How difficult/long is the platinum now compared to release date?

[Stars_of_Sirius]

Title. I got this game for free with my PS5 but personally I really disliked the game. However I am a trophy hunter so I want to give it another chance. If it's 100+ hours of it being a 9/10 or 10/10 like the guide says then this may be the first game on my list I put down and abandon my perfect 100%. 

Edited April 15, 2022 by Stars_of_Sirius

[Yukiko Miyamoto]

Probably a 3/10 difficulty actually wasn't too difficult.

[Stars_of_Sirius]

4 hours ago, gamercris066 said:

Probably a 3/10 difficulty actually wasn't too difficult.

 

Really? That seems like a CRAZY drop from before. 

[Yukiko Miyamoto]

Yep, The recent update made Nightmare Much easier.

[Im_Loafing]

I would say it went from like a 9/10 difficulty to a 6/10. The update made nightmare easier but it still takes a fairly organized team to do it.

[MsVelvet]

How does trophy unlocks work in co op? I've heard some conflicting reports. Can I matchmake into a game in session n get the trophy for that mission or I need to be present for the entire mission? N does my progress save if I'm not host? (I hate to even have to ask that, it's 2022 n this feature should be standard but some devs continue to botch this simple process).

Edited April 17, 2022 by MsVelvet

[Deadly_Ha_Ha]

Maybe the guide should be updated

[Yukiko Miyamoto]

Co-op does work, And joining the game halfway does work

[MsVelvet]

57 minutes ago, gamercris066 said:

Co-op does work, And joining the game halfway does work

Hmm...ok. I think I'll pass 4 now unless I can get a dedicated team to tackle this with. Thanks 4 replying.

Edited April 17, 2022 by MsVelvet

[trophynerd122]

1 hour ago, MsVelvet said:

Hmm...ok. I think I'll pass 4 now unless I can get a dedicated team to tackle this with. Thanks 4 replying.

Quickplay is better, trust me. It might take a bit longer to find some of the more professional players, however you get more blood points since the last update for simply playing through missions on quickplay.

I tried hosting a session on PSNP and messaged a couple of people on my PSN friend list, however the motivation was not really there, so I decided to clean it up via quickplay.

Luckily, with crossplay enabled, you will find a lot of dedicated PC gamers out there. Wish you good luck

[JohnCenaSong-]

On 15/04/2022 at 11:12 PM, gamercris066 said:

Probably a 3/10 difficulty actually wasn't too difficult.

^ Probably this.

 

I did Nightmare before the update that really nerfed Nightmare but I'm not too sure. It's quite dramatic, plus there's a LOT of cheese strats/speedrunning methods in solo.

 

Time however, can't see that being much different because the longest trophy is unchanged really and that's to kill loads of enemies. You can farm in a couple locations if you want to go the boring way buy it'll still take a fair bit of time that it's worth just running the game normally for fun.

[HuntingFever]

Paging @Aim-Dat-PaiN and @Beyondthegrave07, the Guide needs a revision please, based on what has been posted here .

[Beyondthegrave07]

2 hours ago, HuntingFever said:

Paging @Aim-Dat-PaiN and @Beyondthegrave07, the Guide needs a revision please, based on what has been posted here .

What specifically changed in nightmare to make it easier, what cheese strats were added, etc? I don't own the game and was only added to the guide to help with English, so it's difficult for me to add anything to the guide since I don't understand how the game has changed, what has been updated, nor can I really comment on difficulty of it either.

 

If someone could help me here or shoot me a PM on what should be updated on the guide, I'll make the changes when I get a chance.  I've been having a lot of computer issues lately so it's a bit iffy on when my computer will cooperate with me. This isn't something that's easily updated on my phone.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Beyondthegrave07

[SzzMN]

Gonna chime in and say this game definitely is not a 3/10 like it’s been said. December patch did make things easier slightly with reduced special spawn rates. But a 3/10 is an insult. It’s still difficult as one of the few people who played from release day till now it has been made easier yes but not as absurdly dumb easy as it’s been made out to be. You can speed run of course you can but does everyone have the knowledge and how to do so? Nope. Is everyone on the game amazing PC players to carry nope? The only permanent thing to make this “easier”, are burn cards which might be worth mentioning in the guide. They’re basically consumables you can buy from supply lines and use to give yourself an bit of an advantage. It’s basically the same game it’s been since December now. It might honestly be a 8/10 and has been for the last few months. 9/10 people will not be able to speed run the levels and have a team which will absolutely steam roll every act together. Also worth mentioning the DLC tunnels are high risk high reward and you can sometimes skip parts of the map from start to the end if you succeed in the tunnel but it’s all RNG. So just to recap definitely not a 3/10, 8/10 at most now and the game is still difficult and most people will struggle and you’ll see this reflected in the total number of unique plat achievers for the game. 

1 hour ago, Beyondthegrave07 said:

If someone could help me here or shoot me a PM on what should be updated on the guide, I'll make the changes when I get a chance.  I've been having a lot of computer issues lately so it's a bit iffy on when my computer will cooperate with me. This isn't something that's easily updated on my phone.

[JohnCenaSong-]

2 hours ago, SzzzPS said:

Gonna chime in and say this game definitely is not a 3/10 like it’s been said. December patch did make things easier slightly with reduced special spawn rates. But a 3/10 is an insult. It’s still difficult as one of the few people who played from release day till now it has been made easier yes but not as absurdly dumb easy as it’s been made out to be. You can speed run of course you can but does everyone have the knowledge and how to do so? 

