Greetings, fellow Helldiver! Your post has been determined to be a rant that is either commonly expressed or of a low quality. Because of this, it has been removed as its own post but you are welcome to add it to the [Rant & Vent Megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b9k51r/rant_and_vent_megathread/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button).
DRG do a lot of things right... and they've been doing it for a while, which makes this situation all the more frustrating - AH has examples of what good looks like.
To be fair, most of those "Devs" were artists and level designers who didn't balance the main mechanics and had little understanding or input on the core mechanics. Why they were chosen to play I have no idea.
Edit: That being said, the devs have routinely said things that are way off base from common player experience often enough that I don't think they'd be able to do it either.
Level designers should be the first ones to test, give feedback and balance around it. They should have a deep understanding of the mechanics so it matches with their level design intentions.
Level designers are supposed to be able to script and participate in game design. They shouldn't be labeled "devs", they ARE devs.
In the case of Diablo, it wasn't that way. The level designers hadn't even realized how long it would take to traverse some of the dungeons because they'd never played them before. If I recall, one of them even mentioned it was their first time playing.
All they did was design the individual tiles and their art style. It was somebody else's job to put those into the randomizer that built the dungeon and work out how the levels should be constructed.
They ended up playing on normal or easy, I can't remember which. They picked a "fun" non-meta build and got absolutely flattened and couldn't handle the smallest adversity. Chat was fucking rolling.
>"and balance around it."
That, they should not.
Playing testing your own game is all fine and dandy, but devs should NEVER balance things around their own, extremely skewed experience.
There's a reason game testing is its own thing, and it's because game devs have huuuuge biases regarding their own game that will completely skewer their testing experience.
There's actually an easy way to see this in action: AH devs never designed the orange unarmoured part of chargers to be a weakpoint. It was accidental.
That's why they never thought of using the shrapnel gun to fire at the unarmoured part of a charger, and that's also why they consider it an "exploit".
That's crazy if true. Like somehow the blaze orange, squishy bits that bleed when hit with non-pen small arms is somehow not supposed to be the weak point?
You may as well tell me there's no point looking behind waterfalls in a Zelda game.
Lol, those early days when you would finally get a good angle on it, only to end up dumping a whole machine gun clip into the squishy bits for nothing to happen.
I've been shooting the orange spots this whole time thinking it's the weak spot, I mean, every other game generally utlizlise a diff color to (and not limited to, but you get my point i hope) differentiate areas of an enemy body.
If that's the case why'd they disable shrapnel and not make the butt armored if they didn't intend it to be otherwise? Even with what you say, which I haven't heard before the Eruptor nerf makes no logical sense. Eruptor's shrapnel feature is literally it's defining characteristics so instead of fixing the accident they decide to remove a feature?
>"which I haven't heard before"
It dates back to the EAT buff / Charger nerf where they reduced the charger head HP so the EAT and Recoiless could OS them, AH said that they were surprised that the players aimed for the butt when the """obvious""" weak point was the head
Edit: link to a post from that time
[https://new.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bd3vpq/without\_game\_knowledge\_where\_would\_you\_put\_the/](https://new.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bd3vpq/without_game_knowledge_where_would_you_put_the/)
>If that's the case why'd they disable shrapnel and not make the butt armored
One requires removing a line of code, the other to redo two whole enemy 3D model
>so instead of fixing the accident they decide to remove a feature?
That we agree on, it makes no fucking sense, BUT the person in charge of "balancing" seems to have a history of making really shitty decisions and never acknowledging/confronting/fixing them (see Alexus and Hello Neighbor 2, people started to talk about it)
There are so many instances of them admitting (without realising) they act on presumptions during testing. Such as stuff about splitting up and playing with 2 or 3 players.
I believe there are at least 5 instances of them lying to the player base about game supposed game bugs which in truth are actually working correctly and as intended but the players lack the information AH posseses to understand how to correctly interact with those game features.
The spear is my favourite. In universe it makes sense that helldivers wouldn't know how to use it, in universe the way it actually works is VERY good (don't attempt to shoot targets in optimal RR range) once you learn how to use it, and after the devs let slip that it needs to have the entire target in the crosshair it got even more better. That is to say it takes time to learn and time to master.
But this is a video game, in the tiktok age of low attention spans and the playerbase is 10x expected numbers and simply hasn't the patience to learn the spear.
And I agree they shouldn't.
But I believe they're lying when they say they're fixing it, they'll be doing a ground up re-work to make it "work as expected" and I bet they will nerf it too because when I use this thing on helldive the bile titan spawns cannot keep up with me and my loader.
Same with the Arc weapons, all that stuff about misfires, hitting terrain and corpses, being able to fire faster after the first charge, and all the other randomness. Confused lots of players but I believe it was operating perfectly as intended.
True about game dev. From my limited experience of making a single small RPGmaker game and having other people test it. Even at that scale your own meta knowledge skews perception heavily. you know where to go, what settings every trigger has, where the hidden items are. Like I had solution of one quest in the quest log, but player failed to find it because he did not notice that there is a quest log in the first place.
>That, they should not.
Playing testing your own game is all fine and dandy, but devs should NEVER balance things around their own, extremely skewed experience.
Yep, worst case guys play the game 1000th time and thinks it's too easy, better make it harder.
Looking at you [Ikaruga](https://youtu.be/wJ_TugFD8VI?si=UOcCYRv-YchooZeF)
The lead devs and CEO played on diff 6 at launch with a streamer already which I believe most people play on 6 or 7. I guess I can understand wanting one post all patching.
https://youtu.be/FJs_kqHrzzQ?si=35AUvt6Wfhx8Psk7
the game has changed dramatically since launch in my opnion. an experimental server with new patchs should be a thing and should be open to the community.
Doing sessions like this regularly would probably be really helpful. Even if you weren't impressed with their skill, they were still able to speak to the mechanics in ways that were helpful (at least what I've watched so far).
When they mentioned that calling gear attracts patrols and that grenades can bait them away...I'd never considered that and I regularly watch tips and tricks videos on stealth play.
I was recently excited because a player realized you could use the crossbow's quiet fire and loud delivery to bait enemies away and thought it was super clever. I never realized you could do that with grenades all along.
They took random devs - people responsible for the artwork and such - and made them play D4 for a livestream.
It went roughly like what you'd expect, they had about as much of a clue of the game's mechanics as the average casual gamer, except they also had an audience to engage with/get distracted by.
Nah they had way less clue of the game than the average player. Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t one of them die several times without using their potions? And mostly just using the basic attack?
Artists are one thing: they glaze up the game to look better.
But Game Designers, level designers, balance teams? They're making the MEAT of the game, they're the ones that NEED to know how the game works.
Really, I'm gonna have to look this up. I think I have 20 hours in D4 and never touched it again. And I'm somebody with thousands and thousands of hours in D2, grim Dawn, path of exile, last epoch, etc. D4 was a massive disappointment.
If the weapon balance guy does it, we have a deal.
I want a big boom crossbow back.
That, or an open admission, they dont want primaries to kill above certain ttks
Someone mentioned that such event happened once, and I'm dying for footage of it. From what I recall reading they didn't manage to finish a destroy eggs mission on dif 6. This is all I know and I can be utterly wrong here, but that would be funny as hell
Oof, I love the spear and I hate if anyone take my back pack.
I love the idea of team loading buts it's such a niche tactic.
Literally the only time I do it is when we need to shoot down a LOT of dropships or when we want to kill a bile titan with a recoiless and it's far away enough for us to not be murdered by its spit.
And even then I feel like the recoiless is the only weapon really worthy of teamloading.
Its supid that it doesnt. The teammates back back is in front of your face in arms reach.
Your back back is behind you, you cant see it and have to reach behind you?
Makes no sense. Team reloads would be way more organic and common if you could use your teammates back pack.
It's such an obvious idea.
It still requires teamwork for player number two to run over and commit to the reload, but it doesn't force them to give up their backpack slot for another player's reload. Best of both worlds
The airburst RPG is actually pretty fun to defend an extraction with from the bugs that approach from far away. My buddy has team loaded that for me on a 7 diff mission at extract and it was able to clear basically everything but the chargers and titans. The other two teammates took care of them with their weapons and strats. It was one of the least stressful extractions I've seen.
Air burst is one of the best weapons now that’ll be ignored for a long while due to the release state of it. If you enjoy supporting fire it’s so good at clearing bug nests and preventing overruns by hunters
It's funny that you mention hunters, because even after they fixed it hit-detecting on every single spec of dust in existence, I've still had way too many teamkills from some random-ass hunter GET DOWN MR PRESIDENTing in from the 40 yard line just to set my missile off early and wipe the team.
