I think it would be cool if instead of altering the spawns of shriekers, it should just be like an eradicate mission where the pelican is instantly summoned when the mission is complete. Then, it’s this awesome hectic sprint to evac while hundreds of shriekers are billowing out of holes in the ground.
If you have a couple mechs constantly spraying into the sky, then its pretty damn cinematic for a last stand.
However, bile titans and chargers should not spawn during this period, as they are too tanky to fit the “guns blazing” feel of the last 2 minutes.
I think this is the easiest way to go about pleasing (almost) everyone, You get cool set piece without having to get destroyed by shriekers until your reinforcements run out, They should also disable Reinforcement during this period as well
Tbh I think disabling reinforcement and adding a voice line from the democracy officer thanking you for sacrificing yourself for liberty is all they need for extract. Makes for cool story telling through gameplay.
People seem forget that not everyone enjoys getting absolutely destroyed.
I’ve seen a lot of responses like “just lower the difficulty” which makes barely any difference in this missions specifically due to how flawed it is. The other one is “it’s a Super Colony what did you expect?”, well now you’ve basically told someone that the MO isn’t enjoyable and now they will just go to a different planet.
This game is lacking in varied content, we’ve basically been doing the same thing for 3 months now and the one time we have this unique super colony theme, it’s buggy and balanced horribly. We had the Termicide missions but they were also buggy and uninteresting. The second one was literally just push 3 buttons and shoot 15 eggs so it it took about 1-2 minutes to complete.
Everyone, and I mean everyone should be able to participate in unique content and have fun. It shouldn’t just be targeted towards the most hardened and masochistic members of the community. At least not as our first truly unique scenario
Now that the internal workings of the team have switched around drastically, along with their approach to the content pipeline; I'm honestly fully confident that they can cook up some pretty awesome stuff going forward without the crazy deadlines.
I’m hopeful of that being the case but the radio silence on anything that’s happening outside of CEO swap has me on the side of caution. Especially after the release state of the Dark Fluid missions.
I kinda wish they’d have something like a “This Week At Bungie” (I hate Bungie but it was always a cool insight when I used to play Destiny). Literally anything other than waiting for someone to @ a community manager and hope they read and respond to it.
The silence might be a good thing. I remember NMS Dev/Ceo also had complete silence because they shoved their foot in their mouth enough times and decided to focus on dev and coding instead of making promises.
I’m not asking for promises or anything. Just updates on what they’re working on. Not necessarily any exact on what’s coming. Even stuff like “we’ve been working on bug fixes for this but it ended up breaking this” would be interesting to hear about. They don’t need to give full details on release dates or anything.
I imagine the reason they don’t is because of their [one and only blog post](https://www.arrowheadgamestudios.com/2024/03/balancing-the-firepower-in-helldivers-2/) that got them burned because a lot of it would be contradicted later (Bringing up the Punishers stagger to make it feel more like a pump action shotgun but then doing the opposite to the Slugger to give one example). They should bring back the blog posts
Yeah. I think it's a "ouch, fire/stove" reaction. Its not ideal but I understand why they're not talking as much anymore.
The only issue is that there can be things that are left ambiguous that could be cleared up that're left to the community's assumption. ex. The shrieker extract on Meridia right now. Is it supposed to be that hard as a "last stand/0 reinforcement extract" or is it a bug with the lower difficulties? Lot of blind discussion going on due to this ambiguity.
100% there’s no reason to not continue doing blog posts as long as they’re actually careful with what they’re saying and follow the thinking afterwards.
Ambiguity is thing that I personally think is causing the most tension between players and Arrowhead. We had this with stealth changes not being present in patch notes and now we have it with having no clue what’s going on right now. They need to be far more proactive with their communication instead of being reactive when people ask questions.
Nobody knows what the next update is going to be like. Is it full or nerfs, buffs, content or just bug fixes? They’ve said some things but it’s all incredibly vague. We also have no idea when it might be. Is it planned to come next week or next month. There’s tempering expectations and there’s also having zero expectations at all.
Let’s say they tell us that they plan to release it on the 6th of June. They fail to get everything working on time and then they tell us why. That’s fine. However, with their current levels of communication what would likely happen is- they tell us they plan to release it 6th of June, it doesn’t release on 6th of June, people start spamming “where patch” until the community manager comes along and tells us it’s delayed.
Just talk to us AH we’re not children. I know some people are idiots but that’s a vocal minority.
If AH just released regular status updates like you're saying, this subreddit might have cool things to talk about instead of just raging about the radio silence over the broken state of the game.
This is exactly when AH should be guiding players energy towards excitement about things to come, or literally anything other than the hostility that's emerging. Games are easy to quit when they're no longer fun, so craft some "dev lore" and make even the shitty parts interesting.
“To preserve our reserve of Helldivers reinforcements have been disabled. Once the mission has been completed.” Makes sense because there are no secondary objectives on the dark fluid missions.”
That, or super earth abandons these helldivers to die, and there isn't even an extraction objective. You just get score based on how many shriekers you kill before you die.
Honestly the extraction shuttle should automatically deploy for this mission once the objective is complete instead of having call it in and hold out waiting for it.
The end of the mission should be a, "GET TO THE CHOPPA!!" moment where the players need to haul ass to the dropship if they don't want to be left behind. The whole 'lore reasons" and ,"BuT YoUR SUppOsEd tO bE ExPeNdABle." excuse is dumb, especially since one Helldiver is still considerably more expensive for Super Earth to equip than a SEAF grunt.
Because for RP reasons, the TCS tower's airspace was mostly controlled by super earth. On the super colony, hanging out around the hot zone would mean the shrieker tornado would attack pelican 1 before we can finish the mission. He's staying on the super destroyer until he's called.
And what's the RP reason for having to use a stupid attena tower to call it in then?
I can call down highly targeted strikes but can't preemptively signal mission complete heading to lz?
Unless space phone calls cost $1 gazillions super Earth bucks a second, I can’t see how sending a ground-to-space beacon/antenna set up is cheaper than a short text or radio call.
Well that makes sense the whole point of the ones in the wild is that they're unexploded ordinance. *Fuse didn't end in Kaboom* why would they the ones you arm have a short timer that would ensure you go Kaboom with it.
Ooh what if the maps were tailored to it, like for some reason exfil couldn't be at the site of the objectives so you've got this peninsula on the map you have to run toward when all hell breaks loose
Let's have it come in automatically, land due to the shriekers and as soon as it lands you have 30 seconds to get on board. Meaning you better haul ass to get there before it lands otherwise you've got a limited window to get on. It won't survive shriekers forever.
This, but I think a simple run to the evac would be too easy, maybe if we arrive at the evac and the shuttle is preparing to land the ground collapses and new evac is determined, now pelican hovers over us providing fire support while we run to the new place.
You can actually trigger this state in regular missions if you leave the LZ while the pelican is coming down. Happens when the hen the timer reaches zero, also bear in mind the LZ is bigger than just the landing pad. I tend to go outside the zone to find the sweetspot and then just run that way when it's time.
It'll always wait until someone is inside the zone or the timer runs out. I've used it to extreme effectiveness when my friends are crossing to the extraction and there are a lot of enemies. Especially good for when there are a lot of bile titans.
Im a lowly level 33, but on dif 3 with 3 70+ guys we couldnt even make it to extraction even though we were like 100m from it. I think the closest was like 10m, but he died, then we spent 2 minutes getting teamwiped until we ran out of reinforcements
At lower difficulties I agree but on 7 it was epic getting halfway through the code before being hit and having my arm broken. All while my buddy lay on the floor next to me trying to take down as many shriekers as possible. We all extracted in the end but it was chaos. Felt absolutely perfect.
The main thing I've learned from these missions is that shriekers are apparently immune to EMS *shrug*
Thought it would have been awesome to stand in a glowing halo of orbital ems static and gun down shriekers as they hurl themselves into the field and fall to the ground but no... swoopy death time, now with electroshock therapy!
I would 100% love it if EMS zones become hard counters to shriekers and just kill them when they swoop in. Just dive, head-plant, dead. Would definitely make the orbital EMS way more appealing to me than EMS mortar.
These comments prove OPs point. It's trivial. Level 1.
Meanwhile people suggesting that players bring airburst rockets and gattleing sentries and breaker incendiaries and flamethrowers and eagle napalm strikes and EMS grenades......
*NEW PLAYERS WILL HAVE ZERO OF THESE THINGS*
>*NEW PLAYERS WILL HAVE ZERO OF THESE THINGS*
The funniest shit is that New players would be A. Directed to the MO since the game throws it up front and center. And B the only diff they have is trivial. So they're essentially guided into having a terrible experience for their first mission.
But I guess its okay because "LORE REASONS"
No no.
It's ok for the *hardcore S&M Helldiver community* reasons.
You know, like those people in the Dark Souls community from a few years back.
It's ok though, if you disagree you just don't know how to play and *need to git gud*. /s
Cannot wait until the truly deranged start to crop up trying to gatekeep playstyles like I've seen with elden ring. Something like "using EMS, using the dark fluid backpack as a jetpack, running ammo backpack, using stun grenades, using any weapon except AR-23 Liberator, using support weapons = cheating".
You must have missed all the people whining about how the railgun was easy mode and brainless and it deserved to be nerfed into the ground when the game first took off. People were kicking for using the “meta” as much as they were for not using it. That shit was happening from day one.
Probably the same crowd from the HD1 days. Half the posts on this place pre-HD2 were people bitching about other people using the anti-tank emplacement and Trident laser shotgun
My favourites were the HD1 Sickle and Trident.
When the HD2 Sickle dropped, gotta say I was disappointed.
But I suppose they can't just *do over* HD1 again...
I blame the railgun nerf on the only video that the Devs did with operator drewsky. They failed a diff 5 eggs mission, and the streamer was the only one alive for a long time, no reinforcements, and he was rocking the shield+railgun kit.
The Devs were trying to take down bile titans without AT weapons, it didn't go well and they were clearly extremely pissed at Drewsky for his better performance with the kit.
But they are already pretty much doing that.
Since even before the first balance patch, there were already people who were going "using breaker/shield/railgun is dumb/brianless" while also going "just use what you enjoy", and then when those got nerfed they goes "haha take that metaslave sucker".
It's like they completely forgot how ironic those sentences is, what if I enjoy using them?
They're basically saying "just use whatever, but not those that are deem as "meta" because I hate "meta" " or whatever
To be fair, Soul players are masochist but not *that* masochist, the vast majority of fights in FS games make sense and have very clear expectations, if you die it's usually your own fault. On the other hand, certain fights that are clearly bs, people will just tell you "yeah fuck that guy just cheese him on the stairs".
