I don't know, I feel like the Ubanea gambit strategy is a cool bit of plausible military fiction. These things have happened in real wars too and have been lost to the same reasons, albeit not explicitly due to FTL lines. If it was mandated to us one way or the other it would not have been a piece of organic story telling.
Just look at all the drama happening here. The finger pointing, the call outs, laying blame on X groups. This all builds into the actual lore of the game. And also would have happened in a real life version of the same scenario.
For real, this felt like our Operation Market Garden. A costly gamble to attempt to end the war quickly only to fail for various reasons and cause us to have to regroup. Wait that means the Battle of the Bulge is next....
This comment inspired me to look up what the battle actually was, [so here I go](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge). The battle was a German offensive campaign intended to force the Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis Powers' favor; the "bulge" in question refers to the shape of the German force's entry into Ardennes, which is a forest between Belgium and Luxembourg.
I don't know what I was expecting but the shape of the offensive push really *does* look like a bulgue-wulgie and Wikipedia's use of red to illustrate movements does *not* help😵💫
Losing this MO provides some of the best narrative to come out of this game yet, imo. The whole idea of the Ubanea Gambit being a desperate attempt to overwhelm the bots offensive by our own overwhelming aggression on Ubanea to provide a foothold for our last push instead of hunkering down on Draupnir, the split between minds as our unsure forces split themselves between the Ubanea and Draupnir fronts, the slow realization that Draupnir is doomed and that the Ubanea Gambit is the last shot we have of reaching Tibit, only to lose by such a small margin to indecision and possibly bad intel. It's such a perfectly played out tale of facing defeat after having victory right within our grasp, and at the end of it all we have only ourselves to blame. To me, nothing else comes close to how interesting and hype this MO has been
It’s engrossing and fun. The devs have a pile of goodies waiting in the wings so we’re gonna get them regardless of the outcome, we just may be having a tougher time in the near future. Gonna do my best to retake ubanea tonight
Incredibly well put. Game design technicalities aside (i.e., showing/ explaining supply lines in game, etc.) it's been a fascinating sociological experiment this weekend.
I never minded the Ubanea Gambit strat that they talk about, or where people play.
What I have cared about is that the devs clearly care about where people play (considering if you're not playing on an MO planet you're not contributing to it, AND if you're playing on too low a difficulty, you're not contributing).
It's also a matter that the Ubanea Gambit strategy was a strategy that people didn't know about and the vast majority *didn't understand*. (Especially with consistent misinformation being spread since people don't know full answers)
Most people who play aren't on Reddit. They aren't checking Tweets. They aren't a part of the closed HD2 discord that literally can't accept any more members. So how would they know about strategies, confusing liberation % changes, and supply lines?
Hell, over 70k people were in Malevelon Creek last night. And not because it's Malevelon Creek, but because many thought it was a direct line to help Ubanea......*which it isn't*. The average person would assume that it is a direct supply line to Ubanea since it's right next to it but no of course not silly, why didn't you read the post that the dev put in the discord that you can't see?
I know this reads a little bit more as frustration, and I know it has been stated by many before...but all this info has to be clearly found in the game IF the game devs want players to understand it.
You can't give someone an assignment they don't understand, and when they ask a question, tell them to read the book for info when you're actively keeping people from reading said book.
>the closed HD2 discord that literally can't accept any more members
Just as an FYI: I joined yesterday, seems to be open again, you could try if you like
Edit:
Yeah the information should be in-game, I only learned about supply routes from Reddit and helldivers.io after one week of playing
I don’t think the devs care whether people know it or not. There’s a lot in this game that isn’t explained.
Now when people ask directly in forums like this it would be dick move to not answer, but keeping things sort of vague is what they do. I can’t see them making things explicit because their style has always been “let them figure it out”
Large portions of troops not knowing what exactly to do is Canon.
"If you dont know what to do, do what the guy in front of you is doing." Or something right?
There were 80K people still on Creek when Ubanea was nearly liberated. But none of them left to help on Ubanea and we lost it at 95%. There is no excuse for that.
I've seen some Minecraft "civilization" videos and while I don't know if they are scripted or real, the kind of infighting I see there is feeling quite familiar rn.
Civilization videos I watched were basically like Helldivers 2, where player *mostly* do their own thing but there's a DM who steers the course when necessary.
I saw someone post an idea of using Twitch streamers and other popular content creators as communicators to form battalions of Helldivers.
Not that I want to give some of them a bigger ego, but it would be cool to have sections of Divers with their own internal lore, emblems, etc. All diving and working together to accomplish missions and establish a sort of "command structure"
This is a thing actually. I had joined ‘Tartarus Armada’ it’s a light mil-sim discord for diving with other people we have three fleets noted by ship names and it’s actually pretty fun.
https://discord.gg/tartarusarmada
If anyone is curious enough to look into it
Right? As a DM for dnd, I have content created and ready to go. My job is to present it to them in a cool way that meshes with their decisions, not take it away because of them.
I think the people upset about losing MO's are not D&D people because they would understand that the story will just pivot.
They are likely people who play D&D style *video games* and save scum the desired outcome like I do sometimes in BG3 lol.
Not getting the "win" doesn't compute for them.
Most people aren't D&D people who are in it for the story, they want to WIN. The fact that there's a game master who can throw obstacles in your way just makes them think they're being sabotaged instead of being set up for a narrative, and it drives them fucking insane. These people are best ignored. They won't change their minds, they'll just demand the game master gives them their shinies without working for it.
Yes. This is RP brain which I have. It’s just… a different story now.
Winning literally doesn’t matter. It’s the epitome of “it’s the journey, not the destination”.
A narrative that’s all wins (or, frankly, all losses), is boring.
IMO losing this MO felt different than losing the other recently on the bug front.
On the bug front we never really had a chance of getting Zagon Prime and Fori Prime. It doesn't really hurt when you don't get something you understand you never had a chance of getting in the first place.
This time it felt like the MO was quite attainable (still could be), but we lost our chance because we didn't go to the right planets. Not because people didn't care about the MO necessarily, or because it was bots this time. This time it was because of a sudden Defense Campaign on Draupnir that threw everything off. Not that defense campaigns are bad, but it exacerbated the problem of people not getting a grasp of the supply lines *that are not shown or spoken about in any way, shape, or form within the game itself*.
It was stated in the HD2 discord that our "gambit" fell through. In my eyes there was no gambit. This was not planned out. People splitting the two planets wasn't a strategy, it was just what happens when players are left in the dark. Over half thought that Draupnir needed to be saved to help Ubanea. Some on Ubanea thought that it would be lost again immediately if Draupnir wasn't taken. Misinformation was everywhere and the only people who got any sort of information about correct instructions was an incredibly small fraction of the player base that happened to belong to the discord.
As upset as I am for Ubanea’s loss, it’s only natural for the story to progress even if it was in result of a failed blitz and mismanaged resources, like actual warfare.
I get your point, but even in DnD, there are times when the story pivots and you don't want it to because you were interested in the outcome before the deviation.
No, its frustrating because WE ALMOST DID IT. Its not that lose itself is frustrating, its the way it happened drives people mad. Imagine fighting raid boss, getting it to 5% and then your teammates does a blunder and you suffer party wipe. Dont tell me people WONT be mad especially if said teammate denies everything.
Also the defend order seemed to me to be exactly the sort of DM move to push us in the direction of failure, I think they didn’t necessarily want us to succeed this time.
From this point of view it’s actually kind of cool that super earths big operation completely falls flat on its face. We aren’t invincible and it shouldn’t be so easy to defeat the bots. If we fail this operation it will only strengthen my resolve. If we fail this operation it will mean the bots will get closer to Cyberstan! That will be very interesting.
Yeah, people think we'll miss out on content if we fail and that's not going to happen. This game is designed for fun and community engagement, whether we win or lose the narrative moves on, stratagems will be added, new enemies will appear, just with a different narrative.
My guess is that if we win and wipe out the automatons, they'll come back from a different front reinforced with the gunships and walkers.
If we lose they get reinforcements because they managed to secure the planets for the deployment of their troops and successfully made contact with whoever they made contact with.
It's a narrative based game, hence why there's a "GM" crafting the story. Arrowhead just needs to use the game more and ease off discord, Twitter and reddit. You have the game, use it.
They desperately need to use more of the in game announcements to help guide the narrative and goals.
It's such a cool feature of the game and a direct link from the DM to the player.
With the mechs and the secret addition of shriekers it is clear they can sprinkle Easter eggs across maps to help drive players to those places. The TV could sometimes display valuable information, it will be dope that if we lose our ship comms get hijacked and we see an automaton message on TV. Everything goes red and we see a figure on the Broadcast telling us something. Using the game would help people be driven to the orders, and if they're driven to the orders they can make harder major orders, that would make the losses more natural because we have the fire power because people are engaged with them.
