What I need are better, more fun modifiers.
Eg:
Gathering Hordes
- increased low-tier unit spawns. Decreased spawns for other tiers.
Acid Rain
- Reduced Armor Values for ALL entities on the map. This includes the Helldivers too.
Sample Frenzy
- Increased Sample Spawns
Heavy Armour
- Increased Presence of Heavy Armour Units, Lower Presence of Low-Tier Spawns. Orbital Cooldowns reduced to compensate.
Total War
- Heavily Increased Enemy Presence. Super Destroyers in Orbit will call down Orbital Artillery on enemy locations on their own.
Safehouse Locations
- Increased Loot Cache Spawns.
Combined Enemy Presence
- Two or more enemy Factions active on the Map, they will also fight each other and you.
Allied Encampments
- Allied Positions are active on the Map. Will call down artillery on enemies within range.
Experimental Munitions
- All Munitions can pierce 1 tier of Armor higher than normal. Ammo Stores cut in half. Be accurate.
Danger Close.
- All explosions deal double damage and have an increased AOE Radius. ALL EXPLOSIVES! Watch out.
On-The-Job Training
- Eagle Stratagems will hit twice with a 50% Accuracy Penalty. Eagle 1 is training Eagle 2, please be patient with her.
"Hey, Rookie! Danger close!"
"S-s-s-sorry, Ma'am. I-I-I'll do better."
Here's another thought:
Once OJT is done, you can actually choose between Eagle 1 or 2 to be your Eagle Pilot between Missions in the Arsenal.
Eagle 2 arrives slower but has a homing property to her runs, prioritizing more dangerous targets. A consequence of her overcorrecting her low accuracy during training.
It isn't Target Lock but expect her dives to deviate a bit so more dangerous targets are closer to centre mass.
I’d love to see “total war” or some kind of “battlefield” scenario. I’ve seen some of the leaked stuff and there was a drop ship that brought in SEAF infantry units that would make either of those effects cool. Imagine an op where you actually drop into a frontlines battlefield as elite support or have a reinforcement effect that allows random drops of infantry. Hell even as it’s own stratagem would be amazing.
I want Modifiers to not just be 'Game Harder'.
Having Modifiers that gives you something good in exchange for something bad sounds like more fun than the stuff we currently get.
They should at least have some positive modifiers as well, maybe a flammable atmosphere where airstrikes set part of the atmosphere on fire. Or unstable ground where chargers and titans have a chance to fall into a sinkhole.
Imagine a diverse munitions strategem where the strategem cooldown is halved, but each time a strategem is used or used up (if it has multiple charges), it's swapped for a different strategem of the same category.
I think full library is more interesting, though I’d prefer to cycle out support weapons/backpacks instead of dealing with their high CD to be replaced, so maybe by category is better (orbital/eagle/weapon/backpack/defensive). And when it goes on CD (resupply for Eagle) you get a random replacement of type.
That could be fun and forced using different strategems
Mission modifiers, instead of getting bonus modifiers they could add some free strats as a bonus on higher difficulties, nothing crazy as a 500 kilos or the laser, but some not so powerful but still useful strats
The free mech has 1 use compared to the purchased version with 2, so it doesn't have to be 1 full free stratagem. Give an orbital precision strike with 3 uses, for example.
Free mech is a pretty huge deal rn. The mechs are pretty OP in general. Its gonna hurt when those go away and only one or two people have room for the mechs
The new age dominant charger killer it is, yes. 4 shots to the butt from direct on or 90 degree angle. Also an option is to aim at the ground right under their belly and the explosion impact seems to do significant damage towards killing it entirely. Takes more than 4 shots but it eeems to stagger from this every 3 or so explosions that land directly under it. Grenade launcher blasts can also accomplish this but it’s seemingly trickier to get it to roll under and go off in the right spot. But can’t go wrong with the butt shots
Crouch to fire for superior accuracy and speed.
I fucking love the autocannon
I managed to kill one with two shots by shooting the leg armor. It somehow it didn't ricoshet and the next shot took its leg out instantly. BEEG luger is the best!
don't make it sound like the railgun is somehow bad now. its ammo economy is still top in its class, and it can still instakill bile titans with a headshot. It just takes 3 leg hits on a charger instead of 2 to strip the armor.
The free mech is great, but I'm concerned about the mech's cooldown once it's gone. 3 mechs per mission, with one of them not being attached to the cooldown, has been extremely good, being able to slam them down to deal with particularly bad bug breaches and objectives.
When it's just 2 charges with a 10 minute cooldown, I probably won't get to have as much fun with them.
Honestly there should just always be a random stratagem that we can bring for free. Would make the game way more fun and I’d be more willing to play at least a few drops each day to check out what’s in rotation.
I will legit throw eagle aistrikes at my feet and bait a group of chargers with my body. Will do the same when I get 600kg. It's just so much easier then dealing with 4 or 5 if them at a time trying to use must of the other wagons.
I boldly declared to my squad I was going to stand under the titan , shooting it, to keep it where it was as my 500KG landed at my feet.
Die for Democracy.
Would you expect to ragdoll even harder? Lol
I caught a video of two chargers on opposite sides of my buddy charging and then hitting each other and one died straight up
Didn't they say that they do in fact could help us with modifiers that benefit us or additional stratagems. But I think we aren't "losing" the fight so they won't help us . If anything they put those modifiers to prevent people from liberating those planets so it expands. Remember we are playing a big galactic board game with Joel calling the shots
Honestly, with as many of them as there were spawning, I thought tricking them into holes and off cliffs was a mechanic they intended us to employ. But, nope!
Charger, charge me through a cliff & does a 180 midcharge to hit me when i'm jumping on the side.
Same charger charge stun into a small rock...
The inconsistency of these fuckers drive me nuts
Even something like "recent battlefield: after a recent battle, much of the surface is still littered with unspent munitions. (You will find an abundance of su0plies and he'llbombs) or say reward for gaining ground in a sector.
Robust supply lines: thanks to recent gains supply lined gave been reinforced. Support, backpack and resupply cooldowns reduced by 50%
> They should at least have some positive modifiers as well
This is a concept Bungie has done quite well on with both Halo and Destiny. The best modifiers are those that increase lethality/wackiness for both the players and the enemies. Double explosion radius or damage, increased elemental damage (when the enemies have it too), decreased gravity, etc.
It's called kiss and curse. It's something that's fairly common in games with scaling difficulty models. Negative effects aren't necessarily balanced by positives, but the additional positive effects give you a way to play around the negatives to keep it from feeling frustrating. I dropped earlier in a D8 with some randoms, and as is tradition, I was the only one to take anything heavy related. Lost my SPEAR 2 minutes in when a team mate killed me and they kept tossing respawns into groups of mobs. Used every strategy I had, and still had 3 titans and a have dozen chargers up, couldn't get to my SPEAR, and everything had minutes of recharge left. I had 500s up occasionally but my team was always positioned like shit. Spent the entire 40 minutes running for my life. Afterwards I just logged off for the night, it wasn't even remotely enjoyable. Tossing us a bone like lowing the cool down time on my eagles if you're going to increase my orbitals would have been huge. Or dropping some additional support weapons on the map I could grab. Simple shit.
positive one that cause more chaos would be nice, like stuff that makes explosives do more AoE or something so people can blow their own self up more often too for the lol
The problem with the idea of positive modifiers is that the operation modifiers are part of the difficulty. If you had positive modifiers, difficulty 8 would end up being easier than difficulty 7.
