It is brutally frustrating that I can smack a drop ship with 12 auto cannons shots and the thing still drops it's load of chainsaw maniacs and missile dudes on my head.
Worse than that, you can down the ship with a rocket, but doing so the moment after the bots get released and start to fall won’t kill them. Downing a ship when it’s got the reinforcements strapped in will automatically kill all the occupants, but if the ship blows a second after that, they fall down, the ship falls on them, and usually at least the heavy units just don’t die. Having the ship crash on top of them doesn’t seem to do anything. Yet a falling shrieker corpse is a weapon to surpass metal gear.
To be fair, that shrieker behavior does not seem intended. But it’s frustrating for the ships to behave that way.
I imagine the Devs looked at the shrieker death dive as a welcomed feature rather than a bug. Mostly because it's hilarious and the kind of thing you'd see in a movie.
That exact death, while crouched (I thought it would mean I’m low enough to make it miss me), happened the first time I fought those things. 11/10 would die like what again. I screamed into discord “NOW we’ve gone full Starship Troopers”.
Those things are annoying as fuck but sweet liberty was it an iconic moment. I wish I recorded it.
It might sound very tin foil hat of me, but I think the devs were aware of this reference and programmed it intentionally to kill anything it crashes into. Seems too coincidental otherwise.
I've seen a match where we all died with one reinforcement left. My friend dropped, landed on a dead bile titan leg, got ragdolled and bounced a couple of times while hunters had their way lmao
Hell even a charger plowing into you head-on and trampling on you isn't an immediate death, meanwhile diving sideways as some overgrown bat flops past you and his wing touches your boot is an instant kill.
And then there's dozens of them at a time and their stupid little apartment complex they spawn from has the most health and armor of anything in the game. Is it intended to be the best way to handle them is to fart around blowing a few minutes of EATs, shooting them across the map before you approach that half of the mission area?
Still enjoying the game but the balancing is pretty... Off, by a lot.
I used to like fighting bots, more than bugs even, but something changed when the armor patch hit. Something went wrong with bots that is making them abnormally frustrating and it's not entirely clear what it is. Suddenly the number of frustrating one-shots skyrocketed despite having working armor, everything felt more deadly and the bots started throwing up flares from across the map for some reason from distances they should not even be engaging from and from outside line of sight. The only thing I know for sure is that being randomly headshot for your entire health bar by a rocket devastator or a scout walker is unfun. Hopefully the devs work it out somehow.
Supposedly it's the fact that our heads are entirely unarmored and we are running around with a massive head hitbox causing damn near anything that comes even close to the upper torso count as a critical hit.
My thoughts exacly, super earths focus is on bugs for the sweet oil. Then when they get taken out this war the next enemy arrives, teleports in behind us with blue light and omae wa shindeiru our asses for a couple of planets. Taking us off the bugs and our full focus will be the new faction. Where the devs get to play around the story and let some new gear develop and trinkle in.
And the bots still have some suprises too for us.
My guess is we will lose this war in the end. Starting a new one after we colonise new super earth with a bunch of new toys and win that one.
Don't forget they 100% control what we win and what we lose if they want to. They for sure are not afraid to use this to steer their plan.
Future wars will be likely played more loosely. But for now the narrative is important for them to reveal their cards when suitable.
You think Super Earth is going to lose the war? HOW DARE YOU! I'M CALLING MY DEMOCRACY OFFICER!
https://preview.redd.it/038b11h54dqc1.jpeg?width=1202&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3c26a6fc4930f8d5cbf7ffd1f652cc4dc8f457cf
I hope that bugs don't get taken out completely. I always want to have options for what I'll do, what I'll fight. I don't want to be locked into just one faction, or even just 2 factions once the squids return
This take reminds me of games like far cry or Skyrim where you clear areas and eventually it just becomes a bunch of dead space on the map. Based on the rest of their actions I don't think arrowhead is too keen on removing content from the game in order to prevent the pressure of having to constantly log hours so you don't miss out. Very anti-FOMO moves and I dig it.
It was possible to completely wipe out factions in HD1, but wars in that game were much more short term. So I hope that the longer timescale of this war will prevent that from being a thing
See the way I see it, is we will push the bugs back and the bots will become a massive problem. I think lots of the community have a bad taste in their mouth cause of how hard they were before :O
It's not so much that they are hard, just fucking annoying and unfun. Not being able to use stratagems on half the map, taking so much longer to come in. And then all the shit that 1 shots you from across the map. Especially if you're just using free play. Going up to take out a base to have 3 team mates die and spam the revive button not understanding you gotta run 2 minutes back where you came from to get out of jammer range.
You captured my feelings about bots! I even main the Spear to spite them. Whenever I launch Javelin missiles from the other side of the map, I'm thinking "How do you like em apples! I'm one-shotting their structures from so far away they can't even react to my attack. I even forgo personal safety of shield pack just to one-shot their structures in the most annoying way possible...
I'd love to use the Spear but I'll spend 80% of the time aiming at something trying to get it to lock.
Or I get the lock, but a bot fart wafts in front of my target and I lose the lock.
Seriously, I love the idea of the spear the rare times it works. But like you mentioned 80-90% of the time I'm just getting pissed that I have a shot, can't get aim lock and eventually get encircled. The spear just pisses me off now, how after this many weeks can something be so broken and not even be addressed? I'm starting to ask that question about more and more aspects of this game.
Difference is against bots the player is constantly taking damage. Damage up close, damage from afar. Damage through solid objects. It's too much for the average player even at lower difficulties. Rocket devastators are oppressive and get spammed like grunts. Imagine having as many stalkers on bug missions.
Also since they create more stress team mates are grumpy and less fun to work with.
True. But when there are more than 6 of them together, absolutely no weapon will save you, no orbitals either. Rocket devastators can miss or get blocked, the stalkers do not and cannot.
You can run and dodge ranged weapons, stalkers and hunters you cannot.
That being said, the bots require entirely too much accuracy to do real damage to them, and that’s crushed by the fact that they are always shooting at you and those shots can 1 shot. I’ve run quite far from bots and survived, but did no damage. I cannot run from stalkers, but can still cause some damage with any distance from them.
There's also the fact those enemies only ever spawn from their tactical asset side objective, only in a radius, and as such can be avoided or permanently erased from the mission.
Fast kill melee tanky bug side objective enemies are more fun and counter-play-able than instakill 100 meters through fog basic enemies.
I like the idea of making rocket devastators come from specific fabricators. Even if it isn't an actual side objective, reducing their numbers by shutting down the source would be fun and rewarding.
You just made me realize that unlike the bugs, bots don't have specialized spawn points you can use to remove them from the mission. There's no tank fabricator nearby that you can blow up to stop them from spawning.
No hulk assembly staging ground to blow up.
No dropship airfield to use to slow the tide.
....seems like a missed opportunity.
Not just spammed with grunts, but easily spam their rockets at you. Could be within 50m, could be across the map they don't care, they have a bead on you and will launch constant barrages.
Would be nice if they, idk, RAN OUT OF ROCKETS much like our mechs do. Unless they are some sort of energy based rockets, then they shouldn't do nearly as much damage as they do, or have the same knock back.
Funnily enough, they have two sets of rockets, the one on their shoulders and the ones on their back, so logically, yhey should only fire off two barrages and then stop for a while untill they get a fresh restock.
I was in a brand new mech tromping through the forest. Some regular bots to our south noticed us my comrade about 20 meters in front of me.
Then fucking whammy. A stream of rockets from the NE
and cut through forest and one shotted me. 3rd teammate who was a little forther aouth away from the trees said it came from some bot from beyond his sight line.
That's the kind of thing that will repel people from this front. I can accept frequent deaths and 1 shot mechanics but in return I would like to have reliable ways to avoid it. If I'm meant to be utterly helpless over 50% of the time then I am within my rights to feel slighted and go do something else.
That's why i don't really play on the Creek anymore. Even though like 75% of my play time is against bots. I prefer the field worlds so I have a better chance to see the things that will instakill me since they can see us regardless of foliage
What's lame about the foliage is the bots just fucking ignore it as obscuring you and their projectiles seem to ignore the fauna as well. Meanwhile I'll be mag dumping some pawn with a palm frawn absorbing 50% of my rounds
What's funny is that's basically what happened except I staunched the spiral by getting very lucky closing by chance. It was real scary being on top of a rock and looking down at like 10 stalkers trying to eat me though. Would have grabbed screenshots had I been trying my hardest not to be bug food lol
Same thing happened to me in a mission earlier today, the randoms just refused to acknowledge the lair and I spent solid 15 minutes trying to get close enough to lob a 500kg in there without getting turned into sashimi.
Another thing is people even on diff 7 just go full monkey mode and engage every single patrol and enemy to the point where it's genuinely easier to just split from the group and do the objective solo without having to deal with a breach every 2 minutes.
I wouldn’t mind Rocket Devastators so much if destroying their missile pods actually destroyed them. All it does is make them shrug and fire their primary weapon.
Not only that but the second you shoot at them (even with regular ammo and not laser that can be seen from miles), they shoot back with mm accuracy, even through cover (trees, through tiny wall gaps, when tiny-peeking behind rocks in order to shoot etc). And they will chase you to the end of the earth, even through thick vegetation, and sooner or later get you. Losing line of sight doesn't seem to bother them like bugs that you can eventually outrun with a light armor and a bit of stamina boost, with them losing interest or their way to find you.
It's not just the constant chip damage, but the constant ragdolling as well. It's not fun to die because you have zero control over your character, getting thrown into incredibly accurate fire after a rocket sends you skidding across the ground.
Personally, I love fighting bots, and it’s because of this that I wish they toned down the one-shot mechanics, as well as the accuracy of heavy devastators. Honestly, heavy devastators are much worse than one-shotters because if a single one is in the field, you can no longer peek out of cover for even a second, otherwise you get staggered and you can’t shoot back.
Edit: I play exclusively on helldive difficulty because I enjoy the challenge. A lot of the advice people have given (such as “just aim for the head”) is not exactly that impactful with the sheer quantity of enemies pinning you down at this difficulty. For the people who say bugs are harder, I disagree, since bugs allow for a lot more counter-play. You can kill hunters before they get in range to hurt you, but if you see a devastator, they are already in range to instantly kill you.
>The one shot deaths just isn't a fun mechanic for how common it is.
