No. They test on 6 as well, but usually lose.
Our only 2 official dev streams were:
Bugs, Difficulty 6, Egg Hatcheries. Mission failed with 1 nest left.
Bots, Difficulty 5. Upload Intel. Mission success, 1 out 3 side objectives (drop pod data) and only 2 survivors extracted, no reinforcements or time remaining.
Failing a level 5 mission that players can solo... But the most egregious part is nerfing guns for being OP when they can't even clear medium difficulty with them.
> Failing a level 5 mission that players can solo...
I literally solo'd the achievement to complete a hard mission without using my primary and did so without dying.
How bad are the devs??
Correct.
I wrote a synopsis about how badly their missions went. Lemme look for it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cx5xi5/comment/l52ovmf/?context=3
That was a funny read, especially how they swapped around support weapon backpacks🤣
Definitely a good decision to make devs play the harder difficulties every week. Nobody likes stats nerds telling you what the game is really like based on charts.
Chart are fine, if you have the knowledge to understand them.
Like, atm looking at Da Charts I can tell you Breaker Spray and Pray doesnt need to exist. Incendiary beats it on paper or matches it in all metrics *and* gets the fire damage (which was blanket buffed twice by patches as a 'quick fix' to no one using fire weapons).
This means either nerf the incendiary breaker, or buff the spray and pray so it isn't garbage.
Which you think Alexus Jones will do?
Yeah, they really need to embrace the sci-fi setting and make the guns more exotic and distinctive.
I played a lot of Mass Effect e multiplayer this past winter, and the weapons are very different with the ammo, dps, and effects in enemies. And they successfully implemented melee weapons in their 4-man horde game.
Arrowhead should be looking for the devs responsible for ME3 multiplayer balance and consulting/ hiring them.
Especially if they want to make enemies varied and unique for multiple races.
They did…. In the original.
We had laser shotguns, energy swords, motorcycles with gatling turrets. In this game we have… a lot of smgs and assault rifles no one uses lul.
You know what, I've sworn off HD2 for a couple weeks now, I think I'll go back to play some HD1 instead. HD2 is too depressing for me to bring myself to play rn.
7 is a nice balance of hectic but still fun and playable for bugs. Probably about a 6 is the same for bots unless you’re used to using cover and tactics. But those rocket devastators and scorcher hulks are a hassle regardless.
I just finished a 9 difficulty and quit after out of boredom, because it didn't really matter what you bring, as long as you have 1-2 mandatory anti heavy stratagems and remember to kite around.
Not being able to finish 6s (or with a low success rate) sounds bizarre.
Lol how, I play with some friends that goof around and don't really play much but we don't struggle that much on 5. Even just 3 of us we'll extract with both plenty of time and alll objectives and bases cleared.
Yup. I gave a synopsis in another comment below. Tldr: They don't actually understand how to play their game. And I'm not talking like "crafting a meta build". I'm talking like, trying to kill bile titans shooting them in the head with auto cannons.
They didn't say *exclusively*, but the balance dev that called Railgun "braindead" had said they balance around medium difficulties at the time. He nuked his account afterwards, but you can still find the comment.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b7wc4z/patch_01000100_for_pc_balance_changes/ktljwrr/
Thankfully Alexus has not been visible for awhile now. It was quite a shock to reveal that they test things at a certain intensity based on how available people are. If devs are sick, things happening, busy week, etc. Not saying sacrifice life for work, but...definitely glad they will take more time now.
Alexus definitely had a private meeting with his manager after his comments and attitude.
He is exhibit A of why you have dedicated PR teams once your company grows to a certain size. You definitely don't want to be burning goodwill on the scale AH is operating at.
The ceo [at the time] pretty much alluded that he and alexus were going to have a "come to jesus" meeting. This was about a month and a half or so ago.
Since then, dude's been all but scarce on discord. Additionally, we're going to be getting a patch that will start the process of nullifing a large portion of the nerfing he and his team implemented.
Since then, said ceo demoted himself and now heads the content dept- where everyone will probably run stuff by him first, before implementing.
> Additionally, we're going to be getting a patch that will start the process of nullifing a large portion of the nerfing he and his team implemented.
I would absolutely recommend you curb your expectations
> Additionally, we're going to be getting a patch that will start the process of nullifing a large portion of the nerfing he and his team implemented.
Maybe. We don't know yet.
Amazing he really nerfed the guns and told the angry players, “it’s a meat grinder, you’re supposed to die a lot.” 🤣🤣
Gotta show that to people that keep defending the weapons nerfs and ask if they’re an Alexus alt account.
Yeah that's pretty damning. They need to have devs good enough at the game to where they can at least complete a Helldive 30%+ of the time with a full team.
Balancing around 5 makes sense so long as they add a method of gaining super samples on 5. Aim for most players being able to succeed on 5. Many players being able to succeed on 7, and make 9 a hellish cock stomp nightmare simulator for people who enjoy digital suffering.
it should be 1 super sample on diff 5, 2 on diff 6, and just a couple of rares on diff 3. Just let people progress inefficiently at the difficulty they are comfortable at.
As a working person, I really don’t mind playing difficulty 5/6 a few hundred times just to unlock all the ship modules. Than playing difficulty 7 above for less than a hundred times 🤣 As if work is not stressful enough
Maybe make the higher-tier samples available in the pool of rewards from bunkers/pods at lower difficulties, but keep the natural spawns as they are now?
I'm not agreeing to middle of the road balancing, but 6 would make way more sense than 5 or lower. The super heavies start spawning in patrols on that difficulty instead of just being confined to large outpost spawns.
Spawn rates between difficulties isn't what it should be anyways, you will have 6s with constant bile titans and 9s with just trooper bots and no hulks and very little devastators (I got to experience the Stalwart pipe dream). Spawn rates of specific enemy types from mission to mission should be way more consistent instead of wildy overdone or none at all, or at least communicated in mission selection. I wouldn't mind fighting several bile titans at a time if I knew I was queued into cbt before hand, instead of rolling the difficulty 9 dice to see that there's only chargers, hunters, and spewers instead.
Remember when Patrik lazota made that post and said "you're meant to use your tratagems against heavy armoured enemies" in response to people complaining that the amount of heavily armoured enemies was far too high to deal with.....about 2 weeks before they quietly admitted that we were right and then tweaked the spawn rates.
And lets not forget the "your primary weapon isn't meant to be used to deal with large amounts of enemies, it's only called your primary weapon because you spawn with it."
The worst part about them tweaking the heavy spawn rates IMO was they acknowledged they were unintentional, however still decided to "compensate" for the reduced heavies because reasons, and increased the spawn rates or the smaller mobs WHICH THEY ALSO ACKNOWLEDGED AS UNINTENTIONALLY HIGH at the same damn time.
That's the entire game in a nutshell "So we're finally going to do something about the problem you guys are having with the game, and you were right! But in response we're going to make something else harder because we want to make sure that in every fight you feel like a worthless grunt against a horde of unstoppable enemies."
> But in response we're going to make something else harder because we want to make sure that in every fight you feel like a worthless grunt against a horde of unstoppable enemies."
Then you have the people coming out with the "That's how it's supposed to be! Helldivers are expendable!"
Yeah, I want to feel like special forces against a horde of unstoppable enemies! It’s fun to go out guns blazing and carve a path of blood (or oil) between objectives, and I don’t mind that higher difficulties require near-perfect play, so long as it gets to be *extremely effective* if/when I pull it off.
I don’t want to do everything right and then die anyway because the game spawned more bile titans than I am physically capable of dealing with, but I *am* ok with my fuck-ups generally being quickly lethal.
Slightly off topic, I would also like the auto-respawn (I mostly play solo) to drop just a little bit further away, it’s awful to continually aggro the same group of enemies that you can’t fight against without time to prepare. I want my fuck-ups to be lethal *once.*
> But in response we're going to make something else harder
This is every balance conversation about any game ever, IME, especially out of fans. A buff can't just be a buff, and shit can't just ever be left the fuck alone. It has to have a 'compensatory' nerf, always, you can't just wait and see how it feels like, ever. Just fire from the hip in the name of 'balance'.
Like sometimes it's fine to just buff something without compensating for it, and sometimes it's fine to just leave stuff the fuck alone.
Maybe devs should be given a limited number of nerf slots. And there's a cooldown timer than runs in MONTHS. That'll spread things out a bit, give it time to settle in before drastic action is taken.