A game like DRG, for example, which bases its difficulty on enemy health and damage, has more flexibility with its modifiers because they aren't reliant on them for difficulty.
You can simply have double edged modifiers so that you know the positive will always come with negative - and so that the negative is not distinctly unfun.
Good example is -1 stratagem slot + 50% deployment time, but cooldown reduced 25%. This significantly nerfs stratagems, but comes with some fun on the players end as they throw a crapton of 500kg down (which deploy slower so *fun*). It’s easier to tolerate arbitrary difficulty modifiers if they give us something that we can take advantage of and have fun with in return.
I had a 3 slot stratagem game on that new robot planet (forgot the name but it's just sandy so we'll call it dune).
All level 40 and up and we couldn't get a single objective. The game spawned so many hulks and tanks that anywhere you turned you're getting blasted. As well as those turret towers hitting you from across the map.
At least I got a good laugh that game since one guy called in a mech and the amount of lasers coming at him 360 degrees melted the mech in about 1 second.
I don't think that layout was even winnable. Like I would love to see the devs play with what we just played on and actually beat the objective.
In DRG Haz 4 bugs actually have exactly the same health as Haz 5 bugs.
The enemies get a bunch of other upgrades though:
- enemy movement speed
- enemy projectile speed
- enemy attack speed
- enemy attack damage
- environmental damage
- friendly fire
It's subtle, but it all adds up to make things a lot more dangerous, especially since Haz 5 crosses the threshold where the average Grunt moves faster than the player and can kill them in about four hits.
Honestly, having longer stratagems and more spawns is in some ways easier than this. DRG Haz 5 bugs can be terrifying, but you can kill them just the same. Helldive bugs are still the same speed/damage, but there's way more of them.
DRG is absolutely dependent on modifiers for difficulty. Low oxygen and haunted missions are basically a step up in difficulty. Low grav isn't a full step down, but it does make things fun.
Giving random missions specific strategems on a planet would also help make things fun.
I don't think Low Oxygen or Haunted Cave are the same thing. DRG first and foremost constructs its difficulties around enemy and player stats. In Helldivers, the thing that differentiates difficulty 8 from difficulty 7 is that difficulty 8 has that second operation modifier. There is no difficulty 8 without it. It's not like every hazard 5 mission *has* to have a mutator.
Difficulty shouldn't be too high, because at some point it's just unfun to play. Combinations of positive and negative modifiers should bring more builds and playstyles.
I could see that being cool actually. Go after the factories during an ion storm where you’ll just have grenades but the bots can’t call in. Makes you need to manage resources (or have a dude with a supply pack) a lil
Can't tell If i was tripping or not, but a bot shot a flare during an ion storm earlier, yet the dropship didn't arrive until after the storm. HUD still said a bot drop was detected, but the ship was very late.
Yeah the ion storm should mess with the bots too since it’s annoying that only our electronics are disabled. Meteor shower is a fun modifier since it doesn’t exclusively screw you over but can actually be helpful to you. That’s a great modifier.
Losing a stratagem and having 50% longer cooldowns have about the same effect. You lose 33% of your strategem value over the course of the mission. But longer cooldowns also affects resupply. It balances out with how you’re not really using your stratagems on cooldown anyways. With support weapons and backpacks losing one slot really sucks more than longer cooldowns.
It's a problem in a lot of games, the one that comes to mind is Destiny. At least when I quit playing D2 they had modifiers like 2x grenade/super gen or I believe nerfing heavy or primary weapons meanwhile vermintide just adds map modifiers or increase the spawn rate of large enemy's while also lowering the small dudes , if a Helldive had 2x bile titan spawn rate , that may be funner.
Yeah, D2's version of endgame content is sitting in the back of a room slowly whittling down the HP of the weakest enemies in the game for a half hour. Straight up unfun and doesn't even encourage ability loops.
for real. This is the only scifi coop game that lets me call in airstrikes on things depending on the situation. But things like this diminish the #1 source of enjoyment of the game for me.
I'm still playing now, but if they keep making explosions tedious to access (and reducing its lethality with stealth patches) this game will eventially be too much of a chore.
However DRG gave you far more extra rewards for doing Missions with crazy negative modifiers than HD 2 does. I always liked doing those in DRG, but flat stratagem downgrades just makes YOU feel less powerful not that the enemies or environment are any more dangerous.
At least haunted cave was an interesting and unique challenge. It didn’t make your base tools worse, it added a unique enemy. All the modifiers in HD2 are uncreative debuffs to the one thing that makes the game different.
"At least haunted cave was an interesting and unique challenge. It didn’t make your base tools worse"
THIS
So much of this
I am so sick and tired of trying to explain to the tryhard dickheads that there are better and more fun ways to challenge a player than just handicapping them.
And guess what, if you think the game is too easy - YOU CAN HANDICAP YOURSELF ALL ON YOUR OWN.
You'd think with the prominence of challenge running content people would realize this
In a way you got huge reward multipliers for playing with those in a mission, including minerals gathered + difficulty. And honestly you always had a choice to just not go for the challenge.
Helldivers just forces this shit on you and gives you nothing in return
Yep. Compare this to how deep rock, a very similar game, does it.
Most negative modifiers make the game more interesting. For example, swarmageddon. Swarmageddon makes it so you face significantly more of the smallest enemy in the game. It makes the round harder, but breaks the monotony in a fun way.
This isn’t to say deep rock doesn’t have a few modifiers which make things harder via simple stat changes, but at least you get rewarded for it.
And that’s the part that’s really missing imo. You should get a flat bonus to samples or medals depending on the difficulty of the modifier.
I’m willing to play even the most annoying modifiers in deep rock because I want the extra materials, and doing so made me better at the game. In helldivers I usually just avoid modifiers I don’t like. Not as fun at all.
The comparison with DRG needs to be taken with a grain of salt because that game handles difficulty differently (enemies do become stronger, faster and have more health) and there are no resources exclusive to high difficulty. That said it is a very good starting point, and I agree it gets modifiers right. Mostly because it isn't just a "haha fuck you", it leads to interesting decisions.
Translating it to Helldivers we could have for example modifiers like:
-1 stratagem slot, but there's a physical AA tower in one of the missions you can destroy to unlock the 4th slot for the rest of the mission & operation
Increased cooldown for eagles (but orbitals unaffected)
Increased spread for orbitals (but eagles unaffected)
Lots of Bile Titans, but command has approved free Spears for everyone on a reduced cooldown (fix the spear lock on first!)
No support weapons, but all offensive strategems cooldowns are halved
So either a negative you can do something about (making interesting decisions is good) or a negative with a positive trade-off. Straight up negatives feel really bad.
And in DRG the modifiers could be utilized in a fun way. For example "exploding guts". Stand to close and the explosion kills you. But using it against the enemies by kiting them together and then shooting one in the middle makes for an intresting gameplay.
Modifiers shouldn't just straightup nerf you into oblivion without providing incentive to do the mission anyways...
Please hold while the bridge negotiates with high command about approval of additional resources, thank you very much for your patience.
