ArrowHead ego and how it's killing our enjoyment

[SilentHero]

After a couple of updates, it's very clear that the philosophy of Arrowhead is slowly killing its players's fun. Bringing balance to any game is a task. Unfortunately,Arrowhead  fails each update, lowering player morale and eroding the goodwill of the community. while some weapons need to be toned down. What you are doing is limiting the player's options instead of expanding them with each release. Please quit complicating things and allow the community the right to use weapons without any fear. There comes a time when we, as gamer's, grow weary of Nerf's. The Quasar Canon demonstrates the illusion of choice, and while the Nerf's to the weapon is minor, there's still no incentive to use other weapons. You're only inconveniencing people. Players will always gravitate toward what actually works, the main reason being the aggravating circumstances in which they have to adapt during game-play. I like to point out some of the things I found to be irritating while playing for 300+ hours.

irritating strategies rather than genuine obstacles.

Gunships continue to be an annoyance throughout the game. Let me underscore how bothersome that is. Challenges are nice in any game. Arrowhead fails to provide one. Arrowhead has proven that they can create a hard and fair experience, as evidenced by Helldivers 1. Helldivers 2, on the other hand, is a frustrating experience when you have so many things going against the player.

Whoever created rag-doll physics needs to be re-educated. The hilarious moments that rag-doll physics bring to the game are something that I do enjoy, but what I don't enjoy is tripping over a pebble and losing control of my character for a second or two, getting bounced around without any control of my character, and watching my character die in an annoying way.

Enemies do not appear to have the same limitations as players and at times use unnecessarily aggressive animations; they have no Rag-doll mechanics and are unaffected by surroundings, such as fog or patrols that arise out of nowhere, and some even travel through terrain such as mountains because you haven't played tested the game and the community is used as a guinea pig to do so.

Weather effect are supposed to provide an added challenge but only add frustration. Fire tornadoes over-spawn when doing the main objective, or extraction, in an effort to impede progression. Fog is overdone and comes in and out,like some ones turning on and off switches, trying to complicate the mission. However, by doing so, you are not adding difficulty in the traditional sense; you are adding an irritating, unjust challenge on top of the many annoying aspects of the game.

This is not the 1990's, when we were attempting to play Battletoads without dying. This is a cooperative shooter in which the majority of the weaponry is, in many ways, awful. The community frequently discovers weapons that the creators overly enhance in retaliation. Arrowhead hits us like a child and takes away our toys.

This conduct is becoming tiresome, and the player number suggests that you are not as bright as you would like to believe, Arrowhead. Veteran players like myself, who will stay until the ship sinks, will be the only ones left playing. By ignoring the community, you continue to undermine your own success, and this is not a complaint; rather, it's a plea from a player who has enjoyed your game and is wondering what happened to the principles of fun and fair play.

Many people will come to invalidate my points, not realizing that I am a gamer who has completed everything in the game. I overcame all the game challenges. I am merely expressing my honest view and sharing my thoughts. I want the game to succeed, but you're making it difficult. I like you to set aside your ego and embrace your community views.


In the meantime, enjoy Plasma Punisher before Subsequential Nerf, and have a good day.


https://youtu.be/t0d3rJfln3U?si=1VOatazWbujrCFaC

Originally posted by Zephyr:

I would like, if you will, to bring an interesting point to the analysis in my opinion, which is pretty much taking the problem by an other angle.

Enemies.

You see, one thing which infuriates me in this game is how I feel the enemies are made in such a way that they need special tools to be deal with. The problem is those tools don't exist, or are very shaky at their job. There is in particular an overwhelming presence of armored enemies, and very little ways to deal with it. In fact, all weapons designed to deal with armored enemies have huge drawbacks. The rest of the weapons are light penetrations and only work on some weak points which are annoying to reach. Usually it's the back of the enemy, or the sides, but then it's always on the side-back tendency rather than the side-front.

When you check people's loadout, you come to the realisation that it's mostly made to take out big armored target, and to some extent, spawners, because they are also only destroyed by explosives.

