Behemoth Chargers and Tank turrets have health just above the amount that anti-tank weapons can do in a timely manner. That's part of the philosophy that undermines weapons and makes them very unfulfilling.
Yeah and the EATs against the Commando, which one is better to use if you want to take tanks? i tried Eats with another support weapon, and how clumsy and slow they are to aim and fire is insane. The cooldown is quicker, but call in times sometimes its 6-7 seconds by that time im already dead
@@themarlboromandalorianImagine if sending a thermite or incindiary grenade would force a cookoff effect. That'd be an awesome animation for it eventually explode.
another point that is not intuitive for the charger: when such a heavy creature charges and hits a huge boulders, you would expect it to be stunned for a few seconds. However in the game it would just turn at you pretty quickly, or worst, simply climb over it.
@@Keywiiwee stun stop whatever. They hit the a rock, it stand still for a few seconds. Thats what youre expected right, its even enough to land a 500kg right now right then and there. U make it sound like they never bump their head into stuff like all the time.
it used to do that like in the first month or two but then something happened, terrain got fucked up or what, no clue, but yeah most of the time they'll just scale whatever boulder you lead them into
about bile titans one thing I really dislike (besides the numerous bugs) is the fact that bile titans cannot bleed out, you can destroy most of its organs leaving 2 massive gaping holes in its body (which should be a weakpoint but its not) and the titan can live forever afterwards, it will never bleed out, its stupid and coupled with its head being hyperarmored sometimes its miserable to fight imo, especially when sometimes it starts walking as if drunk, constantly putting its legs in front of its face making it impossible to kill it at range and once its close you cant focus it down because there are hunters everywhere
Technically it can bleed out but it takes so long that its impractical. Some people have timed the bleedout for bile titans, it can last for several minutes
did not notice that BT dont bleed out - never really seen it as well - also never really relied on enemies bleeding out like for chargers --- BUT for BT to bleed out would make things so much better - since just letting it bleed out does not make it less of a danger - it is still chasing you and trying to use its legs to step on you --- but at least - lets say it will take 1 minute for it to bleed out - just allows more weapons to be viable - more builds to be viable - more strategies to use but some might be better or faster than other but at least there's player choice
I will agree that the lack of vulnerability for bile titan is annoying. Shooting the guts after the sac has been destroyed is highly inconsistent. Rockets to the head also barely do more damage than just spamming it from the sides. It's a real debate whether you want to try and aim for the head or just hit it in the side to break the armor and finish it with other weapons.
As someone that played Helldivers 1 for almost 200 hours, I feel like I know what Helldivers is supposed to FEEL LIKE. That Feeling is supposed to be "challenging but fair", your Guns should be good, and your Stratagems are only really used when the Alarm gets raised and the HORDE descends upon you. Support weapons give you ways to help the Squad, be it a Anti Tank launcher, Horade Clearing MG/Flamer, or a Healing Beam to keep everyone going. VEHICLES are the "trump card", you call down a Mech or a Tank and just start BLASTIN. They are your on demand BAIL OUT CARD when you really need it. Orbitals and Eagles provide fire support and Fortifications are Supposed to help you defend your position. And having played Helldivers 2 since launch, the WORST thing I can say about is: I'd rather go play helldivers 1 that was Fun AF! It feels like the Further you get from Difficulty 6 or 7, the LESS FUN the game gets. Which is hilarious cus helldivers 1 I think went up to lvl 12 then later they added levels 13 to 15. The Guns and alot of the Stratagems feel like I'm playing Helldivers 1 with NO upgrades on them. Which says alot about the state of most weapons and alot of stratagems we currently have. The ONLY thing about the Automatons that i DON"T LIKE is how utterly OPPRESSIVE they can feel at times, more though sheer NUMBERS then actual Threat level. Heavy Devs with their PINPOINT Machine Gun accuracy and the shere number of Devastators on higher Difficulties (Heavy Devs or Rocket Devs) only extravagates this problem. And Gunships are a massive pain in the ass if you don't "prepare" for them. The new Scout Striders having rockets on them now ironically makes them Vulnerable to Impact grenades again. And the Rocket Tank..... EH its a tank which also ironically are EASYIER TO KILL THEN THE GOD DAME HULKS 99% of the time. Also they put the Command Bunker Turrets in the new "fortresses" on lvl 10 and.... those things are borderline OP, they just Kill you in seconds like they are shooting you in the HEAD. The only things I don't really like about the Bugs is sometimes it feels like the Alarm never stops, cus their is always that ONE BUG in the back calling in the Cavalry and its just like "UGH, guess we doing this for 40 minutes straight" The Charger and by extension Charger Behemoth are not too bad, but their ability to HOME IN on you like a MISSILE is sometimes mind boggling, and when their is like 3, 4, 5 of them its just like "UGH.... this is gonna suck". AND when your Anti Tank options are not 1 Shotting or 2 shotting the BIG MEAN MOTHER BUGGER running you down like a Freight train or your Dumping shell after shell into a Impaler and its like "You gonna Die sometime today or shall I go find a bigger boom stick?" And by bigger boom stick I mean orbital Strikes from the Ship. Like the CHARGER is more of a threat then the Bile Titan is, if you take out the Bile Titans acid sakes all it can do is run after you and you can EASILY out run the bile titan. You can't out run or out maneuver charger, not to mention they tend to brake all your turrets making you wonder why you even brought them.
@@duross101 Yeah I should probably go fill out that Feedback form, assuming its still available. Helldivers 2 is not "dead" or as shit as people make it out to be, but It definitely has very Obvious Issues that need to be addressed. The Gameplay loop is FUN, and at times it is VERY FUN to play. But then their are times where everything just GOES TO SHIT and you just WISH you had a Nuclear Missile to drop on your Own Face out of Spite. Primary Feel Underpowered (both in damage output and ammo capacity), Even KEY Stratagem Support weapons that would be "fan favorites" to veterans of the First Galactic War are feeling Underpowered (That BAD!) meanwhile the Autocannon slowly turning into the GOLDEN GUN to Rule them all due to its versatility. The Mechs..... where do I start? No stratagem Chute like the first war so you can't even use your other stratagems or call in your buddies unless you GET OUT (why would you do that?), they are quite Fragile (they should be built like Chargers or Impalers with Big HP pools) and they do not have alot of ammo pound for pound. (again like they are Un-upgraded versions of the ones from HD 1) And on top of this, We haven't really gotten any "game changing" Stratagems really to shack things up. Just Side grades to what we already had. (HMG vs MMG for example) We have not gotten more powerful while our Enemies have more tools in their toolbox then we do. Any Buffs they have given to Stratagems are NICE though, they have at least improved in that respect. Playing on anything above lvl 7 feels more like a Chore then a Challange.
Did I just essentially read "7 is a lot of fun, but I keep choosing higher difficulties and then a different game " If 7 is fun, stay there. You don't get anything special on 10.
Imo HellDivers 1 was more difficult, mechs werent that good on higher difficulties execpt the bastion tank, but it required 2 people to operates and coordinate. most primaries in HD1 are either broken or bad, no in between, but i agree that HD2 enemies Heavy Devs are really utterly oppressive
Completely agree, Helldivers 1 has a great sense of balance and that alarm state you described, where HD2 is always on that state. It is not as fun as 1
Arrowhead's design philosophy feels a lot like an eight year old playing war on the playground. Everything's going great until you start to beat them then they pull out the invisible force shield, but no you dont get one. They talk about wanting to make things realistic, until it's not convenient for them. And when we start pulling out old world war 2 or vietnam videos to prove a point about realism they throw out buzz words and cop out of any discussion. And frankly, I blame the souls games and this "friction" design philosophy that came from it. Because it seems like nowadays, every dev has to make their own version of dark souls, like it's some kind of weird right of passage.
You know what's funny? Dark soul only has 1 difficulty. Helldivers 2 has many difficulties. Weapons and strategems break on harder difficulty after 6. Enemies are so broken
@@KaiNLindathis. I think most games should have only 1 difficulty. HD2 having many difficulties spread the players from the matchmaking making it sometimes hard to find players.
You've clearly never played a souls game, and i hate that people keep bringing it up like it's even remotely relevant the game they're discussing. Dark souls is not: I repeat, is not hard, it just has a learning curve. I'm not good at video game AT ALL, and I've been fine getting through them cuz they're kinda like combat jigsaw puzzles :3 helldivers however has a balance issue, to many of the threats you face you'll have to run from (assuming helldivers or higher) bc you just don't have the gear to deal with a swarm of chargers.
@@DanielFerreira-mh2hd my issue is they claim they want to be the dark souls version but they dont follow any of the philosophy of dark soul game design.
