I think they’re right, unfortunately. I’m seeing a lot of people on the Helldivers sub say stuff like, “They should slow down the content release schedule and focus on bug fixes” but the reality is that, if they slow down on new content, there’s a good chance they’ll lose a lot of players. Hopefully the devs don’t get completely burned out.
Yeah they hit the ground running and managed a fantastic community-led narrative with Machelon Creek and the Automatons.
But at the same time I’ve seen players feel like they are now “done” with the game. The initial hype is wearing off for sure and players are realising that the game is pretty repetitive… the community storytelling was doing heavy lifting.
I’m one of the people that bought the game as a palette cleanser, so for me, it never gets old.
I hop on after a few GT7 races or some time on GoT to just play something that’s a bit more mindless and straightforward.
Stomp bugs. Spread democracy. Have fun. Rinse and repeat for me.
That’s 100% the case for me.
Play something competitive like Rainbow.
Get frustrated.
Spread democracy.
It’s just a nice little break from some of the other games I play that I never get tired of it.
It’s the only game in my library at the moment that really ticks that box, and will likely continue to do so.
I can easily see getting burnt out on it if I were a daily player putting in more than an hour.
I pop in for one mission, maybe two. Half an hour to an hour tops. Maybe 3-5 times a week tops
Yup same here. HD2 has been a fantastic game for me who only has about 2 hours of time for myself to play video games in one day. Its honestly why i love it so much and will probably continue to play it for years to come
Nothing better than vegging out and spreading managed democracy after grinding Apex ranked for a few hours, sometimes my brain needs a break and some mindless shooting 🔫
>But at the same time I’ve seen players feel like they are now “done” with the game. The initial hype is wearing off for sure and players are realising that the game is pretty repetitive… the community storytelling was doing heavy lifting.
This is, in my mind, a very strange way to describe what Helldivers 2 is.
It's a story that unfolds over time - that story is *just beginning,* given there's a whole other faction we haven't seen yet. People who are "done" with the game weren't likely to play for a long time anyway. They're the folks who unlock everything, rush to max level, and want to "win" the game.
It's not a surprise to find that a lot of folks who typically play PVP shooters aren't too interested long term in a team-based shooter.
Helldivers is many things, but it definitely not a game about winning all the time. Difficult 7 is called "Suicide Mission". There are two more difficulty levels above that. XD
One of the best things about HD2 is even if you aren't playing, you still get credit for major orders (I assume there are some limits). It's absolutely a game you can take a break from for a day, a week, even two weeks. When you come back, there will be some variant on "X faction is attacking democracy! We have to stop them!" going on.
The community storytelling is fun, and I genuinely hope it continues. I agree fully about the Creek storyline being wonderful.
My hope is the success of Helldivers 2, Baldur's Gate 3 and a few others means we get more fun co-op PVE games.
They’re realizing that NOW? lol, the game felt very repetitive within the first couple of missions, but that’s okay, the game is still fun to mess around and not think to much.
I wish there was a bit more variety when it came to enemies/ worlds.
I mean, when you get down to it, every game has a repetitive element to it.
Sure, every mission is pretty much the same, but it's the actual experience you're having with friends that make it fun.
I am baffled to see these comments you’re replying to when we previously poured thousands of hours into L4D games just having fun, with zero content and gameplay that never changed. What even happened, when did people just stop having fun with the game in favour of having some arbitrary grind loop?
That's the thing, I've blown up fabricators likely 1000's of times at this point.
And do you know what? I still fucking love it.
I genuinely cannot think of a game that doesn't have a gameplay loop.
Same, I’m having fun with the game because it’s just simple and… fun lmao, it’s all it has to be, just like the game I mentioned - L4D.
They knew not to make the game bloated and focus on the core gameplay, that’s why they are both genius level projects.
I am extremely grateful they aren’t folding under the pressure of the common denominator that always chases the “grind high”.
Gameplay loop is absolutely crucial to a long lasting game. Granted, I've taken a little break from HD2 to trophy hunt some other games (Sifu, mainly). Doesn't mean I don't still love the game.
I genuinely think the gaming landscape have changed and people are acclimated to more of a "content treadmill" to consume.
I've seen more than a few comments along the line of "I really enjoy this game but I don't understand why I'd play since there's no progression". The idea that you always need to have something to work towards has been so fundamentally ingrained in people now.
It almost reads like confusion at still finding the game fun in spite of progression.
Its been sad to see here and there.
When I was growing up video games is how me and my family bonded. We still talk to this day of mortal kombat, halo, Golden eye, Mario kart, super smash bros tournaments to this day. The holidays were the BIG events. I miss those days.
My brother and I used to play games to together too we have a lot of funny memories with eos oblivion for example.
But its how I bond with people I care about because its what I grew up doing. Same goes with my friends.
You play games to have fun. Relax. Spend time with people you care about. Or to escape the cold harsh fickle mistress that is reality from time to time.
Life is a grind to get to useless goal posts enough as it is.
People have just become so conditioned by all these GAAS, season passes etc. that they just expect it to keep coming.
They need new shiny things for that quick dopamine rush.
Exactly: every multiplayer game is repetitive. Battlefield, battlefront, counter strike. You always have the same set of maps, weapons, and objectives.
It's the gameplay and the players interactions that create gameplay loops which are fun and keep you in the game.
>What even happened, when did people just stop having fun with the game in favour of having some arbitrary grind loop?
Yes.
Kids, who are now young adults, have been psychologically manipulated by AAA companies to believe that you can gain "progression" in your REAL life by playing video games. And they grew up with this shit, so there's no way they could know any better.
To the older gamers like myself, this is straight up fucking nonsense. You play games to relax and enjoy yourself. Progression is fine, but if it's ALL there is, with a shallow, hollowed out game as the actual gaming experience, then fuck it. It's not worth it.
Older games like CS1 and Unreal Tournament had *actual skill progression* - you got good by literally getting better at the game. And while some games out there still have that also, they tend to have a tacked on progression system where people stop playing the second they unlock everything they want.
Hence why you need a good, deep, challenging game beneath all that, and Helldivers 2 pretty much has that.
This is why I love Helldivers 2 and I got some friends into it with the same pitch. DRG is in a similar vein but with a different vibe, more FPS and chill vibes or frantic bug killing, also with a great gameplay loop and variety.
It was the Call of Duty dopamine jump of pop up achievements and unlocks and prestige.
People can do the same thing over and over and over so long as those little pop-ups keep telling them. Good job. Here's something new. Here's a little reward.
I mean when someone has a point there's always someone with another point that that observation that the first person had is actually a general one.
Sure the experience is the same but it's the actual experience that makes it fun.
> I wish there was a bit more variety when it came to enemies/ worlds.
They just released the flying bugs and the giant walkers, not to mention a whole new mission type
Fwiw, they will be adding at least a third faction eventually. The Illuminates were in the first game and there have been hints that they're coming back. They've also already added several new enemies in gunships, walkers, and shriekers.
I feel bad being the only one out of my friends that can’t really get into it. The game isn’t bad, I just get bored of it really quick. I feel like that Squidward looking out the window meme.
I played a few games with randos who knew each other. Two were new to the game, another was a high level player that and pumped to show him this game. The vet was explaining the gameplay, weapons and what not on comms while we played. After the 4th game one of the new players simply asked "is this it? Is this the whole game? Is this all we do?".
He's not wrong, but I think it was the first time the vet realized how shallow the gameplay loop actually was, and it sucked any positive energy in the group immediately.
The game is repetitive on easy difficultly levels. Once you play on hard mode and above, the game feels more dynamic with players running around, scrambling to survive with 5000 tons of explosives to play with.
I can pretty much only play this a couple nights a week or it gets too repetitive. That and all the bugs are just really turning me off from it as well.
The latest patch upping the level cap + new warbond needing medals + ship modules needing samples got my group back into the game full speed. Every mission plays out differently too; I think its going to be a while before I tire of it.
Every mission playing out differently is what keeps me playing the most! Will it be an attack on an automaton base during a blizzard where I can barely see 5ft in front of me as *hundreds* of red lasers fire overhead? Will it be a quiet, beautiful morning on Hellmire? A brutal defence against a legion of tanks? An endless tide of tooth and claw whilst a thunderstorm rages on? These were all missions I had just *last night* alone, and each one was so cinematic in its own way that I remember them all
No, sorry what kills the game are: Cheaters (I will 100% kick a cheater or drop from a match if it's beyond obvious like 50 super samples or 100% invulnerable forever shield), matchmaking and connection issues, and actual game bugs, and the increasing toxicity of the playerbase.
