Get rid of Bonuses for not Extracting

[@%thesock10150alpha49]

Just got done playing a match. Down a man, covered in bugs the whole time. Heavies around every corner and no where near enough ordinance to deal with them. Just ended up getting chased around until we ran out of reinforcements and got wiped.

But because we somehow squeaked the main objectives, it still counted as a victory and we still got a bunch of rewards. Now, I'm won't get into my own personal feelings on pity points. They make me feel gross and I could write a novella on why they're arguably worse than the loss itself.

I want to discuss is how most people I've interacted with just love how hard this game is. How can you be okay with something being impossibly difficult and then turn around and want handouts when you lose? At least on the higher difficulties, there should be no reward. You sought a bigger challenge and failed. You get nothing.

[Daddy Butt Love]

They cover this literally on like the first screen you see in the game. Life expectancy is 21% for divers. When you die, you are replaced by new divers, not a resurrection. Extracting is merely a bonus, completing the mission is all that matters.

[culixstar]

i think of every mission as a Sui**** mission. as long as did the main objective, you shouldn't be seen as a failure.

[LumBiii]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von ZealousSteven:

It's not a hand out, the mission was accomplished, no matter the cost.

this

[KaijuSoul]

Extracting is icing on the cake, a helldivers lifespan boots on the ground averages 30 seconds.
Thats why you get rewards if you did the main objectives.
Because to helldivers, your splattered cold corpse on that rocky moon, died a hero.

Its called a theme, live with it.

[Shraeder]

I like the lore reason for this. Technically, every time you dive, you aren't even the same character. It makes absolutely no sense to send a helldiver down just to get on the pelican and go back up to the ship. There are over half a million helldivers, and your objective is completing the mission. if you die completing the mission, you've still succeeded in the galactic war effort. I should be credited with the completion of the mission even if I don't extract because "coming home" wasn't a requirement. To me, it's an effective way of furthering the goofy "defend democracy" sort of storytelling.

Lastly, you lose the opportunity to extract samples, which arguably are more important than requisitions. The stratagem upgrades are by far, the longest grind. When you don't extract with samples, you don't get them. It incentivizes people getting on the pelican, but again, samples are not the mission.

[weirdkid5]

There's a reason one of the difficulties is called "Suicide Mission." As a Helldiver, you are not expected to come back alive necessarily.

You are 4 well-equipped soldiers taking down hundreds of enemies and greatly setting their operations back by completing objectives. A mission, even in real life military, can be a success even if the team is wiped out.

From a gameplay perspective it still makes sense. You completed what you set out to do. The punishment is losing your hard-earned samples, which basically amounts to you wasting your time once you reach level 20 and have all strategems unlocked.

[Shraeder]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von @%thesock10150alpha49:

Well, I get it. The Lore is that Democracy is forever and all. It's my fault for not articulating my point well enough.

My issue is that there are people defending how 'unforgiving' this game is AND then still benefiting from the forgiving nature of the reward system. It's a little hypocritical.

I am not commenting on the lore/theme of the game. It's a super fun aesthetic, and I totally understand that we are expendable. The progression system makes sense for the average player

But you still had to complete the objective. It's not like you just drop in, die, and then win. On harder difficulties, it's truly brutal. The game is actually hard. But if you want super samples, you actually have to extract on the pelican. and super samples are incredibly necessary. THAT is the punishment

[Aidenel]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von @%thesock10150alpha49:

You can't just handwave lore at it. If you died on the planet, why are they giving your medals to the guy coming in to replace you? It's a fun theme, all imperium of man starship troopers and whatnot, but it's got very little to do with the end rewards.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Operator:

Yeah my guy, if you want to take an L, know that you lose all your samples and those are what you really need to level up...

That is nowhere near enough of a punishment for losing.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Atlas:

Also also: the team IS getting heavily punished. Running from bugs for 20 minutes without completing objectives is losing time. A whole mission could have been completed in that time. Making that lost time also worthless to the team in terms of rewards is just kicking them while they are down.

We live in the age of Souls-fans and "skill issues." People praise games for being insanely difficult, without having any actual skin in the game. I am willing to bet they'd think twice about spiking the difficulty if it wasn't as free and easy. Not to mention you'll have a bunch of people that spam lobbies and just lose their way to the top.

On the more personal end, I dislike the idea of being given rewards for losing. I take it as an insult because it implies that I did good, which I very clearly didn't, or I would have won.

Honestly I think of it as the rewards being handed to your ship.
The ship is what represents you the player. The way you interact with the world is just whichever schmuck is thawed out at any given moment, thats why you can pick randomized voices.

