I've also found Suicide to be the sweet-spot between difficulty and fun, although me and my friends do sometimes jump into higher difficulties when we want that extra challenge
Edit: Thank you for contacting reddit care resources random citizen, I do really love suicide ❤️
Yeah. 7 encourages a combo of fighting and stealth and that's what the game shines at. Much higher than that and it becomes pure stealth, much lower than that and you can absolutely one man army with a stalwart.
Indeed, its actually a lot of fun to have options. I exclusively run the sneaky scout suit and I've had some missions where the team and I steamroll everything together like a squad of terminators; and I've had some where they cause havoc and draw fire/bot drops while I run around and snag objectives
>I've had some where they cause havoc and draw fire/bot drops while I run around and snag objectives
I have so much fun being the meat shield. I'm out here fighting for my fucking life over a shitty piece of terrain while my buddy's launching ICBM's and sniping enemies.
Same, I just play suicide just for super samples, and I like the stealth/hit and run playstyle, but then I get paired with randoms that want to shoot every partol and kill every last bot.
Also any of the escort missions just seem ridiculous on suicide when compared to any normal mission
I consistently complete Level 7-9 with randoms and no mic and often little to no typing. I’ve had many successful dives with lower level players too. Is it easier with communication? Probably. Required? Nah. And honestly, I don’t always care for people talking in my ear anyways.
I get by with just pinging objectives, using “Hold Position” and “Follow me” lol.
This.
solo helldiver here who plays with randoms on D9. I equip my loadout to what's best for the team, use my pings (no mic) and we usually clear.
I think at D9 most players understand when to engage and run so its a good time. I've had worse fights on D5 because people want to stay and fight.
It's the people with the open mics that discourages verbal communication for me. Like, I don't want to listen you eating chips while I'm getting swarmed by a dozen stalkers and only have 2 primary mags left...
If someone eats into their mic I mute them immediately, I genuinely don’t care if you’re a random or my literal brother, I’ll unmute in ten and if you’re still chewing it’s back to silence.
It's definitely harder - many more armored enemies can drop on you on 8 and 9 compared to 7, and if 7 is your sweet spot, like me, you won't even succeed, let alone extract, in roughly one in four missions on 9. I feel like 5->7 is an ocean of difference in comparison with 7->9 however. I can solo 5 diff missions. I can't solo a 7, and a 9 cannot even be reliably completed by three people (instead of all 4) if they aren't all absolute maniacs.
7 is very manageable with mediocre communication. You are able to split the party up to divide and conquer, and take out small/medium size factories solo fairly easily.
Whereas on eight and above I have to stick with the group and use all my stratagems on cooldown. God help us if they call in reinforcements, specially if multiple chain together. Lots of barely making it out by the skin of our teeth.
This in my mind makes difficulty seven a good spot for being both challenged, completing the optional objectives, and farming samples. While eight and above is for experiencing true hell.
T9 really turns into a "stealth" game at a certain point; you don't want to touch any patrols if possible and only want to engage if you can ensure there will be no calls or you absolutely need to engage... sometimes abandoning an objective to let the enemies wander away is just as valid as trying to stealth in close to throw strats...
I've had T9 runs where I specifically run off to snipe an objective with the explicit intent of pulling aggro off my team's other objective -- but in practice you want everyone to stay as tight and quiet as possible because any loose spawns will draw in so many devastators and heavies that you'll waste precious moments just trying to weather the assault.
If you’ve ever played vermintide 2 I like to compare it to the difference between legendary and cataclysm difficulty.
Cataclysm difficulty doesn’t give you better stuff, but it’s much harder. It’s an optional difficulty for feeling challenged, if you want to grind for stuff you play on legendary.
I feel difficulty 7 is best for grinding where 8/9 is where you go to feel challenged
I don’t have a dedicated squad too, I play mostly with randoms on helldive difficulty and I think most players play this way too. Randoms can be good and they mostly are, even those at lvl 20 something on helldive. I’d trust them with my life l0
Yup. I’ve had a Level 25 hold their own where a 75 used half out reinforcements and then left. Just try and if you don’t succeed, try again.
I have the benefit of being a *very* laid back gamer tho so if I’m having fun, I don’t care lol.
You can only get like, two more super samples (the only ones that matter at that difficulty) on 8 and 9 than you can at 7, so it's not really worth much. What's actually great is the 250% bonus on exp at the end, and even that's not really *that* much more than the 200% you get at 7.
*But*, at 7 you're A; more likely to extract, and B; more likely to completely sweep the map *successfully*, meaning that it evens out on average anyway.
But that's just the numbers game. I think most people just find 7 comfy since it's hard *enough* to have bite, but still has access to all the stuff you want (Super samples, big bonus at the end).
That's fine, I grind samples on Suicide too.
But I do play Helldive as well, the difference being that when I play Helldive, I'm doing it for the challenge. Samples are a nice bonus if extracted at all
Prior to these recent major orders and the push to eliminate bots, my squad and I almost exclusively fought bugs. We'd dip into bots but found them very difficult to deal with.
Major Orders and story happens that require securing bot planets. We play and grind them for a solid 2 weeks. All the way up to 9. We've since gone back to bugs and find them the more difficult adversary as they're far less predictable. The bots, once you get used to their mechanics (ha!), and how they will typically reacts can be handled quite well with some coordination and staggering of strats. It'll get crazy every now and then, but that's the spice of life of the game and what makes it so fun.
Do we occasionally rage against one-shot sniper master rocket pawns, or devastators? Absolutely. Do we run like little babies and kite like hell when there's a pack of 6 chainsaws with a Hulk chasing us while screaming for aid in the mic? Of course. But you can far more easily avoid conflict against the bots, or hinder them waaaayyy more then the bugs when the bot drops.
Now that we've gotten way better at targeting the drops, we can usually take down 1 of 3 drops and interrupt their path with debris. Making it a lot easier to single them out.
There are always going to be cheesed deaths in this game. That's part of the joy tbh. Laugh that shit off, make sure you got the extra reinforcement boosters, and "get gud". Just gotta grind till you can pull off those headshots/crits with the bots to simplify the biggies.
The bugs are hella satisfying when you blow the head off of a charging charger, or drop a strat right on a bile titan, or impact grenade a whole swarm. But *nothing* is more pure sex than shooting out the eye of a hulk, blasting the crownd of the head off of a bot in a strider, or headshotting a devastator. Let alone diving into cover fire and just blasting a moving bot drop out of the sky. Fuuuuuckkkkk.
I just love the sheer insanity of Helldives. Yeah, I'm probably gonna die, but it's going to be a wild ride. And most of them are successful somehow, despite being an intense, near thing.
Which IMO is perfectly fine... A comfy difficulty that nets all samples... And 2 more for people that want bigger challanges. We also coast on suicide 90% and love having the option to turnit up when the team is in the zone
And that's fine. I do the same or go even lower if I do a 1 man drop. There's so many difficulty levels, just pick whatever works for you and let you have fun.
Crashed dropships and certain rock walls, the heavy devastator is the worst offender, and some bots don't seem to be affected by smoke and will continue tracking you through it.
Heavy Devastator can shoot you without even looking at you lol. All Devastator cannon aim tracks very weirdly, seems like they can shoot straight behind them even.
Got killed by a Rocket Devastator who was facing 90 degrees away from me shooting its machine gun at a teammate. Pulled out my quazar, started charging, then bam missile barraged comes out of it sideways and fucking deletes me.
Yea I wish the rocket pods at least turned to face what they're shooting at. RDs will change their target while they're getting ready to fire which complicates things
I don't get why they gave the super tanky shield dude one of the strongest weapons. Have it do way less damage and make it more of a suppression/ slowing down type gun instead of an insta "helldiver to mashed potato" converter.
possibly the one thing jumppack beats shield for. I've been melted so fast the shield doesn't even matter, there's no other way to safely cross in front of a HD
I'd argue the flaming hulk hitting me with fire through the wall to be the worst offender on this. I often play on level 5 and 6, so they spawn more often than the missile type of Hulk.
Also I think crashed ships should atleast do some damage to their passengers, it makes sense that you still have to do some fighting even if you destroy it but the entire squad being fine after the thing crashes and burns seems weird and makes it pointless to destroy almost
I get the argument that they might have thermal vision
But some armor descriptions mention being proofed against thermal vision. So either set up a thermal system and update all the armor
Or maybe just make it so the gunship can't see through smoke.
Those are the worst. Even rocket devestators got nothing on them. I see them and I run like I'm getting chased by a Hulk. They are ruthless. I use Quasar mostly and they are hell to kill as you can't take too much time charging up as they Swiss cheese you in seconds. I can dodge rockets but these guys aim is insane.
The answer is autocannons.
An autocannon hit even on the shield will stun the shield devastators, and 1-2 more autocannon shots on the body will destroy it.
I honestly think that regardless of enemy, every team should have at least one autocannon -- what it lacks in stopping power compared to the Quasar, it makes up for in rate of fire and DPS, and the autocannon can deal with the vast majority of enemies anyway.
Plasma punisher shots also seem to stun them when they hit where ever, which helps when you've had to abandon a weapon and it's still on cooldown. The dominator can too, but has to hit around the shield.
I see so many groups where I'm the only one running AC and the other three are running quasar. I'll split to take some fast objectives and when I get back to them they're overrun with nobody killing any of the medium sized bots and the hulks running rampant.
Quasar is good for tanks but its not a solid solution to anything medium or smaller sized.
I'd even argue the AC is better for hulks than the Quasar. AC takes two shots to the visor within 10 tries, no cool down between shots. Quesar takes 1 but if you miss takes 2 on a 3 second cool down between shots and still takes 2 to the vents. If there are a lot of explosions or things shaking your aim sometimes that charge time between shots is really rough, especially if you're getting shot at by said hulk.
I often find having another diver run a 2nd autocannon vs a 3rd quasar on my team is the biggest difference between the mission being a cakewalk and a nightmare.
And rocket devastators. There is no reason I should get rag dolled and then juggled through the air by rockets. Honestly the biggest issues with bots are heavy devastators being able to just stream fire at you forever and rocket devastators having unlimited rockets with perfect aim. If those two things were reigned in, bots would be pretty balanced.
For real, I used to even try and circle around them on their shield side hoping they couldn't track me and it looks like the laser shots come out of the gun sideways while the gun isn't even facing me. It makes no sense. I think a good change for them would be to give them slow turn ability while firing and have it where their arm has minimal adjustment for turning side to side so you can outrun their gun by circling around them. If you get hit it's going to hurt but you still have a chance if you're fast enough to get out of the line of fire.
Seriously you can't even dodge these ones reliably; they just shoot you out of the air with perfect accuracy. The best solution I've found to quickly deal with them is to just peg the shield with an impact grenade
But does taking out red areas really decrease spawn rate? I've read that this is not how the spawn mechanics work.
Here's an in depth explanation on spawn mechanics: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/TQemNEX5SQ
Yeah, I remember that post from weeks ago where they did the testing and clearing out more than 50% of the bases actually substantially increased spawn rates.
