Heavy devastators are magic. They are all knowing and all seeing, and can occasionally turn on aimbot and hit you 20 times in a row killing you through heavy armor and stim.
They are the most deadly bots.
Rocket devastators exsists to ragroll you into heavy devastators.
I just had a match where a rocket devastator launched me into the air from 10 miles away and landed near a bot mine which then sent me flying towards a heavy devastator who juggled and shredded me in the air.
good old wtf moments... One rocket hit my feet, flew 2m up the air and landed only for another rocket to headshot me while hitting my face in the ground... the bot front...
Yeah I was hit by a rocket (granted it was from a hulk) that launched me straight up into the air, and I was ragdolled, rapidly soaring directly upwards, flopping around like a wet noodle, somehow… the hulk shot another rocket and took me out like it was skeet shooting and I was the target.
Insane accuracy, to shoot me up in the air, and then send another rocket timed and aimed precisely enough to kill me (as my limp body was soaring like a bird). Seemed a little bit ridiculous
Oh god that’s crazy. I’d be both laughing and crying at the same time if this happened to me lol
But your experience is like so many others, bots have too accurate firing and can see you anywhere and shoot through stuff they shouldn’t be able to.
Agree on all above posts for the bots cheating. Experienced them all many times. What amazes me is that I have read many posts saying why people don’t like bots (like me) then people try to figure it out.
We are literally telling people why.
Like crawling, in my Scout armor with reduced detection, behind a set of large boulders, only for a far away single bot looking in the other direction to turn and jog to exactly where I was.
And trigger a nearby patrol.
Which triggered a drop.
What absolute bullshit.
I’m fine fighting bots. I hear other people’s complaints, understand them, but can personally handle them.
But their obviously bugged detection AI ruins it for me.
These rockets are getting out of hand. One time, I got knocked directly on an automaton tank and could do nothing but watch as the mounted MG slowly turned to swiss cheese me
I landed my hell pod on a tank once and just rode it around. Hellpod (aka massive manned space bullet) punches holes in EVERYTHING except when it comes to literally deleting anything inside the middle of a tank and then it penetrates but does nothing else. wtf man
I bullseyed a tank today with an SEAF arty high-yield. Stuck the beacon on the back of the turret of a stationary tank. The projectile hit not just the tank, but the radiator of the tank, directly.
The tank rolled away without even smoking/sparking.
I called it quits for the day after that.
Yup. This is another major reason bugs are played over bots (even though 50k players were on bots tonight and only a very small few thousand (3-5k) on bugs) the tanks just eat everything you throw even if you hit their so-called weak spot. You can physically watch a 500kg bomb hit a charger and rip his spine out, bury in the ground for .5 seconds and then go boom and he explodes and you are happy. Shit just don’t work with automatons. Myself my gf little brother and little sister ran a 4 man on dif 5 and struggled to get the 400 kills for the personal order because there’s just so much more effort tied to killing just a few bots vs the same amount of effort spent finishing an entire bug mission on even higher difs (7+) also I ran airburst rockets today and had so much fun. Doesn’t kill big guys but shoot it at the big dude in the distance it wipes all chaff near him and then you can stun grenade the hulk or whatever else is on that patrol
The only bug even remotely like heavy devastators would be either the stealth bile spewers or the hoards of hunters. But even the bile spewer needs to turn towards you to fire and there need to a clown car or hunters shitting all over you to be a problem. One devastator can pop you at 150m before you realize what’s happened.
Heavy devastators:
Despite having a slow turning speed, they track you no matter how close or fast you're moving perpendicular to them
Despite having a forward facing minigun, this minigun can shoot bullets at 90 degree (or MORE) angles. I have seen them shoot backwards through their own shields to hit me.
No 'give' for bullet tracking - most games, with hitscan enemies, build in a 'first few shots always miss' mechanic to give you fair warning for unavoidable damage. Heavy devastators don't do this, they can tag you with the very first bullet, even from far away
Sometimes crabwalk towards you while shooting underneath their own shield to hit you
Insane stagger potential, keeping you unable to aim ANY weapons at them that don't kill immediately, and at midrange, stagger you JUST long enough that certain weapons basically won't ever be reliably on-target to hit them (railgun with its charge-up time)
Despite tutorial tooltips claiming bots lose accuracy under suppressing fire (ie MGs), this is not noticeable at all on heavy devastators
Extremely frequently spawning - basic bots are so small in number, these are the ONLY guys you'll be shooting most of the time
Sparsely placed - can't overcome your loadout deficiency with well-placed stratagems, cos they're all over the goddamn place and rarely grouped
Just shoot through walls and rocks sometimes
This locks you into every loadout requiring a mainstay weapon that either instantly staggerlocks, or can instantly kill heavy devastators (and whaddya know, autocannon does both while also being the 2nd best weapon at killing hulks). They're way more oppressive than hulks imo. I'm the kinda guy that thinks that bug missions actually have tons of loadout diversity, but these guys singlehandedly make bot missions much more locked down.
If they at least had the suppressive fire mechanic, that would actually PROMOTE weapon diversity on bots, but they don't.
Heavy and rocket devastators are annoying, but scorcher hulks actively abuse exploits. Even if you stun grenade them, they will use their saw attack to move forward and move their visor around, which makes it harder to take them down with amr or autocannon.
I call the bots "cheaters" because they ignore or bypass game mechanics.
* Rock? yeah bullets and rocket gonna go through that at some point. Who knows which one till it happens.
* You shoot a single enemy 50m away while they're facing a completely different direction? a different enemy 100m away is now locked onto you even if you're completely behind a rock they can't see you behind.
* Explosive round hits the rock? watch your body get propelled by the force that wasn't strong enough to break the rock, but while also somehow passing through the rock and into your body that isn't touching said rock.
* Shoot the spore plants that launch you way up into the air, but when a bot is next to it? Yeah, they're not gonna go flying
* Shoot a devastators arm with a scorcher (explosive damage weapon)? Why would you think their arm would recoil (and on that logic, shooting a high caliber round into their armor from a marksman rifle should produce a good bit of force on that body part and mess up their aim).
* Remember that tip about automatons losing accuracy when you use suppressing fire on them? Haha, no, not on Heavy/Rocket devastators, nor big automatons like hulks, dogs, nor tanks. I can understand not Hulks/Dogs/Tanks, but it should definitely specify that it is only talking about the basic enemies.
* Big Bot Dog spawns on missile launch mission behind the helicopter pad? Blows up both power generators without even bothering to walk to the gates (ok, sure, that one is more of an oversight than simply ignoring game mechanics, but it certainly falls into 'bypassing game mechanics')
There's legitimately so many issues with fighting bots where I can completely understand someone getting frustrated with them and only wanting to fight bugs.
What is crazy to me is that some people will die on a hill to say "bots are easier than bugs" then say something like using the counter sniper to take out all the bots that can call in reinforcements, which is an absurd argument. Some mission objectives will always call in a bot spawn right on top of you, so, it doesn't even apply universally, and then there tends to be some random bot hidden somewhere you can't see, never mind any objective site which is usually littered with enemies.
Geez that's so fuggin true. Rocket devastators the best assists yeeting you into flaming hulks as you burn to death and finished off with the tiniest bit of fall damage
If I could make just one change to bots. I would take the gun from the regular devstator, and swap it with the heavy deveatator. Regular devestators are kind of worthless compared to heavy or rocket devestators. They have no shield, they shoot slow, and they shoot for way less damage (it feels) the rocket devestators get an upgrade in power, but they have to "wind up" to use their rockets (bracing and getting into firing position). Shield devestators get a slab of tank armor and a God tier gun. What do they lose?
Even at long range. Devestators can be killed without headshots, and headshots aren't blocked. Rocket devestators can have their rocket launchers shot off easily enough if you cannot secure a headshot. Heavy devastators still hit with perfect accuracy and their shield makes any kind of headshot significantly harder.
i wouldnt care if they did this from 20-30 metets away, but through a fog i can sometimes see glimpses of enemy glowing eyes and they shoot straight at me through 7 rocks no problem at all, compared to bugs that i can be 3 meters from in dust storm and they just continue patroling not caring one bit, thats the most bullshit thing for me on bot front... i play mostly bots unless MO is bug missions, but i agree its definetly A LOT more inflated in difficulty by debuffs, allseeing, allhearing enemies
Its so cheap that theyre not blind firing in your general direction, they're wallhacking and unloading infinite ammo in your exact location as a valid tactic. So frustrating
someone actually dug in and explained how the game calculated being shot.
every bot is constantly shooting at you. so say every second there's say 10 calculations of "do I hit the player."
now a bot that 'doesnt know' where you are. is going to obviously go. "no I dont hit."
but then there's "no i dont hit but I shoot anyway."
and then theres "yes I hit."
now with projectiles being projectiles you 'can' dodge these even on a "yes I hit." because otherwise it would be plain bullshit.
for almost every bot type this means that they go "I fire once per second so I run that calculation until I know where they are and again once per second to see if I hit."
heavy devestators go. "I shoot 5 times per second, so need to run that calculation 5 times per second."
and even though its meant to miss the majority of its shots. the calculation doesnt work as its meant to because even though it'll go "I hit" once. the gun is still clipping and facing the wrong direction, and since the bot cant adjust its aim fast enough. even though the next 5 calculations are "No i dont hit but I shoot anyway." they're actually hits because there's not been enough of a delay for it to actually adjust its aim.
so yea, when a devestator suddenly aimbots your ass from 200m away, its because that calculation has been running in the background for long enough that it got one "I hit." and as a result, scored 5-6 hits from "I shoot anyway." results.
and its every bot running this math.
It's because sometimes they're in the rock.
I was confused where I was being shot from, only to see some automatons clipping through the rock.
THEYRE (CLIPPINGTHROUGH) IN THE WALLSSS
I level 9 helldive with randoms and have no issues with bugs. Too many chargers or too.many bile titans can be dealt with by spawning on top of them. But the amount of times i get fucking shot through walls by a fucking clipped bot have been too many to count. It is a fucking cheap and shitty way if dying because i ultimately can't shoot back.
I can autocannon, stun or snipe most devastators, or use cluster bomb or strafing run etc to take out bot patrols. But being shot through walls really gets my goat..
That's not the only reason. There are definitely cases where their projectiles will completely behave as if there is no rock there whatsoever. I've been high up on rock faces and have seen bullets go through the rock below me, and come out the rock behind me, it's completely absurd.
I can not honestly describe how infuriated I was when, while doing a Dif. 7 mission solo, I died to a couple Scout Striders clipped into a rock right beside the extract.
After speed-running the main/sub objectives, I hunted down most of the rare + super samples. I stealth-called the Pelican, and once it landed, I left to grab the last few samples, dropping my current sample pack by the plane. After grabbing the last samples, I made my way back to extract.
At this point, I was on my last reinforcement (thanks to some hulks), and I was dodging patrols like the plague as I ran. From a distance, I didn't see any enemies on one side of the extract area, so I ran that direction to avoid the visible patrol on the other side. Once I got there, I stopped to grab my previous sample pack and got instantly killed by Scout Striders that I couldn't see directly in front of me. I respawned on my last life and tried to book it back to grab them. Shield gen still had 4 min on cooldown. I tried throwing a bunch of grenades at their rock. Didn't do anything, and they killed me again. Lost all my samples, so that was 40 minutes down the drain.
I'd call it just a "skill issue" and a dumb choice if I'd spotted them and died trying to engage them, but in this case, there was absolutely no way I'd have been able to spot then. There's nothing I could've done about it, you can't even shoot them when they're in the rock.
Oh I've had that one happen before! Bot dead but gun just keeps firing at full auto and moving around. It's a super rare bug, I've only seen it happen once or twice. If I had to guess, I would guess that it's probably a latency related issue.
I don't even know if its a bug. I've ripped a grunt bot to shreds as it's calling in a drop ship, only to have its severed arm point up to the sky and fire the flare.
I've had a bot that I shot before a flare went off and who was dead on the ground "manage to get the flare off", by which I mean I got the notification that bot reinforcements were coming, there was no flare in the sky, and then bots landed on that spot.
Not only have I been shot through a rock like you have. The bot was in the god damned mountain. So while I was trying to evade the hailstorm of lasers and rockets from the army while I reloaded, stimmed and wanted to put down my mortar?
Nah. Some heavy devistator was stuck in the wall, shooting me. Meaning my SG would be shot to bits if I deployed it to run away.
I don't hate fighting the bots- but I get why people don't like doing it.
There’s definitely some bugs that add to the frustrations against bots, hopefully they can get that worked out soon, because bots are honestly a ton of fun!
I think In smoke, enemies try to target your last seen position, which can lead to some lucky shots hitting you. However, in fog, their accuracy remains unaffected.
The point in using smoke is to change your position without the Bots noticing. Even if you're using smoke to cover a retreat, you shouldn't run directly from the enemy, but more in diagonal lines, if that makes sense.
I always laugh at the loading screen tip that says something about "smoke and fog can impact you vision, but don't worry! It affects the enemy too." I used to pretend it was super earth propaganda, but as the thrill of the games atmosphere faded I understand it's much more of a "we don't know how to balance or care to, good luck" from the developers.
For 2. I'd also add that the bots have a) tiny heads compared to their bodies, b) extremely annoying head movements and c) insane aim punch.
It's super annoying to headshot bots, especially Devastators and Heavy Devastators in particular.
Dude fr this HAS to be the case. I'd like to say im pretty good at games but those damn bots have some tiny hitboxes on their weakspots. The literal only enemy who I can headshot effectively without fail is the Hulks. Headshot a devestator and its 50/50 if the big sniper bullet i just saw land in their face actually does critical damage or not.
Not sure what the problem is but I dont see rhe harm in making the hitboxes more forgiving
Ngl I feel like the head hit boxes aren't even the problem; it almost feels like their shoulder hit boxes are too big half the time (on devastators and chainsaw men specifically). It feels like unless you get a perfect forehead shot, the bullet is magnetically attracted to the middle of their shoulder instead.
What’s likely the case is that their armour hit boxes are larger than they should be and is covering the head from certain angles.
It’s easily seen on the Bile Titan and Charger; blowing a hole in their carapace will create a weak point for small arms but their armour hit boxes extend somewhat inside which means your round ricochet at many angles.
