I think they have nerfed the Pandoran difficulty, they just didn’t tell anybody - not even UV.
Haven’t had time to try the new patches yet, but since I deliberately avoid playing without any of the cheeses (and am doing perfectly fine thanks), I doubt it will affect my playthrough that much.
That said, @UnstableVoltage, I do think the devs need to pay some attention to some of the reaction this is getting:
Does this sound like a bunch of players eager to see how the patches have improved the game? I think not. It sounds like a bunch of dispirited people who are slowly losing the will to live.
I’m not one of them - I’m still greatly enjoying this game - but then I’ve never encountered the difficulty spike, I suspect because I play this very differently to most people (if a Mission inflicts 50% casualties on me, I accept the 50% casualties - I don’t hit Restart and try again). For me this is a war of attrition, where managing casualties & resources with my ever dwindling pool of people is part of the challenge - and as I say, I don’t use Sniper RB, 100% Stealth, Infinte Jumps or chaining Dash combos on principle.
But even I am currently having to psyche myself up for yet another grind through a Lair Mission. I’ve yet to figure out how to beat it without using OP combos.
UV, I appreciate that you clearly weren’t told about the adjustment to the Difficulty Algorithm, but a friendly word to the wise: releasing only partial information which looks like PP has only nerfed the players’ crutches without addressing the underlying issues of why they are using those crutches in the first place is clearly not endearing PP to its core audience.
Just sayin’ 