Now, if you check the amount of weapons and strategems given to us, you realise there are an overwhelming amount of them made to destroy light armored target, or have light penetration, etc... I'm going to mention a few examples: Strafing eagle run. Gatling orbital. Airburst rockets(okay, don't laugh). Scatter orbital. Stalwart. Machinegun. Heavy machinegun...

Those are the things no one use except when it's a minor order to do so. This is because all those options given to us as just bad at dealing with what we are facing. The predominance of blocky armored threat that absolutely need to be taken down so we can actually keep on playing and deal with objective makes it so we build all our loadout relatively to them.

The way the game is played also doesn't allow to have, say, one person specialised in dealing with light threats, and one person who will deal with heavy threats. We can't spread out roles because a lot of times, Helldivers operate in duos, when they aren't completely solo. We need to cover the map to gather all the samples, collectibles and destroy multiple side objectives in a timely fashion(again, due to time being an entire mechanic, and the fact we are often racing against time for a bunch of missions. We can't dilly-dally, we have to go fast, meaning we spread the load). Because of that, each mission is a group of 4 people dropping with heavy ordonnance and anti-armored/anti-structures weapons and stratagems. Sometimes even the main weapon used is chosen for that. This is why the Eruptor was an overwhelmingly popular pick: It could snipe fabricators and bug holes as well as some armored threats. I mean, it still can, but it's just less good now due to being nerfed twice. People will still use it if only for what it can do.

I will go even further, the way the patrols and reinforcements are structured ensure an overwhelming amount of armored threats starting from Suicidal and onward. There aren't a lot of ways to deal with them quickly and efficiently. So you will see the usual suspect: Rocket pods, orbital laser, railgun orbital, Quasar, EAT, and for the optimists, Railgun. We are very much starved for decent options.

Here is where the game hurts: The way it's made in terms of threats and challenge don't match the tools given to us to face them. We are given a lot of things that don't work, and not many which does. So people complain about the gun's balance, because this is what they feel. The general consensus is "my guns don't work well enough against my enemies". It goes deeper than that, as I demonstrated, it's not just the guns, it's the stratagems too, even the ones which aren't support weapons, but the gun balance is what is the most obvious, and seeing that the patch notes mention the changes, it makes that aspect of the problem even more glaring.

The balance of the whole game is a concern. Not just the guns.

Ideally, you would want to have weapons which one way or an other, can all do the job, or most of the job. If they don't outright kill armored targets or big threats, at least they should allow to neutralise them for long enough to be meaningful, or they should be considerable facilitators. Same for strategems, really. Either that, or change how enemies work so they can be taken down by a larger variety of means. If armor could be shredded more efficiently on a wider range of enemies, for example, it would drastically change what solutions can be viable. Let's take an example: Someone is using a heavy machinegun on a charger. Let's imagine that your heavy machinegun when you hit it supresses the beast and causes it to move more slowly, hunkering under the bullet, while the machinegun also slowly but surely strip it of its armored shell exposing the fleshy underlayer. Suddenly, the whole situation change. Anything goes and can kill it. Sure, it's still a charger, a big lump of HP, but now focused fire will take it down, including the heavy machinegun itself. And because it slows down the target, it's a lot easier and comfortable to do so. Let's imagine you have bot tanks that have more vulnerabilities that can be exploited. Threads could be shot and destroyed. The cannon on the turret can be shot enough it will be damaged with the chance to cause misfires, even with low penetration weapons. Flamethrowers will cook whatever is inside very very hot, with the chance to cause ammo explosions. Suddenly, you have an enemy that have depth, and can be approached in many different ways with many different weapons which will be useful.

I know some will argue: "But it will make the game easier! Too easy even!" . Maybe. But try to see the whole situation from an other light: What is hard right now? What is the reason why those enemies are considered hard? When you think about it, it boils down to: "They are hard, because we can only destroy them in certain ways". And you realise that the difficulty you may defend is in fact brutally artificial. The game isn't hard because it tests your reflexes or brain but because it limits you to proven effective methods to deal with what is thrown toward you. It's the goold ol' "Players uses what works". I don't think any game should be satisfied with forcing players to use what works, the objective of true balance, would be to arrive in a situation of "Everything is viable no matter the situation, but the effect on the battlefield and how you succeed, depends of what you pick".