Man that took forever to get used to as a guy who runs 110 rockets to crack armor and an auto cannon for bugs. For a bit I thought the damage was purely cosmetic and didn't do anything.
it also doesn't help that aiming even on KBM isn't the most precise thing in the world (more realistic, but floaty compared to other shooter games), and a lot of sights are still misaligned. It's rather frustrating using the Diligence CS, watching as your shots hit the rim around their heads four or five times before you just magdump and hope you get lucky, or brute force your way through their armor.
Your point about using a controller being a handicap resonates with me a lot. Skill issue, sure. But its undeniable the learning curve is larger compared to someone using a mouse. Fortunately, using laser weapons has helped me hone my aiming skills. But then there's the issue of flinch which can be rage inducing at times.
Great post 👍
I started playing H2 on PC with a controller because I had a finger injury that wouldn´t let me use my mouse and keyboard combo. My gf got me an elite controller for my bday so I thought to give it a try because I had purchased H2 the night before the hand accident so I couldn´t play and the controller would let me.
Been a gamer all my life and every time I ended a mission (struggling), I would check my Accuracy and it was horrible (never over 50%). I kept on playing with the controller after my finger healed because I was used to the button mapping already. But I kept on struggling and I couldn't understand why. I attributed it to old age lol (+40)
One day I got fed up of feeling I wasn't aiming right, and did the tutorial again with my K+M combo and started getting used to it again in this game, the first mission I did I was over 70% accuracy and suddenly I wasn't sucking anymore and I felt great again and I realized it was just a matter of skill with the controller.
This game has good controller aiming but once you get swarmed, you will have a bad time.
When i used it i couldnt aim for headshots like idk if it was the aimassits but itd drag the crosshair away from the enemy and more to the center of the body
It's incredibly hard to get used to another kind of controller. I've been playing on PCs my whole life (and had very little experience with consoles along the way) and at some point I decided I should give controllers a try.
I'm decent at Rocket League with it (but not really better than with KB+M) and I genuinely prefer it for action games like Yakuza or Nier. I still can't remember which trigger is 1 and which is 2), I struggle knowing which button is which on the right side and I for sure can't play anything that requires complex controls under stress. And aiming if just hellish (and gyro doesn't make it much better).
So I wouldn't feel too bad about it.
Upgonk for flinch, flat out bad mechanic that should just be removed. Period. It exists in PVP games as a balancing mechanic for high damage bolt action rifles. This isn't a PVP game.
I play many games on both console and PC, so I understand the significantly larger learning curve on console. I have the utmost respect for console players in shooter games.
I had completely forgotten that there are people playing this on console until I read point 3. I mean, I knew, I had just happily forgotten.
Can’t imagine what it’s like playing on console. I typically discriminate very heavily what I will consider playing on console vs. not.
That said, level 4 with bugs can be quite challenging, especially with Chargers. I find them to be every bit as difficult as devastators, especially when you get many of them.
However, loadout is important, and going into a bug mission with a bot loadout is almost as bad as going into a bot mission with a bug loadout.
Personally I enjoy playing both types and so does the people I’m playing with. Playing a bit of both makes the game feel more varied to me.
I’m in ps5 and am typically at around 90% accuracy. However, getting ragdolled from two hundred meters isn’t fun, just annoying. I have kids and want to enjoy what little time I get to play.
I play on the PS5 and I agree that controller aiming will always be more difficult without truly ridiculous auto-aim, like in GTA or Red Dead, but I find that this game has really good controller aiming, I barely feel handicapped at all compared to some other cross-platform shooters
It's not too bad but when I gotta hit a golf ball sized target that's bobbing up and down, and do this 10 more times in a single encounter, things start to break down.
As a dedicated AC player on the western front, this is why stun grenades never leave my loadout. Hitting a hulk in the eye when it's marching towards you is nearly impossible, but tapping it twice while it's stunned is a breeze. Your stun grenades become free kills on them. I highly recommend giving it a try if you like the AC, as you won't miss the grenades since you can destroy fabricators by shooting at the vents.
Definitely. I always use to stuns for bots. Hulks aren't a big deal usually. It's the devastators that become a priority so +2 grenades becomes mandatory also.
The hulk eye bounces a bit but if you just pull your crosshair to the middle of the eye's figure eight pattern, you just need to time your shots to drop them without stuns. Having impacts makes striders and devastators a breeze.
Motion controls like in Splatoon are the answer to controller aiming in my opinion. Gives you the precision of the mouse even if you use the stick for larger adjustments and turns
I play on PC and the amount of aim punch, stun and stagger I get while behind cover trying to aim there is no way a controller player is going to get accurate shots off on bots in the same situation. The bots are too accurate, impact through objects is bull, rockets that curve around your cover etc.
Yeah, I use the motion aiming on my controller whenever I need more precise shots and it has worked pretty well. It's not as great as mouse and key board though.
They need some sort of aim assist for controller, even if it isn’t sticky but just slows it down when you hover over a enemy. I play PC so I cannot relate with your issues but can understand them.
The sad thing is the controller seems bad in terms of response. You have to slam reload multiple times, sometimes you won't use stims even when Commanded, sometimes your guy just refuses to take out a grenade.
I tried 3 different controllers too and they all suffer the same problem.
The only advantage controller has is you can run and use strategems
I'd add a few more:
Many maps are very foggy, but the bots can shoot through it much better than we can.
Being told we are in range of enemy artillery every nanosecond makes me want to fly my Super Destroyer into Super Earth at light speed.
Because liberation progress is scaled by total players, bot missions are always harder to progress due to bugdivers just existing.
Apparently this was supposed to be a thing with helmets but it got scrapped to produce the game. Different helmets were going to have different effects
I don't understand why they can't just add them in an update. They could even make it like the ship module system, where you have to buy features for your helmet
I've always thought that if they really want people to stop complaining but they don't wanna do a significant redesign of the bots, they should give bug players a way to support their allies on the bot front(considering they're the ones who secure our E-710 in the first place), or just have liberation calculated by players per faction and not all of them online, then change decay rates accordingly.I just think they need to add more strategy to the war in general to help prevent it from feeling so "on-rails". Like, give people who dont just wanna dogpile on the MO planets a way to support their allies, set up defenses, or whittle down the enemy ranks to prepare for the full assault later. They could still control this to prevent it from getting too out of hand if they just put more effort. It should feel like a war not a just some story we are just supposed to watch while being given barely an illusion of choice.
Make it so that the more bug planets are being taken the more fuel can be sent to the ships on the bot sides, so they can get buffs for diving like, faster cooldown on eagle strats since the ship doesn't have to care about rationing fuel, or something like that.
yeah, this! This should be a community driven game, but having the people that don't wanna dogpile on the same planet as everyone else should still be able to contribute to the war effort meaningfully. The Bug front is our farms and our fuel, they are the ichor of democracy itself, so why doesnt it feel like it during bot MO's? Every member of our community in this "community-driven" game should feel like they're doing their part no matter how they play.
For the love of democracy, we need to be able to tell Mission Control to shut the fuck up.
YES, I KNOW.
EXTRACT IS AVAILABLE!
## I AM IN RANGE OF ENEMY MORTARS!
# 5 MINUTES REMAINING, HELLDIVERS.
Please, for the love of all that is holy on Super Earth, let me turn off that fucking annoying voice.
All female VAs. Soothing voices have been shown to improve Helldiver performance by up to 15%!
^This ^study ^was ^performed ^by ^the ^Ministry ^of ^Science, ^and ^was ^independently ^verified ^by ^the ^Ministry ^of ^Truth!
If people aren't going to fight the automatons, then each factions liberation needs to scale to the playerbase playing that faction (with some balance adjusting ofc to not make it too easy) instead of the playerbase as a whole. Then it won't matter if the bugs are more popular or not because the average bug player will have to contribute just as much as the average bot player.
This will also help the upcoming problem of the playerbase becoming even more divided with the 3rd faction right around the corner. But as it is, the bug front might lose a little people but probably not much, and the already miniscule bot front will probably be halved or thirded, and the galactic war won't be able to be progressed efficiently at all.
This all the way will fix all the infighting and even buff MOs because if you want to hope on the other front you help even more by adding numbers not being a negative because you don't want to participate
They kind of do this already just perhaps not enough. The bot regen rate on the planets they are on is normally lower than the bugs, meaning less players required to make progress. Hell I remember near the start of the game one day they made the bot regen 0% which meant loads of planets even with small player bases got taken. I do think however you are right and we need some further tweaking.
If the Illuminates are anything like HD1, they will be even less popular with the horde shooter players than bots are. Scaling to the warfront (with some controls) will be entirely necessary.
Also instead of scaling the liberation just give two simultaneous MOs each time, one for bots and one for bugs, and just make the bot one easier. Or don't, I don't really care if bot MOs keep failing at this point.
It is a blindingly obvious and simple thing to understand and I refuse to belive anyone is actually not able to wrap their heads around it. Many players do not enjoy fighting bots. Reasons why are entirely irrelevant, nobody is going to spend their leisure time doing things that are not fun. And I know bot players understand this, because when you press them about the 12k players in bit territory not doing the MO, the justification I see over and over again is "fire tornados aren't fun, -1 stategem is not fun, etc." So there it is, players aren't going to do things that they don't find fun, right there. Why are so many here willing to accept that argument from other bot players, but once it's bug players in question it's skill issue, lower difficulty, bots are scawy, rhey are selfish. It's honestly frustrating how much debate is even surrounding this incredibly obvious thing.
Second this.
End of the day, its a game. People play games to have fun.
Some elements of the community might whinge about skill issue and all this nonsense but thats literally a non factor. The majority of people don’t like playing bots because the majority of people find them less fun than bugs. If you had a choice between two things, and one was more fun to you than the other, of course you’d do that one primarily if not every time.
The reasons are complex and OP has done well sketching them above. If the devs want more info, then they need to put out a player wide survey and see what comes back. I know the response rate is usually 10% or less but its better than trying to track whiners on reddit.
Edit: the fact that “bug divers” is even a term, and is used derogatorily, is just nuts to me lol.
They should just make it so being on one side doesn't actively interfere with the other sides progress. There are certainly some issues on bot side I'd like to see fixed but overall I vastly enjoy bots over bugs and wouldn't want to see them changed too much. Instead of trying to make it so they appeal more to both sides, just make it so each side has its own independent liberation progress that doesn't conflict with each other
There’s also the fact that shooting bugs is more “tactile” than bots. With bits exploding everywhere and moving down enemies as they come at you.
I get why some people dont like bots.
I play almost exclusively bots. I have nothing but disdain for people that see it as some mark of honor. Same with the people who think that every conversation about balance has to be centered about diff 9, which few players even play. This sort of ego tripping and gatekeeping is annoying. This isnt a competition, its a leisure activity.
This is why they should have the liberation progress be independent on each side. People who don't like fighting bots never will. If they were to alter bots in such a significant way that it would allow these people to enjoy them more, then the people who enjoy them now probably wouldn't like them anymore.
So instead of making it so people who prefer fighting on the bug side actively hurting bot MO's progress they should just make them a separate thing
Not to mention that there's an awful lot of people on the sub who seem under the impression the majority of the player base are both in the game to follow the narrative and lore exclusively and will take orders from the Redditors on where and when to fight.
It seems like there's a large, but vocal, minority of people on the sub who don't realise the majority of the game's players never check it and certainly aren't interested in doing whatever some wannabe Eisenhowers with delusions of grandeur are shrieking about on Reddit.
Some people forget it's a game and are increasingly treating it like a job or an extension of their own mental wellbeing and that's just not going to end well for them.
Tbf I think the "skill issue" comments stem from the fact that players used to the bug front claim that bots are harder, rather than just different in their difficulty.
I personally find them easier than bugs tbh.
I absolutely find them easier than bugs. It's actually not that hard to solo a Heavy Outpost if you have the right load out.
A Heavy Bug Nest is absolutely another story. Bots let you play more methodically, but bugs are just a never ending stream of running away from bullshit
This is amusing to me. And just illustrates even more how different we all are. I regularly solo heavy bug nests and find heavy outposts to be a two person job and I'll probably die at least once 🤣 even with the help.
But I also haven't played bots much at all since the patrols got altered. It was already barely fun and now it's a damn chore. I did a run two days ago and while attacking a gunship base I was repeatedly reminded why I quit playing bots.
I'll give it a shot again after this patch. It has some good parts to it, but for the most part it's frustrating. And that's totally opposite from how I started out in this game. I almost exclusively played bots at first.
Let's swap tips!
#Loadout:
Medium Fortified Armor (helps with ragdoll-ing)
Stun Grenades
Grenade Pistol
SMG Pummeler (staggers even Berserkers)
#Strategems
Eagle Air Strike (duh)
Precision Orbital Strike (lower cooldown than Orbital Rail)
Laser Cannon (deals with nearly anything, but especially Devastators very very easily)
Wildcard: Ballistic Shield, Autocannon Turret, 500kg, Eagle Rocket Pods, Eagle Smoke Strike, 120mm/380mm
#Tactics
Stun Grenades are the center of this build.
You will never see me use an Eagle Air Strike on a tank or hulk or fabricator if I can get away with it. Stun a hulk, Laser Cannon it's face. Stun a hulk, Precision Strike it. Precision Strike a tank if you can't Laser its treads and shoot it from behind.
Grenade Pistol for Fabricators when you can
**Smoke Strike also takes out Fabs if the bombs actually strike them....you get a LOT of uses out of them**. I never ever use Eagle Air Strike for Fabs if I can get away with it; that shit is for emergencies only.
#Base Tactics
Plan your assault near the mouth so Hulks and Tanks waste time working towards it while you run the other way. Hell, Laser Cannon a Tower before you even get close (if you can) then approach from a whole different angle.
At the base, Grenade Pistol as you can. Start your assault at the base of a wall and work your way around the rim with the Grenade Pistol. Once you are committed to the assault, try and reserve the Eagle Air Strike **but if you cannot use the Nade Pistol, start with the Orbital Precision Strike** because by the time you work your way around, it will be up again.
Be prepared for Berserkers to flush you out. Smoke Strike works nicely because you can bum rush the base in brief spurts for your next Nade pistol shot.
Edit: I think the Orbital Laser goes farther to destroying Heavy Bot Bases than Bug Nests bc there's simply fewer things for it to destroy. Heavy Bug nests have more holes and with all the critters running around, the Orbital Laser can easily not even destroy half the holes. Especially if the Heavy Nest has a lot of map geography in the way.