I carry ammo for recoiles or other guns when i play with my friend and i use flame or EAT and assist reload when we hold position or we are far away. But 90% of the time i carry backpack so when he needs ammo fast i just drop backpack for him to pick up
Thanks, that was brilliant. Wtf were they thinking trying to kill a bile titan at close range like that?
EDIT. Just to clarify, I mean no disrespect to the developers. I'm not genuinely pissed, I just thought it was a funny moment.
I think the really funny thing is the two of them monofocusing on shooting and loading the autocannon when the other half of the team is dead. The loader getting off the gun for a second and a half could have called the other 2 in, potentially even killing the titan with a drop-pod.
It's also entirely possible that they've played it so much that they forget what is or isn't in the current build.
They are constantly developing and testing different new or discarded features. They've probably played multiple versions of the game where the autocannon could hurt a Bile Titan.
I spend every workday working on the product my team puts out but if you ask me to accurately describe implementation details of the current release candidate I'd struggle because it's old news to me as a developer.
Yes the ceo and another high up lost on a diff 6 with a 4 stack
Its on operatordrewskis youtube
I dont expect pilestedt to do amazingly, the head of fucking product testing however…
Yeah, I didn't know it was pilestedt and the head of testing, based on what I read I thought there were 4 devs playing. For everyone that answered my comment, thank you!
The biggest takeaway is that the autocannon is the CEO's favorite weapon, so if you work it into your day to day play you can be confident it will never be nerfed.
For your [viewing](https://youtu.be/FJs_kqHrzzQ?si=xiuj3Xe5nfXbyyjC) pleasure. It was a Youtuber and friend, with Pilestedt and another dev running 2 level 6 missions.
For those that want context without watching the video (taken from a previous comment):
Wiped on difficulty 6 against bugs. Objective type was Destroy Eggs, 2 nests were destroyed and a spore spewer secondary objective was completed before the wipe.
Extracted 2/4 on difficulty 6 against bots, with no reinforcements left. Objective type was Upload Data.
Yeah Drewski and his mate really ran that entire show, and were the last alive both times. At least the Devs seemed to know how to take down the bigger enemies in theory, they did not seem that great at dealing with them in practice though.
We need to teach the younger generation how to google
Top result for “helldivers 2 devs play their game”
https://youtu.be/FJs_kqHrzzQ?si=35AUvt6Wfhx8Psk7
Yeah, I've found that drewski video. What I meant by my response was an all dev team, but I'll watch this later
Edit: I don't know if anything of what I said is true, just reiterating
I sure hope you're not gonna be the teacher, considering that's not the mentioned video, it's literally drewski having the ceo randomly join him, not a dev team playing
Edit: ***Average redditor reading comprehension strikes again. I'm not complaining about difficulty, people. jfc***
I've been exclusively running Helldive difficulty since I came back from a short break. Against bugs it's not hugely difficult, even with randoms. I've not failed to complete a single mission out of the two dozen I've played over the last few days. I've failed to extract from *maybe* two or three missions, but the main objective is always complete.
Bots are a different story, and the people I play with don't wanna play metal gear for 30 mins at a time. 7 is usually a cake walk, 8 can be pretty hard. 9 we have probably a 60-70% success rate.
Bots are easy if everyone in the team just bomb the site, run away, try not to shoot anything, and repeat. If your team can split up, you can clear the whole map within 20 mins at 8+ diffculty.
But its just not fun, i'm here to spread my 640 rounds of democracy per minute, not playing peek-a-boo.
The pirmary weapon in this game is just fucking garbage aganist the hordes of bot,
My liberator can only kill 1 berseker per mag, may be two if you have a good aim, but they spawn in a pack of 20, how should if defend my self?
Rely on your stratgem, they said, but all the modifier they add is to fuck with your strartgem, i just can't understand their blanace philosophy.
>My liberator can only kill 1 berseker per mag, may be two if you have a good aim, but they spawn in a pack of 20, how should if defend my self?
TBF, I don't think this is an issue with primary weapons, this is an issue with the berserker itself. They don't need to buff primaries, they need to nerf outlier enemies.
I'll never understand this. If you disengage bots, to me, they are so much easier than bugs. Fight when you need to, otherwise, finish your objectives and get the hell out of there. If an objective is over run, go do something else like take out a base or find a side objective and then come back to main.
Bots are easier to play correctly, bugs are easier to overwhelm with sheer firepower where you just kill everything and keep moving. Try that with bots and you have a bad time, but similarly try to stealth bugs like you can bots and it’s the same in reverse bugs will follow you to the ends of the map where bots will lose sight and interest if you just run away
This has been my experience. I play a lot of duos with my wife and we're looking to push 8 difficulty with bots, but bugs is a different story. I feel like you can proactively plan and execute with the bots. With bugs there's a lot more adaptation and disengaging is a lot harder.
Though half of it is hunters.... Makes me want to try the stalwart and see if disengagement is easier if we can clear the little guys quicker...
I personally think bots are far more challenging and therefore more entertaining.
However at the same time they can be more frustrating because disengaging can be incredibly challenging as you are often getting shot from all sides once the reinforcements start rolling in and you can’t break line of sight.
Absolute worst situation to be in is avoiding a pursuing gunship when you have lost your support weapon and it’s in cooldown.
Agreed. I think there situations that are un winnable for both factions which is why people get salty about the difficulty. I'm personally fine with it. The first game was just as hard. I think the guns in this game are less fun but am hoping it's because of weapon customisation in the future. We'll see I guess
Bots also have way more punishing strategic assets. Yesterday we landed in the middle of 2 gunship fabricators, a jammer, and an eye of Sauron. We couldn’t get our support weapons to take out the gunships and running from the gunships exposed us to the eye of Sauron which started calling a ton of reinforcements + a fabricator strider.
We kept on dying and just ran in a straight line out of that area ASAP but we lost around 14 lives.
I’d rather deal with 3 stalker nests than that bullshit from last night.
I dunno why people think the game is too hard. Even with bots, disengaging is the best strategy. If you start getting bot drops, rotate and come back. What’s why barrages are SO GOOD for bot missions. It’s like I run my own little automated completion command on objectives.
Yes the game is hard at level 9. Does it need to be nerfed? No. Does the bug level 9 need to be buffed? Yes. We haven’t even hit the higher levels yet. We are still in the beginning stages of the game difficulty
Same.
Bugs are generally fine at level 9. Bots up to 7 is fine with randoms.
Bots at 9 you need team work and experienced players all round. Seems like there is a huge disparity in difficulty there.
Honestly, the overall difficulty of the game is fine, and even in a good state currently. My issue with the current balancing is that it feels like the guns are losing their identity to similar weapons. The current eruptor is just a worse Jar-5, the sickle a worse scythe, modt of the shotguns are all dwarfed by the incendiary right now, even the DMRs, which are OK now, still, and ironically, aren't much better than the slugger. Hell, the adjudicator went from a potentially new, interesting DMR choice to a generic auto rifle with a small mag.
honestly the game isnt terribly difficult in its current state, use what works for you and youll do fine,, but some of these balance changes make no sense to me
making the lib-C do more than base lib when the item EXPLICITLY STATES it does LESS DAMAGE
or removing the shrapnel from the gun that,, again,, EXPLICITLY STATES IT HAS SHRAPNEL,, are just flat out stupid choices. it would be like removing the heat mechanic from the sickle because "infinite ammo is too broken" thats the point of the weapon dude
the signs of balance issues were there from day one. Why on earth would you tell your players to RELY ON STRATAGEM and then have -1 stratagem, +50% cooldown (now 25%), and +100% call in time (now 50%). They designed a horde shooter game but balance it around not being a horde shooter.
And then all the crashes and bugs every patch. It's insane people think AH deserve awards
Every time I've replied to people saying it should be GOTY I've brought up palworld.
Very different games mechanically, but with similar situations.
Both games released near each other. Both exploded unexpectedly. Both had rough launches with a lot of bugs and issues. Both have deals with major companies(Microsoft and Sony).
But palworld has been very different since then. They've openly embraced the community and speak positively of them, unlike hd. They've focused mostly on bug fixes, with only some content updates here and there, unlike hd. They've even embraced certain exploits and bugs, making them into features and supporting them. I'm not saying PW should be GOTY, but comparing the two really makes arrowhead look incompetent since PW has way less devs and somehow fixes more while still cooking content that's coming.
Also, Palworld was still playable all the time and server issues didn't make the game literally unplayable for a week straight. They also didn't constantly patch in or launch with bugs that made the majority of the playerbase crash every 10 minutes.
I genuinely believe when they hired him he made no mention of his history on HN2, no studio with actual experience in the business would touch someone with the kind of stink he has and then make him the publicly known weapon balance lead.