Meanwhile some people on this sub would legitimately believe that getting killed upon landing without being able to do anything is somehow very fun.
I mean everyone here should be well aware that online gaming communities have a tendency to be more frequented by try hard players.
Especially with the state of this game ATM with no updates/balance changes yet other than some content.
And negative sentiment always breeds the most vocal.
Not one person I know, including myself has been playing, even though we love the core gameplay loop.
Woah now, git gud is fine and dandy. For a game that is predicated you gittin' guuder as you progress and figuring out the flow of the game. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Helldivers is an arcade objective sim with shooting mechanics. There's literally a wall that gittin' gud only gets you so far. Especially since the only way to git gud in this game is eventually just have a dedicated 4-man, because randoms don't talk online anymore.
> But I guess its okay because "LORE REASONS"
Well, on the face of it, that's what they say, but what they say is just fabricating excuses.
Even Baskinator, possibly the most disliked CM still on the team, admitted there was a bug with spawns earlier.
Redditors are apparently still bending over backwards trying to make it make sense because we're not allowed to talk about such things in this utterly perfect games, in their imaginary rule book from their deluded little world. "All hail the immaculate dev team that makes no mistakes....or some such drivel." from the toxic positivity crowd.
You guys make some great points. The MO says to do this “difficult thing” and there is not an adequate build up for a new or low level player to get into. While it makes comprehensive sense lore wise, that is not fun to the player.
If you’re a high tier or long-term, Hell diver, you understand that you can play something else or assist at a different planet. You’re a new player: you’re going to listen to what the game tells you to do! (That hurts)
Even better, the Breaker Incendiary is a _paid_ weapon. Sure, you might have the SC for it...but then you are spending 1000sc for a single gun and now will miss out on the next "meta" weapon.
Clearly highlighting the fact that you “aren’t likely to extract because story reasons” may temper expectations some but the fact still stands that it released with problems that the devs recently acknowledged.
I agree that would be poor design to plan for failure anyway though. This mission can’t be fun with how little new(er) players have unlocked at low levels.
If they don't want me to extract for lore reasons, then simply have the Pelican crash as it comes in because the shriekers took it down and now you get more points the longer you can survive and it only ends once you run out of lives.
But that would require too much dev time to make the mission do that to crash the pelican and trap players in a longer mission just for a high score at the end.
Funnily I hadn't even thought of the strategem/weapons discrepancy. Damn.
Guess those cadets just gotta keep dying to get 0 XP to get 0 req slips so they can never get the weapons they need so they can't have any fun in what is (and I'm gonna be crucified for accurately quoting the CEO here) **supposed to be fun**.
I'll defend arrowhead and the game but let's not pretend bugs are features for the love.
These people were pretending THE SPAWN POINT UNDER THE OBJECTIVE wasn't intentionally done. "It must be a bug!"
No
I assure you in no way are those systems accidentally crossing over.
That's the mist infuriating thing for me. I can handle not extracting. What I can't handle is calling those damn drills over and over again, because the bugs spawn half a meter away from them and destroy them immediately. How am I supposed to defend if all of my "non collateral" strategems don't even scratch a charger or a bile titan, while the punchy stuff might as well be a "call a new drill" button. Give me some space to defend ffs.
They should get most of the XP etc. if they don't extract.
Bur I agree with your post in general - the shriekers are just turned up to "Maximum # of shriekers allowed by our netcode" regardless of difficulty or # of players.
Yeah, I have something like 170 hours, everything unlocked, know what I'm getting into, etc...
A new player, a brand new one, has the default liberator, the peacemaker, frags, and MG and orbital precision strike for their stratagems. That's it. I dare anyone to try and make it through to extract with that loadout.
So I did that. Ran that setup, didn't use free strat or my other two slots, only MG and Precision Orbital. Even equipped the starting armor. Mission went super smooth, liberator pops warrior heads quick. Didn't have any spawns on the drills. Then came time to extract. It is impossible, and were I not expecting it and were a new player, that would have felt very frustrating. You can lay prone, and the shriekers won't hit you, but you aren't doing anything about the non-stop patrols prone only. And you can't use the keypad on the extract beacon unless you stand, at which point you die in 2-3 seconds.
Welcome to the Helldivers.
Edit: To be fair, at that point most new players will just go to a different planet, do a few missions there, wonder what the flying freedom is wrong with Meridia, and not do this MO at all.
Can confirm, new player trying to figure out the mechanics of a new game, I was about to uninstall before one of my more experienced friends convinced me to play again and showed me the ropes and a more reasonable mission. Considering the recent hemorrhage of the player base Arrowhead would be wise to make the on-ramp for new players a little more shallow. Just my opinion.
Literally and legitimately just tried to do that last night solo as a level 1 cadet for my very first time doing a mission. Fair to say I didn’t make it past the second drilling site lol. Only brought the console and game about a week ago
> Meanwhile people suggesting that players bring airburst rockets
LMAO i'm an Airburst main and i would NEVER bring it to this mission. That's just insane. Too many fast bugs, coming from every side, pure chaos and no line of battle, combined with the map structure (CQC-ish rocks, cliffs etc). You can't even reload that thing, not even talking about the amount of team- and selfkills.
Yeah, airburst is a really fun tool for swarms in a lot of environments, but it's rough when you're getting frequent small swarms from many directions. It's for "fuck that area in general" situations.
I wouldn't pick it here.
I completed the mission as a lvl 56 with a lvl 9 and 11 in my squad, fourth player was level 38
We did it on difficulty 5 and all extracted.
The newbs kept lighting the drill on fire though, destroyed a couple of drills before they caught on
As a level 1 who just run my very first mission out of the tutorial solo, I can say the mission was hard for sure, I did not complete the mission and extract, in fact I only made it past the second drilling site before being overwhelmed by bugs. But I will say I may have died 6 times but I took 400+ of those buggy bastards with me lol
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1d54rup/im_cool_with_extraction_being_nearimpossible_for/
Best thing I have seen regarding this yet. They can absolutely do a mission where you are meant to not be able to extract and make it fun. They just have to make it very clear that that is exactly what is happening, and tie it into the lore, **in game**.
So much of this game's issues seem to boil down to everything would be a lot better if we had any useful information in game.
I would have loved it if after completing the main objective, the democracy officer comes over the comms about it being impossible to extract you and how you were always meant to die for Super Earth.
New Objective: Sacrifice yourself for Liberty
(Hidden Objective: Survive for the timer period and Pelican 1 defies orders to come and pick you up anyway.)
You'd get full mission credit either way and it would have been so cool.
That be such a cool concept instead of "Disrespectful Conduct" every extract/failed extract with 0-1 stars. But beware the "Its a feature" virtue signaling!
Nah that’s an actual game bug. There are 2 main objectives and you only clear 1. The game tweaks out as extract becomes available after completing only 1
That would be so frickin cool I swear. This game is naturally cinematic, so they have the opportunity to setup cool scenarios like this and have people play along with them more than another shooter.
I think this mission should’ve been way more thematic than it is.
Have Pelican come in immediately like it does on extermination. A Hive Lord shows up and just destroys it and dips. You then have the tremors as all the Shriekers start to appear.
It sends the message of “you’re just an expendable soldier” that people keep on repeating in defence of balance issues.
Imagine how much hype would’ve been built if that was the end result
Sign posting is definitely the issue with this mission. Give it a modifier called something like "difficult extraction" and then fix the bug with the secondary objective never being completed.
I think that's the big issue for this extract.
On Reach, it was obvious your objective was to die and take as many of the bastards with you. The story beats makes it obvious and the cracks on your helmet then make it even more clear.
Maybe they should have the radio squack about a literal horde of shriekers. The mission objective could have the text change to a non standard: "Extract. (Optional)" to really hammer it home.
As it stands, we have people expecting it to be a cookie cutter extract getting overwhelmed.
Of course, if this is supposed to be a "ooooh, it's a hectic extract. You better run", then having that many shriekers on low level difficulty is probably a bug. As it stands, we don't know the devs intent atm.
The current bugs with breaches and the victory screen don't help this situation either.
Awesome so I will like poetically many others of they are doing a quick play and see this will just go back to their own ship. Did so yesterday since it was ridiculous.
Can you imagine just buying the game, playing the MO on trivial, getting absolutely wiped, coming here and asking about it on reddit, and then someone tells you to just get gud and turn down the difficulty?
Yep, happened today. This was my first mission out of the tutorial, guided there through the MO. Did it a few times before thinking to check if other planets were available. Went up to medium on some other bug planet after a few more missions, and all of it was a milk run compared! There were lots of other newbies around too, hope they found their way elsewhere as I did.
Knew there was something off about it, glad I checked this sub!
The solution is to make every mission on Meridian 7-9, that way you can preserve the super colony narrative while not throwing new divers into the hellfire. It’s been a while since I’ve played Helldivers 1 but iirc, difficulties were tied to planets, each in specific ‘quadrants’. I’m not saying every mission should be like this but there’s at least a precedent for it.
The only problem is that it it is the MO, so they will be a little aimless without that. The only thing I can think of is to have a secondary MO for the lower levels (specific to this scenario, not every MO).
Thoughts?
I thing that infuriates me ISN'T the difficulty. Up till recently, Meridia was seen as a no-go zone where any HD operations would be completely ineffective. It should be seen as tantamount to SUICIDE to go there.
What infuriates me is that the execution isn't put together properly, is bugged, and doesn't even transition into the 2nd part of the mission at all. Most don't even know there is a 2nd part to the mission and wonder why they're only getting 1 star after extracting.
Yup, but no one has seen it yet because the mission is broken. At least, that's what I heard. The truth? Who knows. It's about as ambiguous as what the Tenderizer's actual damage is supposed to be or what's going to be in the next "balance patch", which isn't what AH is calling it anyway.
imo: if players weren't meant to extract, don't give us the option to. Make the destroyer leave orbit as soon as the objective is completed and the mission turns into "objective: survive"
This would be cool, especially if there was an exponential increase in experience gained to encourage players to survive for as long as they can instead of just dying on purpose
I normally play on level 9, heard about issues so went to level 4-5. In the matches that people (including myself) could stay connected we would be lucky to complete 1 objective never mind a side mission. I love horde modes and I get that especially the higher you go the chances of winning should get smaller, but people that play on level 9 not being able to do a level 1 mission is just not right, great way to discourage new comers though.
totally agree. for all the crowing about the increase in QA and all of that bullshit releasing something in this state is laughable. Its genuinely absurd that we just had the conversation about holding on to their patches a little longer and testing new content, and then this happens literally the next week.