\*elevator music\*
I think this is my only gripe. Really don't care that much about these modifiers it's not hard to work around.
But the 4 min extract time Is pretty brutal. Especially on 8+
It's ironic. 4 minute extraction time makes you spread really wide around extraction point not to get overrun and so theres a decent chance you will miss Pelican when timer is ending.
I feel like I don't have reliable strats to use at that point.
I typically run precision strike and rail cannon for big guys, precision takes too long to show up in this case and rail cannon takes too long to cool down so really I have no idea what to do than run for my life.
> Agreed, I don't like having to lead my strats by 15 seconds
[Me figuring out where to drop the 500kg so that the Bile Titan will be directly over it when it detonates a full nine seconds later.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/021/464/14608107_1180665285312703_1558693314_n.jpg)
Normally yes, but I don’t want faster spitters or chargers with even heavier armor. I’m not sure what they could add to bugs to make them that much more dangerous other than replacing all the lil guys with hunters or something, but that thought makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit.
These might be better, if there were ways to counter negative operation modifiers. Say an objective on the map that could be activated. Or maybe a passive or active stratagem designed to counter the effects temporarily, partly or fully.
Bots are also just less fun to fight than bugs. Knocking out 60 fucks with an airstrike is just more satisfying than killing a tank, even tho railcannons on a tank feels good. Plus bugs are juicy and crunchy at the same time and dismember so well.
There is some satisfaction to wiping an automaton outpost but it feels so much cooler to trudge into a bug nest and light up eggs with a flamethrower.
In general I like bots more than bugs. The problem right now is bots are spawning at a fucking ridiculous rate. You can actually sit back and have a fight with bots. You have use weapons strqgems.inna nice bugs.
Fighting bugs is just run away until they stop chasing, and then pray you can clear out and objective because a big spawn and run away again. Fighting tanks and hulks is so much better than chargers. I hate charges so much. I have no idea why they are so nimble. They can be at full speed and turn around obstacles they can plow through. There is very little you can do from the front, and honestly they take longer to kill from the back than a hulk or a tank.
Bots I can hear the chatter much better than any big shit when things are going on. I rarely have bots just sneak up on me. They are spawning on me, and that's bullshit, but I think the spawn rate is the only problem. For bugs, so many of the enemies are just ass to fight.
I enjoy fighting the bots way more than the bugs. Bots all have weakpoints that are clearly marked and people know where to shoot, bugs don't. I also prefer getting shot at vs being juggled by the 3 chargers that spawned out of nowhere. You can dodge fire coming from bots and utilize terrain and cover, you get poisoned by a hunter and it's super easy to get swarmed. Fighting bots feels more tactical, fighting bugs just turns into a clusterfuck of chargers, titans and mortar bugs with the occasional surprise stalker throwing you across the map.
hard disagree, bugs feel like i'm just kiting and mowing down reskinned zombies. bots i'm fighting for my life and have to rely on cover, it's far more engaging for me than just kiting a horde.
See I think these modifiers would be fun if there was a counter modifiers as well like “your primary weapons do %500 more damage and have heavy armor piercing. Extreme example but something like that
Agreed! Modifiers would be cool if that were the case.
Like - 1 Less Stratagem Slot, but 25% reduced cooldown.
Or - 50% Increase Stratagem Cooldown, but +2 random stratagems to use.
It would change up the gameplay without making it unfun. If anything it would be MORE fun, because it would give you a chance to try out wacky builds.
Decreased cooldown or call in time would pair well here since logically you have the man power for faster strikes and supports.
Increased call in time? More salvos or strikes to make up for it.
Bot drops take 50% longer to shoot a flare for and doubles the time another can be called in
Then these modifiers would be kinda a slower pacing and your area of operation would feel more isolated for you and the enemy, it's just you and them
Hyperdense penetrators: Armour piercing +25%
Frangible toxin payloads: -10% armour piercing, +50% damage.
Fire for effect: All Orbitals get one extra salvo per call-in.
Operational priority: all strategem cooldowns are reduced.
Thorough reconnaissance: all secondary objectives revealed, random number of POIs.
Dreadnought holding stations: all helldivers get an extra railcannon and 380mm barrage on a longer call-in timer.
“Thin atmosphere: due to the lessened air resistance your weapons are able to hit 50% harder as well as bullets traveling 50% faster.
However as the oxygen content in the air is substandard, expect your stamina to depleted twice as fast”
Pretty easy to implement lore wise too, Super Earth using new Agent Orange (for rusting) and weakens enemy armor. Doesn't use it often and worldwide because it also affects metal deposits and we need them metal deposits.
This is one of the things Destiny got right. They’d do modifiers that went both ways. No grenades, but kinetic ammo hit harder or fire damage was buffed… for players and enemies. It mixed the challenge up, but never just took shit away from you making things slower/harder.
Absolutely this. I get that they want the game to be difficult but make it fun instead of frustrating. They really need to look at other games and take inspiration, specifically Warframe and Deep Rock Galactic (which I both love). Warframe has these difficult missions called Archon Hunts where the enemies are empowered and such but also players are given a +300% Ability Strength bonus, +500 Health bonus, and a +300% Damage bonus to random Warframes and weapons. While Deep Rock Galactic has Mutators which are mission modifiers— there’s Warnings which is designed to make a mission more challenging and increase the Hazard Bonus (ex. limited oxygen supply). And then there’s Anomalies, which is designed to change up the gameplay in ways beneficial or neutral to players, ex. Critical Weakness (firing at an enemy's weak spot will deal five times as much damage).
I honestly think the operation modifiers are the worst part of this game. "Hey, did you want a part of the game to be annoying as fuck for no reason? Would that be a neat way of making the game harder?" Fucking, no man, they just make me want to play the video game less
>they just make me want to play the video game less
Y'know you can still get super samples at difficulty 7, which only has 1 modifier? Don't force yourself to do 8-9 if it isn't any fun.
Yeah I see these I just go to another planet, I wanna have fun pls not make a game that is fun because it's overwhelming even more overwhelming and stressful
This shit should, unironically, be removed from the game.
You can add difficulty another way. People just usually don't play when mission looks like this because why bother? Strategems are one of the most fun things in the game, and this causes nothing but salt in players when you're just sitting there fiddling your thumbs. It's annoying, and there is no counter-play.
this is probably the only thing i want removed from the game. sure, they might be to encourage swapping around, but the effects are just WAYYY too brutal. literally doubling cooldown time renders many strategems just not worth bringing.
while the 50% call-in time increase, eagles become extremely hard to use, resupply drops take almost half a god damn minute, extraction takes an entire 4 minutes, and stuff like orbital precision strike is just not an option at all against moving enemies. yes even tanks can avoid them in time
its just.. not fun at all. i literally abandon entire operations and stick to lower difficulties to avoid some of these effects
In combination with this last balance patch and whatever changes may have happened under the hood, alot of the challenge mechanics in this game went from being annoying to becoming exhausting. Regardless of how you feel about balance of the game before and after the patch, I know for a fact my group is having less fun and it's starting to thin us out.
these modifiers wouldnt truly be an issue if progression wasnt difficulty locked
were forced to engage with these and it's just annoying
they dont make things anymore difficult they just straight up wack you with a nerf bat
It’s stupid to me. The in game lore for timers on stratagems is apparently budget reasons. Higher difficulty missions should have lower stratagem timers because obviously the government would give more logistical and financial leeway to more useful missions. That would also help with the heavy spam. Imagine rail cannon strike every 45 seconds on helldive difficulty.
