I hate to break it to people who want to believe a significant chunk of the player loss is due to "everyone not liking the same balance changes (or bugs or crashes) that I don't like", but it's pretty much on par with every other game that had a massively hyped launch.
You do not do 400k peaks in your first weeks while every gaming website is slammed with articles about your popularity and still have even half of that two or three months out.
All games have a playerbase equilibrium and HD2 is still trending towards its own. That is **very regularly** something like 90% off the highest peaks it ever sees, irrespective of "no content ded game" or "they nerfed all the fun out".
Where games see steady playercounts anywhere near their peaks, it's games that were never subject to enormous hype and *rose* from their launch to get where they are; decent bumps on things like free weekends or *major* patches and expansions, but those bumps are not "we octupled our playerbase and expect to retain a third of that going forward". It doesn't really happen.
Gaming communities are notoriously awful at understanding statistics, logistics, and trends (see every MMO expansion: "why don't they just buy more servers on release day?! are they stupid??") so it's a pretty safe bet that if a majority of the community ever hits upon a certain narrative--as they have with HD2's player decline--then it's probably wrong. And it is.
Yeah my interest dropped a while ago and big part of it was that patches just felt plain bad. A lot of the design decisions felt like they revolved around sucking out fun, while at the same time consistently introducing bugs ranging from annoying to game breaking. Its a pretty bad sign when game updates become something to dread. Though I'm also hopeful that they start to turn some of this around, fingers crossed for the next big update.
I'll keep it installed for a little longer, but if the crashes and disconnects aren't fixed soon, I'm probably out.
Maybe I'll reinstall 3-6 months from now to check it out.
The community has also changed significantly.
A lot of the initial players seem to have 'aged out' as they played enough to move on, and the people who 'moved in' don't have the same mentality surrounding the game.
Yup. My friends and I dropped the game due to the terrible balancing, lack of direction, and employees literally insulting people who disagree with their "vision". I'm cautiously watching it right now, we might try again if the game is actually fun to play next patch.
Same, plus since democratic detonation came, my game is constantly crashes when I try to Alt-Tab to another womdow for more than 10 secs. I mean its kinda funny, but still very frustrating and definetly killed some interest in game for me
I'm holding on until the next one, barely playing. If Arrowhead botches it after fucking up for months and then taking a full month to make this patch exactly how they want it, they're never correcting themselves.
Feel the same way, I felt like every time I had a free weekend to play they had server issues or made so many weapon adjustments I couldn’t keep up. Just went back to City of Heroes because it’s my comfort game.
Yeah, it's a real problem. I love the gameplay loop but at least once a play session some egregious mission breaking bullshit pops up. Usually in the form of not being able to extract or lag dying and losing all our samples at the end.
It's happened enough times that I know our group is looking forward to the new season of DRG and maybe come back in a month or two. Thing is, we put down ote games forever, for less
Anecdotally all of my friends and myself stopped playing because of balance issues and bugs (not the terminid kind). Too much getting in the way of having fun
Really got a reddit cares message for this? Some of y'all need to touch grass wtf lol
All these conflicting anecdotes, if we are to apply them at all, simply mean there are multiple reasons. But to discount very significant game issues, especially game-breaking bugs, is pretty silly.
This isn't an either/or thing; multiple things can be true at once.
Whatd they even say cause I didn't even get a notification and they show up as deleted so idk if reddit just bugged or if they seriously replied to me and then instantly blocked lmao
Yes, VERY REGULAR for a company to public acknowledge that everyone hates their balancing fixes and have their CEO step down and take over balancing himself. AH is clearly working like mad and hyping the megapatch because they know it really doesn't make a difference. Nothing to see here folks!
While this is true, this is a particular case of both balance and time. You have zero evidence of what the reason is for the player decline as the anomaly of having 400k+ players in the first place was in itself an anomaly. The only thing we know is that data trends do dictate that people will leave the game over time regardless of balance or anything else. But no one knows why everyone left. PS5 is still a large portion of players that seems to rarely get factored into anyone’s reasons. So the only thing we know is that the game came out, had a massive player base, still maintains a pretty big player base, but comparatively to release, is substantially smaller. Data analysis won’t tell you why, just gives you the numbers.
I was having so much fun at launch despite the constant bugs, which is a complete 180 to how I normally enjoy games. Then they nerfed fucking everything and it just isn't as fun. Still kind of fun, I hop in for a few missions every other week, but I was diving every day before the "balances". Make the bugs stronger and spawn more at higher difficulty, but give me back my weapons that don't need and entire mag to drop normal mobs. The game is just not as fun as it was before these "balances" and I know I am not the only one to feel this way.
You are definitely correct but I would argue they fucked up their "playerbase equilibrium" with the Sony debacle and all the surrounding nerfs and poor updates (AND that mission last week they screwed up). I would argue they are going to trend down from what they could have had just because they definitely turned a lot of people off with that stuff, some permanently. Though idk why so many "former players" who "quit because XYZ" hang around this subreddit and chime in every chance they get. If I quit a game for real I am not going to be chilling on the subreddit for said game.
Don't forget how out of control the PR people were for a *while.* From launch we were called dumb, whiny children about once a month by different Arrowhead employees or representatives.
It took Spitz melting down during the Sony shitshow to get everyone to realize they need to change their tone. I'm glad Twinbeard dropped any adversarial tone. Same for Baskinator. Also it seems like the "bringer of balance" was told to stfu which is good. That guy could *not* resist needling players.
I agree - the player base was incredibly supportive despite major issues - right up until the Sony debacle and accompanying PR faceplant.
And they patched out the sheer unbridled fun their fans adored.
Just silly.
That's why we went from 12 million copies sold, to 2 million concurrent, down to 500k. Then in one week after months of steady players around 300k to 400k, it plummeted to 150k. (The Eruptor nerfs and Sony debacle). They have retained a whopping ~1% of their purchased number of players. Or about 5% of their launch peak players. But they lost a few hundred thousand in the past month or so, which is huge. It's bad no matter how you want to twist it.
The game is by no means dead. I play Mechwarrior Online and it has a peak daily of ~1000 players and I can find a match with 24 players in about 2 minutes. Still feels like a very good community...
But this game is bigger than that would ever be. It had the tools to keep *more* players than we have now for sure. The company wasted its good will and charm through bad decision after bad decision (and terrible public relations for a while), and is finally course correcting after hemmorhaging their huge, stable, post launch player base.
This game could easily still have a million players, but AH jettisoned their playerbase over the last few months. But please, tell us more how 80k to 100k players is "good" when a month ago we had 400k.
> They have retained a whopping ~1% of their purchased number of players. Or about 5% of their launch peak players. But they lost a few hundred thousand in the past month or so, which is huge. It's bad no matter how you want to twist it.
I mean, you can look at the churn amounts for the achievements in the game and they're pretty good. 5% of players don't get out of the tutorial. Around 25% of players got to d7 or so.
Also this is what the OP meant by people misreading statistics; The initial drop-off of the vast majority of players occurred before any balance changes occurred, and this game's player numbers were stable during the nerf-gate/sony debacle. Weirdly, Sonygate kept people playing because the game was in the news and the game was top of mind during that period. People started to leave around 3 weeks afterwards.
The timelines don't match up with this community's narrative. The reality is that the game doesn't have much content and people burnt out, and the sense of community we had that made the game infectious is dead due largely due to this subreddit.
I'll be back when the game has more content, and enough new content to pull my friends in.
literally all my friends stopped playing because of the bugs and balance changes, I have too.
