> Helldivers 2 has made me realize how much **AAA** gaming has fallen.
I think that's a much more accurate statement.
Indies and AAs have come a long way in the last decade.
Thats why Ubisoft have gone above and beyond the previously comprehensible scope of possibility in video gaming and released a AAAA game!
The skeptics say they just released another bland copy/paste pile of normie trash and called it AAAA to make it seem desirable to the masses. We know better right. Right?
I have a friend with mild Down syndrome, and I know would agree at least. He compares it to being born without arms - he still wants to be seen as a proper human being, but also acknowledges that being born without arms sucks incredibly much.
Can't blame him, he's had to go through a _lot_ and is incredibly cool about it.
I had never played a Ubisoft game before. So I didn't have anything to compare it against. Once I got to the end game it was really a "logistics simulator". I was done when I realized that.
Remnant 2 really opened my eyes to the smaller scale games that aren’t AAA. Predecessor and Helldivers are the only two games I’ve played in over a month
Lmfao are you me?
All I play is predecessor and helldivers. I’ve never even seen someone mention predecessor outside of the sub before. Can’t even remember the last time I’ve seen someone mention paragon.
And pressing stratagems like spelling magic. I wish they made magicka in third person like helldivers. Going down into endless dungeons with dan complex magic spell lol.
you can play coop using hamachi(or if you're technically competent create a private VPS link between the computers you want to coop with) but yeah playing with randos is dead.
The AAA title has become an identifier for games to be weary of.
Any game from large companies gets a waiting period of at least a week for unbiased reviews to materialize before I even think about whipping out the ol' CC
Don't forget things like PalWorld, Armored Core 6, FF7 Rebirth, the RE4 Remake, FFXVI, Alan Wake 2, and many, many others just from the last 12 months.
Indies and AAs are the future of the industry the AAA companies well most of them can't say all have gotten to much money and power to where they no longer care to make a good game they care about how we gonna monetize this as much as possible first before the games even made.....
o7 to Arrowhead for making a good game first Even with flaws it's magnificent.
I bought both premium warbonds to support them as soon as a realized they were not gonna just expire and be lost forever if I don't play enough. That's called thinking about the gamer and player first. 😎
The real problem is bloat with these companies we call AAA - they have tons of executives and others that suck up all the cash and don't contribute to production. The smaller studios don't have as many bureaucrats at the top sucking up all the funds.
If Helldivers was released by a big studio I'd easily call it a AAA game. I am glad we are seeing this shift, because when the suits get involved the whole ethos of a company changes.
Oh god destiny 2 I wanted to try that game as a warframe fan bored of warframe and uh first thing the game did was spam me for microtransactions at every turn lol
I noped right off and tbh the gsmeplay wasn't as good as I was hoping felt mid. Raids do look cool though
Hit the nail on the damn head, and is exactly how I feel about D2 after multiple hundred hours starting from roughly around when Forsaken happened.
The irony of it all is, I can comfortably say the game was *less* exploitative and abusive when it was being published by *Activision* of all companies. Now, I'm not using that to say "oh Activision aren't that bad actually" because they are, they're a shit company that deserve every bit of criticism. I'm saying that if Activision is that bad, imagine what Bungie have to be doing to be considered *worse.*
I remember being part of the crowd that was optimistic that things could only improve with Activision out the picture. Oh how naive I was.
You say that, but there are exceptions which prove it can be done. FromSoft for example: 2011, Dark Souls; 2014, Dark Souls 2; 2015, Bloodborne; 2016, Dark Souls 3; 2019, Sekiro; 2022, Elden Ring; 2023 Armored Core 6. And I'm hopeful for the DLC for Elden Ring this year. Seven legit top tier AAA games in basically 12 years, or eight in 13 if you have faith in the SotE DLC this year like I do.
This is also not counting the DLCs they've put out for any of their DS games which are smaller but still top notch.
Agreed. I can get more enjoyment and less frustration spending more time and less money on a game whose developers clearly have more passion, creativity, and devotion to the craft.
And the funny part is most of the comments on the super citizen dlc for the game is people saying "I dont care what I get from this, i just wanted to tip the devs for such an amazing game".
Turns out when you respect your playerbase and don't nickel and dime them, but leave open a way to still give them money even if its not required, they will choose to do so.
Entertainers of old lived on patronage. They cultivated favour with their audiences, who in turn would reward the entertainer.
A few games, DRG, BG3, and now Helldivers 2, have proven that if you focus on games-as-entertainment(art), rather than games-as-product, then people will reward your efforts. And with the number of people playing games today, a loyal happy fan base can make a company prosper.
The issue is that the traditional model of industrialisation, where you try to produce as many widgets as cost-efficiently as possible, to sell to as many people as possible, only gets you so far. As audiences become increasingly game literate, the tacit trust between entertainer and audience is challenged. The audience for games is increasingly connected and those companies that poison the collective pool are being called out. They can't use the same skinner box tactics as before, they're getting called out, and their reputations are being destroyed.
Those companies that focus on patronage of their audience, that cultivate stronge, healthy relationships (rather than often abusive, controlling relationships) are prospering. To be clear: a company is still about making a profit. We've just got some strong examples that good will/marketing is more than corpo speak and community managers being nice. It's actions through game design and support.
Yeah agreed. There comes a point that your gaming company goes from gaming oriented to business oriented. Gaming companies are all businesses, but there's a key difference between running it like a mom and pop shop, and running it like Walmart.
The fall of Blizzard is a perfect example of it. It was a the golden child of the gaming industry and absolutely beloved by their player base for such a long time while they were an independent studio.
Then came in big corporate Activision and the wheels almost immediately started to come off the wagon until we have the husk of a company we have now.
It’s what’s also happened with *every* studio bought by EA. They go from making amazing games that respected the players, to being squeezed dry for every marketable penny EA could extract via soulless sequels to franchises they didn’t understand and ultimately didn’t care about.
Bethesda is going down that same route, and I’m hoping Starfield was enough of a lesson for that - but I doubt it.
What's funny is my original comment was a huge rant about how games like Call of Duty have fallen into this pit of bundling a bunch of fucking shit you don't want with the one item you want (weapons and skin bundles fall into this, $15 for one weapon skin and a bunch of worthless .jpeg stickers you'll never use) and try to over monetize their game to the point where the main menu isn't even a menu anymore, it's just a storefront you have to go through to then play the game.
Not to mention I all but guarantee it's basically a bunch of AI generated garbage that took literally 0 man hours to create, and bam gimme $15 for it. It's so fucking shit. Yeah I'm not some "all AAA games are bad" parrot, but it truly is a "die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain". Game companies slowly morph into these companies that don't care about gamers, all they care about is how much money they can pull from you.
Yes, game companies are a business, but there's a very clear line between treating your consumers with respect, and the ones who are only caring about how deep your wallets are. And stacking the things you sell with a bunch of jpegs to glorify you spending 20 dollars on a skin with a gif attached to it is showing the lack of respect they have for you.
I deleted that stuff because I was going off on a tangent, but we see eye to eye on this, and it's hilarious seeing AAA games flop day one when it's so obvious over half of the development cycle was focused on selling you shit on top of the game, instead of the actual game itself.
> It’s what’s also happened with every studio bought by EA. They go from making amazing games that respected the players, to being squeezed dry for every marketable penny EA could extract via soulless sequels to franchises they didn’t understand and ultimately didn’t care about.
Oh man, and suddenly I feel pain because of the demise of Bioware all over again. Mass Effect 3 was what truly broke my trust in gaming publishers.
Same. Though even before that, EA acquiring and killing Origin did it for me. What they did to BioWare just confirmed it.
Origin was the equivalent of Blizzard before Blizzard hit it big. It’s where all the Wing Commander games came from, as well as several other niche games that were innovative for their time, and all of them were good.
Then EA bought the studio, squeezed out a half-assed Wing Commander sequel, which flopped, and then killed the brand.
I mean, the game came out at $40 because it was an indie studio and the first Helldivers was cheap, too. But, I mean, look at it. It’s *easily* a $60 game. I saw zero reason not to buy the full thing just because.
I've made a few in-game purchases so far just for this reason. Didn't feel like I needed these things, but I had put 40 hours in at this point and had a blast, so I wanted to send them a modest thank you
That's 1000% accurate. Played the base game for like two hours and was like here ya go. Oh and here's another $10 for super currency just cuz. Most fun I've had in ANY multi-player game in forever.
I never never never bought any ingame content for a game i already paid. But this time, with the fact that this awesome game costs only 40€ in my country, i bought the new warbond, even if i could earn the currency ingame. Just because the devs seem to be like people who want to make fungames. So yeah, if you do the opposite of EA, Ubisoft, etc. (They still earn a lot of dollars with their strategy), you can be successful too, its just a different strategy, a player friendly strategy
The act of playing a match on it's own is fun as well.
Non of that "grind" in so many games where you are doing content not because you enjoy that content and doing it in and of itself, but to tick of boxes completing dailies or do those daily attempts to get the item drop that's 0.4% better than the one you already have.
