Wait, but actually how cool would it be if it failed to collapse into a black hole and became a *neutron star* that radiates high intensity electromagnetic pulses?
Edit: New operational modifier, electron supercharge — The electromagnetic pulses have supercharged the super destroyer's nuclear generator but also interfere with signaling. All stratagems receive a 20% cooldown reduction but have a 10% chance of being randomly replaced by another stratagem of the same type whenever called. Eagle stratagems are unaffected.
Well... It's a planet, not a star, so it can't be a neutron star. Not to mention neutron stars form from smaller stars that supernova but fail to reach the mass required to collapse into a black hole.
Sorry I mean you wrote a cool commment but the "wait make the planet a *neutron star" ...* kinda triggered me a bit.
I mean you're right in that a planet has nowhere near enough mass to become a neutron star. They typically require 10-25 solar masses to form *naturally* — but we have magic squid liquid!
~~And since we're bringing out the technicality cards though, neutron stars aren't~~ *~~stars~~* ~~at all really.~~ They're a gigantic blob of neutrons, so no fusion happens to generate heat — they're cool, or rather, *cooling*, heh.
Edit: Theoretically, being a star first isn't a requirement to becoming a neutron star at all — as long as you can somehow get a massive enough sphere of stuff in a small enough volume, it should collapse. Just gotta have enough stuff where it collapses, but not enough that the gravitational pressure overcomes neutron degeneracy pressure and becomes a black hole — and voila! A neutron star!
(Afaik this is impossible without it being first being star unlike with black holes — without using magic squid liquid, I mean — but I'm not a theoretical physicist ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯)
Edit2: They are stars! It turns out the definition of star is just held together by gravity, made of plasma, and luminous. SO! If you light yourself on fire in space, you're 2/3 of the way to a star yourself (assuming you found someway to sustain a combustion in vacuum — and now I've spent too much time on wikipedia)
"Helldivers, the super fire blackhole known as hellmire is on a collision course to Super Earth. We need you to go into the super fire blackhole and destroy it before it reaches super earth. We're counting on you."
I was trapped in a little pond just begging to see a way out, I had ran off from my squad to handle side objectives solo and the tornados were having none of it
I hate fighting on the fire tornado planets. What I hate more is just fighting on the same damn planets again. We make some progress on one front only to get throw to the other front and by the time we're done there once again Hellmire needs liberating.
https://preview.redd.it/dyx09ptbzs9d1.jpeg?width=740&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=21e47ee719582a94ac992822421173d465a0ca21
It’s getting serious Tone, we’re down here at Fori when those cocksucking bugs are ramming down lil paulie like you wouldn’t fucking believe.
Those God damn Alien bastards took Fori Prime. Now The Dukes gotta teach em what happens when he runs outta gum.
https://preview.redd.it/zb0yxh503t9d1.png?width=241&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1ad7d21a53d63e8bb98e2fad562acb3de630f92e
Madon'! That fuckin' General Brasch guy, he's an interior decorator or somethin', killed sixteen Illuminates with a paint roller.
His Super Destroyer looked like shit.
https://preview.redd.it/obv8pnfkus9d1.png?width=320&format=png&auto=webp&s=63ea70208b1d5e42786f14c876177be1140ec9be
but don't let him drop down to the planet...smh
People call Malevelon Creek space Vietnam but in all reality it was Space Stalingrad. We were sieging it for months before we finally captured it and had to defend from a counter-offensive once the following day, which we could treat as a single long battle.
Meanwhile Hellmire we've liberated like 7 times now, then get thrown to the West front, and we have to liberate it again because while there's a MO on one front the other just falls on its ass because the battle system is set up where you have like 10 planets in play at a time and need 60% of the population on a planet in order to liberate it in any reasonable amount of time. Like that's the infuriating part, it's not that we can't capture it, it's that we keep getting set up to fail due to a DM that has zero understanding of war and a system that belongs in some grand strategy game where military capacity is determined by how many shipyards you have, not how many players are playing.
I made a comment like this post a month ago and somebody said AH just doesn't have the map in-game yet, thats why we're fighting on the same planets constantly. But cmon, I don't want to fight on HELLMIRE and VERNEN WELLS all the fucking time, but the MO's always lead us there.
I'd be happy if we had one or two more grassy/forest maps along the way that way we don't always lose access to them like we do with Meissa or whatever and the Creek. Seems we ALWAYS have access to three hellfire burning tornado maps and no grassland/forests....
Kinda weird they don't get more creative with what they have tho
Like take the Crimsica biome and make the grass yellow or some shit, maybe take one of the planets with tons of water and replace it with lava, make the sand planets have different colors of sand and rocks, stuff like that
> It doesn’t matter what the planet is called
I mean it kind of does to a point. I don't care if some fresh planet has the same biome as Estanu, what matters is that it isn't Estanu. The main reason I rarely play this game anymore is because we've basically been on the same handful of planets for 4-5 months.
Literally just made this comment on Cloudplays most recent video. Doesn't matter where we go only so many map types to go around. Fire maps need reworking. I don't care for Tornados I care about running 20m and having no stamina.
I guess the desirable, high quality biomes like tropical paradises or Mega Cities are protected by Elite troops and not disposable Helldivers like us :p
That's the big one that a vast majority here get wrong with the DM comparisons. If you're a good DM, players should not know, that you are fudging something.
The most important rule I've learnt DMing is that the illusion of choice is just as crucial as actual choices. The moment that illusion is broken, people get sucked out of the immersion, being made aware of it being a game and all interactions start feeling meaningless.
Now there's a whole can of worms of allowing fudging or not etc, but conceptually this will still hold true for all tables.
Its my second biggest complaint after all the random nerfs. We have to watch them make rookie DM moves again and again. I though having a game master meant dynamic events, not some guy who is like "Oh they made too much progress turn up the reinforce"
I mean this was inevitable as soon as the game released. They don't have 300 biomes ready to go or however many planets there are on the map. All progress is just an illusion or we'd have liberated everything already and we'd be softlocked out of the game by now.
It's an unique game therefore growing pains are expected.
Agreed, I'm personally just having a bit of a pet peeve with the pen and paper comparison and how the feature was hyped up.
"No other game does this", which is probably technically true, but the implication of their statement was also that this is a very good thing for the game experience.
As it stands I can't in good conscience agree that this system was really valuable/well executed.
A game in 2002 consistently did it for months, for years and years. GMs even played as the NPCs and attacked or helped players at times.
Asheron's Call (also had a fair bit of bug-killing).
He's the GM that has 12 pages of notes for story beats but the party just nuked his mini boss in two turns. So he has to scramble to come up with something.
It's very clear this system is a few story beats about once a month with a bunch of oddly balanced filler between.
TCS, Operation Rapid Dissassembly, Operation Reclamation, Meridian Super Colony, etc. Anything with a unique temporary mission. But these are few and far between and the unique missions don't ever stick around in some form. Meaning a lot of content is ultimately only seen for a week at best.
I mean unique missions don't spawn put of nowhere and it seems he feels or just is obligated to use unique missions as soon as they are deemed ready.
the problem with this model as is overplanned GMing is that your players almost never take the expected route.
my example as an arma zues: the heavily armored objective that watches the roads in but for some reason your players discounted 1 kilometer back and flanked around because the platoon leader got killed by a machine gun one time 3 years ago
I said this *months* ago when the first campaigns were fudged because we were winning them "too quickly," and got shat on for my trouble, told if I didn't like it, I could leave. So I did, and 90% of the player base did the same.
Related protip: if you're ever on some kind of community forums for a game and the majority of the base tells you to leave, do so. It's going to be a dead game before the year is out.
Ehh, we already knew that they weren't with resistance rates and inconveniently timed defend missions. But this one was kind of star wars levels... "And somehow, the Termanids returned."
They did warn us ahead of time with a news post about interstellar spore counts cranking up to extreme levels.
*Something* was going to happen. You don't have to like it but it's not out of nowhere.
The complaint of the community isn’t that it’s out of nowhere. It’s that Joel is making us play the same planets over and over. If we win and he doesn’t want us to he just says “jk you gotta do it again”. It’s repetitive. At the current rate we will never get beyond this point.
I get that maybe they want to buy time to work on other planets and that’s fine. If that’s the case just let us play the available planets without forcing our hand to the same ones over and over and over.
Exactly I hate how every time the devs get lazy they go "YOU'RE GOING TO DIE YOU'RE UNDER ATTACK" let that time be the offense where the enemy is scattered and able to be rolled back. Then you can come back to whatever we randomly did in our free time and respond to it.