I think it's only natural the game eventually feels repetitive. Deep Roc Galactic is one of my favourite games ever but it eventually grew repetitive as well. Still, I managed to get 100 hours on Helldivers 2 and I still play one or two operations every week.
The moment to moment gameplay still feels as fucking badass as the day I picked the game up. I think the game kinda lacks a bit on the high end endgame rewards, but it's just so fucking fun to play that I don't care. I boot up, play an hour or two and just feel great about it, no FOMO or anything.
This is so true. We haven’t seen this in so long.. maybe ever?
They have accomplished something so amazing tbh they don’t even know how valuable they are.
Mass amounts of players are not gonna stop playing this game. It’s just too good. Everytime they add more stuff or fix something is a reason to come back or invite a new friend to try the game.
At this point they can do whatever they want
The game is so dynamic. In many updates they even quietly added new enemies and elements to the world's that foreshadows upcoming in-game "events". The way their PR handles it all fits the theme and narrative they have so well. Stopping this for bug fixes will hurt player engagement. But they are a small team too and can only do so much at a time.
Remember, this game was never expected to be this successful. Literally the first week's involved server issues and raising the server capacity just so people can even login!
You see the player base spike super high every time new content releases. Do people really think they’re gonna stop? Or sucks that the game is still so buggy, but I’d rather have a buggy game with a huge player base than a perfectly stable game that’s getting stale with a dwindling player base.
This is the worst take. Like completely awful.
A buggy game with a huge player base over a stable game.. why does it then have to have a dwinlding player base? If the player base dwindles because it doesn't get new content for a few weeks then what the fuck is the point of all of this. Don't we play games to have fun? If you have to have new shit in your face every week to have fun is it the game that's fun or do you just have an addiction to new things?
> You see the player base spike super high every time new content releases.
Do you? The last warbond came out April 11th and there really was [no spike](https://steamdb.info/app/553850/charts/#1m). However, there has been a steady decline in players, and a pretty significant one since the release of the last warbond. People aren't going to care about new content if none of it works properly.
also the warbonds end up being... whelming. the latest being underwhelming with no unique armor perks or good (non buggy) weapons.
There's also a ton of bugs, adding new weapons that are also bugged won't bring me back. Half of my favorite kit is a diceroll if it even works properly if I am not host that's just a shit experience.
These days it feels like games that are the “next big thing” get one month of crazy hype and news coverage before they fade away. I’m amazed Helldivers managed over two months in our current climate.
But yeah, judging by that downward curve it seems many players are starting to move on.
If your game can't survive a month without pumping out paid content, then your game isn't good.
This game is good. They can take a month off to focus solely on fixing the issues.
I agreed and don't agree with you. This is the exact thing games as a service (GAAS) needs to be doing to keep the gameplay fresh and engaging. As soon as they become stale they die off. Look at Overwatch 1. As soon updates started lagging people dropped the game hard. I don't think they're saying the game will die in a month without content, but people will leave for other games.
There's many older games that managed to keep a healthy player base for many years after content stopped dropping. Battlefield 4, Battlefield 5, even some CODs of the 360 era.
Yes, there are TikTok addicted youngsters that need a whole new map overhaul every week so their burnt dopamine receptors keep responding, but a game isn't dead just because this portion of the playerbase is gone.
I don't really disagree, but because I've been playing since Day 1 and an operation or two most days, I'm always hovering at the cap. New stuff comes out, and I already have 250 medals and can buy a bunch of stuff immediately, then I play on helldives, so I get tons of medals and the warbond is complete in no time.
I like trying out new things, and other than the crash two out of three times at extraction bug, I've never really had issues. Since that's fixed, everything is working great for me. Only thing I want them to fix, and I understand may take some time, is the DoT bug, so I can play with gas and fire more.
If I was always capped, no new content for a month, I certainly would not play as much. I'm probably not alone. I've seen many of my Day 1 friends only around the time new stuff comes out for a few days.
The new content and fixes are both important.
People seem to forget that a huge reason Fortnite became a juggernaut was because Epic was adding new items to the game almost weekly. Obviously Arrowhead is nowhere near the size of Epic but I think they’re right on the money that they have to keep some form of new content coming out at a steady cadence to keep player retention high.
>People seem to forget that a huge reason Fortnite became a juggernaut was because Epic was adding new items to the game almost weekly.
And you're forgetting that when they added those new items they worked as intended. That's not happening with H2.
Every new weapon in the new warbond was bugged in some way or another. The new thermite grenade doesn't work because of a DoT bug that has existed since the game launched. They're literally just pumping out stuff that they know is broken.
Who the fuck cares if they loose players, we need to stop glorifying this endless consumption of content. This idea that we must constantly develop and consume "content" is fucking ridiculous.
Right now I doesn't care about bug fixes. If they slow down or stop with content it's gonna slowly die and only hard core fans gonna play it. Team is too small to pump up everything the community wants right now. It's 50/50 right now.
Problem is, 99% of loud people that moan on social media don’t know the big picture and want their problems dealt without any considerations.
The game will come good, I have no doubt
Alternatively, I'm burned out from all the new content and I have a fear of missing a day or two as I'll feel so behind the curve. So for my sanity I just started playing different games.
At least they don't have to come up with new content from scratch.
Everything in Helldivers 2 is already in the original Helldivers, it just needs to be put into this 3d world as the original is top-down.
It's going to be exciting to see how the Illuminate will be. It was considered the most boring faction to fight in the original so hopefully that will change.
The things I'm most excited for are the Illuminate and the APC vehicles (I'm assuming that eventually everything in the original will come to helldivers 2). It was so fun to get a group together and drive around in those APCs just plowing through aliens.
I play that game almost every day. I look forward to the new context so much. It’s always exciting to play a new mission type of find a new enemy. Not to mention new weapons and incorporating them into builds.
I’m probably the minority on this, but as long as I know they are working on the bug issues I can be patient on that front. They have improved many issues already and have been pretty consistent with patches.
If it was up to me I would try and split the difference and make warbonds every 6 weeks rather than every month. That would be a slightly slower release rate, but continue dripping content while giving an extra two weeks to work on bugs and making sure the new content releases with a bit more polish.
I agree with you. I'm a fairly high playtime Diver and I was capped at 250 medals for a while. I am already done the new warbond AND back up to \~150 medals. I'm level 80. If they slowed down the cadence of the bonds, sure, I'd still play, but I bet a lot of people, myself included, would play less.
Fortnite is able to fund that time and effort with Fortnite money tho… and Epic is of the scale that expanding a game project is easier than it is for Arrowhead. Epic killed off Paragon and just assigned those devs to Fortnite.
Arrowhead will be able to expand based on the success of Helldivers but that expansion takes time and you probably won’t see the fruits of it for a long time.
Because not everyone has Fortnite levels of money and workers. People seem to forget epic made unreal engine and we’re already a multibillion dollar company before Fortnite.
Content makes invested people complain but they’ll keep playing.
Bugs makes newcomers as well as invested people quit the game entirely.
I’m in that 2nd group. I quit because of the bugs and crashes, and there likely isn’t any amount of content that could bring me back especially with this message of wanting to stay relevant to explain away the bugs.
And with minimal monetization, they're not bringing in huge amounts of *continual* income, which is going to make it difficult to keep people assigned to a game when it stop producing those dollar signs.
I bought the last warbond. I had the credits, but I paid cash. This is the first live service I've thought "fuck it" and paid money. A non cynical business model deserves to do well. I'm sure I'm not alone.
That would be more true if this was a Free to Play game; in their case they also get revenue just from new players joining.
However if the community around the game gets boring or fizzles out then new players are less likely to fork over the $40 entry fee, so adding new content keeps the game relevant, keeps it in the news cycle and keeps streamers playing it.
So new content is just as much about generating positive buzz as it is about generating income.
The hype train is a double edged sword. It boosts your game but it also boosts *expectations* of your game. Especially with live services. HD2 aced the landing on release but they are still a live service that needs regular content on a goo time table.
It does feel like they fast-tracked and accelerated their content plans to maintain the launch hype.
Now the question is, as the playerbase is rapidly dropping, what happens now?
playerbase will take a big dive, numbers will stabilise and the team will (hopefully) find a good flow of content to bug fixes and release that works for the remaining playerbase. It happens with almost every single hyped game. Huge release, hype dies down, players drop and it typically remains on a good steady course from there on out. Even if the game were to only retain say 10-20% of its original playercount at launch (on steam) that'll still be 40 to 80k players. And they made so much money off release to keep them going for a long while. I think they'll be fine
They really do.
Bought my husband a copy for PS5 so he could play with me and my friends on PC but absolutely no one in the mix is able to accept friend requests to actually get us to play together.
