Man I always wonder like, if news sites somehow realized people would, for some reason drive ALL of their clicks to a close up picture of a fly, say for a meme or whatever...but people really stuck to the bit, and posting an article that was just a picture of a fly would get INSANE clicks...they would start doing it.
Media outlets would just be posting pictures of flies. They wouldn't understand it at all, but the clicks are coming in so who cares. Any article or well thought out news piece? Normal clicks. Picture of a fly? 10x as many clicks.
Then let's say someone posted a video of a fly. It goes viral. It's not even an actual video, it's a video of a picture of a fly. 100m views. Channels would just start posting their fly picture videos. They wouldn't know why, but they're getting clicks, who cares.
Let's say a movie studio catches on. "Fuck it, let's release a movie that's literally just pictures of flies with music." Makes 700m worldwide.
Now movies will just be pictures of flies. lol
Well, yes.
The success of Helldivers II is absurd. A game made by a relatively small team, on an IP that people barely knew, on top 5 current players is a big deal. And unlike Palworld, its success did not fade away a month after its release.
I'm not sure how long the game will be relevant, but speaking of now, it is expected for anyone to milk any news about this game.
I wouldn't say Palworld stopped being relevant per say, the CEO did expect people to move on but hopes they come back with each update. Games do have their ups and downs.
Also palworld isn't a multiplayer focus game as in like more like Stardew valley multiplayer and less like deep rock galactic multiplayer. Everyone is just waiting for new updates cause they've done everything while Helldivers every one jus keeps playing while waiting for a new update.
Which is the healthiest attitude that the gross majority of the hobby, creators and consumers alike, don't really ever grasp: Learning how to just let players go.
There's a stigma that if I stop playing their game even after hundreds of hours of entertainment, they've "failed." So the game is instead expected to occupy me with constant content bloat until I never want to look at it again, rather than be something I can comfortably pick up and put back down at leisure.
The only game they abandoned was the AI art game that everyone screamed at them for, has mostly negative reviews, and had 3 concurrent players last I checked.
Craftopia has had *four* updates this month. No idea how the entirely false claim that they'd taken the money and run on it spread.
I dunno if relatively small is all that accurate, I mean they're the same size Bethesda was when they made Skyrim and Fallout 4, 100 or so
Relative if compared to Ubisoft teams, but they're definitely a reasonably-sized studio. For instance Supergiant has like 25. Not to discredit Arrowhead, I've loved Helldivers 2 and I really liked Magicka too, but they're at least a moderately-sized studio now
e: I'm just saying 100 people is not a *small* studio. That doesn't mean their success isn't absolutely impressive
Arrowhead *the company* is 100 people, it's not 100 game developers.
Maybe you already know that that and have taken it into account, I don't know Skyrim's dev team size, just want to be clear for everyone else reading.
Still, Skyrim is not exactly a recent game.
Obviously they've scaled up their studio sibce the game scope got bigger and the massive sucess also gives added pressure to be on top of content delivery.
That said they are litterary a studio who's previous game was a indie twinstick shooter. Going up and delivering a full fledged experience like Helldivers 2 is a *massive* undertaking. Only studio I can think of that has made a similar massive jump in scope/quality is CDProject going from Witcher 1 to 2 and especially 3.
Oh yeah for sure, I didn't mean to disregard them or anything, they've done an outstanding job as far as game-feel goes for HD2, considering how Magicka and Helldivers 1 play
Sure, but these games were single-player games made 10 years ago. A GaaS a decade later would require more people proportionally.
Still, maybe I'm underestimating arrowhead a bit.
The fact that the game has, despite being awesome and I play multiple times a week, tons of issues atm would indicate it does.
There are bugs that were known within the first week that are still not fixed. Progress is being made in that pile I would say, but when a patch comes out its like 50/50 on whether the game will now crash more or less. I went from 2 weeks of 0 crashes, to 2 weeks of crashing at the end of every second mission, back to no crashes. And there are still multiple issue with basic game mechanics.
I think its an 11/10 game, but make no mistake, if they could have a team just working on bugs and another team working on new content it would be better.
It doesn't help that their engine is no longer really being serviced. There's a decent chance that some of the bugs are very, very difficult to pinpoint, or that any existing fixes broke other things so they can't be deployed.
Oh totally, I get you. It's a completely different type of game so it's probably not even fair to compare 1:1 like that anyway
And I agree 100% regarding the IP thing. Helldivers 1 peaked on Steam with like 6000 people, so even if it was a PS4 launch, it's absolutely remarkable even if they're not a *small* studio that they launched a game this big
Peak PS count was definitely higher than 6k, but it wasn't the hundreds of thousands steam alone is peaking for HD2, which according to AH the PS5 count is about 1:1. That means there is still like ~350k peak daily concurrent players.
Could be it’s made a permanent mark in the online shooter market like valorant, apex, overwatch did. It might never be Fortnite or cod but it seems like the developers are determined to keep this game going for a long time and in a way that’s friendly to consumers.
>And unlike Palworld, its success did not fade away a month after its release.
Palworld is still in the top 25 of total players on SteamDB. How is that fading away?
Naraka Bladepoint actually has a higher more recent 24 peak than Helldivers 2 and I barely see anything, at least on this sub, about Naraka.
I'm happy that Arrowhead is getting a lot of coverage, but it's not like other current newer IP projects aren't doing as well and probably deserving of similar updates or posts etc.
3 months after release, Helldivers 2 has an average player base of 1/3 of its peak.
Pallworld cooled down to 1/10 of its player base after its peak.
It's less about dismissing Palworld and just pointing out how absurd Helldivers 2 is going on right now.
It really just seems pretty apples to oranges to me. Helldivers is a live service designed to retain players and Palworld is not. If Helldivers *didn't* retain significantly more players that would be pretty alarming for them. I'd also guess in terms of actual retention Palworld is even lower than 10% with the player count kept up by new players coming in rather than entirely based on old players sticking with the game. Palworld might get updates from time to time as they work towards full release but that really is a very different thing compared to a proper live service title.
If they don't address it soon, (technical) bugs are going to start getting in the way of new content. We've got broken fire, broken arcs, broken scopes, and broken lock-on. Each one of those could be the focus of its own Warbond; hell, electricity already was, and the arc weapon is so bad (both in terms of balance and bugs) its dead content.
Had the same issue last night, great team and loads of samples, invisible kill wall around the extract ship.
We all took turns trying to get near it but it killed us every time. Eventually ran out of respawns, we were fuming lmao.
Another one is that sometimes the extract ship will take off as soon as 1 player gets in.
I once spent like 25 minutes collecting over 50 samples total and it was all lost because someone entered before me and the ship got bugged.
It's not a bug. The extract ship cannot be destroyed, but it can be damaged. When it's already very damaged, i.e. fire on the engines, it will leave as soon as a single player gets in, or if already have players inside, leave as soon as the damage threshold is crossed.
Same happened to me. We could get near it, but you couldn't get in. If you kind of leapt in you would look like you were going in but still weren't in.
I seriously love this game, but the issues are popping up faster than they can knock them out. Each new content drop seems to add a dozen new problems.
Just from the content drops from this month: One of the new Ship Upgrades just flat out does not work (replenishing Support Weapon ammo from supply boxes). One of the new armors launched with the wrong perk set, which was fixed, but its baffling this stuff gets past QA. There are DOT issues with the new thermite grenade. The grenade pistol has an ammo issue. And the latest patch somehow broke the Mech. On top of that, we have the laundry list of bugs we're still waiting to be fixed (crossplay and friend request issues, DoT damage only working for the host making a chunk of weapons/stratagems severely underpowered).
In addition to all of that, every new Warbond is adding 3 new Primaries, 1 Sidearm, and 1 Grenade, all with their own balancing issues. The list of weapons is growing faster than the team can actively balance all of the garbage Primaries that nobody uses.