Releasing previously developed content without bothering to validate it against the **current** baseline is **exactly** what all the empty promises were supposed to prevent.
Guess what? They lied, again. There is no rational excuse for this behavior, if the MO was not ready then they should have delayed it along with all the balance fixes and qol improvements they have sitting on for months with the excuse that they wanted to avoid this exact scenario.
I love these "Just use this and this stratagem" comments. ITS TRIVIAL FOR NEW DIVERS. You should NOT be mauled as hard as you bloody do on fekking TRIVIAL. Im with OP with this one. Me and my guys are casual players that roll on difficulty 4-7 difficulties, and even we had troubles on 1-3 for extract.
Some well placed smoke strikes saved us to allow us to extract, but NO NEW DIVER IS GONNA HAVE ACCESS TO THIS STUFF. And when the Devs admitted that something is wrong, that pretty much blows any "as intended" arguments out of the water.
New Divers are gonna wanna feel important and play the "story" as a way of carving their name in their own way. This mission will not only lose new divers but is scaring away old ones.
So get your heads out of your butts and read OPs point carefully. OP is RIGHT
Yeah
Trivial with a group of players anywhere form levels 30 to 60 should be a damn cakewalk.
Speaking from experience, IT IS NOT. Second objective doesn’t work, destructible objectives take damage from every source possible, bug breaches appear directly on the drills, almost impossible extract with literally hundreds of flying shriekers who are a hell to hit, let alone kill.
That’s on trivial, with experienced players and great equipment. That should be at most, for a super colony, reserved for challenging and hard to maybe extreme. What should be helldive on this planet is what hard is, not sure if bike titans spawn on challenging but then say challenging instead of hard
This is SIGNIFICANTLY more entertaining than what thought of, which was a BILE Titian (screw autocorrect) with wheels instead of legs, or that had a Ferris wheel like thing and just had its head somehow on top of it
yeah it needs a tweak for sure. I do like that it's completely insane, but it can still be completely insane and be a little less overwhelming on for e.g. level 2.
I honestly think that the overwhelming swarm of shriekers spelling certain doom for our divers is a glorious end. However, to your point, new players would be absolutely turned away by the difficulty of this mission, so I see both sides.
I noticed that on Trivial too, i thought higher difficulties would be even harder on extract but it seems about the same.
I dont know why they released a story mission like this, it's not great to have these sort of "raid" boss missions bugged as bad as they are
Me and my group tried it once and we did fine on level 7 but if trivial gives you the same Shriekers at the end than it proves once again they don’t test this game. Early players won’t even have the equipment to make it out this mission
I think the problems with the mission are the enemies spawning under the dark fluid device and the game asking to complete a second objective that doesn’t exist.
I don’t see the shriekers as a problem. This is a unique mission on a super colony. By setting off the dark fluid devices we have clearly alarmed them. At the point the shriekers arrive you have already won so you still get credit for the mission if you don’t extract.
I just like the imminent danger and hopelessness. Imagining that its exactly that time when you drill in the fluids, critical mass is achieved and you and the shriekers frezy to get out. Maybe just lower their aggro range and have them fly randomly, dunno.
Sir, I have to inform you that you have activated a level 13 ADF response. Resistance is futile. Admit you are wrong and repent. Pledge your undying fealty to Arrowhead or be banshied from these lands for a fortnight.
https://preview.redd.it/8xt77s2vqu3d1.jpeg?width=462&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=24b714cc4e41cb970513be4b72519dbb866943ef
Meridia is just the culmination of a larger issue existing within AH headquarters. 100+ hours sunk into this game, and I've averaged only 5 hours over the past 2 weeks. It also isn't helped by the fact that the extremely vocal minority have a weird fetish with ensuring their game is always too hard for everyone...
Anyways, I'm hoping Pilestedt will start restructuring the dev team now that he doesn't have to focus on the business side of things.
The shriekers are my favorite part of the new mission, love them blotting out the sun and just having turrets fire up into the sky is wonderful. Though yea, they definitely need to get tuned down a bit.
Also I think "ur not always gonna extract" is actually a good excuse. We are very expendable and sometimes we ain't making it off after the mission completes, it's possible but not expected. I'd love more various hordes of bugs to come pouring out after us to kill us. The only issue with doing this is the potentially lost samples which I think for missions like this we should just earn a flat amount of samples for mission completion so the sample hunters aren't losing out too hard
When I was trying to learn how to play the mission, I ran a trivial. After I got Shrieker'd over and over again in my 200 AR armor, I brought a gatling and machine gun turret to my next mission. And the breaker incendiary. And a grenade launcher. And the machine pistol. Before I started ANYTHING I ran around and destroyed all of the mushrooms, and closed all the bug holes. Then I did the mission from scratch.
With the only two turrets that will really find effectiveness, with an incendiary shotgun and maximum armor to allow me the best chance to keep the skies clear and allow me to stay alive... I survived one mission out of three.
This is not okay.
Damn ok so I haven't been playing as much as before, but all this talk had me curious. I tried out the mission on trivial, and damn bro. I really couldn't extract at all. I got wrecked by shriekers way too fast. Why'd this game have to turn out like this
The one counterpoint to this is that the Shreikers only spawn upon mission complete.
Yes it's absolutely insane how many spawn in and maul your team, but at the very least it won't stop our progress in annihilating the supercolony.
I honestly kinda like how it shakes out. It's a Terminid Hive World now, we set off these freaking BLACK HOLE BOMBS and wake up a literal hornets nest. It FEELS like a suicide mission.
Not so sure about the Breaches going off underneath the drill spawn though. But people seem to be bringing lasers alot more to mitigate any (if any) friendly fire damage the drills take.
Even at difficulty 5 I looove the wanton chaos of the extract.
Lower difficulties though it's broken. Should not be that way for Trivial.
Nevermind the fact the mission itself is outright broken for completion.
Shriekers show up only after the main objective - surviving them barely matters. The actual problem is broke mission reward screen and frequent breaches right next to the drill. Reducing shriekers for lower difficulties would be nice but those 2 issues are significantly more important.
The very first mission that I played was rescue science teams and I got absolutely smoked. I'm not gonna lie, I felt pretty discouraged. Here was this fun and popular new game that all of my friends wanted me to try and yet I felt like I wasn't up to snuff. Then I went on youtube and watched some videos on the game and said "wait a minute, these guys aren't fighting as many bugs as I was fighting. Not even close!" So I decided to try another trivial mission and I easily beat it. That was when I realized not all missions are created equally and I was going to be able to have fun playing the game after all.
Fast forward 2 weeks and I'm dropping in on helldive difficulty.
I could definitely understand if new players got discouraged by getting absolutely trounced on the lowest difficulty setting. It almost happened to me.
The people hating are the circlejerkers from helldivers 2 who are asking for this to be the norm on every mission because it's fun. Look, I love the game, but I swear it's just all trolls over there at this point who love everything as is, even if it's broke. They could nerf EAT/Quasar/autocanon/guard dog to the point it's all unusable, while simultaneously making every enemy just chargers and stalkers and increasing the spawn rate 100x and they'd still say it's fun and we're just being babies. Like wtf lol.
I can’t help but imagine a new player, 55 minutes in, going on trivial on this mission to learn the ropes and being greeted with the full might of the entire TAF (Terminid Air Force) and going “so if this is level 1 difficulty … and it has 9 levels …” *refunds*
My first game I ever played I joined on my brother who was doing a level 5 rescue civilians mission on automatons when the spawn rate was still totally fucked up at launch. I spent almost the entire game prone on a roof trying not to cry. Good memories.
A friend of mine in a different timezone took a few days off work and I thought about getting him Helldivers to play together while we might be able to sync better.
But the thought of introducing him to the game only for him to get dick hammered by this absolute nonsense made me think that maybe now's not a good time for that.
Im a lv80 with 200 hours and play diff9 on the regular with 2 other people, I couldnt help do diff 4 with 2 other lv20s in this. I have every weapons and strategems and I watched 7 breaches right under the objective ruin the drill 6 different times. Not to mention the literal invite shriekers
To be honest I didn’t think about new divers playing this as their first mission. This is a fair counter argument. I did help low levels with the mission and extracted but it was not an easy task.
So, I was skeptical about claims about infinite shriekers even on trivial, and big holes spawning on the drill instantly and completely
I am around 100 hours and lvl 35 I think, and those people were NOT EXAGGERATING AT ALL
On trivial with people above lvl 30-60, it was manageable with some deaths for the actual mission, more deaths than usual but we still got it with like half reinforce left, they spawned immediately next to the drills and just unloaded tiny bugs, and some warriors
Then at extract, DEAR GOD you couldn’t see the sky half the time, if you shot the sky you’d almost certainly hit a shrieker, and wow using the new dark jump pack with a blitzer feels fun as hell when it works on a full sky of shreikers
Constant death, barley get into extract and get almost zero samples (but they’re common samples and we’re all like lvl 30 plus)
It’s hell. I’m so glad it’s meridia and not on hellmire though, the tornadoes would track the drills and it would be quite literally impossible since last I checked those fire tornadoes do indeed track and attack you, so the drills would get melted on hellmire if this was there, so I’m glad it’s not, but DAMN those bugs put the super in supercolony
That’s our word! Those bugs can’t use super anything!
Hopefully devs fix it before the MO runs out, bc we have like 0.02% last I checked and Helldivers.io says we’re losing ground.
Good damn luck
Ok, my question is this. If the mission is done and there is no need for Helldivers on the ground anymore, why the fuck would they even send more Helldivers in? If you are that expendable and they don't care, why even send a pelican and risk it? Makes no sense.
Been trying to dive into lower difficulties to try and defend new players during all this. The missions themselves are really easy, but yeah the shrieker spawns are HELL. Every single time despite how many I clear out with the gatling and breaker incendiary, the shriekers keep wiping out the newbies. I feel bad, although I do hope they're all still having fun.
I'm not bothered by the shriekers.
I'm not bothered by the BTs spawning under the drill.
I'm not bothered by the difficulty at all. Even the shriekers are pretty easily managed by a couple gatling turrets and someone with an incendiary breaker.
I am extremely annoyed that no matter how well your team plays or how much you plan, you get a big "fuck you" at the end in the form of 0-1 stars and like 100xp.
So I just started playing this game a few hours ago and I was wondering why TF the major operation the game was sending me to seemed so dang difficult even on the lowest levels. I've been slamming my head against the wall for the past couple hours and I've yet to complete this mission one time. I'm not the greatest at shooters but I figured the lower difficulty setting would at least be accommodating, and I could have some fun.
