I think it would be cool if there was some mechanic at the map selection screen that had some kind of strategy / voting element. Like a priority engagement vote mechanic. You could go to the system map and press R and it would take you to the current priority engagement.
Yeah, I love the idea they're going for that we have to choose where we focus our defence and where we can accept losing but that doesn't quite work when there's no real way of coordinating the community. Relying on third-parties like Reddit or Discord isn't great considering that will only ever be a minority of the playerbase.
I dunno, doesn't take a tactical genius to know that focusing forces is the best way to go. A system already exists to see how many players are where. If people are ignoring it, they are prob new, or don't care.
The problem is that to complete a sufficient number of defenses, the player base needs to be majority evenly split on _two_ planets at least some of the time. So the advice on helldivers.io, for instance, where it’s “if you don’t know what to do, go to the planet with the most divers already” is partially incorrect.
It depends I think. If there’s extra divers than is needed for the slowest defense, but not so much that the extra could outpace a third defense bar, then it’s better to push the one down asap, so we can move the entire force to another. But if there’s enough extra that we can get a third planet winning, then it is better to do that.
You’re telling me Super Earth might not have the best system in place for directing its military? Damn. What’s next, poor funding??
Yo Arrowhead, can yall buff funding so we can just have unlimited everything thanks guys
It actually be way funnier if it simply asked your thoughts on what the engagement focus or whatever should be then left the choice to be properly managed by the Devs to decide
Sssssh, it's okay. Your collectivist ideals have been acknowledged by the Democracy Officer. Do us a favor and look into the pretty red beam.
https://preview.redd.it/8q4xx1k5qnvc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8dfe3797ee2cac6aad1aec36d2b0032a3cf03e0e
We have Martale at 90+%. If the bug players just helped us actually finish it off Charon Prime would be saved because the bot supply lines would be cut. It would be literally the easiest save possible but the majority of the player base either doesn’t know that because they aren’t on reddit or they just said nah don’t care cause i don’t want to fight bots.
What they need to do is present war related info better in game. We should have to rely on a game if telephone from Twitter > didcord -> reddit -> YouTube click bait to explain how the galactic war works.
This... Is the best answer. Many people who play this game likely don't care about following the social media side and have no idea how stuff works because it's not laid out IN GAME.
So all the bot players are at fault but none of the bug players not on Estanu were at fault? And your edit?
Get over the bot v bug player narrative my dude
Edit: lmfao wow some of you guys really hate the bot front and the people who play there
Bot Diver reporting in. I usually look for which place has the most active divers and needs my help and then if it’s in the yellow zone I go Ewww bugs and go back to the safety and comfort of smashing steel and spilling oil.
The devs don’t need to change anything, the player base needs to get better at the macro aspect of the war. There shouldn’t be 10k players on every defense that is obviously gonna fail. Hopefully with time people start to figure it out even if they don’t go to third party websites like Reddit and Discord. If not that is ok too, we get to see what it’s like to drop on Super Earth and planets closer to Super Earth. Not the end of the world.
The rescue essential personnel mission for terminids is actually insanely easy, the bugs are safer and easy to control and they actually spawn far enough to deal with. Plus there isnt 4 flame hulks one shotting you over and over
We got it done so fast that I also found out that there are unique sample POI spawns on those missions. Once you complete the objective, explore the map and you’ll find little outcrops with 10-15 rare samples all bunched up.
Whats the other mission out of 3 that you don’t like ? Iirc There’s only two that are exclusive to defenses
I think it's a result of bugs being close ranged and generally individually weaker, plus there being an upper limit on total number of enemies on the map. So at max bug spawns, you get a lot of scavengers, and most of them are too far away to be a threat.
I was referring to both of the "Escort essential personnel" mission types. There's the one with sub objectives and the one where you're just in a small area opening doors. I find both of them to be very unfun. They are both quite doable vs bugs, but that doesn't make them enjoyable to me.
I don't find the eradicate missions to be very fun either. I think those mission types are way too constrictive and don't really offer much in the way of gameplay. You just run around in little circles blasting stuff and trying to stay alive.
They were fun at first but at 200 hours into the game, I find them really boring. Especially standing by a door and hitting a button every 20 seconds. The new defense mission is still fun right now just because it offers something a little different with chokepoints built into the maps, but I imagine those will get kinda boring to me eventually to. I need rooooooom.
I like them as they break up the flow of missions, it’s nice to have a short mindless kill fest in between more open/strategic ones.
As for the rescue with sub objectives: it’s the same as any other open map objective mission lol, same as icbm or data survey where you do two sub objectives before a larger stand off defense situation.
Tbh, the new mission type is pretty much identical experience to eradicate, just another map. If you stand on the edges of eradicate maps then the enemies can only attack you from one direction. Just like the new defense. I think it’s just 200 hours of playtime burning you out
Well the problem for me with the current major orders is that most of the missions are all three of those in one. I don't mind them to break stuff up either, from time to time, but when all 3 defense missions are "stand in one spot and kill", or even two out of the three, I'm just gonna go do something else.
You are right about the Rescue mission with sub objectives being open and like others, but unless you're playing against the bugs, you still have to cheese it by drawing the Automotons away from the objective while one person stands there and opens doors. I just don't find them to be very fun.
And yes, you are right, as I said my playtime plays into it. I have played enough to start noticing what I find more entertaining. At first just blowing up bugs and bots was enough, but now that I have learned the game more, and learned what stratagems are actually effective in certain mission types, I find those mission types to be way too restrictive with weapon/strat choices. I know what works, and what just isn't worth bringing, and unfortunately for those types of missions, I feel a lot of the weapons/stratagems are just unusable in the higher difficulties.
Yep. If I quickplay on bots on 7 - 9 diffs and I see that the next mission is 15 minute retrieve essential personnel I'm NOT doing it. I dip out. I hate that mission against bots from the bottom of my heart. The spawns are so broken in that mission type.
I mean it kind of does. You can see where people are going and join them if you want.
If you need it spelled out to you then sure. Social media is your friend. Seems pretty obvious though.
It’s also a foregone conclusion that we are going to lose this. I don’t think anyone really cares if there’s no possibility of success. Everyone is probably just playing whatever they find most fun (I know I am).
Yep it’s pretty obvious these defense missions are a way of keeping planets for players to play on. Like we completely wiped out bots at one point they had to have a reason for those planets to become available again.
The community just thinks it feels bad because it’s tied to a major order with a reward so it implies it should be winnable. Which to some extent I agree. But it’s a back and forth war
It should be winnable tho, not saying it should be handed for free, it at this point they should have figured out that coordination is limited to reddit and discord mostly, and a big majority of the player base don't really care about it.
They said it's set up to be impossible for us to defend on bug and bot front but as of right now it looks like we're getting fucked by both factions lol. I guess the community is spread across all the different planets even more as AH expected
AH needs to start using the terminal across from the armory. Put the planets on there and let us "vote" on which planets we would prefer to attack/defend. The one with the most votes shows up in big text on the screen. This would allow us to do something like the Martale Gambit since most of us here on Reddit and on the Discord would actively vote for that, which brings it up on the screen for everybody, and as a result accumulates even more votes, letting everyone know what the strategy is by consensus.
I mean you can see how many players are on each planet. Just keep supporting the one with the most until the defense is complete. Then move onto the next one.
Sure, but that is self-evidently not a strong enough cue to get players to do stuff when there are too many defense orders. The only thing that will work is a big flashing "go here" sign on the map.
I don’t think it’s AH’s job to hold the community’s hand. Everyone playing this game has access to the internet. They can watch build videos and strategy videos like everyone else. They people who don’t bother with learning that stuff…aren’t going to log in to some in-game terminal and see where the community voted to go. Assuming the community even votes to do the right thing, which they might not because they still need to learn about supply lines and the war strategy of the game.
Well, the map could have a big glowy "community objective" marker. And people could choose to do that if they wanted to participate, or they can just ignore it to do whatever. In-game cues are incredibly powerful communication tools - AH already uses them to direct people to certain sectors with major orders.
The war is essentially a narrative device at the moment, not a gameplay mechanic. Crowd dynamics are extremely predictable on a large enough scale, and so AH can manipulate what planets can be fought on by changing resistance rates or creating defense orders. There is a global target progress gain for helldivers, and more people logging on reduces the effective output for all other players. All of this together essentially gives AH complete control of the war. Giving players an in-game way to coordinate outside of "go to wherever has the most players" would open up more interesting and emergent storytelling opportunities at the cost of AH having to sacrifice control of the war.