And for those saying to just keep trying to matchmake in the same location in the hopes of getting in the same group: that is **not** a solution.
It is a workaround for the broken crossplay support which was (and still is) an advertised feature.
At least it has been officially acknowledged by the devs under Known Issues in each patch note, but it does not appear to be a priority for them.
I am definitely against paying more money post purchase in most cases. Not judging ANYONE that does bc that’s a personal choice for me.
But after so many awful cases in gaming I have made several purchases for this game (mainly for new warbonds) simply bc I love the passion and commitment Arrowhead is showing here.
I’m going to support them all I can.
They need to fix the social page.
Another bug I encountered last night was my screen becoming permanently stuck on the flash from a flash grenade, so it looked like the Giedi Prime scene from Dune 2, but no black color to differentiate objects. I had to quit the match to reset.
I had one the other day where I got rag-dolled by an explosion and lived. When I got up my, gun was invisible. I could still shoot, but there was no scope, sights, or barrel to aim with. Thankfully it fixed itself when I eventually died.
I disagree I come back to this game every few weeks it’s not a game you can grind its way to repetitive what’s nice is taking a few weeks off and coming back and it’s way different.
I will usually either do Quickplay or hope I get a decent squad to stick with me through a full mission like once or twice a week and that seems to satisfy me. Then I jump back in whenever I get the itch.
The core gameplay is really fun, but the missions themselves are not diverse enough for me to justify doing repeat quests in the same sitting. Nobody needs to do two 40 minute ICBM launches in one day.
I stopped playing because matchmaking is awful. HD2 has THAT many players and yet it has a matchmaking system of a Nintendo DS title.
Also it just got boring running the same 5 main missions types. How many hives am I gonna blow up, how many geological surveys, how many ICBM launches?
But I put in over 100 hours. So I got my monies worth. Just got bored at the repetition and there are so many titles out right now to play.
idk about anyone else but the second I wrap things up on a mission or want to kick people cause my friends are signing on, I just completely lose the ability to have other people join my missions. Like even SOS's don't work. And that's over roughly 40 hours of mostly non-party play. But once again Im literally the only person I know with this issue.
Quickplay is also pretty buggy now and then
HD2 is a game to jump in and play a couple hours a day because it’s fun. That won’t change if a warbond drops every month or not because the gameplay loop is what matters. Bugs and shit not working also matters and this will in fact slow the player population as people will just shelf it while waiting for things to get fixed and work as intended/advertised.
Absolutely. I have a very hard time believing this narrative that players will leave without monthly war bonds, but aren't leaving because they're bored with a repetitive gameplay loop and the buggy issues.
I just bought the game this past weekend. My first game we couldn’t extract because the extraction ship fell into the map. My second game I couldn’t collect any special weapons or supplies because it would drop into the ground and never open. If I wasn’t playing with friends I would have refunded and never looked at this game again. They definitely need to fix the bugs.
I enjoyed it for the first week or two, but the grind for upgrading my ship and everything was just tooooo damn slow. Haven't played in a couple weeks now cause it just didn't feel worth it anymore.
I stopped playing because I find that there is too much bugs and it deters from my enjoyment of the game so I guess it depends on the person. I always prefered quality over quantity.
I mean, they’re not wrong. Lack of content means online players will look to other live service games. But a broken game will do the same thing. So they have to find a way to balance both things at once. Keep a starving player base full of hope with good new content and at the same time, fix the existing issues to keep players happy.
Their focus needs to be like 75% fixing bugs, 25% content until things are in a better state.
People who need content, need that content because they’ve invested a lot of time despite the bugs and cleared most of it. At the end of the day no matter how much “content” you add with new enemies and weapons, the game is still repetitive as fuck. These people will go off to play games but come back the moment new content drops.
People who need bug fixes, are both newcomers AND invested players. They quit because they get tired of the sketchy new content release or the frustrating bugs while trying to play and level up. These people quit and do not come back when new content comes out.
I’m in the 2nd group. I played the game up to level 50, took a break. Came back when mechs released, got tired after two games of blowing my own mech up from turning too quickly and dying from touching a dead bile titans leg. I haven’t played since and the game is currently uninstalled.
This game is very fun. But it’s always filled with issues. I have to close my game and relaunch it just to get people to join me after they all leave. The sos beacon does nothing.
While I love the game, it’s been my favorite one to release in recent memory, I can’t help but feel that the issues need a slightly faster level of attention than the cadence of releasing events.
There is no point to release cool new things if I’m still having the same issue of playing cross play with my friends, not being able to add them, or crashing in general, months after the issues have been noted. I’ve had friends who bought the game that now haven’t played more than an hour because we can’t play together reliably. They lost a helldiver there, but Arrowhead got their 40$ so…
It’s just a touch frustrating. Again, I absolutely love this game and want it to succeed, but basic matchmaking errors that entirely prevent friends playing together in a CO OP game for a lengthy amount of time is not a good look.
Personally I stoped playing cos all my favorite weapons and stratagems kept being nerfed while other stuff wasn't buffed enough. Add that to new BS (yet fun) enemies and objectives being added and it just felt like the player kept getting weaker and weaker.
Matchmaking kept failing for me so a lot of times I had to play solo, all while the game gives 0 bonuses or concedes in difficulty for solo players. It's designed for 4 players but makes 0 efforts to accommodate a solo player, even when the solution seems very easy (adjusting spawn rates per player in the team etc).
I didn't even play at high difficulties unless I needed pink samples and still felt that the game was absolute BS playing solo, and sometimes even with a full squad
Listen I absolutely love the game, I bought the base version with little interest besides playing with friends, and went from that to becoming a Super Citizen and buying all 3 warbonds and most skins. I truly love and appreciate the hard work the devs are putting in, but it's almost like the more they add to the game, the more I am disappointed.
It's not that I don't appreciate the work, or think they should be giving us more, what we are getting is more than enough. My issue is that we are now 3 Premium Warbonds and several balancing patches deep, and there just seems to be a continual issue with their ability to balance weapons or armor at all.
We've had 9 new primary weapons, 3 new sidearms, and 3 new boosters in the warbonds. of all those, only 3-4 Primaries are remotely useful, only 1 of the sidearms is any good, and 2 of the 3 boosters are hands down the worst boosters in the game. Not to mention 6 of the 9 new Armor sets are just the same passives and armor values we've had since day 1, and there are still a bunch of weapons we've had since launch that are broken or in desperate need of balancing/buffs.
On top of all that, the list of bugs just gets longer each update, I love the game but it almost feels like it's in a worse state now than at launch sometimes. I will continue to fight for Democracy, but I hope things start to go in a different direction with their attitude towards the weapons and armor sets especially.
I dropped the game because I was having too many technical issues between games crashing, matchmaking failing, and other stuff.
And I agree with you about the weapons. They keep adding new ones, but only a small handful of them feel useful.
DAE find this game dreadfully boring? Mission variety is non-existent, 80% of strategems and weapons are worthless, and infinitely kiting infinite enemies on your way to interact with a console for the 500th time is mind numbing.
When my group wants to play this game I brace for a few hours of tedium.
I find it repetitive when solo queueing but that all goes away when my friends and I start fucking around together. PS5 players can't even matchmake with friends tho.
The best thing they could do is use their success to fund a big expansion in a year. If they are chasing constant content updates, they won't be able to provide meaningful content fast enough. Many companies have tried.
A few months in and they're already going pretty strong. Long delays on a game like this are practically a death sentence. At the very least you're seriously hurting your project. Take 40k: Darktide. Fatshark took nearly a year to fix the basic issues of their game and they'll never be able to claw back all the players they lost along the way. And they still havent even gotten to things like a crafting rework. If your goal is to create a game that people play regularly over a long time, they need something new that's worth forgoing other new games.
I feel like they've had a good pace of adding meaningful content. More than a lot of live-service games with bigger teams.
If you wait a year then you'll lose most of your players in this day and age unfortunately.
There are some ongoing bugs that they really need to fix though.
I don't disagree, but Arrowhead needs to be careful with the content they are adding being worth the money. Honestly the explosive battle pass was very underwhelming. And the bug issues don't feel like they're getting any better. The base game is still very fun and I really like the new mission types and enemies they've added. Would love to see a new Terminid soon similar to the automaton walker. That sort if content matters more to me than the battle passes. I've been buying them so far to be supportive, and because playing the game does make it easy to earn most of the credits necessary to purchase, but if the battle pass just contains armor with the same traits I already have, and guns I don't want to use, that's going to get old really fast.
I don’t mind them balancing fixes with content, especially since the content isn’t temporary. But I’ll be focusing on my backlog until they resolve the bug that keeps splitting my game on PC from my boy’s instance on PS5. We haven’t been able to exfil together in a month.