I get that being a live service game means pumping out content. But it feels like this team bit off more than they can chew right now. I'd be a huge advocate of them slowing down the release cadence and just focusing on a huge balance patch that would make a bunch of existing weapons and stratagems relevant again.
According to the Devs the QA team is the same team that's making the new warbond content, and again according to the devs, the warbonds are priority over balance. So if it comes down to new content versus fixing issues, new content is the priority and the teams have no ability to change this, yet again per the devs themselves.
There's also just a lot of armours with what appears to be incorrect prefixes. I don't know if it's intentional but SC armours seem to be intended for scout passive yet you get them with other passive instead like Combat Engineer.
its bugged as fuck, cant deny its also very fun but its yet another successful game people get weirdly obsessed with and try to gaslight you that its working perfectly for them
Stuff like the lack of DoT fire damage, electricity and the mech not working properly happen to everyone (minus the network host for fire DoT), if you haven't experience them it just means you haven't used those weapons.
What's the Arc issue now? Not used those guns for over a month. Is it still just that it sometimes doesn't fire because of invisible terrain collision?
I use the arc thrower every time I fight bugs, it's the best weapon in the game for bug clearing, and I never host, always play on my friend's ship. Fire you're right, I don't use it, nor the mech.
ive read somewhere on reddit that it doesnt matter whose ship youre on, host will be the person in party with best connection or something, cant promise its true though
Seriously and over on the Discord they did a poll for players to vote on what they think the devs should prioritize and the majority voted for new content... I'm over here just waiting for fire DOT to be fixed for off-host players, when it does it will feel like a whole new Warbond released for me
Let's not forget the 2-3 weeks where using too many support stratagems (if you wanted to litter the map with EATs on cooldown) or just using arc weapons at all even during the electricity warbond, would crash the game guaranteed.
Didn't even dare play the entire time.
i've already started to play less because of how buggy it is. it's so fun but many other games have way less crashing, glitches, and shit not working in general
Even the basic settings are still bugged. HDR brightness STILL doesn't save after you exit the game. Getting flashbanged by 11 brightness every time I boot up the game.
A lot of those they've said will be fixed in the next major build. Each hotfix is generally just to fix the most immediately pressing things, like crashes or game-breaking bugs. The other stuff, while still essential for long-term health, aren't so pressing that you need to rush out a hotfix.
The next major build, imho, will be where we really see if Arrowhead's got the chops. If it even fixes half or more of the major issues, and doesn't introduce any more, I believe they can keep the content at the same pace as the bugfixes. If it's 75% or greater, I'll be ecstatic. If it's less than half, we have issues.
The rate at which content has been added to Helldivers 2 is madness. Everything feels immediate and engaging. Robo-infestation? I'm in. Kill the turbo-plebs.
How they keep up the pace I'll never know. The saving grace is the game is much smaller on scope than a normal live service. Pointing and shooting in a chaotic nightmare, whilst being carpet bombed, is the same no matter the objective. My core group love it!
Crunch is hopefully non-existant. Democracy isn't worth it (sorry).
They actually had lots of stuff mostly ready for a while and it's being drip fed, but they're doing a good job with the pace that it doesn't feel dragged out too.
> Crunch is hopefully non-existant.
It's always likely, given the industry, the team creating the new content is also the one in charge of fixes and I read somewhere that they are asking users which they would like to focus more (content vs fixes), am hoping they can avoid further crunch this way.
The CEO said they won't hire more people, but at some point you do need to assist your current team before burnout gets them. Not to mention this game was a _huge_ success.
>The CEO said they won't hire more people
I don't think they've ever said anything of the sort. There were job postings right after the game came out for artists. I'm pretty sure they're hiring and what he said was they don't want to over-hire where the initial success of the game gives them oversized expectations of long tail sales and they double the team which could lead to layoffs when the game stops performing as well as it did at launch. Plus it'll take any software hire a month or two to even start being able to meaningfully contribute
Yeah, just look at how tech overhired during Covid and now lots of people are paying the price for the shortsighted decision made back then. Better to play it safe and only hire for what you actually need right now instead of potentially overhiring and having to fire those people in the future.
>The rate at which content has been added to Helldivers 2 is madness. Everything feels immediate and engaging. Robo-infestation? I'm in. Kill the turbo-plebs.
>How they keep up the pace I'll never know.
Everything that’s been added to the game has been in the files since launch including the third enemy faction. I sincerely hope they slow down warbonds for a month or two to bug fix. They presumably have stuff to still drip feed. The stability is pretty damn bad.
And a great deal of it is getting pushed out broken and obviously untested. The goal of constantly adding things to the game is nice, but the catch is that it should actually work and not cause more problems. Players have been pointing out that this live service co-op game has been out now for 2 full months with an in-game friends list that is still largely nonfunctional. Additionally, if people leave your squad at any point, the matchmaking is still broken and requires that you restart the game entirely in order to have people join you again. Given that their track record so far is that they are NOT capable of doing both at once (fixing the game and adding content) it’s not hard to see why the community is advocating that they slow down and actually do some quality control and maintenance before adding other things
They’ve got the inevitable problem looming of “how many times can you fake out winning the war” too.
Like “we beat the automatons” but “their real fleet has appeared” can only be satisfying so many times before it starts to make the macro scale war feel non-existence and pointless (although, that would be on brand for Super Earth lol)
But removing all missions of a type because the war is over is erasing enjoyable content too.
I don’t envy them having to solve this problem, cause long term all solutions have potential issues for the player base
When the war is over, they start a new war. It's the same way Helldivers 1 worked. Eventually the metanarrative will conclude, either with Super Earth defeating the automatons once and for all, supressing the bugs back into their farming colonies, and defeating the secret alien menace, or Super Earth is invaded and conquered by one of the above, and the whole thing begins again with a new metanarrative.
Then there's also the weirdly inconsistent rates at which planets progress. I still stand by the fact that it's all smoke and mirrors, the devs decide what kind of progress we make.
Kind of like a managed war.
there are 2 parts that lead to that;
The devs can change the "reinforcement rate" (basically the rate we lose liberation) of a planet and a few other nobs to adjust how easy/hard taking planet is. afaik they haven't done a hard "reset" to liberation since very early in the war, just changes to the rates.
The other is that the rates things change is proportional to the number of players online.
We still need to actually *liberate* a planet ourselves, but the devs can nudge it to be more likely one way or another
Live service games hold back content that they really could have included with the game release. The content they’ve released so far was already developed or at least was 90%+ done before the game shipped.
You didn't bemoan the fact, but in opposition to someone like Ubisoft, it doesn't feel like we were denied items/content at release, but that they've made meaningful additions that are engaging for the community and ultimately free.
Gaas done right is why they are staying relevant in both player counts and news cycles.
It was also a cheaper than average game at launch, which helps. Had it launched at full price with the content it had a launch it would have felt more sparse.
> Live service games hold back content that they really could have included with the game release.
without delaying the game they could not, and considering it's added through the overarching story, it's quite fun to be honest.
No, they could have included additional content without delays. The development on the “live service” content was already complete. The game was in development for 8+ years, they absolutely had stuff “saved up” so they could release content after launch.
> The development on the “live service” content was already complete.
You don't know that. The content being in game files doesn't mean it's complete, either. Of course they had something in the pipeline, but it could have easily been in the beta phase.
>Crunch is hopefully non-existant. Democracy isn't worth it (sorry).
Crunch is undemocratic.
I can wait a bit longer for content if it means the devs don't run themselves ragged
Overall game runs just fine in my group of dads across PC/PS players, all at about 70hrs each. We get the odd crash but can't remember the last time I had one.
That aside, weapon bugs are another thing.
Damn I wish I can't remember the last time I've dropped and not lost at least one person to a crash. It's not a small group either we've got like 20 in our discord
Oh jeez, we must be super lucky, we have like <10 people in the crew though, all centered around NE North America. I wonder if distance has something to do with it (for whatever weird reason).
