Most of the folks complaining don't hate the game, they want AH to let us love it. We are fighting for the game, not hating it. If I hated it, I'd just move on. I don't spend time and energy on hating things, I spend my energy trying to fix or preserve what I like, or course correct with my feedback when it goes a direction I don't appreciate. To write off everyone critical of the game as "haters" is a mistake. If anyone is bad for anything, its glazing yes-men, who don't critique something they enjoy, so it ends up going to shit in an echo chamber.
Yeah I've stopped playing but I still voice my displeasure because I remember how much fun I was having the first few weeks when I thought the bugs would be ironed out real fast. How innocent I was thinking the chargers sliding around was a bug they'd fix really quick lol.
exaactly. ive been vouching for AH for a long time because i was sure they needed one more update to bring things back, especially considering the last patch was so good. But this new patch was so disappointing (especially with how much they hyped it up) that ive stopped playing. I love this game a lot and i desperately want them to succeed and pull themselves back up. But until they can pull things back in a big balance patch, ill be playing other things, as much as it pains me to say.
I can get behind this, after 100+ hours I had enough when it became harder and harder to want to play it. When all the weapons I used kept getting worse, and some of the ones I swapped to for variety didn't get much better either, AND the enemies kept getting buffs to either their numbers, their spawn rates, or for bots the sheer volume of rockets spammed, it makes it real hard to want to like it. I just don't want to go back when each new patch comes up with new problems, not even just the nerfs, just that the devs change a thing that breaks another thing that causes a new patch to fix the previous patch. It's just so tiresome.
40:10 "And it begs the question: 'Why I need to be able to kill a charger in two to four seconds?'. Well, the answer to that is that there are six more of them on my screen too!" -Most accurate Helldivers 2 statement ever.
Specially now with the new Spore Charger with that annoying green fog. But as a matter of fact, was the Behemoth (that requires 2-3 AT rockets to the head, rather than 1 for a normal charger) that made the Flame Thrower by far the best choice to eliminate chargers.
Exactly, when you have 5 chargers all rushing you AMONGST everything else, you need to be able to dispatch them as efficiently as possible. Taking away the tools to do this is insane!!
"We want to make it clear, we are _listening_ to players, we _hear_ you. That's why we've decided to change how super credits drop. One out of a thousand maps will now contain a single super credit, in a random chest. " "I mean, which group of players should we listen to? Should we listen to the "more super credits crowd", or the equally powerful "no super credits crowd?" Both groups represent a perfect 50/50 slice of the active player base. I know this is true, because I am just making it up right now."
The moment when they remove SC freebies is the moment when they lose probably the rest of their niche players who still stick around. All this "git gud" folks sound like teenagers who are still in school.
its wild because since they gave us so many buffs in the last patch, giving us many more buffs was the one thing i expected them to get nearly perfect. really disappointing and i probably wont come back until we get a major balance patch
The funny thing is - the buffs weren’t really buffs. They merelly reverted a lot of the nerfs we’d received. None of the guns have ever been taken back to their original and better state. (Aside from the AC which has never been altered since release.)
@roar104 I doubt for the ammo economy but the only fact that this gun has stagger makes this weapon look pretty "nerfable" if we know AH well. It's to say how stupid the balancing is.
@@jacktheripper7935 then you must not know them well. The weapon is fun, it's very usable, but nowhere near good enough to get nerfed (via being too strong/pick rate/whatever other metric)
@@roar104Nope. They nerfed the crossbow. That weapon was already niche and they nerfed its ONE use-case. That tells you that the devs can’t even leave the mediocre weapons alone.
AH should watch this. Piles, Shams, every dev in the game. They are getting FREE advice and the consensus is loud and clear: we don't want you to decide when you should prenerf things for us! Let us make that decision. And, let me say this again: IT'S TIME TO LET IN THE POWER CREEP; LET IT RIP!
@@GG-ou7it don't be an idiot. Nobody is saying that. You just shouldn't be able to ignore engaging with every POI and still make 1k a month easy (only need 700 anyways as passes give you 300 back)
@@roar104 you dont be an idiot loads of games are demanding more and more time as a manipulation tactic to extort money out of people to save said time, and what if im playing multiple games at once? This is a fucking paid PvE game let people unlock shit easier or don’t be surprised when the player base drops of a fucking cliff and people move on, you are a child or unemployed.
This game keeps breaking my heart. I have 200+ hours in it from launch but haven't been able to pick it up for at least a month and a half because the game has just gotten less fun. The experience has gotten progressively less cohesive.
Seriously, I was not a fan of the I. Breaker. But I didn't want it nerfed. That one guy spraying down the hunters and shreikers was MVP on higher difficulties. Why you gotta do him like that AH?
i used to want the breaker nerfed, but then i kinda realized after the patch how bad of an idea that was especially since we didnt get enough buffs to other weapons to compensate
Breaker nerf is a great example of how arbitrary their balance is. Breaker was only "popular" because that's what people unlocked and were trying. It was never OP at all.
Not only the colors but the shape too. The "support" ones like smokes and static fields looking like a APFSDS rounds was such a visually simple way of setting them apart from the high explosives, but for some reason they decided to get rid of that and make them all look the same.
Eravin is my favourite Helldivers 2 Content Creator so its really great to see him getting the recognition he deserves! Looking forwards to giving this a listen! (General Brasch told me to leave this comment)
The whole points of interest discussion is so true. You dont want to go after them on harder difficulties cause theres tons of enemies and the chance of dieing and failing the mission increases. The game doesnt incentivise full map clearing either. I think if you take put all the bug holes or fabricators on the map it should significantly decrease enemy spawns
I don't normally do podcasts much less hour long UA-cam videos (except for rat's, of course), but I love you two guy's videos. I listened to the whole thing and it was a treat. Thanks a bunch!
just discovered ratatoskr recently. appreciate the actual thoughtful conversation regarding concerns and improvements. alot of us are frustrated with this game, we just want to know we aren't crazy for questioning these changes. Eravin actually analyzing mechanics and stats is perfect for this format.
This is my favorite crossover episode! Eravin is incredibly knowledgeable about the game and his weapon analysis is such a great service to the community. Great conversation!
Rail gun was the only weapon I kind of agreed with nerfing, along with the shield, but it should've also made the other strategems and weapons much better
i think the issues is in the way the balance team has been led. when Pilestedt was CEO, we got nerfs, stupid ones. When he stepped down to become CCO, we got that really nice patch with a ton of buffs. However, when we get this update, surprise surprise, it was when Pilestedt was on vacation for a long time. Clearly something is wrong with the balance team and that seems to change whenever Pilestedt is around
The railgun nerf was such a bad call. Hard hitting, single target, anti-tank that you had to aim and charge. This was balanced. The bile titan psn bug should not have been a factor.
I'd recommend playing Lost Planet 2, but it's been so long that I think the servers finally shutdown. You might be able to get it running on emulator though.
@CtisGaming that game is SOO FUCKING FUUN I miss it so much I loved stealing the mecha shotguns and use them whit just my character (wich used the ratalos armor) thats very important.
The craziest thing to me is that some weapons that came out close to or at release still are completely useless. There is no reason to expect that this game will ever have a well balanced weapon roster, where the majority of weapons are fun and around equally viable.
Spray and Pray always comes to mind. It's the epitome of useless. Very low dps for a shotgun, low damage per pellet, some of the lowest armor penetration in the game. There is no reason ever to pick it over any other weapon.
SC and Medals are absolutely easier to get on lower difficulty. Play on 2 and the POI are often shipping containers with medals and SC (rarely a pickup will even be 100SC) where on a higher difficulty the containers are gone in favor of samples on the ground. Saying that the game population should be expected to drop over time is correct but it is not normal for a live service to have its population drop in direct correlation to the release of new content or updates. It's supposed to be the opposite. I absolutely agree with Eravin on weapon modifications in general. Not locked to the highest difficulty over all but maybe the top upgrades at the higher levels. Amunition types at bare minimum. Gas or incendiary grenades for the launcher, explosive or armor piercing rounds for the auto cannon, etc.
