easy is too easy --> 2 man army

[Knight]

thats right
as of 20 minutes ago me and JenolT finished the entire campaign on easy with just the 2 of us
a mean green fighting team composed of the sexy wildcat and the mighty wolfe.

while wolfe took point and hacked everything needed with his hacktool, wildcat covered his behind (while peeking a few times at his tight bum, hence the occasional friendly fire and bug getting trough :p)

reactor was a walk in the park: run like crazy, shoot like crazy, stim for final part and then after still having 2 clips each we decided to just stand at the end and waste ammo for frags
that resultes in 100+ frags each

that also gave us the 250+ kills in tour of duty award on the second level already

we didnt unlocked uplink but i ve seen an akimbo medic and a tech beat the behemoth with the assistance of 1 sentry so i m pretty sure we would have handled that fine too.

barracks was a bit tighter since we had to hack and 1 autogunner had to cover both sides. JenolT did a crazy beautifull job there
the final run was way too easy for 2 guys. after a stim we put down the first wave, a second stim took care of the big guy and his little friends and the final stim was a nice slow motion movie of us walking onto the helipad.

then came the mother of all bitches: observation
after a few tries we had a pretty good way of finishing that round
yes, we did use the lame trick of leaving a 3th marine at the apc BUT our tactic was possible to survive with 2.
why? because once i accidentally shot JenolT near the 2nd final door back to the apc and then i was outa ammo ... i ran like crazy and made it to the final door before the apc swarm killed me
with JenolT still alive we would have won.
several more tried every time resulted in us dying near the end of the hive or even past the hive.
flamer fuel reduction has a lot to do with is cause flamer was one fo the tricks we used on the retreat (not gonna tell more ^^)

so we decided to leave a 3th marine at the apc and just finish it since it was getting boring. that last run i made it completely trough the vent system past the hive (just at the red big tunnel) before i died.


why this entire story? simple: devs, plz check this story. it clearly proves that you made the 'easy' difficulty way too easy
the game is meant to be played with at least 4 yet it can be easily done with 2 autogunners

do you know that 1 shot from an autogun kills an adult alien solder ???
i mean ... thats 250 kills/clip with an autogun. and with some ammo wasting thats still 150-200 kills/clip
its only after like 4-5 levels that you need 2-3 bullets
on reactor with 1 star in the skill stat it kills in 1 hit, on the next 3-4 levels too because you can instantly get the skill stat to 5

we even finished barracks in the 2nd try cause we got parasited the first try.

btw: special thanks to JenolT for wanting to try the game with 2 and it turned out to be a lot of fun.
more fun than in an 8 player game where there is no teamplay, no tactics and ppl who shouldnt be allowed to use a shotgun or a flamer near other ppl

[xhydralisk]

The easy was made easier because that's what a lot of people wanted. If it's too easy for you, there's nothing stopping you from raising the difficulty.

[Carth]

Me and 2 other people did the campaign with an autogunner, a medic and a tech before the patch. It's easier with fewer because there's less friendly fire and less people dying on you. I haven't tried the patch but I hope it isn't as easy as you say. If you practically walked through it with two then maybe it is...

[Evilreaver]

First, try going thru the campaing with no retries- if both die, start over.
Two, Leave the dev's alone- if easy's too easy, go normal. Popular demand pushed the difficulty down.

[Master-Builder]

How often do you play normal games on the "Easy" difficulty?
It's meant to be easy... That's why it's called easy.
Start playing normal as your normal difficulty, instead of "easy" everything will be more... normal then.

[LionsPhil]

Indeed. I'm getting pwned on easy (single player, first mission), because I only started playing yesterday. It's a given for any game that an experienced player will be able to just storm through it on easy. That's why there's a 'hard' mode.

[WildBill]

That's why there are difficulty levels. Find the one that's fun and challenging for you.

[Carth]

How often do you play normal games on the "Easy" difficulty?
It's meant to be easy... That's why it's called easy.
Start playing normal as your normal difficulty, instead of "easy" everything will be more... normal then.