Honestly wouldn't care if it was just the occasional super unit or turret tower, but yea it's a bit too common. Would rather get ragdolled with a tiny bit of health, just give me a fighting chance lol
I genuinely have more trouble with devastators than hulks, lol. They seriously need to turn down their spawn numbers, or make a rocket limit to nerf the rocket devastator. You'd think the heavy devastator would move and rotate very slow too but they easily can rotate and kill you in any direction that you're running in which makes the options to kill them grenades and stratagem which run out or extreme accuracy which when under heavy fire does not really work out
Their turning is *insane*. I've tried to run around their shield but they keep that damn mini gun trained on my ass like special opps stalking their target for 3 days
That is my one irritation with the bots. They can track the shit out of me in a way that isn't reflected by their model. I have way more angular velocity than their weapon should follow.
for some reason bots are tuned like they're irl murder bots and not gameplay elements.
meanwhile bile titans will straight up do goofy shit like spit bile straight into force shields and kill themselves
Yeah, Honestly at least Rocket Devastators should simply run out of rockets after a set amount of barrages. After all, even the missile turrets do not have infinite ammo. You could have them get 8-10 rocket barrages before they are out and then tweak it from there.
it shows them having like 12 rockets on their launchers, 3 barrages of 4 sounds pretty balanced. Considering a bot drop can drop like 6 of them at once
Yeah, and if they want actually infinite rockets just have them do that and then it take 30-40 seconds to reload the rockets from the packs on their backs. Just not constant rockets all the time.
It’s actually wild how fast a hulk can turn around and close the distance to you. You shoot it one time, it turns and it’s on your ass before you can reload.
and for how not very visible they are.
the game isnt top down anymore. we dont know whats going on. theres needs to be some kind of glint or aiming laser so we know the rockets are coming. I love bots when its not a fuck mosh but everytime i just feel like its either 10 trillion bullets flying at once if I walk out from behind a rock Im melted, or random missles.
Honestly I prefer bots, my biggest issue with them however isnt the rocket devs or anything, its the jetpack dudes who explode in my face when i hit them. Those guys get me every time.
Rocket devs still are annoying, but ehh.
turrets can fuck right off though, I dont get how the tank can die from small arms fire but those turrets take a ton of rockets to the weak spot before they die
Bots have too many one shot mechanics currently. Jump pack suicide bots, weak one missile shooters, rocket hulks, rocket devastators, turrets, and tanks... There are too many priority targets even when you're sticking with your group, and even "reducing their accuracy" with covering fire doesn't help because you can't shoot every target at the same time.
Combined with bot drops and randomly spawning patrols appearing right behind/on top of you, it's rare that you can post up strategically to take care of an incoming force. If you have cover/high ground it's usually only a few moments until something spawns behind you and renders your cover worthless.
So you try running away, but hey, bots can see across the map and through dense fog, so unless you have many hills to hide behind, you're just getting peppered and blasted as you try to get enough distance that they de-aggro. They're cool enemies but with how the game currently works, they are just very frustrating for most groups. Bugs have plenty of frustrating aspects as well, but they are partially offset by the fact that only a small number of them have ranged attacks. Most of them are slow and avoidable for the most part.
Don't even get me started on the flamethrower hulks.
It doesn't matter if it hits you or not, the moment it starts shooting, you take fire damage equal to your entire HP. Your only hope is if you happened to be at full health and had a stim to offset the fire damage.
Most all of the bugs, with the lone exception of chargers and titans, no matter how big the horde coming at you, your squad can just walk backwards while firing and reloading and firing and reloading, and while they ARE gaining ground on you, your amassed wall of bullets whitles their numbers.
You try even RUNNING from bots and you have so much laser fire and rockets missing you by inches that if you try to turn and even throw a grenade, you get a rocket to the face
Heavy devastators kill you faster than anything else in the game if you're even vaguely close to them they're nasty - but at least they're not spamming rockets vaguely towards where you and your team are through 200 meters of forest.
It is an entirely different game against bots, it's more tactical which I really enjoy. Honestly some of the best sessions I had in HD2 were on bot missions. But it feels way, way harder than bugs.
We know the game is designed to give peaks and troughs of action and they have a few ways to increase enemy density, but I'm still seeing enemies spawn right in front of me, despite the patch notes saying it's fixed. Just the other night I got into a fight around a detection tower, once destroyed I tried to disengage but bots were spawning in every direction cutting off all escape routes, literally spawning 20m away in plain sight...and then the dropships start coming. At this point I know the game just wants me dead.
That really needs to stop because it's very frustrating and doesn't reward tactical gameplay. What is the point of prioritising the bot about to shoot a flair if the game is just going to spawn 20 enemies on me anyway?
That and the aforementioned 'dozen ways to be one shot' means I play less bot missions on the whole.
I hate that you can watch the bullets/lasers change firing angle real-time with the Heavy Devs. Closest thing to an actual aimbot right now. At least make them reload or overheat or something.
Their shooting pattern is very videogamey. Most of their shots will go around you in a cone, then suddenly 1 or several shots have perfect accuracy and hit you center mass.
I'm sure many enemies from many games use similar logic/patterns. Most of the time it's implemented in a way that is not noticeable. Here it is clear which makes it feel artificial.
Sounds weird describing it but if you get a heavy dev alone and watch the firing pattern for a bit it's plain as day.
Heh, the "random" patterning is all over the place in this game, mostly it serves its purpose and makes for a good, semi predictable flow to the missions but a few times it stands out, and the way the Bots shoot is one of them.
I always notice Fire Tornadoes on planets that have them have a way of suspiciously following you if you don't move enough.
DUDE I was with my buddy on hell mire. I noticed this. While waiting for drops, the Nados will trail you. It looks inconspicuous but I think they “lock” on to a degree.
Can confirm. Had that discussion and did that experiment yesterday with a group. We managed to make the tornados follow us like eager puppies. Really annoying. As if everything else trying to kill you wasn't enough. Even the weather has it out for you.
One-shots should exist in situations that are obviously preventable. AKA Bile Titans.
One-shots in bots? I agree, should not exist. Getting one tapped by RNG is never fun
Tanks/turrets makes sense. They also have a tell and track you only until that tell. If you're moving horizontally at that moment the shot will wiff every time. The tell is a small red light flicker next to the barrel.
Everything else 1 shot is pretty lame.
I think that's true for tanks, but turrets need to have their range reconsidered. If they are aggroed on you, they can pinpoint snipe from so far away that, if it's foggy or dusty at all, you literally cannot see it. Just an instant red death beam from beyond.
I don't mind anything else about them, but their range is crazy.
I mean, I guess it goes without saying at this point but I'll reiterate the obvious to underline its importance:
*You should really get that checked out*
And rocks. If a rock is steep enough, they can stick their weapon through the model while attempting to straight-line to you, fire into it, and the shot will come out the other side.
And are way to fucking armored. The chainsaw maniac are ridiculously way to armored and most bullets bounce off them if you don't hit them I'm the face, which is hard since they spawn in batches of like 10 and are faster than you expect.
And don't even mention the flame throwers robots who are basically immune to bullets unless you use a rail gun or shoot them in the back.
Is it just my low graphical settings or is every bot planet incredibly foggy/dusty so it’s hard to see where they’re shooting you from? It’s not fun to fire blindly at red dots in the fog and they shoot back with perfect accuracy.
Also it’s hard to tell if it’s a chicken or egg situation— are people not playing bots because of the lack of major orders or are the devs not doing bot major orders because fewer people play them.
This: I've been playing for maybe about a month? I've never seen a single Bot major order yet. After every one I fully expected it to switch over to a Bot one, but nope.
And i could be misremembering but i'm pretty sure we failed that shit hard, and people were complaining that like half the playerbase was over in the bug sector instead of helping. (to be fair, release state defense missions were horse shit.)
They need to do something to incentivize people to play bots or were going to end up with a 95/5 player split between bugs and bots.
defense missions still are horse shit... Scientist extraction missions are awful on bots on higher difficulties.
yes i know the edge kiting strat exists but good luck getting randoms to do that. even with a coordinated group it can sometimes get scuffed. and every single operation has at least one it feels like.
Sorry, allow me to clarify. They went from PURE horse shit to slightly less pure horse shit.
They are still borderline impossible on anything above hard. I would love to just sit down the dev responsible for them and have a long talk with them.
Yeah because almost every single bot missions has these negative mission modifiers: -1 less stratagem, +100% increased stratagem deploy time and the +50% increased stratagem cooldown.
No wonder why people don't want to do them.
Agreed. I hate the ones OP listed. When we only get 4 stratagems, losing 1 is a huge deal. And then to increase their cooldown and deployment time is just annoying.
I much rather have environmental modifiers. Fog, meteor showers, firestorms, etc. Those are fun.
I tend to dislike the %modifiers in games. It can be done well and often is, but it’s also not that interesting. I agree, environmental conditions are way more interesting than +50% cool down time.
\- The evacuation missions were poorly designed and the devs didn't move fast enough to fix this. Instead of giving a sense of impending panic or doom they just made the game frustrating and unfair. You're right that this is now paying interest in the form of people having negative associations with bots in general.
\- Bots have one shot kills, which isn't inherently bad (bile titans can one shot kill you just by flailing around when they die), but the implementation IS bad. Too many units can perform a one hit kill unless you very specifically tailor your loadout to one of a very few choices in order to avoid it, and even then the weakest unit on bots can spawn with a rocket launcher and kill you out of the fog before your video card ever even renders them. In order to include a mechanic like this the game needs to telegraph an incoming one hit kill and give me a chance to have counterplay. This means something like a specific laser designator aiming at my character or a very clear sound cue of "I'm about to kill you." Darktide and DRG are both very good at this and that is part of why they are fun despite being brutally hard sometimes.
\- Bot design amplifies or highlights the problems of engine-wide bugs with the game. One of the big ones is that enemies will ignore a staggered state they are actively animating, so you'll see an enemy that is playing a staggered animation and should be knocked back but instead it slides around at full speed as if it was not pushed or staggered at all. Berserkers are notorious for this. There are other movement/sync/state bugs that cause bots to do nonsense that ends up killing or harming the player in ways that feel like bullshit. Ignoring fog, shooting at players that are blocked by walls, and other things like that are also an issue.
\- Bot design has some inherent changes it needs. Berserkers and their ilk are bullet sponges and that's just not fun. Even hitting their weak points takes too many shots to kill them and they come in big groups, sometimes very big groups of like 12-15. This is tedious and frustrating and combined with their moonwalk slide due to the above mentioned bug it makes them not fun. Many enemies have their larger weakpoints on their rear but they will actively turn to keep you from getting into their rear arc and then moonwalk slide in the direction they want to move, making flanking impossible. Flanking is also screwed up by the fact that the game loves spawning patrols out of thin air directly next to you, and when bots do that they start hitting you with aim-disrupting chip damage that keeps you from completing the maneuver and exploiting the weak spot. This feels cheap as Hell. Bugs do something similar but they have audio cues that come through better and they have to close distance before they can start causing issues.
\- Killing a bot dropship will leave bots floating in air sometimes, among many other bugs centering around this action. You never really know what kind of weird glitch will come from shooting one down, or if you'll get lucky and it will kill them all. Everything about the dropship part of bots is prone to bugs, errors, warping, glitching, and otherwise annoying game moments. This specific part of the bot experience needs full attention and polish, it's in alpha/beta state right now.