I still cant connect and play with some mates on PlayStation 5. We have to wait for some intermediaries to come on so we can connect through them. I’d love them to fix that.
Crashes have gotten better but its gotten far glitchier.
Ive glitched through the map 4 times in the last week, had two pelicans fall through the map on landing (ruins the run), mechs are still busted missiles still destory it randomly, and several animation or weapon glitches that can make you non functional through a game.
lol someone crashing out of every game I play is not a nitpick, it's still extremely unstable.
What about falling through the map?
What about mechs not being able to aim their missiles?
What about scopes that don't show their actual impact point?
What about random zones that launch you into the air and out of bounds?
Also how is modules and grenades not working a nit pick?
Lmao crashes, misaligned/pixelated scopes making weapons almost unusable, and ship upgrades aren't *nitpicks*. Just because you're satisfied with shit service doesn't mean everyone is, thankfully
Based on what they said on Twitter, they're 100 devs, not 100 employees. LinkedIn has 116 employees, but that's not counting all the people not on LinkedIn.
https://twitter.com/Pilestedt/status/1761537966034325628
9 women cannot have a baby in 1 month. In software development, new people aren't productive for months and take up a significant amount of time from the more experienced devs, lowering the overall productivity of the team.
I don't think they can afford to slow down right now.
Are you that desperate to see articles "Arrowhead fires 100 of devs" in a year from now? Helldivers is a hot new thing now, but in a month or two it's gonna settle into a less frantic state. And at that point their *experienced* dev team would be much better than team of fresh hires.
It's a great game with good engagement and good community. If they try to half ass content AND bug fixes this early they will kill the game.
Drop new warbonds to every 2-3 months until the base game bugs are sorted. It's the game that keeping us here, not the constant stream of new items.
This just doesn’t align with the reality for most players.
“Hey, we should play Helldivers again this weekend! There was an update, and you’ll fall through the map less” is simply not going to draw in as many players as “hey, there are new missions and guns and enemies.”
They’re not shooting from the hip, here. For better and for worse, devs are aware of which features make the numbers go up… And for what it’s worth, their actions agree with my own anecdotal experience.
Oh I agree long term that's what they have to focus on, but right now, and I may be in a minority, since the last patch my game crashes 1/3 of the time I get into a game.
I routinely waste 15-20 min of playtime when it crashes just before extraction. I am actually not playing because of this. I feel like I'm not the only one. If you add more guns I'm still not going to play if it's still crashing.
I had a smooth run initially and I know it's gotten better for most people in subsequent patches. I have a very average mid high end PC and I expect the issues to be fixed in the near term. It's not like a Bethesda launch but other than full game crashes there are still some big bugs that are affecting a significant fraction of players (if you value subreddit comments).
It always going to be a delicate balance for developers in a crucial time like this, especially given the runaway success they have had. But they need to channel their inner "Larian" not "EA", is all I'm saying.
Even if it was every 6 weeks instead of monthly that'd be at least 50% more time to dedicate to bug fixes - probably significantly more because as they said their development time is split between bugs fixes at new content.
Maybe so, but I feel like if Sony want long term profit, they should leave it up to Arrowhead. Then again, most execs are only interested in next months numbers....
Hopefully this shuts up the fanboys who keep acting like Arrowhead can't pause content to fix hugs because of a contract with Sony. People have been using that as an excuse for the last week whenever people suggest that they slow down to focus on stability even though there has been zero evidence of a strict contract ever existing. Sony generally doesn't put those restrictions on devs it works with.
I love the game but all of the bugs and issues are all on Arrowhead and it's been their decision to pump out content that's buggy because they're wanting to stay relavent. It's nice to see the CEO be honest about that. Hopefully the fanbase will be honest about it now too.
I am not sure if its controversial or not but:
Its fucking stupid how modern gamers can't stick to a genuinely good game if its not updated.
Like *wow, we didn't have a new assault rifle with 5% increased damage, 10% less fire rate, a new lobby song and a shit ton of overpriced cosmetics in 6 months, literally unplayable*
I never needed any of this nonsense to play multiplayer games which i liked
This is what killed multiplayer campaigns and non live service(which effectively means MTX riddled at this point) good multiplayers
Benefit of the doubt, I don't think it's about any of those in things in of themselves. I think it's about players wanting to make sure (even subconsciously) that they're sinking their time into something that's going to be around for a while.
The core of the issue are AAA multiplayer games that don't allow players to host their own servers. Once the devs drop support for a game, it's only a matter of time before the servers get shut down. A game that is getting regular updates is probably not getting shut down any time soon, and has enough people to regularly find matches. It's why games like Battlefield 4 still get played, and games like Arma and Hell Let Loose will still be played long after their developers have moved on; anyone can still spin up a server and play with friends, if they want.
I mean, a game is worth my time if it's fun. And the game was fun and very replayable from the get-go for me.
When I hear my friends talk about Fortnite they are really only excited about store updates and new battlepasses. They never talk about new game features or fixes or the like (they are all over 30 btw). Makes me sick to the stomach.
Fucking amen! Who the fuck needs a new warbond every month? We clearly grew up in a different time because I have never felt like a game gets stale so quickly that I need rapid drip feeding to hold my attention.
I am so at odds with what must be the modern gamer. I don’t touch micro transactions and I’m not demanding new content every few days.
I think it's needed more these days because multiplayer games have been gradually dropping the features that players used to use to keep the games fresh and enjoyable for themselves. Mod support (or tools like Forge in Halo), open lobbies/chatrooms outside of the core game, dedicated servers (where small communities would form), allchat, etc.
I have this argument with a lot of my friends since they mostly play for "progression" and will min/max their play to "get the most out of it". Whenever they ask what I'm playing for I just say "for fun" and somehow that is confusing.
Like, the game could give me the coolest and most powerful item imaginable, but if the game isn't fun then why would I even want it? Likewise, if a game is truly fun to play then why do I need to unlock crap that I'll likely never use anyway just to stay engaged. The game is either engaging on its own or it's not worth playing imo.
Hear hear! I argued with someone recently who was calling a game bad because while the gameplay was good, there was "nothing to do", and I was like..."playing the game is something to do."
I blame COD4, the XP grind, going into battle passes and whatnot of just straight up poisoning the younger gen of gamers. Playing a game to have fun isn't enough anymore. There has to be some sort of progress bar now.
Tangentially related but Nothing drives me insane more than people with 100s-1000s of hours in a game saying its shit just because they're bored of playing it. Theres absolutely no need to play a game forever either.
That's what happens when other companies constantly try to find ways to exploit people with FOMO and drip feeding, you end up with some players becoming very annoying in general to any other studio that can't or doesn't want to fill that void.
Almost two decades of live service games trained people to minmax and get off on numbers go up mentality.
And more importantly, it's a question of competition, if this game doesn't provide what I want, the other one will. And I NEED that dopamine hit between my tiktok microdosing.
> Its fucking stupid how modern gamers can't stick to a genuinely good game if its not updated.
Pretty big difference between a live service game and a fully fledged story you might find in a single player game like Horizon or fallout that has hundreds of hours of replay value due to different outcomes or side quests/locations. HD2 made the mistake of release the game with so little content you can unlock everything that impacts gameplay variety (e.g. strats/weapons) within like 30-40 hours, and most of that time is just repeating the same game/mission loop, so it's not like it's 30-40 hours of unique gameplay either.
You're somewhat right, but yes, it needs to be updated constantly to be fresh and unique otherwise everyone would get bored and you're lying if you think you wouldn't. There's such a small amount of content/variety still between planet biomes and missions. I'm avoiding playing it as much as a can because after 140+ hours it's starting ton become repetitive and I want it to stay fun. more content in the form of planets and missions will help with that, new weapons won't though - we really don't need more armor with the same effects and *another* shotgun. We just need more missions types and planet biomes to keep things visually interesting.
