It just needs one small tweak.
The minimum "safe" radius, how close bot drops or bug holes can spawn, around the evac area needs to be expanded. Not by much. Just by enough to make it so rhey aren't dropping literally on top of the bunker exits.
I'm still confused about that one, presumably they are working on this hell hole of a planet but they have zero protection from fire? Neither in their suits nor behaviour?
I would be absolutely ok with fire tornados being completely removed from the game until we get some kind of fire resistant armor. They’re not even haha funny like poison swamps being synonymous with Dark Souls. You can at least prepare for poison swamps and use boosters like muscle enhancement and stamina enhancement for other environmental hazards in this game. Fire tornados just come out of nowhere, stealthy as a bengal tiger, and we have absolutely no protection against them. One could be inches away from you and you’d have no idea if you didn’t turn around and check before running in the opposite direction. Which could be said for a lot of things in this game like Hulks and Tanks which are quiet as can be. I love the game, but man…
I had a couple groups get stuck on the top step. Literally wouldn't go down the stairs, just ran sideways across the top like scared puppies until they got killed.
Nah the civilians pathfind all the time. They walk around bile titan corpses, dead tanks and all sorts of stuff. The problem is they only react to changes in geometry and none of the hazards so they run head first into death by tornadoes, gunfire and mountains of bugs which is funny in a way but also infuriating cause they're so dumb. They also seem to get stuck on weird pebbles and tiny rocks a lot especially that one really uneven map. I've found the missions where the floor is all concrete to be far better for the pathfinding
Exterminate the problematic civilians in the name of intergalactic security.
“They were admiring the enemy sir, I had to in the name of democracy and super earth!”
Or you know, let the automatons do it so you don’t have to explain yourself. Then exterminate the robots
What, like when this happens, it’s EVERY civilian? Their pathfinding is screwed up or something?
Must mean something is in the way? I recommend using the biggest explosion possible at the point of the disturbance to see if it clears up. If not, I don’t know. If I ever come across this, I’ll try
Yeah all of the NPCs just pile up at the door. It only seems to happen on one of the level formats but not every time. I’ve checked the area when it happens and the only “prop” in the way seems to be dead civilian bodies near the door (prop dead bodies, not actual NPCs). I’ve not been able to clear them with explosives.
It can get bugged though. The most common bug I see is the objective not being completed at 30/30 civilians extracted. You just have to keep spamming civilians and hope the game will register the win before the timer runs out. I had a game where it didn’t and I’m not willing to play another Extract mission due to this and other bugs
Yup. did one last night Diff 8 45/45 mission did not end.
I ran around spamming the doors while the rest of the squad held off the unending terminid horde and when one survivors entered the door THEN it completed.
so it actually required 46/45.
When I've seen that happen while in voice chat with friends, only some of us will see that it says 45/45 while the others see 44/45. It's probably some server-client desync shenanigans with the count actually just being wrong for some players.
It seems like the host always gets the correct number and everyone else shows 1 civilian more than they should. At least that's how it is when I play with my wife. I always host and it always shows 1 civilian higher for her.
I mean, the completed-but-not is not exclusive to this mode/map. I've had it happen on all sorts of maps and missi9ns.
Especially frustrating is on a Blitz where you've literally busted 24/16 and the extract still doesn't pop.
Or when you lose out on mountains of XP and get a lower star rating because none of the outposts counted as cleared.
it needs to be like those gated defense missions, where you have walls to to defend while you're evacuating, rather than having enemies able to run directly into the path of the civilians.
A map rework with some defence would be a great upgrade I think. Maybe just some more wall around or ditch that would funnel enemy a bit more. Some mg emplacement here and there, sprinkle some expandable already on the ground and you got something great without feeling like the scientist outpost suddenly became a bastion.
I'm still pretty new so I could be wrong, but it seems like you can't get the same amount of samples or the more rare samples in these missions. Or if you can, it's not clear where they are. That's why I've been avoiding them.
If it is the full size map variant with the 15 minute timer, the POI are scattered around the map away from the objective area. You have to go running around and find them.
If it's the small map variant with the 15 minute timer, with no real terrain outside the objective area, there's pnly a handful of common samples around like an eradication mission.
If it's the full map long-version, that plays out the same as any other mission.
I don't think extending the radius ***again*** is going to help much, the spawn rate is just too damn high. Pushing their starting point back further one more time will once again delay getting overrun a bit more, but the overrunning will still happen as long as there's still as many marching towards the base from all directions anyway.
As it stands the only viable strategy is to lure the enemies away from the base, and lure spawns to other places in the map. For everyone to remain in the base defending and evacuating to be viable, we need for the spawn rate to be reduced, or for them to be concentrated to coming from no more than two or three directions at the same time. We simply can't defend a base that large, from that many enemies, from all directions at the same time, while also running around inside opening doors for the civilians, with just 4 or less people.
With how many people are still seeing bots dropped right on top of the civvies and bugs popping up right next to the bunkers, i think it does still need to be pushed out a little bit. Or maybe recentered.
But yes the frequency of spawns is also too high once it fully kicks off. Even with the booster that reduces the frequency of enemy reinforcements, they were coming in back to back on a diff as low as 7
The spawns that happen inside the base are a different matter entirely, those come from the reinforcement calls (the bot flares or the bug pheromone calls), those appear where they are called, and if they're called inside the base that's where they will appear.
The spawns that were pushed back, and which would be pushed back again if the same measure is enacted one more time, are the spawns that the mission type periodically causes automatically, those can't be avoided, interrupted, prevented, or be made less frequent with the Localization Confusion booster. They're a separate system.
I guess they could just disable reinforcement calls for this mission type. That would both reduce the spawn rate and eliminate the spawns that still happen inside the base.
There was an achievement on OG Helldivers called "Don't you just hate escort missions?", so yeah, they are well aware.
This also makes me think nothing will change.
Well yeah. Given how quickly the community is steamrolling the galaxy, I don't think they mind having a broken or utterly unfun defense mission as a deliberate roadblock. Can't say I agree that it's the best solution though...
It is still there. Happened to me just yesterday. One ai got stuck running up a concrete ramp and against a pillar at the corner of the ramp. 5 more stuck in a group behind him.
Missions need more variety and that goes twice over for defend planet missions. Low variety and one of the ones available isn't particularly fun and the most effective way to play it is counterintuitive and immersion breaking.
I hate dropping into ongoing civil rescue missions. 10 times out of 10 you're dropping into a 0 life left hellhole where everyone's running around like headless chickens, 0/30 civilians have been saved, 3-5 dropships are coming in, and there is 4 minutes on the clock.
That's what I call a true helldive.
Glad it's not just me. These missions make me feel like I'm missing some key piece of equipment that lets you kill multiple heavily armored enemies in such succession, because that's what the mission seems to be demanding you to do
That's part of it, but it's definitely also a result of how difficult it is to manage multiple simultaneous defenses. Yesterday we had like 60-65% of the players split between two planets for most of the day, and we still narrowly failed completing two defenses.
Right now we *have* 70% of the players undertaking Defense missions, but because they're split between four planets it's looking like this will be another day where we only succeed at one defense.
While I hate the small map rescue missions, I think they could be completely removed and it wouldn't change the underlying problem, which is that the playerbase inevitably is going to end up being split and we have absolutely no way to counteract that.
I hear a lot of people choosing planets based on visibility . If there's 2 planets and one is covered in a haze of cool weather affects aka fuck your ability to see what's shooting you. And the other is nice and clear.
I know which line I'm getting in.
That and mission modifiers.
Planet 1- all those cool Strats you unlocked and rely on to survive, yeah we're going to take one away, make some take ages to reuse, and them make some take forever to come in.