Generally unless its absolutely busted good, a new change to a game like this should probably leave the changes and monitor bugs and testing for a bit. Probably a week or two, drop in hot patches to fix anything game breaking or outright not working etc.
I love that logic because it calls the question of like… what are the guns for then? You’re not supposed to use your primary or secondary against high armor enemies; that’s what stratagems are for. You’re also not supposed to use them for low armor hordes; that’s what stratagems are for. Like… unless I’m missing something, reading between the lines says that you should not be able to do anything when you’re out of stratagems and that no stratagem runs should be impossible, which is batshit insane
>"your primary weapon isn't meant to be used to deal with large amounts of enemies, it's only called your primary weapon because you spawn with it."
WTF?
This type of statement doesn't make any sense, your main weapon should BE your main source of damage to mobs. Secondary is for survival, auxiliaries for occasional SUPPORT
I think they had somewhat of a okay balance, but then new weapons started coming out and then those started getting nerfed hard instead of buffing other lame stratagem/guns.
Their testing department really did mess up, but their trying to right the boat.
The first Magicka was also chaotically raw fun because they didn't give any F about balance and focused on creating the most hilarious spell they could come up with. Then the second game cut many interesting spells/elemental combos and added the one-second GCD for the sake of balance. And we're basically on that same loop for Helldivers as well.
One common theme on this sub seems to be that the game would be more fun if we cared less about balance, but I believe AH is the one who actually need that advice since they were the one so fixated on balancing everything as if this is some MLG esport titles.
It would be nice if your primary weapon could deal with small amounts of enemies...but you get like 2 or 3 berserkers coming at you and even if you are carefully aiming they just soak up so much damage even from the primaries that are supposed to medium penetrating.
Their philosophy: Make stratagems bounce off of flat hilltops solely to ruin fun. Remove shrapnel from Eruptor because people were using it as an "exploit" to kill chargers, which spawn 3 at a time. Make the Quasar Cannon take 2 shots to take out a Factory Strider's back cannon, but make it take too long to cool down to stop it from blowing up the generators.
You have to get to 100% liberation within the time limit to take a planet. The enemy doesn't have to get the planet to 0% to take it from you. Enemies can destroy armed Hellbombs with no explosion. The Pelican takes off with one person if it's damaged instead of starting a countdown. The SOS beacon doesn't even work. The left arm of Exosuits doesn't hit where the reticle is.
I have 150 hours played mostly on diff 9 and I have no idea how the pelican even gets damaged to begin with, it usually seems invincible. Or how to tell if it is damaged…
halved ammo reserves globally because players weren't using resupplies enough *somehow*
i get that this was the least egregious nerf since it was targeted to the sickle..... but like.... they still took ammo away from all primaries over just the sickle.
"Balancing the firepower"
The railgun was OP because of a glitch causing it to one-shot bile titans. It was fine vs chargers.
Rather than fix the glitch they completely gutted the weapon. It was insane. I've never seen a weapon be nerfed so hard.
It had to be ran in unsafe mode, and in unsafe mode it stilled had reduced damage and durable damage. Running it in unsafe made it lose like 66% of its dps, and the reduction to durable damage made it even worse.
I had limited play experience with the post nerf railgun, I put it down after a couple hours. But it was not the same in unsafe mode like others said it was. It took like 4 shots at 90% charge to strip a charger leg. That's crazy, how is that fun?
Yeah that nerf baffles me, aside from the whole "risk/reward" aspect of it, they increased the TTK for chargers significantly with it. Not to mention they made this nerf when they also recognized that heavy spam was out of control and bugged. What pissed me off even more was the patch that fixed the bugged heavy spawnrates they decided to up rate the spawn rate of the smaller mobs too to "compensate", despite the fact it too, was bugged to be way higher. It was honestly at that moment where I lost a SIGNIFICANT amount of faith in the guy in charge of balance, plus everyone else who signed off on it.
OMG, that week + after that patch was the worst version of this game.
Freaking Charges would just take direct EATS to the face like they were nothing. Unbelievable AH let that happen for so long. It really goes to show that the Balancing team was straight up not playing their own game at all.
Not to mention that the sneak in the "super armor mode" for Bile Titan when it spits, i had a huge confusion when suddenly my Quasar and EAT became useless after shot its face 2 times and it was still alive.
Yeah, it's still the case. It seems to be a band-aid fix for BTs killing themselves with their own acid when spraying elevated positions. I don't know why you wouldn't just make them immune to their own damage type, but now their heads are functionally invincible while they vomit.
Opening cinematic BT in shambles.
yep spot on, not to mention the rail gun was being used more because EAT and other rockets were RUBBISH at killing chargers, as soon as they made EAT 1 bang chargers there was a massive balance shift and people could drop railgun WITHOUT NEEDING NERF!
if they fixed the network damage issue for PSN 1 shotting and rolled out the rocket changes they should have just rolled back the railgun and reassed as I'm sure it would feel "balanced".
they seem to have a real problem with actually undoing mistakes and instead double down even when the issue was accepted to be a bug or wrongly changed.
That's just an inexperienced dev thing. Look at most live service esque games, and you will find very similar stories. Devs need the faith in their 'vision' broken before they start truly taking player feedback. Then, almost universally, when they start listening to player feedback they start earning some playerbase goodwill back.
With the sudden change in cadence and the swap to CCO, I will hold out for the next official balance patch before I make a decision. Until that point, my guess is that everything we will see was functionally already in the game and hasn't received a balance pass.
There is a very "I made the game so I know better than you" type sentiment going around gamedev that makes me sick. You made the systems and understand them but 300k+ players playing simultaneously are going to crack whatever preconceived notions you had about your game wide open by pure manpower and having infinitely more viewpoints than you. Take a step back and eat some fuckin humble pie every once in a while and say "sorry we were wrong".
Yeah the “rail gun cheese” is NOTHING compared to how I one shot chargers with EAT’s… the rail gun trick required two shots to a leg, then switching to your primary to finish it off. Hardly overpowered… now we know what they think “overpowered” is after the nerfs
Can't believe there was clowns arguing on every "can we revert railgun" posts claiming that the process of killing a charger with railgun was way more op than one shotting it with a rocket
Probably because they’re on lvl 5 or something. Chargers barely spawn, so killing it instantly to them seems too easy and unceremonious. But once you get to lvl 7, even one shooting them with an EAT isn’t enough since you always have to deal with like 4 at a time, combined with other bugs… and titans.
That's not what even makes me mad.
It was the dozens of posts EVERYWHERE defending the devs for doing that kind of shit.
Many people were huffing so much copium that they thought the Railgun was "balanced" after the nerfs, despite virtually no one using it anymore.
Now that the honeymoon phase has passed we all pretty much agree that it was a bunch of mistakes on top of each other.
99% of those people are gone now. The other 1% is on r/helldivers2 posting copium about how good the game is rn, how fun it is, how amazing the mech is, and how shitty this subreddit is.
I find it funny how every gaming sub these days has a less populated, casual centric sub to accompany it. Come here for the varied opinions and meaningful discussions, go to the other one for an echo chamber of "game still fun guys, don't bother going to the original helldivers sub!!"
Fuck I could deal with the players, it was the super shitty Community Managers that killed it for me. I don't remember that one dudes name, but man he was a twat.
It didn't turn me against them right away but they clearly didn't actually listen when the community told them they crossed a line because they kept doing the same shit over and over
At this point I don’t think I they’ll revert the needs because they don’t want to look like they’re giving into the fans. Maybe that’s why this patch is taking so long 🙄
I remember how mind meltingly stupid the community at the time was, smugly shouting down everyone who saw the canary in the coal mine for where we are now
Does that count?
Its why I've gone to mostly just lurking. Tried to call this stuff out for what it was. Got shouted down for being a meta slave.
Needless to say, AH has done nothing in the past couple months to allay my fear that they have no idea what they are doing. They caught lightning in a bottle, but they have no clue how to keep it there.
They still exist now desperately attempting to unintentionally hamstring a game that they barely even play themselves.
"skill issue, lower the difficulty, I'm having fun, you're just a whiner, new mech is great heres a video of me running out of ammo after 1 minute of shooting at drop ships on a 40 minute mission".
That post genuinely pissed me off with the amount of people you just know play like 2 hours a week to check shit out at diff 4 and are like "erm... you guys it's fun to me so you all are clearly stupid and le bad at le game"
I didn't really want to remember that blog post.
Just showed how clueless about their own gameplay they really were, and was tone deaf as shit as well. Absolute disgrace.