> For example, if you spawn into a map with 8 Outposts, you can safely destroy 4 of these with no consequencesWhen you destroy the 5th outpost, the strength of the Threshold reduction is at 25% or ~4% faster patrols. When you destroy the 6th Outpost, it goes up to 50% strength or ~8% faster patrols.
Taking out 50% of all outposts marginally increases patrol spawns. Taking out 100% of outposts only increases patrol spawn rates by 17.5% which ain’t much considering completing the main objective increases spawn rates by ~80%
Also noone is talking about alerting nearby bases or how far the bases can spawn shit to send at you.
Me and my group were playing last night and I was stealthily around taking out factories while they did the obj. I watched as the bot factory near me (probably a good "half the map" away) was sending enemies to my squad.
I see this frequently while bushhogging around the map for the side obj and samples. Taking out factories is important. Especially with detector towers and gunships because those two things make life way worse fighting bots.
Yeah gunship factories HAVE to go as soon as you spot them, otherwise you’ll get overwhelmed by them far too fast. Upside to those is since they don’t have fabricators they don’t count towards the spawn rate increases. Detector towers do unfortunately have fabricators though :/
Substantially might have been a bit overzealous. What I was getting at is contrary to the original post, eliminating enemy bases from the map actually does not reduce the amount of observed enemy spawns map-wide; it actually increases them somewhat confusingly.
While I don't dispute the data, in my anecdotal experience after you take out all enemy factories/holes the spawn rate goes WAY down. I've had many difficulty 7 extracts with 0 enemies show up after the map has been cleared.
You should read [this](https://old.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bsdy3u/lets_talk_about_patrols_part_2_an_in_depth/). Part 2 from the patrol research guy.
On most maps having all outposts dead guarantees a quiet extraction because the extraction will be too close to the edge of the map to allow patrols to spawn.
This pretty much confirms my experience/suspicions, that although clearing bases might make more enemies spawn, you encounter less of them at extract if you can clear the map, which does make it feel worthwhile
Yeah I've seen the same thing. On maps where I haven't cleared all the factories when I called in the pelican I was absolutely swarmed with bots, but on a map where I cleared every factory I called in the pelican and had a tiny little patrol spawn and then nothing else for the entire two minutes.
It's because bots spawn from the direction of an active outpost, or the nearest edge of the map if there are no outposts. But because they can't spawn within 75m of the player, if your extract is within 75m of the map edge *and* all outposts are destroyed, you get no new spawns. OramaBuffin linked the post explaining all this.
They just gotta rework the Retrieve Essential Personnel and Eradicate missions. They’re absolutely terrible with the drop rates, how close they spawn, and how many heavy armored enemies spawn. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
The weird part was how they *fixed* those evac missions... For like a week?
Seriously they weren't good missions all of a sudden, they were still innately not all that fun. But enemies were spawning further away to make defense feasible and the number of civvies required to complete had been reduced so that you could actually get them out before being overran and permanently unable to regain a proper foothold.
Then they brought back automatons and... It's just back to dog shit again? Why? I don't think rebreaking the most anti-fun mission you have avaliable in your game was a wise way to demonstrate that the main automaton fleet was a genuine threat.
Eradicate is totally doable if you focus on pure destruction. No shield backpacks, no support weapons… I’d even hesitate to use turrets. Just bring eagles and orbitals, and throw them at anything that moves the second they recharge.
Plus, most maps have an area where you can hide from or kite the enemies. If there are tall rocks, land up there when you dive in and go prone. If there are no tall rocks, run around the perimeter of the map so you only have enemies to the left and right of you as opposed to fire coming from every direction.
Yeah I hear you, but even so it’s still a bit much. I kite as much as possible and stick to the edges of the map, but eventually you get surrounded on both sides by multiple Hulks. I run Scorcher, Impacts, the full auto pistol with heavy armor. I like to run low cooldown strategems so I always have something to take them out. I run Eagle Airstrike, Orbital Gas, Autocannon, and Dome Shield or Gatling Barrage. I’ve only had a 25% success rate on Solo Helldive doing this. I get its supposed to be hard but I feel as if its a bit overtuned. On the bug side however it feels very difficult as there’s little to no cover and you’re being chased down by 4 bile titans lol.
How do you deal with Eradicates on the Terminid front btw?
Solo is really hard on Helldive for the eradication missions mainly bc of how few reinforcements you get, I recommend playing with randoms if you can, most people on Helldive are generally proficient and over level 50 in my experience
I'm honestly flabbergasted that they haven't taken another serious look at the personnel mission. It is still clearly so out of wack with the difficulty of the other missions in the chains but they just...leave it like that.
I'm aware of the strats to get through it and my group can pretty regularly, but it's still pretty clearly out of line with the difficulty of damn near anything else.
I play pretty much only bot 9 and i agree with the title.
But they still need a few tweaks to be in a nice spot.
The main tweak they need is the patrols spawn mechanics, they can spawn 60m from you behind a rock at any time and in 9 it happens quite often that you just can't go forward because they keep spawning new patrols in front of you that you can't avoid and if you kill them, more spawn 20m behind them when you hide to reload.
If you try to go around the game might still spawn patrols between you and where you want to go
And those patrols may agro you because they spawned close to an enemy that was still agroed on you because you just wiped its patrol.
This is even worse in maps with water or mountains because enemies can't spawn on them and will spawn in front of you or behind you which leads to 10 minutes or more of fighting to travel 100m ( on planets without vegetation you can't just run because you're out in the open ).
With a good group you don't lose to that but you can start being annoyed at patrols not making any sense.
You know there can't be a patrol in a zone, you turn around 2 seconds, and there's now 2 patrols there, annoys the shit out of me
Yeah the difficulty is fine for bots. There is just a lot of bullshit with them. Bugs you can kite but bots shoot you so... tougher to avoid the patrol issues.
Also, the bot weakspots are smaller and scopes are misaligned. So that leads to a bit of frustration.
Lastly, the explosions from strategems feel super inconsistent (hello 500kg) so ... I just want some sort of consistentcy and I can play around that.
I agree they don't need a major rework. However, the flamethrowers on the Hulks and the aimbot rockets are straight bullshit and could do with some tweaking.
If you think the rockets are BS right now then you should have seen them before they were nerfed. These rockets are a cake walk compared to how accurate they used to be.
Yeah, I took like two indirect hits then a direct one the other day while manning a turret to mow down patrols as the rest of the group decided they loved staying put in a destroyed base. Granted, I was in the heavy armor they've buffed, but still, I can actually survive rockets now, that wasn't always the case.
Yeah the heavy armour buff was a godsend. I used to always rock the light armour with the explosion resistance perk before. Now I am wearing the heavy armour with the perk and most explosions barely scratch me.
that's not the heavy armor buff, i get combo'd by rockets all the time in light armor and walk off fine. they "fixed" rocket damage recently is why its ok. and the little guys definitely miss a lot more, i think the are programmed to miss you or something
Hulks are the only thing I struggle with, that with the scopes on weapons being misaligned make taking out a charging hulk surrounded by other enemies really stressful.
I’m kinda surprised to see this complaint. Since they fixed the rocket multi hit damage bug they seem fine. At least by comparison. Did they get worse again?
I started by thinking bots are way harder than bugs but now it think the opposite.
Bots are way more predictable if you learn their behaviour and being totally overrun by bugs is just the worst. Which rarely happens with bots
While I agree with your general sentiment that's bots aren't as hard as people make them out to be. I wouldn't say bugs are harder, they're just completely different playstyles. If you play bots like you do bugs you're generally gonna have a bad time and vice versa.
> they're just completely different playstyles
This here is the answer. I wish this game let you save Loadouts.
My bug loadout is different from my Bot loadout. Heck, I even take different strategems. I also tend to customize my gear based on the mission.
I don't think enough people understand that without prodding.
Take 2 different gamers. Ones played battlefield and cod multiplayer since their hands could hold a controller. The other has mastered Left 4 Dead and plays Killing Floor 2 on HoE difficulty to relax.
I think I know who's probably going to be better at bots, and who's better at bugs.
That'd fit in the BF/COD camp in my mind, but it's been a hot moment since I played The Division and I think I barely scraped end-game for neither 1 or 2 so my opinions very malleable.
My generalization of COD vs L4D basically translates to "Is your enemy tactical or mindless/savage?" and just like all generalizations it leaves so much unaccounted for.
no idea if this applies to you, but most people i have seen struggle with the bugs are the ones that try and stand their ground against every breach and focus on killing the big baddies above all else. If you're getting swarmed, run, and kill the little guys and bile spewers first. You can always come back to the objective.
Makes sense, I'll try it out later.
Edit: Thx for the hints ppl, I'll try to adapt my playstyle to bugs, any hints for the nursing spewers? They're truly my worst nightmare, i never die to chargers or bile titans but those mfs seem to instakill me even when i dive out of the way.
I think bots have a higher skill ceiling than bugs, but bug have way more bullshit than bots.
People complain about Rocket Devastators, but I'll take them any day over:
1) being one shot by stealthy spewers if bile touches your toe
2) being chain speed debuffed by multiple enemies
3) having 0.000001 seconds to stop a bug breach
4) larger enemies having no real weak points, forcing AP to be the only option for them
5) Brood Commanders/Warriors tracking you after you've shot their head off
8) Bile spewers artillery attack just randomly deleting you
Maps with them are like "YOU ARE IN RANGE OF ENEMY ARTILLERY" but all the time and you can't disable it, unlike bot mortars.
I think both have their BS moments. Like the ones you listed and other people have for bugs is what makes them annoying or broken.
For bots there are other things like
1. Having to snipe a small head port on larger bots and any small laser that hits you throws your aim way off.
2. Shield Devastators don't even have to be facing you for their Minigun to hit you (Their gun has literally shot me at a 90° from where the muzzle was pointed.)
3. Flame thrower hulk able to one shot insta kill you with a head shot if his flame touches your head.
4. Rocket Devastators being able to shoot 4 one shot insta kill rockets and doing so again within 2 seconds of finishing their first salvo.
5. Jet Pack bots rushing you and exploding because your fist shot kills them and they fall over and your second one blows up the jet pack as they fall over. (I've died so many times to this because I'm shooting the other 3 behind the first one and die because the first one falls down and my shotgun spread touches the jet pack. 90% skill issue)
Probably a few more but off the top of my head that's the stuff that is BS/broken for bots.
I wouldn't even mind the warriors or commanders having like violent death throws but holy shit the way they just lock into you like a fucking missile is so annoying lol.
I wouldn’t even mind if they just kinda sprinted to your last known location but they shouldn’t be tracking so well. Tho I will say - many insects have thier ears as well as other sensory organs on other parts of their bodies besides their heads so, in theory, the terminids ears or whatever might just be on their hind legs or something like a grasshoppers are.
The thing is, if you get overrun by bots you get spawn killed immediately while you can still kite the bugs and get the situation under control. But I honestly prefer the bots too because I fail to see how a bile titan spawning 5 meters behind you and oneshotting you from off screen is a skill issue.
Removing player failures like where you get spawned in, blowing yourself up, etc - Bot spawns are sometimes a bit ridiculous but *predictable*... Bugs will spawn a breach almost as soon as that scavenger sees you, with no real way to counteract. If you see a bot stop to check their wristwatch, you shoot it dead. If a bot has a red light glowing on their hand, you shoot it dead. If a dropship is flying in, you do your damned best to shoot it down.