I know it's basically a meme at this point, but HD1 did the reward structure better. You HAD to work your way up difficulties slowly because rewards for completing ops were stratagems. You didn't get the rail cannon until you beat like 7s and then you got a very useful tool to help you push up even higher in difficulties. You either had to get good enough, or be carried through to earn shit
I uninstalled. They proved they the nerfs will never end. The fire nerf has me so angry that just logging on, puts me in a bad mood. I want my flamethrower back. I want fun again. No idea why if 30% of people have fun, they decide to ruin it. This just sounds like business suicide
AH is making a lot of mistakes about balancing but the SC system and the Warbond system is fine. They are free as long as you play the game. And farming stuff is always a pain in every game that I played. HD2 at least I never had to farm anything intentionally, since I play a lot.
No offense to Eravin but the PSN network link controversy had little impact on the actual player count. Go look at the Steam player count chart since release. The game launched on 08 February with the Account linking controversy actually marked on the chart as occurring on 03 May. The player count had been steadily declining for 3 months prior to the controversy, already lost ~330k from its early peak. There was no sharp drop-off as a direct consequence, the pace of the downward trend remained relatively unchanged. Not claiming the PSN linking had zero impact, or there was no adverse impact to new players entering the game. But I find it weird so much emphasis is placed on the PSN issue when the publicly available data suggests players just got bored, maybe fed-up with updates, and moved on (/now playing much less).
@@Nobody32990 The PSN thing was a very clear reinforcement of the idea of the game makers being against the game players, and it's one of the main drivers of everyone being on a hair trigger to outrage every time the developers mention the word nerf.
The detail of Eravin’s avatar also enjoying tea is great. While I’m still working slowly thru the Elden Ring DLC and stepping away from HD2 in the meantime, I look forward to returning to the game from time to time to enjoy some new content to go along with the immaculate game play and democratic spirit.
Arrowhead will listen to this podcast and the only take away will be the last 2 minutes of it praising the game Wow see, our game is fun and people love it! Stay the course boys
I really hope they end up buffing things again. If they buff the arc thrower again I'd be happy to drop back in and shock as many bots and bugs as I can. If they figure out the balance of their enemy mixtures so that I don't need to have every stratagem and anti tank weapon used up in the first fifteen seconds of a three minute fight and STILL have heavies piling on I wouldn't mind it so much. I get that they want stratagems used more, well tough luck they have a cool down and some of them are as effective as throwing a can of beans at the enemy. What I really want is for my weapons to be reliable, something that is apparently a problem for some at Arrowhead, but it is all I need to have consistent fun. When I could get the arc-12 to behave after the buff it was fun. Was it good? Nope! But was it reliable enough to be fun? Sometimes. When it was then yeah, it was a lot of fun. I couldn't take it too high up in the difficulties with team mates, it would drag down the whole team as I couldn't take the bugs down fast enough to cover someone, but I had even run it up to 7 solo for fun. It was a very bad idea, but still fun to see lightning arcing around. Just buff everything to be reliable in its own way and I'd be a very happy and active Helldiver again.
33:52 "On launch you *HAD* to link your PSN account." I got the game on Steam on launch day and did not have to link my (nonexistent) PSN account, and as of this writing I still haven't. I still believe that choosing Sony as a publisher was a huge mistake for Arrowhead. I would've thought between the sales of Magicka and HD1 (and all its DLC) that they'd be able to find a less crappy publisher, if not do it themselves... 35:58 Weapon mods. Helldivers 1 had this as its progression system (even stratagem mods to an extent, but I guess those were put on ship upgrades now). The game won't truly be complete until I can eviscerate the enemies of freedom and democracy with a bayonet attachment on my primary weapon. 41:45 Exosuits. Mentioned this in another video but I was late, but IMO the easiest way to fix aiming the rockets pods would be to simply swap the rockets to the right arm and the gatling gun to the left arm. You should be able to take more than one of the same stratagem into a mission if you want like in the first game, which would allow you to really double down on being a 'mech main' or even doing stuff like having 20 eagle strafing runs and using those as your primary weapon. Also, since this game has backpack-reloaded weapons that people want to avoid in multiplayer (which is a huge missed opportunity by the community, IMO, but I can sort of understand it) let me take a backpack that specifically allows me to reload and maybe even repair friendly vehicles (mechs, since that's all we have at the time of this posting). I don't usually bring any special backpacks to a mission but if I know that someone wants to use mechs a lot and I could bring ammo refills for them I would do it in a heartbeat, I love that sort of synergy in my co-op games, *LET ME SYNERGIZE WITH MY TEAM!* 43:20 Bestiary. Yet another feature in the first game that's painfully absent in the second. 50:20 A few minutes earlier to this you guys were saying that the Helldiver's equipment having glaring faults that can lead to user fatalities is on-brand, and that is completely true. In real life a grenade launcher has safeties so that they don't explode within roughly 40 meters after leaving the barrel, but Helldivers don't have such safeties, as blowing up a few bugs point-blank is worth the patriotic sacrifice of a helldiver, right? The fact the railgun has a safety feature at all is pretty stunning to me. So mechs being able to have the gun depression to shoot almost straight down and potentially harm yourself is completely on-brand while letting you shoot down hills much easier and making the mechs feel more useful even if it makes them a bit risky. Overall the game feels like it released unfinished, hence the lack of Illuminates. The war has been going so much more slow than in HD1, and it really does feel like they are stalling for the introduction of not only the illuminates but also the introduction of whatever 'end boss' they end up adding assuming that capturing the final planet is anything like HD1. The lack of 'cityscape' tilesets for planetary defense missions really does make them feel like the planets are little outposts in the boonies that hardly anybody inhabits. How come planetary defense doesn't involve Terminids or Bots going through the streets of super-cities terrorizing civilians? *PUT THE INTRO CINEMATIC INTO THE MAIN GAME.* It's entirely possible that people have been playing Helldivers 2 to the point that they are completely burning themselves out, or they are way too focused on 'the meta' or only playing on the highest difficulties possible even if it turns the game from fun to frustrating. Perhaps some people just need to take a break for a bit. I don't play this game ALL the time, but when I do it's a blast.
@@roar104 I just tested this by the way. Shot a grenade at my feet and it blew me up, so I don't know what grenade launcher you're using but the ones they give me definitely don't have a safety.
@@Zulban48 maybe they only seem to when you're shooting at enemies then? I know for sure they ricochet off enemies back at me if they're too close, blowing up right where I'm standing
Except Arrowhead did not choose Sony as the publisher. Sony owns the Helldivers IP, so unless you are proposing that they should've done something entirely different, they had no other choice
A point of comparison in progression for me was DRG, where i feel like I was always moving towards meaningful upgrades that actually change how you play, as opposed to the ship modules, half of which have any notable differences. Like you mention with the desire to experiment The game feels a little boring when I always essentially take the same exact loadout per faction. Not because a difference in playstyles, but because I feel like that's all I can rely on to clear missions effrctively. It's 100% a crutch, but you usually need crutches because, you know, your legs are broken or something.
Not to mention the fact that going up in difficulty doesn't just increase your XP or credits (the req slip equivalent in DRG) but it also multiplied the crafting minerals you found in the caves (the equivalent of samples in HD2)
People really were pretty blind about the whole "you can earn super credits ingame" thing. It's an extremely common tactic from free to play games where you can technically make all the premium you want from grinding it out, but it's always in the most boring and terrible ways if you want to do it efficient and still very very slow. It's just insane there's no reward multiplier on points of interest as you go up in difficulty. You can open a box and still just get 100 req slips at diff 1 or diff 10. Would it be so bad that if you're playing on difficulty 10 any time you find a super credit drop it's 100 credits? They're already pretty hard to find anyway, not to mention this isn't even a free to play game.
