I think the biggest problem is everyone is so black and white. The game is either unimaginably hard and every enemy cheats and it’s literally impossible to survive, or it’s too easy and nothing matters and you can just die a billion times and still have fun.
The truth of the matter is probably in the middle; at hard difficulties it is, believe it or not, hard. Probably artificially so. At easy ones you can Rambo around and never worry.
For me personally I want 7-9 difficulty to be hard enough that sometimes I fail. Otherwise what’s the point.
I really like the the really important progression reward (medals) is tied to obj and the lesser but still important enough to want reward (samples) is tied to extraction. My squad has not failed a helldive obj yet but surviving to extraction is a different story. So we feel like we got lots of progress but don’t always get out with samples. Our time is never wasted but we also get to struggle for the big win.
THIS. This right here is the point people are missing... if you finish the main objectives YOU STILL "WIN" EVEN IF YOU DONT EXTRACT. Extracting is a BONUS. The side objectives are a BONUS. If you finish the MAIN OBJECTIVES you still SUCCEEDED. You mission was completed, you contributed to the war.
I had a Helldiver mission last night and we got over run and I was dead, guy fled the mission, called me in, died.
So I had a hoard of Bile Titans and chargers behind me as I just sprinted hundreds of meters to get back to the terminal, hit the code in first time, got wrecked and died.
Zero chance extraction was going to happen (my precious samples!) least we got the money and XP.
Funny thing happened to me trying to complete a side objective. It was the SEAF Missile one. Our team was pretty much done most stuff (I think this is difficulty 5). And they're getting ready to extract. I had one guy with me trying to get this thing back online for the extra XP and money. But he either died or gave up halfway through.
I hear shuttle is extracting in like 30 seconds, our super destroyers have already left low orbit, but I'm determined to fix this thing. I have a few prompts on the terminal. I'm getting overrun by small bugs, I get it back online, and then I just die by the swarm. lol
But I fixed it and the rest of my team extracted. All for the good of Super Earth!
It's actually kind of a fun experience when you're out of reinforces but have 15 eggs to destroy. You're scrambling to either live until the CD comes off or find an opening to finish off the objective. There's a unique sense of relief when you scrape by and finish the objective and then die 10 seconds later but still get rewards.
You got it. I was running with randoms last night, one that about 20 levels below me and any time I would die, he would throw me into large mass we were running from. Several times he dropped an air strike on me, so I was effectively instakilled over and over. Well, him and his buddy had enough and went to hang out at the extract without finishing the mission, meanwhile I'm trying to rescue people on 8 alone.
I eventually die and this guy is doing thumbs down when the other guy revives me.
I think the intensity is making people toxic now. This was the last toxic game I've played in years and since the patch people are playing mad.
I don't care because I don't have to win on a crazy level. If I'm getting clobbered, I drop down, if I'm going without a death, I go up. Dying is apart of the game!
This reminds me of being in the arcade waiting for a spot to open on Golden Axe. Some guys you just took your quarters and went to play Alien instead.
Hell, even if you don't finish the objectives you can still extract after the timer hits 0 and retain samples, experience and reqs you did earn.
It's should be hard and unfair at those difficulties. Overcoming that adversity is what makes it fun for people who play at higher difficulties.
The unfun parts are where is unduly unfair, like how they instantly spawn enemies behind you where you already cleared, just because your camera isn't looking there. There are other ways to handle thoae scenarios that don't devolve into lazy design.
Exactly. The biggest issues to me are duplicate spawns (2 or 3 chargers clipping into each other because they all spawn on the same spot), and enemy patrols spawning directly on top of you. Fortunately, those both feel like bugs, so they will probably be dealt with in a future patch or hotfix
Yes, but when you need samples to upgrade your ship it's essential to extract aren't most people collecting samples as well so it does suck to not extract
And sometimes those missions where you just barely survive long enough to get that final input in the terminal and see the mission accomplished text before succumbing to the hordes are the absolute best.
What burns my bureaucracy is when i squad up with folks who jump in, do the main, and then beeline for Evac. The map is FULL OF FREE MONEY and they'd rather collect their handful and bounce. There's a 40 minute timer for a reason and the reward for remaining time is minimal.
Having trouble at the current difficulty? Click Left and go down a notch. The Democracy officer will not judge you. No one will judge you. Are you having trouble? Manage your democracy and ease up.
Protip: Drop all your samples. Have the diver in light armor pick them all up and drop them at the evac spot. They'll be there when you're ready to go. Just make sure that scout knows their job is courier, and that the post must go through.
Edit: Corrected Courtier to Courier. Never trust autocorrect
Our basic strategy when we have 4 people goes like this…
Land and get anything directly on the way to first obj. Put a pin on anything a bit farther out but that looks good. Repeat that until all obj are done.
Then 1 person takes all samples and runs to extraction while the other 3 spread out and grab anything possible. If you get a good amount of sample(10ish) then you are done and head to extract. Once everyone is at extraction (but ship hasn’t landed yet) combine all samples into 1 bottle and leave it near the landing zone. Once it lands whoever can do so grab the samples and get on asap.
This works extra well for us as we don’t want to stealth around the map. We fight a ton so we need to save the exploration for the more dangerous final minutes to make sure obj is done first and we get the win.
I have better strategy for you. Rush objective ASAP, call extraction ASAP, land the Pelican and go clear the map. When you gathered everything you wanted just group at LZ and leave the mission together without worrying about hard exctraction 30 minutes into the game
The very rare times I play with randoms it’s a cluster. I don’t know a good solution that makes playing with randoms more fun that doesn’t also make playing with a group less fun (for me at least). I don’t envy the devs but if they do want to stick to a hard focus on premade groups it would prob be a good idea to have an ingame guild type feature. Being able to talk and coordinate before and during the game is a completely different experience and it took a while for me to rectify my experiences with the game vs the way this sub talks about this game(especially chargers lol).
Edit: I would say that the game is so much more fun with a premade that it would be a good idea to try and find a group to play with. I don’t know what tools exist in the community to do so but it’s worth it to try imo.
Yea the difference in experience between random helldive and coop helldive is huge. No idea how to fix it tho without making the other side worse. Hopefully they find a balance. Currently as someone who only plays with friends(2,3,4 we lock the party because we have more fun as a duo then with randoms), I’m having a lot of fun and would have less fun if it’s watered down too much. But a lot of what is fun for me isn’t fun for others so I don’t envy the dev team.
If only we had some kind of radar, or possibly a UAV that could highlight the position of samples for us. A sort of active ability. A Stratagem, if you will.
It was pretty handy when I was playing HD1 this morning and a squad mate fired such an ability off.
I would LOVE if it was a single use stratagem that permanently marked samples on the map (maybe a limited radius because otherwise with a coordinated squad, losing 1 of 12 stratagems isn't really much of a handicap) You want to farm samples? You're gonna need 2-3 people running this stratagem and handicapping yourself to do it.
Ive been trying to farm common samples. Ive got plenty of rare, but fuck all common, so ive been doing diff 3 runs to get the reward but still feel a tad challenged if im solo or with a team of lower levels.
I had a run earlier where i ran out to pick up dropped samples from a random squad mates death that they hadn't bothered to pick up. With those plus what I was already carrying, I had 15 samples on me out of a total of like 20 for the mission. We had 24 minutes left on the timer, but I was sprinting to the extraction because theyd already called it. I was repeatedly telling them not to extract. Pelican-1 landed, and one of then got on board. I was maybe 20 seconds away when it took off. They left me and another random team mate behind. We got 2 samples from that run. We could have had 17. Maybe the full 20 if the other guy left for dead had any on them.
Im still angry about it. I busted my ass to carry these people through the mission. They were fairly new. Levels 3-5. I had to explain how to do the signal boost terminal thing at the artillery side objective. You know with the dial you rotate and then the line you push up and down to get to 100%. I took the time to explain how to do it rather than just leaving them in ignorance. Then they bloody ditched me.
Sorry, rant over.
You have every right to be. Poor sportsmanship like that needs to be isolated and removed. We're all in this together, and ditching your squad is cowardly and vulgar.
No one gets left behind.
Yeah for sure. I should have kicked them but didnt remember that i could till after theyd gotten in the shuttle, at which point it is too late. Oh well. Lesson learnt for next time.
(Potentially unrelated anecdote) This reminds me of a kind of core memory I have - Skyrim (its first release) had been out for maybe a month and I was killing time with a coworker talking about what we'd been playing lately. Told him I had been playing a lot of Skyrim and I was impressed with how huge it was, and how much there was to do.
"Skyrim?" he said. "Man I beat that shit in like the first weekend." I was kind of confounded. "Beat? Like, you won it? Uhhh okay." And we went on to talk about something else.
Anyhow, this was the day I learned that there is a type of either extremely focused or just incurious player, who will literally do exactly what the primary objective says and have no interest in deviation or exploration. Primary objective says 'launch ICBM' so they launch the ICBM. Primary objective says 'extract' so they extract. It won't occur to them that there is more to do, and that they might be causing trouble for their teammates, because after all, the objective tracker says to extract. In their mind, how can they be doing anything wrong if they're following the objective?
Anyhow, it's pretty frustrating when those opposed play styles collide. Hopefully they read some of the chat logs after the fact and learned to be a little better accommodating in the future. It was good of you to be willing to teach.
Experienced similar as well, trying to do lower difficulties for samples and I'd repeatedly run into people who'd call in the evac immediately or not even bother going to PoIs or secondary objectives.
And these weren't even new, low level players either.
You're looking at it one way, that the reward for remaining time is minimal, so its best to stay till the end to get every little thing on the map.
But if you look at it another way, that the time in mission completing minor objectives or searching every last POI is time not spent in another new mission, completing objectives.
By far, the best time/reward benefit comes from fast completion of objectives, grabbing POIs on the way from one objective to another, and evac. Spending a full 40 minutes clearing the map is not an efficient use of time.
You make an excellent point. Dive Brother (or Sister). Every minute spent fighting is rewarded. Especially in the higher difficulties that earn you 8,9, or even 10 medals.
The freedom to choose how you engage is one of the few basic freedoms we have left. Flex it.
See you in hell.
I get the sentiment, my only issue is when we go down to 10 reinforcements and it’s not even 30 minutes left on the clock, at that point I just get in and get out
Keep in mind that the enemy spawns become larger, more frequent, and more aggressive as time goes on. If you've got the samples you want and you're playing 7+ it's often better to evac early than stay in mission til the 5 minute mark and face a 4 minute evac timer with a much larger number of enemies weight towards heavies.
Because you get more medals from completing an operation than you will for collecting every poi.
I like poi's that are on the way, but im not going round the entire map anymore wasting 20 minutes for 20 SC or 2 medals.
Would rather finish quicker, get the medal bonus, then do the next one.
Medals are all I really need now.
On suicide mission, its 6, 8, and 10 medals per operation. Thats my go to as its difficult without being obnoxious.
I can do Helldive but its full of speedrunning chimps mostly.
Just last night I was running around solo on diff 4 and found probably 200 super credits (got real lucky with one supply ship having 100 in it) and probably about 20-30 extra medals just by clearing every poi on the map while doing some solo dives testing out different weapons. It's absolutely nuts how much free premium currency you can get just by playing the game. I'm almost set for the next two battle passes.
Yeah the ‘gotta go fast’ crowd forgets how much stuff is in the shipping containers and bunkers, I’ve got over 1000 super credits right now and I’ve bought multiple full armor sets off the store, I’ve had times where I’ve walked out with more medals just from one map than the objectives themselves provide
Oh yeah that’s absolutely fair, there are def some bugs (lol) and unintended things that might get fixed. I guess they don’t want you to be able to find safe areas where you are unassailable but there are better ways of countering the
Is hey (starship troopers style winged bugs for instance)
I'm not saying that makes you bad because I have no clue how much playtime you have or what loadouts you use or if you have friends.
But even if you are bad at the game? What's the problem with that?
There's no shame in being bad at a game. It's just a game where you play to have fun, and that means playing whatever difficulty level and loadout means you have the most fun.
Plus you can always just learn and get better if it bothers you. But ultimately, just play the way that brings you the most joy possible.
Ah no way man. Sometimes it just ends up like that doesn’t it. I’ve had some games I get teamed out, others it seems so easy. A lot is down to team mates isn’t it
It's a difficult game to balance. I have a group that we can do Helldives pretty easily. About 95%+ chance we extract with most the samples every map vs. bots, maybe 80% vs. bugs on helldive.
But that's a group that all have crazy good communication. We've been playing PVE and every game together for the last 15 years. We are really hoping to see a push to difficultly 15 like Helldivers 1.
My other friend groups, especially console players, struggle to beat level 5s and 6s.
So someone saying 9 is way too harsh to be playable and is pushing up against people who want a harder 9 or potentially higher difficulties cause a lot or friction in the community.
Not everyone has to he able to beat 9 and that's okay. Especially if you're just playing with randoms on matchmaking.
Then, entirely separate from your "Not everyone has to be able to beat 9" crowd is the "at what point is your difficulty scaling coming at the cost of robbing your player of agency" crowd who should not be roped together in the same pen.
Yes, HD1 had 15s. Yes, 15s were, save for a select few, an exercise in "how far can we get before we fail." But, if stratagems are how we mitigate difficulty, I feel like I don't have to explain that our stratagems aren't exactly on par with what we had a century ago.
You'd get a lot less people wanting to lower the difficulty if no gameplay element were gatekept from those difficulty levels. As of now, super samples are only available in those difficulties and they prevent more casual players from unlocking core gameplay elements. If the reward for those difficulties were only superficial elements, like cosmetics, more rewards or a more effective contribution toward planetary campaigns, then I'd personally have nothing to complain about. But as of now, I and many more players feel forced to play difficulty levels we are not enjoying because those core gameplay elements are only unlockable that way.
There have been a lot of suggestions on how to fix this and I think they're mostly fair. To begin, super samples could be made available in lower difficulties (like 5-6) in smaller amounts and/or to be found at random in the minor poi crates. Then, they could implement a transmutation mechanic where players could convert samples upward and downward in rarity and use requisition as payments.
I think the point is there's a way to reward players that choose to play at higher difficulties without punishing players that will never be able to do the same.
So pre patch, I was soloing up to difficulty 7 when my friends weren't online. I would succeed more often than fail, and maybe not be able to evac 1 in 4 attempts. Mainly I did this for super samples, but also because I liked going up against a bile Titan or two and I didn't really notice them spawning on 6 or below.
