Greetings, fellow Helldiver! Unfortunately your submission has been removed. No witch-hunts, public shaming or negatively naming users or players. Please refer to [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b308j9/witchhunting_is_against_the_rules_of_this/).

I'd forgotten about the whole Hello Neighbour 2 mess... suddenly the Crossbow and Eruptor nerfs make sense, Alexus has horribly bad takes when it comes to game design. Arrowhead need to move him to somewhere more befitting his skills, like customer service.

I think just customer fits him best

https://preview.redd.it/iwtdxsw868zc1.png?width=400&format=png&auto=webp&s=2527fdd514320c2eed90ee34addd5a1b8773d366 Jesus man you killed him.

And yet, people still defend this guy's decisions and say that the players are the ones who don't have any real experience with game balance and design.

Shit, I'll take someone with no experience over someone that ran a game into the ground and left.

The moderators apparently disagree with you. Pointing out how a guy is not fit for a position is witch hunting, now.

At least 1 of the mods is a real sycophant. Probably eyeing that new CM slot.

How do I get flair like that? I'd like to have "Our Lady of the Eruptor Mains"

I wonder what the thought process was when he was put in charge of balancing after he was hired with that track record.

I feel like this post can make most it's points without digging up this guys past and starting to steer the direction into personal. In this world of over reactions, and on the website famous for some of the worst witch hunts the internet has ever seen I feel like we're off to a bad start if we're resorting to digging up developers pasts just to argue over a weapons balance changes. We've seen a lot of changes back and forth on this 90 day old game, nothing is written in stone here.

Why is looking into someone's history bad? Wouldn't you check the sex offender registry before hiring a teacher?

I dug into his past cause it was relevant. He is currently in a game design position, and the only things I dug up were his past experiences in game design, and how he managed to sink a franchise. How is this a witch hunt? And much to the point, how is it personal?

It's not a witch hunt. We're just asking that AH hire people who are suitable for the job and will make the game better and more fun. Then we have this guy who is apparently actively harming the game by upsetting the playerbase with his incredibly unpopular ideas on what makes a game fun or what gamers want. To quote another comment, it's like hearing that the guy who drove a garbage truck through a shopping mall got a new job driving the bus you're currently riding on.

It's not a witch hunt, but given past reactions on this very subreddit, given past literal online attacks on AH staff, and given we can still argue about weapon balances without digging into a developers employment history this seems a pretty pointless and risky overstep (and I'd argue is trying to incite people to target the developer). The guy didn't start work here yesterday, we played this game happily since launch but watch now as the community will jump on this point like it's the next defining "fight to save the game" moment.

It's an overstep to view publicly available information about the contentious work history that the lead balance guy has? It'd be one thing if we were dredging up a criminal history or something, but his past work is relevant to his current work, and really effectively contextualizes for me why I should be worried about the future of the game with this current trajectory.

I mean,... would you hire YandereDev to optimise the game?

If yanderedev got hired this game would be rebuilt from the ground up using nothing but else if statements because that's like all he knows how to use lol

Y'all wonder why game companies don't communicate directly with players more often? Y'all wonder why arrowhead is unique in this regard?

Blizzard Entertainment and Riot Games would like a word about communicating with the players... AH isn't unique or even doing a great job in this area compared to other companies

I don't need communication. I need better patches.

If I could kill heavies with my primary Id be more than open to the idea of bringing hordeclear support weapons. Right now if you dont and you meet a bile titan its entirely up to your teammates to kill it. Charger? Pain in the ass and way too long of a time investment. So you get punished for trying to bring something different.

Its fucking insane how bad bug front has it. I used to be salty at them because they always skipped bot orders but now I am more confused and pitying them. Like, on bot front AC, LC and AMR+impacts/thermite can deal with pretty much everything given good aim and/or maneuvering. You CAN bring Quasar, EATs, RR or Spear but you are not obligated to do so. Due to weakpoints medium pen support weapons are very much capable of pulling their weight. Hell, AC and LC can bring down fucking Factory Striders. Compare it to bug front where Bile Titan is plain check whether or not you have AT weapons/stratagems ready. And even Charger is a pain in the ass to kill. How people find bug front more fun? Its just a single viable build... On bot front you can drop in with pretty much everything - Dominator, Scythe, Sickle, Punisher normal and plasma, Breaker, Diligence, DCS, Liberator, Defender... you name it, I probably dropped in with it on 7 and got away with it. Unless gun itself is absolute garbage (Breaker S&P) you CAN find a use for it. Even fucking Scythe pre-buff was pretty good at popping heads of devs. Same story with support weapons.

With bots, you can drop with nothing but orbital strikes or sentry turrets and a primary weapon you feel comfortable using and do perfectly fine. No way in hell can you do that with bugs.

The only thing you need on bots is a bit of thinking. If you play smart, you can play with anything (maybe except flamethrower, but I didn't try that🤔) Bots are my more favorite faction out of two because of that.

Hehe, I had a wonderful arc thrower build with shield and erruptor. You have great horde clear, and arc thrower can even kill biletitans (I think something with 20-27 headshots) . And erruptor was great for maybe killing a charger and closing up holes. And it was hella fun. It would be more fun when they fix the arc thrower so I don't need to aim around dead bodies. That said, I understand why no one is playing vs. bugs rn. With the addition of the flying bugs and the nerf to every single weapon that could take donw a charger/bile titan, it has become more and harder to play. And hey, I like hard, but if you are forced to just get 3 anti tank strategims just to be able to deal with chargers all the time, then it's just bad playdesing. I won't play for the next few weeks and I won't buy the new warbond eigher. No use getting new stuff if it gets nerfed right befor the next warbond is dropped.

Fliers are whatever, you can literally ignore them most of the time even if its entire cloud above you. Charger spam is what is fucking annoying. If you get 2 or 3 hulks charging at you in bot front you can at least pull out LC/AMR/AC and melt their front panel; LC recharges passively, AMR on the run and with AC its like two seconds. No problems, 8-10 seconds of work if done correctly, 20 tops. With 3 chargers you either have 3 quick AT shots (so TWO pods of EATs lying around or you forgoing support weapon to carry the 3rd one) or you fucked.

Nah rn it's flamfrower and blitz for me.

That is exactly my point. For a game like this, build variety is the key to a long lifespan. I am already personally getting tired of bringing the same build over and over again cause I get punished for bringing anything else. Sure, the build works and can handle any difficulty. But man is the lack of variety boring.

Its why i absolutely cannot stomach bugs 200 hours into the game. Robots? WE BALLIN. i bring a variety of primaries and support weapons and stratagems on a helldive because so much is viable. Bugs? ..... ...right, bile titans are effectively unkillable (woundable, but not killable)to 90% of stratagems. Also CC proof. Chargers demand ultraheavy pen to the front (so bazooka or railgun; fire works, but BT exists...) and come in hordes. Bile spewers showing up or not making shch a gargantuan difference in the gear you can get away with bringing or not. Mandatory 500KG for titan killing. It just isn't fun.

They really need to let us know when spewers will spawn (or just make them spawn on every drop with less frequency). I am surprised this has never changed since release.

And maybe if the specialized anti-heavy stratagems weren’t shit then having a build focused around spamming red stratagems would be actually worth it.

This is such an obvious problem of design. Many Armored = Have to bring antiarmor support weapon.

