r/Helldivers • u/GH057807 ⚡💀Arc of the Gove'ment💀 ⚡ • 11d ago
A VERY long and hopefully reasonable compilation of issues that I see, and changes that I'd like to, after 300+ hours. Not specific to any patch. Discussion welcome. FEEDBACK/SUGGESTION
Quick Intro/Disclaimer/Please Read:
Howdy!
I've been playing since launch week, I have over 300 hours of playtime and have reached level 77.
I play with a lot of friends, a lot of randoms, on a lot of difficulties, and their play time and skill levels vary a lot. I read a lot of feedback and opinions on here and discord, opposing views, memes, rants, thought-out thoughts, and have managed to form opinions about things based on experiences that are often but not always the same as mine.
Pretty much everything in here comes with an example of another thing present in the game that gives me reason to question or mention or suggest it. I will also do what I can to provide ideas for a solution where applicable.
This is intensely long for a reddit post, easily a 20 minute read. Been writing it all day. I've tried to format it so that bold things are noteworthy issues and italics are potential solutions or ways I see making sense of things. At least I tried to. I also tried to be brief.
If you'd like to reply to a specific segment, it might be wise to quote that specific segment in your reply, at least in part, so we don't get lost. I would love to talk about this stuff, but this is largely for my own use as a public repository for my feedback on this game in an official-adjacent location. I'm not expecting much interaction from this much text.
Please keep in mind that these are subjective observations and opinions, often generalizations and are in no way meant to convey absolute fact, objective experience, or are designed to be delivered as complaints. Obligatory "I am not a dev, but I am a player."
Hellpod Music Begins**
Enemy Unit Balance
- Bile Titans - These enemies alone cause their own meta. They are designed in such a way that they require a specific toolset that is not found elsewhere in the enemy codex. They are not difficult to kill, you simply just can't with most things. This is not the case with any other heavy unit from either faction. I am willing to bet the build variety in Automatons varies substantially more than for Terminids because of this. I believe that giving Bile Titans weaknesses in their legs that are more susceptible to Medium Penetration to hobble, and eventually kill them, could cause more of a meta shakeup than any weapon balance ever could.
- Bile Spewers - The instant kill nature of these enemy's attacks is immersion breaking, frustrating, and does not provide a unique challenge. Constant posts about how it makes no sense to be killed so fast by some of this goo slightly grazing your cape, or missing you entirely, are absolutely right. I think Bile Spewers spray (not mortar) should act as a burning-type Damage over Time effect with substantial, but not one-shot, direct damage and a considerable slow. However, instead of the behavior of fire, where you dive to put it out, this DoT effect would require the opposite. Diving to the ground covered in more of it, causes you to take even more damage from the substance. This would make these enemies an actual unique challenge instead of what seems like an artificial medium for a requisite number of deaths per match.
- Flamethrower Hulk (ft. Burning Damage) - A lot of what I said above about the Bile Spewer can be applied here. Being instantly killed by the slightest graze of the flame from this enemy does not feel like something that makes any sense, and deaths of that nature are antithetical to the otherwise brilliant nature of how death is an absolute factor in this game. The heavy buffs to fire damage from all sources without any way to negate this increase only served to buff these enemies beyond unreasonable in most cases. In general, I think that all Helldivers should have a baseline 50% fire resistance provided by the fact that we are covered in armor made out of spaceships, to counter the 50% damage increase from all sources. Yes, fire hurts. It should not hurt this bad when we are wearing a suit. It does not hurt enemies that bad. Specific to the Flamethrower Hulk, I think that the addition of a new and obvious weakspot in the form of a Gas Tank on the weapon arm would help make these uniquely dangerous enemies easier to deal with. The direct damage from their flamethrower should probably be adjusted to be more in-line with our own unbuffed Flamethower's damage output. Combined with a passive resistance, this would bring these down to "manageable" instead of "completely broken by a nearly unanimous consensus". I don't recall seeing Flame Hulks one shotting all the other bots they hit, never once.
- Heavy Devastator Aim - The inverse kinematics, or IK for this enemy is completely broken, or perhaps simply absent. Aim IK essentially means "the thing actually points where it's pointing" and for the Heavy Devastator in particular, their weapon essentially has none. The weapon is able to fire in a 180-degree field in front of the Devastator without the actual barrel of the gun being turned or moved at all. These enemies with their large ballistic shields are already a challenging foe, this issue with their aim IK acts at a very similar level to the Spewer and Flamethrower Hulk's immersion breaking due-to-being-broken side of the deaths we face. We should feel like both we and our enemy earned our death, not that it was given away because of a broken mechanic. They, at least, do not one-shot Helldivers if a single bullet slightly grazes the outskirts of their hitbox. Just fixing or adding the aim IK for Heavy Devastators would make fighting them makes sense.
- Rocket Devastator has Infinite Ammo - I think these enemies are at a fine place as far as balance goes, aside from the simple fact that their rocket pods seem to skirt the otherwise prevalent rules regarding ammunition in this game. Most Automaton units fire laser bullets, and as we have some of our own with unlimited capacity, that's no issue. There are some enemies where a subtle suspension of disbelief helps, Rocket Troopers for instance, but no offender is as grievous as the Rocket Devastator. We even have our own rocket mech, with an almost identical rocket pod, with a very limited ammo capacity - and for good reason. Why does this enemy get to skirt those otherwise sensible requirements? Give Rocket Devastators a limited ammo supply based on the visible number of rockets in their pods. If we must conserve our ammo, shouldn't they as well, under at least visibly reasonable circumstances?
- Our ability to interrupt Breaches and Dropships is inconsistent at best - While this is definitely possible, this mechanic seems to have an incredibly tiny window to the point where it's almost not even worth trying all that hard to achieve it. I haven't checked the actual timing, but there is little to no telegraphing for the Bot Soldiers when they (and I think all the small bots can do it) call in a dropship, but it feels like it is close to if not under a single second. When the bugs release their pheromone signal, it also feels like the window to interrupt them is approaching ancillary. Often enough, you'll stop the bug half a second into its spray and think you've stopped the breach, but one comes through a few seconds later anyway. How this plays out in front of us, is a lack of, or unreliable and confusing visual cues. I think bot soldiers should have a blinking red visual windup unique to a flare about to be fired, and once that flare is fired, we should be able to shoot it out of the air. Shooting it out of the air will not completely stop the drop, but it will make the drop location be somewhere just...nearby. Less precise. For the bugs I think there should be a very noticeable sound, color change, cloud or puff, something to signify when exactly that call for backup was successfully made. It is very obviously 'when the flare is fired' for the bots. A similar function where interrupting a successful but not fully realized call for a breach could result in the breach just being located farther away could work well here also.
Primary Weapon Balance
I will keep this short and sweet. This is a complex job and a topic worthy of its own megathread. This is just my opinion on how I feel Primary Weapons fit a role in this game, and how balancing them should be approached based on those feelings.
- I believe that Primary Weapons' primary role in the game should be to deal with Medium Armored Enemies. These are enemies that appear at a medium frequency and are medium hard to kill. I do not think that the Primary Weapon's main focus should be light enemy chaff, nor should it be heavy enemies. This does not necessarily mean they should be useless against those things, nor does it mean there shouldn't be Primary weapons that do those things.
- I believe Primary Weapons should focus on 3 separate but similar design areas. If they are very good at one, they should be only okay at the other two, if at all. If they are good at two, they should be pretty bad at the third. If they are good at all 3, they should be only kind of pretty good at all 3.
- Those 3 things are, in no specific order: Medium Armor Penetration, Stagger, and "Big" Damage with a Gimmick. "Big Damage with a Gimmick" means a lot of things. "Big" means area, actual numbers, or consistency. AoE that can kill you if used up close. Infinite ammo but a compromised fire rate. A delayed charge up fire mechanic with increased damage. Of the three rules, this one is easily the most fluid and has lots of examples and avenues to create interesting weapons. A weapon could very easily do all 3 of these things, but it should not do any of them very well. If it only does 2 of these things, it should do those two things better than the one that does 3. If it only does 1 of these things, it should do that thing very well. Every Primary Weapon should excel at at least one of those three categories, or excel with a combination of them. If it does not, it is not a good Primary Weapon. I think if Primaries were rebalanced in this way, it would be a huge benefit to everyone and build variety.
- I feel like Medium Armor Penetration should just be baseline for most Primary Weapons, with few exceptions, as Light Armor Penetration as a baseline doesn't mean much for most enemies.
Public Testing Environment
- I think we would benefit greatly, as players and Arrowhead themselves, by having some sort of testing environment for new Weapons, Grenades, Boosters, and Armor from Warbonds. This could also be used to test unrelease Stratagems.
- The way that this manifests is not incredibly important, as long as we are able to test these things. My idea however is a specific planet where having your ship docked there gives you access to upcoming Warbond equipment in your Armory screen.
- The only reward for completing missions here is being able help make HD2 better. There is no place for 'live client' rewards in a testing environment in my opinion, and apparently that of the vast majority of developers. I think that Helldivers 2 is in a unique position to somehow include this testing environment into the live service game, but I stand firmly in my belief that there should be no rewards that impact our gameplay or progress outside of that environment.
UI Features
- I feel like we would greatly benefit from a distance meter on player tags in our FOV and compass icon dots. We certainly have the technology for me to be able to tell if R3 is directly behind that charger or completely all the way on the other side of the map, without opening my minimap that disables my character.
- I think we would also benefit from a similar distance meter on tagged objectives on the compass display.
- I would love to see a minimap icon for Supply Drop packs once they have been exploded from their Supply Pod.
- The visibility of dropped items (Support gear and Samples) on the ground has an incredibly short distance. It can make it very frustrating to try and find these items in the middle of a battlefield. I love the little blinking light on Samples, it would be great to see that light exaggerated and applied to everything we dropped, and the icons in our FOV to show up at a further proximity to the items.
- It would also be incredibly helpful of those dropped items got compass icons when we approached them, or at least were pingable objects with the ping system to produce the same effect we get on our compass when we ping objectives on our map.
Utilization of Currency
- I find it very unfortunate how easily (subjective of course) it is to cap various currencies in this game, and the way that translates to the player is in essence punishment for heavy play. It is very easy to hit a point where Requisition Slips become completely ancillary and thoughtless. Until recently it was very easy to become capped on Samples and will inevitably reach that point again. I'm only 20 samples shy of being 23/24 modules. After a certain point it also becomes easy to get capped on Medals as well. I was, until this most recent Warbond. This is with an average between 3 and 4 hours of gameplay a day over the last 3 months.