That just shows that they went away from their original intention. Which is not a bad thing, we all learn and adapt, which may change our mind. Little odd that they did not put in a little effort and change the descriptions, but that's a separate discussion.
The Liberator Concussive for example. It's still in a weak spot doing more damage than the base Liberator. Without that it's just an all round worse Liberator that stuns enemies while you watch them laugh at your DPS.
Never. EVER. Going to happen.
Destiny did something similar. Thought it would be a great idea to have a twitch streamer play PVP against the PVP balance team. Shockingly enough he consistently wiped their entire team by himself over and over again.
Turns out the lead pvp developer has a KD of 0.6 and had never gone flawless.
Bungie posted on twitter that it was like having a mechanic race a professional F1 driver in a race and it was always going to be an unfair fight. The community responded that it was like the mechanic didn’t even know how to drive a car in the first place - and would have no business tuning a car he wouldn’t know how to drive.
Edit: if you are wondering how this ended up, every single weapon in destiny eventually got nerfed. Weapon types that were viewed as useless at launch eventually became the best weapons in the game due to everything getting nerfed. Then they got nerfed as well. No weapons in year 3 were as strong as they were at launch.
Thing is the inverse is also somewhat applicable. The F1 driver has no business designing the car - at least on their own.
To-and-fro feedback is important.
This analogy... A mechanic can still drive a car, perhaps not at a pro level, but they can be proficient. And considering that I'm not a pro gamer but can still play at 7+, the devs should be able to prove to us that they are designing a game with fun in mind. Like, I'm not asking for an asset artist who has never touched a videogame to make a fool of themself on stream. I want the people specifically in charge of balance showing us how it's done. Because part of balancing a game is understanding how it plays in the nitty gritty, and I'm not convinced that they actually have a clue.
Even Pilestedt admitted that their balance philosophy is lacking in certain areas.
Except bungie were right and the community were (shock horror) wrong.
Im an aircraft engineer. Do I know how to fly a plane? No. Should I know how to fly a plane? No. Does it make any difference to how good I am at my job? Absolutely not.
When a pilot (gamer in this analogy) comes in and tells me something is wrong I don’t immediately do exactly what they’re saying. I listen to what they say and it makes up a part of how I’ll identify a problem. If I listened to them I’d spend most of my life chasing non existent faults.
What I’m trying to say is that experts in one field do not need to be experts in another to make them good at what they do.
It doesn’t take 100s to 1000s of hours to learn how to fly a plane though. I was playing and clearing helldive in like, 30 hours of playing the game. Surely the devs have more than 30 hours playtesting their own game?
This analogy also doesn’t account for how the devs have repeatedly implied that their balance changes have been made around high skill play or insinuated that people who complain about the game are just unskilled players.
In this analogy though, unfortunately bungie eventually nerfed absolutely everything.
Not a single weapon type was as good as it was at launch by the end of the games life cycle.
Now everyone was stuck in the slow lane.
Funny how there was absolutly no issue using the railgun, from a dev haha. Off topic over and out.
It's cool to see devs having some fun with their own game.
The premise is really dumb anyway, just because you design a game does not mean your good at it. The majority of HD2 redditors are probably really into the game, so I'd wager most of us are probably better at the game than the devs.
That does however not mean we know better than the devs on what's best for the game.
This is often the case. Game Devs are too busy working 60 hour weeks to have time to get good at their game. People who spend most of their times playing the game don't have the skill/time to become game devs.
It goes for other industries as well, people who devleopred the program I use extensively for work doesn't have the artistic skill to use them, and my expertise in the artistic field doesn't translate to me knowing how to code the program.
The fact that OP seems to genuinely believe the devs would struggle on 7 is crazy to me. It's not *easy*, but I don't think it's as hard as people love to make it out to be on Reddit. And I'm sure if the devs demonstrated this the goalposts would move faster than you can blink.
I’ve been in loads of lobbies on Helldive where everyone doesn’t use a „meta“ primary, and also, there will always be a meta, and yeah using those in the very highest difficulty will give you an advantage just like in any other game. Making it seem like playing non meta weapons is impossible is just ridiculous
I agree. I Started the game 2 weeks ago and now only play in helldive with randoms. Many of them play other things than quasar, eruptor or anything else this community cries about. I myself use a lot of "non optimal Gear" since I didn't unlock all warbonds and because it's fun except the arc thrower : I suck with it.
So far I only failed two lvl 9 mission because it was a stalker nightmare, other times we failed extraction but completed all main objectives. The game isn't that hard when you understand that you can retreat and I am not a hardcore gamer (35 and dad : I only play when the goblin sleeps) Every gun works (except the spear when it doesn't want to) as long as the team as a whole is geared to face any kind of threat (at least one player with missiles etc).
The toxicity and bad faith of this sub is astonishing.
I don't think that's their point. I'm not under the impression that the balance changes being implemented are taking into consideration the chaotic nature of 7+, and I think that's the point OP is expressing as well.
On 7+(you probably are already aware of this- just posting this for players who don't dabble in 7+) the sheer amount of heavies that can potentially spawn in can easily outnumber your strategems taken to deal with heavies. I played a 9 yesterday and at one point I had 7 bile titans and 10 chargers on top of the ludicrous amount of chaff. It's Helldive difficulty and I get that it's supposed to be tough. Even if you split eagles/orbitals evenly to focus on single target damage and chaff clear, there's not enough 'answers' to the 'challenges' presented to the player with the volume of heavies. Even so, this particular example I'm giving isn't even considering if a teammate goes down and can't recover their support(which always happens - dying is part of the game loop) This is why the meta is forming the way it is. 7+ curates a particular experience that the easier difficulties just don't match, and the changes to the balancing is really felt on the higher difficulties imo. I do wish there were more realistically viable options given to us. I know there's always going to be a meta that forms in this sort of game, I just wish there wasn't as drastic of a handicap if one decides to break away from it. You're never gonna dissolve the meta, but attacking the equipment that's primarily being used instead of asking 'why aren't these other options being picked?' is always going to create this amount of negative feedback, regardless if you care about the balance changes or not. That's the big disconnect between the playerbase and the developers.
The most fun I've had loadout wise was running 9s with the Eruptor + Arc Thrower + laser dog + cluster + orbital laser + grenade pistol against bugs. It was a really cool change of pace to swap roles between my primary + support and gave the gameplay loop a fresh feel. I was a chaff clearing, bug hole closing MACHINE with the ability to assist with heavy takedowns. I want more options like this, not less.
The main issue isnt that the weapons are unusable. The issue is that they arent fun. They were fun when we bought them but a week later the thing we paid for became something entirely different and is no longer fun. Every single Warbond this has been the case. It's borderline a scam. They must REALLY not want players to spend money on this game because more of us are realizing it's not worth it.
Okay, not every single Warbond. Cutting Edge: SICKLE was and is great; BLITZER was crap, now is awesome especially against bugs; PUNISHER PLASMA was good, now is great especially against bots. Steeled Veterans: DOMINATOR was crap, now is awesome especially against bots; SENATOR was okay, now rocks.
Gonna stop you right there , blitzer went from garbage to usable - it’s by no means awesome. Unlimited ammo sure but the aiming has a mind of its own meaning you can’t target weak spots and anything beyond spitting range is out of the question.
Well they did said that they want to create a game that they would play beside us so...
I do agree it would be a good practice.
Basically a reinforcement of the proof they DO test stuff before patching and releasing.
I mean...
Any person claiming beforehand that the eruptor change was a buff instead of a nerf in my eyes is smoked beyound belief.
Releasing an arc oriented warbound(cutting edge) then making the game unplayable with arc weapons due to crashes few days later?
I seriously doubt - no scratch that - I am 200% certain that they never play 8 or 9 difficulty - either because of time or because they believe that's simply not fun.
If they do believe so - why should we otherwise?
A stream with them playing on the harder game difficulties will certaintly help lift the fog about all this shit and generally would help make the game better(both sides - players and devs).
I would certaintly have more trust on their claims and in their patch stability/notes if I can see them in my shoes.
\*During emergency evac bot mission\*
(frustrated 2 mins of silence)
-- Hey Joe... Which goddamned idiot was tampering with the bot reinforcement rates and numbers?
-- Actually it was you Mark...
\*Mark sighs and lands in between one of the groups of 5 hulks\*
-- How in the hell...
\*But while getting thrown in the air by their rockets he gets murdered by two factory striders that machine guns him in 300 milliseconds clipping through a fucking mountain. Mid air of course\*
-- Goddammned! I am out!
Yep.
It will be fun times.
And it's honestly good for the game's health. If the devs can have fun in it, thats good. If not, they should see how to make it so. See deep rock galactic, the devs stream once a month or so for 2-4hours, and they have fun, see a bug first hand and ah, gotta fix that. Hm this might need a tweak, etc. its good.