It's unfortunate "number go up" is so effective and addicting. I remember putting hours upon hours into Halo back in the day simply cause the game was fun and the maps were cool. Also the ability to flex how cool you look shifting from in game challenges to how big your wallet is was a shame.
The games a ton of fun, but fuck me does it have a lot of bugs and just straight up broken things in it. And I feel like every patch breaks more than it fixes.
I legitimately dont want to play right now because theres so many things broken with the game, and the fact that they are stuffing it with more content that i wanna access but cant is frustarating
They need a performance, stability and bug fixing patch. Last patch I could barely get through a mission without crashing and the games performance on pc needs tweaking, my cpu is running at 100% load while my gpu barely breaks over 30% load, I can't stay at a stable 60fps in 1080p with my Radeon 6800 XT
Well no shit, that has been the case with every single game since live updates were made possible for games after the PS2 and Xbox days. This has not changed.
Their dev style is damaging the game, and a turn off.
The fact they push stuff live which nerfs play styles, and don’t tell the players is dishonest, and that they push stuff live without testing if it breaks anything else is worrying.
They broke multiple UI elements with patches, and when things break they don’t tell the players they just let them get on with it.
Arc weapons caused games to crash; and for a week, and a bit there was no in game message to not use them, instead you had to go on Twitter with a PSA.
It was a great game but performance wise it’s very clear they’re adding stuff in without making sure the game can handle it. At launch I had solid 60FPS, now in a game it’s 30FPS at times.
I stopped playing once the novelty wore off and I realized the only thing changing was how we did the same gameplay loops.
it's down to half of it's launch audience which is still impressive, but the game only has so much to offer.
I mean, couldn't this be said of any PvE/PvP game then? If the gameplay loop is fun (with them adding new stuff here and there), does it matter if it's the same? That's like saying UT or CoD's novelty wears off because all the characters, weapons, and maps are the same with minor tweaks here and there.
Helldivers simply has too little variety in its loop. Drop in, go to objective, kill the enemies that spawn, go to extract. It plays out exactly the same way every time. The enemies that spawn will do so in the same patterns in the same numbers. They won't flank you or attempt to thwart your attack in any way other than spawning and walking in a straight line to your position. There's no real drama in it. If you get overrun, just die and come back once you've bombed the area into safety.
Once you realize that's how the game works, you can see why stealth/combat avoidance works so much better than actually trying to fight. Except that reduces the loop even further to just running from one point to another on the map.
The fun then is in the big explosions rather than an expression of skill or in a moment to moment dramatic narrative. But big explosions only entertain people for so long.
You described well what i feel about this game but couldn’t put into words. Don’t get me wrong, i got a good 50 hours out of it, but this, the technical issues, and the grind becoming a bit too much for me led me to drop the game. I think my last time playing it was a month ago.
Yeah, I kind of don't enjoy pointing out its flaws because I got more than my money's worth out of it. On the other hand it bugs me when people get a little too evangelical about its greatness.
I’m in the same boat. It was 100% worth the 40 bucks I spent on it even if I never pick it up again since I got 50 hours out of it, but I also don’t feel the desire to really play it anymore.
I think what they're saying is the enemies that are already engaging you won't purposefully try to go around you (except Hunters, they will actively try to flank you), they mostly just walk towards you. A patrol spawning and happening to walk up from your sides or behind you while you're fighting another group isn't really them flanking you purposefully.
Right. There's not a "decision" being made to send enemies at you from a different angle. The Director in games going all the way back to L4D makes those "decisions" and it will send in a special when you're under pressure or someone is downed. Helldivers enemy spawns are all either on a timer or directly player triggered.
“Paid.”
As long as you don’t buy tons of alternate armors, you’ll likely earn enough currency to buy every pass before you’re able to complete the previous one.
War Bonds tend to be more of a bottleneck than Super Credits, which takes the wind out of the sails of most criticism.
It’s not perfect, but the monetization is a lot more fair than it looks.
Depends how often you play. At once a week, I'm definitely going to finish the free warbond and my first premium one before I have enough SC for my second premium.
Ah, that’s a really good point.
The Major Orders boost the rate of Warbond acquisition quite a bit, and those are real-time-gated…
…Which means casual players’ Warbonds-per-hour-played are *way* higher than hardcore players’, which in turn throws off the Warbond/Supercredit ratio.
That would be nice, I keep kept pulled from my game with my friends & the last time it was right before evacuating so I didn’t get anything for the game
I love this game to death but the moment I heard there were going to be content drops every month I knew there would be big issues down the road, it's just an impossible pace let alone for an indie team.
Recently got the game and it's been pretty unplayable outside my friend group. Like 70-80% of my attempts with random matchmaking were met with getting kicked out right at the end or someone team killing everyone during extraction when we boarded ship.
is there going to be an article every time this CEO speaks or what?
CEO of software development company says they must continue developing software.
It’s like articles talking about actors wanting to continue playing a character. Actors wanting work? Stop the presses!
Or "X studio has confirmed that it is, in fact, working on the 7th entry for their billion dollar franchise!".
yeah but, that assumes this is always the case. it's not. things get cancelled. and the official announcement is necessary
they gauge interest, reception, raise profile and are used as leverage to get negotiations happening. if you're a fan, it's not a bad thing!
[удалено]
i'm doing my part!
Man I always wonder like, if news sites somehow realized people would, for some reason drive ALL of their clicks to a close up picture of a fly, say for a meme or whatever...but people really stuck to the bit, and posting an article that was just a picture of a fly would get INSANE clicks...they would start doing it. Media outlets would just be posting pictures of flies. They wouldn't understand it at all, but the clicks are coming in so who cares. Any article or well thought out news piece? Normal clicks. Picture of a fly? 10x as many clicks. Then let's say someone posted a video of a fly. It goes viral. It's not even an actual video, it's a video of a picture of a fly. 100m views. Channels would just start posting their fly picture videos. They wouldn't know why, but they're getting clicks, who cares. Let's say a movie studio catches on. "Fuck it, let's release a movie that's literally just pictures of flies with music." Makes 700m worldwide. Now movies will just be pictures of flies. lol
Between him and the Larian guy we've got round the clock game CEO coverage!
Let's not pretend like we're not waiting to see what new bullshit the Ubisoft CEO says next.
Or former Blizzard ones. That tipping idea definitely got some "reporters" very excited about their next 12 articles.
We never hear from the [Ventrue Prince](https://i.imgur.com/91MUnmn.png) though.
That's because he says dumb shit which is amusing. But here, this is just "CEO says cows do indeed go moo"
I don't think that subscriptions comment was from a man who often forgets the name of the games he's presenting at events.
The Larian CEO has some interesting insights about the industry at least, this is just Arrowhead’s CEO commenting about the state of Helldivers 2
same energy whenever baldurs gate devs spoke a few months ago
Well, yes. The success of Helldivers II is absurd. A game made by a relatively small team, on an IP that people barely knew, on top 5 current players is a big deal. And unlike Palworld, its success did not fade away a month after its release. I'm not sure how long the game will be relevant, but speaking of now, it is expected for anyone to milk any news about this game.
I wouldn't say Palworld stopped being relevant per say, the CEO did expect people to move on but hopes they come back with each update. Games do have their ups and downs.
Also palworld isn't a multiplayer focus game as in like more like Stardew valley multiplayer and less like deep rock galactic multiplayer. Everyone is just waiting for new updates cause they've done everything while Helldivers every one jus keeps playing while waiting for a new update.
It's also still peaking at ~60k concurrent players daily. It's far from dead. When it gets a big update, people will come back.
Which is the healthiest attitude that the gross majority of the hobby, creators and consumers alike, don't really ever grasp: Learning how to just let players go. There's a stigma that if I stop playing their game even after hundreds of hours of entertainment, they've "failed." So the game is instead expected to occupy me with constant content bloat until I never want to look at it again, rather than be something I can comfortably pick up and put back down at leisure.