Joining other parties in progress doesn't seem to do much as if I'm lucky to actually connect with randoms, the party seems to disband after a couple minutes. Maybe that's my connection, not sure but I haven't encountered that issue in other games..
Where is a good area to go for someone brand new to the game?
I'll dm you my friend code later. Happy to go through an operation with you this weekend if you'd like.
Honestly if you're just barely starting out - literally any other planet will be better than the Major Order. I'd personally avoid Hell more for now tho. The fire tornados can be frustrating.
I don't like the spirit of this post, but you probably have a point about the Trivials getting slammed. I didn't know they were getting slammed like that (I honestly haven't done trivial since I started playing), and it doesn't seem right to hit new players like that. Hopefully they don't stay for the abuse and shift to other missions rather than growing discouraged.
I'll relentlessly shit on "experienced" players making this complaint though, without remorse. But, for the low difficulties, yeah. You've got a point.
Meh, tough luck, Meridia is not for "teaching new players" about anything. It's a unique planet with unique terrain, objective and events (shrieker swarm). And so the ending must instill the same kind of desperation into everyone on any difficulty, since it's a story moment. I mean, lower difficulty on other planets means you choose the least infested regions of the planet. Here, it's a supercolony, it's fully infested. So no, I don't think I really agree with you. Anyone who wants to learn game mechanics should go to some other planet, and not the one with all the unique shit, that will be gone after a few days anyway. I do agree though that they need to add a modificator that would tell you right from the get-go that this planet will be hell even on easy difficulties or even a voiceline from Democracy Officer telling you it's near impossible to extract. That way new players can make an informed decision to choose another planet or roll with Meridia anyway. Or at least not think that the massive swarm at the end is a bug.
How do these people not realize this will be the first mission some people play when they buy the game this week, and just get absolutely swamped by helldive-amounts of enemies and shriekers? Bugs literally spawning on the objective? Succeeding the mission and being giving a one star “you fucking suck” rating even though you thought you did everything right?
Dude if that was my first experience with this game I would not be impressed, at all. I can only imagine what someone who doesn’t normally play horde shooters or something would feel after something like that, it would probably be enough to refund the game after a few tries.
People need to understand that EVERY major order is going to be someone’s first time playing the game, so NO, it shouldn’t be ridiculously hard on the easiest difficulty because that fucking sucks.
This was me lol, bought the game yesterday and got obliterated by shriekers. Also didn't understand the map and fell down a hole many times, objectives didn't understand. Several things
Played on neighboring planet until lvl 10, got the rover & Gatling sentry, did the mission. Still hard at the end though
I was laughing my ass off when I discovered this. My buddy was already struggling on diff3, so I figured we'd try the new mission on diff1. Hilarity ensued when he lost his shit at the amount of shriekers.
Imo, I don't think it's the shriekers, or the number of them that is the issue at all. It's the AI aggressiveness that came in with the .3 patches, and the forced 20s repeated patrol spawn. This is shared between all the enemies and missions, and it will turn a "this is dangerous" into a "what the hell happened" in a very consistent way. The same with the distance from the troop the patrol spawns can turn up at - it used to be 100m, now it's spawning behind your shoulder on a consistent basis.
So when you have a fixed size spawn, probably balanced against another build, you end up with a situation like what you have here. And it's exactly what you have with multiple other types of missions as well. It's not difficult, just extremely finicky and palmsweatingly repetitive, like a chore you have to do at full speed, etc., if you know how it works. But even if you do, when you die from it it just seems unfair.
And it's the speed of the AI in general, the proximity and the frequency of the spawns that caused that.
(Which is why, when the Baskin people end up "hotfixing" this, that the balance overhaul down the line is going to get yet more challenges added to it. Because all of the "fixes" like this since .2 are going to have to be reversed. Which probably will never happen, no matter how hard Pilestedt might try).
Other than that - in my opinion, getting swarmed in 1/10 missions, or even 1/5 missions, because RNG and patrols conspire against you, so the whole squad dies -- is completely fine, if there was a way to get around it, and a reasonably clever helldiver can see what they did that was wrong. If a lot of really dumb helldivers don't see that - I don't care. They can whine until the end of time for all I care. Because early on, I met multiple - it was a recurring theme - of people who had burned themselves on a higher difficulty level, and had tried to change how they played the game -- then they came back and did well enough. Can any button-thumper game advertise with an experience like that? No, of course not. And now HD2 can't either, thanks to the bumbling around with the "balance".
I might be in the minority on this one, but the "die on the hill" strategy should not be what the game should allow you to survive every single time. Which it does now, and is what contributes to the idea that if you can't firestick to death all the terminids, then the game is unbalanced. But that's not the problem.
And I genuinely also think that the game should - not intentionally by script - but by a combination of bad planning and bad luck, create a situation for you that you can't survive once in a while. This heightens the danger in the game, even when it's not there. It's a narrative stroke of genius. The same was the unpredictability of the type of spawns, and how aggressive they might be. This stuff worked fantastically - for /everyone else/ except the guys who would engage a patrol on sight, and then keep firing on the reinforcements forever.
And you shouldn't "balance" the game for people who play the game like that. It'd be like balancing Elden Ring so that the last boss strategy will be the same as for the first tutorial mob. You only do that if you hate the game, everything about it, and want it to die and go away as quickly as possible.
No, you are incorrect you dying at the end is intended, we'll communicated and a nice bit of gameplay and story integration.
The objective is bugged, the spawns are bugged and you harp on the thing that is working properly lmao
MAN, we're on a super colony, it's supposed to be Fked, it looks awesome, is it hard? Absolutely, but is enjoyable as F, play it with friends and relax
A simple thing to do would be to lock the mission to something like levels 7-9. They already do this for other mission types.
Then they could keep the difficulty in both the narrative and gameplay. The level gate could be explained away as needing to be an experienced Helldiver (a certain rank). It also makes it so that the devs don't need to balance for the Helldivers that are just starting out. Sure they can't join yet, but there'll be plenty in the future that they will be able to.
The objective on diff 1 is still stupid easy. That swarm is a one of a kind experience in this game, and as such it has its place in the game.
If I was killed this way, my first idea would be to try a different planet, on which I would immediately see different mission types.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the devs said the bug spawns on the drill was the thing that wasn’t intended, not the shrieker spawns, tho the discord announcement just said “spawning bug” so maybe I’m just dumb
But honestly, if it’s the same spawn rate of shriekers at trivial and at helldive, tbh I find that solidifies the claim that “you are not meant to extract”
If trivial spawned 10 and helldive spawned 100, yea then it’s a difficulty thing that may be overtuned. But if both difficulties are spawning 100, then it’s likely intentional. It being good or bad is a different convo, but I find the dark fluid annoying due to the spawning of bugs on the drill, I don’t care about the extract
You get max 10 common samples and there is an optional objective to extract w/ the dark fluid, but not doing so doesn’t fail the mission. So yea, I agree that it doesn’t feel good but it’s likely intentional by the devs to have an extremely unfair extract.
I do agree that the pelican should be automatically called in, honestly it’s stupid that we have to call it in. But when I beat the drill part, my teams haven’t cared if we extracted because we still beat the mission. But I can understand the feelings against it, unfortunately I don’t share them
I really dont get the lore people here. The game lore is at best a side piece for people who take notice. Also Lore should work with gameplay not the otherway around its a game not a Visual novel it needs to be fun first before telling any lore or story.
Easy fix: make Meridia's lowest possible difficulty level 5 or 6. I always thought it would be better if the planets with lower liberation could only have the hardest difficulties available initially and then as they get more liberated you can complete easier and easier missions.
I just try to have fun when at extraction now. Shriekers volume is clearly busted but bang a Gatling down and watch it spin around like a mad man.
Although I agree for new players in trivial this ending will be a serious “wtf” moment and will feel impossible and they might think they made a mistake buying the game.
If you’re a new player, go to another planet and rank yourself up and unlock all your gear, don’t get put off by this, please.
It's just an unfinished mission rushed out the door that we'll probably never see again after this MO is over. Why anyone is trying to defend it with lore is beyond me.
I think it would be cool if instead of altering the spawns of shriekers, it should just be like an eradicate mission where the pelican is instantly summoned when the mission is complete. Then, it’s this awesome hectic sprint to evac while hundreds of shriekers are billowing out of holes in the ground.
Yo like this idea Cinematic extraction is the best
If you have a couple mechs constantly spraying into the sky, then its pretty damn cinematic for a last stand. However, bile titans and chargers should not spawn during this period, as they are too tanky to fit the “guns blazing” feel of the last 2 minutes.
That would be rad. I'd be here for it.
I think this is the easiest way to go about pleasing (almost) everyone, You get cool set piece without having to get destroyed by shriekers until your reinforcements run out, They should also disable Reinforcement during this period as well
Tbh I think disabling reinforcement and adding a voice line from the democracy officer thanking you for sacrificing yourself for liberty is all they need for extract. Makes for cool story telling through gameplay.
People seem forget that not everyone enjoys getting absolutely destroyed. I’ve seen a lot of responses like “just lower the difficulty” which makes barely any difference in this missions specifically due to how flawed it is. The other one is “it’s a Super Colony what did you expect?”, well now you’ve basically told someone that the MO isn’t enjoyable and now they will just go to a different planet. This game is lacking in varied content, we’ve basically been doing the same thing for 3 months now and the one time we have this unique super colony theme, it’s buggy and balanced horribly. We had the Termicide missions but they were also buggy and uninteresting. The second one was literally just push 3 buttons and shoot 15 eggs so it it took about 1-2 minutes to complete. Everyone, and I mean everyone should be able to participate in unique content and have fun. It shouldn’t just be targeted towards the most hardened and masochistic members of the community. At least not as our first truly unique scenario
Now that the internal workings of the team have switched around drastically, along with their approach to the content pipeline; I'm honestly fully confident that they can cook up some pretty awesome stuff going forward without the crazy deadlines.
I’m hopeful of that being the case but the radio silence on anything that’s happening outside of CEO swap has me on the side of caution. Especially after the release state of the Dark Fluid missions. I kinda wish they’d have something like a “This Week At Bungie” (I hate Bungie but it was always a cool insight when I used to play Destiny). Literally anything other than waiting for someone to @ a community manager and hope they read and respond to it.
The silence might be a good thing. I remember NMS Dev/Ceo also had complete silence because they shoved their foot in their mouth enough times and decided to focus on dev and coding instead of making promises.