Having an upgrade kit that could be earned in mission. Each weapon would have 3 tiers. Common, Rare, Super Rare. An upgrade kit would let you open up upgrades for one of the tiers. I see common tier being basic things to undo nerfs (damage, ammo). Rare tier would add a weapon specific option (like overclocks) and then super rare would be cosmetics. Each tier just needs 2 options for me to be happy.
Possible cool adition: 10 Super Credits every major order completion, every 100 MOs you get the ability to buy a single warbond, how long and how much work is that? I'm pretty sure it should be worth for arrowhead. If they don't want you to be rewarded for the work of others make it so that it's your Personnal Order
for one thing, less and less content is not true. this warbond has more primary weapons than the last one and both this warbond and the last warbond put in a lot more effort into quality cosmetics than the previous ones. and all the previous warbonds that cost 1000 SC all have the same level of content. plus, its super easy to grind out SC. i dont see it as a big deal unless they start being only cosmetics or something. i say this as someone who has temporarily quit helldivers due to the recent update
Fine is the wrong word. We love this game and a good 10.000 of us have an abusive relationship with this game. I collect the equipment in the hope, that Arrowhead stops being such midwits, but my hopium is running low
@@epsilon1372the last 2 Warbounds are nerfed. Also what great cosmetics? Are u talking about Red? The thing that looks like it was made in MS Paint in a minute or default camo ripped from google?
@@kotztotz3530 Still too much for just one or two good things in the whole warbond. And it's been like that since the Democratic Detonation one. Mention to Polar Patriot who got its only good weapon nerfed with just the grenade left 😂
As a monetization scheme goes, it makes sense that you don't want people gaining the premium currency on fun missions. Like most live service games, you either grind for hours to get currency, or you buy it. HD2 managed to dodge the criticism for a little before people started maining 7+ and saw their supercredit income tank. I don't like it, but I see what their doing
Speaking of helldivers endgame, what if we used the baby worm or atomaton head as like a key of sorts for a boss mission like a raid boss, just give us the monster of all monsters for bugs and a walking fortress that makes the strider look small for bots, it could be so awesome fighting this giant boss enemy and then have him drop awesome loot. It could even be like an 8 person mission or something. Thats my dream for helldivers endgame
Helldivers really is going the Outriders route of constant nerfs, unfixed bugs, and wasted potential. It's fun, far more than Outriders was as well, but it could be so much more.
I think Helldivers 2 is supposed to be an Early Access game. The only reason it's not, is because Sony doesn't allow early access type of games. Ideally, some gameplay change that disrupts the player experience, bug or intended change, gets an immediate hotfix released. Since the game is on PlayStation, AH probably needs to follow patch release paperwork hence the delays on most gameplay breaking stuff. Most of their reactive weapon nerfs seems to be due to bugged gameplay elements, like the bile titan damage vs railgun. They wont revert those changes, but now there's a known issue that bile titans sometimes just doesn't take damage from anything or something. Aside from the gameplay changes, every new patch seems to introduce game instability and worsening performance. At the end of the day, all the original review bomb did was for Sony to stop selling future PlayStation games in Steam to around 180 countries they wont ever bother to directly service PSN, All because Arrowhead forgot to re-inforce the PSN integration within the early months once the servers were stable. EDIT: EDF6 EOS epic account linking meanwhile, seems to be a developer issue. EOS can be configured to use a passive dummy account that doesn't push the account linking to the end user. I've played recent games with EOS multiplayer that never asked me to directly link an Epic account unless for specific functionalities. Megaton Musashi has Epic account linking ONLY if you want to use the cross save feature, the default multiplayer coop and pvp modes don't need you to do this.
Would it really have been so bad if the fire weapons were a bit more powerful then the baseline? The flamethrower only got so good after a host of changes and finally had a niche (but respectable) use as a charger deleter and crowd control tool. Now it can't delete chargers and can't control crowds due to no longer piercing bodies with the flames. Arrowhead has made a pattern where they change something to the game mechanics that fundamentally breaks a whole host of things and it's left that way for some time before another patch reverts it. Perhaps the best thing they can do is just stop messing with functions that they don't appear to fully understand themselves.
You would think that the Arrowhead devs would want to be satisfying and entrenching their playerbase with deep and meaningful content 1 month before the release of a new co-op bug-smashing game (Space Marine 2), but it seems the exact opposite.
I dont know if anyone else noticed this or if i just keep getting bad seeds, but i also feel like the bot fortress/mega nests really cut into the poi spawns further reducing potential super credit earnings.
The new weapons are good! Not sure why you would say they are bad. Having a primary flamethrower is great, it's powerful and allows me to set up a heavy machine gun, auto cannon, etc. So kind of inverting primary and support
They could have set it up so that the support flamethrower is the only one that could melt the chargers. They could've set it so the primary flamethrower couldn't "penetrate" heavy armor. That way the primary isn't deleting chargers, and the support still has a niche while being decent at clearing chaff
I have never seen a pve free to play game that almost refuses to let players have a power fantasy. Helldiver devs almost balance this game like its a pvp game. Its so weird to me.
Kek , HD2 weapon balance is up in flame , meanwhile in EDF , this shotgun shoot hella fast and this shotgun reload hella fast , both are equally usable in Inferno difficulty and most importantly , fun to shoot .
24:00 the major complaint i have about weapons in HD2 in comparison to DRG, is that weapons in DRG is op, because its fun and theres a lot of enemy's. I dont want to every encounter in the game be a boss fight, and i feel that is happening in HD2
big risk big reward is key to many fun games imo. I think Helldivers got that along with a focus on realisim. But idk if it sounds like they kept up with that. I think instead of nerfing, raise the challenge or innovate on how the game plays if you can as a core game design. Big stakes seems core to Warhammer philosophy and I think despite Darktide's flaws it has handled power creep better than most. It just really needs the new weapon upgrade system coming cause some of the asinine stuff you gotta do for weapon management atm is admittedly a bit much.
11:08 i wonder how thia applies to the majority of players. As a person with a full time job, that plays everyday, im still working towards lv150 and only need one more ship upgrade. Do top players represent the majority or is the drop of players something that naturally happens to most games?
15:00 this whole conversation is exactly why live-service game models work. Things are affordable or not excessively explained very early on so you can get attched relatively easily and once you are attached that time you spent becomes valuable. But in later halves you have to set aside that fun to use your time to grind those once seemingly generous low dropping snall amount if premium currency that was enough, now is not. As a gamer you spend your free time gaming to escape and have fun. So when your instead spending that time doing the exact tasks your time become more valuable. Then they wave in front of you a price to earn back that fun again. And of course, you enjoy the game, you've spent time getting where you are and had fun doing it. Your committed to the game, you dont wanna abandon it. So you take the bait. And it's usually a 1 tap buy or close too it. As not to let you think on it, while your still emotionally charged by the fun you've had. And this is why Free 2 play games are the highest grossing games in the market.
And mind you, artificial scarcity i only one of many ways these modern games go about pulling you away from the game to ask for ur money to get it back in full.
In the last months I played only on diff7, actively seeking POI's for supercredits. I had around 3000 total before the last warbond dropped. Players playing diff9+ are choosing not to engage enemies and visit POI's. You dont need to farm them on diff2 if you play the game engaging the enemies.
I think what could have been done with mechas aswell is making is obviously more durable, have more dmg etc. But also have a ammo packs spawnable with it or have a ship upgrade that could give that. They could force others play around and logically it should be playable around that thing. But i guess it would be to fun and too great to have so they won't make based of that metric, Fun means a big no in their heads...