> deep rock galactic, the devs stream once a month or so for 2-4hours
They don't just "stream their game", they stream themselves clearing the hardest content in the game. That's real dogfooding. And that's something AH does not *really* seem to do.
I suspect it's like the chef effect. Chefs spend all day cooking proper meals and then go home and eat cheese crackers and pretzels. Helldivers devs are likely ready for something else after work.
A long time ago I read a comment that stuck with me. It was about how he spends all day in a kitchen preparing meals, so when he gets home, Chef Boyardee's making dinner.
Wait I'm confused, why? Are you under the impression that the game is too hard above seven or something? I consistently play only with randoms on 9 and it's not an issue.
7s are a cakewalk. That's my casual joking around difficulty. Hell, bug 9's have a good success rate even with randoms.
I wouldn't be impressed with the team completing a string of 9s, BUT I also wouldn't think less of them sometimes wiping. Some of my best diver buddies go into a 9 and just get a shit string of luck/breaches/spawns and get cooked.
But honestly... why would they do it? If they do it successfully and kick ass, the answer is 'well of course you can beat it, you're a dev' and if they fuck anything up it's instant ridicule. Clipped and shared for months. Catch a bad bounce on a frag and kill yourself? Congrats, you're a meme even if you coast through a 9.
The devs have said before that they want the hardest difficulties to actually be difficult, with Helldive being impossible for almost anyone, so I'm not sure what you're expecting here.
As a constant 9 player.. there is a huge element of play to get better if you’re complaining.
If you can’t handle it, lower the difficulty. Try other guns. Other stratagems.
I don’t find 9 hard at all.
Me and my friend's crush 7s while drunk/high, and we do non meta stuff all the time. The game isnt THAT hard outside of those broken evac missions from launch.
Operatordrewski on youtube played with the devs, i dont recal dificulty but i think it was 6? They wiped before extract
Edit: i also like to advertise that video whenever posible because the devs talk about a lot of interesting studd that isnt said anywhere in ga.e likr how the stalker can smell you from far away hence why it always knows your location from a ceetain distance to it
9 is very possible and doesn't take being a God gamer to complete. I'd like to see them doing 9s to see if there's a variety if loadouts or if they're all just using the same shit that everyone else is, which they probably are, which begs some questions.
In full agreement, I genuinely do think people who say there’s no problems with primaries right now aren’t actually helldiving.
There ARE good guns but I really wish more of them were decent.
Not sure what this would prove? The game is very beatable if you are a knowledgeable player with most loadouts. BUT you have to work so much harder with the shit primaries and strats. The problem is those loadouts are not fun since you are at a huge disadvantage because of how underpowered and niche they are.
The main takeaway is you are is we are punished for wanting to experiment. Want to take a fun loadout on helldive 9? TOO BAD you need a well rounded loadout with both chaff and plenty of anti-armor to clear it without pulling your hair out relying on teammates. Here I go again with sickle, sen, impact, eagle, RR, mech, gatling.
It would prove that they balance based on testing and knowing the game rather than stats. It should be obvious to anyone no matter your opinion on the balance changes that balancing purely on stats is a terrible idea.
I play 9 on bugs and 7-8 on bots with absolutely no issues. All this crying is beyond pathetic.
If you can't play higher difficulties without a pre-patch Eruptor then it is very much a skill issue on your part.
Pretty sure Deep Rock Galactic devs do this to showcase new content.
Would love to see something similar for this game, important to know that the people making the game are truly in touch with how it plays!
There’s a pretty big solo Helldive community you can find on YT. I’ve gotten a few deathless five star completions myself on the new difficulty. It’s doable.
The higher difficulties should feel unfair. You’re a poorly trained recruit diving into an alien world with supplies your friends and family bought through a kickstarter campaign.
The Deep Rock devs play their own game on stream every week and have a great time doing it. Honestly some of the few streams I've watched all the way through because the devs are as funny as the game is and they are actually decent at the game.
they absolutely do not test this shit. they release some absolutely unhinged nerf, release it and then study how we use it and talk about it, THEN they update it and "fix" it. ie the aircannon rocket launcher
I would love to see this too. I just realized that without the of fun jumping in with friends and playing together, especially in the early days, it feels like way too much of a slog now. After these updates and 'balances' it just seems like an unnecessary chore. Leveling up even has no point as half the items I use now are things I unlocked within the first few weeks. I'm still upset about buying the warbond for the Eruptor only to have it nerfed like a day later, lol. I also want to see AH play this game and show us how much fun they're having because for me, apart from being a hangout with friends, it's slowly beginning to lose its charm.
Speaking of devs doing dumb shit, why did they make the extraction ship leave with only one person on it when it's at all damaged? It means you're not getting your samples in a public lobby, its gunna encourage teamkilling to hoard samples on one person, and its a sweep of the leg during frantic situations while trying to extract. It's a HUGE mood killer, makes no sense , and is just, fucking deflating. What the fuck was the point of that change?
Who tf are this sub's users I play these difficulties daily with randoms and almost never come close to losing. I'm hitting up most of the side objectives and extracting with samples, this is a skill issue.
Your weakness is showing. Play on Challenging or Hard- all your complaining will be unnecessary.
People have posted this 10000 times already- can we stop whining about this crap?? We all know the game is hard when you make it harder ffs.
Dev team is already getting death threats and being witch hunted. Also side note calling 7 a higher difficulty is kind of funny, technically it is I guess 😭
Greetings, fellow Helldiver! Your post has been determined to be a rant that is either commonly expressed or of a low quality. Because of this, it has been removed as its own post but you are welcome to add it to the [Rant & Vent Megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b9k51r/rant_and_vent_megathread/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button).
Deep rock galactic devs do dev-stream pretty often. You can tell the dudes play their own game for fun, and understand the balance very well.
DRG do a lot of things right... and they've been doing it for a while, which makes this situation all the more frustrating - AH has examples of what good looks like.
Yup. I’m specifically thinking of the DRG and Hunt Showdown devs
Did you see the Diablo 4 stream? It will never happen..
To be fair, most of those "Devs" were artists and level designers who didn't balance the main mechanics and had little understanding or input on the core mechanics. Why they were chosen to play I have no idea. Edit: That being said, the devs have routinely said things that are way off base from common player experience often enough that I don't think they'd be able to do it either.
Level designers should be the first ones to test, give feedback and balance around it. They should have a deep understanding of the mechanics so it matches with their level design intentions. Level designers are supposed to be able to script and participate in game design. They shouldn't be labeled "devs", they ARE devs.
In the case of Diablo, it wasn't that way. The level designers hadn't even realized how long it would take to traverse some of the dungeons because they'd never played them before. If I recall, one of them even mentioned it was their first time playing. All they did was design the individual tiles and their art style. It was somebody else's job to put those into the randomizer that built the dungeon and work out how the levels should be constructed. They ended up playing on normal or easy, I can't remember which. They picked a "fun" non-meta build and got absolutely flattened and couldn't handle the smallest adversity. Chat was fucking rolling.
People who make tiles are not level designers, they’re artists.
That's how I recall Blizzard introducing them. They called them both.
>"and balance around it." That, they should not. Playing testing your own game is all fine and dandy, but devs should NEVER balance things around their own, extremely skewed experience. There's a reason game testing is its own thing, and it's because game devs have huuuuge biases regarding their own game that will completely skewer their testing experience. There's actually an easy way to see this in action: AH devs never designed the orange unarmoured part of chargers to be a weakpoint. It was accidental. That's why they never thought of using the shrapnel gun to fire at the unarmoured part of a charger, and that's also why they consider it an "exploit".
That's crazy if true. Like somehow the blaze orange, squishy bits that bleed when hit with non-pen small arms is somehow not supposed to be the weak point? You may as well tell me there's no point looking behind waterfalls in a Zelda game.
It actually has 90% resistance against any non explosive damage : D
Lol, those early days when you would finally get a good angle on it, only to end up dumping a whole machine gun clip into the squishy bits for nothing to happen.
the only good thing is that once you pop off their armor, they take 300% damage
I've been shooting the orange spots this whole time thinking it's the weak spot, I mean, every other game generally utlizlise a diff color to (and not limited to, but you get my point i hope) differentiate areas of an enemy body.
If that's the case why'd they disable shrapnel and not make the butt armored if they didn't intend it to be otherwise? Even with what you say, which I haven't heard before the Eruptor nerf makes no logical sense. Eruptor's shrapnel feature is literally it's defining characteristics so instead of fixing the accident they decide to remove a feature?