I have to say Alien Swarm opened my eyes to how boring easy (or even normal normal) games are. Have your easy mode, but it was a lot more fun having to really work together to complete it for the first time because it was so damn hard

[Hybrid]

Congratulations on your easy victory. You gain 1 fame.

[Knight]

obviously you all miss the point and like nothing better than to flame me for trying to explain something
this game is supposed to be played with 4 ppl
why?
single player is always with 4 and multiplayer you can use up to 4 marines if less than 4 ppl join
therefor i think it shouldnt be extremely easy for even 2 ppl to finish it

easy should be easy, no doubt about that. but at least it could be easy for 4 ppl with teamwork. not just 2 ... why not give marines infinite health on easy then? boils down to the same thing. easy is too easy atm.
we just tried it because we wanted to have some fun and even though we did, we also noticed that it was way too easy to get trough the campaign.

so i dont exactly know how much easier they made it cause i never done easy before but if they lowered it considerably it might be a good idea to take something in between the current easy and the previous easy. since there probably were complaints about the previous easy that it was too hard otherwise they wouldnt have patched it ...

now its like you r in a game where you 'normaly' would need a team of at least 4 to have a very good chance at beating the level (so its easy if you r with 4 and you work together) but hey ... we dont need those 2 extra guys ... we can do it just as easy with 2 autogunners ... takes away a lot of the charm of the game.

i m starting to fear that normal would be easily finished with 3 ppl with good teamwork and that you can easily get trough hard with 4 ppl. i seriously hope that i m wrong. a pretty high difficulty is one of the important things in this game.

[Bob]

If easy is too easy, play normal. If normal is too easy, play hard. if hard is too easy, play insane.

[Knight]

and another one that doesnt get the point
i m wondering why ppl persist in making senseless replies
i m betting none of you ever tried easy with 2 ppl in a game that is intented for at least 4
after playing this game only 2 days i shouldnt be able to beat it that easily, even on easy difficulty.
after all that is the point of testing the game in its first fases after the release. finding bugs that the beta testers didnt and discovering balance issues since beta tests are usually limited to a small group of ppl and not everything gets balanced for the big public.
but maybe i was wrong putting this topic here since the only ppl who will understand what i m trying to say are ppl who actually bother to look out for bugs and balance issues while they are playing and having fun. most gamers dont ... hence all the unnessecary replies while i was trying to contact the group of ppl that are seriously trying to find problems in games while they are playing ...

[evilmerlin]

And I'm wondering why you are saying that "easy is too easy". Frankly, this posting of yours makes no sense what so ever. So what if people want to play on easy, no one forcing you to play on easy.

Yes, some of us are not "l33t" to clear the game on normal. So you can finish the game on easy using 2 marines, whoop de do, good for you sonny. They have a difficulty level selector for a reason, you find easy too easy, go play on Insane then. I'm pretty sure you can get a big kick out of it.

[JenoLT]

One thing i like about this game is the increadible need of teamwork -> at least 4 people should be needed to complete the missions, what should mean a nice couple of specialized marines: Explosive, Autogunner, Medic and Tech. That would be the standard to solve the game completly even with not a proper teamplay - if it is too challenging you should keep trying.

But now this new easy gives a lot of people the option to start public games being a fraghunt only. Most times they change difficulty to easy (because normal is too challenging in public with campaign mode on) and so they are running without any teamwork towards the objective. I don't want this mod to end up in a "teamwork only in closed games" mod. I really liked the challenging easy difficult in the last version: PLEASE bring it back to us to stop people from going for frags only (keyword: Teamwork needs to be important)

[Retaliator]

And who says the Easy difficulty is meant for 4 (somewhat) experienced players? I don't see what the fuss is all about, like the others said, the difficulty adjuster is there for a reason.

Now, if Insane was to easy or Easy was to hard, then you'd have something valid to talk about.