There is a sort of progression to unlocking the weapons. You first get the liberator, the shittiest gun in the game, and some of the weapons you unlock levelling up as a lowbie are better. Same for the stratagems. Some of them you can tell are just meant to be used by low levels, on low difficulties. This is why, I think, AH just buffed the adjudicator and tenderiser in the buffs patch, but the liberators and lower level weapons got left alone entirely. They still want there to be a progression in unlocking weapons. With system like that in the game, you and I will never get a balance patch that buffs everything.
The nerfing of the weapons is the biggest sin to this game. The point of the game is to kill things. If they lessen the ability to do that, what’s the point? This last nerf was pretty much the last straw for me. The rail gun, quasar cannon, eruptor, breaker shotgun and several other nerfs were tough. This last one to fire, I’m just done.
The developers have no fucking clue about what they're doing with the game, I really dislike them. They had developed one of the best games ever made which had huge potential to be even better over time, and they've just been wasting it over and over again, it's arguably become worse instead as months pass
Early and mid game was good, but the late game is abyssmal. the last update was bigger in terms of changes, this update is just MEH. There is no plce for a new booster, you need olny 3-4 stamina, HP, full ammo and maybe the new yellow heal booster.
The content is so slow arriving. There are definitely things that could be going on that would really breathe life into the game. I’m talking about diver content, not new enemy types or weapon balance changes. Weapon balance through a nerf actually seems like a very lazy method for balancing the game. Balance the enemies to the weapons and buff the weak weapons.
I wonder how many people would complain about the game if they didn't know the changes. Also how does someone who plays a lot not have the credits for the new warbond? I don't mean this as a insult or anything but I work 8 hours a day and didn't play for weeks after the Elden Ring DLC came out, but I had the credits to buy every warbond on release without buying extra or going to lower difficulties to farm. DRG's first season came out well over a year after the games release.
Just like Eravin said at the end, there are a lot of us waiting for the game to get better and have more content and systems. I haven't played for months now, basically since they nerfed the Eruptor. I didn't understand back then and I still don't understand why the Eruptor was such a problem. I loved using it but it didn't make the harder difficulties easy at all. Having had a weapon that feels that good only for them to take it away made me quit. It's just not as fun any more. They have nerfed almost all my favorite weapons and stratagems AND made the enemies stronger and more varied - no thanks.
So the whole Sony debacle had a zero sum effect on the player count and you can even check the steam charts to see that. The game was steadily losing players well before that and maintained that drop off rate even after the whole Sony thing, so to say "oh it was because of Sony" is just wrong. As for who is at fault for it I'd make the argument that it was Arrowhead's fault, not so much Sony's. And there's a very particular reason for that, when it was all going down the CEO openly admitted to knowing that the requirement was going to be a thing well before the launch of HD2, and yet, they purposefully omitted that from marketing and on the game page on steam. The truth of the matter is that the balance team is slowly killing the game and the player base is constantly calling it out. Even though the CEO stepped down and took over the balancing team and we were promised things would be different, we can see first hand that's just not the case. Why did they nerf the incendiary breaker? Oh because 30% of the player base was using it on bug missions...then why not buff other weapons to bring it in line with it? Mind you, much like the OG breaker, it really isnt over powered, it's just one of the only weapons that's fun to use and decently good at ad clear. But I think the most telling thing for the community was the live stream, it was largely speculation that the devs couldn't actually play their game and that they were making balancing decisions based on lower difficulties. Well, they not only confirmed that they make balancing decisions around 5, they showed the entire player base that they may actually have some brain damage because they could barely beat 5
honestly adding a leaderboard could help maintain player engagement, at least in the short term. grinding high difficulty missions for the reward of prestige, maybe in-universe honors for the best liberators after a planet is saved or something
I always found the Warbound system weird because initially it sounds cool that u can unlock it for free but it releasing so often + what are they gonna do after we have 10 of those? Are we gonna get Steam dlc for year 1 Warbounds or something like that and I doubt players that quit for now to wait for Cars, Illuminits and a lot guns being stronger will be happy seeing a 100€+ paywall in their game. PD 2 already had that problem until the ultimate/legacy edition and it was memed to hell.
Well seeing how AH is shooting themselves in the foot, you are already lucky if you get at least one good weapon in a warbond 😂 Some are just about a grenade or a booster lmao.
@@jacktheripper7935 dont forget the last 2 Warbounds were also nerfed instead of 3 Armors its 2 (and its very clear the 3rd one is ripped out of it and slapped into the superstore) instead of 3 Primaries,1 Secondary and a nade. We only get 3 things instead of 5. But hey now they are filled with ugly "skins" that AH slapped together in MS Paint in 2min.
i dont think its unreasonable to expect people to pay for stuff, but i will say that the price for what you get is kinda iffy, like they usually only give a handful of stuff and most of the time its mostly useless tbh. if there were more skins and color palettes and stuff maybe that would be ok but what you get is just eh.
The lack of reward structure is an issue for sure. Also, this game just plain isnt fun to play sometimes. Im playing to engage with the enemy, it is not fun to me to run away and press the arrow buttons at the terminal
Most of the folks complaining don't hate the game, they want AH to let us love it. We are fighting for the game, not hating it. If I hated it, I'd just move on. I don't spend time and energy on hating things, I spend my energy trying to fix or preserve what I like, or course correct with my feedback when it goes a direction I don't appreciate. To write off everyone critical of the game as "haters" is a mistake. If anyone is bad for anything, its glazing yes-men, who don't critique something they enjoy, so it ends up going to shit in an echo chamber.
Exactly.
amen
Yeah I've stopped playing but I still voice my displeasure because I remember how much fun I was having the first few weeks when I thought the bugs would be ironed out real fast. How innocent I was thinking the chargers sliding around was a bug they'd fix really quick lol.
exaactly. ive been vouching for AH for a long time because i was sure they needed one more update to bring things back, especially considering the last patch was so good. But this new patch was so disappointing (especially with how much they hyped it up) that ive stopped playing. I love this game a lot and i desperately want them to succeed and pull themselves back up. But until they can pull things back in a big balance patch, ill be playing other things, as much as it pains me to say.
I can get behind this, after 100+ hours I had enough when it became harder and harder to want to play it. When all the weapons I used kept getting worse, and some of the ones I swapped to for variety didn't get much better either, AND the enemies kept getting buffs to either their numbers, their spawn rates, or for bots the sheer volume of rockets spammed, it makes it real hard to want to like it.
I just don't want to go back when each new patch comes up with new problems, not even just the nerfs, just that the devs change a thing that breaks another thing that causes a new patch to fix the previous patch. It's just so tiresome.
40:10 "And it begs the question: 'Why I need to be able to kill a charger in two to four seconds?'. Well, the answer to that is that there are six more of them on my screen too!"
-Most accurate Helldivers 2 statement ever.
I miss OG Eruptor........
Fucking exactly!
Absolute truth.
Specially now with the new Spore Charger with that annoying green fog. But as a matter of fact, was the Behemoth (that requires 2-3 AT rockets to the head, rather than 1 for a normal charger) that made the Flame Thrower by far the best choice to eliminate chargers.
Exactly, when you have 5 chargers all rushing you AMONGST everything else, you need to be able to dispatch them as efficiently as possible. Taking away the tools to do this is insane!!
"Hearing about the complaints on this podcast, we have decided to completely remove super credits from the points of interest on difficulties 1 to 5."
"We want to make it clear, we are _listening_ to players, we _hear_ you. That's why we've decided to change how super credits drop. One out of a thousand maps will now contain a single super credit, in a random chest. "
"I mean, which group of players should we listen to? Should we listen to the "more super credits crowd", or the equally powerful "no super credits crowd?" Both groups represent a perfect 50/50 slice of the active player base. I know this is true, because I am just making it up right now."