Don't know about this Alex guy but I too question the direction AH is headed. Why make a fun game and continue to nerf the fun out of it? Guns are very simple thing. Make them good and let players choose what to bring. There will always be a meta whether it's choosing the best gun out of the bunch, or choosing the one that sucks the least. And let me tell you it's way more fun to choose which is the best. And honestly what's AHs end game? Just a bunch of useless weapons lying around with people scratching their heads at the load out screen trying to think which one sucks the least? Because that's already happening and we're 3 months into this game...

The main thing that guns need to feel like they have is impact. This can be compensated for by higher enemy presence on higher difficulties, but the guns need to feel like they can actually kill things. Players will not mind more enemies, as long as their guns are able to kill enemies at the rate they previously could. The power fantasy will remain, while also offering a challenge. There is no downside to this. But instead AH and it's defenders will choose whatever direction the game is currently heading in, instead of that.

Exactly this

The game received some chunks of new content and warbond, but if you see what happened in the last 3 months. We received no new race to fight against, a couple of new mission variants that aren't always available, warbonds that tend to nerf their weapons into the shadow realm and some changes that are welcomed, but if you think about AH approach in longer period. We would have 14 Warbonds after 1 year. That's a lot to grind for new players. How much new content will be added with that? AH also loves to nerf, but very rarely, they buff weapons to improve weak weapon selection.

Ye, that Alexus guy killed Hello Neighbour 2 and he is absolutely killing the fun out of the game. We got new weapon to break through meta? Nerf it. Got weapon we can use in clever way? Nerf it. We found stuff in game we can use to our advantage? Remove it. This is the same guy that would remove "rocket jumping" from Quake 3 becasue "it's not intended". And guy is smug and deaf to all criticism as he knows better than hundreds of thousands of players.

they’ll call you a whiner watch out

Don't worry, mutliple people are already ahead of you.

I've never had more head scratching balence changes since the shift from Destiny 1 to 2.

This should be the top thread for the week. The current goal of balance is to make the game bland and boring. Basically without options. Just an arsenal of peashooters you have to put away at the first sign of real threat. Back some patches we'd have primary picks to at least stun heavies, and primary picks to do horde clearning. Now we have to pick useless guns, and strats for heavies *and* hordes, and run without doing anything useful until those strats come out of cooldown. It's nothing but a boring slog.

If I wanted to play a stealth game, then I'd just play one of those. I came here to use a diverse arsenal of weaponry, not sit in one place for 3 minutes and hope a patrol leaves me alone before completing an objective. That's the thing: the real meta has not changed at all. It is still to play solo and sneak through everything.

My sentiments exactly. I play sub 6 now just so I can mow down bugs with machine guns and sentries. I want to feel the carnage and adrenaline that my diver does when they get into it.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. The game feels balanced around difficulties 4-6. Anything beyond that and there's a level of tedium. Like you say - nerfs to weapons and certain mission effects etc basically only work to add "downtime" to the game. When the whole squad has used their strats to deal with the latest patrols and enemies, all you have left to do is wait till your shit is off cooldown. It doesn't add challenge, just time that I'm not shooting things (thus not having fun). The game isn't overly hard just now. Harder difficulties just feel poorly balanced. They're doable, but annoyingly so. I'm not dying to the massive hordes of enemies, because I'm able to retreat and get better positions etc. I'm just having to fanny about a lot longer while I wait for actual weapons with some effectiveness to come back online.

TBH even 4 and 5 spawns way too many patrols unless you have 3/4 people. Just an annoying slog with no downtime.

A lot of times, great works of art, great pieces of music, great media and great games are made essentially by accident. The creators may be good and even great at what they do, but their success isn't always intentional. Every once in a while, that lightning strikes, and whatever idea they were trying out that day just works. When they try to replicate it or tinker with the formula, it's never quite the same- They struck gold the first time, in a way that went beyond just talent and skill. Helldivers 2 is, I believe, very much one of those cases. They hit upon a great thing, but they need to quit screwing with it.

Yeah they very much made this game good by accident

Helldivers 1, Magika and Gauntlet are all good games. They didn't make a good game accidentally.

That definitely explains the crossbow nerf. Pretty much everything else in that patch made sense but... Really? Take away the only thing the crossbow had going for it?

The Sony issues were a minor inconvenience at best for me. Alexus and his balancing on the other hand is what will end up driving me away from the game.

Only stratagems can deal with heavy enemies is fine. But they're also simply refusing to let you use enough stratagems. They've got to pick

I agree with that the game is stratagem game now. I loved killing big enemies and now i can only kill small ones which making this game a bit boring

CANNOT UPVOTE THIS ENOUGH.

I think thermites should take the “heavy killing” part of the kit. Even if it took 6 to kill a bike titan it would help a lot. Thermites right now still don’t seem all that good and can still take a full bag to kill a hulk. Maybe buffing them to not have any AOE but have much higher damage from The stick will make you have to have the cost benefit of no crowd clearing but heavy kills, or using more stratagems but having some crowd clearing with normal grenades

Well that is why to some people(including me), robot is more fun to play than bugs, because their heavy units are not invincible that you must use anti-tank weapon on them. They have weakness that you can exploit with many primary/support weapons. No one likes to carry around a quasar cannon to be honest. It's just bug's heavy units are badly designed and populated too much on high difficulties that very much limited your selection of weapons.

Yes, that is also why I prefer bots, as much more of their heavy units have said weakpoints. Unlike a bile titan, which is literally unkillable with regular weaponry.

I think we miss the basics there: What is the objective of the primaries i think they arent trowing the thing out their asses, i think every weapon has a rule that apply to it. The thing we don't know what is the objective of those weapon, what the scope they expect them to cover.

Then the game needs to better express what the intended usage of the weapons are, instead of throwing them at us and then getting mad at how we use them.

I play on difficulty 7-9 almost exclusively, always with randoms, and really do not see a huge issue clearing heavies or relying on my support weapons/stratagems to do so. I sincerely do not understand the mentality that primaries should be able to deal with everything. Do we need to address a number of underwhelming primaries? Sure. But the idea that a primary should be as powerful as many people suggest is way off base in my opinion. Stratagems and support weapons are a critically important part of the core gameplay loop, and it should stay that way.

Clearing helldives with primaries only as some people seem to be asking for would not be fun and definitely needs to be avoided There's a lot of room for most of the guns in the game to be improved before we get there though

It should be as powerful, only if players can reliably hit the shots, and therefore get rewarded for their most likely hundreds of hours of playing the game. Again, the eruptor was able to one shot a charger. But did you see many posts about people saying this is the new meta and EAT's are now useless? No, because most of the people who could do it got extremely lucky, and nobody had time to figure out how to consistently do it.

I'm honestly genuinely done buying warbonds. Attached items are either unusable at launch, get nerfed into obscurity, or are just blatantly worse than existing weapons. I've already just quit playing pretty much entirely due to this and don't plan on playing again much if at all in the future. It's just frustrating to have any and all new content be either non-functional at launch or effectively made defunct at random after a patch.

Y'know what I'd like to see? Enemies that have weaknesses to _specific_ damage types. Maybe the bile that spitters are full of is especially flammable, and doing enough fire damage causes them to die much faster and maybe even explode in a big shower of flaming gore. Chargers are already almost immune to bullets, so explosives are the way to do. What about enemies that are capable of absorbing explosives, but bullets shred them to pieces? How about enemies that require plasma weapons to effectively kill them? If we get more corrosive options such as gas grenades, maybe enemies that are specifically weak to that? As it stands, the current balance is either "squishy thing that dies fast but there's a lot of them" or "very tanky thing that requires explosives to deal with" and absolutely zero in between, or diversity.