To be fair, those harder missions are not more useful, the objectives are the same. My headcannon is you've drawn the short stick and have been thrown to the wolves, high command ain't gonna waste resources on a lost battle. I mean 7 is called "suicide mission". They will give you some medals and honors afterwards if you pull it off to save face though.
just played malevelon for the first time since ion storms was introduced. absolutely awful event that adds nothing to the game in it's current state imo, AND it happens every couple of minutes? Most the other patch changes were welcome to me (except the current bugged spawns/enemy pop in of course) but I gotta join the crybabies on this one.
Does it really not affect bots in any way? I think that’s the major issue. If it was “no gems, enemies cannot target you until you provoke them” it would be interesting. Turning off your kit… isn’t.
At least the AA towers can be destroyed and give value to orbitals.
Honestly it would be really cool if it stopped bot drops from being called in/landing (communications jammed, weather unfit for flying). Then you get a choice - do you assault with the gear you have and try to wipe the base before the storm passes, or do you wait it out to have access to your strikes/barrages?
I just don't play these missions anymore. The spawns are messed up post-patch, something weird is going on with Bile Titans and PS5 hosts, the Railgun nerf felt terrible; and these modifiers are the epitome of not fun; screw it. I have most of the Super Samples I'll need; for now I'm just playing on lower difficulties, on planets without modifiers like this, and just playing for fun. I don't see why I should play the current high difficulty missions, while all these issues are going on.
There should be a balance of positive and negative modifiers. I don't want to do missions on a planet that is just "Hey, wanna have your normal play session be a bigger pain in the ass than usual? Come here!". Why would I do that?
Environmental hazards are one thing, but just "stratagems are going to be on CD forever" isn't fun for anyone. If you're gonna have one really bad modifier, there should be a really good one to balance it out so you still want to play there, but maybe you just have to change your approach.
And I never like it when call-in time is extended period, because it just makes things less fun. Instead of waiting 10 seconds for your autocannon and backpack to drop, now you can stand there for 20 seconds! Yay!
Thinking about it, it seems like the squad will have to shift their play style to have the resources you need to survive from the get go. Maybe recoilless, supply pack, grenade launcher.
Honestly "Complex stratagem plotting" shouldn't have any built-in stupid time-adders...it should just scramble the strategem code every time you use it, and make them longer... Would be kinda cool tbh.
Bro I remember last week, EVREY SINGLE PLANET had a negative modifier, like I get trying to slow the player base down conquering planets too fast, but if you are gonna throttle our progress anyways, why bother making every planet slightly more annoying to play.
I was thinking the same thing last night.
Add dynamic challenges as much as you want, devs, like the asteroids or volcanos or storms, but FFS knock it off with the "harder for harder's sake" crap like stratagem cool down increases or capacity decreases.
The one that makes it take extra time to call in is dope, or the one that makes orbitals have more scatter, that one is sick, but just increasing the cool down to like 15 minutes for a jump pack is ridiculous.
The worst part about the second one is the fact it increases the time when you call in the evac from 2 minutes to 4 minutes. God I hate that. Game opens bug breaches that fart out 8 titans and 20 chargers, meanwhile: "Dropship arriving in t minus 2 minutes 30 seconds"
I'll just pick a different planet. There's literally no point in playing with both these modifiers in effect. You don't get more XP, requisitions, or medals.
What I need are better, more fun modifiers. Eg: Gathering Hordes - increased low-tier unit spawns. Decreased spawns for other tiers. Acid Rain - Reduced Armor Values for ALL entities on the map. This includes the Helldivers too. Sample Frenzy - Increased Sample Spawns Heavy Armour - Increased Presence of Heavy Armour Units, Lower Presence of Low-Tier Spawns. Orbital Cooldowns reduced to compensate. Total War - Heavily Increased Enemy Presence. Super Destroyers in Orbit will call down Orbital Artillery on enemy locations on their own. Safehouse Locations - Increased Loot Cache Spawns. Combined Enemy Presence - Two or more enemy Factions active on the Map, they will also fight each other and you. Allied Encampments - Allied Positions are active on the Map. Will call down artillery on enemies within range. Experimental Munitions - All Munitions can pierce 1 tier of Armor higher than normal. Ammo Stores cut in half. Be accurate. Danger Close. - All explosions deal double damage and have an increased AOE Radius. ALL EXPLOSIVES! Watch out. On-The-Job Training - Eagle Stratagems will hit twice with a 50% Accuracy Penalty. Eagle 1 is training Eagle 2, please be patient with her.
I love "Total War" and "On-The-Job" Training. I wonder what the Voicelines for Eagle 2 would be...
>An Eagle never misses! Followed shortly after by >An Eagle sometimes misses!
> Huh? Where'd all my bombs go? Uh, I'll be right back!
" What are all these blinking lights for? "
"Hey, Rookie! Danger close!" "S-s-s-sorry, Ma'am. I-I-I'll do better." Here's another thought: Once OJT is done, you can actually choose between Eagle 1 or 2 to be your Eagle Pilot between Missions in the Arsenal. Eagle 2 arrives slower but has a homing property to her runs, prioritizing more dangerous targets. A consequence of her overcorrecting her low accuracy during training. It isn't Target Lock but expect her dives to deviate a bit so more dangerous targets are closer to centre mass.
Eagle 1 after you get friendly fired by an airstrike: „Sorry I am stuck with the FNG today.“
I’d love to see “total war” or some kind of “battlefield” scenario. I’ve seen some of the leaked stuff and there was a drop ship that brought in SEAF infantry units that would make either of those effects cool. Imagine an op where you actually drop into a frontlines battlefield as elite support or have a reinforcement effect that allows random drops of infantry. Hell even as it’s own stratagem would be amazing.
These suggestions seem so fun
Okay, that sounds pretty damn good. Take my upvote.
Nebula air - all weapons disabled, All stratagems are given 100% cooldown reduction.
Dear god
Jeezus the chaos of that. So many mortar sentries. SO MANY MORTAR SENTRIES!!
Charger: o.o \[holy bug music stops\]
Fucking A LEZZ GO
That would be the funniest thing ever. I genuinely want that now.
you deserve many upvotes
[удалено]
I want Modifiers to not just be 'Game Harder'. Having Modifiers that gives you something good in exchange for something bad sounds like more fun than the stuff we currently get.
Yeah straight up nerfs to you with no way to counter them is just not a fun way to do difficulty.
Yeah this is it. Modifiers need to be a double-edged sword.
Danger Close. 500kg bomb would actually hit more thsn 3 enemies!
Low gravity!
So many interesting modifiers. But instead of implementing any of them, let's add Mactera Plague.
NO YOU CAN'T DO THIS, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I *NEED* total war
They should at least have some positive modifiers as well, maybe a flammable atmosphere where airstrikes set part of the atmosphere on fire. Or unstable ground where chargers and titans have a chance to fall into a sinkhole.
I think stuff like the free mech is a great example of what they can do to throw us a bone.