And to reach that situation, two things need to be done:
-The first one is take a good look at the enemies, and not hesitate to give them weaknesses and interesting interactions with what players can do to them. Especially the most threatening ones. We can shoot a Hulk's arms. Why not its legs? Why isn't just legging a big threat an option, to immobilise it while we work on objectives? There should be plenty of different ways to skin a bile titan, including just making sure it never catches you or can hurt you.
-The second is to look at the offensive options, not just the guns, but also the stratagems, and buffing them. Not just in terms of raw numbers, but also in terms of what they can do. Again, anything should be viable even on the hardest difficulty possible. It may need to think out of the box with them, or use one of the previously mentioned interesting interactions with the enemies, but it should work.

I will go even further and touch a topic that is barely touched, the situation of armors. Right now, I consider armors to be extremely extremely depressing. The amount of different effects on them is sad, some are even downright bad, and they don't feel like a real interesting choice. The bonuses they offer aren't that interesting or even exactly good. There is even the "gambling" armor which can allow you to not die with a RANDOM chance, which is honestly, a terrible mechanic. There is also the problem the heavy armors cut in stamina regen and stamina max. I want you to take the time to consider how much running around a Helldiver usually does, and then you will realise those armors' only use is in defense missions. Most people don't even bother changing armor for those. We really need armors that offer decent amount of protection and interesting bonuses that makes switching around and adapting your armor to the loadout you wish to use a thing worth considering.

I sincerely hope the balance of the game will take those advices into consideration in the future.

With that said, I want to echo the OP on the very frustrating situation that happens too often that we are deprived of our capacity to see clearly while in missions for different reasons, while the enemies can see perfectly. This is extremely cheap and also extremely annoying. I know there are some mechanic which makes the enemies see players more or less well, but the problem it's mostly for initial detection purpose, and when the enemies are aggro, they can perfectly locate players no matter what. If you want to make situation like that where visibility is low, give us ways to counter it like having armors able to switch to thermal vision or night vision, and make sure both sides operate by the same rules. But in general remember it is a very bad idea to take two things from players: 1)The capacity to see 2)The capacity to move at a decent speed to go from one point to an other.

Originally posted by Veridian:

i would totally love to drop down to lvl 5 and play with the machine gun and just doot around with my friends but no we all need super samples because thats all AH could come up with for end game. my friend has unlocked everything and has a max metal cap, hes missing all the major orders because hes not getting the rewards for them anymore. instead of having fun we're all sweating rolling half to full AT and yelling, and kicking dumb randos hogging reinforcements and you hit us with an ammo slash and half cooked buffs for some other primaries as recompense, weapons that needed FIXED not buffed for balance, they were such utter trash now they're just less trash. And what do they have agaisn't the crossbow, poor kid got demolished by some quack with a pen in Sweden.

What happens when all the guns do more or less the same DPS? how is that fun? how is it going to be fun to pick up a dead lvl 50 something's gun at lvl 7 and realize his end game gun that he grinded 1500 metals for is just the same as your beginner gun just with a fancier model and damage effect vfx. its going to be a turn off for that grind to the top of whatever war-bond that gun is from that's for sure.

ALSO why is thermate still useless for anything other than a circus pyrotechnic for the ArrowHead balancing act clown show.

Originally posted by Arocken:

Absolutely right! I'd also like to add to that several points:
Why does everything in the game have to be negative? Why can't we have positive modifiers like increased speed or a MO that comes with a free random stratagem that will actually be useful to the mission? More than half the weapons don't get used because they suck - I'll never use the flamethrower because constantly dying from fire is ridiculous. Same for the arc thrower. The whole armor setup needs a complete rework. And I refuse to purchase several of the new ship modules simply because one of them only affects 3 weapons while the other is only 2! Once you've aquired everything in the game, there is no reason to play other than fun. And every warbond and patch since launch has been one disappointment after another. Half my squad has already stopped playing. The rest are about there as well...

Originally posted by Shrapnel:

Game straps a 50 lb backpack of nerfs and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on you then tell you go run a race, each patch they add 10lbs more.
Why are player numbers dropping, hmmm, weird.

