We are analyzing HoE to see if it is in fact too easy as some may say. We want to see your videos of your victories. This way we can see what users are doing and how we may or may not be able to improve the experience end game.
We want to see your HoE victories!
- Thread starter Kittenmittens
- Start date
I've always thought the people who said Hell on Earth was too easy had some chip on their shoulder tbh (I play on suicidal mainly, best mixture of fun and challenge for me). I've always felt like Hell on Earth was insanely difficult (never bothered to play it when teleporting Zeds was commonplace back then). I mean, I was trying to do solo HoE on Evacuation point as Sharpshooter (for 2 achievements) and it must have taken me 20 attempts across a week or so to beat it using Crossbow+M14, boss was rage-inducing with that too.
From the few times I've done solo Hell on Earth endless, it started to get crazy hard around wave 30 and onward (even as 25 zerk), but perhaps I'll try to do a HoE match later this week, or are you guys looking more for group HoE matches?
From the few times I've done solo Hell on Earth endless, it started to get crazy hard around wave 30 and onward (even as 25 zerk), but perhaps I'll try to do a HoE match later this week, or are you guys looking more for group HoE matches?
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Well... this may not be the evidence of hoe being too easy.....
But this was the most difficult and fun hoe game we had for over a year and a half, intensity was on point and i do hope it gets buffed for the next patch so the intensity was consistant.
*recorded by a friend*
But this was the most difficult and fun hoe game we had for over a year and a half, intensity was on point and i do hope it gets buffed for the next patch so the intensity was consistant.
*recorded by a friend*
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I think what counts as being difficult and top easy depends on player skill and team composition. One game on containment station (which is arguably an easy map) can be smooth with one team, but with another you can somehow fail if one side can't hold the line.
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Containment station had a big problem right from the beta version, I reported it to mapper when it was beta, to TWI when it was added to the game, but apparently nobody thinks that having no zed spawn in the main 'core room' when you hold both sides of the 'core room' is a problem... You literally have the zeds coming from two doors/corridor from each side and a gigantic room with nothing that will spawn inside. Whatever..
I'm not sure HOE is too easy as said it depends on the players and their skill/perks. With top team yeah it is not too difficult, but you can still be beaten in two seconds by a squad of crawlers/stalkers in you back.. anyway with top players, unless you make it impossible, I think there will always be people saying it is too easy because they will master how to beat the game and will need more challenge.
Maybe allowing official server options to increase some values for HOE would please people I think (like 'increased zed health', 'increased zed damage', 'increased zed number', and so on..)
I'm not sure HOE is too easy as said it depends on the players and their skill/perks. With top team yeah it is not too difficult, but you can still be beaten in two seconds by a squad of crawlers/stalkers in you back.. anyway with top players, unless you make it impossible, I think there will always be people saying it is too easy because they will master how to beat the game and will need more challenge.
Maybe allowing official server options to increase some values for HOE would please people I think (like 'increased zed health', 'increased zed damage', 'increased zed number', and so on..)
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omano;n2318525 said:
And thankfully you were ignored, no offence.
In terms of difficulty spike I think HoE doesn't feel like its getting much harder than SuI as opposed to hard -> Sui. Having said that it really depends on the team, how you play the map,camp or kite, the spot you hold and of course the map itself. I have had matches where it felt like a breeze and others getting completely chaotic from wave 7 onwards. If you decide to increase it somehow I hope that doesn't consist of just more zeds coming at you even faster.
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Kittenmittens;n2318496 said:
like anything..a team of good players, even randoms, will probably win. a team of mediocre randoms will probably lose. since difficulty can be a scale based on a variable, like normal =1.0, hard =1.2, suic = 1.5, HOE =2 or whatever. why not just program the game to make it so certain zed traits can be user selected between 1 and 5 modifiers. that way you can have MUCH more granular difficulty levels ranging from what we have today to nigh impossible on the highest setting.
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omano;n2318525 said:
What's wrong with KF2 having some campy maps? I find it more fun having hordes come from one or two directions rather than holding out and having zeds come from every direction. It feels more like KF1.