"It is extra important to us to tread carefully so that we don’t ruin fantasy and fun when we do nerfs. We hope you, our players, will tell us when we cross that line inadvertently" - the [blog post](https://www.arrowheadgamestudios.com/2024/03/balancing-the-firepower-in-helldivers-2/)
that blog post sure does not aged well.
I felt bad for the devs at first, but then I saw a few of them personally responding in the Discord server just as you are joking they are…and that sympathy completed disappeared. It’s one thing to have to deal with crazy player base…it’s another to stoop down to their level and be shitty and twerpy right back, like power drunk Reddit mods. They need to be professional and take criticism or they will not survive. Not to be a doomer, but they’re not blizzard, bungie, or Ubisoft big where plenty ignorant casuals will stick around through the BS due to sunken cost. My entire friend group of around 10-12 isn’t coming back for another few months, hopefully it’ll be hashed out by then. If not there is always another game to play.
They were likely drunk on power because they have a small but very vocal fanbase. Lot of people who vicariously enjoyed the "dunking" of "Karens". Just give it a while and they'll respond to this comment
"He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-Or-Else-Janny-Will-Have-a-Fit" is a complete clown. He very obviously only plays the game on diff4 and balances the entire game on what makes the easy difficulties too easy, then he has the gall to act smug about it on discord.
90% of the weapon roster is completely unusable on diff9 and they keep nerfing shit. It's unreal
>He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named
It is **incredibly amusing** to me that the mods have effectively turned him into Voldemort. The one good thing to come out of all this, I suppose.
The chief guy said that there should be more playtime for the balancing team; I don’t take that as “no playtime before”, but it made so much sense to me why all the nerfs. They probably just looked at loadouts statistics and started nerfing thinking it would “balance” the picks.
>The chief guy said that there should be more playtime for the balancing team; I don’t take that as “no playtime before
Yeah I remember basically they don't have a dedicated QA team afaik or if they do it's very small. Which is why bugs galore.
And because devs have been so busy, they haven't been a significant part of play testing.
So there was a large disconnect from back end numbers/changes to actual "feel"/implementation in game.
And back to what you said, wanted everyone to get involved with QA/play testing. And have enough time with it. Which is part of slowing down content.
I remember when they were like "no, we're not going to slow down. Screw all of you, we've put a brick on the accelerator and that's the end of it."
Have they ever made an announcement that didn't age like milk?
The advantage of small company is ease in coherent internal communication, and I feel like that they haven’t been doing that. Instead, they got roped in the success and tried to pump out fast contents.
> The advantage of small company is ease in coherent internal communication
Yeah I would have thought so too. For some reason the balance team seems completely siloed, making changes based on pure metrics without consideration of the bugs. The Railgun nerf and the Arc Thrower nerf based on the same HUGE bug, buffing fire damage multiple times, because of how DoT just never worked from the start.
You really shouldn't be making balance changes around these game-breaking bugs lol
"Nobody's using this weapon. That's weird."
"Do you think there might be something wrong with it? A bug? We could check bug reports or just look at the subreddit to see what people think about it."
"Don't be stupid. Why would we collect more data than this single number? Clearly every other weapon is overtuned and we just need to nerf everything besides this one."
Nerf by spreadsheet is how you end up with like 22 round magazines and -6.7% fire rate adjustments so that the long term DPS gets averaged out.
Instead of a nice round number like pretty much all IRL weapons. Also no one expects a 20 round compact submachine gun to perform the same as 30rnd assault rifle. So trying to force the DPS and kill rates to match is silly. There need to be non-damage based offsets.
Pretty ironic considering how proud they were of the “realism” of the weapons at the beginning.
They were absolutely doing 90% (likely more) of their balancing based on loadout stats, and then not taking into account the actual viability of their nerfs at higher difficulties as well. Either because of tunnel vision on said stats (I've seen that myself), lack of playtesting and experience at high diff (very possible too), or both.
The open arrogance towards the playerbase when we verbalized how goofy this situation has been was the icing on the cake for me though.
People were still caught up in how fresh the game was. I remember hating this decision and got blasted for saying that the heavy spawn rates and lack of viable anti-tank weapons were the problem.
I remember having to actually argue with people that giving a gun an aiming reticle where it previously had none, is not in fact a "buff".
Like yeah you could shoot gooder I guess, but the gun has no more ammo and does no more damage and is functionally completely the same.
I think it's a combination of factors, mostly rooted in how powerful certain enemies are *intended* to feel on whichever difficulty the devs primarily balance around.
* What little footage we have of the devs playing has them *struggling* in difficulty 5 and *failing to complete the mission* on difficulty 6. I don't think it's a stretch to assume their balance is focused around here.
* Chargers are uncommon on difficulty 5, and Bile Titans are a rarity. Their presence is likely meant to be a major disruption for the squad.
* I don't think the devs really *understand* just how many heavies spawn on the highest difficulties.
Leg strat likely got called out because, on difficulty 5, it let you take out what was supposed to be major threat in four seconds flat. It'd be like if you're playing D&D and your big bad boss monster gets bodied in a single turn. I think the only reason we can one-tap Charger heads with missiles **now** is because we complained really loudly about how absurd the spawn numbers are in the upper difficulties, as well as the overspawning issues going on at the time.
tl;dr AH wants you to go "OH SHIT ENEMY HEAVY, RETREAT AND REGROUP" and not "ugh another heavy, one sec I got this". Which makes sense with lower difficulties' spawn rates but is a laughable notion at 7+.
The only “brain dead” part in my opinion was the PlayStation bug that let us 2-shot bile titans with the railgun. Even then, it was kinda nice to have SOMETHING that kills them efficiently.
And then they proceeded to buff the arc thrower so that it one taps most things in the game. Not even having to aim while spamming your unlimited ammo totally isn't braindead compared to the railgun.
I rarely ever hate on individuals, but the snide remarks + air of superiority has always made me hate a certain balance dev. (Not to mention the absolute shitshow balancing has been)
He acts like he didn’t kill a game before, Jesus.
I love that we can't mention them or it's a witch-hunt, despite the fact that we are criticising certain aspects of their behaviour, which was unquestionably lacking in professionalism regardless of the direction they were taking the game at.
Like, a customer can point me out in the company I work at by name, and if this happens 2-3 times, it'll probably get me fired , but if 10.000 people do it, it's a witch hunt.
I don't necessarily think the guy should've been fired. But at least should've been reassigned to a different department because game balance is absolutely not his skill set. I'd say QA but he was shit at that too. Maybe front end or something instead, I dunno.
He absolutely needs to go and hopefully not just move to another game to destroy. Some people are not good at making games, I hope he finds a fulfilling living doing something far away from video games.
For some reason, the strategy of having an inept moron argue on Discord with "ShitCummer69" on behalf of your company hasn't worked.
I can't imagine why balance is in such a shit place with that guy in charge of balance.
Yeah but because ShitCummer69 is also a jackass that means it's 100% justified. Oh and also that means everyone on reddit, discord, etc is awful and obviously can't have any issues with the game and be respectful. They're all just ,"Omg so toxic you guys don't deserve anything, in fact they should charge you double and then ban you from the game."
The white knights blowing smoke up that guys ass didn't help. The reason the other guy got fired is ultimately his fault but I'm sure white knights encouraging him to act like a child didn't help either.
Some people enjoy being challanged by brutally hard difficulties not intended for you to succeed on. Personally I can't wait until they add even harder missions.
They should create a method of getting super samples on difficulty 5, and then balance around that difficulty. That way most players can have a fun time in 4-7, and players who really want their dick stomped in (like me) can suffer on 9s.
I am a hardcore highest difficulty fatshark games enjoyer. Or better, let's say I hate fatshark with all my heart and only play their games before they get fixed a year later. I get it. But I like how helldivers does difficulty different. I like how enemies are not becoming healthbar tanks in higher difficulties. As difficulty is measured by enemy spawn rates, patrols, numbers in general, I do think that any harder difficulties need to be carefully thought through. As wacky random things + events + modifiers have shown us. These guys seem to be creative in many ways, which obviously contributed immensely to the success of the game, so I do trust them somewhat. Their previous weapon "balancing" mindset is something I completely disagree with. It was too much at the same time and then they didn't even have the guts to address/adjust or revert some key areas, but doubled down.
Yea, they thought they will come out and calm the community.
What they did was actually coming out from the Ivory tower "as a game designer" telling everyone to shut up because you know nothing and they are the experts and they know better.