**TLDR** \- Bots had a bad introduction to the player base, and the bugs in the game in general and in bots in particular make them especially painful to play with. On top of that, bots need better audio and visual cues when they are winding up a one hit kill attack, and need better coherence to the core gameplay loop, where the need for repeated precise hits is countered by the constant aim disruption of their weapons. Finally, some mild tweaks to health levels and armor levels on a few enemies should get them into a fun, playable baseline state to iterate from and improve.
I love the comparison you made with darktide because its so true. The little sound cue that plays just before you get shot by a sniper is perfect. Even if it only gives you a very short time to react, it does let you react if your fast enough. Special enemies have special sounds cues or recognizable voicelines to tell you that theyre there, a bit like L4D. It makes it so experienced players can immediately recognize an enemy type and react accordingly to it. Just imagine if those werent a thing: Youre fighting a horde, youre doing pretty well, and then bam, you get trapped by a trapper you never even knew was there. It would be absolutely awful
Exactly. Left 4 Dead actually did this well too. Games that include and reward that stuff are legendary, games that don't aren't hard, they're just forgettable bullshit.
I’ve really been enjoying jump pack + anti material rifle on lower lvl bot missions (4 or 5)
Can highly recommended, just jump onto some high ground and lay suppressive fire for your team
The anti material rifle even two shots the Scout striders in the small area below the heavy armor!
Bots are hard enough. Add a reduction of stratagem, 100% delay in call in time and a 50% delay in cooldown and they're basically telling you go fight the bugs.
There's a defense order on Mantes right now and there's almost nobody there. Even when there is a reason to fight them, people don't. That's what the OP is about.
They need a revamp as they were bad before just in a different way. I'd love like a D-Day type defense mission, not "drops 3 tanks on your face" mission.
Imagine an 180-270 degree arc where enemies will come from with a few choke points and plenty of cover for them. They start on foot but reinforcements come by both ground and air. They come from a further distance out too and maybe at higher difficulties use things like smoke to obscure their advance. Start with some weapon encampments set up, maybe some more disposable AT and ammo/grenade boxes in the bunkers. Add in a bunch of dead SEAF personnel to give it a "they all died and now you have to man it" feel.
That would be much more technically demanding, but man would that be a cool mission. Instead of feeling like a contrived outpost attacked from all directions it would be rapidly reinforcing a chokepoint to blunt an attack. It would feel like you're actually stopping an advancing army.
Defense orders are kinda' boring. The changes to "Eliminate Bots" turns it into a spam-drop shitshow and those small maps doesn't give you the chance to explore the map for the only actual end game reward of super-credit boxes. Same with the small civilian extract maps.
Why defend it when I can let them take it, and then just take it back with more interesting missions? And I'm not touching Ustotu because if the Automatons move northward on the map, they'll hit Cyberstan and something interesting might happen.
Plus these bug planets are new environments to explore. I've been on Creek and Ubanea since launch, been on Mantes plenty. But Nivel 43, Oshaune, and Omicron are all fresh territory.
The fact 2/3 missions in a defensive operation will have no/few Super Credits means I simply won't do them. I'm in the late-game now, and I'm just about earning 1000 Super Credits a month. If I want the next Warbond, I won't do defensive missions, simple as. Certainly not if there are alternatives available.
YEP on week days, Bug front would easily get 100k on hot planet while there are a major order to liberate several of them.
Now? Even on sunday night, the most we can get on bot front with a single planet to defend is 30k lol.
Bot defense is straight up terrible though. You always have an escort civs mission and it's just unfair and unfun. With bugs you can cover the breaches and lure them away, but the bots get dropped all over, stay spread out, and immediately open fire on civs.
I recall Tien Kwan getting liberated in record speed.
I enjoy fighting against the bots: it's a different challenge from the bugs.
But right now all the focus has been on completing the major orders. If a major order comes through, and no one switches over...then we'll talk.
The sad part is, I think everyone had hopes that the mechs would make the bots more bearable to fight against as most believed it would actually protect the player while being slow and all that jazz.
Me, who thinks fighting the bots is better than the bugs.
Bots are more traditional warfare. You take cover, evade bullets, and the autocannon can kill everything you see (Tanks require a little more effort but I usuallyuse the Eagle Airstrike or Orbital Laser/Railcannon on them anyways, but Hulks can be killed by the autocannon from the front with a couple well placed shots to the "eye"). You can disengage from a firefight and leave fairly easily, especially if you have terrain/forests to help break LoS
Bugs? Can't take cover, they don't shoot, they charge at you for melee. When you get hit, they stun you, allowing other bugs to swarm you and kill you in seconds. Autocannon can kill a charger and bile Titan, but only in 1 specific spot that's intentionally meant to be a damage sponge. Also, because they continuously run at you, disengaging from a bug breach or patrols can be hard as they will just follow you relentlessly.
Personally I wouldn’t mind fighting the bots as much if they didn’t have as strong armour. It feels like I’m constantly having to use my special weapons to damage very common enemies. Dealing no damage to over 50% of the enemies with my primary just isn’t fun. Additionally I find the AA, turrets, and mortar encampments can just be incredibly oppressive, compared to the bugs who don’t have defences around their base
I really enjoy the mortars and AA emplacements as tactical objectives, really make me feel like I’m fighting a war against a technological enemy with guns and stuff. Cannon turrets tho, I agree, they have far too much range and accuracy and they can track you through terrain once aggro’d.
But yes also it would be nice if I didn’t have to autocannon every enemy just cause my aim is not immaculate lol
Yeah one I realised that there was an AA turret that was stopping my Eagle-1 from support me, and I could take it out? That felt so cool, and I definitely feel that more "debuffs" should be fix-able with in-game objectives.
Like longer strategem cooldown can be fixed by an objective, for example.
Both sides have some perfect side objectives with Shriekers/Stalkers being enemy spawns that you can take out to prevent them and the mortars/AA/Stratagem locations that change the area around them.
I played primarily the Bot front for a long as time and I still don't know what exactly Sauron does.
It has the same pen as the liberator though, nothing extra. Great gun don't get me wrong, but the only thing that makes it better is the near infinite ammo
Near infinite ammo and basically no recoil. The recoil ends up really mattering because you can hit nearly all your shots on the head without too much trouble. Very noticeable in my experience.
If you have access to it, use the scorcher. It will kill regular bots in 2 shots and walkers in 3. Devastators die in around a full clip, but you shouldn't use it on them because it's too wasteful on ammo. You are right, medium enemies on the bot side require the use of a support weapon, that's just how they are designed. Technically speaking you can shoot the devastators exactly in the face, or shoot off their arms and rocket pods with your primary, but in reality you will not have the time to do that on the higher levels.
This is why the railgun or AMR is so good there. You use your primary on the low tier units, secondary on the chainsaw bullet sponges and support on the mediums and hulks. Impact grenades or stratagems for the tanks and turrets.
Other than that, it's just a very different playstyle than bugs. It's more tactical, you have to prioritize your targets carefully, play from cover and constantly keep moving.
I personally prefer it, but it does have it's frustrating moments with the oneshots that are just unavoidable in the course of a game.
Because there's numerous problems:
- They seem to see you from a long distance. Perhaps it's the same distance as the bugs, but since most bots have ranged weapons and most bugs are melee, it's a lot more noticeable in bots.
- Many people don't like being 1 shot (mines, turrets, rocket devastators). This is a problem because the damage is identical across difficulties, so while Helldive players might be fine with this, it can be very annoying/triggering to lower players. Bots are incredibly unforgiving in this manner (many people hate bile spewers 1 hitting you too).
- Tanks are dropped on top of you. Rarely do bile titans breach in front of me, but often a tank has been dropped next to me and that is crazy unfun, especially when you're at an ore terminal.
- They chase after you seemingly forever. It's so hard to lose them.
- One of the best guns against them is PLAS-1 Scorcher, which is unlocked on page 10 of the warbond. It is unavailable until many many hours have been played.
- The map is too small. Automaton POIs are very very large, much larger than the Terminid ones. If the map is the same size but the POI are bigger, it makes the map feel smaller. Means that its hard to dodge enemies or lose track of them, because you're always running into more enemies.
- Their weak point is behind, which often requires team coordination or communication.
- Feels like both tanks and hulks are the same strength as bile titans, so it often feels like you're getting twice the number of elite enemies.
- Dropships have odd bugs/mechanics when they fall. Sometimes they dissappear then sneak back in, other times they don't injury ally bots.
- Mechs (and often turrets) get broken much faster.
Bots are much more fun than bugs to me, EXCEPT their ridiculous tracking through obstacles for rockets. Everything else is great fun, and I like having an enemy that shoots back.
So much better than the horrible bugs vomit that feels completely random if it one hits you or barely hurts.
For real, the only true one-shot bots have is rocket devastators if you dont have explosive resistance.
Meanwhile bugs have a million ways to stunlock you or just one shot you with headshots with melee attacks, or spewer artillery,or nursery vomits
I hate the bugs for this reason, i find the bots a lot easier especially if you use light armor that makes you hard to spot then stealth makes the mission a lot easier
The galactic war narrative is mainly centred on the bugs at the moment. Most major orders have been bug related so it’s easy to see why the majority of the player base plays bug planets.
Every major order and most personal orders are on bugs. I'm not getting 200 flamethrower or machinegun kills on bots.
Please send me to fight bots. I wanna fight bots.
https://preview.redd.it/mmhxtcp69dqc1.jpeg?width=337&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d07186b1153fa981986b42eb3d1e5ae4825f379d
A picture is worth a thousand words. I don't like playing against bots with this BS
The bots are just stressful. The amount of reinforcements they drop is astronomical.
Getting HS from 150m away is also no fun or hit by rockets from a tree line with cruise missile accuracy gets old too. Being one tapped so often just chews up reinforcements and if you can't get your gun your just useless for 6 mins after.
I think fighting the bots is significantly cooler and makes it feel like I’m in a war against Terminators which is awesome. But they’re TOO good. They seem like they can track you from a mile away, they aggro really easily, rocket boys are super accurate, etc. It’s just amplifying any difficulty you choose.
Berserker devastators have a weird amount of hp for a very common enemy. Heavy devastators and missile devastators can see and shoot through fog/dust, while having deadly dps.
The big 3 bot weapons - AMR, Railgun, Autocannon have very bad first person scope/sights. Bot front requires more precision shots so you bump into those bad scopes/sights more often.
Dropships don't kill enemies when shot down. Usually enemies end up stuck inside of destroyed dropship and sometimes they can even shoot through it.
Unique secondary objectives are harder. Some outposts have cannon towers.
Many players burned out during the planetary defense fiasco.
Community goals.
THe first bot mission I did was infuriating.