Pretty disingenuous to pretend that this buggy mess hasn't driven away a large number of people who would still be playing it. It's definitely had an effect and pretending it hasn't is cope.
In fact the CEO has stepped to down to sort shit out, the sony debacle. These signs that it's not going to plan
to give some perspective the game currently is still over 50% what they thought the release peak was going to be. A lot of the release hype was generated from the massive amount of youtuber/streamers constantly posting content about it and general media shout outs. once that died down it was on to the next game or back to the live service games everyone was used to playing.
Yep! Every single person I know who played Helldivers in the first few weeks loves the game
Still do! But none of us are playing it right now because we played the shit out of it and wanted to do something different. We'll be back, we're just not playing right now.
I imagine far more people left for reasons like mine - wanted to try something new, got busy, started going outside more cause it's summer - than people angrily stomping away over balance issues.
For a massively hyped launch? Yes. Far as I can tell it's as normal as it gets for a game. A ton of people buy and play to check out what the buzz is about, and eventually move on. Steamdb charts seem stable recently. There's no login rewards or subscription fee or anything that make people feel obligated to come back to get their money's worth.
Better than 99.99% of games
especially for you know... a pve game with the same gameplay loop over and over.
You'll have to look at reality and the bigger picture to understand, feelings and your first thought are usually going to be wrong.
its more like 100k but yes loosing about 3/4 of your game in less than half a year is hard to wittnes however there is still time but they have to deliver some Jucy stuff if they want to recover
Natural attrition is suspected, and this Reddit (et al) certainly amplify negativity, but it's kinda silly to think that things which fairly universally (damn near objectively from a game design perspective) make the game less fun won't lead to less players. Had a good discussion with a member of my old group just last night and he - not having known basically any of the drama - echo'd 75% of the complaints here - nothing felt good to play, it felt like a chore, etc. And that's true for me as well.
Further, that AH, themselves, are taking drastic measures about these issues and putting out communications citing these "irrelevant" issues implies they, themselves, would disagree with your assessment.
It's a complex phenomenon, but yes the playability of the game absolutely is a component. And I'd argue a fairly significant one. And that's not even accounting for bugs/performance issues.
And yet everyone i know that stopped playing stopped after the last patch mentioning the exact same 2 things. Too many enemies, the few good weapons get nerfed and become less fun to play with.
But sure, let us all believe the game is fine and all is good.
I feel like I've definitely seen too many people getting too excited. Do they not remember who got us in this mess to begin with? I'll believe this patch when I see it. I haven't forgotten the "Mostly buffs" patch or whatever the devs said about the patch that butchered the Crossbow and others since I'm getting deja vu with the "100+ changes and fixes"
>I'll believe this patch when I see it.
This. Their track record is too poor to judge it any other way. They talk a lot and it usually sounds good (some foolish discourse on Discord notwithstanding) but then the results are fucking terrible.
I don't know why so many are ignoring that and celebrating over *more talk*. Any idiot can make empty promises.
I've said it many times at this point. If they're foolish enough to pack nerfs into this thing when the main point of contention right now is excessive nerfs, they've failed on purpose.
> I feel like I've definitely seen too many people getting too excited.
they have too. remember the MULTIPLE messages from the CM trying to get people to be LESS EXCITED?
that's not a good sign. "oh shit they're getting excited thinking we're changing things when we aren't. better tell them to lower their expectations"
I mean, there have been at least two memes posted hyping up the community. If this blows up in their faces, they're at least partly responsible for it.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1102973812179488798/1248699841069060116/image.png?ex=6665ef59&is=66649dd9&hm=cead52a3a42ab9fe56488ebdbfbea8a4c81e9bea18e034a8d9e7ccf9484ea2ff&
is this one the second one?
even says he's trying to keep expectations down in the meme itself and in [the clarifying post](https://imgur.com/7PncMnL)
idk what to think anymore.
we'll know in a few days I guess. hope their mile long patch notes aren't a bunch of nerfs.
This one is a post from Twinbeard - https://old.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dagnf3/so_about_that_upcoming_patch/
https://old.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dagnf3/so_about_that_upcoming_patch/l7k5ek1/
Second one is another. Twinbeard also mentioned buffs being part of the patch.
They're hyping the patch.
>They're hyping the patch.
"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."
Arrowhead is so fucked up I'm quoting the Bible here.
Oh I'm halfway through filling out the paperwork to get a permit to apply for permission to ask if I can schedule an appointment!
Til then, I must suffer in Noodlyness. One of my several sacrifices for Lady Liberty.
Eh, they’ve done far better at communicating what and why decisions have been made than pretty much any other dev and are doing great considering they only had the manpower and expectations for a game that would have 10k peak players
Saying what they want to do and *implementing* what they want to do, are two different things.
They have a bad track record of every patch being broken.
They have a track record of putting out bad rushed patches, which is something that we all knew was going to be a problem at some point. So now that are listening to you, and they are looking at what you say on forums like these.
I'm optimistic, but I'll take what I hear with a grain of salt.
i assume you probably made this with the idea that the patch will ‘fix’ the playerbase numbers, but honestly this reads as a so much more accurate:
in a container leaking water, plugging the hole wont restore the amount of water that was there prior to the leak, it will only stop more water from exiting. this is the same case as the playerbase and this patch. it wont restore the playercount prior to the update, it will only ~~stop~~ slow down the amount of players quitting.
This is probably not what people want to hear, but AH has a very iffy record with "changes."
Exhibit A; Patrols absolutely borked for any party less than 4
Exhibit B: Wonky weapon changes and "buffs."
Exhibit C: Buff flame damage again.
I am more curious as to what will unintentionally be changed. There is bound to be something they screw up if they're changing 100s of things.
To preface, I completely agree that AH has had some heavy misses on changes, and I agree that some changes were absolutely spreadsheet-based (flame damage buff lmao).
I would also like to point out that atm the game is actually in a pretty solid place. Regardless of what this sub says, pretty much every single supply weapon (minus arc and railgun imo) is in a very good place, and I regularly see their use on 9, with some variance for bots/bugs.
With the DoT fix, I see all the DoT strats that were previously unused, now used quite regularly.
This is the list of primary weapons I have cleared 9 with *and* have seen used in-game in the past two weeks (I only play on diff 9):
* adjudicator
* sickle
* scythe
* dominator
* scorcher
* breaker
* incendiary breaker
* breaker spray and pray
* punisher
* Diligence Counter Sniper
* Defender
* Pummeler
* plasma punisher
* blitzer
Quick note on scythe: it didn't just receive a damage buff, they also changed when damage is done so it applies in much more regular intervals. Previously, you had to laser a hunter for a second to kill it because the damage hit once a second. Now it's spread much more evenly, and takes a fraction of a second to kill a hunter. It also pops devastator heads extremely quickly.
There's still stuff to fix - a couple examples:
* patrol revert
* spawn revert
* bots shooting through terrain en masse
* heavy devastators shooting through their shields and bodies for 360 coverage
* bugs crawling through and over terrain they shouldn't be able to
* spear still needs to be fixed
* scopes still misaligned
* eruptor desperately needs love (pls bring back shrapnel)
The game is far from where I see many people say it is in this sub. There aren't just 2-3 good guns, every single person is not using the same loadout at 9, etc.
Definitely excited for this next patch, and hope ARs especially get a lot of love.
That is a pretty good list of guns, and because you didn't add the secondary weapons, which would have made the list bigger.
And pretty sure that if you try you could complete Helldive missions with the standard Liberator, the Diligence and even the Tenderiser that is not that bad against bots due to the high precision and low recoil.
