Helldivers 2 (PS5/PC)

[fishbowlhead]

New Fire based war bond finally announced. Looks good and the fire resistance armour is finally going to be a thing.

[Tobal]

Just reading the helldiver forums... seems AH dusted of the nerf bat to make the flamethrower and incendiary weapons useless just in time for the fire themed warpass, the anti tank mines unlock turned out to worthless...won't kill heavies, the chain exploded due to the size of the explosive so there is no catch for heavies to walk over 3 or 4 of them to kill, it's also set off by light enemies, just what you would want to happen for something called anti-tank mine.

Main reason for the nerf is armour blocking flames, so to kill with flamethrower now you have try and aim for the unarmoured belly or the ass (so stuns grenades or go home)

at least Atmospheric Interference is gone and the armed hell bomb changes are nice.

[fishbowlhead]

Im absolutely F*****g sick to death of nerfs in a pve game, it’s pathetic and shows a total lack of imagination on the devs part.

Theres literally every weapon in the game to work on improving and, nope, nerf.

[Tobal]

CEO is out with apology again... the fallout from how bad the update was and out lacklustre the warbond is pissed most of the community off. Aside from prementioned nerfs to fire before the fire themed warbond hit, most of the new units are just frustrating to fight (lots of ragdolling the player)... they need to just remove the Impaler from the game and make sure it's working before putting it, being tracked map wide by tentacles that can knock you over while you all have no idea where the damned impaler is, is not fun.

So we are back to steam review bombs and what's left of the player base letting the Bots win by reusing to fight (currently 1-2 systems away from Earth), not sure if this MO related mess-up arrowhead caused leaving the middle bot lane undefended, while having a MO that wants players to fight both bots and bugs in unrelated pockets. The cynic in me thinks the bots outside Earth was planned for some sort of story thing in a week, and the calls online to ignore the bot front just lined up by coincidence.

[Neon Ignition]

It's been months but I still follow this thread
Honestly, the game is too samey at its core - that's not a bad thing, COD is the same, but if you feel the pull to come back it's far too often that the devs have kicked off some furore. I'm kind of not surprised the community is allowing Earth to be put at risk, it was naturally the only way the community can tease out a real event once frustration/repetition kicks in. Once Earth falls and things are largely reset I think it'll get down to its final core playerbase and stay that way for years. The window to retain its mass popularity has been missed now I think.

[fishbowlhead]

There’s waaaaaaaaaay too much rotting Bungie crept into Helldivers2, and it stinks.

Players having fun? Nerf that.
Were listening!
I’ll pass it along to the devs.

Rinse and repeat, oh well it was fun while it lasted.

[fishbowlhead]

It's been months but I still follow this thread
Honestly, the game is too samey at its core - that's not a bad thing, COD is the same, but if you feel the pull to come back it's far too often that the devs have kicked off some furore. I'm kind of not surprised the community is allowing Earth to be put at risk, it was naturally the only way the community can tease out a real event once frustration/repetition kicks in. Once Earth falls and things are largely reset I think it'll get down to its final core playerbase and stay that way for years. The window to retain its mass popularity has been missed now I think.

Sony are testing review system for the PSN store and the community is already encouraging review bombing there as well to stop the nerfs.

It HAS to stop, it’s a pve game, we play games for fun, if you don’t like people having fun in your game because that’s how not how YOU want them to have fun (I’m looking at you bungle) then you have deep seated phycological issues and have no business being in the industry.

They probably schedule their kids fun at 20mins to bed time for their scheduled 10 mins of supervised fun time, but as long as it’s something they approve of, and doesn’t make a mess, and is also symmetrical.

[Neon Ignition]

They just needed to embrace the emergent gameplay chaos of it rather than focus on pass shilling. They needn't even worry too much about the difficulty balancing if over powered weapons get brought in over time too. Essentially look more to EDF rather than live service games, the regular group fun and cool moment craziness would have kept it going longer.

[fishbowlhead]

Yep, who gives a crap if we all use 1 weapon if that’s what we want to use? Who cares if something that took you 10 hours to unlock is OP, we earned the right to it.

If they were that concerned about balancing they would take the 90% of useless junk they put in the game and bring those up to something of a useful level. Not take everything down.

Stuff like the social menu is still utterly broken since launch but they have ALL the time in the world to track what’s most used and nerf those.