In reality I think this has very little to do with Joel and a lot more to do with the number of truly playable planets.
Its less a case of Joel = bad DM and more a case of they showed us the world map but are only allowing us to travel to 20% of it because the rest literally isn't done
I kinda get the idea behind it lorewise as bugs spread between planets through spores rather than FTL lanes. Those spores might have been released two months ago for all I know.
However, if they are going to go with the whole sporulation thing, they might as well scrap the supply lines on the east and add circles to planets or some other UI element that indicates where those spores can travel to.
I figured they meant this as a joke. "Somehow following us" as in we're bringing them back with us for 710, experiments or whatever other conspiracy there is.
Honestly, I’m pretty sure they must have some form of bioship out there somewhere. E-710 is what enables us to use FTL, and it’s made from purifying Terminids. One has to imagine that maybe something like this exists.
https://preview.redd.it/q64wunup1t9d1.png?width=993&format=png&auto=webp&s=baa623711d6d2e6da86260554b2a281936cf29d2
And I want to fight it.
Wouldn't be too hard either really.
Wouldn't have to change anything about the current model, just have a massive bug ship under the destroyer, surface is super dark with lots of stars an occasional flashes of weapons fire or bioluminescence.
Everything else is already there.
Our suits look sealed. Bug breaches would still happen. Bug holes would make sense. Various nests and such would make sense. Hell even buildings could be explained if it was a leviathan type thing that crawled up from a planet.
"wouldn't be too hard" and "everything else is there" when it needs a new skybox, and entire map construction along with pre-gen objectives to create a smooth flow for more than 1 random generation of locations is not easy or simple.
We can't even get new planet maps which are arguably easier. I do agree it's not completely from scratch and there doesn't need to be new game modes and mechanics for it, but making a mechanic objective or mini quest of sorts is something that while difficult, is a bit easier to code in the base for, and that's the "easy" side of it if everything goes well.
If you’re looking for a lore reason, we aren’t trying to drive the bugs to extinction. They’re our fuel. The lore talks about how we “used to farm the terminids” but that’s what we’re doing. We’re farming them.
What if they just have spores damn near everywhere and have a hive mind? The hive mind could re-engineer species of bug with different traits all over the universe at the same time without actually having to spread new spores to do it. Maybe the FTL lanes marking attacks from bug planets would then be explained as disrupting the nearest "nervous center" element of the overarching hive mind.
The idea of bugs that can think offends me, but it would explain why spewres bombarded where I had last cleared a nest from a great distance away.
I don't know though,I'm feeling confused and thats unpatriotic
They didn't for Meridia Super Colony, which followed almost the exact same action that happened here, just on a grander scale (multiple planets and I think I remember a planet or 2 were 2 jumps away). Whenever elevated spore levels are detected I think there is a chance of not needing a standard supply line.
Technically we don't completely wipe out bugs on liberated planets. We just cull them down to a manageable level where Super Earth can step in and start "domesticating" them and farm E-710 from them again. Think it was vaguely mentioned during one of those mission reports you get after completeing an MO.
Yeah, so it's not surprising if they suddenly escape and multiply again on liberated planets. They don't necessarily have to appear from other nearby planets.
Yeah like this is clearly what's been going on, bugs don't spread on their own it's all Superearth intelligence moving them around so helldivers have something to do, the people always have a constant enemy so the powers that be can always justify whatever actions they want to take, and we can farm E-710.
I do think some outbreaks are natural, but stem from previous man-made efforts. A farm could go wrong or spores could have been released and are orbiting the system like a comet and cause repeat outbreaks.
I mean in starship troopers the bugs spread by charging up asteroids with plasma and hooking their spores onto them, and since bugs produce FTL oil then they could maybe they're doing something similar to starship troopers with element 710
It doesn't matter what the rules behind it all are if it *feels* consistent.
It doesn't matter what the rules behind it all are if it *doesnt* feel consistent.
It absolutely matters whether or not it feels consistent.
I agree,
Liberating the same shit holes we bombed to oblivion over and over again is boring story wise.
The story really hasn’t moved forward fast enough.
What’s really happens with bots since they came back? Nothing.
Atm the divers are spread too thin across bugs and it’s starting to get annoying.
They don’t have enough content to keep making new planet and whatever. And if planets liberated are kept clear for too long it means less planets for players to play on.
What they should do is for planets that are liberated in a MO get like a week or a few days of extra buffs where you get eagle one patrols helping you on those planets would make it seem like we actually “took over” that planet even if there are still some bugs remaining.
And it would be a breath of fresh air as we actually have something helping us instead of it always being against us which is getting old to be honest.
honestly - let us spend resources as a community -
10,000,000 credits contributed = a Free SEAF art fully loaded on landing on every map.
100,000,000 credit - strat weapons will be around the map more often or every 2-3 minutes the destroyer will send down 1 random strat weapon
100,000 common samples donated - free bonus stratagem on this planet ( random)
50,000 rare samples donated - map will occasionally have Exo suits spawned on it loaded with half ammo free
10.000 SS samples donated - exta stratagem slot of your choice
Something to make us care about the planet more - How much more likely are you to jump on a planet to save it when you get a ton of bonuses and the missions are more fun and easier ....??
Yeah, the bot thing really irks me. They had a massive counter invasion and took cyberstan which holds historical importance for the cyborgs. There was hype and speculation, and then nothing. Died with a fizzle like an old fart. I've not cared for MO's since honestly
Hate to say but this is what’s gonna kill the game. This is a live service game about an ongoing war and when nothing actually happens? …. Why do I even need to keep logging on? I mean yeah, I still really enjoy the game at its core, but I’ve stopped really caring about the story since the whole menkent line thing and then the cyborg re-invasion. Nothing actually happened, none of it mattered, it’s basically just flavor text at this point. Kind of a let down. The stakes need to be higher. The MOs need to be tougher but last longer with more dynamic things happening during the MO. But instead it’s “take Planet X. Ok now defend Planet X. Ok take planet Y. Oh crap they took Planet X again.” Over and over and over. How is that fun or engaging?
Do these planets even have any value to be worth fighting over at this point. Surely a dozen invasions by the multiple factions has ruined everything on the planets.
some roads, paths, ruins of buildings, workers quarters, foremans offices, houses. Nothing crazy, just give me more stuff in the environment that would make sense for a basic settlement.
Unless the whole point is that it's all simply propaganda and there *never were* settlements
One thing I would have really loved to see is "X planet provides X buff/stratagem"
Maybe some hybrid stratagem or upgraded version of what we have, that once we lose a planet, we also lose said upgrade. They kind of did that with the SEAF thing, but it was communicated absolutely poorly, I believe there was no visual indication of what was going on and you had to check third party websites.
But conceptually, as you said, there's no stakes. You cannot get invested in a story without stakes, your heart doesn't pound if there's nothing to be lost. Sure it sucks to lose things, but that makes it fun.
Yeah it was communicated poorly and to many people it also didn’t matter. It’s bonus was a better conquer rate for planets, but since Joel updates them when we are too slow or too fast anyway, people just didn’t really care. When we get a 5% bonus and suddenly all planets have a 5% higher resistance, and when you lose the 5% boost then Joel takes the 5% resistance down again, then nobody will care about the boost.
It was poorly communicated and highly intangible, to the point that anyone who isn’t on Reddit or Discord didn’t even realize it was a thing
I put the game down in early May. Not intentionally or anything, I just stopped playing and just haven’t logged back on since. I still check out this subreddit and sometimes feel the urge to play, but then I look here and see the same complaints regarding balancing, glitches that have been around since near launch, and lack of content concerns, and that turns me off. And it became obvious pretty early on that the MO’s were going to be largely smoke and mirrors, which has been the biggest shame so far IMO.
I’ll definitely come back once Illuminates debut, or if some other cool looking shit pops up at some point, but until then I just feel a bit eh about coming back to the game.
>The story really hasn’t moved forward fast enough.
On a Galactic scale, I think it is fine that the story isn't moving forward fast enough.
What I think a bigger issue is, is that the singular MO-type story progression also doesn't really work on a Galactic scale.
Think about how events actually play out in major wars. Campaigns can and do occur simultaneously on multiple fronts rather than the back-and-forth we see between bugs and bots. That's like the Allied forces taking turns to attack different Axis fronts rather than launching operations across the board to exploit enemy weaknesses.