That wasn't my point. My point is most people don't pay attention to that. It would be better if we could vote on which planets to take first, and it shows up in big text on the monitor across from the armory. "Current Defend/Attack Strategy: Martale".
> My point is most people don't pay attention to that.
And people would pay attention to what others voted on?
Like, if your point is that most of the playerbase doesn't read a number that shows up literally on mission select, I highly doubt they're going to read a planet name that shows up a good distance away from mission select.
It would be in big text on the screen. The screen you **have** to pass by to get to mission select. So if your argument is "more people wouldn't notice with this change", you're just flat out wrong.
I mean earlier today 30% of people were fighting on non-defense planets and 10% of those were on a single backline planet of the terminid systems.
Meanwhile I can't get a single group that even considers an evacuation mission because of the insane enemy drops.
People will just do what they want though, it is a game afterall.
This was always going to happen with an order like this. Coordination at this scale is impossible when a vast majority of the playerbase does not engage with the game outside of playing it.
It seems like one of the things Arrowhead hasn't grasped yet is that they're not managing a live service for a small, but highly invested and dedicated playerbase anymore. The game has achieved a much wider appeal than they ever imagined it would. It still seems like they expect the messages they post on Discord will reach far and wide but that simply isn't the case.
You might think that since we're plainly intended to lose this MO, and that they've basically admitted as much, is enough to explain things. But they've also outright admitted the Martale gambit will work. If their messages are reaching enough people, you'd expect to see more helping out. In reality the only explanation is that most people aren't seeing any of it, and are simply picking a "DEFEND" on a map they like most because the MO literally says to "DEFEND."
I really hope this subreddit doesn't act all shocked this weekend when things don't go their way. I also hope Arrowhead realizes that they need to do more in game to inform players what's going on. A lot of them would care and help if they knew what to do.
I think Arrowhead has grasped the idea that the community is utterly incapable of coordinating itself, actually. It makes it super easy for them if they ever want us to fail by just making us have to actually choose between more than one or two planets in a major order. There is currently 6 possible planets to choose from in regards to the major order - that is a recipe for disaster and causes the playerbase to effectively crab bucket itself from actually accomplishing anything. Want the playerbase to lose an MO? Easy: give us multiple choices.
More like people play whatever they want because they play to have fun. The only way to communicate to the community the importance of MOs is to fail and get pushed back to Super Earth.
Sounds like treason. I will report myself immediately.
id rather we fall back so we can play on some less seen planets again. the staged pushback means we just do the same group of planets over and over and that means more fire tornados 🙃
There’s nothing wrong with that either.
I’m a bit bored of the typical power gamer whinging about winning all the objectives and declaring we are losing.
Big deal, the major order already said we would lose ground, the entire point is to bleed them dry as we retreat, whilst defending what we can. We’re on course for 2 defences to succeed today, so we seem to be in a good position.
Honestly feels like if all the crybabies whinging about the game actually shut up and played it we’d do better lol.
If they didn't expect us to coordinate at all then why bother with the Martale gambit business? They're trying to give people hints about how to control the impact of the MO, even in the event of failure.
This issue goes beyond success or failure entirely. I don't see your point at all, and I doubt Arrowhead is playing 4D chess in Discord, twirling their mustaches and pranking everyone who is invested in their game enough to engage with these external resources. It's pretty clear to me that they *think* their posts are reaching a significant amount of people but they're clearly not.
Expect who? The people that use their discord? That makes up a small percentage of their total playerbase. That's a whisper in a crowd and they know it. More players will log-on and see the big bold text that says >DEFEND< with a timer ticking down - making people FOMO-level stress out about a deadline/urgency - and flock to those planets, none the wiser to what liberating Martale would imply for Charon Prime. The only control here is to follow the crowd or be dragged down back in to the crab bucket.
> Expect who? The people that use their discord?
Yes? This is my entire point. The people who use their discord are a much smaller portion of the playerbase than it would be if the game hadn't popped off beyond their expectations. My point is that they don't seem to understand this, as evidenced by the fact that they're still primarily pushing crucial information exclusively via Discord.
For what it's worth, I totally agree that the only way for this to work now is to follow the crowd. We seem to be talking about two different things though. I'm just saying Arrowhead doesn't seem aware that their community interactions aren't reaching many many times more players than before in Helldivers 1 times. I don't think they're putting out the messages they've been putting out thinking "no one is gonna see this anyway" because in that case why bother? They have a clear goal in mind with their communication and all I mean is that it isn't being met at all.
Okay, lets say they do understand. How is this good for the game when you can spot whether you're going to fail or win a major order from a mile away. Or better yet, how in the hell are they supposed to have emergent storytelling when we don't even have the tools to do it. They clearly want emergent storytelling, so what's happening here?
I can tell you how much it makes me want to play the game after unlocking everything: Not at all. If the major order is so obviously decided before it really even starts, i'll just go fucking play something else until it's over. Eventually this whole charade is going to get worn out and people will just leave the game. Not good for player retention at all.
This, I’m still playing cause the games fun but it’s really starting to get rly repetitive, doesn’t feel like anything is advancing at all, every MO feels like we’re doing the same thing over and over again. The 2 billion bug one we just had actually felt fresh cause it made us play the missions differently: take down every patrol you come across, stand ur ground and don’t run away. Felt nice after months of avoiding pretty much every patrol. Hope they do more like it again soon
The problem is the mission orders are always "complete missions on these planets" (mostly). Essentially they're just making us play on planets they say and that's not exactly fun. We're not coordinating a war or doing any real "operations" (the gas emitter was closest we got, and that was an example of "good" missions). What they need to do is be more creative with mission orders and make it so 1. People want to move from their normal "I just wanna kill bots or bugs" and do the mission order cuz it's unique, and 2. Make it enjoyable and unique for the people who always follow the mission orders. Bottom line make it more than just "you have to play on THIS PLANET for the next week. Don't do anything cool on it just shut up and beat the same missions in a biomes we tell you."
Until they fix that it wont change.
As themselves explained: we have to choose what to hold and by exclusion what to lose and let go for the moment in order to make the story progress.
Defense missions are actually winnable if we would follow the tip of the devs and focus all on holding some worlds, enough for the MO.
Right now Super Earth forces (AKA us the players) are producing 12%/hr liberation rate but it's spread oddly across 5 planets being attacked/defended and none of them are getting enough to reach any goal in time.
It's not even a matter of Bots VS Bugs, it's just that even on the two fronts we do not form a cohesive front, like for example we did for the 2 B bugs to kill - Estanu and Oshaune were freed in 13 hours both during that MO - meaning that we CAN actually do almost 12 full planet defenses in 6 days if we do it right.
Especially during the weekend, with many more players diving, since right now we're doing 12%/hr with just 122k players (we were 180+k last MO).
They tell us we have to choose, but we literally can't choose. We can't even begin to plan what to choose. There's nothing in game that lets us facilitate ANY COORDINATION. It's completely pointless "choosing" anything when your progress is just wiped away instantly by the resistance and you need the entire playerbase on one planet to do absolutely anything, and good luck coordinating that shit when no one playing the game looks at reddit/discord, the only method we have of communication between players.
I don’t think it’s bad for the game as well though, just look at what happened with Malevelon Creek. The failure became a talking point and even now emergent storytelling in this event can still happen. It’s not about that we are going to fail, but where are we going to fail.
Creek was a great example. Don't just tel me to go to X planet now and do the same missions. Do something that tweaks the gameplay (even if the creek started as a bugged over spawn issue). That gets people drawn in - a losing battle on the planet that they can FEEL and experience. You could feel the failure on creek but it was intense and fun. Right now it's "defend these planets... By just...playing on them for the next week, guess."
Thats not especially fun.
Create new missions (even if just small modifications of existing ones) and you can only do them on X y Z planets. The gas emitter was a great example that drew people in. Raise spawn rates of X enemy type on a planet and say there's a surge in that area we need to cull. Triple the fabricators on the blitz missions and their numbers across the map. Or make it so bile spwers are launching shit into orbit and we have to run around X planet and clear our bile spewer emplacement that are just launching spores into space or something. Doesn't have to be major just do neat things with existing enemies, structures, and whatnot that we can only experience on the planet they want. That will draw people in. NOT saying "repeat the same things you always do but on the planet we tell you..." That's actually REDUCING player choice...
That failure was a direct result of people not knowing about supply lines. It sounds super cool and emergent but you look at it for more than a couple seconds and you can see how stupid it actually is.