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In my experience, HoE can be easy with a very specific and tuned team composition - that is mostly Zerks with Eviscerators and a medic or two to back them up. Other classes, especially those who can get a bonus on move speed can mostly survive and if you have a bunch of Zerks who know their trade, you can even protect a luxury like a demo, but as a general rule any perk that doesn't get extra hitpoints or movement, will start dying by round 3 or so.
Assuming you get to the boss wave, things can go different ways. The Abomination is pretty easy. The Patriarch is decently ballanced, the King Pound leans towards the hard side as most perks can not evade his attacks indefinetly. And Volter will rip the guts out of any team that doesn't have a good medic and knows how to split Volters attention between themselves.
Assuming you get to the boss wave, things can go different ways. The Abomination is pretty easy. The Patriarch is decently ballanced, the King Pound leans towards the hard side as most perks can not evade his attacks indefinetly. And Volter will rip the guts out of any team that doesn't have a good medic and knows how to split Volters attention between themselves.
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HoE is in fact, too easy. It did not need the 10% zed movement speed nerf, it did not need the nerf to hans. You could more than double the number of zeds on the map at once, and increase the spawn intensity well beyond what HoE currently offers, and more than quadruple the large zeds per game, and people would still clear it. (Look at any of DoomsdayParty's CD videos for proof of that)
After seeing the call for proof HoE is too easy, a few of my friends and I decided to get together and run a few vanilla maps. We don't usually play vanilla HoE because of how easy it is. In fact, vanilla hoe is so easy that it's spawned multiple different mods that allow players to increase how difficult the game is. We're usually playing one called Controlled Difficulty.
I don't usually do the whole video thing (My upload speed is garbage and i play on a potato) but, this seemed like a good cause. Unfortunately, for the first three maps, my audio was messed up)
We recorded all of these the day you posted the announcement:
Containment station, (no medic)
Goat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBsvpTGBYCk
Aguxyz - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/254823869
Tiger - recording screwed, no audio. [can upload on request]
Outpost
RykerZzZ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RMklelRfdM
DarkDarkington - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_kiokawPDM
Hostile Grounds, ( no medic )
Goat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt7lAMvwwhE
Amathy - https://youtu.be/SKvNNlI-BUs
Aguxyz - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/254823869
Tiger - recording screwed, no audio. [can upload on request]
nuked, ( no medic+screwing with eachother the whole time)
Goat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTbkM0tV6iA
Amathy - https://youtu.be/2xhw8TmnfFc
Aguxyz - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/254823869
Tiger - recording screwed, no audio. [can upload on request]
Catacombs
RykerZzZ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9NbL7CHvXg
DarkDarkington - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84hqN8z68Rw
The decent
RykerZzZ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_3bz3hgUB4
DarkDarkington - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCMMqzdcnb0
powercore
RykerZzZ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCOBeiLQnyI
DarkDarkington - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAW4-PcmMCc
zed landing (Cancer play)
DarkDarkington - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-15-hKjdTg
Tiger - https://youtu.be/B0UlFrT8LJc
We even did infernal realm with 6 survivalists and CS_Italy with 6 firebugs
infernal realm ( 6 survivalist )
RykzZzZ - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/254975393
Tiger - Fixed audio and flat out forgot to record.
CS Italy ( 6 firebug )
Rykerzzz - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/254976057
Tiger - https://youtu.be/eVmgGMmpnpg
Back to CD for us, but please... stop nerfing vanilla HoE. Instead, nerf some of the OP weapons and buff the vanilla HoE Difficulty so that we might actually enjoy it again.
There are a number of people whom I've seen stop playing the game because they find HoE boring and easy and they're never introduced to harder custom difficulties. If player retention is important to TWI, this is something that should be addressed.
After seeing the call for proof HoE is too easy, a few of my friends and I decided to get together and run a few vanilla maps. We don't usually play vanilla HoE because of how easy it is. In fact, vanilla hoe is so easy that it's spawned multiple different mods that allow players to increase how difficult the game is. We're usually playing one called Controlled Difficulty.