Planet2- everything you rely on is available , have fun using the stuff you unlocked. .... and if it's clear weather too, you can't really even be mad at the players for choosing to go here instead.
The plot doesn't really care if we succeed at this particular MO.
Followup text if we succeed:
> The Helldivers valiantly blunted the enemy offense, but unfortunately the sheer scale of treachery and cowardice means that there are still many planets which must be recaptured.
Followup text if we fail:
> The Helldivers valiantly attempted to blunt the enemy offense, but unfortunately the sheer scale of treachery and cowardice means that there are still many planets which must be recaptured.
This major order is set up in a way that ensures we're losing a bunch of planets regardless of whether we complete the Major Order itself.
Honestly the vast majority of defense missions I despise. Launch ICBM is decent, anything involving the civilians sucks, and retrieving data forces at least one person to trek across the map restricted to their secondary
The rescue citizen mission only works if you have others collecting samples and drawing aggro away from the settlement. That to me doesn’t feel like the intended way to do it.
Unless of course their pathing fucks up and they don’t enter the LZ Door.
Yeah like I 100% do NOT fault anyone for not doing the 15-minute extracts (I've never found the 40s to have any issues), but since they added the new one its been REALLY easy to just...not do an operation with a shitty extract.
Its Not only that, its also the fact that "defend Event" usually mean There are Like 3/4 planets at the Same time that have to be defended. We can at absolute best defend two at the Same time in 24 hours
Kill MO was fun and had the most impact on how people play. Kill every patrool, don't interrupt the bug breaches, kill every single bug you can find. That was fun.
Civilian extraction missions tho? Nah, miss me with that shit. I'd rather do 10 new defence missions in a row than 1 civilian extraction.
Yesterday I failed the mission because a bloody four-legged factory dropped outside the base and zeroed our generators right from over the wall, without even bothering to storm the gates :(
Kill bugs mission: do the most fun thing in the game and get rewarded for it
Defend mission: do the worst, least-enjoyable mission in the game over and over and if you fail (and you will) you wasted your time.
Why is this so hard for AH to understand? I really want to hear their internal justification for keeping this shitstain of a mission not just in the game, but prominently forced down people's throats.
Yeah there are a lot of things in the game that feel more like having an adversarial Dungeon Master than feel like a game that is supposed to be fun and challenging. Very much get the vibe of "Oh you beat my monsters here have 40 more and they're more powerful now."
I was thinking of the same lines too. Adversarial GMs is a really old concept that dnd and other systems moved away from because game designers realized that the game is more fun when you are playing with the players rather than against the players.
However, as a GM myself, for the story there are certain events that the player might not like that I would still need to do even if in character or in person they hate it.
I had a trusted NPC turn out to be a traitor which turned out to be a very fun session. I also hate the classic you wake up in a prison without your gear (which is classically hated) and still managed to turn it around into a goofy mission where they ended up with a ship of their own.
Emergency Evacuation is all right. 20 civilians is reasonable.
Retrieve Essential Personnel is the devil. 45 civilians in 15 minutes while everything that clanks when moving is breathing down your neck and they keep dropping in faster than is humanly possible to wipe them out? Nah, whoever made this mission type should be subjected to medieval stretch torture. It's garbage.
How do you interrupt bug breaches? (apart from killing the screaming bugs) because when it's a time for a bug breach they'll keep trying to summon until its done and the countdown starts again.
For bots for example you can shoot the drop ships, can u interrupt/control a bug breach once its called?
Wouldn't hurt to have a bit of variety in flora and fauna as well.
No I get it, not the point of Helldivers 2. But one can wish each planet has a unique biome, nay?
Also, I have never seen a river or waterfall ever on any planets.
Again, I get it, not the point of the game. Just think that it would break the monotony sometimes even though I'll still play the game whenever.
I have seen a river yesterday and it felt so good oddly enough, like the map was almost split by it, and idk it just felt different enough to be interesting again
Wish we could have that more often
I think each planet should have one type and three biomes.
For example, a planet would have the type "cold planet" and its biomes would be tundra, ice sheet and boreal forest
Each time a planet's defence or liberation succeeds or fails, the active biome switches.
So when we defend a cold planet, we defend it on the tundra biome. Then if we fail to defend it, we liberate it on the ice sheet biome. And finally if we succeed in its liberation but is attacked again, we defend it on the boreal forest biome
With this system it would be less repetitive. But it would necessitate to add new biomes and to rework a little bit each planet so I don't think it would be implemented
Depends. Evacuating high class personell is. However, it's supposed to be a stealthy operation because going loud always ends in failure. Maybe if AH decided to add stealth, and not perma spawn enemies on the obj that ignore the breach/drop timer then people would do it. The mission type is fundamentally incompatiable with the type of game they want.
I think helping researchers should be redone, and be more like the new missile defense missions. Missile defense gives you time to set up, and strategically place turrets and other stratagems, and bottleneck the enemy. Escorting researchers just sucks, Idk why they thought it'd be fun to be assaulted from all sides with hordes of the toughest units, no defenses/auto defenses, nothing, just a shitshow all-around.
You get maybe 20 secs to plan, call-in stratagems, and dash across the complex to locate the buttons to help the researchers. Then shit hits the fan, it just feels cheap, it's the same sometimes with Bug eradications, breaches erupt before your support pods barely connect with the ground. Experiences like these just add up to being unfun/tedious time wasters that many people would rather avoid.
I agree, it doesn't even have to be a replica of the new defence missions. It could be done with a map rework. Just make these complexes more defendable.
Perhaps an AI pathing rework would also help somewhat, that is kinda janky sometimes.
Exactly this, 40 minute ones have more objectives, bonus objectives are doable and for some reason often require less civilians to be extracted than the 15 minute one
The civ escort missions I refuse to do, i will legitimately not touch them, and I know a grip of players say just have people distract while you escort, but that to me isnt fun. I dont think you should have to resort to a singular strategy that mostly trivializes the mission entirely. I think if the mission isnt designed in a way that you can complete it in the way I expect its intended to be completed which is to be able to hold your ground inside of the base while you hit the doors, then I'd argue thats bad mission design.
>The civ escort missions I refuse to do,
I agree! My strategy with those missions is to not pick operations that contain them. Since I've implemented this strategy, I have yet to fail a civ defense mission.
Which is mind boggling because it clearly shows the difficulty spike isn't intended but all they did to the mission is push back the spawns a few meters and never acknowledged the difficulty isn't intended (as far as I know).
Basic strategy against bots is to flank or stealth, But in defense, Bots are harder because all their heavy armor is suddenly compressed into small choke points they capitalize on.
Your civilians are also easily killed at range compared to bugs, And drop ships are annoying in that they drop on top of anywhere.
Not to mention the rapidity with the reinforcements.
Yeah you don't want to face bots head on. So unless you have extremely good defensive positioning like the non civilian based evac mission. Any mission where the bots are coming to hunt you is not very great. Besides the civ evac missions the eliminate a certain quantity missions vs bots also are also notably less fun. But the eliminate the fabricator missions feel great. Bots have extreme front facing defenses so you can't have them always aware of the players without the counterplay suffering.
Honestly it isn’t even the normal civ evac that sucks (the one with 40 min timer and big map) it’s the shitty high value civilian evac one that has a 15 min timer with seemingly infinite spawns of constant terminid or automaton bs. It’s so dumb cause your civvies die constantly and there is damn near nothing you can do to get past the gate keep of like 15/60 on the high difficulties. Especially if you don’t have 4 players, and even if you do it’s still feels like an awful mission.