Around 17:30 - thing is, they're aren't taking "overpowered" and depowering them, they're taking "over picked" weapons and depowering them. The game has never had any overpowered weapon - we've had game bugs that saw certain weapons overperform (Raiilgun PS5 issue 1shotting bile titans, charge slide glitch allowing flamethrowers to cook them) - but they nerf the guns, maybe fix the bugs, and we end up way weaker than we started How does one convince their friends to play this when each update takes away more than the 'compensate' with. Yes, I do mean compensate, because even "buffs" like the Arc Thrower stagger (which could punch hulks) are often removed by the devs in the next patch (Hulks are more resistant to stagger). How do you advertise warbonds (rip eruptor) when they gut their selling point (flamethrower warbond? Not on AH's watch). There's no milsim I can think of that does that, while ignoring the realism the enemy needs to have (infinite rockets, shooting through walls, etc)
To answer the question: yes. The devs seem like they want this to be a game where we struggle to win just based off of their actions and what's been said. Why buff the enemies with more enemy types but nerf us while at the same time adding weapons centered around those nerfs? What they did to the Breaker Incendiary was pure childish and 100% proves my point. I understand they want they game to be challenging but this is not the way whatsoever
@duross101 if they nerf the auto canon that would be the final straw. I mean I already stopped playing but the auto canon is the last cope for a lot of people .
HMG w/ supply pack is awesome. AMR is great. They are all at the same power level as the autocannon. Heat sinks take a little more with hmg & amr, but they will damage them fairly fast. Spear, & commando are both great. Nade launcher with supply pack is decent. Railgun is getting pretty close to being good. Autocannon is definitely the easiest weapon to get used to. I'm a fellow recovering AC addict.
@lukemehalick370 I dunno those all felt like shit to me. Don't get me wrong they where effective but just because somthing is effective dosent necessarily mean it feels good to shoot. AC is the only thing to me that felt both effective and satisfying to shoot. I also don't like weapons that need the supply pack to feel better as using two stratagem slots to make one weapon work generally feels bad.
a good rework to the charger and that will take skill would be when you force the charger to make a tight turn (by running towards it and moving to the side in the last second dodging it) you should be able to see the charger from pure momentum flip on it's back making it stunned even longer and exposing its more vulnerable belly. if you dive on a 90 degree angle away from the charger - the charger should then take MORE time to stop - exposing its butt for a longer period of time - while stop, the charger's ability to make a 180 degree turn should also be slower because its so big too the stalker/hunters have what some might call "a rubber band" design - i think its used mostly in racing games or at least when i first heard it - basically the in helldivers case - it will lock on to you and even if you dive away, you can never dodge the attack because the enemy is already locked in to you, not your location. the Devs REALLY need to make these jumping enemies jump to the location and not to the helldiver model so there is some skill expression to dodge the bugs when they fly towards you -- same idea already for the flying bugs that you can dive to dodge away from their attacks. lastly -- when people complain about how the guns and weapons FEELS -- buffing them will NOT make you a DOOM Slayer and make the game easy that is 100% a miss conception. Guns need to be buffed or changed to feel good to use, so that can be fun. Just because its fun does not make it easy either. Buffing the weapons allows for more variety of choices in the weapons - not then these F tier weapons suddenly would one shit a BT, just slightly more bearable to use
On top of whatever buffs they give, they need to give us more information on the "guns." Tell me. In game, how the FUCK I'm supposed to know what "AP-4" is?! There's Light, Medium, And Heavy. What's AP4? Thicc-A-F? What weapons do Thicc-A-F Penetration?!
Balancing is a huge part of the issue but it’s not just because the weapons don’t feel great…It’s because the enemies are so difficult. One charger or a hulk isn’t really that big of a deal. But on difficulty 7 plus you are dealing with 5+ at a time on top of the already enormous amount of enemies. It’s weird how they have designed the enemies in this game
mind you a Hunter can extend the range of his jump MID AIR if you jump away with the jetpack as the hunter was jumping you as well and hits you when you were supposed to dodge it.
Primaries aren't necessarily made to be crap though, they're just not intended to be enough to easily and quickly kill heavies without teamwork Hulks can be fairly quickly killed with most primaries, but without some kind of stun they turn too fast to make it quick and easy. You need teamwork Imo chargers need to be like this. Getting shots on their butt is really easy, so they make it very tanky to most weapons. I'd rather chargers be scarier and faster but quicker and easier to kill
@saintwaffles yeah dude, chargers aren't rare elite heavies like bile titans so I don't see why they are so durable on that ass That being said imo the armored bile spewers are way more of a concern. At high level they just completely invalidate all light AP primaries in 1 fell swoop
@@saintwaffles They have weak points...... you just have to brake their armor first and plenty of weak flesh under it. IM MORE CONCERNED by the fact the Impaler can take like 3 Recoiless Rifle shells to face and LIVE!!! How and Why is that allowed?!
@@bodkin7841 Extremely annoying, yes. If you roll bile spewers and the difficulty is over 4 (the don't have armor on their heads until higher levels) your build could just be invalidated entirely. They need to add that module or intelligence purchase upgrade that tells us which types of enemies spawn for the maps, so you can know to not bother with light penetration if it's spewers.
This game isn't hard, its just a knowledge check. Once you know how to fight the enemies, the game becomes easy. The ragdolling just being far too much of a punishment for making mistakes. I firmly believe anyone can beat diff 9 or 10 solo. I've managed to solo 9 and it wasn't too hard. It was just extremely punishing. Actually doing what I need to do wasn't the hard part. However, it was infuriating to do. It wasn't infuriating because it was hard. It was infuriating because it was annoying. Not only was my damage inconsistent because Arrowhead purposely designed their enemies to *be* inconsistent, the primaries just didn't clear the chaff as well as they should be able to. I don't care that my breaker couldn't down a charger with its 13 round mag. I care that my anti tank couldn't when I shot it from the back. The fact that the charger is actively weaker in the armored parts of its body than the fleshy parts is utterly insane and asinine. Yes, skill issue to a degree. If you can't land a shot, thats on you. But when you can land those shots, when you can do what the game asks of you, and you find that what the game asks of you is just annoying rather than hard, *THAT* is how the game's design philosophy failed. Some people want it easy. Some want a power fantasy. I want to feel like my anti tank weapons actually are made to be anti-tank. The fact that the spear, which can only lock on to and fire at heavy enemies at all, can't one shot a charger or hulk from any angle, is stupid. The fact that the new rocket salvo tanks have no heat sinks is dumb. The fact that the recoilless can't consistently two shot a bile titan is dumb. That is the complaint.
as someone who do design games Arrowhead has no idea what they're doing Making games is sort of like cooking, there are a lot of ways to cook a dish but some methods are more correct than others, as in you will get a more desirable result. You didn't speak so much on design philosophy as a whole but pointed out poor design choices which I pretty much agree with are really hindering the game's potential. When I'm playing the game I don't feel like I'm playing a game that's meant to be played, it feels like a bunch of systems cobbled together waiting for the QA report. What gets me is this attempt to balance ten (10) levels of difficulty, which suggests they're open to players of all skill levels, yet they restrict most of the content to 5+. Imo a dynamic difficulty system would solve a lot of issues. Unfortunately they just don't know how to evaluate feedback and are very stubborn about it
My opinion on the last part is that 1-4 are tutorial difficulty, but honestly 3-4 are still valid difficulties to play for resource gain. You're never going to get Supercredits faster than playing on 3-4 while still feeling some small level of engagement with the game. You can hit PoIs quickly and sweep a level even solo. The game really only starts at 5, which I think is fine; and the general sweet spot in difficulty is the 5-7 range with the game getting progressively crazy beyond that. Which in my opinion, is how it should be. People upset about all the changes/nerfs are jumping into 9's and 10's and are looking for power fantasy play at that point; which is a mistake on their part. Arrowhead has always been pretty transparent on how they wanted the highest difficulty to be, even despite the disconnect in some of the marketing, and I think a lot of the pushback here is done in bad faith. They want something the game isn't offering, and they're mad about it.
@@Blakobness I'm just mad that I'm winning, even on diff 9, but I'm not enjoying my wins. I don't think "Wow, that was close" or "damn, my heart's beating so fast." I think "Thank GOD I'm done, fuck off." I can consistently win on diff 9. But no matter how many times I do win... it just isn't fun. The weapons I use simply make things less annoying, rather than more fun.
@@Blakobness Let us break down what “difficulty” means. Games with difficulty levels can generally be broken down into three types of “checks”. 1) progression check, this is like your typical dps check in rpgs. 2) knowledge check, this is learning and knowing the system through experience 3) skill check, this is being able to act on your knowledge, it could be hitting your shots in shooters or planning strategically in rts. In most games there is a healthy mix of everything, a player lacking in one aspect can supplement it with another. There is a soft limit to knowledge and skill so a lot of games will rely mainly on progression to balance the endgame difficulty levels. What isn’t considered “difficulty” is luck. Players love randomness, but not too much that it would cause checks to fail too often when they should have passed. There is a very fine line between fun and frustration in turn making randomness notoriously difficult to balance so it’s generally done very carefully. Arrowhead completely disregards luck in trying to balance the game, they treat it as fun in every and all circumstances. This is where your inconsistency comes from. Progression ends at lvl 20, only knowledge and skill beyond that. Skill is at complete odds with luck, player headshot, ragdolls, awkward enemy hitbox are some big contributors. Knowledge is an awkward one, from 1-8 you’re learning the weapons, the maps, but most importantly how to win harder and more chaotic engagements against enemies. At 9-10 you’re suddenly discouraged from enjoying the game you were playing, you have to learn a different game. The increased randomness making player skill feel less reliable reduces the difficulty progression down to a knowledge check on how to avoid engagements. So there’s the dissonance, 9-10 isn’t marketed as a separate game mode, players want a natural progression of difficulty. Of course you will find people who make it to 10 and can adapt and don’t mind getting unlucky sometimes, but judging by the amount of outrage I think this population is in the minority. So how can Arrowhead eliminate this dissonance? Well it’s not by increasing skill and knowledge check while adding more randomness thereby making 9-10 even more different than 1-8. They can either make the entire game about avoiding engagements or make it about winning engagements. I think they can even have them coexist If they choose to rework difficulty.