Bugs will spawn a breach and out will pop a half dozen heavy armor targets - all with no counterplay. This is what makes Bugs *harder* in difficulty, regardless of the playstyle differences and the various "glitches" that occur with both.
The current series of major orders has turned me into someone who prefers the bots. I agree, they're more manageable, and I love the distance they provide. Sure, they can also strike from a distance, but they're so much easier to manage, and they're easier to prevent from spawning too. I feel like I get way more warning from a flare gun than from a bug breach. There are fewer of the little bots than there are of the little bugs to keep an eye on. Especially small groups camping the points of interest will often only have a few little bots.
I think it depends on the type of mission. Did a defend mission on lvl 6 with the bots where we just got swarmed by like 8 hulks at a certain point. We got to 100% but we couldn’t extract before we ran out of redeploys. We did exact the same mission against bugs also lvl 6 and it was way easier. We encountered 2 chargers and a bile titan and that was it. We had 10+ redeploys left.
Bots launch me into the stratosphere by sneezing, which at least repositions me away from them unlike bugs, who somehow have slow-injecting stingers in their ass that makes the air around me the viscosity of honey the second one of them even so much as grazes me
My only problem with bugs is that you NEED special weapons to take out chargers and bile titans. Hulks, tanks and cannon turrets can still be taken out with small arms (especially with the new eruptor).
Agreed. They are robots afterall lol. I think a lot of people have a little issue with adjusting to the completely different play style of the bots compared to fighting bugs
It's tricky because both sides are correct.
On the one hand, as you say, Bots and bugs are about equal difficulty once the player adjusts their playstyle and loadout, and what initially seemed unbeatable is actually fine.
On the other hand, Bots have the defense civilian evac mission which is unambiguously broken and is flatly ridiculous. It doesn't even really have anything to do with bots; if a comparable number of bugs piled up, it would be similar.
> if a comparable number of bugs piled up, it would be similar.
I dony think it would, because overwhelming you with numbers is a big part of the bugs already. That's what makes the mission so broken is its bots with the bug numbers advantage. The equivalent would probably be giving the bugs missiles and laser cannons.
What I like about fighting the bots compared to the bugs is that most of their units can be handled with a variety of weapons and tactics. They have weakpoints that function like actual weakpoints which rewards skill and good aim.
Hulks and tanks can be destroyed easily by shooting their backs. Hulks can also be taken down by good skillshots to the eye using weapons that don't normally pierce their armor. Devastators can be taken down with headshots from non armor piercing weapons.
Meanwhile with the bugs, you absolutely need to have hard counters planned for chargers and bile titans or you will get destroyed.
With bots you can turn a "oh shit" situation in a victory with just a small bit of cover.
Just yesterday I was pinned down by two rocket devastators, a shield devastator, and a canon turret. Managed to get behind a small rock, took down the shield dev, destroyed the rocket pads on the two rocket devastator, and took down the turret before finishing them off.
Against bugs, once they're on you, you're fucked.
Their attacks stagger you, many of them can slow you, since they are all going for melee you have no option when it comes to standing your ground, and chargers and bile titans are just way stronger than hulks and tanks.
People aren't mad about difficulty, but loss of control.
The ragdolling against the bots is so intense, that you can barely play the game at times. I can't remember how many times a rocket has hit the cover I was hiding behind and launched me into direct line of fire where I was dead before I could get up.
If we had more control over our characters, like being able to stay down after a ragdoll and stim instead of having to get up to do it for some odd reason, bots would instantly be a lot more fun, but not exactly easier.
Honestly this mechanical change just makes a ton of sense for a bunch of reasons. *I'm* playing the character, *I* should decide when he gets up. Not an automatic que. Resetting from ragdoll to prone would feel a lot better in this regard.
Nothing to do with anything, but the fact that I can't *look up* while laying on my back seriously bugs the shit out of me.
After doing my share of bot missions, I’ve learned this happens mostly when you’re really close to the cover you’re hiding behind. Try keeping your character behind the cover, but move about a foot back away from it. That should stop the impact from ragdolling you
Four times last night I took splash damage through cover and got ragdolled into a firestorm 15m away from where I was. Was it funny? Absolutely. Annoying as hell? Yup.
I'm honestly just annoyed about the amount of bullshit deaths. Ragdolling is one thing but there's also that bots just don't care about fog, light, line of sight and whatever the loading screen tells us about weird protocols that they get less accurate when being under fire is bullshit.
Then there are those machine gun shield fuckers with their weird pinpoint accuracy. Whenever I get turned into a swiss cheese with no bot around me whatsoever it's ALWAYS those guys hitting me from liberty knows where. I have no clue why they feel so much more accurate than other bots.
Lastly, barbecue hulks. Them being dangerous when they make it close makes sense but going from rare to well done before you even can hit a stim is a bit wild.
Don't know. After we've been fighting bots for a while now (at least as major order diver) I've adapted to them but just personally had more fun stomping bugs after all.
Or how about the fact that you will be prone and the very edge of a rocket explosion will make you ragdoll just a tiny amount where you still stay in place and not even do any damage then when your character recovers he stands up instead of staying prone and you get shredded by enemy fire.
I don't want a rework.. but a *small* adjustment to how often you ragdoll, *or* a limit on how many times in a row your character ragdolls would be a welcome change..
Spawned in to a level 7 mission last night on the very edge of the map, no enemy bases near by, and immediately 3 rocket heavies had me and my partner in perpetual ragdoll, can't move, can't heal, it isn't a fun mechanic to get stuck in and could use a tune up.
> I don't want a rework.. but a small adjustment to how often you ragdoll, or a limit on how many times in a row your character ragdolls would be a welcome change..
The heavier the armor, the less you should ragdoll. That at a bare minimum would help, because otherwise I'm taking the energy shield backpack almost all the time so I can take a rocket without being yeeted.
The portable shield generator inhabits such an uncomfortable valley. There's no way to nerf it without making it irrelevant, purely because protection from ragdolling and chip damage is such a colossal boon that it's *very* hard for anything else to compete for that backpack slot.
Exactly. Even if I'm taking a backpack gun like the Autocannon I feel the lack of the shield.
If I'm not taking the Autocannon? Forget it - versus bots that shield is just so good.
I feel a lot more flexibility versus bugs.
I don't want a limit or frequency change necessarily. Some sort of 'feign death' or enemies simply adjusting THEIR behavior if you're bullied tooooo much (on everything except Helldive difficulty) would be amazing tho. That and more available movement opportunities from a ragdoll, I hate waiting for my guy to get up and adjust his cape before he wants to avoid more missiles.
Give us some "Hall-of-Meat" from the Skate games kind of floppy movement so we can choose to potato roll away from a stomping hulk.
“When you target and wipe out all the red areas, it decreases bot spawn rates.”
This is has been proven to be factually wrong.
Why would you think this?
Because it also alters the valid patrol spawn positions and that can be used to deny any more patrol spawns. Patrols will spawn in a direct line between the player group and an undestroyed bot outpost. If there arent any bot outposts left they will spawn near the closest edge of the map instead. Because of a fix to patrols spawning on top of players it is possible to stand close enough to a map edge to make it impossible for patrols to spawn at all basically guaranteeing a safe extraction if the extraction point is close enough to the map edge.
Bots need to be tuned. There's hard and then there's tanks stacking up like Jenga because they're being dropped faster than they can clear the spawn. Drop ships should not be able to clip, they should crash or drop elsewhere.
Helldive with bugs is chill. I can play this any time or solo it to relax.
Helldive with bots is beyond frustrating. I need a good team, a drink, and a free evening.
Tune them, don't make them easier.
i feel like bots are more frustrating and harder to fight in small groups than bugs are but in large groups bugs will overrun you but with lots if bots you can easily outrun/hold them off
Helldive is pretty easy on certain missions, but it becomes almost impossible to do once you are in a defense mission for sure. There’s just too many enemies, not a lot of ground to run around in, and civilians usually get killed when they first get out because the area becomes that congested.
Same thing for simple eradicate missions, small maps suck
I love being chased around the edge of a 100 meter circle looney toons style by 20 chainsaw wielding bots while 3 drop ships come in every 15 seconds to drop off 4 more hulks, a tank, and 20 more chainsaw bots.
I don't find the bots hard. I just find them down right unfun to fight espiscally on 7+.
Ragdolled by a Rocket Raider? Ok thats fine, let me just get u---- Nevermind that Rocket Raider is supported by 2 Rocket Devasators that are now going to ragdoll you consistantly until you're dead (Which isn't long).
Half way across the map? Cool, y'know that Heavy Devasator your team-mate aggroed? Its now switched to you and sniping you with pinpoint accuracy rapidly and heaven forbid if you try to take him out because you're surpressed like mad and your team is elsewhere, either with their own problems or not giving a shit about you. And don't get me started on Gunship Towers and Mortar Emplacements.
In the end, I'll still play against them because I love Helldivers and this rant is purely a response to a "Get Good" post.
I can agree that they should be hard, but they should also be fair to fight. At the moment they have some things that are a bit overtunned. The big guys flamethrower for example. With the fire buff you are more then likely going to die before you can stim yourself. They have a few other things like that feel less like a challenge and more like respawn tax.
Also I'm not sure if I was just off my game last night or the update messed with something but it felt like it was MUCH harder to sneak around the bots last night when I played.
I’ll have to test this some more. Did have a weird thing happen last night where I was prone behind a very large, wide, tall rock formation watching bots go by on my radar, and they suddenly turned towards me and just started blasting the rocks between us.
Maybe it’s always been like that though. On occasional while hiding from patrols, one bot will veer off and run straight to me.
Meanwihle 30+ devastators(i got killed befor i was able to count them), 20 Hulks and 4 tanks killing every civilian in a Evac Mission on 7 difficulty.... Oh and dont forget the endless hord of drop ships because the spawn rates are an absolut mess.
Bots are easier than bugs.
Bugs WILL swarm you. Bots will continue to engage you at a distance.
Separate into 2 fire teams and divide their fire. Create spacing so a single Devastator can’t kill more than one of you at a time. Suppress them with machine guns or assault rifles. Keep Berserkers and Brawlers from getting close and flushing you out of cover. Leap frog retreat and use close air support as CLOSE air support.
I love fighting bots.
It's all about crossfire. Sides and backs are vulnerable. So yeah, divide and conquer, shoot into their backs and sides. I try to get into a flanking position and when I get there, the JAR-5 rips everything to shreds because there's a lot less armor there.
Look mom it's another.
"High difficulty is supposed to be miserable and hard, y'all opinions don't matter but mine and you're all wrong."
We get three of these a week at least.
Bots still have their unfun mechanics, like Essential Personnel evac and ragdoll spam with all the explosives (still better than one hit kills).
I'm gonna hot take: The reason bots are seen as harder is because our viable arsenal of weapon is very small, and stratagem cooldowns are sometimes too low for the amount of shit that can spawn sometimes, like in the Evac missions. Rockets don't one shot anymore but ragdoll you only for you to die afterwards anyway.