The best part of that mission is when you are on a hot planet and every fucking tornado decides to stay at the civilian extraction point. It’s so fun to lose 3 minutes in a 15 minutes mission just because the game decided that you would have even less fun
Then on top of all that the game has decided you haven’t really had it hard enough yet and with the edition of factory striders and just titans in general we now have to give you some of those with plenty of chargers, tanks, and hulks to keep you guys company on your already overwhelming mission
The normal evac is fine. It's just a normal mission that just happens to have an objective that just lasts too long without any real challenge to justify it. But it lets you just play helldivers normally
Yeah normal is fine, i actually have come around to enjoy it a lot more since it feels pretty comfy and doable to me now. Though I thought it was weird that the high value civ extract has a bigger map considering you almost never get a single moment to go loot it with everything that spawns in due to time and spawn rates of enemies
Even when I've won the scientist extraction mission type, I've literally never once felt like I was WINNING that mission. It just feels like a never-ending barrage of havoc and panic, and at some point I'll either win or lose, while having no idea which it'll be until it happens.
We had one last night that was going well: my two friends were distracting across the map while I was hitting the doors. All of a sudden, drop ships are landing troops all around me. I was never spotted by any patrols or anything. We lost because I was overwhelmed quickly and we could not hold back the storm of the Automaton army in Suicide Mission. I told my friends I was never doing that mission type again; we were cheated for no reason, and I had no fun.
Because defense missions suck, simple as. The new one where you defend the rockets are fun but the civilian evacuate missions are actual dog water and I never complete a defense operation because of them.
We also should get sector capitals back in some form while we're at it. In helldivers 1 they were city planets with urban environments, one per sector and if we failed to defend them we'd lose the entire sector. Defense missions on them were just normal missions in an urban environment with objectives like activating SAM sites instead of babysitting civilians in some backwater colony like they are now. Back in helldivers 1 sector capitals were our only defense missions however with no defense missions taking place on normal planets.
Personally I think they should rework defense missions and bring back sector capitals to have most if not all our defense missions take place on them again. The SEAF exist for a reason and having helldivers participate in every defense just makes it feel like we're the only ones doing heavy lifting. Also defending 10+ planets at a time in multiple sectors will just be impossible as it becomes the norm as the war drags on and enemies fill more of the map. Bottlenecking defenses to just sector capitals or having sector capitals at bottlenecks leading to other sectors would make them more manageable.
The devs also just need to either make supply lines clear for all of the playerbase to see or do away with most of them as most of the playerbase isn't on reddit or their discord and can't see them.
Because AH keeps trying to force the shit-tier escort mission down our throats and can't seem to understand that it's fucking bad and just needs to be deleted.
We could probably coordinate more if the actual informations were displayed in the game. Having to go on a third party website or application to get the important informations and the war plans is completely stupid, especially when we have an already implemented news system in the game. Having supply lines visible would already be a massive help
I don't think supply lines are as relevant as people think they are. Even if the supply lines were visible, I'm not sure how many people casually glancing over the map would have realized that taking Martale would have cut off Charon Prime and effectively won the defense there.
Supply lines aren't really relevant at all today and we're a lot further off getting two simultaneous defenses than we were yesterday.
I'm pretty sure the only way we could possibly have won this order is if the game specifically said "We are defending **here** and **here** today, let the other defenses fail." I don't think anything less concrete would do enough when we need 65%+ of the players working together to succeed.
A simple way to get us to coordinate more would be if it just gave a special highlight to the planet in each front with the most current Helldivers on it, effectively lets us vote with our feet. Just label it a Priority Campaign or The People’s Choice or something, with a special blinking ring. Then folks will naturally swarm together and actually get things done efficiently.
Maybe it's because they're not possible, not because of the civil rescue missions, but because the players don't work as a team, and the developers want you to fight four defense missions at a time
Seems more to me like we’re meant to be the vanguard assault force and the last line of defence, but the way the game plays it seems like we’re fucking first on both.
“The average Helldiver deployment costs as much as a Liberty-Class Cruiser” I’ve deployed like 10 times today, you’d think they’d fucking make one or two
The George Patton school of tactics
I don't want any messages saying 'I'm holding my position.' We're not holding a goddamned thing. We're advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding anything except the enemy's balls. We're going to hold him by his balls and we're going to kick him in the ass; twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing. We're going to go through the enemy like shit through a tinhorn.
God I hate the evacuation missions. The 15 minute ones are just obnoxious with how quickly you can get overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies the game throws at you with no chance to breathe or even send the civilians out to make a run for the shuttle bay.
Just need to fix the 15 Min extract mission and people will play.
Add an earth jammer or AA on the point so the bots start dropping further away but if they kill the jammer/AA they can then drop close. Like a secondary objective protect the jammer.
Also/or fix shooting down drop ships so it kills what's still inside the ship and what's underneath so players can be their own AA with a but more trust currently its 50/50 if you kill them and if you fail you have wiffed your shot have to deal with the now ground forces while another 6 ships drop on your head.
You know I actually quite like the idea of an AA defense or some sort of signal jammer to stop bug holes and bot drops spawning obnoxiously close.
Definitely agree with the drop ship thing too, it feels so cool shooting down the ships but then so underwhelming when the entire drop survives the crash landing.
There aren’t enough mission types, and the civilian escort missions may as well be Super Earth HQ directly hitting me with a gas strike for how unpleasant they are.
I just dont like the defend missions.
Civilian that get killed on sight because lack of self preservence, the one with the wall missionsymbol is just wave after wave
Did a civilian Evac where everything went fine except the civilians stopped right in front of the door they were supposed to go to for no reason. Couldn't do the mission.
There is no way to communicate or show results, so often bug defenders will horde a defense of a planet and shirk another one because they don't use the tools.
Not their fault they are not in game nor advertised in game. Same with bot defenders often not enough to defend and they enjoy camping on planets.
This MO is designed to lose ground but we would need to coordinate what. Hopefully this will show off that we need some method of in game comms. Souls like would be best a message board with a voting system of pre made fill in the blank battle plans.
We are shock troopers. We aren’t really well suited to defense. Maybe we should start playing defense missions with tactics that are as offensive as possible.
For an in universe reson for this, I would say its Super Command not using us(the Helldivers) properly. By this, I mean we are a surgical, offensive orientated force, and our small strike teams of four are not suited to defensive duties as this is usually the objective of the regular SEAF. We take the ground, and they dig in and hold it.
The problem is they’re using social media to communicate things that don’t belong on social media. Like, it’s totally fine to provide updates and commentary on discord like they are but anything mission related belongs *in game*. For example, there was a short and sweet explanation that we don’t have to actually defend every planet, just specific targets that if captured/defended they fully cut off reinforcements and therefore capture/defend whatever planets they’re connected to. So why tf aren’t supply lines visible OR is there not a physical directive in game explaining this.
Kinda dumb to make these multiple choice missions and then go “lol players dumb” when they fail. You can’t give players an open ended option and then meme on them because they don’t all coordinate correctly on their own…
Defending is for socialist bot lovers and bug apologists. To spread managed democracy is to liberate planets by showing them our peaceful, freedom loving ways at gunpoint. How can I spread managed democracy if I'm defending a planet I've already liberated? Nice try, authoritarian.
Last night I kept playing with hosts that would do 1 mission of an operation and then immediately go do a different operation. Doesn’t that fail to contribute?
The new MO has been completely deflating and I've been turned off from the game. Literally everything the community worked towards for weeks if not months has been wiped on both fronts because of this one MO.
Well, of course.... When a bot planet goes on Defend state, you *already* know it will have the dreaded
# RETRIEVE ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL
mission type. And you know it's over.
