard there are some things that obviously need changing like the incentive to use gun strikes more than just for the damage and the fact that you can get stun locked if you're fighting more than 2 Majors if you mess up a parry just once. Over all though the difficulty is where it needs to be imo, You absolutely need teamwork and team balance when going into Ruthless and while some classe under perform on that difficulty I say rather than lower the difficulty just make some changes to buff those classes to be on the same level of usefullness as the others.

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Karatsuki wrote:

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Barricade133 wrote:

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Karatsuki wrote:

​​People need to stop complaining about the difficulty being too hard. Plenty enough people have completed every mission on Ruthless myself included, some even with 0 damage taken. Some people will never be able to complete the Highest difficulties and that is FINE. What needs to change is the weapon progression system and rewards for higher tier missions. You should be able to get through all the weapon levels at least on the Substantial difficulty. Maybe add additional rewards like cosmetics and being able to progress faster on Ruthless and above. BUT Difficulty being as it is, is completely fine for now and if YOU find it too difficult you can lower the difficulty at any time. There will always be players on different skill levels and so there should also be options for those people. Not every difficulty is meant for everyone.

No, but when progression is locked behind a difficulty you can't complete. And said difficulty is more tedious than difficult at the moment because the weapons you need to mitigate the increased health pools of your enemies need to be completed first, then the tedium needs to be addressed. Enemy health and the healing bugs are gonna be looked at and checked in tandem with Bolters getting a buff of sorts so we'll se where things fall after that. But simply adding the Vanguard's 25 execution health regen of 10% across the board would greatly help alleviating many of the pain points. Which should also be addressed.

This is what I'm talking about here
The problem is NOT the level of difficulty but the fact that they lock the progression behind that difficulty. I love the challenge it brings and I'm looking forward to Lethal very much but if they start lowering the difficulty just a few weeks after launch its not looking good for the hardcore players in the long run. They should be giving people more options on where to get the relic tier upgrades or maybe just remove them from Ruthless alltogether and add different rewards for those who complete these higher difficulties.

The difficulty itself is not the issue. It's how they implemented difficulty is the issue. Enemies doing more damage and giving them twice as much health is not a difficulty slider in tandem with knee capping equipment volume and effectiveness is not fun. It's tedious. That said, I do agree they should let you exchange currencies to upgrade them into higher tiers to let you alleviate the growing pains of going up in difficulty. Turning it into a gradual hill you climb, rather than a stone fucking wall you run into.

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ledarsi wrote:

The issue here is there are hugely overpowered elements that trivialize Ruthless operations. Such as Melta health exploit, Banner being a literal full heal, etc. Mere completion with exploiting these features is likely not a good metric.

There is also the fact that there is a huge difficulty and gameplay difference between, say, Inferno and Reliquary. The Tyranid missions are played literally 10x more than the Chaos missions. This too is a sign of problems rather than looking at 5.3% having "mere completion of at least 1" as a positive metric.

Banner being a full heal is NOT an exploit its literally a perk you have. While it may be a bit strong in a sense and an obvious pick on that column it is in NO WAY an exploit

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Karatsuki wrote:

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ledarsi wrote:

The issue here is there are hugely overpowered elements that trivialize Ruthless operations. Such as Melta health exploit, Banner being a literal full heal, etc. Mere completion with exploiting these features is likely not a good metric.

There is also the fact that there is a huge difficulty and gameplay difference between, say, Inferno and Reliquary. The Tyranid missions are played literally 10x more than the Chaos missions. This too is a sign of problems rather than looking at 5.3% having "mere completion of at least 1" as a positive metric.

Banner being a full heal is NOT an exploit its literally a perk you have. While it may be a bit strong in a sense and an obvious pick on that column it is in NO WAY an exploit

It isn't supposed to be granting your teammates full contested health I believe. I am pretty sure that is where the bug lies. And as such is being used to top off your entire team. And with higher diffs reducing amount of Stimms and them healing you less and less. Bulwarks are going to be a must pick if they don't add some more ways to get health back.

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Barricade133 wrote:

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Karatsuki wrote:

​

ledarsi wrote:

The issue here is there are hugely overpowered elements that trivialize Ruthless operations. Such as Melta health exploit, Banner being a literal full heal, etc. Mere completion with exploiting these features is likely not a good metric.

There is also the fact that there is a huge difficulty and gameplay difference between, say, Inferno and Reliquary. The Tyranid missions are played literally 10x more than the Chaos missions. This too is a sign of problems rather than looking at 5.3% having "mere completion of at least 1" as a positive metric.

Banner being a full heal is NOT an exploit its literally a perk you have. While it may be a bit strong in a sense and an obvious pick on that column it is in NO WAY an exploit

It isn't supposed to be granting your teammates full contested health I believe. I am pretty sure that is where the bug lies. And as such is being used to top off your entire team. And with higher diffs reducing amount of Stimms and them healing you less and less. Bulwarks are going to be a must pick if they don't add some more ways to get health back.

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It is literally a perk you can pick that give all teammates full contested health.