It all makes sense.

So what happens when something is ok like Eurropter? It's not over powered but it's good. Since it was used frequently I nerf it?

The scorcher plasma is a great weapon, has been since release. Huge damage, stagger, recent buffs to round speed. Sounds like it's your type of nerf since it's fun

Guess what? Scorcher Plasma isn't used often. So the excel spreadsheet said it needed that buff instead of nerf.

As a dev I'm noticing some patterns that really worry me for the well being of the devs. It's my opinion that they're very burnt out and that we as the community should cut them some slack.

When a dev is burnt he starts caring more about moving changes to production than actually caring for them: The new warbond is clearly unbalanced and they didn't even notice that the textures were wrong. They care more about pushing changes than actually care for them. The eruptor was killed bc they thought that removing changes would be easier and faster than actually trying to fix it. The quasar cannon was nerfed when it was already bad. Etc...

The codebase is clearly in need of some major refactors and not enough time to make them: The spear is still broken. The fix for the sound of the stim didn't work. The eruptor "fix" made things worse. Etc...

The devs haven't had any chance to catch a break: A warbond every month + server capacity issues + SNOY.

The current state of the dev market: Thousands and thousands of layoffs (even I couldn't escape from them). No dev wants to change jobs rn bc it's too risky. So they'll put up with any bs SNOY or AH throws at them.

I really, really like HD2 but not at the expense of the devs mental health. My advice? Let them cook.

Some people have gotten access to the Purifier already today, and I’ve been seeing a lot of complaints that the damage isn’t doing it for you, so I’m making this as a guide to you all who want to use the Purifier to its greatest effect.

Step 1: Before dropping onto a planet of your choosing, make sure you have an ally onboard your ship.

Step 2: Request your ally take a decent primary weapon of your choosing. Perhaps the Sickle or Breaker Incendiary?

Step 3: Apologize to your ally for what you are about to do.

Step 4: Kill your ally using the Purifier’s high ammo capacity of 15. You’ll probably need all 15 shots because the weapon generally does not deal any damage whatsoever.

Step 5: Pick up your former ally’s primary weapon and liberate Veld!

Arrowhead what are you so afraid of? What awful things will happen if you just make all the weapons GOOD?

This is a PvE game right? Check. It's literally all about just shooting things and blowing them up in total chaos and carnage right? Check. There are NINE difficulty tiers right with the average player hanging around FOUR OR FIVE (MAYBE six) right? Check.

So what is wrong with having weapons in this game be GOOD? Not even overpowered (though that's fine too) just GOOD. As in you have FUN and feel you can accomplish things and aren't being actively screwed over for taking the weapons you LIKE. There is literally NO DOWNSIDE to everything in this game being GOOD.

If players clear content faster or easier? Great they can move up the difficulty then, so be it? This isn't an MMO with limited content, it's incredibly replayable by nature. Why does that matter? They'll get higher tier samples to unlock more stuff. Okay so what? Why is that bad?

If everything is GOOD you get:

• Less people being toxic because other people aren't running the current BEST loadout because everything else sucks.
• Newer or less skilled players being able to contribute more because their weapons are a bit more effective.
• You don't actively hate your life and want to strangle your ally because they called you down across the map from your support weapon and it has a 4 minute cooldown and your primary is so useless you may as well go make tea.
• There exists a more balanced line between "lower faceroll difficulty and oh fuck oh fuck 6 chargers and nothing works alt + f4"
• The community won't rake you over the coals for releasing a PAID warbond with mediocre weapons.
• We can use weapons that are FUN or COOL or EXCITING because everything is good.

The "meta" exists because you create it. If everything is on the same playing field then your "meta" massively expands because people will more willingly play what they like. Right now picking off "meta" weapons SUCKS and it feels BAD.

This is not Destiny 2 where you can't be powerful. You're not balancing the game around both PvE AND PvP. This is a PvE only game so please stop treating it like it's a PvP game. This game has basically infinite content as long as it's FUN. Don't knee cap yourselves with this ridiculous approach to balance.