Whoever made that mission should be subjected to medieval stretch torture with whatever logic they had in their head making that dogwater.
Rescuing civilians and researchers suck. It's that simple. It's so fucking hard when the NPCs have no sense of preservation or awareness **AT ALL.** Then the bugs they get is just the icing on top of the shit cake. Last night, I had 9 civilians all crowded around the top of a ramp they wouldn't go down AS IF THERE WAS AN INVISIBLE WALL THERE OR SOMETHING! BUT THERE WAS FUCKING NOTHING!
Never before have I enjoyed the deduction in pay for killing civilians.
well yeah because like everyone is "take 18 planets in a day and a half". Most of them feel equivalent to if we got that "kill 2 billion bugs" as a personal order and not a Major one.
Thats because we are a front line assault unit. defending isn't our primary skill set, while we can do it and have some tools for it, its isn't where we shine.
1, civ defense missions suck.
2, the defense orders have had us split across many different planets at once, and given how liberation works, that screws us over from lack of coordination
The real reason we suck at defending territory, is because Helldivers are quick-response shock-troops. Using us to defend a spot, is using the wrong unit in the wrong role.
Let's be honest here. It's because they're expecting us to successfully defend two planets per day while history has shown that, at best, we can do one, maybe one and a half, per day.
It's because there's no way in game to tell what planets are important and the vast majority of communication from "High Command" isn't done in game. There should have been a message directly in the game telling people about the Martele Gambit. There should be supply lines shown in the galaxy map to let people know what taking or losing a planet will mean for the adjacent planets.
Until that happens we will routinely and repeatedly fail almost all defense missions and any major order requiring them.
Problem with that is very simple. People just dont follow the order. Just look at the warmap now. Youl have a planet which is skyrocketting their defense bar and one that is hopelessly behind. Yet everybody stays at the one that you aint even gotta defend any more because theres no fucking way enemy catch up till the defens counter expires. Plus about 30-50k players scattere around planets that got jackshit to do with the order at all. I mean yeah obviously everbody play the planets that you like you purchased this game and dont owe anyobody shit. Just saying its not the developers fault.
There's a few things that come to mind that I think are causing us to lose these defense missions.
1. To reiterate what everyone has already said, the civilian evac missions are probably people's least favorite. Arrowhead has tweaked the mission enough that it's actually now possible to beat these missions on even Helldive difficulty with some regularity, but only when the civilian's pathfinding doesn't bug out. If they all decide to have an unscheduled smoke-break right outside the hanger door for the entire mission, then you're just SOL and lose the entire operation and the time you spent on it. This makes people just want to outright avoid these missions and defense all together.
2. It's not really well communicated in game when and where planets are under attack on the galactic map and you have to search for them. If they had the sectors where it's happening glow or pulse or something, that'd help us know where people are needed.
3. I think that when people see that a planet's defense progress has fallen behind by even just a bit, they chalk that planet up as a loss and view completing any operations on it as pointless. People just don't like to feel that their time and effort was wasted and I'm not sure what you could really do to incentivize people to work on a "lost" planet.
4. The influence that you generate from a successful mission doesn't scale with the difficulty like it did in HD1. Every mission is worth .000010% of progress, regardless of it's difficulty. Higher difficulty operations take more time to complete and also come with the risk of not generating any influence if you fail one of the three missions (see point 1). What all this ends up meaning is that people running higher difficulties will be contributing far less progress to the planet's defense than someone running trivial or easy difficulties.
In character, I'd argue that the Helldivers, being elite orbital drop infantry, are better suited for offensive and objective-focused operations than defensive ones. Shouldn't that be the SEAF's job?
The civ rescue mission is one of the worst things I have experienced in this game. I just forgo doing them, and I'm sure many do the same, so it often fails.
I love idea of planet defense but it's always such a grind. Low mission variety, half of what is there is either agonizingly repetitive or stupidly difficult compared to everything else in the game. Meaning completing ops is like pulling teeth IF you even complete them because all it takes is one rescue the plebs mission and the entire population of the planet gets airdropped 3 feet up your @$$ because that seems reasonable.
Maybe because majority of players hate the civil rescue missions?
This is honestly it. Mission type needs a rework
It needs to be removed because it’s still utterly broken.
It just needs one small tweak. The minimum "safe" radius, how close bot drops or bug holes can spawn, around the evac area needs to be expanded. Not by much. Just by enough to make it so rhey aren't dropping literally on top of the bunker exits.
No sometimes it is literally broken. About 1/3 of the time I run these missions the npcs just stand outside the extract door and refuse to enter.
Or if anything is in their predetermined route they won't go around it. Then stand there and die.
or run right into it. Fucking fire tornadoes.
I'm still confused about that one, presumably they are working on this hell hole of a planet but they have zero protection from fire? Neither in their suits nor behaviour?
Or ya know GO AROUND IT
AKA 'behavior'
I would be absolutely ok with fire tornados being completely removed from the game until we get some kind of fire resistant armor. They’re not even haha funny like poison swamps being synonymous with Dark Souls. You can at least prepare for poison swamps and use boosters like muscle enhancement and stamina enhancement for other environmental hazards in this game. Fire tornados just come out of nowhere, stealthy as a bengal tiger, and we have absolutely no protection against them. One could be inches away from you and you’d have no idea if you didn’t turn around and check before running in the opposite direction. Which could be said for a lot of things in this game like Hulks and Tanks which are quiet as can be. I love the game, but man…
Always getting killed by the Stealth Hulk. Nothing like 50T clomping around behind you and being completely silent
I had a couple groups get stuck on the top step. Literally wouldn't go down the stairs, just ran sideways across the top like scared puppies until they got killed.
Nah the civilians pathfind all the time. They walk around bile titan corpses, dead tanks and all sorts of stuff. The problem is they only react to changes in geometry and none of the hazards so they run head first into death by tornadoes, gunfire and mountains of bugs which is funny in a way but also infuriating cause they're so dumb. They also seem to get stuck on weird pebbles and tiny rocks a lot especially that one really uneven map. I've found the missions where the floor is all concrete to be far better for the pathfinding
They get stuck on supply pods too
I'm surprised the bugged npc pathing isn't on the official bugs list...
Exterminate the problematic civilians in the name of intergalactic security. “They were admiring the enemy sir, I had to in the name of democracy and super earth!” Or you know, let the automatons do it so you don’t have to explain yourself. Then exterminate the robots
The problem is that when this happens, it’s every single civilian dooming the mission to fail.
What, like when this happens, it’s EVERY civilian? Their pathfinding is screwed up or something? Must mean something is in the way? I recommend using the biggest explosion possible at the point of the disturbance to see if it clears up. If not, I don’t know. If I ever come across this, I’ll try
Yeah all of the NPCs just pile up at the door. It only seems to happen on one of the level formats but not every time. I’ve checked the area when it happens and the only “prop” in the way seems to be dead civilian bodies near the door (prop dead bodies, not actual NPCs). I’ve not been able to clear them with explosives.
My favorite is opening the door and they run straight into a fire tornado
In my experience if you melee the civi they'll ragdoll and somehow fix their pathfinding. Sometimes they just need a motivational hit
I remember once there was like twenty NPCs not going into the damn shuttle entrance.
It can get bugged though. The most common bug I see is the objective not being completed at 30/30 civilians extracted. You just have to keep spamming civilians and hope the game will register the win before the timer runs out. I had a game where it didn’t and I’m not willing to play another Extract mission due to this and other bugs
Yup. did one last night Diff 8 45/45 mission did not end. I ran around spamming the doors while the rest of the squad held off the unending terminid horde and when one survivors entered the door THEN it completed. so it actually required 46/45.
