Vanden

I don't think it was ever intended to remain that way, though.

It's got nothing to do with game balance or aesthetics. When I would write code, I'd try things like this that SHOULD work in theory, and usually would, but sometimes just wouldn't work the way you want at all.

Just as an overly-simplified example, imagine you had a text file with a word in it. You'd have one part of the program read the word, then erase it and write another word. Then another part of the program would read that word, and erase it and change it to something else. Imagine it's absolutely essential that the two parts read what the other wrote, so they need to always alternate and never have one go twice in a row. You'd think that'd work fine, but sometimes because of what other people wrote or the system you're using or because of the arcane things the compiler does with your code to make it into a program, sometimes part A will go twice in a row for some reason.

I don't know if the Hail of Bullets change is actually a sort of similar situation, but that's what gets conjured in my head when I read it.

And I always thought you had one of those automatically-generated avatars.

When I was hunting them they spawned on a flat timer. I don't remember what it was, but I had my watch on a timer and the Contaminated would spawn exactly on schedule every time.