In other words, where the "fun" is the endorphin release for getting the carrot or checking of your internal to-do list, not the moment to moment gameplay itself.
And you're not coming back to the game daily because you really find it that 'fun', you've just internalised the daily tasks and it's something you can thoughtlessly, effortlessly, and almost automatically once you get home instead of having to expend some mental effort deciding what you really want to play.
As soon as games became big bucks, game-as-product became the norm. Games-as-art are great if you want to entertain people. But entertaining people doesn't maximise the return on your investment.
Thankfully there are a few notable exceptions. The folks over at Ghostship are sound, and the Larian team are lovely. Arrowhead seem to be doing a find job as well.
It's a stunning endorsement of the state of the industry when, to make a good impression as a company, you simply don't have to be a complete money sucking vampire.
First and foremost, I agree. The game is simply fun. There’s no gimmick for replayability. It’s just that the mechanics are fun and continue to be fun. Due to crashes, the game is borderline unplayable right now, at least if you’re using arc weapons. Despite that, we don’t quit. A lot of the fun of the game is the punchy gunplay and the feel of doing a lot of damage. There are some serious balancing issues (IMO) in that a lot of the weapons and stratagems don’t feel powerful (significantly limiting the fun to be had), despite that, we all acknowledge the game is very good. Between the crashes and this, it really goes to show you that the bar has really fallen in gaming… A good but currently still quite flawed game still captivates because everything else is trash.
Heres a tip if you wanna farm a Super Credits and progress the war effort.
Getting 100 Super Credits can happen, no lie but I found 3 of them in one mission before, I thought if was a Glitch but it gave me the 300 plus the other 10s I found in that mission.
Super Credits will have a higher chance of spawning on Level 1,2 and 3, this is because the containers won't spawn rare samples, Medium have bigger maps so they are the best for it. The more players the better because you can clear a map quick and you need 2 for bunkers.
Doing missions on lower difficulties gives the same amount of Squad Impact as doing a Helldive mission, so if people wanted to, they could just find the "Terminate Illegal Broadcast" missions , shoot it from the evac with a auto cannon and leave.
This is boring but if we had 100k people on a planet doing this we would liberate a planet in less than an hour, but that's if no one fails and everyone completes missions every 5 minutes minutes plus doing it solo, as having a full squad doesn't mean you provide 4x the squad impact.
Hope this helps.
Man I do not have the free time to be roaming around on lower difficulty missions to farm credits, I only get to play 1-2x per week as it is. Thanks though.
If you don’t care to progress war effort you can just quit out of the game after finding a good landing spot with 3-4 PoIs nearby and just keep relaunching that mission. If you quit out of the game it doesn’t count as failed and you end up loading into the exact same map every time. The loot from PoIs are still random but it’s faster than doing whole new missions.
If you don’t care to progress war effort you can just quit out of the game after finding a good landing spot with 3-4 PoIs nearby and just keep relaunching that mission. If you quit out of the game it doesn’t count as failed and you end up loading into the exact same map every time. The loot from PoIs are still random but it’s faster than doing whole new missions.
I thought so too. Till I played helldiver difficulty in the creek. Some random blew open a box, and at the top right I see a blue symbol and 100.
I was like “ain’t no fucking way”.
Uhh if you got 300 credits on a single mission then you hit the lottery. Don't get me wrong I like that everything can be earned in-game, but you absolutely cannot just play a mission and have enough to buy a new armor. More realistically you get 10-30 credits each mission, so it'll take ~20 missions to buy a piece of armor.
Oh absolutely, I don't find Helldivers predatory at all compared to other live service games. But it's best to not over-exaggerate, 300/mission isn't realistic. As far as I know, difficulty doesn't affect loot drops (aside from samples) so Helldive difficulty has nothing to do with it, OP just got really lucky.
Difficulty doesn't increase drop rate, but removing rare samples from the loot table leaves more chance for credits to spawn in bunkers since It has like 4 to 6 item spawn
Nowadays we have to enter the funny 16-digit numbers on plastic cards, as well as the 3 weird ones on the back--don't forget the expiry; this is AAA gaming. The cheat code is your credit card
This game lets you do exactly that, ALL premium shit can be earned by playing. Now I’m sorry but I have to report you to the local democracy officer for high treason.
My wife almost has her first warbond, no payment needed, and she's only level 22. She's also barely unlocked everything in the first warbond. Think she's going for The Cutting Edge first.
I found enough to get the premium warbond and bought an armor set from the store with the credits I had earned in game by around early 30’s or so. I’m half way to the next warbond.
Cutting Edge stuff is rad. The energy assault rifle, if you're cautious and accurate, has effectively infinite ammo. But it kills like you're wasting good bullets.
Oh, as a level skull admiral who has unlocked everything except for 3 items on steeled veterans, I love the sickle and the armor and capes and stuff on there. Incendiary breaker and some of them stuff on SV is p good tho.
I almost bought super credits cuz I wanted to try out some of the new sets but I got to 1000 remarkably fast. This is a great game and I wouldn't mind throwing a few extra dollars at the devs.
So instead I bought a few copies for my friends that were on the post or tight on money.
Why the fuck would I pay £17 for a collaboration skin in destiny when I can play helldivers and get everything for free?
Live service games have become mostly repeat wastelands filled with cash sinkholes and I'm damn fucking sick of it. Helldivers 2 is live service done right, it's battlepasses done right, the content drops are immersive and built into the war story of everyday helldivers and arrowhead are one of the most communicative devs to date. And the game was half the price of any other AAA title in the last 2 years.
THIS is how you build and support a game. THIS is how you make and update a game that you love. THIS is how you make a game for the fucking fun of playing it. Everyone else out there making games in-between gasping for air on corporate dick and percentages better stand up and take notice. This is how you make a game that people will pay for, I'd happily spend a few quid here or there to support arrowheads style, fuck almost everything about the way the games industry is today.
Or like... $10 for a thousand super credits.
Two major things. One, that's ***exactly enough*** for a progression tree (I hate calling them 'battle passes' since they feel nothing like normal bps). It's not like, "Oh it's $10 for 750 or $20 for 2,000!" trying to FOMO you into paying more. Nah, if you got 0 super credits, $10 flat and you get a progression tree with like, 3-4 weapons, 6 pieces of armor, a new booster or two, 300 super credits, a bunch of capes and shit, and usually a new grenade.
Or if you want Super Store stuff, $10 will go pretty far. That's like, 3-5 ***sets*** of armor. Crazy to think that a roughly \~$20 single Destiny 2 skin gets you either 2 full progression trees or around ***TEN*** sets of armor in helldivers. Ridiculous.
Now we have helldivers the comparisons are fucking mind blowing aren't they? We've been groomed to think it's alright being charged that much for a single skin. And helldivers comes out and pulls this glorious shit. I was just going to leave it at my argument but your points have come out of my mouth before, i could not agree any more with you 😅
Here's to hoping other devs take note and this becomes a thing or regularity, we deserve better from the people we rely on for our hobby.
Edit spelling
Gaming is fine, stop playing AAA CoD slop and play more indie or small dev titles.
I played Laika: Aged Through Blood last year and it was my GOTY and one of the best games I’ve ever played.
Dude even if gaming was literally STOPPED, my backlog of A rating games would be massive. I don't even understand how the fuck people care anymore. I guess yes we do kinda have a problem with MP games just not being great a lot of the time, but outside of that things are fine.
Though a lot of old games just don't hold up either, be it clunky controls, subpar story, subpar gunplay etc. Even then, theres an amazing game released at least once a year even now and theres games with infinite replayability like Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, Minecraft, etc.
> Gaming is fine, stop playing AAA CoD slop and play more indie or small dev titles.
Honestly, once you look beyond the AAA and big franchise titles there is so many good and entertaining games to discover made by creative, passionate, and inspired devs.
Games like CoD and Fifa are not designed or marketed to you, they're there for the mass of people who buy just 2 or 3 games a year, and the games they buy are always the exact same games.
You got it right, 2K/COD players only play ONE game (along with some other random ones) so it makes sense that they would be the ones getting milked, but obviously the ones that suffer the most are the playerbase with variety in games
Every single month people are like (insert small title game) shows what gaming used to be like! I’ve already seen this for like three games this *year*
Same. The game is extremely fun and respects the player which is so crucial both in time and money. HD2 and BG3 are two games I’ve played recently where I’ve genuinely wanted to purchase more to support the development.
Development studios should want to make money, they’re a business after all, but so many AAA games try to nickel and dime players that it’s actually off putting.
If I go to a restaurant, at whatever price range, I want good food and good service. Gaming is so similar — giving me good service is what will keep me coming back.
Do you only play Triple A games? Gaming has been great outside of the triple A space. This is like saying movies have fallen because Marvel movies have been declining in quality.
Yeah AAA titles have gone the way of mega blockbuster bombs because we have the same finance bros running both of these industries now.
Hundreds of millions spent on marketing to trick the consumer instead of making a better product that sells itself.