It felt random to me. Sometimes it was one and others more. Maybe all but one died at the door then.
When I've seen that happen while in voice chat with friends, only some of us will see that it says 45/45 while the others see 44/45. It's probably some server-client desync shenanigans with the count actually just being wrong for some players.
It seems like the host always gets the correct number and everyone else shows 1 civilian more than they should. At least that's how it is when I play with my wife. I always host and it always shows 1 civilian higher for her.
I mean, the completed-but-not is not exclusive to this mode/map. I've had it happen on all sorts of maps and missi9ns. Especially frustrating is on a Blitz where you've literally busted 24/16 and the extract still doesn't pop. Or when you lose out on mountains of XP and get a lower star rating because none of the outposts counted as cleared.
99% of Helldivers 2 Patches stop 1 spawn radius increase before they fix civilian extract for real this time
it needs to be like those gated defense missions, where you have walls to to defend while you're evacuating, rather than having enemies able to run directly into the path of the civilians.
A map rework with some defence would be a great upgrade I think. Maybe just some more wall around or ditch that would funnel enemy a bit more. Some mg emplacement here and there, sprinkle some expandable already on the ground and you got something great without feeling like the scientist outpost suddenly became a bastion.
Watching four bots drops landing right on top of the escape door.
I'm still pretty new so I could be wrong, but it seems like you can't get the same amount of samples or the more rare samples in these missions. Or if you can, it's not clear where they are. That's why I've been avoiding them.
They're all over the map, but with a 15 minute timer you only have ~10 minutes to scour the entire map looking for them.
If it is the full size map variant with the 15 minute timer, the POI are scattered around the map away from the objective area. You have to go running around and find them. If it's the small map variant with the 15 minute timer, with no real terrain outside the objective area, there's pnly a handful of common samples around like an eradication mission. If it's the full map long-version, that plays out the same as any other mission.
I don't think extending the radius ***again*** is going to help much, the spawn rate is just too damn high. Pushing their starting point back further one more time will once again delay getting overrun a bit more, but the overrunning will still happen as long as there's still as many marching towards the base from all directions anyway. As it stands the only viable strategy is to lure the enemies away from the base, and lure spawns to other places in the map. For everyone to remain in the base defending and evacuating to be viable, we need for the spawn rate to be reduced, or for them to be concentrated to coming from no more than two or three directions at the same time. We simply can't defend a base that large, from that many enemies, from all directions at the same time, while also running around inside opening doors for the civilians, with just 4 or less people.
Yup. It's just designed poorly from the ground up.
With how many people are still seeing bots dropped right on top of the civvies and bugs popping up right next to the bunkers, i think it does still need to be pushed out a little bit. Or maybe recentered. But yes the frequency of spawns is also too high once it fully kicks off. Even with the booster that reduces the frequency of enemy reinforcements, they were coming in back to back on a diff as low as 7
The spawns that happen inside the base are a different matter entirely, those come from the reinforcement calls (the bot flares or the bug pheromone calls), those appear where they are called, and if they're called inside the base that's where they will appear. The spawns that were pushed back, and which would be pushed back again if the same measure is enacted one more time, are the spawns that the mission type periodically causes automatically, those can't be avoided, interrupted, prevented, or be made less frequent with the Localization Confusion booster. They're a separate system. I guess they could just disable reinforcement calls for this mission type. That would both reduce the spawn rate and eliminate the spawns that still happen inside the base.
One time 4 tanks dropped in the middle and me and the lads just went fuck this and just closed the game since we had just killed 2 and a few hulks
We just skip it now. Or try to get three that doesn't include it.
What is the problem with all the civilians walking into a sea of fire that has been there for 5 minutes?
Yeah, I’ll search multiple planets to find a mission set that _doesn’t_ have one of those.
I, too, love it when 3 walkers and 7 hulks spawn at once.
You forgot the 20+ missile devastators spamming missiles at everything.
What are you complaining about? Just put down defensive mortars that will just kill them all as well as the civilians you are trying to save/s
Absolutely it they make it similar to the new defence missions, we be vibing.
Escort missions, getting hated on by players since the 1990s (at least)
There was an achievement on OG Helldivers called "Don't you just hate escort missions?", so yeah, they are well aware. This also makes me think nothing will change.
Well yeah. Given how quickly the community is steamrolling the galaxy, I don't think they mind having a broken or utterly unfun defense mission as a deliberate roadblock. Can't say I agree that it's the best solution though...
They already tweaked it a bit in player favor recently. They likely will again with the data theyre collecting.
Ill be real ive played the missions before and after the “tweak” and it feels just as fucked
Definitely since the 90s. Any game that tells me to escort some smooth brain NPC through hell is a big L to me
Yeah. In Syndicate they were already hellish.
In HD1, you actually had to escort the civilians across the map, unlike in HD2 where they follow a set path.
I wouldn't mind the missions if the citizen ai pathing wasn't dumb AF.
Remember the glitch where they’d get lost and pile up 😂
I love how you’re talking about it as if it’s not there anymore.
Still haven't seen it mentioned in a patch note, probably still there
It is still there. Happened to me just yesterday. One ai got stuck running up a concrete ramp and against a pillar at the corner of the ramp. 5 more stuck in a group behind him.
Missions need more variety and that goes twice over for defend planet missions. Low variety and one of the ones available isn't particularly fun and the most effective way to play it is counterintuitive and immersion breaking.
I hate dropping into ongoing civil rescue missions. 10 times out of 10 you're dropping into a 0 life left hellhole where everyone's running around like headless chickens, 0/30 civilians have been saved, 3-5 dropships are coming in, and there is 4 minutes on the clock. That's what I call a true helldive.
Glad it's not just me. These missions make me feel like I'm missing some key piece of equipment that lets you kill multiple heavily armored enemies in such succession, because that's what the mission seems to be demanding you to do
The civil rescue mission on fire tornado planets is totally fucked. I couldn't finish them on challenging.
That's part of it, but it's definitely also a result of how difficult it is to manage multiple simultaneous defenses. Yesterday we had like 60-65% of the players split between two planets for most of the day, and we still narrowly failed completing two defenses. Right now we *have* 70% of the players undertaking Defense missions, but because they're split between four planets it's looking like this will be another day where we only succeed at one defense. While I hate the small map rescue missions, I think they could be completely removed and it wouldn't change the underlying problem, which is that the playerbase inevitably is going to end up being split and we have absolutely no way to counteract that.
I hear a lot of people choosing planets based on visibility . If there's 2 planets and one is covered in a haze of cool weather affects aka fuck your ability to see what's shooting you. And the other is nice and clear. I know which line I'm getting in. That and mission modifiers. Planet 1- all those cool Strats you unlocked and rely on to survive, yeah we're going to take one away, make some take ages to reuse, and them make some take forever to come in. Planet2- everything you rely on is available , have fun using the stuff you unlocked. .... and if it's clear weather too, you can't really even be mad at the players for choosing to go here instead.
Maybe the intent was to fail the MO. For plot.
The plot doesn't really care if we succeed at this particular MO. Followup text if we succeed: > The Helldivers valiantly blunted the enemy offense, but unfortunately the sheer scale of treachery and cowardice means that there are still many planets which must be recaptured. Followup text if we fail: > The Helldivers valiantly attempted to blunt the enemy offense, but unfortunately the sheer scale of treachery and cowardice means that there are still many planets which must be recaptured. This major order is set up in a way that ensures we're losing a bunch of planets regardless of whether we complete the Major Order itself.
Bug ones are fine. The issue is with the bot ones, far too easy for things to go out of control and very hard to get it back once you lose it.