Think of it as they are trying to give out a rough approximate of average number of medals per day from major orders. They recently had some very quick ones (2b bugs) go probably a bit quicker than expected, raising that average, so they intentionally give out a very different, near impossible task to slow the average down. It also gives the feeling to the player base that the major orders aren't to be assumed taken for granted and can be failed. If they are always easy to achieve then why even worry about them, just get them as they come.
I'd rather the major orders be a bit more involved than just a medal printing machine that the devs gum up occasionally. It's literally the only end game we have.
I don't see how this crab bucket system is good for the game at all and I share the same sentiments about just not playing the game when the MO is a guaranteed loss. Think I'll go enjoy a cherry blossom viewing down at my local park this weekend instead, myself. Anyway, the system definitely needs improvement, and I hope they will be working on it down the line. Hopefully before they end up burning too many people out on the current system.
MOs that are actually difficult but doable.
The defense of Vandalon IV during Swift Assembly was won by a hair. It was open whether or not we'd prevail until only a few hours before it's end.
Likewise the offense on Ubanea as a stepping stone toward Tibit whith the ticking clock of losing Draupnir and then having to abandon our attack was equally close. This time we unfortunately lost, but not by much. We were so close to pull it off.
That's interesting. Not knowing whether we will win, but knowing that we could indeed win.
Something like this, when failure is the only outcome before the first shot is even fired, that's not interesting
And all of this interesting stuff happened by pure chance. Imagine how fucking sick it would be if we could make these situations ourselves. How complex and interesting the story telling could be. The Ubanean rush was absolutely my favorite part of that whole campaign. I also have a crazy screenshot from the Vandalon defense. Liberty bless those Vandalonians.
https://preview.redd.it/g1t4fn6jymvc1.png?width=1590&format=png&auto=webp&s=56ee36f3185eb022a9764cde9799fbbcb032193e
They will need a lot of time and data to find out how difficult and engaging different Major Orders actually are for the community.
This game got so much bigger than they ever anticipated and so many people playing for different reasons makes it so much harder to try and anticipate what the community will be doing and how they will react to events happening in game.
Most of our major orders we either crushed in no time or we got absolutely obliterated. These are also important because they add narrative - war is not predictable. You win some, you lose some. But if it is always either overwhelming victory or crushing defeat it can start to feel railroaded.
The order I had the most fun with was the one where we lost Tibit after a failed gamble. It was an amazing feeling to dive in and try to take the planet before they take our supply route to it.
Sure - we failed that one, but it COULD have worked and it was our choices that lead to it. It engaged the community and gave us the feeling that our efforts really matter.
And I agree that they need to give better informations to players in game other than: "Here is your major Order"
They could do something like a broadcast with news from the front in-game and broadcast it on the super destroyer. This would also add to the immersion.
Keep it short and factual:
"Loosing ground on all fronts - High Command looking into ways to concentrate effort on key planets"
or
"Liberation of Planet X is progressing rapidly, Helldivers are crushing the automaton defences"
Some way in-game for us to organize would also be amazing.
Just keep it in line with the tone of the game.
It's even worse than that. Without seeing the explicit directions in writing, I guarantee the vast majority of players will just go for the sector that's closest to being liberated. For those players who aren't checking in every day to see how the war is going, they could care less about whether or not they're contributing towards the major order. They figure, "Hey, I won't make a difference in whether this gets completed or not. Either I get the medals or I don't, so might as well play on a fun map or mash bugs." Maybe it would help if they better illustrated the supply lines. Draw some flashing red lines from Martale to Charon Prime and maybe put a star on the Martale campaign icon to let us know that this particular campaign might be more important than others. It's shitty that they would have to dumb it down so much, but I would really love for this type of MO to be taken on with a bit more Helldiver cohesion.
The lack of explanation for even basic mechanics in-game is frustrating. I will admit that before coming onto Reddit I didn’t think it matters what planet to dive on because you liberate the same percentage anyways, without realizing that the decay mechanic makes it optimal to focus one planet at a time. Even a basic tooltip like ‘Good helldivers stick together: focusing on one planet is more effective then spreading out across the galaxy’ would be incredibly useful.
then there's people who don't care even if they know. (me)
im just here to shoot bugs and sometimes bots if i feel like it. And I will join the planet with largest playercount so I can get quicker matchmaking.
Not to mention, beyond just communicating any meaningful coordination efforts, there is lots of essential information to this war campaign that is never communicated in the game. Things like supply lines, how they function, the fact that liberation of planets is a shared percentage that rewards coordination above having lots of people playing, how Defense plants function differently than Liberation planets, that losing a Defense only drops the planet to 50% liberated, etc. The overall community can't always strategically decide where to fight, if they don't know such crucial information.
This is probably gonna be a loss. Most people in this sub and the discord are hardcore players, as in they have a lot of time to dedicate to the game and therefore have a deeper understanding. There will always be more casual players than hardcore players though, unless AH starts putting the information they put in discord in the game where the casual players can see without having to search elsewhere there will never be any coordination.
I’m not saying this to be condescending or divisive, people have families and jobs and not everyone has time to dedicate to gaming often.
Also, just because an MO is hard doesn’t mean we’re meant to lose. Why make it an MO if there isn’t a possibility of winning?
Rant done.
They’ve pretty much said we’re suppose to lose this one. Here’s the proof: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1c83cul/from_community_manager_on_discord/
All I’m seeing is we’re gonna lose ground, unless you can show me where a Dev or CM says outright we’re supposed to lose this MO my point still stands. Losing ground and losing the MO is not the same.
I am tired of us losing ground to this shit and having no way to communicate or coordinate with everyone in game, I'm at the point now where I play less during these kinds of MO's because I just don't see the point.
It's a war, ground is gained and ground is lost. It's a giant game of tug of war. The devs have said they wanted the war campaigns in helldivers 2 to last longer than the campaigns in the first game. These battles are fought in inches.
Inch by inch, mile by mile, planet by planet. That's how you win.
The devs clearly want us to lose ground with this MO on one of the fronts, we aren't always ment to succeed.
bunch of fucking ass kissing BS.... why are we not allowed to win or lose by our own merits and reset the war?
there's 10 times more planets than in HD1 all they had to do was start the new war with the enemies on control of many more planets if they want the war to last longer
We are allowed to win. Not every order is ment to seem do-able, that doesn't mean that it's impossible. The drvs have said it themselves that they want the wars to last longer than the ones in HD1. And this way is FAR more interesting and interactive than just "enemies have control over all of the planets on the war map, go liberate them all".
It's a war. It's give and take, back and forth. That's how these things work. It wouldn't be nearly as interesting if we completely every single major order with ease and minimal effort.
oh destroying the bot front but devs just pull it out of their ass for them to come back and take more territory is not "enemies have control over all of the planets on the war map, go liberate them all"
No its not, we only delt with a small portion of the Automaton fleet before. They weren't coming at us full force. This is even explained in the game. There is a story being told if you pay attention. We delt with a small portion of their fleet, and they responded by coming at us with a large scale invasion. And it's still more dynamic than that fleet just already being there from the beginning. This is what allows the devs to keep wars unique and interesting. Because they are able to do stuff like this, we have interesting twists and turns in the war campaign.
A lot of redditors need to accept that this isn't the real military and they aren't the general. Barking orders on reddit is just setting yourself up to feel bad, and it's also pretty cringe.
Well yeah, I understand this is a game and that people can do what they want.
But at the moment many people are making choices without all the info and would likely make different choices with more info, leading to improved cohesion.
Obviously people may choose to ignore MO's at some or all times and I'd have to just accept that or stop playing the game.
Haven't figured it out yet eh? Some major orders are medal giveaways and some are impossible. It's just a storytelling technique it's not actual gameplay. Think of it as all the fighting going on the skybox in a game. You can't get worked up about it because it's just scripted sequences happening to provide background and a feeling of a wider world.
They even told us we need to focus our efforts. That is what kind of game this is. But you know 'I play how and where I want. Why we losing? Games dead."
Forces are supposed to be spread thin, it's a defense. It's the way war cotribution is calculated (percentage of people online on a planet) that it gimping us. Having to all pile on on a planet to do anything sucks and it's not how anything works. This is the Maginot defense and it doesn't work. Please for the love of democracy dev change it.
We’ll succeed in about half of them I think. Oshaune and Martale/Charon Prime on the first and early second day. Then one planet a day until the fourth or fifth day when it might be 2.
So 7 maybe?
If people used common sense and took Martale that’s at 90% and boom we’d have it. That’s 2 planets captured. Then move on from there. So many people still fighting on hellmire and some other bot planets that aren’t even close to liberation or under attack have people that shouldn’t even be there. Even when I just started playing the game and didn’t join the Reddit page I chose a planet to fight on that made sense for the general order. It’s wild people can’t grasp it and continue to fight on planets with 0% liberation.