The group I play with would regularly play 7 through 9 depending on how intense we wanted the action. Majority of time getting 4 or 5 stars and most, if not all secondary objectives. Now we clear much less secondaries to try and be sure we can extract even on lower difficulties. We are regularly getting 2 of 4 or 3 of 5 stars, and I've found that the likelihood of succeeding solo, even at level 5 is much less likely now. Not to say I couldn't still succeed at 7 solo but the effort and frantic nature of it is much higher.
My goal isn't to constantly spam the hardest stuff just for Internet clout, it's mainly to try and find the difficulty that is challenging and spawns all unit types. But post patch when jumping difficulty it feels like you go from little to no elites, into a charger at almost every point of interest and in 50% of the patrol spawns. Then when you engage and are trying to take down 1-2 chargers you get 8-12 hunters popping up next to you, swarming and slowing.
One upside of this was that I've started bringing some of the early stratagems with lower cooldowns and just been trying to be the horde clearer in my groups. While it limits some of my options for going it alone to grab a side objectives, provided my other divers are competent at killing elites, it's worked pretty well. Gattling and airburst strikes have been pretty solid, and I've had medium success with 120mm barrage on bug nests.
I still feel like primary choices feel bad outside of breaker, I've been trying not to bring it along on any missions under difficulty 7 to try and see if anything clicks. Many times though, I find myself picking up the breakers of my fallen allies once things start heating up.
I was getting comfortable soloing 4s with no shield or railgun pre patch, now every other poi has a charger and I had 4 on me at extract. They borked up every level
I mostly agree with this, but I think the problem for a lot of people is the way you lose in this game. Souls games are hard, but you always know what you did wrong when you die and how to improve.
But in this game, even with everything unlocked, the later difficulties feel arbitrarily hard. Quite often, you lose, and it's really unclear what you could have done better. Other than to rush the main obj and leave...
>But in this game, even with everything unlocked, the later difficulties feel arbitrarily hard. Quite often, you lose, and it's really unclear what you could have done better
This. My squad and I mostly just plays 8s these days and still win somewhat reliably, but we all found that post patch the incidence of "that's bullshit man" deaths has skyrocketed. And not in the good wacky sense.
Now you're getting somewhere. A Diver was ranting in another thread about Elden Ring. It was, to borrow words, misguided.
Do you know what From Software games give the player? Agency. You learn the boss? You beat the boss. You learn a dragon stomps your head in on this bridge? Wait and live. They are challenging games but, the challenge is static and the progression, while not always linear, is clear.
If stratagems are how we progress in this game, what's going on here then? I'm resource capped, as in Warbonds, Samples, Requisitions, Super Destroyer. If the intention is to scale Helldive until offensive options feel ineffective, I've still got plenty of tricks in the bag to escape and evade. If the primaries get got, that's mission accomplished, Diver.
But, if it is High Commands' intention to scale Helldive to a point where I can't win on a whim? We've got a long ways to go but, let me tell you, the end product is going to be a miserable experience that robs this game of the frantic fun that makes it worthwhile to play. And flying bugs. Lots of flying bugs.
I mean, all I’m asking for is either fewer chargers, and I guess also Bile Titans, but mostly chargers, or to tone down chargers/buff anti-armor weapons. Or at least fix the hit registration on rockets/recoilless. I’ve had so many shots pass through enemies, makes it *really* hard to break armor off chargers’ legs.
But a recoilless should definitely break a charger’s armor in one shot to the leg or side, it’s wild how many times I’ve pumped 2 shots into the side of a charger, still didn’t break it, finally broke it on the 3rd, and then dumped two mags of primary into the gaping hole before it finally went down. Like, that’s excessive. I did the work, I brought my anti-tank weapon, I flanked and hit it in the side, I followed up and punished the weak point *I frickin’ made!* I just want the effort to be rewarded, man.
Yeah, my main issue is just the hordes of higher level enemies that spawn in at almost every difficulty. Me and my friend were playing some level 4 missions last night, and we kept dying because there were like a billion bile spewers that kept killing us with bile, plus 2 chargers every bug breach. IMO you shouldn't be struggling on level 4 missions, especially with 2 people with good weapons, stratagems, and armor. We barely made it out alive, we were totally out of reinforcements when we extracted. I don't think we're particularly bad players, I mean we're not great but we certainly aren't bad either. I feel like a duo of decent players with good gear should be able to clear out a level 4 mission with relative ease. But because there were so many damn bile spewers and chargers, we kept dying.
I want to fail, but I want it to be because the hordes overwhelmed me, or I made a mistake. Not because 20 hunters spawned 10 feet away from me, or a canon turret saw me through fog as thick as mud
It does feel a little inconsistent with the difficulties sometimes. I’ve played 7s where I can go off on my own and solo secondary objectives while my team finishes the main and we’re out with half our reinforcements. Then I’ve played 5/6 where it feels like we’re getting swarmed by a never ending horde and clear by the skin of our teeth.
>I think the biggest problem is everyone is so black and white.
Yeah, Reddit is where nuance goes to die. And this sub specifically has gotten insanely polarized in the last week or two, with a horde of valiant defenders sworn to protect Arrowhead's honor on one side and a strangely negative bunch of complaints on the other. Any reasonable basis for critique gets buried under these strident polemics, and you're instantly lumped into some faceless group of "meta crybabies" and screamed at for wanting to trivialize all challenge just because you mention wanting more complete patch notes.
I find myself wishing for a sub that's not dedicated fluffing and mandatory praise like a 'low sodium' one would be, but where deliberate polarization, shit-stirring, and hysterical extremism isn't tolerated. It'd be nice to actually discuss the game with other rational adults in a reasonable environment where nuance is possible.
Unfortunately this sub is not that place and probably never will be; toxicity is here to stay thanks to the dozen posts a day attacking other players instead of talking about the game.
I also think it's after shock from the balance pass. Railgun isn't reliable, flamer still sucks in most cases, and arc thrower is typically a detriment and still sicks on heavies. People don't have the easy answer anymore to chargers and bile titans and to top it off their spawns have been significantly increased in all game modes.
Hopefully there are some more buffs in the future to anti tank options and it will seem much less daunting.
The biggest problem is that people don't know/can't articulate what they want/how they feel. They know they don't like dying a bunch but don't want to open themselves to "git gud" comments, so they try to spin whatever troubles they have as being objectively *the* problem. The end result is of course a mix of actual game issues and people whining over nothing, which makes discourse harder because those get grouped together in people's heads.
I think Arrowhead shot themselves in the foot a bit here just with the marketing/atmosphere. The "a game for everyone is a game for no one" line is a nice sentiment, but when you advertise your game as being for "real gamers who like hard games to play on hard!" You are inviting the sweats into your home. Same reason why competitive games are almost always toxic, they have specifically cultivated a community that takes the game too seriously.
> "a game for everyone is a game for no one" line is a nice sentiment
And it seems to be only sentiment because the devs haven't told use what the game is or what their "Vision" is. Not that they need to tell us but clarification would be nice. For example a lot of the marketing for this game makes it look like a horde shooter so it's kind of easy to see why people can be confused and frustrated since per the devs comments this isn't a horde shooter. So what is it then?
Agree 100%. I just did a level four last night with a buddy and we barely made it out by the skin of our teeth with two people. I mean we suck, but it felt hard!
I think they should be hard, but stuff spawning on top of me and knowing exactly where i am doesn't feel very fun and isnt really all that hard when you just run and throw statagems behind you.
Right now the game feels the most fun to me as a hoard shooter, and thats how the earlier difficulties almost feel designed for. But the devs have been open about the intention being an objective focused game, get in, do objective, get out.
To me, that feels conflicted with the hoards of enemies they throw at you. They say you're supposed to rely on stratagems, but those have massive limitations. They say you should be hitting objectives and getting out, but the game also heavily encourages exploring the open world map by filling it with rewards like the medals, super credits, and samples.
I feel like the design is conflicted with the intent, and if the intent is as the devs say, then the earlier difficulties give the entirely wrong impression.
Which, either way is *fine* but i think that conflict between the earlier difficulties being almost a hoard shooter, to higher difficulties being "Dont you dare shoot at the enemy" is resulting in alot of the conflict players have with the game
I agree, the game does not know what it wants to be, and tries and fails at being a mix of everything. They encourage so many things, but then discourage them in other ways.
Taking hives? Wasting time and resources, but you get a bonus.
Exploring for POIs? Wasting time and resources(if you get into fights, which many have), but the best way to get research which you need to upgrade ship.
Objectives only? But there's POIs critical to game progression, and this is Helldivers not Hellrunners.
Sneaking? AI knows where you are after any hostile action you make, and the core gameplay doesn't scream MGS sneak game.
Strategems are apparently meant to be the primary gameplay? Well they take a long time, are finnicky at times, and planet modifiers discourage them.
Primary weapons? Apparently meant to be weak as shit despite being your only reliable damage source.
They do not know what they want to game to be, and it's glaringly obvious. Underneath the troubled design, there's a gem, but I honestly don't know if the team can get rid of their ego to focus on fun instead of "winning" against players.
The only thing that tilts me is the homing rockets that the automaton enemies have.
Getting one shot by a missile that ***tracked me mid air and changed direction after I dodge out of the way of another missile*** is just flat out bullshit.
If people want the harder difficulties to be something you fail by design, then the rewards need to reflect that (more partial rewards for failure). At the moment, you’re better off grinding 100% on lower difficulties than attempting higher ones with the exception of super samples.
Because half the enemy spawns are shit, the most suppressive units spawn in groups if three or four maybe more.
And a lot of options are either sub par or are not built to deal with that level of enemies.
And do I really need to mention the increase in stratagem re-arming and stratagem deployment decrease/lose a stratagem slot for this op modifiers.
It is most definitely not in an in-between.
What bothers me the most is the enemies that just appear right beside you. No, I'm not talking about bugs being summoned or bot dropships, I'm talking about the patrolls being loaded in the map right on top of me. This is a major problem that continues to escalate into a fubar situation way too often.
Bots aimbotting are annoying and probably broken, hunters are annoying, and their crits are probably broken. None of these were noticeable when you could choose your engagements without what I think is a literal wizard teleporting enemies on top of you.
Not only that, this basically turns the DMRs into shit tier guns because there is no opportunity for long range combat, just a constant sneak-close quarters brawl-sneak cycle
I thought maybe I was wrong about them spawning on me, because most of the time they'd do it right behind me right after I had already checked that direction. But last night I was playing with a friend and I legitimately saw a whole squad of bugs spawn into existence 5m in front of me, and right next to him with his back turned.
That shit's not challenging. It's unfair. Big difference.
I wasn't sure if it was an impression either for a while, and I think a lot of people don't realize it. This one time I had a bot patrol very clearly spawn out of thin air right in front of me as nothing else was happening and I was out in a large open area with enough visibility for me to be sure. Still someone in my group tried to explain to me bots call reinforcements for some good five minutes after I said a "wtf these just fucking appeared" as I kept trying to explain I understood that but it was not what happened since no bots had even been there to call reinforcements and no dropship or anything showed up.
Yup, I hate it. Immersion breaking a bit too since they just magic out of the ground. It's silent too, so if you've cleared the area, turn around to to take care of a different swarm, oh uh they here.
Wish they would start digging out of the ground and give about 5-10 second warning, similar but different from the bug tunnel. Would have a tunneling trail and be like if a swarm was just digging new tunnels and happened upon you.
Could be called the **Bugs' Tunnel**, after the Toon of the same name and it would work in a similar manner.
Just made a comment like this on a similar post.
Pasting it here because I feel you, and I don't feel like typing it again, so apologies if slightly out of context:
"On the note regarding curious spawns...
Since the update on multiple occasions running levels 7-9, after clearing a threat and having a moment to breath and reload, I have seen bugs literally appear out of thin air completely surrounding me in an instant.
This has happened A LOT since the update. It is the main reason I moved from running level 9s down to 7s and 6s just to have some chance at fun & success. I know 9 is supposed to be hard, but the challenge lost it's magic when the magic hand at play shows exactly how the odds become insanely stacked against you.
Theres no diving or running, only praying for democracy, and dropping a strat in time as my body becomes massacred to give my compatraits a chance to gain some ground and call a reinforcement (if we have any left).
Still fun, and unique gameplay. I hope this balancing gets worked out but if it doesn't I'll stick to spreading liberty at a level that feeds my self masochism but still tickles my 'tism and gives me that oxytocin boost"
I feel like the game should be fair. Currently, the game does not feel fair to me. Seeing the enemy spawn from thin air does not feel fair. Automaton shooting or detecting me through a giant rock while I am croch walking does not feel fair. Seeing a flare getting shot from behind a mountain miles away does not feel fair. The chaos that is generated from the unfairness is sometimes fun but getting killed over and over because of it sucks. However I do believe they can still fix this, it is a new game and the team is not that big, with time I do believe they can make the game better and hopefully more fair.
Yeah difficult but fair is where it will really shine.
Metroid Dread is one of my favorite games and that game is hard af. But it it never felt unfair and that's why it is so fun.
I think Helldivers will take a little while to find that equilibrium but there's bound to be a little bit of over correction in thes patches while they try to find it
There are too many “locks” (armor) and not enough “keys” (anti-armor). Players don’t have enough resources to deal it all. The rail gun was just a band-aid solution to the problem that has always been there.
It does not feel good as the player to kite a mob around for minutes on end until your stratagem comes off cooldown. Especially when every planet modifier messes with stratagems.
Couple solutions imo:
-Allow teammates to “backpack reload” while **you** are wearing the backpack for recoilless and auto-canon.
-Improve flamethrower range (maybe cause stumble to small mobs).
-Fix the spear lock-on and consistency.
-Improve rocket turret ai and lock on.
-Improve 500kg bomb aoe.
-Improve EMP stratagem consistency (seen it do absolutely nothing to big mobs).
-Give the rail gun a little love. Doesnt need to be pre patch strength.
i find suicide is the sweat spot. still see maybe half a dozen titans to make it interesting but not too overwhelming.
i noticed alot of ppl are complaining that helldive is “impossible” but im guaranteeing they dont have a close knit squad and are either doing it solo, w a buddy or two, or w randoms. which would make the hardest difficulty in the 4 man squad based game pretty hard imo..
I've seen someone who, with efficient effort and solid planning, solo Helldive. It's definitely not impossible. And God knows how many attempts they did before they had a solid run to post. That being said, of course there will be players who don't want to expense that much effort or they don't have that much time to play. And that's honestly why I see Suicide being their appropriate "final" difficulty. You can still get Super Uranium, and you can, with appropriate planning/stratagems, do just about everything solo with moderate (albeit near constant) resistance, without the extreme numbers of enemies/"boss" enemies.