The moment when they remove SC freebies is the moment when they lose probably the rest of their niche players who still stick around. All this "git gud" folks sound like teenagers who are still in school.
my main issue with the game is that enemies get stronger while us players get weaker or stay the same
its wild because since they gave us so many buffs in the last patch, giving us many more buffs was the one thing i expected them to get nearly perfect. really disappointing and i probably wont come back until we get a major balance patch
This right here
The funny thing is - the buffs weren’t really buffs. They merelly reverted a lot of the nerfs we’d received.
None of the guns have ever been taken back to their original and better state. (Aside from the AC which has never been altered since release.)
for all their talk about realism, I have never heard of a real life army constantly replacing their soldiers weapons with weaker ones.
The cookout is doomed. That gun is actually good at chaff clearing. Good stagger and high sustained dps. RIP
It's fine. Worse than incendiary breaker for horde clear because of the spread. Worse DPS and ammo economy. It'll likely not get touched
@roar104 I doubt for the ammo economy but the only fact that this gun has stagger makes this weapon look pretty "nerfable" if we know AH well.
It's to say how stupid the balancing is.
@@jacktheripper7935 then you must not know them well. The weapon is fun, it's very usable, but nowhere near good enough to get nerfed (via being too strong/pick rate/whatever other metric)
it will be fine until they want to release a new set of fire weapons then they’ll nerf the shit out of it
@@roar104Nope. They nerfed the crossbow. That weapon was already niche and they nerfed its ONE use-case. That tells you that the devs can’t even leave the mediocre weapons alone.
AH should watch this. Piles, Shams, every dev in the game.
They are getting FREE advice and the consensus is loud and clear: we don't want you to decide when you should prenerf things for us! Let us make that decision.
And, let me say this again: IT'S TIME TO LET IN THE POWER CREEP; LET IT RIP!
If the game offered an added 30 super credits every time you finish an entire campaign at difficulties 7 and higher would make for a positive change
Agree. Even 25 credits for everyone who completed the full operations on diff level 7 and above would be great.
30 off a singular op is way too high. If you do one a day you make nearly 1k a month before any pickups.
@@roar104yeah every game should be a full time job earning peanuts
@@GG-ou7it don't be an idiot. Nobody is saying that. You just shouldn't be able to ignore engaging with every POI and still make 1k a month easy (only need 700 anyways as passes give you 300 back)
@@roar104 you dont be an idiot loads of games are demanding more and more time as a manipulation tactic to extort money out of people to save said time, and what if im playing multiple games at once?
This is a fucking paid PvE game let people unlock shit easier or don’t be surprised when the player base drops of a fucking cliff and people move on, you are a child or unemployed.
This game keeps breaking my heart. I have 200+ hours in it from launch but haven't been able to pick it up for at least a month and a half because the game has just gotten less fun. The experience has gotten progressively less cohesive.
Holy shit, a fellow rain world and Helldivers fan??? What are the chances?
I love the implied shade between the 2 pfp's facing away from each other
It almost hurts worse when something I don't even use gets nerfed. Like great one less viable option to choose from.
Seriously, I was not a fan of the I. Breaker. But I didn't want it nerfed. That one guy spraying down the hunters and shreikers was MVP on higher difficulties. Why you gotta do him like that AH?
i used to want the breaker nerfed, but then i kinda realized after the patch how bad of an idea that was especially since we didnt get enough buffs to other weapons to compensate
Breaker nerf is a great example of how arbitrary their balance is.
Breaker was only "popular" because that's what people unlocked and were trying. It was never OP at all.
all helldivers needs is REAL CONTENT. missions quests raids etc
it annoys me to no end that every other patch they change things that don't make any sense like the colors of the seaf artillery
They literally can't fix their spaghetti code fast enough so the rest of the team dedicates it's time to mess with whatever comes to their mind.
But we still dont see Resupplies on the map...
Not only the colors but the shape too. The "support" ones like smokes and static fields looking like a APFSDS rounds was such a visually simple way of setting them apart from the high explosives, but for some reason they decided to get rid of that and make them all look the same.
Eravin is my favourite Helldivers 2 Content Creator so its really great to see him getting the recognition he deserves! Looking forwards to giving this a listen!
(General Brasch told me to leave this comment)
The whole points of interest discussion is so true. You dont want to go after them on harder difficulties cause theres tons of enemies and the chance of dieing and failing the mission increases. The game doesnt incentivise full map clearing either. I think if you take put all the bug holes or fabricators on the map it should significantly decrease enemy spawns
I don't normally do podcasts much less hour long UA-cam videos (except for rat's, of course), but I love you two guy's videos. I listened to the whole thing and it was a treat. Thanks a bunch!
just discovered ratatoskr recently. appreciate the actual thoughtful conversation regarding concerns and improvements. alot of us are frustrated with this game, we just want to know we aren't crazy for questioning these changes. Eravin actually analyzing mechanics and stats is perfect for this format.
Someone send this to Arrowhead
So they can laugh at it? They don’t care they made their money and dipped
They’ll just say “we hear you and we understand” and then nerf 3 more weapons
This is my favorite crossover episode! Eravin is incredibly knowledgeable about the game and his weapon analysis is such a great service to the community. Great conversation!
I'm convinced they are trolling. The initial sales likely set them up to not care. Rip the rail gun, it was the most fun.
It’s still fun asf tho ngl, it’s just a riskier weapon now
Rail gun was the only weapon I kind of agreed with nerfing, along with the shield, but it should've also made the other strategems and weapons much better
i think the issues is in the way the balance team has been led. when Pilestedt was CEO, we got nerfs, stupid ones. When he stepped down to become CCO, we got that really nice patch with a ton of buffs. However, when we get this update, surprise surprise, it was when Pilestedt was on vacation for a long time. Clearly something is wrong with the balance team and that seems to change whenever Pilestedt is around
@@epsilon1372wait he was on vacation? I didn’t know that
The railgun nerf was such a bad call. Hard hitting, single target, anti-tank that you had to aim and charge. This was balanced. The bile titan psn bug should not have been a factor.
All this mech talk makes me want a mech that functions as a mobile dome shield
I'd recommend playing Lost Planet 2, but it's been so long that I think the servers finally shutdown.
You might be able to get it running on emulator though.
@CtisGaming that game is SOO FUCKING FUUN I miss it so much I loved stealing the mecha shotguns and use them whit just my character (wich used the ratalos armor) thats very important.
The craziest thing to me is that some weapons that came out close to or at release still are completely useless.
There is no reason to expect that this game will ever have a well balanced weapon roster, where the majority of weapons are fun and around equally viable.
Spray and Pray always comes to mind. It's the epitome of useless. Very low dps for a shotgun, low damage per pellet, some of the lowest armor penetration in the game. There is no reason ever to pick it over any other weapon.
Autocannon the game
I see Helldivers 2 the same way I see Overwatch. I was lucky to play on release, because neither game will ever be as good as they used to be.
SC and Medals are absolutely easier to get on lower difficulty. Play on 2 and the POI are often shipping containers with medals and SC (rarely a pickup will even be 100SC) where on a higher difficulty the containers are gone in favor of samples on the ground.
Saying that the game population should be expected to drop over time is correct but it is not normal for a live service to have its population drop in direct correlation to the release of new content or updates. It's supposed to be the opposite.
I absolutely agree with Eravin on weapon modifications in general. Not locked to the highest difficulty over all but maybe the top upgrades at the higher levels. Amunition types at bare minimum. Gas or incendiary grenades for the launcher, explosive or armor piercing rounds for the auto cannon, etc.
Holding reload to open the attachment menu could even let you swap ammo types mid-mission.
I know it's basically a meme at this point, but HD1 did the reward structure better. You HAD to work your way up difficulties slowly because rewards for completing ops were stratagems. You didn't get the rail cannon until you beat like 7s and then you got a very useful tool to help you push up even higher in difficulties. You either had to get good enough, or be carried through to earn shit
I uninstalled. They proved they the nerfs will never end. The fire nerf has me so angry that just logging on, puts me in a bad mood. I want my flamethrower back. I want fun again. No idea why if 30% of people have fun, they decide to ruin it. This just sounds like business suicide
Exactly this for me too. I just realised that there is no fun in the game anymore.