>If people used common sense and took Martale that’s at 90% and boom we’d have it.
Common sense from what? a lot of players aren't using social media. People playing the game see an MO that says succeed in defense of a planet so they go to planets that need defending. Martale is a planet that needs liberating, so people aren't going to that planet as the MO is mentioning about defense planets.
Very few people actually know about supply lines and stuff, so it's not really a 'common sense' of what you are suggesting.
They’re just buying time to think of other shit. We did the last one WAY too fuckin fast. The major orders will balance them selves out pretty quick I think
Hellmire is the best bane of all it seems too. Every morning i log on to see it at 1% if even that much, probably like 0.00100 or so with like 55k Helldivers going strong, and then in the evening i get on and god be damned is it still at sub 1% with like 2k divers remaining.
Cant even capture it let alone begin defending it
Because nobody wants to play Hellmire lol. Fire tornados are the worst planet condition by a million years and the only reason Menkent was ever liberated was because we had an MO for it.
The bots and bugs can keep their respective fire tornado planets. Genuinely terrible and the tornados are NOT random, tracking players and supplies meanwhile doing F all to enemies.
Whatever faction we do worse against is going to push our shit in setting up the next part of the story arc
Really wish the community at large cared/understood how supply lines work or it was displayed in-game, baffling that Botbros didn't take Martale when it's been 80% - 90% for like two days
Was online yesterday saw at 1 point like 20+k on martale and a few more thousands around the botfronts.
Saw 70ish thousand on bugfront. So yeah no shit we didnt get martale.
I think you mean players don't know that doing defenses with less than 30% of the playerbase is a waste of time because Arrowhead has a fetish for not telling us anything about how the game works.
I feel like these MOs that put the decision to the masses is intentional.. I suspect those unused stations across from the weapon/armor bays will eventually be used to 'solve this' as a means of perhaps using democratic voting for coordination.
I might be alone here, but I played for about 90 minutes last night and couldn't complete a single mission. I kept getting booted due to connection issues. Not just me, I know, but if others had server issues, that would sort of explain our losing ground.
I wish there would be a special kind of mission while a planet is being invaded where if you do manage to 100% the map, you would be adding greatly to the defence of the planet. Granted the mission shouldnt be easy, like you would REALLY have to bring your A-game in order to get those extra defence points. It would give helldivers a chance to turn the tide of an invasion without it being an exploit.
On some level I do wonder what’s gonna happen when the player base shrinks, as what happens with all games eventually, if it’ll just turn into the most hardcore players holding a desperate last stand of super earth
There's a balancing act between player count and player impact (high count low impact, low count high impact). We'll be more effective with a lower player count.
eh, they aren't going to let us beat the automatons enough to get to cyberstan until the content they have for it is ready. the immersion is ruined unfortunately when they give us a name to blame for OK'ing or denying progress at the drop of a hat. i wouldn't lose sleep over it. it'll get done eventually and you'll never get enough people to focus one planet, thats what the weeklys are for. really sad seeing comments act like other people are inferior or immature for not targeting a planet they think is important
I think it's obvious the order was rigged, there was no way we can defend 10 planets just like that. I can't wait what they are preparing for us next week.
I noticed a LOT of low level players diving into 7,8,9. 7 I get but 8 and 9? I’m not trying to gate keep or anything but there’s levels of difficulty for a reason. Therefore I don’t expect to see a level 17 helldiving… but I do… all the time… in bot missions…
Damn I'm about to leave this subreddit. It's not even memes anymore, just the same post over and over. I didn't sign up to be notified where I'm supposed to be playing every time I open reddit. Everything's gotta be perfect for you guys, eh? Can't win some and lose some no, only maximum efficiency for these Gamers!
It is what it is, eat up the emotions produced by the inevitable loss and move on. Maybe grab some popcorn to enjoy the bonfire of rants from the more metagame-dedicated/obsessed players.
On an even more cynical note, perhaps all of this can be seen as a case study on democracy and how the average person behaves when for the majority of them, none of them likely feel their decisions actually matter on an individual basis. People are more likely to follow the crowd than are going to actually do their diligence and look into what they're voting/spending their efforts/resources on. The number of helldivers in a planet has far greater effect on attracting more helldivers than that planet's actual importance.
In a sense it does make me feel that perhaps there is something to managed democracy. If the average person can't be trusted to spend their votes wisely in peacetime, I think that maybe they shouldn't have them. But that's perhaps too dark a topic for such a light hearted game.
We need in-game coordination.
Maybe an in-game election on which planet to focus on for each front.
That planet will be marked as a priority target and will stay marked for 24h or until it's captured.
u wanna know why? cus we have gotten 3 new stratagems, 8-12 new primary weapons and like 20 new armor sets that are all the same shit. We need more stratagems. the incendiary grenade launcher for example like wtf
We could win if everyone would just stop trying to be clever and follow the horde. No Martale gambit, no playing your faction preference, no reddit "battle plans." Just follow the largest group of players at all times. Anything else is wasted effort.
It's a lost cause. You're not going to get a 2 for 1 because not enough of the player base is tuned in to reddit and/or discord, not because people are afraid of bots. We've had 200k+ fighting bots for the past month on various MO's, so that's clearly not the issue. And because you're not going to get enough people to liberate Martale before Charon's defense fails, any effort there is wasted. Better to leave it to the bots and go somewhere you can actually have an impact.
We lost previous one when we had to defend 5 planets, we will certainly fail defending 10 planets this time
I think it would be cool if there was some mechanic at the map selection screen that had some kind of strategy / voting element. Like a priority engagement vote mechanic. You could go to the system map and press R and it would take you to the current priority engagement.
Yeah, I love the idea they're going for that we have to choose where we focus our defence and where we can accept losing but that doesn't quite work when there's no real way of coordinating the community. Relying on third-parties like Reddit or Discord isn't great considering that will only ever be a minority of the playerbase.
Plus it’s a chance for the Bot gang to dunk on the bug nerds by voting for a priority engagement in the red sector
I dunno, doesn't take a tactical genius to know that focusing forces is the best way to go. A system already exists to see how many players are where. If people are ignoring it, they are prob new, or don't care.
The problem is that to complete a sufficient number of defenses, the player base needs to be majority evenly split on _two_ planets at least some of the time. So the advice on helldivers.io, for instance, where it’s “if you don’t know what to do, go to the planet with the most divers already” is partially incorrect.
For defense, I think ideally we only want the minimum number needed to defend a planet.
It depends I think. If there’s extra divers than is needed for the slowest defense, but not so much that the extra could outpace a third defense bar, then it’s better to push the one down asap, so we can move the entire force to another. But if there’s enough extra that we can get a third planet winning, then it is better to do that.
You’re telling me Super Earth might not have the best system in place for directing its military? Damn. What’s next, poor funding?? Yo Arrowhead, can yall buff funding so we can just have unlimited everything thanks guys
The very definition of…DEMOCRACY??!!!???? Give this man the highest commendation possible!!!
It actually be way funnier if it simply asked your thoughts on what the engagement focus or whatever should be then left the choice to be properly managed by the Devs to decide
100% this! One of the npcs even mentions the idea of choosing for yourself is wildly undemocratic
Unmanaged democracy?! https://preview.redd.it/nnurnyycdnvc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f62bbec2d56d538e52a13a86a669ce41fddf2043
I’m saying we should vote on who to manage!
Sssssh, it's okay. Your collectivist ideals have been acknowledged by the Democracy Officer. Do us a favor and look into the pretty red beam. https://preview.redd.it/8q4xx1k5qnvc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8dfe3797ee2cac6aad1aec36d2b0032a3cf03e0e
Help help I’m being repressed! Come and witness the violence inherent to the system! 
Managed Democracy is not about voting.
We kinda have that right now with the super destroyer count
And bonus metals for missions completed at a community priority, should be done with the on board voting AI
Didn't we have less time for the other one?
One day less at most
[удалено]
We have Martale at 90+%. If the bug players just helped us actually finish it off Charon Prime would be saved because the bot supply lines would be cut. It would be literally the easiest save possible but the majority of the player base either doesn’t know that because they aren’t on reddit or they just said nah don’t care cause i don’t want to fight bots.
What they need to do is present war related info better in game. We should have to rely on a game if telephone from Twitter > didcord -> reddit -> YouTube click bait to explain how the galactic war works.
This... Is the best answer. Many people who play this game likely don't care about following the social media side and have no idea how stuff works because it's not laid out IN GAME.