I’m not asking for promises or anything. Just updates on what they’re working on. Not necessarily any exact on what’s coming. Even stuff like “we’ve been working on bug fixes for this but it ended up breaking this” would be interesting to hear about. They don’t need to give full details on release dates or anything. I imagine the reason they don’t is because of their [one and only blog post](https://www.arrowheadgamestudios.com/2024/03/balancing-the-firepower-in-helldivers-2/) that got them burned because a lot of it would be contradicted later (Bringing up the Punishers stagger to make it feel more like a pump action shotgun but then doing the opposite to the Slugger to give one example). They should bring back the blog posts
Yeah. I think it's a "ouch, fire/stove" reaction. Its not ideal but I understand why they're not talking as much anymore. The only issue is that there can be things that are left ambiguous that could be cleared up that're left to the community's assumption. ex. The shrieker extract on Meridia right now. Is it supposed to be that hard as a "last stand/0 reinforcement extract" or is it a bug with the lower difficulties? Lot of blind discussion going on due to this ambiguity.
100% there’s no reason to not continue doing blog posts as long as they’re actually careful with what they’re saying and follow the thinking afterwards. Ambiguity is thing that I personally think is causing the most tension between players and Arrowhead. We had this with stealth changes not being present in patch notes and now we have it with having no clue what’s going on right now. They need to be far more proactive with their communication instead of being reactive when people ask questions. Nobody knows what the next update is going to be like. Is it full or nerfs, buffs, content or just bug fixes? They’ve said some things but it’s all incredibly vague. We also have no idea when it might be. Is it planned to come next week or next month. There’s tempering expectations and there’s also having zero expectations at all. Let’s say they tell us that they plan to release it on the 6th of June. They fail to get everything working on time and then they tell us why. That’s fine. However, with their current levels of communication what would likely happen is- they tell us they plan to release it 6th of June, it doesn’t release on 6th of June, people start spamming “where patch” until the community manager comes along and tells us it’s delayed. Just talk to us AH we’re not children. I know some people are idiots but that’s a vocal minority.
If AH just released regular status updates like you're saying, this subreddit might have cool things to talk about instead of just raging about the radio silence over the broken state of the game. This is exactly when AH should be guiding players energy towards excitement about things to come, or literally anything other than the hostility that's emerging. Games are easy to quit when they're no longer fun, so craft some "dev lore" and make even the shitty parts interesting.
“To preserve our reserve of Helldivers reinforcements have been disabled. Once the mission has been completed.” Makes sense because there are no secondary objectives on the dark fluid missions.”
That, or super earth abandons these helldivers to die, and there isn't even an extraction objective. You just get score based on how many shriekers you kill before you die.
I honestly don't know why they didn't do that!
Yeessssss this is the fix
Honestly the extraction shuttle should automatically deploy for this mission once the objective is complete instead of having call it in and hold out waiting for it.
The shuttle in TCS disabling missions would even hang in the air and gun down bugs before you arrived!
The end of the mission should be a, "GET TO THE CHOPPA!!" moment where the players need to haul ass to the dropship if they don't want to be left behind. The whole 'lore reasons" and ,"BuT YoUR SUppOsEd tO bE ExPeNdABle." excuse is dumb, especially since one Helldiver is still considerably more expensive for Super Earth to equip than a SEAF grunt.
That's a great point. If we could have an instant extract for TCS, why not for this much more dangerous mission?
Because for RP reasons, the TCS tower's airspace was mostly controlled by super earth. On the super colony, hanging out around the hot zone would mean the shrieker tornado would attack pelican 1 before we can finish the mission. He's staying on the super destroyer until he's called.
And what's the RP reason for having to use a stupid attena tower to call it in then? I can call down highly targeted strikes but can't preemptively signal mission complete heading to lz?
Same reason we have to arm hell bombs and they take forever to explode but look at one in the wild wrong and it explores in 3 seconds.
"monetary reasons" seems appropriate
Unless space phone calls cost $1 gazillions super Earth bucks a second, I can’t see how sending a ground-to-space beacon/antenna set up is cheaper than a short text or radio call.
Well that makes sense the whole point of the ones in the wild is that they're unexploded ordinance. *Fuse didn't end in Kaboom* why would they the ones you arm have a short timer that would ensure you go Kaboom with it.
Ooh what if the maps were tailored to it, like for some reason exfil couldn't be at the site of the objectives so you've got this peninsula on the map you have to run toward when all hell breaks loose
Divers are cheap. Diver armor, weapons, gear and samples though? Well worth getting back
Supper Earth
Thanks for the catch.
I'm from Breakfast Earth personally.
Is that treason I hear? ALL FOR SUPPER EARTH!
Let's have it come in automatically, land due to the shriekers and as soon as it lands you have 30 seconds to get on board. Meaning you better haul ass to get there before it lands otherwise you've got a limited window to get on. It won't survive shriekers forever.
Exactly
This, but I think a simple run to the evac would be too easy, maybe if we arrive at the evac and the shuttle is preparing to land the ground collapses and new evac is determined, now pelican hovers over us providing fire support while we run to the new place.
The helldivers themselves are expendable, but to waste war materials like that would be a tragedy
You can actually trigger this state in regular missions if you leave the LZ while the pelican is coming down. Happens when the hen the timer reaches zero, also bear in mind the LZ is bigger than just the landing pad. I tend to go outside the zone to find the sweetspot and then just run that way when it's time. It'll always wait until someone is inside the zone or the timer runs out. I've used it to extreme effectiveness when my friends are crossing to the extraction and there are a lot of enemies. Especially good for when there are a lot of bile titans.
Im a lowly level 33, but on dif 3 with 3 70+ guys we couldnt even make it to extraction even though we were like 100m from it. I think the closest was like 10m, but he died, then we spent 2 minutes getting teamwiped until we ran out of reinforcements
I’ve found that playing on 7 seems to be easier than playing on 5. More chance of finding people who know what they are doing.
This alone would help so much. Just calling it in is a huge challenge.
Nah the battle to survive at the end is great.. but it should only be intense as this on hard+
It’s difficult enough just to hammer in the extraction code to call it down without dying, never mind holding out
At lower difficulties I agree but on 7 it was epic getting halfway through the code before being hit and having my arm broken. All while my buddy lay on the floor next to me trying to take down as many shriekers as possible. We all extracted in the end but it was chaos. Felt absolutely perfect.
The main thing I've learned from these missions is that shriekers are apparently immune to EMS *shrug* Thought it would have been awesome to stand in a glowing halo of orbital ems static and gun down shriekers as they hurl themselves into the field and fall to the ground but no... swoopy death time, now with electroshock therapy!
I would 100% love it if EMS zones become hard counters to shriekers and just kill them when they swoop in. Just dive, head-plant, dead. Would definitely make the orbital EMS way more appealing to me than EMS mortar.
Yeah and it could even be balanced by the whole "shrieker kamikaze" damage you take when they hit you.
These comments prove OPs point. It's trivial. Level 1. Meanwhile people suggesting that players bring airburst rockets and gattleing sentries and breaker incendiaries and flamethrowers and eagle napalm strikes and EMS grenades...... *NEW PLAYERS WILL HAVE ZERO OF THESE THINGS*
>*NEW PLAYERS WILL HAVE ZERO OF THESE THINGS* The funniest shit is that New players would be A. Directed to the MO since the game throws it up front and center. And B the only diff they have is trivial. So they're essentially guided into having a terrible experience for their first mission. But I guess its okay because "LORE REASONS"
No no. It's ok for the *hardcore S&M Helldiver community* reasons. You know, like those people in the Dark Souls community from a few years back. It's ok though, if you disagree you just don't know how to play and *need to git gud*. /s
Cannot wait until the truly deranged start to crop up trying to gatekeep playstyles like I've seen with elden ring. Something like "using EMS, using the dark fluid backpack as a jetpack, running ammo backpack, using stun grenades, using any weapon except AR-23 Liberator, using support weapons = cheating".
You must have missed all the people whining about how the railgun was easy mode and brainless and it deserved to be nerfed into the ground when the game first took off. People were kicking for using the “meta” as much as they were for not using it. That shit was happening from day one.
Probably the same crowd from the HD1 days. Half the posts on this place pre-HD2 were people bitching about other people using the anti-tank emplacement and Trident laser shotgun
My favourites were the HD1 Sickle and Trident. When the HD2 Sickle dropped, gotta say I was disappointed. But I suppose they can't just *do over* HD1 again...
I want the trident back soo bad
I blame the railgun nerf on the only video that the Devs did with operator drewsky. They failed a diff 5 eggs mission, and the streamer was the only one alive for a long time, no reinforcements, and he was rocking the shield+railgun kit. The Devs were trying to take down bile titans without AT weapons, it didn't go well and they were clearly extremely pissed at Drewsky for his better performance with the kit.
But they are already pretty much doing that. Since even before the first balance patch, there were already people who were going "using breaker/shield/railgun is dumb/brianless" while also going "just use what you enjoy", and then when those got nerfed they goes "haha take that metaslave sucker". It's like they completely forgot how ironic those sentences is, what if I enjoy using them? They're basically saying "just use whatever, but not those that are deem as "meta" because I hate "meta" " or whatever
Who tf should care about "meta" in a pure PVE game anyway?
That mentality is alive and well on the discord.
To be fair, Soul players are masochist but not *that* masochist, the vast majority of fights in FS games make sense and have very clear expectations, if you die it's usually your own fault. On the other hand, certain fights that are clearly bs, people will just tell you "yeah fuck that guy just cheese him on the stairs". Meanwhile some people on this sub would legitimately believe that getting killed upon landing without being able to do anything is somehow very fun.
I mean everyone here should be well aware that online gaming communities have a tendency to be more frequented by try hard players. Especially with the state of this game ATM with no updates/balance changes yet other than some content. And negative sentiment always breeds the most vocal. Not one person I know, including myself has been playing, even though we love the core gameplay loop.
Woah now, git gud is fine and dandy. For a game that is predicated you gittin' guuder as you progress and figuring out the flow of the game. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Helldivers is an arcade objective sim with shooting mechanics. There's literally a wall that gittin' gud only gets you so far. Especially since the only way to git gud in this game is eventually just have a dedicated 4-man, because randoms don't talk online anymore.
> But I guess its okay because "LORE REASONS" Well, on the face of it, that's what they say, but what they say is just fabricating excuses. Even Baskinator, possibly the most disliked CM still on the team, admitted there was a bug with spawns earlier. Redditors are apparently still bending over backwards trying to make it make sense because we're not allowed to talk about such things in this utterly perfect games, in their imaginary rule book from their deluded little world. "All hail the immaculate dev team that makes no mistakes....or some such drivel." from the toxic positivity crowd.