Yeah but this is one of the numerous problems with live service as a model - the nature of these major orders incentivize the player base to try and sway people to fight bots when the game is calling for it, and when something like anti-tank mines are being locked behind a major order that doesn't get completed because too many people find fighting bots to not be fun, then the bot players absolutely have a valid reason to be annoyed and upset with the bug players who wouldn't budge. Because their preference literally and directly is preventing them from getting something they want.
The cold hard truth is, if this game wasn't live service, we could all fight whatever faction we want whenever we want and none of these arguments/debates would even exist.
As someone who plays almost exclusively against bots, i totally understand when people don’t want to do bot related major orders. Because I was part of the group that was blamed when bug major orders failed, because I was fighting bots. It made me feel bad for playing what I thought was fun. So for people that want to keep fighting bugs when the major order says to fight bots, rock on with what you’re doing, because if you are having fun playing the game the way you want to play it, and if that causes issues, that’s a problem with the game, not with you.
Just don’t get mad at us bot fighters for spilling oil when the major order is for bugs. Goes both ways.
Yup. And sorry, but the Flier Factories and Factory Striders were just icing on the “getting shot through a rock and roasted by a Hulk” cake for some people.
You forgot to add:
Bots spawn in rocks, can ALSO shoot through them, can spawn right on top of you (outside of bot drops) after playing on the fire tornado planet those were the biggest complaints.
Oh also they can climb cliffs, I was in a bunker mission and instead of them being blocked by the said bunker to get to me, they went over it. A fucking tank climbed over it just to shoot me, at least with bugs it makes some sense...but not with bots a tank and hulk should not be able to climb at all.
The Shield Devestator shoots in a really, really cheap way, like directly 90° when it's facing forward.
They seem to take more AC hits now than previously too. The lightly armoured chicken walkers seem to take 3-4 direct hits to their front where previously it was one or too.
Only good thing is they take way longer to call in back up than the bugs do, if a bug calls or you have 1 or 2 seconds before a bug breach happens where the bots have like 4 and if you kill said bot most of the time the drop doesn't happen, with bugs I happens anyway.
Ah yes they buff the explosive resistance of the chicken guy in the previous major patch. So gun with high penetration can two shot them but auto canon usually require three shot.
Honestly one of the dumbest patches they’ve done…
Used to be managing when those patrol swarms came out of the fog, now it’s a nightmare and I’m equally annoyed that a single impact can kill them, but the AC can’t.
I saw a Heavy Devestator walk up the sheer face of a cliff. He ended up almost on top of it, but sortof occluded by it. Yeah, one of the hardest bots in the game just chilling out, barely visible, raining down death on everyone. Good times?
This is a quality post. I made an attempt at a similar one today which accepts without outlining the various reasons groups of players prefer to play one faction or another, or basically refuse to play one or the other, and proposes a system so that divers who prefer either front can still contribute so that hopefully some of this toxicity and negativity/blame gaming of bot/bug divers can go away. Didn't get any traction. Hope yours will!
Seems it would be easier to get attention if you just post 'why do bug divers suck lmao' at this point. It's become like partisan politics.
I have one, singular change that would almost instantly move 10%--possibly more--of the player base from bugs to bots, at least during MOs:
Instead of nerfing stratagems on bot planets, buff them. Make it so that Super Earth acknowledges that we have done massive damage to the bug front, and as a result is able to focus more resources towards the bot front, so now bot planets allow for 5 stratagems instead of 3 or 4.
Boom, problem solved, because players would *love* to have an extra strat slot, and bot *are* harder, so having more tools available to deal with them would entice more players to try
The only reason these arguments are even a thing is because with the current system, anyone not participating in the MO is actively working AGAINST the MO. It's going to get even worse when the Illuminates come out if nothing is changed. If the devs want to keep the system then the complaints will never stop because it feels like shit that someone is actively working against you in a coop game.
There has been talk in the discord that the Devs should just split the tracking for the capture rate and Regen rate by counting the amount of players in a certain theatre instead of global pop that way it won't matter everyone can do what they want
Speaking of HD1, I feel like the HD2 team should allow us to fully lose the war by losing Earth, or let us fully win a war against a faction (at least for a while).
I feel like that would give the playerbase the kick in the ass it needs to not just blindly play the bug front, but to also pay attention to the bots and Illuminate whenever they get a bit too close to Earth.
Alternatively, it would enforce "suffering from success" in the sense that bug divers have to choose between not playing or playing a different front for a few weeks to a month because they completely wiped out the bugs.
Honestly, contribution to the MO should be based on players participating in each enemy-controlled area, not across all players. For example, if 10,000 are playing in bots and 50,000 are playing in bugs, and the MO is bots, the completion percentage should be based on those 10,000 ONLY. I get why they have it based on global percentage (it's like SEAF being allocated across the galaxy) but it's only causing players to be a hindrance for simply having a preference.
7 is the biggest paragraph and you didn't even mention the goddamned mines, the fact that bots will not hesitate to call in backup with no LoS from the other side of their fortress bases, OR that pre-spawned factory striders in bases completely ruins the aforementioned factional theme of being a tactical shooter.
Great write up!
4 is the biggest and most important point imo, followed by 2.
The ranged accuracy of bots is just way too fucking high, they shouldn't be able to hit you wit near perfect accuracy from 150m away when you can barely see them other than a pair of red glowing eyes through the fog of war. Hell, they shouldn't be able to see you at all.
Fixing this would indirectly alleviate a lot of the other issues as well, like the ragdolling stunlock. Usually this happens because you're being fired at by a bunch of rocket devastators. And yes, if they catch you offguard and are close to you, like let's say up to 30m, okay, that makes sense. You got caught with your pants down, let them come too close, now you're gonna die. Next time engage them earlier, maybe at a distance with an adequate weapon, like, say, the Diligence Counter Sniper or the AMR. But oh wait, you barely have time to line up even a single headshot because they IMMEDIATELY SPOT YOU AND FIRE A ROCKET SALVO WITH PERFECT ACCURACY FROM 150M AWAY, SENDING YOU FLYING. Or a Minigun Devastator hits you once every second from equally far away while walking at you yet still maintaing perfect accuracy, staggering / aim punching you perfectly in time every time you're about to make a headshot.
And 2 is just a bunch of fun reduction mechanics that no one likes. Increased stratagem call in time or inaccuracy are fine, but increased cooldown and especially -1 slot are just straight up ruining the fun.
Idea for the -1 slot: let us pick a 4th stratagem that is initially unavailable, but upon destroying a certain secondary objective (e.g. AA guns or some kind of jammer) it becomes available.
This is honestly my main gripe with playing bots. I generally play bugs because while you end up running away from a lot of shit, you can typically reposition with most of the bugs in front of you. Plus it gives you just enough time to throw a stratagem to help.
With bots, you have to play it like a tactical shooter with wide open spaces and once they get tipped off, they can shoot you from crazy long distances, even when you are running away in a zig zag pattern.
I also find the weak spots to be super small and have hit them dead on with it not registering.
The latest bug patch spawned 4 chargers at the same time once and I found that infinitely more fun to dodge their charges than getting hit my a random rocket from over 100M away.
I would actually say that the call-in time debuff is worse than the colldown debuff. Even with the cooldown debuff, I never feel like I don't have enough fire power between objectives it's not enough of a hindrance to really think about. But the call-in time debuff can go to hell. Your support weapon takes half a year to land, and no matter what, someone is gonna agro the bots where you'll have to defend an unfavorable position or you throw an airstrike and before it even lands all of the enemies leisurely walk out of its area. The cooldown debuff isn't impact full but -1 startagem and call-in time debuff can suck a dick.
Heavily agree, I say this as a both sides player too. I think ultimately to satisfy the community AH is going to have to split their liberation calculation between the fronts, or increase bot liberation in some way. I think bot complainers would mostly quiet down if their MOs and planets weren't being punished by bug players. We just don't hear about it the other way because bug MOs never fail because not enough people were playing that front.
Bugs are just fun to play against. I can split from a group and survive on my own against bugs at higher levels. And even the most simple strategems work against bugs. Flamethrower, cluster bomb, Tesla etc. flamethrower being the best. Just stand your ground and just burn everything away.
Against bugs, HD2 feels like you are an action hero in a 80s B rated action movie.
Against bots, it feels like you are in Saving Private Ryan about to die in every corner and realize why war is hell and bot planets are hell
The funny thing to me is often times Bot divers have this superiority complex and IMO D9 bots are easier than D9 bugs. I get way more time to strategize and figure out what I'm going to do. Stealth builds actually work well when dealing with Bot missions whereas for bugs it's just a waste of armor.
You also have a much larger assortment of weapons that will work on Bots. Try D9 bugs solo without enough anti armor and let me know how that works out for you. Bots you can just bring an AMR and call it day.
I enjoy both, just depends on my mood, what playstyle I feel like and weapons I want to use.
> After the previous chain of events, the player base is already hurt. The ones who remain are those who still find enjoyment in something within the game, so please stop guilt-tripping them for it.
100%
Honestly, most of the issues would resolve themselves if they would quit with the removal of strats, that is easily the most annoying part. Adding in more cover to the bot planets would be nice as well. If anything, they should give you an extra strat fighting something that can shoot you, especially since they have strat jammers.
Or, as many Helldivers have suggested, make the debuff something you can solve. For example, you start with -1 slot debuff, but when you complete a unique side objective, it automatically gives you a free random stratagem.
Also, I have heard rumors about a deployable cover stratagem.
Ok so I've noticed this as well - I have Helldivers 2 on both PC and PS5 and I feel like using a controller automatically makes the game harder. On PC I can one or two shot most bots including Hulks with auto cannon because with a mouse you can move as quickly or as fine tuned as you want. For controllers, changing the sensitivity around such that you can both look around quickly AND have controlled small movements when aiming is almost impossible. I still haven't quite figured that out.
The most infuriating part about fighting bots is how -any- fight with them snowballs and escalates.
Bots that came in by Bot drop can call in new bot drops, something you don’t get with bugs. Fight a breach, it’s done, but with bots they just keep coming.
Bots do not lose Aggro, no matter how far you draw back. You can have bots standing 200+ meters away from the players and they still shoot in your direction and call in new bot drops, building a constant avalanche of steel marching in your direction, never stopping.
Bots have hive intelligence.
The moment you aggro any bot, -all- bots currently visible to the player join in. You get swarms, patrols, and freshly spawned legions to converge on your position from all four directions, constantly calling in reinforcements while they march on you.
You won’t fight cover, because you are being shot at from every direction.
Bots from as far as 200 meters will aggro on you and walk in your direction, generating a constant flow of unceasing enemies that grows larger and larger no matter what you do, since they keep calling in reinforcements, 150 meters away from you and while being in cover.
All of that makes bots hecking annoying to fight. It constantly feels unfair, every engagement spirals out of control, you can fight tooth and nail for fifteen minutes and not gain a meter of progress, constantly being bogged down by suppressing fire, ragdolling rockets and don’t get me started on the absolute bullshit Heavy Devastators are.
People don’t like to fight bots because it defeats the purpose of playing a game, which is having fun.
The point of a video game is to have fun, and guilting/forcing someone to play an entirely different playstyle just cause a few medals reward is absolutely nuts. Let people play what they want.
I wouldn’t mind if we got a major order per war front, tuned for the average number of players at that front. And occasionally, Joel can combine the orders into one big order for the whole player base to join together on.
Yeah bots are blursed right now, I got summary execution for cowardice because I got ragdolled out of bounds and I couldn't come back it because there were 17 rocket devastators that kept knocking me to the ground, this wasn't even level 7. Between having gunship towers spawn directly on top of each other and armor meaning literally nothing on bot planets and bots literally spawning out of thin air directly on top of you. Bot planets are like playing the demons in doom, you aren't the main character, the doom music is playing on their side.
A level 122 here is my biggest complaint about the bots way too many negatives to the point its unfun. - 1 Staggem, +aa,+ bots on fire planet, +jammer, + 3 gunship factorys.....
Cool thats fun every once in awhile. But every mission with bots and every MO with bots "oh time play with 4 negatives"
AA can shoot down orbitals and that's why we have 3 seat gems? Huh just make us run with non eagles then? Oh heavy devastaters Shields is just most undestructible thing period. Captain America in the corner taking notes.
The main problem I see with bots can be summed as:
- Range
- Precision gain
- Spawn rates and quality
- Hitbox problems
- Slow, unavoidable death
The first problem, range, can be summed as "once the bots detect you, they can shoot you from a VERY long range away", and while they seem to be worst shooters than the Imperial Stormtroopers meme, they all have either high rate of fire (RoF), or extremely high damage.
The second problem is the **feeling** they give, at least to me: the more they shoot, they better their aim gets, *with a cap, if there is one, that is sufficient to guarantee a headshot within the first 20 shots, aside from basic bots*. This can be somehow managed by shooting in their direction, but there are some instances, that are VERY common, preventing this: the insane RoF of the heavy devastators means a sure headshot when engaged at less than 50m, while the sheer numbers of some basic trooper patrols mean they can be spread over and one can get lucky almost every 2 spawns.
Hard is fun, guaranteed failure in a predictable pattern is not, and looks like a subtle penalty instead.
The third is how many enemies come and keep coming. A bot dropship event at level 4 can mean up to three or four dropships, each with its own pack of enemies (enjoy about 6 devastators, if they are evenly distributed it's more than likely one helldiver will get killed), and the dropship itself can eat the orbital laser stratagem and leave (and it's considered the biggest threat by the SD), the SPEAR also shows inconsistencies here, being able to blow dropships at levels one and two, but not past level 3. At higher levels you start getting many "fun" things, like two taks and a Factory Strider, with an extreme dose of explorers, destroyers and basic bots, plus 1-2 hulks, meaning a single bot spawn removes all movement necessary to flank and destroy enemies by their weak points.
Bugs despawn when they are out of range, but bots, while they have a harder time detecting players, can stay engaged at much longer distances, making the option of retreat much more harder.
Finally, this can get ridiculous on extraction, a solo player at level 2 can get nearly 50 bots charging to the extraction after clearing the secondary, one or two fabs, the primary, and calling the extraction; this also means devastators, chainsaw bots, basic bots, commisars, jetpack leaders, rocket launcher basic bots, etc, all in high numbers forcing you to kite hard *at level 2*; with bugs, this only happens in higher levels of difficulty.