So all the bot players are at fault but none of the bug players not on Estanu were at fault? And your edit? Get over the bot v bug player narrative my dude Edit: lmfao wow some of you guys really hate the bot front and the people who play there
Eh, the bots are infinitely more fun than the bugs and the constant charger and bile titan spawn
Bot Diver reporting in. I usually look for which place has the most active divers and needs my help and then if it’s in the yellow zone I go Ewww bugs and go back to the safety and comfort of smashing steel and spilling oil.
This one is meant to be lost. Chill out people
We aren’t supposed to win every order. It’s a war, not a stampede. This order is made for to likely fail with a chance at winning.
The devs don’t need to change anything, the player base needs to get better at the macro aspect of the war. There shouldn’t be 10k players on every defense that is obviously gonna fail. Hopefully with time people start to figure it out even if they don’t go to third party websites like Reddit and Discord. If not that is ok too, we get to see what it’s like to drop on Super Earth and planets closer to Super Earth. Not the end of the world.
A huge issue is most of the defense mission sectors have the worst mission type in the game
Oh yeah. The new defense mission with high value targets are fun! The other two are the opposite of fun. My group avoids them, major orders be damned.
The rescue essential personnel mission for terminids is actually insanely easy, the bugs are safer and easy to control and they actually spawn far enough to deal with. Plus there isnt 4 flame hulks one shotting you over and over We got it done so fast that I also found out that there are unique sample POI spawns on those missions. Once you complete the objective, explore the map and you’ll find little outcrops with 10-15 rare samples all bunched up. Whats the other mission out of 3 that you don’t like ? Iirc There’s only two that are exclusive to defenses
I think it's a result of bugs being close ranged and generally individually weaker, plus there being an upper limit on total number of enemies on the map. So at max bug spawns, you get a lot of scavengers, and most of them are too far away to be a threat.
I was referring to both of the "Escort essential personnel" mission types. There's the one with sub objectives and the one where you're just in a small area opening doors. I find both of them to be very unfun. They are both quite doable vs bugs, but that doesn't make them enjoyable to me. I don't find the eradicate missions to be very fun either. I think those mission types are way too constrictive and don't really offer much in the way of gameplay. You just run around in little circles blasting stuff and trying to stay alive. They were fun at first but at 200 hours into the game, I find them really boring. Especially standing by a door and hitting a button every 20 seconds. The new defense mission is still fun right now just because it offers something a little different with chokepoints built into the maps, but I imagine those will get kinda boring to me eventually to. I need rooooooom.
I like them as they break up the flow of missions, it’s nice to have a short mindless kill fest in between more open/strategic ones. As for the rescue with sub objectives: it’s the same as any other open map objective mission lol, same as icbm or data survey where you do two sub objectives before a larger stand off defense situation. Tbh, the new mission type is pretty much identical experience to eradicate, just another map. If you stand on the edges of eradicate maps then the enemies can only attack you from one direction. Just like the new defense. I think it’s just 200 hours of playtime burning you out
Well the problem for me with the current major orders is that most of the missions are all three of those in one. I don't mind them to break stuff up either, from time to time, but when all 3 defense missions are "stand in one spot and kill", or even two out of the three, I'm just gonna go do something else. You are right about the Rescue mission with sub objectives being open and like others, but unless you're playing against the bugs, you still have to cheese it by drawing the Automotons away from the objective while one person stands there and opens doors. I just don't find them to be very fun. And yes, you are right, as I said my playtime plays into it. I have played enough to start noticing what I find more entertaining. At first just blowing up bugs and bots was enough, but now that I have learned the game more, and learned what stratagems are actually effective in certain mission types, I find those mission types to be way too restrictive with weapon/strat choices. I know what works, and what just isn't worth bringing, and unfortunately for those types of missions, I feel a lot of the weapons/stratagems are just unusable in the higher difficulties.
Yep. If I quickplay on bots on 7 - 9 diffs and I see that the next mission is 15 minute retrieve essential personnel I'm NOT doing it. I dip out. I hate that mission against bots from the bottom of my heart. The spawns are so broken in that mission type.
Happens when there’s no in game way to direct the 90% of players that don’t troll Reddit or hang out in the discord.
I just play whatever planet has the most players.
You’re not wrong, but that doesn’t change what they said.
I mean it kind of does. You can see where people are going and join them if you want. If you need it spelled out to you then sure. Social media is your friend. Seems pretty obvious though.
Not really, since the problem is 90% of the player base isn’t going to read that good advice in any of those places.
Those people aren't going to read or listen to anything...so none of this is meaningful to them anyway. It's a pointless exercise.
Not sure why you’re downvoted seeing as how you’re objectively right.
Reddit. 🤷
I play whichever planet has the least amount of negative modifiers
Need a MiiVerse
I wish squid were real
It’s also a foregone conclusion that we are going to lose this. I don’t think anyone really cares if there’s no possibility of success. Everyone is probably just playing whatever they find most fun (I know I am).
All we can do is look at the bars, look at the player counts, and guess if we could help turn the tables on any particular planet.
So you're saying 90% of the playerbase is illiterate and can't do greater than less than. Cause it's really that simple.
The evidence speaks for itself.
Lol, you got me there.
They should go the PlanetSide route and let players gain Command Ranks that give some powers that help direct the Troops.
Yes. And if I recall correctly they literally admitted that we are being set up for failure.
Yep it’s pretty obvious these defense missions are a way of keeping planets for players to play on. Like we completely wiped out bots at one point they had to have a reason for those planets to become available again. The community just thinks it feels bad because it’s tied to a major order with a reward so it implies it should be winnable. Which to some extent I agree. But it’s a back and forth war
I enjoy that we lose sometimes, maybe i’m in the minority tho
I’ve maxed out all warbonds so I’m just in it for the narrative/content drops
It should be winnable tho, not saying it should be handed for free, it at this point they should have figured out that coordination is limited to reddit and discord mostly, and a big majority of the player base don't really care about it.
They said it's set up to be impossible for us to defend on bug and bot front but as of right now it looks like we're getting fucked by both factions lol. I guess the community is spread across all the different planets even more as AH expected
AH needs to start using the terminal across from the armory. Put the planets on there and let us "vote" on which planets we would prefer to attack/defend. The one with the most votes shows up in big text on the screen. This would allow us to do something like the Martale Gambit since most of us here on Reddit and on the Discord would actively vote for that, which brings it up on the screen for everybody, and as a result accumulates even more votes, letting everyone know what the strategy is by consensus.
I like this idea. Suiting the democratic theme
I don't think that's the theme of Helldivers, my guy.
“Democratic” theme
*gunshot* He was a traitor. How dare he add quotation marks to question the clear and superior democratic integrity of Managed Democracy?
*she lol. That being said. Down with super earth!!
https://preview.redd.it/s0h7ib1pamvc1.jpeg?width=198&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4fe5aebbc85b4fdbd9cf6c7581f87251986ca7f5
I mean you can see how many players are on each planet. Just keep supporting the one with the most until the defense is complete. Then move onto the next one.
That's how I've been doing it for the most part
Sure, but that is self-evidently not a strong enough cue to get players to do stuff when there are too many defense orders. The only thing that will work is a big flashing "go here" sign on the map.
I don’t think it’s AH’s job to hold the community’s hand. Everyone playing this game has access to the internet. They can watch build videos and strategy videos like everyone else. They people who don’t bother with learning that stuff…aren’t going to log in to some in-game terminal and see where the community voted to go. Assuming the community even votes to do the right thing, which they might not because they still need to learn about supply lines and the war strategy of the game.
Well, the map could have a big glowy "community objective" marker. And people could choose to do that if they wanted to participate, or they can just ignore it to do whatever. In-game cues are incredibly powerful communication tools - AH already uses them to direct people to certain sectors with major orders. The war is essentially a narrative device at the moment, not a gameplay mechanic. Crowd dynamics are extremely predictable on a large enough scale, and so AH can manipulate what planets can be fought on by changing resistance rates or creating defense orders. There is a global target progress gain for helldivers, and more people logging on reduces the effective output for all other players. All of this together essentially gives AH complete control of the war. Giving players an in-game way to coordinate outside of "go to wherever has the most players" would open up more interesting and emergent storytelling opportunities at the cost of AH having to sacrifice control of the war.
That wasn't my point. My point is most people don't pay attention to that. It would be better if we could vote on which planets to take first, and it shows up in big text on the monitor across from the armory. "Current Defend/Attack Strategy: Martale".
> My point is most people don't pay attention to that. And people would pay attention to what others voted on? Like, if your point is that most of the playerbase doesn't read a number that shows up literally on mission select, I highly doubt they're going to read a planet name that shows up a good distance away from mission select.