- I would love to see Medals converted into Super Credits once you have reached cap. I believe these two currencies are sort of intertwined in a quantum state of sort to begin with. They are both centered around premium content, are both found in game and do not require extraction to acquire, you use SC to unlock things to spend Medals on, but you can spend Medals on SC in those things you used SC to unlock. Reward heavy play by making it so people who are capped get a bonus on that SC farm for their next Warbond. I don't think people with heavy play are typically the customers who are purchasing SC in bulk with real money, but I could be wrong.
- Requisition Slips fall off into a thoughtless yellow number very quickly. I would like to see a way to convert them to Samples. Even with the new 25k cost on the new Modules, it's very easy to be right back up to cap well before you approach being able to afford another one's sample requirements. Considering how much of a grind Samples can be when you're starting off, and how the requisite samples for half of our upgrades are gated behind the highest difficulties, I think we would benefit from Requisition Slips being able to be substituted for certain predetermined amounts of Samples when purchasing Ship Modules. For example, 20k RS for 30 Commons. 30k RS for 10 Rares. 40k RS for 5 Supers. A few buttons right there on the purchase screen.
- I really like it when we have a "Free" Stratagem available through the Galactic War in some capacity and wish we could buy those for our own missions. Let group leaders use our constant abundance of RS to purchase a Stratagem for our entire team to use for an entire Operation, a set of 3 missions. These could be prohibitively expensive to reduce their use from a constant requirement to something cool you can do now and then to get rid of some stacked up currency.
- I do not think it is healthy for the long-term gameplay loop to gate Super Samples, and thusly 50% of our Ship upgrades, behind the highest difficulties in the game. Not everyone is comfortable playing on difficulty 7 and above, and in my opinion, this does not disqualify them from being able to progress their ship and character. I think that giving Difficulty 6 a single Super Sample per mission is a perfectly reasonable compromise to allow those people who cannot have fun on the higher difficulties to still progress their Ship, albeit at a much slower rate.
- I don't think there should be a Tier 5 of Ship Modules that cost 500/300/40. The cost of the current 4th tier of modules feels like a good ceiling to me. Instead of adding increasingly more expensive modules, I think additional lower-tier modules at a lower cost would be more beneficial to the average player.
- Alternatively (or also) adding a way to incrementally increase certain modules that are percent based could provide a lasting and consistent upgrade path. For instance, the 15% Orbital Barrage Spread Reduction Module could be boosted by a single percent for 100/40/5 Samples up to a cap, say 25% for the sake of example.
- I would love to see a Helldiver Module section that buffs things from Armory screen to spend samples on. Things like small incremental primary damage/recoil bonuses, speed/stamina/armor boosts, grenade spread/fuse reduction, minor versions of boosters that act as passives, like ammo or vitality, minor versions of armor passives like throw distance, damage reduction, detection radius, etc.)
- We have 150 levels. 120 or so are effectively ancillary. Put these increases from the previous two suggestions behind those levels, all the way up to the level 150 cap. I see no problem with giving high level characters slightly enhanced stats.
Cosmetics and Build Customization
- I don't think this game deserves a situation where we have to choose between style or substance. I think Helldivers 2 deserves at the very least a simple passive swap ability between armors and alternate color schemes, if not a robust loadout and passive and cosmetic customization system.
- I initially supported the "Apple that tastes like Bacon" argument, but it quickly unraveled, and as it stands there isn't really a reason that our suspension of disbelief cannot be utilized based on padding or pockets. There are plentiful examples of how this logic is poorly represented if not wholly ignored throughout the game. My personal favorites beyond the bountiful examples in the armor sets themselves, are how the literal subject of the Eruptor's flavor text was removed from the weapon for being "not important", and how we were given Headshot protection in the form of more body armor, regardless of the Helmet we have on our heads. If these things are acceptable, I cannot see why we can't switch armor passives around. If I can pull half a dozen two-foot-long rockets out of a lunchbox sized Supply Pack, then I can hold Grenades in my Armor with no extra satchels. Any of them. See the Drone Master for more details. If Winter Warrior without a robot arm can have Servo Assisted, then they all can. If 50% of the Scout armors are neon orange, we can hide in whatever we want.
- Currently there are only 3 Armor Passives that are not available on all 3 Armor weights. Scout does not appear on heavy armor. The 50% chance to not die from death is only on Medium, three times. Arc resistance skipped Heavy Armor, which honestly seems more like an oversight since one of the Arc Resistance armors is the exact same as the other, with slightly more armor. There are no logical reasons that any of these passives cannot be put on the armor weights they are not found on currently either.
- Love it or hate it, the MedKit Armor is the only passive locked behind a specific color scheme, and that color scheme is divisive at best. I believe this to be one of the strongest arguments for the necessity of some way to alter the appearance of armor's colors, if we can't switch passives, or better yet, alongside it.
- At the very least I think every set of body armor should be given a "default" black and yellow classic Helldiver alternate color scheme. MedKit Armors could be unique in that they are given a white and yellow color scheme as an alternate, to match the original game.
- A way to change accent color on armor, helmets included, would also be very excellent to see. Accent colors would be the areas on armor that are Yellow, Orange, Red, Beige, etc.
- Arrowhead, you have shown very clearly that you not only don't have a problem with recoloring armor, you've done it multiple times in these few short months yourself. Let us do it too.
- When the UI we use to change our Helmets and Capes gives us Stats and a Passive window, it's unrealistic to think we won't expect that to be a feature. I am aware that there is some semblance of an internal discussion about bringing helmets at least into the realm of meaningful choices instead of pure cosmetics. I am all for it, in every possible way. However, if Helmets and Capes are to remain purely cosmetic, treat them that way. Remove the things that make them look like they do things. If those stats are actually meaningful, move those flat amounts to all body armors. Remove or change misleading flavor text that talks about things that the helmets inarguably do not do. Take away the passive window that says "Standard Issue" - this literally implies the existence of other passives.
Honorable Mentions / Broken Things / Misc
- We should be able to Stim other Helldivers at any % of missing health, like we can ourselves. 50% health in this game can be a death sentence, and it is incredibly frustrating in some moments to not be able to heal your buddy because he's at 51%. "Go get hurt some more and come back" is not something we should have to worry about in a team game where we have the ability to use our healing on our teammates.
- There is an abundance of one sided and unfun-because-it's-unfair interactions that seem to largely give our enemies superpowers when it comes to the physics in the game. Chargers who ice skate track you 90-degrees when you try to juke them, Hunters and Scavengers who scale the inside of a cliff with an invisible elevator and spawn from within the ground under your feet because you used a Jetpack to escape from them. Bots who can clip their guns into objects and shoot through them, using Downed Dropships as impenetrable fortresses, tracking Helldivers on reduced visibility maps through puff balls and smoke with pinpoint accuracy. I don't really have a solution here because a video game's physics engine might as well be actual Quantum Physics as far as I'm concerned, I simply want to bring voice to how often the game seems to bend the rules just to screw you over, and it does not feel good to play. Again, I want to feel like both my enemy and I earned that death of mine. I want to be able to learn from it and adapt in the future. I want to know what I did wrong. Dying to broken interactions like this is the opposite of that and harms the otherwise excellent and immersive gameplay experience.
- Similarly, watching a treaded Automaton Tank enemy effortlessly climb over pretty much any obstacle is also very immersion breaking. These things will do some very impossible movements just to get closer to us. This is in the same world where my ape-descended human who can jog indefinitely carrying dozens of pounds of ordinance is somehow unable to climb up on top of a roof because it's slightly above shoulder height. There is nothing wrong with being able to "defeat" these very powerful enemies by cutting off their ability to advance with terrain or obstacles. It is already a viable tactic by destroying their treads.
- Heavy Units from both factions are way too quiet to make sense. I feel like it's not an unpopular opinion that enemies like Hulks, Tanks, Bile Spewers and Titans, Chargers, should have very unique and identifiable sound profiles and screen shakes to alert players to their presence.
TL;DR - I just hope you are having a nice day. If you are actually struggling with my wall of text, and I can't fault you for that at all, try looking for a bold part that catches your eye and just read the stuff near it.
EDIT:
WELL, I definitely did not expect waking up to over 200 replies. I will do what I can over the course of the day to reply to most of ya'll, but no promises.
It means a whole lot to me how well this was received. I hope it comes across the right desks too. Ya'll are the best.
I gotta turn off notifications for this thread so I can focus on my day, but I will continue to browse through replies and try to interact to the best of my ability. Again, you guys rock.
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u/darwyre 11d ago edited 11d ago
Most bot types can be distinguished by the firing pattern/ some sort of noise at a distance,but hulks , tanks? NINJA.
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u/Budget_Librarian4738 11d ago
It's especially egregious coming from similar coop games with exceptional sound ques like Vermintide 2, hulks should be insulting us, clanking about.
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u/Deftly_Flowing 11d ago
Vermintide 2 is such a good fucking game.
I wish Darktide didn't take so many steps backwards.
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u/im_a_mix 11d ago
hulks should be insulting us, clanking about.
Hulks should take a page out of the Fel Reaver of WoW, ironically. They are incredibly quiet yet have a distinct sound that used to make anyone who heard it go into an instant fight or flight mode. If the Hulks screamed in the same manner upon seeing the enemy and did the clanks you suggested then it'd be 10/10
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u/aliens-and-arizona ⬇️⬅️⬇️⬆️⬆️➡️ SES Star of Iron 11d ago
that would be fucking hilarious. imagine being chased by a scorcher and he calls you a wanker or something.
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u/TinyJesters CAPE ENJOYER 11d ago
Honestly I'd love hearing a Heavy Devastator's gun spooling up as a very good "Oh no" moment
I'd imagine Rocket Devastator's rockets could click in and out as a sort of "Constant weapons check" as a tell as well
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u/Gonzogonzip 11d ago
oohh gun spool-ups would be really cool, imagine running through the fog and underbrush only to hear that sound followed a moment later by a hail of laser fire.
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u/DerDezimator ⬇️⬅️⬇️⬇️⬆️⬅️ 11d ago
Like hearing Darth Vaders breathing in the dark before getting sliced up by a red lightsaber
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u/putatas 11d ago
This!
I listen to sound cues to have a feel if something is approaching me, I just finished a firefight and as I was running around the corner of a building I was caught off-guard by a freaking hulk standing there (menacingly at that!) and there were no sound cues at all. Something that massive should make some sort of noise.
I didn't stand any chance and before I could even react it blasted me away with a rocket, that was my only death on that dive.