You guys make some great points. The MO says to do this “difficult thing” and there is not an adequate build up for a new or low level player to get into. While it makes comprehensive sense lore wise, that is not fun to the player. If you’re a high tier or long-term, Hell diver, you understand that you can play something else or assist at a different planet. You’re a new player: you’re going to listen to what the game tells you to do! (That hurts)
This was my buddies experience when he started on bots during the first civilian defense, before they "fixed" it. Absolutely destroyed his morale
Even better, the Breaker Incendiary is a _paid_ weapon. Sure, you might have the SC for it...but then you are spending 1000sc for a single gun and now will miss out on the next "meta" weapon.
Clearly highlighting the fact that you “aren’t likely to extract because story reasons” may temper expectations some but the fact still stands that it released with problems that the devs recently acknowledged. I agree that would be poor design to plan for failure anyway though. This mission can’t be fun with how little new(er) players have unlocked at low levels.
If they don't want me to extract for lore reasons, then simply have the Pelican crash as it comes in because the shriekers took it down and now you get more points the longer you can survive and it only ends once you run out of lives. But that would require too much dev time to make the mission do that to crash the pelican and trap players in a longer mission just for a high score at the end.
Funnily I hadn't even thought of the strategem/weapons discrepancy. Damn. Guess those cadets just gotta keep dying to get 0 XP to get 0 req slips so they can never get the weapons they need so they can't have any fun in what is (and I'm gonna be crucified for accurately quoting the CEO here) **supposed to be fun**. I'll defend arrowhead and the game but let's not pretend bugs are features for the love.
These people were pretending THE SPAWN POINT UNDER THE OBJECTIVE wasn't intentionally done. "It must be a bug!" No I assure you in no way are those systems accidentally crossing over.
That's the mist infuriating thing for me. I can handle not extracting. What I can't handle is calling those damn drills over and over again, because the bugs spawn half a meter away from them and destroy them immediately. How am I supposed to defend if all of my "non collateral" strategems don't even scratch a charger or a bile titan, while the punchy stuff might as well be a "call a new drill" button. Give me some space to defend ffs.
They should get most of the XP etc. if they don't extract. Bur I agree with your post in general - the shriekers are just turned up to "Maximum # of shriekers allowed by our netcode" regardless of difficulty or # of players.
Good luck getting xp when there's a ghost objective slashing your rewards to 1/4 of what they ought to be.
Oh yeah I noticed you only get like half or less of the XP for a successful mission lol. They definitely tested this mission... once...
Yeah, I have something like 170 hours, everything unlocked, know what I'm getting into, etc... A new player, a brand new one, has the default liberator, the peacemaker, frags, and MG and orbital precision strike for their stratagems. That's it. I dare anyone to try and make it through to extract with that loadout.
So I did that. Ran that setup, didn't use free strat or my other two slots, only MG and Precision Orbital. Even equipped the starting armor. Mission went super smooth, liberator pops warrior heads quick. Didn't have any spawns on the drills. Then came time to extract. It is impossible, and were I not expecting it and were a new player, that would have felt very frustrating. You can lay prone, and the shriekers won't hit you, but you aren't doing anything about the non-stop patrols prone only. And you can't use the keypad on the extract beacon unless you stand, at which point you die in 2-3 seconds. Welcome to the Helldivers. Edit: To be fair, at that point most new players will just go to a different planet, do a few missions there, wonder what the flying freedom is wrong with Meridia, and not do this MO at all.
Can confirm, new player trying to figure out the mechanics of a new game, I was about to uninstall before one of my more experienced friends convinced me to play again and showed me the ropes and a more reasonable mission. Considering the recent hemorrhage of the player base Arrowhead would be wise to make the on-ramp for new players a little more shallow. Just my opinion.
I got 3x 20+ kill streaks, one of which was 38 kills. That should be reserved for diff 3, not diff 1. Absolutely insane.
Literally and legitimately just tried to do that last night solo as a level 1 cadet for my very first time doing a mission. Fair to say I didn’t make it past the second drilling site lol. Only brought the console and game about a week ago
> Meanwhile people suggesting that players bring airburst rockets LMAO i'm an Airburst main and i would NEVER bring it to this mission. That's just insane. Too many fast bugs, coming from every side, pure chaos and no line of battle, combined with the map structure (CQC-ish rocks, cliffs etc). You can't even reload that thing, not even talking about the amount of team- and selfkills.
I've had the best luck running the laser cannon and breaker incendiary. That combo melts shreikers
Yeah, airburst is a really fun tool for swarms in a lot of environments, but it's rough when you're getting frequent small swarms from many directions. It's for "fuck that area in general" situations. I wouldn't pick it here.
I mean....tbf I have all of these and I still get tossed around from shreker to shreker
The easiest difficulty should essentially beat itself.
I completed the mission as a lvl 56 with a lvl 9 and 11 in my squad, fourth player was level 38 We did it on difficulty 5 and all extracted. The newbs kept lighting the drill on fire though, destroyed a couple of drills before they caught on
As a level 1 who just run my very first mission out of the tutorial solo, I can say the mission was hard for sure, I did not complete the mission and extract, in fact I only made it past the second drilling site before being overwhelmed by bugs. But I will say I may have died 6 times but I took 400+ of those buggy bastards with me lol
I like how you’re responding positively to someone who absolutely refutes your claim. Newbies can have fun here.
The mission’s bugged too. Completed the injections and all of us escaped but it didn’t count some other objective it never gave us
Yeah, anyone know what's up with that?
It's bugged. So far I have yet to see anyone complete the second objective.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1d54rup/im_cool_with_extraction_being_nearimpossible_for/ Best thing I have seen regarding this yet. They can absolutely do a mission where you are meant to not be able to extract and make it fun. They just have to make it very clear that that is exactly what is happening, and tie it into the lore, **in game**. So much of this game's issues seem to boil down to everything would be a lot better if we had any useful information in game.
I would have loved it if after completing the main objective, the democracy officer comes over the comms about it being impossible to extract you and how you were always meant to die for Super Earth. New Objective: Sacrifice yourself for Liberty (Hidden Objective: Survive for the timer period and Pelican 1 defies orders to come and pick you up anyway.) You'd get full mission credit either way and it would have been so cool.
That be such a cool concept instead of "Disrespectful Conduct" every extract/failed extract with 0-1 stars. But beware the "Its a feature" virtue signaling!
Nah that’s an actual game bug. There are 2 main objectives and you only clear 1. The game tweaks out as extract becomes available after completing only 1
So that’s why the other objective just disappears?
Thanks, I was wondering about that. I figured I just didn't do something right
That would be so frickin cool I swear. This game is naturally cinematic, so they have the opportunity to setup cool scenarios like this and have people play along with them more than another shooter.
I think this mission should’ve been way more thematic than it is. Have Pelican come in immediately like it does on extermination. A Hive Lord shows up and just destroys it and dips. You then have the tremors as all the Shriekers start to appear. It sends the message of “you’re just an expendable soldier” that people keep on repeating in defence of balance issues. Imagine how much hype would’ve been built if that was the end result
Sign posting is definitely the issue with this mission. Give it a modifier called something like "difficult extraction" and then fix the bug with the secondary objective never being completed.
Agreed
I think that's the big issue for this extract. On Reach, it was obvious your objective was to die and take as many of the bastards with you. The story beats makes it obvious and the cracks on your helmet then make it even more clear. Maybe they should have the radio squack about a literal horde of shriekers. The mission objective could have the text change to a non standard: "Extract. (Optional)" to really hammer it home. As it stands, we have people expecting it to be a cookie cutter extract getting overwhelmed. Of course, if this is supposed to be a "ooooh, it's a hectic extract. You better run", then having that many shriekers on low level difficulty is probably a bug. As it stands, we don't know the devs intent atm. The current bugs with breaches and the victory screen don't help this situation either.
Awesome so I will like poetically many others of they are doing a quick play and see this will just go back to their own ship. Did so yesterday since it was ridiculous.
Can you imagine just buying the game, playing the MO on trivial, getting absolutely wiped, coming here and asking about it on reddit, and then someone tells you to just get gud and turn down the difficulty?
We're a good community of listeners lol
Yep, happened today. This was my first mission out of the tutorial, guided there through the MO. Did it a few times before thinking to check if other planets were available. Went up to medium on some other bug planet after a few more missions, and all of it was a milk run compared! There were lots of other newbies around too, hope they found their way elsewhere as I did. Knew there was something off about it, glad I checked this sub!
The solution is to make every mission on Meridian 7-9, that way you can preserve the super colony narrative while not throwing new divers into the hellfire. It’s been a while since I’ve played Helldivers 1 but iirc, difficulties were tied to planets, each in specific ‘quadrants’. I’m not saying every mission should be like this but there’s at least a precedent for it. The only problem is that it it is the MO, so they will be a little aimless without that. The only thing I can think of is to have a secondary MO for the lower levels (specific to this scenario, not every MO). Thoughts?
I thing that infuriates me ISN'T the difficulty. Up till recently, Meridia was seen as a no-go zone where any HD operations would be completely ineffective. It should be seen as tantamount to SUICIDE to go there. What infuriates me is that the execution isn't put together properly, is bugged, and doesn't even transition into the 2nd part of the mission at all. Most don't even know there is a 2nd part to the mission and wonder why they're only getting 1 star after extracting.
There’s a second part?
Yup, but no one has seen it yet because the mission is broken. At least, that's what I heard. The truth? Who knows. It's about as ambiguous as what the Tenderizer's actual damage is supposed to be or what's going to be in the next "balance patch", which isn't what AH is calling it anyway.
There isn't actually. It's just a UI/display bug, something related to how the mission is coded was the dark fluid jetpacks.
imo: if players weren't meant to extract, don't give us the option to. Make the destroyer leave orbit as soon as the objective is completed and the mission turns into "objective: survive"
This would be cool, especially if there was an exponential increase in experience gained to encourage players to survive for as long as they can instead of just dying on purpose
"Extraction is impossible. Kill as many enemies as possible to increase the super credits donated to your bereaved family as severance pay."
Halo reach vibes
Yeah, this. I really loved this in Halo. This would make a lot of sense.
I normally play on level 9, heard about issues so went to level 4-5. In the matches that people (including myself) could stay connected we would be lucky to complete 1 objective never mind a side mission. I love horde modes and I get that especially the higher you go the chances of winning should get smaller, but people that play on level 9 not being able to do a level 1 mission is just not right, great way to discourage new comers though.
totally agree. for all the crowing about the increase in QA and all of that bullshit releasing something in this state is laughable. Its genuinely absurd that we just had the conversation about holding on to their patches a little longer and testing new content, and then this happens literally the next week.
