Finite Reinforcements

[Dimwit Donald (very high IQ)]

That's my only problem with the game so far. Reinforcements should be unlimited in coop like it was in the original Helldivers. There should be a moderate cooldown on reinforcing from the start, no tickets and no auto-reinforce on wipe out.

This slow bleeding-out until you have to start wondering how much further you will get with the mission - that's not Helldivers. The game is so true to the original in most ways, but this just changes everything. Let's be honest here. Helldivers are expendable cannon fodder... They get eaten by bugs, killed by friendly fire, fall into bottomless abysses, get roasted by lava eruptions, smashed by drop pods, kill themselves with grenades and stratagems.... over and over and over. The good thing is that you can always send in more - or at least that's how it used to be. That's what being a Helldiver is all about.

The best experience in the first Helldivers was when you were playing on Helldive and were up against neverending waves of enemies, desperately trying to survive in a chaotic madness of a battle until someone fumbled the reinforce stratagem or you made it through. Unlimited tickets without auto-reinforcements is how Helldivers should be played.

The reinforcement limit just encourages you to kick bad players, so they can't drain your tickets, instead of trying to teach and carry. Other coop games since L4D, including DRG and the Fatshark games, also have mechanisms in place that allow your team to recover from losses at a later point. Modern coop with a set amount of tickets is just not a good design choice anymore.

You should either find alternative ways of dealing with reinforcement or go back to the Helldivers 1 system. If you think it would be too exploitable without the enforcement of cohesion, then maybe that is what you should really be reconsidering: to find ways to prevent the team from scattering all over the map or to restrict reinforcing only when they do. Or play around with the reinforce-cooldown for balance. Maybe make the timers per-player, like 1 minute after dying or so.


EDIT - to elaborate some more on this (for the git guds): It's NOT about the difficulty. It's about the gameplay. In other coop games, like the ones mentioned, there is ALWAYS a chance to lose the match in a tough or unlucky situation, right from the start and at any point, not just after having spent 20 lives, just as it was in Helldivers 1, too. That's much more thrilling than this slow bleed-out and is the kind of challenge/difficulty Helldivers 2 should go for again. Tickets are garbage. Reinforcing in time used to be essential. Now you don't even have to. You can just wait until everyone's dead and respawn together. Make the game harder (and remove auto/team-reinforcement when all are dead), but stop limiting reinforcement tickets.

Don't get me wrong: "lives" were an amazing concept when the first Super Mario released, really. But there is a reason why basically no successful 4-player-coop game uses them anymore. Helldivers 1 was doing it right. Why Helldivers 2 would take 3 steps back in this regard is beyond me.

also:

Originally posted by Albatross:

At the very, very least, they should grant tickets for finished objectives and not just give you all 20 at the start. Start with one per player and grant another one for each finished objective. Keep those silly crowd funded emergency tickets in for all I care. The old Helldivers 1 system would be best, of course, but if tickets would be better distributed throughout a mission, that would at least be a small step forward and instead of one hopeless doom phase at the end, there would potentially be shorter ones in between objectives, and you'd still be able to recover from it.

... as it was in Helldivers 1 solo play btw.

also also:

Originally posted by GOAT:

People also seem to ignore the other side of the coin, the removal of auto-reinforcement: The thrill that you get from always being at risk of losing within seconds, at any point. In HD1 it's always fun to watch the last guy alive and go "Is he gonna make it? Can he call in the reinforce strat?" You could actually watch and see people fumble the arrow-sequence in their hectic while trying to stay alive, lol. That's the same kind of thrill that Left 4 Dead, DRG and Fatshark games have when you got downed, and HD2 is simply lacking it. Imagine Left 4 Dead with your team just respawning together after getting overwhelmed... HD2 is now more like an economy simulation in this respect where that "lives resource" is slowly depleting. There's no risk of losing, so there's no thrill either. If you're gonna lose, you can see it coming from a mile away, after all tickets have been spent, which rarely happens anyway.