[pseudo]

We may get 20 "lives" but when we run out we're still back on the ship. This is why the cryopods exist. All of those pods are mass produced copies of the "Helldiver". A lot of people seem to be unaware of this, but this is why Super Earth doesn't fear death. We can be sent into literal suicide and nobody bats an eye. Coming back alive is merely a bonus.

[Holly!!]

You completely miss the point of the game, this isn’t dark souls or some cod game, this is HELLDIVERS. The entire point of the series is “you are a part of a group that is ultimately expendable, your objective is to complete the task by any means necessary, no matter how many bodies it takes. (Unless our glorious democracy dictates you’ve taken too many)
The entire point is you did your job. It isn’t “pity points” you completed your objectives. You are rewarded for preserving yourselves but the reward is so small because of just how expendable you are.

[ratfromthemoon]

This doesn't make sense. You literally completed the mission. Extracting is just the BONUS. If you finish the mission, that's already a victory. It'd be different if you still get rewards without completing anything

[bl_4u]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von @%thesock10150alpha49:

You can't just handwave lore at it. If you died on the planet, why are they giving your medals to the guy coming in to replace you? It's a fun theme, all imperium of man starship troopers and whatnot, but it's got very little to do with the end rewards.

If you don't extract from a mission you don't get research samples. They are the most difficult to earn or to find. Super Samples are only available in the top 3 difficulty levels near specific natural landmarks.

But yeah, most of the rewards are passed onto the next guy for thematic reasons. Your Helldiver doesn't have a name, but the Destroyer does.

You can't keep the research samples you lose in the mission because otherwise you would just never need to extract, ever. You also have to wonder 'How do they do the research if they don't actually have the samples to do research with?'

Ursprünglich geschrieben von @%thesock10150alpha49:

Well, I get it. The Lore is that Democracy is forever and all. It's my fault for not articulating my point well enough.

My issue is that there are people defending how 'unforgiving' this game is AND then still benefiting from the forgiving nature of the reward system. It's a little hypocritical.

I am not commenting on the lore/theme of the game. It's a super fun aesthetic, and I totally understand that we are expendable. The progression system makes sense for the average player

I guess some people just get annoyed about losing because it's not always their fault? A person might join your game, but if they end up dying too much they use up all of your reinforcement points which you contributed to the team.

When a single mission can take at least 30 minutes, it feels like a big waste of time, ESPECIALLY when failing one mission out of 3 means you don't complete that campaign (a waste of 90+ minutes).

People also have different opinions about what 'kind of game' it is, and how it should be played. Some people feel that it's a horde shooter, and just like to have fun killing enemies even though a high kill count doesn't give more XP or rewards.

Sometimes if you don't play the way your host likes to play (they might want to be the one who does all the map marking and completes the objectives - yes people are really this weird and selfish), they will kick you out without any warning. They can even decide that they don't like your loadout, or that you are too low, or even too high level, for this difficulty.

This is what some people mean by 'unforgiving', there is no vote kick system, there is no warning - you are just gone and take none of the rewards with you (except for ones that are immediately granted as soon as you find them, and not after extraction).

[Retardus_Autistica]

The challenge comes from having to fight all those enemies and accomplish the objective within the amount of divers you have. Failing to extract doesnt negate all the things you accomplished to that point. Youre hung up on an arbitrary line youve drawn in your head.

If that personally bothers you, then it only personally bothers you. There's nothing else to be said. Is titanfall also in the same category with extraction being secondary?

[Temuldjin^]

I though extracting was not now part of the victory criteria.

that infamous 23.1 Survival rate note after you complete the tutorial.

[Retardus_Autistica]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von pseudo:

We may get 20 "lives" but when we run out we're still back on the ship. This is why the cryopods exist. All of those pods are mass produced copies of the "Helldiver". A lot of people seem to be unaware of this, but this is why Super Earth doesn't fear death. We can be sent into literal suicide and nobody bats an eye. Coming back alive is merely a bonus.

The director shot this down in a tweet reply to someone saying that. To quote directly; "They are real people with real families that are "oh so proud" of their baby joining the elite and invincible hero unit to do the right thing and fight for democracy.

That they get into a freezer to be thawed is not disclosed. Nor that their life expectancy is 2 minutes.
7:14 AM · Feb 19, 2024"

If they were clones it'd defeat the entire purpose of the flagrant tutorial segment. Each helldiver is a brainwashed lemmjng sent through their half hour of training and then into the meatgrinder.

The ship retains the equipment and the player basically controls it and the disposable lemming at the same time.