I ask because Legend quick play rounds seem to go by quickly with little trouble, but when a group of mine stuck together and selected a map, we got our asses kicked… a few times.
Also, on QP getting caught in a plague wind does some noticeable damage on characters with 120HP, but in the premade run it downed me by itself.
Spawns also seem more chaotic.
Is this the case or was RNG just picking on us?
It’s not. Sometimes RNG is a little cruel, but that’s unrelated to whether you’re in QP or a premade. QP you’re going to get all sorts of builds that may or may not complement your play style and your role, and that’s also probably what you’re noticing.
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It seems to depend on the host as well. You can get a totally different difficulty depending on the hosts PC.
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So this is actually true? The difficulty also scales with the power, that host pc can provide? xD Or is it some other factor?
Often heard about that, but I was never really too sure.
Well, they probably fixed some of that, but they can only do so much. So yes, the host makes a difference. Not only high or unstable pings, but also CPU performance.
Someone in the past tested this by limiting his PC to one core with low clock rate.
The result was far fewer mobs in hordes, possibly by impacting the maximum spawns per second, and also fewer roaming enemies. It wasn’t easier, though: The game has a slot system with value assigned to mobs, and the game just filled the freed up slots with berserkers.
In the past RNG and host dependence was larger, though; I remember someone reported getting a boss, patrol and horde within 90 seconds of starting Hunger in the Dark. I believe Fatshark set tighter constraints since then?
What a bad host can still cause, besides lower spawnrates, is enemies walking through walls or spawning right in someone’s face.
Of course, while I don’t intend to judge anyone harshly here, it is also possible OP is just immensely lucky with his randoms.
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Official answer from the beginning has been that there is nothing in the AI director’s code that should be affected by the host’s computing power. But there have been enough reports about more powerful PCs producing harder games that these suspicions should not (in my opinion) be dismissed outright. Then again, there also hasn’t been any conclusive evidence, just anecdotes and very limited testing by individuals, so they shouldn’t be believed outright either.
There is also the (quite high, because of how computer RNGs or rather pseudo-RNGs usually work) chance that the RNG in itself is affected by the hardware, so that also may be behind these experiences. At one point, there certainly was enough complaints about the RNG feeling unfair to warrant some suspicion. But again, nothing conclusive was found out, and only anecdotal evidence surfaced.
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I need more CPU power then xD
Seemed to be a slow weekend so I was hosting a lot more than usual and I noticed a significant difference when hosting (recently upgraded my CPU). The giveaway is normally the sheer number of elites in almost every new encounter. I also notice a much higher frequency of specials spawning and hordes seem to last longer but haven’t done any proper science just yet. Will start taking note of the number of elites per map and compare to non-hosted games to get some numbers :).
I think one theory was that there is a limit to mobs spawned at one time, and with a better CPU, they have better pathing, which means they reach you faster - and then more are spawned.
That shouldn’t affect the duration of hordes, though.
Anyone can test it themselves by reducing cores and using any CPU benchmarking / overloading tool to put more workload on the CPU, you will notice the difference almost immediately. It also heavily affects AI-targeting and sometimes outright busting it. I am no one that buys into these things easily, but this is something anyone can verify for themselves, especially those who have a very strong CPU.
I have to say though that it seems they evened that out by quite a bit. The differences in quickplay have been a lot less as of late, but that might be just an impression.
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No evidence? People posted threads with videos before the forum purge. Underclocking your CPU made a huge difference. And I can still tell the difference between myself and my wife hosting. People with bad CPUs always had less mobs per game.
They have made some upgrades lately, so this doesn’t happen as much. But I’ve noticed lately that some horde mobs will just stand around in the back and not even attack or move. They seem to just be there cause they were spawned, but haven’t been given the resources to do anything.
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