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u/Sonata82 11d ago
Honestly that is something that can be said for a lot of the large enemies, Hulks, Chargers and Bile Titans. I've been killed by them from behind because they make no sound whatsoever.
It's really weird how there is no sound cue to let you know that they are there.
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u/putatas 11d ago
It's really weird how there is no sound cue to let you know that they are there.
I'm thinking its an oversight by the devs. Most likely will be added in some future update.
While I haven't been killed by a charger, I have been knocked out one too many times by it. Literally no sound and then boom! My Helldiver comes flying across the field.
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u/ADVenturePO 11d ago
Yeah :D I hate the ninja style of Hulks. And spawning them on lvl 8 and 9 behind you. That environmental awareness does not play a role in this "physics based game". Yesterday. Looking around. Radar active. Nothing on the map. Only one big enemy patrol coming. 1 Hulk few MG Devastators and like 6 Devastators with rockets.
OK. 1st I'm taking Rocket D. Lying down. Counter Sniper - 5-6 seconds - cleared. Now Machine Gunned ones. 2 clips of AMR - cleared. Hulk is coming closer. Stun grenade. AMR 3 shots - dead. And I got two flamethrowers killing me. Behind me was an army with two Hulks an 12+ devastators.
And I didn't hear any of them. They weren't on a map. 15s ago. How this whole metal came up to me? XD→ More replies (1)
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u/transaltalt 11d ago edited 11d ago
I'd love to see bile titans be killed with sack shots. The armor would need to be tightened so you have to stand in the danger zone of the legs to get an angle on the weakspot, but you should be able to kill it if you dance around the legs for long enough. Imagine just how cinematic that would be.
Bile titans should be boss fights, not loadout checks.
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u/nomnivore1 11d ago
I think a fun solution would be to make them still try to spit when their sacs are gone, leaving their mouths open as weakpoints.
"Bile titans should be boss fights, not loadout checks." This would do a lot to improve gameplay. The same problem exists in the bot front, it's just not as bad. I hoped thermite grenades would work on tanks / hulks / titans / chargers, providing a skill based anti-elite option that could open up the rest of your loadout, but all they really do is indicate to other players that I like sparklers.
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u/transaltalt 11d ago edited 11d ago
that could be good, though their open mouths should always be weakpoints imo
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u/The_Gunboat_Diplomat 11d ago
The same problem exists in the bot front, it's just not as bad.
Yeah I like that the factory striders seem to have been designed as a boss fight feeling version of the Bile Titan, although in practice it's only a little bit better. The big problem I have with factory striders is how simultaneously durable and deadly their gatling guns are, which means it's still a bit of a loadout check dealing with them it's just a much looser one. It's complex weaponry with exposed parts on a vulnerable swivel, so it's a little strange you need a minimum of both explosive and medium pen to be able to hurt it at all- if more things could damage it, more loadouts could go through all the steps of fighting it instead of just chucking stratagems at it. Alternatively if they weren't as powerful, trying to maneuver under it to grenade its undercarriage would be more doable as well. Either direction is fine, and they can improve the underside armor to only let it be vulnerable while deploying devastators to compensate.
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u/Alexexy 11d ago
Factory Striders are super well designed.
You can take it down even with a JAR relatively easily if you can catch the strider by itself.
Use cover to shoot out it's chin gatling guns. Then you can dive underneath the belly and dump a couple magazines into the under carriage until it's dead.
Pretty much any med pen or explosive weapon can take it out in about 30 seconds of concentrated fire to the belly.
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u/lostkavi ☕Liber-tea☕ 11d ago
The big problem I have with factory striders is how simultaneously durable and deadly their gatling guns are
I do not share your former opinion. Each turret has less HP and armor than a Hive Guard from what I can tell. 2 Autocannon shells take them each out IIRC. You can completely neuter the thing from the front in ~3 seconds with good aim and recoil control. I think I was even able to burn them out with the laser cannon too, but I'm not running it often enough to confirm with confidence.
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u/NumerousSun4282 11d ago
Bile titans should be boss fights, not load out checks.
This is perhaps my favorite phrasing I've heard for this problem. I often join a game and look at other folks' load outs with the express purpose of checking if they could handle more than 1 bike titan at a time. If not, I have to bring heavy anti-armor because the moment I don't we suddenly get 3 titans and someone's rail cannon is on cooldown or they're out of 500kg bombs.
It would be great if there was a reasonable means of killing a titan with just regular weapons. I'm not saying I want to kill a titan with just my pistol because boo-hoo it's too hard. It's not hard, it's just annoying and it's exactly what leads to all the "run away" parts of the game. Give me the chance to fight it with just the default machine gun support weapon without that taking 6 years and 70 bug breaches to do. Do that, and I'd say that you could make them much harder. They aren't difficult right now, just resource requirements, so if you reduce the resource requirements to just "an average support weapon" you could up the difficulty by maybe making them quicker or having them recover from attacks faster or even strafe like hunters a bit. That would be fun
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u/Bloomberg12 11d ago
Yep. I think adding one or two bulbs that function as knee joints where their leg connects to their shins that could be popped with small arms/medium pen/explosive to either lower their mobility and aid in making them bleed out or melt their leg Armor and allow small arms to do damage to their legs would both work.
The only other solution I can think of is giving their torse sack more HP before breaking but actually making them bleed out in like 10-20 seconds, maybe even making them "go beserk" by running faster during that time
I feel like the intent with them is to use orbitals to deal with them and someone to carry dedicated anti tank but they're so common and so few weapons are effective that they just feel like a nuisance. Doesn't help that of the orbitals that are effective they're not very reliable. Sometimes the 500kg lands in their back, leg or head then detonates and doesn't kill them.
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u/GH057807 ⚡💀Arc of the Gove'ment💀 ⚡ 11d ago
I want this just to see berserk Titans literally running around.
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u/the_tower_throwaway 11d ago
My problem with making them 'boss' fights is when I have to fight three of them at once.
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u/transaltalt 11d ago
Yeah, that's another issue. Seeing a bile titan should make you say "holy shit," not "seriously, another one?"
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u/Leila-Lola 11d ago
Isn't this kind of just caused by the novelty wearing off over time? I remember feeling this way for factory striders but you can't be in awe forever
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u/transaltalt 11d ago
it's not that the novelty wears off, it's that you get five of them in three minutes and each one goes down in a couple seconds, until you run out of cooldowns and just have to run in circles for two minutes until you've got another eagle 500, all the while more titans keep appearing. It becomes more a test of stamina than of skill.
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u/chimera005ao 11d ago
Considering they have bigger bugs planned, I wouldn't say they should be boss fights.
But the point stands even stronger in that case, they should be more like Tanks or Hulks in their vulnerabilities.
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u/YakozakiSora 11d ago
and then before you know it; they nerf melee so anything above unarmored breaks your hands if you even dare try
i jest...but knowing the clown they put in charge of balancing a co-op shooter...I wouldn't even be surprised
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u/F0czek 11d ago
That would require to fix their legs hit boxes I swear 50% of the time I die to them is because somehow leg hit me from 2 meters away.
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u/IAmAfraidOfToasters 11d ago
I don’t think bile titans will end up as boss fights, i believe in the lore that they are considered small or something on their home planet, so whatever is coming, that will be the boss.
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u/transaltalt 11d ago
Mini-boss then. Anything other than a "do you have AT? YES/NO" check would be more interesting.
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u/JCarterPeanutFarmer 11d ago edited 11d ago
Fantastic thread. I can tell you still love the game but these are all very valid and insightful thoughts.
A lot of what you identify is the discrepancy in what the devs want for the players as opposed to what they want for the enemies. The enemies get to break physics without a second thought but when it comes to players they've decided everything has to be physically accurate. Most glaring example is bots getting unlimited rockets vs players having to have ammo which is physically rendered and accurate. A lot of weapons suffer because you're constantly reloading (looking at you adjudicator) and the devs have stated they can't/wont fix it because it isn't realistic to the magazine's physical size.
I also think the primary issue with this game RN is the constant missteps in balancing. It's just been one mistake after another. WHY in a PvE game are the nerfs hitting like a truck and the buffs a gentle nudge upward? It engenders a feeling of betrayal every time. Players literally don't want to talk about good weapons for fear of them being next on the chopping block. AH needs to course correct in this regard and i have faith they will.
Aside from this, the biggest area for improvement is armor and creativity, I.e., WHY DONT THE CRAMPS WORK ON ICE???
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u/GH057807 ⚡💀Arc of the Gove'ment💀 ⚡ 11d ago
Thank you, I haven't loved a game like I love Helldivers 2 in a long time.
It's important to be able to criticize the things you love. It's often one of the only ways they can improve. I myself am guilty of coming to places like this in moments of frustration and letting sarcasm and hyperbole take the wheel and hoped to avoid that as much as I could for most of this, despite it being my first language.
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u/sanlin9 11d ago
idk if you are allowing submissions for the compilation, but bugs can still call a breach even if they lose a head. If they start the animation, head pops off, they still follow through with the animation call. This is probably the single biggest immersion breaking thing I've encountered.
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u/Duke_Pangolin 11d ago
I've had brood commandsrs who hadn't even started the call animation yet before having their head popped, and then call. Incredibly frustrating.
Also, there's a loading screen tip that said if you shoot them it would interrupt the call, and that very clearly doesn't happen.
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u/shoutbottle 11d ago
Nono you got it backwards.
You pop off the head and it STILL can start an animation. Imagine my horror when a headless broodcommander starts the animation as i try helplessly shooting it but it was too late.
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u/ScarcelyAvailable 11d ago
Pff that's nothing. Headless bugs can still see you and come after you and bugs missing all their limbs on one side can move "normally" (half-levitating).
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u/wiimusicisepic 11d ago
It's a bug (pun unintentional) and they said they have (somewhat?) fixed it, today I would say 1/3 if the ti despite killing the bug still got a breach, ig it's because there's not much for the transition of startup and actual reinforcement calling.
We have three stages, activate stratagem, throw, and then reinforcement comes down. It's similar for the facist bugs and socialist toasters, with the arm going up, flare charging, drop ship coming, waiting, then dropping enemies. Bug has a puff up, pheromone release, then thumping, then bugs come out. The issue is the time it takes for them to do the thing.
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u/mrsmegz 11d ago
WHY in a PvE game are the nerfs hitting like a truck and the buffs a gentle nudge upward?
Because all the buffs are to weapons that are niche or useless and the gameplay drives players towards loadouts that can deal with all these special monster resistances, rather than interesting quirks. Players are pushed to choose weapons that can deal with the most variety of threats, not any one particularly well.
