I've had some odd experiences with the game difficulty recently when playing with friends. Simply put, the AI difficulty seemed quite a bit higher than what the end game results screen showed. This might be due to my MMR being a lot higher than my friends' MMR, which perhaps causes the game to not average out the difficulty properly. My MMR is at 75 right now, and I think the friends I was playing with had an MMR around the high 30s to low 40s range.
I played two matches on In Shock, one with a 4 man squad, and another with a 3 man squad. The latter match was also a mentor match, with a level one player who didn't really know what he was doing. When I was with the 4 man squad, the difficulty was 48%, and with the 3 man squad, it was 43%. Regardless, I felt the difficulty was a little harder than what the game showed. 5th Council enemies needed two 80 damage Strikes to go down, whereas it usually takes one 80 damage Strike in my typical experience with them, playing with randoms in the 40-50% difficulty range. Enemy melee damage was 27, through 50% damage reduction, which seems a little too high for this particular difficulty range.
Moreover, playing with my Ignis Harec, I wasn't able to kill regular 5th Council enemies in one headshot. I've played matches around the 55% range and was still able to kill regular enemies in one headshot, so it seemed strange to me. Perhaps this is just a peculiarity with the In Shock mission.
There was a 50% difficulty match on A Low Blow which seemed a lot harder than it should have been, with enemies having boosted health and damage, and spawning more often. It wasn't too hard for me, but my friends were having a tough time dealing with the AI, especially during the first section. The Elite Captains were doing about 120-130 damage with their incendiary pistols, which seems a little too much for 50% difficulty. Rocket troopers were also downing teammates in one shot, which seemed to surprise them. Not quite sure how much damage they were doing though. They usually down anyone in one hit that's not 5th Council at the difficulties I'm used to.
Another match was with a few different players, but was a 4 man squad, playing A Weapon from the Past at 57% difficulty. In that match, enemies also were dealing more damage than I would expect, and they had more health too. The spawn rate of enemies was also quite high on both sections, whereas usually there's a bit of a gap between one group spawning and the next. This was most noticeable during the first section, where there was a constant influx of dropships; sometimes two at once. Additionally, rather than there being 4-5 enemies per dropship, it was usually around 6-8 enemies.
I played with another group of friends whose MMR was around the 60% range, and whilst the match difficulty was around 65% difficulty, the actual difficulty was a lot higher. I've played matches in the 60-75% range with friends in a full squad during the Hades update, and I've never experienced enemies being this tough at that difficulty.
Regular 5th Council enemies had about 200 health, Wardogs had a little over 300 health, Hades soldiers had about 500. The mine layers on White Noise and Mind Over Matter had around 300-400 health, and their mines were more durable than usual, perhaps around 250 health. Enemy melee damage was around 45-50, through 50% damage reduction. Riflemen had very high ranged damage, something like 30-40 damage per rifle bullet at medium ranges, with a higher fire rate. Hades and 5th Council shotgunners would one shot wound people that weren't Hades or 5th Council characters, as they were doing about 130 damage at close range. Wardog shotgunners could down a 5th Council character in three shots at close-medium range. Elites also had a lot more health than usual, with the Hades Brutes on Hanging by a Thread having about 700-800 health, whilst also moving faster. Enemies were also more resistant to push effects, as they didn't seem to get pushed as far as usual.
It was difficult to clear enemies quickly whilst going for objectives, as their high health and damage meant we had to play pretty conservatively. There aren't very many characters that can really output that much damage to clear enemies fast enough. We mostly just had to camp around Valeria's E.R. Bridge and heal up from that whilst picking enemies off, as a single rifleman could down a 5th Council character in a burst or two, and a whiffed Grapple or Strike against even one enemy was usually a death sentence.
I would say the enemies were doing a little more ranged damage than they do on Insane difficulty, whilst also having about two or three times more health. I don't really mind high damage enemies, but when they have high health too, it takes far too long to clear them, and the whole map drags out into an almost stalemate. This is despite having maxed out weapons with all the damage upgrades.
Even though we beat these maps, it took us a lot longer than usual and there were more deaths, so our scores and rewards weren't really all that great, which made the whole thing kind of pointless.
When I queue up on my own, and play with randoms, the matches don't seem quite as difficult, even when the difficulty level is roughly the same. Likewise, if I'm playing with one or two friends, rather than as as full squad, the difficulty doesn't seem too bad, even it's in the 50-60% range.
I would like to help introduce some newer players to the game, but it doesn't really make the best impression for them when the regular AI enemies are harder than usual. I generally have more fun playing with friends than with randoms, but it seems hard to do currently due to the difficulty spikes unless you reduce the teams' average MMR to the 40-50% range.
Anyway, has anyone else had similar experiences? I've mostly been playing with randoms in solo queue since the Spacelords update, so I don't have too many examples.