This update was over hyped dog water.
AH is making a lot of mistakes about balancing but the SC system and the Warbond system is fine. They are free as long as you play the game. And farming stuff is always a pain in every game that I played. HD2 at least I never had to farm anything intentionally, since I play a lot.
AAAAOOOOOOOOOHHHHH wasnt expecting one of my fav from elden ring to team up with my fav from helldivers
No offense to Eravin but the PSN network link controversy had little impact on the actual player count. Go look at the Steam player count chart since release. The game launched on 08 February with the Account linking controversy actually marked on the chart as occurring on 03 May. The player count had been steadily declining for 3 months prior to the controversy, already lost ~330k from its early peak. There was no sharp drop-off as a direct consequence, the pace of the downward trend remained relatively unchanged.
Not claiming the PSN linking had zero impact, or there was no adverse impact to new players entering the game. But I find it weird so much emphasis is placed on the PSN issue when the publicly available data suggests players just got bored, maybe fed-up with updates, and moved on (/now playing much less).
i agree. PSN situation did suck and still does, but everyone blows it out of proportion.
@@epsilon1372 it soured the mood of the game completely tho.
@@Nobody32990 The PSN thing was a very clear reinforcement of the idea of the game makers being against the game players, and it's one of the main drivers of everyone being on a hair trigger to outrage every time the developers mention the word nerf.
nice! eravin is a legend
The detail of Eravin’s avatar also enjoying tea is great.
While I’m still working slowly thru the Elden Ring DLC and stepping away from HD2 in the meantime, I look forward to returning to the game from time to time to enjoy some new content to go along with the immaculate game play and democratic spirit.
this has about the same energy as "You know what Grinds my Gears?" from Family Guy but more civil
Just give the mech two reticles. One for each arm
Arrowhead will listen to this podcast and the only take away will be the last 2 minutes of it praising the game
Wow see, our game is fun and people love it! Stay the course boys
I really hope they end up buffing things again. If they buff the arc thrower again I'd be happy to drop back in and shock as many bots and bugs as I can. If they figure out the balance of their enemy mixtures so that I don't need to have every stratagem and anti tank weapon used up in the first fifteen seconds of a three minute fight and STILL have heavies piling on I wouldn't mind it so much. I get that they want stratagems used more, well tough luck they have a cool down and some of them are as effective as throwing a can of beans at the enemy. What I really want is for my weapons to be reliable, something that is apparently a problem for some at Arrowhead, but it is all I need to have consistent fun. When I could get the arc-12 to behave after the buff it was fun. Was it good? Nope! But was it reliable enough to be fun? Sometimes. When it was then yeah, it was a lot of fun. I couldn't take it too high up in the difficulties with team mates, it would drag down the whole team as I couldn't take the bugs down fast enough to cover someone, but I had even run it up to 7 solo for fun. It was a very bad idea, but still fun to see lightning arcing around. Just buff everything to be reliable in its own way and I'd be a very happy and active Helldiver again.
33:52 "On launch you *HAD* to link your PSN account."
I got the game on Steam on launch day and did not have to link my (nonexistent) PSN account, and as of this writing I still haven't.
I still believe that choosing Sony as a publisher was a huge mistake for Arrowhead. I would've thought between the sales of Magicka and HD1 (and all its DLC) that they'd be able to find a less crappy publisher, if not do it themselves...
35:58 Weapon mods. Helldivers 1 had this as its progression system (even stratagem mods to an extent, but I guess those were put on ship upgrades now). The game won't truly be complete until I can eviscerate the enemies of freedom and democracy with a bayonet attachment on my primary weapon.
41:45 Exosuits. Mentioned this in another video but I was late, but IMO the easiest way to fix aiming the rockets pods would be to simply swap the rockets to the right arm and the gatling gun to the left arm. You should be able to take more than one of the same stratagem into a mission if you want like in the first game, which would allow you to really double down on being a 'mech main' or even doing stuff like having 20 eagle strafing runs and using those as your primary weapon. Also, since this game has backpack-reloaded weapons that people want to avoid in multiplayer (which is a huge missed opportunity by the community, IMO, but I can sort of understand it) let me take a backpack that specifically allows me to reload and maybe even repair friendly vehicles (mechs, since that's all we have at the time of this posting). I don't usually bring any special backpacks to a mission but if I know that someone wants to use mechs a lot and I could bring ammo refills for them I would do it in a heartbeat, I love that sort of synergy in my co-op games, *LET ME SYNERGIZE WITH MY TEAM!*
43:20 Bestiary. Yet another feature in the first game that's painfully absent in the second.
50:20 A few minutes earlier to this you guys were saying that the Helldiver's equipment having glaring faults that can lead to user fatalities is on-brand, and that is completely true. In real life a grenade launcher has safeties so that they don't explode within roughly 40 meters after leaving the barrel, but Helldivers don't have such safeties, as blowing up a few bugs point-blank is worth the patriotic sacrifice of a helldiver, right? The fact the railgun has a safety feature at all is pretty stunning to me. So mechs being able to have the gun depression to shoot almost straight down and potentially harm yourself is completely on-brand while letting you shoot down hills much easier and making the mechs feel more useful even if it makes them a bit risky.
Overall the game feels like it released unfinished, hence the lack of Illuminates. The war has been going so much more slow than in HD1, and it really does feel like they are stalling for the introduction of not only the illuminates but also the introduction of whatever 'end boss' they end up adding assuming that capturing the final planet is anything like HD1. The lack of 'cityscape' tilesets for planetary defense missions really does make them feel like the planets are little outposts in the boonies that hardly anybody inhabits. How come planetary defense doesn't involve Terminids or Bots going through the streets of super-cities terrorizing civilians? *PUT THE INTRO CINEMATIC INTO THE MAIN GAME.*
It's entirely possible that people have been playing Helldivers 2 to the point that they are completely burning themselves out, or they are way too focused on 'the meta' or only playing on the highest difficulties possible even if it turns the game from fun to frustrating. Perhaps some people just need to take a break for a bit. I don't play this game ALL the time, but when I do it's a blast.
@@Zulban48 the GL absolutely has a minimum arming distance in HD2. I'd use it more if it didn't
@@roar104 It does? Guess that kinda reveals how often I (don't) use a lot of these weapons.
@@roar104 I just tested this by the way. Shot a grenade at my feet and it blew me up, so I don't know what grenade launcher you're using but the ones they give me definitely don't have a safety.
@@Zulban48 maybe they only seem to when you're shooting at enemies then? I know for sure they ricochet off enemies back at me if they're too close, blowing up right where I'm standing
Except Arrowhead did not choose Sony as the publisher. Sony owns the Helldivers IP, so unless you are proposing that they should've done something entirely different, they had no other choice
a nice podcast talk - hope you get to be a guest in ThiccFila's podcast as well in the future.
A point of comparison in progression for me was DRG, where i feel like I was always moving towards meaningful upgrades that actually change how you play, as opposed to the ship modules, half of which have any notable differences. Like you mention with the desire to experiment
The game feels a little boring when I always essentially take the same exact loadout per faction. Not because a difference in playstyles, but because I feel like that's all I can rely on to clear missions effrctively. It's 100% a crutch, but you usually need crutches because, you know, your legs are broken or something.
Never was really able to get into DRG... Maybe it's time for me to go back to it now that I'm done with Helldivers
Not to mention the fact that going up in difficulty doesn't just increase your XP or credits (the req slip equivalent in DRG) but it also multiplied the crafting minerals you found in the caves (the equivalent of samples in HD2)
They need to add in Weapon modifications. Use samples to unlock extra mags, Scope, incendiary ammo, Grips, etc.