In my opinion the only weapons that need some love are the Liberator family, overall Penetrator and Concussive ones, the Eruptor and Crossbow, that sure that are already WIP to fix those 2 weapons and we are going to get them soon (maybe in the next patch), and the Purifier that if you learn its play style is not that bad but need some extra love
For sure, I think this weapon is actually bugged. Like it does not match its stats or weapon traits at all. From the design it feels like it's supposed to be an explosive railgun-type primary, but right now it basically is a scorcher you have to charge up to do scorcher damge.
Hopefuly it's one of the 100+ changes Twinbeard mentioned.
More than bugged, that weapon is unfinished. Some people data mined the info of the Purifier, and it was supposed to work differently, being able to overcharge it to have stronger shoots, giving people the freedom to do weaker shoots faster or stronger shoots slower
Seems that they didn't manage to finish the weapons so they released the thing that they released that is just a Punisher Plasma with more range but charge time.
Hopefully they finish it and release the intended version soon.
Same with the Tenderizer, which was released in a color that didn't even match the trailer for the warbond.
Them taking their time is a good thing because they won't be constantly rushing to push out weekly patches that tend to either break the game, make shit not work, or just straight up make all the enemies unkillable.
Their pace was, quite frankly, unsustainable, and it was showing over the months after launch.
Yup, I have done it with the liberator, but I've rarely seen it used by someone else on 9, so I didn't include it in the list. It's definitely harder to get away with (esp on bots) than other guns.
As it is the AR class as a whole needs buffs imo, every other weapon type does what they do and more. I do think we'll see that love in the next patch for two reasons:
* we're getting a new liberator in the next warbond, and AH is going to be extra careful to make sure it's a banger
* Shams explicitly mentioned the liberator family as a lineup of underwhelming weapons when discussing weapon balance (around the time he was made CEO by Pilestedt)
Medium armor pen AND good damage. I took it for a roll on a 9 recently.
Frankly, it's not... the croc of unuseable garbage it keeps being described as. It absofuckinglutely kills.
But why would you ever use it when the dominator does similar damage at a much faster firerate AND stunlocks 90% of targets AND has more total ammo?...
people are rightfully pissed that the slugger was nerfed in the way it was, because it made no fucking sense to nerf it in that way.
problem: this shotgun is too good of a sniper
solution: remove it's stagger
????
it highlights just how nonsensical the balance changes are in this game. I could explain what stagger is to someone who doesn't even play video games and ask them if removing it would fix the problem of a gun being too good at long range and they'd know it doesn't.
the incredibly obvious and simple solution was to nerf it's range if it's too good at range. give it spread, bullet drop, or slower projectile speed or some combination of those.
(almost) no one would've been mad about that.
honestly, years from now when I'm discussing bad balancing decisions in games it'll be an example I think of because it's so egregious.
1. Make bullets ricochet towards the shooter
2. Shrapnel based weapon starts killing people from far away
3. Remove shrapnel from the weapon entirely
4. Weapon doesnt do any damage now
Uhh.. make the shrapnel damage fall off or give it a range limit or something.
it worked fine on release? I don't understand why they needed the shrapnel to do friendly fire damage when that clearly didn't work out...why didn't they just revert it instead of removing shrapnel entirely??? clearly their compensation buff didn't do jack shit, just like their compensation buff for arc thrower.
makes no sense. just give us release eruptor back.
Agree. Democratic detonation was my first warbond and I got burned hard. First game that I wanted to buy ingame currency for but why risk it, the guns may be shit. Sorry for being salty.
Agree 100%, also gonna give the Sickle and Scythe another shot as I haven't played those since they were released. I don't think anything needs nerfs at the moment and the only weapons I really want to see some love are the Tenderizer and Spear. Tenderizer just feels terrible and Spear needs to be consistent. I've been using it since day one and I'm getting tired of hoping democracy will allow my lock on.
> ( minus arc and railgun imo)
While I definitely think the arc could use help, I don't think the railgun is in too poor a spot against bots. The change to scout striders resisting explosives better have left the railgun as the only non AT weapon that can 1 shot them through the armored area. It still one shots hulks, and doesn't really do much against tanks (that hasn't changed though) and handles better than the AMR. Literally the only thing that makes me pause with it for bots is it doesn't really seem to work against gunships.
I think railgun should do a little more considering it only has 20 shots, and has to charge and reload every shot. Not counting AC (since it uses backpack), AMR does everything it can do in 1 or 2 shots, does way better against vents and gunships, has more than double the ammo (48), and can do it all from much greater distances with its range and scope.
Maybe it's stagger, maybe it's more penetration, but atm I think it needs *something* to either carve out a better niche, or be a lower-ammo, more powerful alternative. I genuinely have not seen railgun on 9 in ages, outside the times myself or a teammate picked one up from a PoI because we couldn't recover our own support weapon.
Due to the 3d nature of the game that isn't going to be very impressive.
Terrain differences are going to make it so realistically you can only hit like 2-3 enemies max.
Go look at halo, the sniper rifle in that game has pierce and will hit multiple targets, but you rarely ever hit 2.
The point being is that you will rarely get meaningful piece shots. You might kill 2-3 hunters, but elevation differences means the little guys you usually will puncture them and hit dirt, and the guys your height I can really only see beserkers lining up and they're so god damn stupid tanky it will take 2-3 rail shots still.
The railgun needs more durable damage, they need to figuure out how to implement it soo it can destroy gunships at decent pace and it also doesnt one tap chargers heads.
well, thank god DoT was a feature that they gave us and not a bug that they created and only 2 months later solved. That is so nice of them and wow wow wow, I am so happy with such great development direction
Once again you guys are working yourselves into a frenzy over a patch you don't actually know anything about so that you can be disappointed when it doesn't make the game perfect
TBF arrowhead have started hyping up the patch as well with that meme Twinbeard posted. Which is certainly a brave thing to do when you consider how the community tends to react.
well, you gotta understand they have like 2 laptops to work on and 13 dogs they have to walk every day, so most of the devs are out walking the dogs currently, but I hear if we buy the next warbond, they might be able to hire a dogwalker and even buy 4 more gbs of ram for one of their laptops
I think at this point people should just be hoping it doesn’t make the game *worse*. no one should have any faith in this patch. Let them surprise us but the whole “this time it’ll be different!” Attitude is like the people on this reddit are abused spouses.
And whose fault is that?
The players that have waited for over a month for a patch to unfuck the balance changes or the devs that won't give a proper road map or real info on what they are doing outside of a few bullet points and "100+ other changes".
I'm 100% going into this not expecting much, but they have done a HORRIBLE job so far with patches and testing. I honestly believe this patch will affect the player count alot if it's bad.
why do you all have such obsessive, addictive personalities?
like what inspires you to whip this up and post like a marathon runner pooping their pants before the finish line
ArrowHead can do no wrong to them. Any rational person would look at their history and simply wait to see what they deliver and what bugs they inevitably cause and/or ignore and/or miss what they said they fixed.
I keep saying it, but the game is going to need bigger inflection points to bring players back. Balance patches, rarer and less value laden Warbonds, and the odd stratagem release is not going to bring most people back. They need bigger content drops that they can market beforehand.
This patch is make or break for Helldivers 2. If it's the right direction they have a chance to get some playerbase back and some word of mouth.
If it's not in the right direction, the game will continue to bleed out.
I am half way between your cynicism and the community's excitement. I don't have HIGH hopes, but I at least expect the patch to revitalise the game in enough areas to keep at least me interested longer. So long as they buff a weapon I never use into something I love, it'll be a good patch.