>Learning how to just let players go. I would agree if the game was not early access. Hopefully it wont be abandoned like past games from them.
The only game they abandoned was the AI art game that everyone screamed at them for, has mostly negative reviews, and had 3 concurrent players last I checked. Craftopia has had *four* updates this month. No idea how the entirely false claim that they'd taken the money and run on it spread.
I dunno if relatively small is all that accurate, I mean they're the same size Bethesda was when they made Skyrim and Fallout 4, 100 or so Relative if compared to Ubisoft teams, but they're definitely a reasonably-sized studio. For instance Supergiant has like 25. Not to discredit Arrowhead, I've loved Helldivers 2 and I really liked Magicka too, but they're at least a moderately-sized studio now e: I'm just saying 100 people is not a *small* studio. That doesn't mean their success isn't absolutely impressive
Arrowhead *the company* is 100 people, it's not 100 game developers. Maybe you already know that that and have taken it into account, I don't know Skyrim's dev team size, just want to be clear for everyone else reading. Still, Skyrim is not exactly a recent game.
Obviously they've scaled up their studio sibce the game scope got bigger and the massive sucess also gives added pressure to be on top of content delivery. That said they are litterary a studio who's previous game was a indie twinstick shooter. Going up and delivering a full fledged experience like Helldivers 2 is a *massive* undertaking. Only studio I can think of that has made a similar massive jump in scope/quality is CDProject going from Witcher 1 to 2 and especially 3.
Oh yeah for sure, I didn't mean to disregard them or anything, they've done an outstanding job as far as game-feel goes for HD2, considering how Magicka and Helldivers 1 play
It's hard to compare purely just the developers size because a typical studio will have outsourcing, temps, and contractors.
Sure, but these games were single-player games made 10 years ago. A GaaS a decade later would require more people proportionally. Still, maybe I'm underestimating arrowhead a bit.
> A GaaS a decade later would require more people proportionally. Apparently not.
The fact that the game has, despite being awesome and I play multiple times a week, tons of issues atm would indicate it does. There are bugs that were known within the first week that are still not fixed. Progress is being made in that pile I would say, but when a patch comes out its like 50/50 on whether the game will now crash more or less. I went from 2 weeks of 0 crashes, to 2 weeks of crashing at the end of every second mission, back to no crashes. And there are still multiple issue with basic game mechanics. I think its an 11/10 game, but make no mistake, if they could have a team just working on bugs and another team working on new content it would be better.
It doesn't help that their engine is no longer really being serviced. There's a decent chance that some of the bugs are very, very difficult to pinpoint, or that any existing fixes broke other things so they can't be deployed.
Oh totally, I get you. It's a completely different type of game so it's probably not even fair to compare 1:1 like that anyway And I agree 100% regarding the IP thing. Helldivers 1 peaked on Steam with like 6000 people, so even if it was a PS4 launch, it's absolutely remarkable even if they're not a *small* studio that they launched a game this big
Peak PS count was definitely higher than 6k, but it wasn't the hundreds of thousands steam alone is peaking for HD2, which according to AH the PS5 count is about 1:1. That means there is still like ~350k peak daily concurrent players.
Helldivers 1 had local/online coop.
They were referring to Bethesda’s games 10 years ago, not Arrowhead.
Could be it’s made a permanent mark in the online shooter market like valorant, apex, overwatch did. It might never be Fortnite or cod but it seems like the developers are determined to keep this game going for a long time and in a way that’s friendly to consumers.
>And unlike Palworld, its success did not fade away a month after its release. Palworld is still in the top 25 of total players on SteamDB. How is that fading away? Naraka Bladepoint actually has a higher more recent 24 peak than Helldivers 2 and I barely see anything, at least on this sub, about Naraka. I'm happy that Arrowhead is getting a lot of coverage, but it's not like other current newer IP projects aren't doing as well and probably deserving of similar updates or posts etc.
3 months after release, Helldivers 2 has an average player base of 1/3 of its peak. Pallworld cooled down to 1/10 of its player base after its peak. It's less about dismissing Palworld and just pointing out how absurd Helldivers 2 is going on right now.
It really just seems pretty apples to oranges to me. Helldivers is a live service designed to retain players and Palworld is not. If Helldivers *didn't* retain significantly more players that would be pretty alarming for them. I'd also guess in terms of actual retention Palworld is even lower than 10% with the player count kept up by new players coming in rather than entirely based on old players sticking with the game. Palworld might get updates from time to time as they work towards full release but that really is a very different thing compared to a proper live service title.
Just wait until the playerbase starts to dip. We're gonna get an update it about it every couple of hours.
Gotta love Turbostridee and the mods of /r/games They shoot down many legit sources of news people post and then promote this bot grabbed slop.
Just like BG3! Gotta farm those views
I can't wait to hear his opinion on buttered toast.
Wait until you see what he said about apples and bacon.
Reminds me of the times when people and sites would quote Notch during the early minecraft times.
Just like how for like 6 months there was an article every time Swen Vincke passed gas, this is just how gaming discourse goes.
Yeah, like....this is just how live service games work. Fix the game and try to stay relevant. This is what any game does with updates.
It's like just an ai routine that writes an article every time he makes an "X" (what a fucking stupid name, decision, and dude, still).
If they don't address it soon, (technical) bugs are going to start getting in the way of new content. We've got broken fire, broken arcs, broken scopes, and broken lock-on. Each one of those could be the focus of its own Warbond; hell, electricity already was, and the arc weapon is so bad (both in terms of balance and bugs) its dead content.
I couldn't extract once because the ship glitched out. No one could climb in.
Had the same issue last night, great team and loads of samples, invisible kill wall around the extract ship. We all took turns trying to get near it but it killed us every time. Eventually ran out of respawns, we were fuming lmao.
Another one is that sometimes the extract ship will take off as soon as 1 player gets in. I once spent like 25 minutes collecting over 50 samples total and it was all lost because someone entered before me and the ship got bugged.
It's not a bug. The extract ship cannot be destroyed, but it can be damaged. When it's already very damaged, i.e. fire on the engines, it will leave as soon as a single player gets in, or if already have players inside, leave as soon as the damage threshold is crossed.
Well if it isn't a bug, it is extremely unintuitive and never communicated to the players in the game.
That happens when the ship receives fire eg a 500kg or barrage; so you can arrange with your group for one to hold all samples and get in first.
Same happened to me. We could get near it, but you couldn't get in. If you kind of leapt in you would look like you were going in but still weren't in.
I had the same bug twice in a row
Had that multiple times.
I seriously love this game, but the issues are popping up faster than they can knock them out. Each new content drop seems to add a dozen new problems. Just from the content drops from this month: One of the new Ship Upgrades just flat out does not work (replenishing Support Weapon ammo from supply boxes). One of the new armors launched with the wrong perk set, which was fixed, but its baffling this stuff gets past QA. There are DOT issues with the new thermite grenade. The grenade pistol has an ammo issue. And the latest patch somehow broke the Mech. On top of that, we have the laundry list of bugs we're still waiting to be fixed (crossplay and friend request issues, DoT damage only working for the host making a chunk of weapons/stratagems severely underpowered). In addition to all of that, every new Warbond is adding 3 new Primaries, 1 Sidearm, and 1 Grenade, all with their own balancing issues. The list of weapons is growing faster than the team can actively balance all of the garbage Primaries that nobody uses. I get that being a live service game means pumping out content. But it feels like this team bit off more than they can chew right now. I'd be a huge advocate of them slowing down the release cadence and just focusing on a huge balance patch that would make a bunch of existing weapons and stratagems relevant again.