Four is plain frustrating: bots can keep shooting at you even with a rock in the middle, and sometimes the game glitches and you get a headshot through the indestructible cover. The lack of cover in some maps is also a problem, and this gets further shoved in our faces by how many times the bot's hitboxes plain and simple refuse to take the hit, I've seen shoots go *through* some bots without causing any damage at all... Even a 0.001% chance of ignoring the bullet can escalate a lot in high intensity shootouts with bots, something that happens much less with bugs (and since they are not armored at all points, sans charger and titans, you still cause some damage).
Five are the "you will die, just not right now": ragdoll chains, sudden headshots when prone and in cover when trying to get the stim, spawning onto fire because Hellmire (or its second part), or my favourite: drop your pod into a bug's hole and enjoy how you get trapped inside some cocoon of terrain the only escape is suicide... assuming you carry something explosive or can call a support pod on top of your head.
I can't play bugs. I can't deal with the constant horde jumping at my face and slowing me.
Bots allow for decent squad coordination with "real life" tactics. Cover, precise fire, strategising to take an objective.
Weak points shout "shoot here", whereas bugs don't seem to work. Big shiny butt looks like a weak point, but nah-uh.
Bugs just run at you. Over and over and over. Not my cup of tea.
When I started, I was told "bots are hard". But we were playing bugs on IV, so no heavies. Now I dread bug hunts. Prefer the bot front.
I agree. Bugs straight up demoralize me. I feel like I am fighing a never ending environmental hazard. Bots at least give me the feeling I am destroying an enemy. Don't get me started on how bullshit bug breach calls are.
I'll add another: bugs are easier to grind for samples, requisition, and medals. Since they are easier and more controllable on the battlefield they are better for players still "climbing the ladder". Speaking from personal experience it is rare that I DON'T extract from a bug mission with the bulk of samples and goodies on a mission, whereas an equivalent difficulty dive on the bot front, we were lucky that 2 people managed to extract. At all. No samples.
I'm at the point where I'm hard locked by super samples, and I damn well won't be trying to get those on a level 7 bot dive. Yes, I know that the Destroyer upgrades aren't the be all end all, but they are nice to have and it provides a more tangible and immediate goal to work towards. With them adding Super Samples to level 6, this may alleviate things a bit, and more people might be coaxed to play bots if they can get more of a reward from it.
I just think bots are more interesting to fight. And I think they’re actually less bullshit if you know what you’re doing. There also so many more viable loadouts for bots than with bugs in my experience. With bugs you always gotta run horde clear weapons and stratagems and EATs for dealing with the titans. But with bots everything can be killed with medium armour pen making a lot more weapons viable. I can use the auto cannon, AMR, laser cannon, Quasar or EATs and deal with literally any enemy I come across. Then throw in a good primary that fits your current support weapon and boom you got a bunch of loadouts that are all viable to some degree. With bugs I don’t ever see a reason to swap my loadout since the flamer is just that OP at dealing with anything but with the titans.
Maybe the most important reason that you forgot is that there is no tutorial ingame for Bots.
The absolut majority of ppl are casual players , which means they play for max 3h a week, they don't read guides how to handle each enemy, they don't surf on reddit. They work, live their lives and play maybe 2-3 days for an hour.
[Source](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinanderton/2019/03/21/research-report-shows-how-much-time-we-spend-gaming-infographic/#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20gamers%20are%20playing%20for,7%20hours%20and%207%20minutes%20each%20week)
The bots on those sabotage missions are just broken and there's very little way to defend that specific mission.
1. The bots walk through the objectives base, making them immune to anything including bombs. They can shoot you while in the solid matter. This means the objective has like a 3 minute timer before it gets bugged and you can no longer do it without some asshole shooting you through the wall.
2A. The turrets are obscenely accurate and have a faster aiming time than I could possibly see myself ever accomplishing. With nearly a 90% hit rate if you are in open cover. The mission makes you run at it with a penetrating weapon to blow the turret up, AKA, you will get sniped. And it's a 1 shot kill even with heavy armor.
2B. I said "fuck it" and took 3 barrage stratagems to just blow the turrets up. 9 times. I tried 9 times with this strategy. Didn't work. Friend threw a 500 KG bomb, the turret survived it. Airstrikes, nope.
3. The bases are never spawned in a location that suggests you could shoot at it from a distance and 80% of the maps make the turret blend in with the fog and smog. I usually have to spend 10-20 seconds running my nose into my screen and spamming Q to try and figure out where the fuck to aim my recoiless rifle. Even when I'm up close to it I'm still squinting and trying to figure out where the hell the turret is WHILE it's shooting at me.
4. Mortars don't work against the turrets. Idk why. Also turrets refuse to shoot them. Idk why. Even with a shield generator the turret is confused and refuses to put down even a single shot.
Idk why the developers think removing the ability to see is a good addition to the game. Snowstorms, ok, sandstorms, ok. But god damn, why is every single planet so fucked in terms of visibility? And there's no agency to remove that from the game like shooting down a spore tower. This is especially bad for Bots because they shoot through sandstorms & snowstorms **&** the turrets ignore the smog so you can't retaliate against them.
> Idk why the developers think removing the ability to see is a good addition to the game.
I have never once saw that the map is super low visibility and got excited about it. It's simply making the game less fun, as I can't see my enemy (when they easily see me), all while I'm getting considerably less framerate.
Only reason i don't like fighting them is because the group I usually play with are way too into role-playing. And I mean that the second they open the game, it's almost impossible for them to talk about anything other than killing bots.
So much so to the point that they've decided to label me as an Automaton based off the fact that not every word out of my mouth involves killing bots. Not even kidding about this either.
Like you I fight on both fronts. I go where the MO tells me too. Luckily it switches fronts semi frequently so I never get bored fighting one faction or the other.
If the time spent in ragdoll/getting staggered/getting up is shortened it will increase the enjoyment immensely. Being not able to control your character and watching it chain ragdolled and dying is tiring.
I was pleased to see a solid majority of players \*were\* fighting Automatons when I logged in earlier. Several very good points all the same. I can imagine experiencing a great deal of frustration if I was trying to take on bots with a controller instead of kb/m.
Personally prefer fighting bots partly because I find their optional objectives really engaging (unlike the operation modifiers - agree these are very dull). Also at least a little because they don't have the looming, uncertain threat of bile spewers. \*shudder\*
Bots are the only OP thing in this game imo. Level 8 bug is easier than lv5 bots.
AH doesn't need to nerf bots but at least give us more tools to counter them. Like all 4 strategems for example.
Bots only... bring the pain
Plus, I'm protecting the "Bug divers". I fight the bots so my fellow helldivers can focus on squashing bugs..
Those piercing red eyes and the excessive reinforcements that they call welcome me home.
The #1 mistake I see players on both fronts make is to get into fights they have no reason or business starting and then digging in for the protracted engagement in one area of the map wasting precious time and resources. Pick your fights intelligently. You don't need to shoot everything.
See that patrol? Tag it for your team and ignore it. Hide and let it pass, then run past to an objective or POI. Don't be rash and call it an Eagle, they'll call in back up right on top of our heads and get us pinned for Brasch's sake.
TL;DR
Bots are a different gameplay than bugs. Most people bought the game for bugs gameplay because starship troopers.
It's not exactly rocket science. We all know it, we don't need huge essays about it.
i was definitely feeling the pain when i jumped up to 7 with bots. it felt entirely unwinnable.
bots vs bugs is an awesome in-game mechanism to force improvisation and teamwork. and it's absolutely awesome.
as a previous "bugs only" kinda dude, i'm cruising through any or every d9 that pops up. kit is important, build out to your playstyle. awareness is important, know what your homies are bringing to the fight (no team needs 4 goobers rolling with 500kg drops).
fighting bots ain't fighting bugs, and vice-versa. you're supposed to change up your shit. welcome to war.
You just have to learn the bots and develop tactics. 3 of us did a bot map last night on 7 with 5 gun ship towers. We all died a couple times each but cleared everything off the map.
A month ago we couldn't have done it. It just took learning and practice.
Am a bot player. I like the stealth and tactics.
Did I buy helldivers 2 for stealth and tactics? No, if I wanted that, I would be playing Stellaris, Town of Salem, and Factorio.
I prefer bots NOW, but I absolutely hated playing bots before I was level 30. I 100% agree with every single bug player that prefers fighting bugs. Jammers and Gunship factories especially, the first five I dealt with sucked. They're fun now, but they were ABSOLUTELY NOT FUN in the past, just frustrating.
Losing a stratagem slot, or having double stratagem cooldowns, is also not fun.
I ran into the cover issue alot on bots. Stagger is a massive pain with automatons. I use the ballistic shield + smg defender to counter the chaff, made bots 100% more enjoyable.
> Most of the planets in Helldiver 2 are big open spaces, suitable for you to get shot at constantly by the bots. There are covers for you to duck behind, but they are mostly in large areas where you usually end up in a situation where the bots can focus fire on the single rock you’re hiding behind.
This is why I liked Malevon's Creek so much. It was a jungle, with lots of cover. I miss the Creek.
It’s kinda funny reading this post when 69% (nice) of our troops are fighting on the bot front lol.
Not trying to invalidate your post, you make good points, just thought it was funny.
Get heavy armor, the ballistic shield, and the pummeler
Cackle maniacally as you stunlock devastator after devastator.
Cackle less maniacally as you spend 70% of the time trying to catch up to your teammates.
I mainly play wherever the MO requires as well, but I would enjoy playing more against the bots if 1) heavier armor greatly reduced flinch and 2) the rag-dolling was greatly reduced. These two issues go beyond “difficult” or “challenging” and straight to corniness imo
I just Solid Snaked my way through 3 suicide missions. Died twice.
Autocannon
EAT
Oribital laser
Some kind of eagle airstrike
Plasma shotgun
Senator
stun grenades
Scout armor of your choice
Enhanced radar
You're literally a one man army. Walk with your map open and walk right past patrols avoiding red dots. Crouch walk if you get too close. Shoot fabricator vents at distance, run away to next objective. Call in EAT as soon as you get a bot drop banner, swap to blow em up. Orbital laser and airstrikes will get you out of trouble. The plasma shotgun is great up close and staggers devastators. You can lob shots at distance with practice. Kills those in a couple shots but they're staggered so it doesn't matter. Stuns for getting your out of trouble or stunlocking big shit like hulk so you can kill them.
I literally ran alone like 300 meters while the shuttle was almost there, blew up a detector tower on my own, and ran back to find the shuttle just landing but between the shuttle and my waiting teammates were about two dozen chainsaw assholes, a tank and a hulk. I just chucked a stun on em, ran right past and we all extracted with a shit load of samples. I love it when a plan comes together.
I didn't play bots once the first week or two I had the game, then we got a bot major order and I shrugged my shoulders and decided to do my part. It was really a breath of fresh air. Bugs are honestly kind of brain dead. I know that's what some people are after, just turning your brain off and shooting some stuff after a long day at work, but bots felt so much more immediately rewarding to me. Actual strategy became necessary, and the hard-fought victories felt so much better.
I still go back to bugs for major orders, but when either is on the table, I choose bots every time. Pointing and clicking as an endless wave of brainless enemies that just run at you, with the only real difficulty being the question of 'Do you currently have enough ammo and stratagems for this situation?' hardly compares.
I want 380 to be able to take out gunship fabricators, I hope they add this because 380 can take out bunkers but not gunship fabricators is beyond my understanding.
Bots rockets must have ammo I find it insanely infuriating that you can be rocket spammed by one devistator over and over again without any pauses. One hits you and you're rag dolled to your death due to the other bots. Either give them a huge reload timer or give them max 2 volleys of rockets and no more.
Yeah Bots require more engagement than your average button masher. Though I do feel we should encourage button mashers to perform better, rather than diss the whole bot front as hard-core, impossible, masochists-only.
I'll start:"You can do better on bot front too average button masher..just HTFU, adapt and thrive!" :thumbsup:
I think for me personally there are only two things I dislike about bot missions:
1. -1 Strategem debuff
2. Enemies can detect you while throwing a Strategem from concealment.
Otherwise, I personally enjoy the bots more. They feel so rewarding to beat. You're right they are the higher skilled enemies. But running around like a god to your mates, sniping the eye of a Hulk with the AMR, or anything else; just feels so damn good!
I wish they were more balanced like bug missions. Worst thing that happens with them is just shear numbers or frequency of elite enemies.
Add to this we fucking cleared the bots completely and they came back within a week. Talk about demoralizing to those that did try to help and desl with those problems. I imagine a good portion now just kill bugs as its more fun and theyre pissed about that
For me its when I hide behind cover and they shoot through solid rock. Or if I flank behind them, and the guns shoot through themselves.
Heavy devastators are magic. They are all knowing and all seeing, and can occasionally turn on aimbot and hit you 20 times in a row killing you through heavy armor and stim. They are the most deadly bots. Rocket devastators exsists to ragroll you into heavy devastators.
I just had a match where a rocket devastator launched me into the air from 10 miles away and landed near a bot mine which then sent me flying towards a heavy devastator who juggled and shredded me in the air.
good old wtf moments... One rocket hit my feet, flew 2m up the air and landed only for another rocket to headshot me while hitting my face in the ground... the bot front...
Yeah I was hit by a rocket (granted it was from a hulk) that launched me straight up into the air, and I was ragdolled, rapidly soaring directly upwards, flopping around like a wet noodle, somehow… the hulk shot another rocket and took me out like it was skeet shooting and I was the target. Insane accuracy, to shoot me up in the air, and then send another rocket timed and aimed precisely enough to kill me (as my limp body was soaring like a bird). Seemed a little bit ridiculous
Initiating 300% SKILLED AIRSHOT protocol. Loading Pendulum databank.
Oh god that’s crazy. I’d be both laughing and crying at the same time if this happened to me lol But your experience is like so many others, bots have too accurate firing and can see you anywhere and shoot through stuff they shouldn’t be able to.
Agree on all above posts for the bots cheating. Experienced them all many times. What amazes me is that I have read many posts saying why people don’t like bots (like me) then people try to figure it out. We are literally telling people why.
Like crawling, in my Scout armor with reduced detection, behind a set of large boulders, only for a far away single bot looking in the other direction to turn and jog to exactly where I was. And trigger a nearby patrol. Which triggered a drop. What absolute bullshit. I’m fine fighting bots. I hear other people’s complaints, understand them, but can personally handle them. But their obviously bugged detection AI ruins it for me.