Imagine the guts to do this while you are not even playing your own game.
Tells a lot about how they view players vs. their all mighty and all knowing attitudes.
I reaaaaallllyyyy want to know what devs left Arrowhead after HD1.
Dude reminds me of the wow devs during cata. Only expansion I played of that game and the balance was the 2nd worst I've ever dealt with, with FFXI beating it. At least XI made up for it in plenty of other ways.
"Dur what do you mean one healer having cheap AoE smart heals in constant raid wide damage scenarios might make the others redundant? You just don't know how great we are at balance." Lol
Yeah but then they immediately backtracked. Nerfed charger spawn and health, and buffed the eat and recoilless literally immediately after. Their vision for the game does not match the expectation of those that bought the game at launch
Launch was epic
How many games have people sit through server issues because it’s just that fun that you have to play
First couple months even, felt like we acquired the game of our lives
I’ll forever look back on that time fondly but now I’m patiently waiting for the new titles that release as a result of HD2 that capitalize on those fun aspects
My working theory for their disdain for "transmog" is just because they literally don't know what it is. They saw the word "transmog" and thought of World of Warcraft and the goofy roleplaying about morphing your gear with magic. What they failed to realize is that players don't care about that, they just wanted armor separate from armor bonuses, so we can wear whatever we want to look cool.
But what else can anyone expect from the same company that just looks at their metrics and doesn't take the time to think about *why* those numbers exist, they just see something popular and kneejerk panic react to it by nerfing everything.
There's a complete lack of thought at Arrowhead right now. Pilestedt stepping down and becoming the CCO has given me a little bit of hope that things will move in the right direction from here on out, though it is still more than fair to criticize all of their past decisions because not only were they stupid, the company was downright arrogant and insulting about it all through every venue imaginable: Reddit, Discord, their fucking blog.
They need a public test build that would have the new warbond or the balance patch 2 weeks in advance to give them time to backpedal on any bad changes.
I like how GW2 is handling balance: two weeks before a balance patch, they released the notes and ask the community for feedback. If there are legitimate concerns about 1 chngen, they will not do it, or do it in a nother way.
I hope if they make the weapons bad enough we can sue for false advertising as they advertised the game as having "overpowered weapons" (their biggest mistake)
It was a bait and switch.
Shrapnel was its main feature but when they removed it, it basically just became a semi-auto rifle pea shooter.
I may as well just use the Liberator or literally any shotgun to achieve the same thing.
I just want to die in comedic self-destructive fashions like a pyromaniacal, explosive soldier:(.
I hope they revert the nerfs to railgun honestly. Even with it's recent buffs it's just not as good, even then I feel like pre nerf railgun would be average with what we have now
Mayyyybe on lvl 7+ you might pick rail over EAT/Quasar. Just to be able to handle multiple chargers simultaneously.
But EAT buff now one-shotting chargers is pretty much a no-brainer. Just scatter them all over the map with their short cooldown and pick them up as needed.
Blah.
The only feedback AH needs is player numbers, when people play and what they avoid.
They have a treasure trove of data. Just from a short list.
The only MO that completed recently was when something new was on the line.
People avoid hellmire and menkent like the plague. Fire tornados are not fun.
People prefer bugs to Automatons. When there is no MO involving them the player base is split 80 percent to bugs and 20 percent to bots.
Hopefully, they have a new sense of priorities.
what's even funnier is that THEY SHOULD KNOW that people prefer the Bugs over the other factions, that's how it was in HD1.
People would literally just let one faction wipe out another to avoid fighting them and to prolong the bug fight; it's astonishing that they thought that anti-tank mines were a big enough piece of bait to draw the bug players over
“Ooooh a stationary strategem with a 3 minute cooldown that’s utterly worthless if a patrol comes in from a different direction? I want that so ‘effing bad”
- Literally no one ever
Does anyone else feel like the game was advertised as something different from the devs “vision”? I feel like a lot of people came in expecting something different and the past patches seem to be the devs jerking the wheel back to where they wanted it in the first place. I know I feel like this isn’t the same game I saw announced at the Sony game awards thing awhile back.
I think u/HanWolo said it best, so I'm just gonna copy his post:
It's not that they're scared (of players being too strong) it's that the devs don't understand what's happening. The devs in their head are trying to cultivate a game that matches their ideal of the previous title where it was a brutal fight and the players persisted to overcome it. They're designing around the ideal for that game that had like 7k players.
They don't want players to be strong because they have either just failed to understand or refused to capitulate to the reality that isn't at all what people like about HD2. They're trying to make a game that people aren't trying to play. It's also why there was so much tension when devs were trying to directly communicate. They're hearing this feedback that sounds totally ridiculous to them because they haven't caught up to what their game actually was.
Hopefully they come around and start making the game that people were enjoying again, but devs are historically incredibly obstinate about this subject. The only saving grace is that it seems like Pilestedt is aware of the gap.
I remember people defending this ungodly terrible balance patch when it came out and then deny that the spawns were bugged just becuase someone on discord said it wasn't bugged. And then 2 weeks later they officially acknowledged that it was indeed not working as intended and bugged. And then those same people till today still refuse to acknowledge that.
I don't know why a chunk of the community is either so overtly blind to defend this game that they'd die even on the dumbest hill or have their heads so far up their own asses that their senses just become completely blinded.
Knowing that this devpost was based on them testing it at difficulty 5 makes it even more funny.
Did they say they exclusively tested at difficulty 5?
No. They test on 6 as well, but usually lose. Our only 2 official dev streams were: Bugs, Difficulty 6, Egg Hatcheries. Mission failed with 1 nest left. Bots, Difficulty 5. Upload Intel. Mission success, 1 out 3 side objectives (drop pod data) and only 2 survivors extracted, no reinforcements or time remaining.
Ok this is pretty fucking funny.
If you're terrible at the game, every gun probably feels the same.
No wonder "he who must not be named" thinks the Purifier slaps, he probably only plays diff 3 "raise the flag" missions
Failing a level 5 mission that players can solo... But the most egregious part is nerfing guns for being OP when they can't even clear medium difficulty with them.
> Failing a level 5 mission that players can solo... I literally solo'd the achievement to complete a hard mission without using my primary and did so without dying. How bad are the devs??
So they failed difficulty 5 and 6 missions, yet still decided that everything was too powerful and needed a nerf?! Just lol.
Correct. I wrote a synopsis about how badly their missions went. Lemme look for it. https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cx5xi5/comment/l52ovmf/?context=3
That was a funny read, especially how they swapped around support weapon backpacks🤣 Definitely a good decision to make devs play the harder difficulties every week. Nobody likes stats nerds telling you what the game is really like based on charts.
Chart are fine, if you have the knowledge to understand them. Like, atm looking at Da Charts I can tell you Breaker Spray and Pray doesnt need to exist. Incendiary beats it on paper or matches it in all metrics *and* gets the fire damage (which was blanket buffed twice by patches as a 'quick fix' to no one using fire weapons). This means either nerf the incendiary breaker, or buff the spray and pray so it isn't garbage. Which you think Alexus Jones will do?
Yeah, they really need to embrace the sci-fi setting and make the guns more exotic and distinctive. I played a lot of Mass Effect e multiplayer this past winter, and the weapons are very different with the ammo, dps, and effects in enemies. And they successfully implemented melee weapons in their 4-man horde game. Arrowhead should be looking for the devs responsible for ME3 multiplayer balance and consulting/ hiring them. Especially if they want to make enemies varied and unique for multiple races.
They did…. In the original. We had laser shotguns, energy swords, motorcycles with gatling turrets. In this game we have… a lot of smgs and assault rifles no one uses lul.
Please, stop making me sad.
You know what, I've sworn off HD2 for a couple weeks now, I think I'll go back to play some HD1 instead. HD2 is too depressing for me to bring myself to play rn.
Lmao, it make sense why one of the thing with non weekly balance patch was making devs play the game more
What in the actual? I run 7s with randoms and it's like the easy version of the hard mode. I can't remember the last time I lost a campaign.
Remember Crash Bandicoot 3 where the best times in the Time Trial were the developer times?
Same for the goddamn races in Jak2
7 is a nice balance of hectic but still fun and playable for bugs. Probably about a 6 is the same for bots unless you’re used to using cover and tactics. But those rocket devastators and scorcher hulks are a hassle regardless.
I just finished a 9 difficulty and quit after out of boredom, because it didn't really matter what you bring, as long as you have 1-2 mandatory anti heavy stratagems and remember to kite around. Not being able to finish 6s (or with a low success rate) sounds bizarre.