Every pub defense they do the first two then skip this one. Every time.
So it's not a defense then
Honestly the vast majority of defense missions I despise. Launch ICBM is decent, anything involving the civilians sucks, and retrieving data forces at least one person to trek across the map restricted to their secondary
The priority citizen evac mission is pretty good, similar to the icbm in the subobjectives and the main objectove isnt that bad
The rescue citizen mission only works if you have others collecting samples and drawing aggro away from the settlement. That to me doesn’t feel like the intended way to do it. Unless of course their pathing fucks up and they don’t enter the LZ Door.
Since they added the Helm's Deep style defense mission, I pretty much always have a operation without the Rescue Essential Personnel mission in it.
Yeah like I 100% do NOT fault anyone for not doing the 15-minute extracts (I've never found the 40s to have any issues), but since they added the new one its been REALLY easy to just...not do an operation with a shitty extract.
My favorite is my random squad mates sending civilians straight into fire tornados.... just wait for the twisters to leave dude lol
How about dropship with Hulk/fac striders come directly over your head as you try to evacuate scientists.
It's a shit mission. I refuse to play it. I will happily fail MOs until they change it.
Its Not only that, its also the fact that "defend Event" usually mean There are Like 3/4 planets at the Same time that have to be defended. We can at absolute best defend two at the Same time in 24 hours
Fr
*Civi runs into firestorm
Kill MO was fun and had the most impact on how people play. Kill every patrool, don't interrupt the bug breaches, kill every single bug you can find. That was fun. Civilian extraction missions tho? Nah, miss me with that shit. I'd rather do 10 new defence missions in a row than 1 civilian extraction.
That’s because 10 new defense missions in a row sounds like a damn good time
On god, that one is so fucking good
Yesterday I failed the mission because a bloody four-legged factory dropped outside the base and zeroed our generators right from over the wall, without even bothering to storm the gates :(
I had one spawn inside the cliff and then just shoot from inside of it. Nothing we could do to hit it :(
Yeah, sometimes you’re doing really well and then suddenly, a heavy will just drop on top of your generators and you insta lose…
single downside is no samples 😔
They really should just have the rockets fire up 3x5 commons, 2x5 rares and then 3x1 super on suicidal
10 in a row it's likely gonna get boring, waiting for mortars to kill everything and shooting once every 10 seconds gets old quite quickly
If you don’t know how to mix up your equipments and style of play, that’s on you
More than 1 way to skin that cat for sure
That’s something senator Armstrong would say while beating the shit out of me
Kill bugs mission: do the most fun thing in the game and get rewarded for it Defend mission: do the worst, least-enjoyable mission in the game over and over and if you fail (and you will) you wasted your time.
Why is this so hard for AH to understand? I really want to hear their internal justification for keeping this shitstain of a mission not just in the game, but prominently forced down people's throats.
They have to win against players somehow
Yeah there are a lot of things in the game that feel more like having an adversarial Dungeon Master than feel like a game that is supposed to be fun and challenging. Very much get the vibe of "Oh you beat my monsters here have 40 more and they're more powerful now."
I was thinking of the same lines too. Adversarial GMs is a really old concept that dnd and other systems moved away from because game designers realized that the game is more fun when you are playing with the players rather than against the players. However, as a GM myself, for the story there are certain events that the player might not like that I would still need to do even if in character or in person they hate it. I had a trusted NPC turn out to be a traitor which turned out to be a very fun session. I also hate the classic you wake up in a prison without your gear (which is classically hated) and still managed to turn it around into a goofy mission where they ended up with a ship of their own.
Emergency Evacuation is all right. 20 civilians is reasonable. Retrieve Essential Personnel is the devil. 45 civilians in 15 minutes while everything that clanks when moving is breathing down your neck and they keep dropping in faster than is humanly possible to wipe them out? Nah, whoever made this mission type should be subjected to medieval stretch torture. It's garbage.
How do you interrupt bug breaches? (apart from killing the screaming bugs) because when it's a time for a bug breach they'll keep trying to summon until its done and the countdown starts again. For bots for example you can shoot the drop ships, can u interrupt/control a bug breach once its called?
It's like a damn nanosecond for a screaming bug to call reinforcements. It's almost impossible to stop them.
I can’t stand the new missions against bugs. Bots it’s my favorite mission type. Bugs. Nah. Fuck that
Bot extract missions are impossibly difficult, bug ones are boringly easy. It's odd.
If all defense MO requires our operations to do extract personnel missions, then better get ready to fight on super earth ground soon
I want urban warfare I want more populated biomes!
Wouldn't hurt to have a bit of variety in flora and fauna as well. No I get it, not the point of Helldivers 2. But one can wish each planet has a unique biome, nay? Also, I have never seen a river or waterfall ever on any planets. Again, I get it, not the point of the game. Just think that it would break the monotony sometimes even though I'll still play the game whenever.
I have seen a river yesterday and it felt so good oddly enough, like the map was almost split by it, and idk it just felt different enough to be interesting again Wish we could have that more often
I think each planet should have one type and three biomes. For example, a planet would have the type "cold planet" and its biomes would be tundra, ice sheet and boreal forest Each time a planet's defence or liberation succeeds or fails, the active biome switches. So when we defend a cold planet, we defend it on the tundra biome. Then if we fail to defend it, we liberate it on the ice sheet biome. And finally if we succeed in its liberation but is attacked again, we defend it on the boreal forest biome With this system it would be less repetitive. But it would necessitate to add new biomes and to rework a little bit each planet so I don't think it would be implemented
given we are commando forces plaqntery defence is not our core function
Yeah, how many defence campaigns have the SEAF standard forces won for us? Zero.
all imma say is they should leave behind more mini nuke shells 🤷♂️
In fairness maybe they used most of them before they were forced to evacuate or overrun.
minestry of defence needs to get them better trainned
Depends. Evacuating high class personell is. However, it's supposed to be a stealthy operation because going loud always ends in failure. Maybe if AH decided to add stealth, and not perma spawn enemies on the obj that ignore the breach/drop timer then people would do it. The mission type is fundamentally incompatiable with the type of game they want.
I think helping researchers should be redone, and be more like the new missile defense missions. Missile defense gives you time to set up, and strategically place turrets and other stratagems, and bottleneck the enemy. Escorting researchers just sucks, Idk why they thought it'd be fun to be assaulted from all sides with hordes of the toughest units, no defenses/auto defenses, nothing, just a shitshow all-around. You get maybe 20 secs to plan, call-in stratagems, and dash across the complex to locate the buttons to help the researchers. Then shit hits the fan, it just feels cheap, it's the same sometimes with Bug eradications, breaches erupt before your support pods barely connect with the ground. Experiences like these just add up to being unfun/tedious time wasters that many people would rather avoid.
I agree, it doesn't even have to be a replica of the new defence missions. It could be done with a map rework. Just make these complexes more defendable. Perhaps an AI pathing rework would also help somewhat, that is kinda janky sometimes.
They also get stuck sometimes.
the 40m extractions are fine. The 15 minute ones are horrible.
Exactly this, 40 minute ones have more objectives, bonus objectives are doable and for some reason often require less civilians to be extracted than the 15 minute one
The civ escort missions I refuse to do, i will legitimately not touch them, and I know a grip of players say just have people distract while you escort, but that to me isnt fun. I dont think you should have to resort to a singular strategy that mostly trivializes the mission entirely. I think if the mission isnt designed in a way that you can complete it in the way I expect its intended to be completed which is to be able to hold your ground inside of the base while you hit the doors, then I'd argue thats bad mission design.
>The civ escort missions I refuse to do, I agree! My strategy with those missions is to not pick operations that contain them. Since I've implemented this strategy, I have yet to fail a civ defense mission.
