Packs of 6 crushers, mobs of gunners and ragers. I’m PUGing this game. One match we had a nurgle beast and chaos spawn both arrive at the same time. In heresy. No special mod either. Just regular heresy. It feels like everything got turned up by 5. The difficulty seemed more or less balanced and now feels like a constant ragdoll and disable fest trying to grind out weeklies. Might be an unpopular opinion, but the challenge seemed good enough and now isn’t appropriate for pick up groups nor is the reward worth it.
Heresy’s PUGs are the hidden modifier.
Damnation feels easier to me than Heresy does simply because Damnation’s PUGs actually know what they’re doing.
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True story.
Level 4 is the hardest to play in unless you have buddies.
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Yeah, I follow. But I think heresy still could be more of a bridge difficulty. I won’t even pretend to understand how the AI director works, but I’ve had heresy missions that were worse than damnation ones, just based on pack size and composition. It’s inconsistent. I think it needs to get more limited in general. I’ve had missions this last week that were dumping streams of specialist level hordes out. Considering where the difficulty level sits in the bigger picture, I think it could use some work.
I hear you @mozer
I think one thing that sits in the background here is that there was a small bump in difficulty (I would say) in both T5 and above in the last month or two, and I’d not be surprised at all if that was across T4 and below as well.
I’m pretty sure I’ve had packs of 6 crushers in T4 maps in the past. Sometimes that RNG rolls snake eyes and out they come. That said, I am surprised that you’ve found this a regular thing. The more regular changes I’ve noticed are larger horde sizes. Maybe a little less frequent? Dunno. Hard to compare as no two games are the same.
T4 as a premise feels to me more about introducing these pack aspects, while having enemies with a lower damage threshold (giving and receiving). So in that respects, it probably isn’t a bad shout “in the bigger picture”.
Double boss spawn on vanilla heresy definitely sounds a bit silly. Haven’t visited Heresy for a while so hard to comment but I do definitely remember aggressively awful team mates being the hardest part of it. Hopefully it’s another thing FS gets a chance to look over after the itemisation rework.
Level 4 with PUGs is the secret true solo mode.
edit - Jokes aside, if you can clutch/carry Heresy, you are probably ready for Damnation, maybe even Auric. Maybe.
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It varies, I can carry with a couple classes and builds usually on heresy. I can run damnation but usually not the clutch player, I can stay alive well enough though. The main issue I see with PUGs there, is that as soon as one person decides to go off alone, they get wiped and then if the group discipline is bad, someone else tries to save them without thinking and it cascades. I’m not an expert player by any means, but have closing on 500 hours I think and have noticed a significant change in the “when it rains, it pours” aspect of heresy. I saw someone on the forums talking about trapper mechanics and saying the game should just institute a 5% chance of dying no matter modifier and it seems like what the AI director does is sometimes just that. Putting a bunch of gunners right by a demon host, 2 bosses at once, big crusher hordes… etc. My opinion is heresy should be the moderate risk/reward grind difficulty. You don’t get orange weapons, it’s not great for rewards, it should play that way. But yeah, just going back to damnation to do weeklies for now.
You most likely walked forward and passed another map boss trigger. In few places they are really close (Hab Dreyko comes to mind).
Yes. Why? To tighten the skill gap between difficulties and make players play the right difficulty according to personal skill instead of rewards.
The fact that people in Heresy are having a very hard time and the people in Damnation arent, is a huge problem.
I don’t disagree, but it has always been this way.
Tier4 has players who are stretching up from 3, or are at level 4. Some Level5’ers admittedly trying to do Melk tasks, but otherwise, it’s a narrow band.
Tier5 has players are are stretching up from 4, all the way up to AuricMaelstrom capable players just chilling out.
It’s the upper bounds that differ, so it’s easier to get a … let’s say a “helping hand”, from players who are good enough to cover the mistakes you make in a Tier5 map.
The issue I suspect is that players want to play at levels higher than their true ability. Which I get, as that’s the progression endorfin brain-juice. But it means that they win levels because of other players and don’t realise it fully, think they’re on that level, then get rofflestomped when the pug mix is suddenly not in their favour.