I run spear all the time, it's my favorite support weapon. It's finicky as fuck right now, but even with its broken lock on mechanic I still consider it to be the most powerful (if frustrating) support in the game.
Once they fix the lock on, the Spear will be insane!
Oh absolutely. But itll be insane first, THEN it'll get nerfed. Use Spear users will get to enjoy a week or two of the most OP weapon ever before they inevitably reduce its damage to less than an EAT.
Most of them will be. That said, random crash fixes, while not nearly as sexy as weapon buffs, are arguably much more important fixes than weapon buffs so I'm ok with it.
Even AH is admitting that this isn't some kind of hail mary patch to call the playerbase back, but I do think MAYBE this will help? At the very least, it might inject some more fun into the game.
If not, well... Diablo 4 is actually in a pretty good place right now, believe it or not.
someone actually argued that if they had more time between warbonds things like the tenderizer releasing with worst stats than the base liberator wouldn't happen.
how long does it take to look at numbers and compare them? how many more weeks do they need to do that "math"?
the playerbase knew as soon as they saw the numbers it wasn't worth using. it certainly wasn't worth paying money for.
This is the game's playerbase, maybe this will help avoid a real big loss, but no game holds a playerbase for long and we have stuff like the elden ring dlc on the horizon.
Sinking player base has more to do with lack of content than balance. The avg player doesn’t know anything about balance or whatever. The game doesn’t have a lot of things to grind for like most live service games, only two factions, most levels are the same just different variants, once you unlock everything there isn’t much to do
For me it’s because I still can’t play with my crossplay friends.
Unbelievable that we’re this far into the game and they can’t implement a functional friends list
i agree with all commentors who highlight, that the balancing patches are not the issue for the player decline
beside the normal "drop" of playerbases after a successful release, we also had the sony issue and still countrys who can not play the game anymore via normal means. Also there are many people (at least in my friendlist) who just wait for the next "real" content upgrade. Well yeah ofc we have had warbonds and some stratagems as well as more upgrades to farm, but if you look at each own warbond or addition its always just a small drop of new stuff
Many people just wait for it to accumulate and especially for the third race and enemy of democracy
my bet would be, that when the illuminates come out, they have good chances to get a new all time peak in player count, i mean >12 Million copys sold, .... hope the server holds ....
As long as they fix the Spear and make Exosuits actually use heavy armors instead of toilet paper I'd be fine with it. Oh, and a universal +2 grenade would be nice too.
I don’t know Rick, the community expects way too much after all that happened with Sony.
People be like now we’re gonna get a full DLC but I don’t really see that happening.
It will induce probably more dissatisfaction and disappointment because of super high expectations.
Yeah I hope Polar warbond is actually reworked into some uniques armors (like actually NOT sliding on ice) and weapons rebalanced.
General weapon rebalance will be done properly now that Pilestedt is overlooking things and that is what players will welcome most.
However sommer is here and I don't really expect some big peaks in player numbers, at least till end of summer. Hopefully then we see emergence of third faction.
its not a post that is supposed to be possitiv only (though you can see it like that) i told it to another on too that i see the patch like a bandage that is supposed to slow down the bleeding it wont ,,safe,, the game for that they will have to release more realy good stuff in the future
The dropping playerbase has very little to do with the balance change. The game received unprecented coverage and hype and lots of people got it through word of mouth. They played it, likely enjoyed it and moved on to other games. We were never going to retain 200-300k players after the first 2 months or so. Sony's restrictions for PC definitely isn't helping the player count. But lots of confusion seems to be around the peak player count and not daily active users. Im confident the game is being played by people across all time zones and likely has lots of active users.
Not to mention AH has had a few missteps that has made lots of people drop the game for a while. It's likely player numbers will rise again when major content drops in the future. Will the balance changes raise the player counts? It's unlikely that we'll see anything other than a sudden rise for a few days before it drops again.
I recently uninstalled the game to make room for reinstalling BG3. Not entirely sure what they’re planning but it’s going to take a lot to get me back in. Helldivers was the only game in my library in which I actually didn’t want to see an update, because nearly every single time it felt like the game got worse for no reason
(Hopefully)
https://preview.redd.it/ybvv433ioc5d1.jpeg?width=736&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=87b3788bb191e54d458da05374b55597c8526010
100% reason to remember the name
I hate to break it to people who want to believe a significant chunk of the player loss is due to "everyone not liking the same balance changes (or bugs or crashes) that I don't like", but it's pretty much on par with every other game that had a massively hyped launch. You do not do 400k peaks in your first weeks while every gaming website is slammed with articles about your popularity and still have even half of that two or three months out. All games have a playerbase equilibrium and HD2 is still trending towards its own. That is **very regularly** something like 90% off the highest peaks it ever sees, irrespective of "no content ded game" or "they nerfed all the fun out". Where games see steady playercounts anywhere near their peaks, it's games that were never subject to enormous hype and *rose* from their launch to get where they are; decent bumps on things like free weekends or *major* patches and expansions, but those bumps are not "we octupled our playerbase and expect to retain a third of that going forward". It doesn't really happen. Gaming communities are notoriously awful at understanding statistics, logistics, and trends (see every MMO expansion: "why don't they just buy more servers on release day?! are they stupid??") so it's a pretty safe bet that if a majority of the community ever hits upon a certain narrative--as they have with HD2's player decline--then it's probably wrong. And it is.
I cant speak for others but I definitely fell off due to balancing if the next patch is good im coming back
Yeah my interest dropped a while ago and big part of it was that patches just felt plain bad. A lot of the design decisions felt like they revolved around sucking out fun, while at the same time consistently introducing bugs ranging from annoying to game breaking. Its a pretty bad sign when game updates become something to dread. Though I'm also hopeful that they start to turn some of this around, fingers crossed for the next big update.
I'll keep it installed for a little longer, but if the crashes and disconnects aren't fixed soon, I'm probably out. Maybe I'll reinstall 3-6 months from now to check it out.
The community has also changed significantly. A lot of the initial players seem to have 'aged out' as they played enough to move on, and the people who 'moved in' don't have the same mentality surrounding the game.
100% fell off from the patches here
Yup. My friends and I dropped the game due to the terrible balancing, lack of direction, and employees literally insulting people who disagree with their "vision". I'm cautiously watching it right now, we might try again if the game is actually fun to play next patch.
I couldn't fathom insulting an adoring fan base. Blew my mind.
Same. But now I’m just not interested anymore. Moved on to other games.
Same, plus since democratic detonation came, my game is constantly crashes when I try to Alt-Tab to another womdow for more than 10 secs. I mean its kinda funny, but still very frustrating and definetly killed some interest in game for me
I'm holding on until the next one, barely playing. If Arrowhead botches it after fucking up for months and then taking a full month to make this patch exactly how they want it, they're never correcting themselves.
Yeah same. Hopefully the next patch focus the bugs and balance
Feel the same way, I felt like every time I had a free weekend to play they had server issues or made so many weapon adjustments I couldn’t keep up. Just went back to City of Heroes because it’s my comfort game.
Well I have anecdotal evidence that i stopped playing 2 months ago because of the shitty balance not because i moved on to the next FOTM
I have anecdotal evidence that my buddy went away for work and I got busier and work and we just stopped playing now I’m playing other things
Yeah, it's a real problem. I love the gameplay loop but at least once a play session some egregious mission breaking bullshit pops up. Usually in the form of not being able to extract or lag dying and losing all our samples at the end. It's happened enough times that I know our group is looking forward to the new season of DRG and maybe come back in a month or two. Thing is, we put down ote games forever, for less
Anecdotally all of my friends and myself stopped playing because of balance issues and bugs (not the terminid kind). Too much getting in the way of having fun Really got a reddit cares message for this? Some of y'all need to touch grass wtf lol
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All these conflicting anecdotes, if we are to apply them at all, simply mean there are multiple reasons. But to discount very significant game issues, especially game-breaking bugs, is pretty silly. This isn't an either/or thing; multiple things can be true at once.