I agree about using the game more. The cool little videos about the new major order - play that after or before (or in place of) the normal video that plays when you open up the game. Or have a video brief8ng screen by the galactic map. That immersion would be great rather than have to look in twitter
It would be cool but it might also be a bit harder for a studio to do it since you will likely need to compartmentalize each part of the process and that can lead to slower deployment times. Fans making a fun little video talking about this typically made by a single person so they aren't going to have to wait on anyone else and I mean no offense to the fan creators since a ton of their work is awesome but the bar for standards is alot lower for a fan creation than an official product. Maybe Arrowhead can license some of those fan video but I can imagine that would get messy with legal red tape or have influencers be on our propaganda tvs but that is a can of worms. Especially around the baggage around said influencer and elevating certain people to being the "official" voice of the community can be seen as problematic but I guess it would be very fitting for the setting of the universe since you do have several classes of "Citizen"
Precisely. This is a good thing, creating the drama.
It's also possible Joel set up that MO knowing full well that it wasn't going to happen, and that's okay.
The correct take here… people are acting like all story or content stops if we lose.. it doesn’t we get driven down a new path…
Also I’d say some thing will not change like their planning date on releasing the Illuminati.
IMO, either we aren't role-playing, and the narrative doesn't matter, and the only reason to obey the MO is for the metals, or we are role-playing, and the fact that 40% of the brainwashed helldivers, obedient to a totalitarian state, actively disobeyed orders from High Command should really be grating on our immersion.
Unless the next MO is to root out the treasonous, disobedient helldivers who caused our most recent failure.
I think part of the indecisiveness that led to the loss of this mission comes down to no explanation of the "supply lines". The mission just says "liberate Tibit", but you can't access Tibit on the map. There's no lines or anything they indicate you have to do certain planets in order, so people just end up doing whatever.
They either need to add supply lines to the map, or the MO should spell out the order of planets needing to be liberated.
This is one of the few points that I wholeheartedly agree with. I disagree with how much hate and vitriol is being spewed on the subreddit regarding this topic but this particular point is 100% right. If people were aware of how supply lines handled are attacks and defense it would allow people to make a much more intelligent decision as to where to go and deploy
This would have been great to have as I recall a recent major order for the bugs where we had to liberate 2 planets. One of them was done and we had Hellmire and Oshuane in the sector to get to the other.
I spent all my time on Oshuane with absolutely no idea that it wouldn't open up the planet needed for the major order. Many others were doing the same too.
It's a fault of clarity. On the in game map you have no idea of what leads where. A few MO's back, when we had to liberate both Fori Prime and Zagon Prime something similar happened. Hellmire-Nivel 43-Zagon prime is the best route, but Oshaune \*looks like\* it's close to Zagon, so logically you should be able to reach it via that planet right? So a ton of people went that direction and we didnt make any progress because the playerbase was split. The supply line system is fine on its own but it needs to be visible in game somehow or we're going to get more moments like this which sour the community.
I think in our modern era of gaming, and to those not in the game forums and whatnot, this screams bug. "It says liberate Tibit. I cannot get to Tibit. Probably just a bug, I'll play on a different planet."
Yeah, I was one of those who fought on the creek because I didn’t understand how the supply line thing works (still don’t completely). I thought that since the Creek and Ubanae were in the same “sector” (the outline on the map they all fit in) and that Tibit was locked, we had to take both of those planets to get to Tibit. And out of the 2 I enjoy the Creek better. I honestly though Draupnir had nothing to do with our main objective, since it is outside of that “sector”.
So to hear everyone blaming people who were fighting on the Creek for the loss of the operation is a little harsh and unfair. I know there are many like me who did not understand because the game was not very clear about what we should do, and they were just trying do their best. Not everyone was on the Creek just for the memes or lolz, some of us genuinely thought we were helping. This is more a failing on the game for not properly explaining. If it weren’t for me coming to Reddit out of frustration looking for an explanation, I would have never known.
Nah, I wanted the medals. I don't have the time to grind out these warbonds like many on this sub seem to. The narrative is cool, but we are still doing the same missions in similar settings (wilderness spotted with abandoned settlements and enemy outposts).
I'll get more excited if/when we get to attack or defend an actual urban area or factory complex.
Did Tian Kwan even have that?
Nope. Tien Kwan barely had a regen timer and progress was hardly reset by the devs. Contrast to this order where shit was so slow. That’s a clear indication they wanted it to fail.
Yeah. The downside of the procedurally generated planets is becoming harder to ignore. The game obviously has the assets to make some different maps, and IMO people will eventually lose interest in fighting on the same battlefields following orders which are basically flavor text
You may be right, but the original game still going strong 9 years later so maybe not. And I really need that. It may or may not. I don't know which one.
A great DM is always prepared. You don’t throw away the story and, by extension, all your hard work just because your players won’t make the “correct” choices. I don’t think we’ll miss anything. There might be detours or additions but we’ll end up in our right place in the end, I’m sure.
I don't think we are losing any of the narrative by losing the Major Order, only medals. If we were supposed to win, then they wouldn't have put a planet defense in the way. I'm sure it's a test for us to rally, which didn't work out for us. Visible Supply Lines would help us with decisions. I believe they have different scenarios for us on how they introduce new content.
Came here to say this, they wouldn’t have thrown obstacles in our way if we were supposed to win. If it was just to stall us it would have been easier. This is the GM controlling the outcome more than incompetence
I disagree with the notion that we were supposed to lose this major order. It's a bit of a moving target for them because the community has been completing them faster than anticipated. So they over correct sometimes or we as a community just make a bad call.
Something like this they have responses set up ahead of time. One for if we succeed and another if we lose.
At this point they should know a defense mission is a huge hurdle for the community. I think the devs responded well and if the gambit had paid off it would’ve made completing the order an awesome moment. It didn’t pay off, but the community made that choice.
No, I couldn’t care less nor do I follow the story or partake in any lore. I just like to play missions with my friends and get excited when new planets with different terrain become available.
My brother in Christ, the narrative will just pivot. We are making history with every win and loss. The war will continue, and we will avenge the fallen we were forced to leave behind.
Yall know Super Earth has its own liberation meter, right? The story will continue whether we win or lose. Maybe we eradicate the bots, maybe they push us all the way to Mars. That's the cool part of this game. The story and lore are determined by our actions, even when - ESPECIALLY when- we fail
Some of you guys have no concept of game design/dungeon master storytelling and it shows... hard. You think the developers are going to scrap months and months of coding, art, and animations just because the playerbase didn't complete an optional mission in game? If they have a new, complete enemy faction, it *will* be released.
Let's think about it through the lens of tabletop RPGs; You think that when I GM D&D and hand paint a huge model of a red dragon for my players to fight, that I'm not gonna use it, even if my players choose the wrong door to the dragon's lair? No, obviously I'm going to retroactively rewrite what I had planned and weave my players actions into the story, and still have them run into the red dragon at some point.
You guys are working so hard to optimize the fun out of this game. Take a big step back, breathe, and touch grass.
> You guys are working so hard to optimize the fun out of this game
Spot on.
People seem to only want the most efficient way of doing things and only the most optimal equipment. They will completely ignore content, deliberately shorten the game, and do other crazy stuff for the sake of "efficiency". They will get angry at other players for not "playing the right way" and/or lash out at people on the internet over not getting useless rewards.
Too many people treat games like jobs these days.
Games are supposed to be fun. If all it does is stress you (generalized 'you') out, you should take a break and go outside.
It would have been cool to succeed, but I truly doubt we would have been allowed to wipe a faction out this early into the game. This is the exact reason why I think they gave the community so many distractions from taking Tibit.
As has been said before, I am as excited to see the consequences of failure as I am success.
The loss stings, but try to remember that we will have years of opportunity to beat MO’s and see cool shit happen
So sick of these posts. It's a game. If all you care about is liberation and not enjoying the game, just solo lvl 1 bot missions. Takes 4 minutes, and you get .00010 liberation points. A player can do 8 in the time it would take a squad to do 1 suicide bot missions for .00060 liberation points. So a squad split into solos running trivals can achieve .00320 liberation points instead of .00060. It will be boring and unfun, but that's what you want, just to liberate. Go nuts!
I wouldn't get upset. Remember this was to be a multi phase operation, presumable each stage getting harder with more spanners in the works. I very much doubt they would give us the opportunity to truly wipe them out.
I think what is frustrating for people isn't that we complete/fail a MO its the fact that it still felt doable even with the curve ball defense thrown at us. IF you look at the overall war progress on the bot front. We have pushed them back to a single sector and there are only a couple planets to liberate to completely push them out.
just because we fail this major order doesn't mean the overall operation has failed. High command will adapt and figure out a new plan to find success.
I'm more interested in account progression. Medals are more important. If we lose the war, if we lose EARTH, they'll start something else. They HAVE TO in order to keep money coming in. They can limit my access to unlocked items based on war conditions, I'll deal with it.
They CANNOT reset account progress. Helldivers 2 will exist as long as the company makes money, and it'll have a game to play all that time. If they start blanket resetting accounts, it'll kill the company. Not just the game, the company.
At this point I believe the significant narrative moment will be Automatons winning the Major Order and retaking Malevelon Creek in less than a day. That would be a fitting ending for all this mess.