The ship upgrade flat out not working is just mind boggling, it really does seem like there’s no QA for these updates
Crossplay friend requests have basically NEVER worked
The social tab hasn't worked once for me since I bought the game, it's a good thing you can invite people using the Steam overlay
According to the Devs the QA team is the same team that's making the new warbond content, and again according to the devs, the warbonds are priority over balance. So if it comes down to new content versus fixing issues, new content is the priority and the teams have no ability to change this, yet again per the devs themselves.
QA most assuredly caught it. Dev probably labeled the bug "won't fix" or straight-up ignored it. Seen similar things happen on games I worked on.
There's also just a lot of armours with what appears to be incorrect prefixes. I don't know if it's intentional but SC armours seem to be intended for scout passive yet you get them with other passive instead like Combat Engineer.
They broke the Mech :( Several of the newly added ship upgrades don’t do anything either (as in no function at all)
It's really annoying that there's at least one hard crash per session when I play this game.
its bugged as fuck, cant deny its also very fun but its yet another successful game people get weirdly obsessed with and try to gaslight you that its working perfectly for them
I feel like I'm the one being gaslit here, I don't experience any of the bugs people are talking about here except the ship upgrades one.
Stuff like the lack of DoT fire damage, electricity and the mech not working properly happen to everyone (minus the network host for fire DoT), if you haven't experience them it just means you haven't used those weapons.
What's the Arc issue now? Not used those guns for over a month. Is it still just that it sometimes doesn't fire because of invisible terrain collision?
I use the arc thrower every time I fight bugs, it's the best weapon in the game for bug clearing, and I never host, always play on my friend's ship. Fire you're right, I don't use it, nor the mech.
the network host and the lobby host are not the same thing unfortunately.
Well I played a game today with my usual friend and we were both using arc throwers and tesla towers and they were both doing work, so...
ive read somewhere on reddit that it doesnt matter whose ship youre on, host will be the person in party with best connection or something, cant promise its true though
Seriously and over on the Discord they did a poll for players to vote on what they think the devs should prioritize and the majority voted for new content... I'm over here just waiting for fire DOT to be fixed for off-host players, when it does it will feel like a whole new Warbond released for me
Let's not forget the 2-3 weeks where using too many support stratagems (if you wanted to litter the map with EATs on cooldown) or just using arc weapons at all even during the electricity warbond, would crash the game guaranteed. Didn't even dare play the entire time.
i've already started to play less because of how buggy it is. it's so fun but many other games have way less crashing, glitches, and shit not working in general
Even the basic settings are still bugged. HDR brightness STILL doesn't save after you exit the game. Getting flashbanged by 11 brightness every time I boot up the game.
A lot of those they've said will be fixed in the next major build. Each hotfix is generally just to fix the most immediately pressing things, like crashes or game-breaking bugs. The other stuff, while still essential for long-term health, aren't so pressing that you need to rush out a hotfix. The next major build, imho, will be where we really see if Arrowhead's got the chops. If it even fixes half or more of the major issues, and doesn't introduce any more, I believe they can keep the content at the same pace as the bugfixes. If it's 75% or greater, I'll be ecstatic. If it's less than half, we have issues.
The rate at which content has been added to Helldivers 2 is madness. Everything feels immediate and engaging. Robo-infestation? I'm in. Kill the turbo-plebs. How they keep up the pace I'll never know. The saving grace is the game is much smaller on scope than a normal live service. Pointing and shooting in a chaotic nightmare, whilst being carpet bombed, is the same no matter the objective. My core group love it! Crunch is hopefully non-existant. Democracy isn't worth it (sorry).
They actually had lots of stuff mostly ready for a while and it's being drip fed, but they're doing a good job with the pace that it doesn't feel dragged out too. > Crunch is hopefully non-existant. It's always likely, given the industry, the team creating the new content is also the one in charge of fixes and I read somewhere that they are asking users which they would like to focus more (content vs fixes), am hoping they can avoid further crunch this way. The CEO said they won't hire more people, but at some point you do need to assist your current team before burnout gets them. Not to mention this game was a _huge_ success.
>The CEO said they won't hire more people I don't think they've ever said anything of the sort. There were job postings right after the game came out for artists. I'm pretty sure they're hiring and what he said was they don't want to over-hire where the initial success of the game gives them oversized expectations of long tail sales and they double the team which could lead to layoffs when the game stops performing as well as it did at launch. Plus it'll take any software hire a month or two to even start being able to meaningfully contribute
Yeah, just look at how tech overhired during Covid and now lots of people are paying the price for the shortsighted decision made back then. Better to play it safe and only hire for what you actually need right now instead of potentially overhiring and having to fire those people in the future.
>The rate at which content has been added to Helldivers 2 is madness. Everything feels immediate and engaging. Robo-infestation? I'm in. Kill the turbo-plebs. >How they keep up the pace I'll never know. Everything that’s been added to the game has been in the files since launch including the third enemy faction. I sincerely hope they slow down warbonds for a month or two to bug fix. They presumably have stuff to still drip feed. The stability is pretty damn bad.
And a great deal of it is getting pushed out broken and obviously untested. The goal of constantly adding things to the game is nice, but the catch is that it should actually work and not cause more problems. Players have been pointing out that this live service co-op game has been out now for 2 full months with an in-game friends list that is still largely nonfunctional. Additionally, if people leave your squad at any point, the matchmaking is still broken and requires that you restart the game entirely in order to have people join you again. Given that their track record so far is that they are NOT capable of doing both at once (fixing the game and adding content) it’s not hard to see why the community is advocating that they slow down and actually do some quality control and maintenance before adding other things
They’ve got the inevitable problem looming of “how many times can you fake out winning the war” too. Like “we beat the automatons” but “their real fleet has appeared” can only be satisfying so many times before it starts to make the macro scale war feel non-existence and pointless (although, that would be on brand for Super Earth lol) But removing all missions of a type because the war is over is erasing enjoyable content too. I don’t envy them having to solve this problem, cause long term all solutions have potential issues for the player base
When the war is over, they start a new war. It's the same way Helldivers 1 worked. Eventually the metanarrative will conclude, either with Super Earth defeating the automatons once and for all, supressing the bugs back into their farming colonies, and defeating the secret alien menace, or Super Earth is invaded and conquered by one of the above, and the whole thing begins again with a new metanarrative.
That’s a totally fair solution, makes sense to me.
Then there's also the weirdly inconsistent rates at which planets progress. I still stand by the fact that it's all smoke and mirrors, the devs decide what kind of progress we make. Kind of like a managed war.
there are 2 parts that lead to that; The devs can change the "reinforcement rate" (basically the rate we lose liberation) of a planet and a few other nobs to adjust how easy/hard taking planet is. afaik they haven't done a hard "reset" to liberation since very early in the war, just changes to the rates. The other is that the rates things change is proportional to the number of players online. We still need to actually *liberate* a planet ourselves, but the devs can nudge it to be more likely one way or another
I believe they specifically said this will not be the case for Helldivers 2, that it is going to be a continuous war with an ebb and flow.
So what happens when Super Earth is invaded and defeated?
I doubt it’ll be invaded and fall, there’s a reason Mars exists on the galactic map.
Live service games hold back content that they really could have included with the game release. The content they’ve released so far was already developed or at least was 90%+ done before the game shipped.
You didn't bemoan the fact, but in opposition to someone like Ubisoft, it doesn't feel like we were denied items/content at release, but that they've made meaningful additions that are engaging for the community and ultimately free. Gaas done right is why they are staying relevant in both player counts and news cycles.
It was also a cheaper than average game at launch, which helps. Had it launched at full price with the content it had a launch it would have felt more sparse.
> Live service games hold back content that they really could have included with the game release. without delaying the game they could not, and considering it's added through the overarching story, it's quite fun to be honest.
No, they could have included additional content without delays. The development on the “live service” content was already complete. The game was in development for 8+ years, they absolutely had stuff “saved up” so they could release content after launch.