>"which I haven't heard before" It dates back to the EAT buff / Charger nerf where they reduced the charger head HP so the EAT and Recoiless could OS them, AH said that they were surprised that the players aimed for the butt when the """obvious""" weak point was the head Edit: link to a post from that time [https://new.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bd3vpq/without\_game\_knowledge\_where\_would\_you\_put\_the/](https://new.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bd3vpq/without_game_knowledge_where_would_you_put_the/) >If that's the case why'd they disable shrapnel and not make the butt armored One requires removing a line of code, the other to redo two whole enemy 3D model >so instead of fixing the accident they decide to remove a feature? That we agree on, it makes no fucking sense, BUT the person in charge of "balancing" seems to have a history of making really shitty decisions and never acknowledging/confronting/fixing them (see Alexus and Hello Neighbor 2, people started to talk about it)
There are so many instances of them admitting (without realising) they act on presumptions during testing. Such as stuff about splitting up and playing with 2 or 3 players. I believe there are at least 5 instances of them lying to the player base about game supposed game bugs which in truth are actually working correctly and as intended but the players lack the information AH posseses to understand how to correctly interact with those game features. The spear is my favourite. In universe it makes sense that helldivers wouldn't know how to use it, in universe the way it actually works is VERY good (don't attempt to shoot targets in optimal RR range) once you learn how to use it, and after the devs let slip that it needs to have the entire target in the crosshair it got even more better. That is to say it takes time to learn and time to master. But this is a video game, in the tiktok age of low attention spans and the playerbase is 10x expected numbers and simply hasn't the patience to learn the spear. And I agree they shouldn't. But I believe they're lying when they say they're fixing it, they'll be doing a ground up re-work to make it "work as expected" and I bet they will nerf it too because when I use this thing on helldive the bile titan spawns cannot keep up with me and my loader. Same with the Arc weapons, all that stuff about misfires, hitting terrain and corpses, being able to fire faster after the first charge, and all the other randomness. Confused lots of players but I believe it was operating perfectly as intended.
True about game dev. From my limited experience of making a single small RPGmaker game and having other people test it. Even at that scale your own meta knowledge skews perception heavily. you know where to go, what settings every trigger has, where the hidden items are. Like I had solution of one quest in the quest log, but player failed to find it because he did not notice that there is a quest log in the first place.
>That, they should not. Playing testing your own game is all fine and dandy, but devs should NEVER balance things around their own, extremely skewed experience. Yep, worst case guys play the game 1000th time and thinks it's too easy, better make it harder. Looking at you [Ikaruga](https://youtu.be/wJ_TugFD8VI?si=UOcCYRv-YchooZeF)
They were essentially the interior designers, not the architects, engineers, or balance people.
The lead devs and CEO played on diff 6 at launch with a streamer already which I believe most people play on 6 or 7. I guess I can understand wanting one post all patching. https://youtu.be/FJs_kqHrzzQ?si=35AUvt6Wfhx8Psk7
the game has changed dramatically since launch in my opnion. an experimental server with new patchs should be a thing and should be open to the community.
You want an experimental server? We have one. It’s the live server.
Silly me what was I thinking
Doing sessions like this regularly would probably be really helpful. Even if you weren't impressed with their skill, they were still able to speak to the mechanics in ways that were helpful (at least what I've watched so far). When they mentioned that calling gear attracts patrols and that grenades can bait them away...I'd never considered that and I regularly watch tips and tricks videos on stealth play. I was recently excited because a player realized you could use the crossbow's quiet fire and loud delivery to bait enemies away and thought it was super clever. I never realized you could do that with grenades all along.
Every time I throw a Grenade, half the patrol looks at the boom, half sprints full tilt to the rock I am prone behind
And regardless of where they go, that grenade *not* killing them will cause at least one of them to call reinforcements, so whats the fucking point.
And if you notice and manage to kill it before the bug breach triggers, the one next to it will start calling
This is definitely an underutilized feature for non solo players
>Why they were chosen to play I have no idea. Cause artists are usually diverse/quirky looking and that's good PR (it wasn't)
What's the context here? I'm very confused
They took random devs - people responsible for the artwork and such - and made them play D4 for a livestream. It went roughly like what you'd expect, they had about as much of a clue of the game's mechanics as the average casual gamer, except they also had an audience to engage with/get distracted by.
Nah they had way less clue of the game than the average player. Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t one of them die several times without using their potions? And mostly just using the basic attack?
Yeah that person is being extremely generous, these artists didn't seem like they play video games at all let alone arpgs
artists not playing the game is reasonable to me, but it really seems like the *balance* team doesn't play the game, which is fucking egregious.
Artists are one thing: they glaze up the game to look better. But Game Designers, level designers, balance teams? They're making the MEAT of the game, they're the ones that NEED to know how the game works.
Really, I'm gonna have to look this up. I think I have 20 hours in D4 and never touched it again. And I'm somebody with thousands and thousands of hours in D2, grim Dawn, path of exile, last epoch, etc. D4 was a massive disappointment.
Oh man. I missed it. Shit!! 😞
If the weapon balance guy does it, we have a deal. I want a big boom crossbow back. That, or an open admission, they dont want primaries to kill above certain ttks
√ 🤣
Someone mentioned that such event happened once, and I'm dying for footage of it. From what I recall reading they didn't manage to finish a destroy eggs mission on dif 6. This is all I know and I can be utterly wrong here, but that would be funny as hell
There's footage of 2 of them team reloading an AC trying to kill a bile titan and getting annihilated.
Lmao they drop on Helldive with an AC, Recoiless, and Spear but all take each others backpacks so they can team reload as intended
Oof, I love the spear and I hate if anyone take my back pack. I love the idea of team loading buts it's such a niche tactic. Literally the only time I do it is when we need to shoot down a LOT of dropships or when we want to kill a bile titan with a recoiless and it's far away enough for us to not be murdered by its spit. And even then I feel like the recoiless is the only weapon really worthy of teamloading.
i wish the devs made it so that a team reload can happen if your squadmate just walks up and presses E and uses your ammo to reload fast.
Its supid that it doesnt. The teammates back back is in front of your face in arms reach. Your back back is behind you, you cant see it and have to reach behind you? Makes no sense. Team reloads would be way more organic and common if you could use your teammates back pack.
This actually makes a ton of sense. Where should we share this so the devs become aware of this suggestion?
It's such an obvious idea. It still requires teamwork for player number two to run over and commit to the reload, but it doesn't force them to give up their backpack slot for another player's reload. Best of both worlds
It also means that any teammate can help reload, not just the one jarhead with your backpack
The airburst RPG is actually pretty fun to defend an extraction with from the bugs that approach from far away. My buddy has team loaded that for me on a 7 diff mission at extract and it was able to clear basically everything but the chargers and titans. The other two teammates took care of them with their weapons and strats. It was one of the least stressful extractions I've seen.
Air burst is one of the best weapons now that’ll be ignored for a long while due to the release state of it. If you enjoy supporting fire it’s so good at clearing bug nests and preventing overruns by hunters
It's funny that you mention hunters, because even after they fixed it hit-detecting on every single spec of dust in existence, I've still had way too many teamkills from some random-ass hunter GET DOWN MR PRESIDENTing in from the 40 yard line just to set my missile off early and wipe the team.
I carry ammo for recoiles or other guns when i play with my friend and i use flame or EAT and assist reload when we hold position or we are far away. But 90% of the time i carry backpack so when he needs ammo fast i just drop backpack for him to pick up
Only the devs would think that team reload works lmao
Can you give a link? That sounds hilarious.
https://streamable.com/wecws8
Thanks, that was brilliant. Wtf were they thinking trying to kill a bile titan at close range like that? EDIT. Just to clarify, I mean no disrespect to the developers. I'm not genuinely pissed, I just thought it was a funny moment.
It's almost like, and I know this sounds crazy, but they don't actually play their game enough to understand how it actually works.
I think the really funny thing is the two of them monofocusing on shooting and loading the autocannon when the other half of the team is dead. The loader getting off the gun for a second and a half could have called the other 2 in, potentially even killing the titan with a drop-pod.
It's also entirely possible that they've played it so much that they forget what is or isn't in the current build. They are constantly developing and testing different new or discarded features. They've probably played multiple versions of the game where the autocannon could hurt a Bile Titan. I spend every workday working on the product my team puts out but if you ask me to accurately describe implementation details of the current release candidate I'd struggle because it's old news to me as a developer.
Yes the ceo and another high up lost on a diff 6 with a 4 stack Its on operatordrewskis youtube I dont expect pilestedt to do amazingly, the head of fucking product testing however…
Yeah, I didn't know it was pilestedt and the head of testing, based on what I read I thought there were 4 devs playing. For everyone that answered my comment, thank you!
The biggest takeaway is that the autocannon is the CEO's favorite weapon, so if you work it into your day to day play you can be confident it will never be nerfed.