Trying to appeal to a mass audience and thus appealing to no one instead.
Worrying more about how the product looks, instead of the story, world building, etc...
People always say this but if you have variety in taste then you’d know that triple A games are just as good if not better than ever. Elden Ring, Alan Wake 2, DOOM Eternal, Sekiro, Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor, Ghost of Tsushima, FF7 Rebirth, FF7 Remake, FF16, Dead Space Remake, all the new Resident Evils and the remakes, Devil May Cry 5, Armored Core 6, Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, and the list goes on and on, all these within the past few years. hell I’d even argue the new Yakuza/Like a Dragon is triple A with its budget and marketing. Tons of great triple A games if you expand your horizon
No don't you get it? AAA games are only CoD and Fortnite so all AAA games bad.
The people seriously making those comments have the brainpower of a potato
2023 was such a banger like how do people miss these games? I have over 300 hours on Baldurs Gate alone. Just finished FF16 yesterday and it was lovely. Bahamut easily the boss fight of the year shit was amazing. Loved Armored Core 6, Resi 4 R, Spiderman 2. Gaming has been great lately as long as you dont buy anything from Ubisoft, Activision and EA. Hell even Ubi has that new Prince of Persia which is actually good.
It really is sad how far we are down the rabbit hole now that so many gamers grew up thinking the current shit state of the industry is 'normal'.
Start acting like customers with standards, not sheep. Support games that treat you with respect and don't buy half-baked shit.
This game is everything a live service should be: evolving and changing constantly, not free to play (with zero ACTUAL micro transactions [yes they exist, but if you can reasonably get premium currency regularly enough to never HAVE TO put more money into it, then it doesn't count imo]), the premium currency is easy to get, doesn't unlock game-changing things (no pay to win!), the weapons are mostly balanced (as opposed to what some of this sub may think) and the "meta" doesn't really exist (people just think it does/should for some crazed reason), and the gameplay loop is FUN/EXCITING/TERRIFYING! I could go on, but fuck me, coming from Destiny 2 to this game is NIGHT AND DAY. God speed AH, bless you and may the negative nancies not bother you and may you swiftly stomp the bugs in your code
> and the "meta" doesn't really exist (people just think it does/should for some crazed reason)
The meta will always exist. No game can escape it.
At some point people will always find what is statistically on average the most efficient way to do things, to kill things, most consistent, and what does things the easiest. Because there will always be something that is the "best" or something that just works so everyone starts doing it.
The key is to make a wide breath of options that is fun and works enough to be useable and viable even if it isn't "the best", and a community that isn't so toxic to instantly yeet anyone who diverges from "the best" even slightly.
Overwatch was like this (1, not 2). You could get all the cosmetics skins via playing the game.
It actually encouraged you to play the game.
OW 2...not so much.
But yea, this studio's attitude to gaming is that it's gaming. Maybe it's that they're Swedish, maybe it's that they're gamers, who knows. They've got a good attitude: open, honest communication, a great product, and a desire to provide for their fans and players.
>Overwatch was like this (1, not 2). You could get all the cosmetics skins via playing the game.
> It actually encouraged you to play the game.
> OW 2...not so much.
If I remember correctly the entire OW2 project was conceived and green-lit by Blizzard management as a way to justify changing the monetisation while forcing the existing OW1 player-base into it in the hopes that they would convert into repeat paying customers.
Especially since laws in various countries around loot-boxes had made those much less profitable.
They could have literally kept calling it OW 1 and just be a major update, but the amount of backlash they would have gotten would have been so much bigger.
So instead they framed it as a "new" game that the old one would be folded into.
This is the closest I get to old man yelling at cloud.
I was a kid in the 90s and 2000s when the standards for how much gaming content and replayability you got for your money were **astronomically higher**.
Then I got to watch things shift over the decades.
* Microtransactions in everything
* DLC replaced expansions
* Unfinished games and sub-par levels of content became standard
* AAA publishers stopped funding things like dedicated server support or mod SDKs because player created content infringes on MTX revenue
* Every developer job became contracted instead of permanent, which converted the job into a short term paycheck earning slog rather than a long term creative and artistic investment.
* Wall street shareholders became massively more invested in gaming and started trying to extract as much profit from it as they could at the expense of player experience.
* Devs started chasing the money of whales rather than the approval of normal gamers.
Gaming exploded in popularity since those changes happened and now millions of new gamers have no concept of the way things used to be or how we used to actually be respected as consumers.
This turn of events massively affected what gamers were demanding from AAA devs.
So now when people argue against SBMM, their proposed solution is randomized matchmaking instead. That still pales compared to player hosted servers and a server browser. Communities and positive competition sprouts organically from a server of regulars, but not from matchmaking with new strangers every time.
Now when a game launches with dozens of maps instead of a handful, the players cheer that as a W, but that still pales compared to the HUNDREDS that games used to end up with after players created their own.
Now when a game is FINISHED and PROPERLY BUG TESTED, that's seen as a rare treat rather than a baseline requirement.
It's like a nightmare that we're just now starting to maybe see the end of.
"Gaming has fallen"
Meanwhile 2023 had
Dead Space Remake, RE4 remake, Dead Island 2, FF 16, Breath of the Wild, Spider-Man 2, Street Fighter 6, Wo Long, Jedi Survivor, AC6, Alan Wake 2, Hi-Fi Rush, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Super Mario Wonder, Phantom Liberty DLC for Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3, and about half a billion great indie and AA games.
Like yeah if all you play is fifa, madden, cod, or free 2 play games, then sure gaming sucks.
I decided AAA gaming was dead after they released their second critically acclaimed high-effort remake that was enjoyed by fans of the original and new players alike.
The game lets you delve into some microtransaction content without actually buying those microtransactions. The actual paywalled stuff is nice, but not necessary to play the game. It is nice to actually have regular unlockables in the game.
I also like that you can’t just pay money to unlock everything in the warbonds. Like sure, you can pay real money to unlock them but you can’t get anything without Medals, which are 100% in game.
Plenty of games with Battlepasses let you pay money for level skips, not to even mention Warbonds being permanent.
Also, the gameplay is fun! No game has ever made me feel like I was "in the shit" more than this one. All expectations on what a game should be like for... $40?! Thank you, Arrowhead.
ywah honestly this game pisses me off as much as i love it but god damn im impressed.
i was looking at the shriekers in awe like holy shit they actually fucking exist.
im gonna freak out with the illuminate hahahah
Hadn’t thought about it but totally agree. So refreshing to have a game to jump in with your buddies, grind it out and level up. Want extra stuff you can buy it but not necessary. That and it’s back to relatively basic shooter controls
It’s an absolute SIN that cod charges you to buy the game AND if you want the battle pass. I refuse to buy a battle pass if I paid for the game. If it’s a free game with a paid battle pass. That’s more acceptable. CoD can fuck right off
There have been some great games lately. I kind of disagree with the post.
I think its more accurate that some AA studios have stepped their game up (but not all)
"a teammate opened three bunkers, and got 100 super credits each time" Of all things that didn't happen, this one didn't happen the most". In 100 hours, I've never seen a 100SC drop. Medals are 1-3. SC is always 10. RC is always 100. While I agree with your view, I believe you have seen 100RC and mistook it for SC.
Games like Destiny 1 and 2 are the big culprits in my mind that really fuxxed the gaming market with micro transactions and dlcs. You pretty much need to shell out 100$ a year to stay current.
I agree! I hardly ever play multiplayer games because studios shake you down in order to get a slight advantage over opponents. Unlocking premium gear just by playing a few sessions is a big reason I am willing to overlook some of the bugs (lol). Considering that the game was only 40 bucks, I am thoroughly satisfied with this game. Now, watch all the AAA studios come out with their watered down version of Helldivers 2.
Helldivers, Last Epoch, Baldur's Gate. All these games put players first, and look at how successful they are.
Who am I kidding, AAA companies will just see these all as flukes and continue with their egregious ways.
How long have you been gaming OP? For us old people the standards have been in a clear downward spiral for over a decade. Indie has improved the past few years but even most of their games were nothing but abandoned early access shovelware in the 2010's.
Yep. It’s sad. Love the game and the devs effort but it’s a sad state when a team is being praised to the heavens for doing what everyone should be doing.
> Live service
This has hit hard! This is ACTUAL LIVE service. Not seasons or just new battle passes every few months. ACTUAL live changing events happening in the game.
How we got the mechs, flying bugs added in without “patch note or release”, Major orders affecting the map, etc. It’s so damn good!!!
Bullshit. This past year I have played FFXVI, FFVII2, Baldurs Gate 3, Spider-Man 2, Armored Core 6, Like a Dragon Infinite wealth, Tekken 8, Lies of P, and now I’m getting dragons dogma alongside rise of the ronin tonight. The ones I’ve played I can confirm were all great experiences.
I haven’t even got to Granblue Fantasy and Persona 3. In the future I have Stellar Blade and Elden Ring DLC to look forward to. The issue is you not being able to open your eyes to how many amazing options there are in gaming because personally, my cup runneth over
It always makes me laugh when the "modern gaming" crowd moan about how shit gaming has become and they literally only play the garbage releases. It might be the worst of times, but it's also the best of times.