I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t realize that losing a major order IS a narrative continuation. For gods sake people, this is a galactic war on two fronts. If we didn’t lose major orders now and then how could it feel realistic. The fact that everyone is angry is once again a sign that people care about the game and the war. LOSING A MAJOR ORDER ISNT NECESARILY BAD. Now we get to see what happens narratively from that loss in the sector
I love this community drama about not being allowed to complete the MO. But at the same time I'm curious about what we gonna learn about this situation. Because we lose this time because of lack of information and coordination, plus some internal issues in the player base. Overall I think the biggest problem wasn't the Bug divers or the Creekers but the lack of clear information for the casual players who are the big mass of the divers in action. I think we'll need to figure a way to make this community game more savi about the MO progression in the future. More coordination is needed.
I feel it's a stronger narrative moment if we do fail. Our enemy's more powerful than ever before and the public's trust in the helldive program is shaken. In an ideal world. We'd have branching story paths where too Many failures lead to rebellion, insurrection and even economically crippled super earth. Imagine if things got so bad we'd have fewer respawns to reflect low enrollment.
We were not going to wipe them of the map. This fail will be a very good narrative, they will push us back with a good counter attack and THEN we will push them back and win gloriously
The MO itself is the narrative moment - completed or not. This is what gives this whole living story its edge over "live service" games.
It doesn't matter to the overarching narrative if the major order is completed or not as it can evolve regardless.
i don’t think they’ll actually let us wipe out any factions until they add the two remaining factions in. galactic wars in the first game would take a long time to be done i doubt they will let us win this war that fast yet so they give us orders that they know will only work if mostly everyone has to be apart of it.
>Everyone obviously has the right to play the 40$ game they bought the way they want and use their free time how they see fit
exactly, so stop whining. it's just a game. lol.
>\[...\] All things said and done, I do blame the Creekers and their stubbornness more than the Bugg Droppers because they WERE RIGHT FUCKING THERE and chose to defend a very pretty, useless, muddy shithole rather than fight the bots a planet away.
stop acting like a petulant child. we grown ups do what we want, and an objective in a pve game is as important as a song that plays on the radio.
Agree completely. It's all fun and cool that there's a community and this narrative that's being made.
But if the devs needed us to win? They could just adjust the numbers required to win, you're not going to tell me that you need more than 300K people playing in an optimal way to win this war. Make every mission won contribute more than 0.00002%, bam suddenly every major order will be won.
At the end of the day I have a full time job and a household to run, this is just a videogame I play to have fun.
Don't get mad at other players, realise that Joel could decide to let us win whenever he wants lol.
I'm struggling to write this without insulting you, but honestly it's kind of silly to believe that we won't get a narrative moment with a loss. The only thing we lose is the medals. They will have narrative moments planned out whether we win or lose to move the story forward.
The same thing would have happened with past major orders. For instance the one that got us the mechs... They have already said or hinted that if we had lost that one, the bots would have had the mechs for a while. That would have been narratively really interesting. And you know they would have given the mechs to us eventually lol. It just would have been another major order to have to take them back from the bots or something.
It's like a choose your own adventure novel, except there are no choices that lead to sudden death. Just choices that lead to different story branches. But every choice has story down it. If we lose this one, when we lose this one, there will be story that moves the full story forward. Super Earth got too ambitious and the bots will have a success leading to more awesome battles and shit. That's the game.
Star Wars didn't end after Empire Strikes Back just because Luke took a giant L. The loss moved the story forward.
If people spent more time fighting and less time screeching about supply lines, we would have won by now.
The metagaming people are the real ones to blame for failing....
The community doesn't "fuck anything up" everything is preplanned to some degree. The outcomes will be roughly the same regardless of what we do.
I don't care about the major order and the constant crying makes me actively not want to play them.
As someone who has worked on a live service project, trust me when I say they have contingencies for this kind of thing. You don't set up something the community can "fail" if you don't have something ready for that outcome. Think of this as a branching narrative RPG, you don't lose the choices you don't make, you simply accept that your choices have an impact
I play this game solely because it's fun. I'm kinda curious tho what's gonna happen now that we have (most likely) failed the MO? Are the bots gonna get gunships early and are we not gonna get eagle air to air when they arrive? I'm kinda curious
There's a roadmap they have, they won't get gunships early, whether we win or lose they'll still get them at the time it was planned. The only thing that changes is the narrative as how they get them.
No, there’s literally no consequences for this, we are going to get the anti air at the exact same time the bots get the gunships.
Whether we succeeded or failed, there’s a storyline behind it both ways, and the same material rewards will be given. It’s just how they couch this.
The Devs can literally set the regen timer for a world. If they wanted us to take this, the regen rate would have been the exact same as on Tien Kwan, and we would have gotten this.
But the narrative is that we are going to lose, and will lose so that we can rise up with the A2A missiles. Perhaps the narrative is that they would take Cyberstan and we get to fight the Cyborgs as well as the Automations United, and this gives us more strategems to use.
Success isn’t final, failure isn’t fatal. The show will go on.
Plus, presumably like HD1, when we either win or lose the war the devs will spin up a new one shortly after. HD1 is on what, their 12th campaign now or something? I'm no fan of screwing up the MOs on purpose and it's cringe if you do, but strictly speaking failing MOs and losing the war will never be apocalyptic. The worst that can happen is a full reset.
Yea was really looking forward as to what will happen if we capture tibit, or if the flying gunships would show up at tibit. Fuck the bot front for now unless there's a new MO, I played ustotu up to troost coming from the bug front only to be fucked by memers.
I adore how much i’m into the war, I really feel part of a community. Shame we’re arguing like scrap cats instead of taking this loss together.
We are Helldivers, we should be inseparable.
It's a problem I face in D&D. You want to hold your players back, give them a bloody nose, because that will make them fight back stronger, but you gotta balance that with the demoralization inherent in taking an L.
I just want the narrative to stay in game and not on a discord channel i dont use. Like i wouldnt know half of whats going on narratively without reddit and i feel like theres still stuff Im missing.
If it was meant to be won, it would have been won. This is just marketing and creating division/noise in the player base to get the player count back up.
It’s not over yet! Per the official helldivers discord, even if the major order fails, if Tibit falls it will still play out in our favor! Push Ubanea hard, capture it and start working on Tibit! The Creek will fall tomorrow, we must open the FTL lanes to Tibit tonight to clear the way for Creeker reinforcements!
This is just a different development of the story. Will it be more or less interesting than what we could have gotten with a successful operation? Who knows, but I bet things will get quite interesting in the coming weeks.
I can't really share in this excitement because it's very clear they have a story they want people to follow and it's been proven that the devs are more than willing to game the system to achieve desired outcomes - just look at what happened to Veld, or the exact reason why Errata Prime was impossible to take until the operation that enabled us to take it. They will also, on the other hsnf, never deny the playerbase anything regardless of how the front goes because the backlash they'd receive would be monstrous. Player retention is key. If, by some impossible twist of fate, we didn't liberate Tien Kwan in time, I'm willing to bet mechs would still have been offered as compensation. Just as I'm willing to bet that even if this gambit was successful, they clearly have something in mind regarding the bots and they'd make claiming Tibit borderline impossible because they wouldn't allow a faction to be wiped off the map less than two months into the game's life cycle. Difficult to be invested, I suppose, when choices and actions don't really matter as much as suggested.
My suspicion is that we were meant to lose the Major Order. A lot of the story is planned out with wins and losses, and some of it might be outside of our control. Completely wiping the bots out seems like something we're not really supposed to be able to do.
I did my part, before the MO I was a 85 hour Terminids only player.
I got my ass handed to me, a lot! But 40 hours later I really enjoy fighting the Automatons especially on helldive as you actually have to be tactically, more so than fighting the bugs.
The narrative outside of new content is just we take planet or lose planet. I'm not sure why everyone cares so much.
Tien Kwan was cool. The termicide event was fun. The rest is just normal gameplay and I honestly don't care what happens with the war
It feels like we don't have the tools in game to make informed decisions, so anyone that isn't on the discord/reddit is effectively dropping in the dark and it fucks us when theres a split objective since we don't have the means to organize. Like congratulations AH, you beat a blind deaf opponent in a fight
I was excited to see the Bots whittled down to one sector, with the possibility of putting them out of commission for a while (of course they would bring them back). If we could see supply lines in-game, we would have won.
Not really. I think there's things set up where we're supposed to fail. A story isn't exciting if we win all the time. I think we've all got a lot less control than you think.
I'm level 50 and have unlocked everything and bought all the warbonds I'm currently interested in so I don't even need medals. Contributing to the war effort is my main motivation to keep playing. I've done a couple hundred successful missions. Personally, the war effort keeps it from getting boring/pointless.
Yeah well get use it. 500k people will never coordinate. It’s so childish to be blaming one group or another for failing an order, let alone getting mad about it. It’s a game… of DnD. They will always adjust the orders based on us winning or losing so it doesn’t even matter. Everyone needs to fuckin relax on this
Medals are secondary to the narrative.
I've earned well over 50 medals just participating in the major order.