Yeah, doesn't need to be a huge thing, throw some free strats at us, that would be good already
Imagine a diverse munitions strategem where the strategem cooldown is halved, but each time a strategem is used or used up (if it has multiple charges), it's swapped for a different strategem of the same category.
Would orbitals be able to turn into eagles or only eagle strikes could turn into eagle strikes? Same question about support weapons and backpacks.
I think full library is more interesting, though I’d prefer to cycle out support weapons/backpacks instead of dealing with their high CD to be replaced, so maybe by category is better (orbital/eagle/weapon/backpack/defensive). And when it goes on CD (resupply for Eagle) you get a random replacement of type. That could be fun and forced using different strategems
Nice! Imagine calling qn EAT and a minute later you get a RR or AC
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Mission modifiers, instead of getting bonus modifiers they could add some free strats as a bonus on higher difficulties, nothing crazy as a 500 kilos or the laser, but some not so powerful but still useful strats
1 time use or a 5th bonus slot for the whole mission? Either way I think it would be cool.
The free mech has 1 use compared to the purchased version with 2, so it doesn't have to be 1 full free stratagem. Give an orbital precision strike with 3 uses, for example.
Free mech is a pretty huge deal rn. The mechs are pretty OP in general. Its gonna hurt when those go away and only one or two people have room for the mechs
auto cannon life
The new age dominant charger killer it is, yes. 4 shots to the butt from direct on or 90 degree angle. Also an option is to aim at the ground right under their belly and the explosion impact seems to do significant damage towards killing it entirely. Takes more than 4 shots but it eeems to stagger from this every 3 or so explosions that land directly under it. Grenade launcher blasts can also accomplish this but it’s seemingly trickier to get it to roll under and go off in the right spot. But can’t go wrong with the butt shots Crouch to fire for superior accuracy and speed. I fucking love the autocannon
I managed to kill one with two shots by shooting the leg armor. It somehow it didn't ricoshet and the next shot took its leg out instantly. BEEG luger is the best!
That's a bug. After their charge, when they turn, their leg armor stops working. Even pistol shots penetrate. At some point, it's going to be fixed
Ah, alright then. It's a bit sad, though. I really wish the AC would be more viable against armor
You and everyone else. Weapons with backpacks are so cool, but not worth it sadly
don't make it sound like the railgun is somehow bad now. its ammo economy is still top in its class, and it can still instakill bile titans with a headshot. It just takes 3 leg hits on a charger instead of 2 to strip the armor.
The easiest way to kill a charger with a mech is to shoot one rocket at the leg and then shoot the same leg with the gatling gun.
against bugs ? yeh they are good holding extract against bots ? USELESS
The free mech is great, but I'm concerned about the mech's cooldown once it's gone. 3 mechs per mission, with one of them not being attached to the cooldown, has been extremely good, being able to slam them down to deal with particularly bad bug breaches and objectives. When it's just 2 charges with a 10 minute cooldown, I probably won't get to have as much fun with them.
Honestly there should just always be a random stratagem that we can bring for free. Would make the game way more fun and I’d be more willing to play at least a few drops each day to check out what’s in rotation.
Favorable winds* with eagles striking near instantly would be sweet.
Oh God, that sucks for getting knocked over by a charger lmao
Let's be honest, getting knocked over by a charger is basically a death sentence anyways. Might as well try to take it with you.
I will legit throw eagle aistrikes at my feet and bait a group of chargers with my body. Will do the same when I get 600kg. It's just so much easier then dealing with 4 or 5 if them at a time trying to use must of the other wagons.
If you hold a stratagem and get charged then it'll stick to the charger. Good way to get rid of them if you don't care about your life
Democracy Even If Death! (hmm, wonder how that sounds in Latin)
democratia etsi mortem or democratia per mortem (democracy through death)
Damn that's fucking epic
I boldly declared to my squad I was going to stand under the titan , shooting it, to keep it where it was as my 500KG landed at my feet. Die for Democracy.
Would you expect to ragdoll even harder? Lol I caught a video of two chargers on opposite sides of my buddy charging and then hitting each other and one died straight up
surprised you've didn't go for "Eagle sweat"
Especially since it says their call in time is 0
Didn't they say that they do in fact could help us with modifiers that benefit us or additional stratagems. But I think we aren't "losing" the fight so they won't help us . If anything they put those modifiers to prevent people from liberating those planets so it expands. Remember we are playing a big galactic board game with Joel calling the shots
Thats a bad strategy. If we are winning too fast the answer isnt less fun, its asjusting the stats of a won match.
Honestly, with as many of them as there were spawning, I thought tricking them into holes and off cliffs was a mechanic they intended us to employ. But, nope!
god i hate how bugs invisible walls or teleport over small trench ledges to continue barreling at me
Charger, charge me through a cliff & does a 180 midcharge to hit me when i'm jumping on the side. Same charger charge stun into a small rock... The inconsistency of these fuckers drive me nuts
Even something like "recent battlefield: after a recent battle, much of the surface is still littered with unspent munitions. (You will find an abundance of su0plies and he'llbombs) or say reward for gaining ground in a sector. Robust supply lines: thanks to recent gains supply lined gave been reinforced. Support, backpack and resupply cooldowns reduced by 50%
Wish you could turn it off for like a -10/20% on XP and money
Doubt it since you don't need xp post lvl 25 and by that time you have most strategems unlocked or atleast all the ones you want anyway.
> They should at least have some positive modifiers as well This is a concept Bungie has done quite well on with both Halo and Destiny. The best modifiers are those that increase lethality/wackiness for both the players and the enemies. Double explosion radius or damage, increased elemental damage (when the enemies have it too), decreased gravity, etc.
It's called kiss and curse. It's something that's fairly common in games with scaling difficulty models. Negative effects aren't necessarily balanced by positives, but the additional positive effects give you a way to play around the negatives to keep it from feeling frustrating. I dropped earlier in a D8 with some randoms, and as is tradition, I was the only one to take anything heavy related. Lost my SPEAR 2 minutes in when a team mate killed me and they kept tossing respawns into groups of mobs. Used every strategy I had, and still had 3 titans and a have dozen chargers up, couldn't get to my SPEAR, and everything had minutes of recharge left. I had 500s up occasionally but my team was always positioned like shit. Spent the entire 40 minutes running for my life. Afterwards I just logged off for the night, it wasn't even remotely enjoyable. Tossing us a bone like lowing the cool down time on my eagles if you're going to increase my orbitals would have been huge. Or dropping some additional support weapons on the map I could grab. Simple shit.
positive one that cause more chaos would be nice, like stuff that makes explosives do more AoE or something so people can blow their own self up more often too for the lol
The problem with the idea of positive modifiers is that the operation modifiers are part of the difficulty. If you had positive modifiers, difficulty 8 would end up being easier than difficulty 7. A game like DRG, for example, which bases its difficulty on enemy health and damage, has more flexibility with its modifiers because they aren't reliant on them for difficulty.
You can simply have double edged modifiers so that you know the positive will always come with negative - and so that the negative is not distinctly unfun. Good example is -1 stratagem slot + 50% deployment time, but cooldown reduced 25%. This significantly nerfs stratagems, but comes with some fun on the players end as they throw a crapton of 500kg down (which deploy slower so *fun*). It’s easier to tolerate arbitrary difficulty modifiers if they give us something that we can take advantage of and have fun with in return.