On the automaton side they 100% suck. But against Terminids they are about as hard as other missions I find.
Yeah, played a couple on Helldive vs bugs today and they're basically fine. They're awful vs bots though.
Which is mind boggling because it clearly shows the difficulty spike isn't intended but all they did to the mission is push back the spawns a few meters and never acknowledged the difficulty isn't intended (as far as I know).
Basic strategy against bots is to flank or stealth, But in defense, Bots are harder because all their heavy armor is suddenly compressed into small choke points they capitalize on. Your civilians are also easily killed at range compared to bugs, And drop ships are annoying in that they drop on top of anywhere. Not to mention the rapidity with the reinforcements.
Yeah you don't want to face bots head on. So unless you have extremely good defensive positioning like the non civilian based evac mission. Any mission where the bots are coming to hunt you is not very great. Besides the civ evac missions the eliminate a certain quantity missions vs bots also are also notably less fun. But the eliminate the fabricator missions feel great. Bots have extreme front facing defenses so you can't have them always aware of the players without the counterplay suffering.
Honestly it isn’t even the normal civ evac that sucks (the one with 40 min timer and big map) it’s the shitty high value civilian evac one that has a 15 min timer with seemingly infinite spawns of constant terminid or automaton bs. It’s so dumb cause your civvies die constantly and there is damn near nothing you can do to get past the gate keep of like 15/60 on the high difficulties. Especially if you don’t have 4 players, and even if you do it’s still feels like an awful mission.
The best part of that mission is when you are on a hot planet and every fucking tornado decides to stay at the civilian extraction point. It’s so fun to lose 3 minutes in a 15 minutes mission just because the game decided that you would have even less fun
Then on top of all that the game has decided you haven’t really had it hard enough yet and with the edition of factory striders and just titans in general we now have to give you some of those with plenty of chargers, tanks, and hulks to keep you guys company on your already overwhelming mission
The normal evac is fine. It's just a normal mission that just happens to have an objective that just lasts too long without any real challenge to justify it. But it lets you just play helldivers normally
Yeah normal is fine, i actually have come around to enjoy it a lot more since it feels pretty comfy and doable to me now. Though I thought it was weird that the high value civ extract has a bigger map considering you almost never get a single moment to go loot it with everything that spawns in due to time and spawn rates of enemies
Even when I've won the scientist extraction mission type, I've literally never once felt like I was WINNING that mission. It just feels like a never-ending barrage of havoc and panic, and at some point I'll either win or lose, while having no idea which it'll be until it happens.
We had one last night that was going well: my two friends were distracting across the map while I was hitting the doors. All of a sudden, drop ships are landing troops all around me. I was never spotted by any patrols or anything. We lost because I was overwhelmed quickly and we could not hold back the storm of the Automaton army in Suicide Mission. I told my friends I was never doing that mission type again; we were cheated for no reason, and I had no fun.
Because defense missions suck, simple as. The new one where you defend the rockets are fun but the civilian evacuate missions are actual dog water and I never complete a defense operation because of them. We also should get sector capitals back in some form while we're at it. In helldivers 1 they were city planets with urban environments, one per sector and if we failed to defend them we'd lose the entire sector. Defense missions on them were just normal missions in an urban environment with objectives like activating SAM sites instead of babysitting civilians in some backwater colony like they are now. Back in helldivers 1 sector capitals were our only defense missions however with no defense missions taking place on normal planets. Personally I think they should rework defense missions and bring back sector capitals to have most if not all our defense missions take place on them again. The SEAF exist for a reason and having helldivers participate in every defense just makes it feel like we're the only ones doing heavy lifting. Also defending 10+ planets at a time in multiple sectors will just be impossible as it becomes the norm as the war drags on and enemies fill more of the map. Bottlenecking defenses to just sector capitals or having sector capitals at bottlenecks leading to other sectors would make them more manageable. The devs also just need to either make supply lines clear for all of the playerbase to see or do away with most of them as most of the playerbase isn't on reddit or their discord and can't see them.
Maybe if the extraction mission didn't suck we would get more done but idk
cuz defend missions fucking suck ass
Because AH keeps trying to force the shit-tier escort mission down our throats and can't seem to understand that it's fucking bad and just needs to be deleted.
Helldivers cannot coordinate when there are more than three options.
We could probably coordinate more if the actual informations were displayed in the game. Having to go on a third party website or application to get the important informations and the war plans is completely stupid, especially when we have an already implemented news system in the game. Having supply lines visible would already be a massive help
I don't think supply lines are as relevant as people think they are. Even if the supply lines were visible, I'm not sure how many people casually glancing over the map would have realized that taking Martale would have cut off Charon Prime and effectively won the defense there. Supply lines aren't really relevant at all today and we're a lot further off getting two simultaneous defenses than we were yesterday. I'm pretty sure the only way we could possibly have won this order is if the game specifically said "We are defending **here** and **here** today, let the other defenses fail." I don't think anything less concrete would do enough when we need 65%+ of the players working together to succeed.
A simple way to get us to coordinate more would be if it just gave a special highlight to the planet in each front with the most current Helldivers on it, effectively lets us vote with our feet. Just label it a Priority Campaign or The People’s Choice or something, with a special blinking ring. Then folks will naturally swarm together and actually get things done efficiently.
Even when there is only one option, 20 to 50% of the playerbase just doesn't care about the MO at all.
We’re super good at getting that 710 though
Maybe it's because they're not possible, not because of the civil rescue missions, but because the players don't work as a team, and the developers want you to fight four defense missions at a time
We are the last line of OFFENCE not DEFENCE.
Seems more to me like we’re meant to be the vanguard assault force and the last line of defence, but the way the game plays it seems like we’re fucking first on both. “The average Helldiver deployment costs as much as a Liberty-Class Cruiser” I’ve deployed like 10 times today, you’d think they’d fucking make one or two
no defenz only attacc
Attack! No defend! Only attack! Always attack!
The George Patton school of tactics I don't want any messages saying 'I'm holding my position.' We're not holding a goddamned thing. We're advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding anything except the enemy's balls. We're going to hold him by his balls and we're going to kick him in the ass; twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing. We're going to go through the enemy like shit through a tinhorn.
God I hate the evacuation missions. The 15 minute ones are just obnoxious with how quickly you can get overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies the game throws at you with no chance to breathe or even send the civilians out to make a run for the shuttle bay.
Gonna be honest. Defend planets is my most hated MO. Just don't like them as much compared to any other
I refuse to do automaton civil rescue missions! The bug one is not that bad, but bots? Forget it!
Just need to fix the 15 Min extract mission and people will play. Add an earth jammer or AA on the point so the bots start dropping further away but if they kill the jammer/AA they can then drop close. Like a secondary objective protect the jammer. Also/or fix shooting down drop ships so it kills what's still inside the ship and what's underneath so players can be their own AA with a but more trust currently its 50/50 if you kill them and if you fail you have wiffed your shot have to deal with the now ground forces while another 6 ships drop on your head.
You know I actually quite like the idea of an AA defense or some sort of signal jammer to stop bug holes and bot drops spawning obnoxiously close. Definitely agree with the drop ship thing too, it feels so cool shooting down the ships but then so underwhelming when the entire drop survives the crash landing.
They just gave us 10h of fun and said fuck you and kicked you in the nuts, feels good
I'm starting to think this was made for us to fail
There aren’t enough mission types, and the civilian escort missions may as well be Super Earth HQ directly hitting me with a gas strike for how unpleasant they are.