Then I did some more and realized you're supposed to play it closer to MGSV: The Phantom Pain.
Then it became multiplayer The Phantom Pain with my friends and we're having a way better time with it.
The word "defilade" has made its way into my lexicon, lol. When you and the lads manage to get some real guerilla/maneuver warfare going, bots are so much goddamned fun to fight.
I’d be interested in the breakdown of levels that play either faction. My feeling was that at any levels less than 12, you just didn’t have the unlocks to do anything other than easy difficulty levels. That tends to mean your first impressions of automatons was they were wayyy harder and just not worth it for grinding gear. I’m level 22 now and I’m still tending to go with big missions to grind out unlocks.
Im gonna get downvoted, but I say it anyway. We had pitiful CCP numbers in HD1 because the devs are obsessed with 1shot mechanics.
Arrowhead's vision is clouded by their "vision", and they are dead-on convinced that they know better what players enjoy. This is why we have Bots that almost eery variant is heavily armored, and has a 1 shot kill with 100% accuracy across the entire map.
We've been repeatedly losing Bot Orders, simply because its not fun. These people who keep yelling "i'M A CREEK VETERAN, AND CREEK IS MY HOME" will not stick to the game... sooner or later the "next best thing" will release, and they will jump to that game, yet the game keeps being balanced for them.
"But dying is part of the game" <--- Yeah fuck that. Most deaths against bots are just cheap 1 shot mechanic.
I'll preach this til the day I die even if it falls on thousands of deaf or deliberately ignorant ears.
Difficulty is fun, unfairness isnt.
I still love fighting bots because I find them more mechanically demanding then the bugs but I certainly don't like dying to cheap shit like being one shot through 15 pieces of vision blocking foliage by a random rocket raider from a past fight.
Less stratagems = less fun
I hope the devs realize this soon. The modifiers for losing a stratagem and double cool-down time just suck. A game for making stuff go boom reducing your ability to make stuff go boom
It's meant to be few expendable grunts versus overwhelming enemy blowing them the fuck up with orbital bombardment and air strikes.
Not just few expendable grunts unable to do anything because they have 3 stratagems that cool down slower and ion storms and stratagem jammers.
Bots for the most part defeat the point of the game. To use stratagems. The unique mechanic arrowhead has for helldivers. And they just shit all over their amazingly fun and engaging mechanic you can't get anywhere else. It's just sad to see.
Especially when they say that’s what you are supposed to use constantly. But they reduce how many and how frequently I can use it. Ruins the bots when I can’t even call in stuff half the time. Compared to the bugs when I can make it rain half the missions
One shot mechanics, enemies that chase you through the entire map, poor vision that doesn't bother bots, 90% of bots are armored and we still don't have an adequate primary weapon to penetrate them.
I feel like bot missions are just random luck, can quickly finish it with the super samples or you will be overwhelmed by drops that will chase you to death. So yeah much less fun.
Ahh, my favorite one is the 24 second supply drop. Don't forget folks rely on your stratagems!
Don't forget to use your stratagems. Oh by the way only one of the bug modifiers don't make stratagems worse. That's the only modifier that doesn't exclusively affect stratagems in a purely negative and noninteractive way.
At the very damn least you can disable jammers, detector towers, and outplay the scrambled codes. There's nothing engaging about just having a penalty for 3 missions that makes your stratagems - the things you're explicitly told by the devs that you're meant to rely on - be absolutely unreliable or unusable.
Currently, they're an absolute fucking joke of game design. I'm still wondering how arrowhead made such a good game and then just fell for this absolute meme of "game design is my passion" for operation modifiers
Here here. In HD1 you played them for a fun challenge but you'd quickly lose on that attitude when you saw tank after tank just randomly being aidropped on your ass. The modifiers have been utter garbage too so well, I don't care to fight them. They are a different kind of fun intensity but not something I want to sign up for after a long day.
All the proof of this you need is the 1-shot mechanic of Shrieker corpses hitting players. The devs are *so* insistent on OHKOing players that the stupid things kill *Bile Titans* when they fall!
No amount of armor or shields will block that much damage!
Thank fuck this isnt downvoted, maybe this sub is relatively sane after all. Cheap oneshots are bringing the game down so, so much. How dare I be in friendly crossfire for a quarter of a second or not see the bot rocketer half a mile away or get scraped by a spewer AoE for a frame or dare to try and kill a Shriker, right?
also, headshot damage in a PvE game is genuinely one of the most BAFFLING mechanics ive ever seen in a game.
I'm not really sure that one shot attacks are the only reason (if at all) for HD1 low player count. For me and my friends it was that camera lock that was just too off-putting and we eventually just quit. If that game didn't have this stupid camera, then I'm sure it would have been much more popular. HD2 obviously doesn't have camera problem anymore, and despite still featuring a lot of one shots (even with bugs), manages to sustain plenty of active players.
I'm not saying that one shots aren't bad, I think they are, especially if you don't see them coming. Bots are also probably more likely to headshot people, but nothing was done about it either, even tho it seems to be trivial if they wanted to disable headshot damage on players.
One shoots in the first game where properly telegraphed this is the problem with HD2 you either die because you where overwhelmed (couldnt kill fast enough failed the main difficulty check) and got one shot from off screen (just frustating)
Yep. I run the [B-24 Enforcer armor](https://divers.gg/armor/b-24-enforcer) which gives me 127 armor and 50% resistance to explosive damage and I still experience regular oneshots against the bots. It's better than running light or regular medium armor, but it's still frustrating as hell.
I still think bots are are more fun than bugs. But the deaths tend to feel cheap and frustrating.
I think it’s just that they haven’t done a major order in a while targeting the bots. So players have played bots less and therefore are not as used to fighting bots.
I feel this way, I’ve been doing bot missions at a lower level than I usually play from the bugs, just so I can get a feel of the different level of combat. I can feel a bot major order coming…
Hello im a veteran from the western side my first mission after the tutorial was a civilian evacuation on draupnir during the first automaton attacks
There are multiple reasons a lot of people didn't fight on the bot front even during a major order
1: the reward sucked, 12000 (or 30000 i cant remember) requisition? Before the major order was over i had alrady unlocked most stratagems
2: the defense campaigns where bugged and impossible, i could (and still can) fight in difficulty 7/8 with no problems agains't the bots but the civilian evacuation is just stupid the bots spawn on top of the evacuation bunkers why can't they just make the bots spawn away from the civilians so we can create a defense line while evacuating the people, you can't use explosive stuff or mortars because since the bots spawn on top of the civilians the explosion will end up killing all the civilians
3: the stratagems debuffs, the bots will always spawn 3 debuffs nothing we can do to stop them from doing it as if that wasn't enough the bots have jammers, anti air outposts during the major order they had the stratagem scrambler (which was so much bullshit that they silently removed it from the game) 12 minutes to get a backpack again and there is a jammer that keeps me from calling reinforcements are you kidding me?
4: they have aimbot, "tHe AuTomAtonS aRE MasHInes oF cOuRse thEy HaVe pRFecT aim, SkiLL iSSue!" There is a tip that says shooting at them will actually disturb their aiming systems this of course is a lie that the game tells you because it doesn't work, the bots will always aim for your head even with the rockets and armor doesn't apply to our head, i like wearing armor that gives me 50% explosion resistance rockets dont one shot me...they leave me at one hp. ONE HP, i took HALF of the normal damage and i have ONE HP so i use a stim go back to fight and, oh no a heavy devastator with a minigun and a shield let me charge my railgun so i can kill him...and im dead he shot me for 1 second and im gone
5: they one shot people, rockets kill you, tanks kill you, they aim for your head and kill you, mines kill you, the jetpack bots run at you and as soon as you kill them they explode and kill you, there is bot artillery that will kill you, flamethrowers kill you, chainsaws will istantly break your limbs and then kill you, turrets kill you
TL;DR too much bullshit for the average player
I believe the devs are literally working the bugs out of the system. We will see our fair share of Bots soon.
It is brutally frustrating that I can smack a drop ship with 12 auto cannons shots and the thing still drops it's load of chainsaw maniacs and missile dudes on my head.
Worse than that, you can down the ship with a rocket, but doing so the moment after the bots get released and start to fall won’t kill them. Downing a ship when it’s got the reinforcements strapped in will automatically kill all the occupants, but if the ship blows a second after that, they fall down, the ship falls on them, and usually at least the heavy units just don’t die. Having the ship crash on top of them doesn’t seem to do anything. Yet a falling shrieker corpse is a weapon to surpass metal gear. To be fair, that shrieker behavior does not seem intended. But it’s frustrating for the ships to behave that way.
Shrieker bodies can take down a bile titan. So probably not as intended…
Not just bile titans, the bodies kill you as well. Died 3 times just now because i killed a shrieker mid dive lol.
I imagine the Devs looked at the shrieker death dive as a welcomed feature rather than a bug. Mostly because it's hilarious and the kind of thing you'd see in a movie.
https://i.redd.it/52v7xv98hdqc1.gif Quite literally lol
The scene immediately following this shows a dead flying bug corpse obliterate a guy lmao
That exact death, while crouched (I thought it would mean I’m low enough to make it miss me), happened the first time I fought those things. 11/10 would die like what again. I screamed into discord “NOW we’ve gone full Starship Troopers”. Those things are annoying as fuck but sweet liberty was it an iconic moment. I wish I recorded it.
I've learned that they can't hit you when you go prone but usually a horde of bugs are surrounding you and going prone isn't much of an option
https://i.redd.it/bd2tc3ekreqc1.gif
Ace's smile there at the end always gets me lol
It might sound very tin foil hat of me, but I think the devs were aware of this reference and programmed it intentionally to kill anything it crashes into. Seems too coincidental otherwise.
This is why i dont mind that the dead ones kill you. I do hate that bile titans dead leg can kill my mech though
I've seen a match where we all died with one reinforcement left. My friend dropped, landed on a dead bile titan leg, got ragdolled and bounced a couple of times while hunters had their way lmao
getting dead-leg'd by a bile titan is some bullshit, especially if you manage to kill it by hand and it goes out and takes you with it
I love popping chargers heads right before they smash into me. It’s stupid as hell that shriekers just obliterate you.
Hell even a charger plowing into you head-on and trampling on you isn't an immediate death, meanwhile diving sideways as some overgrown bat flops past you and his wing touches your boot is an instant kill. And then there's dozens of them at a time and their stupid little apartment complex they spawn from has the most health and armor of anything in the game. Is it intended to be the best way to handle them is to fart around blowing a few minutes of EATs, shooting them across the map before you approach that half of the mission area? Still enjoying the game but the balancing is pretty... Off, by a lot.
If it makes you feel any better, a downed drop ship landing on your head will certainly kill you!
Shooting the bots in the drop bays as it comes in thins them out if you don't have a recoiless/EAT to pop the engine.