I don't know, maybe a 3 is a bit extreme, but the solo speedrun techniques are really easy if you know how and I guess the aim of a guide is to inform players how. With knowledge the player find things lot easier so I don't necessarily think difficulty should be based on a lack of knowledge if a guide offers it. Just like how puzzle games get low difficulty ratings because the guide offers the solutions. I don't think difficulty is made easier by the patches exclusively but by community knowledge, people have pooled together to make some really reliable safe strats and speedrun routes that dramatically lower the difficulty of getting through Nightmare if you just want to simply get through it. To do it the more 'legit' traditional way then sure, not too much has changed over time to knock it's difficulty so dramatically.

 

The areas where you have to survive have cheeses and generally solo play with the AI being good turrets in more stationary survival encounters is easier than when you had to do it online only. Some of the level requirements themselves are also easier in offline, as well as ridden and special spawns.

 

Even missions like T5 (gathering the Intel in the house) which I'd say at one point was the hardest section in Nightmare to beat legit is much easier with the right know-how. One method that was popular was to build up economy then splurge on barbed wire and pipe bombs. Using the bombs when you exited an upstairs window with an intel and using wire on the stairs because the AI clears ridden quick enough to make the top of the stairs totally safe. But this is an outdated 'easy' method as last I checked the easier method (and I don't know if there's an even easier one now) is to use the same typical speed deck used on all the other Acts/checkpoints with pain meds. Rush to the minigun with a toolkit and blast the ogre since you'll kill it before it gets close and you're totally safe up there on the minigun then just run around alternating between upstairs exit where the minigun was at or basement one-way door as exit points each time you find an Intel. Often AIs will die while you're moving around the house but you don't need them for anything. Speedrunning so OP for easy Nightmare runs despite some cards in speed decks being nerfed themselves throughout the game. You just gotta know where to run and at which point you should hunker down in a certain spot to tackle a hoard or recover some stamina and pretty much let the AI wipe most things out for you while supplying you with endless ammo too.

 

Evangelo also makes this easier, firstly with the stamina and speed but also the breakout for if you get caught up while running.

 

It should also be noted, while I'm not a fan of exploits and didn't use this myself, you can back out of the game before you fully game over and continue from the level you quit on rather than being sent back to the last Nightmare checkpoint (unless this got patched last patch). That would significantly make sections like Act 3 first half a lot easier as you wouldn't need to do them all in a row plus the corruption cards don't change so if you have an easy set that's neat (though I guess the drawback is you'd be stuck with a hard set too).

 

Act 4 (being a boss fight) is a bit harder to get the speedrun for and I think they nerfed it in places like phase 2 so you can't hit over a certain amount each time the mouth opens (or at least for me I could only ever do exactly 1/3rd of its HP each time) but there's safe strats that make it a lot easier. For example phase 1 the ridden hoards don't trigger until you kill a tentacle so you can get all tentacles down to 1 shot (which is super easy with no ridden around) and then just hit them all with the last shot and bam, phase 2. I still believe you can 1 shot it in phase 3 though with the grenade deck but don't quote me on that.

 

If you decide to play with a group instead of the easier solo route there's also the cards which I don't think got nerfed (correct me if I'm wrong, I've never used these cards myself, only see them in quickplay) that trigger on hoards that when stacked across the team are really strong.

 

Melee decks are another one that can be crazy OP both solo and online. When I run a melee deck I can switch my brain off (even on Nightmare) and feel safe in the knowledge that aside from getting grabbed or pinned and not having a teammate/AI free me then it's basically impossible for me to die with all that damage reduction and temp health generation.

 

Hags can still be a nuisance solo though if you're not paying attention. Mostly because the AI will always trigger it but I remember I had a hag on Nightmare on the Act 3 level with the raft (Cabins by the lake) and all my AI died and I just kept going back and forth between areas until the game informed me where the battery was so I didn't have to go inside any buildings or trigger alarms unnecessarily so I could just grab it and run to the exit. I just didn't care during that run, I was speedrunning just to grind an easy ZWAT for a character I didn't care about .

 

Only area that I think would be tricky even with speedrunning and solo would be the hedge maze. The area before the maze you have to hold out and destroy a few things to open up the path to the maze is kind of easy (go up the stairs and hold off on either far end) but the AI does like to jump down for no reason to fight specials point blank and whilst you don't need all your AIs alive it's nice to have at least 1 following nearby in the hedge maze. The hedge maze itself has a few randomised paths, there's a handy picture that shows you the optimal path to check your route with the least possible backtracking but even then, backtracking is tricky in an enclosed space if you're speedrunning. It may even be best to slow down a bit here and let your (hopefully more than one) AIs cover you from common ridden as you navigate and focus any major threats in your way.

 

I'm not too familiar with the latest patch with Nightmare because my focus has been moved onto No Hope, but it seems this patch has nerfed Nightmare even more than the last nerf meanwhile speedrunning hasn't really been nerfed so... I imagine it's even easier than when I last did a ZWAT and I'm wondering if it'll even make for an easy time in No Hope

 

I'm no expert but I've played other '9/10' rated titles before and this game with the current easy strats and nerfs is nowhere near that level. I'm terrible with arbitrary difficulty ratings though so I don't know where it would stand. 3/10 I guess sounds too extreme, would... 6/10 sound fair?

 

If they ever severely cripple speedrunning techniques and decks then, although there's others easy strats, I think the difficulty would raise a little. But speedrunning is very easy in this game and I'd wager is how a lot of people filled out some of their ZWAT collection. No shame in it, once I did Nightmare the traditional way a couple times I did some speedrunning just to complete some characters because I admit I couldn't be bothered and wanted to get through characters I didn't like the easy way.