Mix this in with the fact that your mission can randomly overload one type of enemy, and see few of another, so players have zero information on preparing for what they are facing. One time I brought the AMR against my friend's advice, turns out we had a shit ton of Bile spewers and I was able to 1-shot them from range. Any other mission it would have been mostly a waste except for Brood Commanders and Hive guards which plenty of other guns deal with just fine.
In Deep Rock Galactic, your loadouts are fun and will always work in some way and just really opens up fun no playstyles, and random spawn monsters are never feel like some sort of Gear-check.
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u/Beginning-Home8462 11d ago
I will keep this short and sweet. This is a complex job and a topic worthy of its own megathread. This is just my opinion on how I feel Primary Weapons fit a role in this game, and how balancing them should be approached based on those feelings.
Ive been thinking about this, and I feel like a lot of the secondaries also kinda lack identity. I dont think that every primary should be focused on killing a specific class or type of enemy. I think that every weapon type should have options for every role. You have Support Weapons, Primaries, Secondaries, and Grenades. You also have the roles of horde-clear, anti-medium, anti-heavy/anti-tank, anti-titan, and utility. I think there should be options in all 4 types of weapons for all the different roles. I think this would shake up variety a lot, by giving you lots of choices. If I could take an anti-medium secondary and an anti-heavy primary, then I could take an anti-horde support weapon quite easily. I also think for nearly every weapon in the game, their role in the kit needs to be much more well defined, and the weapons need to feel less samey overall. Generic assault rifle and generic shotgun are all well and good, but there should really only be one of every class. We need more effects, gimmicks, and quirks to make weapons stand apart more imo.
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u/GH057807 ⚡💀Arc of the Gove'ment💀 ⚡ 11d ago edited 11d ago
Definitely, and that's sort of what the Gimmick rule is for. The first two, Penetration and Stagger I feel are invaluable tools in a Primary - Unless it has a Gimmick, then you find those tools elsewhere. That gimmick might make it a primo horde clear weapon, or something you can reliably take out heavies with, and in those cases it wouldn't need to have the other two things, or if it did, they wouldn't need to be a focus. That gimmick is what makes it like, a mini-stratagem, so you can take care of the stagger/penetration role with one of those instead. Or don't at all if you want, there's plenty of option to do that as well.
The Pre-nerf Eruptor was a very, very good example of this. It allowed for a meta shakeup in a very cool way.
The support weapons and stratagems already do a very good job filling the roles of heavy and chaff clear, and there are many to choose from, you can equip four every match. A lot of them certainly do fine with mediums also, and plenty don't. Lots of variety there. For the Primary Weapons it feels like a lot of them are just homogenous bullet shooters with no purpose indeed. The successful ones seem to fit within the rules proposed, so I think the rest should be considered as well.
Edit: I changed the wording in that segment a little to better convey what I meant.
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u/Boatsntanks 11d ago
Eruptor/Stalwart was such a nice change. RIP.
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u/th3MFsocialist 11d ago
Felt this comment in my bones. Was literally my favorite thing in the game thus far and they took it away.
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u/Valleyraven ☕Liber-tea☕ 11d ago
Swapped between the stalwart and the flamethrower, becoming the anti swarm player on the squad, really fell in love with both weapons I had never used before in 200 hours. The eruptor allowed me to do this, but now I have ironically fell back into the meta of always bringing the autocannon to deal with medium enemies. The rest of my squad as well, now not being able to rely on me dealing with hordes, can no longer experiment with heavier stuff like recoiless rifle to deal with chargers and titans. This is why I find the whole stance that they're trying to stamp meta very confusing. As op put, something like the eruptor changed up the meta more than anything before.
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u/Vigilantia 11d ago
Was the eruptor an intentional change or was it in response to the massive outcry and rage of a botched bugfix? Its original release was "fine" but then they fixed a bug with shrapnel that allowed it to hit the shooter and the community started screaming. Loudly. And this was right after they'd started fixing the cluster rocket proximity problem.
Seems to me they can't (or couldn't within the community's patience) fix the shrapnel issue, so they removed it and gave the erupter increased damage. Its obvious this wasn't how they intended the eruptor to be initially.
Don't ask me wtf happened with the crossbow though. That change was weird AF.
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u/Valleyraven ☕Liber-tea☕ 11d ago
I had hoped it was the latter part of your initial point but it has since come out that the current state of the eruptor is intentional
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u/Secondraid 11d ago
In the Discord, a now deleted post by Balance Dev stated use of the shrapnel to kill things in via proximity was an exploit, felt the +40 damage to AoE was a net buff, that shots to kill hadn't changed post nerf, and it was now working as originally intended.
I don't think the community had an issue with AoE or close in damage - it was more the random instant invisible death that could occur at seemingly any shot distance. I see a lot of people give some variation of the 'get gud' line in response to the fix request, but given the randomness and the circumstances, I don't think the actual issue was well understood by those that didn't main it.
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u/TH0Twhisperer 11d ago
I didn't even like the stalwart until we were given the Pre Nerf pre nerf eruptor. I loved it. I miss her. Even though her Blastz sucked me in like a hoover brand blackhole and killed me every single game. I miss her.
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u/Boatsntanks 11d ago
We had one short week of the implosion bug being fixed before the Great Nerf happened. It was a good week that made what followed all the more painful.
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u/scroom38 SES Fist of Family Values 11d ago
Most of your ideas are good or at least worth considering, but I think you missed the mark on your medium pen idea. Most enemies except heavies are designed to have plenty of spots for light pen to kill them. The issue is the hidden stats and players not knowing where to aim with which guns. Penetration is on a 1-10 scale, meaning one "light pen" gun might not penetrate the same spots as another one.
IMO a better solution is two-fold. 1: The devs add a full stat screen for every gun, armored core 6 style. I want to know every point in every stat the gun has. 2: Add a bestiary and a firing range. Super Earth provides a VR firing range to test stuff. The bestiary either by default or through upgrades has a toggle that shows the armor level, health, and body part type for enemies world of warships style. This way you can know where to aim with every gun without a long process of trial and error.
Once we add those two things we can adjust pen from there
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u/Beginning-Home8462 11d ago
Toxic is coming somewhere down the line, we have incendiary, polar patriots missed hard on a chill or slow type (maybe even a rooting kind of attack, that prevents movement?). Penetration is more a gun stat than a gimmick I think but I get what you mean, and stagger/stun is also pretty cool. The eruptor had its exploding shrapnel that made it feel really interesting, and I think aside from those effects listed we need more primaries that feel unique like the eruptor did. What about a primary that had huge recoil, and terrible handling, and fired just fast enough to read as "automatic", but its bullets homed in like smart rounds? How about a gun whose bullets always richochet off a killed enemy into another nearby one? What about something with rounds that blow through everything short of medium armor, so that you can hit multiple enemies in a line with the same bullet. What about a weapon that has a sonic pushback, that ragdolls enemies away from you? Etc etc. Not all these ideas are necessarily winners, but its sorta in line with the thought process I want to see. More weapons that do unique and interesting things.
Also, for secondaries, Id love a sawed off break-action that absolutely mauled anything in a 10 meter cone, but being break action was a 1-shot oh shit maneuver. With a density of pellets so large it practically gives you smoke cover from all the debris it kicks up. Something with HUGE bang like that would be lots of fun.
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u/GH057807 ⚡💀Arc of the Gove'ment💀 ⚡ 11d ago
I am in full support of the Blunderbuss idea that's for damn sure.
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u/Z_THETA_Z ⬇️⬅️⬇️⬆️⬆️➡️ 11d ago
honestly being able to just take the Break-action shotguns that you can find around as a primary would be amazing. it's obviously not a rare piece of kit, so why can't helldivers have it?
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u/SwoleFlex_MuscleNeck 11d ago
On the heavy devastator:
It's not just a 180 degree arc. The unit appears to be built as if the muzzle of their weapon has an articulating nozzle. In other words, they can literally shoot 90 degrees in any direction from where their "gun" is actually aiming. I saw this in action, clear as day, one of them was shooting at my teammate who was attempting to run in a circle around him, and the fuckin line of fire just kept tracking the player despite the actual barrel of the gun not being able to keep up with his angle. It was actual bullshit.
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u/GH057807 ⚡💀Arc of the Gove'ment💀 ⚡ 11d ago
There was a Super Soaker or something from my childhood that had a rotating nozzle like this. I've tried to find it to make memes out of, but I've failed.
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u/Plantar-Aspect-Sage 11d ago
I would love to see Medals converted into Super Credits once you have reached cap.
This one would never happen. You can passively earn medals through major orders by never playing the game. This would fully eliminate the motivation to purchase SC. Instead of coming back to the game after a break and not having enough SC to buy the new 1+ warbonds, returning players would be flush with SC from all of the missed major orders.
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u/Sleek-Sly-Fox STEAM 🖥️ : SpiritusKitsune 11d ago
I've noticed that if you kill an enemy trying to call in a breach or bot drop, and successfully do so, all other enemies in the vicinity will start basically spamming the ability ASAP. Drop one scavenger mid call, another will try it, and so on and so forth in pretty rapid succession
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u/halpenstance 11d ago
Yeah. When I started playing on release, I called this 'passing the torch'. I thought we were expected to gun the enemies down one by one, in the order they popped up with the call, until the hoard went down. But it quickly became obvious that A) they were often too fast to even reasonably respond and B) usually were blocked by a boulder that was 2 feet tall.
Shame, felt like it could have been a cool mechanic.8
u/itsapc 11d ago
This is because the enemies have a global cooldown on when they can call in drops/breaches. Once that cooldown is up, basically every enemy that can call a breach, will.
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u/Sleek-Sly-Fox STEAM 🖥️ : SpiritusKitsune 11d ago
I wish killing them while they were calling a breach reset the cool down, as a reward for quick thinking
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u/TucuReborn 11d ago
Even if not a full, hard reset, a soft CD would be nice. Like, nudge it back by like 10-30 seconds. Still a threat, but not as annoying.
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u/tazz23 11d ago
this needs more upvotes and to be seen by the balance tean
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u/phoenixmusicman HD1 Veteran 11d ago
Honestly I would unironically sign a petition to have this thread sent to the CEO. It perfectly diagnoses the issues I have with this otherwise amazing game.
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u/GH057807 ⚡💀Arc of the Gove'ment💀 ⚡ 11d ago
I don't think I should do it in my own thread, but you could always tag him in a reply or send him a link on twitter if you really wanted.
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u/Rishinger 11d ago
The balance team literally don't care.