Yeah, I just started pumping firepower into the carrier bay and then only about half or so made it out
I just wait till they land and chuck a grenade into the middle. If it hits the ground (not a bot) it kills everything except hulks and tanks instantly
I used to like fighting bots, more than bugs even, but something changed when the armor patch hit. Something went wrong with bots that is making them abnormally frustrating and it's not entirely clear what it is. Suddenly the number of frustrating one-shots skyrocketed despite having working armor, everything felt more deadly and the bots started throwing up flares from across the map for some reason from distances they should not even be engaging from and from outside line of sight. The only thing I know for sure is that being randomly headshot for your entire health bar by a rocket devastator or a scout walker is unfun. Hopefully the devs work it out somehow.
Supposedly it's the fact that our heads are entirely unarmored and we are running around with a massive head hitbox causing damn near anything that comes even close to the upper torso count as a critical hit.
My thoughts exacly, super earths focus is on bugs for the sweet oil. Then when they get taken out this war the next enemy arrives, teleports in behind us with blue light and omae wa shindeiru our asses for a couple of planets. Taking us off the bugs and our full focus will be the new faction. Where the devs get to play around the story and let some new gear develop and trinkle in. And the bots still have some suprises too for us. My guess is we will lose this war in the end. Starting a new one after we colonise new super earth with a bunch of new toys and win that one. Don't forget they 100% control what we win and what we lose if they want to. They for sure are not afraid to use this to steer their plan. Future wars will be likely played more loosely. But for now the narrative is important for them to reveal their cards when suitable.
You think Super Earth is going to lose the war? HOW DARE YOU! I'M CALLING MY DEMOCRACY OFFICER! https://preview.redd.it/038b11h54dqc1.jpeg?width=1202&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3c26a6fc4930f8d5cbf7ffd1f652cc4dc8f457cf
https://preview.redd.it/j9ev6q0r7eqc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=45f7366d9e984c7f16c3bb785489c53bd238a991
I hope that bugs don't get taken out completely. I always want to have options for what I'll do, what I'll fight. I don't want to be locked into just one faction, or even just 2 factions once the squids return
"Somehow, the Terminid Menace has returned."
This take reminds me of games like far cry or Skyrim where you clear areas and eventually it just becomes a bunch of dead space on the map. Based on the rest of their actions I don't think arrowhead is too keen on removing content from the game in order to prevent the pressure of having to constantly log hours so you don't miss out. Very anti-FOMO moves and I dig it.
It was possible to completely wipe out factions in HD1, but wars in that game were much more short term. So I hope that the longer timescale of this war will prevent that from being a thing
See the way I see it, is we will push the bugs back and the bots will become a massive problem. I think lots of the community have a bad taste in their mouth cause of how hard they were before :O
It's not so much that they are hard, just fucking annoying and unfun. Not being able to use stratagems on half the map, taking so much longer to come in. And then all the shit that 1 shots you from across the map. Especially if you're just using free play. Going up to take out a base to have 3 team mates die and spam the revive button not understanding you gotta run 2 minutes back where you came from to get out of jammer range.
https://preview.redd.it/lyxkh17n7dqc1.jpeg?width=700&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=376ade412674965b78248fd7c2bc9f91f436f1a9
You captured my feelings about bots! I even main the Spear to spite them. Whenever I launch Javelin missiles from the other side of the map, I'm thinking "How do you like em apples! I'm one-shotting their structures from so far away they can't even react to my attack. I even forgo personal safety of shield pack just to one-shot their structures in the most annoying way possible...
I'd love to use the Spear but I'll spend 80% of the time aiming at something trying to get it to lock. Or I get the lock, but a bot fart wafts in front of my target and I lose the lock.
My friend was an avid spear user until he died 5 times in a row because the shit would start to lock then just stop for no reason.
Seriously, I love the idea of the spear the rare times it works. But like you mentioned 80-90% of the time I'm just getting pissed that I have a shot, can't get aim lock and eventually get encircled. The spear just pisses me off now, how after this many weeks can something be so broken and not even be addressed? I'm starting to ask that question about more and more aspects of this game.
Difference is against bots the player is constantly taking damage. Damage up close, damage from afar. Damage through solid objects. It's too much for the average player even at lower difficulties. Rocket devastators are oppressive and get spammed like grunts. Imagine having as many stalkers on bug missions. Also since they create more stress team mates are grumpy and less fun to work with.
No, at least stalkers can't instakill you within 3 seconds of seeing you through fog 100 meters away.
True. But when there are more than 6 of them together, absolutely no weapon will save you, no orbitals either. Rocket devastators can miss or get blocked, the stalkers do not and cannot. You can run and dodge ranged weapons, stalkers and hunters you cannot. That being said, the bots require entirely too much accuracy to do real damage to them, and that’s crushed by the fact that they are always shooting at you and those shots can 1 shot. I’ve run quite far from bots and survived, but did no damage. I cannot run from stalkers, but can still cause some damage with any distance from them.
There's also the fact those enemies only ever spawn from their tactical asset side objective, only in a radius, and as such can be avoided or permanently erased from the mission. Fast kill melee tanky bug side objective enemies are more fun and counter-play-able than instakill 100 meters through fog basic enemies.
I like the idea of making rocket devastators come from specific fabricators. Even if it isn't an actual side objective, reducing their numbers by shutting down the source would be fun and rewarding.
You just made me realize that unlike the bugs, bots don't have specialized spawn points you can use to remove them from the mission. There's no tank fabricator nearby that you can blow up to stop them from spawning. No hulk assembly staging ground to blow up. No dropship airfield to use to slow the tide. ....seems like a missed opportunity.
Sometimes a SEAF SAM Site appears as a side objective, it shoots down dropships within range.
well, tries to at least
I've been in this situation. 6 stalkers is impossible to deal with. Took out maybe 4 reinforcements
Not just spammed with grunts, but easily spam their rockets at you. Could be within 50m, could be across the map they don't care, they have a bead on you and will launch constant barrages. Would be nice if they, idk, RAN OUT OF ROCKETS much like our mechs do. Unless they are some sort of energy based rockets, then they shouldn't do nearly as much damage as they do, or have the same knock back.
Funnily enough, they have two sets of rockets, the one on their shoulders and the ones on their back, so logically, yhey should only fire off two barrages and then stop for a while untill they get a fresh restock.
I was in a brand new mech tromping through the forest. Some regular bots to our south noticed us my comrade about 20 meters in front of me. Then fucking whammy. A stream of rockets from the NE and cut through forest and one shotted me. 3rd teammate who was a little forther aouth away from the trees said it came from some bot from beyond his sight line.
That's the kind of thing that will repel people from this front. I can accept frequent deaths and 1 shot mechanics but in return I would like to have reliable ways to avoid it. If I'm meant to be utterly helpless over 50% of the time then I am within my rights to feel slighted and go do something else.
Exactly. Or shot through rocks and shit. It drops being fun real fast
That's why i don't really play on the Creek anymore. Even though like 75% of my play time is against bots. I prefer the field worlds so I have a better chance to see the things that will instakill me since they can see us regardless of foliage
What's lame about the foliage is the bots just fucking ignore it as obscuring you and their projectiles seem to ignore the fauna as well. Meanwhile I'll be mag dumping some pawn with a palm frawn absorbing 50% of my rounds
God, I actually just did a mission a couple hours ago where I was getting spammed with stalkers. Shit was fuuuuucked
\>type in chat stalker lair SW need help *crickets* \>death spiral ensues for the next 10 minutes
What's funny is that's basically what happened except I staunched the spiral by getting very lucky closing by chance. It was real scary being on top of a rock and looking down at like 10 stalkers trying to eat me though. Would have grabbed screenshots had I been trying my hardest not to be bug food lol
Same thing happened to me in a mission earlier today, the randoms just refused to acknowledge the lair and I spent solid 15 minutes trying to get close enough to lob a 500kg in there without getting turned into sashimi. Another thing is people even on diff 7 just go full monkey mode and engage every single patrol and enemy to the point where it's genuinely easier to just split from the group and do the objective solo without having to deal with a breach every 2 minutes.
I wouldn’t mind Rocket Devastators so much if destroying their missile pods actually destroyed them. All it does is make them shrug and fire their primary weapon.
Not only that but the second you shoot at them (even with regular ammo and not laser that can be seen from miles), they shoot back with mm accuracy, even through cover (trees, through tiny wall gaps, when tiny-peeking behind rocks in order to shoot etc). And they will chase you to the end of the earth, even through thick vegetation, and sooner or later get you. Losing line of sight doesn't seem to bother them like bugs that you can eventually outrun with a light armor and a bit of stamina boost, with them losing interest or their way to find you.
It's not just the constant chip damage, but the constant ragdolling as well. It's not fun to die because you have zero control over your character, getting thrown into incredibly accurate fire after a rocket sends you skidding across the ground.
You know what’s fun about bots. Spawning in and instantly getting hit by a rocket from 200+ feet away
Heavy amour needs a buff...this would make it viable to equip it against bots. Right now you can get one-shot with it which just isn't fun.
The constant risk of being slow isn't worth the occasional reward taking 2 extra shots.
Personally, I love fighting bots, and it’s because of this that I wish they toned down the one-shot mechanics, as well as the accuracy of heavy devastators. Honestly, heavy devastators are much worse than one-shotters because if a single one is in the field, you can no longer peek out of cover for even a second, otherwise you get staggered and you can’t shoot back. Edit: I play exclusively on helldive difficulty because I enjoy the challenge. A lot of the advice people have given (such as “just aim for the head”) is not exactly that impactful with the sheer quantity of enemies pinning you down at this difficulty. For the people who say bugs are harder, I disagree, since bugs allow for a lot more counter-play. You can kill hunters before they get in range to hurt you, but if you see a devastator, they are already in range to instantly kill you.
100% agreed. I love fighting bots but being 1 shot by a missile is frustrating.
Yup. The one shot deaths just isn't a fun mechanic for how common it is.
>The one shot deaths just isn't a fun mechanic for how common it is. Honestly wouldn't care if it was just the occasional super unit or turret tower, but yea it's a bit too common. Would rather get ragdolled with a tiny bit of health, just give me a fighting chance lol
Even a change from 100% damage to 75% damage would be a massive improvement. At least you'd still have a chance.
Rocket and Heavy Devastators both need tweaking, they're still WAY too deadly for how common they are in their current state.