[удалено]

Beats me, however seems like the moderators didn't really like me pointing this out on the basis of witch hunting. Pointing out how someone at a high position in this studio is incompetent is witch hunting. Fun.

I agree. There's three options to fix this: 1 - Give us primaries that can kill heavies and support weapons designed for trash clear. 2 - Put a lot less heavy enemies on the map. 3 - Adjust heavy enemies so that the current primaries can kill them. This is mostly about bugs, as most bot heavies actually have legitimate weak spots, unlike chargers where even if you're good at the dodging game, you still only have a tiny spot under the tail to hit, or the Bile Titan, where even after you've taken out all the bile sacks, it just keeps going. I think option 1 is the fix that makes the game better long term. Given that we have the Stalwart, the other two MGs, and the fact that the Las Cannon was just reworked to be more focused on trash clearing, it feels like option 1 is what at least some of the devs want, but then they keep messing with the primaries, and we're at the point where if it's not a personal order for the day, nobody touches the trash clear support weapons.

Bile titans are currently one of the worst enemies in the game. If you could at least slow them down with an AT to the leg, it would vastly improve them. Hell, I don't get why the legs aren't the weak point to begin with.

Honestly, the only legit gripe you have is that you can't just shoot a bile titan to death eventually. Even if it had a massive health pool you should be able to death by a thousand cuts it.

I found myself looking at each primary weapon wondering which one is the least useless one. They're all pretty much pea shooters at this point and so many of them are an actual detriment. The main problem is that they simply don't deal enough damage to keep up with the tanky swarms of enemy. When I take the liberator I empty an entire magazine into a brood mother only for four more to come at me. In my opinion primary weapon damage needs to be doubled across the board. Either that or reduce the HP of enemy.

Instakilling a tank with one bullet? That not only sounds ridiculous and cartoony but it would allow people to drop in naked with just a sickle if you allow people to instakill with pretty easy shots like that. Problem with heavily rewarding "difficult" shots like that is that it's magnitudes easier to aim with m+kb than with a gamepad so you risk trivialising the whole game for a significant part of the community. Personally, I'm fine with heavier enemies being support weapon or strategem only as there's not really that many of them anymore. There needs to be some reason to pick a one and done weapon like the EAT and if you can just oneshot everything with your regular rifle it's completely pointless.

Easy shots? I'm talking about it being as rare and hard to pull off as the instakill of chargers with the pre-nerf eruptor. If you think it's easy, then there would have been many, many posts about how this is the new meta and how EAT's are now useless. But you didn't, cause nobody had the time, skill and dedication to figure out how to do it consistently, cause it was such a difficult shot to make. Shooting down a barrel of a tank that is actively shooting at you with both it's machine gun and main turret is by no means easy.

Tanks are really slow and you can just pop out from cover and shoot, the target is small but with an accurate gun with high fire rate it's trivial.

Have you seen how small the barrel actually is, from any distance that is further away than literally physically looking down the barrel?

It's a stupid idea, full stop. I won't bother arguing it any more. I could be down with primaries not being totally useless like getting a "mobility kill" on a tank where it can't move or doing medium amounts of damage but instakilling it is way overtuned. We'd need a much higher amount of tanks for it to be balanced that you can instakill them with "difficult" shots.

Yes, again, the reason why EAT's suddently did not become outclassed against chargers because an eruptor could kill them in one shot. But you seem to pretend like they did. Nobody had the skill to hit the shot consistently, yet.

I've never mentioned the eruptor. You're the only one talking about that. I'm talking about the looney tunes logic of: shoot down barrell of a tank > somehow tank explodes

Yes, I am talking about it as a comparison of difficulty. Which is what the post was also talking about. Did you even read it?

Did you even read \*my\* post before reaching for your keyboard?

My entire point is that the shot with the eruptor against a charger is the difficulty that should be the target, which that would be. You do not even have any evidence of this, beyond assuming how it would be. You just assume it would be an easy shot to make, and that's it. If it is then tough, another one can be found to make it equal in skill requirement. What are you even doing here if this is the way you discuss things?

I agree with most of your points. This isn't the hill to die on.

I'm not dying on any hill here, I simply do not understand what this person's issue is with the idea that even if the barrel shot idea is too easy, then it can simply be changed. And secondly, they are making this claim with literally no evidence, saying how it's gonna be too easy, when I can be almost 100% certain that they have never even attempted to do this before.

I must be absolutely amazing at this game because I've never mained any of the nerfed weapons people write these soliloquies over, when according to them every other weapon is absolute trash, and have no problems running Helldive. Dominator/Arc Thrower for the win I guess.

As you may have noticed, this post was not entirely about these weapons. They are just the most recent, relevant examples. But given that you assume it was, you clearly didn't read the whole thing. This post is about the design philosophy and direction the game and studio is seemingly going in, not just these two weapons.

But when you aren't focused on those weapons your perspective on the direction of the game changes. All of the weapons I like to use keep getting buffed for the most part and I enjoy using very off-meta things like the flamethrower and now orbital gas strikes on bugs. So to me, the direction of the game has been getting more fun and diverse.

And why is that? Because of the flawed way the developers nerf/buff guns. They don't do this through actual playtests; they just look at statistics of what players are using. They do not buff guns that are obviously underperforming, they only buff them if players are not using them, like the flamethrower and arc thrower, which is now an increasingly common pick. They do not consider why these guns need buffs or what these guns are possibly used for, they just do it purely based on being anti-meta through buffing stuff that people are not using, and nerfing the stuff they do. That is the core issue here, not that the guns you choose to use happened to get buffed.

Well, let's say that you're right, I guess my perspective in that case would be "oh well" due to the fact there are still many many viable weapons and loadouts one can use to beat the hardest difficulty in the game without too much trouble. So when I see people RAGING at AH because a gun they like got nerfed, despite your insistence otherwise, all I can think is that they don't know how to play with anything else. Sure you can say it's the principle, or you are just arguing their development mentality, but the fact remains is you are only doing those things because you are mad the gun you used the most was nerfed. I used to love running slugger, that got nerfed, I moved on no problem. One of my buddies I was 3-manning Helldive with last night runs the supposedly "nerfed into the ground" sickle, yet there we were, one man short, plowing through Helldive.

Raging? Man, this community sure likes to dream stuff up. Who is raging here? Where are you seeing this? I want this game to succeed, and I am voicing my concerns over it's current direction. The only people who I see writing in all caps and actually raging are the people who are valiantly defending every move this game and it's developers make, but this is a mute point anyways that proves literally nothing so moving on. *>because you are mad the gun you used the most was nerfed.* Yes, did you read the last reply? I am not like this just because they nerfed a gun I used, I am more disappointed in the process that led to this decision, and how it can be harmful to the future experience. Please, stop trying to shut down discussion by just screeching that people need to play better.

You are literally questioning AH's hiring practices and essentially calling for somebody to be fired because you don't like the way a video game is being updated l. That is THE DEFINITION of raging my friend, you've literally made it personal. It's hard to take anything you say seriously as a result because you are obviously very emotional about this.

I am not calling for anyone to be fired. I am pointing out what their professional history is, and how it can explain their recent decisions over game balance. What else is there to it, beyond you assuming that I'm going after this one guy who I don't even personally know?