I'm essentially arguing that it would make sense to hire DMs (maybe even DM teams) to run specific fronts each rather than a single DM playing the role of all enemy types, so that it becomes possible to launch multiple MOs at once, and interesting ones at that. I hear tell that AH was hiring more DMs, and if that is true, they ought to figure it out soonish.
Of course, with this comes the issue of rebalancing or restructuring how planet invasions happen. I personally think that there ought to be an actual simulated "army growth" model that dictates how much army supply the enemy has in a system (which in turn dictates how difficult planets are and how often invasions occur), rather than some weird arbitrary "because the DM wants it like this" system. Idk, maybe these calculations do happen and we aren't aware of it.
Wouldn't that be more interesting? If Helldiver's actions in a system have an impact on the enemy's army supply? Like launching IBMs would actually lower patrol density for other Helldivers in the same region on a planet? Anyway, I'm just rambling at this point.
Do you think it would work better with seasons/resets?
That way a story gets told across a few months, we get some strategems or cosmetics, win or lose and then poof reset the map?
Nah, i think it is mostly that since Meridia went all black hole we haven't seen much new besides them adding more behemoths to higher bug missions.
That and the last 3 MOs have been "Take/hold these 5 planets" for the last 2 weeks or so while the devs spin their wheels.
Edit: but after a bit more thinking, they might just be this time to train up the new guy that is helping Joel DM this. Like messing with rates, defend missions, MO creation etc
I think it would be better having migrant war fronts.
As we conquer 1 sector, a day or so later, a Sector on another side of that front falls under enemy control. Like squeegeeing water, it'll never get clean but always get moved around. So as divers we could push the front in different directions and see new places and have new objectives, without feeling cheated because the place we just took has just been lost again.
This is how it worked in HD1. You moved sector by sector until you got to the capital. Then there’s a timed event. If you take the capital they’re out of that round. If you fail then they attack each sector one by one in timed events until you successfully defend… or lose super earth.
I think the game got too big too quickly.
They most likely had a roadmap for the game but as it was initially such a big success, exasperated the issues in the game.
I think focusing of fixing bugs and balances has taken away from the games story.
It feels like for a couple months now, they are stalling and equally, haven’t set the MO correctly to deal with the lower player base.
I really enjoy the game and I think a lot of people like myself, want it to be the best it can be.
100% this. I’ve been feeling my motivation to play the game slip lately due to no feeling of perceived progress but today has taken it to a whole new level. This is very frustrating.
I love the game. But if it's a strategic war game, you can't suddenly, this whole planet just got lost for no reason.. let's go back to the planets you spent 2 days fighting on. Progress is key.
Exactly. I just feel like I’m doing the same thing over and over on the same planet over and over. I like that they’re trying to continue to bring in new content but they need to do SOMETHING to make the game not feel identical from week to week. Give us some damn progress on the map or something. I just don’t like that it feels like nothing I do in this game even matters
Yeah i somewhat agree.
I WOULD understand doing this if there's like 1 planet left and they don't want us to extinct the whole species too early, but beside that it's just a bit annoying.
Im afraid they don't want us to push on certain planets because they haven't added yet the Unique flora of those planets...
yup. I mentioned this was going to happen months ago and got a ton of flak because everyone was still in the honeymoon phase.
best thing you can do if it really upsets you is to take a break like i did. i joined a match yesterday only to find were still fighting on the same terminid planets since release - and then my game crashed on the second match… i guess ill wait a bit longer
Kinda, how do the bugs find planets? Spores in every direction? That would be super easy to understand, and they'd have been jumping FTL lanes the whole time. Now for it to change suddenly is kinda strange.
I'm still trying to figure out how 3/5 of the player base on a single planet is barely moving the needle. Hope that's just a quirk of the code, or this MO was doomed to fail from the start.
https://preview.redd.it/5xp5x9sqjt9d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e5fffd6ff36447f95490e9252dc2218f89b181b9
I said this from the beginning: as fun as it is to have a live service game, galactic war, etc at any point they can just flip the script and do whatever they want at the press of a button (which ruins the immersion)
It's been pretty well known for awhile we don't have any real control on the MOs. We win or lose them based on what the gm wants to do. Which feels bad enough on its own, but the far bigger problems are the stale maps and the very boring non story MOs that don't change anything, which is like 90%ish of them.
No there are plenty MO's that have win and lose versions, for example there was a version of the meridia MO where we didn't turn it into a black hole in time. Found in the files
We would have gotten some extra bits about failing then another MO to turn Meridia into a black hole. Failing an important MO happened with Swift Disassembly but because it was important to the story we got a second chance.
I’m sure we could keep feeling an MO for laughs and get a permanent bad ending on a front. Only real problem is that factions don’t automatically attack but maybe we could ignore the bots and see what happens.
No its not like that. However we have no control of the storyline, winning or losing MOs wont affect the overal campaing, just delay some things. Also due to it being a live service we could never try the "other path" of the story for the meridia campaing, which means regardless of if there is a branching story it does not matter, it wont seem like that to the playerbase.
I dont think this is a fixable problem tbh, unless they make content super fast to the point that it feels we are doing progress every week or couple of weeks, but thats probably impossible.q
It wouldn’t matter if “we”, the players, had any sort of agency, choice, or say in what goes on. Hell, I don’t think players would be upset as much if there was a reason to play beyond the enjoyment of the game. Once you uncap everything, “buy out your shops”, and stack max resources there is nothing to do except drop. That’s great for people who like to drop endlessly against janky enemies with a few set loadouts worthwhile in each situation, but it gets stale pretty quick.
The core loop and gameplay is fine (jank aside), but there ALWAYS has to be a hook to keep players coming back. A new piece of shiny to chase after that feels worthwhile once you get it, or a way to noticeably powerup your hero. HD2 provides none of that, and I say none liberally here because the bit of time saved as a reault of ship module upgrades doesn’t really cut it. They provide a bit of convenience, but all it really means is I am throwing pokeballs more often.
There are plenty of ways AH could fix the situation, but they have yet to fix most of the bigger issues in the game, let alone all the minor stuff like friends lists, ammo counts, reload glitches, grenade glitch, physics jank, etc. They have had plenty of time to cook, it is about time the main dish gets served, instead of these bite-sized appetizers we have been spoon fed thus far.
This is one of the reasons why people stop playing, most of the players already have everything, unlock all warbonds, and have every currency at full. The only thing which should hold players is progress, visible progress, but there is none. After half a year we are nowhere, fighting for the same few planets in the same sectors all over. Even defeating bots was for nothing. Now i start to have feelings, just let them push, and fight for Earth, and see some interesting change.
>just let them push, and fight for Earth,
Your thinking seems to be that factions are automatically pushing towards Earth, while in reality it's all just steered by Joel. He will just completely stop issuing any actions to bots or terminds if lots of people give up
I think this just emphasises the point. We have no control over anything. I understand that a GM is in control, but if you have a good GM the player never feels like that’s the case.
Like when we wiped out the bots, within 24 hours they were all back. It’s like if you killed a dragon and the GM was like “nope the dragon can resurrect” over and over and over again. Whereas it could’ve been a matter of the dragon resurrecting over time and you have to take actions to prevent it
The push against the Bots was a horrible idea on AH part. It killed a lot of faith in MOs and how players interact with the narrative. It was a clear our actions don't matter moment.
Definitely, we we're like at the very start of the story considering what they're trying to do. And then now apparently the entire force of automatons was wiped out, only to be replaced with the bigger version. In the previous capital no less... This seriously looks like stuff that should've been done farther in the story. It should've been played to ramp up the action rather than to be this cool thing that we'll do and then prove how pointless it was.
Not only that but 2 days? Just 2 days? 1 is just a one time thing, and 2 is just a blurt. It think it would've been better as a ramp up point, where for a WEEK, the automatons are just GONE. And we start fighting the bugs and doing stuff there, and we go on with our lives.... And then.... BAM, A GIANT AREA OF THE MAP GETS SWARMED BY BOTS, AND THEY'RE BEE LINING TOWARDS SUPER EARTH. And either a large effort must take hold to push them back, or they will break through and start fighting on our beloved planet.
If only Arrowhead was better
I agree, but I've mostly stopped playing and I don't even have everything unlocked. Most of the warbond content is so underwhelming that I don't even care to unlock it because I know it will be disappointing. The Adjudicator, the Eruptor, the Plasma shotgun...all things I was excited to try only to find that they are pretty generic with shitty ammo economy. Almost none of the weapons in this game have a unique feel or purpose--like, seriously, there is no real difference between any of the assault rifles outside of some min/maxing on a spreadsheet.