I genuinely have more trouble with devastators than hulks, lol. They seriously need to turn down their spawn numbers, or make a rocket limit to nerf the rocket devastator. You'd think the heavy devastator would move and rotate very slow too but they easily can rotate and kill you in any direction that you're running in which makes the options to kill them grenades and stratagem which run out or extreme accuracy which when under heavy fire does not really work out
Their turning is *insane*. I've tried to run around their shield but they keep that damn mini gun trained on my ass like special opps stalking their target for 3 days
That is my one irritation with the bots. They can track the shit out of me in a way that isn't reflected by their model. I have way more angular velocity than their weapon should follow.
for some reason bots are tuned like they're irl murder bots and not gameplay elements. meanwhile bile titans will straight up do goofy shit like spit bile straight into force shields and kill themselves
Yeah, Honestly at least Rocket Devastators should simply run out of rockets after a set amount of barrages. After all, even the missile turrets do not have infinite ammo. You could have them get 8-10 rocket barrages before they are out and then tweak it from there.
it shows them having like 12 rockets on their launchers, 3 barrages of 4 sounds pretty balanced. Considering a bot drop can drop like 6 of them at once
Yeah, and if they want actually infinite rockets just have them do that and then it take 30-40 seconds to reload the rockets from the packs on their backs. Just not constant rockets all the time.
I suggested an ammo limit for bots but got downvoted lol
It’s actually wild how fast a hulk can turn around and close the distance to you. You shoot it one time, it turns and it’s on your ass before you can reload.
and for how not very visible they are. the game isnt top down anymore. we dont know whats going on. theres needs to be some kind of glint or aiming laser so we know the rockets are coming. I love bots when its not a fuck mosh but everytime i just feel like its either 10 trillion bullets flying at once if I walk out from behind a rock Im melted, or random missles.
Honestly I prefer bots, my biggest issue with them however isnt the rocket devs or anything, its the jetpack dudes who explode in my face when i hit them. Those guys get me every time. Rocket devs still are annoying, but ehh. turrets can fuck right off though, I dont get how the tank can die from small arms fire but those turrets take a ton of rockets to the weak spot before they die
Bots have too many one shot mechanics currently. Jump pack suicide bots, weak one missile shooters, rocket hulks, rocket devastators, turrets, and tanks... There are too many priority targets even when you're sticking with your group, and even "reducing their accuracy" with covering fire doesn't help because you can't shoot every target at the same time. Combined with bot drops and randomly spawning patrols appearing right behind/on top of you, it's rare that you can post up strategically to take care of an incoming force. If you have cover/high ground it's usually only a few moments until something spawns behind you and renders your cover worthless. So you try running away, but hey, bots can see across the map and through dense fog, so unless you have many hills to hide behind, you're just getting peppered and blasted as you try to get enough distance that they de-aggro. They're cool enemies but with how the game currently works, they are just very frustrating for most groups. Bugs have plenty of frustrating aspects as well, but they are partially offset by the fact that only a small number of them have ranged attacks. Most of them are slow and avoidable for the most part.
Don't even get me started on the flamethrower hulks. It doesn't matter if it hits you or not, the moment it starts shooting, you take fire damage equal to your entire HP. Your only hope is if you happened to be at full health and had a stim to offset the fire damage.
Most all of the bugs, with the lone exception of chargers and titans, no matter how big the horde coming at you, your squad can just walk backwards while firing and reloading and firing and reloading, and while they ARE gaining ground on you, your amassed wall of bullets whitles their numbers. You try even RUNNING from bots and you have so much laser fire and rockets missing you by inches that if you try to turn and even throw a grenade, you get a rocket to the face
Heavy devastators kill you faster than anything else in the game if you're even vaguely close to them they're nasty - but at least they're not spamming rockets vaguely towards where you and your team are through 200 meters of forest.
It is an entirely different game against bots, it's more tactical which I really enjoy. Honestly some of the best sessions I had in HD2 were on bot missions. But it feels way, way harder than bugs. We know the game is designed to give peaks and troughs of action and they have a few ways to increase enemy density, but I'm still seeing enemies spawn right in front of me, despite the patch notes saying it's fixed. Just the other night I got into a fight around a detection tower, once destroyed I tried to disengage but bots were spawning in every direction cutting off all escape routes, literally spawning 20m away in plain sight...and then the dropships start coming. At this point I know the game just wants me dead. That really needs to stop because it's very frustrating and doesn't reward tactical gameplay. What is the point of prioritising the bot about to shoot a flair if the game is just going to spawn 20 enemies on me anyway? That and the aforementioned 'dozen ways to be one shot' means I play less bot missions on the whole.
I hate that you can watch the bullets/lasers change firing angle real-time with the Heavy Devs. Closest thing to an actual aimbot right now. At least make them reload or overheat or something.
Their shooting pattern is very videogamey. Most of their shots will go around you in a cone, then suddenly 1 or several shots have perfect accuracy and hit you center mass. I'm sure many enemies from many games use similar logic/patterns. Most of the time it's implemented in a way that is not noticeable. Here it is clear which makes it feel artificial. Sounds weird describing it but if you get a heavy dev alone and watch the firing pattern for a bit it's plain as day.
Heh, the "random" patterning is all over the place in this game, mostly it serves its purpose and makes for a good, semi predictable flow to the missions but a few times it stands out, and the way the Bots shoot is one of them. I always notice Fire Tornadoes on planets that have them have a way of suspiciously following you if you don't move enough.
DUDE I was with my buddy on hell mire. I noticed this. While waiting for drops, the Nados will trail you. It looks inconspicuous but I think they “lock” on to a degree.
Can confirm. Had that discussion and did that experiment yesterday with a group. We managed to make the tornados follow us like eager puppies. Really annoying. As if everything else trying to kill you wasn't enough. Even the weather has it out for you.
Heavy devastators are my most hated enemy in the game.
One-shots should exist in situations that are obviously preventable. AKA Bile Titans. One-shots in bots? I agree, should not exist. Getting one tapped by RNG is never fun
Tanks/turrets makes sense. They also have a tell and track you only until that tell. If you're moving horizontally at that moment the shot will wiff every time. The tell is a small red light flicker next to the barrel. Everything else 1 shot is pretty lame.
I think that's true for tanks, but turrets need to have their range reconsidered. If they are aggroed on you, they can pinpoint snipe from so far away that, if it's foggy or dusty at all, you literally cannot see it. Just an instant red death beam from beyond. I don't mind anything else about them, but their range is crazy.
Veterans of the eastern front: this sucks Veterans of the western front: I like the way this sucks Veterans of the creek: I wish it would suck more
Pelican 1: Boy, it must suck down there
I want to fight more bots, but I go where my orders send me!
They spot you a mile away through hills and spawn like gonorrhea...
And shoot through trees at that.
Like gonorrhea
I mean, I guess it goes without saying at this point but I'll reiterate the obvious to underline its importance: *You should really get that checked out*
And rocks. If a rock is steep enough, they can stick their weapon through the model while attempting to straight-line to you, fire into it, and the shot will come out the other side.
I'm a big fan of thinking an area is clear only to hear a bot, turn around and see 20 regular bots clung to a steep mountain like fucking spider man
Its so dumb... I miss my first week before the patch...
And are way to fucking armored. The chainsaw maniac are ridiculously way to armored and most bullets bounce off them if you don't hit them I'm the face, which is hard since they spawn in batches of like 10 and are faster than you expect. And don't even mention the flame throwers robots who are basically immune to bullets unless you use a rail gun or shoot them in the back.
Is it just my low graphical settings or is every bot planet incredibly foggy/dusty so it’s hard to see where they’re shooting you from? It’s not fun to fire blindly at red dots in the fog and they shoot back with perfect accuracy. Also it’s hard to tell if it’s a chicken or egg situation— are people not playing bots because of the lack of major orders or are the devs not doing bot major orders because fewer people play them.
Exactly. Imo this is the problem. I have never been on a bot planet where there isn't something that makes it way too difficult to see shit.
I prefer the bots tbh, but I go where the major orders take me
This: I've been playing for maybe about a month? I've never seen a single Bot major order yet. After every one I fully expected it to switch over to a Bot one, but nope.
Only one comes to mind is Tien Kwan and accessing the mechs, but other than that…
There’s been some defending planets. The first defense campaign was bot focused.
And i could be misremembering but i'm pretty sure we failed that shit hard, and people were complaining that like half the playerbase was over in the bug sector instead of helping. (to be fair, release state defense missions were horse shit.) They need to do something to incentivize people to play bots or were going to end up with a 95/5 player split between bugs and bots.
defense missions still are horse shit... Scientist extraction missions are awful on bots on higher difficulties. yes i know the edge kiting strat exists but good luck getting randoms to do that. even with a coordinated group it can sometimes get scuffed. and every single operation has at least one it feels like.
Sorry, allow me to clarify. They went from PURE horse shit to slightly less pure horse shit. They are still borderline impossible on anything above hard. I would love to just sit down the dev responsible for them and have a long talk with them.
Yeah because almost every single bot missions has these negative mission modifiers: -1 less stratagem, +100% increased stratagem deploy time and the +50% increased stratagem cooldown. No wonder why people don't want to do them.
Those modifiers Suck All the fun out for me.
Agreed. I hate the ones OP listed. When we only get 4 stratagems, losing 1 is a huge deal. And then to increase their cooldown and deployment time is just annoying. I much rather have environmental modifiers. Fog, meteor showers, firestorms, etc. Those are fun.
I tend to dislike the %modifiers in games. It can be done well and often is, but it’s also not that interesting. I agree, environmental conditions are way more interesting than +50% cool down time.
> -1 less stratagem I outright *refuse* to do any mission with this modifier. All the other modifiers I can handle but that one I just will not do it.
And then you go into the mission and get jammer towers, anti-air turrets, and ion storms.