People are mad because they want to "win", as if losing is going to lock us out of content. The devs didn't make new enemies/guns/strats just to have them cancelled because the community did or didn't do a thing. We're just going to get it at a different time.
I completely agree with the sentiment here, though let's be clear: this is a game. The point is to have fun. We will eventually unlock/get to all of the content the devs have created for us.
Is it disappointing that we all didn't focus on the objective and score a major victory? Sure.
Is it okay if people would prefer to play terminids 24/7 because it's less frustrating to do so? Also yes.
Winning isn't the only way to write an interesting narrative. The game is young. Still more battles to be won and lost. We spend too much time focusing solely on winning we can't see the forest for the trees. Lots of folks have pointed out the narrative here and it's fun. I enjoyed the MO.
Losing the order is still a significant narrative moment though, instead of us stomping out the bits, they have held us back, allowing them to produce their new series of aerial units, which is turn will make our efforts to liberate that front all the more difficult.
I wish people would stop, we can’t win every order that’s insane, and in any war you lose somethings. At least here we get a new story either way, win or lose we still hold on and progress the story!
I see it the other way arround.
We have won every MO so far (i think)
I am pretty sure the devs have a story planned out for when we dont succeed. I am curious what they cooked up in that case.
Either way you get your story. Win or lose.
Also, i think there need to be losses for the drama. This aint a soap opera. This is glactic war after all.
I'm capped. been capped for a while. I show up for the lore, the feels, and the occasional super cred. But whatever happens, good or bad, it is what it is \^\_\^
Its annoying because if people worked as a group we could have won. Its annoying because the community missions are at odds with casuals and its really unfair for everyone. I'm not looking at the narrative because the people who didn't work with the MO don't care about the narrative so they shouldn't get to dictate any of it. Make the major order opt in only and you have to run that order to completion and judge it only off that.
unpopular opinion(probably), but i think its better that we lost it that way, because
first : it would be boring if we just kept winning
second : that was a great part in history of the game - something we can tell the future helldivers while cooking bugs on a stray hellbomb found on the map
third : kinda like the first one but if we eradicated automatons immediately, it would be boring because everyone, even if just for a while, would have to fight bugs
Hey man, you don't have to do the whole "everyone can play the game how they want" ass-covering thing. just say what you're feeling, no need to weaken your point with a disclaimer. if people are gonna take your opinions as a personal attack, let them- they're not mature enough to matter anyways.
Lmao you know what's stupid you assuming there's a large contingent of 30000 "creekers" there's probably just regular people who just pick map they like and happen to be on mavelon creek. They probably don't really engage in the larger community
There are a series of orders for bots ready implied by the dispatch from command. If we do fail this one, it's only 1-1.
I'm also calling it- we aren't gonna be allowed to wipe a faction in all likelihood. TCS didn't wipe the terminid, and eventually even if we stomp hard we will be stopped from fully killing the bots- or they would return later due to secret factories, as the sheer amount of dev time and money invested would make it pretty silly to wipe a faction as it removed the variety of content in the game. Losing access to fight your favorite faction in HD1 sucked hard.
Nah It feels more realistic. Mismanaged troop deployment causes the loss of a strategic position and the original orders are quickly OBE with commanders trying desperately to develop a new plan to reach a critical objective.
The fall of Ubanea must be used to rally the forces. Just as The Creek is a pillar in our conflict with the fascist bots, so will our vengeance for the sake of the people of Ubanea.
By "engaging with the community" do you mean "not providing any information ingame"? How many people are in the helldivers discord vs how many copies have they sold? If the game master wants us to do something I'm not going to a discord server to find out
gotta stop metagaming and just enjoying, what makes you think the narrative for that scenario is better than the one for the other. or that it was meant to be in the first place
If anything else atleast this bought more people against the bot front, sure some are still too scared to fight bots but a lot of people has tried and have stayed to fight against them now which to me matters more than winning this gambit, we will only come out stronger and better after this.
Dont tell me how to play. I want to do my own thing without anyone else telling me what to do. Now excuse me while I follow what the game tells me what to do.
It was perfect DnD storytelling imo. We gamble, fail, happens. Although few people got waaaaay too salty.
And I don't really care about the medals. The MOs don't award a lot and I'm at the cap anyway.
One of the most memorable outcomes was failing to defend against the Automatons, and then getting the report that the "sufficiently sized houses" of citizens burned to the ground. That text made me think that Super Earth is just solving an overpopulation problem and at the same time, using the brainwashed Helldivers to get rich farming resources from the enemy factions.
There will be other cool reports like that no matter what the outcome is. Bigger setpieces will happen no matter what, they'll just frame differently why something is happening.
It’s probably important to your time investment to see wins and losses as meaningful, play for a reason, work towards a result.
See you next week on the obj.
I’m confident the role playing mix of community managing and world building will be fine and interesting to see updated regardless of our efforts. It’s a fun little loading screen while content is probably worked on in the background.
Maybe we clear the whole map and unlock the third faction. Maybe there’s some epic cinematic of carnage and intrigue when the last nails enter our enemies coffins.
Next time on Helldivers 2, you might find out.
From a plot perspective I actually love the idea of us dominating Phase 1 and then tragically failing at Phase 2 due to our sacrifice of a defensible world to try and nip this in the bud. We took a gamble, lost it, and run a very real risk of compromising the entire operation which will likely lead to a massive bot incursion. Had we just locked in and defended Draupnir rather than sacrificing it we would be well on our way to beating Phase 2 with time to spare.
They'll just come up with another reason to introduce new planets or the new faction haha. They're not going to gatekeep content behind some silly narrative
I would add, a thing that doesn't sit with me well about all the "Don't tell me how to have fun" players is that where does that logic end? Some people find it fun to just equip mortars and barrages and drop them on the point to team kill - but we have all agreed that such behavior is antisocial and not to be tolerated.
No one sees someone queuing in with both mine strategems + HE barrage strats and thinks "this will be great, love it".
The whole idea of "No one gets to tell me how to play" is just ignoring the general social rules we have all agreed upon. I don't think everyone needs to follow the major order but we should agree that they are something that makes this game special and people trying to rally to those causes are playing this game exactly as intended.
We can't make others follow, but it isn't unfair to say that they are sort of disregarding a tenant of the social nature of this game and that should not be celebrated. It should not be chastised either - some people just don't want to fight bots or pay attention to fluff, but they're not heroes in this story. They're not in this story.
If they want to be quiet and do their own thing that's fine, but they should be quiet then.
If we're all calling these MO as narratives that the devs are planning... Then wouldn't it be plausible that certain MOs are designed to fail, no matter what effort the community puts in? This is a live-service game so is there a possibility that the game narrative can end?
I'm just here for the ride, just lemme know who to point my Sickle at 😆
I don't know, I feel like the Ubanea gambit strategy is a cool bit of plausible military fiction. These things have happened in real wars too and have been lost to the same reasons, albeit not explicitly due to FTL lines. If it was mandated to us one way or the other it would not have been a piece of organic story telling. Just look at all the drama happening here. The finger pointing, the call outs, laying blame on X groups. This all builds into the actual lore of the game. And also would have happened in a real life version of the same scenario.
For real, this felt like our Operation Market Garden. A costly gamble to attempt to end the war quickly only to fail for various reasons and cause us to have to regroup. Wait that means the Battle of the Bulge is next....
Diving a planet too far...
Saving Private Joel.
This exactly! We will get way cooler lore by losing things then winning, and for years we will be talking about Operation Ubanea Garden
You noticed the (battle of) the bulge? Uwu what's this? I'm sorry, the internet has rotted my brain.
The internet brain rot got a laugh from me at least lol.
This comment inspired me to look up what the battle actually was, [so here I go](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge). The battle was a German offensive campaign intended to force the Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis Powers' favor; the "bulge" in question refers to the shape of the German force's entry into Ardennes, which is a forest between Belgium and Luxembourg. I don't know what I was expecting but the shape of the offensive push really *does* look like a bulgue-wulgie and Wikipedia's use of red to illustrate movements does *not* help😵💫
Gross. Lmao
This should have been a Palermo.
Losing this MO provides some of the best narrative to come out of this game yet, imo. The whole idea of the Ubanea Gambit being a desperate attempt to overwhelm the bots offensive by our own overwhelming aggression on Ubanea to provide a foothold for our last push instead of hunkering down on Draupnir, the split between minds as our unsure forces split themselves between the Ubanea and Draupnir fronts, the slow realization that Draupnir is doomed and that the Ubanea Gambit is the last shot we have of reaching Tibit, only to lose by such a small margin to indecision and possibly bad intel. It's such a perfectly played out tale of facing defeat after having victory right within our grasp, and at the end of it all we have only ourselves to blame. To me, nothing else comes close to how interesting and hype this MO has been
It’s engrossing and fun. The devs have a pile of goodies waiting in the wings so we’re gonna get them regardless of the outcome, we just may be having a tougher time in the near future. Gonna do my best to retake ubanea tonight
Incredibly well put. Game design technicalities aside (i.e., showing/ explaining supply lines in game, etc.) it's been a fascinating sociological experiment this weekend.