I don't usually do the whole video thing (My upload speed is garbage and i play on a potato) but, this seemed like a good cause. Unfortunately, for the first three maps, my audio was messed up)
We recorded all of these the day you posted the announcement:
Containment station, (no medic)
Goat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBsvpTGBYCk
Aguxyz - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/254823869
Tiger - recording screwed, no audio. [can upload on request]
Outpost
RykerZzZ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RMklelRfdM
DarkDarkington - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_kiokawPDM
Hostile Grounds, ( no medic )
Goat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt7lAMvwwhE
Amathy - https://youtu.be/SKvNNlI-BUs
Aguxyz - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/254823869
Tiger - recording screwed, no audio. [can upload on request]
nuked, ( no medic+screwing with eachother the whole time)
Goat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTbkM0tV6iA
Amathy - https://youtu.be/2xhw8TmnfFc
Aguxyz - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/254823869
Tiger - recording screwed, no audio. [can upload on request]
Catacombs
RykerZzZ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9NbL7CHvXg
DarkDarkington - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84hqN8z68Rw
The decent
RykerZzZ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_3bz3hgUB4
DarkDarkington - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCMMqzdcnb0
powercore
RykerZzZ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCOBeiLQnyI
DarkDarkington - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAW4-PcmMCc
zed landing (Cancer play)
DarkDarkington - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-15-hKjdTg
Tiger - https://youtu.be/B0UlFrT8LJc
We even did infernal realm with 6 survivalists and CS_Italy with 6 firebugs
infernal realm ( 6 survivalist )
RykzZzZ - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/254975393
Tiger - Fixed audio and flat out forgot to record.
CS Italy ( 6 firebug )
Rykerzzz - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/254976057
Tiger - https://youtu.be/eVmgGMmpnpg
Back to CD for us, but please... stop nerfing vanilla HoE. Instead, nerf some of the OP weapons and buff the vanilla HoE Difficulty so that we might actually enjoy it again.
There are a number of people whom I've seen stop playing the game because they find HoE boring and easy and they're never introduced to harder custom difficulties. If player retention is important to TWI, this is something that should be addressed.
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Coffee009;n2318540 said:
Having all zeds coming only from a doorway is just exactly like a farming map, no challenge, plain boring. I mostly play by camping, but look at this video in this post https://forums.tripwireinteractive....-see-your-hoe-victories?p=2318513#post2318513 they are camping a spot, but it is not boring because zeds do not come only from one doorway, you understand what I mean? Having absolutely no threat coming from at least the other side of the doorway is just exactly like a farming map. For me the problem is more zed spawning than general difficulty of the game, if all areas had multiple zed spawning possibilities then it would increase difficulty a little. But yeah I also think there will still be people finding the game not challenging enough because they are very good at it and know exactly how to react in every possible situation and play well together and do no mistakes.
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LazyTiger;n2318567 said:
Playing with friends (I.E. people you know well enough to the point you know what they do and won't totally bomb) is much different than playing with randoms of varying skill. Just keep that in mind.
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Dr. Lethal;n2318584 said:
This post is perfect to have here for the dev team - because to me, this is the biggest challenge in balancing the difficulties to appease the masses.
HOE w/ a coordinated team is like a different difficulty than HOE w/ 5 randoms.
To me it's more reason to add a difficulty beyond HOE and just leave the current HOE alone. It might be the best of both worlds.
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Randoms being what they are makes little difference to the fact that HoE is just too easy. You don't need teamwork and coordination. There's not a lot that distinguishes HoE from Sui besides the sheer number of uneducated players that have no clue what they're doing and some health scaling and spawn frequency changes. I've pubbed quite a bit. I have well over 1000 multiplayer match wins (and I play more CD than anything else- CD doesn't count towards stats and wins because it's not a whitelisted mutator). Pubs are more difficult because the players are typically bad, but that doesn't change the fact that even pubbing I still typically win on HoE with randoms.