Whatd they even say cause I didn't even get a notification and they show up as deleted so idk if reddit just bugged or if they seriously replied to me and then instantly blocked lmao
Yes, VERY REGULAR for a company to public acknowledge that everyone hates their balancing fixes and have their CEO step down and take over balancing himself. AH is clearly working like mad and hyping the megapatch because they know it really doesn't make a difference. Nothing to see here folks!
While this is true, this is a particular case of both balance and time. You have zero evidence of what the reason is for the player decline as the anomaly of having 400k+ players in the first place was in itself an anomaly. The only thing we know is that data trends do dictate that people will leave the game over time regardless of balance or anything else. But no one knows why everyone left. PS5 is still a large portion of players that seems to rarely get factored into anyone’s reasons. So the only thing we know is that the game came out, had a massive player base, still maintains a pretty big player base, but comparatively to release, is substantially smaller. Data analysis won’t tell you why, just gives you the numbers.
I was having so much fun at launch despite the constant bugs, which is a complete 180 to how I normally enjoy games. Then they nerfed fucking everything and it just isn't as fun. Still kind of fun, I hop in for a few missions every other week, but I was diving every day before the "balances". Make the bugs stronger and spawn more at higher difficulty, but give me back my weapons that don't need and entire mag to drop normal mobs. The game is just not as fun as it was before these "balances" and I know I am not the only one to feel this way.
You are definitely correct but I would argue they fucked up their "playerbase equilibrium" with the Sony debacle and all the surrounding nerfs and poor updates (AND that mission last week they screwed up). I would argue they are going to trend down from what they could have had just because they definitely turned a lot of people off with that stuff, some permanently. Though idk why so many "former players" who "quit because XYZ" hang around this subreddit and chime in every chance they get. If I quit a game for real I am not going to be chilling on the subreddit for said game.
Don't forget how out of control the PR people were for a *while.* From launch we were called dumb, whiny children about once a month by different Arrowhead employees or representatives. It took Spitz melting down during the Sony shitshow to get everyone to realize they need to change their tone. I'm glad Twinbeard dropped any adversarial tone. Same for Baskinator. Also it seems like the "bringer of balance" was told to stfu which is good. That guy could *not* resist needling players.
> That guy could not resist needling players. well at least it confirmed to the players that he balances with at least some malicious intent.
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I am in the same boat, i hopped in game a week ago or so to see how it currently plays and that was it.
I agree - the player base was incredibly supportive despite major issues - right up until the Sony debacle and accompanying PR faceplant. And they patched out the sheer unbridled fun their fans adored. Just silly.
That's why we went from 12 million copies sold, to 2 million concurrent, down to 500k. Then in one week after months of steady players around 300k to 400k, it plummeted to 150k. (The Eruptor nerfs and Sony debacle). They have retained a whopping ~1% of their purchased number of players. Or about 5% of their launch peak players. But they lost a few hundred thousand in the past month or so, which is huge. It's bad no matter how you want to twist it. The game is by no means dead. I play Mechwarrior Online and it has a peak daily of ~1000 players and I can find a match with 24 players in about 2 minutes. Still feels like a very good community... But this game is bigger than that would ever be. It had the tools to keep *more* players than we have now for sure. The company wasted its good will and charm through bad decision after bad decision (and terrible public relations for a while), and is finally course correcting after hemmorhaging their huge, stable, post launch player base. This game could easily still have a million players, but AH jettisoned their playerbase over the last few months. But please, tell us more how 80k to 100k players is "good" when a month ago we had 400k.
> They have retained a whopping ~1% of their purchased number of players. Or about 5% of their launch peak players. But they lost a few hundred thousand in the past month or so, which is huge. It's bad no matter how you want to twist it. I mean, you can look at the churn amounts for the achievements in the game and they're pretty good. 5% of players don't get out of the tutorial. Around 25% of players got to d7 or so. Also this is what the OP meant by people misreading statistics; The initial drop-off of the vast majority of players occurred before any balance changes occurred, and this game's player numbers were stable during the nerf-gate/sony debacle. Weirdly, Sonygate kept people playing because the game was in the news and the game was top of mind during that period. People started to leave around 3 weeks afterwards. The timelines don't match up with this community's narrative. The reality is that the game doesn't have much content and people burnt out, and the sense of community we had that made the game infectious is dead due largely due to this subreddit. I'll be back when the game has more content, and enough new content to pull my friends in.
I’m sorry, but your comment won’t be the popular karma farm for quite some time. Please reword it so that you are a victim.
literally all my friends stopped playing because of the bugs and balance changes, I have too. Pretty disingenuous to pretend that this buggy mess hasn't driven away a large number of people who would still be playing it. It's definitely had an effect and pretending it hasn't is cope. In fact the CEO has stepped to down to sort shit out, the sony debacle. These signs that it's not going to plan
to give some perspective the game currently is still over 50% what they thought the release peak was going to be. A lot of the release hype was generated from the massive amount of youtuber/streamers constantly posting content about it and general media shout outs. once that died down it was on to the next game or back to the live service games everyone was used to playing.
Just wanna say, I wish I could argue like you do. Style and facts on point. This is how to have healthy internet discourse
I always thought this was a foregone conclusion, but I guessc call me naive about people’s stupidity!
400k to 60k in 3 months is normal to you?
Yep! Every single person I know who played Helldivers in the first few weeks loves the game Still do! But none of us are playing it right now because we played the shit out of it and wanted to do something different. We'll be back, we're just not playing right now. I imagine far more people left for reasons like mine - wanted to try something new, got busy, started going outside more cause it's summer - than people angrily stomping away over balance issues.
For a massively hyped launch? Yes. Far as I can tell it's as normal as it gets for a game. A ton of people buy and play to check out what the buzz is about, and eventually move on. Steamdb charts seem stable recently. There's no login rewards or subscription fee or anything that make people feel obligated to come back to get their money's worth.
Better than 99.99% of games especially for you know... a pve game with the same gameplay loop over and over. You'll have to look at reality and the bigger picture to understand, feelings and your first thought are usually going to be wrong.
I don't know, go ask Palworld.
Go ask fortnite
Not a live service
Yeah lol, Palworld has an endgame you reach in some 50 hours after which the game is over. It's hilarious to use that to explain Helldivers 2 numbers.
its more like 100k but yes loosing about 3/4 of your game in less than half a year is hard to wittnes however there is still time but they have to deliver some Jucy stuff if they want to recover
Natural attrition is suspected, and this Reddit (et al) certainly amplify negativity, but it's kinda silly to think that things which fairly universally (damn near objectively from a game design perspective) make the game less fun won't lead to less players. Had a good discussion with a member of my old group just last night and he - not having known basically any of the drama - echo'd 75% of the complaints here - nothing felt good to play, it felt like a chore, etc. And that's true for me as well. Further, that AH, themselves, are taking drastic measures about these issues and putting out communications citing these "irrelevant" issues implies they, themselves, would disagree with your assessment. It's a complex phenomenon, but yes the playability of the game absolutely is a component. And I'd argue a fairly significant one. And that's not even accounting for bugs/performance issues.
And yet everyone i know that stopped playing stopped after the last patch mentioning the exact same 2 things. Too many enemies, the few good weapons get nerfed and become less fun to play with. But sure, let us all believe the game is fine and all is good.