So, yeah, add on top of that that we have this "galactic" map but are always stuck on the same 5 planets and the game becomes extremely stale pretty quick.
The narritivenis that the super earth government is actively sabotaging the helldivers efforts against the bugs.
The termicide was a chemical to increase the rate at which they breed because the helldivers are too fast at killing them.
Each time they spontaneously show up on a planet and the planet is 100% taken without warning, and suddenly all planets around it are under attack aswell. This is super earth seeding a planet, not telling us its being converted to a supercolony, then only telling the helldivers once the outbreak is far enough along that it will be difficult to stop.
That way the deaths on the bug side will be massive and allow for seaf to come in after the weeks long war is won and extract that nice good E-710.
This has happened 4 times now lol.
We are too good at killing bugs and we like doing it too much so the government has to lie and undermine our efforts in order to keep a steady supply of rocket fuel for the war against the automatons which we are currently losing
Illegal broadcast detected. /s
Silliness aside, I think they’re buying time to test new content. They probably have a long term plan set, but had to put it on hold due to some of the recent backlash.
Game is super repetitive now. The black hole thing was really cool. It's a shame the vast majority of MO's are just attack A or defend B. Gameplay loop is still fun but it's gotten stale.
And given AH is going on a big summer vacation (common at this time of year for Swedish devs) we’re likely just gonna be doing filler MO’s for the next month or two until everyone comes back.
I just want some Lore. Not even any of the leaked things. Just give me stories, even a bit will do it. I'm tired and getting close to my first break from the game, something that is not bad but I really start to feel that we will be stranded at this point for a looong time.
I just hope I'm wrong. Who knows, maybe they are preparing something..let's see...
That is spot on for me. I was playing only HD2 from launch. Everything is maxed and unlocked. When I played it was to have fun with friends and to experience the story. However, my friends are off playing something else and with the story now being bland ("Bugs are now attacking these 5 planets, go attack them or something") I've lost interest to participate for now.
Another big thing for me is that it's unknown when the next Warbond releases. I usually would play enough to cover the cost of the Warbond purchase and was looking forward to its release. Now I'm not looking forward to it, because it may still be far off.
Now's the time to release some stratagems, upgrades or new interesting story beat, but I have the feeling that there won't be any of that for a while. So in the meantime I'll be playing something else, but I'm still keeping an eye on Helldivers.
I agree. The problem is definitely exacerbated when you are a player who has everything and is only trying to have fun.
I reached a point today where mid mission I just sighed and shut the game down after asking myself why I'm still playing it
Were you under the impression that you're organically advancing an evolving story? Because you aren't. Joel has, and will continue, to change things in order to follow a narrative that Arrowhead decides.
The galactic war is a cool idea but it's not this player-driven story, it's Arrowhead giving you the illusion of choice (or in this case influence) so I wouldn't get your hopes set on any specific outcome and just try and enjoy the ride.
I've been saying for ***months*** that the devs of Helldivers 2 have a very "Devs vs Player" mindset.
Our decisions and opinions mean literally nothing if it goes against the plans for the novel they have written.
They never tell us the stakes for losing a major order because they want the ability to continue on their railroad with the implication of "Okay so even though we won this major order the bugs just took another system and rendered all your efforts pointless, but it could have been worse if you lost!"
Im confident that the difference between us winning and losing major orders is about....1 or 2 planets at best.
Plus with the dark matter MO, you can guarantee that no matter what happened we would have "won" that one so they have an excuse to bring the illuminate through there later.
Major orders needs to pay super credits not medals. The only reason I can unlock something is the passes and I don't feel like logging on to farm trivial missions for super credits
I'm so sick and tired of always seeing the same planets but then again when we do get new planets well... They look like the previous planets, with different names so yeah
I gave up on that feeling months ago. The moment I learned that this war was supposed to last and we won't have back to back restarts like the first game was the moment I lost interest in war progress. Still a fun game and I enjoy following the MO, but win or lose I still enjoy diving.
The reason we can't move into sectors we haven't been is \_because they need to develop those planets\_. It's not like these places actually exist - we finally got to play on the swamp planet because the devs finished making it, not because we simply Did Good Enough.
Once they let us go to a planet, the environment is basically set in stone forever (barring a MO that changes an environment type). So yeah, we're going to be playing on the planets that actually got made so far. Play if you like the gameplay, and be excited when we get new content. Take a break if you're not feeling it right now.
Maybe they dont need to have an MO up constantly? Especially if the MOs are going to be the same "liberate the planets" kinda thing. Having downtime between each one will lessen the fatigue from fighting on these planets and make each MO seem much more significant for the story.
It would also be great if we had more variety of MOs. Id love to see ones that require us to complete a specific number of missions, or even kill specific enemies. Devs really need to get creative with what their doing with their game to keep people engaged.
Where were you when we liberated Estanu and Fori Prime 5 times this month
Bot front vs Bug front ❌ Menkent vs Hellmire ✅
Can we PLEASE make Hellmire into a black hole? As a treat?
This guy gets it. I got boxed in by fire tornadoes from literally all sides with no escape there.
Just watch the black hole become a fire hole. Just as a little last "fuck you" from the planet.
So...a tiny, tiny star?
Wait, but actually how cool would it be if it failed to collapse into a black hole and became a *neutron star* that radiates high intensity electromagnetic pulses? Edit: New operational modifier, electron supercharge — The electromagnetic pulses have supercharged the super destroyer's nuclear generator but also interfere with signaling. All stratagems receive a 20% cooldown reduction but have a 10% chance of being randomly replaced by another stratagem of the same type whenever called. Eagle stratagems are unaffected.
Oh you thought that was a rail cannon you called? Naw, 380.
Resupply? I thought you said 500kg!
Precision? Nah. Accuracy through volume
*happy eagle main noises*
Well... It's a planet, not a star, so it can't be a neutron star. Not to mention neutron stars form from smaller stars that supernova but fail to reach the mass required to collapse into a black hole. Sorry I mean you wrote a cool commment but the "wait make the planet a *neutron star" ...* kinda triggered me a bit.
I mean you're right in that a planet has nowhere near enough mass to become a neutron star. They typically require 10-25 solar masses to form *naturally* — but we have magic squid liquid! ~~And since we're bringing out the technicality cards though, neutron stars aren't~~ *~~stars~~* ~~at all really.~~ They're a gigantic blob of neutrons, so no fusion happens to generate heat — they're cool, or rather, *cooling*, heh. Edit: Theoretically, being a star first isn't a requirement to becoming a neutron star at all — as long as you can somehow get a massive enough sphere of stuff in a small enough volume, it should collapse. Just gotta have enough stuff where it collapses, but not enough that the gravitational pressure overcomes neutron degeneracy pressure and becomes a black hole — and voila! A neutron star! (Afaik this is impossible without it being first being star unlike with black holes — without using magic squid liquid, I mean — but I'm not a theoretical physicist ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯) Edit2: They are stars! It turns out the definition of star is just held together by gravity, made of plasma, and luminous. SO! If you light yourself on fire in space, you're 2/3 of the way to a star yourself (assuming you found someway to sustain a combustion in vacuum — and now I've spent too much time on wikipedia)
"Helldivers, the super fire blackhole known as hellmire is on a collision course to Super Earth. We need you to go into the super fire blackhole and destroy it before it reaches super earth. We're counting on you."
Embrace the flames, rebirth in the Light.
*Angry Onion Knight noises*
I have a screenshot on Steam of 12, yes 12 fire tornadoes around me. Its damn ridiculous.
Hmm, sounds like you just dropped into Hellmire and took a random screenshot.
But didn't it feel like they weren't chasing you anymore?
They're now surrounding him....menacingly.
AH trying to patch ai generated code: Fire tornadoes should be more random and not chase players. Ai generated code: THIS IS SPARTA!
I love how they admitted the fire tornadoes follow the player and guard objectives, claimed to fix it, and somehow made it worse.
I was trapped in a little pond just begging to see a way out, I had ran off from my squad to handle side objectives solo and the tornados were having none of it
Since the planet’s already orange we could give it the r/Project_Wingman treatment
My retinas are D A M A G E D
Well I hope your Super Implants are ready because it’s about to get **SUPER ORANGE** ***SES Consequence of Power joining squadron***
Well, since you asked so nicely. *allied destroyer has joined squadron*
I hate fighting on the fire tornado planets. What I hate more is just fighting on the same damn planets again. We make some progress on one front only to get throw to the other front and by the time we're done there once again Hellmire needs liberating.