Autocannon, EAT, Commando & 500kg bomb will be next on the chopping block.

[fishbowlhead]

Thanks the the community’s lack of effort and faulty equipment (ha) the bots are dangerously close to taking super earth.

That will screw arrowheads plans up.

[Tobal]

I've really gone of the boil with this, so much feels so broken, spawns for patrols are completely unbalanced, i'm pretty sure level 6 is harder than level 7 and 8, PC players crashing all over the place, the damned ragdoll from the new units introduced last major update, peashooter weapons and long stratagems cooldowns making 6-10 a frustrating experience, currency caps, problems with the rare sample build ups and having nothing to do with medals even for now casual players like me. And it shows, last played on monday there was about 24k players (pc and ps5 combined) down alot from the regular 40-50k players the last few months.

I see reddit posts about some discord dev posts proposing a big balance change 30/40 days from now... we'll see if the fun returns.

[fishbowlhead]

Problem is, they’ve gone from broken but fixes every week, sometimes twice a week, to broken and fixes every few months.

And there’s waaaaaaaaaay to much bungle advice crept into this game of promises promises that they never intend to enact, or if they do it’s in some twisted F you to the player base.

I’ve lost all desire to play

[Neon Ignition]

Helldivers 2, largely because I stepped away from it before the heaviest catalogue of controversies hit, is one of the best new game experiences I've had all year but I'm hoping that the hit's it's taken along with the failure of titles like Foamstars and sheer implosion of Concord - along with the many cancelled live service projects Sony has had - prompts a hard push back to SP content. They had so many things on the go, as have many companies, that it's hard not to imagine it contributed to Sony's first party slate being so sparse at the peak point of this gen. Just too much emphasis and had Sony had other big 2024 fish to fry but the team on this might have been left alone more.

[Tobal]

Strap into the drop pod boys, the big balance patch (all buffs) is here... once im home i'll give it a whizz for the first time in weeks. Main brief below, with the actually list of per weapons changes in the link.

Helldivers,
Thank you for your valuable feedback. Many players have expressed feeling constrained in how they approach challenges, often relying on a limited set of tools while other options seem less effective. This has impacted your ability to play the game in a way that suits your preferences.
So, what’s changing? For all the bugdivers out there, many situations were previously either resolved with your primary weapon or anti-tank weapons, which haven’t always performed as expected. With the overwhelming presence of Bile Titans and Chargers, many weapon choices therefore became invalid.
To address this, we've reworked armor penetration, anti-tank weapons, enemy armor and health values. Our goal is to improve the effectiveness of weapons such as the Autocannon, Heavy Machine Gun, Flamethrower, and Anti-Materiel Rifle against heavily armored enemies. Although they may not be as effective as specialized anti-tank weapons, they are now more viable choices making your loadouts more versatile, fostering better team collaboration and planning.
On the Bot front, Hulks have also had their armor reduced, making them more vulnerable to a wider range of weapons. Additionally, to improve the gameplay experience, the Devastator and Gunship will now have a limited supply of rockets, and those rockets won’t hit as frequently as before. This comes alongside the previously updated smaller impact radius for rockets, reducing excessive ragdolling.
We’ve also made improvements to many primary weapons, bringing them closer in effectiveness to the most popular choices. This should offer more variety and flavor during your play sessions.
We are adjusting damage mechanics to make the damage Helldivers receive more consistent over time by reducing 100% extra headshot damage to 50%. To maintain the overall challenge of the game, we've slightly increased the damage taken to other parts of the body. Our intent is to preserve the intensity of the gameplay while minimizing frustrating situations where sudden headshots cause large damage spikes.
With these changes, along with an upgraded Helldiver arsenal, enemy adjustments, and more consistent damage, the overall difficulty may slightly decrease. We'll be monitoring this closely and will listen to the community on how you think it feels.
We want to assure you that your feedback remains essential to us. Please share your thoughts on these updates, as we are actively listening. We plan to conduct another balance pass by Day 60 of our commitment to ensure we’re aligning with what you need for the best possible experience and to address any concerns or adjustments required. Your insights will be invaluable in refining these changes and making sure the game remains engaging and enjoyable for everyone.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1fiuaad/patch_01001100/

[fishbowlhead]

And just like that i'm back in, new warbond looks good as well.