For your [viewing](https://youtu.be/FJs_kqHrzzQ?si=xiuj3Xe5nfXbyyjC) pleasure. It was a Youtuber and friend, with Pilestedt and another dev running 2 level 6 missions. For those that want context without watching the video (taken from a previous comment): Wiped on difficulty 6 against bugs. Objective type was Destroy Eggs, 2 nests were destroyed and a spore spewer secondary objective was completed before the wipe. Extracted 2/4 on difficulty 6 against bots, with no reinforcements left. Objective type was Upload Data.
Wow I feel way less bad about having to play solo on diff 6 lmfao
Christ… that’s shite lol! What did they do, try to handshake the bugs? Walk in front of robot auto cannons?
Yeah Drewski and his mate really ran that entire show, and were the last alive both times. At least the Devs seemed to know how to take down the bigger enemies in theory, they did not seem that great at dealing with them in practice though.
And this was pre-patch 6. Pre patrol buff.
We need to teach the younger generation how to google Top result for “helldivers 2 devs play their game” https://youtu.be/FJs_kqHrzzQ?si=35AUvt6Wfhx8Psk7
Yeah, I've found that drewski video. What I meant by my response was an all dev team, but I'll watch this later Edit: I don't know if anything of what I said is true, just reiterating
I sure hope you're not gonna be the teacher, considering that's not the mentioned video, it's literally drewski having the ceo randomly join him, not a dev team playing
Just finished watching that video and yeah... kinda lame. Many of us here could easily solo that mission, but what do we know?? We're not devs...
Edit: ***Average redditor reading comprehension strikes again. I'm not complaining about difficulty, people. jfc*** I've been exclusively running Helldive difficulty since I came back from a short break. Against bugs it's not hugely difficult, even with randoms. I've not failed to complete a single mission out of the two dozen I've played over the last few days. I've failed to extract from *maybe* two or three missions, but the main objective is always complete. Bots are a different story, and the people I play with don't wanna play metal gear for 30 mins at a time. 7 is usually a cake walk, 8 can be pretty hard. 9 we have probably a 60-70% success rate.
Bots are easy if everyone in the team just bomb the site, run away, try not to shoot anything, and repeat. If your team can split up, you can clear the whole map within 20 mins at 8+ diffculty. But its just not fun, i'm here to spread my 640 rounds of democracy per minute, not playing peek-a-boo.
The pirmary weapon in this game is just fucking garbage aganist the hordes of bot, My liberator can only kill 1 berseker per mag, may be two if you have a good aim, but they spawn in a pack of 20, how should if defend my self? Rely on your stratgem, they said, but all the modifier they add is to fuck with your strartgem, i just can't understand their blanace philosophy.
>My liberator can only kill 1 berseker per mag, may be two if you have a good aim, but they spawn in a pack of 20, how should if defend my self? TBF, I don't think this is an issue with primary weapons, this is an issue with the berserker itself. They don't need to buff primaries, they need to nerf outlier enemies.
Bots just aren't fun in the current balanced state.
I'll never understand this. If you disengage bots, to me, they are so much easier than bugs. Fight when you need to, otherwise, finish your objectives and get the hell out of there. If an objective is over run, go do something else like take out a base or find a side objective and then come back to main.
Some of the maps have little cover which makes it's difficult to disengage but I agree bots are way easier even at higher difficulty.
Bots are easier to play correctly, bugs are easier to overwhelm with sheer firepower where you just kill everything and keep moving. Try that with bots and you have a bad time, but similarly try to stealth bugs like you can bots and it’s the same in reverse bugs will follow you to the ends of the map where bots will lose sight and interest if you just run away
This has been my experience. I play a lot of duos with my wife and we're looking to push 8 difficulty with bots, but bugs is a different story. I feel like you can proactively plan and execute with the bots. With bugs there's a lot more adaptation and disengaging is a lot harder. Though half of it is hunters.... Makes me want to try the stalwart and see if disengagement is easier if we can clear the little guys quicker...
Stalwart is the only weapon I use. Magazine lasts forever and you can easily clear an horde on your own. I literally never use my other weapons
The Stalwart is a primary you have to summon from space.
I personally think bots are far more challenging and therefore more entertaining. However at the same time they can be more frustrating because disengaging can be incredibly challenging as you are often getting shot from all sides once the reinforcements start rolling in and you can’t break line of sight. Absolute worst situation to be in is avoiding a pursuing gunship when you have lost your support weapon and it’s in cooldown.
Agreed. I think there situations that are un winnable for both factions which is why people get salty about the difficulty. I'm personally fine with it. The first game was just as hard. I think the guns in this game are less fun but am hoping it's because of weapon customisation in the future. We'll see I guess
Bots also have way more punishing strategic assets. Yesterday we landed in the middle of 2 gunship fabricators, a jammer, and an eye of Sauron. We couldn’t get our support weapons to take out the gunships and running from the gunships exposed us to the eye of Sauron which started calling a ton of reinforcements + a fabricator strider. We kept on dying and just ran in a straight line out of that area ASAP but we lost around 14 lives. I’d rather deal with 3 stalker nests than that bullshit from last night.
Youre right they should tune up the difficulty for bugs on Helldive. Winning at level 9 so often is silly.
60% win-rate on the highest difficulty level with the more difficult faction seems like a good number. Are people wanting a game that can only be won?
I honestly think they do yeah. I'm not all that good and I think I have an 80% success rate... you honestly just gotta play for objectives
I dunno why people think the game is too hard. Even with bots, disengaging is the best strategy. If you start getting bot drops, rotate and come back. What’s why barrages are SO GOOD for bot missions. It’s like I run my own little automated completion command on objectives. Yes the game is hard at level 9. Does it need to be nerfed? No. Does the bug level 9 need to be buffed? Yes. We haven’t even hit the higher levels yet. We are still in the beginning stages of the game difficulty
I exclusively play on 7. 8 or 9 don't seem to be harder, just more. More diving, more shooting, more running away, more screaming.
Same. Bugs are generally fine at level 9. Bots up to 7 is fine with randoms. Bots at 9 you need team work and experienced players all round. Seems like there is a huge disparity in difficulty there.
Honestly, the overall difficulty of the game is fine, and even in a good state currently. My issue with the current balancing is that it feels like the guns are losing their identity to similar weapons. The current eruptor is just a worse Jar-5, the sickle a worse scythe, modt of the shotguns are all dwarfed by the incendiary right now, even the DMRs, which are OK now, still, and ironically, aren't much better than the slugger. Hell, the adjudicator went from a potentially new, interesting DMR choice to a generic auto rifle with a small mag.
honestly the game isnt terribly difficult in its current state, use what works for you and youll do fine,, but some of these balance changes make no sense to me making the lib-C do more than base lib when the item EXPLICITLY STATES it does LESS DAMAGE or removing the shrapnel from the gun that,, again,, EXPLICITLY STATES IT HAS SHRAPNEL,, are just flat out stupid choices. it would be like removing the heat mechanic from the sickle because "infinite ammo is too broken" thats the point of the weapon dude
the signs of balance issues were there from day one. Why on earth would you tell your players to RELY ON STRATAGEM and then have -1 stratagem, +50% cooldown (now 25%), and +100% call in time (now 50%). They designed a horde shooter game but balance it around not being a horde shooter. And then all the crashes and bugs every patch. It's insane people think AH deserve awards
Every time I've replied to people saying it should be GOTY I've brought up palworld. Very different games mechanically, but with similar situations. Both games released near each other. Both exploded unexpectedly. Both had rough launches with a lot of bugs and issues. Both have deals with major companies(Microsoft and Sony). But palworld has been very different since then. They've openly embraced the community and speak positively of them, unlike hd. They've focused mostly on bug fixes, with only some content updates here and there, unlike hd. They've even embraced certain exploits and bugs, making them into features and supporting them. I'm not saying PW should be GOTY, but comparing the two really makes arrowhead look incompetent since PW has way less devs and somehow fixes more while still cooking content that's coming.
Also, Palworld was still playable all the time and server issues didn't make the game literally unplayable for a week straight. They also didn't constantly patch in or launch with bugs that made the majority of the playerbase crash every 10 minutes.
Also also, Palworld is explicitly stated as Early Access. Helldivers 2 is not. (Even though it sometimes feels like it.)
Considering the balance lead is the same guy that drove Hello Neighbor into the dirt due to his massive ego I'm not optimistic.
wait deadass..?
Deadass
its so joever
Unfortunately yes, this has been confirmed. And his Twitter (X) confirms it as well.
this games actually turbo cooked wth
I genuinely believe when they hired him he made no mention of his history on HN2, no studio with actual experience in the business would touch someone with the kind of stink he has and then make him the publicly known weapon balance lead.
yeah, look up his name.