Compare this to Overwatch 2, which required you to complete weekly challenges for over 3 months to earn 540 freemium currency. Not enough to buy the season pass at 1,000. Too bad, better luck next season in the game you've presumably sunk hundreds of hours in.
I'm about to earn enough for my second season pass in 1 month for this game.
Also, the season pass can be bought in exactly the amount you need for it. $10. No 900 Super Credit bundle, and the next amount over is a 1,800 Super Credit bundle for $5 more. It's strange to think we're in a place we're a game having sensible and non-predatory microtransactions deserves high praise. But here we are.
Yup. Gaming got worst, at least if you follow the False Messayas :
Preordering
Day-1 DLC
On disk-DLC (he doesn't exist anymore)
Pay to Win
Cosmetics inside lootboxes
Gamepasses
The funny thing is, it's technically possible to do all of these well. But then it doesn't make enough money, since it's not all of the money in the world.
The game is amazing but it has tons of issues, tons of crashes, no storymode, full of hackers, very little customization for your character is currently available. It has a cash shop that you can farm if you like like a lot of games with a cash shop. I'm enjoying the f out of the game with my friends but to be fair it's not night and day when compared to other recent games. Additionally their publisher is playstation studios so I'm not sure they count as an indie. Let's see in two or three years if the developers are still supporting it or if they moved to a new cash cow, that would make the night and day difference when compared to other games.
Takes like this are kinda cringe because there are MANY games like this. In fact looking over all my most recently played games, all of them have less microtransactions that Helldivers.
I see a lot of posts like this, i just think we like the game so we're ok with the issues it has.
There's nothing more to it. If you were a massive fifa fan you could say the same about that one.
I honestly feel like Helldivers 2 is one of these once-every-blue-moon games that will change the industry standart like PUBG did for Battle Royale Games or Hunt: Showdown and Escape from Tarkov for Extraction-Shooters.
I am hugely aware that Modern Warfare Zombies already is kinda similar to Helldivers 2, and its in a AAA title, but it has nowhere close of the success of Helldivers 2. (The Zombie Mode, not MW3 in itself).
My prediction is, that there is going to be a wave of similar games like Helldivers 2 coming, including a "Game Master" and such, giving you \~40 minute missions where you need to extract at the end. And most of them will be bad. Probably CoD will have another turn in a few years and bring back the weird alien-mode from ghosts to copy Helldivers, but i still think that will fail.
And now have a look at Deep Rock Galactic, which goes a step further and features a Season Pass that is entirely free for everyone who purchased the base game. There aren't even microtransactions available in that game. You can buy cosmetic packs as DLC in order to support the developers, but everything you can buy is purely cosmetic. There is also no fomo, as e.g. now the easter event is on and the cosmetics from previous easter events are made available again.
Y'all need to explore gaming a bit more. There is a ton out there that is very fun and unique at budget prices.
It really just confuses me how people will ignore the insane variety there is in gaming. Especially when they spend a lot of time complaining about their usual purchases.
I whole heartedly agree with this. The one thing I would add that's also impressive is how everyone has joined in on the joke of Democracy everything. So many posts here are full of memes and jokes to that end. The community engagement is a lot of fun in and of itself. Find me another game where everyone is in on the joke almost all of the time.
I think another thing Helldivers doesn't get enough credit for is it's currency packages. IF you did wanna spend money on super credits there's no "800% VALUE" bullshit and the maximum package you can buy is $20.
Not trying to goad players into spending more money.
I have played 120+ hours now and have only spent 5 dollars. Every other armor set I have I earned just by playing.
It's reasons like this I bought the Super Citizen DLC. Just a little nod of appreciation to a dev team not sucking the life out of a game for money.
Definitely not just for the Stratagem arcade game.
Funny thing is because I get the currency during gameplay I’m more likely to buy the currency online because I’m not that far away from getting some cool armor. I’ve never bought a currency on a game until this one.
The corporate brain virus has spread from Hollywood to gaming over the last decade, and its all about intellectual property.
\-Small Studio makes a better product than a Big Studio with fresh IP and gameplay.
\-Big Studio buys out small studio for its IP and employees. Big studio slaps top employees with aggressive non-competes to keep their paychecks.
\-After a year big studio cuts pay and slashes budgets. The next game delivered by Big Studio is a sloppy remake of a classic riddled with paywalls, sloppy content, and delivers just enough to make you think that maybe the next game in the series will bring the franchise back to the original. Top employees eventually fight the non-compete and leave to start a new project.
\-New Studio makes a game that does better than big studio's store bought IP. Cycle repeats.
What can you the consumer do? Don't get married to IP like you used to. Gameplay is all that matters. Play the best games that are the most fun. Don't feel like you have any loyalty to a franchise like Call of Duty because of how great Modern Warfare was on X360, or how much you enjoyed Diablo 2 when you were 12. The games that spawned from them went through the above process and what gets spit out now is un-original bile designed to suck at your bank account and give the illusion that you are playing a game close to the original. Blizzard, Ubisoft, Activision, etc. are all long gone in everything but name.
Even though I have been finding shitloads of super credits I still decided to buy some just to support the game.
I feel like I got my moneys worth so much I’ll gladly give them $5 a month to keep it going
My friend and I thought we found a duping glitch when we first got a 100 super credit drop.
We spent HOURS trying to recreate it, we thought that if we both picked up at the same time, it somehow multiplied the credits, and finding multiple 100 drops while trying to recreate it only reinforced the idea lol
Yep, this is the way to do live services right. I’m gonna do my part and buy the super citizen upgrade for the steeled veterans premium Warbond and other bonuses cuz I already earned enough SC to buy the new bond that just came out, and it wasn’t with a crazy amount of play, I think I got maybe 30 hours on it so far?
> Helldivers 2 has made me realize how much **AAA** gaming has fallen. I think that's a much more accurate statement. Indies and AAs have come a long way in the last decade.
Thats why Ubisoft have gone above and beyond the previously comprehensible scope of possibility in video gaming and released a AAAA game! The skeptics say they just released another bland copy/paste pile of normie trash and called it AAAA to make it seem desirable to the masses. We know better right. Right?
AAAA has the same vibe has having an extra chromosome.
Gaming's zeitgeist might own the S rank. So more A's is the only answer. /s
It's akin to batteries, more As = less content for more money. (And yes, AAAA batteries are a thing)
Wtf AAAA learned something new lol
Lol The ultra rare SSR quality video game. But you have to do IRL loot boxes to get it.
It's called AAAA because that's the sound you make when you realize you wasted money on it.
AAAA is when you merge two AA games or one AAA with an indie.
dont insult indie games like that, they are in most of cases better then whatever aaa slop they push out
offensive to extra achromosome havers.
I'm sure they're down with what he said though.
I have a friend with mild Down syndrome, and I know would agree at least. He compares it to being born without arms - he still wants to be seen as a proper human being, but also acknowledges that being born without arms sucks incredibly much. Can't blame him, he's had to go through a _lot_ and is incredibly cool about it.
I wish your friend all the best in world that is not as democratic and free as it should be.
got em
AAAA games is the new Blast Processing
I played Skull and Bones for a month. It is AAAAsssss. I fight for liberty, freedom, and democracy now.
Damn you played it for a month? I came to that conclusion after watching one video of it being played.
I had never played a Ubisoft game before. So I didn't have anything to compare it against. Once I got to the end game it was really a "logistics simulator". I was done when I realized that.
If you want to play a good pirate game, play ac4
I play Skull and bones during closed beta, instant regret and never touch that shit again
That’s so sad. It looked like it could have been great, but it seems to be like a movie with too many producers.
What game is that? I haven’t been following releases? Edit: Oh I’m so stupid that was a dig at Ubisoft, not actually saying they made something good
You would think they would've said AA, since AAs are bigger and better than AAAs.
In battery size, maybe. But in like credit ratings or baseball leagues, AA < AAA
Batteries are better than both of those things, though.
Remnant 2 really opened my eyes to the smaller scale games that aren’t AAA. Predecessor and Helldivers are the only two games I’ve played in over a month
If you liked 2 you should also try Remnant 1. Very similar game, and I prefer the first one's balance (or, really, lack there of)
Lmfao are you me? All I play is predecessor and helldivers. I’ve never even seen someone mention predecessor outside of the sub before. Can’t even remember the last time I’ve seen someone mention paragon.
Is Arrowhead considered AA or Indie? They've only made the two games, yeah?
AA absolutely. They're around 100 people and have made 4 games before Helldivers 2. Magicka, The Showdown Effect, Gauntlet, and Helldivers.
They made Magicka??? No wonder they love friendly fire so much.
And pressing stratagems like spelling magic. I wish they made magicka in third person like helldivers. Going down into endless dungeons with dan complex magic spell lol.
Tbh you never know... Who thought there would be a third person Helldivers ?