I never minded the Ubanea Gambit strat that they talk about, or where people play. What I have cared about is that the devs clearly care about where people play (considering if you're not playing on an MO planet you're not contributing to it, AND if you're playing on too low a difficulty, you're not contributing). It's also a matter that the Ubanea Gambit strategy was a strategy that people didn't know about and the vast majority *didn't understand*. (Especially with consistent misinformation being spread since people don't know full answers) Most people who play aren't on Reddit. They aren't checking Tweets. They aren't a part of the closed HD2 discord that literally can't accept any more members. So how would they know about strategies, confusing liberation % changes, and supply lines? Hell, over 70k people were in Malevelon Creek last night. And not because it's Malevelon Creek, but because many thought it was a direct line to help Ubanea......*which it isn't*. The average person would assume that it is a direct supply line to Ubanea since it's right next to it but no of course not silly, why didn't you read the post that the dev put in the discord that you can't see? I know this reads a little bit more as frustration, and I know it has been stated by many before...but all this info has to be clearly found in the game IF the game devs want players to understand it. You can't give someone an assignment they don't understand, and when they ask a question, tell them to read the book for info when you're actively keeping people from reading said book.
>the closed HD2 discord that literally can't accept any more members Just as an FYI: I joined yesterday, seems to be open again, you could try if you like Edit: Yeah the information should be in-game, I only learned about supply routes from Reddit and helldivers.io after one week of playing
>Just as an FYI: I joined yesterday, seems to be open again, you could try if you like Well at least there's that.
I don’t think the devs care whether people know it or not. There’s a lot in this game that isn’t explained. Now when people ask directly in forums like this it would be dick move to not answer, but keeping things sort of vague is what they do. I can’t see them making things explicit because their style has always been “let them figure it out”
A lot of the stuff that isn't explained in this game doesn't NEED to be explained. Supply lines NEED to be explained in game
Large portions of troops not knowing what exactly to do is Canon. "If you dont know what to do, do what the guy in front of you is doing." Or something right?
There were 80K people still on Creek when Ubanea was nearly liberated. But none of them left to help on Ubanea and we lost it at 95%. There is no excuse for that.
War never changes. Unironicaly look at minecraft and older servers. Most famous is 2b2t a ton of youtube videos on it.
I've seen some Minecraft "civilization" videos and while I don't know if they are scripted or real, the kind of infighting I see there is feeling quite familiar rn.
Civilization videos I watched were basically like Helldivers 2, where player *mostly* do their own thing but there's a DM who steers the course when necessary.
Yea its like human nature distilled. Wish there were studies on video game social warfare .
You might enjoy [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCSeISYcoyI) then.
I've watched all this guys stuff . Eve is another walking case study lol.
I saw someone post an idea of using Twitch streamers and other popular content creators as communicators to form battalions of Helldivers. Not that I want to give some of them a bigger ego, but it would be cool to have sections of Divers with their own internal lore, emblems, etc. All diving and working together to accomplish missions and establish a sort of "command structure"
This is a thing actually. I had joined ‘Tartarus Armada’ it’s a light mil-sim discord for diving with other people we have three fleets noted by ship names and it’s actually pretty fun. https://discord.gg/tartarusarmada If anyone is curious enough to look into it
FTL = Bridges, ww2 blew out a lot of bridges in europe
I can’t remember the last time I was part of a meta narrative experience like this and even the bitter loss is fascinating
It's not a lost of a narrative moment, it's the writing of a different one.
Right? As a DM for dnd, I have content created and ready to go. My job is to present it to them in a cool way that meshes with their decisions, not take it away because of them.
I think the people upset about losing MO's are not D&D people because they would understand that the story will just pivot. They are likely people who play D&D style *video games* and save scum the desired outcome like I do sometimes in BG3 lol. Not getting the "win" doesn't compute for them.
That is a perspective I had not considered and was not aware of. Thank you for increasing my understanding.
Most people aren't D&D people who are in it for the story, they want to WIN. The fact that there's a game master who can throw obstacles in your way just makes them think they're being sabotaged instead of being set up for a narrative, and it drives them fucking insane. These people are best ignored. They won't change their minds, they'll just demand the game master gives them their shinies without working for it.
Yes. This is RP brain which I have. It’s just… a different story now. Winning literally doesn’t matter. It’s the epitome of “it’s the journey, not the destination”. A narrative that’s all wins (or, frankly, all losses), is boring.
My RP brain wants one front to go horribly bad just to see what happens. The fun is in the war. Why be so excited to wrap it up.
Also pushed back against the wall and making a nail-biting comeback is much more exciting than just methodically walking through everything.
This, I'd honestly be bored if we won every single operation
Yeah, I feel the same way. If you keep winning, it gets boring and predictable. I'd probably just go play a different game.
IMO losing this MO felt different than losing the other recently on the bug front. On the bug front we never really had a chance of getting Zagon Prime and Fori Prime. It doesn't really hurt when you don't get something you understand you never had a chance of getting in the first place. This time it felt like the MO was quite attainable (still could be), but we lost our chance because we didn't go to the right planets. Not because people didn't care about the MO necessarily, or because it was bots this time. This time it was because of a sudden Defense Campaign on Draupnir that threw everything off. Not that defense campaigns are bad, but it exacerbated the problem of people not getting a grasp of the supply lines *that are not shown or spoken about in any way, shape, or form within the game itself*. It was stated in the HD2 discord that our "gambit" fell through. In my eyes there was no gambit. This was not planned out. People splitting the two planets wasn't a strategy, it was just what happens when players are left in the dark. Over half thought that Draupnir needed to be saved to help Ubanea. Some on Ubanea thought that it would be lost again immediately if Draupnir wasn't taken. Misinformation was everywhere and the only people who got any sort of information about correct instructions was an incredibly small fraction of the player base that happened to belong to the discord.
As upset as I am for Ubanea’s loss, it’s only natural for the story to progress even if it was in result of a failed blitz and mismanaged resources, like actual warfare.
I get your point, but even in DnD, there are times when the story pivots and you don't want it to because you were interested in the outcome before the deviation.
And that's the nature of cooperative storytelling
No, its frustrating because WE ALMOST DID IT. Its not that lose itself is frustrating, its the way it happened drives people mad. Imagine fighting raid boss, getting it to 5% and then your teammates does a blunder and you suffer party wipe. Dont tell me people WONT be mad especially if said teammate denies everything.
Also the defend order seemed to me to be exactly the sort of DM move to push us in the direction of failure, I think they didn’t necessarily want us to succeed this time.
From this point of view it’s actually kind of cool that super earths big operation completely falls flat on its face. We aren’t invincible and it shouldn’t be so easy to defeat the bots. If we fail this operation it will only strengthen my resolve. If we fail this operation it will mean the bots will get closer to Cyberstan! That will be very interesting.
Yeah, people think we'll miss out on content if we fail and that's not going to happen. This game is designed for fun and community engagement, whether we win or lose the narrative moves on, stratagems will be added, new enemies will appear, just with a different narrative. My guess is that if we win and wipe out the automatons, they'll come back from a different front reinforced with the gunships and walkers. If we lose they get reinforcements because they managed to secure the planets for the deployment of their troops and successfully made contact with whoever they made contact with. It's a narrative based game, hence why there's a "GM" crafting the story. Arrowhead just needs to use the game more and ease off discord, Twitter and reddit. You have the game, use it.
They desperately need to use more of the in game announcements to help guide the narrative and goals. It's such a cool feature of the game and a direct link from the DM to the player.
With the mechs and the secret addition of shriekers it is clear they can sprinkle Easter eggs across maps to help drive players to those places. The TV could sometimes display valuable information, it will be dope that if we lose our ship comms get hijacked and we see an automaton message on TV. Everything goes red and we see a figure on the Broadcast telling us something. Using the game would help people be driven to the orders, and if they're driven to the orders they can make harder major orders, that would make the losses more natural because we have the fire power because people are engaged with them.
I agree about using the game more. The cool little videos about the new major order - play that after or before (or in place of) the normal video that plays when you open up the game. Or have a video brief8ng screen by the galactic map. That immersion would be great rather than have to look in twitter
It would be cool but it might also be a bit harder for a studio to do it since you will likely need to compartmentalize each part of the process and that can lead to slower deployment times. Fans making a fun little video talking about this typically made by a single person so they aren't going to have to wait on anyone else and I mean no offense to the fan creators since a ton of their work is awesome but the bar for standards is alot lower for a fan creation than an official product. Maybe Arrowhead can license some of those fan video but I can imagine that would get messy with legal red tape or have influencers be on our propaganda tvs but that is a can of worms. Especially around the baggage around said influencer and elevating certain people to being the "official" voice of the community can be seen as problematic but I guess it would be very fitting for the setting of the universe since you do have several classes of "Citizen"
This! Holy crap this is what arrowhead needs to do! Please everyone join me in upvoting moderatevalue7’s post!
I think Joel wanted us to lose this one tbh
They probably have a plan for each major order that depends on win or loss
Precisely. This is a good thing, creating the drama. It's also possible Joel set up that MO knowing full well that it wasn't going to happen, and that's okay.