HoE being the hardest vanilla difficulty should- in fact- be hard. It should encourage teamwork and coordination. It doesn't. The 6 survialist game, the game on nuked where we tried to be as cancerous to eachother as possible, and the 6 firebug game should prove that beyond any doubt. The in-game difficulty description should apply. It doesn't, none of it does. As it stands now, if you're not an idiot, and you know what you're doing- HoE is a joke. For a wave defense game's highest difficulty to be easy, is not a good thing. It's not helping with player retention. People start getting good then they realize just how easy HoE is and stop playing. I've seen it many times over the last three years.
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LazyTiger;n2318588 said:
Ok so I read the whole post, but let me hit the pause button on was said at the very beginning. Now, like you, I've played over 1k or so online games and most of the time win a match. But, I'm not gonna stay long in a game if I have to keep propping up a team just because they can't keep themselves alive.
Like Patty says in Endless: "If you keep propping up your team like this, you're going to get yourself killed."
Stuff like that would burn you out in almost the same time span of doing a scrake-only wave on endless. Even the most hardened players need some level of coordination to succeed, and everyone playing the same perk isn't that good of an example since everyone would have the same skills and be less likely to trip on each other. A full team of Pyros essentially means everything and anything will be burning in hell faster than Sonic the Hedgehog can say his catchprhase.
I don't play with my friends all the time, and HOE can feel trivial at times, but it's a real toss up as to what the game decides to throw at you. One game you can get your typical pre-halloween update zed loads or pre-summer groups, and in the next game you could be drowning in QPs and raging fleshpounds. I mentioned CS earlier because if it's natural corridor style, and at times I've been in decent teams that failed because they got bum rushed on one side and didn't call for help.
For someone like you, it may feel trivial because you spent too much time playing the game anyways, but I feel it could only use a few small adjustments.
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I don't disagree here. Personally I find pubs lack of game knowledge often infuriating. And while that will add to the challenge of the game, it doesn't inherently make it harder. Bad players should not be factored in when balancing the hardest difficulty in a game.
Anecdotal example:
I hopped into a pub just earlier where it was me (on GS) and one other guy on commando. He had just finished wave 3 solo. No biggie, late joining just means budgeting longer than usual. This guy actually knew how to extend as well, and on 2player health the difficulty was a joke. Then a few waves later more people show up. The first goes second commando. That's never a good idea because of how zed-time works. (global extension limit, any commando can proc an extension, if you've got multiple they'll screw with eachother's zed-time unless they're very well coordinated- which pubs are not.) He's just going to wind up screwing with the first commando's extensions, and he did. The next goes sharpshooter and proceeds to freeze every scrake he sees. Laughable, but not harmful. A wave after that another guy joins and goes third commando. At which point the very first commando (The one who wasn't bad) decides to switch to demo. Well... I wasn't going to stay on a precision-based ballistic perk like gunslinger with a demo, and two manndos that didn't know how zed time works and were both throwing grenades at scrakes and fleshpounds, etc. I of course switched off GS and went to a cancerous loadout myself. We still won, no problem, no deaths (except someone who decided to try and facetank patty's rockets during bosswave). It wasn't remotely difficult, even with pubs that had no clue what they were doing.
The game is easy, even with pubs. Yes pub players ARE infuriating to deal with, but if you just let them die (or help them die as I prefer to do- by welding them out or simply leaving them to their own devices) scaling done for players in turn will make the game even easier. (It would be nice if this were turned off for HOE and we had 6p health all the time regardless of player-count) pubbing has been rather aptly described as "essentially pvp cleverly disguised as PVE." Let the idiot pubs die and it won't be so bad. It just means more zeds for you.
I understand catering to the masses makes business sense, I really do. But it's dedicated players who put the time in to learn how the game works and actually get good at it. This is where TWI is fumbling with HoE- they're capping their audience by catering to players that should really be playing on lower difficulties and have repeatedly nerfed it. Back in closed beta They said they'd make HoE harder if anyone beat it. People did, TWI didn't. In fact, every few updates they keep nerfing it. If not for controlled difficulty myself and a fair number of other players who have spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on cosmetics in the game would have left a long time ago. There are plenty of players who are never introduced to modded difficulties like CD, so they're never really able to recapture that thrill of being challenged. This is one of the things causing TWI to lose out on player retention.
