Same discussion topics merged.
//Mod
In one of the latest dev streams, Björn (lead designer) did gave hope for the post-April’20 update difficulty returning to the game.
What was exactly said can be listened at 00:30:30 in here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/659109790
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What I’d like to see is tanks moving around and not just staying in one spot shooting you after you’ve been spotted. All the swedisch army would have had to do was hide behind a rock and move left or right by 4 meters everytime the rockets or mortars come flying. Apoc Tanks are a bit better due to their area denial, but generally there isn’t enough re-positioning happening with the bigger units. Once you get rid of their guns you can simply move before two trees that they can’t fit between, and all they will ever do is look at you angrily.
I also think that difficulty should reflect item quality and drops to a certain degree, as in nothing being unobtainable in the easiest mode, but harder ones giving better loot more frequently. In my opinion a challenge has to be proportional to its rewards.
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YES! I will forever love these guys if April 2020 makes its way back on one of the difficulty levels. I would be more than happy to throw in tips if asked, and Im sure there are plenty of gamers here who have played since the 80s that can also throw some input. 
Totally agree with you on this. I spent a lot of time planning my shots pre latest update. What I found the first time I played the latest update was, firstly I was being attacked by up to 40+ hunters (coming in waves of three or four once I’d dispatched the previous wave) and at least two tanks and an harvester plus several runners and seekers and was able to survive without dying once. Yesterday I destroyed several tanks and about 20 hunters as well as 20+ runners while on an open road with forests to both sides and various rock outcrops for cover and survived. Previously if I got into a scrap with more than three hunters and just one tank and I’d not planned it well, i.e. setting traps, getting adequate cover etc I’d be dead twice over or more unless I ran away. A new difficulty mode incorporating the difficulty from the April update would be brilliant. I would keep the present as a medium to easy difficulty mode.
The image is from the first battle I had post update. You can only see half of the robots, a harvester and tank are behind the second barn with loads more hunters. Oddly there were few runners. I didn’t use my pistol, I just changed it to get a better shot of the destruction.
This new change is just too easy, and also time consuming as the battle took almost 40 minutes.
I think “spamming” robots is the problem, not the difficulty itself. I would love to fear the robots, not
to get the swarm of robots that comes in front of my face to shoot at.
I will admit that the Assassins of April difficulty has grown on me. I am surprised at how much I’m actually going to miss it. Devs, it could use some tweaks ( like getting hit by hunters concussion rifles doing 80% hp and missiles that you obviously dodged but still did damage) don’t completely eradicate the April difficulty.
Still waiting the post-April '20 update difficulty level coming back to the game.
In the mean time, here are some of my gameplay recordings that i took post-April '20 update, to be as reminders, what the game was back then. 
Solo play, Guerilla difficulty:
Multiplayer, Adventurer difficulty:
Multiplayer, Skirmish difficulty:
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I have to agree that it made the game more interesting, just no more “Laser” missiles or Hunters OP concussion rifles please.
Just make it a standard feature in Guerilla and optional for Skirmish.
Yep! The most important tactic I learned early when dealing with the Harvesters. Shoot Hunter weapons off to not kill them which prevents more Hunters from spawning. You almost feel bad for the Hunters with no weapons. Them running around in circles like drunk toddlers trying to knife you looks pretty comical. 
I have mixed feelings about April 2020 concussion rifles. They were REALLY hard to evade, but that is what made it interesting. If you were out in the open, you had to seriously plan ahead either by finding a large rock to come in and out of from behind to hit them or an entire hill. Heck I remember multiple times having to find a large enough drop for me to hide at. You hear them coming, but they won’t jump a vertical drop of like 20+ efeet / 6+ emeters. Then you hit them as hard as you can from below. The luckiest I ever got was when 3 Hunters were chasing me. We came down a mountain, and they happened to be huddled together close enough where the blast radius of the grenade launcher killed them all together. That was months ago, and I still remember exactly where that was at. It was an epic moment because they were SO hard to take down, but that one instance I was extremely lucky to get 3 at a time with the grenade launcher. 
And at a town with plenty of tightly packed buildings? It made it far easier. You circle around them running around like rats in a maze, hit them hard from behind and go running the opposite direction around a different structure. The key was making sure their sights were not seeing you. Aesyle’s first video above at 1:20 is the perfect example. When they lost track of you, they would sometimes stand still long enough to make a critical hit on something like their arm canon. I had to use that same tactic endlessly of only seeing their canon peeking out of a structure with the rest of their body blocked.