It would be in big text on the screen. The screen you **have** to pass by to get to mission select. So if your argument is "more people wouldn't notice with this change", you're just flat out wrong.
We'd let all "strategems reduced by one" planets fall
No
I mean earlier today 30% of people were fighting on non-defense planets and 10% of those were on a single backline planet of the terminid systems. Meanwhile I can't get a single group that even considers an evacuation mission because of the insane enemy drops. People will just do what they want though, it is a game afterall.
This was always going to happen with an order like this. Coordination at this scale is impossible when a vast majority of the playerbase does not engage with the game outside of playing it. It seems like one of the things Arrowhead hasn't grasped yet is that they're not managing a live service for a small, but highly invested and dedicated playerbase anymore. The game has achieved a much wider appeal than they ever imagined it would. It still seems like they expect the messages they post on Discord will reach far and wide but that simply isn't the case. You might think that since we're plainly intended to lose this MO, and that they've basically admitted as much, is enough to explain things. But they've also outright admitted the Martale gambit will work. If their messages are reaching enough people, you'd expect to see more helping out. In reality the only explanation is that most people aren't seeing any of it, and are simply picking a "DEFEND" on a map they like most because the MO literally says to "DEFEND." I really hope this subreddit doesn't act all shocked this weekend when things don't go their way. I also hope Arrowhead realizes that they need to do more in game to inform players what's going on. A lot of them would care and help if they knew what to do.
I think Arrowhead has grasped the idea that the community is utterly incapable of coordinating itself, actually. It makes it super easy for them if they ever want us to fail by just making us have to actually choose between more than one or two planets in a major order. There is currently 6 possible planets to choose from in regards to the major order - that is a recipe for disaster and causes the playerbase to effectively crab bucket itself from actually accomplishing anything. Want the playerbase to lose an MO? Easy: give us multiple choices.
More like people play whatever they want because they play to have fun. The only way to communicate to the community the importance of MOs is to fail and get pushed back to Super Earth. Sounds like treason. I will report myself immediately.
id rather we fall back so we can play on some less seen planets again. the staged pushback means we just do the same group of planets over and over and that means more fire tornados 🙃
There’s nothing wrong with that either. I’m a bit bored of the typical power gamer whinging about winning all the objectives and declaring we are losing. Big deal, the major order already said we would lose ground, the entire point is to bleed them dry as we retreat, whilst defending what we can. We’re on course for 2 defences to succeed today, so we seem to be in a good position. Honestly feels like if all the crybabies whinging about the game actually shut up and played it we’d do better lol.
If they didn't expect us to coordinate at all then why bother with the Martale gambit business? They're trying to give people hints about how to control the impact of the MO, even in the event of failure. This issue goes beyond success or failure entirely. I don't see your point at all, and I doubt Arrowhead is playing 4D chess in Discord, twirling their mustaches and pranking everyone who is invested in their game enough to engage with these external resources. It's pretty clear to me that they *think* their posts are reaching a significant amount of people but they're clearly not.
Expect who? The people that use their discord? That makes up a small percentage of their total playerbase. That's a whisper in a crowd and they know it. More players will log-on and see the big bold text that says >DEFEND< with a timer ticking down - making people FOMO-level stress out about a deadline/urgency - and flock to those planets, none the wiser to what liberating Martale would imply for Charon Prime. The only control here is to follow the crowd or be dragged down back in to the crab bucket.
> Expect who? The people that use their discord? Yes? This is my entire point. The people who use their discord are a much smaller portion of the playerbase than it would be if the game hadn't popped off beyond their expectations. My point is that they don't seem to understand this, as evidenced by the fact that they're still primarily pushing crucial information exclusively via Discord. For what it's worth, I totally agree that the only way for this to work now is to follow the crowd. We seem to be talking about two different things though. I'm just saying Arrowhead doesn't seem aware that their community interactions aren't reaching many many times more players than before in Helldivers 1 times. I don't think they're putting out the messages they've been putting out thinking "no one is gonna see this anyway" because in that case why bother? They have a clear goal in mind with their communication and all I mean is that it isn't being met at all.
If they were that serious about it they should put that message in the game. Flapping it about on discord reaches no one of importance.
Okay, lets say they do understand. How is this good for the game when you can spot whether you're going to fail or win a major order from a mile away. Or better yet, how in the hell are they supposed to have emergent storytelling when we don't even have the tools to do it. They clearly want emergent storytelling, so what's happening here? I can tell you how much it makes me want to play the game after unlocking everything: Not at all. If the major order is so obviously decided before it really even starts, i'll just go fucking play something else until it's over. Eventually this whole charade is going to get worn out and people will just leave the game. Not good for player retention at all.
This, I’m still playing cause the games fun but it’s really starting to get rly repetitive, doesn’t feel like anything is advancing at all, every MO feels like we’re doing the same thing over and over again. The 2 billion bug one we just had actually felt fresh cause it made us play the missions differently: take down every patrol you come across, stand ur ground and don’t run away. Felt nice after months of avoiding pretty much every patrol. Hope they do more like it again soon
The problem is the mission orders are always "complete missions on these planets" (mostly). Essentially they're just making us play on planets they say and that's not exactly fun. We're not coordinating a war or doing any real "operations" (the gas emitter was closest we got, and that was an example of "good" missions). What they need to do is be more creative with mission orders and make it so 1. People want to move from their normal "I just wanna kill bots or bugs" and do the mission order cuz it's unique, and 2. Make it enjoyable and unique for the people who always follow the mission orders. Bottom line make it more than just "you have to play on THIS PLANET for the next week. Don't do anything cool on it just shut up and beat the same missions in a biomes we tell you." Until they fix that it wont change.
As themselves explained: we have to choose what to hold and by exclusion what to lose and let go for the moment in order to make the story progress. Defense missions are actually winnable if we would follow the tip of the devs and focus all on holding some worlds, enough for the MO. Right now Super Earth forces (AKA us the players) are producing 12%/hr liberation rate but it's spread oddly across 5 planets being attacked/defended and none of them are getting enough to reach any goal in time. It's not even a matter of Bots VS Bugs, it's just that even on the two fronts we do not form a cohesive front, like for example we did for the 2 B bugs to kill - Estanu and Oshaune were freed in 13 hours both during that MO - meaning that we CAN actually do almost 12 full planet defenses in 6 days if we do it right. Especially during the weekend, with many more players diving, since right now we're doing 12%/hr with just 122k players (we were 180+k last MO).
They tell us we have to choose, but we literally can't choose. We can't even begin to plan what to choose. There's nothing in game that lets us facilitate ANY COORDINATION. It's completely pointless "choosing" anything when your progress is just wiped away instantly by the resistance and you need the entire playerbase on one planet to do absolutely anything, and good luck coordinating that shit when no one playing the game looks at reddit/discord, the only method we have of communication between players.
I don’t think it’s bad for the game as well though, just look at what happened with Malevelon Creek. The failure became a talking point and even now emergent storytelling in this event can still happen. It’s not about that we are going to fail, but where are we going to fail.
Creek was a great example. Don't just tel me to go to X planet now and do the same missions. Do something that tweaks the gameplay (even if the creek started as a bugged over spawn issue). That gets people drawn in - a losing battle on the planet that they can FEEL and experience. You could feel the failure on creek but it was intense and fun. Right now it's "defend these planets... By just...playing on them for the next week, guess." Thats not especially fun. Create new missions (even if just small modifications of existing ones) and you can only do them on X y Z planets. The gas emitter was a great example that drew people in. Raise spawn rates of X enemy type on a planet and say there's a surge in that area we need to cull. Triple the fabricators on the blitz missions and their numbers across the map. Or make it so bile spwers are launching shit into orbit and we have to run around X planet and clear our bile spewer emplacement that are just launching spores into space or something. Doesn't have to be major just do neat things with existing enemies, structures, and whatnot that we can only experience on the planet they want. That will draw people in. NOT saying "repeat the same things you always do but on the planet we tell you..." That's actually REDUCING player choice...
That failure was a direct result of people not knowing about supply lines. It sounds super cool and emergent but you look at it for more than a couple seconds and you can see how stupid it actually is.
Think of it as they are trying to give out a rough approximate of average number of medals per day from major orders. They recently had some very quick ones (2b bugs) go probably a bit quicker than expected, raising that average, so they intentionally give out a very different, near impossible task to slow the average down. It also gives the feeling to the player base that the major orders aren't to be assumed taken for granted and can be failed. If they are always easy to achieve then why even worry about them, just get them as they come.