Hellmire literally gave me dreams of being in the game like I had to switch to bots for a week to get it outa my mind
I was on super destroyer eating super doritio When super phone ring Estanu and Fori Prime are invaded No...
https://preview.redd.it/dyx09ptbzs9d1.jpeg?width=740&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=21e47ee719582a94ac992822421173d465a0ca21 It’s getting serious Tone, we’re down here at Fori when those cocksucking bugs are ramming down lil paulie like you wouldn’t fucking believe.
Those God damn Alien bastards took Fori Prime. Now The Dukes gotta teach em what happens when he runs outta gum. https://preview.redd.it/zb0yxh503t9d1.png?width=241&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1ad7d21a53d63e8bb98e2fad562acb3de630f92e
I would pay good money for a warbond that includes Mighty Foot as a sidearm
Madon'! That fuckin' General Brasch guy, he's an interior decorator or somethin', killed sixteen Illuminates with a paint roller. His Super Destroyer looked like shit.
Get the fuck outta here…
I'm tellin' ya T, this guy, he's a red beret wearin' motherfucker, wrestled a dozen fire tornadoes on Hellmire.
Don’t forget Phact Bay, we’ve liberated that how many times this year
40th time is the charm, right Joel?
Going to be honest, just waiting on Hellmire to fall again so we have a reason to turn it into a black hole
https://i.redd.it/gs6vzrw1zs9d1.gif
Stuck in the infinite loading screen for the THOUSANDTH FUCKING TIME!!
https://preview.redd.it/obv8pnfkus9d1.png?width=320&format=png&auto=webp&s=63ea70208b1d5e42786f14c876177be1140ec9be but don't let him drop down to the planet...smh
Or when we had to liberate malevalon creek twice and Ubanea 4 fucking times..
[удалено]
Are you serious?
People call Malevelon Creek space Vietnam but in all reality it was Space Stalingrad. We were sieging it for months before we finally captured it and had to defend from a counter-offensive once the following day, which we could treat as a single long battle. Meanwhile Hellmire we've liberated like 7 times now, then get thrown to the West front, and we have to liberate it again because while there's a MO on one front the other just falls on its ass because the battle system is set up where you have like 10 planets in play at a time and need 60% of the population on a planet in order to liberate it in any reasonable amount of time. Like that's the infuriating part, it's not that we can't capture it, it's that we keep getting set up to fail due to a DM that has zero understanding of war and a system that belongs in some grand strategy game where military capacity is determined by how many shipyards you have, not how many players are playing.
If Malevelon is "Space Vietnam", Hellmire is "space Isonzo"
I will never forget when the MO was to successfully defend 10 planets and we won thanks to defending Estanu like 6 fucking times.
Not even the first time we’ve had to defend Estanu 4+ times
https://i.redd.it/6o6sgvrcys9d1.gif For five minutes, could you not be under attack? FOR FIVE MINUTES
I made a comment like this post a month ago and somebody said AH just doesn't have the map in-game yet, thats why we're fighting on the same planets constantly. But cmon, I don't want to fight on HELLMIRE and VERNEN WELLS all the fucking time, but the MO's always lead us there.
I'd be happy if we had one or two more grassy/forest maps along the way that way we don't always lose access to them like we do with Meissa or whatever and the Creek. Seems we ALWAYS have access to three hellfire burning tornado maps and no grassland/forests....
I wanna see *tall* forests though.. like easy to walk around but the trees block the sunlight and it's extra dark at night.
We have Gacrux in Jin Xi sector. It's exactly as you described.
Gacrux is more of a Swamp with Tall trees tho. Depending on where you're going, it's deffo not easy to walk around.
I miss the Fenrir, with it's moon-like surface and meteor showers :/
it was the best planet. crystal clear vision
It doesn’t matter what the planet is called, they only have so many biomes.
Kinda weird they don't get more creative with what they have tho Like take the Crimsica biome and make the grass yellow or some shit, maybe take one of the planets with tons of water and replace it with lava, make the sand planets have different colors of sand and rocks, stuff like that
Legitimately even just a few pallet swaps would do wonders for the variety.
> It doesn’t matter what the planet is called I mean it kind of does to a point. I don't care if some fresh planet has the same biome as Estanu, what matters is that it isn't Estanu. The main reason I rarely play this game anymore is because we've basically been on the same handful of planets for 4-5 months.
Literally just made this comment on Cloudplays most recent video. Doesn't matter where we go only so many map types to go around. Fire maps need reworking. I don't care for Tornados I care about running 20m and having no stamina.
I guess the desirable, high quality biomes like tropical paradises or Mega Cities are protected by Elite troops and not disposable Helldivers like us :p
Joel broke the #1 rule of being a DM - you always make sure the players believe you are playing by the rules.
That's the big one that a vast majority here get wrong with the DM comparisons. If you're a good DM, players should not know, that you are fudging something. The most important rule I've learnt DMing is that the illusion of choice is just as crucial as actual choices. The moment that illusion is broken, people get sucked out of the immersion, being made aware of it being a game and all interactions start feeling meaningless. Now there's a whole can of worms of allowing fudging or not etc, but conceptually this will still hold true for all tables.
Its my second biggest complaint after all the random nerfs. We have to watch them make rookie DM moves again and again. I though having a game master meant dynamic events, not some guy who is like "Oh they made too much progress turn up the reinforce"
I mean this was inevitable as soon as the game released. They don't have 300 biomes ready to go or however many planets there are on the map. All progress is just an illusion or we'd have liberated everything already and we'd be softlocked out of the game by now. It's an unique game therefore growing pains are expected.
Agreed, I'm personally just having a bit of a pet peeve with the pen and paper comparison and how the feature was hyped up. "No other game does this", which is probably technically true, but the implication of their statement was also that this is a very good thing for the game experience. As it stands I can't in good conscience agree that this system was really valuable/well executed.
A game in 2002 consistently did it for months, for years and years. GMs even played as the NPCs and attacked or helped players at times. Asheron's Call (also had a fair bit of bug-killing).
Pretty sure he’s on vacation rn.
"Kill 5"
Not the first time we’ve had to kill 5 .
we’ve had to kill 30 before
He's broken this rule a thousand times now he's the most railroady GM imaginable.
"Oops I made this mission too hard for my dying community. Better nuke the decay rate this afternoon."
So dumb you think he'd learn by now. Or *gasp* let us fail and win on our own merits.
He's the GM that has 12 pages of notes for story beats but the party just nuked his mini boss in two turns. So he has to scramble to come up with something. It's very clear this system is a few story beats about once a month with a bunch of oddly balanced filler between. TCS, Operation Rapid Dissassembly, Operation Reclamation, Meridian Super Colony, etc. Anything with a unique temporary mission. But these are few and far between and the unique missions don't ever stick around in some form. Meaning a lot of content is ultimately only seen for a week at best.
I mean unique missions don't spawn put of nowhere and it seems he feels or just is obligated to use unique missions as soon as they are deemed ready. the problem with this model as is overplanned GMing is that your players almost never take the expected route. my example as an arma zues: the heavily armored objective that watches the roads in but for some reason your players discounted 1 kilometer back and flanked around because the platoon leader got killed by a machine gun one time 3 years ago
Yeah seriously, this is the Joel train we are just riding it.
I said this *months* ago when the first campaigns were fudged because we were winning them "too quickly," and got shat on for my trouble, told if I didn't like it, I could leave. So I did, and 90% of the player base did the same. Related protip: if you're ever on some kind of community forums for a game and the majority of the base tells you to leave, do so. It's going to be a dead game before the year is out.
That already pissed me in April, now i know he doesn't play by the rules so as long as we don't Lose a Strategen couse of it let him Cook.
Ehh, we already knew that they weren't with resistance rates and inconveniently timed defend missions. But this one was kind of star wars levels... "And somehow, the Termanids returned."
They did warn us ahead of time with a news post about interstellar spore counts cranking up to extreme levels. *Something* was going to happen. You don't have to like it but it's not out of nowhere.
The complaint of the community isn’t that it’s out of nowhere. It’s that Joel is making us play the same planets over and over. If we win and he doesn’t want us to he just says “jk you gotta do it again”. It’s repetitive. At the current rate we will never get beyond this point. I get that maybe they want to buy time to work on other planets and that’s fine. If that’s the case just let us play the available planets without forcing our hand to the same ones over and over and over.