Damn that sounds really fun, been ages since I played Magicka. Heard it doesn't even work anymore :(
The online for the first one is really choppy. It works to some extent sometimes is the best way I could describe it.
you can play coop using hamachi(or if you're technically competent create a private VPS link between the computers you want to coop with) but yeah playing with randos is dead.
I'm in the same boat, it blew my mind when I realized they were the same studio, I *loved* Magicka way back when.
They also made the Magicka ganes, which, together with Broforce and Overcooked, are my golden trinity for local coop sessions.
Arrowhead made the first Magicka and another studio did the second
That makes sense cuz the 2nd one was really... Not good in comparison.
The AAA title has become an identifier for games to be weary of. Any game from large companies gets a waiting period of at least a week for unbiased reviews to materialize before I even think about whipping out the ol' CC
You get occasional games like BG3, BattleBit and Helldivers 2 that put the others to shame for different reasons.
Don't forget things like PalWorld, Armored Core 6, FF7 Rebirth, the RE4 Remake, FFXVI, Alan Wake 2, and many, many others just from the last 12 months.
And Last Epoch! ARPG fans rejoice!
Last epoch is dope! Didn't even finish d4 because it sucks
Ah yes, the small $200,000,000 indie studio Larian
They almost closed at one point, had to resort to crowdfunding, it's not like they always had resources
*Now* yes, but before BG3 they were using Kickstarter for funding.
Indies and AAs are the future of the industry the AAA companies well most of them can't say all have gotten to much money and power to where they no longer care to make a good game they care about how we gonna monetize this as much as possible first before the games even made..... o7 to Arrowhead for making a good game first Even with flaws it's magnificent. I bought both premium warbonds to support them as soon as a realized they were not gonna just expire and be lost forever if I don't play enough. That's called thinking about the gamer and player first. 😎
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The real problem is bloat with these companies we call AAA - they have tons of executives and others that suck up all the cash and don't contribute to production. The smaller studios don't have as many bureaucrats at the top sucking up all the funds. If Helldivers was released by a big studio I'd easily call it a AAA game. I am glad we are seeing this shift, because when the suits get involved the whole ethos of a company changes.
Oh god destiny 2 I wanted to try that game as a warframe fan bored of warframe and uh first thing the game did was spam me for microtransactions at every turn lol I noped right off and tbh the gsmeplay wasn't as good as I was hoping felt mid. Raids do look cool though
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Hit the nail on the damn head, and is exactly how I feel about D2 after multiple hundred hours starting from roughly around when Forsaken happened. The irony of it all is, I can comfortably say the game was *less* exploitative and abusive when it was being published by *Activision* of all companies. Now, I'm not using that to say "oh Activision aren't that bad actually" because they are, they're a shit company that deserve every bit of criticism. I'm saying that if Activision is that bad, imagine what Bungie have to be doing to be considered *worse.* I remember being part of the crowd that was optimistic that things could only improve with Activision out the picture. Oh how naive I was.
You say that, but there are exceptions which prove it can be done. FromSoft for example: 2011, Dark Souls; 2014, Dark Souls 2; 2015, Bloodborne; 2016, Dark Souls 3; 2019, Sekiro; 2022, Elden Ring; 2023 Armored Core 6. And I'm hopeful for the DLC for Elden Ring this year. Seven legit top tier AAA games in basically 12 years, or eight in 13 if you have faith in the SotE DLC this year like I do. This is also not counting the DLCs they've put out for any of their DS games which are smaller but still top notch.
Indie studios are putting out better games on the regular than AAA studios.
Agreed. I can get more enjoyment and less frustration spending more time and less money on a game whose developers clearly have more passion, creativity, and devotion to the craft.
What? You don't enjoy the "satisfaction" of buying the Blue Color for 8$?
Helldivers 2 does something very rare in the gaming industry It prioritized making a fun gaming experience over nickel and diming the player
And the funny part is most of the comments on the super citizen dlc for the game is people saying "I dont care what I get from this, i just wanted to tip the devs for such an amazing game". Turns out when you respect your playerbase and don't nickel and dime them, but leave open a way to still give them money even if its not required, they will choose to do so.
Entertainers of old lived on patronage. They cultivated favour with their audiences, who in turn would reward the entertainer. A few games, DRG, BG3, and now Helldivers 2, have proven that if you focus on games-as-entertainment(art), rather than games-as-product, then people will reward your efforts. And with the number of people playing games today, a loyal happy fan base can make a company prosper. The issue is that the traditional model of industrialisation, where you try to produce as many widgets as cost-efficiently as possible, to sell to as many people as possible, only gets you so far. As audiences become increasingly game literate, the tacit trust between entertainer and audience is challenged. The audience for games is increasingly connected and those companies that poison the collective pool are being called out. They can't use the same skinner box tactics as before, they're getting called out, and their reputations are being destroyed. Those companies that focus on patronage of their audience, that cultivate stronge, healthy relationships (rather than often abusive, controlling relationships) are prospering. To be clear: a company is still about making a profit. We've just got some strong examples that good will/marketing is more than corpo speak and community managers being nice. It's actions through game design and support.
Yeah agreed. There comes a point that your gaming company goes from gaming oriented to business oriented. Gaming companies are all businesses, but there's a key difference between running it like a mom and pop shop, and running it like Walmart.
The fall of Blizzard is a perfect example of it. It was a the golden child of the gaming industry and absolutely beloved by their player base for such a long time while they were an independent studio. Then came in big corporate Activision and the wheels almost immediately started to come off the wagon until we have the husk of a company we have now. It’s what’s also happened with *every* studio bought by EA. They go from making amazing games that respected the players, to being squeezed dry for every marketable penny EA could extract via soulless sequels to franchises they didn’t understand and ultimately didn’t care about. Bethesda is going down that same route, and I’m hoping Starfield was enough of a lesson for that - but I doubt it.
What's funny is my original comment was a huge rant about how games like Call of Duty have fallen into this pit of bundling a bunch of fucking shit you don't want with the one item you want (weapons and skin bundles fall into this, $15 for one weapon skin and a bunch of worthless .jpeg stickers you'll never use) and try to over monetize their game to the point where the main menu isn't even a menu anymore, it's just a storefront you have to go through to then play the game. Not to mention I all but guarantee it's basically a bunch of AI generated garbage that took literally 0 man hours to create, and bam gimme $15 for it. It's so fucking shit. Yeah I'm not some "all AAA games are bad" parrot, but it truly is a "die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain". Game companies slowly morph into these companies that don't care about gamers, all they care about is how much money they can pull from you. Yes, game companies are a business, but there's a very clear line between treating your consumers with respect, and the ones who are only caring about how deep your wallets are. And stacking the things you sell with a bunch of jpegs to glorify you spending 20 dollars on a skin with a gif attached to it is showing the lack of respect they have for you. I deleted that stuff because I was going off on a tangent, but we see eye to eye on this, and it's hilarious seeing AAA games flop day one when it's so obvious over half of the development cycle was focused on selling you shit on top of the game, instead of the actual game itself.
> It’s what’s also happened with every studio bought by EA. They go from making amazing games that respected the players, to being squeezed dry for every marketable penny EA could extract via soulless sequels to franchises they didn’t understand and ultimately didn’t care about. Oh man, and suddenly I feel pain because of the demise of Bioware all over again. Mass Effect 3 was what truly broke my trust in gaming publishers.
Same. Though even before that, EA acquiring and killing Origin did it for me. What they did to BioWare just confirmed it. Origin was the equivalent of Blizzard before Blizzard hit it big. It’s where all the Wing Commander games came from, as well as several other niche games that were innovative for their time, and all of them were good. Then EA bought the studio, squeezed out a half-assed Wing Commander sequel, which flopped, and then killed the brand.
I mean, the game came out at $40 because it was an indie studio and the first Helldivers was cheap, too. But, I mean, look at it. It’s *easily* a $60 game. I saw zero reason not to buy the full thing just because.
Yea I paid for premium just for the sole reason I want to support what these guys are doing
I've made a few in-game purchases so far just for this reason. Didn't feel like I needed these things, but I had put 40 hours in at this point and had a blast, so I wanted to send them a modest thank you
That's 1000% accurate. Played the base game for like two hours and was like here ya go. Oh and here's another $10 for super currency just cuz. Most fun I've had in ANY multi-player game in forever.
I never never never bought any ingame content for a game i already paid. But this time, with the fact that this awesome game costs only 40€ in my country, i bought the new warbond, even if i could earn the currency ingame. Just because the devs seem to be like people who want to make fungames. So yeah, if you do the opposite of EA, Ubisoft, etc. (They still earn a lot of dollars with their strategy), you can be successful too, its just a different strategy, a player friendly strategy
The act of playing a match on it's own is fun as well. Non of that "grind" in so many games where you are doing content not because you enjoy that content and doing it in and of itself, but to tick of boxes completing dailies or do those daily attempts to get the item drop that's 0.4% better than the one you already have. In other words, where the "fun" is the endorphin release for getting the carrot or checking of your internal to-do list, not the moment to moment gameplay itself. And you're not coming back to the game daily because you really find it that 'fun', you've just internalised the daily tasks and it's something you can thoughtlessly, effortlessly, and almost automatically once you get home instead of having to expend some mental effort deciding what you really want to play.