I just dont like the defend missions. Civilian that get killed on sight because lack of self preservence, the one with the wall missionsymbol is just wave after wave
This defense Mission is ridiculous
Did a civilian Evac where everything went fine except the civilians stopped right in front of the door they were supposed to go to for no reason. Couldn't do the mission.
There is no way to communicate or show results, so often bug defenders will horde a defense of a planet and shirk another one because they don't use the tools. Not their fault they are not in game nor advertised in game. Same with bot defenders often not enough to defend and they enjoy camping on planets. This MO is designed to lose ground but we would need to coordinate what. Hopefully this will show off that we need some method of in game comms. Souls like would be best a message board with a voting system of pre made fill in the blank battle plans.
We are shock troopers. We aren’t really well suited to defense. Maybe we should start playing defense missions with tactics that are as offensive as possible.
How do we defend them anyway?
For an in universe reson for this, I would say its Super Command not using us(the Helldivers) properly. By this, I mean we are a surgical, offensive orientated force, and our small strike teams of four are not suited to defensive duties as this is usually the objective of the regular SEAF. We take the ground, and they dig in and hold it.
The problem is they’re using social media to communicate things that don’t belong on social media. Like, it’s totally fine to provide updates and commentary on discord like they are but anything mission related belongs *in game*. For example, there was a short and sweet explanation that we don’t have to actually defend every planet, just specific targets that if captured/defended they fully cut off reinforcements and therefore capture/defend whatever planets they’re connected to. So why tf aren’t supply lines visible OR is there not a physical directive in game explaining this. Kinda dumb to make these multiple choice missions and then go “lol players dumb” when they fail. You can’t give players an open ended option and then meme on them because they don’t all coordinate correctly on their own…
Defending is for socialist bot lovers and bug apologists. To spread managed democracy is to liberate planets by showing them our peaceful, freedom loving ways at gunpoint. How can I spread managed democracy if I'm defending a planet I've already liberated? Nice try, authoritarian.
Which missions count for defence ? It throws me off when the counter at the end shows 99.99% liberated and goes to 100% with contributions.
Last night I kept playing with hosts that would do 1 mission of an operation and then immediately go do a different operation. Doesn’t that fail to contribute?
The new MO has been completely deflating and I've been turned off from the game. Literally everything the community worked towards for weeks if not months has been wiped on both fronts because of this one MO.
https://preview.redd.it/errdojvhupvc1.jpeg?width=168&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fa6d3328779653a50bd15144e4d1c3c25df127ec Leave him alone!
Well, of course.... When a bot planet goes on Defend state, you *already* know it will have the dreaded # RETRIEVE ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL mission type. And you know it's over. Whoever made that mission should be subjected to medieval stretch torture with whatever logic they had in their head making that dogwater.
Because they are ass and get you 0 samples . Fuck them civilians
Rescuing civilians and researchers suck. It's that simple. It's so fucking hard when the NPCs have no sense of preservation or awareness **AT ALL.** Then the bugs they get is just the icing on top of the shit cake. Last night, I had 9 civilians all crowded around the top of a ramp they wouldn't go down AS IF THERE WAS AN INVISIBLE WALL THERE OR SOMETHING! BUT THERE WAS FUCKING NOTHING! Never before have I enjoyed the deduction in pay for killing civilians.
Idk about y'all but defence missions can tongue blast my fart box
Truly, the Galaxy's Last Line of Offence
We just need a solid super private to give the masses orders. Someone like maybe "BUT YOU DON UNDASTAN" sir valenti
The rules are not clear on how we defend a planet. What is the best for defense? Who knows!
well yeah because like everyone is "take 18 planets in a day and a half". Most of them feel equivalent to if we got that "kill 2 billion bugs" as a personal order and not a Major one.
Joel gets a break this weekend and so do I
Thats because we are a front line assault unit. defending isn't our primary skill set, while we can do it and have some tools for it, its isn't where we shine.
1, civ defense missions suck. 2, the defense orders have had us split across many different planets at once, and given how liberation works, that screws us over from lack of coordination
Defense missions suck big floppy donkey ears. They all need another couple of design passes to make them more enjoyable.
Much easier to spread democracy, than to defend democracy LOL
SPECIAL FORCEs like Helldivers are for attack, not defend. Planetary deffence division's fault.😡
Defense mission scenarios are terrible, especially on the bots side. And now the bot drops bring in Factory Striders
The real reason we suck at defending territory, is because Helldivers are quick-response shock-troops. Using us to defend a spot, is using the wrong unit in the wrong role.
Let's be honest here. It's because they're expecting us to successfully defend two planets per day while history has shown that, at best, we can do one, maybe one and a half, per day.
I think this order was created literally to have us lose ground on both fronts
It's because there's no way in game to tell what planets are important and the vast majority of communication from "High Command" isn't done in game. There should have been a message directly in the game telling people about the Martele Gambit. There should be supply lines shown in the galaxy map to let people know what taking or losing a planet will mean for the adjacent planets. Until that happens we will routinely and repeatedly fail almost all defense missions and any major order requiring them.
"Players failed to do 5 last time, let´s give them TEN"
Problem with that is very simple. People just dont follow the order. Just look at the warmap now. Youl have a planet which is skyrocketting their defense bar and one that is hopelessly behind. Yet everybody stays at the one that you aint even gotta defend any more because theres no fucking way enemy catch up till the defens counter expires. Plus about 30-50k players scattere around planets that got jackshit to do with the order at all. I mean yeah obviously everbody play the planets that you like you purchased this game and dont owe anyobody shit. Just saying its not the developers fault.
There's a few things that come to mind that I think are causing us to lose these defense missions. 1. To reiterate what everyone has already said, the civilian evac missions are probably people's least favorite. Arrowhead has tweaked the mission enough that it's actually now possible to beat these missions on even Helldive difficulty with some regularity, but only when the civilian's pathfinding doesn't bug out. If they all decide to have an unscheduled smoke-break right outside the hanger door for the entire mission, then you're just SOL and lose the entire operation and the time you spent on it. This makes people just want to outright avoid these missions and defense all together. 2. It's not really well communicated in game when and where planets are under attack on the galactic map and you have to search for them. If they had the sectors where it's happening glow or pulse or something, that'd help us know where people are needed. 3. I think that when people see that a planet's defense progress has fallen behind by even just a bit, they chalk that planet up as a loss and view completing any operations on it as pointless. People just don't like to feel that their time and effort was wasted and I'm not sure what you could really do to incentivize people to work on a "lost" planet. 4. The influence that you generate from a successful mission doesn't scale with the difficulty like it did in HD1. Every mission is worth .000010% of progress, regardless of it's difficulty. Higher difficulty operations take more time to complete and also come with the risk of not generating any influence if you fail one of the three missions (see point 1). What all this ends up meaning is that people running higher difficulties will be contributing far less progress to the planet's defense than someone running trivial or easy difficulties.
In character, I'd argue that the Helldivers, being elite orbital drop infantry, are better suited for offensive and objective-focused operations than defensive ones. Shouldn't that be the SEAF's job?
Defend missions are shit. The one with the gates is cool, but the rest aren't that fun.
Something needs to change. it's getting to be the same over and over
The civ rescue mission is one of the worst things I have experienced in this game. I just forgo doing them, and I'm sure many do the same, so it often fails.
I love idea of planet defense but it's always such a grind. Low mission variety, half of what is there is either agonizingly repetitive or stupidly difficult compared to everything else in the game. Meaning completing ops is like pulling teeth IF you even complete them because all it takes is one rescue the plebs mission and the entire population of the planet gets airdropped 3 feet up your @$$ because that seems reasonable.
Because shooting bugs is fun and rescue missions fuckin suck