And everything I mentioned here are just a few of the reasons why April 2020 was SO interesting, challenging, and intimidating which = fun in my book. You had to seriously plan out your attack. Running/evading/hiding was part of the tactic. You had to look at a pack of Hunters and ask yourself “Do I have enough health packs to feed a small family, and do I have enough surrounding structural help to not get myself shot into the atmosphere.”
The more I talk about it the more I miss April 2020. But I stick around because the Devs are open to changes, I have hope, and I REALLY enjoy fighting big bad crazed industrial robots with 80s music. 
Oh, I loved the April Update changes with the Hunter’s Concussion rifle. It was super accurate, which made it extraordinarily deadly. As soon as you encountered a squad of Hunters you immediately had to go for the one with the rifle.
I didn’t mind that it went through walls, either. It’s a .50 shoulder-mounted cannon, it should do that.
When it started to arc through solid ground and justabout everything else, that was a bit much 
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I fully agree with this, I too suggested this.
Maybe in combination with a survival mode, but OPTIONAL of course, a totally new and seperate mode, like the “Gorilla Mode”.
+10’000 fro me, sir @Flybye
As for name: we have “Gorilla Mode”…
Let’s go silly and name it Donkey Kong mode. XD
I was kidding there, btw!
ADDENDUM:
And might I add… realistic.
Humans make machines since these are superior to us humans.
If they were not, then machines would not exist.
Machines are -compared to humans- perfectly precise, can’t get tired (but they CAN break down), and in case of military assault systems, are remorseless.
These would follow you until you either destroy them, or they destroyed you.
Now, I won’t ask for such update, if it were not optional, of course.
I do not like forcing such things onto others.
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When i play GZ, especially in the beginning and after April '20 update, i was thinking to myself: “Is there any need to take out X machines and is it even worthwhile for me to do so.” Since when i can avoid X machines to either go around or wait for them to move onwards, it saves me ammo (not that i don’t have enough) but most importantly, it saves me first aid kits (which are in a great need in Guerilla difficulty).
This is the way i’ve played my whole GZ in solo play. I’d rather avoid combat and save my gear for the critical events, where i need them the most. Going in guns blazing (like many like to play GZ), will consume your resources to the point that, when you are shot down, only option is to respawn in the safehouse, thus breaking combat and forcing you to hike all the way back. And then, we see all those people in the forums asking for vehicles to ease the slow walking around.
April '20 update was a good example of showing GZ in a state, where going in guns blazing and standing out in the open did not work anymore. You had to be smart to win against machines, rather than brute forcing your way through.
This was my #1 argument when people whined about April 2020. I would ask "why would you NOT expect military grade equipment to be fast, precise, and difficult to kill?
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That, indeed.
One, especially not a Govt, would make machines just to be cannon fodder!!!
And basically that is what it is.
I thought I had 120 deaths over 1200 kills.
Turns out… I got 89 deaths over 4K kills!!!
I play on “gorilla mode” with Scaling active.
What seems wrong here?
I’m not too much of a stealth type of guy, but you did have to know your limits. Like that time I had to enter a church to activate a safe house, but it was surrounded by a Tank, a Harvester, and a bunch of Hunters. I setup the large siren decoy on a side of a hill, I ran around the other side of the hill to ensure they didn’t see me, and I worked my way into the church.
For a game like this, I prefer the combat, but I am always prepared. I sometimes spend days collecting ammo and supplies. I would even harvest a Harvester’s Hunters! I destroyed a Harvester’s missiles, and I would continuously kill the Hunters around buildings essentially farming them for their 7.62mm. I don’t throw any guns or ammo away. I use one class of guns first like 7.62mm. When I run out of ammo I switch to a 9mm sub or a 5.56mm gun while slowly collecting 7.62. When I feel I have enough 7.62mm I switch back to it. I try to only use the PVG 90 on weapons then I switch to anything else to bring the robot down.
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My first encounter ever in GZ with a machine, the orange runner you have to kill, I was like 30m away, pumping bullets “into” the machine…
Well, in FACT, I hit the barn 300m down the road, the church bell, some went into that first bunker we encountered, and my clip was empty when i realized, my character was not out due fatigue, or a hit in the head (when he woke near the house), but he had passed out stupidly drunk, seeing his aim was allover the place, but not the aim point.
Relo… no reaload, ded.
I has deed.
The machine figured, that I would place a lucky shot, and scratch some paint of.
Couldn’t let that happen, right?
Took 2 shots.
These followed fast in sequence: “BAM BAM” and Ben was nea moar.
Ben was worm food.