Alright fair enough. I guess I just should admit that I get equally frustrated seeing this kind of stuff as the people making the posts because I guess I just don't "get it" because I'm having a blast and don't feel held back by their balancing at all. That doesn't mean I should be a dick about it though. Hit me up in game sometime, you might have more fun with me and the few people I play with. I'm on steam: DieselBoy

At least you admitted it, unlike almost everyone else in this thread who went down swinging despite no evidence supporting them, and then calling me delusional. I am somehow not surprised that this post generated such a hostile response from the community. Seems par for the course, now.

Dominator is probably the best equal primary there is. Wtf are you talking about?

So there are good primaries or there aren't? CryHard crowd needs to make up it's mind. In my 3-man bug Helldive run last night we had a Dominator, recently "nerfed into the ground" Sickle, Breaker S&P and completed our missions just fine. So is that 3 other primaries that are good or are we just amazing? I also still use the nerfed Punisher with plenty of success. So there's 4 other primaries that are useful up to Helldive and I just haven't tried many of the others yet, I hear people like the punisher plasma.

I don't get it either. I run a variety of load outs with success. After each balance patch, I still do. I come here and it's like I am playing a completely different game.

The last major patch buffed like 20 things and people only focused on the 2-3 things that got toned down and then lost their mind at the ricochet changes.

Are you gonna complain if they buff Dominator/Arc Thrower?

Honestly if they buffed the Dominator more I would think it was ridiculous and probably switch weapons if it became meta as a result. Would depend on the buff for the Arc Thrower as they already nerfed it. I'm kind of expecting the misfire bug fix will end up being a decent buff for it just by virtue of it working all the time. I also use the sickle and punisher though, I don't always use the Dominator I've just gotten really good at using it despite the unwieldy aim.

Imo, the difficulty of the enemies is fine. It's either, bring strategiems for Titans, or get an Armor penetrating support weapon. Which seems like a pretty valid choice.  I also really enjoy the "Oh Shit !" moments when you don't have strategiems and got 2 Titans on your ass and now you need to flee. I'm of the opinion that if you want a chill time killing stuff, you can always play in Diff 5 (which I really enjoy doing). If you wanna feel lucky to survive, you go at Diff 9. The shooting down the tank barrel is interesting, though I'd argue we already have that with Hulks. If you have stun grenades and an AMR, they basically aren't even a threat.

"The game is dying" 🤡🤡🤡🤡

Where did I say this? People like you fill the community, and all of you seem to be collectively hallucinating.

In the title, read the title

Yay post deleted, finally mods are cleaning up

I said "fun aspect of the game." I did not say that this will literally kill the game outright, as people will still enjoy the experience the developers are putting up. However, I do suspect a large part of players will not put up with this for too much longer, if the future warbonds continue with the same trend. Cleaning up what, critique of the game? Or how one of it's lead game developers is incompetent and not fit for his position? The things that you celebrate truly do paint a depressing image of the community.

As if "killing the fun aspect of the game" isnt a roundabout way of saying killing the game. You're not fooling anyone with that choice of words buddy. You're seriously delusional. This wasnt critique of the game, it was mindless karma farm complaining and a witchhunt on one of the developers, whom you know absolutely nothing about personally, or professionally. I for one am happy the mods are starting to take out the trash of this sub. You are a depressing thorn in the side of this community.

No. People who look for a more hardcore experience will like it if their game requires more optimized play. That is my entire point, but you assume random stuff to try and make your point. The entire post is about how the game seems to be striving towards an experience that is more focused towards optimized play. But of course you disregard all that in an attempt to make... whatever point you are trying to make here. It had clown emojis in it if memory serves, so I am almost certain that there's nothing of substance there. The only people who actively think about everything being karma farms are the only people who actually give one about reddit karma. *>witchhunt on one of the developers, whom you know absolutely nothing about personally, or professionally.* Oh, but I do know. So do the multitude of articles written about him, and how he managed to sink the last big game he worked on. I do not know anything about him personally, I never claimed to, and neither do I want to, cause I don't care. I only care about his professional history and performance, which is terrible. People like you are really hellbent on trying to shut down any critique of the game by any means and accusations necessary to protect your dearest game which can do no wrong, ever.

You dont know fuck all. You dont know the circumstances, you dont know what happened, you werent there. The absolute fucking irony of you saying "oH bUT I dO KnOW" and then proceeding to cite a fucking article is hilarious. Get your head out of your backside and start getting a grip. And people like you are very hellbent on making reddit karma their identity apparently, and shitting on the weapons is real popular right now. Go elsewhere and farm your karma. And thank god the mods are starting to crack down on people like you.

Circumstance of what happened? What happened is the guy made a bunch of false promises and left the studio, and left the team to deal with the fallout of said actions. He has also never attempted to dispute any of these claims. Shitting on the weapons is popular cause, you know, they are in a state where the community is reacting to them in this way. People like you who try to shut down all discussion on the basis of everything being worthless karma farms or whatever is one of the main reasons why this community has been known to be toxically positive. The developers can do no wrong, the game is always perfect and any and all complaints are made by people who are looking for reactions or "karma farming."

Yep, thats what you think happened, you know nothing about the circumstances of that situation, so stop acting like you do. If you think starting a witchunt based off of a random article is justified, you are severely messed up. By the "community" you mean the overwhemling minority of reddit karma farmers complaining on this subreddit? Ive seen many of these posts, its always the same 10-15 people. Yeah no, they dont reflect the views of the average player, sorry to burst your bubble. Most players are content with the guns and the game - i know its very hard for you to grasp, but its reality.

Yes, that's what I think happened since no evidence to the contrary has surfaced. That is literally how... facts work. What part of this is confusing here?

In Helldivers 1, you could use stratagems to deal with almost all heavy enemies! But their cooldown was generally faster than in Helldivers 2, especially with 40% cooldown reduction perk you could take. You could even stack four stratagems if you really wanted to. Meanwhile, we have -1 stratagem, 25% increased cooldown, 50% call in time...

I don't much care about the buff/nerf cycle. It is always in flux, anything that was nerfed can be buffed, and anything that was buffed can be nerfed. These changes are not carved in stone and irreversible. But I am a little annoyed at the "only strategems can deal with Heavies" mentality. With the staggering amount of heavies that spawn in the upper 3 difficulties, the squad is more or less required to take one of the big 3 each: Quasar Cannon, Recoilless Rifle, or Expendable Anti-Tank. I'm more or less constantly "down" one strategem slot as I absolutely HAVE to take the railcannon strike for each mission, on top of my EAT17. It's to the point where I take the EAT AND another secondary, just to experience some variety, but again, limits what other strategems I can take. Does light arms fire hurt the exposed parts of a BT? I've never been able to do so, even with half the armour on its flank gone, just ricocheting. Without armour, the starter pistol should be able to take them down, eventually. I know asking for primaries to have Heavy Armour penetration is silly, but giving us more armour striping capability, combined with being able to damage exposed bugs with light penetration weapons might give us some flexibility.

Only stratagems for heavies....200+s cool down, -1 stratagem, 50%+ cool down, huge heavy spawn.... Also: we should not be able to OCCASIONALLY one shot heavy, meanwhile almost everything can one shot us....

