[LordDraco3]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ5P_cpm65c

In the 11 months I've played, I don't think I've ever been spawn camped at the first lyre sphere altar before. Our team just fell apart from a disconnect and a barely-moving Alicia, but the spawn rate feels like it's been cranked up to 11.

Imagine my shock when I get to the results screen and see 34% difficulty

I have played most missions at 60+ all the way up to 70%. This 34% felt like one of those 70% games. Not only was the spawn rate crazy high, but enemies were extremely aggressive and fast to respond to every action.

Any time I antag this particular mission when I'm 50 MMR against a team in the 30's, they have only 3 enemies on the map, max. Plus 1 commander, maybe, at any given time.

I played some games the other day in the 40's with some of my regular teammates that have played 70+ difficulty, and we all agreed the game felt crazy hard, as if we were still playing in the 70's. HBaT taking us to Survive before even saving Lycus, barely surviving through Short Fused, etc.

[Level9Drow]

YES, Draco with exhibit A. Thank you, Brother, for shedding light on this.

[Power Penguin]

Good so I'm not going crazy and the AI are hitting really hard after the update.

[Velgeder]

I have been hovering around 30 to 40 mmr and In some levels there are just boarded of enemies. I find that I have to rely on Valerias whip for crowd control, otherwise were overwhelmed. This includes elites soldiers as well.

There's also the fact that the enemies hit harder. I

[Ac3_f4ce]

Seriously and if your wounded my god they are like sharks going on a feeding frenzy. Ive been wounded and the enemy swarms me shooting and hitting me. No chance to recover. Wounded a half second later dead. It shows in my last second 7 different enemies got a piece of me.

[feed1]

Difficulty is insane sometimes. I think players became so good at the game that every patch passively increases difficulty ^^. I'm gonna wild guess here and say difficulty also scales with levels. Playing local in medias res is like a death sentence. Any mook looks at you the wrong way and you are dead. Shotgunners 1hit you from across the map(not even kidding here), assaults down you while they run to cover, and if you are wounded you will die before you even finish your strike animation. I'm fine with hard games but you need to reward people for it.  Don't hide difficulty from players, instead reward them for hard games, hell, even give them some mercury points(like 3-5) for insane games. Instead you just gate the progression of players(like there isn't enough already). You know what players will do? They will drop MMR either by afk antaging or fucking their team over. Either way you just make players frustrated by spending like 1-2 hours just to drop MMR where they can play normally.

[Level9Drow]

Difficulty is insane sometimes. I think players became so good at the game that every patch passively increases difficulty ^^. I'm gonna wild guess here and say difficulty also scales with levels. Playing local in medias res is like a death sentence. Any mook looks at you the wrong way and you are dead. Shotgunners 1hit you from across the map(not even kidding here), assaults down you while they run to cover, and if you are wounded you will die before you even finish your strike animation. I'm fine with hard games but you need to reward people for it.  Don't hide difficulty from players, instead reward them for hard games, hell, even give them some mercury points(like 3-5) for insane games. Instead you just gate the progression of players(like there isn't enough already). You know what players will do? They will drop MMR either by afk antaging or fucking their team over. Either way you just make players frustrated by spending like 1-2 hours just to drop MMR where they can play normally.

You hit it on the nail! Many people use many different techniques to lower MMR. The quickest way is suiciding and it sucks when it's not a full squad. The fairest, but longest way, is by AFK/peaceful antaging. But it takes so long. It would be nice if the antagonists could surrender, I will gladly take the hit to MMR. In fact, that's what most of us doing this want.

But why do we HAVE to lower our MMR in the first place? Why would a game be created to disincentivize a growing MMR? What's wrong with the system that would cause players to feel they need to lower their MMR? The developers have to look at this. I think there is a possibility that the reason the situation is the way it is now with difficulties, rising MMRs with less rewards is a gating mechanism. They have to decide if it's worth it or not because people are going to continue to lower MMRs.

I'm even starting to think I should ask people on the steam channel or discord to form MMR lowering squads, where we group to surrender 4 or 5 times lower MMR to a more tolerable and, most of all FUN, level where rewards aren't compromised.

[Lehi]

ME might have tweaked the damage receive based on each player's MMR, but I could not tell how much damage other player received, so this is just a speculation.

All of them were in your squad? Was it happen to the Alicia be not in your squad and she in around 30% MMR?
Your MMR was 52, so it is possible to match with someone with 34. (someone says the matching range is upto +/- 20%)

The life of the hollow ones seemed to be low so you can 2-hits them, but the damage felt like 50%MMR+. (1 shot of autorifle Dog/Hollow = about 11, but the rate of fire..)

Patch 11.0 tells me the following:
https://spacelordsthegame.com/news/spacelords-update-11-patchnotes

- Increased enemy spawn rate at low difficulty levels.
- AI behaves more permissively at low difficulty levels.
- Decreased enemy damage at low difficulty levels.