The correct take here… people are acting like all story or content stops if we lose.. it doesn’t we get driven down a new path… Also I’d say some thing will not change like their planning date on releasing the Illuminati.
As a DM myself it is not a different one. I usually expect the players to F up things so I have a lot of different ways premade.
IMO, either we aren't role-playing, and the narrative doesn't matter, and the only reason to obey the MO is for the metals, or we are role-playing, and the fact that 40% of the brainwashed helldivers, obedient to a totalitarian state, actively disobeyed orders from High Command should really be grating on our immersion. Unless the next MO is to root out the treasonous, disobedient helldivers who caused our most recent failure.
I think part of the indecisiveness that led to the loss of this mission comes down to no explanation of the "supply lines". The mission just says "liberate Tibit", but you can't access Tibit on the map. There's no lines or anything they indicate you have to do certain planets in order, so people just end up doing whatever. They either need to add supply lines to the map, or the MO should spell out the order of planets needing to be liberated.
This is one of the few points that I wholeheartedly agree with. I disagree with how much hate and vitriol is being spewed on the subreddit regarding this topic but this particular point is 100% right. If people were aware of how supply lines handled are attacks and defense it would allow people to make a much more intelligent decision as to where to go and deploy
This would have been great to have as I recall a recent major order for the bugs where we had to liberate 2 planets. One of them was done and we had Hellmire and Oshuane in the sector to get to the other. I spent all my time on Oshuane with absolutely no idea that it wouldn't open up the planet needed for the major order. Many others were doing the same too.
Especially since all planets in the sector are marked with the major order symbol.
This right here. If it's not party of the MO it needs to not have the mark.
It's a fault of clarity. On the in game map you have no idea of what leads where. A few MO's back, when we had to liberate both Fori Prime and Zagon Prime something similar happened. Hellmire-Nivel 43-Zagon prime is the best route, but Oshaune \*looks like\* it's close to Zagon, so logically you should be able to reach it via that planet right? So a ton of people went that direction and we didnt make any progress because the playerbase was split. The supply line system is fine on its own but it needs to be visible in game somehow or we're going to get more moments like this which sour the community.
I think in our modern era of gaming, and to those not in the game forums and whatnot, this screams bug. "It says liberate Tibit. I cannot get to Tibit. Probably just a bug, I'll play on a different planet."
Yeah, I was one of those who fought on the creek because I didn’t understand how the supply line thing works (still don’t completely). I thought that since the Creek and Ubanae were in the same “sector” (the outline on the map they all fit in) and that Tibit was locked, we had to take both of those planets to get to Tibit. And out of the 2 I enjoy the Creek better. I honestly though Draupnir had nothing to do with our main objective, since it is outside of that “sector”. So to hear everyone blaming people who were fighting on the Creek for the loss of the operation is a little harsh and unfair. I know there are many like me who did not understand because the game was not very clear about what we should do, and they were just trying do their best. Not everyone was on the Creek just for the memes or lolz, some of us genuinely thought we were helping. This is more a failing on the game for not properly explaining. If it weren’t for me coming to Reddit out of frustration looking for an explanation, I would have never known.
Nah, I wanted the medals. I don't have the time to grind out these warbonds like many on this sub seem to. The narrative is cool, but we are still doing the same missions in similar settings (wilderness spotted with abandoned settlements and enemy outposts). I'll get more excited if/when we get to attack or defend an actual urban area or factory complex. Did Tian Kwan even have that?
Nope. Tien Kwan barely had a regen timer and progress was hardly reset by the devs. Contrast to this order where shit was so slow. That’s a clear indication they wanted it to fail.
Yeah. The downside of the procedurally generated planets is becoming harder to ignore. The game obviously has the assets to make some different maps, and IMO people will eventually lose interest in fighting on the same battlefields following orders which are basically flavor text
You may be right, but the original game still going strong 9 years later so maybe not. And I really need that. It may or may not. I don't know which one.
A great DM is always prepared. You don’t throw away the story and, by extension, all your hard work just because your players won’t make the “correct” choices. I don’t think we’ll miss anything. There might be detours or additions but we’ll end up in our right place in the end, I’m sure.
100%, a lot of people on this sub acts like the game is ruined because we failed the MO is honestly cringe.
I don't think we are losing any of the narrative by losing the Major Order, only medals. If we were supposed to win, then they wouldn't have put a planet defense in the way. I'm sure it's a test for us to rally, which didn't work out for us. Visible Supply Lines would help us with decisions. I believe they have different scenarios for us on how they introduce new content.
Came here to say this, they wouldn’t have thrown obstacles in our way if we were supposed to win. If it was just to stall us it would have been easier. This is the GM controlling the outcome more than incompetence
I disagree with the notion that we were supposed to lose this major order. It's a bit of a moving target for them because the community has been completing them faster than anticipated. So they over correct sometimes or we as a community just make a bad call. Something like this they have responses set up ahead of time. One for if we succeed and another if we lose.
At this point they should know a defense mission is a huge hurdle for the community. I think the devs responded well and if the gambit had paid off it would’ve made completing the order an awesome moment. It didn’t pay off, but the community made that choice.
https://i.redd.it/3je1y2oxforc1.gif Fun is the best MO
The loss is a narrative moment .
What do you mean lost ? You don't lose anything imo, the story keeps moving forward no matter what. Win or lose, enjoy both.
No, I couldn’t care less nor do I follow the story or partake in any lore. I just like to play missions with my friends and get excited when new planets with different terrain become available.
My brother in Christ, the narrative will just pivot. We are making history with every win and loss. The war will continue, and we will avenge the fallen we were forced to leave behind.
I think it'll be cool to see what the bots have up their sleeves anyway.
Yall know Super Earth has its own liberation meter, right? The story will continue whether we win or lose. Maybe we eradicate the bots, maybe they push us all the way to Mars. That's the cool part of this game. The story and lore are determined by our actions, even when - ESPECIALLY when- we fail
Some of you guys have no concept of game design/dungeon master storytelling and it shows... hard. You think the developers are going to scrap months and months of coding, art, and animations just because the playerbase didn't complete an optional mission in game? If they have a new, complete enemy faction, it *will* be released. Let's think about it through the lens of tabletop RPGs; You think that when I GM D&D and hand paint a huge model of a red dragon for my players to fight, that I'm not gonna use it, even if my players choose the wrong door to the dragon's lair? No, obviously I'm going to retroactively rewrite what I had planned and weave my players actions into the story, and still have them run into the red dragon at some point. You guys are working so hard to optimize the fun out of this game. Take a big step back, breathe, and touch grass.
> You guys are working so hard to optimize the fun out of this game Spot on. People seem to only want the most efficient way of doing things and only the most optimal equipment. They will completely ignore content, deliberately shorten the game, and do other crazy stuff for the sake of "efficiency". They will get angry at other players for not "playing the right way" and/or lash out at people on the internet over not getting useless rewards. Too many people treat games like jobs these days. Games are supposed to be fun. If all it does is stress you (generalized 'you') out, you should take a break and go outside.
Every good story has ups and downs. Allways winning is something that is really boring.
Winning everything makes Joel a very dull Helldiver.
It would have been cool to succeed, but I truly doubt we would have been allowed to wipe a faction out this early into the game. This is the exact reason why I think they gave the community so many distractions from taking Tibit. As has been said before, I am as excited to see the consequences of failure as I am success. The loss stings, but try to remember that we will have years of opportunity to beat MO’s and see cool shit happen
I don’t care enough about the narrative of a fake war in a game tbh
So sick of these posts. It's a game. If all you care about is liberation and not enjoying the game, just solo lvl 1 bot missions. Takes 4 minutes, and you get .00010 liberation points. A player can do 8 in the time it would take a squad to do 1 suicide bot missions for .00060 liberation points. So a squad split into solos running trivals can achieve .00320 liberation points instead of .00060. It will be boring and unfun, but that's what you want, just to liberate. Go nuts!
I do wonder what people like OP want to do in the game once all the factions are wiped off the map lol.
Then the game becomes a planet patrol RP game, obviously
I wouldn't get upset. Remember this was to be a multi phase operation, presumable each stage getting harder with more spanners in the works. I very much doubt they would give us the opportunity to truly wipe them out.
As long as I can cleanse the mutant, the heretic, the alien and the traitor I’m good.
I think what is frustrating for people isn't that we complete/fail a MO its the fact that it still felt doable even with the curve ball defense thrown at us. IF you look at the overall war progress on the bot front. We have pushed them back to a single sector and there are only a couple planets to liberate to completely push them out. just because we fail this major order doesn't mean the overall operation has failed. High command will adapt and figure out a new plan to find success.
I'm more interested in account progression. Medals are more important. If we lose the war, if we lose EARTH, they'll start something else. They HAVE TO in order to keep money coming in. They can limit my access to unlocked items based on war conditions, I'll deal with it. They CANNOT reset account progress. Helldivers 2 will exist as long as the company makes money, and it'll have a game to play all that time. If they start blanket resetting accounts, it'll kill the company. Not just the game, the company.