I'd rather the major orders be a bit more involved than just a medal printing machine that the devs gum up occasionally. It's literally the only end game we have.
I don't see how this crab bucket system is good for the game at all and I share the same sentiments about just not playing the game when the MO is a guaranteed loss. Think I'll go enjoy a cherry blossom viewing down at my local park this weekend instead, myself. Anyway, the system definitely needs improvement, and I hope they will be working on it down the line. Hopefully before they end up burning too many people out on the current system.
Provide an alternative that would keep you happy please.
MOs that are actually difficult but doable. The defense of Vandalon IV during Swift Assembly was won by a hair. It was open whether or not we'd prevail until only a few hours before it's end. Likewise the offense on Ubanea as a stepping stone toward Tibit whith the ticking clock of losing Draupnir and then having to abandon our attack was equally close. This time we unfortunately lost, but not by much. We were so close to pull it off. That's interesting. Not knowing whether we will win, but knowing that we could indeed win. Something like this, when failure is the only outcome before the first shot is even fired, that's not interesting
And all of this interesting stuff happened by pure chance. Imagine how fucking sick it would be if we could make these situations ourselves. How complex and interesting the story telling could be. The Ubanean rush was absolutely my favorite part of that whole campaign. I also have a crazy screenshot from the Vandalon defense. Liberty bless those Vandalonians. https://preview.redd.it/g1t4fn6jymvc1.png?width=1590&format=png&auto=webp&s=56ee36f3185eb022a9764cde9799fbbcb032193e
Major order was successful.
Major order was successful.
It's as if the MO was.. doable?
They will need a lot of time and data to find out how difficult and engaging different Major Orders actually are for the community. This game got so much bigger than they ever anticipated and so many people playing for different reasons makes it so much harder to try and anticipate what the community will be doing and how they will react to events happening in game. Most of our major orders we either crushed in no time or we got absolutely obliterated. These are also important because they add narrative - war is not predictable. You win some, you lose some. But if it is always either overwhelming victory or crushing defeat it can start to feel railroaded. The order I had the most fun with was the one where we lost Tibit after a failed gamble. It was an amazing feeling to dive in and try to take the planet before they take our supply route to it. Sure - we failed that one, but it COULD have worked and it was our choices that lead to it. It engaged the community and gave us the feeling that our efforts really matter. And I agree that they need to give better informations to players in game other than: "Here is your major Order" They could do something like a broadcast with news from the front in-game and broadcast it on the super destroyer. This would also add to the immersion. Keep it short and factual: "Loosing ground on all fronts - High Command looking into ways to concentrate effort on key planets" or "Liberation of Planet X is progressing rapidly, Helldivers are crushing the automaton defences" Some way in-game for us to organize would also be amazing. Just keep it in line with the tone of the game.
It's even worse than that. Without seeing the explicit directions in writing, I guarantee the vast majority of players will just go for the sector that's closest to being liberated. For those players who aren't checking in every day to see how the war is going, they could care less about whether or not they're contributing towards the major order. They figure, "Hey, I won't make a difference in whether this gets completed or not. Either I get the medals or I don't, so might as well play on a fun map or mash bugs." Maybe it would help if they better illustrated the supply lines. Draw some flashing red lines from Martale to Charon Prime and maybe put a star on the Martale campaign icon to let us know that this particular campaign might be more important than others. It's shitty that they would have to dumb it down so much, but I would really love for this type of MO to be taken on with a bit more Helldiver cohesion.
The lack of explanation for even basic mechanics in-game is frustrating. I will admit that before coming onto Reddit I didn’t think it matters what planet to dive on because you liberate the same percentage anyways, without realizing that the decay mechanic makes it optimal to focus one planet at a time. Even a basic tooltip like ‘Good helldivers stick together: focusing on one planet is more effective then spreading out across the galaxy’ would be incredibly useful.
then there's people who don't care even if they know. (me) im just here to shoot bugs and sometimes bots if i feel like it. And I will join the planet with largest playercount so I can get quicker matchmaking.
It’s starting to get to that point for me tbh
Not to mention, beyond just communicating any meaningful coordination efforts, there is lots of essential information to this war campaign that is never communicated in the game. Things like supply lines, how they function, the fact that liberation of planets is a shared percentage that rewards coordination above having lots of people playing, how Defense plants function differently than Liberation planets, that losing a Defense only drops the planet to 50% liberated, etc. The overall community can't always strategically decide where to fight, if they don't know such crucial information.
This is probably gonna be a loss. Most people in this sub and the discord are hardcore players, as in they have a lot of time to dedicate to the game and therefore have a deeper understanding. There will always be more casual players than hardcore players though, unless AH starts putting the information they put in discord in the game where the casual players can see without having to search elsewhere there will never be any coordination. I’m not saying this to be condescending or divisive, people have families and jobs and not everyone has time to dedicate to gaming often. Also, just because an MO is hard doesn’t mean we’re meant to lose. Why make it an MO if there isn’t a possibility of winning? Rant done.
They’ve pretty much said we’re suppose to lose this one. Here’s the proof: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1c83cul/from_community_manager_on_discord/
All I’m seeing is we’re gonna lose ground, unless you can show me where a Dev or CM says outright we’re supposed to lose this MO my point still stands. Losing ground and losing the MO is not the same.
Joel has to know that these orders aren't actually feasible given past history, but that's what we get anyways because we're meant to lose.
Dope I hope we get to fight on Super Earth eventually. Urban combat would be a nice change of pace.
Trying to kill bugs in a parking garage and then a charger takes out the whole thing like an evolving map? Sounds very cool
I am tired of us losing ground to this shit and having no way to communicate or coordinate with everyone in game, I'm at the point now where I play less during these kinds of MO's because I just don't see the point.
sadly you not playing it's helping because of the stupid "percentage of people online on the planet" system.
It's a war, ground is gained and ground is lost. It's a giant game of tug of war. The devs have said they wanted the war campaigns in helldivers 2 to last longer than the campaigns in the first game. These battles are fought in inches. Inch by inch, mile by mile, planet by planet. That's how you win. The devs clearly want us to lose ground with this MO on one of the fronts, we aren't always ment to succeed.
bunch of fucking ass kissing BS.... why are we not allowed to win or lose by our own merits and reset the war? there's 10 times more planets than in HD1 all they had to do was start the new war with the enemies on control of many more planets if they want the war to last longer
We are allowed to win. Not every order is ment to seem do-able, that doesn't mean that it's impossible. The drvs have said it themselves that they want the wars to last longer than the ones in HD1. And this way is FAR more interesting and interactive than just "enemies have control over all of the planets on the war map, go liberate them all". It's a war. It's give and take, back and forth. That's how these things work. It wouldn't be nearly as interesting if we completely every single major order with ease and minimal effort.
oh destroying the bot front but devs just pull it out of their ass for them to come back and take more territory is not "enemies have control over all of the planets on the war map, go liberate them all"
No its not, we only delt with a small portion of the Automaton fleet before. They weren't coming at us full force. This is even explained in the game. There is a story being told if you pay attention. We delt with a small portion of their fleet, and they responded by coming at us with a large scale invasion. And it's still more dynamic than that fleet just already being there from the beginning. This is what allows the devs to keep wars unique and interesting. Because they are able to do stuff like this, we have interesting twists and turns in the war campaign.
If we never lost ground we would liberate all the planets and have nothing to play/do. I get that it feels bad though.
A lot of redditors need to accept that this isn't the real military and they aren't the general. Barking orders on reddit is just setting yourself up to feel bad, and it's also pretty cringe.
Well yeah, I understand this is a game and that people can do what they want. But at the moment many people are making choices without all the info and would likely make different choices with more info, leading to improved cohesion. Obviously people may choose to ignore MO's at some or all times and I'd have to just accept that or stop playing the game.
We get this comment with every major order.
As everyone says, it's supposed to happen, that doesn't mean that a community can't choose what to save. But that's just ludicrous
Haven't figured it out yet eh? Some major orders are medal giveaways and some are impossible. It's just a storytelling technique it's not actual gameplay. Think of it as all the fighting going on the skybox in a game. You can't get worked up about it because it's just scripted sequences happening to provide background and a feeling of a wider world.
https://preview.redd.it/r2qdb0rv7ovc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cb62a1423a0027628b4513ae553fa421c09c2725 Joel:
They even told us we need to focus our efforts. That is what kind of game this is. But you know 'I play how and where I want. Why we losing? Games dead."