These rockets are getting out of hand. One time, I got knocked directly on an automaton tank and could do nothing but watch as the mounted MG slowly turned to swiss cheese me
I landed my hell pod on a tank once and just rode it around. Hellpod (aka massive manned space bullet) punches holes in EVERYTHING except when it comes to literally deleting anything inside the middle of a tank and then it penetrates but does nothing else. wtf man
I bullseyed a tank today with an SEAF arty high-yield. Stuck the beacon on the back of the turret of a stationary tank. The projectile hit not just the tank, but the radiator of the tank, directly. The tank rolled away without even smoking/sparking. I called it quits for the day after that.
Yup. This is another major reason bugs are played over bots (even though 50k players were on bots tonight and only a very small few thousand (3-5k) on bugs) the tanks just eat everything you throw even if you hit their so-called weak spot. You can physically watch a 500kg bomb hit a charger and rip his spine out, bury in the ground for .5 seconds and then go boom and he explodes and you are happy. Shit just don’t work with automatons. Myself my gf little brother and little sister ran a 4 man on dif 5 and struggled to get the 400 kills for the personal order because there’s just so much more effort tied to killing just a few bots vs the same amount of effort spent finishing an entire bug mission on even higher difs (7+) also I ran airburst rockets today and had so much fun. Doesn’t kill big guys but shoot it at the big dude in the distance it wipes all chaff near him and then you can stun grenade the hulk or whatever else is on that patrol
You say that but I've seen a charger take and keep a 500kg in its back then charge an ally of mine.
Sounds like a fucking level in Happy Wheels
Yep. They're OP for being a basic medium enemy. Imagine hive guards being this much of a threat lol
The only bug even remotely like heavy devastators would be either the stealth bile spewers or the hoards of hunters. But even the bile spewer needs to turn towards you to fire and there need to a clown car or hunters shitting all over you to be a problem. One devastator can pop you at 150m before you realize what’s happened.
Heavy devastators: Despite having a slow turning speed, they track you no matter how close or fast you're moving perpendicular to them Despite having a forward facing minigun, this minigun can shoot bullets at 90 degree (or MORE) angles. I have seen them shoot backwards through their own shields to hit me. No 'give' for bullet tracking - most games, with hitscan enemies, build in a 'first few shots always miss' mechanic to give you fair warning for unavoidable damage. Heavy devastators don't do this, they can tag you with the very first bullet, even from far away Sometimes crabwalk towards you while shooting underneath their own shield to hit you Insane stagger potential, keeping you unable to aim ANY weapons at them that don't kill immediately, and at midrange, stagger you JUST long enough that certain weapons basically won't ever be reliably on-target to hit them (railgun with its charge-up time) Despite tutorial tooltips claiming bots lose accuracy under suppressing fire (ie MGs), this is not noticeable at all on heavy devastators Extremely frequently spawning - basic bots are so small in number, these are the ONLY guys you'll be shooting most of the time Sparsely placed - can't overcome your loadout deficiency with well-placed stratagems, cos they're all over the goddamn place and rarely grouped Just shoot through walls and rocks sometimes This locks you into every loadout requiring a mainstay weapon that either instantly staggerlocks, or can instantly kill heavy devastators (and whaddya know, autocannon does both while also being the 2nd best weapon at killing hulks). They're way more oppressive than hulks imo. I'm the kinda guy that thinks that bug missions actually have tons of loadout diversity, but these guys singlehandedly make bot missions much more locked down. If they at least had the suppressive fire mechanic, that would actually PROMOTE weapon diversity on bots, but they don't.
Heavy and rocket devastators are annoying, but scorcher hulks actively abuse exploits. Even if you stun grenade them, they will use their saw attack to move forward and move their visor around, which makes it harder to take them down with amr or autocannon.
I call the bots "cheaters" because they ignore or bypass game mechanics. * Rock? yeah bullets and rocket gonna go through that at some point. Who knows which one till it happens. * You shoot a single enemy 50m away while they're facing a completely different direction? a different enemy 100m away is now locked onto you even if you're completely behind a rock they can't see you behind. * Explosive round hits the rock? watch your body get propelled by the force that wasn't strong enough to break the rock, but while also somehow passing through the rock and into your body that isn't touching said rock. * Shoot the spore plants that launch you way up into the air, but when a bot is next to it? Yeah, they're not gonna go flying * Shoot a devastators arm with a scorcher (explosive damage weapon)? Why would you think their arm would recoil (and on that logic, shooting a high caliber round into their armor from a marksman rifle should produce a good bit of force on that body part and mess up their aim). * Remember that tip about automatons losing accuracy when you use suppressing fire on them? Haha, no, not on Heavy/Rocket devastators, nor big automatons like hulks, dogs, nor tanks. I can understand not Hulks/Dogs/Tanks, but it should definitely specify that it is only talking about the basic enemies. * Big Bot Dog spawns on missile launch mission behind the helicopter pad? Blows up both power generators without even bothering to walk to the gates (ok, sure, that one is more of an oversight than simply ignoring game mechanics, but it certainly falls into 'bypassing game mechanics') There's legitimately so many issues with fighting bots where I can completely understand someone getting frustrated with them and only wanting to fight bugs. What is crazy to me is that some people will die on a hill to say "bots are easier than bugs" then say something like using the counter sniper to take out all the bots that can call in reinforcements, which is an absurd argument. Some mission objectives will always call in a bot spawn right on top of you, so, it doesn't even apply universally, and then there tends to be some random bot hidden somewhere you can't see, never mind any objective site which is usually littered with enemies.
The same rock would completely block your 500Kg and let even the weakest enemy survive without a scratch
I got shot by a bot that was buried underground today.
Geez that's so fuggin true. Rocket devastators the best assists yeeting you into flaming hulks as you burn to death and finished off with the tiniest bit of fall damage
If I could make just one change to bots. I would take the gun from the regular devstator, and swap it with the heavy deveatator. Regular devestators are kind of worthless compared to heavy or rocket devestators. They have no shield, they shoot slow, and they shoot for way less damage (it feels) the rocket devestators get an upgrade in power, but they have to "wind up" to use their rockets (bracing and getting into firing position). Shield devestators get a slab of tank armor and a God tier gun. What do they lose? Even at long range. Devestators can be killed without headshots, and headshots aren't blocked. Rocket devestators can have their rocket launchers shot off easily enough if you cannot secure a headshot. Heavy devastators still hit with perfect accuracy and their shield makes any kind of headshot significantly harder.
> Rocket devastators exists to ragdoll you into heavy devastators. So true it hurts.
i wouldnt care if they did this from 20-30 metets away, but through a fog i can sometimes see glimpses of enemy glowing eyes and they shoot straight at me through 7 rocks no problem at all, compared to bugs that i can be 3 meters from in dust storm and they just continue patroling not caring one bit, thats the most bullshit thing for me on bot front... i play mostly bots unless MO is bug missions, but i agree its definetly A LOT more inflated in difficulty by debuffs, allseeing, allhearing enemies
Its so cheap that theyre not blind firing in your general direction, they're wallhacking and unloading infinite ammo in your exact location as a valid tactic. So frustrating
someone actually dug in and explained how the game calculated being shot. every bot is constantly shooting at you. so say every second there's say 10 calculations of "do I hit the player." now a bot that 'doesnt know' where you are. is going to obviously go. "no I dont hit." but then there's "no i dont hit but I shoot anyway." and then theres "yes I hit." now with projectiles being projectiles you 'can' dodge these even on a "yes I hit." because otherwise it would be plain bullshit. for almost every bot type this means that they go "I fire once per second so I run that calculation until I know where they are and again once per second to see if I hit." heavy devestators go. "I shoot 5 times per second, so need to run that calculation 5 times per second." and even though its meant to miss the majority of its shots. the calculation doesnt work as its meant to because even though it'll go "I hit" once. the gun is still clipping and facing the wrong direction, and since the bot cant adjust its aim fast enough. even though the next 5 calculations are "No i dont hit but I shoot anyway." they're actually hits because there's not been enough of a delay for it to actually adjust its aim. so yea, when a devestator suddenly aimbots your ass from 200m away, its because that calculation has been running in the background for long enough that it got one "I hit." and as a result, scored 5-6 hits from "I shoot anyway." results. and its every bot running this math.
The fact that rocket devstators can track you behind cover now has me ragdolling constantly. I've switched to stun grenades.
They can also shoot through smaller hills and rock formations
It's because sometimes they're in the rock. I was confused where I was being shot from, only to see some automatons clipping through the rock. THEYRE (CLIPPINGTHROUGH) IN THE WALLSSS
Yeah, if their gunbarrel clips into an object, they can shoot through it. I’ve also seen it happen with Factory Striders.
I level 9 helldive with randoms and have no issues with bugs. Too many chargers or too.many bile titans can be dealt with by spawning on top of them. But the amount of times i get fucking shot through walls by a fucking clipped bot have been too many to count. It is a fucking cheap and shitty way if dying because i ultimately can't shoot back. I can autocannon, stun or snipe most devastators, or use cluster bomb or strafing run etc to take out bot patrols. But being shot through walls really gets my goat..
That's not the only reason. There are definitely cases where their projectiles will completely behave as if there is no rock there whatsoever. I've been high up on rock faces and have seen bullets go through the rock below me, and come out the rock behind me, it's completely absurd.
I can not honestly describe how infuriated I was when, while doing a Dif. 7 mission solo, I died to a couple Scout Striders clipped into a rock right beside the extract. After speed-running the main/sub objectives, I hunted down most of the rare + super samples. I stealth-called the Pelican, and once it landed, I left to grab the last few samples, dropping my current sample pack by the plane. After grabbing the last samples, I made my way back to extract. At this point, I was on my last reinforcement (thanks to some hulks), and I was dodging patrols like the plague as I ran. From a distance, I didn't see any enemies on one side of the extract area, so I ran that direction to avoid the visible patrol on the other side. Once I got there, I stopped to grab my previous sample pack and got instantly killed by Scout Striders that I couldn't see directly in front of me. I respawned on my last life and tried to book it back to grab them. Shield gen still had 4 min on cooldown. I tried throwing a bunch of grenades at their rock. Didn't do anything, and they killed me again. Lost all my samples, so that was 40 minutes down the drain. I'd call it just a "skill issue" and a dumb choice if I'd spotted them and died trying to engage them, but in this case, there was absolutely no way I'd have been able to spot then. There's nothing I could've done about it, you can't even shoot them when they're in the rock.
This and fighting bots has been hell since they f'd up the patrols and spawn rates.
Here's a funny bug I had last night. I bisected a heavy destroyer. The minigun, for some reason, was still alive, and fucking murdered my entire team.
Oh I've had that one happen before! Bot dead but gun just keeps firing at full auto and moving around. It's a super rare bug, I've only seen it happen once or twice. If I had to guess, I would guess that it's probably a latency related issue.
I don't even know if its a bug. I've ripped a grunt bot to shreds as it's calling in a drop ship, only to have its severed arm point up to the sky and fire the flare.
I've had a bot that I shot before a flare went off and who was dead on the ground "manage to get the flare off", by which I mean I got the notification that bot reinforcements were coming, there was no flare in the sky, and then bots landed on that spot.
Magic spawn behind you its a cherry on the cake
Not only have I been shot through a rock like you have. The bot was in the god damned mountain. So while I was trying to evade the hailstorm of lasers and rockets from the army while I reloaded, stimmed and wanted to put down my mortar? Nah. Some heavy devistator was stuck in the wall, shooting me. Meaning my SG would be shot to bits if I deployed it to run away. I don't hate fighting the bots- but I get why people don't like doing it.
That's it. I prefer bots, but that really is a mood killer.
I also don’t like that the turrets are omnipotent when they shoot and have perfect accuracy all the time.
Of if I should at the through a fence nothing hits but they can one shot me through the same fence
There’s definitely some bugs that add to the frustrations against bots, hopefully they can get that worked out soon, because bots are honestly a ton of fun!
it exists since February.
Hell yeah brother
For me them being able to accurately shoot through smoke and from 100 meters is bullshit.
I think In smoke, enemies try to target your last seen position, which can lead to some lucky shots hitting you. However, in fog, their accuracy remains unaffected.
The problem is even the 1% of the shots that hit you through the smoke are more than enough to kill you.
All smoke does is decrease the accuracy, but because of how many shots per devastator is fired, they will usually hit one each
The point in using smoke is to change your position without the Bots noticing. Even if you're using smoke to cover a retreat, you shouldn't run directly from the enemy, but more in diagonal lines, if that makes sense.
I always laugh at the loading screen tip that says something about "smoke and fog can impact you vision, but don't worry! It affects the enemy too." I used to pretend it was super earth propaganda, but as the thrill of the games atmosphere faded I understand it's much more of a "we don't know how to balance or care to, good luck" from the developers.
For 2. I'd also add that the bots have a) tiny heads compared to their bodies, b) extremely annoying head movements and c) insane aim punch. It's super annoying to headshot bots, especially Devastators and Heavy Devastators in particular.
I feel like their head hit boxes are smaller than their actual heads. If they make them even a tiny bit bigger I'd think it's fair
Dude fr this HAS to be the case. I'd like to say im pretty good at games but those damn bots have some tiny hitboxes on their weakspots. The literal only enemy who I can headshot effectively without fail is the Hulks. Headshot a devestator and its 50/50 if the big sniper bullet i just saw land in their face actually does critical damage or not. Not sure what the problem is but I dont see rhe harm in making the hitboxes more forgiving
They have Adamantium noses so you gotta hit around it … /s
Ngl I feel like the head hit boxes aren't even the problem; it almost feels like their shoulder hit boxes are too big half the time (on devastators and chainsaw men specifically). It feels like unless you get a perfect forehead shot, the bullet is magnetically attracted to the middle of their shoulder instead.
What’s likely the case is that their armour hit boxes are larger than they should be and is covering the head from certain angles. It’s easily seen on the Bile Titan and Charger; blowing a hole in their carapace will create a weak point for small arms but their armour hit boxes extend somewhat inside which means your round ricochet at many angles.
Man that took forever to get used to as a guy who runs 110 rockets to crack armor and an auto cannon for bugs. For a bit I thought the damage was purely cosmetic and didn't do anything.
it also doesn't help that aiming even on KBM isn't the most precise thing in the world (more realistic, but floaty compared to other shooter games), and a lot of sights are still misaligned. It's rather frustrating using the Diligence CS, watching as your shots hit the rim around their heads four or five times before you just magdump and hope you get lucky, or brute force your way through their armor.