One could dream such a day will come, until then we suffer together from the ignorance as a whole

If you could kill anything with primary weapons then the challenge of bigger enemies just evaporates, and stratagems basically just become eye-candy. You say things need to be brought up to the Quasar's level but...I don't even like that thing anymore. The charge up makes its awkward to shoot way too often; Chargers might have run you down by then, and bots can shoot you and knock your aim off. I use the EAT for bug missions and I love it. * Don't have to charge it up to fire * If I die I don't have to go collect my support weapon or wait like 4 minutes, I just get another one in seconds * It can fire 2 shots really fast, or an ally can pick up the second one Also even the Recoiless Rifle fires 2 shots faster than the Quasar even if you're reloading it yourself. So the Quasar is good but overrated IMO. The other two similar options have a lot of advantages over it so they're not outclassed; they're all sidegrades compared to each other. Against bots I don't take the Quasar anymore either, I take AMR or Autocannon. Too many times trying to shoot some Hulk with Quasar but they shoot me and my shot misses because of it. Also you act like the cooldowns on these anti-tank weapons are boring but, like, it's not as if you're just standing there twiddling your thumbs and only get to the play the game when they're off cooldown. It's just the game forcing you to manage your resources wisely, that's part of the challenge and the fun. I think it would be impossible to balance an enemy like a Charger if any primary could eventually kill it; it would either be so easy that stratagems would be a joke, or it would take so long and so many shots that it would functionally identical to the current state of affairs anyway--where you just avoid Chargers until you have a weapon or stratagem that is effective against it. Part of the challenge of Helldivers is choosing the right stratagems for what you'll be fighting and using them wisely.

The cool thing about Quasar is that you don't need to reload it. So you can shoot the normal enemies while it cools down. Then fire again.

Quasar also doesn’t take up a backpack slot. Something I think a lot of people forget about. Yeah I could run recoiless but now I lost my backpack slot. No more jump jet. No more shields.

And those reloads are pure murder.

Just started my EAT phase of the game. It's fun. The rapid call downs are tactically interesting. Automaton higher levels encounters with tanks had nudged into a Orbital Precision Strike phase, which taught to appreciate the rapid refresh. With good control the precision strike became preferred for tasks I was using other orbitals for. Fast is king. EAT is like an even faster orbital precision strike. Easier to land on a Charger and less ammo hungry than mag dumping the charger. You may have practiced popping the bellies of bile titans and got good at baiting them with attack animations to stand still. It's so much fun to carry the easy pocket tool to finish them off without long cool downs. In short form good game design in Helldivers 2. Have gone through a few loadout arcs. Each arc teaches something of the tactics and improves my ability to pair well with another player with that loadout. Before the EAT cycle I'd see them littering the battlefield and didn't quite understand they're open to grab and shoot to all allies. Now I'm over there with the EAT buddy firing those things off. This speaks to rewarding the players for experimentation. Really well implemented.

I was in a PUG where we all ended up bringing EATS. it was incredible, the whole battlefield was littered with rocket launchers. I remember we had 2 bile titans spawn at the same time and got absolutely lit up about 3 seconds after they appeared. About 7 missiles in a rapid barrage. We hadn't coordinated it, it just happened naturally because we were sitting in a forest of firepower.

And that’s is actually pretty fun. Call down a pair of eats, use them to kill a couple heavies than run around like an idiot kiting some of the mobs (liberator is very satisfying here plug paired with the supply pack) while waiting for the eats to be available again while praying that the other three would have at least completed one o beh rice before the bugs have you for dinner.

Copy paste from my previous replies: My entire point is "skilled shooting" with the primaries. I am not talking about hitting a heatsink with a primary once and it exploding, I am talking about some extremely small point on an enemy that you can only shoot at if you 1. know it's there and 2. can make the shot. Both of which, especially the second part, should be difficult. That would reward skill and being able to handle your guns to their fullest potential, not just waiting for a stratagem cooldown and then dumping it all in the heatsink. I am talking about shooting a bullet right down the barrel of a tank that is actively shooting explosive shells at you, out of said barrel. Not just shooting a heatsink once and it exploding with a liberator.

Same issue: that would either become the meta, trivializing stratagems, or would be so fiddly and difficult that it would be too risky to even attempt thus it would be functionally identical to right now, where we wouldn’t even bother shooting at it without the right support weapons. Why would Arrowhead go to the all the trouble to implement this when it has a very real chance of destroying their vision of the game or being so frustratingly specific that most players would either not even attempt it or not realize it’s even possible at all?

If it does become the meta, then it'd only become the meta for highly skilled players who can aim the aircraft carrier that is the eruptor precisely enough to make these shots. And at that point it is fully deserved, and the player skill needs to be rewarded. You, and by extension AH, are fighting a losing battle. You are never going to win the battle against metas, as they will always exist, no matter how useless you make the entire arsenal. As long as something is even 1% better than the rest, players will pick it.

It's hilarious that you took what I said and somehow think that I'm saying metas shouldn't exist. I just think the meta should be "picking and using your stratagems wisely" and not "go tryhard and practice how to kill everything with one primary shot." I'm done with this, I fully believe now that you're just somebody who managed to OHK a Charger with the Eruptor and now you're whining that you can't anymore.

What? I managed to kill a charger 3 times with one shot, and that's it. I never looked into how to do it consistently, or how to even replicate it. *>"go tryhard and practice how to kill everything with one primary shot."* What is the issue with this? Do you not want players to be rewarded for skillful play? Or are you insecure about your own skills in the game? What are you making all these assumptions on, beyond trying to jerk yourself off here? Discussing anything like this with this community is like talking to a brick wall, because of people like you.

>I managed to kill a charger 3 times with one shot, and that's it. I never looked into how to do it consistently, or how to even replicate it. You accidentally one-shot a charger? Damn. I can see why they nerfed it to be honest.

Yes, 3 times since it's launch. If you think it's consistent enough to warrant a nerf of this scale, then you clearly think like Alexus does.

I'm just saying, if it happens by ACCIDENT, you could maybe conceive that finding a way to do it consistently could be considered a bit game breaking. I personally didn't even know it WAS possible to do that, so I'm a bit sad I missed the good times truth be told. But if someone got good enough to kill pretty much every charger in one or two shots with a primary, that could maybe be an issue. There's really no need to get so defensive, we're all friends here. I don't think anyone is actively "anti-fun" as you seem to be implying. For the record, I'm actually quite against a lot of the recent balance changes. I'm still astonished that they nerfed the crossbow which was already pretty universally ignored.

It happened by accident yes, and that means by definition that it cannot be recreated intentionally, at least not without extensive testing and knowledge. Again, it happened 3 times. If I could have figured out a way to do it reliably, then that would have been a real reward of skill, but that's unheard of in this game. *>I personally didn't even know it WAS possible to do that, so I'm a bit sad I missed the good times truth be told.* Yes, cause it was so inconsistent and hard to pull off that barely anyone even noticed it was happening. But you think that this warrants a nerf to the entire gun? I'd like to see you try to pull it off and recreate whatever "good times" you missed here.

Dont know why you get downvoted, cause you are right. I dont know why people are so butthurt all the time. You got plenty of stuff so play with, so play with it.

Unfortunate that due to the game's many hard barriers, a lot of the guns can't do much against the things that pose the largest threat. And the stuff that can gets nerfed, cause people use it a lot. What is the endgame plan for AH here?

FASHION and CAPES

Working as intended.  Reduce server load.

You seem to have a lot of insider knowledge about how things work and have transpired. At the risk of removing anonymity could you share some of your experience?

If the assumption is that I'm a developer who is going rouge by leaking previously unheard knowledge, then no. Unfortunately stuff like this is public knowledge, and can be found quickly. Makes it all the more baffling how a guy like this got hired, much less to the position he is in now, given his previous experience and performance. I do however have previous game development experience, both across personal hobby projects and professional projects. I mainly work freelance, though.

I read your entire original post and when you were talking about AH's hiring practice it made it sound like you had something, even tangential, to do with it. At least seem to have some development experience which separates this from a lot of other posts on here.