So, the life of enemies and spawn rate are at low MMR setting, but the damage seems to be high MMR, like 50 MMR+.

[LordDraco3]

This was a random PUG, no squad.

I'm 52 MMR so the rest of the squad would have had to be in the low 30's high 20's for that final result of 34% to make sense.

- Increased enemy spawn rate at low difficulty levels.
- AI behaves more permissively at low difficulty levels.
- Decreased enemy damage at low difficulty levels.

I can tell the spawn rate, and that's fine. Low games with 3 enemies on the map are hardly even worth playing, and as antag, it's just a 4v1 fest..... but I still encounter those when I antag people at this same difficulty.

The enemy behavior is clearly not all that 'passive' and their damage still feels pretty high to me. Again, I feel it important to state, that I've never been spawn camped at the first lyre sphere altar until this match. 2 aleph-charged commanders practically walked right up to it to take it themselves!

In the past, Kuzmann was a required character on this mission. For a while, the balance allowed a more diverse team. But from the sheer number of highly-aggressive dogs on the map, it would not have been possible without a lichtbogen or whip in this team. I don't find it to be acceptable that a team must have perfect composition for a 34% difficulty match. I guess I'm still stuck in the past (as in, the entire game's life pre-spacelords) where 30% was suuuuper low. Now I hear players complaining about difficulty in the 20's and 30's!

[pululon]

The Lyra sphere mission has a crazy spawn rate, when I play it is like a nonstop killing or the field is filled with enemies in few seconds... and I'm talking about elites that shoot from long distances.
And the council spawn is insane... can overrun you easily

[LordDraco3]

On the subject of how MMR affects AI, this is the coding that I have been given, posted from 10/22 so it is post-patch 11.1

skill is MMR difficulty, of course.

"AIDifficulty": [
        { "skill": 0,   "shot_damage_received_by_players": 3.45, "melee_damage": 0.32, "melee_damage_received": 3.14 },
        { "skill": 10,  "shot_damage_received_by_players": 1.90, "melee_damage": 0.57, "melee_damage_received": 1.76 },
        { "skill": 20,  "shot_damage_received_by_players": 1.24, "melee_damage": 0.85, "melee_damage_received": 1.17 },
        { "skill": 30,  "shot_damage_received_by_players": 1.04, "melee_damage": 0.99, "melee_damage_received": 1.02 },
        { "skill": 40,  "shot_damage_received_by_players": 0.99, "melee_damage": 1.00, "melee_damage_received": 1.00 },
        { "skill": 50,  "shot_damage_received_by_players": 0.92, "melee_damage": 1.00, "melee_damage_received": 1.00 },
        { "skill": 60,  "shot_damage_received_by_players": 0.82, "melee_damage": 1.02, "melee_damage_received": 0.98 },
        { "skill": 70,  "shot_damage_received_by_players": 0.68, "melee_damage": 1.10, "melee_damage_received": 0.91 },
        { "skill": 80,  "shot_damage_received_by_players": 0.53, "melee_damage": 1.28, "melee_damage_received": 0.78 },
        { "skill": 90,  "shot_damage_received_by_players": 0.37, "melee_damage": 1.71, "melee_damage_received": 0.58 },
        { "skill": 100, "shot_damage_received_by_players": 0.22, "melee_damage": 2.86, "melee_damage_received": 0.35 }
    ],

So to me, this formula sounds like enemies have a set HP, say, 100 HP for a wardog (don't know these actual values yet), but MMR dictates how much your 150dmg shot  or 80 damage punch actually hurts them.

Not particularly relevant to our talk about spawn rates and behavior, but maybe this can shed some light on how much damage it takes to kill something maybe feeling inconsistent.

[MSE_Karen]

Hi guys,

The difficulty is something we tweak every weak (depending on your MMR) and it's always based on your feedback. The code you posted is dynamic and it changes almost everyday, so it makes no sense having it as a reference.

Please, remember our main objective is to make the game fun and challenging.

As always, thank you very much for your concerns

[Dr.Kuzie]

I think the game is too much challenging for a 34% MMR. It's 3 out of 10, not even normal. In almost every other game that difficulty should be a piece of cake, why is hard as hell here?

It's not that amusing because the balance between fun and challenge is broken.

[B30]

… Please, remember our main objective is to make the game fun and challenging. …

Okay, it is already challenging as HELL, but when can we expect the fun again?

[Lehi]

Oh, it's fun.
But, the combination of Spawn rate of Low MMR (High spawn rate) & High Damage (due to high rate of fire) for High MMR is not playable. High spawn + Mid/mild damage is OK. I can feel I play Dynasty Warrior. I love Loath.