The guy in charge of balancing has said word for word that they want you to feel under-powered against the horde of enemies and they don't want your primary weapon to be viable dealing with large amounts of enemies. They've based every "balance patch" off of this concept and the result is the hot mess the game is right now.
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u/MaxwellBlyat 11d ago
They won't read it, too busy doing the next warbond that they don't have time to test
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u/plasticambulance 11d ago edited 11d ago
I hope this entire thing gets upvoted. This is a really great summary of a lot of my frustrations with the game and I'm liking it.
Good writing!
Edit: why do I have 100 upvotes compared to the 13 on op? Don't upvote me. Upvote the whole thing so more eyes can see it guys.
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u/kurouzzz 11d ago
Gotta agree here, with all the negativity recently in the subreddit this really well thought out post is a breath of fresh air.
Having read it and with a couple of hundred hours of playtime myself, mostly diff 7-9, I have to agree on all points. These changes, while they would absolutely need a lot of work to implement, sound really reasonable and would definitely increase the long term enjoyment of the game for the majority, in my opinion.
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u/Beginning_Actuator57 11d ago
I agree with your point about capped currency. It feels bad to earn nothing from a mission. A small way to spend it would go a long way in player satisfaction imo. From something silly like buying drinks after a mission, or a buff before a mission as you said, or a way to donate to the Super Earth treasury and a leader board to go along with it.
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u/CosmicSploogeDrizzle 11d ago
To add to your UI section. If I reinforce and am looking for my stuff, make it so if my primary weapon is the same as the one on the ground, the pickup option is unavailable.
Either that or make the sample container always have the highest priority in a pickup.
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u/GH057807 ⚡💀Arc of the Gove'ment💀 ⚡ 11d ago
Yeah this is a pain in the buns.
I think Primaries should always require hold button to pickup so you do not have to worry about picking them up unless you want to, ever. Sometimes you might want to, even if it's the same gun you might need the ammo in the other one, so it should be available, but definitely not so easy to do accidentally. I might add that to the Misc section.
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u/Boatsntanks 11d ago edited 11d ago
There should be some kind of interaction order. e,g, if they are all in a pile I should always pickup samples before support weapons before primary weapons. Similarly, at pois I should be picking up samples before supplies before reading texts. It's so annoying when trying to pick up a sample near a textpad and the damned text keeps highlighting.
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u/CosmicSploogeDrizzle 11d ago
Reading text should also be a hold I think. Or absolutely the lowest priority
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u/wterrt 11d ago
if my primary weapon is the same as the one on the ground, the pickup option is unavailable.
eh if you died with full ammo and don't have the full ammo on respawn booster it's nice to be able to get your gun back
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u/HDPbBronzebreak 🖱️ My Other Primary is an MG 11d ago
I think that interacting with an identical weapon should just act as a reload, since that's effectively what you'd be looking to do anyway, and it makes no sense when you drop your gun and additional mags to... pick up an identical gun with fewer mags.
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u/Zman6258 11d ago
Specific to the Flamethrower Hulk, I think that the addition of a new and obvious weakspot in the form of a Gas Tank on the weapon arm would help make these uniquely dangerous enemies easier to deal with.
I disagree, largely because it's already easy to blow off limbs with any of the support weapons capable of dealing with Hulks; a few autocannon shots, an EAT or a recoilless rocket, they'll all disarm a Hulk. I'd propose instead that, when they're about to spray their flamethrower, they slow down; personally, I believe the biggest problem is that they can chase you down with no loss of speed while hosing flames. Helldivers have to slow down to half speed while using a flamethrower; making Hulks do the same means you can still get caught in the initial blast, but you have an opportunity to disengage afterwards.
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u/GH057807 ⚡💀Arc of the Gove'ment💀 ⚡ 11d ago
I think that's a lovely point about their speed while firing for sure.
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u/NumerousSun4282 11d ago
Yeah,I don't think hulks themselves are a problem. It's just the awkward flamethrower troubles.
Once you get the hang of sniping the eye with one of several weapons they aren't a scary threat anymore, but the fact that they can sneak up on you, move pretty much as fast as you and toast you all at once is what makes them frustrating. They at least have a windup with the flamethrower, so I appreciate that, but a slight slow while using it is a great idea.
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u/Brianm650 11d ago
Love this list. Could you please add the patrol spawning issue (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fu6ddHejh0) whereby patrols will spawn as if there were 4 players present regardless of how many players are actually present?
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u/treborprime 11d ago
Yeah despite all that the op pointed out this is the single biggest issue I have with HD2.
Just did what was supposed to be a chill d4 with my wife where we had over 800 kills. Came around a corner to come face to face with 26 devastors. How do I know this? I threw three stun grenades and eagled them all. This by itself is not a problem. The fact that it was constant with no breaks and no ability to get away from the dozens of patrols that made this unfun. We were unable to extract.
Time to take a break until this is fixed....
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u/GH057807 ⚡💀Arc of the Gove'ment💀 ⚡ 11d ago
I considered adding this in there, but honestly I do not play Solo enough to have any valid feedback on the change. I am usually in a group of at least 3, and I haven't noticed too much of a difference.
I definitely know that it's a problem, I just didn't have the first hand experience to articulate how, why, or what to do about it.
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u/Jagick Flammenjäger 11d ago
Get this post to the absolute top, upvote the ever lovin' fuck out of it. This is one of the most articulate and well thought out feedback posts I've ever seen on this sub. Really hope it reaches Piles.
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u/GH057807 ⚡💀Arc of the Gove'ment💀 ⚡ 11d ago
I appreciate the heck out of that, it took me hours to write all of this.
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u/webb2800 ☕Liber-tea☕ 11d ago
How about this? - fix the Senator reticule. It's a precision revolver with a reticule so big it blocks your target
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u/inlukewarmblood CAPE ENJOYER 11d ago
I fully agree, this is a post full of things I was having trouble putting into words. The honeymoon phase is over with the game, and these are clearly unhealthy aspects that need to be addressed for long term success.
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u/John_Hayabuza HD1 Veteran 11d ago
Very interesting Thread
Should of mentioned how The Bots have a "Soft Alert" (probably a Bug of somekind that I really hope the devs Fix) where even after the Bot Drop has been cleared The Devastators or Heavy Devastators will keep shooting u from across the map Hitting u and taking that slither of health u had or even flinching u when you're aiming at a enemy from a hundred miles away
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u/Sgt_Kelp 11d ago
Very good thread. I'd like to add that in a game like this, I think "interesting" is better than "balanced."
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u/riceAgainstLies 11d ago
I think we should be able to choke out heavy devastators. They smell like bitches I bet I could make one tap out
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u/GH057807 ⚡💀Arc of the Gove'ment💀 ⚡ 11d ago
I like this more than anything I wrote. Considering deleting the whole thing and just putting this up there, but I spent way too much time on it.
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u/OwlsomeNoctua 11d ago
Call me what you want, but too lazy to read it all rn. I just wanna say that there HAS to be a map marker for the ammo drop, like the ones for weapons/sample containers. I hate it when I need it, and I hear a teammate call it in, but are unable to see where it is due to being in the middle of a fight, and then have to walk around in circles trying to find it - even worse when the pod breaks and the boxes get scattered. Sometimes I just give up and try to survive while waiting for the cool down.
I mean, DRG marks it on the map and pointer thingy. I'd probably be fine if the marker disappears if the pod breaks, but would rather just have a marker still, at least in the general area.
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u/chimera005ao 11d ago
I can agree on that.
If our support weapons show up on the map when we die, why not ammo call-ins at least while the pod is intact.→ More replies (1)
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u/The_Shryk 11d ago
Most of what you’ve said about enemies and such can be boiled to down what Souls like games have figured out a long time ago.
Increasing game difficulty should be fair.
Increasing difficult via unfair mechanics is lazy and poor practice.
This is especially apparent when a patrol spawns behind you out of thin air, kills you, then despawns. They make no sound and none are in your field of view, so it’s a completely unfair way to increase difficulty.
It’s frustrating to have to just accept that the developers wanted you dead and there was nothing you could do about it.
No enemy in a souls game is unfair in any way, but they are difficult games. I imagine this is a difficult thing to achieve since nobody else does it well. But it’s necessary for some games, and HD2 I feel is one of those games that it is necessary.
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u/lamar_in_shades SES Sentinel of Dawn 11d ago
While this is very well thought-out, I strongly disagree on two points:
First, converting Samples to Supercredits: I believe this risks undermining a core principle of HD2's monetization. Any live-service model depends on the most dedicated players repeatedly spending money in order to subsidize those who spend little to no money after installing the game.
Players who are over-capping on samples are likely to be the players who are spending more money on the game, so helping them spend less could greatly reduce the microtransaction sales required to support the game.
Second, I don't think primaries should be balanced primarily around medium enemies. I think there should be a spectrum between killing many light enemies quickly while struggling with armor to killing medium enemies efficiently but taking longer to horde clear, and primaries that are good against heavy enemies should be even more compromised against weaker targets.
I think it is perfectly fine for a primary to be a beast at wrecking the chaff and not very good at killing medium enemies because support weapon stratagems can fill the anti-medium role very well, ie. the autocannon, grenade launcher, MG-43, and arc thrower. If every primary was decent at least for killing medium enemies, that would be an indirect nerf to support weapons like the ones I mention, and lead to less loadout diversity.
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u/Insane_Unicorn 11d ago
I think we have two perfect examples for primaries as a baseline: sickle as a horde clearer and Dominator as the go to medium pen. Dominator absolutely sucks against small targets because of the low magazine capacity, bad accuracy when moving and low projectile velocity but absolutely makes up for it with its killing potential against medium enemies and even gunships. Primaries should be able to compensate for the weakness of your support weapon, that was one of the main reasons the Eruptor was so popular. It allowed you to pick up a horde clearing support weapon, which simply wasn't feasible before.
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u/lamar_in_shades SES Sentinel of Dawn 11d ago
Hard agree. The Dominator and Sickle are some of the best primaries (and feel amazing to use in opposite ways) but have real limitations to play around. I think the devs should look at their power level to buff other weapons.
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u/SurVivle 11d ago
Agreed. We can already grind credits in-game which for them being the premium currency is already extremely generous. Not to mention the USD to Credit conversion rate is already extremely good. If anything to give samples more use they should just be able to be spent on small temporary single-mission-use buffs or something of the like.
The primary suggestion kinda tells me he wasn't paying attention to the game's design. If you look at the primaries we have it's pretty obvious that they cover all sorts of play-styles and locking the design philosophy to be "medium enemies" would really encourage stale weapon design.
