What's the focus?

[Boblin the Goblin]

I've been lurking here for a few days and in the discord.

From what I've gathered, while the game advertises itself as a team based extraction shooter, it also tries to encourage stealthing.

But then patches make stealthing harder(higher patrols) and nerf weapons used for shooting while the base mechanics punish completing missions(spawns being tied to mission time).

What's the focus?

[Anzuvere]

Something to keep in mind about "Stealth" is that doesn't necessarily mean ghosting. In fact if you watch many avid stealth game players play games, they often walk or even sprint all over the place. That being said for this game Stealth just means the literal definition: To be cautious and surreptitious in your actions. Basically stealth can mean hitting something so hard and fast no one has any time to react to it. That seems to be the idea behind a Helldiver. Dive into hell, hit it hard, and get the hell out.

[Fox]

The focus is to keep us distracted from the real enemy: Joel.

[Pain]

What is happening is that the devs have not ironed out what exactly they want their game to be. The nonsense with increase light mob density and patrol density on paper, sounds good from analytics, but in practice, as you may as have noticed, it breaks the flow.

When they did the first "rebalance" on spawn rates, I knew instantly, they are doing the proto-typical dev in a snow globe approach to "balance". And now its coming home to roost.

This patch today is just the cherry on top. I do not envy the devs atm.

[static]

Originally posted by SlowMango:

I've been lurking here for a few days and in the discord.

From what I've gathered, while the game advertises itself as a team based extraction shooter, it also tries to encourage stealthing.

But then patches make stealthing harder(higher patrols) and nerf weapons used for shooting while the base mechanics punish completing missions(spawns being tied to mission time).

What's the focus?

Primary focus: Mission objectives.

Secondary focus: Optional objectives, sample gathering, bug nest/bot factory demolition team extraction. Note that extraction is NOT required for success once primary mission objective(s) are completed.

Tertiary focus: Unnecessary combat with bugs & bots not required for objective success.

Stealth is a critical skill, especially when coordinated with your team of helldivers. At the higher difficulty levels, you WILL NOT survive if you engage everything that moves. Moving tactically and carefully choosing when and where to engage with enemy forces is critical. Nothing matters more than mission objective success; it's what contributes to the overall war effort.

The community is still learning. There's plenty of helldiver teams who don't survive because they haven't yet figured out that you must KEEP MOVING and not stop to fight unless it's absolutely critical to mission success.

[static]

Originally posted by Pain:

What is happening is that the devs have not ironed out what exactly they want their game to be. The nonsense with increase light mob density and patrol density on paper, sounds good from analytics, but in practice, as you may as have noticed, it breaks the flow.

When they did the first "rebalance" on spawn rates, I knew instantly, they are doing the proto-typical dev in a snow globe approach to "balance". And now its coming home to roost.

This patch today is just the cherry on top. I do not envy the devs atm.

All due respect, but I disagree. The devs know exactly what they want to achieve here. A lot of what they've been doing (besides patching bugs in the game) is tuning for the number of people playing. They did not expect HD2 to blow up in popularity to the extent it did.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Originally posted by static:

Originally posted by SlowMango:

I've been lurking here for a few days and in the discord.

From what I've gathered, while the game advertises itself as a team based extraction shooter, it also tries to encourage stealthing.

But then patches make stealthing harder(higher patrols) and nerf weapons used for shooting while the base mechanics punish completing missions(spawns being tied to mission time).

What's the focus?

Primary focus: Mission objectives.

Secondary focus: Optional objectives, sample gathering, bug nest/bot factory demolition team extraction. Note that extraction is NOT required for success once primary mission objective(s) are completed.

Tertiary focus: Unnecessary combat with bugs & bots not required for objective success.

Stealth is a critical skill, especially when coordinated with your team of helldivers. At the higher difficulty levels, you WILL NOT survive if you engage everything that moves. Moving tactically and carefully choosing when and where to engage with enemy forces is critical. Nothing matters more than mission objective success; it's what contributes to the overall war effort.

The community is still learning. There's plenty of helldiver teams who don't survive because they haven't yet figured out that you must KEEP MOVING and not stop to fight unless it's absolutely critical to mission success.

They greatly encourage side ops for the rewards(it literally can tank your rank and rewards ignoring them) but punish you for doing them.

Which then negates the stealth since it also takes longer.

Then weapons are nerfed to discourage too much engagement while still making you race against apwns despite destroying spawners.

[Pain]

Originally posted by static:

Originally posted by Pain:

What is happening is that the devs have not ironed out what exactly they want their game to be. The nonsense with increase light mob density and patrol density on paper, sounds good from analytics, but in practice, as you may as have noticed, it breaks the flow.

When they did the first "rebalance" on spawn rates, I knew instantly, they are doing the proto-typical dev in a snow globe approach to "balance". And now its coming home to roost.

This patch today is just the cherry on top. I do not envy the devs atm.