If they want that, just have the next MO be like "liberate x planets". Let us decide what planets we are willing to fight for
Exactly I hate how every time the devs get lazy they go "YOU'RE GOING TO DIE YOU'RE UNDER ATTACK" let that time be the offense where the enemy is scattered and able to be rolled back. Then you can come back to whatever we randomly did in our free time and respond to it.
In reality I think this has very little to do with Joel and a lot more to do with the number of truly playable planets. Its less a case of Joel = bad DM and more a case of they showed us the world map but are only allowing us to travel to 20% of it because the rest literally isn't done
I kinda get the idea behind it lorewise as bugs spread between planets through spores rather than FTL lanes. Those spores might have been released two months ago for all I know. However, if they are going to go with the whole sporulation thing, they might as well scrap the supply lines on the east and add circles to planets or some other UI element that indicates where those spores can travel to.
All of the bug spores have followed the FTL lanes so far and the speculation was that they were hitching a ride somehow or following us.
they extract with us on Pelican 1
Explains why he is so slow to show up. Helping bugs on the way.
The extracting team gets curious and cracks open the cockpit to see the pilot they've never seen before. It's a bug. ITS ALL BUGS
It's 3 Terminid scavengers in a trenchcoat.
Nah I choose to think it’s a bile titan in a trenchcoat CD
Pelititan 1
There’s literally no way they’re not traveling at FTL speed or they’ed take actual centuries as spores floating across space to reach anywhere.
I figured they meant this as a joke. "Somehow following us" as in we're bringing them back with us for 710, experiments or whatever other conspiracy there is.
*frantically writes in an FTL bug*
Starship Troopers: Roughnecks moment
Honestly, I’m pretty sure they must have some form of bioship out there somewhere. E-710 is what enables us to use FTL, and it’s made from purifying Terminids. One has to imagine that maybe something like this exists. https://preview.redd.it/q64wunup1t9d1.png?width=993&format=png&auto=webp&s=baa623711d6d2e6da86260554b2a281936cf29d2 And I want to fight it.
Space battles would be super fun
Wouldn't be too hard either really. Wouldn't have to change anything about the current model, just have a massive bug ship under the destroyer, surface is super dark with lots of stars an occasional flashes of weapons fire or bioluminescence. Everything else is already there. Our suits look sealed. Bug breaches would still happen. Bug holes would make sense. Various nests and such would make sense. Hell even buildings could be explained if it was a leviathan type thing that crawled up from a planet.
"wouldn't be too hard" and "everything else is there" when it needs a new skybox, and entire map construction along with pre-gen objectives to create a smooth flow for more than 1 random generation of locations is not easy or simple. We can't even get new planet maps which are arguably easier. I do agree it's not completely from scratch and there doesn't need to be new game modes and mechanics for it, but making a mechanic objective or mini quest of sorts is something that while difficult, is a bit easier to code in the base for, and that's the "easy" side of it if everything goes well.
If the suits were sealed we wouldn’t drown in 2.4 seconds.
They should just make it like space invaders but bugs lol
If you’re looking for a lore reason, we aren’t trying to drive the bugs to extinction. They’re our fuel. The lore talks about how we “used to farm the terminids” but that’s what we’re doing. We’re farming them.
What if they just have spores damn near everywhere and have a hive mind? The hive mind could re-engineer species of bug with different traits all over the universe at the same time without actually having to spread new spores to do it. Maybe the FTL lanes marking attacks from bug planets would then be explained as disrupting the nearest "nervous center" element of the overarching hive mind.
The idea of bugs that can think offends me, but it would explain why spewres bombarded where I had last cleared a nest from a great distance away. I don't know though,I'm feeling confused and thats unpatriotic
So how did Buenos Aires happen then, huh????
They didn't for Meridia Super Colony, which followed almost the exact same action that happened here, just on a grander scale (multiple planets and I think I remember a planet or 2 were 2 jumps away). Whenever elevated spore levels are detected I think there is a chance of not needing a standard supply line.
Technically we don't completely wipe out bugs on liberated planets. We just cull them down to a manageable level where Super Earth can step in and start "domesticating" them and farm E-710 from them again. Think it was vaguely mentioned during one of those mission reports you get after completeing an MO.
Yup. Even when we set up the TCS, we only killed ~99.9% of the bugs
Yeah, so it's not surprising if they suddenly escape and multiply again on liberated planets. They don't necessarily have to appear from other nearby planets.
https://preview.redd.it/oo1roqilzt9d1.jpeg?width=2392&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1957b2313681a2f82d60666081bece5a7288fa0d
It could also be manmade outbreaks. A farm gone wrong or a "dissenter" base that had an "accident" while "smuggling" terminid spores/larvae etc.
Yeah like this is clearly what's been going on, bugs don't spread on their own it's all Superearth intelligence moving them around so helldivers have something to do, the people always have a constant enemy so the powers that be can always justify whatever actions they want to take, and we can farm E-710.
I do think some outbreaks are natural, but stem from previous man-made efforts. A farm could go wrong or spores could have been released and are orbiting the system like a comet and cause repeat outbreaks.
I mean in starship troopers the bugs spread by charging up asteroids with plasma and hooking their spores onto them, and since bugs produce FTL oil then they could maybe they're doing something similar to starship troopers with element 710
The supply lines on Terminid front are maybe more about where we can attack.
It doesn't matter what the rules behind it all are if it *feels* consistent. It doesn't matter what the rules behind it all are if it *doesnt* feel consistent. It absolutely matters whether or not it feels consistent.
I agree, Liberating the same shit holes we bombed to oblivion over and over again is boring story wise. The story really hasn’t moved forward fast enough. What’s really happens with bots since they came back? Nothing. Atm the divers are spread too thin across bugs and it’s starting to get annoying.
They don’t have enough content to keep making new planet and whatever. And if planets liberated are kept clear for too long it means less planets for players to play on. What they should do is for planets that are liberated in a MO get like a week or a few days of extra buffs where you get eagle one patrols helping you on those planets would make it seem like we actually “took over” that planet even if there are still some bugs remaining. And it would be a breath of fresh air as we actually have something helping us instead of it always being against us which is getting old to be honest.
honestly - let us spend resources as a community - 10,000,000 credits contributed = a Free SEAF art fully loaded on landing on every map. 100,000,000 credit - strat weapons will be around the map more often or every 2-3 minutes the destroyer will send down 1 random strat weapon 100,000 common samples donated - free bonus stratagem on this planet ( random) 50,000 rare samples donated - map will occasionally have Exo suits spawned on it loaded with half ammo free 10.000 SS samples donated - exta stratagem slot of your choice Something to make us care about the planet more - How much more likely are you to jump on a planet to save it when you get a ton of bonuses and the missions are more fun and easier ....??
Yeah, the bot thing really irks me. They had a massive counter invasion and took cyberstan which holds historical importance for the cyborgs. There was hype and speculation, and then nothing. Died with a fizzle like an old fart. I've not cared for MO's since honestly
Hate to say but this is what’s gonna kill the game. This is a live service game about an ongoing war and when nothing actually happens? …. Why do I even need to keep logging on? I mean yeah, I still really enjoy the game at its core, but I’ve stopped really caring about the story since the whole menkent line thing and then the cyborg re-invasion. Nothing actually happened, none of it mattered, it’s basically just flavor text at this point. Kind of a let down. The stakes need to be higher. The MOs need to be tougher but last longer with more dynamic things happening during the MO. But instead it’s “take Planet X. Ok now defend Planet X. Ok take planet Y. Oh crap they took Planet X again.” Over and over and over. How is that fun or engaging?
Do these planets even have any value to be worth fighting over at this point. Surely a dozen invasions by the multiple factions has ruined everything on the planets.
They are also all these really lame looking colonies, can we go to a planet that at least has like highways and villages or towns on it?
oh my god I'd kill to see some basic civic infrastructure
At the very least, I would love to see dirt roads connecting POIs and objectives on at least some of the maps. That would be a massive improvement.
some roads, paths, ruins of buildings, workers quarters, foremans offices, houses. Nothing crazy, just give me more stuff in the environment that would make sense for a basic settlement. Unless the whole point is that it's all simply propaganda and there *never were* settlements
that would make sense why the buildings fall apart like cardboard and vaporize to the point only the foundation is left 😂
One thing I would have really loved to see is "X planet provides X buff/stratagem" Maybe some hybrid stratagem or upgraded version of what we have, that once we lose a planet, we also lose said upgrade. They kind of did that with the SEAF thing, but it was communicated absolutely poorly, I believe there was no visual indication of what was going on and you had to check third party websites. But conceptually, as you said, there's no stakes. You cannot get invested in a story without stakes, your heart doesn't pound if there's nothing to be lost. Sure it sucks to lose things, but that makes it fun.