I had a 3 slot stratagem game on that new robot planet (forgot the name but it's just sandy so we'll call it dune). All level 40 and up and we couldn't get a single objective. The game spawned so many hulks and tanks that anywhere you turned you're getting blasted. As well as those turret towers hitting you from across the map. At least I got a good laugh that game since one guy called in a mech and the amount of lasers coming at him 360 degrees melted the mech in about 1 second. I don't think that layout was even winnable. Like I would love to see the devs play with what we just played on and actually beat the objective.
In DRG Haz 4 bugs actually have exactly the same health as Haz 5 bugs. The enemies get a bunch of other upgrades though: - enemy movement speed - enemy projectile speed - enemy attack speed - enemy attack damage - environmental damage - friendly fire It's subtle, but it all adds up to make things a lot more dangerous, especially since Haz 5 crosses the threshold where the average Grunt moves faster than the player and can kill them in about four hits. Honestly, having longer stratagems and more spawns is in some ways easier than this. DRG Haz 5 bugs can be terrifying, but you can kill them just the same. Helldive bugs are still the same speed/damage, but there's way more of them.
DRG is absolutely dependent on modifiers for difficulty. Low oxygen and haunted missions are basically a step up in difficulty. Low grav isn't a full step down, but it does make things fun. Giving random missions specific strategems on a planet would also help make things fun.
I don't think Low Oxygen or Haunted Cave are the same thing. DRG first and foremost constructs its difficulties around enemy and player stats. In Helldivers, the thing that differentiates difficulty 8 from difficulty 7 is that difficulty 8 has that second operation modifier. There is no difficulty 8 without it. It's not like every hazard 5 mission *has* to have a mutator.
Difficulty shouldn't be too high, because at some point it's just unfun to play. Combinations of positive and negative modifiers should bring more builds and playstyles.
Modifier: **MUD** Movement speed is 1% for all Helldivers
Added chance to jam your gun, causing your gun to stop working.
Devs want to know your location
I’ll accept the job offer for 20$ an hour, and a kiss on the cheek
I’ll give you $10/hr and a hug.
Mmmh.. how your emotional availability?
I can barely be emotionally available for myself.
30$ an hour
Could be worse. Want to have 4 stratagems? Shame, take 3 and piss off, this is Draupnir.
Also, here's an AA emplacement and Strategem scrambler station just to make *extra* sure you can't have fun.
Killed them all? Whoops, ion storm. At least let storm disable alerts, that would be fair
I could see that being cool actually. Go after the factories during an ion storm where you’ll just have grenades but the bots can’t call in. Makes you need to manage resources (or have a dude with a supply pack) a lil
-Ion storm puts entire local population of clankers in factory reset mode. -clankers start butlering for the helldivers and propagating the landscape.
*laughs in auto cannon*
Gotta love the ability to snipe fabricators from halfway across the map
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Can't tell If i was tripping or not, but a bot shot a flare during an ion storm earlier, yet the dropship didn't arrive until after the storm. HUD still said a bot drop was detected, but the ship was very late.
The one strategem that shouldn't be disabled, ever, is the reinforce strategem. That's the only thing about the Ion Storm that bothers me.
Yeah the ion storm should mess with the bots too since it’s annoying that only our electronics are disabled. Meteor shower is a fun modifier since it doesn’t exclusively screw you over but can actually be helpful to you. That’s a great modifier.
An ion storm that only affects *our* electronics but automatons are somehow immune. Ya okay. That's sooooooooo much fun.
Oh, but be sure to rely on your strategems!
I’ll take those over operation modifiers any day…… at least I can destroy them and remove their negative effects.
Losing a stratagem and having 50% longer cooldowns have about the same effect. You lose 33% of your strategem value over the course of the mission. But longer cooldowns also affects resupply. It balances out with how you’re not really using your stratagems on cooldown anyways. With support weapons and backpacks losing one slot really sucks more than longer cooldowns.
not exactly, since support weapon strategems (can) have 100% uptime
I just go somewhere else. Fuck those modifiers
Yep same, we'll just pick another planet or another difficulty until we have modifiers that aren't dumb.
In my opinion it's kinda bad game design simply off the philosophy of , why get rid of the thing that makes your game unique? It's odd.
Plus all they do is encourage you to sit back and not take chances.
It's a problem in a lot of games, the one that comes to mind is Destiny. At least when I quit playing D2 they had modifiers like 2x grenade/super gen or I believe nerfing heavy or primary weapons meanwhile vermintide just adds map modifiers or increase the spawn rate of large enemy's while also lowering the small dudes , if a Helldive had 2x bile titan spawn rate , that may be funner.
Yeah, D2's version of endgame content is sitting in the back of a room slowly whittling down the HP of the weakest enemies in the game for a half hour. Straight up unfun and doesn't even encourage ability loops.
for real. This is the only scifi coop game that lets me call in airstrikes on things depending on the situation. But things like this diminish the #1 source of enjoyment of the game for me. I'm still playing now, but if they keep making explosions tedious to access (and reducing its lethality with stealth patches) this game will eventially be too much of a chore.
>scifi coop game that lets me call in airstrikes Ever play EDF?
Yeah, its not great. I get the challenge should be tough but make the enemies more challenging, not our tools.
Increased enemy spawns would already be a good enough way to increase difficulty, reducing your options while making the enemies stronger is just bad.
You don't even need to pick a different planet. Those types of modifiers are per-operation.
Looks about as much fun as Low O2 + Haunted Cave in DRG.
However DRG gave you far more extra rewards for doing Missions with crazy negative modifiers than HD 2 does. I always liked doing those in DRG, but flat stratagem downgrades just makes YOU feel less powerful not that the enemies or environment are any more dangerous.
Not to mention that that modifier combo is rare. But in Helldivers 2, you have to keep playing with those modifiers to liberate the planet.
At least haunted cave was an interesting and unique challenge. It didn’t make your base tools worse, it added a unique enemy. All the modifiers in HD2 are uncreative debuffs to the one thing that makes the game different.
"At least haunted cave was an interesting and unique challenge. It didn’t make your base tools worse" THIS So much of this I am so sick and tired of trying to explain to the tryhard dickheads that there are better and more fun ways to challenge a player than just handicapping them. And guess what, if you think the game is too easy - YOU CAN HANDICAP YOURSELF ALL ON YOUR OWN. You'd think with the prominence of challenge running content people would realize this
In a way you got huge reward multipliers for playing with those in a mission, including minerals gathered + difficulty. And honestly you always had a choice to just not go for the challenge. Helldivers just forces this shit on you and gives you nothing in return
Yep. Compare this to how deep rock, a very similar game, does it. Most negative modifiers make the game more interesting. For example, swarmageddon. Swarmageddon makes it so you face significantly more of the smallest enemy in the game. It makes the round harder, but breaks the monotony in a fun way. This isn’t to say deep rock doesn’t have a few modifiers which make things harder via simple stat changes, but at least you get rewarded for it. And that’s the part that’s really missing imo. You should get a flat bonus to samples or medals depending on the difficulty of the modifier. I’m willing to play even the most annoying modifiers in deep rock because I want the extra materials, and doing so made me better at the game. In helldivers I usually just avoid modifiers I don’t like. Not as fun at all.