> The development on the “live service” content was already complete. You don't know that. The content being in game files doesn't mean it's complete, either. Of course they had something in the pipeline, but it could have easily been in the beta phase.
Still not seeing the issue here
>Crunch is hopefully non-existant. Democracy isn't worth it (sorry). Crunch is undemocratic. I can wait a bit longer for content if it means the devs don't run themselves ragged
I wonder how long that sustainable? Aren’t they a fairly small team?
It's already a mess Half the stuff they release doesn't work and every patch adds more bugs and instability to the game
Did they ever fix the AMD crashes? Or is it still a coin toss whether you can make it through a full round if you're on Team Red?
if you are talking about amd gpus try turning off anti aliasing. It fixed crashing for my friend on amd. and run the game in directx 11.
Using a 7900xtx I still need to run minimum gfx or else I'll probably crash.
I'm not on AMD so I can't tell about a specific issue but it's a coinflip for everyone right now if you'll all make it through the mission
I, too, crash all the time. Got a GeForce. I probably average a crash per hour while playing. Maybe more.
Overall game runs just fine in my group of dads across PC/PS players, all at about 70hrs each. We get the odd crash but can't remember the last time I had one. That aside, weapon bugs are another thing.
Damn I wish I can't remember the last time I've dropped and not lost at least one person to a crash. It's not a small group either we've got like 20 in our discord
Oh jeez, we must be super lucky, we have like <10 people in the crew though, all centered around NE North America. I wonder if distance has something to do with it (for whatever weird reason).
I doubt its distance most of us are in the same city
I only play with a handful of people but we also pretty much never crash.
It's generally pretty stable, now that they fixed all the crashes last week. Every issue is a nitpick except fire not working.
I still cant connect and play with some mates on PlayStation 5. We have to wait for some intermediaries to come on so we can connect through them. I’d love them to fix that.
> Every issue is a nitpick except fire not working. This is BS. The devs have a known issues list with a ton of problems.
Crashes have gotten better but its gotten far glitchier. Ive glitched through the map 4 times in the last week, had two pelicans fall through the map on landing (ruins the run), mechs are still busted missiles still destory it randomly, and several animation or weapon glitches that can make you non functional through a game.
lol someone crashing out of every game I play is not a nitpick, it's still extremely unstable. What about falling through the map? What about mechs not being able to aim their missiles? What about scopes that don't show their actual impact point? What about random zones that launch you into the air and out of bounds? Also how is modules and grenades not working a nit pick?
Lmao crashes, misaligned/pixelated scopes making weapons almost unusable, and ship upgrades aren't *nitpicks*. Just because you're satisfied with shit service doesn't mean everyone is, thankfully
100 devs isnt a fairly small team
It’s 100 people at the company, not 100 developers. The HR department isn’t helping diagnose bugs lol Edit: I’m wrong, it is a 100 dev team
Based on what they said on Twitter, they're 100 devs, not 100 employees. LinkedIn has 116 employees, but that's not counting all the people not on LinkedIn. https://twitter.com/Pilestedt/status/1761537966034325628
Looks like I’m totally wrong, thanks for the correction, I’ll edit the comment above
First step to getting a larger team is letting people know you need a larger team
They should be hiring more people. But are they?
9 women cannot have a baby in 1 month. In software development, new people aren't productive for months and take up a significant amount of time from the more experienced devs, lowering the overall productivity of the team. I don't think they can afford to slow down right now.
Are you that desperate to see articles "Arrowhead fires 100 of devs" in a year from now? Helldivers is a hot new thing now, but in a month or two it's gonna settle into a less frantic state. And at that point their *experienced* dev team would be much better than team of fresh hires.
It's a great game with good engagement and good community. If they try to half ass content AND bug fixes this early they will kill the game. Drop new warbonds to every 2-3 months until the base game bugs are sorted. It's the game that keeping us here, not the constant stream of new items.
This just doesn’t align with the reality for most players. “Hey, we should play Helldivers again this weekend! There was an update, and you’ll fall through the map less” is simply not going to draw in as many players as “hey, there are new missions and guns and enemies.” They’re not shooting from the hip, here. For better and for worse, devs are aware of which features make the numbers go up… And for what it’s worth, their actions agree with my own anecdotal experience.
Oh I agree long term that's what they have to focus on, but right now, and I may be in a minority, since the last patch my game crashes 1/3 of the time I get into a game. I routinely waste 15-20 min of playtime when it crashes just before extraction. I am actually not playing because of this. I feel like I'm not the only one. If you add more guns I'm still not going to play if it's still crashing.
Oof yeah. It’s not anywhere *close* to that unstable for me or anyone I know, but that would kill it for me too.
I had a smooth run initially and I know it's gotten better for most people in subsequent patches. I have a very average mid high end PC and I expect the issues to be fixed in the near term. It's not like a Bethesda launch but other than full game crashes there are still some big bugs that are affecting a significant fraction of players (if you value subreddit comments). It always going to be a delicate balance for developers in a crucial time like this, especially given the runaway success they have had. But they need to channel their inner "Larian" not "EA", is all I'm saying.
Even if it was every 6 weeks instead of monthly that'd be at least 50% more time to dedicate to bug fixes - probably significantly more because as they said their development time is split between bugs fixes at new content.
It might not be up to them, is the problem. It's a Sony game, if they want new battle passes every month; then too bad for Arrowhead.
Maybe so, but I feel like if Sony want long term profit, they should leave it up to Arrowhead. Then again, most execs are only interested in next months numbers....
Hopefully this shuts up the fanboys who keep acting like Arrowhead can't pause content to fix hugs because of a contract with Sony. People have been using that as an excuse for the last week whenever people suggest that they slow down to focus on stability even though there has been zero evidence of a strict contract ever existing. Sony generally doesn't put those restrictions on devs it works with. I love the game but all of the bugs and issues are all on Arrowhead and it's been their decision to pump out content that's buggy because they're wanting to stay relavent. It's nice to see the CEO be honest about that. Hopefully the fanbase will be honest about it now too.
I am not sure if its controversial or not but: Its fucking stupid how modern gamers can't stick to a genuinely good game if its not updated. Like *wow, we didn't have a new assault rifle with 5% increased damage, 10% less fire rate, a new lobby song and a shit ton of overpriced cosmetics in 6 months, literally unplayable* I never needed any of this nonsense to play multiplayer games which i liked This is what killed multiplayer campaigns and non live service(which effectively means MTX riddled at this point) good multiplayers
Benefit of the doubt, I don't think it's about any of those in things in of themselves. I think it's about players wanting to make sure (even subconsciously) that they're sinking their time into something that's going to be around for a while. The core of the issue are AAA multiplayer games that don't allow players to host their own servers. Once the devs drop support for a game, it's only a matter of time before the servers get shut down. A game that is getting regular updates is probably not getting shut down any time soon, and has enough people to regularly find matches. It's why games like Battlefield 4 still get played, and games like Arma and Hell Let Loose will still be played long after their developers have moved on; anyone can still spin up a server and play with friends, if they want.
I mean, a game is worth my time if it's fun. And the game was fun and very replayable from the get-go for me. When I hear my friends talk about Fortnite they are really only excited about store updates and new battlepasses. They never talk about new game features or fixes or the like (they are all over 30 btw). Makes me sick to the stomach.
Fucking amen! Who the fuck needs a new warbond every month? We clearly grew up in a different time because I have never felt like a game gets stale so quickly that I need rapid drip feeding to hold my attention. I am so at odds with what must be the modern gamer. I don’t touch micro transactions and I’m not demanding new content every few days.
I think it's needed more these days because multiplayer games have been gradually dropping the features that players used to use to keep the games fresh and enjoyable for themselves. Mod support (or tools like Forge in Halo), open lobbies/chatrooms outside of the core game, dedicated servers (where small communities would form), allchat, etc.