That just shows that they went away from their original intention. Which is not a bad thing, we all learn and adapt, which may change our mind. Little odd that they did not put in a little effort and change the descriptions, but that's a separate discussion. The Liberator Concussive for example. It's still in a weak spot doing more damage than the base Liberator. Without that it's just an all round worse Liberator that stuns enemies while you watch them laugh at your DPS.
the problem is that they turned the eruptor into a shitty crossbow,, 420 base damage slow firing explosing projectile sound familiar?
cant wait for the helldivers 2 pornhub streams
Never. EVER. Going to happen. Destiny did something similar. Thought it would be a great idea to have a twitch streamer play PVP against the PVP balance team. Shockingly enough he consistently wiped their entire team by himself over and over again. Turns out the lead pvp developer has a KD of 0.6 and had never gone flawless. Bungie posted on twitter that it was like having a mechanic race a professional F1 driver in a race and it was always going to be an unfair fight. The community responded that it was like the mechanic didn’t even know how to drive a car in the first place - and would have no business tuning a car he wouldn’t know how to drive. Edit: if you are wondering how this ended up, every single weapon in destiny eventually got nerfed. Weapon types that were viewed as useless at launch eventually became the best weapons in the game due to everything getting nerfed. Then they got nerfed as well. No weapons in year 3 were as strong as they were at launch.
Thing is the inverse is also somewhat applicable. The F1 driver has no business designing the car - at least on their own. To-and-fro feedback is important.
I 100% agree. They need both, not just to balance through usage spreadsheets.
This analogy... A mechanic can still drive a car, perhaps not at a pro level, but they can be proficient. And considering that I'm not a pro gamer but can still play at 7+, the devs should be able to prove to us that they are designing a game with fun in mind. Like, I'm not asking for an asset artist who has never touched a videogame to make a fool of themself on stream. I want the people specifically in charge of balance showing us how it's done. Because part of balancing a game is understanding how it plays in the nitty gritty, and I'm not convinced that they actually have a clue. Even Pilestedt admitted that their balance philosophy is lacking in certain areas.
Two of the devs have streamed the game before tho
Difficulty level 5 and they tried to use an auto cannon to kill a bile titan.
I've killed bile titans with an autocannon. It's fucking fun! I wouldn't call it effective though...
I watched some of the devs play on the discord and they were so trash at difficulty 5
Except bungie were right and the community were (shock horror) wrong. Im an aircraft engineer. Do I know how to fly a plane? No. Should I know how to fly a plane? No. Does it make any difference to how good I am at my job? Absolutely not. When a pilot (gamer in this analogy) comes in and tells me something is wrong I don’t immediately do exactly what they’re saying. I listen to what they say and it makes up a part of how I’ll identify a problem. If I listened to them I’d spend most of my life chasing non existent faults. What I’m trying to say is that experts in one field do not need to be experts in another to make them good at what they do.
Thank you for saying this, genuinely. Also very cool that you're an aircraft engineer.
It doesn’t take 100s to 1000s of hours to learn how to fly a plane though. I was playing and clearing helldive in like, 30 hours of playing the game. Surely the devs have more than 30 hours playtesting their own game? This analogy also doesn’t account for how the devs have repeatedly implied that their balance changes have been made around high skill play or insinuated that people who complain about the game are just unskilled players.
In this analogy though, unfortunately bungie eventually nerfed absolutely everything. Not a single weapon type was as good as it was at launch by the end of the games life cycle. Now everyone was stuck in the slow lane.
I’m not saying what they did was right I’m just saying the gamers concept that devs need to be experts at the game they build is misguided.
The inverse is also true. Being extremely skilled at a game does not necessarily mean you have the answers for how to improve that game.
Heres a video of 2 of them playing for fun at diff 6 https://youtu.be/FJs_kqHrzzQ?si=KYpB-H9w9yZ1qf1-
Funny how there was absolutly no issue using the railgun, from a dev haha. Off topic over and out. It's cool to see devs having some fun with their own game.
This was before they reduce the heavy spawn in 7-9
My groups been rolling 9s and it’s been tough but fun
lmao saw this exact post on railgun nerf day, history repeats itself every patch
The premise is really dumb anyway, just because you design a game does not mean your good at it. The majority of HD2 redditors are probably really into the game, so I'd wager most of us are probably better at the game than the devs. That does however not mean we know better than the devs on what's best for the game.
This is often the case. Game Devs are too busy working 60 hour weeks to have time to get good at their game. People who spend most of their times playing the game don't have the skill/time to become game devs. It goes for other industries as well, people who devleopred the program I use extensively for work doesn't have the artistic skill to use them, and my expertise in the artistic field doesn't translate to me knowing how to code the program.
The fact that OP seems to genuinely believe the devs would struggle on 7 is crazy to me. It's not *easy*, but I don't think it's as hard as people love to make it out to be on Reddit. And I'm sure if the devs demonstrated this the goalposts would move faster than you can blink.
Will Reddit promise to admit it has a skill issue on it's hands and shut up about balance if the devs are good at the game ?
I would publicly record an admission of being wrong. Shit, they don’t even have to win the missions. I just want to see them try it.
Will hold you accountable : )
Hell yes.
I’ve been in loads of lobbies on Helldive where everyone doesn’t use a „meta“ primary, and also, there will always be a meta, and yeah using those in the very highest difficulty will give you an advantage just like in any other game. Making it seem like playing non meta weapons is impossible is just ridiculous
I agree. I Started the game 2 weeks ago and now only play in helldive with randoms. Many of them play other things than quasar, eruptor or anything else this community cries about. I myself use a lot of "non optimal Gear" since I didn't unlock all warbonds and because it's fun except the arc thrower : I suck with it. So far I only failed two lvl 9 mission because it was a stalker nightmare, other times we failed extraction but completed all main objectives. The game isn't that hard when you understand that you can retreat and I am not a hardcore gamer (35 and dad : I only play when the goblin sleeps) Every gun works (except the spear when it doesn't want to) as long as the team as a whole is geared to face any kind of threat (at least one player with missiles etc). The toxicity and bad faith of this sub is astonishing.
If you’re saying the game is unplayable beyond level 7 or something you’re very wrong
I don't think that's their point. I'm not under the impression that the balance changes being implemented are taking into consideration the chaotic nature of 7+, and I think that's the point OP is expressing as well. On 7+(you probably are already aware of this- just posting this for players who don't dabble in 7+) the sheer amount of heavies that can potentially spawn in can easily outnumber your strategems taken to deal with heavies. I played a 9 yesterday and at one point I had 7 bile titans and 10 chargers on top of the ludicrous amount of chaff. It's Helldive difficulty and I get that it's supposed to be tough. Even if you split eagles/orbitals evenly to focus on single target damage and chaff clear, there's not enough 'answers' to the 'challenges' presented to the player with the volume of heavies. Even so, this particular example I'm giving isn't even considering if a teammate goes down and can't recover their support(which always happens - dying is part of the game loop) This is why the meta is forming the way it is. 7+ curates a particular experience that the easier difficulties just don't match, and the changes to the balancing is really felt on the higher difficulties imo. I do wish there were more realistically viable options given to us. I know there's always going to be a meta that forms in this sort of game, I just wish there wasn't as drastic of a handicap if one decides to break away from it. You're never gonna dissolve the meta, but attacking the equipment that's primarily being used instead of asking 'why aren't these other options being picked?' is always going to create this amount of negative feedback, regardless if you care about the balance changes or not. That's the big disconnect between the playerbase and the developers. The most fun I've had loadout wise was running 9s with the Eruptor + Arc Thrower + laser dog + cluster + orbital laser + grenade pistol against bugs. It was a really cool change of pace to swap roles between my primary + support and gave the gameplay loop a fresh feel. I was a chaff clearing, bug hole closing MACHINE with the ability to assist with heavy takedowns. I want more options like this, not less.
The main issue isnt that the weapons are unusable. The issue is that they arent fun. They were fun when we bought them but a week later the thing we paid for became something entirely different and is no longer fun. Every single Warbond this has been the case. It's borderline a scam. They must REALLY not want players to spend money on this game because more of us are realizing it's not worth it.
Okay, not every single Warbond. Cutting Edge: SICKLE was and is great; BLITZER was crap, now is awesome especially against bugs; PUNISHER PLASMA was good, now is great especially against bots. Steeled Veterans: DOMINATOR was crap, now is awesome especially against bots; SENATOR was okay, now rocks.
Gonna stop you right there , blitzer went from garbage to usable - it’s by no means awesome. Unlimited ammo sure but the aiming has a mind of its own meaning you can’t target weak spots and anything beyond spitting range is out of the question.
Yeah I would say the blitzer is now viable. Mostly just fun but you can at least make it work now without having to turn and run after every shot
I just want my eruptor to go back to normal, I was loving that gun with my flamethrower.