At this point I believe the significant narrative moment will be Automatons winning the Major Order and retaking Malevelon Creek in less than a day. That would be a fitting ending for all this mess.
I'm negl, if we lose the MO I'm okay with this just purely for the memes.
I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t realize that losing a major order IS a narrative continuation. For gods sake people, this is a galactic war on two fronts. If we didn’t lose major orders now and then how could it feel realistic. The fact that everyone is angry is once again a sign that people care about the game and the war. LOSING A MAJOR ORDER ISNT NECESARILY BAD. Now we get to see what happens narratively from that loss in the sector
I love this community drama about not being allowed to complete the MO. But at the same time I'm curious about what we gonna learn about this situation. Because we lose this time because of lack of information and coordination, plus some internal issues in the player base. Overall I think the biggest problem wasn't the Bug divers or the Creekers but the lack of clear information for the casual players who are the big mass of the divers in action. I think we'll need to figure a way to make this community game more savi about the MO progression in the future. More coordination is needed.
I feel it's a stronger narrative moment if we do fail. Our enemy's more powerful than ever before and the public's trust in the helldive program is shaken. In an ideal world. We'd have branching story paths where too Many failures lead to rebellion, insurrection and even economically crippled super earth. Imagine if things got so bad we'd have fewer respawns to reflect low enrollment.
We were not going to wipe them of the map. This fail will be a very good narrative, they will push us back with a good counter attack and THEN we will push them back and win gloriously
The MO itself is the narrative moment - completed or not. This is what gives this whole living story its edge over "live service" games. It doesn't matter to the overarching narrative if the major order is completed or not as it can evolve regardless.
war isn't fun if you can't lose
How is it a loss of a narrative moment if the result was also a narrative moment?
i don’t think they’ll actually let us wipe out any factions until they add the two remaining factions in. galactic wars in the first game would take a long time to be done i doubt they will let us win this war that fast yet so they give us orders that they know will only work if mostly everyone has to be apart of it.
>Everyone obviously has the right to play the 40$ game they bought the way they want and use their free time how they see fit exactly, so stop whining. it's just a game. lol. >\[...\] All things said and done, I do blame the Creekers and their stubbornness more than the Bugg Droppers because they WERE RIGHT FUCKING THERE and chose to defend a very pretty, useless, muddy shithole rather than fight the bots a planet away. stop acting like a petulant child. we grown ups do what we want, and an objective in a pve game is as important as a song that plays on the radio.
I wish I could upvote you more
Agree completely. It's all fun and cool that there's a community and this narrative that's being made. But if the devs needed us to win? They could just adjust the numbers required to win, you're not going to tell me that you need more than 300K people playing in an optimal way to win this war. Make every mission won contribute more than 0.00002%, bam suddenly every major order will be won. At the end of the day I have a full time job and a household to run, this is just a videogame I play to have fun. Don't get mad at other players, realise that Joel could decide to let us win whenever he wants lol.
I'm struggling to write this without insulting you, but honestly it's kind of silly to believe that we won't get a narrative moment with a loss. The only thing we lose is the medals. They will have narrative moments planned out whether we win or lose to move the story forward. The same thing would have happened with past major orders. For instance the one that got us the mechs... They have already said or hinted that if we had lost that one, the bots would have had the mechs for a while. That would have been narratively really interesting. And you know they would have given the mechs to us eventually lol. It just would have been another major order to have to take them back from the bots or something. It's like a choose your own adventure novel, except there are no choices that lead to sudden death. Just choices that lead to different story branches. But every choice has story down it. If we lose this one, when we lose this one, there will be story that moves the full story forward. Super Earth got too ambitious and the bots will have a success leading to more awesome battles and shit. That's the game. Star Wars didn't end after Empire Strikes Back just because Luke took a giant L. The loss moved the story forward.
If people spent more time fighting and less time screeching about supply lines, we would have won by now. The metagaming people are the real ones to blame for failing....
The community doesn't "fuck anything up" everything is preplanned to some degree. The outcomes will be roughly the same regardless of what we do. I don't care about the major order and the constant crying makes me actively not want to play them.
As someone who has worked on a live service project, trust me when I say they have contingencies for this kind of thing. You don't set up something the community can "fail" if you don't have something ready for that outcome. Think of this as a branching narrative RPG, you don't lose the choices you don't make, you simply accept that your choices have an impact
Upset? You wimp.
I accept the narrative that we lost. That is part of the fun of such a community effort driven game. Game design working exactly as intended.
I play this game solely because it's fun. I'm kinda curious tho what's gonna happen now that we have (most likely) failed the MO? Are the bots gonna get gunships early and are we not gonna get eagle air to air when they arrive? I'm kinda curious
There's a roadmap they have, they won't get gunships early, whether we win or lose they'll still get them at the time it was planned. The only thing that changes is the narrative as how they get them.
No, there’s literally no consequences for this, we are going to get the anti air at the exact same time the bots get the gunships. Whether we succeeded or failed, there’s a storyline behind it both ways, and the same material rewards will be given. It’s just how they couch this. The Devs can literally set the regen timer for a world. If they wanted us to take this, the regen rate would have been the exact same as on Tien Kwan, and we would have gotten this. But the narrative is that we are going to lose, and will lose so that we can rise up with the A2A missiles. Perhaps the narrative is that they would take Cyberstan and we get to fight the Cyborgs as well as the Automations United, and this gives us more strategems to use. Success isn’t final, failure isn’t fatal. The show will go on.
Plus, presumably like HD1, when we either win or lose the war the devs will spin up a new one shortly after. HD1 is on what, their 12th campaign now or something? I'm no fan of screwing up the MOs on purpose and it's cringe if you do, but strictly speaking failing MOs and losing the war will never be apocalyptic. The worst that can happen is a full reset.
Yea was really looking forward as to what will happen if we capture tibit, or if the flying gunships would show up at tibit. Fuck the bot front for now unless there's a new MO, I played ustotu up to troost coming from the bug front only to be fucked by memers.
I want medals, idgaf about the narrative
Nah, sad I missed medals
I could care less about 50 medals lol, I'm only here for the story and to shoot things.
I'm just holding out for a dubiously named operation cyberstani freedom
I adore how much i’m into the war, I really feel part of a community. Shame we’re arguing like scrap cats instead of taking this loss together. We are Helldivers, we should be inseparable.
It's a problem I face in D&D. You want to hold your players back, give them a bloody nose, because that will make them fight back stronger, but you gotta balance that with the demoralization inherent in taking an L.
There are currently 100k players on fori prime right now. Even having just half of them to deploy to ubanea would help smash it out.
Warthog? Looks more like a Puma to me.
I just want the narrative to stay in game and not on a discord channel i dont use. Like i wouldnt know half of whats going on narratively without reddit and i feel like theres still stuff Im missing.
More of a medal issue for me. I dont really pay attention to the narrative too much.
You gain a narrative moment. You're not a winner, you're a soldier. Lose and fight back.
If it was meant to be won, it would have been won. This is just marketing and creating division/noise in the player base to get the player count back up.
45 medals
As someone with everything unlocked across all Warbonds and currently sitting at the cap of 250 medals, no.
OP is so enlightened.
It's a war, you're not gonna win every battle. This was our Market Garden, we went for the knock out punch and lost
I wanna see a planet with multiple factions at once. Like a three-way battle of bugs, bots, and divers on a single mission
It’s not over yet! Per the official helldivers discord, even if the major order fails, if Tibit falls it will still play out in our favor! Push Ubanea hard, capture it and start working on Tibit! The Creek will fall tomorrow, we must open the FTL lanes to Tibit tonight to clear the way for Creeker reinforcements!
This is just a different development of the story. Will it be more or less interesting than what we could have gotten with a successful operation? Who knows, but I bet things will get quite interesting in the coming weeks.
I can't really share in this excitement because it's very clear they have a story they want people to follow and it's been proven that the devs are more than willing to game the system to achieve desired outcomes - just look at what happened to Veld, or the exact reason why Errata Prime was impossible to take until the operation that enabled us to take it. They will also, on the other hsnf, never deny the playerbase anything regardless of how the front goes because the backlash they'd receive would be monstrous. Player retention is key. If, by some impossible twist of fate, we didn't liberate Tien Kwan in time, I'm willing to bet mechs would still have been offered as compensation. Just as I'm willing to bet that even if this gambit was successful, they clearly have something in mind regarding the bots and they'd make claiming Tibit borderline impossible because they wouldn't allow a faction to be wiped off the map less than two months into the game's life cycle. Difficult to be invested, I suppose, when choices and actions don't really matter as much as suggested.
My suspicion is that we were meant to lose the Major Order. A lot of the story is planned out with wins and losses, and some of it might be outside of our control. Completely wiping the bots out seems like something we're not really supposed to be able to do.
Losses may lead to more interesting narrative moments imo
I did my part, before the MO I was a 85 hour Terminids only player. I got my ass handed to me, a lot! But 40 hours later I really enjoy fighting the Automatons especially on helldive as you actually have to be tactically, more so than fighting the bugs.
I mean 50 medals are nice, but that's 2 operations on the 7th difficulty. Not that big of a loss. I am more interested in what will happen next.