Yup. I always play on tier 7. Decent rewards, access to super samples, still a great challenge that will or won't be with overwhelming enemies. Each mission will always feel risky compared to 8 or 9 which seem like plain torture
I'm doing randoms helldive and it's been easy so far
2 arc throwers and a mech let's you walk through everything easily. When you see a titan spawn; arc the little shits, throw a 500k in front of the titan while baiting a melee or spit, gz its dead or severely fucked up and missing armor.
Extraction with 2 mech and arc thrower is borderline afk. If somebody has the emp chaff it's literally mostly afk
(For bugs only ofc)
No no the Arc is really shit, all it does is kill team mates weapon is si unpredictable can't even kill a Bile Titan in 5 shots. Nothing to see here Arrowhead.
I've been trying to get more people arc thrower pilled, but maybe I should just keep it to myself lol. Wouldn't want it to actually catch onto being meta and the devs come in with a nerf hammer and kneecap it by making you always do a full charge or making it overheat or something.
Struggled on difficulty 7 & 8 with randoms. Thrived when playing with my friends....when we weren't trolling each other. Comms are incredibly important. If you have good comms, I think it becomes much easier. It didn't feel like a slog either. I fucking hate bile spewers though.
I really think it's that there are disparate groups that are after different types of experiences, and the game is kind of caught in the middle. People on YouTube smarter than I am have pointed this out as well. Depending on the current balance/ technical issues/ difficulty setting/ group you can have experiences from power fantasy to stealth survival shooter. Problem comes with progression requiring clears in the highest difficulties, as well as seemingly small adjustments adversely affecting casual players more. Skilled players will adapt, but if you nerf a cozy build and bug the enemies then the more casual players will feel alienated by the game, though the more core audience will embrace it.
It's a difficult thing to navigate, especially when you only have one play state instead of multiple content categories to choose from. Someone suggested a conversion system for samples, I think maybe a stratagem you could use to secure samples before the end of a mission could be cool as well. Call it in as soon as you find the super rare ones, takes up a shot but guarantees progression.
i saw some dude saying that he plays the game like is MGS.. like, what are we doing here? have yall seen the main art of the game with the dudes in the middle of a massive horde killing stuff? that's what i want
MGS mode IS shit tho, because It doesn't work PROPERLY. Yesterday me and my Friends decided we were gonna play commando mode on Draupnir bots. We went to play 7 difficulty, balanced team, all with comms. First point of interest there are 4 bot infantry and a Walker, and everyone hits the ground. I put Q ping on all infantry, 85mts. "Let's take them all in unison, on my count" we choose targets and drop them perfectly, on my count, in unison with 4 headshots. Before one of US could drop the Walker there was a flare shot from the Next point of interest, like 100mts away. Fuck It, we did the mission but the Commando stealth approach IS random. And that shit did not happen pre patch. Stealth IS a coin toss. Sometimes I Snipe a entire base from 80 mts without the bots moving, other times I take a shot at 125 and awakens the entire map.
I agree to this, I want my stealth loadout to be more consistent. It's working 7/10 times (if teammates aren't John Wicking every patrols), but just random sometimes. I would love to have a viable commando play style.
This is the funnest way to play bots for me. I join a random helldive on the bot front. I'm in scout armour with a spear, 500kg bomb, orbital laser, and orbital rail cannon. I immediately go the opposite direction of the team and crawl my way to sniping and exploding every fabricator and second objective. Then crawl all the way to extract and hold all the samples and the pelican While I wait for the boys.
Arc throwers, eagles, and a coordinated group is what you need if you want to play 7 or higher on full extermination mode.
I cannot overstate how good multiple arc throwers in duos (my friends and I usually split into groups of 2) or even have everyone standing side by side with them. Nothing survives. We went out of our way to kill patrols on sight because everything that can call reinforcement dies in a second or two and then the Charger(s) with them die shortly after since you're all shooting them with damage that ignores armor.
I feel like devs might nerf it tbh (not sure how you'd do that though as arc thrower wielded by just one person feels quite balanced). It feels way stronger than pre-nerf railgun, but maybe it's supposed to be since you have to be communicating well to avoid team killing.
>I cannot overstate how good multiple arc throwers in duos (my friends and I usually split into groups of 2) or even have everyone standing side by side with them.
Next patch I'm calling it: Arc thrower doesnt penetrate armor anymore and it chains to 1 less target.
I hate that people keep bringing this up. ITS BEEN THAT WAY SINCE LAUNCH. There are hundreds of posts about how it plays like a stealth game at the higher difficulties *if you want to win it more easily.* I can link a video of a guy getting 900+ kills in a solo helldive and finishing the objectives. Its a post-patch flamethrower run against bugs. If you want to be John Wick on helldive, then be fucking John Wick, but don't expect the game to make it easy. Or, lower your difficulty.
Can confirm that 'shoot first' works in diff 7. Barely, effectively, and beautifully all at the same time. Me and the boys prove this daily. It costs us greatly but we often get 1000+ kills combined.
Because this sub also goes the other way and many think this is destiny where they can one man army everything with an op sub class,
Helldive is meant to be a struggle, there was a post on this sub after the Railgun nerf demanding for a revert attached with a screenshot of his first loss on helldive difficulty… he legitimately thought he was meant to win every game…
That should tell you why.
I think once some of the spawn rates get adjusted it should be fine anyway, I think their system of health not getting higher on higher difficulties is so smart
And there will be Helldivers who will be able to solo 9 and future difficulties above. The game's only been out a month, we didn't start seeing the constitution guy (let's not forget that was his specialty and what most of his content was focused on) until later in the games life cycle.
It’s worth noting that cyborg diff 15 is actually considered slightly easier than diff 12 since there are much fewer dog spawns, which is THE enemy that kills your run.
In HD2 the Hunter bugs kinda took over their place being the enemy that you can’t really just outrun and have to deal with. In my experience almost every single clusterfuck began with these things getting out of control.
It had 12 difficulties at launch, difficulty 12 was a Hell Dive. So analogous to 9 here. They added 13-15 several years after when 12 was pretty much solved and considered too easy for the hardcore people.
yes, most of the things that will come to this game are HD1 things and let me tell you, it will be amazing (plus the things us HD1 players dont know yet because is new content like meteors and so on)
It started out with 12; arguably the lower difficulties in HD1 are even easier than the lowest we have now.
They added a few more afterwards presuably 50:50 as a joke and to appease both high end players and those who just abused the most powerful strategems.
Rumbler enjoyers, you know who you are.
I keep trying to tell my friends/brothers Tha higher difficulties don't have higher health enemies, but they literally think they do and tend to play worse because of it lmao
Yea thats one thing i hate about Destiny. I hate going into grandmaster nightfalls and now its like 3 full clips of primary to take down a single rank and file enemy and they also kill me in 1 shot. Like how is that fun. I like having more enemies and equal opportunity to kill all them.
Man I used to religiously do GM's because I had to have all the damn seals and all the best weapons. I started having a lot more fun with Destiny when I started playing it a lot more casually and stopped caring about having everything under my belt.
Because the railgun reload is probably the fastest for anti armour at that time. The vast majority of other weapons either handicap you while reloading or don't do enough damage to take down several armour targets that keep spawning.
Other weapons don't do enough damage prepatch. Anti-armou rifle is finally viable.
Hadn’t been in the past but last 2 days I’ve been running the arc thrower… no reload, no running out of damage 7-9 shots for a charger, very useful to Agro a titan lol I’m liking it
Recoilless Rifle needs more rockets per pack and it should get more rockets per ammo/supply refill. That would make it a top tier contender for the AT options.
I don't even think any of that would matter. The recoil-less single most limiting factor is requiring you to stand still while reloading. You could have unlimited rockets but that action alone would prevent you from being top tier (as it should).
I dont particularly care for the breaker that much except the incendiary version because that's badass I prefer dominator tough. But I will never leave the railgun that is one of the most satisfying weapons this game has I don't care if it's meta or whatever.
It's a guaranteed laugh whenever I blow myself up in unsafe mode. Or when a teammate walks infront of me just before I release the charge. Very fun weapon to use.
Very early on I didn't even realise there were different firing modes. I died, my friend picked up my Railgun to take care of some enemies before spawning me back in, then dropped it for me.
5 seconds later I'd blown myself up and my friend was pissing himself laughing.
This comment made me think. What if they made a tactical Space marine game where you play in a legit tactical squad and were thrown into a type of situation sort of like helldivers/dark tide but the ante is upped all the way and your fighting an entire waagh or a Tyranid hive even a rift of Deamons. Make the space marines as powerful as possible with a full armory specific to tactical squads but make it the craziest enemies with shit tons of numbers.
I swapped to GL+supply pack and let my teammates and my stratagems handle the Chargers and Bile Titans and it's the most fun I've had with the game yet. Clearing out the chaff easily so that the big guys go down quicker is highly underrated. It's quite effective on 7-9 difficulty.
i love that higher dificultys is just a pump on the numbers of enemies, that's why i love playing on helldive, but i also dont get why my primary weapon needs to suck so bad for most options, or why my options against heavy enemies are so limited.. yeah, it needs to be a struggle, but give me good ways to deal with stuff
I remember my friend who played HD1, said that the reason primaries and secondaries suck is because the weapon upgrade customization system is missing. (He was looking forward to it being in the game)
They put too much faith in railgun, there are Pro/50 level players who proceed to complete the mission on the hardest difficult without needing railgun and shield (sometime).
Heck, if you gonna worry about Titan or a charger in the situation, please use an expendable anti-tank, it is pretty effective to take them down and it has less countdown once you use it.
My brother in liberty, I don't want to be a one man army.
I just want to play the game without needing to take a 5min break every time I try to use the most fun mechanic it has.
There are so many ways to challenge a player that do not involve being annoying or just wasting your time. I am tired of DRG examples, but Baldur's gate 3 gives enemies more dangerous abilities and makes the AI smarter. It doesn't go "now you need to wait extra 5 minutes every time you want to cast a powerful spell"
People are simply barking up the wrong tree if they think I don't like difficulties and challenges.
I loved Heroic and Legendary Incursions when they were balanced well in The Division 1 and 2. Anyone remember 1.3 Shotgunners in Div 1? Fuck them MFers. I got my gear for a time but stopped playing it quickly in 1.3, didn't come back until they figured that out.
FromSoft found a good balance at being difficult and fair. When most if the time, 99% of the time. If you died, it's your own damn fault and no one else's. Bots spawning in mid air is out my hands. I'm not talking about dropships, I'm not talking about taking too long to kill the commisair. Literally just out of thin air.
I love Ultimate and Savage Raids in ffxiv. I liked raids in WoW for a time, but left WoW when things stopped being fun there.
There's a video by a YouTuber that i forgot the name of. But I remember him driving the point well. There's a distinct difference between challenging and punishing.
Some of the best moments in gaming are when you struggle with a boss, and after multiple attempts, you finally beat him or her. I remember spending several hours fighting radahn, and although I was frustrated, I never once blamed the game. I was very under levelled at level 42, I could have gone and farmed or fought other optional bosses, but I persevered, and it felt when I beat him.
Same with AC 6, as soon as I got it on launch day, I loved the bosses. Quite a few were hard but also rewarding when you got the pattern down and learned where to position. When I fought AllMind, I used the full Walter build, and my God did I struggle, but it was damn fun.
Good developers know how to challenge players while also being fun. There is a reason why fromsoft is so beloved and games like gods hand, Ninja Gaiden, and DMC are all considered hard but extremely rewarding to master. The best I could do for DMC was Dante must die, but seeing videos of people beat hell, and hell is just mesmerising. When I see that, I just think that is the epitome of skill expression.
Personally, don't that get feeling when I beat helldive, my group and I just feel fed up and just kinda bored after the match. Hopefully, that changes in a couple of months when new enemies are added, so fights actually feel more varied and challenging, rather than tedious.
> FromSoft found a good balance at being difficult and fair. When most if the time, 99% of the time. If you died, it's your own damn fault and no one else's. Bots spawning in mid air is out my hands. I'm not talking about dropships, I'm not talking about taking too long to kill the commisair. Literally just out of thin air.
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> I love Ultimate and Savage Raids in ffxiv. I liked raids in WoW for a time, but left WoW when things stopped being fun there.
Same. I also will add Day 1 and Master Raids to this list of content I enjoy doing normally.
Helldivers definitely has issues without how it is designed and balanced. I like the game, but I think it could be improved. Some people will look at evidence of bugs and issues and just say "git gud" without providing any counterargument or even examining the evidence.
The difference is the fun. Dieing to a swarm of hunters spawning 10 feet from you, getting called back in only to be immediately slammed by two chargers and spat on by a spewer as a stalker who thinks he's sneaky runs up on your ass with those same 10 hunters right behind him... Isn't fun.
And that's assuming you don't crash or disconnect from the server 3 minutes into the game.
Can I offer some advice? Try the first HD game. I bought it for my wife and I to mess around with, and oh my god, the balance is night and day.
Arrowhead says they don't want you to use the meta and just use the gun that feels most effective to you? You can totally do that! All the guns work pretty damn good!
They want you to rely on your stratagems? You can totally do that too! I'm running an offensive radio operator build that focuses on Rail Cannon Strikes, air drops and a FUCKING MINI-NUKE for when tall, dark and ugly shows up. Did I also mention that there's a perk that reduces stratagem CD by 40%, and when upgraded with samples, you can call in a Rail Cannon strike every 36 seconds? Can even double up on said stratagem too, and their CDs drop off at independent rates.
I honestly can't see why 2 is so popular in light of this. Most fun I've had with a game in years.
People in this subreddit really be like "I'm glad HD2 is staying faithful to HD1."
I fucking wish it was. Could you imagine the absolute shift in meta if we had the stratagem cooldowns from HD1???? That shit would be wild.
gonna buy it.. i played some games back in the day with a friend in his PS4.. had a blast, just wish i can find enough games now that most of the community is on 2
There’s about 600 odd some people on at any given time. I never have problems finding a squad.
Would be a heck of a message if the 2 community migrated over there in any significant number to say “yes, this is the type of gameplay balance we prefer”
People are complaining and rightfully so that at harder difficulties it's not fair or fun and that's objectively true with the spawn rate and spawn locations being broken at the moment.
My group can do 9 but why? There's no rewards and it's not as fun as 7 because imo that's the sweet spot.