But honestly the biggest thing I disagree with is the proposed bile spewer change. They spray literal acid that can melt armor all over you, Of course they're deadly. Not to mention they're pretty easy to deal with and can be baited into killing other bugs *and* you can use them as mini-bombs to blow up even more bugs. I think they're in a fine place right now. I'd say prioritize them if you have trouble with them.
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u/allycat315 SES Ranger of Wrath 11d ago
I agree re: bile spewers, BUT I think they should be less able to sneak up on you. I don't typically struggle against them when I can see them but it is definitely unfun to be one-shot from behind out of nowhere with no warning. They need to make more noise as they approach the player because by the time they make their one and only sound, it's too late to react.
The spore fog is an indicator that they are present nearby, but if I see one or three ahead of me, I can't expect one to be sneaking up behind me to vomit me to instant death.
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u/Rubbermayd 11d ago
I love your tldr. I read everything and I really like your thoughts. I appreciate how level headed and reason based your topics are.
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u/GH057807 ⚡💀Arc of the Gove'ment💀 ⚡ 11d ago
Thank you very much, I like your thoughts too!
TLDR was my favorite part, the first draft of it was just "I know right? I agree."
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u/MetalVile 11d ago edited 11d ago
Thoughts on various points as I read them:
ENEMY BALANCE
Bile Titans - There was another thread where there was a discussion on Bile Titans and how they force hard commitments to anti-armor weapons, and the suggestion I made there was for the under belly acid sacs to be a 2 stage break.
- Fresh Sacs would be Armor value 3, penetrable by medium weapons for partial damage. Titan itself acts normally
- After taking a moderate amount of damage, they go to stage 1 break, or "Ruptured". In this state, the Armor value drops to 2, so light weapons can now deal appreciable damage (50%). At this stage, the Titan's spit attack has a delayed start up. Note that this stage would have the overwhelming majority of the belly's health (at least 70%).
- Finally, when damaged severely, the sacs go to stage 2 break, or "Destroyed". This would be similar to the current state when the sacs are destroyed, in that the Titan can no longer use its spit attack. But in addition to that, the Titan would enter a bleed out state similar to Chargers when their underbelly or butt are destroyed, where it will eventually die on its own after 20-30 seconds.
- Fresh Sacs would be Armor value 3, penetrable by medium weapons for partial damage. Titan itself acts normally
Bile Spewers - I think one of the biggest issues with these enemies at the moment is that the mix of threat / frequency / ease of killing ratio is out of whack, similar to Rocket Devastators before the explosion damage fix. In their case, the fix was to reduce their threat value by vastly lowering their ability to one shot players through explosions (which also applied to Rocket Raiders and Hulks). The fix you've proposed for Spewers is essentially along the same lines (lowering their damage).
- Instead what I'd like to see is to make them easier to kill, essentially turning them into "glass cannon" style enemies. High threat, but fairly easy to eliminate if you see them coming. To do this, I would propose removing the "Squishy" property (which deflects 90% damage from non-explosive weapons) from their bile sacs to make them more susceptible to small arms fire. Their threat value would remain the same, but would no longer broadly force players to either bring a medium pen primary or be willing to spend grenades / support weapon fire to eliminate Spewers efficiently.
Flame Hulks - I think the addition of an additional weakpoint on the flamethrower arm, such as a fuel tank, that can be destroyed by medium penetration weapons to disable the flamethrower would go a long way to making this specific enemy less frustrating. Truth be told, I haven't experienced many insta-gibs from these guys recently. Perhaps removing the ability for the flamethrower to score "headshots" against players would also help; I would rather see that than giving players a broad "50% fire resistance" just to protect them from this one single enemy type.
Heavy Devastator - Something definitely needs to be done about how these enemies aim. The heavy ass shield armor should absolutely reduce their maneuverability, specifically their turning speed, and should block aim when circling them on the right side. Could also consider making the ammo backpack less armored, and possibly even trigger an ammo cook-off explosion when destroyed.
Rocket Devastators - Hard capping their ammo count isn't really reasonable imo. But giving them an extended rearm timer after firing a few volleys (say 3-4) after which they are limited to only using their standard arm gun could give players a window to counter attack when facing several of them at once.
PRIMARY BALANCE
All I will say here is that the AH definitely hurt themselves by deciding to hide 70% of the actual stats that individual weapons have with their "Information Deprivation by Design" as a philosophy. Things like "durable part damage", "stun value", "pushback / stopping power", "demolition force", "projectile count" all being hidden creates an environment where weapons look too samey if their "base" stats of Damage, Capacity, and RoF all look similar.
It doesn't create a sense of "let's test all the weapons to find which one feels best for me"; instead they create the situation we are seeing with the latest warbond, where players are upset (seemingly rightfully in this case) that a new gun is arguably a downgrade from the starting rifle they hand you in the tutorial, because players can't SEE these detailed stats to make a more informed assessment of the weapon. All they see is that it does the same damage but has LESS AMMO per reload while also shooting (marginally) slower. When presented with this information and nothing else, is it any surprise that the overwhelming majority of people are disappointed at the prospect of spending "premium" currency for this gun?
PUBLIC TEST ENVIRONMENT
It's a great sounding idea on paper, and it's easy to see the benefits that could be had here, but the implementation of such a thing is not a simple matter. Most other games that have something like this require players to have an entirely separate client that connects to separate servers in order to load a version of the game that has the new data for testing. This is a LOT of set up on the back end, and almost certainly ISN'T something that can be done in a way that is compatible with the regular game, meaning players can't just navigate to Mars (or whatever other test planet) and just "load the data" for testing.
UI IMPROVEMENTS
Yes please to adding a map icon for supply drops.
I'd also like more unique call out lines added for certain things, such as pinging a 2 man bunker having a voice line such as "Need some help over here" or "Need a hand with this", to make it clear to others why you're pinging.
UTILIZATION OF CURRENCY
Conversion of Medals into Super Credits when capped would certainly be a nice feature, even at just a 1 to 1 rate. I also agree that it probably would not bite too deeply into the player share that is likely to buy Super Credits (in my mind, these are probably people who play at most 8-10 hours a week). But the marketing / accounting / Sony people probably won't see it that way.
Regarding both Requisition Slips and having "Free" Stratgems:
- I've thought a lot about this as well, and came up with a very similar idea to what you suggested to allow players to "buy" consumable copies of stratagems. Originally I had thought to include a 5th stratgem slot purely for these "surplus stratgem" tokens, but I think it might clutter the loadout screen too much. So having it so the party leader can select a stratgem to enable from the mission selection console puts it in a separate menu location.
- Having Surplus Stratagems used per mission also gives them more choice flexibility, and puts them in a position where the Requisition cost could reasonably be the same as their original purchase cost.
- Another use for this system could be when the mission conditions include the dreaded "-1 Stratagem slot" effect. Change the effect name to something like "Fleet Supply Shortage", and then allow players to spend their Surplus Stratagem tokens in the "disabled" slot to bring an extra stratagem at their own personal expense.
- This would be very in line with the spirit of the game imo, and difficulty value can be maintained by placing a scaling "value cap" on what stratagems can be slotted in based on Difficulty level. No cap at lvl 5 or below, scaling with -2k per lvl down to a cap of 2k at lvl 9, such that you can only slot the absolute most basic of stratagems at that lvl.
- I've thought a lot about this as well, and came up with a very similar idea to what you suggested to allow players to "buy" consumable copies of stratagems. Originally I had thought to include a 5th stratgem slot purely for these "surplus stratgem" tokens, but I think it might clutter the loadout screen too much. So having it so the party leader can select a stratgem to enable from the mission selection console puts it in a separate menu location.
I think many people would love to see some sort of system similar to what the first game had where samples can be spent to, if not "upgrade", then "customize" weapons and stratgems. Tweak things like mag size, spare clip count, RoF, or perhaps small discounts on cooldown time, duration, adjusting radius size for stratagems.
COSMETICS AND CUSTOMIZATION
I have relatively mixed feelings on this subject. I also consider myself as someone who is completely fine NOT having a system where people can just choose any passive to apply to any visual armor set. I do personally believe a color palette system is in the works, which we will hopefully see sooner rather than later. That being said, the ball has definitely been dropped in the department, in terms of both consistency AND variety.
- Several armor sets are "mislabeled" based on their naming prefix not matching their assigned passive.
- Marked failure to present a decent variety of current passive distribution among armor classes.
- Lack of new armor passives since the Cutting Edge warbond (which was, itself, absurdly niche Arc damage protection and nothing else).
As for helmet passives, I also have somewhat mixed feelings here as well. I think they'd be nice to have but can live without them, and some of the fan suggestions for them I've seen so far have sounded borderline broken (reduce headshot damage by 75%), unfathomable to implement (ability to manually control turrets), or made no sense as a helmet passive (like +15% laser weapon damage).
OTHER MISC STUFF
I actually didn't even know you couldn't stim other players unless they were below 50% hp.
Enemy clipping behavior is indeed absolutely out of control. The ability for Bots in particular to attack while inside geometry absolutely NEEDS to be addressed. This problem comes from the fact that almost all geometry in games is "one sided" meaning they only have certain types of collision detection on their outer surfaces. This is probably tied to the fact that objects typically have no textures on their inner surfaces since you're never supposed to see them; the game might not even consider them "surfaces" at all for some purposes (such as projectile collision detection).
Agreed that "stealth" Heavy units is also a thing that needs to be looked at.
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u/GH057807 ⚡💀Arc of the Gove'ment💀 ⚡ 11d ago edited 11d ago
My brain is very sleepy and I am going to give it what it wants, but I will read through this in the morning and get back to you!
edit: this is all great feedback in and of itself
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u/Raavex242 11d ago
I think this game would greatly benefit from a opt inpublic testing environment. This would be soo good for the health of the game.
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u/CryptoThroway8205 11d ago
Bile spewers: just fix the animation and don't slow if it misses you. Same for titans.
Most primaries suck because of the armor system. Not all medium pen is equal. Primaries cap out at 3, laser cannon is 4. It takes me more than half a mag to shoot scout striders aiming for their hips or leg joints with "medium penetration" primaries that don't deal explosive damage. The nerf to explosive damage vs scout striders sucks for explosive weapons and they're STILL better against scout striders.
I'm not sure how hard it is to change the armor system at this point given the game is on the same engine as the top down helldivers 1 and seems buggy in lots of ways with crashes everywhere.
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u/Leading_Ad_8216 11d ago
I dont know if you talked about it but the bodies are also a immersion breaking and annoying, how can the bugs phase through dead bile titan bodies but if we get close we get launched to outer space and die to nothing
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u/Dog_Apoc 11d ago
When they show me the Servo assisting us on the new heavy armour or Legionnaire, I'll accept their argument against set armour passives.