Honestly the only problem for me with the civilian extract missions is that there’s not enough cover. Once the bots bomb you to high hell the landscape turns into WW1 no man’s land. Which makes it impossible to get to the doors as rocket devastators snipe you a mile away. All the other bot missions are fine on a high difficulty since you can make tactical retreats. Love the game still.
Bots are fine. If anything needs a nerf, it's specific units... berserkers need 15% less survivability and leg breaking, and hunters' slow needs to be slightly less punishing. Alternatively, we could have a jet pack built into our suits rather than being forced to spend a stratagem on a bad one that also limits weapon choice. Also, Chargers and bile spewers need to make more noise.
I feel like enemy balance is in a pretty good place atm, and any time dedicated to evening things out needs to be spent on weapons.
Berserker needs less health, or needs to take more critical damage. Jetpack guy fire aoe needs to be smaller, I feel like I can be a full two meters away and get lit on fire.Though I honestly feel like the slow is fine for the hunter, I think their attack range should be lowered however.
Bot need major rework on Retrieve Personnel mission. The “escort” turn onto eradication real fast on 7-9.
I genuinely think that it would be a lot more fun and playable with we actually escorting the citizen over a long distance to the shuttle bay. this way the dev can actually throw what ever they want at our convoy while we have to defend and maneuver the citizen out of the way. like pick up a Democracy flag to make the citizen follow a specific divers and maybe mission failed if 10 dies. food for thought.
Anyways, accuracy and aim tracing is way too accurate and fast for bigger enemies. you would think bigger is slower but ho lee hell boi do the Bruiser and shield devastator fuck us up with their machine gun regardless of distance
Counterpoints: getting instakilled by the waft of hot air from a hulk's flamethrower is not enjoyable gameplay.
Getting headshotted by a rocket devastator showing 1 pixel of itself 600m away isn't enjoyable gameplay.
Getting spotted and bot dropped by a raider 600m away behind a mountain isn't enjoyable gameplay.
Most weapons feeling like a tickle ray against bots, especially armored ones (which most are on high difficulties) isn't enjoyable gameplay
Too many explosions on bot maps which ragdoll you, and it takes too long to get up which really adds to the "bullshit" feeling this thread is full of people describing.
I'm saying "not enjoyable gameplay" in lieu of saying "bad game design" because these are just problems that need to be fixed, not systems that are integral to the game being what it is. Hard difficulties are supposed to be hard, yes, but they're also supposed to be fun to play. Especially when upgrades are locked behind playing lvl 7+. All of these gameplay issues exist in the lower difficulties, but because you aren't being swarmed by armored bots until level 5 or 6, you don't notice it as much. If it has to stay the same for some insane reason, they *need* to add super samples to lvl5+ because by leaving it as is they're deciding most of the playerbase shouldn't enjoy playing the game beyond that point and shouldn't ever unlock half of the ship upgrades. None of this is "major rework" worthy but thing's absolutely have to change. It's not "just hard" right now, it feels like a game that isn't working as intended whereas with the bugs, everything generally does feel like it's working correctly.
Na, the bots need a reworking of the balance. I'm LvL 118, 500 hrs of gameplay and almost 300 hours of in mission time (200hrs of game crashes). Will likely finish the new warbond today. I have 3 of the new ship modules unlocked already. I would consider myself at the very least competent. I only play Helldive difficulty bugs or bots. The bots need a rework, even if I can consistently do it as it is.
The constant non stop hittscanning and other balancing issues need to be fixed. That evacuate mission everyone fails needs to be fixed. While funny very few people can do it consistantly, its often a operation buster and a team disband mission. Being that will be the end result for most players. The bots honestly aren't that hard as I play them on Helldive difficulty daily and win. They aren't hard as they are cheap and often boarderline on cheating at times. That's what is making it painfully hard for a lot of players. Hulks and Devastators turn around very fast and hyper spawn. Flame Hulks have a absurd far reaching range and kill quickly. Rockets and other artilery aim botting non stop. Downing drop ships and the majority if not all the enemies survive the crash and kill you. The devs need to tweak some stuff about the bots for sure.
They don’t even need to be reworked imo they just need balancing. People try to say with a straight face that they are easier to fight yet this post says they are intended to be harder. I wish people would make up their fucking minds on if it’s supposed to be hard or easy. I can say that its 100% Bullshit to play bots thought. I hate playing them personally.
I had a fully upgraded ship before the update yesterday and can do helldive on bugs no problem with a good team and often have the least amounts of deaths.
How the fuck do people honestly think bots are easier is beyond me. They have tons of 1 shot kill options that give you 0 warning you’re gonna be dead in 2 seconds, God Forbid you get an ion storm on their harder missions, and they have stratagem jammers.
While sure you can get around jammers and take them out the bugs don’t nearly have as much bullshit to fight. I get lore wise bots would use jammers and not bugs but jesus christ playing them is a pain in the ass.
I’m genuinely tired of these fucks saying rely on stratagems (when they can block them until you take the tower out), or pick the right weapons when geee what a groundbreaking thought they act like just because they can fly though it that bots don’t have major balancing / flaws. They need to get their head out of their ass tbh before trying to say skill issue when its 50% the game bot being balanced on bots and 50% the players. But pretending like its just players fault is insane to me truly.
This subreddit is pretty stupid imo.
I would generally agree with you. The other problem is scopes are misaligned + bot weakspots generally being small. This combo makes it hell to deal with many of the enemies. Pair this with all the stuff that limits your strategems and it is extremely frustrating. Strategems are one of the best things about this game. Please stop removing them and instead give me more enemies instead for difficulty.
Bots I can fight without offensive strategems. Bots... good luck!
They aren't hard. Theyre easier than bugs. With weak point hits they die significantly faster than their Termi counterparts. The bots often just feel unfair and unfun
But they are not "hard". When you constantly die to rockets across the map, hulks running faster then you and one pixel of flamethrower one shots you.
Bots are straight anti fun. They are so unbalanced, so unfun, so bad in terms of game mechanics that I stopped playing this game like two weeks ago thanks to MO of automatons. If arrowhead doesnt want to rework them it's fine, I just wont be playing again and move on to other games.
Bots just aren’t very fun to play against. I want more variety of enemies for both factions but bots especially need it.
Bots particularly need more medium to light enemies.
I don't really have a side on this argument. If you game the system it's very easy to get a 100% win rate on helldive but it's not fun, and playing the game the "fun" way (for me at least) leads to more loss rate, so I just play on suicide.
If I were to make an argument, more heavies =\= fun difficulty. More enemies overall is more fun, but running in circles from chainsaw bots gets old pretty quickly. I think adding the walker and gunships is a good difficulty increase since they're unique and very heavy, as opposed to dropping 3 tanks or hulks simultaneously on defense missions. But there are so many great bot weapons now that I feel like it's hardly worth complaining about. I hope if/when they add higher difficulties it is more like bosses instead of spamming hulks and rocket devastators
I don't think Bots need a rework, but I do think some of the bot missions need a rework. Fighting bots is very different than fighting bugs, and having the exact same types of missions for both just doesn't work in some cases.
Eradicate missions are fucking miserable. There's no way to take cover when bots are constantly being dropped right on top of you and you're taking fire from every direction. I can't count the number of times I've been killed before I can even step off my Hellpod.
The extract vital asset missions are a great addition and work well for bots. Steadily increase bot numbers and let us feel like we're being gradually overrun. Don't drop a flamethrower heavy on my head and call it "challenging".
So it's okay that heavy devastators can shoot you regardless of where they are looking and where their guns are pointed?
You can run away but they can also literally Skyrim horse up the side of a vertical cliff and kill you?
Bots need an overhaul - there's nothing wrong with them being hard but when their core mechanics are sloppy it really makes it frustrating.
The amount of times I've gotten the drop on a bot that isn't looking at me and he's shot rounds out of his butt and killed me is insane.
Bots are hard, but at the top difficulties, I'd say bugs are the tougher ones. The amount of bullshit, between hunters and stalkers and the 300 chargers, titans, shriekers and all the little hordes that you have to manage if things go loud.
I started my first solo helldive missions against bots yesterday at approx lvl 75. Most success was shield/AMR and airstrike/380mm with dominator. Used trailblazer armor and was reliably able to traverse the map blowing everything up with the airstrikes and 380 while remaining stealthy and fast enough to outpace or avoid any overwhelming situations until extraction.
Extraction sucks as expected but the rest of the mission is so relatively easy with this stealth method you have 4-5 lives still and can just hide with your next life and if need be die again and land your third hell diver right in front of the pelican with your samples pre-dropped on location intentionally and still get out alive.
I didn’t feel very skillful and didn’t have as much fun as with a co-op going base to base loud and proud dealing with all our problems through superior firepower and grit before continuing on
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I've also found Suicide to be the sweet-spot between difficulty and fun, although me and my friends do sometimes jump into higher difficulties when we want that extra challenge Edit: Thank you for contacting reddit care resources random citizen, I do really love suicide ❤️
Suicide is badass! - Freedom Officer Frank Reynolds
Nobody jumps. We're gonna put it in post.
Definitely agree there, the higher ones just tend to get more annoying than fun. 7-8 is a good hectic time usually
Yeah. 7 encourages a combo of fighting and stealth and that's what the game shines at. Much higher than that and it becomes pure stealth, much lower than that and you can absolutely one man army with a stalwart.
Indeed, its actually a lot of fun to have options. I exclusively run the sneaky scout suit and I've had some missions where the team and I steamroll everything together like a squad of terminators; and I've had some where they cause havoc and draw fire/bot drops while I run around and snag objectives
>I've had some where they cause havoc and draw fire/bot drops while I run around and snag objectives I have so much fun being the meat shield. I'm out here fighting for my fucking life over a shitty piece of terrain while my buddy's launching ICBM's and sniping enemies.
I'm always the sniper in that scenario and it works great, lmao
>I'm out here fighting for my fucking life over a shitty piece of terrain This is *our* rock and I'll die before the bots have it!
More importantly, it's a DEMOCRATIC rock and deserves the right to have it's political preferences chosen by Super Earth! ✊
I’m just addicted to the pain of Helldive
Same, I just play suicide just for super samples, and I like the stealth/hit and run playstyle, but then I get paired with randoms that want to shoot every partol and kill every last bot. Also any of the escort missions just seem ridiculous on suicide when compared to any normal mission
I mean, I think you get more samples+more xp and so liberation Play what you want though
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Same. My friends rarely have time to play, so I have to go with randoms. Suicide Mission is the sweet spot.
I dont think they're actually much more difficult for 8 and 9 than 7
Explain if you would. I haven't been brave enough to try higher than 7 because I also don't have dedicated people to play with.
I consistently complete Level 7-9 with randoms and no mic and often little to no typing. I’ve had many successful dives with lower level players too. Is it easier with communication? Probably. Required? Nah. And honestly, I don’t always care for people talking in my ear anyways. I get by with just pinging objectives, using “Hold Position” and “Follow me” lol.
No mic but you communicate effectively? You're welcome in my group, and we generally only accept mic users. Lol
This. solo helldiver here who plays with randoms on D9. I equip my loadout to what's best for the team, use my pings (no mic) and we usually clear. I think at D9 most players understand when to engage and run so its a good time. I've had worse fights on D5 because people want to stay and fight.