[Dimwit Donald (very high IQ)]

Originally posted by Bregastor:

Originally posted by Albatross:

It's obvious you don't have a clue about what Helldivers 1 was like. You seem like the git gud kind of people looking for a desperate ego boost lol.
It's not about difficulty. It's about gameplay and that dying should come as naturally to any Helldiver as eating and sleeping. This is not Operation Flashpoint / Armed Assault, if that wasn't before your time.

So many assumptions from a line and a half message. All wrong tho

Deaths should be a thing sure, but dying 20+ times should be ringing a bell about the team struggling. I dont see how that is screaming "get gud". Could be 1000 reason someone struggle on a mission.

Not to mention how dull a coop game is when you can't actually lose before having drained 20 tickets. All other coop games (including Helldivers 1 lol) do it differently. The thrill comes from the possibility to lose at any given moment in a tough or unlucky situation. Tickets are a bad choice. There's no thrill to the possibility to slowly bleed out instead.

[Bregastor]

I mean, I think it is way better to not have a mission screwed by an unlucky sincro death, but I guess that is a matter of taste

[Ruin N Gaun]

I agree with op, story wise it also make sense since it would make it more that we are more helldivers. I think they tried to balance this using the stim system, but helldivers 1 doesn’t have that in exchange for never ending forces.

I think I rather like the unlimited mission timer and infinite respawn, because it also screams that with sheer will we can actually win. Some of my most memorable game on the first was playing with people who clearly thought that this game is all about killing and having around 40 minutes of back and forth of running to the dropped equipment, dying left and right, and we still dont restart the game.

[Formous]

Originally posted by Kashra Fall:

They are unlimited though? You get 20 standby reinforcements. After that, it's the same familiar cooldown from HD1.

Its not. You get 1 buddy back every 2 minutes and it doesn't stock up beyond 1.

[CH3DD4R_G0B-L1N]

This has become the biggest issue for me looking in from the outside. The way reinforcements worked in HD1 lead to many awesome, "emergent" moments. That last diver going down with the beacon in hand to get the whole squad back was a peak gaming moment every time.
Now, not only is that possibility limited, but we can reach situations of having to wait 2-6 whole ass minutes to respawn.
And for all the git gudders, Murphy's Law is a constant in Helldivers. This will happen.
I hope they can channel some dev community listening into changing this system back to HD1 or find a better compromise. I'm not buying a helldivers game to watch other people play if I make a mistake after my crappy team burned through the instant reinforces.

[Ray]

Originally posted by Albatross:

That's my only problem with the game so far. Reinforcements should be unlimited in coop like it was in the original Helldivers. There should be a moderate cooldown on reinforcing from the start, no tickets and no auto-reinforce on wipe out.

This slow bleeding-out until you have to start wondering how much further you will get with the mission - that's not Helldivers. The game is so true to the original in most ways, but this just changes everything. Let's be honest here. Helldivers are expendable cannon fodder... They get eaten by bugs, killed by friendly fire, fall into bottomless abysses, get roasted by lava eruptions, smashed by drop pods, kill themselves with grenades and stratagems.... over and over and over. The good thing is that you can always send in more - or at least that's how it used to be. That's what being a Helldiver is all about.

The best experience in the first Helldivers was when you were playing on Helldive and were up against neverending waves of enemies, desperately trying to survive in a chaotic madness of a battle until someone fumbled the reinforce stratagem or you made it through. Unlimited tickets without auto-reinforcements is how Helldivers should be played.

The reinforcement limit just encourages you to kick bad players, so they can't drain your tickets, instead of trying to teach and carry. Other coop games since L4D, including DRG and the Fatshark games, also have mechanisms in place that allow your team to recover from losses at a later point. Modern coop with a set amount of tickets is just not a good design choice anymore.

You should either find alternative ways of dealing with reinforcement or go back to the Helldivers 1 system. If you think it would be too exploitable without the enforcement of cohesion, then maybe that is what you should really be reconsidering: to find ways to prevent the team from scattering all over the map or to restrict reinforcing only when they do. Or play around with the reinforce-cooldown for balance. Maybe make the timers per-player, like 1 minute after dying or so.