My biggest issue with the game is that the design philosophy is around creating issues on the battlefield. But when every single enemy type is an issue, not a challenge but a problem to solve, then nothing is an issue. You can't think critically, there is no strategy, you can't do anything but kill the thing. No clever usage of enemy AoEs against other enemies, no selective target killing, all you can do is throw a stratagem and start firing. Too much thought is put into the enemies, no thought on the Helldivers. We see that with the balancing, it completely sucked any joy out of primary weapons.
Right now both the horde shooter and milsim game can exist, and they kind of do. For reasons which I hope are obvious. What the game needs is agency and consistency about which you talked, and to fix their damn hitboxes. Also, do not compare Dark Souls with HD2. DS is hard because of actually good design. The game is adamant about giving you the adequate tools for the job. And Myazaki himself makes sure he can beat the game, whereas if you watch AH people play HD2 you will think they are game journalists, not developers.
The problem with the saying "I want to feel overpowered" is that I don't believe players want that either. If the game was too easy for the majority of players, it would get stale fast. People would lose interest. We just want weapons that will actually kill things. It's not op to be at the same level as the enemies. AH needs to lean into building stratgems around teamwork and actual strategy. They should be powerful but only in the right hands. I think helldivers has elements of both a mil sim and a horde shooter. Rather than picking a side, AH needs to find a better way of combining the 2 genres. That's the true potential of this game.
I'm extremely confidant that if they left the game in the at-launch state without any of the nerfs, the game would have dropped off more severely. For all people's bitching and moaning, the nerfs did their job and got people to change their approach. The game staying in that state was bad because the experience was not changing, and it was boring. Once people got over the honeymoon phase of the game, it would have been shelved. I don't care what people seem to think they want, but chasing a power fantasy kills a game. Especially a game like Helldivers 2 which has really nothing going on in the background to keep you invested. Cool, we drop in and squash some bugs and spill some oil and go home. Cool, we do it again, no deviation. RP some on social media. Drop again, no deviation. New Warbond, nice; drop in and do the same thing, no deviation, no difficulty. Stand and shoot. That is not fun. Not having enemies that cat push and disrupt your position is not fun. Having all the resources you need to address every threat you can face all the time is not fun.
One thing about the incendiary breaker that I completely forgot about is that they buffed it when the dot bug was still around. Its damage used to be below the 200 mark and they never reverted it to what it used to be. Now it does a hell of a lot of damage but I think they've been so busy that they forgot about it. Thats a massive issue is that there hasnt really been a breather for AH to figure out their shit. Or at least thats how it seems on my end
Horde shooter or Tactical shooter. Helldiver 2 is one of the rare games that can do both. They have "kill that particular target" missions, that dont appear in higher difficultis. They have "defend that base or attack that base" missions They have a lot of "clear/destroy/activate that objective" missions that have the same feel. they can create different missions that need to be tactical they can create missions that are true horde shooters without a ton of heavy targets. They can create boss mobs with an insane amount of movesets and defense. like a charger that doesnt just charge, but also jumps and rolls. Mobs that can only be found in special boss missions. The possibilitys are endless in this game. Unused potential. Right now we are playing Maps that are indeed horde shooters.
Thank You! Finally someone notices, We are punished for going prone, also there are way too many places that refuse to let us go prone in order to get a good position. 😢
what ive picked up is arrowheads philosophy is perfectly sound... if theyre trying to make a game not that fun becuase there trying to please everyone even though they said they dont do that
i think helldivers 2 suffers alot from inconsistency among other things. in my opinion at least. there is many times on the bot front for example, espically with the striders, they just gets straight up aimbot just random. kinda the same with all bots too tho. sometimes they miss and sometimes they hit you which is to be expected. but then suddenly out of nowhere your either down to low health or dead in a second. same thing with rockets. sometimes they acts like rockets and they either miss or hit you if your in the line of fire of a rocket, but sometimes the rockets suddenly have homing on you. there was one time i was hiding behind a rock from a rocket devestator far away, somehow that dude hit me with rockets while i was behind a rock. and then the bugs. espically with chargers, sometimes your able to dodge at the side of him, sometimes your not due to its crazy turn speed. then chargers sometimes just walks super fast. idk if this is a animation flaw where its supposed to charge but it looks like it just walks super fast idk. but hella annoying that it can just walk faster than you can run. i dont realy struggle that much with the other bugs. their heads are usually their weakpoints i suppose. but it is was very annoying when i was new to helldivers 2 that the bots had obvious weak spots while the bugs i thought had obvious weak spot like the chargers ass, but apperantly isnt. now i know this isnt the case because i watched youtube to know how to easily defeat all enemies. Helldivers are getting weaker and weaker while the enemy is getting stronger and stronger
I enjoyed this video as it is hitting that Helldivers 2 content crave I have. But... You should be more specific, the way you are describing things can confuse someone who does not already know all this information. -Not making a distinction between behemoth charger and regular charger gives the impression that regular charger has the momentum dependent armor stripping phenomenon. -Saying that "sniper rifles" can take out hulk visors gives the impression that the diligence counter sniper and regular diligence are capable of taking out hulk visors. Anti material rifle (AMR) and railgun can, though you specified that later.
Speaking of sniper rifles. I don't know who designed the cross hairs, but it's obvious they've never fired a gun with scope on it. And who decided To give the railgun a crappie six MOA green dot as opposed to real scope?
OP, did you understand what he was saying? I'd say he used his linguistic skills effectively. I'd also say you are splitting hairs because you're sad and bored. You can do better. I have faith in you.
Honestly, the rail gun nerf gave us the single greatest change this game has ever received. Being able to 1 shot charger heads with AT weapons is so good and so obvious that it not being in the game at launch is mind-blowing to me. Its so bassic, "hit the tank in the head with anti tank and it dies in 1 hit" that it not being in the game by default tells me arrow head has no idea what to do with the bugs, and the sucsess of the game was a complete fluke
I think the biggest problem with the design philosophy is that it wasn't advertised the same way on Steam and on PS5. The infamous "overpowered weapon" quote comes from the Sony adds for the game. If you read the Steam version, it is nowhere to be seen.
Serious Sam First Encounter is more than two decades old and easily beats HD2 in design department. Every enemy is distinct visually, has clear sound cues for running towards player, preparing attack or taking damage. All guns feel powerful in their niche and the game was still challenging due to sheer amount of opponents and neat level design. AH could learn a thing or two from that game but I guess ego won't let them.
Imo weaons should be a counter to a type of enemy and less efficient against others. What we have are good all around weapons and garbage weapons Also you can still be overwhelmed and have power at the same time. That would require to have real specialized power and lots of enemy variety so picking your weapons makes sense for each situation Armor stripping mechanics would be great too
Your charger breakdown is thorough, but I feel you're listing issues which aren't with the chargers, but are in other areas. The sound design of the bugs isn't good, as they all can sneak up on you, and have me many times. I fight bots more often than bugs because THEY DO NOT SNEAK. They have marching cadences, and when they engage, you know it because they shoot at you. The armour pen issues with chargers isn't an issue with their armour, but with damage drop off on weapons. The weapons would be better off if they removed this from most if not all weapons, because we rarely engage with anything over 300m anyway. I don't really remember what else you said... Maybe intuitive weak spots and how it lacks them... But really, their weak points are probably fine. The issue is the weird damage drop offs and hidden weapon values. My point is, the enemy design is ok. The issues lie in sound design, and weird shitty weapon mechanics.
I agree with both sides here. I think it's compounding factors where some people (like myself) feel like the chargers and titans aren't the best designed, but on top of that a lot of our weapons just don't feel good to use. I adore the auto cannon, and I'm happy it can take care of chargers in 5-6 shots to the butt, but it's basically useless against a titan unfortunately. On top of that, it took quite some time for our other AT weapons (EAT-17, recoilles rifle, spear) to be effective against chargers. It's kind of laughable how many persistent bugs have been in the game, too, like the spear being essentially unusuable for the first few months, the PS5 bug that resulted in a bunch of nerfs to things like the railgun because it could one shot titans with that bug whereas without the bug it'd take 7-8 shots, which was perfectly fine imo.