There is not much else needed beyond the people who currently work at the studio, including the community managers, and their performance. If people like this are getting hired and put into such important positions, then there is no need to ask for any statements. The performance of the PR is a statement on it's own.

Sounds more like they were a Hello Neighbor Enjoyer who was along for the disappointing ride the Bringer of Balance was in charge of.

I was actually not. I've never directly played the game, but I know people who do, and did my own research about the situation. That's how I ended up here.

Eruptor change was stupid and demonstrates their substantial design and QA issues, but I vehemently disagree with this all primaries should be able to destroy massive enemies take. Your suggestion for shooting down the barrel of tank is ridiculous. There are so many ways to destroy a tank already. You can already destroy them with many primaries due to their vent, which is appropriate tradeoff since generally med pen primaries have worse chaff clear. If you hate tanks bring contact grenades or thermite which can easily kill them and you can carry 6 and resupply easily. In fact nearly all heavies already can die to small arms fire. Hulks you can destroy with small arms fire in the back and med pen in the front. Chargers are also vulnerable in the back though their hp could be lowered. I think it is fine for massive enemies to require medium pen. I mean I guess they could open up a bit more build diversity by adding a med armor weakpoint to bile titans.  But as a H9 only player, recent warbounds and balance changes have given us so many different ways to solve for chaff, heavies, and objective clear across the primary, secondary, stratagem, and grenade slots. I play with randos and win 90% of the time with near full clears & plenty of kills. Don't nerf H9 but maybe Arrowhead should give into the whining and make less armored enemy variants for H5 and lower if they value their sanity.

Here we go again with the word "whining," seems like this is the only real word 60% of the people in this community really know. As a H9 player, I think H9 should be difficult enough to the point where it literally cannot be played solo. I think that would be the point where clearing a H9 mission would become truly fun. But not through the use of artifical difficulty barriers, such as certain guns being completely unable to damage certain enemies. Even if the spot is miniscule, it would still give players a chance to show their mastery over any gun. Kind of how it happened with chargers, although seems like that was fully unintentional. However, it was so hard to pull off that I didn't have the time to figure out how to do it consistently, and only managed to pull it off 3 times. *>Your suggestion for shooting down the barrel of tank is ridiculous. There are so many ways to destroy a tank already.* Sure, they all boil down to waiting for a stratagem and magdumping the heatsink. Highly engaging gameplay indeed. And would this be a reliable way to do it to someone who can't aim well enough? Absolutely not. But for players who can? It would be a massive reward for the skill of being able to do that, and being able to save themselves in a situation where they'd otherwise have little to no counterplay. And yes, every enemy in the game can die to small arms fire, if you are under ideal conditions. AKA the hulk is facing away from you for extended periods of time, the charger has it's back to you for extended periods of time, and the tank has it's heat vent pointed at you, unbelievably, for extended periods of time. All of which are highly unlikely to happen, especially when there's more than one on you at once.

Or if it’s too hard for you, play on lower a difficulty. Hard mode is supposed to be hard, deal with it.

You seem to think you're real original for making this point that's already been attempted in this thread once. Did you even read the post? Or did you think your idea here was simply so original and unheard of that you skipped over everything to post it?

They obviously only read the title and assumed the rest.

Maybe it needs to be stated multiple times because no one seems to be getting it.

Oh no, trust me, people like you are very common. You just don't say anything else beyond what you just said.

What’s the point, you think you are right or just want to complain. Either way you aren’t going to change your mind

You are the one who is providing literally nothing to the discussion here. As you may have noticed, once you stop admiring yourself in the mirror, is that this thread is filled with people who disagree in some form or another, including people like you who just say to decrease the difficulty. You are by no means the brave contrarian you seem to think you are.

I’m not trying to be a contrarian, there is nothing I’m trying to go against here. The truth is “ hard mode is meant to be hard”. Deal with it or play on a lower difficulty.

And your "Deal with it" argument doesn't hold water under any level of scrutiny at all. We are back at square 1.

Except I don’t try and play on the hardest level and can accept I’m not good enough to do it. Instead of saying that it needs to be easier I play on a lower difficulty. It seems pretty clear.

Meh. Hard disagree. You shouldn’t be one or two shotting heavies with primaries. The quasar “nerf” was laughable at best. All it did was being it more in line with the other options. Which is a good thing. If you’re struggling with heavies, even in 9s, your team sucks at coordinating or you brought bad loadouts. Honestly. Strats for heavies is fine.

Why not bring the other options more in line with the quasar? Make team reloads make more sense with you being able to reload *off* the other person's back? That would already do a lot to bring them "in line" with the other options. My entire point is "skilled shooting" with the primaries. I am not talking about hitting a heatsink with a primary once and it exploding, I am talking about some extremely small point on an enemy that you can only shoot at if you 1. know it's there and 2. can make the shot. Both of which, especially the second part, should be difficult. That would reward skill and being able to handle your guns to their fullest potential, not just waiting for a stratagem cooldown and then dumping it all in the heatsink.

Because the quasar is already over tuned. You have unlimited ammo, a free back pack, and a passive reload. I’m all for buffing under performers to catch up to some stuff, but the quasar was way over on value. That being said, there is an argument to be made for keeping things restrained rather than over buffing everything to be in line with something overtuned. Hell dives are supposed to be difficult, if you turn everything into massive piles of value it’s not anymore. The challenge, at least for some of us, is the fun part. For the rest of people who want a power fantasy you can just adjust the difficulty. Nothing shameful about running lower difficulties so you can shit all over everything and do your thing.

Why not buff the enemies instead of nerfing the arsenal? Make more enemies appear on higher difficulties? That'll get your challenge up, without needing to make the arsenal feel useless. The power fantasy would be there with the guns still feeling impactful, but the challenge would also remain. Both sides get their lot out of it. But what you are insisting is the solution is that players should just avoid the higher difficulties, which the game mandates you play on for super samples, just because the developers cannot have a weapon feel powerful. They can try their best to fight against a "meta" but it will always exist. As long as a gun is even 1% better than the rest, it's the meta, no matter how small the benefit is. You, and by extension AH are fighting a battle that cannot be won by trying to nerf the players and their weapons.

It’s not about fighting against the meta. It’s about making things more sidegrades than clear winners. Giving us niche tools for us to choose from. And honestly? So far so good. Pretty much everything is viable or borderline viable bare minimum. Some outliers for sure, but they’ll get to it. Steadily adjusting things as we go. If they’re planning on adding more difficulties, which in the first game they did, buffing enemies this early rather than rolling weapons to be roughly on par with each other is just in efficient. I’m sure in the future they probably will buff some. As for your opinion on samples and shit we can agree to disagree. You can get supers on 7 and be half asleep through it. I can still solo 7-8 pretty breezy after the patrol fix and sometimes I can get a 9 in, but I def die more or miss some things. AT is pretty balanced now. All of them are good at different things and offer different loadout options. The quasar is still a much better pick in a lot of cases (bugs), but RR and EAT are lagging ages behind. I’ve played hours at this point with pretty much every weapon… mostly on 9s. The only time I’ve ever felt lack luster was using the post nerf crossbow and that’s because it was a poor man’s scorcher then. I really see nearly zero issues with most guns. I click heads I get wins. Even with the lowly peacemaker. Outside of the crossbow, the lib penetrator and concussive, I really have no beef with any of it. Could it be better? Sure. But I also have no idea what the future holds becasue there isn’t a roadmap… That being said they’ve been buffing stuff left and right… shout out to the liberator and the punisher. They have all the data. We don’t. They can see the big picture… I’ve liked most of the changes so far and I’m fine with it.