Originally posted by Mister Cebion:

To add to this problem are the bootlickers who cant find fault in the devs doing and try to balme the player for a lack of skill or insult them as crybabys but fail to see that when its starting to get sour and downwards it will also be their problem cause its always some ppl who are leaving and short after more and more.

First a friend stopped... now also me cause i cant be botheres to play most of the time with strangers and with me another friend who played sometimes also stoped.....
If the devs ♥♥♥♥ arround they will find out...soon

Originally posted by Velxra:

Everytime I find a groove I like and I feel like a badass helldiver rambo. It always seems to get nerfed. I want to feel powerful and Im truly the best super earth has to offer. Instead I now feel like a wet noodle.

Originally posted by Irier:

Originally posted by adobo:

Fun is relative. Your idea of fun is different from the kind of fun the Devs intended.

The devs don't play the hiring difficulties, they just look at a spread sheet and say "too many people are passing it, let's make it difficult by spawning so many enemies PC performance tanks and those that can handle it, the game becomes tedious and boring."

Now lets balance a game by another spreadsheet of data for the weapons without playing them.

The CEO did a let's play and he's a bad gamer, how is he going to create a product that people will keep playing when he doesn't play it himself?

Originally posted by Mister Cebion:

I have to 100% agree with the statement in this post.
My loadout got hit with the first two patches. Breaker in the first one which was (after i used another weapon) a total joke cause for me the slugger was way more fun to use. Now here comes the 2nd patch which gutted the slugger to a joke which was uncalled for, samer with the crossbow now.
The 3rd patch didnt hit my new weapon of choice (Dominator) as hard as previous pacthes but im done seeing everything getting nerfed. It feels thas AH lost control of their own game and have no idea how to balance things or what their end goal even is........
I get it use more strategems but i can use them when they´re on a 3min cooldown after every use.....
I am sorry but its an action shooter and not a strategy topdown.

I am done with this game for now untill i see ion further pacthed content and not nerfs cause thats where they need to put their energy. Maybe throw out the balance team throu the window to get competent guys

Originally posted by Van:

Originally posted by Xdiespa:

2. No greater truth has been said so far, than Helldivers 2's idea of balance is to just play whatever weapons just got buffed. Arrowhead creates a monthly meta with their nerfs and buffs, and players react accordingly. It's a shockingly amateurish situation.

For real, I didn't have much strong feelings on previous weapon balance patches, but it's this one that i start noticing the writing on the wall, which is this weird action to balance all weapons to be equally bad, rather than address the weapons that players do not like for reason x, y, and z. As you say, shockingly amateurish.

Most of the nerfs don't affect me because I always liked using the LIberator+Autocannon. Eventually AH will come for my loadout because nobody is allowed to have fun, or have any chance against the constant bot drops and bug breeches.

Originally posted by OGPG:

I want to feel like a Helldiver not a Muffdiver

Originally posted by RedWolfofDeath:

I agree with you to some extent. I think weapons needs major reworking on as there used to be two weapons to fight the bots only as the other weapons were more suited for the bugs. The slug shotgun and the sickle were really the only 2 weapons to fight the bots and both have been nerfed. What they need to do is really redo ALL the weapons and give us reasons to use more weapons. I don't fight on the bug front because of how broken hunters are on any difficulty, so this would be mostly for bots.

Sickle was good before the ammo nerf as the only real counter was having a longer cool down on that heat planet. But when enemies spawn out of no where and they have 3-4 packs charging you, you will reload your weapon as it takes forever to let your weapons cool down and secondaries are an absolute joke.

Slugger was good but they nerfed the range and stagger feature. It feels like it takes more rounds before a bot dies which is also frustrating.

That's. No reason to use any other gun against bots as all kinetic weapons suck and the explosive shotgun ricochets off armor and the flaming shotgun doesn't do damage to bots since they are immune to fire. They need to completely redo either the guns or the resistances of bots so we can use more than just those 2 guns. The scythe also works, but I honestly never see anyone use it in mission 8 or 9 difficulties.

Secondaries are always a joke and the senator is the only decent one against bots. But that's it.