I think your final point about them not committing to a design or vision is the real root of what happened with HD2. Too many aspects of both the horde shooter and tactical team game are half-baked at best and it leaves things feeling very murky. That said, I do think it's possible for them to pull both off without a full rework of the game's systems by shifting player resources around and giving stratagems more defined roles and uptimes to match, but above all, making sure it's stated in the game somewhere. It'd be a difficult line to walk, but doable. A full rework of the game - definitely out of the question as it currently stands - would be the way to really pull something like that off.
In comparison to the enemy, we do have overpowered weapons, cause with only 4 divers, we kill thousands of them. Our weapons are overpowered! But they are not overpowered if you’re trying to be the one man show Rambo that can take everything out on their own.
the problem isn't poor Game design is the clashing of game design and level design inately helldive "advanced colonies" are barren open wasteland made for you to engage horde of ennemy walking toward you it's balance in the fact you see the ennemy and it sees you what imbalanced it isn't the flamethrower its the clutter that ennemy can't care about in a layman's term you can't see shit they can that's why sudden rocket raider feel BS the example continue the openness of the map indicated a clear capacity of seeing the ennemy before it sees you and when it work: its feel really good to bpin a patrol and then game design says "what if neemies apear non stop 6 feet of you" this game design FACTUALLY can work that type of fight is the core of Space hulk deathwing or vermintide (which use the same engine) but in both case those game are power fantasy with LONG, not wide map and when they are more open the spawn are with few exception on the side of the area TL;DR Game design is good but level design is lacking both fundamentally and literraly
No Bonuses or buffs for taking or losing planets. The game has no planet by planet incentive to fight it doesnt reduce enemies or types it doesnt buff weapons. Buff your weapon your not going to want to lose that planet.... in game consequences for player engagement. Medals that dont impact gameplay doesnt do it.
Honestly I don't mind how far hunters can jump. What I hate is how it feels like they're swerving midair to hit you, as if it gravitates towards you, and how they go through rocks.
Sometimes after being hit with Ems or stun grenades, hunters drop vertically in midair, sometimes landing inside rocks or other terrain and you cant kill them, but they can damage and kill you when theyre stuck in the ground. Ive seen them - both bugs and bots - call in reinforcements whilst everyone is blasting ordnance at the ground to kill the missing enemy
The only other issue with the bots other than the ragdolloing is the fucking riot shields guys who can faze there gun through the shield or a wall and laser u with perfect accuracy. Other than that good video (except bugs are easy)
16:03 the philosophies are compatible, just lower the difficulty, every resource you can get in the game is not locked behind the highest difficulty so the only reason to play it is ego and bragging rights. There’s nothing wrong with playing at difficulty 6 or 7, you can have that horde shooter experience or play tactically in those difficulties, both are equally viable play styles 19:52 they added them so players that play in lower difficulties have more weapons to play around with. Players shouldn’t rely on it on higher difficulties similar to how players in CoD:Zombies don’t rely on guns you buy around the map but roll for in boxes as the waves gets higher. In discussions on how this game is balanced, UA-camrs compare and complain about how it feels to play the game at the highest difficulty, which is very dangerous. This presents the game to be very “play lvl 9 or 10 or you might as well not play the game at all” which is stupid. Whenever someone brings up playing lower difficulties, the general community sentiment is “well of course it works at difficulty x, everything and anything works at lower difficulties” and I’m getting sick of it. The community around any game have killed more of my enjoyment of that game than anything the game devs have done, this holds true for War Thunder, Genshin, League, and other games
I generally agree with most of your points, but I think the language you use is too vauge for its own good. In reality the three points that you focus on that are actually well defined are. How helldivers fails to communicate information to the player, how the mechanics of helldivers can seem inconsistent or even random and third due to this randomness the game can be far more luck dependent than it would at first appear.
Disagree that the charger turning speed is too high, because it encourages skilled diving. Completely agree with your other criticisms; it's far too counterintuitive.
Kinda disagree on the intuitiveness of the charger, at least for the first point. The glowing butt is a weak point, except for the few weapons that are designed to shoot tanks from the front, in which case shooting the tank from the front is the best strategy. The hardness value isn't shown and it's a bit complicated, but it's also not necessary to know to understand the strategy at play here. (It's the same for hulks btw, their back weakspot is partly durable).
@@saintwaffles They still damage and can kill it. The damage reduction is irrelevant, we don't even seee how much HP they have in the first place if we limit ourselves to external sources, all we know is that we can kill it by shooting the butt but they're very tanky.
I feel people nowadays want everything on a silver platter. This game is hard. They run to UA-cam for a tutorial instead of going with the old-fashioned way which is trial and error. I remember discovering you can three shot chargers with the rail if you hit him in the head It was such a big moment for me and I love it. This was after the Nerf meanwhile everyone was crying the rail was bad. I was having a blast. There’s so many different things you can do so many tactics so many things to learn with people or don’t work on this thing so that means that thing is bad or my gun is bad instead change tactics, doing the same thing over and over again called insanity I’m terribly sorry for typos English is not my first language
The design philosophy is just fine. People always whine about nerfs. The problem the devs have is all the bugs they're so slow to fix that affect balance. For example, the flamethrower nerfs were the result of terrible bugfixing. It's not intended to be this bad, they've admitted. For the entire life of the game until last patch the laser weapons were supposed to light enemies on fire, but never did. Charger armor was bugged from the start. Fire damage had been buffed BEFORE they even fixed the DoT desync bug that made flames worthless for 3/4 players in the game. They have a massive skill issue and need to get their crap together.
I'm extremely confidant that if they left the game in the at-launch state without any of the nerfs, the game would have dropped off more severely. For all people's bitching and moaning, the nerfs did their job and got people to change their approach. The game staying in that state was bad because the experience was not changing, and it was boring. Once people got over the honeymoon phase of the game, it would have been shelved. I don't care what people seem to think they want, but chasing a power fantasy kills a game. Especially a game like Helldivers 2 which has really nothing going on in the background to keep you invested. Cool, we drop in and squash some bugs and spill some oil and go home. Cool, we do it again, no deviation. RP some on social media. Drop again, no deviation. New Warbond, nice; drop in and do the same thing, no deviation, no difficulty. Stand and shoot. That is not fun. Not having enemies that can push and disrupt your position is not fun. Having all the resources you need to address every threat you can face all the time is not fun. You should be running out of ammo, you should be falling back and changing position, you should be coordinating with your team or change your tactics to show more care if you're pushing out on your own.
I dont understand. Almost everyone says 7 is fun. If 7 is fun, wild idea, play on 7? 10 wasnt supposed to be fair or balanced. How can people say "the game is too easy" but then cry about 10? AH have made mistakes, but i highly doubt this community, as a whole, can be made happy.
Behemoth Chargers and Tank turrets have health just above the amount that anti-tank weapons can do in a timely manner. That's part of the philosophy that undermines weapons and makes them very unfulfilling.
Yeah and the EATs against the Commando, which one is better to use if you want to take tanks? i tried Eats with another support weapon, and how clumsy and slow they are to aim and fire is insane. The cooldown is quicker, but call in times sometimes its 6-7 seconds by that time im already dead
Meaningful weakspots? Rocket strider and barrager tank would like a word
Rocket striders have rockets.
I do agree on those new tanks.
Honestly, the whole rocket bed on those tanks should have a little less armour.
@@themarlboromandalorianImagine if sending a thermite or incindiary grenade would force a cookoff effect. That'd be an awesome animation for it eventually explode.
The barrage tank does have a weak spot, it's just not advertised. On the back part of the frame you only need armor pen 4 (AC, AMR, HMG)
@@lukemehalick370 Liberator penetrator works too
@@lukemehalick370 Shhhhh....they dont want to adapt they just want to whine!
another point that is not intuitive for the charger: when such a heavy creature charges and hits a huge boulders, you would expect it to be stunned for a few seconds. However in the game it would just turn at you pretty quickly, or worst, simply climb over it.
rocks and walls can stun chargers wym
it does get stunned for a little bit, like it doesnt really stun, but stops
Half the time it climbs the terrain lol its actually half spider
@@Keywiiwee stun stop whatever. They hit the a rock, it stand still for a few seconds. Thats what youre expected right, its even enough to land a 500kg right now right then and there. U make it sound like they never bump their head into stuff like all the time.
it used to do that like in the first month or two but then something happened, terrain got fucked up or what, no clue, but yeah most of the time they'll just scale whatever boulder you lead them into
about bile titans one thing I really dislike (besides the numerous bugs) is the fact that bile titans cannot bleed out, you can destroy most of its organs leaving 2 massive gaping holes in its body (which should be a weakpoint but its not) and the titan can live forever afterwards, it will never bleed out, its stupid and coupled with its head being hyperarmored sometimes its miserable to fight imo, especially when sometimes it starts walking as if drunk, constantly putting its legs in front of its face making it impossible to kill it at range and once its close you cant focus it down because there are hunters everywhere
Technically it can bleed out but it takes so long that its impractical. Some people have timed the bleedout for bile titans, it can last for several minutes
@@hujron the most i observed a titan bleeding out was ~7min, left the mission after that so no clue how long it actually takes a titan to die
My problem with Bile Titans is there are not enough of them to make me want to get an Anti-Tank weapon just for them
did not notice that BT dont bleed out - never really seen it as well - also never really relied on enemies bleeding out like for chargers --- BUT for BT to bleed out would make things so much better - since just letting it bleed out does not make it less of a danger - it is still chasing you and trying to use its legs to step on you --- but at least - lets say it will take 1 minute for it to bleed out - just allows more weapons to be viable - more builds to be viable - more strategies to use but some might be better or faster than other but at least there's player choice
I will agree that the lack of vulnerability for bile titan is annoying. Shooting the guts after the sac has been destroyed is highly inconsistent. Rockets to the head also barely do more damage than just spamming it from the sides. It's a real debate whether you want to try and aim for the head or just hit it in the side to break the armor and finish it with other weapons.