People really were pretty blind about the whole "you can earn super credits ingame" thing. It's an extremely common tactic from free to play games where you can technically make all the premium you want from grinding it out, but it's always in the most boring and terrible ways if you want to do it efficient and still very very slow.
It's just insane there's no reward multiplier on points of interest as you go up in difficulty. You can open a box and still just get 100 req slips at diff 1 or diff 10. Would it be so bad that if you're playing on difficulty 10 any time you find a super credit drop it's 100 credits? They're already pretty hard to find anyway, not to mention this isn't even a free to play game.
Having an upgrade kit that could be earned in mission. Each weapon would have 3 tiers. Common, Rare, Super Rare. An upgrade kit would let you open up upgrades for one of the tiers. I see common tier being basic things to undo nerfs (damage, ammo). Rare tier would add a weapon specific option (like overclocks) and then super rare would be cosmetics. Each tier just needs 2 options for me to be happy.
Possible cool adition: 10 Super Credits every major order completion, every 100 MOs you get the ability to buy a single warbond, how long and how much work is that? I'm pretty sure it should be worth for arrowhead. If they don't want you to be rewarded for the work of others make it so that it's your Personnal Order
I’d still love to see them buff other weapons instead of nerfing used weapons. Just saying.
I'm not interested in Helldivers, but I could listen to Rata talk about stamp collecting and still be mesmerised.
Never got over the fact that they still charge 1000 SC for less and less content in a warbond and everyone seems fine with it
for one thing, less and less content is not true. this warbond has more primary weapons than the last one and both this warbond and the last warbond put in a lot more effort into quality cosmetics than the previous ones. and all the previous warbonds that cost 1000 SC all have the same level of content. plus, its super easy to grind out SC. i dont see it as a big deal unless they start being only cosmetics or something. i say this as someone who has temporarily quit helldivers due to the recent update
It essentially costs 700 since you unlock 300 back through the warbond.
Fine is the wrong word. We love this game and a good 10.000 of us have an abusive relationship with this game. I collect the equipment in the hope, that Arrowhead stops being such midwits, but my hopium is running low
@@epsilon1372the last 2 Warbounds are nerfed. Also what great cosmetics? Are u talking about Red? The thing that looks like it was made in MS Paint in a minute or default camo ripped from google?
@@kotztotz3530 Still too much for just one or two good things in the whole warbond.
And it's been like that since the Democratic Detonation one.
Mention to Polar Patriot who got its only good weapon nerfed with just the grenade left 😂
As a monetization scheme goes, it makes sense that you don't want people gaining the premium currency on fun missions. Like most live service games, you either grind for hours to get currency, or you buy it. HD2 managed to dodge the criticism for a little before people started maining 7+ and saw their supercredit income tank. I don't like it, but I see what their doing
Speaking of helldivers endgame, what if we used the baby worm or atomaton head as like a key of sorts for a boss mission like a raid boss, just give us the monster of all monsters for bugs and a walking fortress that makes the strider look small for bots, it could be so awesome fighting this giant boss enemy and then have him drop awesome loot. It could even be like an 8 person mission or something. Thats my dream for helldivers endgame
Great episode! I would love to see OnlyWaifu sometime in the future to discuss PvP in Elden Ring.
Helldivers really is going the Outriders route of constant nerfs, unfixed bugs, and wasted potential.
It's fun, far more than Outriders was as well, but it could be so much more.
I think Helldivers 2 is supposed to be an Early Access game. The only reason it's not, is because Sony doesn't allow early access type of games.
Ideally, some gameplay change that disrupts the player experience, bug or intended change, gets an immediate hotfix released. Since the game is on PlayStation, AH probably needs to follow patch release paperwork hence the delays on most gameplay breaking stuff.
Most of their reactive weapon nerfs seems to be due to bugged gameplay elements, like the bile titan damage vs railgun. They wont revert those changes, but now there's a known issue that bile titans sometimes just doesn't take damage from anything or something. Aside from the gameplay changes, every new patch seems to introduce game instability and worsening performance.
At the end of the day, all the original review bomb did was for Sony to stop selling future PlayStation games in Steam to around 180 countries they wont ever bother to directly service PSN, All because Arrowhead forgot to re-inforce the PSN integration within the early months once the servers were stable.
EDIT: EDF6 EOS epic account linking meanwhile, seems to be a developer issue. EOS can be configured to use a passive dummy account that doesn't push the account linking to the end user. I've played recent games with EOS multiplayer that never asked me to directly link an Epic account unless for specific functionalities. Megaton Musashi has Epic account linking ONLY if you want to use the cross save feature, the default multiplayer coop and pvp modes don't need you to do this.
Would it really have been so bad if the fire weapons were a bit more powerful then the baseline? The flamethrower only got so good after a host of changes and finally had a niche (but respectable) use as a charger deleter and crowd control tool. Now it can't delete chargers and can't control crowds due to no longer piercing bodies with the flames. Arrowhead has made a pattern where they change something to the game mechanics that fundamentally breaks a whole host of things and it's left that way for some time before another patch reverts it.
Perhaps the best thing they can do is just stop messing with functions that they don't appear to fully understand themselves.
You would think that the Arrowhead devs would want to be satisfying and entrenching their playerbase with deep and meaningful content 1 month before the release of a new co-op bug-smashing game (Space Marine 2), but it seems the exact opposite.
Eravin is the man!
Rip helldivers it was fun while it lasted 🫡
Nerfdivers.
Can you do more podcasts?
I dont know if anyone else noticed this or if i just keep getting bad seeds, but i also feel like the bot fortress/mega nests really cut into the poi spawns further reducing potential super credit earnings.
The new weapons are good! Not sure why you would say they are bad. Having a primary flamethrower is great, it's powerful and allows me to set up a heavy machine gun, auto cannon, etc. So kind of inverting primary and support
They could have set it up so that the support flamethrower is the only one that could melt the chargers. They could've set it so the primary flamethrower couldn't "penetrate" heavy armor. That way the primary isn't deleting chargers, and the support still has a niche while being decent at clearing chaff
@@crimzonpegasus9714 That's what I have been saying for days!
Thank you.
@@crimzonpegasus9714 i get it but i choose to adjust
@@Gen.Bread75 The issue is AH will likely nerf or change the thing you readjust to
I have never seen a pve free to play game that almost refuses to let players have a power fantasy. Helldiver devs almost balance this game like its a pvp game. Its so weird to me.
Kek , HD2 weapon balance is up in flame , meanwhile in EDF , this shotgun shoot hella fast and this shotgun reload hella fast , both are equally usable in Inferno difficulty and most importantly , fun to shoot .
24:00 the major complaint i have about weapons in HD2 in comparison to DRG, is that weapons in DRG is op, because its fun and theres a lot of enemy's. I dont want to every encounter in the game be a boss fight, and i feel that is happening in HD2
I've been looking forward to this...
biggest issue for me is they worry about nerfs when their is plenty of bug squashing and performance issues
Yo Ratatoskr, would love to see you play Etrian Odyssey or talk about them. I know in the past you mentioned loving them.
Would you say as far as you are concerned that atmosphere CAN be enough to count as “story” for your purpose of joy?
big risk big reward is key to many fun games imo. I think Helldivers got that along with a focus on realisim. But idk if it sounds like they kept up with that. I think instead of nerfing, raise the challenge or innovate on how the game plays if you can as a core game design.
Big stakes seems core to Warhammer philosophy and I think despite Darktide's flaws it has handled power creep better than most. It just really needs the new weapon upgrade system coming cause some of the asinine stuff you gotta do for weapon management atm is admittedly a bit much.
11:08 i wonder how thia applies to the majority of players. As a person with a full time job, that plays everyday, im still working towards lv150 and only need one more ship upgrade. Do top players represent the majority or is the drop of players something that naturally happens to most games?