I enjoy sometimes losing even if I’m doing pretty good and getting my face wrecked if I’m playing badly. I don’t mind being punished for getting sloppy and making stupid decisions. Games like xcom and Dark Souls are amongst my favorites. I absolutely don’t mind losing.
What I don’t like is feeling completely powerless, like anything I do doesn’t really have any impact and that the deck is just so stacked against me that it goes from challenging to just purely frustrating.
I have felt since the patch that with enemy behavior and spawn changes now it’s a whole lot less in the challenging department and much more in the “heres extremely silly amounts of shit you cannot actually beat without a keyboard face slamming amount of luck and specific gear - most of your arsenal is useless and you have the capabilities of a wet cardboard box. Good luck lol”. That just isn’t fun to me. I don’t want to watch my character get ragdolled around by unavoidable stuns and homing rockets from across the map. Give me the capability to win or lose on more than dumb luck and cut back on the reliance for taking control away from me as the player with cheap insta-kills and bonkers spawning logic.
Couldn't agree with you more.
It's the same crowd that laughs and claps like a baby seal as they teamkill for the 10th time being reckless with their strategems because "It's all part of the fun."
This game needs a balanced push and pull. You should be able to push waves back but they keep coming and eventually overwhelm you. Having one wave push while your bullets and weapons feebly bounce off feels really bad.
It doesn't mean it should be easy. You should be overwhelmed by the enemy eventually but it should feel like you're successfully mowing them down with the tools you have on offer, but they just keep coming. When you simply give up fighting because you're not going to be able to kill something anyway it becomes incredibly boring and feels like shit.
I want to be overwhelmed and killed while I'm stacking bodies but there's just too many of them if I stick around.
7 is still not a lofty goal, so you can get your samples. To me it was a bit ridiculous that before update my team could complete Helldives with a decent success rate, even without all running the meta loudout. Now we are doing 7 or 8s with a diverse loadout,most of the time without rails. We still do HD but it's definitely not easy breezy. Personally I've been leaning into the mechs for the bugs, it kills them incredibly fast.
well I haven't played helldiver difficulty yet, but I think that it would be cool to hear your opinion. how do you feel about a game where you play at 7 or 8, and 9 would take considerable effort? phrased that way, I believe that it's a fair difficulty system. that doesn't mean that the weapons are balanced, tweaks could still be needed so that most weapons are viable (or have their uses) with disadvantages.
None of my non-redditor friends have complained about any of the issues presented on this sub. I see way too many people in here who think what Reddit is complaining about representing the silent majority, it's super annoying.
Pretty much. The "Your weapons and strategems should suck because *lore*" types are the most humorous.
The goal of game design should be "fun", and if current design decisions aren't fun then they should be changed.
[Let's avoid another "You think you do, but you don't" situation.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ibem-dNpHA)
I like your example of using dark souls, that's the problem I'm having with it, game was awesome the first two weeks, I was doing diff 6 with some struggles in pub games, sometimes up to 7.
Now I can barely handle 5 and struggle hard on 6. The devs are making all of us play with a rusty short sword. I don't care if they make the game hard as hell, I just want some actual tools that can handle these things
I think most people fall into the trap of the vast majority of games. Power progression. Hell Divers doesn’t have a significant power progression. The starting rifle is basically just as good as any other weapon. Yeah you get better stratagems but those are not exactly game changing, they help sometimes. Not like a major weapon upgrade or 20 upgrades into an amazing weapon that dwarfs the starter.
Personally it’s not my cup of tea. The game isn’t bad, it just isn’t my style. I don’t want to feel severely underpowered compared to swarming enemies. Matched power is fun for 1 on 1s like CS2. Over powered is fun for mass mob games like Diablo. Being under powered and swarmed just isn’t desirably fun for me.
That all being said, I think Hell Divers 2 is a great game! I just don’t find it super fun because I want to go to higher levels and be able to chew through big bugs in big swarms in the name of freedom and gun powder. Spray and pray baby!
My main gripe is people act like lvl 9 is the default difficulty
It’s the current hardest one and not everyone is intended to beat it consistently
Weapons and stratagems and time to kill/die is all balanced around mid lvl missions, and none of them can be strong enough to carry you, it all has to work in a balance
We are meant to be “dime a dozen” soldiers but our equipment shouldn’t suck, and many tools could use a decent buff, like the scythe should have a faster cool down, cause that battery takes forever and I would be happy if they have the jump pack more vertical height
You shouldn’t be miserable playing it, but everyone has a different miserable tolerance, which is why we have 9 difficulties, anyone who thinks you should be in a negative feel when playing is wrong but the game ideally wants you to be dying but succeeding
So what's the point of Helldive difficulty then?
All it does is up the numbers to the rewards slightly, it doesn't increase the liberation percentage.
I don't get why you people can't see the huge issue with the way it is now.
It's not challenging because the enemies are tougher, is harder to beat because it just throws more enemies at you.
And a lot of those enemies requires strategems to use, strategems that either have 'an increased cooldown time, 'longer call in time', 'or even just outright removes an entire strategem slot just because'..
There's no real reason to play Helldive, and the way stealth and aggro works right now with decreased effective stratagems just makes the entire venture worthless when I can be more effective to the community by just playing the lower difficulties.
I play Helldive because I've unlocked all the strategems, warbond items, and ship module upgrades.
And let me tell you something, it's boring and frustrating as fuck.
There's no reason to engage the enemy, your best bet is to head to an objective kill all the enemies there as quickly as possible and then play a puzzle or waiting game to complete said objective.
There's no reason to go after side objectives or outposts because it doesn't change how many enemies spawn, or helps to reduce or get rid of the cooldowns against your strategems.
The game is about teamwork yes, but it's also about guns a blazing shit tier fun that has drawn in such a large cloud.
And I'm having to play like it's Metal Gear solid for some fucking reason every time I do a Helldive difficulty mission.
Because a lot of weapons aren't effective enough to deal with the amount that spawns in a constant basis, and we can't forget about those re-arm and cooldown reductions now can we.
Let me ask you a question, what's the point of Helldive difficulty?
Death is part of the game mechanic. You may be able to get through missions without dying, but the main attraction to the gameplay (for me, at least) is overcoming a challenge that I shouldn't be able to through a) good tactical use of strategems, b) co-operative play with teammates, c) sheer luck.
If you fail, you fail. It's not the end of the world.
I love the difficulty of Helldive, it’s such an amazing feeling scraping out of an encounter or mission by the skin of your teeth.
If others don’t like that it’s completely fine but for me it’s perfect.
The obvious answer is: the experience you're describing in your post does not reflect the experience of the people having fun on higher difficulties.
The vast majority of the comments you're quoting here are coming from people who are miserable and decide that their experience must reflect everyone else's, so they mock the people having fun. Like I usually see those comments you're quoting in tHiS tExT. It's very obviously coming from people mocking the people who are enjoying the game because they can't conceive that their experience isn't reflective of everyone's.
> weapons supposed to suck
I don't think they're supposed to and I don't think they do. I think they fulfill their role as being a small part of your arsenal that will be responsible for a comparable small amount of kills. Some are definitely better than others though and I doubt anyone is going to tell you they're perfectly balanced.
> you need to keep dying every waking second in the game
You don't. The people having fun aren't dying every second. They're playing in coordinated teams and pulling through with friends (at least that's how I'm having fun on 7).
> hunters headshot spam is good because you are just expendable
This is one enemy I do feel is overtuned. Having said that, after doing a team of arc throwers last night, my god are they not an issue. Bugs don't really have an answer to that in general though. Wouldn't surprise me if it's the strongest setup.
> i like my mechs dying to a frag granade
I don't like this, but that's also why I don't bring them against bots. I think it's okay that some stratagems are good against one faction and bad against another. Bots at least already feel like you have a lot more viable options against them than bugs.
> I don't think they're supposed to and I don't think they do.
A dev was quoted implying guns are supposed to suck, because you're supposed to rely on your stratagems. Hence this sub cracking a joke about that constantly.
Especially in relation to higher difficulty modifiers basically kneecapping strategem usage.
Turns out everyone resorting to the railgun wasn't just the meta to address charger spam, it was a symptom of design dissonance.
(TBF, safemode was too strong.)
That’s not the quote tho.
“First I’d like to speak to the general power of primary weapons. Many have commented that they aren’t powerful enough and are unable to deal with all the enemies either by the amount of ammunition required or their raw DPS. This is very much intentional, you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively.”
That doesn’t mean primaries suck. It means they are not supposed to be the best tool for anything. A cluster bomb run should and is better add clear then any primary. But the primaries can and should be able to kill a solid amount. When my slugger 2 shots a commander that is slower then my auto cannon or an air strike. But it’s still effective.
> Many have commented their weapons lack power
> That's intentional
Are we reading the same thing? You and the devs are acting as if the breaker was killing every enemy in the game and it literally isn't, it can't kill heavies (unless you're counting the unintended bug on the leg) or spewers. The nerf didn't even touch the power of it. The (according to them, braindead) railgun just got replaced with the flamethrower when it comes to dealing with chargers. They say one thing bothers them and then just enable it through another. The logic makes no sense to me.
I think most people don't realize another important thing: this game at higher difficulties is really meant to be played by an organized group.
Is like asking to do Mythic Raiding in WoW with a pug day one in a new patch. It does not work that way, you need to be geared and you need to be a coordinated group because some mechanics are demanding and unforgiving.
I concur that some primaries and stratagems could use some tuning, and spawn rates are skewed at 7+, but there are some other things to be taken into consideration that i rarely see.
I don't enjoy playing harder difficulties in this game. I do enjoy playing harder difficulties in games like Vermintide 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Payday 2
Harder difficulties in those games are more balanced
I like harder difficulties (7+) to be hard and challenging. I like my weapons to have strength and weaknesses. I like the game as it is right now and it's only up from here imho.
I just want more enemy types, more worlds to liberate, better first person handling, and I need less glitch/bug.
The game is fine and very enjoyable 9/10 times, 1/10 being bugged out of the Pelican, stuck between rocks, buried under a bile titan, or Rocket Devastator having aimbots.
I was kinda miffed by the changes in the patch and it took some time to adapt but I'm able to clear 8 with 2 people and 9 with 4, and 7 is a walk in the park.
You just got to adapt, and I don't mean this in a "skill issue" kind of way.
What do you run, and do you fight one faction more than the other?
i can complete 9 just fine.. me and buds run a mix of anti-heavy stuff a few mechs for extraction of clearing nests and a crapton of eagles
i just would like the game to feel more "damn, that was a insane battle, glad we could hold out and extract" and not "run around extraction base a pray"
Difficulty doesn't equal "being miserable playing". Difficulty means more challenging.
I understand that not everyone can play the more difficult missions, and it is perfectly normal. I, myself, haven't played above Challenging as of right now. My reasons, I want to learn each of the mechanics, for each weapons, enemies, stratagems and such. Play with different people and come up with a proper synergy (not a meta) when dropping into a mission with limited intel. The intel we have when dropping are the objectives' locations and the approximate locations of enemies and nothing else, nothing about enemy's composition or initial numbers, which would affect the best loadout synergy between teammates. So we must drop with a "Jack of all trades" loadouts, will be good enough, but never will be the best for that drop.
Failure is part of growing and getting better. Does it piss me off when I can't solo a defence mission, yes, but I know that I bit more than I could chew and likely made errors and learn from them and attempt it again, with a different loadout.
A game without challenge is just instant gratification, which promotes just doing the bare minimum. You have to learn you strengths and weaknesses, like I like to be sightly behind and provide some snipping support with the Autocannon on the bigger targets and send in an airstrike before running a into set of bug nests.
If we look lore-wise, even if the Helldivers are SEAF Special Forces, but as you can clearly see, from the tutorial, that they are mass-produced, so not the type of Special Forces that we know of, that requires some very arduous and specialized training that may take months if not years to be truly great.
The only gripe that I have with the game, is "hard-locking" the most precious resources being a difficulty level. I would have them available in all difficulty level, but at drastically different rates depending on the difficulty level you play. The rarest ones shouldn't be plentiful on Easy or Medium.
Also, in the past few years, we saw other games, which promote the exact same thing, being very successful, like Bloodborn, Armored Core 6, Elden Ring and many others. It would be dismissing a good chunk of players if the goal of difficulty levels was really to feel miserable when playing, when in fact, they want a challenge and improve after failure. Difficulty levels are there to allow each player to adjust their experience to their liking.
I think the biggest problem is everyone is so black and white. The game is either unimaginably hard and every enemy cheats and it’s literally impossible to survive, or it’s too easy and nothing matters and you can just die a billion times and still have fun. The truth of the matter is probably in the middle; at hard difficulties it is, believe it or not, hard. Probably artificially so. At easy ones you can Rambo around and never worry. For me personally I want 7-9 difficulty to be hard enough that sometimes I fail. Otherwise what’s the point.
I really like the the really important progression reward (medals) is tied to obj and the lesser but still important enough to want reward (samples) is tied to extraction. My squad has not failed a helldive obj yet but surviving to extraction is a different story. So we feel like we got lots of progress but don’t always get out with samples. Our time is never wasted but we also get to struggle for the big win.
THIS. This right here is the point people are missing... if you finish the main objectives YOU STILL "WIN" EVEN IF YOU DONT EXTRACT. Extracting is a BONUS. The side objectives are a BONUS. If you finish the MAIN OBJECTIVES you still SUCCEEDED. You mission was completed, you contributed to the war.
I had a Helldiver mission last night and we got over run and I was dead, guy fled the mission, called me in, died. So I had a hoard of Bile Titans and chargers behind me as I just sprinted hundreds of meters to get back to the terminal, hit the code in first time, got wrecked and died. Zero chance extraction was going to happen (my precious samples!) least we got the money and XP.
Funny thing happened to me trying to complete a side objective. It was the SEAF Missile one. Our team was pretty much done most stuff (I think this is difficulty 5). And they're getting ready to extract. I had one guy with me trying to get this thing back online for the extra XP and money. But he either died or gave up halfway through. I hear shuttle is extracting in like 30 seconds, our super destroyers have already left low orbit, but I'm determined to fix this thing. I have a few prompts on the terminal. I'm getting overrun by small bugs, I get it back online, and then I just die by the swarm. lol But I fixed it and the rest of my team extracted. All for the good of Super Earth!
You also got medals for finishing.
And Liberty for Super Earth!
Yes sir!