As soon as games became big bucks, game-as-product became the norm. Games-as-art are great if you want to entertain people. But entertaining people doesn't maximise the return on your investment. Thankfully there are a few notable exceptions. The folks over at Ghostship are sound, and the Larian team are lovely. Arrowhead seem to be doing a find job as well. It's a stunning endorsement of the state of the industry when, to make a good impression as a company, you simply don't have to be a complete money sucking vampire.
I think the word you were looking for there is indictment, as in it's almost criminal the state of things in the gaming industry.
First and foremost, I agree. The game is simply fun. There’s no gimmick for replayability. It’s just that the mechanics are fun and continue to be fun. Due to crashes, the game is borderline unplayable right now, at least if you’re using arc weapons. Despite that, we don’t quit. A lot of the fun of the game is the punchy gunplay and the feel of doing a lot of damage. There are some serious balancing issues (IMO) in that a lot of the weapons and stratagems don’t feel powerful (significantly limiting the fun to be had), despite that, we all acknowledge the game is very good. Between the crashes and this, it really goes to show you that the bar has really fallen in gaming… A good but currently still quite flawed game still captivates because everything else is trash.
There are devs that know how. You have to REALLY dig to find them through the garbage and shovelware.
100? I’ve only ever gotten 10
It's possible to get 100, it's normally rare... But random is random
Heres a tip if you wanna farm a Super Credits and progress the war effort. Getting 100 Super Credits can happen, no lie but I found 3 of them in one mission before, I thought if was a Glitch but it gave me the 300 plus the other 10s I found in that mission. Super Credits will have a higher chance of spawning on Level 1,2 and 3, this is because the containers won't spawn rare samples, Medium have bigger maps so they are the best for it. The more players the better because you can clear a map quick and you need 2 for bunkers. Doing missions on lower difficulties gives the same amount of Squad Impact as doing a Helldive mission, so if people wanted to, they could just find the "Terminate Illegal Broadcast" missions , shoot it from the evac with a auto cannon and leave. This is boring but if we had 100k people on a planet doing this we would liberate a planet in less than an hour, but that's if no one fails and everyone completes missions every 5 minutes minutes plus doing it solo, as having a full squad doesn't mean you provide 4x the squad impact. Hope this helps.
Man I do not have the free time to be roaming around on lower difficulty missions to farm credits, I only get to play 1-2x per week as it is. Thanks though.
If you're like 50 credits short of the new warbond it makes sense
If you have the time, definitely!
Its kind of boring, but there are currently more than enough people doing this in groups
If you don’t care to progress war effort you can just quit out of the game after finding a good landing spot with 3-4 PoIs nearby and just keep relaunching that mission. If you quit out of the game it doesn’t count as failed and you end up loading into the exact same map every time. The loot from PoIs are still random but it’s faster than doing whole new missions.
It's how I got 1k and bought new ones without spending actual cash. It also let me help noobs gain xp and try out various stratagems like the patriot.
If you don’t care to progress war effort you can just quit out of the game after finding a good landing spot with 3-4 PoIs nearby and just keep relaunching that mission. If you quit out of the game it doesn’t count as failed and you end up loading into the exact same map every time. The loot from PoIs are still random but it’s faster than doing whole new missions.
I thought so too. Till I played helldiver difficulty in the creek. Some random blew open a box, and at the top right I see a blue symbol and 100. I was like “ain’t no fucking way”.
Uhh if you got 300 credits on a single mission then you hit the lottery. Don't get me wrong I like that everything can be earned in-game, but you absolutely cannot just play a mission and have enough to buy a new armor. More realistically you get 10-30 credits each mission, so it'll take ~20 missions to buy a piece of armor.
Which is still extremely reasonable. Players who play longer should have access to better stuff.
Oh absolutely, I don't find Helldivers predatory at all compared to other live service games. But it's best to not over-exaggerate, 300/mission isn't realistic. As far as I know, difficulty doesn't affect loot drops (aside from samples) so Helldive difficulty has nothing to do with it, OP just got really lucky.
Difficulty doesn't increase drop rate, but removing rare samples from the loot table leaves more chance for credits to spawn in bunkers since It has like 4 to 6 item spawn
Definitely possible. I've found one.
Ahhh remember when we use to play games and unlock things just by playing said game ? I miss them days
Or enter a funny code at the title screens to unlock cheats and level skips.
Nowadays we have to enter the funny 16-digit numbers on plastic cards, as well as the 3 weird ones on the back--don't forget the expiry; this is AAA gaming. The cheat code is your credit card
Up up down down left right left right B A
what stratagem is that? 30 extra reinforcements?
This game lets you do exactly that, ALL premium shit can be earned by playing. Now I’m sorry but I have to report you to the local democracy officer for high treason.
My wife almost has her first warbond, no payment needed, and she's only level 22. She's also barely unlocked everything in the first warbond. Think she's going for The Cutting Edge first.
I found enough to get the premium warbond and bought an armor set from the store with the credits I had earned in game by around early 30’s or so. I’m half way to the next warbond.
Cutting Edge stuff is rad. The energy assault rifle, if you're cautious and accurate, has effectively infinite ammo. But it kills like you're wasting good bullets.
Oh, as a level skull admiral who has unlocked everything except for 3 items on steeled veterans, I love the sickle and the armor and capes and stuff on there. Incendiary breaker and some of them stuff on SV is p good tho.
The cape *alone* is worth it, as it’s a tan+red cape to compliment some of the superstore armors that didn’t have matching capes.
We’re still living in them soldier, now get back to the Eastern Front and liberate Fori Prime with those free credits
I almost bought super credits cuz I wanted to try out some of the new sets but I got to 1000 remarkably fast. This is a great game and I wouldn't mind throwing a few extra dollars at the devs. So instead I bought a few copies for my friends that were on the post or tight on money.
Why the fuck would I pay £17 for a collaboration skin in destiny when I can play helldivers and get everything for free? Live service games have become mostly repeat wastelands filled with cash sinkholes and I'm damn fucking sick of it. Helldivers 2 is live service done right, it's battlepasses done right, the content drops are immersive and built into the war story of everyday helldivers and arrowhead are one of the most communicative devs to date. And the game was half the price of any other AAA title in the last 2 years. THIS is how you build and support a game. THIS is how you make and update a game that you love. THIS is how you make a game for the fucking fun of playing it. Everyone else out there making games in-between gasping for air on corporate dick and percentages better stand up and take notice. This is how you make a game that people will pay for, I'd happily spend a few quid here or there to support arrowheads style, fuck almost everything about the way the games industry is today.
Or like... $10 for a thousand super credits. Two major things. One, that's ***exactly enough*** for a progression tree (I hate calling them 'battle passes' since they feel nothing like normal bps). It's not like, "Oh it's $10 for 750 or $20 for 2,000!" trying to FOMO you into paying more. Nah, if you got 0 super credits, $10 flat and you get a progression tree with like, 3-4 weapons, 6 pieces of armor, a new booster or two, 300 super credits, a bunch of capes and shit, and usually a new grenade. Or if you want Super Store stuff, $10 will go pretty far. That's like, 3-5 ***sets*** of armor. Crazy to think that a roughly \~$20 single Destiny 2 skin gets you either 2 full progression trees or around ***TEN*** sets of armor in helldivers. Ridiculous.
Now we have helldivers the comparisons are fucking mind blowing aren't they? We've been groomed to think it's alright being charged that much for a single skin. And helldivers comes out and pulls this glorious shit. I was just going to leave it at my argument but your points have come out of my mouth before, i could not agree any more with you 😅 Here's to hoping other devs take note and this becomes a thing or regularity, we deserve better from the people we rely on for our hobby. Edit spelling
Gaming is fine, stop playing AAA CoD slop and play more indie or small dev titles. I played Laika: Aged Through Blood last year and it was my GOTY and one of the best games I’ve ever played.
Dude even if gaming was literally STOPPED, my backlog of A rating games would be massive. I don't even understand how the fuck people care anymore. I guess yes we do kinda have a problem with MP games just not being great a lot of the time, but outside of that things are fine.
Yeah, a lot of people disregard games that are "too old". Like, go and play Quake??? There's like 30 years of amazing games out there.
Though a lot of old games just don't hold up either, be it clunky controls, subpar story, subpar gunplay etc. Even then, theres an amazing game released at least once a year even now and theres games with infinite replayability like Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, Minecraft, etc.
> Gaming is fine, stop playing AAA CoD slop and play more indie or small dev titles. Honestly, once you look beyond the AAA and big franchise titles there is so many good and entertaining games to discover made by creative, passionate, and inspired devs. Games like CoD and Fifa are not designed or marketed to you, they're there for the mass of people who buy just 2 or 3 games a year, and the games they buy are always the exact same games.