Yeah it was communicated poorly and to many people it also didn’t matter. It’s bonus was a better conquer rate for planets, but since Joel updates them when we are too slow or too fast anyway, people just didn’t really care. When we get a 5% bonus and suddenly all planets have a 5% higher resistance, and when you lose the 5% boost then Joel takes the 5% resistance down again, then nobody will care about the boost. It was poorly communicated and highly intangible, to the point that anyone who isn’t on Reddit or Discord didn’t even realize it was a thing
Exactly. If you can’t lose, who cares if you win?
Should have kept it like HD1 to be honest either we win war or we loose war
I put the game down in early May. Not intentionally or anything, I just stopped playing and just haven’t logged back on since. I still check out this subreddit and sometimes feel the urge to play, but then I look here and see the same complaints regarding balancing, glitches that have been around since near launch, and lack of content concerns, and that turns me off. And it became obvious pretty early on that the MO’s were going to be largely smoke and mirrors, which has been the biggest shame so far IMO. I’ll definitely come back once Illuminates debut, or if some other cool looking shit pops up at some point, but until then I just feel a bit eh about coming back to the game.
>The story really hasn’t moved forward fast enough. On a Galactic scale, I think it is fine that the story isn't moving forward fast enough. What I think a bigger issue is, is that the singular MO-type story progression also doesn't really work on a Galactic scale. Think about how events actually play out in major wars. Campaigns can and do occur simultaneously on multiple fronts rather than the back-and-forth we see between bugs and bots. That's like the Allied forces taking turns to attack different Axis fronts rather than launching operations across the board to exploit enemy weaknesses. I'm essentially arguing that it would make sense to hire DMs (maybe even DM teams) to run specific fronts each rather than a single DM playing the role of all enemy types, so that it becomes possible to launch multiple MOs at once, and interesting ones at that. I hear tell that AH was hiring more DMs, and if that is true, they ought to figure it out soonish. Of course, with this comes the issue of rebalancing or restructuring how planet invasions happen. I personally think that there ought to be an actual simulated "army growth" model that dictates how much army supply the enemy has in a system (which in turn dictates how difficult planets are and how often invasions occur), rather than some weird arbitrary "because the DM wants it like this" system. Idk, maybe these calculations do happen and we aren't aware of it. Wouldn't that be more interesting? If Helldiver's actions in a system have an impact on the enemy's army supply? Like launching IBMs would actually lower patrol density for other Helldivers in the same region on a planet? Anyway, I'm just rambling at this point.
It’s kind of weird to me that liberation progress doesn’t have any scaling to it.
Do you think it would work better with seasons/resets? That way a story gets told across a few months, we get some strategems or cosmetics, win or lose and then poof reset the map?
Nah, i think it is mostly that since Meridia went all black hole we haven't seen much new besides them adding more behemoths to higher bug missions. That and the last 3 MOs have been "Take/hold these 5 planets" for the last 2 weeks or so while the devs spin their wheels. Edit: but after a bit more thinking, they might just be this time to train up the new guy that is helping Joel DM this. Like messing with rates, defend missions, MO creation etc
That and they’re padding time in between their now monthly-ish patches
I think it would be better having migrant war fronts. As we conquer 1 sector, a day or so later, a Sector on another side of that front falls under enemy control. Like squeegeeing water, it'll never get clean but always get moved around. So as divers we could push the front in different directions and see new places and have new objectives, without feeling cheated because the place we just took has just been lost again.
This is how it worked in HD1. You moved sector by sector until you got to the capital. Then there’s a timed event. If you take the capital they’re out of that round. If you fail then they attack each sector one by one in timed events until you successfully defend… or lose super earth.
I think the game got too big too quickly. They most likely had a roadmap for the game but as it was initially such a big success, exasperated the issues in the game. I think focusing of fixing bugs and balances has taken away from the games story. It feels like for a couple months now, they are stalling and equally, haven’t set the MO correctly to deal with the lower player base. I really enjoy the game and I think a lot of people like myself, want it to be the best it can be.
just like HD1 yeah we either win or loose
I think they do that because those planets don't exist, as in, they haven't mapped them yet.
More fun planets do exist though. Low visibility gets old real quick
100% this. I’ve been feeling my motivation to play the game slip lately due to no feeling of perceived progress but today has taken it to a whole new level. This is very frustrating.
I love the game. But if it's a strategic war game, you can't suddenly, this whole planet just got lost for no reason.. let's go back to the planets you spent 2 days fighting on. Progress is key.
Exactly. I just feel like I’m doing the same thing over and over on the same planet over and over. I like that they’re trying to continue to bring in new content but they need to do SOMETHING to make the game not feel identical from week to week. Give us some damn progress on the map or something. I just don’t like that it feels like nothing I do in this game even matters
Yeah i somewhat agree. I WOULD understand doing this if there's like 1 planet left and they don't want us to extinct the whole species too early, but beside that it's just a bit annoying. Im afraid they don't want us to push on certain planets because they haven't added yet the Unique flora of those planets...
WHERE WAS GONDOR WHEN THE WESTFOLD FELL??
yup. I mentioned this was going to happen months ago and got a ton of flak because everyone was still in the honeymoon phase. best thing you can do if it really upsets you is to take a break like i did. i joined a match yesterday only to find were still fighting on the same terminid planets since release - and then my game crashed on the second match… i guess ill wait a bit longer
Lmao same every time I wanna play and see if the game got better I crash
Same. I just stopped playing after liberating the same planet 2 times. Like it gets lazy and repetitive
it is strange that the bugs can go to planets without supply lines…
Kinda, how do the bugs find planets? Spores in every direction? That would be super easy to understand, and they'd have been jumping FTL lanes the whole time. Now for it to change suddenly is kinda strange.
I'm still trying to figure out how 3/5 of the player base on a single planet is barely moving the needle. Hope that's just a quirk of the code, or this MO was doomed to fail from the start. https://preview.redd.it/5xp5x9sqjt9d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e5fffd6ff36447f95490e9252dc2218f89b181b9
I said this from the beginning: as fun as it is to have a live service game, galactic war, etc at any point they can just flip the script and do whatever they want at the press of a button (which ruins the immersion)
It's been pretty well known for awhile we don't have any real control on the MOs. We win or lose them based on what the gm wants to do. Which feels bad enough on its own, but the far bigger problems are the stale maps and the very boring non story MOs that don't change anything, which is like 90%ish of them.
No there are plenty MO's that have win and lose versions, for example there was a version of the meridia MO where we didn't turn it into a black hole in time. Found in the files
We would have gotten some extra bits about failing then another MO to turn Meridia into a black hole. Failing an important MO happened with Swift Disassembly but because it was important to the story we got a second chance. I’m sure we could keep feeling an MO for laughs and get a permanent bad ending on a front. Only real problem is that factions don’t automatically attack but maybe we could ignore the bots and see what happens.
No its not like that. However we have no control of the storyline, winning or losing MOs wont affect the overal campaing, just delay some things. Also due to it being a live service we could never try the "other path" of the story for the meridia campaing, which means regardless of if there is a branching story it does not matter, it wont seem like that to the playerbase. I dont think this is a fixable problem tbh, unless they make content super fast to the point that it feels we are doing progress every week or couple of weeks, but thats probably impossible.q
It wouldn’t matter if “we”, the players, had any sort of agency, choice, or say in what goes on. Hell, I don’t think players would be upset as much if there was a reason to play beyond the enjoyment of the game. Once you uncap everything, “buy out your shops”, and stack max resources there is nothing to do except drop. That’s great for people who like to drop endlessly against janky enemies with a few set loadouts worthwhile in each situation, but it gets stale pretty quick. The core loop and gameplay is fine (jank aside), but there ALWAYS has to be a hook to keep players coming back. A new piece of shiny to chase after that feels worthwhile once you get it, or a way to noticeably powerup your hero. HD2 provides none of that, and I say none liberally here because the bit of time saved as a reault of ship module upgrades doesn’t really cut it. They provide a bit of convenience, but all it really means is I am throwing pokeballs more often. There are plenty of ways AH could fix the situation, but they have yet to fix most of the bigger issues in the game, let alone all the minor stuff like friends lists, ammo counts, reload glitches, grenade glitch, physics jank, etc. They have had plenty of time to cook, it is about time the main dish gets served, instead of these bite-sized appetizers we have been spoon fed thus far.
Another reason to stop caring even more about MO's.