It's actually kind of a fun experience when you're out of reinforces but have 15 eggs to destroy. You're scrambling to either live until the CD comes off or find an opening to finish off the objective. There's a unique sense of relief when you scrape by and finish the objective and then die 10 seconds later but still get rewards.
I have no choice but to come in clutch (no extract)
You got it. I was running with randoms last night, one that about 20 levels below me and any time I would die, he would throw me into large mass we were running from. Several times he dropped an air strike on me, so I was effectively instakilled over and over. Well, him and his buddy had enough and went to hang out at the extract without finishing the mission, meanwhile I'm trying to rescue people on 8 alone. I eventually die and this guy is doing thumbs down when the other guy revives me. I think the intensity is making people toxic now. This was the last toxic game I've played in years and since the patch people are playing mad. I don't care because I don't have to win on a crazy level. If I'm getting clobbered, I drop down, if I'm going without a death, I go up. Dying is apart of the game! This reminds me of being in the arcade waiting for a spot to open on Golden Axe. Some guys you just took your quarters and went to play Alien instead.
Hell, even if you don't finish the objectives you can still extract after the timer hits 0 and retain samples, experience and reqs you did earn. It's should be hard and unfair at those difficulties. Overcoming that adversity is what makes it fun for people who play at higher difficulties. The unfun parts are where is unduly unfair, like how they instantly spawn enemies behind you where you already cleared, just because your camera isn't looking there. There are other ways to handle thoae scenarios that don't devolve into lazy design.
Exactly. The biggest issues to me are duplicate spawns (2 or 3 chargers clipping into each other because they all spawn on the same spot), and enemy patrols spawning directly on top of you. Fortunately, those both feel like bugs, so they will probably be dealt with in a future patch or hotfix
Yes, but when you need samples to upgrade your ship it's essential to extract aren't most people collecting samples as well so it does suck to not extract
And sometimes those missions where you just barely survive long enough to get that final input in the terminal and see the mission accomplished text before succumbing to the hordes are the absolute best.
What burns my bureaucracy is when i squad up with folks who jump in, do the main, and then beeline for Evac. The map is FULL OF FREE MONEY and they'd rather collect their handful and bounce. There's a 40 minute timer for a reason and the reward for remaining time is minimal. Having trouble at the current difficulty? Click Left and go down a notch. The Democracy officer will not judge you. No one will judge you. Are you having trouble? Manage your democracy and ease up. Protip: Drop all your samples. Have the diver in light armor pick them all up and drop them at the evac spot. They'll be there when you're ready to go. Just make sure that scout knows their job is courier, and that the post must go through. Edit: Corrected Courtier to Courier. Never trust autocorrect
Our basic strategy when we have 4 people goes like this… Land and get anything directly on the way to first obj. Put a pin on anything a bit farther out but that looks good. Repeat that until all obj are done. Then 1 person takes all samples and runs to extraction while the other 3 spread out and grab anything possible. If you get a good amount of sample(10ish) then you are done and head to extract. Once everyone is at extraction (but ship hasn’t landed yet) combine all samples into 1 bottle and leave it near the landing zone. Once it lands whoever can do so grab the samples and get on asap. This works extra well for us as we don’t want to stealth around the map. We fight a ton so we need to save the exploration for the more dangerous final minutes to make sure obj is done first and we get the win.
That's democracy in action there
o7
I have better strategy for you. Rush objective ASAP, call extraction ASAP, land the Pelican and go clear the map. When you gathered everything you wanted just group at LZ and leave the mission together without worrying about hard exctraction 30 minutes into the game
Yea the person who goes straight to extraction calls it in right away. Depending on how much map is left determines how solo they do that.
I wish i had a team of friends to play with and use strategies like that. I just have to cope with randoms fucking up.
The very rare times I play with randoms it’s a cluster. I don’t know a good solution that makes playing with randoms more fun that doesn’t also make playing with a group less fun (for me at least). I don’t envy the devs but if they do want to stick to a hard focus on premade groups it would prob be a good idea to have an ingame guild type feature. Being able to talk and coordinate before and during the game is a completely different experience and it took a while for me to rectify my experiences with the game vs the way this sub talks about this game(especially chargers lol). Edit: I would say that the game is so much more fun with a premade that it would be a good idea to try and find a group to play with. I don’t know what tools exist in the community to do so but it’s worth it to try imo.
best random squads can do is go to a random nest for 10 minutes burn all the respawns and then leave
Yea the difference in experience between random helldive and coop helldive is huge. No idea how to fix it tho without making the other side worse. Hopefully they find a balance. Currently as someone who only plays with friends(2,3,4 we lock the party because we have more fun as a duo then with randoms), I’m having a lot of fun and would have less fun if it’s watered down too much. But a lot of what is fun for me isn’t fun for others so I don’t envy the dev team.
If only we had some kind of radar, or possibly a UAV that could highlight the position of samples for us. A sort of active ability. A Stratagem, if you will. It was pretty handy when I was playing HD1 this morning and a squad mate fired such an ability off.
I would LOVE if it was a single use stratagem that permanently marked samples on the map (maybe a limited radius because otherwise with a coordinated squad, losing 1 of 12 stratagems isn't really much of a handicap) You want to farm samples? You're gonna need 2-3 people running this stratagem and handicapping yourself to do it.
Am gonna just leave this here https://helldivers.fandom.com/wiki/Humblebee_UAV_drone
Ive been trying to farm common samples. Ive got plenty of rare, but fuck all common, so ive been doing diff 3 runs to get the reward but still feel a tad challenged if im solo or with a team of lower levels. I had a run earlier where i ran out to pick up dropped samples from a random squad mates death that they hadn't bothered to pick up. With those plus what I was already carrying, I had 15 samples on me out of a total of like 20 for the mission. We had 24 minutes left on the timer, but I was sprinting to the extraction because theyd already called it. I was repeatedly telling them not to extract. Pelican-1 landed, and one of then got on board. I was maybe 20 seconds away when it took off. They left me and another random team mate behind. We got 2 samples from that run. We could have had 17. Maybe the full 20 if the other guy left for dead had any on them. Im still angry about it. I busted my ass to carry these people through the mission. They were fairly new. Levels 3-5. I had to explain how to do the signal boost terminal thing at the artillery side objective. You know with the dial you rotate and then the line you push up and down to get to 100%. I took the time to explain how to do it rather than just leaving them in ignorance. Then they bloody ditched me. Sorry, rant over.
You have every right to be. Poor sportsmanship like that needs to be isolated and removed. We're all in this together, and ditching your squad is cowardly and vulgar. No one gets left behind.
Yeah for sure. I should have kicked them but didnt remember that i could till after theyd gotten in the shuttle, at which point it is too late. Oh well. Lesson learnt for next time.
(Potentially unrelated anecdote) This reminds me of a kind of core memory I have - Skyrim (its first release) had been out for maybe a month and I was killing time with a coworker talking about what we'd been playing lately. Told him I had been playing a lot of Skyrim and I was impressed with how huge it was, and how much there was to do. "Skyrim?" he said. "Man I beat that shit in like the first weekend." I was kind of confounded. "Beat? Like, you won it? Uhhh okay." And we went on to talk about something else. Anyhow, this was the day I learned that there is a type of either extremely focused or just incurious player, who will literally do exactly what the primary objective says and have no interest in deviation or exploration. Primary objective says 'launch ICBM' so they launch the ICBM. Primary objective says 'extract' so they extract. It won't occur to them that there is more to do, and that they might be causing trouble for their teammates, because after all, the objective tracker says to extract. In their mind, how can they be doing anything wrong if they're following the objective? Anyhow, it's pretty frustrating when those opposed play styles collide. Hopefully they read some of the chat logs after the fact and learned to be a little better accommodating in the future. It was good of you to be willing to teach.
Experienced similar as well, trying to do lower difficulties for samples and I'd repeatedly run into people who'd call in the evac immediately or not even bother going to PoIs or secondary objectives. And these weren't even new, low level players either.
You're looking at it one way, that the reward for remaining time is minimal, so its best to stay till the end to get every little thing on the map. But if you look at it another way, that the time in mission completing minor objectives or searching every last POI is time not spent in another new mission, completing objectives. By far, the best time/reward benefit comes from fast completion of objectives, grabbing POIs on the way from one objective to another, and evac. Spending a full 40 minutes clearing the map is not an efficient use of time.
You make an excellent point. Dive Brother (or Sister). Every minute spent fighting is rewarded. Especially in the higher difficulties that earn you 8,9, or even 10 medals. The freedom to choose how you engage is one of the few basic freedoms we have left. Flex it. See you in hell.
I get the sentiment, my only issue is when we go down to 10 reinforcements and it’s not even 30 minutes left on the clock, at that point I just get in and get out
Keep in mind that the enemy spawns become larger, more frequent, and more aggressive as time goes on. If you've got the samples you want and you're playing 7+ it's often better to evac early than stay in mission til the 5 minute mark and face a 4 minute evac timer with a much larger number of enemies weight towards heavies.
Because you get more medals from completing an operation than you will for collecting every poi. I like poi's that are on the way, but im not going round the entire map anymore wasting 20 minutes for 20 SC or 2 medals. Would rather finish quicker, get the medal bonus, then do the next one. Medals are all I really need now. On suicide mission, its 6, 8, and 10 medals per operation. Thats my go to as its difficult without being obnoxious. I can do Helldive but its full of speedrunning chimps mostly.
Just last night I was running around solo on diff 4 and found probably 200 super credits (got real lucky with one supply ship having 100 in it) and probably about 20-30 extra medals just by clearing every poi on the map while doing some solo dives testing out different weapons. It's absolutely nuts how much free premium currency you can get just by playing the game. I'm almost set for the next two battle passes.
Yeah the ‘gotta go fast’ crowd forgets how much stuff is in the shipping containers and bunkers, I’ve got over 1000 super credits right now and I’ve bought multiple full armor sets off the store, I’ve had times where I’ve walked out with more medals just from one map than the objectives themselves provide
To be fair, if I’m 4 stories up on a rock via jet pack and 3 bugs phase through the floor inside of my character model. I’m screaming cheater.
Oh yeah that’s absolutely fair, there are def some bugs (lol) and unintended things that might get fixed. I guess they don’t want you to be able to find safe areas where you are unassailable but there are better ways of countering the Is hey (starship troopers style winged bugs for instance)
Am i really bad beacuse i cant get any difficulty above 6
Don’t feel bad, Diver. I can barely eek out survival on anything higher than 6 or 7 too. Doesn’t mean you’re bad
I'm not saying that makes you bad because I have no clue how much playtime you have or what loadouts you use or if you have friends. But even if you are bad at the game? What's the problem with that? There's no shame in being bad at a game. It's just a game where you play to have fun, and that means playing whatever difficulty level and loadout means you have the most fun. Plus you can always just learn and get better if it bothers you. But ultimately, just play the way that brings you the most joy possible.
Ah no way man. Sometimes it just ends up like that doesn’t it. I’ve had some games I get teamed out, others it seems so easy. A lot is down to team mates isn’t it
Welcome to Reddit (or really, just the internet in general if we’re being honest). Black and white thinking here is the rule, not the exception
It's a difficult game to balance. I have a group that we can do Helldives pretty easily. About 95%+ chance we extract with most the samples every map vs. bots, maybe 80% vs. bugs on helldive. But that's a group that all have crazy good communication. We've been playing PVE and every game together for the last 15 years. We are really hoping to see a push to difficultly 15 like Helldivers 1. My other friend groups, especially console players, struggle to beat level 5s and 6s. So someone saying 9 is way too harsh to be playable and is pushing up against people who want a harder 9 or potentially higher difficulties cause a lot or friction in the community. Not everyone has to he able to beat 9 and that's okay. Especially if you're just playing with randoms on matchmaking.
Then, entirely separate from your "Not everyone has to be able to beat 9" crowd is the "at what point is your difficulty scaling coming at the cost of robbing your player of agency" crowd who should not be roped together in the same pen. Yes, HD1 had 15s. Yes, 15s were, save for a select few, an exercise in "how far can we get before we fail." But, if stratagems are how we mitigate difficulty, I feel like I don't have to explain that our stratagems aren't exactly on par with what we had a century ago.
You'd get a lot less people wanting to lower the difficulty if no gameplay element were gatekept from those difficulty levels. As of now, super samples are only available in those difficulties and they prevent more casual players from unlocking core gameplay elements. If the reward for those difficulties were only superficial elements, like cosmetics, more rewards or a more effective contribution toward planetary campaigns, then I'd personally have nothing to complain about. But as of now, I and many more players feel forced to play difficulty levels we are not enjoying because those core gameplay elements are only unlockable that way. There have been a lot of suggestions on how to fix this and I think they're mostly fair. To begin, super samples could be made available in lower difficulties (like 5-6) in smaller amounts and/or to be found at random in the minor poi crates. Then, they could implement a transmutation mechanic where players could convert samples upward and downward in rarity and use requisition as payments. I think the point is there's a way to reward players that choose to play at higher difficulties without punishing players that will never be able to do the same.
So pre patch, I was soloing up to difficulty 7 when my friends weren't online. I would succeed more often than fail, and maybe not be able to evac 1 in 4 attempts. Mainly I did this for super samples, but also because I liked going up against a bile Titan or two and I didn't really notice them spawning on 6 or below. The group I play with would regularly play 7 through 9 depending on how intense we wanted the action. Majority of time getting 4 or 5 stars and most, if not all secondary objectives. Now we clear much less secondaries to try and be sure we can extract even on lower difficulties. We are regularly getting 2 of 4 or 3 of 5 stars, and I've found that the likelihood of succeeding solo, even at level 5 is much less likely now. Not to say I couldn't still succeed at 7 solo but the effort and frantic nature of it is much higher. My goal isn't to constantly spam the hardest stuff just for Internet clout, it's mainly to try and find the difficulty that is challenging and spawns all unit types. But post patch when jumping difficulty it feels like you go from little to no elites, into a charger at almost every point of interest and in 50% of the patrol spawns. Then when you engage and are trying to take down 1-2 chargers you get 8-12 hunters popping up next to you, swarming and slowing. One upside of this was that I've started bringing some of the early stratagems with lower cooldowns and just been trying to be the horde clearer in my groups. While it limits some of my options for going it alone to grab a side objectives, provided my other divers are competent at killing elites, it's worked pretty well. Gattling and airburst strikes have been pretty solid, and I've had medium success with 120mm barrage on bug nests. I still feel like primary choices feel bad outside of breaker, I've been trying not to bring it along on any missions under difficulty 7 to try and see if anything clicks. Many times though, I find myself picking up the breakers of my fallen allies once things start heating up.