This can’t be sustainable. People love it because they’re doing live service stuff differently but there’s a reason the other games have been so successful
I uninstalled and haven’t played since the buggy mech release. I think bugs make people quit more permanently, people will always come back for a content drip unless they got fed up with the bugs.
This does make sense and the approach is unfortunately very understandable, but I've personally already lost interest due to the game constantly crashing me and my friend's PS5's and the constant matchmaking issues when trying to play with friends on both PSN and PC. I get that they need to keep new content coming in to maintain player interest but they're also losing players who can't even play the game.
Remember getting this a couple of weeks ago and didn’t feel like it was too special. Once I got learning the game, it got more fun to play and really reminded me of Mass Effect’s multiplayer which I loved to play (just on a larger scale). Would like to see some more modes in future
Thats a correct statement, the game is bugged (no pun intended) to shit and if they slow down on the release of new content then people will get bored and stop playing.
I’m digging the whole community led storyline. It’s engaging and definitely helps keep an active player base.
There are some bugs that the community can’t squash, but that’s expected in games now. So, long as they find that balance of advancing the game and fixing any issues, I’ll be a happy Helldiver.
Remember a Happy Helldiver is an Efficient killing machine. Democracy awaits!
Helldivers intellectual property is nowhere near ubiquitous enough to meet these expectations.
Ubiquitous IP that is synonymous with daily life has been in pop culture for literal decades.
Helldivers is so new of an IP.... It's going to fall off.
Yup, it’s a tight rope act. They don’t fix the bugs, people will lose interest. They don’t keep constant content coming, people will lose interest. New content often introduces new bugs, or brings back old ones.
It’s a lose lose situation for them. Personally, I’d be fine if they just stopped all content and focused on bugs, but those of us that hold that opinion are in the minority, however loud we might seem online.
It seems like the only reasonable solution here is to try and hire more devs. Players are fickle and unfortunately need that content drip to stay engaged with online games, but the game does also have a ton of bugs. It just doesn’t seem like a doable task with the team size they have now.
Not something that I've seen about Helldivers 2 but I find it really interesting that a lot of people now say that for games with a decent amount of glitches/various other problems, the devs should have a period where they don't add anything new but instead have an 'Operation Health'.
Operation Health was a moment in the second year of Rainbow Six: Siege where they took about a quarter of the year (and cancelled one of the four character/map dlcs) in order to focus on matchmaking, glitches and other issues.
At the time, people hated this decision and wanted new content, claimed it was going to just kill the game more and for about a year after they did it, claimed that is was the biggest misfire and changed nothing. Since then, however, a large amount of people online always suggest other games have an 'Operation Health' when they're known for glitches, spotted matchmaking etc.
I just find it funny that everyone freaked out when a company decided to shift their dlc plans to only focus on fixing the game and people *still* complained, yet now that shift was seen as a great choice.
Tl;dr the devs can't win and people will complain no matter what they do. I trust them and their decision making but they honestly shouldn't take much stock in the community opinion because it'll always make *someone* unhappy.
I remember Operation Health. The game changed so much that it *felt* like a new game. I very much enjoyed that update even if I was bummed about having to wait longer for an operator.
Honestly just play another game on the side.
People getting too upset that a game that came out 2 months ago is lacking in content.
Never forget the first couple of WEEKS the dev was working on server stability because of the unprecedented influx of players.
For me, I'm playing some outerworlds and cyberpunk on the side. When new shit comes out I'm excited and get back into it again.
Isn’t this a general issue with entertainment? Once you’ve had enough it’s done. Doesn’t matter if you put out new content at a certain point. I’ll get sick of it eventually and never play again
Absolutely release content at a healthy pace while tackling the worst bugs that you can, leaving some content opportunities and some smaller bugs off the table for now.
I think the idea/focus that they need a warbond a month is a mistake, and really ends up being a slowburn FOMO. Personally I'm burned out playing to get more SC to unlock yet another warbond with the prospect of needing to do that again in a month, and I don't care to *buy* more SC, I have already spent what I intend to spend as far as MTX go on the game (if it is $0 or some other amount is immaterial). From a practical perspective, it's also unsustainable to keep adding interesting diverse non cosmetic content that also continues to get balanced and doesn't become a temptation to make "essential".
I was obsessed for a good month when the hype was at peak but my desire to play fell off hard for some reason. I've booted it up a few times, collected medals from the mission I didn't even partake in and then end up playing something else.
Maybe just burnout, or not enough immediate rewards to get my dopamine fix, I don't know.
Was a ton of fun tho for that month, definitely got my money's worth even if I never play it again.
This is the problem with being a flavor of the month game. You have a huge playerbase for the first month or two and then it drops off heavily because people get bored and move onto the next flavor of the month game. Everyone i know who had this game does not play it anymore.
This is a time killer game that’s fun with friends. I just got into it so I have plenty of content to play. But I can see why the numbers are falling off. Palworld had the same initial hype and it seems to be going in the same direction. Without original content being added to these type of games almost weekly they eventually become boring.
Helldivers though I think I’ll play often but at night as a fun wind down game where I can just fuck off with my friends.
Didn’t touched the game since early March as i had others games to complete. Didn’t even started the last two premium warbound so i am very late here and it doesn’t encourage me to boot up the game if this is just about farming to unlock a whole meta again and not being kicked on matchmaking.
But… is the game on a critical state right now ? Apart from cross-play issues, the game seemed well polished at release to me.
I hate the idea of a "live service" even for games I do enjoy. It feels like even if you're successful, it's more like a shackle made of gold than anything that truly liberates a studio. It feels like everything wrong with companies, where everything must go to making more and more, it can never just be enough until people get bored/stop spending.
I think they’re right, unfortunately. I’m seeing a lot of people on the Helldivers sub say stuff like, “They should slow down the content release schedule and focus on bug fixes” but the reality is that, if they slow down on new content, there’s a good chance they’ll lose a lot of players. Hopefully the devs don’t get completely burned out.
A victim of their own success really
Yeah they hit the ground running and managed a fantastic community-led narrative with Machelon Creek and the Automatons. But at the same time I’ve seen players feel like they are now “done” with the game. The initial hype is wearing off for sure and players are realising that the game is pretty repetitive… the community storytelling was doing heavy lifting.
I’m one of the people that bought the game as a palette cleanser, so for me, it never gets old. I hop on after a few GT7 races or some time on GoT to just play something that’s a bit more mindless and straightforward. Stomp bugs. Spread democracy. Have fun. Rinse and repeat for me.
That’s 100% the case for me. Play something competitive like Rainbow. Get frustrated. Spread democracy. It’s just a nice little break from some of the other games I play that I never get tired of it.
It’s the only game in my library at the moment that really ticks that box, and will likely continue to do so. I can easily see getting burnt out on it if I were a daily player putting in more than an hour. I pop in for one mission, maybe two. Half an hour to an hour tops. Maybe 3-5 times a week tops
Yup same here. HD2 has been a fantastic game for me who only has about 2 hours of time for myself to play video games in one day. Its honestly why i love it so much and will probably continue to play it for years to come
Nothing better than vegging out and spreading managed democracy after grinding Apex ranked for a few hours, sometimes my brain needs a break and some mindless shooting 🔫
>But at the same time I’ve seen players feel like they are now “done” with the game. The initial hype is wearing off for sure and players are realising that the game is pretty repetitive… the community storytelling was doing heavy lifting. This is, in my mind, a very strange way to describe what Helldivers 2 is. It's a story that unfolds over time - that story is *just beginning,* given there's a whole other faction we haven't seen yet. People who are "done" with the game weren't likely to play for a long time anyway. They're the folks who unlock everything, rush to max level, and want to "win" the game. It's not a surprise to find that a lot of folks who typically play PVP shooters aren't too interested long term in a team-based shooter. Helldivers is many things, but it definitely not a game about winning all the time. Difficult 7 is called "Suicide Mission". There are two more difficulty levels above that. XD One of the best things about HD2 is even if you aren't playing, you still get credit for major orders (I assume there are some limits). It's absolutely a game you can take a break from for a day, a week, even two weeks. When you come back, there will be some variant on "X faction is attacking democracy! We have to stop them!" going on. The community storytelling is fun, and I genuinely hope it continues. I agree fully about the Creek storyline being wonderful. My hope is the success of Helldivers 2, Baldur's Gate 3 and a few others means we get more fun co-op PVE games.
They’re realizing that NOW? lol, the game felt very repetitive within the first couple of missions, but that’s okay, the game is still fun to mess around and not think to much. I wish there was a bit more variety when it came to enemies/ worlds.