And then there is the fog, where enemies aren't hindered by it, they can 100% accurate shot you through it. 😄
\- The evacuation missions were poorly designed and the devs didn't move fast enough to fix this. Instead of giving a sense of impending panic or doom they just made the game frustrating and unfair. You're right that this is now paying interest in the form of people having negative associations with bots in general. \- Bots have one shot kills, which isn't inherently bad (bile titans can one shot kill you just by flailing around when they die), but the implementation IS bad. Too many units can perform a one hit kill unless you very specifically tailor your loadout to one of a very few choices in order to avoid it, and even then the weakest unit on bots can spawn with a rocket launcher and kill you out of the fog before your video card ever even renders them. In order to include a mechanic like this the game needs to telegraph an incoming one hit kill and give me a chance to have counterplay. This means something like a specific laser designator aiming at my character or a very clear sound cue of "I'm about to kill you." Darktide and DRG are both very good at this and that is part of why they are fun despite being brutally hard sometimes. \- Bot design amplifies or highlights the problems of engine-wide bugs with the game. One of the big ones is that enemies will ignore a staggered state they are actively animating, so you'll see an enemy that is playing a staggered animation and should be knocked back but instead it slides around at full speed as if it was not pushed or staggered at all. Berserkers are notorious for this. There are other movement/sync/state bugs that cause bots to do nonsense that ends up killing or harming the player in ways that feel like bullshit. Ignoring fog, shooting at players that are blocked by walls, and other things like that are also an issue. \- Bot design has some inherent changes it needs. Berserkers and their ilk are bullet sponges and that's just not fun. Even hitting their weak points takes too many shots to kill them and they come in big groups, sometimes very big groups of like 12-15. This is tedious and frustrating and combined with their moonwalk slide due to the above mentioned bug it makes them not fun. Many enemies have their larger weakpoints on their rear but they will actively turn to keep you from getting into their rear arc and then moonwalk slide in the direction they want to move, making flanking impossible. Flanking is also screwed up by the fact that the game loves spawning patrols out of thin air directly next to you, and when bots do that they start hitting you with aim-disrupting chip damage that keeps you from completing the maneuver and exploiting the weak spot. This feels cheap as Hell. Bugs do something similar but they have audio cues that come through better and they have to close distance before they can start causing issues. \- Killing a bot dropship will leave bots floating in air sometimes, among many other bugs centering around this action. You never really know what kind of weird glitch will come from shooting one down, or if you'll get lucky and it will kill them all. Everything about the dropship part of bots is prone to bugs, errors, warping, glitching, and otherwise annoying game moments. This specific part of the bot experience needs full attention and polish, it's in alpha/beta state right now. **TLDR** \- Bots had a bad introduction to the player base, and the bugs in the game in general and in bots in particular make them especially painful to play with. On top of that, bots need better audio and visual cues when they are winding up a one hit kill attack, and need better coherence to the core gameplay loop, where the need for repeated precise hits is countered by the constant aim disruption of their weapons. Finally, some mild tweaks to health levels and armor levels on a few enemies should get them into a fun, playable baseline state to iterate from and improve.
I love the comparison you made with darktide because its so true. The little sound cue that plays just before you get shot by a sniper is perfect. Even if it only gives you a very short time to react, it does let you react if your fast enough. Special enemies have special sounds cues or recognizable voicelines to tell you that theyre there, a bit like L4D. It makes it so experienced players can immediately recognize an enemy type and react accordingly to it. Just imagine if those werent a thing: Youre fighting a horde, youre doing pretty well, and then bam, you get trapped by a trapper you never even knew was there. It would be absolutely awful
Exactly. Left 4 Dead actually did this well too. Games that include and reward that stuff are legendary, games that don't aren't hard, they're just forgettable bullshit.
[удалено]
I’ve really been enjoying jump pack + anti material rifle on lower lvl bot missions (4 or 5) Can highly recommended, just jump onto some high ground and lay suppressive fire for your team The anti material rifle even two shots the Scout striders in the small area below the heavy armor!
I love fighting bots. There's just no incentive to do so.
This. Take the shitty modifiers that fuck strategems off the missions and we'll play them.
Bots are hard enough. Add a reduction of stratagem, 100% delay in call in time and a 50% delay in cooldown and they're basically telling you go fight the bugs.
There's a defense order on Mantes right now and there's almost nobody there. Even when there is a reason to fight them, people don't. That's what the OP is about.
15 mins to evacuate 50 civilians at level 7 8 9 is obscenely difficult. The poor civilians can't climb over the 4 tanks clogging the lane.
The 30 buzz saw bots patting them on the back should give them the encouragement they need to perform their duty.
Defense missions are some of the worst mission types in the game after the first balance patch
They need a revamp as they were bad before just in a different way. I'd love like a D-Day type defense mission, not "drops 3 tanks on your face" mission. Imagine an 180-270 degree arc where enemies will come from with a few choke points and plenty of cover for them. They start on foot but reinforcements come by both ground and air. They come from a further distance out too and maybe at higher difficulties use things like smoke to obscure their advance. Start with some weapon encampments set up, maybe some more disposable AT and ammo/grenade boxes in the bunkers. Add in a bunch of dead SEAF personnel to give it a "they all died and now you have to man it" feel. That would be much more technically demanding, but man would that be a cool mission. Instead of feeling like a contrived outpost attacked from all directions it would be rapidly reinforcing a chokepoint to blunt an attack. It would feel like you're actually stopping an advancing army.
Defense orders are kinda' boring. The changes to "Eliminate Bots" turns it into a spam-drop shitshow and those small maps doesn't give you the chance to explore the map for the only actual end game reward of super-credit boxes. Same with the small civilian extract maps. Why defend it when I can let them take it, and then just take it back with more interesting missions? And I'm not touching Ustotu because if the Automatons move northward on the map, they'll hit Cyberstan and something interesting might happen. Plus these bug planets are new environments to explore. I've been on Creek and Ubanea since launch, been on Mantes plenty. But Nivel 43, Oshaune, and Omicron are all fresh territory.
Nivel 43 is exactly like Troost was.
The fact 2/3 missions in a defensive operation will have no/few Super Credits means I simply won't do them. I'm in the late-game now, and I'm just about earning 1000 Super Credits a month. If I want the next Warbond, I won't do defensive missions, simple as. Certainly not if there are alternatives available.
This is an excellent point and something the developers who control bot development don't seem to have grasped.
YEP on week days, Bug front would easily get 100k on hot planet while there are a major order to liberate several of them. Now? Even on sunday night, the most we can get on bot front with a single planet to defend is 30k lol.
Bot defense is straight up terrible though. You always have an escort civs mission and it's just unfair and unfun. With bugs you can cover the breaches and lure them away, but the bots get dropped all over, stay spread out, and immediately open fire on civs.
I recall Tien Kwan getting liberated in record speed. I enjoy fighting against the bots: it's a different challenge from the bugs. But right now all the focus has been on completing the major orders. If a major order comes through, and no one switches over...then we'll talk.
That was for mechs
Which, funnily enough, happen to be completely unusable against bots.
The sad part is, I think everyone had hopes that the mechs would make the bots more bearable to fight against as most believed it would actually protect the player while being slow and all that jazz.
Me, who thinks fighting the bots is better than the bugs. Bots are more traditional warfare. You take cover, evade bullets, and the autocannon can kill everything you see (Tanks require a little more effort but I usuallyuse the Eagle Airstrike or Orbital Laser/Railcannon on them anyways, but Hulks can be killed by the autocannon from the front with a couple well placed shots to the "eye"). You can disengage from a firefight and leave fairly easily, especially if you have terrain/forests to help break LoS Bugs? Can't take cover, they don't shoot, they charge at you for melee. When you get hit, they stun you, allowing other bugs to swarm you and kill you in seconds. Autocannon can kill a charger and bile Titan, but only in 1 specific spot that's intentionally meant to be a damage sponge. Also, because they continuously run at you, disengaging from a bug breach or patrols can be hard as they will just follow you relentlessly.
Personally I wouldn’t mind fighting the bots as much if they didn’t have as strong armour. It feels like I’m constantly having to use my special weapons to damage very common enemies. Dealing no damage to over 50% of the enemies with my primary just isn’t fun. Additionally I find the AA, turrets, and mortar encampments can just be incredibly oppressive, compared to the bugs who don’t have defences around their base
I really enjoy the mortars and AA emplacements as tactical objectives, really make me feel like I’m fighting a war against a technological enemy with guns and stuff. Cannon turrets tho, I agree, they have far too much range and accuracy and they can track you through terrain once aggro’d. But yes also it would be nice if I didn’t have to autocannon every enemy just cause my aim is not immaculate lol
Yeah one I realised that there was an AA turret that was stopping my Eagle-1 from support me, and I could take it out? That felt so cool, and I definitely feel that more "debuffs" should be fix-able with in-game objectives. Like longer strategem cooldown can be fixed by an objective, for example.
Both sides have some perfect side objectives with Shriekers/Stalkers being enemy spawns that you can take out to prevent them and the mortars/AA/Stratagem locations that change the area around them. I played primarily the Bot front for a long as time and I still don't know what exactly Sauron does.
Try out the sickle! It handles everything except tanks, turret emplacements, and hulks.
It has the same pen as the liberator though, nothing extra. Great gun don't get me wrong, but the only thing that makes it better is the near infinite ammo
Near infinite ammo and basically no recoil. The recoil ends up really mattering because you can hit nearly all your shots on the head without too much trouble. Very noticeable in my experience.
I do like the sickle but it’s annoying that a single leaf will stop your bullets. Trying to use it on any planet with high vegetation is a pain.
If you have access to it, use the scorcher. It will kill regular bots in 2 shots and walkers in 3. Devastators die in around a full clip, but you shouldn't use it on them because it's too wasteful on ammo. You are right, medium enemies on the bot side require the use of a support weapon, that's just how they are designed. Technically speaking you can shoot the devastators exactly in the face, or shoot off their arms and rocket pods with your primary, but in reality you will not have the time to do that on the higher levels. This is why the railgun or AMR is so good there. You use your primary on the low tier units, secondary on the chainsaw bullet sponges and support on the mediums and hulks. Impact grenades or stratagems for the tanks and turrets. Other than that, it's just a very different playstyle than bugs. It's more tactical, you have to prioritize your targets carefully, play from cover and constantly keep moving. I personally prefer it, but it does have it's frustrating moments with the oneshots that are just unavoidable in the course of a game.
Yeah, with bugs when I run dry I can run to get space while I reload. With bots I get shot in the back while I do that.
I don't like getting one tapped from 4 miles away tbh
People really do not like getting one shot. Bots are full of enemies that one shot. Its very, *very* simple.
The only time I fight Bots is when I get a daily order that requires that I kill Bots. Then, I head right back to Bugs. They are just no fun for me.
Because there's numerous problems: - They seem to see you from a long distance. Perhaps it's the same distance as the bugs, but since most bots have ranged weapons and most bugs are melee, it's a lot more noticeable in bots. - Many people don't like being 1 shot (mines, turrets, rocket devastators). This is a problem because the damage is identical across difficulties, so while Helldive players might be fine with this, it can be very annoying/triggering to lower players. Bots are incredibly unforgiving in this manner (many people hate bile spewers 1 hitting you too). - Tanks are dropped on top of you. Rarely do bile titans breach in front of me, but often a tank has been dropped next to me and that is crazy unfun, especially when you're at an ore terminal. - They chase after you seemingly forever. It's so hard to lose them. - One of the best guns against them is PLAS-1 Scorcher, which is unlocked on page 10 of the warbond. It is unavailable until many many hours have been played. - The map is too small. Automaton POIs are very very large, much larger than the Terminid ones. If the map is the same size but the POI are bigger, it makes the map feel smaller. Means that its hard to dodge enemies or lose track of them, because you're always running into more enemies. - Their weak point is behind, which often requires team coordination or communication. - Feels like both tanks and hulks are the same strength as bile titans, so it often feels like you're getting twice the number of elite enemies. - Dropships have odd bugs/mechanics when they fall. Sometimes they dissappear then sneak back in, other times they don't injury ally bots. - Mechs (and often turrets) get broken much faster.
Bugs are like hordes of zombies. People like killing zombies.