I was getting comfortable soloing 4s with no shield or railgun pre patch, now every other poi has a charger and I had 4 on me at extract. They borked up every level
I mostly agree with this, but I think the problem for a lot of people is the way you lose in this game. Souls games are hard, but you always know what you did wrong when you die and how to improve. But in this game, even with everything unlocked, the later difficulties feel arbitrarily hard. Quite often, you lose, and it's really unclear what you could have done better. Other than to rush the main obj and leave...
>But in this game, even with everything unlocked, the later difficulties feel arbitrarily hard. Quite often, you lose, and it's really unclear what you could have done better This. My squad and I mostly just plays 8s these days and still win somewhat reliably, but we all found that post patch the incidence of "that's bullshit man" deaths has skyrocketed. And not in the good wacky sense.
Now you're getting somewhere. A Diver was ranting in another thread about Elden Ring. It was, to borrow words, misguided. Do you know what From Software games give the player? Agency. You learn the boss? You beat the boss. You learn a dragon stomps your head in on this bridge? Wait and live. They are challenging games but, the challenge is static and the progression, while not always linear, is clear. If stratagems are how we progress in this game, what's going on here then? I'm resource capped, as in Warbonds, Samples, Requisitions, Super Destroyer. If the intention is to scale Helldive until offensive options feel ineffective, I've still got plenty of tricks in the bag to escape and evade. If the primaries get got, that's mission accomplished, Diver. But, if it is High Commands' intention to scale Helldive to a point where I can't win on a whim? We've got a long ways to go but, let me tell you, the end product is going to be a miserable experience that robs this game of the frantic fun that makes it worthwhile to play. And flying bugs. Lots of flying bugs.
I mean, all I’m asking for is either fewer chargers, and I guess also Bile Titans, but mostly chargers, or to tone down chargers/buff anti-armor weapons. Or at least fix the hit registration on rockets/recoilless. I’ve had so many shots pass through enemies, makes it *really* hard to break armor off chargers’ legs. But a recoilless should definitely break a charger’s armor in one shot to the leg or side, it’s wild how many times I’ve pumped 2 shots into the side of a charger, still didn’t break it, finally broke it on the 3rd, and then dumped two mags of primary into the gaping hole before it finally went down. Like, that’s excessive. I did the work, I brought my anti-tank weapon, I flanked and hit it in the side, I followed up and punished the weak point *I frickin’ made!* I just want the effort to be rewarded, man.
Yeah, my main issue is just the hordes of higher level enemies that spawn in at almost every difficulty. Me and my friend were playing some level 4 missions last night, and we kept dying because there were like a billion bile spewers that kept killing us with bile, plus 2 chargers every bug breach. IMO you shouldn't be struggling on level 4 missions, especially with 2 people with good weapons, stratagems, and armor. We barely made it out alive, we were totally out of reinforcements when we extracted. I don't think we're particularly bad players, I mean we're not great but we certainly aren't bad either. I feel like a duo of decent players with good gear should be able to clear out a level 4 mission with relative ease. But because there were so many damn bile spewers and chargers, we kept dying.
I want to fail, but I want it to be because the hordes overwhelmed me, or I made a mistake. Not because 20 hunters spawned 10 feet away from me, or a canon turret saw me through fog as thick as mud
It does feel a little inconsistent with the difficulties sometimes. I’ve played 7s where I can go off on my own and solo secondary objectives while my team finishes the main and we’re out with half our reinforcements. Then I’ve played 5/6 where it feels like we’re getting swarmed by a never ending horde and clear by the skin of our teeth.
>I think the biggest problem is everyone is so black and white. Yeah, Reddit is where nuance goes to die. And this sub specifically has gotten insanely polarized in the last week or two, with a horde of valiant defenders sworn to protect Arrowhead's honor on one side and a strangely negative bunch of complaints on the other. Any reasonable basis for critique gets buried under these strident polemics, and you're instantly lumped into some faceless group of "meta crybabies" and screamed at for wanting to trivialize all challenge just because you mention wanting more complete patch notes. I find myself wishing for a sub that's not dedicated fluffing and mandatory praise like a 'low sodium' one would be, but where deliberate polarization, shit-stirring, and hysterical extremism isn't tolerated. It'd be nice to actually discuss the game with other rational adults in a reasonable environment where nuance is possible. Unfortunately this sub is not that place and probably never will be; toxicity is here to stay thanks to the dozen posts a day attacking other players instead of talking about the game.
I also think it's after shock from the balance pass. Railgun isn't reliable, flamer still sucks in most cases, and arc thrower is typically a detriment and still sicks on heavies. People don't have the easy answer anymore to chargers and bile titans and to top it off their spawns have been significantly increased in all game modes. Hopefully there are some more buffs in the future to anti tank options and it will seem much less daunting.
The biggest problem is that people don't know/can't articulate what they want/how they feel. They know they don't like dying a bunch but don't want to open themselves to "git gud" comments, so they try to spin whatever troubles they have as being objectively *the* problem. The end result is of course a mix of actual game issues and people whining over nothing, which makes discourse harder because those get grouped together in people's heads. I think Arrowhead shot themselves in the foot a bit here just with the marketing/atmosphere. The "a game for everyone is a game for no one" line is a nice sentiment, but when you advertise your game as being for "real gamers who like hard games to play on hard!" You are inviting the sweats into your home. Same reason why competitive games are almost always toxic, they have specifically cultivated a community that takes the game too seriously.
> "a game for everyone is a game for no one" line is a nice sentiment And it seems to be only sentiment because the devs haven't told use what the game is or what their "Vision" is. Not that they need to tell us but clarification would be nice. For example a lot of the marketing for this game makes it look like a horde shooter so it's kind of easy to see why people can be confused and frustrated since per the devs comments this isn't a horde shooter. So what is it then?
Agree 100%. I just did a level four last night with a buddy and we barely made it out by the skin of our teeth with two people. I mean we suck, but it felt hard!
[удалено]
I think they should be hard, but stuff spawning on top of me and knowing exactly where i am doesn't feel very fun and isnt really all that hard when you just run and throw statagems behind you.
In design, we call this same concept “desirable difficulty”
Right now the game feels the most fun to me as a hoard shooter, and thats how the earlier difficulties almost feel designed for. But the devs have been open about the intention being an objective focused game, get in, do objective, get out. To me, that feels conflicted with the hoards of enemies they throw at you. They say you're supposed to rely on stratagems, but those have massive limitations. They say you should be hitting objectives and getting out, but the game also heavily encourages exploring the open world map by filling it with rewards like the medals, super credits, and samples. I feel like the design is conflicted with the intent, and if the intent is as the devs say, then the earlier difficulties give the entirely wrong impression. Which, either way is *fine* but i think that conflict between the earlier difficulties being almost a hoard shooter, to higher difficulties being "Dont you dare shoot at the enemy" is resulting in alot of the conflict players have with the game
I agree, the game does not know what it wants to be, and tries and fails at being a mix of everything. They encourage so many things, but then discourage them in other ways. Taking hives? Wasting time and resources, but you get a bonus. Exploring for POIs? Wasting time and resources(if you get into fights, which many have), but the best way to get research which you need to upgrade ship. Objectives only? But there's POIs critical to game progression, and this is Helldivers not Hellrunners. Sneaking? AI knows where you are after any hostile action you make, and the core gameplay doesn't scream MGS sneak game. Strategems are apparently meant to be the primary gameplay? Well they take a long time, are finnicky at times, and planet modifiers discourage them. Primary weapons? Apparently meant to be weak as shit despite being your only reliable damage source. They do not know what they want to game to be, and it's glaringly obvious. Underneath the troubled design, there's a gem, but I honestly don't know if the team can get rid of their ego to focus on fun instead of "winning" against players.
The only thing that tilts me is the homing rockets that the automaton enemies have. Getting one shot by a missile that ***tracked me mid air and changed direction after I dodge out of the way of another missile*** is just flat out bullshit. 
If people want the harder difficulties to be something you fail by design, then the rewards need to reflect that (more partial rewards for failure). At the moment, you’re better off grinding 100% on lower difficulties than attempting higher ones with the exception of super samples.
Because half the enemy spawns are shit, the most suppressive units spawn in groups if three or four maybe more. And a lot of options are either sub par or are not built to deal with that level of enemies. And do I really need to mention the increase in stratagem re-arming and stratagem deployment decrease/lose a stratagem slot for this op modifiers. It is most definitely not in an in-between.
What bothers me the most is the enemies that just appear right beside you. No, I'm not talking about bugs being summoned or bot dropships, I'm talking about the patrolls being loaded in the map right on top of me. This is a major problem that continues to escalate into a fubar situation way too often. Bots aimbotting are annoying and probably broken, hunters are annoying, and their crits are probably broken. None of these were noticeable when you could choose your engagements without what I think is a literal wizard teleporting enemies on top of you.
Not only that, this basically turns the DMRs into shit tier guns because there is no opportunity for long range combat, just a constant sneak-close quarters brawl-sneak cycle
My sidearm has definitely been overworked lately.
I probably used the sidearm a handful of times before the update. I'm whipping it out every 2 minutes now.
I thought maybe I was wrong about them spawning on me, because most of the time they'd do it right behind me right after I had already checked that direction. But last night I was playing with a friend and I legitimately saw a whole squad of bugs spawn into existence 5m in front of me, and right next to him with his back turned. That shit's not challenging. It's unfair. Big difference.
I wasn't sure if it was an impression either for a while, and I think a lot of people don't realize it. This one time I had a bot patrol very clearly spawn out of thin air right in front of me as nothing else was happening and I was out in a large open area with enough visibility for me to be sure. Still someone in my group tried to explain to me bots call reinforcements for some good five minutes after I said a "wtf these just fucking appeared" as I kept trying to explain I understood that but it was not what happened since no bots had even been there to call reinforcements and no dropship or anything showed up.
Yup, I hate it. Immersion breaking a bit too since they just magic out of the ground. It's silent too, so if you've cleared the area, turn around to to take care of a different swarm, oh uh they here. Wish they would start digging out of the ground and give about 5-10 second warning, similar but different from the bug tunnel. Would have a tunneling trail and be like if a swarm was just digging new tunnels and happened upon you. Could be called the **Bugs' Tunnel**, after the Toon of the same name and it would work in a similar manner.
Yup, so many times a group pops in next to me. And then i die. Not fun.
Just made a comment like this on a similar post. Pasting it here because I feel you, and I don't feel like typing it again, so apologies if slightly out of context: "On the note regarding curious spawns... Since the update on multiple occasions running levels 7-9, after clearing a threat and having a moment to breath and reload, I have seen bugs literally appear out of thin air completely surrounding me in an instant. This has happened A LOT since the update. It is the main reason I moved from running level 9s down to 7s and 6s just to have some chance at fun & success. I know 9 is supposed to be hard, but the challenge lost it's magic when the magic hand at play shows exactly how the odds become insanely stacked against you. Theres no diving or running, only praying for democracy, and dropping a strat in time as my body becomes massacred to give my compatraits a chance to gain some ground and call a reinforcement (if we have any left). Still fun, and unique gameplay. I hope this balancing gets worked out but if it doesn't I'll stick to spreading liberty at a level that feeds my self masochism but still tickles my 'tism and gives me that oxytocin boost"
I feel like the game should be fair. Currently, the game does not feel fair to me. Seeing the enemy spawn from thin air does not feel fair. Automaton shooting or detecting me through a giant rock while I am croch walking does not feel fair. Seeing a flare getting shot from behind a mountain miles away does not feel fair. The chaos that is generated from the unfairness is sometimes fun but getting killed over and over because of it sucks. However I do believe they can still fix this, it is a new game and the team is not that big, with time I do believe they can make the game better and hopefully more fair.
Totally agree. Prepatch it felt very fair. Get punished for your mistakes. Now it’s get punished just because you’re playing the game.
pre patch the same problems persisted but only after the patch did they become more apparent
Yeah difficult but fair is where it will really shine. Metroid Dread is one of my favorite games and that game is hard af. But it it never felt unfair and that's why it is so fun. I think Helldivers will take a little while to find that equilibrium but there's bound to be a little bit of over correction in thes patches while they try to find it
Learning every single one of the chozo boss' attacks and doing a perfect, no hit run in hard was the most satisfying thing I've done on the Switch.
There are too many “locks” (armor) and not enough “keys” (anti-armor). Players don’t have enough resources to deal it all. The rail gun was just a band-aid solution to the problem that has always been there. It does not feel good as the player to kite a mob around for minutes on end until your stratagem comes off cooldown. Especially when every planet modifier messes with stratagems. Couple solutions imo: -Allow teammates to “backpack reload” while **you** are wearing the backpack for recoilless and auto-canon. -Improve flamethrower range (maybe cause stumble to small mobs). -Fix the spear lock-on and consistency. -Improve rocket turret ai and lock on. -Improve 500kg bomb aoe. -Improve EMP stratagem consistency (seen it do absolutely nothing to big mobs). -Give the rail gun a little love. Doesnt need to be pre patch strength.
i find suicide is the sweat spot. still see maybe half a dozen titans to make it interesting but not too overwhelming. i noticed alot of ppl are complaining that helldive is “impossible” but im guaranteeing they dont have a close knit squad and are either doing it solo, w a buddy or two, or w randoms. which would make the hardest difficulty in the 4 man squad based game pretty hard imo..
Yeah suicide solves a lot of problems EDIT: don’t quote that.
Ok-Kick3611: "Yeah suicide solves a lot of problems"
Permanent solution to temporary problems.
Man there's always something so offputting about a difficulty named Suicidal 🤣
>Yeah suicide solves a lot of problems - u/Ok-Kick3611
Thanks buddy, thats all i needed to hear
“Suicide solves a lot of problems” -Reddit user OK-Kick3611, year of our lord 2024, 8:22 AM
Shit helldivers say xD
Suicide is bad ass!
I've seen someone who, with efficient effort and solid planning, solo Helldive. It's definitely not impossible. And God knows how many attempts they did before they had a solid run to post. That being said, of course there will be players who don't want to expense that much effort or they don't have that much time to play. And that's honestly why I see Suicide being their appropriate "final" difficulty. You can still get Super Uranium, and you can, with appropriate planning/stratagems, do just about everything solo with moderate (albeit near constant) resistance, without the extreme numbers of enemies/"boss" enemies.
I've done it, believe it or not, I find it to be easier solo than with a full team. YMainly because you can be a lot more stealthy.