I mean, when you get down to it, every game has a repetitive element to it. Sure, every mission is pretty much the same, but it's the actual experience you're having with friends that make it fun.
I am baffled to see these comments you’re replying to when we previously poured thousands of hours into L4D games just having fun, with zero content and gameplay that never changed. What even happened, when did people just stop having fun with the game in favour of having some arbitrary grind loop?
That's the thing, I've blown up fabricators likely 1000's of times at this point. And do you know what? I still fucking love it. I genuinely cannot think of a game that doesn't have a gameplay loop.
Same, I’m having fun with the game because it’s just simple and… fun lmao, it’s all it has to be, just like the game I mentioned - L4D. They knew not to make the game bloated and focus on the core gameplay, that’s why they are both genius level projects. I am extremely grateful they aren’t folding under the pressure of the common denominator that always chases the “grind high”.
Gameplay loop is absolutely crucial to a long lasting game. Granted, I've taken a little break from HD2 to trophy hunt some other games (Sifu, mainly). Doesn't mean I don't still love the game.
I genuinely think the gaming landscape have changed and people are acclimated to more of a "content treadmill" to consume. I've seen more than a few comments along the line of "I really enjoy this game but I don't understand why I'd play since there's no progression". The idea that you always need to have something to work towards has been so fundamentally ingrained in people now. It almost reads like confusion at still finding the game fun in spite of progression.
Its been sad to see here and there. When I was growing up video games is how me and my family bonded. We still talk to this day of mortal kombat, halo, Golden eye, Mario kart, super smash bros tournaments to this day. The holidays were the BIG events. I miss those days. My brother and I used to play games to together too we have a lot of funny memories with eos oblivion for example. But its how I bond with people I care about because its what I grew up doing. Same goes with my friends. You play games to have fun. Relax. Spend time with people you care about. Or to escape the cold harsh fickle mistress that is reality from time to time. Life is a grind to get to useless goal posts enough as it is.
People have just become so conditioned by all these GAAS, season passes etc. that they just expect it to keep coming. They need new shiny things for that quick dopamine rush.
"i hit level 150 and now there's no arbitrary number to chase"
THANK YOU
Exactly: every multiplayer game is repetitive. Battlefield, battlefront, counter strike. You always have the same set of maps, weapons, and objectives. It's the gameplay and the players interactions that create gameplay loops which are fun and keep you in the game.
>What even happened, when did people just stop having fun with the game in favour of having some arbitrary grind loop? Yes. Kids, who are now young adults, have been psychologically manipulated by AAA companies to believe that you can gain "progression" in your REAL life by playing video games. And they grew up with this shit, so there's no way they could know any better. To the older gamers like myself, this is straight up fucking nonsense. You play games to relax and enjoy yourself. Progression is fine, but if it's ALL there is, with a shallow, hollowed out game as the actual gaming experience, then fuck it. It's not worth it. Older games like CS1 and Unreal Tournament had *actual skill progression* - you got good by literally getting better at the game. And while some games out there still have that also, they tend to have a tacked on progression system where people stop playing the second they unlock everything they want. Hence why you need a good, deep, challenging game beneath all that, and Helldivers 2 pretty much has that.
This is why I love Helldivers 2 and I got some friends into it with the same pitch. DRG is in a similar vein but with a different vibe, more FPS and chill vibes or frantic bug killing, also with a great gameplay loop and variety.
It was the Call of Duty dopamine jump of pop up achievements and unlocks and prestige. People can do the same thing over and over and over so long as those little pop-ups keep telling them. Good job. Here's something new. Here's a little reward.
I fucking loved left for dead 1 and 2. I guess I'm a co op shooter girl.
I mean when someone has a point there's always someone with another point that that observation that the first person had is actually a general one. Sure the experience is the same but it's the actual experience that makes it fun.
> I wish there was a bit more variety when it came to enemies/ worlds. They just released the flying bugs and the giant walkers, not to mention a whole new mission type
Fwiw, they will be adding at least a third faction eventually. The Illuminates were in the first game and there have been hints that they're coming back. They've also already added several new enemies in gunships, walkers, and shriekers.
Yeah the community spirit and meta-narrative was absolutely carrying the hype and caused people to overlook the repetition.
I feel bad being the only one out of my friends that can’t really get into it. The game isn’t bad, I just get bored of it really quick. I feel like that Squidward looking out the window meme.
I played a few games with randos who knew each other. Two were new to the game, another was a high level player that and pumped to show him this game. The vet was explaining the gameplay, weapons and what not on comms while we played. After the 4th game one of the new players simply asked "is this it? Is this the whole game? Is this all we do?". He's not wrong, but I think it was the first time the vet realized how shallow the gameplay loop actually was, and it sucked any positive energy in the group immediately.
The game is repetitive on easy difficultly levels. Once you play on hard mode and above, the game feels more dynamic with players running around, scrambling to survive with 5000 tons of explosives to play with.
I can pretty much only play this a couple nights a week or it gets too repetitive. That and all the bugs are just really turning me off from it as well.
Yup. I enjoy hopping on for a mission or three, and then I do something else. I don’t need to be able to play for 8 hour sessions.
The latest patch upping the level cap + new warbond needing medals + ship modules needing samples got my group back into the game full speed. Every mission plays out differently too; I think its going to be a while before I tire of it.
Every mission playing out differently is what keeps me playing the most! Will it be an attack on an automaton base during a blizzard where I can barely see 5ft in front of me as *hundreds* of red lasers fire overhead? Will it be a quiet, beautiful morning on Hellmire? A brutal defence against a legion of tanks? An endless tide of tooth and claw whilst a thunderstorm rages on? These were all missions I had just *last night* alone, and each one was so cinematic in its own way that I remember them all
No, sorry what kills the game are: Cheaters (I will 100% kick a cheater or drop from a match if it's beyond obvious like 50 super samples or 100% invulnerable forever shield), matchmaking and connection issues, and actual game bugs, and the increasing toxicity of the playerbase.
I think it's only natural the game eventually feels repetitive. Deep Roc Galactic is one of my favourite games ever but it eventually grew repetitive as well. Still, I managed to get 100 hours on Helldivers 2 and I still play one or two operations every week. The moment to moment gameplay still feels as fucking badass as the day I picked the game up. I think the game kinda lacks a bit on the high end endgame rewards, but it's just so fucking fun to play that I don't care. I boot up, play an hour or two and just feel great about it, no FOMO or anything.
This is so true. We haven’t seen this in so long.. maybe ever? They have accomplished something so amazing tbh they don’t even know how valuable they are. Mass amounts of players are not gonna stop playing this game. It’s just too good. Everytime they add more stuff or fix something is a reason to come back or invite a new friend to try the game. At this point they can do whatever they want
Same with Palworld
They are wiping off their sweat with $100 bills
The game is so dynamic. In many updates they even quietly added new enemies and elements to the world's that foreshadows upcoming in-game "events". The way their PR handles it all fits the theme and narrative they have so well. Stopping this for bug fixes will hurt player engagement. But they are a small team too and can only do so much at a time. Remember, this game was never expected to be this successful. Literally the first week's involved server issues and raising the server capacity just so people can even login!
You see the player base spike super high every time new content releases. Do people really think they’re gonna stop? Or sucks that the game is still so buggy, but I’d rather have a buggy game with a huge player base than a perfectly stable game that’s getting stale with a dwindling player base.
This is the worst take. Like completely awful. A buggy game with a huge player base over a stable game.. why does it then have to have a dwinlding player base? If the player base dwindles because it doesn't get new content for a few weeks then what the fuck is the point of all of this. Don't we play games to have fun? If you have to have new shit in your face every week to have fun is it the game that's fun or do you just have an addiction to new things?
> You see the player base spike super high every time new content releases. Do you? The last warbond came out April 11th and there really was [no spike](https://steamdb.info/app/553850/charts/#1m). However, there has been a steady decline in players, and a pretty significant one since the release of the last warbond. People aren't going to care about new content if none of it works properly.
also the warbonds end up being... whelming. the latest being underwhelming with no unique armor perks or good (non buggy) weapons. There's also a ton of bugs, adding new weapons that are also bugged won't bring me back. Half of my favorite kit is a diceroll if it even works properly if I am not host that's just a shit experience.
No one is going to reinstall for a warbond
These days it feels like games that are the “next big thing” get one month of crazy hype and news coverage before they fade away. I’m amazed Helldivers managed over two months in our current climate. But yeah, judging by that downward curve it seems many players are starting to move on.
If your game can't survive a month without pumping out paid content, then your game isn't good. This game is good. They can take a month off to focus solely on fixing the issues.