Other than making T3 harder, I’d suggest an old idea with hidden ELO rankings so that you’re paired with more similar skilled players most of the time and get a truer sense of skill.
PS Also @mozer I wouldn’t hold out for anything decent dropping from the Emperor’s grace. You might get something usable every hundred games or so, but a combination of Brunt for good base stats and Hadron are the most realistic way to get good stuff. Sadly that means more time in the shop than the game, but 
that’s what FS designed.
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Yeah, I get heresy has been like this in the past, but it seems to have gotten a lot worse. I’m pretty guilty of not reading all the patch notes, so not sure when. The sheer volume of gunners and maniacs in particular seems to have doubled. And clusters of poxwalkers. My suggestion or feedback if FS is reading these posts is to tone it down slightly, I guess that would look like 1 less of everything in the elite packs. Not a ton, but some. I think Heresy should be a C average level of difficulty for the reward with the reliance on pugging this game has for the non-auric difficulties.
The average damnation player wears two wounds and is usually awful at the game. Ive been playing damnation for weeks due to not crashing and the average player goes down 6 7 10 times a run and sometimes even in low intensity. In my experience damnation players might as well be malice players and the people I play with wouldnt last 5 minutes in a hi shock mission. I have to carry almost every damnation pug game and 1/2 my teammates are psykers who smite everything and instantly get downed and surrounded because they have terrible positioning. Almost every game im playing with people running atleast 2 wounds sometimes 3. Damnation players were decent november december or january but now theyre beyond bad players. Go play 3 or 4 regular damnation games and just look at how abysmal your teammates are. The only way you get competent teammates in this game is auric or maelstrom. There is zero difference between malice heresy and damnation players from my experience.
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no more apt description exists for fatshark itself…
I’d agree with a comment in the difficulty thread, is that difficulty issues (especially balancing) are significantly exacerbated by the difference in enemy density and health between the difficulties.
This was always an “issue” related to low difficulty players discovering there is more to Tide combat than just pressing W and LMB. The difficulty spike, mainly the enemy numbers, intensity, specials, higher HP pool and damage, has to happen somewhere. On heresy you actually have to learn the combat basics and start thinking about your build and weapon composition. It’s not the game’s fault.
Please play with me and you will see how childishly easy it is to cross both heresy and damnation. It’s about the shooting style and, of course, the compactness of the weapons you own. Most players rush around like flies without a head, and that’s bad for the team. Also, most players don’t want to share ammo or resources, but selfishly grab whatever they get. These are usually players at lower levels. You have the best and most honest players on auric maps, who take good care of themselves and their teammates. So the heresy is not difficult even if there were 20 crashers, the point is in the style of the game with the weapons and of course the skill of you and your teammates. So if you want a good game and fun and not stressful call me. I usually play as either a zealot ( LAMB_OF_GOD ) or a psyker ( ORNAMENTYUS ). And of course you can always lose the map under certain conditions as it is set up at that moment and there is nothing strange about that, it is part of the game.
Truth for also Auric. I took a break from the game since Febrary, before that I won 4/5 of Auric Damnations, now I struggle to win at least 2 of 5, some teams just can’t even pass the first two room without getting overrun and downed.
Playerbase quality has gone down significantly, and it varies from just unskilled delusional players who “only play on hardest difficulty” to totally not cheaters/boosted “auric maelstorm surivers” with main character syndrom who shift+w into the enemies in the next room, catch a dog and ragequit instantly.
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Because I haven’t been playing recently 
The fact that the game makes/forces people to learn the basics in Heresy is the problem. Yes the players should learn the basics in earlier levels but since they arent playing against real players and there isnt an incentive to improve besides rewards, the game should then force the player to either improve or keep them in the right difficulty, i.e. the improvement in difficulty for Damnation.
It’s the effect of bad game/difficulty design, and the cause for Sedition, Uprising, and Malice to be useless. (Plus having no scoreboard and the lack of competition in any respect leads many players to be completely blindsided of their skill.)