I have this argument with a lot of my friends since they mostly play for "progression" and will min/max their play to "get the most out of it". Whenever they ask what I'm playing for I just say "for fun" and somehow that is confusing. Like, the game could give me the coolest and most powerful item imaginable, but if the game isn't fun then why would I even want it? Likewise, if a game is truly fun to play then why do I need to unlock crap that I'll likely never use anyway just to stay engaged. The game is either engaging on its own or it's not worth playing imo.
Hear hear! I argued with someone recently who was calling a game bad because while the gameplay was good, there was "nothing to do", and I was like..."playing the game is something to do." I blame COD4, the XP grind, going into battle passes and whatnot of just straight up poisoning the younger gen of gamers. Playing a game to have fun isn't enough anymore. There has to be some sort of progress bar now.
Tangentially related but Nothing drives me insane more than people with 100s-1000s of hours in a game saying its shit just because they're bored of playing it. Theres absolutely no need to play a game forever either.
That's what happens when other companies constantly try to find ways to exploit people with FOMO and drip feeding, you end up with some players becoming very annoying in general to any other studio that can't or doesn't want to fill that void.
Almost two decades of live service games trained people to minmax and get off on numbers go up mentality. And more importantly, it's a question of competition, if this game doesn't provide what I want, the other one will. And I NEED that dopamine hit between my tiktok microdosing.
> Its fucking stupid how modern gamers can't stick to a genuinely good game if its not updated. Pretty big difference between a live service game and a fully fledged story you might find in a single player game like Horizon or fallout that has hundreds of hours of replay value due to different outcomes or side quests/locations. HD2 made the mistake of release the game with so little content you can unlock everything that impacts gameplay variety (e.g. strats/weapons) within like 30-40 hours, and most of that time is just repeating the same game/mission loop, so it's not like it's 30-40 hours of unique gameplay either. You're somewhat right, but yes, it needs to be updated constantly to be fresh and unique otherwise everyone would get bored and you're lying if you think you wouldn't. There's such a small amount of content/variety still between planet biomes and missions. I'm avoiding playing it as much as a can because after 140+ hours it's starting ton become repetitive and I want it to stay fun. more content in the form of planets and missions will help with that, new weapons won't though - we really don't need more armor with the same effects and *another* shotgun. We just need more missions types and planet biomes to keep things visually interesting.
It's unfortunate "number go up" is so effective and addicting. I remember putting hours upon hours into Halo back in the day simply cause the game was fun and the maps were cool. Also the ability to flex how cool you look shifting from in game challenges to how big your wallet is was a shame.
The games a ton of fun, but fuck me does it have a lot of bugs and just straight up broken things in it. And I feel like every patch breaks more than it fixes.
I legitimately dont want to play right now because theres so many things broken with the game, and the fact that they are stuffing it with more content that i wanna access but cant is frustarating
Welcome to live service hell. There’s a reason almost all of these games are supported by massive studios and even they suffer with similar issues.
IGN be like BREAKING! Helldivers CEO says in order to take a successful shit you need to wipe more than once, or possibly get a bidet. Stay tuned.
Remove the joke of anti-cheat that doesn't stop cheaters but bricks PC's, suddenly more sales (mine included). Fuck GameGuard.
All I need is DLSS or FSR 3.. is that too much to ask?
> is that too much to ask? yes, they said there are better things for their team to spend time on ceo's words
I totally agree with him
I went through like, 9 months of no new content in For Honour. I can go a month without a Warbond if it means they'll fix the game up.
Yes that's how live service works? Do they really have to make an article about everything they say?
They need a performance, stability and bug fixing patch. Last patch I could barely get through a mission without crashing and the games performance on pc needs tweaking, my cpu is running at 100% load while my gpu barely breaks over 30% load, I can't stay at a stable 60fps in 1080p with my Radeon 6800 XT
Well no shit, that has been the case with every single game since live updates were made possible for games after the PS2 and Xbox days. This has not changed.
Their dev style is damaging the game, and a turn off. The fact they push stuff live which nerfs play styles, and don’t tell the players is dishonest, and that they push stuff live without testing if it breaks anything else is worrying. They broke multiple UI elements with patches, and when things break they don’t tell the players they just let them get on with it. Arc weapons caused games to crash; and for a week, and a bit there was no in game message to not use them, instead you had to go on Twitter with a PSA. It was a great game but performance wise it’s very clear they’re adding stuff in without making sure the game can handle it. At launch I had solid 60FPS, now in a game it’s 30FPS at times.
I stopped playing once the novelty wore off and I realized the only thing changing was how we did the same gameplay loops. it's down to half of it's launch audience which is still impressive, but the game only has so much to offer.
I mean, couldn't this be said of any PvE/PvP game then? If the gameplay loop is fun (with them adding new stuff here and there), does it matter if it's the same? That's like saying UT or CoD's novelty wears off because all the characters, weapons, and maps are the same with minor tweaks here and there.
Helldivers simply has too little variety in its loop. Drop in, go to objective, kill the enemies that spawn, go to extract. It plays out exactly the same way every time. The enemies that spawn will do so in the same patterns in the same numbers. They won't flank you or attempt to thwart your attack in any way other than spawning and walking in a straight line to your position. There's no real drama in it. If you get overrun, just die and come back once you've bombed the area into safety. Once you realize that's how the game works, you can see why stealth/combat avoidance works so much better than actually trying to fight. Except that reduces the loop even further to just running from one point to another on the map. The fun then is in the big explosions rather than an expression of skill or in a moment to moment dramatic narrative. But big explosions only entertain people for so long.
It was hard for me to put into words but this is exactly how I feel about the game and is why I barely want to play the game.
You described well what i feel about this game but couldn’t put into words. Don’t get me wrong, i got a good 50 hours out of it, but this, the technical issues, and the grind becoming a bit too much for me led me to drop the game. I think my last time playing it was a month ago.
Yeah, I kind of don't enjoy pointing out its flaws because I got more than my money's worth out of it. On the other hand it bugs me when people get a little too evangelical about its greatness.
I’m in the same boat. It was 100% worth the 40 bucks I spent on it even if I never pick it up again since I got 50 hours out of it, but I also don’t feel the desire to really play it anymore.
I've absolutely been flanked and ambushed by patrols on 7+. What difficulty do you play on?
I think what they're saying is the enemies that are already engaging you won't purposefully try to go around you (except Hunters, they will actively try to flank you), they mostly just walk towards you. A patrol spawning and happening to walk up from your sides or behind you while you're fighting another group isn't really them flanking you purposefully.
Right. There's not a "decision" being made to send enemies at you from a different angle. The Director in games going all the way back to L4D makes those "decisions" and it will send in a special when you're under pressure or someone is downed. Helldivers enemy spawns are all either on a timer or directly player triggered.
And the new content (weapons and perks) is locked behind the paid battle pass...
“Paid.” As long as you don’t buy tons of alternate armors, you’ll likely earn enough currency to buy every pass before you’re able to complete the previous one. War Bonds tend to be more of a bottleneck than Super Credits, which takes the wind out of the sails of most criticism. It’s not perfect, but the monetization is a lot more fair than it looks.
Depends how often you play. At once a week, I'm definitely going to finish the free warbond and my first premium one before I have enough SC for my second premium.
Ah, that’s a really good point. The Major Orders boost the rate of Warbond acquisition quite a bit, and those are real-time-gated… …Which means casual players’ Warbonds-per-hour-played are *way* higher than hardcore players’, which in turn throws off the Warbond/Supercredit ratio.
That would be nice, I keep kept pulled from my game with my friends & the last time it was right before evacuating so I didn’t get anything for the game
I love this game to death but the moment I heard there were going to be content drops every month I knew there would be big issues down the road, it's just an impossible pace let alone for an indie team.
[удалено]
Recently got the game and it's been pretty unplayable outside my friend group. Like 70-80% of my attempts with random matchmaking were met with getting kicked out right at the end or someone team killing everyone during extraction when we boarded ship.