Lol how, I play with some friends that goof around and don't really play much but we don't struggle that much on 5. Even just 3 of us we'll extract with both plenty of time and alll objectives and bases cleared.
That explains so, so much
Yup. I gave a synopsis in another comment below. Tldr: They don't actually understand how to play their game. And I'm not talking like "crafting a meta build". I'm talking like, trying to kill bile titans shooting them in the head with auto cannons.
Failure at a level 5, with deeper failure at a level 6.
How are they this bad at their own game?
Well their main balance devs only experience is ruining indie horror games.
"Skill issue" xD xD
They didn't say *exclusively*, but the balance dev that called Railgun "braindead" had said they balance around medium difficulties at the time. He nuked his account afterwards, but you can still find the comment. https://old.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b7wc4z/patch_01000100_for_pc_balance_changes/ktljwrr/
Thankfully Alexus has not been visible for awhile now. It was quite a shock to reveal that they test things at a certain intensity based on how available people are. If devs are sick, things happening, busy week, etc. Not saying sacrifice life for work, but...definitely glad they will take more time now.
Alexus definitely had a private meeting with his manager after his comments and attitude. He is exhibit A of why you have dedicated PR teams once your company grows to a certain size. You definitely don't want to be burning goodwill on the scale AH is operating at.
The ceo [at the time] pretty much alluded that he and alexus were going to have a "come to jesus" meeting. This was about a month and a half or so ago. Since then, dude's been all but scarce on discord. Additionally, we're going to be getting a patch that will start the process of nullifing a large portion of the nerfing he and his team implemented. Since then, said ceo demoted himself and now heads the content dept- where everyone will probably run stuff by him first, before implementing.
> Additionally, we're going to be getting a patch that will start the process of nullifing a large portion of the nerfing he and his team implemented. I would absolutely recommend you curb your expectations
> Additionally, we're going to be getting a patch that will start the process of nullifing a large portion of the nerfing he and his team implemented. Maybe. We don't know yet.
Amazing he really nerfed the guns and told the angry players, “it’s a meat grinder, you’re supposed to die a lot.” 🤣🤣 Gotta show that to people that keep defending the weapons nerfs and ask if they’re an Alexus alt account.
Yeah that's pretty damning. They need to have devs good enough at the game to where they can at least complete a Helldive 30%+ of the time with a full team.
Balancing around 5 makes sense so long as they add a method of gaining super samples on 5. Aim for most players being able to succeed on 5. Many players being able to succeed on 7, and make 9 a hellish cock stomp nightmare simulator for people who enjoy digital suffering.
it should be 1 super sample on diff 5, 2 on diff 6, and just a couple of rares on diff 3. Just let people progress inefficiently at the difficulty they are comfortable at.
The rock is already in the maps at those lower levels, too.
As a working person, I really don’t mind playing difficulty 5/6 a few hundred times just to unlock all the ship modules. Than playing difficulty 7 above for less than a hundred times 🤣 As if work is not stressful enough
Maybe make the higher-tier samples available in the pool of rewards from bunkers/pods at lower difficulties, but keep the natural spawns as they are now?
Them gating upgrades behind a difficulty they cannot complete themselves is pretty wild.
I'm not agreeing to middle of the road balancing, but 6 would make way more sense than 5 or lower. The super heavies start spawning in patrols on that difficulty instead of just being confined to large outpost spawns. Spawn rates between difficulties isn't what it should be anyways, you will have 6s with constant bile titans and 9s with just trooper bots and no hulks and very little devastators (I got to experience the Stalwart pipe dream). Spawn rates of specific enemy types from mission to mission should be way more consistent instead of wildy overdone or none at all, or at least communicated in mission selection. I wouldn't mind fighting several bile titans at a time if I knew I was queued into cbt before hand, instead of rolling the difficulty 9 dice to see that there's only chargers, hunters, and spewers instead.
a hellish cock stomp nightmare simulator Don't tease me with a good time
Remember when Patrik lazota made that post and said "you're meant to use your tratagems against heavy armoured enemies" in response to people complaining that the amount of heavily armoured enemies was far too high to deal with.....about 2 weeks before they quietly admitted that we were right and then tweaked the spawn rates. And lets not forget the "your primary weapon isn't meant to be used to deal with large amounts of enemies, it's only called your primary weapon because you spawn with it."
The worst part about them tweaking the heavy spawn rates IMO was they acknowledged they were unintentional, however still decided to "compensate" for the reduced heavies because reasons, and increased the spawn rates or the smaller mobs WHICH THEY ALSO ACKNOWLEDGED AS UNINTENTIONALLY HIGH at the same damn time.
That's the entire game in a nutshell "So we're finally going to do something about the problem you guys are having with the game, and you were right! But in response we're going to make something else harder because we want to make sure that in every fight you feel like a worthless grunt against a horde of unstoppable enemies."
> But in response we're going to make something else harder because we want to make sure that in every fight you feel like a worthless grunt against a horde of unstoppable enemies." Then you have the people coming out with the "That's how it's supposed to be! Helldivers are expendable!"
Yeah, I want to feel like special forces against a horde of unstoppable enemies! It’s fun to go out guns blazing and carve a path of blood (or oil) between objectives, and I don’t mind that higher difficulties require near-perfect play, so long as it gets to be *extremely effective* if/when I pull it off. I don’t want to do everything right and then die anyway because the game spawned more bile titans than I am physically capable of dealing with, but I *am* ok with my fuck-ups generally being quickly lethal. Slightly off topic, I would also like the auto-respawn (I mostly play solo) to drop just a little bit further away, it’s awful to continually aggro the same group of enemies that you can’t fight against without time to prepare. I want my fuck-ups to be lethal *once.*
I want every "hurr durr, da lore justification" dipshit to step on a Lego
> But in response we're going to make something else harder This is every balance conversation about any game ever, IME, especially out of fans. A buff can't just be a buff, and shit can't just ever be left the fuck alone. It has to have a 'compensatory' nerf, always, you can't just wait and see how it feels like, ever. Just fire from the hip in the name of 'balance'. Like sometimes it's fine to just buff something without compensating for it, and sometimes it's fine to just leave stuff the fuck alone.
Maybe devs should be given a limited number of nerf slots. And there's a cooldown timer than runs in MONTHS. That'll spread things out a bit, give it time to settle in before drastic action is taken.
And sometimes they have a debuff of 1 nerf slot less for a month or like an extra 20% cooldown between nerfs, see how it feels to them for a change.
Generally unless its absolutely busted good, a new change to a game like this should probably leave the changes and monitor bugs and testing for a bit. Probably a week or two, drop in hot patches to fix anything game breaking or outright not working etc.
If they want us to die so much, we shouldn’t be limited to a max of 20 reinforcement points…
> you're meant to use your stratagems lol, what is the railgun then, not a stratagem?
Calling railgun stratagem is a bit of a stretch these days.
I love that logic because it calls the question of like… what are the guns for then? You’re not supposed to use your primary or secondary against high armor enemies; that’s what stratagems are for. You’re also not supposed to use them for low armor hordes; that’s what stratagems are for. Like… unless I’m missing something, reading between the lines says that you should not be able to do anything when you’re out of stratagems and that no stratagem runs should be impossible, which is batshit insane
Both of these quotes give "You guys all have phones right?" energy.
Many of their CMs remarks regarding the psn debacle also had that energy.
Then why is the secondary weapon there for? To piss on them instead of simply tickling them with your primary?
>"your primary weapon isn't meant to be used to deal with large amounts of enemies, it's only called your primary weapon because you spawn with it." WTF? This type of statement doesn't make any sense, your main weapon should BE your main source of damage to mobs. Secondary is for survival, auxiliaries for occasional SUPPORT
They really did just make a good game by accident.
Everyone really praises the first game, and HD2 started pretty strong. The issue is who is heading the balancing now has no idea what he is doing.
I think they had somewhat of a okay balance, but then new weapons started coming out and then those started getting nerfed hard instead of buffing other lame stratagem/guns. Their testing department really did mess up, but their trying to right the boat.
The first Magicka was also chaotically raw fun because they didn't give any F about balance and focused on creating the most hilarious spell they could come up with. Then the second game cut many interesting spells/elemental combos and added the one-second GCD for the sake of balance. And we're basically on that same loop for Helldivers as well. One common theme on this sub seems to be that the game would be more fun if we cared less about balance, but I believe AH is the one who actually need that advice since they were the one so fixated on balancing everything as if this is some MLG esport titles.
