High Intensity Is a Different Difficulty Level

At least on Malice, Heresy, and Damnation, High Intensity is effectively a different difficulty level. The average Malice player is not ready for Malice High Intensity, the average Heresy player is not ready for Heresy High Intensity, and the average Damnation player is not ready for Damnation High Intensity.

Today quickplay dropped me into Damnation High Intensity. By the time the mission should have ended in our defeat, three of my teammates had died a total of 14 times, and all three of them were dead at that moment, while I was downed. I was saved by a bot that replaced a player who had left the game. I managed to revive everyone, and the three of us (+ the bot) completed the mission. Interestingly, after that point (about half the mission remaining), no one died again, and no one was even downed — not even the bot — which makes me suspect that the player who left had somehow been heavily contributing to the knockdowns and deaths.

On average, that’s three and a half deaths per teammate by the middle of the mission. If we assume that I could have survived that midpoint without the bot’s help, revived everyone, and things continued in the same spirit but ended in a successful extraction, then it would have averaged seven deaths per teammate. The average player who presses the quickplay button is simply not ready for High Intensity at the difficulty level whose quickplay button they are pressing.

Separately, I would ask the developers to add a notification during the drop ship ride if the mission has Lights Out. I personally am not prepared for those missions, since they require me to turn off the lights in my room beforehand — and once the mission has loaded, there may not be a safe moment for me to get up from my desk and turn off the lights without being attacked in the meantime

Yeah, it’s not too hard to explain this. The vast majority of people who play this game are terrible & most likely just casual players. I’m not trying to be mean; it’s just the reality of this game. As a rough estimation, 90% suck, 5% are average, 4% are above average & roughly 1% are basically God-like with their skill. That’s how I would frame it in my mind. It’s rare, especially in pub’s to find somebody that’s pretty decent. Maybe every 20-30 games, I find somebody that’s pretty solid that shocks me & I’m like ‘ohh, okay, niiiice.’ Other than that, the real skilled players in this game play in private pre-made’s for the most part. If you’re looking for more wins & better-quality players, I’d suggest pre-made’s is my answer if you can.

In my initial message, I meant that ‘High Intensity’ needs to be distinguished from regular missions. Instead of having five difficulty levels, we should have ten. For example, the standard “Damnation” difficulty and a “Damnation High Intensity” difficulty. This way, players who press the quick play button will understand what they are signing up for

That does make sense. People choose difficulty they prefer, but the RNG is quite large with quickplay on normal missions.

It’s like choosing T4 then it feels like T5. T5 Hi intensity vs Auric…feels similar.

T4 hi intensity would say have more elites than T5 normal. But T4 has lower breakpoints. So one point more difficult but easier in another point.

But at least can manually select mission, just adds bit more match making time as plenty of players in pool.

I think its a great idea. I see it on Auric Hi Inteinsty Shock troop Gauntlet all the time. The guys charge like if they expect to kill everything easily and suddenly die and rage quit. Its baffling, but if you imagine those guys expected an Auric mission without hi intensity shock troop gauntlet , it starts to make more sense. The difference between Auric on the mission chain or Auric with hunting grounds modifer and Auric Hi intenesity Shock troop gauntlet is considerable,.

Or another idea: make a filter for quickplay, where you can opt out of certain modifiers and maps. It could be even more robust that way. These days for example i never use quickjplay because : a) i dont want to play the event, i dont like it, and i have alrdy earned the silly reward. b) i dont ever want to play the train mission, i just hate the timed gameplay. IF i could filter them out, i would be happy to use quickplay.

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Not only do players end up on a difficulty level they aren’t ready for, they also realize it only after the game has already beaten them up. And before that they run all over the map and drop like flies

In general, within quickplay at the same difficulty level, a player can end up in missions that differ greatly in difficulty—not only because of the mission modifiers themselves, but also because of the teammates.

For example, I equipped my best Zealot build with Chorus and pressed quickplay on Damnation, expecting an easy run. Instead, I landed in HI Rumbling Giants on SpireSide. I got fairly strong teammates: two H20 players and one H40 (I’m H21 myself). The result: a 41-minute mission (two knockdowns, though I wasn’t knocked down). And that’s with the Ogryn carrying grenade boxes. He dealt twice as much damage as me (and I still wasn’t last in damage). What if he had rocks equipped instead? It’s quite possible the mission could have failed or lasted over 50 minutes. That’s not really what I tend to expect from Damnation.

Or take my next games on Heresy with a weak and inefficient Veteran build. In the first mission (which quickly ended in failure) with Rumbling Giants, my teammates were levels 8 to 19. In the second mission (the second mission of the campaign), the true levels of my teammates (beyond the normal level 30) ranged from 48 to 320-something.

And of course these are fundamentally different levels of difficulty—yet the game throws you into them by pressing the same quickplay button. It becomes quite hard to plan for an easy run, because almost any mission can turn out to be significantly harder than the player expected