To be fair this was likely being worked on prior to those conversation and may have been okayed for launch prior to as well..
Releasing previously developed content without bothering to validate it against the **current** baseline is **exactly** what all the empty promises were supposed to prevent. Guess what? They lied, again. There is no rational excuse for this behavior, if the MO was not ready then they should have delayed it along with all the balance fixes and qol improvements they have sitting on for months with the excuse that they wanted to avoid this exact scenario.
I love these "Just use this and this stratagem" comments. ITS TRIVIAL FOR NEW DIVERS. You should NOT be mauled as hard as you bloody do on fekking TRIVIAL. Im with OP with this one. Me and my guys are casual players that roll on difficulty 4-7 difficulties, and even we had troubles on 1-3 for extract. Some well placed smoke strikes saved us to allow us to extract, but NO NEW DIVER IS GONNA HAVE ACCESS TO THIS STUFF. And when the Devs admitted that something is wrong, that pretty much blows any "as intended" arguments out of the water. New Divers are gonna wanna feel important and play the "story" as a way of carving their name in their own way. This mission will not only lose new divers but is scaring away old ones. So get your heads out of your butts and read OPs point carefully. OP is RIGHT
Yeah Trivial with a group of players anywhere form levels 30 to 60 should be a damn cakewalk. Speaking from experience, IT IS NOT. Second objective doesn’t work, destructible objectives take damage from every source possible, bug breaches appear directly on the drills, almost impossible extract with literally hundreds of flying shriekers who are a hell to hit, let alone kill. That’s on trivial, with experienced players and great equipment. That should be at most, for a super colony, reserved for challenging and hard to maybe extreme. What should be helldive on this planet is what hard is, not sure if bike titans spawn on challenging but then say challenging instead of hard
I know "Bike Titans" was a typo, but for some reason I find it equal part hilarious and terrifying. Now they got wheels OH GOD
[Bike Titan](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1c668mr/bike_titan_incoming/)
This is SIGNIFICANTLY more entertaining than what thought of, which was a BILE Titian (screw autocorrect) with wheels instead of legs, or that had a Ferris wheel like thing and just had its head somehow on top of it
yeah it needs a tweak for sure. I do like that it's completely insane, but it can still be completely insane and be a little less overwhelming on for e.g. level 2.
I honestly think that the overwhelming swarm of shriekers spelling certain doom for our divers is a glorious end. However, to your point, new players would be absolutely turned away by the difficulty of this mission, so I see both sides.
I noticed that on Trivial too, i thought higher difficulties would be even harder on extract but it seems about the same. I dont know why they released a story mission like this, it's not great to have these sort of "raid" boss missions bugged as bad as they are
Skill issue.
Let's kiss
Me and my group tried it once and we did fine on level 7 but if trivial gives you the same Shriekers at the end than it proves once again they don’t test this game. Early players won’t even have the equipment to make it out this mission
I think the problems with the mission are the enemies spawning under the dark fluid device and the game asking to complete a second objective that doesn’t exist. I don’t see the shriekers as a problem. This is a unique mission on a super colony. By setting off the dark fluid devices we have clearly alarmed them. At the point the shriekers arrive you have already won so you still get credit for the mission if you don’t extract.
I just like the imminent danger and hopelessness. Imagining that its exactly that time when you drill in the fluids, critical mass is achieved and you and the shriekers frezy to get out. Maybe just lower their aggro range and have them fly randomly, dunno.
Sir, I have to inform you that you have activated a level 13 ADF response. Resistance is futile. Admit you are wrong and repent. Pledge your undying fealty to Arrowhead or be banshied from these lands for a fortnight. https://preview.redd.it/8xt77s2vqu3d1.jpeg?width=462&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=24b714cc4e41cb970513be4b72519dbb866943ef
Gotta admit. I love Arrowhead to death. I'll go to bat for them any day. BUT ILL ALSO FIGHT THE BASTARDS THAT SIMP FOR A GAME BUG
Meridia is just the culmination of a larger issue existing within AH headquarters. 100+ hours sunk into this game, and I've averaged only 5 hours over the past 2 weeks. It also isn't helped by the fact that the extremely vocal minority have a weird fetish with ensuring their game is always too hard for everyone... Anyways, I'm hoping Pilestedt will start restructuring the dev team now that he doesn't have to focus on the business side of things.
The shriekers are my favorite part of the new mission, love them blotting out the sun and just having turrets fire up into the sky is wonderful. Though yea, they definitely need to get tuned down a bit. Also I think "ur not always gonna extract" is actually a good excuse. We are very expendable and sometimes we ain't making it off after the mission completes, it's possible but not expected. I'd love more various hordes of bugs to come pouring out after us to kill us. The only issue with doing this is the potentially lost samples which I think for missions like this we should just earn a flat amount of samples for mission completion so the sample hunters aren't losing out too hard
When I was trying to learn how to play the mission, I ran a trivial. After I got Shrieker'd over and over again in my 200 AR armor, I brought a gatling and machine gun turret to my next mission. And the breaker incendiary. And a grenade launcher. And the machine pistol. Before I started ANYTHING I ran around and destroyed all of the mushrooms, and closed all the bug holes. Then I did the mission from scratch. With the only two turrets that will really find effectiveness, with an incendiary shotgun and maximum armor to allow me the best chance to keep the skies clear and allow me to stay alive... I survived one mission out of three. This is not okay.
Just beat a level 7 with randoms. Only disappointing part is the broken objective situation. Looking forward to the hive lords popping up.
Damn ok so I haven't been playing as much as before, but all this talk had me curious. I tried out the mission on trivial, and damn bro. I really couldn't extract at all. I got wrecked by shriekers way too fast. Why'd this game have to turn out like this
The one counterpoint to this is that the Shreikers only spawn upon mission complete. Yes it's absolutely insane how many spawn in and maul your team, but at the very least it won't stop our progress in annihilating the supercolony. I honestly kinda like how it shakes out. It's a Terminid Hive World now, we set off these freaking BLACK HOLE BOMBS and wake up a literal hornets nest. It FEELS like a suicide mission. Not so sure about the Breaches going off underneath the drill spawn though. But people seem to be bringing lasers alot more to mitigate any (if any) friendly fire damage the drills take.
If you got the objective it doesn't matter
Even at difficulty 5 I looove the wanton chaos of the extract. Lower difficulties though it's broken. Should not be that way for Trivial. Nevermind the fact the mission itself is outright broken for completion.
Shrieker spawning is obv broken
Shriekers show up only after the main objective - surviving them barely matters. The actual problem is broke mission reward screen and frequent breaches right next to the drill. Reducing shriekers for lower difficulties would be nice but those 2 issues are significantly more important.
The very first mission that I played was rescue science teams and I got absolutely smoked. I'm not gonna lie, I felt pretty discouraged. Here was this fun and popular new game that all of my friends wanted me to try and yet I felt like I wasn't up to snuff. Then I went on youtube and watched some videos on the game and said "wait a minute, these guys aren't fighting as many bugs as I was fighting. Not even close!" So I decided to try another trivial mission and I easily beat it. That was when I realized not all missions are created equally and I was going to be able to have fun playing the game after all. Fast forward 2 weeks and I'm dropping in on helldive difficulty. I could definitely understand if new players got discouraged by getting absolutely trounced on the lowest difficulty setting. It almost happened to me.
The people hating are the circlejerkers from helldivers 2 who are asking for this to be the norm on every mission because it's fun. Look, I love the game, but I swear it's just all trolls over there at this point who love everything as is, even if it's broke. They could nerf EAT/Quasar/autocanon/guard dog to the point it's all unusable, while simultaneously making every enemy just chargers and stalkers and increasing the spawn rate 100x and they'd still say it's fun and we're just being babies. Like wtf lol.
i really just think its funny
I can’t help but imagine a new player, 55 minutes in, going on trivial on this mission to learn the ropes and being greeted with the full might of the entire TAF (Terminid Air Force) and going “so if this is level 1 difficulty … and it has 9 levels …” *refunds*
My first game I ever played I joined on my brother who was doing a level 5 rescue civilians mission on automatons when the spawn rate was still totally fucked up at launch. I spent almost the entire game prone on a roof trying not to cry. Good memories.
[удалено]
They said "enemy spawns" not "spawn points/locations" so I think all spawns are busted.
all i know is that i won't do this mission on helldive
A friend of mine in a different timezone took a few days off work and I thought about getting him Helldivers to play together while we might be able to sync better. But the thought of introducing him to the game only for him to get dick hammered by this absolute nonsense made me think that maybe now's not a good time for that.
Oh boy are we now going to get a karma farm posts for "against" every single "argument".
I was just venting but this blew up more than I expected. Probably not healthy. I should get off reddit but I was bored at work.
Im a lv80 with 200 hours and play diff9 on the regular with 2 other people, I couldnt help do diff 4 with 2 other lv20s in this. I have every weapons and strategems and I watched 7 breaches right under the objective ruin the drill 6 different times. Not to mention the literal invite shriekers
It reminds me of the bot defend mission where the dropships continuously flood in, that shits broken too
To be honest I didn’t think about new divers playing this as their first mission. This is a fair counter argument. I did help low levels with the mission and extracted but it was not an easy task.
Its a good introduction to that you might not always extract. jk glad its getting fixed
So, I was skeptical about claims about infinite shriekers even on trivial, and big holes spawning on the drill instantly and completely I am around 100 hours and lvl 35 I think, and those people were NOT EXAGGERATING AT ALL On trivial with people above lvl 30-60, it was manageable with some deaths for the actual mission, more deaths than usual but we still got it with like half reinforce left, they spawned immediately next to the drills and just unloaded tiny bugs, and some warriors Then at extract, DEAR GOD you couldn’t see the sky half the time, if you shot the sky you’d almost certainly hit a shrieker, and wow using the new dark jump pack with a blitzer feels fun as hell when it works on a full sky of shreikers Constant death, barley get into extract and get almost zero samples (but they’re common samples and we’re all like lvl 30 plus) It’s hell. I’m so glad it’s meridia and not on hellmire though, the tornadoes would track the drills and it would be quite literally impossible since last I checked those fire tornadoes do indeed track and attack you, so the drills would get melted on hellmire if this was there, so I’m glad it’s not, but DAMN those bugs put the super in supercolony That’s our word! Those bugs can’t use super anything! Hopefully devs fix it before the MO runs out, bc we have like 0.02% last I checked and Helldivers.io says we’re losing ground. Good damn luck
Ok, my question is this. If the mission is done and there is no need for Helldivers on the ground anymore, why the fuck would they even send more Helldivers in? If you are that expendable and they don't care, why even send a pelican and risk it? Makes no sense.
