[2023] Was the double specials spawn bug retconned into a feature?

Shortly after release a bug was introduced that caused the same type of specials to spawn in pairs at the same time, which led to you switching to your ranged weapon and letting your teammate get dragged because you knew another hook rat was on the way. This was eventually fixed but reintroduced some updates later (classic fatshark, amirite?) and it continued to exist until I quit the game when Bogenasdasdasdas came out.

I started playing again recently and boy oh boy is that bug still around and with a vengeance. It feels even more common now and happens in super annoying places like last stand finales such as invocation of decay.

So, my question is, was this bug retconned into a feature or is it a bug that has existed for like two years?

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Originally posted by TheCuteLittleGhost

a google search will show it has been a pervasive bug.

Since the game released, people have claimed that dual special spawns are bugged, and asked Fatshark to fix it. Every single time I have seen Fatshark respond to this, they have said it is not a bug.

Also anecdotally, I played plenty of Legend games before WoM came out, and have played a ton of cata games since. I do not recall dual spawns being so common as to be obviously a bug.

FYI, the total special cap for legend is four, not three, and on cata its five. War Camp also doesn't stop skaven specials.

I'll back you up: it's not a bug, it's a feature! :) Adding on to what TheCuteLittleGhost already said:

Specials have a chance to spawn at the same time. The probability increases with difficulty so at higher difficulties you'll get intensity spikes in the form of special waves. The parameter that controls this is called chance_of_coordinated_attack in the code and the defaults are 25% for Champion and 50% for Legend and above.
Not all 8 specials are able to spawn at any given time. Levels are broken down into chunks which have different factions & spawning settings. Only 5 different specials can spawn in a skaven chunk, so there's a a higher chance of seeing a dupe.
We humans are pretty good at identifying and remembering patterns, even when looking at pure randomness. Double spawns can seem more frequent than they really are if we're actively looking out for them.

Also AFAIK event-spawned specials do ignore the limit (the gutter runner stash is coded as an event). However most events stop special spawning before you go into them so it's extremely unlikely they'll overlap.

I hope this helps clear things up!

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