Was playing Ruthless last night, and compared to when I played last week, it felt way more challenging and chaotic. Was getting double Extremis spawns, back-to-back Sentries, back-to-back enemy waves, Bosses spawning next to Extremis enemies. And I didn't question it too much, because it is Ruthless after all, but just did a round on Average difficulty to level up some weaker weapons, and I ran into the exact same thing. Massive Enemy Wave, Zoanthrope Brood, Ravener, multiple Sentries calling reinforcements. It was madness. 

Is this unintentional or not, because I remember the intensity of these encounters getting toned down? Or perhaps is this a bug where swapping difficulties doesn't actually swap the difficulty? Curious to know if you all have encountered similar issues, or maybe I just got really unlucky on these past couple rounds. 

Same. Was trying to run average Inferno to goof around. Got a total 4 Zoanthrope spawns, 3 lichtors, 3 sentry and 3 ravenours. And that was before even getting into the promethium factory. Run ended in the section just before the elevator. 

2 more Zoanthrope spawned, a sniper's projectile did an almost 90 degree turn to hit me which sent me into a knock back, which staggered me long enough for the Zoanthropes to double tap me with back to back lazers. 

All while the bots literally ran around in small circles doing nothing. Not to mention I counted and dumped 2 FULL MAGS WORTH OF HEADSHOTS into a ranged majoris before it was executable. This is with a maxed build and maxed relic bolt pistol.

The games poorly balanced "difficulty", along with the wonky nature of its RNG and AI, has been exposed even harder after the last patch and hotfix. But nothing will be done about it. They want the game to be as frustrating as possible so they can force you into playing co-op only and so they can stroke the egos of their extremely small minority of sweatlords. 

I have long said the AI director appears to calculate class level into the actual difficulty, regardless of the chosen difficulty.

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OddBall wrote:

Was playing Ruthless last night, and compared to when I played last week, it felt way more challenging and chaotic. Was getting double Extremis spawns, back-to-back Sentries, back-to-back enemy waves, Bosses spawning next to Extremis enemies. And I didn't question it too much, because it is Ruthless after all, but just did a round on Average difficulty to level up some weaker weapons, and I ran into the exact same thing. Massive Enemy Wave, Zoanthrope Brood, Ravener, multiple Sentries calling reinforcements. It was madness. 

Is this unintentional or not, because I remember the intensity of these encounters getting toned down? Or perhaps is this a bug where swapping difficulties doesn't actually swap the difficulty? Curious to know if you all have encountered similar issues, or maybe I just got really unlucky on these past couple rounds. 

This is not an impression, it has been the case since update 4.0, despite a slight mitigation with patch 4.1. This is indeed one of the main reasons for the discord within the community and one of the explanations for the fact that many more casual players are abandoning the game, especially since the change was brutal.​

Yes, it does seem that all modes are more challenging. It feels very different today. So far, I have 5 incompletes. 2 on average and 3 on Ruthless. I'm know I'm terrible but this is a first with so many fails in one day. Getting huge damage numbers with a L25 Heavy but team getting tapped out about half-way. A lot of grind time for minimal rewards. I can see folks getting frustrated and shelving it until the next patch.

Yes. They definitely changed the AI Director code and did not document their changes in the patch notes. The number of enemies in groups was significantly more than the days prior. When there could be a 10 minor enemies, now there's 20 or 25 minor enemies. There's also way more majors (at least 2x) and extremes appearing (sometimes 2 or 3) per each stage of the map.

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gr4v3dgr wrote:

I have long said the AI director appears to calculate class level into the actual difficulty, regardless of the chosen difficulty.

I had never considered that to be a possibility, but it would make sense. I was playing my Level 25 Assault. 

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OddBall wrote:

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gr4v3dgr wrote:

I have long said the AI director appears to calculate class level into the actual difficulty, regardless of the chosen difficulty.

I had never considered that to be a possibility, but it would make sense. I was playing my Level 25 Assault. 

I just ran an average where we killed 1350 tyranids.  That's 300 more than my last Ruthless.