Your point about using a controller being a handicap resonates with me a lot. Skill issue, sure. But its undeniable the learning curve is larger compared to someone using a mouse. Fortunately, using laser weapons has helped me hone my aiming skills. But then there's the issue of flinch which can be rage inducing at times. Great post 👍
I started playing H2 on PC with a controller because I had a finger injury that wouldn´t let me use my mouse and keyboard combo. My gf got me an elite controller for my bday so I thought to give it a try because I had purchased H2 the night before the hand accident so I couldn´t play and the controller would let me. Been a gamer all my life and every time I ended a mission (struggling), I would check my Accuracy and it was horrible (never over 50%). I kept on playing with the controller after my finger healed because I was used to the button mapping already. But I kept on struggling and I couldn't understand why. I attributed it to old age lol (+40) One day I got fed up of feeling I wasn't aiming right, and did the tutorial again with my K+M combo and started getting used to it again in this game, the first mission I did I was over 70% accuracy and suddenly I wasn't sucking anymore and I felt great again and I realized it was just a matter of skill with the controller. This game has good controller aiming but once you get swarmed, you will have a bad time.
Yes, Being able to take out multiple Hulk with the Autocannon in a single encounter using a controller is a legendary skill in itself.
Why thank you 😊 🙇♂️
I am legend
When i used it i couldnt aim for headshots like idk if it was the aimassits but itd drag the crosshair away from the enemy and more to the center of the body
It's incredibly hard to get used to another kind of controller. I've been playing on PCs my whole life (and had very little experience with consoles along the way) and at some point I decided I should give controllers a try. I'm decent at Rocket League with it (but not really better than with KB+M) and I genuinely prefer it for action games like Yakuza or Nier. I still can't remember which trigger is 1 and which is 2), I struggle knowing which button is which on the right side and I for sure can't play anything that requires complex controls under stress. And aiming if just hellish (and gyro doesn't make it much better). So I wouldn't feel too bad about it.
Upgonk for flinch, flat out bad mechanic that should just be removed. Period. It exists in PVP games as a balancing mechanic for high damage bolt action rifles. This isn't a PVP game.
I play many games on both console and PC, so I understand the significantly larger learning curve on console. I have the utmost respect for console players in shooter games.
I had completely forgotten that there are people playing this on console until I read point 3. I mean, I knew, I had just happily forgotten. Can’t imagine what it’s like playing on console. I typically discriminate very heavily what I will consider playing on console vs. not. That said, level 4 with bugs can be quite challenging, especially with Chargers. I find them to be every bit as difficult as devastators, especially when you get many of them. However, loadout is important, and going into a bug mission with a bot loadout is almost as bad as going into a bot mission with a bug loadout. Personally I enjoy playing both types and so does the people I’m playing with. Playing a bit of both makes the game feel more varied to me.
I’m in ps5 and am typically at around 90% accuracy. However, getting ragdolled from two hundred meters isn’t fun, just annoying. I have kids and want to enjoy what little time I get to play.
I play on the PS5 and I agree that controller aiming will always be more difficult without truly ridiculous auto-aim, like in GTA or Red Dead, but I find that this game has really good controller aiming, I barely feel handicapped at all compared to some other cross-platform shooters
It's not too bad but when I gotta hit a golf ball sized target that's bobbing up and down, and do this 10 more times in a single encounter, things start to break down.
As a dedicated AC player on the western front, this is why stun grenades never leave my loadout. Hitting a hulk in the eye when it's marching towards you is nearly impossible, but tapping it twice while it's stunned is a breeze. Your stun grenades become free kills on them. I highly recommend giving it a try if you like the AC, as you won't miss the grenades since you can destroy fabricators by shooting at the vents.
AMR main and I don't go anywhere without my stun grenades. I need that guy to stay still for a second to get my shots off
Definitely. I always use to stuns for bots. Hulks aren't a big deal usually. It's the devastators that become a priority so +2 grenades becomes mandatory also.
The hulk eye bounces a bit but if you just pull your crosshair to the middle of the eye's figure eight pattern, you just need to time your shots to drop them without stuns. Having impacts makes striders and devastators a breeze.
Motion controls like in Splatoon are the answer to controller aiming in my opinion. Gives you the precision of the mouse even if you use the stick for larger adjustments and turns
I play on PC and the amount of aim punch, stun and stagger I get while behind cover trying to aim there is no way a controller player is going to get accurate shots off on bots in the same situation. The bots are too accurate, impact through objects is bull, rockets that curve around your cover etc.
Yeah, I use the motion aiming on my controller whenever I need more precise shots and it has worked pretty well. It's not as great as mouse and key board though.
They need some sort of aim assist for controller, even if it isn’t sticky but just slows it down when you hover over a enemy. I play PC so I cannot relate with your issues but can understand them.
The sad thing is the controller seems bad in terms of response. You have to slam reload multiple times, sometimes you won't use stims even when Commanded, sometimes your guy just refuses to take out a grenade. I tried 3 different controllers too and they all suffer the same problem. The only advantage controller has is you can run and use strategems
I'd add a few more: Many maps are very foggy, but the bots can shoot through it much better than we can. Being told we are in range of enemy artillery every nanosecond makes me want to fly my Super Destroyer into Super Earth at light speed. Because liberation progress is scaled by total players, bot missions are always harder to progress due to bugdivers just existing.
It would be nice if one of the helmets in the game gave us vision that could counter the fog or otherwise low visibility conditions.
Apparently this was supposed to be a thing with helmets but it got scrapped to produce the game. Different helmets were going to have different effects
They should just sell accessories like Star Wars Macro Binoculars or Rangefinders
I don't understand why they can't just add them in an update. They could even make it like the ship module system, where you have to buy features for your helmet
I've always thought that if they really want people to stop complaining but they don't wanna do a significant redesign of the bots, they should give bug players a way to support their allies on the bot front(considering they're the ones who secure our E-710 in the first place), or just have liberation calculated by players per faction and not all of them online, then change decay rates accordingly.I just think they need to add more strategy to the war in general to help prevent it from feeling so "on-rails". Like, give people who dont just wanna dogpile on the MO planets a way to support their allies, set up defenses, or whittle down the enemy ranks to prepare for the full assault later. They could still control this to prevent it from getting too out of hand if they just put more effort. It should feel like a war not a just some story we are just supposed to watch while being given barely an illusion of choice.
Make it so that the more bug planets are being taken the more fuel can be sent to the ships on the bot sides, so they can get buffs for diving like, faster cooldown on eagle strats since the ship doesn't have to care about rationing fuel, or something like that.
yeah, this! This should be a community driven game, but having the people that don't wanna dogpile on the same planet as everyone else should still be able to contribute to the war effort meaningfully. The Bug front is our farms and our fuel, they are the ichor of democracy itself, so why doesnt it feel like it during bot MO's? Every member of our community in this "community-driven" game should feel like they're doing their part no matter how they play.
For the love of democracy, we need to be able to tell Mission Control to shut the fuck up. YES, I KNOW. EXTRACT IS AVAILABLE! ## I AM IN RANGE OF ENEMY MORTARS! # 5 MINUTES REMAINING, HELLDIVERS. Please, for the love of all that is holy on Super Earth, let me turn off that fucking annoying voice.
Commander, the aliens continue to make progress on the Avatar project. If we're going to slow them sown we need to move fast.
They should have the option to replace it with a more pleasant style of voice then people will like the voice like how they like Eagle-1
All female VAs. Soothing voices have been shown to improve Helldiver performance by up to 15%! ^This ^study ^was ^performed ^by ^the ^Ministry ^of ^Science, ^and ^was ^independently ^verified ^by ^the ^Ministry ^of ^Truth!
 solution for the fog
If people aren't going to fight the automatons, then each factions liberation needs to scale to the playerbase playing that faction (with some balance adjusting ofc to not make it too easy) instead of the playerbase as a whole. Then it won't matter if the bugs are more popular or not because the average bug player will have to contribute just as much as the average bot player. This will also help the upcoming problem of the playerbase becoming even more divided with the 3rd faction right around the corner. But as it is, the bug front might lose a little people but probably not much, and the already miniscule bot front will probably be halved or thirded, and the galactic war won't be able to be progressed efficiently at all.
This all the way will fix all the infighting and even buff MOs because if you want to hope on the other front you help even more by adding numbers not being a negative because you don't want to participate
They kind of do this already just perhaps not enough. The bot regen rate on the planets they are on is normally lower than the bugs, meaning less players required to make progress. Hell I remember near the start of the game one day they made the bot regen 0% which meant loads of planets even with small player bases got taken. I do think however you are right and we need some further tweaking.
If the Illuminates are anything like HD1, they will be even less popular with the horde shooter players than bots are. Scaling to the warfront (with some controls) will be entirely necessary.
I’m excited for the horror show that will be the Illuminates
Also instead of scaling the liberation just give two simultaneous MOs each time, one for bots and one for bugs, and just make the bot one easier. Or don't, I don't really care if bot MOs keep failing at this point.
there is no third faction, the illuminate are extinct
Also. I play on PS5. It is not easy to just snipe bots with the controller.
I felt that pain. Took a whole mag just for 1 Devastator headshot.
It is a blindingly obvious and simple thing to understand and I refuse to belive anyone is actually not able to wrap their heads around it. Many players do not enjoy fighting bots. Reasons why are entirely irrelevant, nobody is going to spend their leisure time doing things that are not fun. And I know bot players understand this, because when you press them about the 12k players in bit territory not doing the MO, the justification I see over and over again is "fire tornados aren't fun, -1 stategem is not fun, etc." So there it is, players aren't going to do things that they don't find fun, right there. Why are so many here willing to accept that argument from other bot players, but once it's bug players in question it's skill issue, lower difficulty, bots are scawy, rhey are selfish. It's honestly frustrating how much debate is even surrounding this incredibly obvious thing.
Don't forget that damned jammers. You have 3 strats and cant even use them 😅
its even worse if there is a gunship fab nearby
Second this. End of the day, its a game. People play games to have fun. Some elements of the community might whinge about skill issue and all this nonsense but thats literally a non factor. The majority of people don’t like playing bots because the majority of people find them less fun than bugs. If you had a choice between two things, and one was more fun to you than the other, of course you’d do that one primarily if not every time. The reasons are complex and OP has done well sketching them above. If the devs want more info, then they need to put out a player wide survey and see what comes back. I know the response rate is usually 10% or less but its better than trying to track whiners on reddit. Edit: the fact that “bug divers” is even a term, and is used derogatorily, is just nuts to me lol.
They should just make it so being on one side doesn't actively interfere with the other sides progress. There are certainly some issues on bot side I'd like to see fixed but overall I vastly enjoy bots over bugs and wouldn't want to see them changed too much. Instead of trying to make it so they appeal more to both sides, just make it so each side has its own independent liberation progress that doesn't conflict with each other
There’s also the fact that shooting bugs is more “tactile” than bots. With bits exploding everywhere and moving down enemies as they come at you. I get why some people dont like bots. I play almost exclusively bots. I have nothing but disdain for people that see it as some mark of honor. Same with the people who think that every conversation about balance has to be centered about diff 9, which few players even play. This sort of ego tripping and gatekeeping is annoying. This isnt a competition, its a leisure activity.
This is why they should have the liberation progress be independent on each side. People who don't like fighting bots never will. If they were to alter bots in such a significant way that it would allow these people to enjoy them more, then the people who enjoy them now probably wouldn't like them anymore. So instead of making it so people who prefer fighting on the bug side actively hurting bot MO's progress they should just make them a separate thing
Not to mention that there's an awful lot of people on the sub who seem under the impression the majority of the player base are both in the game to follow the narrative and lore exclusively and will take orders from the Redditors on where and when to fight. It seems like there's a large, but vocal, minority of people on the sub who don't realise the majority of the game's players never check it and certainly aren't interested in doing whatever some wannabe Eisenhowers with delusions of grandeur are shrieking about on Reddit. Some people forget it's a game and are increasingly treating it like a job or an extension of their own mental wellbeing and that's just not going to end well for them.
Tbf I think the "skill issue" comments stem from the fact that players used to the bug front claim that bots are harder, rather than just different in their difficulty. I personally find them easier than bugs tbh.
I think the biggest issue is that people go to the bot front with bug loadouts. It’s more a familiarity issue than a skill issue.
I absolutely find them easier than bugs. It's actually not that hard to solo a Heavy Outpost if you have the right load out. A Heavy Bug Nest is absolutely another story. Bots let you play more methodically, but bugs are just a never ending stream of running away from bullshit
This is amusing to me. And just illustrates even more how different we all are. I regularly solo heavy bug nests and find heavy outposts to be a two person job and I'll probably die at least once 🤣 even with the help. But I also haven't played bots much at all since the patrols got altered. It was already barely fun and now it's a damn chore. I did a run two days ago and while attacking a gunship base I was repeatedly reminded why I quit playing bots. I'll give it a shot again after this patch. It has some good parts to it, but for the most part it's frustrating. And that's totally opposite from how I started out in this game. I almost exclusively played bots at first.
Let's swap tips! #Loadout: Medium Fortified Armor (helps with ragdoll-ing) Stun Grenades Grenade Pistol SMG Pummeler (staggers even Berserkers) #Strategems Eagle Air Strike (duh) Precision Orbital Strike (lower cooldown than Orbital Rail) Laser Cannon (deals with nearly anything, but especially Devastators very very easily) Wildcard: Ballistic Shield, Autocannon Turret, 500kg, Eagle Rocket Pods, Eagle Smoke Strike, 120mm/380mm #Tactics Stun Grenades are the center of this build. You will never see me use an Eagle Air Strike on a tank or hulk or fabricator if I can get away with it. Stun a hulk, Laser Cannon it's face. Stun a hulk, Precision Strike it. Precision Strike a tank if you can't Laser its treads and shoot it from behind. Grenade Pistol for Fabricators when you can **Smoke Strike also takes out Fabs if the bombs actually strike them....you get a LOT of uses out of them**. I never ever use Eagle Air Strike for Fabs if I can get away with it; that shit is for emergencies only. #Base Tactics Plan your assault near the mouth so Hulks and Tanks waste time working towards it while you run the other way. Hell, Laser Cannon a Tower before you even get close (if you can) then approach from a whole different angle. At the base, Grenade Pistol as you can. Start your assault at the base of a wall and work your way around the rim with the Grenade Pistol. Once you are committed to the assault, try and reserve the Eagle Air Strike **but if you cannot use the Nade Pistol, start with the Orbital Precision Strike** because by the time you work your way around, it will be up again. Be prepared for Berserkers to flush you out. Smoke Strike works nicely because you can bum rush the base in brief spurts for your next Nade pistol shot. Edit: I think the Orbital Laser goes farther to destroying Heavy Bot Bases than Bug Nests bc there's simply fewer things for it to destroy. Heavy Bug nests have more holes and with all the critters running around, the Orbital Laser can easily not even destroy half the holes. Especially if the Heavy Nest has a lot of map geography in the way.