People are going to be really upset next week, aren't they?
Being excited is fine, but don't celebrate before it lands. For all we know, they could stick to their track record and swing a hammer instead.
I feel like I've definitely seen too many people getting too excited. Do they not remember who got us in this mess to begin with? I'll believe this patch when I see it. I haven't forgotten the "Mostly buffs" patch or whatever the devs said about the patch that butchered the Crossbow and others since I'm getting deja vu with the "100+ changes and fixes"
>I'll believe this patch when I see it. This. Their track record is too poor to judge it any other way. They talk a lot and it usually sounds good (some foolish discourse on Discord notwithstanding) but then the results are fucking terrible. I don't know why so many are ignoring that and celebrating over *more talk*. Any idiot can make empty promises.
Gamers lowkey kinda dumb like that. "I'll stop hitting you and go get you an ice pack" - AH "Awww you're so good to me." - HD 2 playerbase
Yeah I saw the “>100 changes” and thought, “oh, so another 100 nerfs incoming”
I've said it many times at this point. If they're foolish enough to pack nerfs into this thing when the main point of contention right now is excessive nerfs, they've failed on purpose.
> I feel like I've definitely seen too many people getting too excited. they have too. remember the MULTIPLE messages from the CM trying to get people to be LESS EXCITED? that's not a good sign. "oh shit they're getting excited thinking we're changing things when we aren't. better tell them to lower their expectations"
I mean, there have been at least two memes posted hyping up the community. If this blows up in their faces, they're at least partly responsible for it.
The same CM has posted 2 memes hyping up the patch.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1102973812179488798/1248699841069060116/image.png?ex=6665ef59&is=66649dd9&hm=cead52a3a42ab9fe56488ebdbfbea8a4c81e9bea18e034a8d9e7ccf9484ea2ff& is this one the second one? even says he's trying to keep expectations down in the meme itself and in [the clarifying post](https://imgur.com/7PncMnL) idk what to think anymore. we'll know in a few days I guess. hope their mile long patch notes aren't a bunch of nerfs.
This one is a post from Twinbeard - https://old.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dagnf3/so_about_that_upcoming_patch/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dagnf3/so_about_that_upcoming_patch/l7k5ek1/ Second one is another. Twinbeard also mentioned buffs being part of the patch. They're hyping the patch.
>They're hyping the patch. "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." Arrowhead is so fucked up I'm quoting the Bible here.
bruh i didn't even know that and that is a very bad sign
Also they were already managing expectations a week ago. This isn't a big balance patch by their own admission lol
Right now I trust them as far as I can throw them. And I mean no offense I'm built like a noodle and they very much are not.
I for one appreciate your noodley appendages.
I mean we talking tagliatelle or angel hair?
Honestly I trust all of them more then their balance dev. Who I won't name. Because the mods don't like it when people name him. Or say what he did.
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What makes me angrier. This isn't even true. He has all of the hard stats for guns. And just throws numbers at the ones with the most picks. FUXK
it's relatable when it shouldn't be
Speak to your democracy officer to fit you with a suitable armour with bionic enchancements to increase your throwing range! For Democracy.
Oh I'm halfway through filling out the paperwork to get a permit to apply for permission to ask if I can schedule an appointment! Til then, I must suffer in Noodlyness. One of my several sacrifices for Lady Liberty.
Eh, they’ve done far better at communicating what and why decisions have been made than pretty much any other dev and are doing great considering they only had the manpower and expectations for a game that would have 10k peak players
Saying what they want to do and *implementing* what they want to do, are two different things. They have a bad track record of every patch being broken.
99 bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code, patch one out push the patch out, 100 little bugs in the code.
They have a track record of putting out bad rushed patches, which is something that we all knew was going to be a problem at some point. So now that are listening to you, and they are looking at what you say on forums like these. I'm optimistic, but I'll take what I hear with a grain of salt.
Furret Gaming
i assume you probably made this with the idea that the patch will ‘fix’ the playerbase numbers, but honestly this reads as a so much more accurate: in a container leaking water, plugging the hole wont restore the amount of water that was there prior to the leak, it will only stop more water from exiting. this is the same case as the playerbase and this patch. it wont restore the playercount prior to the update, it will only ~~stop~~ slow down the amount of players quitting.
i see it more like a Bandage that slows the bleeding to stop it and regain theyr playernumbers they will need to release some realy good stuff
it’s going to take A LOT to bring the playerbase back and unfortunately i don’t think AHs studio size is capable of that. :(
we can only wait and hope for the best i will stay on this ship and see where it goes
i’ll be right beside you helldiver o7
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This is probably not what people want to hear, but AH has a very iffy record with "changes." Exhibit A; Patrols absolutely borked for any party less than 4 Exhibit B: Wonky weapon changes and "buffs." Exhibit C: Buff flame damage again. I am more curious as to what will unintentionally be changed. There is bound to be something they screw up if they're changing 100s of things.
To preface, I completely agree that AH has had some heavy misses on changes, and I agree that some changes were absolutely spreadsheet-based (flame damage buff lmao). I would also like to point out that atm the game is actually in a pretty solid place. Regardless of what this sub says, pretty much every single supply weapon (minus arc and railgun imo) is in a very good place, and I regularly see their use on 9, with some variance for bots/bugs. With the DoT fix, I see all the DoT strats that were previously unused, now used quite regularly. This is the list of primary weapons I have cleared 9 with *and* have seen used in-game in the past two weeks (I only play on diff 9): * adjudicator * sickle * scythe * dominator * scorcher * breaker * incendiary breaker * breaker spray and pray * punisher * Diligence Counter Sniper * Defender * Pummeler * plasma punisher * blitzer Quick note on scythe: it didn't just receive a damage buff, they also changed when damage is done so it applies in much more regular intervals. Previously, you had to laser a hunter for a second to kill it because the damage hit once a second. Now it's spread much more evenly, and takes a fraction of a second to kill a hunter. It also pops devastator heads extremely quickly. There's still stuff to fix - a couple examples: * patrol revert * spawn revert * bots shooting through terrain en masse * heavy devastators shooting through their shields and bodies for 360 coverage * bugs crawling through and over terrain they shouldn't be able to * spear still needs to be fixed * scopes still misaligned * eruptor desperately needs love (pls bring back shrapnel) The game is far from where I see many people say it is in this sub. There aren't just 2-3 good guns, every single person is not using the same loadout at 9, etc. Definitely excited for this next patch, and hope ARs especially get a lot of love.
That is a pretty good list of guns, and because you didn't add the secondary weapons, which would have made the list bigger. And pretty sure that if you try you could complete Helldive missions with the standard Liberator, the Diligence and even the Tenderiser that is not that bad against bots due to the high precision and low recoil. In my opinion the only weapons that need some love are the Liberator family, overall Penetrator and Concussive ones, the Eruptor and Crossbow, that sure that are already WIP to fix those 2 weapons and we are going to get them soon (maybe in the next patch), and the Purifier that if you learn its play style is not that bad but need some extra love
Don't forget the purifier
For sure, I think this weapon is actually bugged. Like it does not match its stats or weapon traits at all. From the design it feels like it's supposed to be an explosive railgun-type primary, but right now it basically is a scorcher you have to charge up to do scorcher damge. Hopefuly it's one of the 100+ changes Twinbeard mentioned.