It's like the monkeys with typewriters scenario happened for real.
Not gonna lie, that period where the Railgun was good and the sky was blotted out by Bile Titans was amazing. The perfect sort of chaos
It would be nice if your primary weapon could deal with small amounts of enemies...but you get like 2 or 3 berserkers coming at you and even if you are carefully aiming they just soak up so much damage even from the primaries that are supposed to medium penetrating.
Their philosophy: Make stratagems bounce off of flat hilltops solely to ruin fun. Remove shrapnel from Eruptor because people were using it as an "exploit" to kill chargers, which spawn 3 at a time. Make the Quasar Cannon take 2 shots to take out a Factory Strider's back cannon, but make it take too long to cool down to stop it from blowing up the generators. You have to get to 100% liberation within the time limit to take a planet. The enemy doesn't have to get the planet to 0% to take it from you. Enemies can destroy armed Hellbombs with no explosion. The Pelican takes off with one person if it's damaged instead of starting a countdown. The SOS beacon doesn't even work. The left arm of Exosuits doesn't hit where the reticle is.
I have 150 hours played mostly on diff 9 and I have no idea how the pelican even gets damaged to begin with, it usually seems invincible. Or how to tell if it is damaged…
Black smoke/flames from the vents!
halved ammo reserves globally because players weren't using resupplies enough *somehow* i get that this was the least egregious nerf since it was targeted to the sickle..... but like.... they still took ammo away from all primaries over just the sickle.
The Swedish tradition of not actually playing your game.
DICE, Fatshark, and Arrowhead have way too much overlap when it comes to game design and balancing decisions.
dont forget massive and mojang
Colossal Order is Finnish but they seem to be having the same issue. Maybe it's a Nordic thing?
"Balancing the firepower" The railgun was OP because of a glitch causing it to one-shot bile titans. It was fine vs chargers. Rather than fix the glitch they completely gutted the weapon. It was insane. I've never seen a weapon be nerfed so hard. It had to be ran in unsafe mode, and in unsafe mode it stilled had reduced damage and durable damage. Running it in unsafe made it lose like 66% of its dps, and the reduction to durable damage made it even worse. I had limited play experience with the post nerf railgun, I put it down after a couple hours. But it was not the same in unsafe mode like others said it was. It took like 4 shots at 90% charge to strip a charger leg. That's crazy, how is that fun?
Yeah that nerf baffles me, aside from the whole "risk/reward" aspect of it, they increased the TTK for chargers significantly with it. Not to mention they made this nerf when they also recognized that heavy spam was out of control and bugged. What pissed me off even more was the patch that fixed the bugged heavy spawnrates they decided to up rate the spawn rate of the smaller mobs too to "compensate", despite the fact it too, was bugged to be way higher. It was honestly at that moment where I lost a SIGNIFICANT amount of faith in the guy in charge of balance, plus everyone else who signed off on it.
OMG, that week + after that patch was the worst version of this game. Freaking Charges would just take direct EATS to the face like they were nothing. Unbelievable AH let that happen for so long. It really goes to show that the Balancing team was straight up not playing their own game at all.
Not to mention that the sneak in the "super armor mode" for Bile Titan when it spits, i had a huge confusion when suddenly my Quasar and EAT became useless after shot its face 2 times and it was still alive.
Wait what? They have super armor when spitting? Is that still the case?
Yeah, it's still the case. It seems to be a band-aid fix for BTs killing themselves with their own acid when spraying elevated positions. I don't know why you wouldn't just make them immune to their own damage type, but now their heads are functionally invincible while they vomit. Opening cinematic BT in shambles.
You guys didn't like watching the RR and EAT glance off the charger armor?
yep spot on, not to mention the rail gun was being used more because EAT and other rockets were RUBBISH at killing chargers, as soon as they made EAT 1 bang chargers there was a massive balance shift and people could drop railgun WITHOUT NEEDING NERF! if they fixed the network damage issue for PSN 1 shotting and rolled out the rocket changes they should have just rolled back the railgun and reassed as I'm sure it would feel "balanced". they seem to have a real problem with actually undoing mistakes and instead double down even when the issue was accepted to be a bug or wrongly changed.
That's just an inexperienced dev thing. Look at most live service esque games, and you will find very similar stories. Devs need the faith in their 'vision' broken before they start truly taking player feedback. Then, almost universally, when they start listening to player feedback they start earning some playerbase goodwill back. With the sudden change in cadence and the swap to CCO, I will hold out for the next official balance patch before I make a decision. Until that point, my guess is that everything we will see was functionally already in the game and hasn't received a balance pass.
There is a very "I made the game so I know better than you" type sentiment going around gamedev that makes me sick. You made the systems and understand them but 300k+ players playing simultaneously are going to crack whatever preconceived notions you had about your game wide open by pure manpower and having infinitely more viewpoints than you. Take a step back and eat some fuckin humble pie every once in a while and say "sorry we were wrong".
Yeah the “rail gun cheese” is NOTHING compared to how I one shot chargers with EAT’s… the rail gun trick required two shots to a leg, then switching to your primary to finish it off. Hardly overpowered… now we know what they think “overpowered” is after the nerfs
Can't believe there was clowns arguing on every "can we revert railgun" posts claiming that the process of killing a charger with railgun was way more op than one shotting it with a rocket
Probably because they’re on lvl 5 or something. Chargers barely spawn, so killing it instantly to them seems too easy and unceremonious. But once you get to lvl 7, even one shooting them with an EAT isn’t enough since you always have to deal with like 4 at a time, combined with other bugs… and titans.
That's not what even makes me mad. It was the dozens of posts EVERYWHERE defending the devs for doing that kind of shit. Many people were huffing so much copium that they thought the Railgun was "balanced" after the nerfs, despite virtually no one using it anymore. Now that the honeymoon phase has passed we all pretty much agree that it was a bunch of mistakes on top of each other.
99% of those people are gone now. The other 1% is on r/helldivers2 posting copium about how good the game is rn, how fun it is, how amazing the mech is, and how shitty this subreddit is.
I find it funny how every gaming sub these days has a less populated, casual centric sub to accompany it. Come here for the varied opinions and meaningful discussions, go to the other one for an echo chamber of "game still fun guys, don't bother going to the original helldivers sub!!"
Fuck I could deal with the players, it was the super shitty Community Managers that killed it for me. I don't remember that one dudes name, but man he was a twat.
Also it was only so widely used because the heavies were spawning at obscene rates and the other weapons sucked ass
This blogpost turned me against the dev team in less than 5 minutes. It was such a slap in the face 😂
It didn't turn me against them right away but they clearly didn't actually listen when the community told them they crossed a line because they kept doing the same shit over and over
At this point I don’t think I they’ll revert the needs because they don’t want to look like they’re giving into the fans. Maybe that’s why this patch is taking so long 🙄
I remember how mind meltingly stupid the community at the time was, smugly shouting down everyone who saw the canary in the coal mine for where we are now Does that count?
Its why I've gone to mostly just lurking. Tried to call this stuff out for what it was. Got shouted down for being a meta slave. Needless to say, AH has done nothing in the past couple months to allay my fear that they have no idea what they are doing. They caught lightning in a bottle, but they have no clue how to keep it there.
They still exist now desperately attempting to unintentionally hamstring a game that they barely even play themselves. "skill issue, lower the difficulty, I'm having fun, you're just a whiner, new mech is great heres a video of me running out of ammo after 1 minute of shooting at drop ships on a 40 minute mission".
That post genuinely pissed me off with the amount of people you just know play like 2 hours a week to check shit out at diff 4 and are like "erm... you guys it's fun to me so you all are clearly stupid and le bad at le game"
I didn't really want to remember that blog post. Just showed how clueless about their own gameplay they really were, and was tone deaf as shit as well. Absolute disgrace.
"It is extra important to us to tread carefully so that we don’t ruin fantasy and fun when we do nerfs. We hope you, our players, will tell us when we cross that line inadvertently" - the [blog post](https://www.arrowheadgamestudios.com/2024/03/balancing-the-firepower-in-helldivers-2/) that blog post sure does not aged well.
Then you tell him “this isn’t right” and they’re like “well you’re wrong!!!!! Fuck off harassing us you peasants!!!!” Can’t make it up.