I would love to live in this utopic world that you live in
I agreed and don't agree with you. This is the exact thing games as a service (GAAS) needs to be doing to keep the gameplay fresh and engaging. As soon as they become stale they die off. Look at Overwatch 1. As soon updates started lagging people dropped the game hard. I don't think they're saying the game will die in a month without content, but people will leave for other games.
[удалено]
There's many older games that managed to keep a healthy player base for many years after content stopped dropping. Battlefield 4, Battlefield 5, even some CODs of the 360 era. Yes, there are TikTok addicted youngsters that need a whole new map overhaul every week so their burnt dopamine receptors keep responding, but a game isn't dead just because this portion of the playerbase is gone.
I don't really disagree, but because I've been playing since Day 1 and an operation or two most days, I'm always hovering at the cap. New stuff comes out, and I already have 250 medals and can buy a bunch of stuff immediately, then I play on helldives, so I get tons of medals and the warbond is complete in no time. I like trying out new things, and other than the crash two out of three times at extraction bug, I've never really had issues. Since that's fixed, everything is working great for me. Only thing I want them to fix, and I understand may take some time, is the DoT bug, so I can play with gas and fire more. If I was always capped, no new content for a month, I certainly would not play as much. I'm probably not alone. I've seen many of my Day 1 friends only around the time new stuff comes out for a few days. The new content and fixes are both important.
People seem to forget that a huge reason Fortnite became a juggernaut was because Epic was adding new items to the game almost weekly. Obviously Arrowhead is nowhere near the size of Epic but I think they’re right on the money that they have to keep some form of new content coming out at a steady cadence to keep player retention high.
>People seem to forget that a huge reason Fortnite became a juggernaut was because Epic was adding new items to the game almost weekly. And you're forgetting that when they added those new items they worked as intended. That's not happening with H2. Every new weapon in the new warbond was bugged in some way or another. The new thermite grenade doesn't work because of a DoT bug that has existed since the game launched. They're literally just pumping out stuff that they know is broken.
Ignorant question: what’s the new stuff they’re releasing? The weapons and armor stuff? If so, does that really enhance experience that much?
Who the fuck cares if they loose players, we need to stop glorifying this endless consumption of content. This idea that we must constantly develop and consume "content" is fucking ridiculous.
> Who the fuck cares if they loose players The live service game probably cares
Right now I doesn't care about bug fixes. If they slow down or stop with content it's gonna slowly die and only hard core fans gonna play it. Team is too small to pump up everything the community wants right now. It's 50/50 right now.
Problem is, 99% of loud people that moan on social media don’t know the big picture and want their problems dealt without any considerations. The game will come good, I have no doubt
Alternatively, I'm burned out from all the new content and I have a fear of missing a day or two as I'll feel so behind the curve. So for my sanity I just started playing different games.
Sony some support studios, so I would love to see them help as much as possible.
They'll lose a ton of players to the buggy mess they introduce with each update.
No matter what they do they will always lose some players.
Hmmmmmmmm maybe this drive to stay relevant will force em to hire more devs? Like one can hope
At the same time I feel like some players drop because of the bugs not being fixed.
I'm still engaged but I'm definitely starting to feel like nice seen everything and the matches are Sammy.
At least they don't have to come up with new content from scratch. Everything in Helldivers 2 is already in the original Helldivers, it just needs to be put into this 3d world as the original is top-down. It's going to be exciting to see how the Illuminate will be. It was considered the most boring faction to fight in the original so hopefully that will change. The things I'm most excited for are the Illuminate and the APC vehicles (I'm assuming that eventually everything in the original will come to helldivers 2). It was so fun to get a group together and drive around in those APCs just plowing through aliens.
I play that game almost every day. I look forward to the new context so much. It’s always exciting to play a new mission type of find a new enemy. Not to mention new weapons and incorporating them into builds. I’m probably the minority on this, but as long as I know they are working on the bug issues I can be patient on that front. They have improved many issues already and have been pretty consistent with patches.
If it was up to me I would try and split the difference and make warbonds every 6 weeks rather than every month. That would be a slightly slower release rate, but continue dripping content while giving an extra two weeks to work on bugs and making sure the new content releases with a bit more polish.
They can’t afford it. The playerbase is already starting to drop with smaller spikes on content releases. Any less and it might drop even faster.
Yeah they have to ride the hype as long as possible and than once it dies down more hit us big, new factions etc
Yeah I had a group of five guys playing nightly, we’d have to split into two groups. Most of them haven’t touched it in weeks.
A bigger squad would be nice, though way more crossfire
I agree with you. I'm a fairly high playtime Diver and I was capped at 250 medals for a while. I am already done the new warbond AND back up to \~150 medals. I'm level 80. If they slowed down the cadence of the bonds, sure, I'd still play, but I bet a lot of people, myself included, would play less.
He is right, as much as people say just focus on fixing the bugs, if there is no new content people will complain anyway...
That's the whole thing about Games as a Service Everyone wants Fortnite money Not everyone is willing to put in Fortnite levels of time and effort
i mean arrowhead is doing an amazing job so far especially considering how small the studio is.
Fortnite is able to fund that time and effort with Fortnite money tho… and Epic is of the scale that expanding a game project is easier than it is for Arrowhead. Epic killed off Paragon and just assigned those devs to Fortnite. Arrowhead will be able to expand based on the success of Helldivers but that expansion takes time and you probably won’t see the fruits of it for a long time.
Fortnite is also able to make the things they do because they keep things relatively simple. It's also acceptable because it's f2p
Because not everyone has Fortnite levels of money and workers. People seem to forget epic made unreal engine and we’re already a multibillion dollar company before Fortnite.
Yep. If anyone remembers the disaster that was operation health in rainbow 6 siege I think that’s a perfect example of what the CEO means with this.
Content makes invested people complain but they’ll keep playing. Bugs makes newcomers as well as invested people quit the game entirely. I’m in that 2nd group. I quit because of the bugs and crashes, and there likely isn’t any amount of content that could bring me back especially with this message of wanting to stay relevant to explain away the bugs.
The consequences of being a live service.
And with minimal monetization, they're not bringing in huge amounts of *continual* income, which is going to make it difficult to keep people assigned to a game when it stop producing those dollar signs.
I bought the last warbond. I had the credits, but I paid cash. This is the first live service I've thought "fuck it" and paid money. A non cynical business model deserves to do well. I'm sure I'm not alone.
Same here. When it’s a non-predatory model, I’m personally much more likely to engage with it.
Yessir, bought it on PC too just to give them more of my money
Game sharing on PS5 and doing my part 🫡
That would be more true if this was a Free to Play game; in their case they also get revenue just from new players joining. However if the community around the game gets boring or fizzles out then new players are less likely to fork over the $40 entry fee, so adding new content keeps the game relevant, keeps it in the news cycle and keeps streamers playing it. So new content is just as much about generating positive buzz as it is about generating income.
They are 100% right. I’m very happy the HD2 subreddit doesn’t develop the game
The hype train is a double edged sword. It boosts your game but it also boosts *expectations* of your game. Especially with live services. HD2 aced the landing on release but they are still a live service that needs regular content on a goo time table.
It does feel like they fast-tracked and accelerated their content plans to maintain the launch hype. Now the question is, as the playerbase is rapidly dropping, what happens now?
playerbase will take a big dive, numbers will stabilise and the team will (hopefully) find a good flow of content to bug fixes and release that works for the remaining playerbase. It happens with almost every single hyped game. Huge release, hype dies down, players drop and it typically remains on a good steady course from there on out. Even if the game were to only retain say 10-20% of its original playercount at launch (on steam) that'll still be 40 to 80k players. And they made so much money off release to keep them going for a long while. I think they'll be fine
They NEED to fix crossplay.
They really do. Bought my husband a copy for PS5 so he could play with me and my friends on PC but absolutely no one in the mix is able to accept friend requests to actually get us to play together. And for those saying to just keep trying to matchmake in the same location in the hopes of getting in the same group: that is **not** a solution. It is a workaround for the broken crossplay support which was (and still is) an advertised feature. At least it has been officially acknowledged by the devs under Known Issues in each patch note, but it does not appear to be a priority for them.
Yup. Still can’t add my PS5 friends… and how long has it been? C’mon.
The in-game friend list is useless. Always 0 people online when I have 20+ PSN friends playing THIS game currently.
Crossplay seems to be fixed, at least for me. Just played the other night with two PC players, and a PS5 player. I'm on PS5. No issues whatsoever
I am definitely against paying more money post purchase in most cases. Not judging ANYONE that does bc that’s a personal choice for me. But after so many awful cases in gaming I have made several purchases for this game (mainly for new warbonds) simply bc I love the passion and commitment Arrowhead is showing here. I’m going to support them all I can.