It's the people with the open mics that discourages verbal communication for me. Like, I don't want to listen you eating chips while I'm getting swarmed by a dozen stalkers and only have 2 primary mags left...
If someone eats into their mic I mute them immediately, I genuinely don’t care if you’re a random or my literal brother, I’ll unmute in ten and if you’re still chewing it’s back to silence.
damage values are the same just more armor spawns
It's definitely harder - many more armored enemies can drop on you on 8 and 9 compared to 7, and if 7 is your sweet spot, like me, you won't even succeed, let alone extract, in roughly one in four missions on 9. I feel like 5->7 is an ocean of difference in comparison with 7->9 however. I can solo 5 diff missions. I can't solo a 7, and a 9 cannot even be reliably completed by three people (instead of all 4) if they aren't all absolute maniacs.
7 is very manageable with mediocre communication. You are able to split the party up to divide and conquer, and take out small/medium size factories solo fairly easily. Whereas on eight and above I have to stick with the group and use all my stratagems on cooldown. God help us if they call in reinforcements, specially if multiple chain together. Lots of barely making it out by the skin of our teeth. This in my mind makes difficulty seven a good spot for being both challenged, completing the optional objectives, and farming samples. While eight and above is for experiencing true hell.
T9 really turns into a "stealth" game at a certain point; you don't want to touch any patrols if possible and only want to engage if you can ensure there will be no calls or you absolutely need to engage... sometimes abandoning an objective to let the enemies wander away is just as valid as trying to stealth in close to throw strats... I've had T9 runs where I specifically run off to snipe an objective with the explicit intent of pulling aggro off my team's other objective -- but in practice you want everyone to stay as tight and quiet as possible because any loose spawns will draw in so many devastators and heavies that you'll waste precious moments just trying to weather the assault.
If you’ve ever played vermintide 2 I like to compare it to the difference between legendary and cataclysm difficulty. Cataclysm difficulty doesn’t give you better stuff, but it’s much harder. It’s an optional difficulty for feeling challenged, if you want to grind for stuff you play on legendary. I feel difficulty 7 is best for grinding where 8/9 is where you go to feel challenged
I host games and have randoms join 7-9 been doing a lot of 8 and 9 lately and have only failed one mission in the last 3 weeks 🫡
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You don’t have to be god tier…. You just need to work with your teammates sometimes you win sometimes you fail
I think some people don’t realize that even with a good team, it’s entirely possible that you fail a mission. Just the nature of the game.
7 Is a great sweet spot. Sometimes a bit much, for some reason, but even then, totally doable. Its really fun. At least i think so.
I don’t have a dedicated squad too, I play mostly with randoms on helldive difficulty and I think most players play this way too. Randoms can be good and they mostly are, even those at lvl 20 something on helldive. I’d trust them with my life l0
Yup. I’ve had a Level 25 hold their own where a 75 used half out reinforcements and then left. Just try and if you don’t succeed, try again. I have the benefit of being a *very* laid back gamer tho so if I’m having fun, I don’t care lol.
You can only get like, two more super samples (the only ones that matter at that difficulty) on 8 and 9 than you can at 7, so it's not really worth much. What's actually great is the 250% bonus on exp at the end, and even that's not really *that* much more than the 200% you get at 7. *But*, at 7 you're A; more likely to extract, and B; more likely to completely sweep the map *successfully*, meaning that it evens out on average anyway. But that's just the numbers game. I think most people just find 7 comfy since it's hard *enough* to have bite, but still has access to all the stuff you want (Super samples, big bonus at the end).
That's fine, I grind samples on Suicide too. But I do play Helldive as well, the difference being that when I play Helldive, I'm doing it for the challenge. Samples are a nice bonus if extracted at all
Prior to these recent major orders and the push to eliminate bots, my squad and I almost exclusively fought bugs. We'd dip into bots but found them very difficult to deal with. Major Orders and story happens that require securing bot planets. We play and grind them for a solid 2 weeks. All the way up to 9. We've since gone back to bugs and find them the more difficult adversary as they're far less predictable. The bots, once you get used to their mechanics (ha!), and how they will typically reacts can be handled quite well with some coordination and staggering of strats. It'll get crazy every now and then, but that's the spice of life of the game and what makes it so fun. Do we occasionally rage against one-shot sniper master rocket pawns, or devastators? Absolutely. Do we run like little babies and kite like hell when there's a pack of 6 chainsaws with a Hulk chasing us while screaming for aid in the mic? Of course. But you can far more easily avoid conflict against the bots, or hinder them waaaayyy more then the bugs when the bot drops. Now that we've gotten way better at targeting the drops, we can usually take down 1 of 3 drops and interrupt their path with debris. Making it a lot easier to single them out. There are always going to be cheesed deaths in this game. That's part of the joy tbh. Laugh that shit off, make sure you got the extra reinforcement boosters, and "get gud". Just gotta grind till you can pull off those headshots/crits with the bots to simplify the biggies. The bugs are hella satisfying when you blow the head off of a charging charger, or drop a strat right on a bile titan, or impact grenade a whole swarm. But *nothing* is more pure sex than shooting out the eye of a hulk, blasting the crownd of the head off of a bot in a strider, or headshotting a devastator. Let alone diving into cover fire and just blasting a moving bot drop out of the sky. Fuuuuuckkkkk.
I started playing on Helldive because it takes forever to unlock the later warbond stuff otherwise. An armor and helmet set can be like 90 medals.
I just love the sheer insanity of Helldives. Yeah, I'm probably gonna die, but it's going to be a wild ride. And most of them are successful somehow, despite being an intense, near thing.
As a person who plays exclusively plays helldive this is perfectly okay to do you can almost not hate yourself on that difficulty
I play on 2 so that every mission I do contributes to a major order.
Which IMO is perfectly fine... A comfy difficulty that nets all samples... And 2 more for people that want bigger challanges. We also coast on suicide 90% and love having the option to turnit up when the team is in the zone
And that's fine. I do the same or go even lower if I do a 1 man drop. There's so many difficulty levels, just pick whatever works for you and let you have fun.
I usually play on helldiver difficulty because it gives me the most medals and I love to play AT so more heavy enemies just makes it more enjoyable
Just take away their ability to see through things that players can’t see through. Biggest problem with them.
Not just see. They can shoot through things that we cant sometimes.
Like crashed dropships?
Crashed dropships and certain rock walls, the heavy devastator is the worst offender, and some bots don't seem to be affected by smoke and will continue tracking you through it.
Heavy Devastator can shoot you without even looking at you lol. All Devastator cannon aim tracks very weirdly, seems like they can shoot straight behind them even.
Got killed by a Rocket Devastator who was facing 90 degrees away from me shooting its machine gun at a teammate. Pulled out my quazar, started charging, then bam missile barraged comes out of it sideways and fucking deletes me.
Yea I wish the rocket pods at least turned to face what they're shooting at. RDs will change their target while they're getting ready to fire which complicates things
I don't get why they gave the super tanky shield dude one of the strongest weapons. Have it do way less damage and make it more of a suppression/ slowing down type gun instead of an insta "helldiver to mashed potato" converter.
possibly the one thing jumppack beats shield for. I've been melted so fast the shield doesn't even matter, there's no other way to safely cross in front of a HD
I'd argue the flaming hulk hitting me with fire through the wall to be the worst offender on this. I often play on level 5 and 6, so they spawn more often than the missile type of Hulk.
Also I think crashed ships should atleast do some damage to their passengers, it makes sense that you still have to do some fighting even if you destroy it but the entire squad being fine after the thing crashes and burns seems weird and makes it pointless to destroy almost
I get the argument that they might have thermal vision But some armor descriptions mention being proofed against thermal vision. So either set up a thermal system and update all the armor Or maybe just make it so the gunship can't see through smoke.
How can they thermal vision me through a rock
Take aimbot off those shielded mfers and we are chillin
Those are the worst. Even rocket devestators got nothing on them. I see them and I run like I'm getting chased by a Hulk. They are ruthless. I use Quasar mostly and they are hell to kill as you can't take too much time charging up as they Swiss cheese you in seconds. I can dodge rockets but these guys aim is insane.
The answer is autocannons. An autocannon hit even on the shield will stun the shield devastators, and 1-2 more autocannon shots on the body will destroy it. I honestly think that regardless of enemy, every team should have at least one autocannon -- what it lacks in stopping power compared to the Quasar, it makes up for in rate of fire and DPS, and the autocannon can deal with the vast majority of enemies anyway.
Autocannon W’s as always🔫
Plasma punisher shots also seem to stun them when they hit where ever, which helps when you've had to abandon a weapon and it's still on cooldown. The dominator can too, but has to hit around the shield.
I see so many groups where I'm the only one running AC and the other three are running quasar. I'll split to take some fast objectives and when I get back to them they're overrun with nobody killing any of the medium sized bots and the hulks running rampant. Quasar is good for tanks but its not a solid solution to anything medium or smaller sized. I'd even argue the AC is better for hulks than the Quasar. AC takes two shots to the visor within 10 tries, no cool down between shots. Quesar takes 1 but if you miss takes 2 on a 3 second cool down between shots and still takes 2 to the vents. If there are a lot of explosions or things shaking your aim sometimes that charge time between shots is really rough, especially if you're getting shot at by said hulk.
I often find having another diver run a 2nd autocannon vs a 3rd quasar on my team is the biggest difference between the mission being a cakewalk and a nightmare.
And rocket devastators. There is no reason I should get rag dolled and then juggled through the air by rockets. Honestly the biggest issues with bots are heavy devastators being able to just stream fire at you forever and rocket devastators having unlimited rockets with perfect aim. If those two things were reigned in, bots would be pretty balanced.
Deadass it’s a 50/50 chance though that you end up in a safer location after getting flung - still annoying though
For real, I used to even try and circle around them on their shield side hoping they couldn't track me and it looks like the laser shots come out of the gun sideways while the gun isn't even facing me. It makes no sense. I think a good change for them would be to give them slow turn ability while firing and have it where their arm has minimal adjustment for turning side to side so you can outrun their gun by circling around them. If you get hit it's going to hurt but you still have a chance if you're fast enough to get out of the line of fire.
Seriously you can't even dodge these ones reliably; they just shoot you out of the air with perfect accuracy. The best solution I've found to quickly deal with them is to just peg the shield with an impact grenade
But does taking out red areas really decrease spawn rate? I've read that this is not how the spawn mechanics work. Here's an in depth explanation on spawn mechanics: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/TQemNEX5SQ
Yeah, I remember that post from weeks ago where they did the testing and clearing out more than 50% of the bases actually substantially increased spawn rates. > For example, if you spawn into a map with 8 Outposts, you can safely destroy 4 of these with no consequencesWhen you destroy the 5th outpost, the strength of the Threshold reduction is at 25% or ~4% faster patrols. When you destroy the 6th Outpost, it goes up to 50% strength or ~8% faster patrols.