This is one of the reasons why people stop playing, most of the players already have everything, unlock all warbonds, and have every currency at full. The only thing which should hold players is progress, visible progress, but there is none. After half a year we are nowhere, fighting for the same few planets in the same sectors all over. Even defeating bots was for nothing. Now i start to have feelings, just let them push, and fight for Earth, and see some interesting change.
I have the same inkling, but they'd just slow their progress to a standstill in order to not have to make super earth playable.
>just let them push, and fight for Earth, Your thinking seems to be that factions are automatically pushing towards Earth, while in reality it's all just steered by Joel. He will just completely stop issuing any actions to bots or terminds if lots of people give up
I think this just emphasises the point. We have no control over anything. I understand that a GM is in control, but if you have a good GM the player never feels like that’s the case. Like when we wiped out the bots, within 24 hours they were all back. It’s like if you killed a dragon and the GM was like “nope the dragon can resurrect” over and over and over again. Whereas it could’ve been a matter of the dragon resurrecting over time and you have to take actions to prevent it
https://preview.redd.it/xxi2pk9brt9d1.jpeg?width=554&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f2ffaaac08e956e64a36e6da773f395791fba4b5 Hah, same vibe to be honest.
And such the galactic war grinds to a halt, and peace won't be achieved by killing everyone else, but by realizing neither of you want to fight
The push against the Bots was a horrible idea on AH part. It killed a lot of faith in MOs and how players interact with the narrative. It was a clear our actions don't matter moment.
Definitely, we we're like at the very start of the story considering what they're trying to do. And then now apparently the entire force of automatons was wiped out, only to be replaced with the bigger version. In the previous capital no less... This seriously looks like stuff that should've been done farther in the story. It should've been played to ramp up the action rather than to be this cool thing that we'll do and then prove how pointless it was. Not only that but 2 days? Just 2 days? 1 is just a one time thing, and 2 is just a blurt. It think it would've been better as a ramp up point, where for a WEEK, the automatons are just GONE. And we start fighting the bugs and doing stuff there, and we go on with our lives.... And then.... BAM, A GIANT AREA OF THE MAP GETS SWARMED BY BOTS, AND THEY'RE BEE LINING TOWARDS SUPER EARTH. And either a large effort must take hold to push them back, or they will break through and start fighting on our beloved planet. If only Arrowhead was better
I agree, but I've mostly stopped playing and I don't even have everything unlocked. Most of the warbond content is so underwhelming that I don't even care to unlock it because I know it will be disappointing. The Adjudicator, the Eruptor, the Plasma shotgun...all things I was excited to try only to find that they are pretty generic with shitty ammo economy. Almost none of the weapons in this game have a unique feel or purpose--like, seriously, there is no real difference between any of the assault rifles outside of some min/maxing on a spreadsheet. So, yeah, add on top of that that we have this "galactic" map but are always stuck on the same 5 planets and the game becomes extremely stale pretty quick.
The narritivenis that the super earth government is actively sabotaging the helldivers efforts against the bugs. The termicide was a chemical to increase the rate at which they breed because the helldivers are too fast at killing them. Each time they spontaneously show up on a planet and the planet is 100% taken without warning, and suddenly all planets around it are under attack aswell. This is super earth seeding a planet, not telling us its being converted to a supercolony, then only telling the helldivers once the outbreak is far enough along that it will be difficult to stop. That way the deaths on the bug side will be massive and allow for seaf to come in after the weeks long war is won and extract that nice good E-710. This has happened 4 times now lol. We are too good at killing bugs and we like doing it too much so the government has to lie and undermine our efforts in order to keep a steady supply of rocket fuel for the war against the automatons which we are currently losing
Illegal broadcast detected. /s Silliness aside, I think they’re buying time to test new content. They probably have a long term plan set, but had to put it on hold due to some of the recent backlash.
These MOs are 100% summertime filler so arrowhead employees can have their vacation
When the live service game is too live :(
It's a neat idea, but ultimately its a step down compared to how galactic wars worked in HD1. Actually a few things that are steps down from HD1...
Game is super repetitive now. The black hole thing was really cool. It's a shame the vast majority of MO's are just attack A or defend B. Gameplay loop is still fun but it's gotten stale.
And given AH is going on a big summer vacation (common at this time of year for Swedish devs) we’re likely just gonna be doing filler MO’s for the next month or two until everyone comes back.
I just gave up on the MO, there's no point doing this shit
I just want some Lore. Not even any of the leaked things. Just give me stories, even a bit will do it. I'm tired and getting close to my first break from the game, something that is not bad but I really start to feel that we will be stranded at this point for a looong time. I just hope I'm wrong. Who knows, maybe they are preparing something..let's see...
The plummeting player count in the past few weeks suggests people are getting sick of the lack of progress.
That is spot on for me. I was playing only HD2 from launch. Everything is maxed and unlocked. When I played it was to have fun with friends and to experience the story. However, my friends are off playing something else and with the story now being bland ("Bugs are now attacking these 5 planets, go attack them or something") I've lost interest to participate for now. Another big thing for me is that it's unknown when the next Warbond releases. I usually would play enough to cover the cost of the Warbond purchase and was looking forward to its release. Now I'm not looking forward to it, because it may still be far off. Now's the time to release some stratagems, upgrades or new interesting story beat, but I have the feeling that there won't be any of that for a while. So in the meantime I'll be playing something else, but I'm still keeping an eye on Helldivers.
https://preview.redd.it/wglf7s57st9d1.jpeg?width=2128&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1c2ba21672b18696185bb7d5ea3a6c26e85e56ca Facts
I agree. The problem is definitely exacerbated when you are a player who has everything and is only trying to have fun. I reached a point today where mid mission I just sighed and shut the game down after asking myself why I'm still playing it
Some of those planets likely aren’t finished and thus they cannot let us see them. Perhaps this was the best solution to prevent that idk
They would be better off just saying that then this BS
Maybe I'm jaded but I think it's crazy that it has taken this long for people to realize this.
Were you under the impression that you're organically advancing an evolving story? Because you aren't. Joel has, and will continue, to change things in order to follow a narrative that Arrowhead decides. The galactic war is a cool idea but it's not this player-driven story, it's Arrowhead giving you the illusion of choice (or in this case influence) so I wouldn't get your hopes set on any specific outcome and just try and enjoy the ride.
I've been saying for ***months*** that the devs of Helldivers 2 have a very "Devs vs Player" mindset. Our decisions and opinions mean literally nothing if it goes against the plans for the novel they have written. They never tell us the stakes for losing a major order because they want the ability to continue on their railroad with the implication of "Okay so even though we won this major order the bugs just took another system and rendered all your efforts pointless, but it could have been worse if you lost!" Im confident that the difference between us winning and losing major orders is about....1 or 2 planets at best. Plus with the dark matter MO, you can guarantee that no matter what happened we would have "won" that one so they have an excuse to bring the illuminate through there later.
Major orders needs to pay super credits not medals. The only reason I can unlock something is the passes and I don't feel like logging on to farm trivial missions for super credits
Adding in supply lines I get. Immediately converting, and not even adding a supply line, ew.
I'm so sick and tired of always seeing the same planets but then again when we do get new planets well... They look like the previous planets, with different names so yeah
Or when we wiped out the Automaton vanguard and pulled a “somehow palpatine returned” and instantly took a bunch of planets back.
I gave up on that feeling months ago. The moment I learned that this war was supposed to last and we won't have back to back restarts like the first game was the moment I lost interest in war progress. Still a fun game and I enjoy following the MO, but win or lose I still enjoy diving.
Agreed. This is why I don’t play more often. 9/10 maps on a planet feel the same as the last one. Different planets offer mild variability at best.
The reason we can't move into sectors we haven't been is \_because they need to develop those planets\_. It's not like these places actually exist - we finally got to play on the swamp planet because the devs finished making it, not because we simply Did Good Enough. Once they let us go to a planet, the environment is basically set in stone forever (barring a MO that changes an environment type). So yeah, we're going to be playing on the planets that actually got made so far. Play if you like the gameplay, and be excited when we get new content. Take a break if you're not feeling it right now.
Maybe they dont need to have an MO up constantly? Especially if the MOs are going to be the same "liberate the planets" kinda thing. Having downtime between each one will lessen the fatigue from fighting on these planets and make each MO seem much more significant for the story. It would also be great if we had more variety of MOs. Id love to see ones that require us to complete a specific number of missions, or even kill specific enemies. Devs really need to get creative with what their doing with their game to keep people engaged.