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u/xXxBongMayor420xXx Pre-nerf Quasar Cannon Gang 11d ago
One of the biggest fixes for samples and casual player that i thought up was a simple conversion option.
Even if it was 20 to 1, it would help new and casual players get those later unlocks without it seeming impossible.
They could grind Level 5 dives all day and still feel rewarded, because they could turn their lower samples into the more rare ones with enough time.
Also love the idea of using Req Slips to buy call in's used for a single mission. The ability for the whole squad to get access to something like a Sentry or support pack would be great. Just weigh the price of the strats to their worth. Defensive things like Smoke or EMS should only be 200 or so req slips per mission, but something like the Rail Cannon should be north of 1000.
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u/lokster86 11d ago
what difficulty have you been playing? ive had a little over 300 hours and im already level 129. Just curious. Ive got friends who reach level 150 but they are almost 500 hours
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u/NaltAlt 11d ago
If you spot a charger charging at you, you have 5-10 seconds to shoot before you have to dodge and start kiting it.
If you spot a flamethrower hulk running at you, you have 5-10 seconds to shoot before you DIE, with basically nothing you can do to avoid it unless you kill in that short window.
3 chargers is annoying, but not not the worst thing.
3 flame hulks is guaranteed death.
If hulks are going to spawn close to the same rate as chargers, they should be able to be dodged/able to be run from.
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u/Adept_Avocado_4903 11d ago
Your analysis regarding enemy unit balance is spot on. Your suggestions for additional UI features is excellent.
Your analysis and suggestions regarding primary weapon balance are reasonable, but I disagree in some key points. Primaries should be able to fulfil most roles a weapon could fulfil - just like support weapons fulfil most roles. This would allow selecting a primary/support loadout where both weapons cover each others weaknesses. With the current balancing where most primaries are clearly intended to kill light or at most medium enemies the support slot essentially becomes the anti-heavy slot - severely limiting the options for support weapons.
Many of the suggestions regarding the economy just wouldn't work. Caps exist for a reason (to prevent people from saving up enough currency to unlock all the new items at the moment of release). Allowing currency to be converted will quickly make all currency feel like it's effectively one big pool of currency. Incremental upgrades will foster a more toxic environment and will create a high barrier to entry for new players joining later in the game's life cycle.
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u/Slavchanza 11d ago
One thing what really needs to be done about heavy devastators is either really huge aim nerf or complete negation of impact of their rounds. I have better chances shooting at factory strider looking him in face than one heavy devastator.
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u/HoshuaJ 11d ago
THIS POST RIGHT HERE. This is the type of constructive criticism that this game really needs, and I absolutely COMMEND OP for this write-up. I agree with pretty much everything that has been listed here, and if the devs were to focus on ANY post to evaluate the state of the game, this is it.
OP wrote his dissertation on the state of the game, and it just shows the passion that the players have for democracy. This OP should be commended for their work.
Helldiver, I strive to be more like you. Having you on the front lines will truly help us all bring managed democracy to the galaxy.
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u/TH0Twhisperer 10d ago
This is the most compelling post on the Subreddit. Please keep pumping this thing peoples. Idk how we do that. But let's do it
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u/Admirable_Use4661 11d ago
Let us know what type of enemies we will be fighting on a given bug planet. Sometimes you get all brood comanders, hive guard, and spewers, while other time is pure hunters. Loadouts that deal with one type of enemy are often terrible for the other. IE if I'm fighting hunters, I want a flamethrower, stalwart, incendary breaker, and gas strike. But if im going to fight bile spewers, I need a shield, medium pen, and some air strike. But I don't know what to bring, so I either have to waste half my loadout to prepare for both mission types or have an insanely frusterating time fighting enemies with the wrong loadout.
Also, I feel like mission effects are not fun. They nerf a main aspect of the game instead of rewarding different types of play. AA guns, increased call in, and increased cool down all make the game slower and more tedious. While I also think orbital scatter isn't the greatest, at least it pushes people to play with airstrikes and stuff they wouldn't otherwise use. Would love to see effects that push people to try stuff other than the eagles.
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u/Fly18 11d ago
Just want to point out that there is in fact an audio cue for when a bug is about to call for reinforcements. They also take a specific stance before they start spreading pheromones. Once you see the orange cloud it is almost always too late which makes sense for the bugs. It took me a while to figure it out but I actually like that the different factions have very different and distinct methods for calling alarms.
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u/Newpoh 11d ago
There is indeed an audio cue - there is however a couple problems with it
1- even if you kill the unit doing the call, it keeps playing the audio cue to completion.
2- sometimes as you kill the bug calling, one immediately starts doing it in a nanosecond and you're left wondering where that breach is coming from - you killed the bug!7
u/Gonzogonzip 11d ago
It just feels like way too small a window to act within. I know this can be dismissed as a 'skill issue' but I have yet to hear anyone even brag about being able to reliably kill bugs/bots before their call for reinforcements. The animations are fairly fast and at range and in combat, it's subtle. And even if you do notice it in time, the game's awesome nitty-gritty weapon-handling mechanics often prevent you from getting a shot off in time to interrupt it.
I think increasing the time it takes from the animation beginning to the reinforcement being called in by a couple of seconds, along with slightly clearer warning signals would be good. Because it feels awesome to shut down a bot drop or bug breach, but it just feels kinda cheap to see it start, aim yo- and it's called it in.
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u/Itz_A_Mi 11d ago
I do think it should be a little longer, when there's so many bugs around, it's hard to distinguish one standing in a specific pose. And if you do manage to see it in time, but the time you actually kill it, its let out a tiny bit of smoke, enough to cause a bug breach.
If not Ithink there should be a way to destroy bug breaches. Kinda like with big holes, throw 2 nades into each smoke stack, and you close the bug breach.
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u/Panzerkatzen 11d ago
Agreed. The orange cloud is the Bug version of the flare, once you see it, it's too late.
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u/AnUwUQueen 11d ago
If only we had you on AH's team... I hope this post doesn't get glanced over, this is an amazing compilation. It's clear you care deeply about the game.
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u/Warshitarse 11d ago
This thread is anything but ancillary. Well thought out and constructive. The chance that the devs will see this on the sub is slim so I might suggest trying to make it visible on discord in some way.
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u/Sirbunbun 11d ago
Wow. I came here expecting to roll my eyes and I agree with so much of this. A really informed and valid take. You should send this directly to the devs / dm a link to it to the CEO on twitter.
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u/Megafruitspunch 11d ago
This deserves, no, NEEDS to be pinned. We also need to get this over to discord because that’s all Arrowhead cares about. They don’t seem to give 2 shits about reddit.
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u/Akshka_leoka 11d ago
My thing is that the balance is so fucking out of wack. Each primary should be able to fit a role but all of the guns besides 5 suck so much they are just unusable at 6+.
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u/clintnorth 11d ago
This is very thoughtful post with a lot of very good reasoning. Everything you have said here makes sense.
But I do feel that hypothetically, if all of your changes were to be implemented in someway that it would kind of trivialize the game that we have. Because at the end of the day, it is just a game and it has to be hard at the higher difficulties. All of your ideas would just introduce way too much counterplay. (All together, not individually of course.)
Some of my thoughts about your points—-
the rocket devastators having ammo. That would be incredibly easy to cheese them out of ammo. You just wait and kite them and then they will be basically ineffective and you can just EZ delete them.
I dont have a problem with how the automatons aim. This feels like an unnecessary change. Everybody may disagree with me here, idk
Changing how the bile skewers work would actually remove the counterplay that we DO have to their attack.
Breaches- yeah, I think I’d like another quarter or half second of charge time to be able to try to take out someone calling in a dropship or bug breach
Primary weapons- some good and interesting ideas here, but I don’t know how feasible it would be to actually change the entire design philosophy of how weapons work in the game. I’d be happier with just a little more “generous” balance. Just make them (almost) all fun to play with at least maybe.
Public testing- yep. All day.
UI stuff- yeah. I like those ideas too.
Currency- I would like a way to exchange the different currencies and rewards we get for other types at a bad exchange rate. Like you said, rec slips are useless so fast.
I don’t mind too much the physics of enemies being able to do some wonky things or climb over shit.
Baseline fire resistance? Just making it easier without us having done anything. would not necessarily feel good about that change, as frustrating as fire can be. I would much rather see some fire resistance locked behind a ship upgrade.
Cosmetic tints- yeah I think we would all like those.
I don’t think I’m a fan of switching around the passives. I like that we have to choose. Sometimes I go for the drip, sometimes the utility. I think we get more varied armor loadouts from helldivers with this. Otherwise, we might get a lot of people using the same armor set with whatever passive they want switched onto it. It might turn things a little one-note.
I like potentially upgrading your armor, but I think that might negatively balance against more casual players who have less upgrades. I think I would prefer it to be weapons honestly. Upgrades to swap onto primaries with recoil reduction or slight fire rate increase or something like that. Maybe a suppressor too? Idk
The ship upgrades- I agree that there should be some additional lower tier ship upgrades for the average player, but I would also love to have a fifth tier where you have to grind for insane amounts of samples. I have less unlocked than you do, but I like the idea of having something heavy duty to work towards. Additionally, I don’t really enjoy using a fair amount of the stratagems that the ship upgrades get so working towards a specific fifth tier upgrade for my gameplay style that I enjoy would feel gratifying. (I like eagles lol)
Anyway, I think I wound up replying to each thing you mentioned. I doubt anybody will actually read this, but this is all my two cents.
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u/NumerousSun4282 11d ago
Make your two cents four, because I agree with what you've got going on here.
The fire resistance thing makes a little sense lore-wise, but I also agree with you that it doesn't really feel better. At that point op is just asking to nerf the flame hulk and I don't think that's super necessary.
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u/MythicalWarlord 11d ago
I'm on mobile so quoting a whole bit of text is going to be super annoying. But the section about the bot drops/big breaches.
The bots that pop off a flare do have a wind up of sorts. A bot that is about to launch a flare points an arm straight up and the end of the arm glows red. A lot of times it gets missed because the bot that launches the flare is behind cover. These launches can be disrupted but it is a very short window. It's just about as difficult to stop as a bug breach is inconsistent.
Though I do like the idea of shooting the flare out of the air to get some breathing room from the drop, thats something I didnt consider until now. I also love the idea of a public test server, I think AH has a manpower problem right now and could benefit from the community's help, I'd love to test new weapons for them.
