I have yet to experience that once honestly. I’ve seen a lot of sht, like 8 crushers spawning right in front of me, scab/dreg gunner elite clown car spawns etc. but never have I seen that large of a platoon spawn in my back. Even your screen doesn’t indicate that. The thing that regularily happens is 2-4 walkers just appearing behind you. Which is why every VT2 vet has the eyes behind his back tick, constantly turning around.
Thanks mate, appreciate the compliment.
After having many not-ready-for-auric teammates this afternoon, I’m starting to come around to OP’s side.
Double/stacked specials still beingl a thing, bugs and broken blessings, missing sound cues etc. all make it a harrowing experience if you have 2 people who cannot pull their weight in even vanilla damnation.
You notice the extra gunner spam on top of the extra everything, and many people haven’t adapted to the changes including reduced crates and med station charges.
I really like the extra challenge but holy cow, far too often it feels like 2 people need to carry 3 others for a reasonable chance at success. Why 3? Because very often 1 teammate actively works against the team and there’s just no way to votekick them even if they are an obvious troll.
Also, if 1 of the 2 carriers gets a double-pox blown up on them or janky net/dog it’s usually GG.
I feel like some crucial bug fixes would smooth things over, but I’m not sure what FS’s long-term vision or design intent is, but it could probably use some monitoring. There are some “unpopular” options on the table but I don’t see those happening.
I did not see that as a real problem… but yes, obviously we see lot of gunners actually…
A little less would be welcome.
But maybe I am alone, but I would not like they return to the situation before. I like these gunners cause they force you to play cautiously.
What I absolutely hate are the savage spawn… this need to be fixed. No more group that spawn just behind you… spawn should happen outside of any player vision.
I would say they should happen at least 50 meter away from any player.
There is no “playing cautios” if right after clearing a room and passing through it, you can’t fall back inside because now it’s full of crushers.
The concession I’ll make to that is they should at the very least come out of sone kind of visual door or blocked area.
I don’t think that’s a huge ask considering L4D even had that rule.
Im willing to accept “side passages” as an excuse but when they are literally 0 around im just like “what the f?”
Strangely, I never seem to get destroyed-out-of-nowhere by gunners the way you describe, even though I play auric maelstrom all the time and don’t run invis or bubble – I wonder why? 
Personally I think the gunner spam is interesting. Sure, it shouldn’t be happening on lower difficulties. But for aurics I think it’s fine. Why wouldn’t the enemy send a bunch of machine gunners to deal with you? Seems perfectly sensible to me.
I do think all spawns should appear in a realistic way; i.e. through a door instead of just materializing. But tbh even there, apparently lots of folks know how to “stealth” in this universe (including player-character-veterans, many of whom tote machine guns), which seems like a reasonable explanation for why enemies could simply appear out of nowhere.
It might be helpful for folks to post some videos of what they’re describing. Gunner spawns have clearly been cranked up recently but tbh I’ve just not encountered the scenarios being described here. Legions of gunners that appear from nowhere and kill you in one second? Where does this happen? Videos would be very helpful.
Because you’re playing Auric.
You’re advancing way slower than normal and the director does not spawn as much absurdities.
I switched to Auric because I find it easier than normal.
How does that work you mean people are less about running ahead and dying or you mean they spawn stuff in more difficult patterns.
Interesting. I’ve not seen this in normal missions either, regardless of how fast we’re moving. But speed-clearing has never been my thing and I admit I’ve never done sub-20-minute missions. It takes me anywhere from 20-something to 50-something minutes to clear an auric. So, are you saying that you have to be running at a sub-20-something minute pace to see these spawns? (If so, you might simply slow down a bit to prevent the spawns from happening – if you’re progressing through the missions at any kind of reasonable pace it will take you longer than 20 minutes to finish…)
I can’t say exactly what creates these situations.
In normal there are runs that are so empty they are finished in a flash, other times they are so full of enemies it takes minutes to advance 5 meters.
One of the most difficult runs I completed in normal was a low intensity T5: it was so full of enemies, specials, and monstrosities that I would have thought I was in an auric hi-int shock trooper. So much so that 5 minutes in the run I pressed TAB to check the details of the run…
Hell, even in Auric HIST I have yet to encounter that many enemies.
Anyway, I think it’s a mix of the speed of the party and the composition of the map.
If the map is spawning gunners AND the party is moving fast AND the map presents an open space where gunners can surround you in a wide area, then you’ll get in that situation where you can’t reach them fast enough to eliminate the threat.
There’s also the fact that in Auric you have more experienced companions that will have your back: they won’t ignore an enemy just because it’s not shooting at them.
The only problem with gunners that I see when i play it’s that sometimes you get the entire run infested by them.
This makes the run very tedious, as they spread up and dig under cover, and cleaning them up most of the times becomes a peek a boo game where you go in and out of cover to kill them one by one.
It’s fine for 2 or 3 rooms but doing this through all the run it’s cyanide…
Do you have a video of this happening? I feel like that’d really help get everyone on the same page here. I’ve definitely noticed increased gunner spawns recently, but when it comes to the specific complaint here I’m drawing a blank. From the way people are wording things, it sounds like they’re experiencing this a lot – it’s not just some crazy anomaly that caused them to wipe once. So, possibly someone could share a video?
Sure, it’s helpful to have experienced companions, no doubt. But having experienced companions won’t help you if a huge mob of gunners spawns in every corner of the room you’re in and they instagib you. Anyway if you (or OP, or whoever) has a video of this happening that’d be helpful.
This is a fair complaint imo. Hordes of gunners can be annoying to pin down and clear. But that’s a different problem than the one other people are describing (massive gunner spawns out of nowhere that kill you in 1 second).
I don’t record my games unless there’s a specific bug I have to document.
Especially this one where I already get so many FPS drops, having a recording session in the background would probably kill it.
It happened during beta and launch where patrols of normal shooters/stalkers would come out or drop down from behind/the side and gun down the nearest person in one salvo before sometimes switching to melee. That was toned down a bit but I can believe the recent tweaking of the director might have relaxed any restriction that was set to reduce that happening.
Not really, conseder that gunners tend to hide, when they spawn en-mass and position themselves around the map, the moment they all start to shoot it’s an instagib.
I’m thinking of maps where there are high raise corridors accessible only by the enemies.
Also I keep getting told that I just have to go up in their faces to make them stop shooting…
Yes, in spite of all the complaints the first thing I did when I bought the game was do all the training sessions. I learned how to dodge bullets and that enemies are supposed to switch to melee when you get close.
The problem is that they don’t, not always but sometimes they don’t, and when as a psyker I used all my dodges to get to his face and when I start smashing my sword on his head he just keeps pumping bullets in my chest, I go down pretty easily.
The worst gunner spots IMO are metalfab smelter after the first door, Hourglass vertical slums, both going up and down and Magistrati Oublliette at the prison block drop. It’s close enough that gunners do full damage, open because of the drops/large door/high verticality and there are areas there enemies can be in that are inaccessible to players.
I noticed today that they have ammo and need to reload. They can fire for a long time before having to reload! What if their weapon’s magazine/belt was reduced.
I mean Id appreciate it if gunners didn’t track you while you move behind cover out of line of sight, they can still turn like a swivel and try and turn the cover I hide behind to slag but when I sneak to the other side of the cover to try and flank them they could at least pretend to be surprised.
Auric Hi int shock troop
85 gunners (dreg+scab)
A little too much…
Sidenote: yes materials are messed in my board cause I made a mistake in my code… but I do not want to count how many materials someone collected but how many times someone has picked a material pack. And yes, Damage taken is also totally messed… 