As someone that played Helldivers 1 for almost 200 hours, I feel like I know what Helldivers is supposed to FEEL LIKE. That Feeling is supposed to be "challenging but fair", your Guns should be good, and your Stratagems are only really used when the Alarm gets raised and the HORDE descends upon you. Support weapons give you ways to help the Squad, be it a Anti Tank launcher, Horade Clearing MG/Flamer, or a Healing Beam to keep everyone going. VEHICLES are the "trump card", you call down a Mech or a Tank and just start BLASTIN. They are your on demand BAIL OUT CARD when you really need it. Orbitals and Eagles provide fire support and Fortifications are Supposed to help you defend your position.
And having played Helldivers 2 since launch, the WORST thing I can say about is: I'd rather go play helldivers 1 that was Fun AF! It feels like the Further you get from Difficulty 6 or 7, the LESS FUN the game gets. Which is hilarious cus helldivers 1 I think went up to lvl 12 then later they added levels 13 to 15. The Guns and alot of the Stratagems feel like I'm playing Helldivers 1 with NO upgrades on them. Which says alot about the state of most weapons and alot of stratagems we currently have.
The ONLY thing about the Automatons that i DON"T LIKE is how utterly OPPRESSIVE they can feel at times, more though sheer NUMBERS then actual Threat level. Heavy Devs with their PINPOINT Machine Gun accuracy and the shere number of Devastators on higher Difficulties (Heavy Devs or Rocket Devs) only extravagates this problem. And Gunships are a massive pain in the ass if you don't "prepare" for them. The new Scout Striders having rockets on them now ironically makes them Vulnerable to Impact grenades again. And the Rocket Tank..... EH its a tank which also ironically are EASYIER TO KILL THEN THE GOD DAME HULKS 99% of the time. Also they put the Command Bunker Turrets in the new "fortresses" on lvl 10 and.... those things are borderline OP, they just Kill you in seconds like they are shooting you in the HEAD.
The only things I don't really like about the Bugs is sometimes it feels like the Alarm never stops, cus their is always that ONE BUG in the back calling in the Cavalry and its just like "UGH, guess we doing this for 40 minutes straight" The Charger and by extension Charger Behemoth are not too bad, but their ability to HOME IN on you like a MISSILE is sometimes mind boggling, and when their is like 3, 4, 5 of them its just like "UGH.... this is gonna suck". AND when your Anti Tank options are not 1 Shotting or 2 shotting the BIG MEAN MOTHER BUGGER running you down like a Freight train or your Dumping shell after shell into a Impaler and its like "You gonna Die sometime today or shall I go find a bigger boom stick?" And by bigger boom stick I mean orbital Strikes from the Ship.
Like the CHARGER is more of a threat then the Bile Titan is, if you take out the Bile Titans acid sakes all it can do is run after you and you can EASILY out run the bile titan. You can't out run or out maneuver charger, not to mention they tend to brake all your turrets making you wonder why you even brought them.
It's sad there's players who love the game this much that are ignored constantly
@@duross101 Yeah I should probably go fill out that Feedback form, assuming its still available. Helldivers 2 is not "dead" or as shit as people make it out to be, but It definitely has very Obvious Issues that need to be addressed. The Gameplay loop is FUN, and at times it is VERY FUN to play. But then their are times where everything just GOES TO SHIT and you just WISH you had a Nuclear Missile to drop on your Own Face out of Spite.
Primary Feel Underpowered (both in damage output and ammo capacity), Even KEY Stratagem Support weapons that would be "fan favorites" to veterans of the First Galactic War are feeling Underpowered (That BAD!) meanwhile the Autocannon slowly turning into the GOLDEN GUN to Rule them all due to its versatility. The Mechs..... where do I start? No stratagem Chute like the first war so you can't even use your other stratagems or call in your buddies unless you GET OUT (why would you do that?), they are quite Fragile (they should be built like Chargers or Impalers with Big HP pools) and they do not have alot of ammo pound for pound. (again like they are Un-upgraded versions of the ones from HD 1)
And on top of this, We haven't really gotten any "game changing" Stratagems really to shack things up. Just Side grades to what we already had. (HMG vs MMG for example) We have not gotten more powerful while our Enemies have more tools in their toolbox then we do. Any Buffs they have given to Stratagems are NICE though, they have at least improved in that respect.
Playing on anything above lvl 7 feels more like a Chore then a Challange.
Did I just essentially read "7 is a lot of fun, but I keep choosing higher difficulties and then a different game "
If 7 is fun, stay there. You don't get anything special on 10.
Imo HellDivers 1 was more difficult, mechs werent that good on higher difficulties execpt the bastion tank, but it required 2 people to operates and coordinate. most primaries in HD1 are either broken or bad, no in between, but i agree that HD2 enemies Heavy Devs are really utterly oppressive
Completely agree, Helldivers 1 has a great sense of balance and that alarm state you described, where HD2 is always on that state. It is not as fun as 1
Stay near someone using jar5. Your screen will shake like hell... but chargers... they will whisper to your ear.
"It's free real estate" they whisper.
Arrowhead's design philosophy feels a lot like an eight year old playing war on the playground. Everything's going great until you start to beat them then they pull out the invisible force shield, but no you dont get one.
They talk about wanting to make things realistic, until it's not convenient for them. And when we start pulling out old world war 2 or vietnam videos to prove a point about realism they throw out buzz words and cop out of any discussion.
And frankly, I blame the souls games and this "friction" design philosophy that came from it. Because it seems like nowadays, every dev has to make their own version of dark souls, like it's some kind of weird right of passage.
You know what's funny? Dark soul only has 1 difficulty. Helldivers 2 has many difficulties. Weapons and strategems break on harder difficulty after 6. Enemies are so broken
@@KaiNLindathis. I think most games should have only 1 difficulty. HD2 having many difficulties spread the players from the matchmaking making it sometimes hard to find players.
You've clearly never played a souls game, and i hate that people keep bringing it up like it's even remotely relevant the game they're discussing. Dark souls is not: I repeat, is not hard, it just has a learning curve. I'm not good at video game AT ALL, and I've been fine getting through them cuz they're kinda like combat jigsaw puzzles :3 helldivers however has a balance issue, to many of the threats you face you'll have to run from (assuming helldivers or higher) bc you just don't have the gear to deal with a swarm of chargers.
@KaiNLinda Well, dark souls gives you weapons that aren't made of cardboard as well.
@@DanielFerreira-mh2hd my issue is they claim they want to be the dark souls version but they dont follow any of the philosophy of dark soul game design.
It was advertised as a horde shooter. It should be a horde shooter
Can you tell me where and when Helldivers 2 was advertised as a horde shooter?
Around 17:30 - thing is, they're aren't taking "overpowered" and depowering them, they're taking "over picked" weapons and depowering them.
The game has never had any overpowered weapon - we've had game bugs that saw certain weapons overperform (Raiilgun PS5 issue 1shotting bile titans, charge slide glitch allowing flamethrowers to cook them) - but they nerf the guns, maybe fix the bugs, and we end up way weaker than we started
How does one convince their friends to play this when each update takes away more than the 'compensate' with.
Yes, I do mean compensate, because even "buffs" like the Arc Thrower stagger (which could punch hulks) are often removed by the devs in the next patch (Hulks are more resistant to stagger).
How do you advertise warbonds (rip eruptor) when they gut their selling point (flamethrower warbond? Not on AH's watch).
There's no milsim I can think of that does that, while ignoring the realism the enemy needs to have (infinite rockets, shooting through walls, etc)
10:29 - Never seen a Bowel Titan before, but they sound terrifying! 😆
To answer the question: yes. The devs seem like they want this to be a game where we struggle to win just based off of their actions and what's been said. Why buff the enemies with more enemy types but nerf us while at the same time adding weapons centered around those nerfs? What they did to the Breaker Incendiary was pure childish and 100% proves my point. I understand they want they game to be challenging but this is not the way whatsoever
Almost every gun feels limp and terrible to shoot. The auto cannon is like the only gun that feels well balanced.