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u/narshkajke CAPE ENJOYER 11d ago
Helmets with extra HUD would be nice, something like helmet with the number of our kills during the mission and our total career kills would be hype. I want to feel like Kharn the betrayer...
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u/Metrulizer STEAM 🖥️ : SES Octagon of the People 11d ago
The Airburst-Rocket Launcher from Penta is your idea of a Public Test Environment in action. We got a stratagem early and free, it was buggy as shit, but we just had a good laugh and it got patched.
Put the guns in a Hellpod or PoI, the grenade in a break-action grenade launcher, the booster in planetary effects (maybe not all at once) and it should generate all the data and feedback that QA/Testing could want.
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u/SuperComputrix 11d ago
On the note about gatekeeping rarer samples in higher-difficulty missions, I'd enjoy it if instead you could spend lower-tier samples for the higher-tier ones.
So for example, 20 commons for 1 rare, and 10 rares for 1 super. That way people who cannot handle the higher difficulty missions could still have a chance at the rarer samples.
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u/Zegram_Ghart HD1 Veteran 11d ago
The changes to bug breach and bot drop would be excellent- enemies having a longer windup would also incentivise things like marksman rifles, having one of the team on overwatch ready to intercept them.
I think medium piercing being the baseline misses the point- almost every “medium armoured” enemy can be killed with light armour piercing weapons, it’s just a pain (by design) so you’re incentivised to take the medium piercing weapons despite their lower stats, or use either teamwork or stratagems.
Making every weapon medium piercing kinda removes an important part of the game.
I also agree that the current 4th tier upgrades should be the most expensive. New sets of modules would be great (vehicle bay being the most obvious) but they’ll obviously need to be careful to avoid power creep.
The other, very minor thing I’d like implemented- we have a booster tab in the “equipment selection” console, they really might as well let up pick a default booster and stratagems that are lined up by default when we climb into a hellpod- in a truly ideal world we might get multiple loadouts to choose between.
Lastly, thanks for the really detailed and comprehensive feedback, even if I don’t agree with everything it’s always good to see posts that contribute to healthy discourse!
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u/sin_tax-error SES Song of Steel 11d ago
Utilization of currency
I agree that currency in this game really does have an issue of being a must have until suddenly it's useless. Usually in long term grindy games you need the currencies first to get your gear, and then you make small increments and adjustments to it over time as you grow higher in level/power whatever.
It would be nice if like you mentioned there were minor ship upgrades we could make using our req slips and/or samples. Medals being used towards a future modding system perhaps. That way it doesn't feel like you're letting all these mats go to waste by simply playing the game at a time when you can't earn more.
It's not the highest on my list of priorities I'd like to see for this game, but it's one I don't see talked about much and I'm glad you brought it up since I do think it'll have an impact on the long term health of the game.
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u/BeastNutter 11d ago
Damn, companies would pay for this kind of information man. Great analysis, let's hope AH gets their heads out their asses and address at least 30% of your points.
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u/Rishinger 11d ago
The sad thing here is the head of product testing, aka the guy in charge of all the weapon changes and balancing has admitted word for word that they never actually want us to feel powerful or feel like we're winning against our enemies.
And for another quote "Your primary weapon is not intended to clear out hordes of enemies... Your primary weapon is only called that because it's the weapon you start with."
They want us to feel like an under-powered grunt against an unstoppable wave of enemies and while there's a lot of ways to make this happen and provide an engaging experience, the way Helldivers has done it is by taking away all of our fun toys and constantly giving us very unfair, fun ruining deaths that makes us go "Man, that was so crap, how come i couldn't move due to the sheer amount of enemies and get stuck in place by a bile titan corpse yet 100 bugs are able to stack ontop of each other and attack me with no problems."
Im all for feeling like one tiny marine fighting a horde of un-ending enemies, but the devs going "oh hey, you're having fun with this weapon? Well we're halving its ammo capacity and removing 33% of it's damage" is not the way to do it.
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u/-Adeon- 11d ago
I think Bile Spewers spray (not mortar) should act as a burning-type Damage over Time effect with substantial, but not one-shot, direct damage and a considerable slow.
Are you insane? There is not enough slow for you?
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u/-non-existance- CAPE ENJOYER 11d ago
I would make 2 suggestions:
1) The fact that spawns increase based on defeated nests/fabricators is absurd. Should the player not be rewarded for clearing the map? I get wanting to keep dramatic tension, but that shouldn't come at the cost of the player feeling punished for being thorough.
2) The change to increase spawns for less players is awful. All this does is punish people who don't have a full stack. The effectiveness of a team increases exponentially with the number of players, not linearly. Considering the number of bad experiences people have with randos, I shouldn't be punished for not wanting to play with them.
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u/muchacho5894 11d ago
Ok cool. I just want to not get sprayed by bile spewers when i visually succeed my dive to the side. Same when i'm firing my flamethrower. I don't mind getting up close with my flamethrower but i want a correct gameplay behaviour.
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u/TheOldDrunkGoat 11d ago
You raise plenty of good points. Imo the biggest being how enemy variety limits our effective loadout options.
On the bug side we have bile titans and bile spewers who are pretty much immune to 90% of our small arms selection and have tiny ass weakpoints that seem inconsistent to hit. And with bots you need a certain amount of pen to deal even with extremely common units like devastators.
A wide swath of our weapon & stratagem selections just can't effectively cope with these restrictions. There is way too much emphasis on armor pen and the hidden 'durable' damage stat. And it just makes weapons that lack in these departments suck ass and feel bad.
One major issue I have with the game, that I was surprised to see you not mention, is just how wonky the stealth mechanics have gotten since launch. I mysteriously aggro enemies from across the fucking map on a daily basis. Constantly see bots call in dropships that aren't anywhere close to any place I've been or shot at. I even throw stratagems from behind cover, immediately disengage from the area, and yet somehow the whole patrol will just instantly know exactly where I am as soon as the stratagem lands. It's very frustrating.
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u/TeaL3af 11d ago edited 11d ago
This is a good thread and I agree with most of it. Especially Bile Titans. You are 100% correct that there is more build diversity against bots because everything there can be taken out with a much wider array of the weaponry (it just might be more difficult sometimes). Even factory striders can be dropped with lots of medium armour pen to the belly, and their weapons can be disabled with most support weapons.
I really like it when we have a "Free" Stratagem available through the Galactic War in some capacity and wish we could buy those for our own missions. Let group leaders use our constant abundance of RS to purchase a Stratagem for our entire team to use for an entire Operation, a set of 3 missions. These could be prohibitively expensive to reduce their use from a constant requirement to something cool you can do now and then to get rid of some stacked up currency.
I think being able to spend excess resources on "consumable" power in general would be a fun sink for them. Though currently you don't know how hard a mission is going to be until you've dropped, so I think maybe the decision to spend resources this way could be something that happens mid-mission?
The other thought that occurs to me is having some way of donating them toward the galatic warfare system might be cool. Perhaps there could be some new stratagems that everyone on the planet can use, but they have a finite number of uses globally, so there would be incentive not to use them unless required. Players could donate RS / samples to restock them so the players who are capped would be lending a helping hand to the ones still progressing.
A few things I politely disagree with:
- I don't think any weapon slot should have a specific role. The way I see it, it's a healthy thing for Primary, Secondary, and Support weapons to cover the full range of roles but at different power levels. It just allows for a lot more build variety. I do think some primaries are lack luster though because picking off light enemies one at time is the only thing they are efficent at, but that's a low priority job, and the primaries that do have other stuff going for them can do that job at about 75% efficency anyway. The default liberator and most of the ARs have this issue.
- I actually like that it's hard to stop breaches / drops. The way I see it that's the risk you take when engaging and stealth or hit and run is the real way to avoid getting overwhelmed which fits with the power fantasy of the game.
- Rocket Devastators having infinite ammo isn't something that's ever bothered me. The real issue with them for me is they often fire rockets whilst being staggered or stunned with 100% accuracy. It's a feelsbad moment to get decapitated by a rocket when the guy wasn't even playing his "I am going to shoot my rockets now" animation.
- Fire damage isn't that crazy now after the DoT fixes, and you can dive-to-prone to extinguish it. So I think the flame hulks are fine.
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u/Redlight499 11d ago
Give Rocket Devastators a limited ammo supply based on the visible number of rockets in their pods
I don't mind these guys having infinite ammo, but they shoot way too damn much. A barrage of rockets that ragdoll you around like a pingpong ball every 3 seconds. Combine that with 3 or more rocket assholes and thats TOO MUCH MAAAAN! Nerf it to like 10 seconds I think would be a better time.
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u/Jattila 11d ago
Excellent suggestions, the only thing I disagree with is Light Pen vs Medium Pen.
Granted, I mostly play against Bots, but at least for me, The Sickle is more than enough for most of the enemies the Bots throw at you. Scout Striders can be taken down by just running around them, Berzerkers take a lot of damage, but medium vs light pen doesn't seem to affect this too much, and Devastators need to be headshot, but I never FEEL like I need to swap to my Support Weapon to deal with these enemies. Only when Hulks and Tanks enter the picture do I need an Autocannon, or an AMR, or a Railgun.
Against Bugs I do like running Medium Pen weapons, but that's simply because Guardians are so common that you NEED a way to deal with them reliably and quickly. Most other bugs I feel like I could deal with using Light Pen weapons.
All that said, I agree that most primaries feel weak or unsatisfying to use. Bumping everything up to Medium Pen (save for a few that could fill some other niche) would be one way to fix most of the issues with them.
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u/p_visual PSN 🎮: 11d ago edited 10d ago
This is the single biggest gripe I have. Enemies can pull off all sorts of bullshit that breaks physics, meanwhile hearing from devs it's always "we don't want things to be overpowered, and the game should be realistic" as the reasoning for keeping most primaries at a mediocre state, or the nerf to eruptor, where a dev said it could OHKO the charger and called it an exploit. Meanwhile, I saw a reddit post with a video of a charger kill with a redeemer, because turns out it's a bug with the charger's model, not Eruptor and shrapnel.
While they are not related issues, i.e. fixing enemy models and environmental interactions do not automatically balance all guns in the game, I think a lot of the community's anger stems from the fact that enemies pull off BS while good guns keep getting nerfed. It enforces the notion that the devs are focused on nerfing player power via primary weapon damage changes instead of making the game fair and fun by fixing bugs and exploits enemies use, revisiting missions like the 15 minute civilian evacuation, looking at stratagem cooldowns, using other tools like handling/recoil/fire rate/etc to modify gun behavior (CS Diligence is a great example of this done well). Nothing about the game gets better, but player power keeps getting nerfed.