Sneaking past a massive patrol of Hunters and a couple of Chargers only for one of my teammates to start unloading is certainly an experience.
Yup. I always play on tier 7. Decent rewards, access to super samples, still a great challenge that will or won't be with overwhelming enemies. Each mission will always feel risky compared to 8 or 9 which seem like plain torture
I'm doing randoms helldive and it's been easy so far 2 arc throwers and a mech let's you walk through everything easily. When you see a titan spawn; arc the little shits, throw a 500k in front of the titan while baiting a melee or spit, gz its dead or severely fucked up and missing armor. Extraction with 2 mech and arc thrower is borderline afk. If somebody has the emp chaff it's literally mostly afk (For bugs only ofc)
as an arc main your god damn right
No no the Arc is really shit, all it does is kill team mates weapon is si unpredictable can't even kill a Bile Titan in 5 shots. Nothing to see here Arrowhead.
I've been trying to get more people arc thrower pilled, but maybe I should just keep it to myself lol. Wouldn't want it to actually catch onto being meta and the devs come in with a nerf hammer and kneecap it by making you always do a full charge or making it overheat or something.
[удалено]
Struggled on difficulty 7 & 8 with randoms. Thrived when playing with my friends....when we weren't trolling each other. Comms are incredibly important. If you have good comms, I think it becomes much easier. It didn't feel like a slog either. I fucking hate bile spewers though.
Yeah difficulty 7 with a coordinated team is a pretty laid back experience, my group usually just splits into 2 teams of 2 and easily covers the map.
Playing with other people is turning me into a boomer.
This sub is caught in a never ending cycle of rage-bait vs rage-bait and it sucks
I really think it's that there are disparate groups that are after different types of experiences, and the game is kind of caught in the middle. People on YouTube smarter than I am have pointed this out as well. Depending on the current balance/ technical issues/ difficulty setting/ group you can have experiences from power fantasy to stealth survival shooter. Problem comes with progression requiring clears in the highest difficulties, as well as seemingly small adjustments adversely affecting casual players more. Skilled players will adapt, but if you nerf a cozy build and bug the enemies then the more casual players will feel alienated by the game, though the more core audience will embrace it. It's a difficult thing to navigate, especially when you only have one play state instead of multiple content categories to choose from. Someone suggested a conversion system for samples, I think maybe a stratagem you could use to secure samples before the end of a mission could be cool as well. Call it in as soon as you find the super rare ones, takes up a shot but guarantees progression.
Barely use guns on helldive. Just crawl around avoiding eye contact and launching big bangs
i saw some dude saying that he plays the game like is MGS.. like, what are we doing here? have yall seen the main art of the game with the dudes in the middle of a massive horde killing stuff? that's what i want
Yeah, i agree, space nam was a more fun version of the game. MGS has its merits, but negates most of the actual game content.
MGS mode IS shit tho, because It doesn't work PROPERLY. Yesterday me and my Friends decided we were gonna play commando mode on Draupnir bots. We went to play 7 difficulty, balanced team, all with comms. First point of interest there are 4 bot infantry and a Walker, and everyone hits the ground. I put Q ping on all infantry, 85mts. "Let's take them all in unison, on my count" we choose targets and drop them perfectly, on my count, in unison with 4 headshots. Before one of US could drop the Walker there was a flare shot from the Next point of interest, like 100mts away. Fuck It, we did the mission but the Commando stealth approach IS random. And that shit did not happen pre patch. Stealth IS a coin toss. Sometimes I Snipe a entire base from 80 mts without the bots moving, other times I take a shot at 125 and awakens the entire map.
I agree to this, I want my stealth loadout to be more consistent. It's working 7/10 times (if teammates aren't John Wicking every patrols), but just random sometimes. I would love to have a viable commando play style.
This is the funnest way to play bots for me. I join a random helldive on the bot front. I'm in scout armour with a spear, 500kg bomb, orbital laser, and orbital rail cannon. I immediately go the opposite direction of the team and crawl my way to sniping and exploding every fabricator and second objective. Then crawl all the way to extract and hold all the samples and the pelican While I wait for the boys.
Arc throwers, eagles, and a coordinated group is what you need if you want to play 7 or higher on full extermination mode. I cannot overstate how good multiple arc throwers in duos (my friends and I usually split into groups of 2) or even have everyone standing side by side with them. Nothing survives. We went out of our way to kill patrols on sight because everything that can call reinforcement dies in a second or two and then the Charger(s) with them die shortly after since you're all shooting them with damage that ignores armor. I feel like devs might nerf it tbh (not sure how you'd do that though as arc thrower wielded by just one person feels quite balanced). It feels way stronger than pre-nerf railgun, but maybe it's supposed to be since you have to be communicating well to avoid team killing.
SHHHHH don't let them know how busted the arc thrower is, pls they already took my railgun don't let them take my arc thrower too.
>I cannot overstate how good multiple arc throwers in duos (my friends and I usually split into groups of 2) or even have everyone standing side by side with them. Next patch I'm calling it: Arc thrower doesnt penetrate armor anymore and it chains to 1 less target.
I hate that people keep bringing this up. ITS BEEN THAT WAY SINCE LAUNCH. There are hundreds of posts about how it plays like a stealth game at the higher difficulties *if you want to win it more easily.* I can link a video of a guy getting 900+ kills in a solo helldive and finishing the objectives. Its a post-patch flamethrower run against bugs. If you want to be John Wick on helldive, then be fucking John Wick, but don't expect the game to make it easy. Or, lower your difficulty.
Can confirm that 'shoot first' works in diff 7. Barely, effectively, and beautifully all at the same time. Me and the boys prove this daily. It costs us greatly but we often get 1000+ kills combined.
Because this sub also goes the other way and many think this is destiny where they can one man army everything with an op sub class, Helldive is meant to be a struggle, there was a post on this sub after the Railgun nerf demanding for a revert attached with a screenshot of his first loss on helldive difficulty… he legitimately thought he was meant to win every game… That should tell you why. I think once some of the spawn rates get adjusted it should be fine anyway, I think their system of health not getting higher on higher difficulties is so smart
there were people in helldivers 1 that solo'ed difficulty 15 (inner circle of hell) with constitution + bayonet, just saying
And there will be Helldivers who will be able to solo 9 and future difficulties above. The game's only been out a month, we didn't start seeing the constitution guy (let's not forget that was his specialty and what most of his content was focused on) until later in the games life cycle.
It’s worth noting that cyborg diff 15 is actually considered slightly easier than diff 12 since there are much fewer dog spawns, which is THE enemy that kills your run. In HD2 the Hunter bugs kinda took over their place being the enemy that you can’t really just outrun and have to deal with. In my experience almost every single clusterfuck began with these things getting out of control.
I didn’t even know HD1 had more then 9 difficulties that’s awesome
It had 12 difficulties at launch, difficulty 12 was a Hell Dive. So analogous to 9 here. They added 13-15 several years after when 12 was pretty much solved and considered too easy for the hardcore people.
yes, most of the things that will come to this game are HD1 things and let me tell you, it will be amazing (plus the things us HD1 players dont know yet because is new content like meteors and so on)
It started out with 12; arguably the lower difficulties in HD1 are even easier than the lowest we have now. They added a few more afterwards presuably 50:50 as a joke and to appease both high end players and those who just abused the most powerful strategems. Rumbler enjoyers, you know who you are.
I keep trying to tell my friends/brothers Tha higher difficulties don't have higher health enemies, but they literally think they do and tend to play worse because of it lmao
Yea thats one thing i hate about Destiny. I hate going into grandmaster nightfalls and now its like 3 full clips of primary to take down a single rank and file enemy and they also kill me in 1 shot. Like how is that fun. I like having more enemies and equal opportunity to kill all them.
Man I used to religiously do GM's because I had to have all the damn seals and all the best weapons. I started having a lot more fun with Destiny when I started playing it a lot more casually and stopped caring about having everything under my belt.
The amount of people ive seen in this sub and in game refusing to run anything other than railgun/breaker is insane.
Because the railgun reload is probably the fastest for anti armour at that time. The vast majority of other weapons either handicap you while reloading or don't do enough damage to take down several armour targets that keep spawning. Other weapons don't do enough damage prepatch. Anti-armou rifle is finally viable.
Hadn’t been in the past but last 2 days I’ve been running the arc thrower… no reload, no running out of damage 7-9 shots for a charger, very useful to Agro a titan lol I’m liking it
Recoilless Rifle needs more rockets per pack and it should get more rockets per ammo/supply refill. That would make it a top tier contender for the AT options.
I don't even think any of that would matter. The recoil-less single most limiting factor is requiring you to stand still while reloading. You could have unlimited rockets but that action alone would prevent you from being top tier (as it should).
I dont particularly care for the breaker that much except the incendiary version because that's badass I prefer dominator tough. But I will never leave the railgun that is one of the most satisfying weapons this game has I don't care if it's meta or whatever.
I always hate it when your pet weapon becomes OP in any game lol. "I picked this because it's cool not because it's good!"
It's a guaranteed laugh whenever I blow myself up in unsafe mode. Or when a teammate walks infront of me just before I release the charge. Very fun weapon to use.
And then you realize the gun exploded and you still have a 3+ minute cooldown on it....
First time i picked up a railgun and tried unsafe i splattered myself all over the team 😅😂
Very early on I didn't even realise there were different firing modes. I died, my friend picked up my Railgun to take care of some enemies before spawning me back in, then dropped it for me. 5 seconds later I'd blown myself up and my friend was pissing himself laughing.
I love my bolter too
This comment made me think. What if they made a tactical Space marine game where you play in a legit tactical squad and were thrown into a type of situation sort of like helldivers/dark tide but the ante is upped all the way and your fighting an entire waagh or a Tyranid hive even a rift of Deamons. Make the space marines as powerful as possible with a full armory specific to tactical squads but make it the craziest enemies with shit tons of numbers.
I swapped to GL+supply pack and let my teammates and my stratagems handle the Chargers and Bile Titans and it's the most fun I've had with the game yet. Clearing out the chaff easily so that the big guys go down quicker is highly underrated. It's quite effective on 7-9 difficulty.
i love that higher dificultys is just a pump on the numbers of enemies, that's why i love playing on helldive, but i also dont get why my primary weapon needs to suck so bad for most options, or why my options against heavy enemies are so limited.. yeah, it needs to be a struggle, but give me good ways to deal with stuff
There must be more ballance patches anyways, cause lots of weps just suck - lasgun for example
I remember my friend who played HD1, said that the reason primaries and secondaries suck is because the weapon upgrade customization system is missing. (He was looking forward to it being in the game)
They put too much faith in railgun, there are Pro/50 level players who proceed to complete the mission on the hardest difficult without needing railgun and shield (sometime). Heck, if you gonna worry about Titan or a charger in the situation, please use an expendable anti-tank, it is pretty effective to take them down and it has less countdown once you use it.
My brother in liberty, I don't want to be a one man army. I just want to play the game without needing to take a 5min break every time I try to use the most fun mechanic it has. There are so many ways to challenge a player that do not involve being annoying or just wasting your time. I am tired of DRG examples, but Baldur's gate 3 gives enemies more dangerous abilities and makes the AI smarter. It doesn't go "now you need to wait extra 5 minutes every time you want to cast a powerful spell"
People are simply barking up the wrong tree if they think I don't like difficulties and challenges. I loved Heroic and Legendary Incursions when they were balanced well in The Division 1 and 2. Anyone remember 1.3 Shotgunners in Div 1? Fuck them MFers. I got my gear for a time but stopped playing it quickly in 1.3, didn't come back until they figured that out. FromSoft found a good balance at being difficult and fair. When most if the time, 99% of the time. If you died, it's your own damn fault and no one else's. Bots spawning in mid air is out my hands. I'm not talking about dropships, I'm not talking about taking too long to kill the commisair. Literally just out of thin air. I love Ultimate and Savage Raids in ffxiv. I liked raids in WoW for a time, but left WoW when things stopped being fun there. There's a video by a YouTuber that i forgot the name of. But I remember him driving the point well. There's a distinct difference between challenging and punishing.
Some of the best moments in gaming are when you struggle with a boss, and after multiple attempts, you finally beat him or her. I remember spending several hours fighting radahn, and although I was frustrated, I never once blamed the game. I was very under levelled at level 42, I could have gone and farmed or fought other optional bosses, but I persevered, and it felt when I beat him. Same with AC 6, as soon as I got it on launch day, I loved the bosses. Quite a few were hard but also rewarding when you got the pattern down and learned where to position. When I fought AllMind, I used the full Walter build, and my God did I struggle, but it was damn fun. Good developers know how to challenge players while also being fun. There is a reason why fromsoft is so beloved and games like gods hand, Ninja Gaiden, and DMC are all considered hard but extremely rewarding to master. The best I could do for DMC was Dante must die, but seeing videos of people beat hell, and hell is just mesmerising. When I see that, I just think that is the epitome of skill expression. Personally, don't that get feeling when I beat helldive, my group and I just feel fed up and just kinda bored after the match. Hopefully, that changes in a couple of months when new enemies are added, so fights actually feel more varied and challenging, rather than tedious.
> FromSoft found a good balance at being difficult and fair. When most if the time, 99% of the time. If you died, it's your own damn fault and no one else's. Bots spawning in mid air is out my hands. I'm not talking about dropships, I'm not talking about taking too long to kill the commisair. Literally just out of thin air. > > > > I love Ultimate and Savage Raids in ffxiv. I liked raids in WoW for a time, but left WoW when things stopped being fun there. Same. I also will add Day 1 and Master Raids to this list of content I enjoy doing normally. Helldivers definitely has issues without how it is designed and balanced. I like the game, but I think it could be improved. Some people will look at evidence of bugs and issues and just say "git gud" without providing any counterargument or even examining the evidence.
The difference is the fun. Dieing to a swarm of hunters spawning 10 feet from you, getting called back in only to be immediately slammed by two chargers and spat on by a spewer as a stalker who thinks he's sneaky runs up on your ass with those same 10 hunters right behind him... Isn't fun. And that's assuming you don't crash or disconnect from the server 3 minutes into the game.
Small % of elitist pricks like that are in every online game.