All due respect, but I disagree. The devs know exactly what they want to achieve here. A lot of what they've been doing (besides patching bugs in the game) is tuning for the number of people playing. They did not expect HD2 to blow up in popularity to the extent it did.

if you mean by they had a plan mapped out then yes, but the popularity of the game made them go off-script, and thats why they are fumbling. Today's patch is pretty embarrassing

[Boblin the Goblin]

Originally posted by Pain:

Originally posted by static:

All due respect, but I disagree. The devs know exactly what they want to achieve here. A lot of what they've been doing (besides patching bugs in the game) is tuning for the number of people playing. They did not expect HD2 to blow up in popularity to the extent it did.

if you mean by they had a plan mapped out then yes, but the popularity of the game made them go off-script, and thats why they are fumbling. Today's patch is pretty embarrassing

I mean(from what I heard) the direct meddling in the last big global event was because there were too many players.

Thereby shattering any trust they could have of good intentions.

[static]

You definitely aren't punished for doing side objectives on most difficulty levels.

What you are absolutely punished for is standing and fighting waves of enemies for no reason. THAT is what gets teams wiped out. You've got to be quick, have a plan, and communicate. It's absolutely very possible to achieve secondary objectives on mid to low difficulty missions.

Once you get up into the suicide mission and higher levels, any unnecessary lingering around beyond the primary mission stands a good chance of getting you absolutely swarmed. Which is exactly as it should be.

People cut their teeth on the low to middle difficulty missions, where you can definitely traipse around and clear out nests and bot factories. Then they start running suicide missions and helldives and get frustrated that a different approach is required. It's not as viable on the higher difficulty levels, and that's just fine.

[Shadow Wizard Fluffy Gang]

I'd say teamwork and coordination is the focus.

It's a sandbox horde shooter where you can approach things with a variety of methods in the confines of the arena you drop in.
Lately Helldive has been harder to play for me, not because of the amount of bugs, the type of bugs, or the loadouts people bring; but mainly because a lot of people are playing Helldive that just simply aren't ready for it or don't want to teamplay.

I have said this since release, even Helldive is a steamroll if your team works together. But lately very few people do.
In fact, currently I see the community held in a death grip by the belief you are meant to run away from every engagement. While disengaging can be good, finishing an ongoing engagement swiftly is also good.
I played on and off yesterday where every match the Host would start bug breaches and run away to let the randoms (I included) to deal with the fight while he continued to aggro patrols inbetween so there was no hope of maneuvering out or coordinating.

[static]

All good points Mystic. Would you agree that, in general, the community needs to work out how to assess when to stand and fight and when to keep moving? We all know that the longer you linger in a mission, the more enemies will start spawning.

[Tsuru55]

Originally posted by SlowMango:

I've been lurking here for a few days and in the discord.

From what I've gathered, while the game advertises itself as a team based extraction shooter, it also tries to encourage stealthing.

But then patches make stealthing harder(higher patrols) and nerf weapons used for shooting while the base mechanics punish completing missions(spawns being tied to mission time).

What's the focus?

Small info : Devs can't beat difficulty higher than 5 + also why they suck to balance it
(some stream(s) proving it)

[Pain]

Originally posted by Tsuru55:

Originally posted by SlowMango:

I've been lurking here for a few days and in the discord.

From what I've gathered, while the game advertises itself as a team based extraction shooter, it also tries to encourage stealthing.

But then patches make stealthing harder(higher patrols) and nerf weapons used for shooting while the base mechanics punish completing missions(spawns being tied to mission time).

What's the focus?

Small info : Devs can't beat difficulty higher than 5 + also why they suck to balance it
(some stream(s) proving it)

LMAO, that explains alot. Also explains why people on the harder diffs, usually just run away from everything, citing "just st4lth pro".

The devs cant balance the spawn densities properly.

[static]

Some of y'all are missing the point. You aren't necessarily supposed to be able to steamroll every difficulty. It's not that kind of game.

It's why the game encourages finishing objectives quickly and extracting. You are given a bonus for finishing quickly, not killing thousands of enemies.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Originally posted by static:

You definitely aren't punished for doing side objectives on most difficulty levels.

What you are absolutely punished for is standing and fighting waves of enemies for no reason. THAT is what gets teams wiped out. You've got to be quick, have a plan, and communicate. It's absolutely very possible to achieve secondary objectives on mid to low difficulty missions.

Once you get up into the suicide mission and higher levels, any unnecessary lingering around beyond the primary mission stands a good chance of getting you absolutely swarmed. Which is exactly as it should be.

People cut their teeth on the low to middle difficulty missions, where you can definitely traipse around and clear out nests and bot factories. Then they start running suicide missions and helldives and get frustrated that a different approach is required. It's not as viable on the higher difficulty levels, and that's just fine.

Spawns are tied to the time passed.

Doing side objectives makes more time pass.

More time passing makes spawns increase.

Spawns increasing punishes the player.

Do you follow?