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EDIT: Sorry, all! I didn’t take to time to do my research before answering. Defer to @Yzneftamz or @AgainPyromancer posts below for a better summary!

This is actually intended behavior! Hordes are meant to be very dangerous if you just run in trying to bash them to pieces before they bash you.

Weapons only pierce through a limited number of foes and do less damage for each target hit (with certain, hyper-cleave weapons being an exception on the number of targets that can be hit). Armored enemies always (?, can I get an expert in here to clarify? I dunno) bring weapons to a stop on impact and protect remaining enemies from your attack arc.

Limit the number that threatening to hit you by utilizing shoves, allied cleaves, and dodging. Many of our forum users are regular legend players who will vouch for the strength of “kiting” a horde. Keep them in front of you with shoves and dodges, give yourself space to fight, block the attacks you need to, and whittle them down. Their numbers advantage is better than your weapon… so take away their numbers advantage!

Spells and bombs are also great horde-clearers and can save teams from wiping. If you have a bomb and feel like you are being overwhelmed, throw that sucker into the fray!

One of my favorite things about playing with friends is when our party lead shouts “Form a war-line!”

Playing, Kerillian, my job is to use my spear to keep the bad guys from ever threatening my friends’ flanks while Bardin employs his hammers to mash the horde to bits, Markus buffs us up and clogs the door with his shield, and our Sienna watches our backs while sprinkling in some explosions!

We are constantly moving back whenever the shield does. If we can’t hold together, we break off and kite as best we can. Reach weapons, like Kerillian’s spear and Markus’ halberd are excellent for kiting because you can smack them from that much farther away.

I doubt it. It’s caused by the slot system malfunctioning. It is however something that will probably stay as a part of the game so getting used to it won’t hurt. Getting rid of it would probably be both immersion breaking and making the game way too easy at this point.

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Well, its being intended or not is debatable, but hyperdensity isn’t caused by the slot system’s “malfunctions”. When j_sat (sometime last summer, iirc) dug a bit deeper than usual into the system, with a dev’s help, it was stated that while the hyperdensity can be caused by some aspects of the slot system (among other things), that system was never meant to prevent enemy stacking. Its purpose is to spread the enemies around us relatively evenly. That is done pretty well, and there is even a semblance of some enemies trying to circle behind us.

Whatever the reasons and intentions, hyperdensity is a part of the game, and dealing with it is part of player skills. Easiest way to do that is to learn the conditions where it’s most likely to happen and either avoid those, or even use them to one’s advantage. To be completely honest, if hyperdensity weren’t a thing, I think a large part of hordes’ difficulty would be gone, and certainly fighting would require far less tactics.

I can throw out some thoughts on how to manipulate enemy density if someone wants to hear them, but I think it’s best to learn through experience.

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I could be wrong here, but the reason hyperdensity is really a thing is that the game already pushes processors quite hard just with the sheer number of enemies on-screen and how much it has to process with their actions. I recall a dev saying once that specials don’t use much processing power, because their behaviour is relatively direct. It makes sense, since normal enemies have to consider position in relation to heroes, the slot system, player movement, and update very quickly. Something like a Blightstormer or Gutter Runner (while it has a bit more than this), is also a lot more “fire and forget”.

Giving enemies collision hitboxes (rather than just hurtboxes) and checking for that would add significantly to that load.

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Hyperdensity can be produced in a bunch of ways. One of those ways is a product of a glitch in the waiting pool allocations as Jsat explored in this video.

Hyperdensity in other situations, though, is, IMO, better thought of as a feature instead of a bug.

Imagine a horde spawning ahead of your team before you drop down, say, into the big open room on Into the Nest where the third tome is. The rats furiously path towards the party and then… take turns, 3 at a time, climbing up to where the 4 players are waiting for them. You kill them, 3 at a time while they’re climbing, and continue to do that for about 3 minutes. Welcome to the new (and hella boring) ledge camp meta. Ledge camping is already a thing, but only if you can kill faster than the horde arrives. If the horde is concentrated enough the density will be too much for just 1 or 2 players to resist. This is a good thing.

The same observation holds for hyperdensity in tunnels and other tight spaces. If trash took turns, 1 by 1, it would be trivial and boring for one player to kill the enemies in single file. And again, for hyperdensity where rats drop down from somewhere, you’d only have to deal with a completely non-threatening trickle if the rats couldn’t pass through each other.

TL;DR hyperdensity and the slot system are complementary elements of giving the players a fair but interesting challenge from massed enemies, even if some kinds of hyperdensity are likely unintended.

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hd is not a bug, an error, it’s a behavior that was not intended to exist (this is my understanding from fs talk/writing, but I may have misunderstood) the engineers had to face, caused by the problem of managing the hit boxes of such a huge amount of creatures. Because it was labeled as “impossible to solve technology problem” it has been accepted as feature.
I do agree with @AgainPyromancer, at the end of the day it makes everything more fun and it’s possible to counter react to it.
The things I find difficult to accept are mobs hiding “in” the terrains, able to hit you, the ones that spawn right behind you (I don’t know if they are already there, invisible, or just spawn) the double, contemporary, in the same place/slot, disablers spawn (that seems “became” also a feature) or the 180°/90° instant turn and hit that still happens (maybe will also be labeled as feature if enough players will write is acceptable).

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I am a veteran player so I know how to deal with it. Its more of a rant about it being annoying and whether or not it is intended. Its just off putting to have about 30 things hit you at once and put you down from full to dead. As well because they pile up so much the cleave does not work well and it can be hard to clear if the team hasn’t properly grouped during a horde. That is all.

Block push. You will stagger the entire group. Proceed to hit them again. For a “veteran player”, that should be second nature.

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Only thing that bothers me with it is still not knowing whether it is truly intended to work this way, if so to what extent? Kinda like enemies initiating running attacks from a stand still while running on the spot (and it is especially hilarious if a hyperstacked horde does it). It’s kinda like the problem with the difficulty being so dependent on host CPU-power. Like, how is the game REALLY supposed to be?

lets not dig this… the same thing can be applied to the weapons, the resources, the deeds and so on. Feels that there was a project and then engineering was lost/postponed/missed, and now is adjustment time.

Most of the time, yes, but a few weapons (at least Two-handed Hammer and Empire Two-handed Sword on heavies) can cleave through armor. That property makes them very good against mixed hordes…

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Thanks for the clarification :slight_smile:

No need to be snarky. I know how to play the game and this isnt about how to play, its about whether or not this is intended in the game

on request of OP