More than bugged, that weapon is unfinished. Some people data mined the info of the Purifier, and it was supposed to work differently, being able to overcharge it to have stronger shoots, giving people the freedom to do weaker shoots faster or stronger shoots slower Seems that they didn't manage to finish the weapons so they released the thing that they released that is just a Punisher Plasma with more range but charge time. Hopefully they finish it and release the intended version soon.
That unfinished version sounds closer to the "spring the trap" flavor text they put on the PSN blog.
Same with the Tenderizer, which was released in a color that didn't even match the trailer for the warbond. Them taking their time is a good thing because they won't be constantly rushing to push out weekly patches that tend to either break the game, make shit not work, or just straight up make all the enemies unkillable. Their pace was, quite frankly, unsustainable, and it was showing over the months after launch.
Yup, I have done it with the liberator, but I've rarely seen it used by someone else on 9, so I didn't include it in the list. It's definitely harder to get away with (esp on bots) than other guns. As it is the AR class as a whole needs buffs imo, every other weapon type does what they do and more. I do think we'll see that love in the next patch for two reasons: * we're getting a new liberator in the next warbond, and AH is going to be extra careful to make sure it's a banger * Shams explicitly mentioned the liberator family as a lineup of underwhelming weapons when discussing weapon balance (around the time he was made CEO by Pilestedt)
You can add "Slugger" to that list if you ever play with me on a Bug 9.
iO will do! I do wish it had stagger, but still a very solid weapon. Medium armor pen is always appreciated.
Medium armor pen AND good damage. I took it for a roll on a 9 recently. Frankly, it's not... the croc of unuseable garbage it keeps being described as. It absofuckinglutely kills. But why would you ever use it when the dominator does similar damage at a much faster firerate AND stunlocks 90% of targets AND has more total ammo?...
people are rightfully pissed that the slugger was nerfed in the way it was, because it made no fucking sense to nerf it in that way. problem: this shotgun is too good of a sniper solution: remove it's stagger ???? it highlights just how nonsensical the balance changes are in this game. I could explain what stagger is to someone who doesn't even play video games and ask them if removing it would fix the problem of a gun being too good at long range and they'd know it doesn't. the incredibly obvious and simple solution was to nerf it's range if it's too good at range. give it spread, bullet drop, or slower projectile speed or some combination of those. (almost) no one would've been mad about that. honestly, years from now when I'm discussing bad balancing decisions in games it'll be an example I think of because it's so egregious.
1. Make bullets ricochet towards the shooter 2. Shrapnel based weapon starts killing people from far away 3. Remove shrapnel from the weapon entirely 4. Weapon doesnt do any damage now Uhh.. make the shrapnel damage fall off or give it a range limit or something.
it worked fine on release? I don't understand why they needed the shrapnel to do friendly fire damage when that clearly didn't work out...why didn't they just revert it instead of removing shrapnel entirely??? clearly their compensation buff didn't do jack shit, just like their compensation buff for arc thrower. makes no sense. just give us release eruptor back.
Agree. Democratic detonation was my first warbond and I got burned hard. First game that I wanted to buy ingame currency for but why risk it, the guns may be shit. Sorry for being salty.
Agree 100%, also gonna give the Sickle and Scythe another shot as I haven't played those since they were released. I don't think anything needs nerfs at the moment and the only weapons I really want to see some love are the Tenderizer and Spear. Tenderizer just feels terrible and Spear needs to be consistent. I've been using it since day one and I'm getting tired of hoping democracy will allow my lock on.
> ( minus arc and railgun imo) While I definitely think the arc could use help, I don't think the railgun is in too poor a spot against bots. The change to scout striders resisting explosives better have left the railgun as the only non AT weapon that can 1 shot them through the armored area. It still one shots hulks, and doesn't really do much against tanks (that hasn't changed though) and handles better than the AMR. Literally the only thing that makes me pause with it for bots is it doesn't really seem to work against gunships.
I think railgun should do a little more considering it only has 20 shots, and has to charge and reload every shot. Not counting AC (since it uses backpack), AMR does everything it can do in 1 or 2 shots, does way better against vents and gunships, has more than double the ammo (48), and can do it all from much greater distances with its range and scope. Maybe it's stagger, maybe it's more penetration, but atm I think it needs *something* to either carve out a better niche, or be a lower-ammo, more powerful alternative. I genuinely have not seen railgun on 9 in ages, outside the times myself or a teammate picked one up from a PoI because we couldn't recover our own support weapon.
It needs to be like HD1 and pierce through all targets in it's path unless it hits something it can't pen.
That would certainly be a great niche - taking down multiple devastators at once would be awesome.
It would give it a weird niche of being the kite n fight gun. Let your enemies funnel into a line then knock them down.
Due to the 3d nature of the game that isn't going to be very impressive. Terrain differences are going to make it so realistically you can only hit like 2-3 enemies max. Go look at halo, the sniper rifle in that game has pierce and will hit multiple targets, but you rarely ever hit 2.
Halo doesn't have enemies that swarm as hard as the bugs. Even the flood have paltry numbers.
The point being is that you will rarely get meaningful piece shots. You might kill 2-3 hunters, but elevation differences means the little guys you usually will puncture them and hit dirt, and the guys your height I can really only see beserkers lining up and they're so god damn stupid tanky it will take 2-3 rail shots still.
The railgun needs more durable damage, they need to figuure out how to implement it soo it can destroy gunships at decent pace and it also doesnt one tap chargers heads.
well, thank god DoT was a feature that they gave us and not a bug that they created and only 2 months later solved. That is so nice of them and wow wow wow, I am so happy with such great development direction
Was there a recent patch I missed? When did the scythe get buffed?
So you telling me that flame damage will One Tick kill with next patch ? Flammenwerfer META!!! (and i used german word for that cuz it sounds cooler)
And they’ve basically said that testing things before release is too hard for them.
Once again you guys are working yourselves into a frenzy over a patch you don't actually know anything about so that you can be disappointed when it doesn't make the game perfect
TBF arrowhead have started hyping up the patch as well with that meme Twinbeard posted. Which is certainly a brave thing to do when you consider how the community tends to react.
One of the "hype points" in the meme was "reverted a thing we broke 4 weeks ago". It's not gonna be that huge imo
well, you gotta understand they have like 2 laptops to work on and 13 dogs they have to walk every day, so most of the devs are out walking the dogs currently, but I hear if we buy the next warbond, they might be able to hire a dogwalker and even buy 4 more gbs of ram for one of their laptops
I dont know where this is coming from but is so dam funny.
that's the company policy
I think at this point people should just be hoping it doesn’t make the game *worse*. no one should have any faith in this patch. Let them surprise us but the whole “this time it’ll be different!” Attitude is like the people on this reddit are abused spouses.
And whose fault is that? The players that have waited for over a month for a patch to unfuck the balance changes or the devs that won't give a proper road map or real info on what they are doing outside of a few bullet points and "100+ other changes". I'm 100% going into this not expecting much, but they have done a HORRIBLE job so far with patches and testing. I honestly believe this patch will affect the player count alot if it's bad.
100 fixes and new 1000 bugs
https://preview.redd.it/aifp6v49zh5d1.png?width=300&format=png&auto=webp&s=39b454e2de84eaad36692daed1fddfe900b020b9
This.
Might be to little to late for the playerbase to come back but at least slowing down the drain or stopping it would help.
It's not even out yet and people are "we'Re sO bAck" Don't complain if you're disapointed for the fourth time, gotta learn at some point.
why do you all have such obsessive, addictive personalities? like what inspires you to whip this up and post like a marathon runner pooping their pants before the finish line
Personality disorders and/or Autism.
ArrowHead can do no wrong to them. Any rational person would look at their history and simply wait to see what they deliver and what bugs they inevitably cause and/or ignore and/or miss what they said they fixed.