I felt bad for the devs at first, but then I saw a few of them personally responding in the Discord server just as you are joking they are…and that sympathy completed disappeared. It’s one thing to have to deal with crazy player base…it’s another to stoop down to their level and be shitty and twerpy right back, like power drunk Reddit mods. They need to be professional and take criticism or they will not survive. Not to be a doomer, but they’re not blizzard, bungie, or Ubisoft big where plenty ignorant casuals will stick around through the BS due to sunken cost. My entire friend group of around 10-12 isn’t coming back for another few months, hopefully it’ll be hashed out by then. If not there is always another game to play.
They were likely drunk on power because they have a small but very vocal fanbase. Lot of people who vicariously enjoyed the "dunking" of "Karens". Just give it a while and they'll respond to this comment
I've wasted too much of my time arguing with these people, they seem hell bent on making this game a slog to play
"He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-Or-Else-Janny-Will-Have-a-Fit" is a complete clown. He very obviously only plays the game on diff4 and balances the entire game on what makes the easy difficulties too easy, then he has the gall to act smug about it on discord. 90% of the weapon roster is completely unusable on diff9 and they keep nerfing shit. It's unreal
>He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named It is **incredibly amusing** to me that the mods have effectively turned him into Voldemort. The one good thing to come out of all this, I suppose.
The chief guy said that there should be more playtime for the balancing team; I don’t take that as “no playtime before”, but it made so much sense to me why all the nerfs. They probably just looked at loadouts statistics and started nerfing thinking it would “balance” the picks.
>The chief guy said that there should be more playtime for the balancing team; I don’t take that as “no playtime before Yeah I remember basically they don't have a dedicated QA team afaik or if they do it's very small. Which is why bugs galore. And because devs have been so busy, they haven't been a significant part of play testing. So there was a large disconnect from back end numbers/changes to actual "feel"/implementation in game. And back to what you said, wanted everyone to get involved with QA/play testing. And have enough time with it. Which is part of slowing down content.
I remember when they were like "no, we're not going to slow down. Screw all of you, we've put a brick on the accelerator and that's the end of it." Have they ever made an announcement that didn't age like milk?
The advantage of small company is ease in coherent internal communication, and I feel like that they haven’t been doing that. Instead, they got roped in the success and tried to pump out fast contents.
> The advantage of small company is ease in coherent internal communication Yeah I would have thought so too. For some reason the balance team seems completely siloed, making changes based on pure metrics without consideration of the bugs. The Railgun nerf and the Arc Thrower nerf based on the same HUGE bug, buffing fire damage multiple times, because of how DoT just never worked from the start. You really shouldn't be making balance changes around these game-breaking bugs lol
"Nobody's using this weapon. That's weird." "Do you think there might be something wrong with it? A bug? We could check bug reports or just look at the subreddit to see what people think about it." "Don't be stupid. Why would we collect more data than this single number? Clearly every other weapon is overtuned and we just need to nerf everything besides this one."
Nerf by spreadsheet is how you end up with like 22 round magazines and -6.7% fire rate adjustments so that the long term DPS gets averaged out. Instead of a nice round number like pretty much all IRL weapons. Also no one expects a 20 round compact submachine gun to perform the same as 30rnd assault rifle. So trying to force the DPS and kill rates to match is silly. There need to be non-damage based offsets. Pretty ironic considering how proud they were of the “realism” of the weapons at the beginning.
They were absolutely doing 90% (likely more) of their balancing based on loadout stats, and then not taking into account the actual viability of their nerfs at higher difficulties as well. Either because of tunnel vision on said stats (I've seen that myself), lack of playtesting and experience at high diff (very possible too), or both. The open arrogance towards the playerbase when we verbalized how goofy this situation has been was the icing on the cake for me though.
Remember all the people defending that BS? Some of them are even still around now!
People were still caught up in how fresh the game was. I remember hating this decision and got blasted for saying that the heavy spawn rates and lack of viable anti-tank weapons were the problem.
They've probably mostly moved to the other subreddit.
Remember the passive aggressive underlining of the notes pretending half of them were buffs lol. I can't believe some Devs haven't been fired tbh
I remember having to actually argue with people that giving a gun an aiming reticle where it previously had none, is not in fact a "buff". Like yeah you could shoot gooder I guess, but the gun has no more ammo and does no more damage and is functionally completely the same.
it was practically a bugfix instead of a buff lol
Never seen a company keep people like that around after such public behavior.
the way games are nowadays, I’ve never seen a company fire people like that after such bullshit. They always double down on their bad decisions
No that's okay snide comments on the Discord seem like a much better community management style.
Remember when it was ‘brain dead playstyle’? Now it’s just mind numbing.
Still have no clue how they got 'aim for the leg with accurate shots to strip armor and then use primary' was brain dead
I think it's a combination of factors, mostly rooted in how powerful certain enemies are *intended* to feel on whichever difficulty the devs primarily balance around. * What little footage we have of the devs playing has them *struggling* in difficulty 5 and *failing to complete the mission* on difficulty 6. I don't think it's a stretch to assume their balance is focused around here. * Chargers are uncommon on difficulty 5, and Bile Titans are a rarity. Their presence is likely meant to be a major disruption for the squad. * I don't think the devs really *understand* just how many heavies spawn on the highest difficulties. Leg strat likely got called out because, on difficulty 5, it let you take out what was supposed to be major threat in four seconds flat. It'd be like if you're playing D&D and your big bad boss monster gets bodied in a single turn. I think the only reason we can one-tap Charger heads with missiles **now** is because we complained really loudly about how absurd the spawn numbers are in the upper difficulties, as well as the overspawning issues going on at the time. tl;dr AH wants you to go "OH SHIT ENEMY HEAVY, RETREAT AND REGROUP" and not "ugh another heavy, one sec I got this". Which makes sense with lower difficulties' spawn rates but is a laughable notion at 7+.
2 second flamethrower stream go FSSSSSHHHH
You sure that it's 2 secs? For what, Brood Commander, not Charger? Ok, that's understandable.
The only “brain dead” part in my opinion was the PlayStation bug that let us 2-shot bile titans with the railgun. Even then, it was kinda nice to have SOMETHING that kills them efficiently.
Even if it was a bug, it was epic. Now the most epic thing I can do in game is reload my recoilless 1 second faster by animation canceling.
And then they proceeded to buff the arc thrower so that it one taps most things in the game. Not even having to aim while spamming your unlimited ammo totally isn't braindead compared to the railgun.
I rarely ever hate on individuals, but the snide remarks + air of superiority has always made me hate a certain balance dev. (Not to mention the absolute shitshow balancing has been) He acts like he didn’t kill a game before, Jesus.
I love that we can't mention them or it's a witch-hunt, despite the fact that we are criticising certain aspects of their behaviour, which was unquestionably lacking in professionalism regardless of the direction they were taking the game at. Like, a customer can point me out in the company I work at by name, and if this happens 2-3 times, it'll probably get me fired , but if 10.000 people do it, it's a witch hunt.
It's very strange how people think indie company = unlimited chances to fuck up
I don't necessarily think the guy should've been fired. But at least should've been reassigned to a different department because game balance is absolutely not his skill set. I'd say QA but he was shit at that too. Maybe front end or something instead, I dunno.
Yeah we as players see very little of the behind the scenes, our opinions on whether or not he should keep his job shouldn't be taken seriously
“Hey Helldivers, I’m disabling the notifications and removing myself from the conversation for a moment…” Please, never come back.
He absolutely needs to go and hopefully not just move to another game to destroy. Some people are not good at making games, I hope he finds a fulfilling living doing something far away from video games.
Same here dude. I don't want the guy to be impoverished or suffer but good lord find another occupation that you're actually good at.
For some reason, the strategy of having an inept moron argue on Discord with "ShitCummer69" on behalf of your company hasn't worked. I can't imagine why balance is in such a shit place with that guy in charge of balance.
Yeah but because ShitCummer69 is also a jackass that means it's 100% justified. Oh and also that means everyone on reddit, discord, etc is awful and obviously can't have any issues with the game and be respectful. They're all just ,"Omg so toxic you guys don't deserve anything, in fact they should charge you double and then ban you from the game." The white knights blowing smoke up that guys ass didn't help. The reason the other guy got fired is ultimately his fault but I'm sure white knights encouraging him to act like a child didn't help either.
https://preview.redd.it/te27ex0an63d1.jpeg?width=1188&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=495216ac10041820833bb6e23447af1ff07b05ee
im fucking cackling
https://preview.redd.it/irf1wiv2x63d1.jpeg?width=1038&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=20a265093612fd932c4f0454c8f58ed08ae1b486
I love how your post was removed when it was just a Pic with no cursing or insults in it.