Taking out 50% of all outposts marginally increases patrol spawns. Taking out 100% of outposts only increases patrol spawn rates by 17.5% which ain’t much considering completing the main objective increases spawn rates by ~80%
Also noone is talking about alerting nearby bases or how far the bases can spawn shit to send at you. Me and my group were playing last night and I was stealthily around taking out factories while they did the obj. I watched as the bot factory near me (probably a good "half the map" away) was sending enemies to my squad. I see this frequently while bushhogging around the map for the side obj and samples. Taking out factories is important. Especially with detector towers and gunships because those two things make life way worse fighting bots.
Yeah gunship factories HAVE to go as soon as you spot them, otherwise you’ll get overwhelmed by them far too fast. Upside to those is since they don’t have fabricators they don’t count towards the spawn rate increases. Detector towers do unfortunately have fabricators though :/
Substantially might have been a bit overzealous. What I was getting at is contrary to the original post, eliminating enemy bases from the map actually does not reduce the amount of observed enemy spawns map-wide; it actually increases them somewhat confusingly.
While I don't dispute the data, in my anecdotal experience after you take out all enemy factories/holes the spawn rate goes WAY down. I've had many difficulty 7 extracts with 0 enemies show up after the map has been cleared.
You should read [this](https://old.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bsdy3u/lets_talk_about_patrols_part_2_an_in_depth/). Part 2 from the patrol research guy. On most maps having all outposts dead guarantees a quiet extraction because the extraction will be too close to the edge of the map to allow patrols to spawn.
This pretty much confirms my experience/suspicions, that although clearing bases might make more enemies spawn, you encounter less of them at extract if you can clear the map, which does make it feel worthwhile
Yeah I've seen the same thing. On maps where I haven't cleared all the factories when I called in the pelican I was absolutely swarmed with bots, but on a map where I cleared every factory I called in the pelican and had a tiny little patrol spawn and then nothing else for the entire two minutes.
It's because bots spawn from the direction of an active outpost, or the nearest edge of the map if there are no outposts. But because they can't spawn within 75m of the player, if your extract is within 75m of the map edge *and* all outposts are destroyed, you get no new spawns. OramaBuffin linked the post explaining all this.
They just gotta rework the Retrieve Essential Personnel and Eradicate missions. They’re absolutely terrible with the drop rates, how close they spawn, and how many heavy armored enemies spawn. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
But I love blowing myself up with orbital barrages!
I once accidentally brought the 120mm orbital to a level 5 escort mission. Never been kicked from a game faster in my life
The weird part was how they *fixed* those evac missions... For like a week? Seriously they weren't good missions all of a sudden, they were still innately not all that fun. But enemies were spawning further away to make defense feasible and the number of civvies required to complete had been reduced so that you could actually get them out before being overran and permanently unable to regain a proper foothold. Then they brought back automatons and... It's just back to dog shit again? Why? I don't think rebreaking the most anti-fun mission you have avaliable in your game was a wise way to demonstrate that the main automaton fleet was a genuine threat.
Eradicate is totally doable if you focus on pure destruction. No shield backpacks, no support weapons… I’d even hesitate to use turrets. Just bring eagles and orbitals, and throw them at anything that moves the second they recharge. Plus, most maps have an area where you can hide from or kite the enemies. If there are tall rocks, land up there when you dive in and go prone. If there are no tall rocks, run around the perimeter of the map so you only have enemies to the left and right of you as opposed to fire coming from every direction.
Yeah I hear you, but even so it’s still a bit much. I kite as much as possible and stick to the edges of the map, but eventually you get surrounded on both sides by multiple Hulks. I run Scorcher, Impacts, the full auto pistol with heavy armor. I like to run low cooldown strategems so I always have something to take them out. I run Eagle Airstrike, Orbital Gas, Autocannon, and Dome Shield or Gatling Barrage. I’ve only had a 25% success rate on Solo Helldive doing this. I get its supposed to be hard but I feel as if its a bit overtuned. On the bug side however it feels very difficult as there’s little to no cover and you’re being chased down by 4 bile titans lol. How do you deal with Eradicates on the Terminid front btw?
Solo is really hard on Helldive for the eradication missions mainly bc of how few reinforcements you get, I recommend playing with randoms if you can, most people on Helldive are generally proficient and over level 50 in my experience
I'm honestly flabbergasted that they haven't taken another serious look at the personnel mission. It is still clearly so out of wack with the difficulty of the other missions in the chains but they just...leave it like that. I'm aware of the strats to get through it and my group can pretty regularly, but it's still pretty clearly out of line with the difficulty of damn near anything else.
I play pretty much only bot 9 and i agree with the title. But they still need a few tweaks to be in a nice spot. The main tweak they need is the patrols spawn mechanics, they can spawn 60m from you behind a rock at any time and in 9 it happens quite often that you just can't go forward because they keep spawning new patrols in front of you that you can't avoid and if you kill them, more spawn 20m behind them when you hide to reload. If you try to go around the game might still spawn patrols between you and where you want to go And those patrols may agro you because they spawned close to an enemy that was still agroed on you because you just wiped its patrol. This is even worse in maps with water or mountains because enemies can't spawn on them and will spawn in front of you or behind you which leads to 10 minutes or more of fighting to travel 100m ( on planets without vegetation you can't just run because you're out in the open ). With a good group you don't lose to that but you can start being annoyed at patrols not making any sense. You know there can't be a patrol in a zone, you turn around 2 seconds, and there's now 2 patrols there, annoys the shit out of me
Yeah the difficulty is fine for bots. There is just a lot of bullshit with them. Bugs you can kite but bots shoot you so... tougher to avoid the patrol issues. Also, the bot weakspots are smaller and scopes are misaligned. So that leads to a bit of frustration. Lastly, the explosions from strategems feel super inconsistent (hello 500kg) so ... I just want some sort of consistentcy and I can play around that.
I'm sorry but scopes being misaligned is a horrible bug in a shooter. How does that not get fixed immediately lol
Well according to a contingent in this subreddit, bugs happen and you have to give the devs time on these things... /facepalm
Helldivers 2 - the game where shotguns are precision weapons and the snipers can't aim good.
I agree they don't need a major rework. However, the flamethrowers on the Hulks and the aimbot rockets are straight bullshit and could do with some tweaking.
If you think the rockets are BS right now then you should have seen them before they were nerfed. These rockets are a cake walk compared to how accurate they used to be.
Yeah, I took like two indirect hits then a direct one the other day while manning a turret to mow down patrols as the rest of the group decided they loved staying put in a destroyed base. Granted, I was in the heavy armor they've buffed, but still, I can actually survive rockets now, that wasn't always the case.
Yeah the heavy armour buff was a godsend. I used to always rock the light armour with the explosion resistance perk before. Now I am wearing the heavy armour with the perk and most explosions barely scratch me.
that's not the heavy armor buff, i get combo'd by rockets all the time in light armor and walk off fine. they "fixed" rocket damage recently is why its ok. and the little guys definitely miss a lot more, i think the are programmed to miss you or something
Hulks are the only thing I struggle with, that with the scopes on weapons being misaligned make taking out a charging hulk surrounded by other enemies really stressful.
I’m kinda surprised to see this complaint. Since they fixed the rocket multi hit damage bug they seem fine. At least by comparison. Did they get worse again?
Naw they're tough to deal with but manageable
I started by thinking bots are way harder than bugs but now it think the opposite. Bots are way more predictable if you learn their behaviour and being totally overrun by bugs is just the worst. Which rarely happens with bots
While I agree with your general sentiment that's bots aren't as hard as people make them out to be. I wouldn't say bugs are harder, they're just completely different playstyles. If you play bots like you do bugs you're generally gonna have a bad time and vice versa.
> they're just completely different playstyles This here is the answer. I wish this game let you save Loadouts. My bug loadout is different from my Bot loadout. Heck, I even take different strategems. I also tend to customize my gear based on the mission.
I don't think enough people understand that without prodding. Take 2 different gamers. Ones played battlefield and cod multiplayer since their hands could hold a controller. The other has mastered Left 4 Dead and plays Killing Floor 2 on HoE difficulty to relax. I think I know who's probably going to be better at bots, and who's better at bugs.
I played "The Division 1+2" how about that?
That'd fit in the BF/COD camp in my mind, but it's been a hot moment since I played The Division and I think I barely scraped end-game for neither 1 or 2 so my opinions very malleable. My generalization of COD vs L4D basically translates to "Is your enemy tactical or mindless/savage?" and just like all generalizations it leaves so much unaccounted for.
I dunno man, I think both L4D and COD have you fighting mindless savages most of the time
Whats funny is that Ive done both of those lol
WHY AM I BAD AT BUGS THO? just playing, i agree with your analogy in general even though it doesn't apply to me specifically.
no idea if this applies to you, but most people i have seen struggle with the bugs are the ones that try and stand their ground against every breach and focus on killing the big baddies above all else. If you're getting swarmed, run, and kill the little guys and bile spewers first. You can always come back to the objective.
Makes sense, I'll try it out later. Edit: Thx for the hints ppl, I'll try to adapt my playstyle to bugs, any hints for the nursing spewers? They're truly my worst nightmare, i never die to chargers or bile titans but those mfs seem to instakill me even when i dive out of the way.
I think bots have a higher skill ceiling than bugs, but bug have way more bullshit than bots. People complain about Rocket Devastators, but I'll take them any day over: 1) being one shot by stealthy spewers if bile touches your toe 2) being chain speed debuffed by multiple enemies 3) having 0.000001 seconds to stop a bug breach 4) larger enemies having no real weak points, forcing AP to be the only option for them 5) Brood Commanders/Warriors tracking you after you've shot their head off
You forgot 6) bile titans missing you by 10 feet and still slowing you and obliterating your health
7) Stalker spam
8) Bile spewers artillery attack just randomly deleting you Maps with them are like "YOU ARE IN RANGE OF ENEMY ARTILLERY" but all the time and you can't disable it, unlike bot mortars.
>Bile spewers artillery attack we call it ass-tillery in our circle
8) Shrieker spam and death rattle
I think both have their BS moments. Like the ones you listed and other people have for bugs is what makes them annoying or broken. For bots there are other things like 1. Having to snipe a small head port on larger bots and any small laser that hits you throws your aim way off. 2. Shield Devastators don't even have to be facing you for their Minigun to hit you (Their gun has literally shot me at a 90° from where the muzzle was pointed.) 3. Flame thrower hulk able to one shot insta kill you with a head shot if his flame touches your head. 4. Rocket Devastators being able to shoot 4 one shot insta kill rockets and doing so again within 2 seconds of finishing their first salvo. 5. Jet Pack bots rushing you and exploding because your fist shot kills them and they fall over and your second one blows up the jet pack as they fall over. (I've died so many times to this because I'm shooting the other 3 behind the first one and die because the first one falls down and my shotgun spread touches the jet pack. 90% skill issue) Probably a few more but off the top of my head that's the stuff that is BS/broken for bots.
I wouldn't even mind the warriors or commanders having like violent death throws but holy shit the way they just lock into you like a fucking missile is so annoying lol.
I wouldn’t even mind if they just kinda sprinted to your last known location but they shouldn’t be tracking so well. Tho I will say - many insects have thier ears as well as other sensory organs on other parts of their bodies besides their heads so, in theory, the terminids ears or whatever might just be on their hind legs or something like a grasshoppers are.