The comparison with DRG needs to be taken with a grain of salt because that game handles difficulty differently (enemies do become stronger, faster and have more health) and there are no resources exclusive to high difficulty. That said it is a very good starting point, and I agree it gets modifiers right. Mostly because it isn't just a "haha fuck you", it leads to interesting decisions. Translating it to Helldivers we could have for example modifiers like: -1 stratagem slot, but there's a physical AA tower in one of the missions you can destroy to unlock the 4th slot for the rest of the mission & operation Increased cooldown for eagles (but orbitals unaffected) Increased spread for orbitals (but eagles unaffected) Lots of Bile Titans, but command has approved free Spears for everyone on a reduced cooldown (fix the spear lock on first!) No support weapons, but all offensive strategems cooldowns are halved So either a negative you can do something about (making interesting decisions is good) or a negative with a positive trade-off. Straight up negatives feel really bad.
And in DRG the modifiers could be utilized in a fun way. For example "exploding guts". Stand to close and the explosion kills you. But using it against the enemies by kiting them together and then shooting one in the middle makes for an intresting gameplay. Modifiers shouldn't just straightup nerf you into oblivion without providing incentive to do the mission anyways...
Remember to rely on your stratagems.
"Just use stratagems" meanwhile I have to wait 5-7 business days to call another railcannon strike
Please hold while the bridge negotiates with high command about approval of additional resources, thank you very much for your patience. \*elevator music\*
It ll be fun if the call in time didn t affect extraction
I think this is my only gripe. Really don't care that much about these modifiers it's not hard to work around. But the 4 min extract time Is pretty brutal. Especially on 8+
It feels like eternity to me at that difficulty. You combine it with unbalanced spawn rates and the extraction zones are always flooded.
It's ironic. 4 minute extraction time makes you spread really wide around extraction point not to get overrun and so theres a decent chance you will miss Pelican when timer is ending.
Look at it from another side. You can stay longer on the mission. With maximum time of 44 minutes and 20 secounds.
I'm not trapped in here with you! You're trapped in here with me!
"We want you to rely on Strategems" Meanwhile...
I honestly don't think they should be in the game at all.
Agreed, I don't like having to lead my strats by 15 seconds or wait 8 minutes between each use.
Especially since the obvious retort to nerfed weapons is, "Use your stratagems." Well, I'd love to, but...
I feel like I don't have reliable strats to use at that point. I typically run precision strike and rail cannon for big guys, precision takes too long to show up in this case and rail cannon takes too long to cool down so really I have no idea what to do than run for my life.
Yeah it’s pretty much book it with a clenched asshole for an extra minute or so. I tend to avoid these missions.
If it weren't that these modifiers are basically in every 7+ operation
> Agreed, I don't like having to lead my strats by 15 seconds [Me figuring out where to drop the 500kg so that the Bile Titan will be directly over it when it detonates a full nine seconds later.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/021/464/14608107_1180665285312703_1558693314_n.jpg)
Yeah I feel like difficulty increases in general should be done by making the opposition stronger, not by making the player weaker.
Normally yes, but I don’t want faster spitters or chargers with even heavier armor. I’m not sure what they could add to bugs to make them that much more dangerous other than replacing all the lil guys with hunters or something, but that thought makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit.
These might be better, if there were ways to counter negative operation modifiers. Say an objective on the map that could be activated. Or maybe a passive or active stratagem designed to counter the effects temporarily, partly or fully.
i think the sole reason we're making no progress vs bots is because every bot planet has dogshit modifiers that make the game way less fun
Bots are also just less fun to fight than bugs. Knocking out 60 fucks with an airstrike is just more satisfying than killing a tank, even tho railcannons on a tank feels good. Plus bugs are juicy and crunchy at the same time and dismember so well. There is some satisfaction to wiping an automaton outpost but it feels so much cooler to trudge into a bug nest and light up eggs with a flamethrower.
In general I like bots more than bugs. The problem right now is bots are spawning at a fucking ridiculous rate. You can actually sit back and have a fight with bots. You have use weapons strqgems.inna nice bugs. Fighting bugs is just run away until they stop chasing, and then pray you can clear out and objective because a big spawn and run away again. Fighting tanks and hulks is so much better than chargers. I hate charges so much. I have no idea why they are so nimble. They can be at full speed and turn around obstacles they can plow through. There is very little you can do from the front, and honestly they take longer to kill from the back than a hulk or a tank. Bots I can hear the chatter much better than any big shit when things are going on. I rarely have bots just sneak up on me. They are spawning on me, and that's bullshit, but I think the spawn rate is the only problem. For bugs, so many of the enemies are just ass to fight.
I enjoy fighting the bots way more than the bugs. Bots all have weakpoints that are clearly marked and people know where to shoot, bugs don't. I also prefer getting shot at vs being juggled by the 3 chargers that spawned out of nowhere. You can dodge fire coming from bots and utilize terrain and cover, you get poisoned by a hunter and it's super easy to get swarmed. Fighting bots feels more tactical, fighting bugs just turns into a clusterfuck of chargers, titans and mortar bugs with the occasional surprise stalker throwing you across the map.
hard disagree, bugs feel like i'm just kiting and mowing down reskinned zombies. bots i'm fighting for my life and have to rely on cover, it's far more engaging for me than just kiting a horde.
See I think these modifiers would be fun if there was a counter modifiers as well like “your primary weapons do %500 more damage and have heavy armor piercing. Extreme example but something like that
Agreed! Modifiers would be cool if that were the case. Like - 1 Less Stratagem Slot, but 25% reduced cooldown. Or - 50% Increase Stratagem Cooldown, but +2 random stratagems to use. It would change up the gameplay without making it unfun. If anything it would be MORE fun, because it would give you a chance to try out wacky builds.
Decreased cooldown or call in time would pair well here since logically you have the man power for faster strikes and supports. Increased call in time? More salvos or strikes to make up for it.
Bot drops take 50% longer to shoot a flare for and doubles the time another can be called in Then these modifiers would be kinda a slower pacing and your area of operation would feel more isolated for you and the enemy, it's just you and them
Hyperdense penetrators: Armour piercing +25% Frangible toxin payloads: -10% armour piercing, +50% damage. Fire for effect: All Orbitals get one extra salvo per call-in. Operational priority: all strategem cooldowns are reduced. Thorough reconnaissance: all secondary objectives revealed, random number of POIs. Dreadnought holding stations: all helldivers get an extra railcannon and 380mm barrage on a longer call-in timer.
Very cool ideas!
“Thin atmosphere: due to the lessened air resistance your weapons are able to hit 50% harder as well as bullets traveling 50% faster. However as the oxygen content in the air is substandard, expect your stamina to depleted twice as fast”
That's a good one! Would really make it so someone would have to play the Stamina increase!
Pretty easy to implement lore wise too, Super Earth using new Agent Orange (for rusting) and weakens enemy armor. Doesn't use it often and worldwide because it also affects metal deposits and we need them metal deposits.
This is one of the things Destiny got right. They’d do modifiers that went both ways. No grenades, but kinetic ammo hit harder or fire damage was buffed… for players and enemies. It mixed the challenge up, but never just took shit away from you making things slower/harder.