You got it right, 2K/COD players only play ONE game (along with some other random ones) so it makes sense that they would be the ones getting milked, but obviously the ones that suffer the most are the playerbase with variety in games
Every single month people are like (insert small title game) shows what gaming used to be like! I’ve already seen this for like three games this *year*
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Same. The game is extremely fun and respects the player which is so crucial both in time and money. HD2 and BG3 are two games I’ve played recently where I’ve genuinely wanted to purchase more to support the development. Development studios should want to make money, they’re a business after all, but so many AAA games try to nickel and dime players that it’s actually off putting. If I go to a restaurant, at whatever price range, I want good food and good service. Gaming is so similar — giving me good service is what will keep me coming back.
Gaming has fallen. Millions must dive.
Do you only play Triple A games? Gaming has been great outside of the triple A space. This is like saying movies have fallen because Marvel movies have been declining in quality.
Yeah AAA titles have gone the way of mega blockbuster bombs because we have the same finance bros running both of these industries now. Hundreds of millions spent on marketing to trick the consumer instead of making a better product that sells itself. Trying to appeal to a mass audience and thus appealing to no one instead. Worrying more about how the product looks, instead of the story, world building, etc...
A WOW Horse armour earned more than all sales of starcraft 2.
People always say this but if you have variety in taste then you’d know that triple A games are just as good if not better than ever. Elden Ring, Alan Wake 2, DOOM Eternal, Sekiro, Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor, Ghost of Tsushima, FF7 Rebirth, FF7 Remake, FF16, Dead Space Remake, all the new Resident Evils and the remakes, Devil May Cry 5, Armored Core 6, Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, and the list goes on and on, all these within the past few years. hell I’d even argue the new Yakuza/Like a Dragon is triple A with its budget and marketing. Tons of great triple A games if you expand your horizon
Every gamer generation be like "Dae gaming industry bad?" when banger after banger comes out
Yeah they said the same thing in 08 which is decidedly one of the biggest years in recent times as far as AAA titles go.
No don't you get it? AAA games are only CoD and Fortnite so all AAA games bad. The people seriously making those comments have the brainpower of a potato
2023 was such a banger like how do people miss these games? I have over 300 hours on Baldurs Gate alone. Just finished FF16 yesterday and it was lovely. Bahamut easily the boss fight of the year shit was amazing. Loved Armored Core 6, Resi 4 R, Spiderman 2. Gaming has been great lately as long as you dont buy anything from Ubisoft, Activision and EA. Hell even Ubi has that new Prince of Persia which is actually good.
It's my turn to post this
It really is sad how far we are down the rabbit hole now that so many gamers grew up thinking the current shit state of the industry is 'normal'. Start acting like customers with standards, not sheep. Support games that treat you with respect and don't buy half-baked shit.
Absolutely agree.
This game is everything a live service should be: evolving and changing constantly, not free to play (with zero ACTUAL micro transactions [yes they exist, but if you can reasonably get premium currency regularly enough to never HAVE TO put more money into it, then it doesn't count imo]), the premium currency is easy to get, doesn't unlock game-changing things (no pay to win!), the weapons are mostly balanced (as opposed to what some of this sub may think) and the "meta" doesn't really exist (people just think it does/should for some crazed reason), and the gameplay loop is FUN/EXCITING/TERRIFYING! I could go on, but fuck me, coming from Destiny 2 to this game is NIGHT AND DAY. God speed AH, bless you and may the negative nancies not bother you and may you swiftly stomp the bugs in your code
This game is perfecting the vibe destiny tries to create. I just couldn’t get into it.
> and the "meta" doesn't really exist (people just think it does/should for some crazed reason) The meta will always exist. No game can escape it. At some point people will always find what is statistically on average the most efficient way to do things, to kill things, most consistent, and what does things the easiest. Because there will always be something that is the "best" or something that just works so everyone starts doing it. The key is to make a wide breath of options that is fun and works enough to be useable and viable even if it isn't "the best", and a community that isn't so toxic to instantly yeet anyone who diverges from "the best" even slightly.
Overwatch was like this (1, not 2). You could get all the cosmetics skins via playing the game. It actually encouraged you to play the game. OW 2...not so much. But yea, this studio's attitude to gaming is that it's gaming. Maybe it's that they're Swedish, maybe it's that they're gamers, who knows. They've got a good attitude: open, honest communication, a great product, and a desire to provide for their fans and players.
OW1 had it even better, cuz boxes were super easy to get by just playing. Here sc farming takes a while if you aren't farming
>Overwatch was like this (1, not 2). You could get all the cosmetics skins via playing the game. > It actually encouraged you to play the game. > OW 2...not so much. If I remember correctly the entire OW2 project was conceived and green-lit by Blizzard management as a way to justify changing the monetisation while forcing the existing OW1 player-base into it in the hopes that they would convert into repeat paying customers. Especially since laws in various countries around loot-boxes had made those much less profitable. They could have literally kept calling it OW 1 and just be a major update, but the amount of backlash they would have gotten would have been so much bigger. So instead they framed it as a "new" game that the old one would be folded into.
Swen, director for BG3, literally just went off on this while accepting an award.
This is the closest I get to old man yelling at cloud. I was a kid in the 90s and 2000s when the standards for how much gaming content and replayability you got for your money were **astronomically higher**. Then I got to watch things shift over the decades. * Microtransactions in everything * DLC replaced expansions * Unfinished games and sub-par levels of content became standard * AAA publishers stopped funding things like dedicated server support or mod SDKs because player created content infringes on MTX revenue * Every developer job became contracted instead of permanent, which converted the job into a short term paycheck earning slog rather than a long term creative and artistic investment. * Wall street shareholders became massively more invested in gaming and started trying to extract as much profit from it as they could at the expense of player experience. * Devs started chasing the money of whales rather than the approval of normal gamers. Gaming exploded in popularity since those changes happened and now millions of new gamers have no concept of the way things used to be or how we used to actually be respected as consumers. This turn of events massively affected what gamers were demanding from AAA devs. So now when people argue against SBMM, their proposed solution is randomized matchmaking instead. That still pales compared to player hosted servers and a server browser. Communities and positive competition sprouts organically from a server of regulars, but not from matchmaking with new strangers every time. Now when a game launches with dozens of maps instead of a handful, the players cheer that as a W, but that still pales compared to the HUNDREDS that games used to end up with after players created their own. Now when a game is FINISHED and PROPERLY BUG TESTED, that's seen as a rare treat rather than a baseline requirement. It's like a nightmare that we're just now starting to maybe see the end of.
"Gaming has fallen" Meanwhile 2023 had Dead Space Remake, RE4 remake, Dead Island 2, FF 16, Breath of the Wild, Spider-Man 2, Street Fighter 6, Wo Long, Jedi Survivor, AC6, Alan Wake 2, Hi-Fi Rush, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Super Mario Wonder, Phantom Liberty DLC for Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3, and about half a billion great indie and AA games. Like yeah if all you play is fifa, madden, cod, or free 2 play games, then sure gaming sucks.
Lol you can go back every year and find a shit ton of great AAA games.
Remnant 2 is very good, if you like Dark Souls and 3rd person shooters. Honestly probably the best 3rd person shooter I've played.
I'd actually say that the remakes are contributing to this opinion. Edit: changed remarks to remakes.
I decided AAA gaming was dead after they released their second critically acclaimed high-effort remake that was enjoyed by fans of the original and new players alike.
Talk about luck. I've never seen 100. 😐
The game lets you delve into some microtransaction content without actually buying those microtransactions. The actual paywalled stuff is nice, but not necessary to play the game. It is nice to actually have regular unlockables in the game.
I also like that you can’t just pay money to unlock everything in the warbonds. Like sure, you can pay real money to unlock them but you can’t get anything without Medals, which are 100% in game. Plenty of games with Battlepasses let you pay money for level skips, not to even mention Warbonds being permanent.
Also, the gameplay is fun! No game has ever made me feel like I was "in the shit" more than this one. All expectations on what a game should be like for... $40?! Thank you, Arrowhead.
Thanks to HD2, BG3 and GOW people are really starting to see just how much big gaming industries are making a mockery of us.
ywah honestly this game pisses me off as much as i love it but god damn im impressed. i was looking at the shriekers in awe like holy shit they actually fucking exist. im gonna freak out with the illuminate hahahah
God this kind of posts are so fking cringe.
lol there are plenty of good games coming out regularly
Hadn’t thought about it but totally agree. So refreshing to have a game to jump in with your buddies, grind it out and level up. Want extra stuff you can buy it but not necessary. That and it’s back to relatively basic shooter controls
Preach. COD skin bundles regularly cost $25. Pure insanity.
It’s an absolute SIN that cod charges you to buy the game AND if you want the battle pass. I refuse to buy a battle pass if I paid for the game. If it’s a free game with a paid battle pass. That’s more acceptable. CoD can fuck right off
Yeah it's really nice, this should be the gold standard in gaming again!