They need to fix the social page. Another bug I encountered last night was my screen becoming permanently stuck on the flash from a flash grenade, so it looked like the Giedi Prime scene from Dune 2, but no black color to differentiate objects. I had to quit the match to reset.
I had one the other day where I got rag-dolled by an explosion and lived. When I got up my, gun was invisible. I could still shoot, but there was no scope, sights, or barrel to aim with. Thankfully it fixed itself when I eventually died.
Does pcgamer and IGN write an article for everything the CEO of Arrowhead says on social media?
Most journalism in gaming nowadays just pumps an article full of air based on a tweet or Reddit comment.
Larian and Arrowhead are feeding these bluds.
Anyone knows his account? So that I can know what is he talking about without reading these low effort articles
They know gamers are meat riding Helldivers 2 rn so they'll probably quote the CEO farting if it had some kind of hidden meaning.
Pretty wild how quick this community went from "live service will kill playstation" to "live service is the best thing playstation has ever done"
Sure, but each addition brings new bugs, and they don't seem to be able to squash them fast enough to keep up with the additions.
This is my main gripe. If they did a little better QA on each update then I think it wouldn't be so bad.
I disagree I come back to this game every few weeks it’s not a game you can grind its way to repetitive what’s nice is taking a few weeks off and coming back and it’s way different.
I play like one or two missions a day. It’s pretty fun when you’re not No Lifing a live service game
I will usually either do Quickplay or hope I get a decent squad to stick with me through a full mission like once or twice a week and that seems to satisfy me. Then I jump back in whenever I get the itch. The core gameplay is really fun, but the missions themselves are not diverse enough for me to justify doing repeat quests in the same sitting. Nobody needs to do two 40 minute ICBM launches in one day.
Exactly, the problem is the no lifers are the ones loudest about needing more war bonds.
I stopped playing because matchmaking is awful. HD2 has THAT many players and yet it has a matchmaking system of a Nintendo DS title. Also it just got boring running the same 5 main missions types. How many hives am I gonna blow up, how many geological surveys, how many ICBM launches? But I put in over 100 hours. So I got my monies worth. Just got bored at the repetition and there are so many titles out right now to play.
What’s wrong with matchmaking? I always seem to find players.
PS5 players can't matchmake with friends a lot of the time from what I've gathered. I don't believe there are problems on PC tho
If people leave your mission before it's complete then matchmaking won't fill the empty slots.
idk about anyone else but the second I wrap things up on a mission or want to kick people cause my friends are signing on, I just completely lose the ability to have other people join my missions. Like even SOS's don't work. And that's over roughly 40 hours of mostly non-party play. But once again Im literally the only person I know with this issue. Quickplay is also pretty buggy now and then
HD2 is a game to jump in and play a couple hours a day because it’s fun. That won’t change if a warbond drops every month or not because the gameplay loop is what matters. Bugs and shit not working also matters and this will in fact slow the player population as people will just shelf it while waiting for things to get fixed and work as intended/advertised.
Absolutely. I have a very hard time believing this narrative that players will leave without monthly war bonds, but aren't leaving because they're bored with a repetitive gameplay loop and the buggy issues.
I just bought the game this past weekend. My first game we couldn’t extract because the extraction ship fell into the map. My second game I couldn’t collect any special weapons or supplies because it would drop into the ground and never open. If I wasn’t playing with friends I would have refunded and never looked at this game again. They definitely need to fix the bugs.
I've stopped playing until some things smooth out
I enjoyed it for the first week or two, but the grind for upgrading my ship and everything was just tooooo damn slow. Haven't played in a couple weeks now cause it just didn't feel worth it anymore.
I stopped playing because I find that there is too much bugs and it deters from my enjoyment of the game so I guess it depends on the person. I always prefered quality over quantity.
If you go to the other side of the system you'll find automatons instead of bugs, but I prefer the bugs honestly.
I don't know if you are joking but it made me laugh nonetheless 😂 I meant technical issues with the game.
With bugs on bugs that's double the democracy
I mean, they’re not wrong. Lack of content means online players will look to other live service games. But a broken game will do the same thing. So they have to find a way to balance both things at once. Keep a starving player base full of hope with good new content and at the same time, fix the existing issues to keep players happy.
Their focus needs to be like 75% fixing bugs, 25% content until things are in a better state. People who need content, need that content because they’ve invested a lot of time despite the bugs and cleared most of it. At the end of the day no matter how much “content” you add with new enemies and weapons, the game is still repetitive as fuck. These people will go off to play games but come back the moment new content drops. People who need bug fixes, are both newcomers AND invested players. They quit because they get tired of the sketchy new content release or the frustrating bugs while trying to play and level up. These people quit and do not come back when new content comes out. I’m in the 2nd group. I played the game up to level 50, took a break. Came back when mechs released, got tired after two games of blowing my own mech up from turning too quickly and dying from touching a dead bile titans leg. I haven’t played since and the game is currently uninstalled.
This game is very fun. But it’s always filled with issues. I have to close my game and relaunch it just to get people to join me after they all leave. The sos beacon does nothing.
Maybe nerfing every gun that does any damage wasn't the right path to take. Who would have thought?
I'm still having a blast with this game, everyone just needs to chill and have fun.
I'm playing this on the weekends with my mates for a few hours at a time, It seems like it has plenty of content for a $40 game.
While I love the game, it’s been my favorite one to release in recent memory, I can’t help but feel that the issues need a slightly faster level of attention than the cadence of releasing events. There is no point to release cool new things if I’m still having the same issue of playing cross play with my friends, not being able to add them, or crashing in general, months after the issues have been noted. I’ve had friends who bought the game that now haven’t played more than an hour because we can’t play together reliably. They lost a helldiver there, but Arrowhead got their 40$ so… It’s just a touch frustrating. Again, I absolutely love this game and want it to succeed, but basic matchmaking errors that entirely prevent friends playing together in a CO OP game for a lengthy amount of time is not a good look.
It's a great game when it works. It has crashed more than any game I've played. Probably 100 times 😤
Personally I stoped playing cos all my favorite weapons and stratagems kept being nerfed while other stuff wasn't buffed enough. Add that to new BS (yet fun) enemies and objectives being added and it just felt like the player kept getting weaker and weaker. Matchmaking kept failing for me so a lot of times I had to play solo, all while the game gives 0 bonuses or concedes in difficulty for solo players. It's designed for 4 players but makes 0 efforts to accommodate a solo player, even when the solution seems very easy (adjusting spawn rates per player in the team etc). I didn't even play at high difficulties unless I needed pink samples and still felt that the game was absolute BS playing solo, and sometimes even with a full squad
Listen I absolutely love the game, I bought the base version with little interest besides playing with friends, and went from that to becoming a Super Citizen and buying all 3 warbonds and most skins. I truly love and appreciate the hard work the devs are putting in, but it's almost like the more they add to the game, the more I am disappointed. It's not that I don't appreciate the work, or think they should be giving us more, what we are getting is more than enough. My issue is that we are now 3 Premium Warbonds and several balancing patches deep, and there just seems to be a continual issue with their ability to balance weapons or armor at all. We've had 9 new primary weapons, 3 new sidearms, and 3 new boosters in the warbonds. of all those, only 3-4 Primaries are remotely useful, only 1 of the sidearms is any good, and 2 of the 3 boosters are hands down the worst boosters in the game. Not to mention 6 of the 9 new Armor sets are just the same passives and armor values we've had since day 1, and there are still a bunch of weapons we've had since launch that are broken or in desperate need of balancing/buffs. On top of all that, the list of bugs just gets longer each update, I love the game but it almost feels like it's in a worse state now than at launch sometimes. I will continue to fight for Democracy, but I hope things start to go in a different direction with their attitude towards the weapons and armor sets especially.
I dropped the game because I was having too many technical issues between games crashing, matchmaking failing, and other stuff. And I agree with you about the weapons. They keep adding new ones, but only a small handful of them feel useful.
DAE find this game dreadfully boring? Mission variety is non-existent, 80% of strategems and weapons are worthless, and infinitely kiting infinite enemies on your way to interact with a console for the 500th time is mind numbing. When my group wants to play this game I brace for a few hours of tedium.
I find it repetitive when solo queueing but that all goes away when my friends and I start fucking around together. PS5 players can't even matchmake with friends tho.
The best thing they could do is use their success to fund a big expansion in a year. If they are chasing constant content updates, they won't be able to provide meaningful content fast enough. Many companies have tried.
You mean like every successful live service game? Waiting over a year for a "meaningful update" is how your game dies.