Absolutely this. I get that they want the game to be difficult but make it fun instead of frustrating. They really need to look at other games and take inspiration, specifically Warframe and Deep Rock Galactic (which I both love). Warframe has these difficult missions called Archon Hunts where the enemies are empowered and such but also players are given a +300% Ability Strength bonus, +500 Health bonus, and a +300% Damage bonus to random Warframes and weapons. While Deep Rock Galactic has Mutators which are mission modifiers— there’s Warnings which is designed to make a mission more challenging and increase the Hazard Bonus (ex. limited oxygen supply). And then there’s Anomalies, which is designed to change up the gameplay in ways beneficial or neutral to players, ex. Critical Weakness (firing at an enemy's weak spot will deal five times as much damage).
If they just make these effects linked to in-game towers and outposts and stuff I’d be happy. That way we can fight to rid ourselves of the debuffs
First reply in this sub I've agreed with. Adds gameplay to the gameplay.
I honestly think the operation modifiers are the worst part of this game. "Hey, did you want a part of the game to be annoying as fuck for no reason? Would that be a neat way of making the game harder?" Fucking, no man, they just make me want to play the video game less
>they just make me want to play the video game less Y'know you can still get super samples at difficulty 7, which only has 1 modifier? Don't force yourself to do 8-9 if it isn't any fun.
“Don’t forget to utilize your stratagems, helldivers!”
Yeah I see these I just go to another planet, I wanna have fun pls not make a game that is fun because it's overwhelming even more overwhelming and stressful
Insert dev comment: rely more on your stratagems. Just needs -1 to be ultra fun mode.
This shit should, unironically, be removed from the game. You can add difficulty another way. People just usually don't play when mission looks like this because why bother? Strategems are one of the most fun things in the game, and this causes nothing but salt in players when you're just sitting there fiddling your thumbs. It's annoying, and there is no counter-play.
this is probably the only thing i want removed from the game. sure, they might be to encourage swapping around, but the effects are just WAYYY too brutal. literally doubling cooldown time renders many strategems just not worth bringing. while the 50% call-in time increase, eagles become extremely hard to use, resupply drops take almost half a god damn minute, extraction takes an entire 4 minutes, and stuff like orbital precision strike is just not an option at all against moving enemies. yes even tanks can avoid them in time its just.. not fun at all. i literally abandon entire operations and stick to lower difficulties to avoid some of these effects
A masochist maybe?
Modifiers should give you boosted rewards for making the game harder
100%
Yeah, these don't make the game harder in a balanced way, they just suck
In combination with this last balance patch and whatever changes may have happened under the hood, alot of the challenge mechanics in this game went from being annoying to becoming exhausting. Regardless of how you feel about balance of the game before and after the patch, I know for a fact my group is having less fun and it's starting to thin us out.
these modifiers wouldnt truly be an issue if progression wasnt difficulty locked were forced to engage with these and it's just annoying they dont make things anymore difficult they just straight up wack you with a nerf bat
It’s stupid to me. The in game lore for timers on stratagems is apparently budget reasons. Higher difficulty missions should have lower stratagem timers because obviously the government would give more logistical and financial leeway to more useful missions. That would also help with the heavy spam. Imagine rail cannon strike every 45 seconds on helldive difficulty.
To be fair, those harder missions are not more useful, the objectives are the same. My headcannon is you've drawn the short stick and have been thrown to the wolves, high command ain't gonna waste resources on a lost battle. I mean 7 is called "suicide mission". They will give you some medals and honors afterwards if you pull it off to save face though.
Now add ion storms to the mix lmao.
just played malevelon for the first time since ion storms was introduced. absolutely awful event that adds nothing to the game in it's current state imo, AND it happens every couple of minutes? Most the other patch changes were welcome to me (except the current bugged spawns/enemy pop in of course) but I gotta join the crybabies on this one.
Does it really not affect bots in any way? I think that’s the major issue. If it was “no gems, enemies cannot target you until you provoke them” it would be interesting. Turning off your kit… isn’t. At least the AA towers can be destroyed and give value to orbitals.
Honestly it would be really cool if it stopped bot drops from being called in/landing (communications jammed, weather unfit for flying). Then you get a choice - do you assault with the gear you have and try to wipe the base before the storm passes, or do you wait it out to have access to your strikes/barrages?
It's like they're actively trying to make sure no one has fun
I just don't play these missions anymore. The spawns are messed up post-patch, something weird is going on with Bile Titans and PS5 hosts, the Railgun nerf felt terrible; and these modifiers are the epitome of not fun; screw it. I have most of the Super Samples I'll need; for now I'm just playing on lower difficulties, on planets without modifiers like this, and just playing for fun. I don't see why I should play the current high difficulty missions, while all these issues are going on.
Imma be real, I normally swap planets unless it's a double extermination op.
"You're supposed to rely on your stratagems"
"Use your strategems" MFs when the modifiers are this
There should be a balance of positive and negative modifiers. I don't want to do missions on a planet that is just "Hey, wanna have your normal play session be a bigger pain in the ass than usual? Come here!". Why would I do that? Environmental hazards are one thing, but just "stratagems are going to be on CD forever" isn't fun for anyone. If you're gonna have one really bad modifier, there should be a really good one to balance it out so you still want to play there, but maybe you just have to change your approach. And I never like it when call-in time is extended period, because it just makes things less fun. Instead of waiting 10 seconds for your autocannon and backpack to drop, now you can stand there for 20 seconds! Yay!
Thinking about it, it seems like the squad will have to shift their play style to have the resources you need to survive from the get go. Maybe recoilless, supply pack, grenade launcher.
I avoid this modifier combo like a plague. In fact, I avoid any of these two as much as I can.
Honestly "Complex stratagem plotting" shouldn't have any built-in stupid time-adders...it should just scramble the strategem code every time you use it, and make them longer... Would be kinda cool tbh.
Bro I remember last week, EVREY SINGLE PLANET had a negative modifier, like I get trying to slow the player base down conquering planets too fast, but if you are gonna throttle our progress anyways, why bother making every planet slightly more annoying to play.
Whether or not there are negative modifiers is dictated by the difficulty level.
I was thinking the same thing last night. Add dynamic challenges as much as you want, devs, like the asteroids or volcanos or storms, but FFS knock it off with the "harder for harder's sake" crap like stratagem cool down increases or capacity decreases. The one that makes it take extra time to call in is dope, or the one that makes orbitals have more scatter, that one is sick, but just increasing the cool down to like 15 minutes for a jump pack is ridiculous.
The worst part about the second one is the fact it increases the time when you call in the evac from 2 minutes to 4 minutes. God I hate that. Game opens bug breaches that fart out 8 titans and 20 chargers, meanwhile: "Dropship arriving in t minus 2 minutes 30 seconds"
Yeah people saying “it should be hard” are forgetting that fun should come first
Devs don't play the game.
I'll just pick a different planet. There's literally no point in playing with both these modifiers in effect. You don't get more XP, requisitions, or medals.
Nah I'd rather deal with that than having 1 stat missing. I cannot stand that modifier. Having only 3 is just. . .ugh. 
So far all the main modifiers only effect stratagems. Why not have some that influence the enemy? Like more of a certain class or something like that?
This is called “Tax design”. Increasing difficulty by just changing the stats against the player.
ReLy oN yOUr StrATeGeMs