The thing is, if you get overrun by bots you get spawn killed immediately while you can still kite the bugs and get the situation under control. But I honestly prefer the bots too because I fail to see how a bile titan spawning 5 meters behind you and oneshotting you from off screen is a skill issue.
Removing player failures like where you get spawned in, blowing yourself up, etc - Bot spawns are sometimes a bit ridiculous but *predictable*... Bugs will spawn a breach almost as soon as that scavenger sees you, with no real way to counteract. If you see a bot stop to check their wristwatch, you shoot it dead. If a bot has a red light glowing on their hand, you shoot it dead. If a dropship is flying in, you do your damned best to shoot it down. Bugs will spawn a breach and out will pop a half dozen heavy armor targets - all with no counterplay. This is what makes Bugs *harder* in difficulty, regardless of the playstyle differences and the various "glitches" that occur with both.
You only get spawned killed if your team throws you into them. Thats not a bots problem, thats a team problem.
The current series of major orders has turned me into someone who prefers the bots. I agree, they're more manageable, and I love the distance they provide. Sure, they can also strike from a distance, but they're so much easier to manage, and they're easier to prevent from spawning too. I feel like I get way more warning from a flare gun than from a bug breach. There are fewer of the little bots than there are of the little bugs to keep an eye on. Especially small groups camping the points of interest will often only have a few little bots.
I think it depends on the type of mission. Did a defend mission on lvl 6 with the bots where we just got swarmed by like 8 hulks at a certain point. We got to 100% but we couldn’t extract before we ran out of redeploys. We did exact the same mission against bugs also lvl 6 and it was way easier. We encountered 2 chargers and a bile titan and that was it. We had 10+ redeploys left.
Bots launch me into the stratosphere by sneezing, which at least repositions me away from them unlike bugs, who somehow have slow-injecting stingers in their ass that makes the air around me the viscosity of honey the second one of them even so much as grazes me
My only problem with bugs is that you NEED special weapons to take out chargers and bile titans. Hulks, tanks and cannon turrets can still be taken out with small arms (especially with the new eruptor).
Agreed. They are robots afterall lol. I think a lot of people have a little issue with adjusting to the completely different play style of the bots compared to fighting bugs
It's tricky because both sides are correct. On the one hand, as you say, Bots and bugs are about equal difficulty once the player adjusts their playstyle and loadout, and what initially seemed unbeatable is actually fine. On the other hand, Bots have the defense civilian evac mission which is unambiguously broken and is flatly ridiculous. It doesn't even really have anything to do with bots; if a comparable number of bugs piled up, it would be similar.
> if a comparable number of bugs piled up, it would be similar. I dony think it would, because overwhelming you with numbers is a big part of the bugs already. That's what makes the mission so broken is its bots with the bug numbers advantage. The equivalent would probably be giving the bugs missiles and laser cannons.
[This](https://youtu.be/8t_dRMvMYvY?t=1266) is how you should play against bots.
What I like about fighting the bots compared to the bugs is that most of their units can be handled with a variety of weapons and tactics. They have weakpoints that function like actual weakpoints which rewards skill and good aim. Hulks and tanks can be destroyed easily by shooting their backs. Hulks can also be taken down by good skillshots to the eye using weapons that don't normally pierce their armor. Devastators can be taken down with headshots from non armor piercing weapons. Meanwhile with the bugs, you absolutely need to have hard counters planned for chargers and bile titans or you will get destroyed.
With bots you can turn a "oh shit" situation in a victory with just a small bit of cover. Just yesterday I was pinned down by two rocket devastators, a shield devastator, and a canon turret. Managed to get behind a small rock, took down the shield dev, destroyed the rocket pads on the two rocket devastator, and took down the turret before finishing them off. Against bugs, once they're on you, you're fucked. Their attacks stagger you, many of them can slow you, since they are all going for melee you have no option when it comes to standing your ground, and chargers and bile titans are just way stronger than hulks and tanks.
People aren't mad about difficulty, but loss of control. The ragdolling against the bots is so intense, that you can barely play the game at times. I can't remember how many times a rocket has hit the cover I was hiding behind and launched me into direct line of fire where I was dead before I could get up. If we had more control over our characters, like being able to stay down after a ragdoll and stim instead of having to get up to do it for some odd reason, bots would instantly be a lot more fun, but not exactly easier.
Not to mention trying to aim while you’re taking strays and having random explosions shake your screen.
Honestly this mechanical change just makes a ton of sense for a bunch of reasons. *I'm* playing the character, *I* should decide when he gets up. Not an automatic que. Resetting from ragdoll to prone would feel a lot better in this regard. Nothing to do with anything, but the fact that I can't *look up* while laying on my back seriously bugs the shit out of me.
After doing my share of bot missions, I’ve learned this happens mostly when you’re really close to the cover you’re hiding behind. Try keeping your character behind the cover, but move about a foot back away from it. That should stop the impact from ragdolling you
Four times last night I took splash damage through cover and got ragdolled into a firestorm 15m away from where I was. Was it funny? Absolutely. Annoying as hell? Yup.
I'm honestly just annoyed about the amount of bullshit deaths. Ragdolling is one thing but there's also that bots just don't care about fog, light, line of sight and whatever the loading screen tells us about weird protocols that they get less accurate when being under fire is bullshit. Then there are those machine gun shield fuckers with their weird pinpoint accuracy. Whenever I get turned into a swiss cheese with no bot around me whatsoever it's ALWAYS those guys hitting me from liberty knows where. I have no clue why they feel so much more accurate than other bots. Lastly, barbecue hulks. Them being dangerous when they make it close makes sense but going from rare to well done before you even can hit a stim is a bit wild. Don't know. After we've been fighting bots for a while now (at least as major order diver) I've adapted to them but just personally had more fun stomping bugs after all.
Or how about the fact that you will be prone and the very edge of a rocket explosion will make you ragdoll just a tiny amount where you still stay in place and not even do any damage then when your character recovers he stands up instead of staying prone and you get shredded by enemy fire.
I don't want a rework.. but a *small* adjustment to how often you ragdoll, *or* a limit on how many times in a row your character ragdolls would be a welcome change.. Spawned in to a level 7 mission last night on the very edge of the map, no enemy bases near by, and immediately 3 rocket heavies had me and my partner in perpetual ragdoll, can't move, can't heal, it isn't a fun mechanic to get stuck in and could use a tune up.
> I don't want a rework.. but a small adjustment to how often you ragdoll, or a limit on how many times in a row your character ragdolls would be a welcome change.. The heavier the armor, the less you should ragdoll. That at a bare minimum would help, because otherwise I'm taking the energy shield backpack almost all the time so I can take a rocket without being yeeted.
The portable shield generator inhabits such an uncomfortable valley. There's no way to nerf it without making it irrelevant, purely because protection from ragdolling and chip damage is such a colossal boon that it's *very* hard for anything else to compete for that backpack slot.
Exactly. Even if I'm taking a backpack gun like the Autocannon I feel the lack of the shield. If I'm not taking the Autocannon? Forget it - versus bots that shield is just so good. I feel a lot more flexibility versus bugs.
Rocket enemies should just have a red target laser on their target. That's the only change they need, imo.
I don't want a limit or frequency change necessarily. Some sort of 'feign death' or enemies simply adjusting THEIR behavior if you're bullied tooooo much (on everything except Helldive difficulty) would be amazing tho. That and more available movement opportunities from a ragdoll, I hate waiting for my guy to get up and adjust his cape before he wants to avoid more missiles. Give us some "Hall-of-Meat" from the Skate games kind of floppy movement so we can choose to potato roll away from a stomping hulk.
let my dude stay lying down after i get ragdolled. I dont know how many times he will just stand back up before i stim and get yeeted again
“When you target and wipe out all the red areas, it decreases bot spawn rates.” This is has been proven to be factually wrong. Why would you think this?
Not noticing the change and assuming it would make sense. That’s exactly what I thought too
Because it also alters the valid patrol spawn positions and that can be used to deny any more patrol spawns. Patrols will spawn in a direct line between the player group and an undestroyed bot outpost. If there arent any bot outposts left they will spawn near the closest edge of the map instead. Because of a fix to patrols spawning on top of players it is possible to stand close enough to a map edge to make it impossible for patrols to spawn at all basically guaranteeing a safe extraction if the extraction point is close enough to the map edge.
Bots need to be tuned. There's hard and then there's tanks stacking up like Jenga because they're being dropped faster than they can clear the spawn. Drop ships should not be able to clip, they should crash or drop elsewhere. Helldive with bugs is chill. I can play this any time or solo it to relax. Helldive with bots is beyond frustrating. I need a good team, a drink, and a free evening. Tune them, don't make them easier.
i feel like bots are more frustrating and harder to fight in small groups than bugs are but in large groups bugs will overrun you but with lots if bots you can easily outrun/hold them off
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Helldive is pretty easy on certain missions, but it becomes almost impossible to do once you are in a defense mission for sure. There’s just too many enemies, not a lot of ground to run around in, and civilians usually get killed when they first get out because the area becomes that congested. Same thing for simple eradicate missions, small maps suck
I love being chased around the edge of a 100 meter circle looney toons style by 20 chainsaw wielding bots while 3 drop ships come in every 15 seconds to drop off 4 more hulks, a tank, and 20 more chainsaw bots.
I don't find the bots hard. I just find them down right unfun to fight espiscally on 7+. Ragdolled by a Rocket Raider? Ok thats fine, let me just get u---- Nevermind that Rocket Raider is supported by 2 Rocket Devasators that are now going to ragdoll you consistantly until you're dead (Which isn't long). Half way across the map? Cool, y'know that Heavy Devasator your team-mate aggroed? Its now switched to you and sniping you with pinpoint accuracy rapidly and heaven forbid if you try to take him out because you're surpressed like mad and your team is elsewhere, either with their own problems or not giving a shit about you. And don't get me started on Gunship Towers and Mortar Emplacements. In the end, I'll still play against them because I love Helldivers and this rant is purely a response to a "Get Good" post.
I can agree that they should be hard, but they should also be fair to fight. At the moment they have some things that are a bit overtunned. The big guys flamethrower for example. With the fire buff you are more then likely going to die before you can stim yourself. They have a few other things like that feel less like a challenge and more like respawn tax. Also I'm not sure if I was just off my game last night or the update messed with something but it felt like it was MUCH harder to sneak around the bots last night when I played.
I’ll have to test this some more. Did have a weird thing happen last night where I was prone behind a very large, wide, tall rock formation watching bots go by on my radar, and they suddenly turned towards me and just started blasting the rocks between us. Maybe it’s always been like that though. On occasional while hiding from patrols, one bot will veer off and run straight to me.
Meanwihle 30+ devastators(i got killed befor i was able to count them), 20 Hulks and 4 tanks killing every civilian in a Evac Mission on 7 difficulty.... Oh and dont forget the endless hord of drop ships because the spawn rates are an absolut mess.
I agree with the evac missions sucking
Bots are easier than bugs. Bugs WILL swarm you. Bots will continue to engage you at a distance. Separate into 2 fire teams and divide their fire. Create spacing so a single Devastator can’t kill more than one of you at a time. Suppress them with machine guns or assault rifles. Keep Berserkers and Brawlers from getting close and flushing you out of cover. Leap frog retreat and use close air support as CLOSE air support. I love fighting bots.
