[This post has become long by accident. I do not apologise 
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I have been playing Generation Zero since the very early days and I did fall in love instantly, setting, robots, ROBOTS! 
Later on I fell out of love again, when heavy bugs and glitches were still a thing (that was back in 2019), had to stop playing after being 60hours in the game roughly, mostly solo. I was sadâŚ
Earlier this year I got back, this time in co-op, and the difficulty was still okay (hard! challenging! sort of a player choice "stealth VS run and gun VS traps etc.) with a few exceptions. And those exceptions are most likely bugs and glitches (wall-glitching robots, non-stop chase/combat, very quick rocket spam etc.- has all been adressed by the latest patch afaik). I say most likely since I am not yet sure ^.^ Following some discussions and player reports about their experience here on the forums I am left with two thoughts/questions:
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The perceived difficulty of the game hinges on so many factors, that the developers cannot rely on those player reports in written form alone to tune the game. Watching live gameplay should help the developers more, if they need that help.
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Many things that happen in the interaction between player(s) and robots are not 100% clear to me as a player, especially early in the game. As in âIs this a bug or a feature?â
Which leads me to the following thought. If I cannot tell the robots abilities are meant to work like they do, how should I react to that scenario as a player? This is where love and frustration happen, as well as the other states of emotional attachment to the game 
So here is what I think is happening: The mystery around the Robots and the World that you find yourself in as a player is a major part of the atmosphere and a core part of the game for me. Gradually learning about the Robots, adapting my tactics and approaches to what the machines do is another major part of the game and the atmosphere from my perspective.
Since it is necessary to keep the player in the âdarkâ for quite some time about the robots and potential weapons and tactics etc. to get this kind of atmosphere and gameplay dynamic going, you are obviously loosing some players on the way there because they do not have the patience / feel irritated / get frustrated. They feel like the game is too hard, unbalanced, broken. Unfair! or they just expected something different! And I do absolutely understand that. A game cannot get everyone in, unless it drops down to the most basic foundation and removes everything else. Generation Zero is not such a game. I am happy about that!
So, when discussing difficulty, i feel like the community does need to step out of their own experience and try to figure out some common points of scaling the difficulty against/with in order to arrive at some form of constructive feedback. Otherwise it is just us players swapping stories, which is totally cool to read in most cases btw. but not helping anyone making a better game or âunderstandingâ how the game âis meant to be playedâ or tuning the difficulty in a meaningful way.
As for the point of how the player can understand his enemy and how mysterious and unclear that needs to be for how long? I cannot tell The developers need to put their vision of that in the game. And leave it at that. Adding 3 difficulties is already really good and helps more people enjoy the game.
So, in the end, do we need to keep discussing difficulty as âa perceived 1 person experienceâ or is that maybe more like sharing battle-stories and comparing tactics. Does the game maybe need a âfair warningâ screen? I have seen that in other games along the lines of âplease do not expect to be a hero winning every battle from the start - this is a challenging game and stopping to fight is not loosing the game - experiment, co-operate, adapt, survive (or something like that)â Might be good to tell people what is coming their way in order to ease them in. Sort of thing.
And finally coming around to the posted topic: I really hope that the AI / difficulty tuning is not a permanent process for this game. Swaying with forum opinions might kill the game in its core. Taking into account what people feed back to the developers, I think the team does know what they want and do not want in their game. As far as I can tell, this is still the Generation zero i played and loved in 2019, just a better version. a much better version.
Their aiming, armor, weapons should feel superior - and they do! Loving that! I just read/hear that a lot of people are confused by what the robots do. And I sometimes wonder if in a situation if i encountered a new robot ability - sayâŚsuperior tracking in the dark with broken line of sight or if the robot just glitched and has perfect aim and track on me always at any time - I feel like the game has gotten that under control in the last patch and I really hope more people give it another go. I am certainly trying to get people to check it out (again) to try to get the better of those nasty robots ^.^ because we can!