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Rexipher wrote:

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This is my conclusion as well, it's random.
I've had Lethal runs where I start questioning if I actually picked Lethal or not and have to double check due to the lack of enemy numbers.
And then I've had runs where the game throws everything at the same time.

I feel it was more random before the latest patch. I had those same experiences (weeks ago) where an operation could have completely empty zones.

Since this recent patch, every single zone has 2-3 times more enemies than the the week prior. There's no empty zones. There's no randomness, it's just constant wave after wave of slogfest to get to the next zone. It's not even that its "harder", it's not harder and it's not more challenging. It's just not as fun to slog through so many enemies. Also, of course, there's zero information in the patch notes about these changes. The last patch said they understood the difference between frustrating challenging slogfests and challenging fun sessions, but it's obvious that somebody didn't know what they were talking about or they are just incompetent devs that keep changing their code. 

didn't notice much except marked increase in sentry call rates

Just did an average solo run with my level 3 tactical after leveling everything else to max to take advantage of the double exp weekend. Did decapitation. I had 3 extremis spawn, every room had between 15 and 20+ warriors and sentries. I couldn't finish the run. Normally I can do this with the gene seed and barely use a med kit. I thought they fixed this on average? 

stop complaining you snivelling wretches. The game is focused around brutally purging vile enemies and you have a problem with having too many of them? It’s a blessing. Go for a gentle walk outside if that’s the vibe you want. 

Cant say i have noticed any difference in rank 3 and 4.

If anything, i see a bigger change in the quality of the pug playerbase pool. And ofc the is the randomness of the group composition, what their loadout is and what team perks they bring, there is easy mode, and then there is not, nothing in between.

And due to the double xp event, you can be shure many players bring green and purple weapons to rank 4 matches, heck you are getting 3200xp whitout the seed, you can lvl a weapon from grey to yellow in rank 4 matches in 3-4 hours (if they all are successes)

why do you always complain about everything... All this is calmly killed. Show at least a little creativity and prudence. Enough for everything. constantly. whine.

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Zoaza wrote:

stop complaining you snivelling wretches. The game is focused around brutally purging vile enemies and you have a problem with having too many of them? It’s a blessing. Go for a gentle walk outside if that’s the vibe you want. 

I'm not talking about substantial or ruthless or lethal. It's completely fair that those difficulties are difficult. That's the point. I'm talking about average and minimal. It should be a easy going cake walk to level new things with or just a chill experience after oh I don't know a 12 hour shift when I come home, right before I have to go to sleep. Not everyone wants to play like you. Have some empathy for other people's experiences otherwise you just come over as a child incapable of that. 

I think the Director has been shifted in some way and it throws more at you, and will give harder combos of enemies now. Especially on lethal - personally i welcome the difficulty increase, but i think to make it more fun the bolters need to still be buffed further in damage per bolt round across the board. (and the grenade launcher bolter be reworked - its to strong 100% it trivializes everything - but I don't think damage needs to be changed, just force a reload and add a 5 round grenade magazine that needs to be replaced after a salvo with a reserve - it will also force players to be more accurate and make smarter decisions on when to use it instead of spamming it, and it will also work better with the refile magazine perk after majoris kill more fairly - but also allow grenade reserves to be replenished via big ammo crate)

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OddBall wrote:

Was playing Ruthless last night, and compared to when I played last week, it felt way more challenging and chaotic. Was getting double Extremis spawns, back-to-back Sentries, back-to-back enemy waves, Bosses spawning next to Extremis enemies. And I didn't question it too much, because it is Ruthless after all, but just did a round on Average difficulty to level up some weaker weapons, and I ran into the exact same thing. Massive Enemy Wave, Zoanthrope Brood, Ravener, multiple Sentries calling reinforcements. It was madness. 

Is this unintentional or not, because I remember the intensity of these encounters getting toned down? Or perhaps is this a bug where swapping difficulties doesn't actually swap the difficulty? Curious to know if you all have encountered similar issues, or maybe I just got really unlucky on these past couple rounds. 

Give it time. The devs really only care about Operations so it'll be fixed up in no time while their PVP fanbase drowns in an unbalanced mess.