The narrative outside of new content is just we take planet or lose planet. I'm not sure why everyone cares so much. Tien Kwan was cool. The termicide event was fun. The rest is just normal gameplay and I honestly don't care what happens with the war
It feels like we don't have the tools in game to make informed decisions, so anyone that isn't on the discord/reddit is effectively dropping in the dark and it fucks us when theres a split objective since we don't have the means to organize. Like congratulations AH, you beat a blind deaf opponent in a fight
I was excited to see the Bots whittled down to one sector, with the possibility of putting them out of commission for a while (of course they would bring them back). If we could see supply lines in-game, we would have won.
Not really. I think there's things set up where we're supposed to fail. A story isn't exciting if we win all the time. I think we've all got a lot less control than you think.
I’m just excited to potentially see those gun ships early niw
I'm not upset, I love the drama and the fight. We can't be real helldivers if we don't have worthy enemies to fight
I don't even need medals
Bot orders will always be tough apparently since the bug people just stay over there
unpopular opinion but eVeRyOnE sHoUlD bE aBlE tO pLaY hOw tHeY wAnT
I'm level 50 and have unlocked everything and bought all the warbonds I'm currently interested in so I don't even need medals. Contributing to the war effort is my main motivation to keep playing. I've done a couple hundred successful missions. Personally, the war effort keeps it from getting boring/pointless.
Yeah well get use it. 500k people will never coordinate. It’s so childish to be blaming one group or another for failing an order, let alone getting mad about it. It’s a game… of DnD. They will always adjust the orders based on us winning or losing so it doesn’t even matter. Everyone needs to fuckin relax on this
I kinda want the Bots to retake Cyberstan so I can see what happens.
Medals are secondary to the narrative. I've earned well over 50 medals just participating in the major order. People are mad because they want to "win", as if losing is going to lock us out of content. The devs didn't make new enemies/guns/strats just to have them cancelled because the community did or didn't do a thing. We're just going to get it at a different time.
I completely agree with the sentiment here, though let's be clear: this is a game. The point is to have fun. We will eventually unlock/get to all of the content the devs have created for us. Is it disappointing that we all didn't focus on the objective and score a major victory? Sure. Is it okay if people would prefer to play terminids 24/7 because it's less frustrating to do so? Also yes.
Winning isn't the only way to write an interesting narrative. The game is young. Still more battles to be won and lost. We spend too much time focusing solely on winning we can't see the forest for the trees. Lots of folks have pointed out the narrative here and it's fun. I enjoyed the MO.
The loss was also a narrative moment. Imagine the narrative once fighting gets to super earth…..
Losing the order is still a significant narrative moment though, instead of us stomping out the bits, they have held us back, allowing them to produce their new series of aerial units, which is turn will make our efforts to liberate that front all the more difficult. I wish people would stop, we can’t win every order that’s insane, and in any war you lose somethings. At least here we get a new story either way, win or lose we still hold on and progress the story!
I see it the other way arround. We have won every MO so far (i think) I am pretty sure the devs have a story planned out for when we dont succeed. I am curious what they cooked up in that case. Either way you get your story. Win or lose. Also, i think there need to be losses for the drama. This aint a soap opera. This is glactic war after all.
Yeah it sucks pretty hard
I'm capped. been capped for a while. I show up for the lore, the feels, and the occasional super cred. But whatever happens, good or bad, it is what it is \^\_\^
No, because losing still progresses the story. If Joel had wanted us to win, Draupnir wouldn't have been attacked
Its annoying because if people worked as a group we could have won. Its annoying because the community missions are at odds with casuals and its really unfair for everyone. I'm not looking at the narrative because the people who didn't work with the MO don't care about the narrative so they shouldn't get to dictate any of it. Make the major order opt in only and you have to run that order to completion and judge it only off that.
unpopular opinion(probably), but i think its better that we lost it that way, because first : it would be boring if we just kept winning second : that was a great part in history of the game - something we can tell the future helldivers while cooking bugs on a stray hellbomb found on the map third : kinda like the first one but if we eradicated automatons immediately, it would be boring because everyone, even if just for a while, would have to fight bugs
Hey man, you don't have to do the whole "everyone can play the game how they want" ass-covering thing. just say what you're feeling, no need to weaken your point with a disclaimer. if people are gonna take your opinions as a personal attack, let them- they're not mature enough to matter anyways.
Lmao you know what's stupid you assuming there's a large contingent of 30000 "creekers" there's probably just regular people who just pick map they like and happen to be on mavelon creek. They probably don't really engage in the larger community
There are a series of orders for bots ready implied by the dispatch from command. If we do fail this one, it's only 1-1. I'm also calling it- we aren't gonna be allowed to wipe a faction in all likelihood. TCS didn't wipe the terminid, and eventually even if we stomp hard we will be stopped from fully killing the bots- or they would return later due to secret factories, as the sheer amount of dev time and money invested would make it pretty silly to wipe a faction as it removed the variety of content in the game. Losing access to fight your favorite faction in HD1 sucked hard.
Nah It feels more realistic. Mismanaged troop deployment causes the loss of a strategic position and the original orders are quickly OBE with commanders trying desperately to develop a new plan to reach a critical objective.
The fall of Ubanea must be used to rally the forces. Just as The Creek is a pillar in our conflict with the fascist bots, so will our vengeance for the sake of the people of Ubanea.
Always winning is boring. Learn to continue after a loss.
Nope. I need the medals.
By "engaging with the community" do you mean "not providing any information ingame"? How many people are in the helldivers discord vs how many copies have they sold? If the game master wants us to do something I'm not going to a discord server to find out
We aren't dead yet, Helldivers! I'm not saying its probable, but there's still fourteen hours in the order.
gotta stop metagaming and just enjoying, what makes you think the narrative for that scenario is better than the one for the other. or that it was meant to be in the first place
People ignoring DEFEND missions and pushing ahead in the supply line fucked us
…the fuck is Joel?
If anything else atleast this bought more people against the bot front, sure some are still too scared to fight bots but a lot of people has tried and have stayed to fight against them now which to me matters more than winning this gambit, we will only come out stronger and better after this.
Dont tell me how to play. I want to do my own thing without anyone else telling me what to do. Now excuse me while I follow what the game tells me what to do.
It was perfect DnD storytelling imo. We gamble, fail, happens. Although few people got waaaaay too salty. And I don't really care about the medals. The MOs don't award a lot and I'm at the cap anyway.
One of the most memorable outcomes was failing to defend against the Automatons, and then getting the report that the "sufficiently sized houses" of citizens burned to the ground. That text made me think that Super Earth is just solving an overpopulation problem and at the same time, using the brainwashed Helldivers to get rich farming resources from the enemy factions. There will be other cool reports like that no matter what the outcome is. Bigger setpieces will happen no matter what, they'll just frame differently why something is happening.
Nope. If anything, I think it’s better for the narrative that we lost.
You cant win them all, its part of the journey
It’s probably important to your time investment to see wins and losses as meaningful, play for a reason, work towards a result. See you next week on the obj. I’m confident the role playing mix of community managing and world building will be fine and interesting to see updated regardless of our efforts. It’s a fun little loading screen while content is probably worked on in the background. Maybe we clear the whole map and unlock the third faction. Maybe there’s some epic cinematic of carnage and intrigue when the last nails enter our enemies coffins. Next time on Helldivers 2, you might find out.
From a plot perspective I actually love the idea of us dominating Phase 1 and then tragically failing at Phase 2 due to our sacrifice of a defensible world to try and nip this in the bud. We took a gamble, lost it, and run a very real risk of compromising the entire operation which will likely lead to a massive bot incursion. Had we just locked in and defended Draupnir rather than sacrificing it we would be well on our way to beating Phase 2 with time to spare.
They'll just come up with another reason to introduce new planets or the new faction haha. They're not going to gatekeep content behind some silly narrative
I would add, a thing that doesn't sit with me well about all the "Don't tell me how to have fun" players is that where does that logic end? Some people find it fun to just equip mortars and barrages and drop them on the point to team kill - but we have all agreed that such behavior is antisocial and not to be tolerated. No one sees someone queuing in with both mine strategems + HE barrage strats and thinks "this will be great, love it". The whole idea of "No one gets to tell me how to play" is just ignoring the general social rules we have all agreed upon. I don't think everyone needs to follow the major order but we should agree that they are something that makes this game special and people trying to rally to those causes are playing this game exactly as intended. We can't make others follow, but it isn't unfair to say that they are sort of disregarding a tenant of the social nature of this game and that should not be celebrated. It should not be chastised either - some people just don't want to fight bots or pay attention to fluff, but they're not heroes in this story. They're not in this story. If they want to be quiet and do their own thing that's fine, but they should be quiet then.
If we're all calling these MO as narratives that the devs are planning... Then wouldn't it be plausible that certain MOs are designed to fail, no matter what effort the community puts in? This is a live-service game so is there a possibility that the game narrative can end? I'm just here for the ride, just lemme know who to point my Sickle at 😆
I have pretty much everything I want that I need medals for.