This was in the early days of the release, and I figured, right there and then, that Marksman would be the thing to invest on.
I had seen a video of guys encountering a Hunter, a Tank (the first videos of GZ released), and even while looking as orange as Trump does, those looked menacing, especially since a puppy machine took my head of in no time.
I could see me: no Marksman skill, standing 30m from a tank, unable to land the slightest hit.
Having been in the Belgian army, Paras, where i was a marksman (heh, and STILL miss that pup at 30m!!!) wielding the 7.62mm Maximi, which I had fitted with a rifle scope, taking out targets 800m away, I just got stunned by my guy’s inaccuracy.
Must’ve been the Austrian Stroh 80%, for sure.
Or Sunset Rum, or something in that style.
And if pups here could two-time me into bloody pulp… God, imagine what could those orange elephants (Harveys) could do to me.
Pups were shooting pellets, them Elethingies would probably have rotating cannons with .250 or so.
Lesson learned, avoid combat.
ESPECIALLY early on.
If I remember right, 2 months later, I think it was, machines got tuned down.
No idea why.
I had begun overnew, as I do with big patches and DLC (to avoid conflicts or old bugs, which tend to haunt older saves), and I got me grey Dilapilolitangied Moller, got to the popo car, take ammo, load gun, head to the Trump pup, and…
Where the old one stood there, chest pumped, head high, taunting me, this one stood there trembling, I was about to bring my Moller into position, when… I think it just died from fear.
Or it had tripped over it’s own paw, crashlanding it’s orange head into a pebble, cracking it’s skull, or…
Wait, no… oooh, I actually, if I remember well… KILLED it…
Could that even be?
In the second shot no less??? (I hit the cannister twice).
Poor AI, what has become of you…
Often I addressed this, and then there was the April patch, released … during my break from GZ…
Figures.
Another odd thing, and no, it’s not an illusion: after the end mission on Main (Beyond…) I went straight to Hjim.
Ended the last one there, and all but one mission got done (one is uncompletable, a machine sits stuck underground), went to do the FNIX series, but already I noticed a drop in amount of machines.
I was hunting down the very last FNIX pups for the challenge (needed about 150 I think more), but darn, even towns in the high North were stricken from machines, and no, I play solo, so no one snuck in to sabotage me.
And no, while I think, I am not TOO bad in combat, I did not erase those either, as it was many an hour since I had set foot there.
The machines… just were not there…
Maybe… the aliens abducted the wrong species?
Either way: finished the last mission from FNIX, managed to find the last pups for achievement, and being frustrated over how easy this section of the story was (If you come from Hjim, engaging the Apo class, and you have to then go back to kill mainly orange and camo machines… that was a serious anti-climax right there), I went to Hjim…
Which, weirdly, was also mainly void of machines now.
Compared to before the endings on both land parts, there is a SIGNIFICANT drop in machine amount.
The Eastern Lighthouse (main land) for instance had several bots before, none when I returned.
The fields there had usually Harveys and Tanks stomping around, with a small army of Hunters and Runners… void now, except for the 2 or 3 near the mills.
Same in Hjim, the one port always had a few runners (about 10 each time I got there), now then…
1, and 3 just a bit ago…
I hope the spawns get sped up, myself…
But that is me. 
PS: the first part is poured into a story type, with some tiny hyperboles for fun, but you probably got that.
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Fun read.
I agree that the April update made me avoid fights even more I did prior. So basically improved skills regarding the sneak abilities. And I gathered ammo… a lot of ammo I couldn’t use without dying over and over. The few fights I fought threw my kill to death ratio out the window.
After they rolled the update back (well at least they made it close to pre-April) I don’t care about the KD ratio anymore. But what is still left from the April update is the bug (?) where machines don’t shoot where they aim sometimes.
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Thank you, sir.
Let’s say… a LOT of the times even, and this in all classes.
I had 2 Military Tanks firing at me while I engaged the first, out of so many shots from them, I only got hit ONCE.
And that seemed to be a scraper, too, as I hardly lost any health.
If these machines would’ve existed here, I can tell you, even 1/10th a shot would’ve scalped you.
In our reality, each bullet would’ve been a killer hit, simply because machines make calculations on the fly, taking in account wind speeds, bullet drop, the size of the moon, you’re movement, and spit out a ‘perfect’ shot…
Then, THAT would be no fun anymore, would it.
But improved AI is absolutely a MUST.
OPTIONAL, so folks can choose whether to have a walk on the beach being unkillable as it is now, or a damn fun time in GZ…