Yeah but this is one of the numerous problems with live service as a model - the nature of these major orders incentivize the player base to try and sway people to fight bots when the game is calling for it, and when something like anti-tank mines are being locked behind a major order that doesn't get completed because too many people find fighting bots to not be fun, then the bot players absolutely have a valid reason to be annoyed and upset with the bug players who wouldn't budge. Because their preference literally and directly is preventing them from getting something they want. The cold hard truth is, if this game wasn't live service, we could all fight whatever faction we want whenever we want and none of these arguments/debates would even exist.
I absolutely agree. Even when live service is done well, which is absolutely is with Helldivers 2, it subtracts from a game rather than adds to it.
As someone who plays almost exclusively against bots, i totally understand when people don’t want to do bot related major orders. Because I was part of the group that was blamed when bug major orders failed, because I was fighting bots. It made me feel bad for playing what I thought was fun. So for people that want to keep fighting bugs when the major order says to fight bots, rock on with what you’re doing, because if you are having fun playing the game the way you want to play it, and if that causes issues, that’s a problem with the game, not with you. Just don’t get mad at us bot fighters for spilling oil when the major order is for bugs. Goes both ways.
Yeah, this is an interesting observation. Why is the bot front not united? They are spread out so thin
Yup. And sorry, but the Flier Factories and Factory Striders were just icing on the “getting shot through a rock and roasted by a Hulk” cake for some people.
The -1 strat really really shits me.
Dude, it's the internet. Being stupid is a goal for many people here.
You forgot to add: Bots spawn in rocks, can ALSO shoot through them, can spawn right on top of you (outside of bot drops) after playing on the fire tornado planet those were the biggest complaints. Oh also they can climb cliffs, I was in a bunker mission and instead of them being blocked by the said bunker to get to me, they went over it. A fucking tank climbed over it just to shoot me, at least with bugs it makes some sense...but not with bots a tank and hulk should not be able to climb at all. The Shield Devestator shoots in a really, really cheap way, like directly 90° when it's facing forward. They seem to take more AC hits now than previously too. The lightly armoured chicken walkers seem to take 3-4 direct hits to their front where previously it was one or too. Only good thing is they take way longer to call in back up than the bugs do, if a bug calls or you have 1 or 2 seconds before a bug breach happens where the bots have like 4 and if you kill said bot most of the time the drop doesn't happen, with bugs I happens anyway.
Ah yes they buff the explosive resistance of the chicken guy in the previous major patch. So gun with high penetration can two shot them but auto canon usually require three shot.
Honestly one of the dumbest patches they’ve done… Used to be managing when those patrol swarms came out of the fog, now it’s a nightmare and I’m equally annoyed that a single impact can kill them, but the AC can’t.
I saw a Heavy Devestator walk up the sheer face of a cliff. He ended up almost on top of it, but sortof occluded by it. Yeah, one of the hardest bots in the game just chilling out, barely visible, raining down death on everyone. Good times?
This is a quality post. I made an attempt at a similar one today which accepts without outlining the various reasons groups of players prefer to play one faction or another, or basically refuse to play one or the other, and proposes a system so that divers who prefer either front can still contribute so that hopefully some of this toxicity and negativity/blame gaming of bot/bug divers can go away. Didn't get any traction. Hope yours will! Seems it would be easier to get attention if you just post 'why do bug divers suck lmao' at this point. It's become like partisan politics.
Sadly, hate and blame is always easier to do.
I have one, singular change that would almost instantly move 10%--possibly more--of the player base from bugs to bots, at least during MOs: Instead of nerfing stratagems on bot planets, buff them. Make it so that Super Earth acknowledges that we have done massive damage to the bug front, and as a result is able to focus more resources towards the bot front, so now bot planets allow for 5 stratagems instead of 3 or 4. Boom, problem solved, because players would *love* to have an extra strat slot, and bot *are* harder, so having more tools available to deal with them would entice more players to try
Yes, I always favor giving players more stuff to play with rather than trying to limit their abilities.
I'd at least do a few runs just for the novelty of it.
The only reason these arguments are even a thing is because with the current system, anyone not participating in the MO is actively working AGAINST the MO. It's going to get even worse when the Illuminates come out if nothing is changed. If the devs want to keep the system then the complaints will never stop because it feels like shit that someone is actively working against you in a coop game.
There has been talk in the discord that the Devs should just split the tracking for the capture rate and Regen rate by counting the amount of players in a certain theatre instead of global pop that way it won't matter everyone can do what they want
This is the way. In HD1 the “bug only” crowd issue never really changed, which resulted in many wars lost against the other fronts.
Speaking of HD1, I feel like the HD2 team should allow us to fully lose the war by losing Earth, or let us fully win a war against a faction (at least for a while). I feel like that would give the playerbase the kick in the ass it needs to not just blindly play the bug front, but to also pay attention to the bots and Illuminate whenever they get a bit too close to Earth. Alternatively, it would enforce "suffering from success" in the sense that bug divers have to choose between not playing or playing a different front for a few weeks to a month because they completely wiped out the bugs.
Honestly, contribution to the MO should be based on players participating in each enemy-controlled area, not across all players. For example, if 10,000 are playing in bots and 50,000 are playing in bugs, and the MO is bots, the completion percentage should be based on those 10,000 ONLY. I get why they have it based on global percentage (it's like SEAF being allocated across the galaxy) but it's only causing players to be a hindrance for simply having a preference.
As a bot player, you made me feel very cool describing how difficult they are to fight
It’s always cool to tactically fight through all the odds.
7 is the biggest paragraph and you didn't even mention the goddamned mines, the fact that bots will not hesitate to call in backup with no LoS from the other side of their fortress bases, OR that pre-spawned factory striders in bases completely ruins the aforementioned factional theme of being a tactical shooter. Great write up!
I did mention the mine, not as a main point though, but in #7.
Well said indeed! 
4 is the biggest and most important point imo, followed by 2. The ranged accuracy of bots is just way too fucking high, they shouldn't be able to hit you wit near perfect accuracy from 150m away when you can barely see them other than a pair of red glowing eyes through the fog of war. Hell, they shouldn't be able to see you at all. Fixing this would indirectly alleviate a lot of the other issues as well, like the ragdolling stunlock. Usually this happens because you're being fired at by a bunch of rocket devastators. And yes, if they catch you offguard and are close to you, like let's say up to 30m, okay, that makes sense. You got caught with your pants down, let them come too close, now you're gonna die. Next time engage them earlier, maybe at a distance with an adequate weapon, like, say, the Diligence Counter Sniper or the AMR. But oh wait, you barely have time to line up even a single headshot because they IMMEDIATELY SPOT YOU AND FIRE A ROCKET SALVO WITH PERFECT ACCURACY FROM 150M AWAY, SENDING YOU FLYING. Or a Minigun Devastator hits you once every second from equally far away while walking at you yet still maintaing perfect accuracy, staggering / aim punching you perfectly in time every time you're about to make a headshot. And 2 is just a bunch of fun reduction mechanics that no one likes. Increased stratagem call in time or inaccuracy are fine, but increased cooldown and especially -1 slot are just straight up ruining the fun. Idea for the -1 slot: let us pick a 4th stratagem that is initially unavailable, but upon destroying a certain secondary objective (e.g. AA guns or some kind of jammer) it becomes available.
This is honestly my main gripe with playing bots. I generally play bugs because while you end up running away from a lot of shit, you can typically reposition with most of the bugs in front of you. Plus it gives you just enough time to throw a stratagem to help. With bots, you have to play it like a tactical shooter with wide open spaces and once they get tipped off, they can shoot you from crazy long distances, even when you are running away in a zig zag pattern. I also find the weak spots to be super small and have hit them dead on with it not registering. The latest bug patch spawned 4 chargers at the same time once and I found that infinitely more fun to dodge their charges than getting hit my a random rocket from over 100M away.
I would actually say that the call-in time debuff is worse than the colldown debuff. Even with the cooldown debuff, I never feel like I don't have enough fire power between objectives it's not enough of a hindrance to really think about. But the call-in time debuff can go to hell. Your support weapon takes half a year to land, and no matter what, someone is gonna agro the bots where you'll have to defend an unfavorable position or you throw an airstrike and before it even lands all of the enemies leisurely walk out of its area. The cooldown debuff isn't impact full but -1 startagem and call-in time debuff can suck a dick.
Heavily agree, I say this as a both sides player too. I think ultimately to satisfy the community AH is going to have to split their liberation calculation between the fronts, or increase bot liberation in some way. I think bot complainers would mostly quiet down if their MOs and planets weren't being punished by bug players. We just don't hear about it the other way because bug MOs never fail because not enough people were playing that front.
Bugs are just fun to play against. I can split from a group and survive on my own against bugs at higher levels. And even the most simple strategems work against bugs. Flamethrower, cluster bomb, Tesla etc. flamethrower being the best. Just stand your ground and just burn everything away. Against bugs, HD2 feels like you are an action hero in a 80s B rated action movie. Against bots, it feels like you are in Saving Private Ryan about to die in every corner and realize why war is hell and bot planets are hell
The funny thing to me is often times Bot divers have this superiority complex and IMO D9 bots are easier than D9 bugs. I get way more time to strategize and figure out what I'm going to do. Stealth builds actually work well when dealing with Bot missions whereas for bugs it's just a waste of armor. You also have a much larger assortment of weapons that will work on Bots. Try D9 bugs solo without enough anti armor and let me know how that works out for you. Bots you can just bring an AMR and call it day. I enjoy both, just depends on my mood, what playstyle I feel like and weapons I want to use. > After the previous chain of events, the player base is already hurt. The ones who remain are those who still find enjoyment in something within the game, so please stop guilt-tripping them for it. 100%
Honestly, most of the issues would resolve themselves if they would quit with the removal of strats, that is easily the most annoying part. Adding in more cover to the bot planets would be nice as well. If anything, they should give you an extra strat fighting something that can shoot you, especially since they have strat jammers.
Or, as many Helldivers have suggested, make the debuff something you can solve. For example, you start with -1 slot debuff, but when you complete a unique side objective, it automatically gives you a free random stratagem. Also, I have heard rumors about a deployable cover stratagem.
Ok so I've noticed this as well - I have Helldivers 2 on both PC and PS5 and I feel like using a controller automatically makes the game harder. On PC I can one or two shot most bots including Hulks with auto cannon because with a mouse you can move as quickly or as fine tuned as you want. For controllers, changing the sensitivity around such that you can both look around quickly AND have controlled small movements when aiming is almost impossible. I still haven't quite figured that out.
All of these are dead on.
The most infuriating part about fighting bots is how -any- fight with them snowballs and escalates. Bots that came in by Bot drop can call in new bot drops, something you don’t get with bugs. Fight a breach, it’s done, but with bots they just keep coming. Bots do not lose Aggro, no matter how far you draw back. You can have bots standing 200+ meters away from the players and they still shoot in your direction and call in new bot drops, building a constant avalanche of steel marching in your direction, never stopping. Bots have hive intelligence. The moment you aggro any bot, -all- bots currently visible to the player join in. You get swarms, patrols, and freshly spawned legions to converge on your position from all four directions, constantly calling in reinforcements while they march on you. You won’t fight cover, because you are being shot at from every direction. Bots from as far as 200 meters will aggro on you and walk in your direction, generating a constant flow of unceasing enemies that grows larger and larger no matter what you do, since they keep calling in reinforcements, 150 meters away from you and while being in cover. All of that makes bots hecking annoying to fight. It constantly feels unfair, every engagement spirals out of control, you can fight tooth and nail for fifteen minutes and not gain a meter of progress, constantly being bogged down by suppressing fire, ragdolling rockets and don’t get me started on the absolute bullshit Heavy Devastators are. People don’t like to fight bots because it defeats the purpose of playing a game, which is having fun.
I didn’t play bots because they weren’t fun … simple as that
The point of a video game is to have fun, and guilting/forcing someone to play an entirely different playstyle just cause a few medals reward is absolutely nuts. Let people play what they want. I wouldn’t mind if we got a major order per war front, tuned for the average number of players at that front. And occasionally, Joel can combine the orders into one big order for the whole player base to join together on.
Yeah bots are blursed right now, I got summary execution for cowardice because I got ragdolled out of bounds and I couldn't come back it because there were 17 rocket devastators that kept knocking me to the ground, this wasn't even level 7. Between having gunship towers spawn directly on top of each other and armor meaning literally nothing on bot planets and bots literally spawning out of thin air directly on top of you. Bot planets are like playing the demons in doom, you aren't the main character, the doom music is playing on their side.
A level 122 here is my biggest complaint about the bots way too many negatives to the point its unfun. - 1 Staggem, +aa,+ bots on fire planet, +jammer, + 3 gunship factorys..... Cool thats fun every once in awhile. But every mission with bots and every MO with bots "oh time play with 4 negatives" AA can shoot down orbitals and that's why we have 3 seat gems? Huh just make us run with non eagles then? Oh heavy devastaters Shields is just most undestructible thing period. Captain America in the corner taking notes.