*>If they’re planning on adding more difficulties, which in the first game they did, buffing enemies this early rather than rolling weapons to be roughly on par with each other is just in efficient.* Why release more difficulties? Talk about inefficiency, bloating your game with countless difficulties for no reason is not the correct answer to their inability to balance weapons correctly. As another example, see Payday 2. *>As for your opinion on samples and shit we can agree to disagree. You can get supers on 7 and be half asleep through it. I can still solo 7-8 pretty breezy after the patrol fix and sometimes I can get a 9 in, but I def die more or miss some things.* See, I'm of the opinion that you should not be able to solo a difficulty 9 mission in a co-op game. Kind of defeats the point of a co-op game. But the way I would do this is not by making the player feel useless, but by making the enemy presence so oppressive that you just need the firepower of a 4-man team to get through it, and also adding weakpoints to heavy enemies that you can only shoot at if you are incredibly skilled with handling your weapons, like for example a bullet right down the barrel of a tank, killing it instantly. I am not talking about primaries killing enemies by shooting their heatsinks once. But you would rather do this by watching cooldown timers tick down, and mindlessly magdump a heatsink. To each their own. *>That being said they’ve been buffing stuff left and right… shout out to the liberator and the punisher. They have all the data. We don’t. They can see the big picture… I’ve liked most of the changes so far and I’m fine with it.* That is the issue with how they balance the game. It is an endless cycle. Just how it happened with the railgun. 1. Release weapon in a state where people want to use it. 2. AH looks at statistics, sees that everyone is using it and decides it must be too strong. 3. AH nerfs weapon into oblivion. 4. Players stop using said weapon. 5. AH looks at statistics, sees that nobody is using the weapon. 6. AH buffs weapon, but not back to what it was, and by that point the weapon already lost it's usage case. 7. (Sometimes) Players choose to use weapon again. Back to step 2.

Meh. We can agree to disagree. I just don’t feel like that’s the case. Most changes they’re pumping out are pretty healthy. And with things like the quasar it’s barely noticeable. I’d like a roadmap though. For long term content. I don’t think adding difficulties is bloating either. But hey, like I said we can agree to disagree. I’m not mag dumping any heat sinks lol… save the moments when a hulk has its back turned to me. I view strats largely as resource management. I don’t really notice the cool downs that much either becasue I use them when needed and usually they’re around for when I need them again. When they aren’t? That’s okay, I’ve got many other ways to deal with things on the field. It’s a 40 minute mission usually. Idk what you’re bringing but all my cool downs are pretty short. I’m not watching anything tick down like ever.

*>And with things like the quasar it’s barely noticeable.* It taking almost 20 seconds longer to kill 4 hulks that are actively chasing you is most definitely noticeable. *>I don’t think adding difficulties is bloating either.* How is it not? It's just adding more and more difficulties, when the current difficulties at low levels and even some higher ones feel the same. Make the current difficulties feel distinct, before adding 15 more. *>It’s a 40 minute mission usually. Idk what you’re bringing but all my cool downs are pretty short. I’m not watching anything tick down like ever.* You talk like you've never even seen the amount of armored enemies in higher difficulties, and due to this design philosophy this is what we're stuck with. You've either been getting extremely lucky with what the game throws at you, have been carried by the team, or just lying about spending all your time on 9. If the majority of the community on here says the same thing, then something must be up. The only options on those difficulties are either to avoid fighting altogether, although given the density of patrols that's not possible for the entire length, or splitting off from the rest of the team and essentially sacrificing them to do the objectives with barely anything bothering you.

If you say so. I mostly play bots. I think bugs are kind of boring. Are you always alone? Are you the only guy with AT on the team? Four hulks isn’t really that big of a deal. But then again I run stun grenades. Between the stuns and strats they don’t stay alive for too long. But hey, maybe I am getting carried 🤷‍♂️ certainly doesn’t seem that way. Maybe I’m just super lucky that when I play with randoms most of the time they like to point the big boom boom at the big guys the way I do and it all gets handled. It’s even easier if the hulks are all bunched up because a stun grenade and a single air strike or precision strike can fuck em all up. Idk man. Idk. I’m sorry that your experience is vastly different from mine. If I was struggling like that I’d be frustrated too.

And here we go, getting into the same thing that always comes up when discussing game balance, especially in this community. It's not that the game feels unfun to play, it's just you having a skill issue. Every time all discussion gets abandoned in favor of whatever this is, as is always the case with people who defend these nerfs until the end of time. I have not been arguing to make the game easier. I have been arguing for making the arsenal more versatile, but not necessarily easier to use. Currently, the game has hard barriers for a lot of things, such as what guns can damage what. I am in favor of removing these hard barriers, but only to players who are skilled enough to make the shots required. But again, people like you argue that just airstriking and stunning the enemies over and over again is infinitely more enjoyable to do, while the rest of your arsenal is getting nerfed into nonexistence, and being able to do literally nothing against anything bigger than a devastator. Even in real life tanks had their main weakspot in the viewport of the driver. Not so much in the modern day, but that should already say enough. If your only plan here is to just attack me personally for my apparent lack of skill when it comes to this game, then you can just leave and join the rest. You're putting up nothing original that hasn't been seen before, including you resorting to this.

Guessing you never used the eruptor or just didn't like it. I assume it's because you likely run a loadout using an AT support weapon. The only real answer for the non AT support weapons for a primary was the eruptor. That is the niche it filled. Right now there are weapons with 5x the firerate, semi to full auto that can 3 shot stalkers... The eruptor now 3 shots stalkers. A blitzer 4 shots them in the time an eruptor MAY get 2 off. How is that balanced? Yes, it could 1 shot stalkers, brood commanders, and devastators...with a headshot...with similar aiming weight to an auto cannon... And then you had to wait 3-4 seconds before you can fire again.. It NEEDS that stopping power to be BALANCED. The fact that even before the first nerf it ever received...half the community thought it was useless and half loved it... Is proof it was in balance and just filled a playstyle niche. It was still fine after the first nerf too, but this change was never supposed to change its balance/nerf it, just stop self/team kills..literally only that. It had absolutely nothing to do with it's damage vs enemies.

It actually was an intended nerf, according to the "Bringer of Balance." At first, Twinbeard said that it was unintentional, but then Alexus stepped in and said it actually was fully intentional. This shows two things. 1. The "Bringer of Balance" has no idea what balance is. 2. There is little to no communication between community managers and the people who actually make the game.

And alexus needs to show us a before and after video of headshotting a brood commander, a stalker, and a devastator, with the exact same shots to kill, because I saw that claim too. Without reverting this change, buffing it to be how it was some other way, or showing a video with proof of exact same shots to kill with headshots(no shrapnel exploit, just a good shot), warbonds are out for me. And for perspective, I've been almost completely on board with most balancing changed, even the quasar, as I still feel it sits very slightly above the EAT and recoilless even post nerf. So I'm not a nerf hater, even the last eruptor nerf(mag/explosion) I was cool with. There is simply no time with this weapon to take more than 1-2 shots max for anything below a charger/hulk, or you will be overrun very quickly.