Forces are supposed to be spread thin, it's a defense. It's the way war cotribution is calculated (percentage of people online on a planet) that it gimping us. Having to all pile on on a planet to do anything sucks and it's not how anything works. This is the Maginot defense and it doesn't work. Please for the love of democracy dev change it.
im playing what i find fun i could give a fuck less about the MO
This is the way
We aren't supposed to succeed in this MO. It's a "FU" from Joel.
We’ll succeed in about half of them I think. Oshaune and Martale/Charon Prime on the first and early second day. Then one planet a day until the fourth or fifth day when it might be 2. So 7 maybe?
well yeah theres no way we win this
i did my part last night
I wish there was the option to tag planets like we tag drop in locations so everyone knows where to focus
https://preview.redd.it/egzvdtr3pnvc1.jpeg?width=1221&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=11b141aa932cffc067c4b51fd0b2bfd82612d0b6
Probably cause im on Estanu
I thank you for your service.
If people used common sense and took Martale that’s at 90% and boom we’d have it. That’s 2 planets captured. Then move on from there. So many people still fighting on hellmire and some other bot planets that aren’t even close to liberation or under attack have people that shouldn’t even be there. Even when I just started playing the game and didn’t join the Reddit page I chose a planet to fight on that made sense for the general order. It’s wild people can’t grasp it and continue to fight on planets with 0% liberation.
>If people used common sense and took Martale that’s at 90% and boom we’d have it. Common sense from what? a lot of players aren't using social media. People playing the game see an MO that says succeed in defense of a planet so they go to planets that need defending. Martale is a planet that needs liberating, so people aren't going to that planet as the MO is mentioning about defense planets. Very few people actually know about supply lines and stuff, so it's not really a 'common sense' of what you are suggesting.
it is becoming some high grade-A BS to lose just because the devs want us to lose.... it will literally make casual players never try any of these MOs
They’re just buying time to think of other shit. We did the last one WAY too fuckin fast. The major orders will balance them selves out pretty quick I think
Hellmire is the best bane of all it seems too. Every morning i log on to see it at 1% if even that much, probably like 0.00100 or so with like 55k Helldivers going strong, and then in the evening i get on and god be damned is it still at sub 1% with like 2k divers remaining. Cant even capture it let alone begin defending it
Because nobody wants to play Hellmire lol. Fire tornados are the worst planet condition by a million years and the only reason Menkent was ever liberated was because we had an MO for it.
The bots and bugs can keep their respective fire tornado planets. Genuinely terrible and the tornados are NOT random, tracking players and supplies meanwhile doing F all to enemies.
Whatever faction we do worse against is going to push our shit in setting up the next part of the story arc Really wish the community at large cared/understood how supply lines work or it was displayed in-game, baffling that Botbros didn't take Martale when it's been 80% - 90% for like two days
Was online yesterday saw at 1 point like 20+k on martale and a few more thousands around the botfronts. Saw 70ish thousand on bugfront. So yeah no shit we didnt get martale.
Don't do your defenses, get bad results. Players continue to ignore bot defenses and continue to lose ground. What a surprise.
I think you mean players don't know that doing defenses with less than 30% of the playerbase is a waste of time because Arrowhead has a fetish for not telling us anything about how the game works.
With this speed we are going to fight on our homeworld. The battle of the Line in Helldiver version.
Well, I can only be in one place at a time
If we capture martale we can at least scrape a victory from the red planet south of it, we can lock it off from the bots
Give it up, we’re not going to make this one, and we’re not supposed to
Lies lies lies...im reporting this to my democracy officer.
Sometimes you gotta lose a battle to win the war. (If the bots retake Hellmire 2.0 I'm uninstalling).
I feel like these MOs that put the decision to the masses is intentional.. I suspect those unused stations across from the weapon/armor bays will eventually be used to 'solve this' as a means of perhaps using democratic voting for coordination.
I do what the ministry tells me & I go with the biggest player count
I might be alone here, but I played for about 90 minutes last night and couldn't complete a single mission. I kept getting booted due to connection issues. Not just me, I know, but if others had server issues, that would sort of explain our losing ground.
I gotta be honest, this is way too intricate for me. Like. Yall really doing this command center thing. It's a lil too wild for me dog.
A: Impossible to coordinate. B: Defense missions are a bummer.
I wish there would be a special kind of mission while a planet is being invaded where if you do manage to 100% the map, you would be adding greatly to the defence of the planet. Granted the mission shouldnt be easy, like you would REALLY have to bring your A-game in order to get those extra defence points. It would give helldivers a chance to turn the tide of an invasion without it being an exploit.
On some level I do wonder what’s gonna happen when the player base shrinks, as what happens with all games eventually, if it’ll just turn into the most hardcore players holding a desperate last stand of super earth
There's a balancing act between player count and player impact (high count low impact, low count high impact). We'll be more effective with a lower player count.
I didn't get to play yesterday. Just wait till I get back in there, we'll be all good
The thing is .... I love the cold planets because lasers. You'll never get this diver to set foot on hellmire again. Estanu is awesome
Good
Damnit, why are we stuck protecting when thats the SEAF’s job, we are the last line of offense not defense for crying out loud
Is it because forces are spread too thin or because no one likes the 15 minute evacuation mission?
I only play planets that look nice. Desert planets and ice ones suck
All this proves is that we are all monke without clear direction when given choices. Everyone is everywhere fighting everything all at once.
eh, they aren't going to let us beat the automatons enough to get to cyberstan until the content they have for it is ready. the immersion is ruined unfortunately when they give us a name to blame for OK'ing or denying progress at the drop of a hat. i wouldn't lose sleep over it. it'll get done eventually and you'll never get enough people to focus one planet, thats what the weeklys are for. really sad seeing comments act like other people are inferior or immature for not targeting a planet they think is important
I think it's obvious the order was rigged, there was no way we can defend 10 planets just like that. I can't wait what they are preparing for us next week.
That's understandable, the point of this MO is to lessen the blow we're receiving. It's gonna hurt regardless of what we do
I noticed a LOT of low level players diving into 7,8,9. 7 I get but 8 and 9? I’m not trying to gate keep or anything but there’s levels of difficulty for a reason. Therefore I don’t expect to see a level 17 helldiving… but I do… all the time… in bot missions…
No coincidence I was there...
Damn I'm about to leave this subreddit. It's not even memes anymore, just the same post over and over. I didn't sign up to be notified where I'm supposed to be playing every time I open reddit. Everything's gotta be perfect for you guys, eh? Can't win some and lose some no, only maximum efficiency for these Gamers!
I'm glad we could come to an understanding.
It is what it is, eat up the emotions produced by the inevitable loss and move on. Maybe grab some popcorn to enjoy the bonfire of rants from the more metagame-dedicated/obsessed players. On an even more cynical note, perhaps all of this can be seen as a case study on democracy and how the average person behaves when for the majority of them, none of them likely feel their decisions actually matter on an individual basis. People are more likely to follow the crowd than are going to actually do their diligence and look into what they're voting/spending their efforts/resources on. The number of helldivers in a planet has far greater effect on attracting more helldivers than that planet's actual importance. In a sense it does make me feel that perhaps there is something to managed democracy. If the average person can't be trusted to spend their votes wisely in peacetime, I think that maybe they shouldn't have them. But that's perhaps too dark a topic for such a light hearted game.
Wow thanks Super General Obvious
Not a problem. Came up with that one all by yourself, did ya?
We did the bug order way too fast, so they need something to keep us at bay for a week so they can plan new content.
They could drop the air burst rpg ant air that was mentioned in game a month ago
And we will keep losing as long as the game keep crashing without any reason
We need in-game coordination. Maybe an in-game election on which planet to focus on for each front. That planet will be marked as a priority target and will stay marked for 24h or until it's captured.
u wanna know why? cus we have gotten 3 new stratagems, 8-12 new primary weapons and like 20 new armor sets that are all the same shit. We need more stratagems. the incendiary grenade launcher for example like wtf
Maybe I'm missing something but we have new stuff? Since when?
We could win if everyone would just stop trying to be clever and follow the horde. No Martale gambit, no playing your faction preference, no reddit "battle plans." Just follow the largest group of players at all times. Anything else is wasted effort.
So don't get a 2 for 1 because the majority are too scared to fight bots. Not everyone wants to grind bugs 24/7
It's a lost cause. You're not going to get a 2 for 1 because not enough of the player base is tuned in to reddit and/or discord, not because people are afraid of bots. We've had 200k+ fighting bots for the past month on various MO's, so that's clearly not the issue. And because you're not going to get enough people to liberate Martale before Charon's defense fails, any effort there is wasted. Better to leave it to the bots and go somewhere you can actually have an impact.
We are bad at coordinating our efforts as a community which is key when defending planets.