HoE needs a buff, and doing so will not hurt the casuals who should be playing lower difficulties. Those lower difficulties exist to cater to them. People with the 'but muh participation award achievements' for map completion should be able to get over it or play it enough to get it simply by being carried by players that actually know what they're doing. A game that is too easy is not fun for very long, and any game that isn't fun will lose players. (This is why a number of people are appalled at the idea of the m99 being stronger than the railgun) HoE players and people that are good at the game say it's easy because it is.
Introducing bad players into the mix who don't understand game mechanics and wind up doing more harm to the people they're playing with than good is not an acceptable means of balancing difficulty. bad players causing problems is an artificial difficulty increase. As it stands, a firebug raging and fire panicking every large zed on the map is annoying, but that's all it is. Unless the whole team is bad, it's typically not going to cause a wipe.
If there's an opportunity to buff vanilla HoE I absolutely think TWI should do it.
As far as 'for someone like me' I'm not special. Sure, I'm one of the better players in the game, and I have some degree of fame for it (not something I ever wanted) but I am not special. I don't have some inhuman powers that make me click a mouse better than anyone else. Anyone who takes the time to learn how the game works and practice can do anything I do just as well if not better. Let me ask you this. For those spending 'too much time on the game' who do you think TWI profits from more? Casuals who only play once every couple of weeks or a few times each event- or those dedicated players like you and me with literally thousands of hours in game who just have to have that full precious weapon loadout for their favorite perks, or that fancy new skin, or that new character bundle? I wonder.
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in the nuked game in my post we were legitimately screwing with eachother and still won. There was no coordination. I was on firebug- i am perhaps one of the loudest firebug haters this game has seen. I think that alone not only disproves this but drives it home that coordination and teamwork isn't required to win. We did all of those HoE wins in 1-take on the day TWI put out this request. There was no cherry picking. By the end of it we were running HoE with 6 survivalists and 6 firebugs -one of whom was level 0, and still winning with no real effort.
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LazyTiger;n2318595 said:
Well personally, I think anything that's precious skinned is overrated and just lazy skin texture unlike the neon weapons or tactical skins. But I do see your point. TWI is probably the only game company I will willing spend dosh on to get stuff because they've proven to be reilable, and they don't disappoint with each update. Even this new one such as introducing two new weapons no one has heard of is very enticing.
I remember at one point seeing an article about perk compatibility (and the constant arguing in it). I do agree that certain perks won't do well with each other, like GS and demos since one is about precision and the other is about causing damage over a radius. But it was also brought up player skill can mess up things too. Most people just prefer to play the perk they like the most when given the chance, but can end up stepping on other people if they try to fit multiple perks on the same team and aren't as good. 3 commandos is never a good mix, and it's largely because it weakens the team's ability to deal with big zeds. With me, my favorite is demo because I like seeing body parts fly, though I won't pick it if there's already one (unless for some reason he's using the seeker six which IMO fails compared to the RPG). My steam even hints at it.
However, there are also players who believe perks are only allowed to do certain things or restricts it to one perk each. Nothing is wrong with the latter, but I believe in free choice to pick who you want to play. As for the former...met this idiot named Joker who believed demos should only kill big zeds and not trash (completely forgetting trash make up 90% of the zed force). He kicked me off his server despite the fact I had the most kills and me and a zerker were holding a side pretty well; we only got pushed back due to a big zed rush. It was on Containment Station too.
If they could make HOE's stats scale by 2 or 1.5 for each player in the game, that would be something to test and go from there. Also, giving zeds some new moves wouldn't hurt, like giving all FPs the spin attack they used to have. I also think restricting perk levels to certain difficulties should be a thing (cause everyone hates it when a guy below 10 joins HoE just to get some quick XP). Can't exactly stop people from doing that unless your server has an autokick feature enabled.
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Coffee009;n2318606 said:
solo is really nothing to write home about.. even a toddler will be able to survive solo play with a level 0 perk.
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