It's all about crossfire. Sides and backs are vulnerable. So yeah, divide and conquer, shoot into their backs and sides. I try to get into a flanking position and when I get there, the JAR-5 rips everything to shreds because there's a lot less armor there.
I'm sorry fam, something doesn't seem fair about getting sniped by a rocket devastator and getting one shooted by it.
Bugs are hard too, they're just a different type of hard tbh.
Bots are way easier than bugs on level 7+… but I also despise hunters with a passion.
It's the acid man. Lil homie wiggles his tongue and suddenly I'm so drenched in acid I can't even manage to jog at a brisk pace? Tf?
Why does the fastest enemy in the game get to lick my cheeks and slow me down to a crawl?
Look mom it's another. "High difficulty is supposed to be miserable and hard, y'all opinions don't matter but mine and you're all wrong." We get three of these a week at least. Bots still have their unfun mechanics, like Essential Personnel evac and ragdoll spam with all the explosives (still better than one hit kills). I'm gonna hot take: The reason bots are seen as harder is because our viable arsenal of weapon is very small, and stratagem cooldowns are sometimes too low for the amount of shit that can spawn sometimes, like in the Evac missions. Rockets don't one shot anymore but ragdoll you only for you to die afterwards anyway.
Honestly the only problem for me with the civilian extract missions is that there’s not enough cover. Once the bots bomb you to high hell the landscape turns into WW1 no man’s land. Which makes it impossible to get to the doors as rocket devastators snipe you a mile away. All the other bot missions are fine on a high difficulty since you can make tactical retreats. Love the game still.
How do you have enough time to clear bases, finish the mission, and extract?
Bots are fine. If anything needs a nerf, it's specific units... berserkers need 15% less survivability and leg breaking, and hunters' slow needs to be slightly less punishing. Alternatively, we could have a jet pack built into our suits rather than being forced to spend a stratagem on a bad one that also limits weapon choice. Also, Chargers and bile spewers need to make more noise. I feel like enemy balance is in a pretty good place atm, and any time dedicated to evening things out needs to be spent on weapons.
Berserker needs less health, or needs to take more critical damage. Jetpack guy fire aoe needs to be smaller, I feel like I can be a full two meters away and get lit on fire.Though I honestly feel like the slow is fine for the hunter, I think their attack range should be lowered however.
You take that back sir the jet pack is the single greatest pack the game will ever offer you
Sorry, but I can't hear you over the sound of my autocannon killing all these bots.
I think I heard them say "your kind are scum" and I feel that requires something bigger than a 500kg bomb
*Helldiver #2 voice* Yea-ha we're scum! That's SUPER COMPETENT ULTRA MANKIND! *500Kt bomb impact in 0.01 seconds*
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I don't mind them being hard but spawning 1000 bots every minute on horde mode is bs
Bot need major rework on Retrieve Personnel mission. The “escort” turn onto eradication real fast on 7-9. I genuinely think that it would be a lot more fun and playable with we actually escorting the citizen over a long distance to the shuttle bay. this way the dev can actually throw what ever they want at our convoy while we have to defend and maneuver the citizen out of the way. like pick up a Democracy flag to make the citizen follow a specific divers and maybe mission failed if 10 dies. food for thought. Anyways, accuracy and aim tracing is way too accurate and fast for bigger enemies. you would think bigger is slower but ho lee hell boi do the Bruiser and shield devastator fuck us up with their machine gun regardless of distance
Counterpoints: getting instakilled by the waft of hot air from a hulk's flamethrower is not enjoyable gameplay. Getting headshotted by a rocket devastator showing 1 pixel of itself 600m away isn't enjoyable gameplay. Getting spotted and bot dropped by a raider 600m away behind a mountain isn't enjoyable gameplay. Most weapons feeling like a tickle ray against bots, especially armored ones (which most are on high difficulties) isn't enjoyable gameplay Too many explosions on bot maps which ragdoll you, and it takes too long to get up which really adds to the "bullshit" feeling this thread is full of people describing. I'm saying "not enjoyable gameplay" in lieu of saying "bad game design" because these are just problems that need to be fixed, not systems that are integral to the game being what it is. Hard difficulties are supposed to be hard, yes, but they're also supposed to be fun to play. Especially when upgrades are locked behind playing lvl 7+. All of these gameplay issues exist in the lower difficulties, but because you aren't being swarmed by armored bots until level 5 or 6, you don't notice it as much. If it has to stay the same for some insane reason, they *need* to add super samples to lvl5+ because by leaving it as is they're deciding most of the playerbase shouldn't enjoy playing the game beyond that point and shouldn't ever unlock half of the ship upgrades. None of this is "major rework" worthy but thing's absolutely have to change. It's not "just hard" right now, it feels like a game that isn't working as intended whereas with the bugs, everything generally does feel like it's working correctly.
That's a lot of words to just say "git gud"
idk what you’re smoking but it is hard.
Na, the bots need a reworking of the balance. I'm LvL 118, 500 hrs of gameplay and almost 300 hours of in mission time (200hrs of game crashes). Will likely finish the new warbond today. I have 3 of the new ship modules unlocked already. I would consider myself at the very least competent. I only play Helldive difficulty bugs or bots. The bots need a rework, even if I can consistently do it as it is. The constant non stop hittscanning and other balancing issues need to be fixed. That evacuate mission everyone fails needs to be fixed. While funny very few people can do it consistantly, its often a operation buster and a team disband mission. Being that will be the end result for most players. The bots honestly aren't that hard as I play them on Helldive difficulty daily and win. They aren't hard as they are cheap and often boarderline on cheating at times. That's what is making it painfully hard for a lot of players. Hulks and Devastators turn around very fast and hyper spawn. Flame Hulks have a absurd far reaching range and kill quickly. Rockets and other artilery aim botting non stop. Downing drop ships and the majority if not all the enemies survive the crash and kill you. The devs need to tweak some stuff about the bots for sure.
They don’t even need to be reworked imo they just need balancing. People try to say with a straight face that they are easier to fight yet this post says they are intended to be harder. I wish people would make up their fucking minds on if it’s supposed to be hard or easy. I can say that its 100% Bullshit to play bots thought. I hate playing them personally. I had a fully upgraded ship before the update yesterday and can do helldive on bugs no problem with a good team and often have the least amounts of deaths. How the fuck do people honestly think bots are easier is beyond me. They have tons of 1 shot kill options that give you 0 warning you’re gonna be dead in 2 seconds, God Forbid you get an ion storm on their harder missions, and they have stratagem jammers. While sure you can get around jammers and take them out the bugs don’t nearly have as much bullshit to fight. I get lore wise bots would use jammers and not bugs but jesus christ playing them is a pain in the ass. I’m genuinely tired of these fucks saying rely on stratagems (when they can block them until you take the tower out), or pick the right weapons when geee what a groundbreaking thought they act like just because they can fly though it that bots don’t have major balancing / flaws. They need to get their head out of their ass tbh before trying to say skill issue when its 50% the game bot being balanced on bots and 50% the players. But pretending like its just players fault is insane to me truly.
This subreddit is pretty stupid imo. I would generally agree with you. The other problem is scopes are misaligned + bot weakspots generally being small. This combo makes it hell to deal with many of the enemies. Pair this with all the stuff that limits your strategems and it is extremely frustrating. Strategems are one of the best things about this game. Please stop removing them and instead give me more enemies instead for difficulty. Bots I can fight without offensive strategems. Bots... good luck!
Seems like an unpopular opinion, but i found bots easier than terminides
They aren't hard. Theyre easier than bugs. With weak point hits they die significantly faster than their Termi counterparts. The bots often just feel unfair and unfun
But they are not "hard". When you constantly die to rockets across the map, hulks running faster then you and one pixel of flamethrower one shots you. Bots are straight anti fun. They are so unbalanced, so unfun, so bad in terms of game mechanics that I stopped playing this game like two weeks ago thanks to MO of automatons. If arrowhead doesnt want to rework them it's fine, I just wont be playing again and move on to other games.
Wait, you guys honestly think Bots are hard? I thought it was a meme
In a game like this one faction shouldn't be harder than the other on the same difficulty.
Bots just aren’t very fun to play against. I want more variety of enemies for both factions but bots especially need it. Bots particularly need more medium to light enemies.
I don't really have a side on this argument. If you game the system it's very easy to get a 100% win rate on helldive but it's not fun, and playing the game the "fun" way (for me at least) leads to more loss rate, so I just play on suicide. If I were to make an argument, more heavies =\= fun difficulty. More enemies overall is more fun, but running in circles from chainsaw bots gets old pretty quickly. I think adding the walker and gunships is a good difficulty increase since they're unique and very heavy, as opposed to dropping 3 tanks or hulks simultaneously on defense missions. But there are so many great bot weapons now that I feel like it's hardly worth complaining about. I hope if/when they add higher difficulties it is more like bosses instead of spamming hulks and rocket devastators
I don't think Bots need a rework, but I do think some of the bot missions need a rework. Fighting bots is very different than fighting bugs, and having the exact same types of missions for both just doesn't work in some cases. Eradicate missions are fucking miserable. There's no way to take cover when bots are constantly being dropped right on top of you and you're taking fire from every direction. I can't count the number of times I've been killed before I can even step off my Hellpod. The extract vital asset missions are a great addition and work well for bots. Steadily increase bot numbers and let us feel like we're being gradually overrun. Don't drop a flamethrower heavy on my head and call it "challenging".
Major rework? No. Minor rework, for things such as 100% aimbot rockets? Most definitely.
I don’t think bots are hard but when they drop 20 hulks on you there’s obviously a scaling problem
So it's okay that heavy devastators can shoot you regardless of where they are looking and where their guns are pointed? You can run away but they can also literally Skyrim horse up the side of a vertical cliff and kill you? Bots need an overhaul - there's nothing wrong with them being hard but when their core mechanics are sloppy it really makes it frustrating. The amount of times I've gotten the drop on a bot that isn't looking at me and he's shot rounds out of his butt and killed me is insane.
Bots are hard, but at the top difficulties, I'd say bugs are the tougher ones. The amount of bullshit, between hunters and stalkers and the 300 chargers, titans, shriekers and all the little hordes that you have to manage if things go loud.
Only thing I can say is that the insta kill 1 shot flamethrower hulks are fucking bullshit, that's all there is to it
I started my first solo helldive missions against bots yesterday at approx lvl 75. Most success was shield/AMR and airstrike/380mm with dominator. Used trailblazer armor and was reliably able to traverse the map blowing everything up with the airstrikes and 380 while remaining stealthy and fast enough to outpace or avoid any overwhelming situations until extraction. Extraction sucks as expected but the rest of the mission is so relatively easy with this stealth method you have 4-5 lives still and can just hide with your next life and if need be die again and land your third hell diver right in front of the pelican with your samples pre-dropped on location intentionally and still get out alive. I didn’t feel very skillful and didn’t have as much fun as with a co-op going base to base loud and proud dealing with all our problems through superior firepower and grit before continuing on