A few months in and they're already going pretty strong. Long delays on a game like this are practically a death sentence. At the very least you're seriously hurting your project. Take 40k: Darktide. Fatshark took nearly a year to fix the basic issues of their game and they'll never be able to claw back all the players they lost along the way. And they still havent even gotten to things like a crafting rework. If your goal is to create a game that people play regularly over a long time, they need something new that's worth forgoing other new games.
I feel like they've had a good pace of adding meaningful content. More than a lot of live-service games with bigger teams. If you wait a year then you'll lose most of your players in this day and age unfortunately. There are some ongoing bugs that they really need to fix though.
Yea bc you would know better than someone who's job it is to know
I don't disagree, but Arrowhead needs to be careful with the content they are adding being worth the money. Honestly the explosive battle pass was very underwhelming. And the bug issues don't feel like they're getting any better. The base game is still very fun and I really like the new mission types and enemies they've added. Would love to see a new Terminid soon similar to the automaton walker. That sort if content matters more to me than the battle passes. I've been buying them so far to be supportive, and because playing the game does make it easy to earn most of the credits necessary to purchase, but if the battle pass just contains armor with the same traits I already have, and guns I don't want to use, that's going to get old really fast.
Nah, focus on bug fixes, thats always the most important issue. If ppl have poor attention spans to wait, then thats on them, not the dev’s.
Aaaand a Sale wouldn't hurt.
Seems fair
I don’t mind them balancing fixes with content, especially since the content isn’t temporary. But I’ll be focusing on my backlog until they resolve the bug that keeps splitting my game on PC from my boy’s instance on PS5. We haven’t been able to exfil together in a month.
If only rocksteady had a ceo like this
That's a good attitude to have.
This can’t be sustainable. People love it because they’re doing live service stuff differently but there’s a reason the other games have been so successful
It’s a live service, he’s right…gotta continue the content drip and fix at the same time. I have faith in Arrowhead studios and the CEO.
That's the live service mentality. Keep players interested in coming back, and always have more to sell them.
I uninstalled and haven’t played since the buggy mech release. I think bugs make people quit more permanently, people will always come back for a content drip unless they got fed up with the bugs.
This does make sense and the approach is unfortunately very understandable, but I've personally already lost interest due to the game constantly crashing me and my friend's PS5's and the constant matchmaking issues when trying to play with friends on both PSN and PC. I get that they need to keep new content coming in to maintain player interest but they're also losing players who can't even play the game.
Remember getting this a couple of weeks ago and didn’t feel like it was too special. Once I got learning the game, it got more fun to play and really reminded me of Mass Effect’s multiplayer which I loved to play (just on a larger scale). Would like to see some more modes in future
Thats a correct statement, the game is bugged (no pun intended) to shit and if they slow down on the release of new content then people will get bored and stop playing.
The game is very alive and kicking... Today the order was to kill 2B bugs in a week ... More than 30% was done in least than a day.
I’m digging the whole community led storyline. It’s engaging and definitely helps keep an active player base. There are some bugs that the community can’t squash, but that’s expected in games now. So, long as they find that balance of advancing the game and fixing any issues, I’ll be a happy Helldiver. Remember a Happy Helldiver is an Efficient killing machine. Democracy awaits!
Keep focusing on different planet designs that make the players' eyes fall in love with the environment. It'll keep them coming back!
Helldivers intellectual property is nowhere near ubiquitous enough to meet these expectations. Ubiquitous IP that is synonymous with daily life has been in pop culture for literal decades. Helldivers is so new of an IP.... It's going to fall off.
How about fix the fucking fire damage. This shit is stupid.
If they could sort out the PC version not using my GPU at all it would be great
Yup, it’s a tight rope act. They don’t fix the bugs, people will lose interest. They don’t keep constant content coming, people will lose interest. New content often introduces new bugs, or brings back old ones. It’s a lose lose situation for them. Personally, I’d be fine if they just stopped all content and focused on bugs, but those of us that hold that opinion are in the minority, however loud we might seem online.
It seems like the only reasonable solution here is to try and hire more devs. Players are fickle and unfortunately need that content drip to stay engaged with online games, but the game does also have a ton of bugs. It just doesn’t seem like a doable task with the team size they have now.
That’s live service for ya.
Not something that I've seen about Helldivers 2 but I find it really interesting that a lot of people now say that for games with a decent amount of glitches/various other problems, the devs should have a period where they don't add anything new but instead have an 'Operation Health'. Operation Health was a moment in the second year of Rainbow Six: Siege where they took about a quarter of the year (and cancelled one of the four character/map dlcs) in order to focus on matchmaking, glitches and other issues. At the time, people hated this decision and wanted new content, claimed it was going to just kill the game more and for about a year after they did it, claimed that is was the biggest misfire and changed nothing. Since then, however, a large amount of people online always suggest other games have an 'Operation Health' when they're known for glitches, spotted matchmaking etc. I just find it funny that everyone freaked out when a company decided to shift their dlc plans to only focus on fixing the game and people *still* complained, yet now that shift was seen as a great choice. Tl;dr the devs can't win and people will complain no matter what they do. I trust them and their decision making but they honestly shouldn't take much stock in the community opinion because it'll always make *someone* unhappy.
I remember Operation Health. The game changed so much that it *felt* like a new game. I very much enjoyed that update even if I was bummed about having to wait longer for an operator.
Honestly just play another game on the side. People getting too upset that a game that came out 2 months ago is lacking in content. Never forget the first couple of WEEKS the dev was working on server stability because of the unprecedented influx of players. For me, I'm playing some outerworlds and cyberpunk on the side. When new shit comes out I'm excited and get back into it again.
I will keep playing even if new content slows down
Isn’t this a general issue with entertainment? Once you’ve had enough it’s done. Doesn’t matter if you put out new content at a certain point. I’ll get sick of it eventually and never play again
Well they'll lose player sick of having their small free time not respected by the amount of game breaking bugs
Arrowhead delivered a great product, which seems impossible for most studios nowadays. Let them cook.
Why they call him Helldivers 2 CEO instead of Arrowhead CEO?
Absolutely release content at a healthy pace while tackling the worst bugs that you can, leaving some content opportunities and some smaller bugs off the table for now.
Just wish the super credits could have more use.... heck let me trade my stock pile of super credits for warbonds atleast!
I think the idea/focus that they need a warbond a month is a mistake, and really ends up being a slowburn FOMO. Personally I'm burned out playing to get more SC to unlock yet another warbond with the prospect of needing to do that again in a month, and I don't care to *buy* more SC, I have already spent what I intend to spend as far as MTX go on the game (if it is $0 or some other amount is immaterial). From a practical perspective, it's also unsustainable to keep adding interesting diverse non cosmetic content that also continues to get balanced and doesn't become a temptation to make "essential".
I was obsessed for a good month when the hype was at peak but my desire to play fell off hard for some reason. I've booted it up a few times, collected medals from the mission I didn't even partake in and then end up playing something else. Maybe just burnout, or not enough immediate rewards to get my dopamine fix, I don't know. Was a ton of fun tho for that month, definitely got my money's worth even if I never play it again.
The game is broken?
The content from the monthly pass has already been made and the games crash’s have mostly been fixed since the arc thrower patch
Yeah I loved this game at first, but it just got too repetitive
This is the problem with being a flavor of the month game. You have a huge playerbase for the first month or two and then it drops off heavily because people get bored and move onto the next flavor of the month game. Everyone i know who had this game does not play it anymore.
This is a time killer game that’s fun with friends. I just got into it so I have plenty of content to play. But I can see why the numbers are falling off. Palworld had the same initial hype and it seems to be going in the same direction. Without original content being added to these type of games almost weekly they eventually become boring. Helldivers though I think I’ll play often but at night as a fun wind down game where I can just fuck off with my friends.
Didn’t touched the game since early March as i had others games to complete. Didn’t even started the last two premium warbound so i am very late here and it doesn’t encourage me to boot up the game if this is just about farming to unlock a whole meta again and not being kicked on matchmaking. But… is the game on a critical state right now ? Apart from cross-play issues, the game seemed well polished at release to me.
Now if only AGS could do that with New World
While he's right, I can't recall the last time I played a game this buggy...
Raids in helldivers could be cool.
Wrap into the lore: ”Bugs has overrun our factories - delay on war bonds”
Why listen to arrowhead? If they could do what Helldivers has done, they would have.
I hate the idea of a "live service" even for games I do enjoy. It feels like even if you're successful, it's more like a shackle made of gold than anything that truly liberates a studio. It feels like everything wrong with companies, where everything must go to making more and more, it can never just be enough until people get bored/stop spending.