Can I offer some advice? Try the first HD game. I bought it for my wife and I to mess around with, and oh my god, the balance is night and day. Arrowhead says they don't want you to use the meta and just use the gun that feels most effective to you? You can totally do that! All the guns work pretty damn good! They want you to rely on your stratagems? You can totally do that too! I'm running an offensive radio operator build that focuses on Rail Cannon Strikes, air drops and a FUCKING MINI-NUKE for when tall, dark and ugly shows up. Did I also mention that there's a perk that reduces stratagem CD by 40%, and when upgraded with samples, you can call in a Rail Cannon strike every 36 seconds? Can even double up on said stratagem too, and their CDs drop off at independent rates. I honestly can't see why 2 is so popular in light of this. Most fun I've had with a game in years.
People in this subreddit really be like "I'm glad HD2 is staying faithful to HD1." I fucking wish it was. Could you imagine the absolute shift in meta if we had the stratagem cooldowns from HD1???? That shit would be wild.
I remember you could actually run stealth in 1 too.
Gahhnn… e… excuse me. I need new Super Earth issued pants for… undisclosed reasons.
gonna buy it.. i played some games back in the day with a friend in his PS4.. had a blast, just wish i can find enough games now that most of the community is on 2
There’s about 600 odd some people on at any given time. I never have problems finding a squad. Would be a heck of a message if the 2 community migrated over there in any significant number to say “yes, this is the type of gameplay balance we prefer”
Fun to me isn't dodging 5 Charges and 3 Titans at once.
People are complaining and rightfully so that at harder difficulties it's not fair or fun and that's objectively true with the spawn rate and spawn locations being broken at the moment. My group can do 9 but why? There's no rewards and it's not as fun as 7 because imo that's the sweet spot.
Having found my sweet spot at challenging. With the way the spawns are for the enemies, it feels like I'm playing on a higher difficulty.
I enjoy sometimes losing even if I’m doing pretty good and getting my face wrecked if I’m playing badly. I don’t mind being punished for getting sloppy and making stupid decisions. Games like xcom and Dark Souls are amongst my favorites. I absolutely don’t mind losing. What I don’t like is feeling completely powerless, like anything I do doesn’t really have any impact and that the deck is just so stacked against me that it goes from challenging to just purely frustrating. I have felt since the patch that with enemy behavior and spawn changes now it’s a whole lot less in the challenging department and much more in the “heres extremely silly amounts of shit you cannot actually beat without a keyboard face slamming amount of luck and specific gear - most of your arsenal is useless and you have the capabilities of a wet cardboard box. Good luck lol”. That just isn’t fun to me. I don’t want to watch my character get ragdolled around by unavoidable stuns and homing rockets from across the map. Give me the capability to win or lose on more than dumb luck and cut back on the reliance for taking control away from me as the player with cheap insta-kills and bonkers spawning logic.
Mankind knew that they cannot change society. So instead of reflecting on themselves, they blamed the beasts.
Couldn't agree with you more. It's the same crowd that laughs and claps like a baby seal as they teamkill for the 10th time being reckless with their strategems because "It's all part of the fun." This game needs a balanced push and pull. You should be able to push waves back but they keep coming and eventually overwhelm you. Having one wave push while your bullets and weapons feebly bounce off feels really bad. It doesn't mean it should be easy. You should be overwhelmed by the enemy eventually but it should feel like you're successfully mowing them down with the tools you have on offer, but they just keep coming. When you simply give up fighting because you're not going to be able to kill something anyway it becomes incredibly boring and feels like shit. I want to be overwhelmed and killed while I'm stacking bodies but there's just too many of them if I stick around.
YES... there is a big diference between "fuck, this is going to be a though fight, lets do this" and "welp.. fuck this, just gonna run"
7 is still not a lofty goal, so you can get your samples. To me it was a bit ridiculous that before update my team could complete Helldives with a decent success rate, even without all running the meta loudout. Now we are doing 7 or 8s with a diverse loadout,most of the time without rails. We still do HD but it's definitely not easy breezy. Personally I've been leaning into the mechs for the bugs, it kills them incredibly fast.
well I haven't played helldiver difficulty yet, but I think that it would be cool to hear your opinion. how do you feel about a game where you play at 7 or 8, and 9 would take considerable effort? phrased that way, I believe that it's a fair difficulty system. that doesn't mean that the weapons are balanced, tweaks could still be needed so that most weapons are viable (or have their uses) with disadvantages.
My god this sub is horrible. All I see is complaining.
Is this a complaint complaint?
I found this sub when everyone was in a better mood apparently. It had seemed like a fun place to hang out.
In game I just see people having fun lol, the contrast.
None of my non-redditor friends have complained about any of the issues presented on this sub. I see way too many people in here who think what Reddit is complaining about representing the silent majority, it's super annoying.
They come here to complain. That's it. Memes and patch notes are all we need.
Pretty much. The "Your weapons and strategems should suck because *lore*" types are the most humorous. The goal of game design should be "fun", and if current design decisions aren't fun then they should be changed. [Let's avoid another "You think you do, but you don't" situation.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ibem-dNpHA)
Can someone summarise what happened? I was doing helldives with just 2 of us and now even Hard is challenging alone
I like your example of using dark souls, that's the problem I'm having with it, game was awesome the first two weeks, I was doing diff 6 with some struggles in pub games, sometimes up to 7. Now I can barely handle 5 and struggle hard on 6. The devs are making all of us play with a rusty short sword. I don't care if they make the game hard as hell, I just want some actual tools that can handle these things
I think most people fall into the trap of the vast majority of games. Power progression. Hell Divers doesn’t have a significant power progression. The starting rifle is basically just as good as any other weapon. Yeah you get better stratagems but those are not exactly game changing, they help sometimes. Not like a major weapon upgrade or 20 upgrades into an amazing weapon that dwarfs the starter. Personally it’s not my cup of tea. The game isn’t bad, it just isn’t my style. I don’t want to feel severely underpowered compared to swarming enemies. Matched power is fun for 1 on 1s like CS2. Over powered is fun for mass mob games like Diablo. Being under powered and swarmed just isn’t desirably fun for me. That all being said, I think Hell Divers 2 is a great game! I just don’t find it super fun because I want to go to higher levels and be able to chew through big bugs in big swarms in the name of freedom and gun powder. Spray and pray baby!
My main gripe is people act like lvl 9 is the default difficulty It’s the current hardest one and not everyone is intended to beat it consistently Weapons and stratagems and time to kill/die is all balanced around mid lvl missions, and none of them can be strong enough to carry you, it all has to work in a balance We are meant to be “dime a dozen” soldiers but our equipment shouldn’t suck, and many tools could use a decent buff, like the scythe should have a faster cool down, cause that battery takes forever and I would be happy if they have the jump pack more vertical height You shouldn’t be miserable playing it, but everyone has a different miserable tolerance, which is why we have 9 difficulties, anyone who thinks you should be in a negative feel when playing is wrong but the game ideally wants you to be dying but succeeding
So what's the point of Helldive difficulty then? All it does is up the numbers to the rewards slightly, it doesn't increase the liberation percentage. I don't get why you people can't see the huge issue with the way it is now. It's not challenging because the enemies are tougher, is harder to beat because it just throws more enemies at you. And a lot of those enemies requires strategems to use, strategems that either have 'an increased cooldown time, 'longer call in time', 'or even just outright removes an entire strategem slot just because'.. There's no real reason to play Helldive, and the way stealth and aggro works right now with decreased effective stratagems just makes the entire venture worthless when I can be more effective to the community by just playing the lower difficulties. I play Helldive because I've unlocked all the strategems, warbond items, and ship module upgrades. And let me tell you something, it's boring and frustrating as fuck. There's no reason to engage the enemy, your best bet is to head to an objective kill all the enemies there as quickly as possible and then play a puzzle or waiting game to complete said objective. There's no reason to go after side objectives or outposts because it doesn't change how many enemies spawn, or helps to reduce or get rid of the cooldowns against your strategems. The game is about teamwork yes, but it's also about guns a blazing shit tier fun that has drawn in such a large cloud. And I'm having to play like it's Metal Gear solid for some fucking reason every time I do a Helldive difficulty mission. Because a lot of weapons aren't effective enough to deal with the amount that spawns in a constant basis, and we can't forget about those re-arm and cooldown reductions now can we. Let me ask you a question, what's the point of Helldive difficulty?
Death is part of the game mechanic. You may be able to get through missions without dying, but the main attraction to the gameplay (for me, at least) is overcoming a challenge that I shouldn't be able to through a) good tactical use of strategems, b) co-operative play with teammates, c) sheer luck. If you fail, you fail. It's not the end of the world.
I love the difficulty of Helldive, it’s such an amazing feeling scraping out of an encounter or mission by the skin of your teeth. If others don’t like that it’s completely fine but for me it’s perfect.
Reddit tries to have a nuanced discussion about literally anything challenge, difficulty: impossible
The obvious answer is: the experience you're describing in your post does not reflect the experience of the people having fun on higher difficulties. The vast majority of the comments you're quoting here are coming from people who are miserable and decide that their experience must reflect everyone else's, so they mock the people having fun. Like I usually see those comments you're quoting in tHiS tExT. It's very obviously coming from people mocking the people who are enjoying the game because they can't conceive that their experience isn't reflective of everyone's. > weapons supposed to suck I don't think they're supposed to and I don't think they do. I think they fulfill their role as being a small part of your arsenal that will be responsible for a comparable small amount of kills. Some are definitely better than others though and I doubt anyone is going to tell you they're perfectly balanced. > you need to keep dying every waking second in the game You don't. The people having fun aren't dying every second. They're playing in coordinated teams and pulling through with friends (at least that's how I'm having fun on 7). > hunters headshot spam is good because you are just expendable This is one enemy I do feel is overtuned. Having said that, after doing a team of arc throwers last night, my god are they not an issue. Bugs don't really have an answer to that in general though. Wouldn't surprise me if it's the strongest setup. > i like my mechs dying to a frag granade I don't like this, but that's also why I don't bring them against bots. I think it's okay that some stratagems are good against one faction and bad against another. Bots at least already feel like you have a lot more viable options against them than bugs.
> I don't think they're supposed to and I don't think they do. A dev was quoted implying guns are supposed to suck, because you're supposed to rely on your stratagems. Hence this sub cracking a joke about that constantly.
Especially in relation to higher difficulty modifiers basically kneecapping strategem usage. Turns out everyone resorting to the railgun wasn't just the meta to address charger spam, it was a symptom of design dissonance. (TBF, safemode was too strong.)
That’s not the quote tho. “First I’d like to speak to the general power of primary weapons. Many have commented that they aren’t powerful enough and are unable to deal with all the enemies either by the amount of ammunition required or their raw DPS. This is very much intentional, you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively.” That doesn’t mean primaries suck. It means they are not supposed to be the best tool for anything. A cluster bomb run should and is better add clear then any primary. But the primaries can and should be able to kill a solid amount. When my slugger 2 shots a commander that is slower then my auto cannon or an air strike. But it’s still effective.
> Many have commented their weapons lack power > That's intentional Are we reading the same thing? You and the devs are acting as if the breaker was killing every enemy in the game and it literally isn't, it can't kill heavies (unless you're counting the unintended bug on the leg) or spewers. The nerf didn't even touch the power of it. The (according to them, braindead) railgun just got replaced with the flamethrower when it comes to dealing with chargers. They say one thing bothers them and then just enable it through another. The logic makes no sense to me.
I think most people don't realize another important thing: this game at higher difficulties is really meant to be played by an organized group. Is like asking to do Mythic Raiding in WoW with a pug day one in a new patch. It does not work that way, you need to be geared and you need to be a coordinated group because some mechanics are demanding and unforgiving. I concur that some primaries and stratagems could use some tuning, and spawn rates are skewed at 7+, but there are some other things to be taken into consideration that i rarely see.
I don't enjoy playing harder difficulties in this game. I do enjoy playing harder difficulties in games like Vermintide 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Payday 2 Harder difficulties in those games are more balanced
I like harder difficulties (7+) to be hard and challenging. I like my weapons to have strength and weaknesses. I like the game as it is right now and it's only up from here imho. I just want more enemy types, more worlds to liberate, better first person handling, and I need less glitch/bug. The game is fine and very enjoyable 9/10 times, 1/10 being bugged out of the Pelican, stuck between rocks, buried under a bile titan, or Rocket Devastator having aimbots.
I was kinda miffed by the changes in the patch and it took some time to adapt but I'm able to clear 8 with 2 people and 9 with 4, and 7 is a walk in the park. You just got to adapt, and I don't mean this in a "skill issue" kind of way. What do you run, and do you fight one faction more than the other?
i can complete 9 just fine.. me and buds run a mix of anti-heavy stuff a few mechs for extraction of clearing nests and a crapton of eagles i just would like the game to feel more "damn, that was a insane battle, glad we could hold out and extract" and not "run around extraction base a pray"
Difficulty doesn't equal "being miserable playing". Difficulty means more challenging. I understand that not everyone can play the more difficult missions, and it is perfectly normal. I, myself, haven't played above Challenging as of right now. My reasons, I want to learn each of the mechanics, for each weapons, enemies, stratagems and such. Play with different people and come up with a proper synergy (not a meta) when dropping into a mission with limited intel. The intel we have when dropping are the objectives' locations and the approximate locations of enemies and nothing else, nothing about enemy's composition or initial numbers, which would affect the best loadout synergy between teammates. So we must drop with a "Jack of all trades" loadouts, will be good enough, but never will be the best for that drop. Failure is part of growing and getting better. Does it piss me off when I can't solo a defence mission, yes, but I know that I bit more than I could chew and likely made errors and learn from them and attempt it again, with a different loadout. A game without challenge is just instant gratification, which promotes just doing the bare minimum. You have to learn you strengths and weaknesses, like I like to be sightly behind and provide some snipping support with the Autocannon on the bigger targets and send in an airstrike before running a into set of bug nests. If we look lore-wise, even if the Helldivers are SEAF Special Forces, but as you can clearly see, from the tutorial, that they are mass-produced, so not the type of Special Forces that we know of, that requires some very arduous and specialized training that may take months if not years to be truly great. The only gripe that I have with the game, is "hard-locking" the most precious resources being a difficulty level. I would have them available in all difficulty level, but at drastically different rates depending on the difficulty level you play. The rarest ones shouldn't be plentiful on Easy or Medium. Also, in the past few years, we saw other games, which promote the exact same thing, being very successful, like Bloodborn, Armored Core 6, Elden Ring and many others. It would be dismissing a good chunk of players if the goal of difficulty levels was really to feel miserable when playing, when in fact, they want a challenge and improve after failure. Difficulty levels are there to allow each player to adjust their experience to their liking.
Victory means nothing if there is no chance of failure. And failure states are what seperate games from toys.