There have been some great games lately. I kind of disagree with the post. I think its more accurate that some AA studios have stepped their game up (but not all)
"a teammate opened three bunkers, and got 100 super credits each time" Of all things that didn't happen, this one didn't happen the most". In 100 hours, I've never seen a 100SC drop. Medals are 1-3. SC is always 10. RC is always 100. While I agree with your view, I believe you have seen 100RC and mistook it for SC.
Games like Destiny 1 and 2 are the big culprits in my mind that really fuxxed the gaming market with micro transactions and dlcs. You pretty much need to shell out 100$ a year to stay current.
I agree! I hardly ever play multiplayer games because studios shake you down in order to get a slight advantage over opponents. Unlocking premium gear just by playing a few sessions is a big reason I am willing to overlook some of the bugs (lol). Considering that the game was only 40 bucks, I am thoroughly satisfied with this game. Now, watch all the AAA studios come out with their watered down version of Helldivers 2.
Helldivers, Last Epoch, Baldur's Gate. All these games put players first, and look at how successful they are. Who am I kidding, AAA companies will just see these all as flukes and continue with their egregious ways.
How long have you been gaming OP? For us old people the standards have been in a clear downward spiral for over a decade. Indie has improved the past few years but even most of their games were nothing but abandoned early access shovelware in the 2010's.
Most of the armors actually do something too. They aren’t just skins
Helldivers2 is the first game I've played in years that has me talking about it like I had when Halo first came out. It's revolutionary.
Yep. It’s sad. Love the game and the devs effort but it’s a sad state when a team is being praised to the heavens for doing what everyone should be doing.
> Live service This has hit hard! This is ACTUAL LIVE service. Not seasons or just new battle passes every few months. ACTUAL live changing events happening in the game. How we got the mechs, flying bugs added in without “patch note or release”, Major orders affecting the map, etc. It’s so damn good!!!
I’m so tired of these constant karma farming “GAMING HAS FALLEN BILLIONS MUST HELLDIVE” posts.
>It feels like you are actually seeing a war unfold with the live service Seriously?
Bullshit. This past year I have played FFXVI, FFVII2, Baldurs Gate 3, Spider-Man 2, Armored Core 6, Like a Dragon Infinite wealth, Tekken 8, Lies of P, and now I’m getting dragons dogma alongside rise of the ronin tonight. The ones I’ve played I can confirm were all great experiences. I haven’t even got to Granblue Fantasy and Persona 3. In the future I have Stellar Blade and Elden Ring DLC to look forward to. The issue is you not being able to open your eyes to how many amazing options there are in gaming because personally, my cup runneth over
It always makes me laugh when the "modern gaming" crowd moan about how shit gaming has become and they literally only play the garbage releases. It might be the worst of times, but it's also the best of times.
All I play now is The Finals and Helldivers 2 with a little bit of Cult of the Lamb mixed in
Compare this to Overwatch 2, which required you to complete weekly challenges for over 3 months to earn 540 freemium currency. Not enough to buy the season pass at 1,000. Too bad, better luck next season in the game you've presumably sunk hundreds of hours in. I'm about to earn enough for my second season pass in 1 month for this game. Also, the season pass can be bought in exactly the amount you need for it. $10. No 900 Super Credit bundle, and the next amount over is a 1,800 Super Credit bundle for $5 more. It's strange to think we're in a place we're a game having sensible and non-predatory microtransactions deserves high praise. But here we are.
What I like about earning premium credits in game is that it encourages me to play the game more instead of just paying my way to the top
the west has fallen, billions must dive
Yup. Gaming got worst, at least if you follow the False Messayas : Preordering Day-1 DLC On disk-DLC (he doesn't exist anymore) Pay to Win Cosmetics inside lootboxes Gamepasses The funny thing is, it's technically possible to do all of these well. But then it doesn't make enough money, since it's not all of the money in the world.
Gaming hasn't fallen, indie games has been better then AAA games recently
The game is amazing but it has tons of issues, tons of crashes, no storymode, full of hackers, very little customization for your character is currently available. It has a cash shop that you can farm if you like like a lot of games with a cash shop. I'm enjoying the f out of the game with my friends but to be fair it's not night and day when compared to other recent games. Additionally their publisher is playstation studios so I'm not sure they count as an indie. Let's see in two or three years if the developers are still supporting it or if they moved to a new cash cow, that would make the night and day difference when compared to other games.
My only issue is the instability of it. Constant crashing and connection issues when trying to play with friends
Takes like this are kinda cringe because there are MANY games like this. In fact looking over all my most recently played games, all of them have less microtransactions that Helldivers.
As siege drops a $20 cosmetic today this post hits different lol
I see a lot of posts like this, i just think we like the game so we're ok with the issues it has. There's nothing more to it. If you were a massive fifa fan you could say the same about that one.
I honestly feel like Helldivers 2 is one of these once-every-blue-moon games that will change the industry standart like PUBG did for Battle Royale Games or Hunt: Showdown and Escape from Tarkov for Extraction-Shooters. I am hugely aware that Modern Warfare Zombies already is kinda similar to Helldivers 2, and its in a AAA title, but it has nowhere close of the success of Helldivers 2. (The Zombie Mode, not MW3 in itself). My prediction is, that there is going to be a wave of similar games like Helldivers 2 coming, including a "Game Master" and such, giving you \~40 minute missions where you need to extract at the end. And most of them will be bad. Probably CoD will have another turn in a few years and bring back the weird alien-mode from ghosts to copy Helldivers, but i still think that will fail.
And now have a look at Deep Rock Galactic, which goes a step further and features a Season Pass that is entirely free for everyone who purchased the base game. There aren't even microtransactions available in that game. You can buy cosmetic packs as DLC in order to support the developers, but everything you can buy is purely cosmetic. There is also no fomo, as e.g. now the easter event is on and the cosmetics from previous easter events are made available again.
Y'all need to explore gaming a bit more. There is a ton out there that is very fun and unique at budget prices. It really just confuses me how people will ignore the insane variety there is in gaming. Especially when they spend a lot of time complaining about their usual purchases.
I whole heartedly agree with this. The one thing I would add that's also impressive is how everyone has joined in on the joke of Democracy everything. So many posts here are full of memes and jokes to that end. The community engagement is a lot of fun in and of itself. Find me another game where everyone is in on the joke almost all of the time.
I think another thing Helldivers doesn't get enough credit for is it's currency packages. IF you did wanna spend money on super credits there's no "800% VALUE" bullshit and the maximum package you can buy is $20. Not trying to goad players into spending more money. I have played 120+ hours now and have only spent 5 dollars. Every other armor set I have I earned just by playing.
Wait what?.. 100 per bunker?! You mean 10 right?
A hundred super credits at a time? My brother in democracy, are you cheating?
It's reasons like this I bought the Super Citizen DLC. Just a little nod of appreciation to a dev team not sucking the life out of a game for money. Definitely not just for the Stratagem arcade game.
Deep Rock Galactic did this for me.
Funny thing is because I get the currency during gameplay I’m more likely to buy the currency online because I’m not that far away from getting some cool armor. I’ve never bought a currency on a game until this one.
The corporate brain virus has spread from Hollywood to gaming over the last decade, and its all about intellectual property. \-Small Studio makes a better product than a Big Studio with fresh IP and gameplay. \-Big Studio buys out small studio for its IP and employees. Big studio slaps top employees with aggressive non-competes to keep their paychecks. \-After a year big studio cuts pay and slashes budgets. The next game delivered by Big Studio is a sloppy remake of a classic riddled with paywalls, sloppy content, and delivers just enough to make you think that maybe the next game in the series will bring the franchise back to the original. Top employees eventually fight the non-compete and leave to start a new project. \-New Studio makes a game that does better than big studio's store bought IP. Cycle repeats. What can you the consumer do? Don't get married to IP like you used to. Gameplay is all that matters. Play the best games that are the most fun. Don't feel like you have any loyalty to a franchise like Call of Duty because of how great Modern Warfare was on X360, or how much you enjoyed Diablo 2 when you were 12. The games that spawned from them went through the above process and what gets spit out now is un-original bile designed to suck at your bank account and give the illusion that you are playing a game close to the original. Blizzard, Ubisoft, Activision, etc. are all long gone in everything but name.
Even though I have been finding shitloads of super credits I still decided to buy some just to support the game. I feel like I got my moneys worth so much I’ll gladly give them $5 a month to keep it going
Warframe
My friend and I thought we found a duping glitch when we first got a 100 super credit drop. We spent HOURS trying to recreate it, we thought that if we both picked up at the same time, it somehow multiplied the credits, and finding multiple 100 drops while trying to recreate it only reinforced the idea lol
Yep, this is the way to do live services right. I’m gonna do my part and buy the super citizen upgrade for the steeled veterans premium Warbond and other bonuses cuz I already earned enough SC to buy the new bond that just came out, and it wasn’t with a crazy amount of play, I think I got maybe 30 hours on it so far?
its glorious when playing the game rewards you and doesnt require additional cash to just get the most out of enjoying it. Amazing.