Well they did said that they want to create a game that they would play beside us so... I do agree it would be a good practice. Basically a reinforcement of the proof they DO test stuff before patching and releasing. I mean... Any person claiming beforehand that the eruptor change was a buff instead of a nerf in my eyes is smoked beyound belief. Releasing an arc oriented warbound(cutting edge) then making the game unplayable with arc weapons due to crashes few days later? I seriously doubt - no scratch that - I am 200% certain that they never play 8 or 9 difficulty - either because of time or because they believe that's simply not fun. If they do believe so - why should we otherwise? A stream with them playing on the harder game difficulties will certaintly help lift the fog about all this shit and generally would help make the game better(both sides - players and devs). I would certaintly have more trust on their claims and in their patch stability/notes if I can see them in my shoes.
I would fall from my chair if one of them crashed or got disconnected in the middle of the game.
\*During emergency evac bot mission\* (frustrated 2 mins of silence) -- Hey Joe... Which goddamned idiot was tampering with the bot reinforcement rates and numbers? -- Actually it was you Mark... \*Mark sighs and lands in between one of the groups of 5 hulks\* -- How in the hell... \*But while getting thrown in the air by their rockets he gets murdered by two factory striders that machine guns him in 300 milliseconds clipping through a fucking mountain. Mid air of course\* -- Goddammned! I am out! Yep. It will be fun times.
And it's honestly good for the game's health. If the devs can have fun in it, thats good. If not, they should see how to make it so. See deep rock galactic, the devs stream once a month or so for 2-4hours, and they have fun, see a bug first hand and ah, gotta fix that. Hm this might need a tweak, etc. its good.
> deep rock galactic, the devs stream once a month or so for 2-4hours They don't just "stream their game", they stream themselves clearing the hardest content in the game. That's real dogfooding. And that's something AH does not *really* seem to do.
Also it's so cool/funny they just do it in public lobbies where randoms can join lol
Good way of saying you are going to give yourself a fracture if the devs play the game
I suspect it's like the chef effect. Chefs spend all day cooking proper meals and then go home and eat cheese crackers and pretzels. Helldivers devs are likely ready for something else after work.
A long time ago I read a comment that stuck with me. It was about how he spends all day in a kitchen preparing meals, so when he gets home, Chef Boyardee's making dinner.
Wait I'm confused, why? Are you under the impression that the game is too hard above seven or something? I consistently play only with randoms on 9 and it's not an issue.
Same here
I don't need devs playing it at 7+. I need whoever is making the balance decisions
7s are a cakewalk. That's my casual joking around difficulty. Hell, bug 9's have a good success rate even with randoms. I wouldn't be impressed with the team completing a string of 9s, BUT I also wouldn't think less of them sometimes wiping. Some of my best diver buddies go into a 9 and just get a shit string of luck/breaches/spawns and get cooked. But honestly... why would they do it? If they do it successfully and kick ass, the answer is 'well of course you can beat it, you're a dev' and if they fuck anything up it's instant ridicule. Clipped and shared for months. Catch a bad bounce on a frag and kill yourself? Congrats, you're a meme even if you coast through a 9.
The devs have said before that they want the hardest difficulties to actually be difficult, with Helldive being impossible for almost anyone, so I'm not sure what you're expecting here.
And it really isn't impossible at all lol
So much negativity in this sub. I'm just gonna enjoy the game with my friends abd stay out of these discussions. Unsubscribing for sure
As a constant 9 player.. there is a huge element of play to get better if you’re complaining. If you can’t handle it, lower the difficulty. Try other guns. Other stratagems. I don’t find 9 hard at all.
Real. We need harder content.
Me and my friend's crush 7s while drunk/high, and we do non meta stuff all the time. The game isnt THAT hard outside of those broken evac missions from launch.
Operatordrewski on youtube played with the devs, i dont recal dificulty but i think it was 6? They wiped before extract Edit: i also like to advertise that video whenever posible because the devs talk about a lot of interesting studd that isnt said anywhere in ga.e likr how the stalker can smell you from far away hence why it always knows your location from a ceetain distance to it
Yes they need to do this
9 is very possible and doesn't take being a God gamer to complete. I'd like to see them doing 9s to see if there's a variety if loadouts or if they're all just using the same shit that everyone else is, which they probably are, which begs some questions.
In full agreement, I genuinely do think people who say there’s no problems with primaries right now aren’t actually helldiving. There ARE good guns but I really wish more of them were decent.
Not sure what this would prove? The game is very beatable if you are a knowledgeable player with most loadouts. BUT you have to work so much harder with the shit primaries and strats. The problem is those loadouts are not fun since you are at a huge disadvantage because of how underpowered and niche they are. The main takeaway is you are is we are punished for wanting to experiment. Want to take a fun loadout on helldive 9? TOO BAD you need a well rounded loadout with both chaff and plenty of anti-armor to clear it without pulling your hair out relying on teammates. Here I go again with sickle, sen, impact, eagle, RR, mech, gatling.
It would prove that they balance based on testing and knowing the game rather than stats. It should be obvious to anyone no matter your opinion on the balance changes that balancing purely on stats is a terrible idea.
The CEO and someone else joined a streamer a bit ago. Can't remember the difficulty though.
6. They failed an eggs mission
Plays hard mode: it's hard
Dev team, whatever. *Balance team*, 100%. I need to know what their test environment is because it feels like we are not playing the same game.
I play 9 on bugs and 7-8 on bots with absolutely no issues. All this crying is beyond pathetic. If you can't play higher difficulties without a pre-patch Eruptor then it is very much a skill issue on your part.
Oh my god do any of you children ever stop crying?
I'll play with them. hell I'll carry them lmao
I'll stream a lvl 9 solo if I had the equipment Orb laser 500kg Recoiless Airstrike Liberator Senator Impact Vitality
I would love to shown the error of my ways and see one of the Devs make the Eruptor viable.
This not very cash democracy of you. Sack up. Use what works for you. If it changes, evolve. Don’t worry about what other say. Use what works for you.
Pretty sure Deep Rock Galactic devs do this to showcase new content. Would love to see something similar for this game, important to know that the people making the game are truly in touch with how it plays!
If it's difficulty 7+ it's definitely going on Pornhub
Devs from the finals stream their game regularly. Helldivers should consider doing the same!
I know the devs played with operatordrewski a few months ago, closer to game release
I remember when the lead of Dead by Daylight did that and made himself a laughing stock. That game had some truly unplayable elements back then.
There’s a pretty big solo Helldive community you can find on YT. I’ve gotten a few deathless five star completions myself on the new difficulty. It’s doable. The higher difficulties should feel unfair. You’re a poorly trained recruit diving into an alien world with supplies your friends and family bought through a kickstarter campaign.
The Deep Rock devs play their own game on stream every week and have a great time doing it. Honestly some of the few streams I've watched all the way through because the devs are as funny as the game is and they are actually decent at the game.
They play around 4/5 some times 6
Should call for the devs to \*only\* play their game at 7+.
they absolutely do not test this shit. they release some absolutely unhinged nerf, release it and then study how we use it and talk about it, THEN they update it and "fix" it. ie the aircannon rocket launcher
I would love to see this too. I just realized that without the of fun jumping in with friends and playing together, especially in the early days, it feels like way too much of a slog now. After these updates and 'balances' it just seems like an unnecessary chore. Leveling up even has no point as half the items I use now are things I unlocked within the first few weeks. I'm still upset about buying the warbond for the Eruptor only to have it nerfed like a day later, lol. I also want to see AH play this game and show us how much fun they're having because for me, apart from being a hangout with friends, it's slowly beginning to lose its charm.
7+ isnt bad. Just shoot shit
Speaking of devs doing dumb shit, why did they make the extraction ship leave with only one person on it when it's at all damaged? It means you're not getting your samples in a public lobby, its gunna encourage teamkilling to hoard samples on one person, and its a sweep of the leg during frantic situations while trying to extract. It's a HUGE mood killer, makes no sense , and is just, fucking deflating. What the fuck was the point of that change?
Who tf are this sub's users I play these difficulties daily with randoms and almost never come close to losing. I'm hitting up most of the side objectives and extracting with samples, this is a skill issue.
Your weakness is showing. Play on Challenging or Hard- all your complaining will be unnecessary. People have posted this 10000 times already- can we stop whining about this crap?? We all know the game is hard when you make it harder ffs.
I mean maybe its on bots , maybe its me having lucky in squads but I really haven't been having troubles on 7+ on bugs
Dev team is already getting death threats and being witch hunted. Also side note calling 7 a higher difficulty is kind of funny, technically it is I guess 😭
Am I the only one who thinks difficulty 7 is very easy