EDIT - to elaborate some more on this (for the git guds): It's NOT about the difficulty. It's about the gameplay. In other coop games, like the ones mentioned, there is ALWAYS a chance to lose the match in a tough or unlucky situation, right from the start and at any point, not just after having spent 20 lives, just as it was in Helldivers 1, too. That's much more thrilling than this slow bleed-out and is the kind of challenge/difficulty Helldivers 2 should go for again. Tickets are garbage. Reinforcing in time used to be essential. Now you don't even have to. You can just wait until everyone's dead and respawn together. Make the game harder (and remove auto/team-reinforcement when all are dead), but stop limiting reinforcement tickets.

absolutely agree. there are multiple features got changed in HD2 that simply downgrades the game. Call down reinforcemenr should be unlimited but with limited auto-reinfrocement just like the 1st game.

Timed mission is ok but should be for certain urgent mission. Other mission should have unlimited time but limited resources to indirectly limit time.

Call down equipment and weapon, e. g. machine gun, should be of limited use but with disposable weapon atrategem and attack strategems e. g. air strike should be unlimited like the 1st game. Making all strategem weapon unlimited use simply makes them extremely cheap and disposable, while making the original disposable weapon useless. This also disrupt balance between primary weapon and support weapon because now you just use strategem weapon instead of your primary. Since strategem weapon now become unlimited use, they have essentially unlimited ammo, while your primary is not without resupply. When even bother use primary?? This change is just so bad I never see it coming. It is like push the game down a cliff.

Add back stacked strategem. This is essential. Allow player to be creative and prepare the mission as they pleased. Absolutely furious to see this removed.

[Commander Hitman2b]

the time limit is fine eventually we will get vehicule and it will go even faster

[Chaos]

Originally posted by Ray:

Call down equipment and weapon, e. g. machine gun, should be of limited use but with disposable weapon atrategem and attack strategems e. g. air strike should be unlimited like the 1st game. Making all strategem weapon unlimited use simply makes them extremely cheap and disposable, while making the original disposable weapon useless. This also disrupt balance between primary weapon and support weapon because now you just use strategem weapon instead of your primary. Since strategem weapon now become unlimited use, they have essentially unlimited ammo, while your primary is not without resupply. When even bother use primary?? This change is just so bad I never see it coming. It is like push the game down a cliff.

I see that you don't own the game yet, so most of the stuffs you sprew here barely make any sense to those who actually play it.

Such as

- "air strike should be unlimited like the 1st game"

Yes they are, they just run with the new system now.
Like you get 3 charges of air strike with 15 CD between use, and when you wish to refresh back to 3 charge, you got to use the new "rearm" strategems (it is also auto use when you ran out of charges), this will take 2 mins, after that your air strike will be ready again with 3 charges.


- "Call down equipment and weapon being unlimited making disposable weapon useless"

Wasn't it almost useless back in HD 1 with some exception anyway?


- Making all strategem weapon unlimited use simply makes them extremely cheap and
disposable which disrupt balance between primary weapon and support weapon
because now you just use strategem weapon instead of your primary"

What? the 8 mins CD for 2 mag is cheap and disposable?
The main benefit of this change is so that I don't have to murder teammate who stealing my gear all the time, since if you nearly refresh I can just wait for a min or 2.

Btw in case you didn't notice (since you don't even play it and all) refill strategems have been reworked, so now they give your primary weapon 100% ammo while only give your strategems weapon 50% ammo per refill.

So unless you steal all the ammo packs in the drop (now refill work like resupply pod in DRG in that the CD is shared and it give 4 packs per drop) you still have to use all of your guns, hell I even need to switch to my pistol sometime now.


So next time, if you want to talk about something...how about you gather of basic info about it first so you people can take you seriously?
Since I actually like that stacked strategem too but everything else are pure hot air.