In the last big patch it said they fixed the misaligned rockets and ive been able to hit where the reticle goes. 🤷♂️
There are still 170+ countries in which you cannot buy the game btw, which is something i hate to my core
15:00 this whole conversation is exactly why live-service game models work. Things are affordable or not excessively explained very early on so you can get attched relatively easily and once you are attached that time you spent becomes valuable. But in later halves you have to set aside that fun to use your time to grind those once seemingly generous low dropping snall amount if premium currency that was enough, now is not.
As a gamer you spend your free time gaming to escape and have fun. So when your instead spending that time doing the exact tasks your time become more valuable.
Then they wave in front of you a price to earn back that fun again. And of course, you enjoy the game, you've spent time getting where you are and had fun doing it. Your committed to the game, you dont wanna abandon it. So you take the bait. And it's usually a 1 tap buy or close too it. As not to let you think on it, while your still emotionally charged by the fun you've had.
And this is why Free 2 play games are the highest grossing games in the market.
Which is rather problematic when this loop is what game companies aim to have for their games over anything else.
And mind you, artificial scarcity i only one of many ways these modern games go about pulling you away from the game to ask for ur money to get it back in full.
In the last months I played only on diff7, actively seeking POI's for supercredits. I had around 3000 total before the last warbond dropped. Players playing diff9+ are choosing not to engage enemies and visit POI's. You dont need to farm them on diff2 if you play the game engaging the enemies.
I’ve never seen a dev team so against their player base having fun. It’s like they genuinely want us to be frustrated
at this point they are going to have to undo all the nerfs they ever did to our stuff and buffs to enemy unites to get some good will back.
I think what could have been done with mechas aswell is making is obviously more durable, have more dmg etc. But also have a ammo packs spawnable with it or have a ship upgrade that could give that. They could force others play around and logically it should be playable around that thing.
But i guess it would be to fun and too great to have so they won't make based of that metric, Fun means a big no in their heads...
It will be funny coming back to this podcast episode after the game is dead 6 months from now.
Nerfs and nothing gets fixed!!!
And seriously, give us all the weapons at their peak use, and tune the hoards accordingly
There is a sort of progression to unlocking the weapons. You first get the liberator, the shittiest gun in the game, and some of the weapons you unlock levelling up as a lowbie are better. Same for the stratagems. Some of them you can tell are just meant to be used by low levels, on low difficulties.
This is why, I think, AH just buffed the adjudicator and tenderiser in the buffs patch, but the liberators and lower level weapons got left alone entirely. They still want there to be a progression in unlocking weapons.
With system like that in the game, you and I will never get a balance patch that buffs everything.
The nerfing of the weapons is the biggest sin to this game. The point of the game is to kill things. If they lessen the ability to do that, what’s the point? This last nerf was pretty much the last straw for me. The rail gun, quasar cannon, eruptor, breaker shotgun and several other nerfs were tough. This last one to fire, I’m just done.
I used a patriot suit and fire all missiles at the face of a factory strider just to see if its viable, nope didnt kill it
41:05 May I introduce you to Mechwarrior, my good sir?
the stomp is the strongest attack the mech can do...kinda sad if you think about it
Spear can 1 shot behemoth if targeted directly at the head, but yeah the issue is 6 charger coming for you at once.
When you only have 4 rockets.
Imagine playing monster hunter and you get weaker every time to kill the monster
The developers have no fucking clue about what they're doing with the game, I really dislike them. They had developed one of the best games ever made which had huge potential to be even better over time, and they've just been wasting it over and over again, it's arguably become worse instead as months pass
people play games to have fun but arrowhead does not want anyone to have fun
Early and mid game was good, but the late game is abyssmal. the last update was bigger in terms of changes, this update is just MEH. There is no plce for a new booster, you need olny 3-4
stamina, HP, full ammo and maybe the new yellow heal booster.
The content is so slow arriving. There are definitely things that could be going on that would really breathe life into the game. I’m talking about diver content, not new enemy types or weapon balance changes. Weapon balance through a nerf actually seems like a very lazy method for balancing the game. Balance the enemies to the weapons and buff the weak weapons.
I wonder how many people would complain about the game if they didn't know the changes.
Also how does someone who plays a lot not have the credits for the new warbond? I don't mean this as a insult or anything but I work 8 hours a day and didn't play for weeks after the Elden Ring DLC came out, but I had the credits to buy every warbond on release without buying extra or going to lower difficulties to farm.
DRG's first season came out well over a year after the games release.
22:48 How tf do you like souls games so much?
because of the story. he's dedicated many many videos and livestreams to talking about the story in souls games
Just like Eravin said at the end, there are a lot of us waiting for the game to get better and have more content and systems. I haven't played for months now, basically since they nerfed the Eruptor. I didn't understand back then and I still don't understand why the Eruptor was such a problem. I loved using it but it didn't make the harder difficulties easy at all. Having had a weapon that feels that good only for them to take it away made me quit. It's just not as fun any more. They have nerfed almost all my favorite weapons and stratagems AND made the enemies stronger and more varied - no thanks.
dope
more helldivers 2 content! I don’t play anymore but it’s nice to still hear about it
So the whole Sony debacle had a zero sum effect on the player count and you can even check the steam charts to see that. The game was steadily losing players well before that and maintained that drop off rate even after the whole Sony thing, so to say "oh it was because of Sony" is just wrong.
As for who is at fault for it I'd make the argument that it was Arrowhead's fault, not so much Sony's. And there's a very particular reason for that, when it was all going down the CEO openly admitted to knowing that the requirement was going to be a thing well before the launch of HD2, and yet, they purposefully omitted that from marketing and on the game page on steam.
The truth of the matter is that the balance team is slowly killing the game and the player base is constantly calling it out. Even though the CEO stepped down and took over the balancing team and we were promised things would be different, we can see first hand that's just not the case. Why did they nerf the incendiary breaker? Oh because 30% of the player base was using it on bug missions...then why not buff other weapons to bring it in line with it? Mind you, much like the OG breaker, it really isnt over powered, it's just one of the only weapons that's fun to use and decently good at ad clear.
But I think the most telling thing for the community was the live stream, it was largely speculation that the devs couldn't actually play their game and that they were making balancing decisions based on lower difficulties. Well, they not only confirmed that they make balancing decisions around 5, they showed the entire player base that they may actually have some brain damage because they could barely beat 5
honestly adding a leaderboard could help maintain player engagement, at least in the short term. grinding high difficulty missions for the reward of prestige, maybe in-universe honors for the best liberators after a planet is saved or something
Pre Nerf is an MMO term sir
I always found the Warbound system weird because initially it sounds cool that u can unlock it for free but it releasing so often + what are they gonna do after we have 10 of those? Are we gonna get Steam dlc for year 1 Warbounds or something like that and I doubt players that quit for now to wait for Cars, Illuminits and a lot guns being stronger will be happy seeing a 100€+ paywall in their game. PD 2 already had that problem until the ultimate/legacy edition and it was memed to hell.
Well seeing how AH is shooting themselves in the foot, you are already lucky if you get at least one good weapon in a warbond 😂
Some are just about a grenade or a booster lmao.
@@jacktheripper7935 dont forget the last 2 Warbounds were also nerfed instead of 3 Armors its 2 (and its very clear the 3rd one is ripped out of it and slapped into the superstore) instead of 3 Primaries,1 Secondary and a nade. We only get 3 things instead of 5. But hey now they are filled with ugly "skins" that AH slapped together in MS Paint in 2min.
HD2 is cursed
i dont think its unreasonable to expect people to pay for stuff, but i will say that the price for what you get is kinda iffy, like they usually only give a handful of stuff and most of the time its mostly useless tbh. if there were more skins and color palettes and stuff maybe that would be ok but what you get is just eh.
The lack of reward structure is an issue for sure. Also, this game just plain isnt fun to play sometimes.
Im playing to engage with the enemy, it is not fun to me to run away and press the arrow buttons at the terminal
Call it out! It IS lazy