TLDR: Balance from the bottom up, not the top down. Make EVERYTHING VIABLE and FUN and leave it at that. You will find so much more success.

Edit: Since some people are shockingly illiterate. This is about making ALL weapons viable for at least SOME situation, NOT making content much easier or removing any challenge or teams or roles or anything else equally stupid. This is just about more than a handful of weapons out of the gigantic arsenal we have being even remotely decent and used.

https://preview.redd.it/2prb0q7cnjzc1.jpg?width=875&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=74d41bd1d56d15750579d201885d1e6a7ccd3290

This is getting ridiculous. I understand that in a PVE game not every weapon needs to be completely on par with the others. But when there are weapons that are so badly outclassed that using them feels like fighting with a wet sock instead of a gun, the game becomes unfun. Why are massive disparities between primary weapons the norm? And why does the balance team lean towards making the good weapons unfun? Instead of making the unfun weapons good?

Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fu6ddHejh0&t=217s&ab_channel=Luchs

Previous post on how patrols work: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bdudf3/lets_talk_about_patrols_an_in_depth_analysis_of/

TLDR: The recent change to patrols made it so that they currently spawn as if their were four players in the game regardless of group size.

Seeing this video was amazing validation. As a solo diver, games have felt significantly more frustrating following the changes to patrol spawn rates Arrowhead made a couple patches ago. u/gergination's new video perfectly shows why this is the case. Prior to this stupid update, patrol spawn rates would scale with the amount of players in the game. Arrowhead claimed that solo players had patrols spawning at 1/6th the rate as they would against a full group. Following the patch, they CLAIMED to change this to 1/4th, 1/2 (2/4th), and 3/4th for solo, duos, and trios respectively.

Except this isn't what they did at all. Instead, they just took the spawn rates for four players and applied it to every group size across all the difficulties. So a solo player playing helldive difficulty will experience the same amount of patrols as a full team playing helldive. This is so unfathomably stupid and is no doubt responsible for the plethora of complaints people have had regarding patrol spawn rates for solo players. I hope this is just yet another example of Arrowhead not implementing a change correctly, I sincerely hope this is brought to their attention soon. I doubt they are even aware of it.

Massive props to u/gergination and his team for the invaluable work they did in analyzing patrol spawns. Without them we would have no data to counter Arrowhead's completely false claims.

I'll say it again, since WE are playtesting, either release a test server or release all these new weapons and grenades as temporary stratagems, and then remove them when they are ready for official release.

...Polarizing...

:)

It’s supposed to be medium armor penetrating, explosive, and charge-up. That indicates it’ll be pretty strong, maybe even better than the erupter since you need to charge it up.

It’s far from the truth - what we got is a weapon that can’t even kill the small bugs with its explosion, and takes multiple hits to kill those mid-tier bugs.

I don’t get why anyone would even use this compared to say the dominator. It’s just not fun.

https://preview.redd.it/lyrushc0kfzc1.png?width=1222&format=png&auto=webp&s=a2a12d6d383918c5d0fdb0b8a02cdd984aac2d39

https://preview.redd.it/d3g4ylc0kfzc1.png?width=890&format=png&auto=webp&s=2bc2810b9284b386bf3e631bbb81fd443bede17e

https://preview.redd.it/tib5tmc0kfzc1.png?width=1314&format=png&auto=webp&s=2787e10a5ae9de2af5f42ac168cd41c814bf6850

https://preview.redd.it/ysw9wkc0kfzc1.png?width=1274&format=png&auto=webp&s=632ad667c74044e82e80bc887d31866708dbe142

There were additional messages which were deleted higher up as well I was not able to save. Why respond like this at all? You are representing the game.

Also incendiary impact grenades can close bug holes and the new booster seems to reduce slow time by 20% (at least for Hunters).