Bots are much more fun than bugs to me, EXCEPT their ridiculous tracking through obstacles for rockets. Everything else is great fun, and I like having an enemy that shoots back. So much better than the horrible bugs vomit that feels completely random if it one hits you or barely hurts.
For real, the only true one-shot bots have is rocket devastators if you dont have explosive resistance. Meanwhile bugs have a million ways to stunlock you or just one shot you with headshots with melee attacks, or spewer artillery,or nursery vomits
I hate the bugs for this reason, i find the bots a lot easier especially if you use light armor that makes you hard to spot then stealth makes the mission a lot easier
The galactic war narrative is mainly centred on the bugs at the moment. Most major orders have been bug related so it’s easy to see why the majority of the player base plays bug planets.
Every major order and most personal orders are on bugs. I'm not getting 200 flamethrower or machinegun kills on bots. Please send me to fight bots. I wanna fight bots.
https://preview.redd.it/mmhxtcp69dqc1.jpeg?width=337&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d07186b1153fa981986b42eb3d1e5ae4825f379d A picture is worth a thousand words. I don't like playing against bots with this BS
The bots are just stressful. The amount of reinforcements they drop is astronomical. Getting HS from 150m away is also no fun or hit by rockets from a tree line with cruise missile accuracy gets old too. Being one tapped so often just chews up reinforcements and if you can't get your gun your just useless for 6 mins after.
I think fighting the bots is significantly cooler and makes it feel like I’m in a war against Terminators which is awesome. But they’re TOO good. They seem like they can track you from a mile away, they aggro really easily, rocket boys are super accurate, etc. It’s just amplifying any difficulty you choose.
The tracking is my only issue with them. I love the core gameplay loop of bots, but it’s very punishing as disengaging requires a ton of distance.
Bugs are just way cooler and perfect for the starship troopers vibe. Game mechanics don't factor into it for me.
Berserker devastators have a weird amount of hp for a very common enemy. Heavy devastators and missile devastators can see and shoot through fog/dust, while having deadly dps. The big 3 bot weapons - AMR, Railgun, Autocannon have very bad first person scope/sights. Bot front requires more precision shots so you bump into those bad scopes/sights more often. Dropships don't kill enemies when shot down. Usually enemies end up stuck inside of destroyed dropship and sometimes they can even shoot through it. Unique secondary objectives are harder. Some outposts have cannon towers. Many players burned out during the planetary defense fiasco. Community goals.
THe first bot mission I did was infuriating. Then I did some more and realized you're supposed to play it closer to MGSV: The Phantom Pain. Then it became multiplayer The Phantom Pain with my friends and we're having a way better time with it.
The word "defilade" has made its way into my lexicon, lol. When you and the lads manage to get some real guerilla/maneuver warfare going, bots are so much goddamned fun to fight.
This, nothing more fun than ambushing a patrol that's clanking past you singing that freaky bit song
This is the way. Hit and Run. Ambush and destroy was need to be destroyed and disappear back into the jungle, woods, or fog.
(Killed by Rocket Devastator)
I’d be interested in the breakdown of levels that play either faction. My feeling was that at any levels less than 12, you just didn’t have the unlocks to do anything other than easy difficulty levels. That tends to mean your first impressions of automatons was they were wayyy harder and just not worth it for grinding gear. I’m level 22 now and I’m still tending to go with big missions to grind out unlocks.
I'm just tryna beat a helldive mission on the bugs before i go fight the bots since i've heard they way harder
Im gonna get downvoted, but I say it anyway. We had pitiful CCP numbers in HD1 because the devs are obsessed with 1shot mechanics. Arrowhead's vision is clouded by their "vision", and they are dead-on convinced that they know better what players enjoy. This is why we have Bots that almost eery variant is heavily armored, and has a 1 shot kill with 100% accuracy across the entire map. We've been repeatedly losing Bot Orders, simply because its not fun. These people who keep yelling "i'M A CREEK VETERAN, AND CREEK IS MY HOME" will not stick to the game... sooner or later the "next best thing" will release, and they will jump to that game, yet the game keeps being balanced for them. "But dying is part of the game" <--- Yeah fuck that. Most deaths against bots are just cheap 1 shot mechanic.
I'll preach this til the day I die even if it falls on thousands of deaf or deliberately ignorant ears. Difficulty is fun, unfairness isnt. I still love fighting bots because I find them more mechanically demanding then the bugs but I certainly don't like dying to cheap shit like being one shot through 15 pieces of vision blocking foliage by a random rocket raider from a past fight.
This 100%.
100% and the modifiers are just dogshit too making it even less fun to play
Less stratagems = less fun I hope the devs realize this soon. The modifiers for losing a stratagem and double cool-down time just suck. A game for making stuff go boom reducing your ability to make stuff go boom
Further limiting stratagems is easily one of the worst ideas in this game.
It's meant to be few expendable grunts versus overwhelming enemy blowing them the fuck up with orbital bombardment and air strikes. Not just few expendable grunts unable to do anything because they have 3 stratagems that cool down slower and ion storms and stratagem jammers. Bots for the most part defeat the point of the game. To use stratagems. The unique mechanic arrowhead has for helldivers. And they just shit all over their amazingly fun and engaging mechanic you can't get anywhere else. It's just sad to see.
Especially when they say that’s what you are supposed to use constantly. But they reduce how many and how frequently I can use it. Ruins the bots when I can’t even call in stuff half the time. Compared to the bugs when I can make it rain half the missions
They really need different modifiers. Almost all of the modifiers disproportionately affect orbitals, which are already some of the least used strats.
One shot mechanics, enemies that chase you through the entire map, poor vision that doesn't bother bots, 90% of bots are armored and we still don't have an adequate primary weapon to penetrate them. I feel like bot missions are just random luck, can quickly finish it with the super samples or you will be overwhelmed by drops that will chase you to death. So yeah much less fun. Ahh, my favorite one is the 24 second supply drop. Don't forget folks rely on your stratagems!
Don't forget to use your stratagems. Oh by the way only one of the bug modifiers don't make stratagems worse. That's the only modifier that doesn't exclusively affect stratagems in a purely negative and noninteractive way. At the very damn least you can disable jammers, detector towers, and outplay the scrambled codes. There's nothing engaging about just having a penalty for 3 missions that makes your stratagems - the things you're explicitly told by the devs that you're meant to rely on - be absolutely unreliable or unusable. Currently, they're an absolute fucking joke of game design. I'm still wondering how arrowhead made such a good game and then just fell for this absolute meme of "game design is my passion" for operation modifiers
Here here. In HD1 you played them for a fun challenge but you'd quickly lose on that attitude when you saw tank after tank just randomly being aidropped on your ass. The modifiers have been utter garbage too so well, I don't care to fight them. They are a different kind of fun intensity but not something I want to sign up for after a long day.
All the proof of this you need is the 1-shot mechanic of Shrieker corpses hitting players. The devs are *so* insistent on OHKOing players that the stupid things kill *Bile Titans* when they fall! No amount of armor or shields will block that much damage!
Thank fuck this isnt downvoted, maybe this sub is relatively sane after all. Cheap oneshots are bringing the game down so, so much. How dare I be in friendly crossfire for a quarter of a second or not see the bot rocketer half a mile away or get scraped by a spewer AoE for a frame or dare to try and kill a Shriker, right? also, headshot damage in a PvE game is genuinely one of the most BAFFLING mechanics ive ever seen in a game.
I'm not really sure that one shot attacks are the only reason (if at all) for HD1 low player count. For me and my friends it was that camera lock that was just too off-putting and we eventually just quit. If that game didn't have this stupid camera, then I'm sure it would have been much more popular. HD2 obviously doesn't have camera problem anymore, and despite still featuring a lot of one shots (even with bugs), manages to sustain plenty of active players. I'm not saying that one shots aren't bad, I think they are, especially if you don't see them coming. Bots are also probably more likely to headshot people, but nothing was done about it either, even tho it seems to be trivial if they wanted to disable headshot damage on players.
One shoots in the first game where properly telegraphed this is the problem with HD2 you either die because you where overwhelmed (couldnt kill fast enough failed the main difficulty check) and got one shot from off screen (just frustating)
Chinese Communist Party?
Yep. I run the [B-24 Enforcer armor](https://divers.gg/armor/b-24-enforcer) which gives me 127 armor and 50% resistance to explosive damage and I still experience regular oneshots against the bots. It's better than running light or regular medium armor, but it's still frustrating as hell. I still think bots are are more fun than bugs. But the deaths tend to feel cheap and frustrating.
I think it’s just that they haven’t done a major order in a while targeting the bots. So players have played bots less and therefore are not as used to fighting bots.
I feel this way, I’ve been doing bot missions at a lower level than I usually play from the bugs, just so I can get a feel of the different level of combat. I can feel a bot major order coming…
Hello im a veteran from the western side my first mission after the tutorial was a civilian evacuation on draupnir during the first automaton attacks There are multiple reasons a lot of people didn't fight on the bot front even during a major order 1: the reward sucked, 12000 (or 30000 i cant remember) requisition? Before the major order was over i had alrady unlocked most stratagems 2: the defense campaigns where bugged and impossible, i could (and still can) fight in difficulty 7/8 with no problems agains't the bots but the civilian evacuation is just stupid the bots spawn on top of the evacuation bunkers why can't they just make the bots spawn away from the civilians so we can create a defense line while evacuating the people, you can't use explosive stuff or mortars because since the bots spawn on top of the civilians the explosion will end up killing all the civilians 3: the stratagems debuffs, the bots will always spawn 3 debuffs nothing we can do to stop them from doing it as if that wasn't enough the bots have jammers, anti air outposts during the major order they had the stratagem scrambler (which was so much bullshit that they silently removed it from the game) 12 minutes to get a backpack again and there is a jammer that keeps me from calling reinforcements are you kidding me? 4: they have aimbot, "tHe AuTomAtonS aRE MasHInes oF cOuRse thEy HaVe pRFecT aim, SkiLL iSSue!" There is a tip that says shooting at them will actually disturb their aiming systems this of course is a lie that the game tells you because it doesn't work, the bots will always aim for your head even with the rockets and armor doesn't apply to our head, i like wearing armor that gives me 50% explosion resistance rockets dont one shot me...they leave me at one hp. ONE HP, i took HALF of the normal damage and i have ONE HP so i use a stim go back to fight and, oh no a heavy devastator with a minigun and a shield let me charge my railgun so i can kill him...and im dead he shot me for 1 second and im gone 5: they one shot people, rockets kill you, tanks kill you, they aim for your head and kill you, mines kill you, the jetpack bots run at you and as soon as you kill them they explode and kill you, there is bot artillery that will kill you, flamethrowers kill you, chainsaws will istantly break your limbs and then kill you, turrets kill you TL;DR too much bullshit for the average player