That's probably because Arrowdead hasn't touched it yet lol
@duross101 if they nerf the auto canon that would be the final straw. I mean I already stopped playing but the auto canon is the last cope for a lot of people .
HMG w/ supply pack is awesome. AMR is great. They are all at the same power level as the autocannon. Heat sinks take a little more with hmg & amr, but they will damage them fairly fast. Spear, & commando are both great. Nade launcher with supply pack is decent. Railgun is getting pretty close to being good. Autocannon is definitely the easiest weapon to get used to. I'm a fellow recovering AC addict.
@lukemehalick370 I dunno those all felt like shit to me. Don't get me wrong they where effective but just because somthing is effective dosent necessarily mean it feels good to shoot. AC is the only thing to me that felt both effective and satisfying to shoot. I also don't like weapons that need the supply pack to feel better as using two stratagem slots to make one weapon work generally feels bad.
@@duross101there's also the fact that it's a few of the devs' golden child out of every weapon in the game.
a good rework to the charger and that will take skill would be when you force the charger to make a tight turn (by running towards it and moving to the side in the last second dodging it) you should be able to see the charger from pure momentum flip on it's back making it stunned even longer and exposing its more vulnerable belly.
if you dive on a 90 degree angle away from the charger - the charger should then take MORE time to stop - exposing its butt for a longer period of time - while stop, the charger's ability to make a 180 degree turn should also be slower because its so big too
the stalker/hunters have what some might call "a rubber band" design - i think its used mostly in racing games or at least when i first heard it - basically the in helldivers case - it will lock on to you and even if you dive away, you can never dodge the attack because the enemy is already locked in to you, not your location. the Devs REALLY need to make these jumping enemies jump to the location and not to the helldiver model so there is some skill expression to dodge the bugs when they fly towards you -- same idea already for the flying bugs that you can dive to dodge away from their attacks.
lastly -- when people complain about how the guns and weapons FEELS -- buffing them will NOT make you a DOOM Slayer and make the game easy that is 100% a miss conception. Guns need to be buffed or changed to feel good to use, so that can be fun. Just because its fun does not make it easy either. Buffing the weapons allows for more variety of choices in the weapons - not then these F tier weapons suddenly would one shit a BT, just slightly more bearable to use
homie nice video but for the love of Joel disable the AI generated emojis based on what you're saying
On top of whatever buffs they give, they need to give us more information on the "guns." Tell me. In game, how the FUCK I'm supposed to know what "AP-4" is?! There's Light, Medium, And Heavy. What's AP4? Thicc-A-F? What weapons do Thicc-A-F Penetration?!
Balancing is a huge part of the issue but it’s not just because the weapons don’t feel great…It’s because the enemies are so difficult. One charger or a hulk isn’t really that big of a deal. But on difficulty 7 plus you are dealing with 5+ at a time on top of the already enormous amount of enemies.
It’s weird how they have designed the enemies in this game
For a game that they brag about having development time of over 7 years they sure are changing a whole lot of things. This is pathetic
mind you a Hunter can extend the range of his jump MID AIR if you jump away with the jetpack as the hunter was jumping you as well and hits you when you were supposed to dodge it.
are the subtitles made with ai? sometimes the emoji makes no sense lol
agree with alot of ur points tho great video
Yeah, the subtitles are really weird.
For better or worse, I found them hilarious. It just seems so out of poace
Yes they are for some reason they increase my views and view time and engagement so I keep them around
Primaries aren't necessarily made to be crap though, they're just not intended to be enough to easily and quickly kill heavies without teamwork
Hulks can be fairly quickly killed with most primaries, but without some kind of stun they turn too fast to make it quick and easy. You need teamwork
Imo chargers need to be like this. Getting shots on their butt is really easy, so they make it very tanky to most weapons. I'd rather chargers be scarier and faster but quicker and easier to kill
They said there's a charger rework coming and all I want is an actual weak point
@saintwaffles yeah dude, chargers aren't rare elite heavies like bile titans so I don't see why they are so durable on that ass
That being said imo the armored bile spewers are way more of a concern. At high level they just completely invalidate all light AP primaries in 1 fell swoop
@@saintwaffles They have weak points...... you just have to brake their armor first and plenty of weak flesh under it. IM MORE CONCERNED by the fact the Impaler can take like 3 Recoiless Rifle shells to face and LIVE!!! How and Why is that allowed?!
@@bodkin7841 Extremely annoying, yes. If you roll bile spewers and the difficulty is over 4 (the don't have armor on their heads until higher levels) your build could just be invalidated entirely. They need to add that module or intelligence purchase upgrade that tells us which types of enemies spawn for the maps, so you can know to not bother with light penetration if it's spewers.
@@jaywerner8415
If you have to actively expose the weakpoint with a specific weapon, then its not a weakpoint.
This game isn't hard, its just a knowledge check. Once you know how to fight the enemies, the game becomes easy. The ragdolling just being far too much of a punishment for making mistakes. I firmly believe anyone can beat diff 9 or 10 solo. I've managed to solo 9 and it wasn't too hard. It was just extremely punishing. Actually doing what I need to do wasn't the hard part.
However, it was infuriating to do. It wasn't infuriating because it was hard. It was infuriating because it was annoying. Not only was my damage inconsistent because Arrowhead purposely designed their enemies to *be* inconsistent, the primaries just didn't clear the chaff as well as they should be able to. I don't care that my breaker couldn't down a charger with its 13 round mag. I care that my anti tank couldn't when I shot it from the back. The fact that the charger is actively weaker in the armored parts of its body than the fleshy parts is utterly insane and asinine.
Yes, skill issue to a degree. If you can't land a shot, thats on you. But when you can land those shots, when you can do what the game asks of you, and you find that what the game asks of you is just annoying rather than hard, *THAT* is how the game's design philosophy failed. Some people want it easy. Some want a power fantasy. I want to feel like my anti tank weapons actually are made to be anti-tank. The fact that the spear, which can only lock on to and fire at heavy enemies at all, can't one shot a charger or hulk from any angle, is stupid. The fact that the new rocket salvo tanks have no heat sinks is dumb. The fact that the recoilless can't consistently two shot a bile titan is dumb. That is the complaint.
Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: Yes, the devs do not understand what makes a game fun and the game is suffering from their ignorance.
as someone who do design games Arrowhead has no idea what they're doing
Making games is sort of like cooking, there are a lot of ways to cook a dish but some methods are more correct than others, as in you will get a more desirable result.
You didn't speak so much on design philosophy as a whole but pointed out poor design choices which I pretty much agree with are really hindering the game's potential. When I'm playing the game I don't feel like I'm playing a game that's meant to be played, it feels like a bunch of systems cobbled together waiting for the QA report. What gets me is this attempt to balance ten (10) levels of difficulty, which suggests they're open to players of all skill levels, yet they restrict most of the content to 5+. Imo a dynamic difficulty system would solve a lot of issues. Unfortunately they just don't know how to evaluate feedback and are very stubborn about it
My opinion on the last part is that 1-4 are tutorial difficulty, but honestly 3-4 are still valid difficulties to play for resource gain. You're never going to get Supercredits faster than playing on 3-4 while still feeling some small level of engagement with the game. You can hit PoIs quickly and sweep a level even solo.
The game really only starts at 5, which I think is fine; and the general sweet spot in difficulty is the 5-7 range with the game getting progressively crazy beyond that. Which in my opinion, is how it should be. People upset about all the changes/nerfs are jumping into 9's and 10's and are looking for power fantasy play at that point; which is a mistake on their part. Arrowhead has always been pretty transparent on how they wanted the highest difficulty to be, even despite the disconnect in some of the marketing, and I think a lot of the pushback here is done in bad faith. They want something the game isn't offering, and they're mad about it.
@@Blakobness
I'm just mad that I'm winning, even on diff 9, but I'm not enjoying my wins. I don't think "Wow, that was close" or "damn, my heart's beating so fast." I think "Thank GOD I'm done, fuck off." I can consistently win on diff 9. But no matter how many times I do win... it just isn't fun. The weapons I use simply make things less annoying, rather than more fun.
@@Blakobness Let us break down what “difficulty” means. Games with difficulty levels can generally be broken down into three types of “checks”. 1) progression check, this is like your typical dps check in rpgs. 2) knowledge check, this is learning and knowing the system through experience 3) skill check, this is being able to act on your knowledge, it could be hitting your shots in shooters or planning strategically in rts.
In most games there is a healthy mix of everything, a player lacking in one aspect can supplement it with another. There is a soft limit to knowledge and skill so a lot of games will rely mainly on progression to balance the endgame difficulty levels. What isn’t considered “difficulty” is luck. Players love randomness, but not too much that it would cause checks to fail too often when they should have passed. There is a very fine line between fun and frustration in turn making randomness notoriously difficult to balance so it’s generally done very carefully.