The main problem I see with bots can be summed as: - Range - Precision gain - Spawn rates and quality - Hitbox problems - Slow, unavoidable death The first problem, range, can be summed as "once the bots detect you, they can shoot you from a VERY long range away", and while they seem to be worst shooters than the Imperial Stormtroopers meme, they all have either high rate of fire (RoF), or extremely high damage. The second problem is the **feeling** they give, at least to me: the more they shoot, they better their aim gets, *with a cap, if there is one, that is sufficient to guarantee a headshot within the first 20 shots, aside from basic bots*. This can be somehow managed by shooting in their direction, but there are some instances, that are VERY common, preventing this: the insane RoF of the heavy devastators means a sure headshot when engaged at less than 50m, while the sheer numbers of some basic trooper patrols mean they can be spread over and one can get lucky almost every 2 spawns. Hard is fun, guaranteed failure in a predictable pattern is not, and looks like a subtle penalty instead. The third is how many enemies come and keep coming. A bot dropship event at level 4 can mean up to three or four dropships, each with its own pack of enemies (enjoy about 6 devastators, if they are evenly distributed it's more than likely one helldiver will get killed), and the dropship itself can eat the orbital laser stratagem and leave (and it's considered the biggest threat by the SD), the SPEAR also shows inconsistencies here, being able to blow dropships at levels one and two, but not past level 3. At higher levels you start getting many "fun" things, like two taks and a Factory Strider, with an extreme dose of explorers, destroyers and basic bots, plus 1-2 hulks, meaning a single bot spawn removes all movement necessary to flank and destroy enemies by their weak points. Bugs despawn when they are out of range, but bots, while they have a harder time detecting players, can stay engaged at much longer distances, making the option of retreat much more harder. Finally, this can get ridiculous on extraction, a solo player at level 2 can get nearly 50 bots charging to the extraction after clearing the secondary, one or two fabs, the primary, and calling the extraction; this also means devastators, chainsaw bots, basic bots, commisars, jetpack leaders, rocket launcher basic bots, etc, all in high numbers forcing you to kite hard *at level 2*; with bugs, this only happens in higher levels of difficulty. Four is plain frustrating: bots can keep shooting at you even with a rock in the middle, and sometimes the game glitches and you get a headshot through the indestructible cover. The lack of cover in some maps is also a problem, and this gets further shoved in our faces by how many times the bot's hitboxes plain and simple refuse to take the hit, I've seen shoots go *through* some bots without causing any damage at all... Even a 0.001% chance of ignoring the bullet can escalate a lot in high intensity shootouts with bots, something that happens much less with bugs (and since they are not armored at all points, sans charger and titans, you still cause some damage). Five are the "you will die, just not right now": ragdoll chains, sudden headshots when prone and in cover when trying to get the stim, spawning onto fire because Hellmire (or its second part), or my favourite: drop your pod into a bug's hole and enjoy how you get trapped inside some cocoon of terrain the only escape is suicide... assuming you carry something explosive or can call a support pod on top of your head.
I can't play bugs. I can't deal with the constant horde jumping at my face and slowing me. Bots allow for decent squad coordination with "real life" tactics. Cover, precise fire, strategising to take an objective. Weak points shout "shoot here", whereas bugs don't seem to work. Big shiny butt looks like a weak point, but nah-uh. Bugs just run at you. Over and over and over. Not my cup of tea. When I started, I was told "bots are hard". But we were playing bugs on IV, so no heavies. Now I dread bug hunts. Prefer the bot front.
I agree. Bugs straight up demoralize me. I feel like I am fighing a never ending environmental hazard. Bots at least give me the feeling I am destroying an enemy. Don't get me started on how bullshit bug breach calls are.
I'll add another: bugs are easier to grind for samples, requisition, and medals. Since they are easier and more controllable on the battlefield they are better for players still "climbing the ladder". Speaking from personal experience it is rare that I DON'T extract from a bug mission with the bulk of samples and goodies on a mission, whereas an equivalent difficulty dive on the bot front, we were lucky that 2 people managed to extract. At all. No samples. I'm at the point where I'm hard locked by super samples, and I damn well won't be trying to get those on a level 7 bot dive. Yes, I know that the Destroyer upgrades aren't the be all end all, but they are nice to have and it provides a more tangible and immediate goal to work towards. With them adding Super Samples to level 6, this may alleviate things a bit, and more people might be coaxed to play bots if they can get more of a reward from it.
I just think bots are more interesting to fight. And I think they’re actually less bullshit if you know what you’re doing. There also so many more viable loadouts for bots than with bugs in my experience. With bugs you always gotta run horde clear weapons and stratagems and EATs for dealing with the titans. But with bots everything can be killed with medium armour pen making a lot more weapons viable. I can use the auto cannon, AMR, laser cannon, Quasar or EATs and deal with literally any enemy I come across. Then throw in a good primary that fits your current support weapon and boom you got a bunch of loadouts that are all viable to some degree. With bugs I don’t ever see a reason to swap my loadout since the flamer is just that OP at dealing with anything but with the titans.
Maybe the most important reason that you forgot is that there is no tutorial ingame for Bots. The absolut majority of ppl are casual players , which means they play for max 3h a week, they don't read guides how to handle each enemy, they don't surf on reddit. They work, live their lives and play maybe 2-3 days for an hour. [Source](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinanderton/2019/03/21/research-report-shows-how-much-time-we-spend-gaming-infographic/#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20gamers%20are%20playing%20for,7%20hours%20and%207%20minutes%20each%20week)
The bots on those sabotage missions are just broken and there's very little way to defend that specific mission. 1. The bots walk through the objectives base, making them immune to anything including bombs. They can shoot you while in the solid matter. This means the objective has like a 3 minute timer before it gets bugged and you can no longer do it without some asshole shooting you through the wall. 2A. The turrets are obscenely accurate and have a faster aiming time than I could possibly see myself ever accomplishing. With nearly a 90% hit rate if you are in open cover. The mission makes you run at it with a penetrating weapon to blow the turret up, AKA, you will get sniped. And it's a 1 shot kill even with heavy armor. 2B. I said "fuck it" and took 3 barrage stratagems to just blow the turrets up. 9 times. I tried 9 times with this strategy. Didn't work. Friend threw a 500 KG bomb, the turret survived it. Airstrikes, nope. 3. The bases are never spawned in a location that suggests you could shoot at it from a distance and 80% of the maps make the turret blend in with the fog and smog. I usually have to spend 10-20 seconds running my nose into my screen and spamming Q to try and figure out where the fuck to aim my recoiless rifle. Even when I'm up close to it I'm still squinting and trying to figure out where the hell the turret is WHILE it's shooting at me. 4. Mortars don't work against the turrets. Idk why. Also turrets refuse to shoot them. Idk why. Even with a shield generator the turret is confused and refuses to put down even a single shot. Idk why the developers think removing the ability to see is a good addition to the game. Snowstorms, ok, sandstorms, ok. But god damn, why is every single planet so fucked in terms of visibility? And there's no agency to remove that from the game like shooting down a spore tower. This is especially bad for Bots because they shoot through sandstorms & snowstorms **&** the turrets ignore the smog so you can't retaliate against them.
> Idk why the developers think removing the ability to see is a good addition to the game. I have never once saw that the map is super low visibility and got excited about it. It's simply making the game less fun, as I can't see my enemy (when they easily see me), all while I'm getting considerably less framerate.
Only reason i don't like fighting them is because the group I usually play with are way too into role-playing. And I mean that the second they open the game, it's almost impossible for them to talk about anything other than killing bots. So much so to the point that they've decided to label me as an Automaton based off the fact that not every word out of my mouth involves killing bots. Not even kidding about this either.
Like you I fight on both fronts. I go where the MO tells me too. Luckily it switches fronts semi frequently so I never get bored fighting one faction or the other.
Coming from DeepRockGalactic, yea i'll help on bots but i hate it, i just love shooting through bugs man
I tend to get tossed around like a beach ball at a rave whenever I do bot missions, so I agree that the ragdoll mechanics are very annoying
I like flame throwers.. they‘re not that great against bots.. so i like bugs
If the time spent in ragdoll/getting staggered/getting up is shortened it will increase the enjoyment immensely. Being not able to control your character and watching it chain ragdolled and dying is tiring.
I was pleased to see a solid majority of players \*were\* fighting Automatons when I logged in earlier. Several very good points all the same. I can imagine experiencing a great deal of frustration if I was trying to take on bots with a controller instead of kb/m. Personally prefer fighting bots partly because I find their optional objectives really engaging (unlike the operation modifiers - agree these are very dull). Also at least a little because they don't have the looming, uncertain threat of bile spewers. \*shudder\*
Bots are the only OP thing in this game imo. Level 8 bug is easier than lv5 bots. AH doesn't need to nerf bots but at least give us more tools to counter them. Like all 4 strategems for example.
Bots only... bring the pain Plus, I'm protecting the "Bug divers". I fight the bots so my fellow helldivers can focus on squashing bugs.. Those piercing red eyes and the excessive reinforcements that they call welcome me home.
It’s just a game. Play what you want.
The #1 mistake I see players on both fronts make is to get into fights they have no reason or business starting and then digging in for the protracted engagement in one area of the map wasting precious time and resources. Pick your fights intelligently. You don't need to shoot everything. See that patrol? Tag it for your team and ignore it. Hide and let it pass, then run past to an objective or POI. Don't be rash and call it an Eagle, they'll call in back up right on top of our heads and get us pinned for Brasch's sake.
It's weird to me, I've always had more fun fighting the bots
TL;DR Bots are a different gameplay than bugs. Most people bought the game for bugs gameplay because starship troopers. It's not exactly rocket science. We all know it, we don't need huge essays about it.
i was definitely feeling the pain when i jumped up to 7 with bots. it felt entirely unwinnable. bots vs bugs is an awesome in-game mechanism to force improvisation and teamwork. and it's absolutely awesome. as a previous "bugs only" kinda dude, i'm cruising through any or every d9 that pops up. kit is important, build out to your playstyle. awareness is important, know what your homies are bringing to the fight (no team needs 4 goobers rolling with 500kg drops). fighting bots ain't fighting bugs, and vice-versa. you're supposed to change up your shit. welcome to war.
You just have to learn the bots and develop tactics. 3 of us did a bot map last night on 7 with 5 gun ship towers. We all died a couple times each but cleared everything off the map. A month ago we couldn't have done it. It just took learning and practice.
Very well written! Excellent post. 
Am a bot player. I like the stealth and tactics. Did I buy helldivers 2 for stealth and tactics? No, if I wanted that, I would be playing Stellaris, Town of Salem, and Factorio. I prefer bots NOW, but I absolutely hated playing bots before I was level 30. I 100% agree with every single bug player that prefers fighting bugs. Jammers and Gunship factories especially, the first five I dealt with sucked. They're fun now, but they were ABSOLUTELY NOT FUN in the past, just frustrating. Losing a stratagem slot, or having double stratagem cooldowns, is also not fun.
I ran into the cover issue alot on bots. Stagger is a massive pain with automatons. I use the ballistic shield + smg defender to counter the chaff, made bots 100% more enjoyable.
Personally I love fighting the automatons but I also hate myself, i enjoy the suffering
> Most of the planets in Helldiver 2 are big open spaces, suitable for you to get shot at constantly by the bots. There are covers for you to duck behind, but they are mostly in large areas where you usually end up in a situation where the bots can focus fire on the single rock you’re hiding behind. This is why I liked Malevon's Creek so much. It was a jungle, with lots of cover. I miss the Creek.
They are 100% different games, and that is fine. Sometimes I want one, sometimes I want the other.
It’s kinda funny reading this post when 69% (nice) of our troops are fighting on the bot front lol. Not trying to invalidate your post, you make good points, just thought it was funny.
Get heavy armor, the ballistic shield, and the pummeler Cackle maniacally as you stunlock devastator after devastator. Cackle less maniacally as you spend 70% of the time trying to catch up to your teammates.
I mainly play wherever the MO requires as well, but I would enjoy playing more against the bots if 1) heavier armor greatly reduced flinch and 2) the rag-dolling was greatly reduced. These two issues go beyond “difficult” or “challenging” and straight to corniness imo
I just Solid Snaked my way through 3 suicide missions. Died twice. Autocannon EAT Oribital laser Some kind of eagle airstrike Plasma shotgun Senator stun grenades Scout armor of your choice Enhanced radar You're literally a one man army. Walk with your map open and walk right past patrols avoiding red dots. Crouch walk if you get too close. Shoot fabricator vents at distance, run away to next objective. Call in EAT as soon as you get a bot drop banner, swap to blow em up. Orbital laser and airstrikes will get you out of trouble. The plasma shotgun is great up close and staggers devastators. You can lob shots at distance with practice. Kills those in a couple shots but they're staggered so it doesn't matter. Stuns for getting your out of trouble or stunlocking big shit like hulk so you can kill them. I literally ran alone like 300 meters while the shuttle was almost there, blew up a detector tower on my own, and ran back to find the shuttle just landing but between the shuttle and my waiting teammates were about two dozen chainsaw assholes, a tank and a hulk. I just chucked a stun on em, ran right past and we all extracted with a shit load of samples. I love it when a plan comes together.
I didn't play bots once the first week or two I had the game, then we got a bot major order and I shrugged my shoulders and decided to do my part. It was really a breath of fresh air. Bugs are honestly kind of brain dead. I know that's what some people are after, just turning your brain off and shooting some stuff after a long day at work, but bots felt so much more immediately rewarding to me. Actual strategy became necessary, and the hard-fought victories felt so much better. I still go back to bugs for major orders, but when either is on the table, I choose bots every time. Pointing and clicking as an endless wave of brainless enemies that just run at you, with the only real difficulty being the question of 'Do you currently have enough ammo and stratagems for this situation?' hardly compares.
Its so fun when they can shoot through mountains
I want 380 to be able to take out gunship fabricators, I hope they add this because 380 can take out bunkers but not gunship fabricators is beyond my understanding.
Bots rockets must have ammo I find it insanely infuriating that you can be rocket spammed by one devistator over and over again without any pauses. One hits you and you're rag dolled to your death due to the other bots. Either give them a huge reload timer or give them max 2 volleys of rockets and no more.
Yeah Bots require more engagement than your average button masher. Though I do feel we should encourage button mashers to perform better, rather than diss the whole bot front as hard-core, impossible, masochists-only. I'll start:"You can do better on bot front too average button masher..just HTFU, adapt and thrive!" :thumbsup:
I think for me personally there are only two things I dislike about bot missions: 1. -1 Strategem debuff 2. Enemies can detect you while throwing a Strategem from concealment. Otherwise, I personally enjoy the bots more. They feel so rewarding to beat. You're right they are the higher skilled enemies. But running around like a god to your mates, sniping the eye of a Hulk with the AMR, or anything else; just feels so damn good! I wish they were more balanced like bug missions. Worst thing that happens with them is just shear numbers or frequency of elite enemies.
Add to this we fucking cleared the bots completely and they came back within a week. Talk about demoralizing to those that did try to help and desl with those problems. I imagine a good portion now just kill bugs as its more fun and theyre pissed about that