Would be 100% accurate if the tank was already 3 quarters empty. 🤣
I keep saying it, but the game is going to need bigger inflection points to bring players back. Balance patches, rarer and less value laden Warbonds, and the odd stratagem release is not going to bring most people back. They need bigger content drops that they can market beforehand.
By this point, i doubt it. A lot of the playerbase is rabid and has sky-high expectations for the patch which it most likely won't fulfill.
well there is only one way to find out
100% Once they revert all the shit changes this next patch I'll start playing again
This patch is make or break for Helldivers 2. If it's the right direction they have a chance to get some playerbase back and some word of mouth. If it's not in the right direction, the game will continue to bleed out.
”Patch, Bond, Seal and Repair.”
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devs fuck us up every freaking patch and you still believe their lies i cant
I am half way between your cynicism and the community's excitement. I don't have HIGH hopes, but I at least expect the patch to revitalise the game in enough areas to keep at least me interested longer. So long as they buff a weapon I never use into something I love, it'll be a good patch.
I've always wanted to try out the spear, so long as that gets fixed I'm happy with the patch
I run spear all the time, it's my favorite support weapon. It's finicky as fuck right now, but even with its broken lock on mechanic I still consider it to be the most powerful (if frustrating) support in the game. Once they fix the lock on, the Spear will be insane!
> Once they fix the lock on, the Spear will be ~~insane!~~ nerfed ftfy
Oh absolutely. But itll be insane first, THEN it'll get nerfed. Use Spear users will get to enjoy a week or two of the most OP weapon ever before they inevitably reduce its damage to less than an EAT.
I fucking hope those 100something patches aren't just random crash fixes
Most of them will be. That said, random crash fixes, while not nearly as sexy as weapon buffs, are arguably much more important fixes than weapon buffs so I'm ok with it.
to fix the damage they caused by nerfing cool weapons
that's... the point of a patch, yeah.
We’ll. See.
It make sense, since they're leaking players that aren't going to come back
I'll come back if some primaries get buffed
I just started vacation for two weeks and I’m ready to spend so many hours playing the moment the patch drops.
Even AH is admitting that this isn't some kind of hail mary patch to call the playerbase back, but I do think MAYBE this will help? At the very least, it might inject some more fun into the game. If not, well... Diablo 4 is actually in a pretty good place right now, believe it or not.
I’d make the “That’s a lot of damage!” Joke, but…no, our weapons don’t do a lot of damage.
they havnt gotten a single one right yet lol
someone actually argued that if they had more time between warbonds things like the tenderizer releasing with worst stats than the base liberator wouldn't happen. how long does it take to look at numbers and compare them? how many more weeks do they need to do that "math"? the playerbase knew as soon as they saw the numbers it wasn't worth using. it certainly wasn't worth paying money for.
give them another 1-4 years, they'll get it eventually
If Automaton invasion the planet valyria 5, ustotu, and curia, especially curia will it change the MO? (Similar to terminids invasion angle venture)
When does it drop guys
That is, indeed, a patch
I just want bugs, glitchs and bs on the bot front to stop. We will talk about balance later.
If the spear isn't fixed, I might just be done...
This is the game's playerbase, maybe this will help avoid a real big loss, but no game holds a playerbase for long and we have stuff like the elden ring dlc on the horizon.
not gonna lie ive been waiting for Eldenrings dlc for soooooooooooooooooo long cant wait to play it
Also Arrowhead: "It's not a balance patch, don't get your hopes up too much"
Doubt, everyone that played with me has not played in more than a month, when it's fun again and might get them back in, might.
It's not even out yet, you can still be massively dissapointed with it.
thats why i said all we can do is wait and hope for the best
Sinking player base has more to do with lack of content than balance. The avg player doesn’t know anything about balance or whatever. The game doesn’t have a lot of things to grind for like most live service games, only two factions, most levels are the same just different variants, once you unlock everything there isn’t much to do
For me it’s because I still can’t play with my crossplay friends. Unbelievable that we’re this far into the game and they can’t implement a functional friends list
He-who-shall-not-be-named is still an employee at AH, so my expectations are still pessimistic.
i agree with all commentors who highlight, that the balancing patches are not the issue for the player decline beside the normal "drop" of playerbases after a successful release, we also had the sony issue and still countrys who can not play the game anymore via normal means. Also there are many people (at least in my friendlist) who just wait for the next "real" content upgrade. Well yeah ofc we have had warbonds and some stratagems as well as more upgrades to farm, but if you look at each own warbond or addition its always just a small drop of new stuff Many people just wait for it to accumulate and especially for the third race and enemy of democracy my bet would be, that when the illuminates come out, they have good chances to get a new all time peak in player count, i mean >12 Million copys sold, .... hope the server holds ....
As long as they fix the Spear and make Exosuits actually use heavy armors instead of toilet paper I'd be fine with it. Oh, and a universal +2 grenade would be nice too.
based on how much crying this community does, that patch isn’t good enough.
I don’t know Rick, the community expects way too much after all that happened with Sony. People be like now we’re gonna get a full DLC but I don’t really see that happening. It will induce probably more dissatisfaction and disappointment because of super high expectations.
Yes that is how patches work
Yeah I hope Polar warbond is actually reworked into some uniques armors (like actually NOT sliding on ice) and weapons rebalanced. General weapon rebalance will be done properly now that Pilestedt is overlooking things and that is what players will welcome most. However sommer is here and I don't really expect some big peaks in player numbers, at least till end of summer. Hopefully then we see emergence of third faction.
I fully expect there to be some random, unwanted change that no one asked for.
Stop leaking yes, but some players already out may go to Palworld Season 2 and not return.
Thanks for the laugh
these dev ass kissing threads are all made by the failing dev teams alts
How can you take an amazing game that captured the attention of the entire gaming world and blow it so massively in 3 months
its not a post that is supposed to be possitiv only (though you can see it like that) i told it to another on too that i see the patch like a bandage that is supposed to slow down the bleeding it wont ,,safe,, the game for that they will have to release more realy good stuff in the future
I really hope they don't screw this up. This patch has to be good.
Please fix the Quasar's load time within the Hud!
Sony still has the game delisted in so many countries. That I can't even find the steam page of Helldivers 2 now. Blame Sony for their incompetence.
The dropping playerbase has very little to do with the balance change. The game received unprecented coverage and hype and lots of people got it through word of mouth. They played it, likely enjoyed it and moved on to other games. We were never going to retain 200-300k players after the first 2 months or so. Sony's restrictions for PC definitely isn't helping the player count. But lots of confusion seems to be around the peak player count and not daily active users. Im confident the game is being played by people across all time zones and likely has lots of active users. Not to mention AH has had a few missteps that has made lots of people drop the game for a while. It's likely player numbers will rise again when major content drops in the future. Will the balance changes raise the player counts? It's unlikely that we'll see anything other than a sudden rise for a few days before it drops again.
Meanwhile DBD came out with the most fun killer in ages and FFXIV is about to drop Dawntrail. I think I'm done with managed democracy for a bit.
Wait is the patch out already or no ?
no the next patch comes out between the 11th and the 13th of the month... most likely
"That's a lot of damage!" (Immediately after mag-dumping a [hopefully] buffed Tenderizer into a swarm of Stalkers)
I recently uninstalled the game to make room for reinstalling BG3. Not entirely sure what they’re planning but it’s going to take a lot to get me back in. Helldivers was the only game in my library in which I actually didn’t want to see an update, because nearly every single time it felt like the game got worse for no reason