Arrowhead completely disregards luck in trying to balance the game, they treat it as fun in every and all circumstances. This is where your inconsistency comes from. Progression ends at lvl 20, only knowledge and skill beyond that. Skill is at complete odds with luck, player headshot, ragdolls, awkward enemy hitbox are some big contributors. Knowledge is an awkward one, from 1-8 you’re learning the weapons, the maps, but most importantly how to win harder and more chaotic engagements against enemies. At 9-10 you’re suddenly discouraged from enjoying the game you were playing, you have to learn a different game. The increased randomness making player skill feel less reliable reduces the difficulty progression down to a knowledge check on how to avoid engagements. So there’s the dissonance, 9-10 isn’t marketed as a separate game mode, players want a natural progression of difficulty. Of course you will find people who make it to 10 and can adapt and don’t mind getting unlucky sometimes, but judging by the amount of outrage I think this population is in the minority.
So how can Arrowhead eliminate this dissonance? Well it’s not by increasing skill and knowledge check while adding more randomness thereby making 9-10 even more different than 1-8. They can either make the entire game about avoiding engagements or make it about winning engagements. I think they can even have them coexist If they choose to rework difficulty.
Yeah... a game filled with bugs/glitches and crashes is a poor design philosophy. Oh! The nerfs too...
My biggest issue with the game is that the design philosophy is around creating issues on the battlefield. But when every single enemy type is an issue, not a challenge but a problem to solve, then nothing is an issue. You can't think critically, there is no strategy, you can't do anything but kill the thing. No clever usage of enemy AoEs against other enemies, no selective target killing, all you can do is throw a stratagem and start firing. Too much thought is put into the enemies, no thought on the Helldivers. We see that with the balancing, it completely sucked any joy out of primary weapons.
Right now both the horde shooter and milsim game can exist, and they kind of do. For reasons which I hope are obvious. What the game needs is agency and consistency about which you talked, and to fix their damn hitboxes.
Also, do not compare Dark Souls with HD2. DS is hard because of actually good design. The game is adamant about giving you the adequate tools for the job. And Myazaki himself makes sure he can beat the game, whereas if you watch AH people play HD2 you will think they are game journalists, not developers.
The problem with the saying "I want to feel overpowered" is that I don't believe players want that either. If the game was too easy for the majority of players, it would get stale fast. People would lose interest. We just want weapons that will actually kill things.
It's not op to be at the same level as the enemies. AH needs to lean into building stratgems around teamwork and actual strategy. They should be powerful but only in the right hands.
I think helldivers has elements of both a mil sim and a horde shooter. Rather than picking a side, AH needs to find a better way of combining the 2 genres. That's the true potential of this game.
I'm extremely confidant that if they left the game in the at-launch state without any of the nerfs, the game would have dropped off more severely. For all people's bitching and moaning, the nerfs did their job and got people to change their approach. The game staying in that state was bad because the experience was not changing, and it was boring. Once people got over the honeymoon phase of the game, it would have been shelved.
I don't care what people seem to think they want, but chasing a power fantasy kills a game. Especially a game like Helldivers 2 which has really nothing going on in the background to keep you invested. Cool, we drop in and squash some bugs and spill some oil and go home. Cool, we do it again, no deviation. RP some on social media. Drop again, no deviation. New Warbond, nice; drop in and do the same thing, no deviation, no difficulty. Stand and shoot.
That is not fun. Not having enemies that cat push and disrupt your position is not fun. Having all the resources you need to address every threat you can face all the time is not fun.
One thing about the incendiary breaker that I completely forgot about is that they buffed it when the dot bug was still around. Its damage used to be below the 200 mark and they never reverted it to what it used to be. Now it does a hell of a lot of damage but I think they've been so busy that they forgot about it. Thats a massive issue is that there hasnt really been a breather for AH to figure out their shit. Or at least thats how it seems on my end
Horde shooter or Tactical shooter.
Helldiver 2 is one of the rare games that can do both.
They have "kill that particular target" missions, that dont appear in higher difficultis.
They have "defend that base or attack that base" missions
They have a lot of "clear/destroy/activate that objective" missions that have the same feel.
they can create different missions that need to be tactical
they can create missions that are true horde shooters without a ton of heavy targets.
They can create boss mobs with an insane amount of movesets and defense.
like a charger that doesnt just charge, but also jumps and rolls. Mobs that can only be found in special boss missions.
The possibilitys are endless in this game.
Unused potential.
Right now we are playing Maps that are indeed horde shooters.
Thank You! Finally someone notices, We are punished for going prone, also there are way too many places that refuse to let us go prone in order to get a good position. 😢
"Poor design philosophy" pre escalation of freedom? No, I've loved this game since my first bug kill. Post EoF? Let's watch the video and find out...
Hopefully you will be pleasantly surprised
@@saintwaffles I like this channel in general and his voice is pleasant, like eravin, also I got side objectived so I don't know yet.
what ive picked up is arrowheads philosophy is perfectly sound... if theyre trying to make a game not that fun becuase there trying to please everyone even though they said they dont do that
Charger legs need to be AP4.
i think helldivers 2 suffers alot from inconsistency among other things. in my opinion at least. there is many times on the bot front for example, espically with the striders, they just gets straight up aimbot just random. kinda the same with all bots too tho. sometimes they miss and sometimes they hit you which is to be expected. but then suddenly out of nowhere your either down to low health or dead in a second. same thing with rockets. sometimes they acts like rockets and they either miss or hit you if your in the line of fire of a rocket, but sometimes the rockets suddenly have homing on you. there was one time i was hiding behind a rock from a rocket devestator far away, somehow that dude hit me with rockets while i was behind a rock.
and then the bugs. espically with chargers, sometimes your able to dodge at the side of him, sometimes your not due to its crazy turn speed. then chargers sometimes just walks super fast. idk if this is a animation flaw where its supposed to charge but it looks like it just walks super fast idk. but hella annoying that it can just walk faster than you can run. i dont realy struggle that much with the other bugs. their heads are usually their weakpoints i suppose.
but it is was very annoying when i was new to helldivers 2 that the bots had obvious weak spots while the bugs i thought had obvious weak spot like the chargers ass, but apperantly isnt. now i know this isnt the case because i watched youtube to know how to easily defeat all enemies.
Helldivers are getting weaker and weaker while the enemy is getting stronger and stronger
I enjoyed this video as it is hitting that Helldivers 2 content crave I have. But...
You should be more specific, the way you are describing things can confuse someone who does not already know all this information.
-Not making a distinction between behemoth charger and regular charger gives the impression that regular charger has the momentum dependent armor stripping phenomenon.
-Saying that "sniper rifles" can take out hulk visors gives the impression that the diligence counter sniper and regular diligence are capable of taking out hulk visors. Anti material rifle (AMR) and railgun can, though you specified that later.
Thank you for that I truely didn't think of that
Speaking of sniper rifles. I don't know who designed the cross hairs, but it's obvious they've never fired a gun with scope on it.
And who decided To give the railgun a crappie six MOA green dot as opposed to real scope?
OP, did you understand what he was saying?
I'd say he used his linguistic skills effectively.
I'd also say you are splitting hairs because you're sad and bored.
You can do better.
I have faith in you.
The only changes they'll make is more nerfs for Helldivers and more buffs for enemies.
WAIT.... you deal more damage with anti-tank weapons when moving forward?!?
Yup.
Crazy right?
@@saintwaffles WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME?!
Perfectly described the issue I have with chargers, great video!
The game just feels like it doesn't reward you no matter what playstyle you pick
Honestly, the rail gun nerf gave us the single greatest change this game has ever received. Being able to 1 shot charger heads with AT weapons is so good and so obvious that it not being in the game at launch is mind-blowing to me. Its so bassic, "hit the tank in the head with anti tank and it dies in 1 hit" that it not being in the game by default tells me arrow head has no idea what to do with the bugs, and the sucsess of the game was a complete fluke
I think the biggest problem with the design philosophy is that it wasn't advertised the same way on Steam and on PS5. The infamous "overpowered weapon" quote comes from the Sony adds for the game. If you read the Steam version, it is nowhere to be seen.
Serious Sam First Encounter is more than two decades old and easily beats HD2 in design department. Every enemy is distinct visually, has clear sound cues for running towards player, preparing attack or taking damage. All guns feel powerful in their niche and the game was still challenging due to sheer amount of opponents and neat level design.
AH could learn a thing or two from that game but I guess ego won't let them.
Imo weaons should be a counter to a type of enemy and less efficient against others. What we have are good all around weapons and garbage weapons
Also you can still be overwhelmed and have power at the same time. That would require to have real specialized power and lots of enemy variety so picking your weapons makes sense for each situation
Armor stripping mechanics would be great too
Your charger breakdown is thorough, but I feel you're listing issues which aren't with the chargers, but are in other areas.
The sound design of the bugs isn't good, as they all can sneak up on you, and have me many times.
I fight bots more often than bugs because THEY DO NOT SNEAK.
They have marching cadences, and when they engage, you know it because they shoot at you.
The armour pen issues with chargers isn't an issue with their armour, but with damage drop off on weapons. The weapons would be better off if they removed this from most if not all weapons, because we rarely engage with anything over 300m anyway.