[coolman552]

Originally posted by Chaos:

Originally posted by Ray:

Call down equipment and weapon, e. g. machine gun, should be of limited use but with disposable weapon atrategem and attack strategems e. g. air strike should be unlimited like the 1st game. Making all strategem weapon unlimited use simply makes them extremely cheap and disposable, while making the original disposable weapon useless. This also disrupt balance between primary weapon and support weapon because now you just use strategem weapon instead of your primary. Since strategem weapon now become unlimited use, they have essentially unlimited ammo, while your primary is not without resupply. When even bother use primary?? This change is just so bad I never see it coming. It is like push the game down a cliff.

I see that you don't own the game yet, so most of the stuffs you sprew here barely make any sense to those who actually play it.

Such as

- "air strike should be unlimited like the 1st game"

Yes they are, they just run with the new system now.
Like you get 3 charges of air strike with 15 CD between use, and when you wish to refresh back to 3 charge, you got to use the new "rearm" strategems (it is also auto use when you ran out of charges), this will take 2 mins, after that your air strike will be ready again with 3 charges.


- "Call down equipment and weapon being unlimited making disposable weapon useless"

Wasn't it almost useless back in HD 1 with some exception anyway?


- Making all strategem weapon unlimited use simply makes them extremely cheap and
disposable which disrupt balance between primary weapon and support weapon
because now you just use strategem weapon instead of your primary"

What? the 8 mins CD for 2 mag is cheap and disposable?
The main benefit of this change is so that I don't have to murder teammate who stealing my gear all the time, since if you nearly refresh I can just wait for a min or 2.

Btw in case you didn't notice (since you don't even play it and all) refill strategems have been reworked, so now they give your primary weapon 100% ammo while only give your strategems weapon 50% ammo per refill.

So unless you steal all the ammo packs in the drop (now refill work like resupply pod in DRG in that the CD is shared and it give 4 packs per drop) you still have to use all of your guns, hell I even need to switch to my pistol sometime now.


So next time, if you want to talk about something...how about you gather of basic info about it first so you people can take you seriously?
Since I actually like that stacked strategem too but everything else are pure hot air.

disposable weapons? useless? HUH?
you're telling me the demolisher satchel charge, the EAT-17 and the mfing mgx-42 machinegun (the mobile turret if you may) WERE USELESS??? I dont care about the rest of the points but I wont stand someone disrespecting my beloved mgx-42

[Dimwit Donald (very high IQ)]

Bump cuz important. At the very, very least, they should grant tickets for finished objectives and not just give you all 20 at the start. Start with one per player and grant another one for each finished objective. Keep those silly crowd funded emergency tickets in for all I care. The old Helldivers 1 system would be best, of course, but if tickets would be better distributed throughout a mission, that would at least be a small step forward and instead of one hopeless doom phase at the end, there would potentially be shorter ones in between objectives, and you'd still be able to recover from it.

[Mosey]

Originally posted by Albatross:

Originally posted by Kashra Fall:

They are unlimited though? You get 20 standby reinforcements. After that, it's the same familiar cooldown from HD1.

Really?... Haven't actually gotten to that point yet. Can't tell how it is. I only see a limited amount of tickets draining...

Complains before they actually know how it works.

Yeah, this guy is a wonder to behold.

Arrowhead are so amazing they added what you want and, as a bonus, they made the change retroactively in the time space continuum.

[Tyrant]

Me and my team managed to bug out a pelican and couldn't evac, only way out was to burn all reinforcements.

[Oobaneko]

Improve your survival capabilities.

[Prognostitron]

As an often solo-qeuer who SOS responds, I am not worried about there being a limit so much as constantly watching that limit go down because of other player's actions.

I can't tell you how many times I have been team wiped to some moron dropping an arti turret and bad grenades in the middle of a foggy, stalker infested bug objective.

That should have used up that guys lives for team killing and after he is done murdering his teammates 5 times he can watch for awhile until he rejuvenates another respawn. Same for just getting owned over and over and if everyone is friends then sharing a few lives with some easy button press should do it.

5 lives each, separate pools with separate recharges and a quick press to give a life to someone(maybe buttons for each player on side of map when you tab-right click).

[Gmoneymozart]

No