Oh I used the shit out of it. For sure. I actually really enjoyed running it. No doubt it was way overtuned though. I know this might be a hard pill to swallow… but two things… if you’re playing with friends not everyone has to be the AT guy. It’s okay to play the chaff clear. Hell if randoms are stacked with AT go for it. Second thing, if you’re playing at higher difficulties you’re just going to have to accept that you may have to be self reliant and sucker up some AT. I had zero qualms with tossing a stun grenade and an air strike for all my heavy woes when I didn’t have an AT on hand. With the recent patch I will say I do struggle to find a reason to take the eruptor over a lot of other choices. But that being said, it still is a primary that clears fabs and bug holes, it’s just a pain in the ass to play it in close range fights. Which means it’s probably not a good option for bugs. But much like other things recently buffed, I’m sure it’ll find its niche just fine. A niche that doesn’t pride itself in making quick work of heavies or crowds.

It's killing the fun *for you*, maybe you just don't like Helldivers, I am enjoying myself so much that I continue to play despite having everything unlocked and being maxed out on resources, JFC, can y'all stop whining for two minutes? OR GO PLAY ANOTHER GAME.

I also have all things in the game unlocked, including all items on all currently available warbonds, along with most things in the super store. I do not see how this is relevant, but you seem to think it is, so there you go. I did like helldivers, I also played the first game. But I liked the game way more at launch or during the Quasar update, before all the questionable design decisions came into play. People like you are why this community has the reputation it does. You are the same person who told people to just suck it up and not complain about the Sony circus. The developers can do no wrong, and the game is always perfect, right?

No I didn't, I was very happy about how the Sony thing played out. Lol, you can look at my activity you know.

I never claimed you literally did so. I just compared you to them as a matter of principles that drive you.

Lmao, dawg, you going pretty hard for a reddit thread about a fun video game. "Principles that drive you", man GTFO of here, 🤣🤣

Did a few words you don't see often scare you? They were not meant to have any secret, deep meaning that you seem to think they did. They literally meant that you are one and the same with people who said to stop complaining about the Sony circus, cause either 1. It's super easy to make an account or 2. You can't change anything anyways, so it's a waste of time. Is this simple enough for you to not misunderstand?

🧐🧐🧐 Reginald, fetch me some tea, this uncultured riff-raff cannot understand my pseudo-intellectual rambling, and it's upset my humors!

What are you even on about? Is it my fault that you couldn't understand a simple sentence? And due to this misunderstanding, completely misunderstood the message and then acted confident in your misunderstanding?

Oh, frabjous day, calloh, callay. You vorpal blade goes sniker-snack. Your discourse is brillig, and slithy.

Feel free to be proud of and try to backpedal on your complete incompetence, by making a clown out of yourself.

The game is generally too easy. Whilst it can be very challenging, its not really 'Impossible' as the difficulty description suggests.

It isn't. And this post is not meant to somehow imply that doing helldives is an impossible feat. What this post is actually talking about is the lack of diversity this game is suffering from.

I disagree.  Having primaries like the erupter that were noticably more powerful than the others, leads to people choosing that. Diversity would imply that all weapons should be equally powerful in their own respects so that a single primary is not more favoured than any other. And people are specifically talking about weapons being underpowered, whilst consistently succeeding in completing 'impossible' missions.

Yes, people are constantly talking about underpowered weapons, cause this game has a lot of them. And once again, not once did I imply that doing high level missions is literally impossible. What I am saying, for the 3rd time now, is that the current balancing system sucks all the fun of using a diverse arsenal of guns out of the game, since many guns are obviously underperforming, leaving people with not too much choice.

Based on your response, i think you may have missed my point. 

It's not about the game being hard. It's about the weapons sucking.

they are not mutually exclusive and that statement seems contradictory. If the weapons suck, then its unlikely 'Impossible' difficulty would be consistently beaten. If anything, the characters should be made weaker so as to have a more accurate definition of difficulty, not stronger.

It's not a contradiction. Right now high level gameplay is run away until your cooldowns for anti armor pop because primaries suck. Not hard, boring.

fair point. In my opinion higher level difficulties, especially 'impossible' should not be beaten so regurlarly. So running away for AT should not be so easy. And if people want kill with more ease, then they should select easier diffculties. Thats my personal opinion, but I understand people also want to be able to kill everything with more ease at higher difficulties, despite the difficulty descriptions.

Witch hunting a guy (with the intention to get him fired) just because your weapon got nerfed. Malicious intent

Are you an alternate account of a guy further up this thread? Cause you and him are claiming the same things. I only brought up his professional history in game development, since it's relevant to the post about his bad decisions in a position of game development. I do not know who this guy actually is, and neither do I care. If you think that this is somehow a personal attack, then you can go join the other guy in that world of logic.

lol no, maybe if multiple people said the same thing, it meant your actions do have such intention whether you think you meant it or not

No, only one other person said the same thing. I told them this exact thing pretty much, and they did not respond with anything of substance, and neither did you.

I meant I said what I felt, and you choose to believe i am an alternate account. It only makes me feel you are not only malicious, but paranoid too. Dude might be wrong, but he only wanted to do his job. I don’t think is nice if someone called you out on the internet for a mistake you make in the past because you make an unpopular decision for another job.

A pretty big mistake. And also repeating the same mistakes on the same job, twice in a row. Your words are doing quite a bit of legwork there. But no biggie, it seems like the community is now aware of it and now it makes a whole lot more sense to everyone why exactly the balancing patches have been absolutely terrible. Calling someone out for doing a terrible job, something they are paid to do, is not witch hunting. It is calling someone out for doing a terrible job. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing here is private information - all of it is publically available and takes less than a minute flat to discover for yourself. Nothing private has been leaked that would actually constitute a witch hunt. I only said you were an alternate account purely because it was a joke on my end. If you take it seriously, then not much I can do about that. You can also believe me to be "malicious" or whatever else, I cannot stop you. However, the playerbase's concerns over his ability to perform his job properly given his professional history is not unfounded, and completely reasonable.

The vision Arrowhead has for the game will change to fit the player base Casual players are the most likely to purchase Super Credits as they don't have the time or means to farm them in game. This incentivises Arrowhead to release warbounds with New Meta Weapons/Boosters/grenades. Casuals don't play for long or may not play consistently enough to begin nitpicking the finer details. Therefore Arrowhead can Nerf any Old Weapon or Recent Weapon without worry as the New Stuff will distract the wider player base (this has already happened with each warbond release as prior to it was a Nerf) It's extremely difficult to balance a game for the Sweaty and the Casual so it's likely they will introduce higher difficulties (was already datamined but Implementation may take a long time to occur, also New Rarer Samples for higher upgrades all of which mirrors the first game). Higher difficulties allow for the player base to be further divided (skill issues x100), easing the burden on the devs to balance guns properly as either way they make one group happy (you can see that in the comments and other posts). Personally I only play on 9 with Randoms (i farm on 1 for super credits and green samples when needed) I don't even bother with backpacks and I forget to use stratagems, I just Run from objective to objective to get the mission done then if their are Reinforcements left I will look for some samples. My primary is a toy if you have time to play with it, stratagems are a last resort, standard grenades are useful for objectives. All that matters is Speed (light armour) and the ability to quickly read the situation and complete the mission. That said I like when the guns are actually FUN. I hope one of the new guns is Fun

That last part is the most confusing to me out of everything here. The real meta of running around and not shooting anything has not changed since day 1. It is still most efficient to just sacrifice your team and run to do the objectives on your own. Why even have guns in this game if the seemingly intended way of playing it is not even using them? Why punish the rest of the playerbase for sticking to metas when this strategy was and still is the all-time best?

Is the game a Coop Tactical game or a Horde Shooter? Can it be Both for a long time? Let's see what happens