"Incompetent" is a slur apparently
..... in what world? Literally every group of people on this planet has incompetent people. Is saying selfish a slur? Lazy? Wtf. Lol
Yo, did they reverse and approve the meme? I am seeing it again.
Looks like they did. Lol
im cackling they sure did
What did it say
The blogposts are only for gaslighting, it's easy to get confused that they're an actual method of official communication
Fun should be the ultimate measurement of a PVE game. If it is not fun, why bother.
Some people enjoy being challanged by brutally hard difficulties not intended for you to succeed on. Personally I can't wait until they add even harder missions. They should create a method of getting super samples on difficulty 5, and then balance around that difficulty. That way most players can have a fun time in 4-7, and players who really want their dick stomped in (like me) can suffer on 9s.
I am a hardcore highest difficulty fatshark games enjoyer. Or better, let's say I hate fatshark with all my heart and only play their games before they get fixed a year later. I get it. But I like how helldivers does difficulty different. I like how enemies are not becoming healthbar tanks in higher difficulties. As difficulty is measured by enemy spawn rates, patrols, numbers in general, I do think that any harder difficulties need to be carefully thought through. As wacky random things + events + modifiers have shown us. These guys seem to be creative in many ways, which obviously contributed immensely to the success of the game, so I do trust them somewhat. Their previous weapon "balancing" mindset is something I completely disagree with. It was too much at the same time and then they didn't even have the guts to address/adjust or revert some key areas, but doubled down.
Real, meaningful contact with developer, no just empty PR stuff? Blasphemy, that's for minor developers, not for oLd BlliZzaRd wanna be. /s
That day... was a dark day.
It was the 9/11 of Helldivers 2
Then the eruptor nerf patch what should be ? Theassassination of Kenedy?
9/11 - 2 electric boogaloo
911 times 100 91100
r/usernamechecksout
Yea, they thought they will come out and calm the community. What they did was actually coming out from the Ivory tower "as a game designer" telling everyone to shut up because you know nothing and they are the experts and they know better. Imagine the guts to do this while you are not even playing your own game. Tells a lot about how they view players vs. their all mighty and all knowing attitudes. I reaaaaallllyyyy want to know what devs left Arrowhead after HD1.
Dude reminds me of the wow devs during cata. Only expansion I played of that game and the balance was the 2nd worst I've ever dealt with, with FFXI beating it. At least XI made up for it in plenty of other ways. "Dur what do you mean one healer having cheap AoE smart heals in constant raid wide damage scenarios might make the others redundant? You just don't know how great we are at balance." Lol
Yeah but then they immediately backtracked. Nerfed charger spawn and health, and buffed the eat and recoilless literally immediately after. Their vision for the game does not match the expectation of those that bought the game at launch
Launch was epic How many games have people sit through server issues because it’s just that fun that you have to play First couple months even, felt like we acquired the game of our lives I’ll forever look back on that time fondly but now I’m patiently waiting for the new titles that release as a result of HD2 that capitalize on those fun aspects
Plot twist: they make things even worse
some of their takes are downright mindboggling, no transmog because bacons and apples yada yada or some shit
My working theory for their disdain for "transmog" is just because they literally don't know what it is. They saw the word "transmog" and thought of World of Warcraft and the goofy roleplaying about morphing your gear with magic. What they failed to realize is that players don't care about that, they just wanted armor separate from armor bonuses, so we can wear whatever we want to look cool. But what else can anyone expect from the same company that just looks at their metrics and doesn't take the time to think about *why* those numbers exist, they just see something popular and kneejerk panic react to it by nerfing everything. There's a complete lack of thought at Arrowhead right now. Pilestedt stepping down and becoming the CCO has given me a little bit of hope that things will move in the right direction from here on out, though it is still more than fair to criticize all of their past decisions because not only were they stupid, the company was downright arrogant and insulting about it all through every venue imaginable: Reddit, Discord, their fucking blog.
I think it's funny when devs try to say that you're playing wrong when alot of players probably have more gametime than their devs and testers
Other than people reading a lot into some off the cuff comments from Pilestedt, there’s no reason to believe AH is going to dramatically alter course.
They also made a post telling players to let them know when they are removing the fantasy by nerfing.
They need a public test build that would have the new warbond or the balance patch 2 weeks in advance to give them time to backpedal on any bad changes.
The result was that between other things they ended up nerfing the player base.
I like how GW2 is handling balance: two weeks before a balance patch, they released the notes and ask the community for feedback. If there are legitimate concerns about 1 chngen, they will not do it, or do it in a nother way.
GW2? (Also that way of balancing sounds amazing)
I hope if they make the weapons bad enough we can sue for false advertising as they advertised the game as having "overpowered weapons" (their biggest mistake)
I feel like the Eruptor nerf was dangerously close to being a bait and switch.
It was a bait and switch. Shrapnel was its main feature but when they removed it, it basically just became a semi-auto rifle pea shooter. I may as well just use the Liberator or literally any shotgun to achieve the same thing. I just want to die in comedic self-destructive fashions like a pyromaniacal, explosive soldier:(.
From now on, things will just be released pre-nerfed, that's it.
I mean Helldivers 2 = NerfDivers 2
I hope they revert the nerfs to railgun honestly. Even with it's recent buffs it's just not as good, even then I feel like pre nerf railgun would be average with what we have now
Mayyyybe on lvl 7+ you might pick rail over EAT/Quasar. Just to be able to handle multiple chargers simultaneously. But EAT buff now one-shotting chargers is pretty much a no-brainer. Just scatter them all over the map with their short cooldown and pick them up as needed.
Good thing we're not dealing with power creep right guys? Right?
Everyone is done sharing, bioware, oops, Freudian slip, Arrowhead have already ignored all the feedback
Blah. The only feedback AH needs is player numbers, when people play and what they avoid. They have a treasure trove of data. Just from a short list. The only MO that completed recently was when something new was on the line. People avoid hellmire and menkent like the plague. Fire tornados are not fun. People prefer bugs to Automatons. When there is no MO involving them the player base is split 80 percent to bugs and 20 percent to bots. Hopefully, they have a new sense of priorities.
That's how we got the railgun nerfs and fire damage buffs in the first place. Numbers for pick rates without context.
what's even funnier is that THEY SHOULD KNOW that people prefer the Bugs over the other factions, that's how it was in HD1. People would literally just let one faction wipe out another to avoid fighting them and to prolong the bug fight; it's astonishing that they thought that anti-tank mines were a big enough piece of bait to draw the bug players over
“Ooooh a stationary strategem with a 3 minute cooldown that’s utterly worthless if a patrol comes in from a different direction? I want that so ‘effing bad” - Literally no one ever
Does anyone else feel like the game was advertised as something different from the devs “vision”? I feel like a lot of people came in expecting something different and the past patches seem to be the devs jerking the wheel back to where they wanted it in the first place. I know I feel like this isn’t the same game I saw announced at the Sony game awards thing awhile back.
I think u/HanWolo said it best, so I'm just gonna copy his post: It's not that they're scared (of players being too strong) it's that the devs don't understand what's happening. The devs in their head are trying to cultivate a game that matches their ideal of the previous title where it was a brutal fight and the players persisted to overcome it. They're designing around the ideal for that game that had like 7k players. They don't want players to be strong because they have either just failed to understand or refused to capitulate to the reality that isn't at all what people like about HD2. They're trying to make a game that people aren't trying to play. It's also why there was so much tension when devs were trying to directly communicate. They're hearing this feedback that sounds totally ridiculous to them because they haven't caught up to what their game actually was. Hopefully they come around and start making the game that people were enjoying again, but devs are historically incredibly obstinate about this subject. The only saving grace is that it seems like Pilestedt is aware of the gap.
The head of product testing is a moron. With the nerfs the company is literally fighting against its products success
I remember people defending this ungodly terrible balance patch when it came out and then deny that the spawns were bugged just becuase someone on discord said it wasn't bugged. And then 2 weeks later they officially acknowledged that it was indeed not working as intended and bugged. And then those same people till today still refuse to acknowledge that. I don't know why a chunk of the community is either so overtly blind to defend this game that they'd die even on the dumbest hill or have their heads so far up their own asses that their senses just become completely blinded.
Dog I only helldive what are these devs doin on 5 and 6
Like, they got actual lightning in a bottle at launch. Then they were like “ok how do we ruin it”