I don't really remember what else you said... Maybe intuitive weak spots and how it lacks them... But really, their weak points are probably fine. The issue is the weird damage drop offs and hidden weapon values.
My point is, the enemy design is ok. The issues lie in sound design, and weird shitty weapon mechanics.
I agree with both sides here. I think it's compounding factors where some people (like myself) feel like the chargers and titans aren't the best designed, but on top of that a lot of our weapons just don't feel good to use. I adore the auto cannon, and I'm happy it can take care of chargers in 5-6 shots to the butt, but it's basically useless against a titan unfortunately. On top of that, it took quite some time for our other AT weapons (EAT-17, recoilles rifle, spear) to be effective against chargers. It's kind of laughable how many persistent bugs have been in the game, too, like the spear being essentially unusuable for the first few months, the PS5 bug that resulted in a bunch of nerfs to things like the railgun because it could one shot titans with that bug whereas without the bug it'd take 7-8 shots, which was perfectly fine imo.
I think your final point about them not committing to a design or vision is the real root of what happened with HD2. Too many aspects of both the horde shooter and tactical team game are half-baked at best and it leaves things feeling very murky.
That said, I do think it's possible for them to pull both off without a full rework of the game's systems by shifting player resources around and giving stratagems more defined roles and uptimes to match, but above all, making sure it's stated in the game somewhere. It'd be a difficult line to walk, but doable.
A full rework of the game - definitely out of the question as it currently stands - would be the way to really pull something like that off.
15:57 Don't forget Reddit for being a Prime suspect for the negative feedback
Actually my last video covers the negativity feedback and heavily features reddit and youtubers trying to make momeyas key sources!
In comparison to the enemy, we do have overpowered weapons, cause with only 4 divers, we kill thousands of them. Our weapons are overpowered! But they are not overpowered if you’re trying to be the one man show Rambo that can take everything out on their own.
they need to rework Bile Titans heads like sometimes I can 2 shot them with any anti-tank except the Commando but other times it takes 5 or 6 shots
A known bug sadly
Remember to smack hunters med jump
Arrowhead is being dishonest.
They pretend they don't know what players want so they can build the game the players don't want.
the problem isn't poor Game design is the clashing of game design and level design
inately helldive "advanced colonies" are barren open wasteland made for you to engage horde of ennemy walking toward you it's balance in the fact you see the ennemy and it sees you
what imbalanced it isn't the flamethrower its the clutter that ennemy can't care about
in a layman's term you can't see shit they can that's why sudden rocket raider feel BS
the example continue the openness of the map indicated a clear capacity of seeing the ennemy before it sees you and when it work: its feel really good to bpin a patrol and then game design says "what if neemies apear non stop 6 feet of you"
this game design FACTUALLY can work that type of fight is the core of Space hulk deathwing or vermintide (which use the same engine) but in both case those game are power fantasy with LONG, not wide map and when they are more open the spawn are with few exception on the side of the area
TL;DR Game design is good but level design is lacking both fundamentally and literraly
Very very good video. I hope arrowhead sees this!!
My dream at this point is to get to do something with them. A video, a collab, anything, that would be so seriously cool!
Now the charger can turn very sharp 90 or 180 realy? When you wanna the samples to go futher with your carrier. You have to go min. level 6 in.
No Bonuses or buffs for taking or losing planets. The game has no planet by planet incentive to fight it doesnt reduce enemies or types it doesnt buff weapons. Buff your weapon your not going to want to lose that planet.... in game consequences for player engagement. Medals that dont impact gameplay doesnt do it.
Honestly I don't mind how far hunters can jump. What I hate is how it feels like they're swerving midair to hit you, as if it gravitates towards you, and how they go through rocks.
Sometimes after being hit with Ems or stun grenades, hunters drop vertically in midair, sometimes landing inside rocks or other terrain and you cant kill them, but they can damage and kill you when theyre stuck in the ground. Ive seen them - both bugs and bots - call in reinforcements whilst everyone is blasting ordnance at the ground to kill the missing enemy
The only other issue with the bots other than the ragdolloing is the fucking riot shields guys who can faze there gun through the shield or a wall and laser u with perfect accuracy. Other than that good video (except bugs are easy)
Hulks can be shot in the leg so they move very slow.
16:03 the philosophies are compatible, just lower the difficulty, every resource you can get in the game is not locked behind the highest difficulty so the only reason to play it is ego and bragging rights. There’s nothing wrong with playing at difficulty 6 or 7, you can have that horde shooter experience or play tactically in those difficulties, both are equally viable play styles
19:52 they added them so players that play in lower difficulties have more weapons to play around with. Players shouldn’t rely on it on higher difficulties similar to how players in CoD:Zombies don’t rely on guns you buy around the map but roll for in boxes as the waves gets higher.
In discussions on how this game is balanced, UA-camrs compare and complain about how it feels to play the game at the highest difficulty, which is very dangerous. This presents the game to be very “play lvl 9 or 10 or you might as well not play the game at all” which is stupid. Whenever someone brings up playing lower difficulties, the general community sentiment is “well of course it works at difficulty x, everything and anything works at lower difficulties” and I’m getting sick of it. The community around any game have killed more of my enjoyment of that game than anything the game devs have done, this holds true for War Thunder, Genshin, League, and other games
I generally agree with most of your points, but I think the language you use is too vauge for its own good. In reality the three points that you focus on that are actually well defined are. How helldivers fails to communicate information to the player, how the mechanics of helldivers can seem inconsistent or even random and third due to this randomness the game can be far more luck dependent than it would at first appear.
That's fair. Luck is an uncontrollably frustrating factor like how difficulty 6 can be worse than 9
Disagree that the charger turning speed is too high, because it encourages skilled diving. Completely agree with your other criticisms; it's far too counterintuitive.
Yes
Kinda disagree on the intuitiveness of the charger, at least for the first point. The glowing butt is a weak point, except for the few weapons that are designed to shoot tanks from the front, in which case shooting the tank from the front is the best strategy. The hardness value isn't shown and it's a bit complicated, but it's also not necessary to know to understand the strategy at play here. (It's the same for hulks btw, their back weakspot is partly durable).
But the charger butt is not vulnerable to everything some weapons only do 10 percent damage to it.
@@saintwaffles They still damage and can kill it. The damage reduction is irrelevant, we don't even seee how much HP they have in the first place if we limit ourselves to external sources, all we know is that we can kill it by shooting the butt but they're very tanky.
You need to proofread your captions before uploading.
Yes I do
I feel people nowadays want everything on a silver platter. This game is hard. They run to UA-cam for a tutorial instead of going with the old-fashioned way which is trial and error. I remember discovering you can three shot chargers with the rail if you hit him in the head It was such a big moment for me and I love it. This was after the Nerf meanwhile everyone was crying the rail was bad. I was having a blast. There’s so many different things you can do so many tactics so many things to learn with people or don’t work on this thing so that means that thing is bad or my gun is bad instead change tactics, doing the same thing over and over again called insanity I’m terribly sorry for typos English is not my first language
The design philosophy is just fine. People always whine about nerfs. The problem the devs have is all the bugs they're so slow to fix that affect balance. For example, the flamethrower nerfs were the result of terrible bugfixing. It's not intended to be this bad, they've admitted. For the entire life of the game until last patch the laser weapons were supposed to light enemies on fire, but never did. Charger armor was bugged from the start. Fire damage had been buffed BEFORE they even fixed the DoT desync bug that made flames worthless for 3/4 players in the game. They have a massive skill issue and need to get their crap together.
Bro you need to get a better mic. You sound like you're recording on a potato phone.
I have been recording on my phone more and more as I don't always have time to sit down at the full station
I'm extremely confidant that if they left the game in the at-launch state without any of the nerfs, the game would have dropped off more severely. For all people's bitching and moaning, the nerfs did their job and got people to change their approach. The game staying in that state was bad because the experience was not changing, and it was boring. Once people got over the honeymoon phase of the game, it would have been shelved.
I don't care what people seem to think they want, but chasing a power fantasy kills a game. Especially a game like Helldivers 2 which has really nothing going on in the background to keep you invested. Cool, we drop in and squash some bugs and spill some oil and go home. Cool, we do it again, no deviation. RP some on social media. Drop again, no deviation. New Warbond, nice; drop in and do the same thing, no deviation, no difficulty. Stand and shoot.
That is not fun. Not having enemies that can push and disrupt your position is not fun. Having all the resources you need to address every threat you can face all the time is not fun. You should be running out of ammo, you should be falling back and changing position, you should be coordinating with your team or change your tactics to show more care if you're pushing out on your own.
so, this video is AI right? there are multiple times the text subtitles are 100% out of whack with the actual words being spoken
No the video and voice are not ai, but the subtitles are. I have been sick and unfortunately didn't check them
I dont understand. Almost everyone says 7 is fun. If 7 is fun, wild idea, play on 7? 10 wasnt supposed to be fair or balanced. How can people say "the game is too easy" but then cry about 10?
AH have made mistakes, but i highly doubt this community, as a whole, can be made happy.