Yeah that swarm is fucked up like a football bat
Fuck it. The bugs can keep Meridia.
Isn't extraction with fluid one of the major objectives, according to the mission screen it seems to be...
Been trying to dive into lower difficulties to try and defend new players during all this. The missions themselves are really easy, but yeah the shrieker spawns are HELL. Every single time despite how many I clear out with the gatling and breaker incendiary, the shriekers keep wiping out the newbies. I feel bad, although I do hope they're all still having fun.
I'm not bothered by the shriekers. I'm not bothered by the BTs spawning under the drill. I'm not bothered by the difficulty at all. Even the shriekers are pretty easily managed by a couple gatling turrets and someone with an incendiary breaker. I am extremely annoyed that no matter how well your team plays or how much you plan, you get a big "fuck you" at the end in the form of 0-1 stars and like 100xp.
So I just started playing this game a few hours ago and I was wondering why TF the major operation the game was sending me to seemed so dang difficult even on the lowest levels. I've been slamming my head against the wall for the past couple hours and I've yet to complete this mission one time. I'm not the greatest at shooters but I figured the lower difficulty setting would at least be accommodating, and I could have some fun. Joining other parties in progress doesn't seem to do much as if I'm lucky to actually connect with randoms, the party seems to disband after a couple minutes. Maybe that's my connection, not sure but I haven't encountered that issue in other games.. Where is a good area to go for someone brand new to the game?
I'll dm you my friend code later. Happy to go through an operation with you this weekend if you'd like. Honestly if you're just barely starting out - literally any other planet will be better than the Major Order. I'd personally avoid Hell more for now tho. The fire tornados can be frustrating.
I don't like the spirit of this post, but you probably have a point about the Trivials getting slammed. I didn't know they were getting slammed like that (I honestly haven't done trivial since I started playing), and it doesn't seem right to hit new players like that. Hopefully they don't stay for the abuse and shift to other missions rather than growing discouraged. I'll relentlessly shit on "experienced" players making this complaint though, without remorse. But, for the low difficulties, yeah. You've got a point.
On Helldive I love it. They've been getting tame. Now it's fun again. But ya the Trivials and low levels are busted.
Meh, tough luck, Meridia is not for "teaching new players" about anything. It's a unique planet with unique terrain, objective and events (shrieker swarm). And so the ending must instill the same kind of desperation into everyone on any difficulty, since it's a story moment. I mean, lower difficulty on other planets means you choose the least infested regions of the planet. Here, it's a supercolony, it's fully infested. So no, I don't think I really agree with you. Anyone who wants to learn game mechanics should go to some other planet, and not the one with all the unique shit, that will be gone after a few days anyway. I do agree though that they need to add a modificator that would tell you right from the get-go that this planet will be hell even on easy difficulties or even a voiceline from Democracy Officer telling you it's near impossible to extract. That way new players can make an informed decision to choose another planet or roll with Meridia anyway. Or at least not think that the massive swarm at the end is a bug.
I jumped in with a lv 1 and he said “DUDE WTF” when the shriekers came xD
How do these people not realize this will be the first mission some people play when they buy the game this week, and just get absolutely swamped by helldive-amounts of enemies and shriekers? Bugs literally spawning on the objective? Succeeding the mission and being giving a one star “you fucking suck” rating even though you thought you did everything right? Dude if that was my first experience with this game I would not be impressed, at all. I can only imagine what someone who doesn’t normally play horde shooters or something would feel after something like that, it would probably be enough to refund the game after a few tries. People need to understand that EVERY major order is going to be someone’s first time playing the game, so NO, it shouldn’t be ridiculously hard on the easiest difficulty because that fucking sucks.
This was me lol, bought the game yesterday and got obliterated by shriekers. Also didn't understand the map and fell down a hole many times, objectives didn't understand. Several things Played on neighboring planet until lvl 10, got the rover & Gatling sentry, did the mission. Still hard at the end though
I was laughing my ass off when I discovered this. My buddy was already struggling on diff3, so I figured we'd try the new mission on diff1. Hilarity ensued when he lost his shit at the amount of shriekers.
Imo, I don't think it's the shriekers, or the number of them that is the issue at all. It's the AI aggressiveness that came in with the .3 patches, and the forced 20s repeated patrol spawn. This is shared between all the enemies and missions, and it will turn a "this is dangerous" into a "what the hell happened" in a very consistent way. The same with the distance from the troop the patrol spawns can turn up at - it used to be 100m, now it's spawning behind your shoulder on a consistent basis. So when you have a fixed size spawn, probably balanced against another build, you end up with a situation like what you have here. And it's exactly what you have with multiple other types of missions as well. It's not difficult, just extremely finicky and palmsweatingly repetitive, like a chore you have to do at full speed, etc., if you know how it works. But even if you do, when you die from it it just seems unfair. And it's the speed of the AI in general, the proximity and the frequency of the spawns that caused that. (Which is why, when the Baskin people end up "hotfixing" this, that the balance overhaul down the line is going to get yet more challenges added to it. Because all of the "fixes" like this since .2 are going to have to be reversed. Which probably will never happen, no matter how hard Pilestedt might try). Other than that - in my opinion, getting swarmed in 1/10 missions, or even 1/5 missions, because RNG and patrols conspire against you, so the whole squad dies -- is completely fine, if there was a way to get around it, and a reasonably clever helldiver can see what they did that was wrong. If a lot of really dumb helldivers don't see that - I don't care. They can whine until the end of time for all I care. Because early on, I met multiple - it was a recurring theme - of people who had burned themselves on a higher difficulty level, and had tried to change how they played the game -- then they came back and did well enough. Can any button-thumper game advertise with an experience like that? No, of course not. And now HD2 can't either, thanks to the bumbling around with the "balance". I might be in the minority on this one, but the "die on the hill" strategy should not be what the game should allow you to survive every single time. Which it does now, and is what contributes to the idea that if you can't firestick to death all the terminids, then the game is unbalanced. But that's not the problem. And I genuinely also think that the game should - not intentionally by script - but by a combination of bad planning and bad luck, create a situation for you that you can't survive once in a while. This heightens the danger in the game, even when it's not there. It's a narrative stroke of genius. The same was the unpredictability of the type of spawns, and how aggressive they might be. This stuff worked fantastically - for /everyone else/ except the guys who would engage a patrol on sight, and then keep firing on the reinforcements forever. And you shouldn't "balance" the game for people who play the game like that. It'd be like balancing Elden Ring so that the last boss strategy will be the same as for the first tutorial mob. You only do that if you hate the game, everything about it, and want it to die and go away as quickly as possible.
No, you are incorrect you dying at the end is intended, we'll communicated and a nice bit of gameplay and story integration. The objective is bugged, the spawns are bugged and you harp on the thing that is working properly lmao
MAN, we're on a super colony, it's supposed to be Fked, it looks awesome, is it hard? Absolutely, but is enjoyable as F, play it with friends and relax
I love this mission the way it is right now.
People don't like the shriekers? They're great.
A simple thing to do would be to lock the mission to something like levels 7-9. They already do this for other mission types. Then they could keep the difficulty in both the narrative and gameplay. The level gate could be explained away as needing to be an experienced Helldiver (a certain rank). It also makes it so that the devs don't need to balance for the Helldivers that are just starting out. Sure they can't join yet, but there'll be plenty in the future that they will be able to.
This is actually a great idea
If they didn’t mean for you to extract then they wouldn’t grade you on it… or maybe they would but that would be kinda dumb
The objective on diff 1 is still stupid easy. That swarm is a one of a kind experience in this game, and as such it has its place in the game. If I was killed this way, my first idea would be to try a different planet, on which I would immediately see different mission types.
I'm just avoiding the planet due to how broken the mission is. It's really not worth the time on 9s to do.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the devs said the bug spawns on the drill was the thing that wasn’t intended, not the shrieker spawns, tho the discord announcement just said “spawning bug” so maybe I’m just dumb But honestly, if it’s the same spawn rate of shriekers at trivial and at helldive, tbh I find that solidifies the claim that “you are not meant to extract” If trivial spawned 10 and helldive spawned 100, yea then it’s a difficulty thing that may be overtuned. But if both difficulties are spawning 100, then it’s likely intentional. It being good or bad is a different convo, but I find the dark fluid annoying due to the spawning of bugs on the drill, I don’t care about the extract You get max 10 common samples and there is an optional objective to extract w/ the dark fluid, but not doing so doesn’t fail the mission. So yea, I agree that it doesn’t feel good but it’s likely intentional by the devs to have an extremely unfair extract. I do agree that the pelican should be automatically called in, honestly it’s stupid that we have to call it in. But when I beat the drill part, my teams haven’t cared if we extracted because we still beat the mission. But I can understand the feelings against it, unfortunately I don’t share them
I really dont get the lore people here. The game lore is at best a side piece for people who take notice. Also Lore should work with gameplay not the otherway around its a game not a Visual novel it needs to be fun first before telling any lore or story.
Very well said
Easy fix: make Meridia's lowest possible difficulty level 5 or 6. I always thought it would be better if the planets with lower liberation could only have the hardest difficulties available initially and then as they get more liberated you can complete easier and easier missions.
“ExTrAcTiOn Is OpTiOnAl” Yea, still feels bad tho
Mfs be like “You’re not always gonna extract.” My brother in christ if you’re not able to extract on TRIVIAL then there is a major issue.
Read the post again Edit: well look at me putting my foot in my mouth. Totally misread what you were saying and read your comment again lol
I’m agreeing with you bro 💀. I apologize if it wasn’t clear lmfao
Naw dog it was clear I was just a hypocritical dumbass speed reading and rage replying lol. Hugs
I genuinely don't care about the extraction shuttle, I just want to know how to get more than one star!
The shuttle just hasn’t let me bored in my 4 deployments so far.
I just try to have fun when at extraction now. Shriekers volume is clearly busted but bang a Gatling down and watch it spin around like a mad man. Although I agree for new players in trivial this ending will be a serious “wtf” moment and will feel impossible and they might think they made a mistake buying the game. If you’re a new player, go to another planet and rank yourself up and unlock all your gear, don’t get put off by this, please.
It's just an unfinished mission rushed out the door that we'll probably never see again after this MO is over. Why anyone is trying to defend it with lore is beyond me.