Gunships aren't a problem if you use something like a recoilless rifle to aim at their engines as they go down pretty easily. The problem is how many strafe you and the rag doll physics make it hard to get a shot off or even make it hard for you to get a weapon when you just landed. So in a sense, I do agree to that about gunships, but if you got the weapon, really not hard to take them down.

Originally posted by <⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️⬇️>:

imagine making an aswesome game like helldivers and slowly kill it because you can't figure how to balance 10 weapons >,< , yeah im salty about the balacning and wtf is this recoil adittion to he redeemer make it less fun to promote the other choices.. hella great m8 design idea :aurip:

Originally posted by Nequis:

I second this, i just can't figure out why can't they buff/fix the underperforming/niche guns instead of nerfing to the base level crap the viable ones.

From the moment i saw the Quasar i knew it'd become the new meta,considering that the other options immobilize you and don't even guarantee a kill after you sacrifice so much to use it.

[LoboFH]

Fog, dark nights, tornados, crazy ragdolls...yeah, they are irritating, war is a dirty, irritating business, some will say fun, some will say unfun.

Some terrain collisions are wonky as hell, this is not fun or unfun, it's bug, they must refine them. Agree.

Balance?, sorry, they are doing a good work in this (with some mistakes), the last patch moved lot of weapons from trash tier to abecedary tier and we are here in a soap opera about 5 seconds.

[Echo2Omega]

You can always lower the difficulty.

[SPIGOT]

Originally posted by SilentHero:

I like to point out some of the things I found to be irritating while playing for 300+ hours.

I think I found your problem, the game isn't getting worse you've just played way too much of it.

[Weed Dragon]

Originally posted by Echo2Omega:

You can always lower the difficulty.

in a normal game upping the diff isn't a requirement to unlock everything for a better experience.

[adobo]

Fun is relative. Your idea of fun is different from the kind of fun the Devs intended.

[Eudicots]

I rather play the game the developers have envisioned than the game other people are trying to force out.

[Depore]

Originally posted by LoboFH:

Fog, dark nights, tornados, crazy ragdolls...yeah, they are irritating, war is a dirty, irritating business, some will say fun, some will say unfun.

Some terrain collisions are wonky as hell, this is not fun or unfun, it's bug, they must refine them. Agree.

Balance?, sorry, they are doing a good work in this (with some mistakes), the last patch moved lot of weapons from trash tier to abecedary tier and we are here in a soap opera about 5 seconds.

they are not doing good work with balancing their balancing method is look at whats popular and being used the most and Nerf it into the ground. wow great job arrowhead way to go.. you fixed nothing

[Meefreese]

Personally I'd rather thr game not become piss easy to thr point its mindless with teamplsy being an after thought. You can lower the difficulty, most of thr super samples required upgrades are kinda just there as slight bonuses with a few exceptions. My comfort difficulty is personally 7. Not too hard but not too easy, while I occasionally inter into level 9 rounds for fun.

[LoboFH]

Originally posted by Dreamers Demise:

they are not doing good work with balancing their balancing method is look at whats popular and being used the most and Nerf it into the ground. wow great job arrowhead way to go.. you fixed nothing

It's how developers balance all the games of the same kind since PONG, analyze metrics and tweak numbers here and there.

"Nerf to the ground" is an obvious overdramatization...and wrong in most cases, people still says the arc thrower was nerfed.

[Meefreese]

Originally posted by Dreamers Demise:

Originally posted by LoboFH:

Fog, dark nights, tornados, crazy ragdolls...yeah, they are irritating, war is a dirty, irritating business, some will say fun, some will say unfun.

Some terrain collisions are wonky as hell, this is not fun or unfun, it's bug, they must refine them. Agree.

Balance?, sorry, they are doing a good work in this (with some mistakes), the last patch moved lot of weapons from trash tier to abecedary tier and we are here in a soap opera about 5 seconds.

they are not doing good work with balancing their balancing method is look at whats popular and being used the most and Nerf it into the ground. wow great job arrowhead way to go.. you fixed nothing

Probably because some weapons are ivertuned and people gravitate to what requires thr least amount of effort and skill with thr most amount of reward.

It gets tiring seeing thr same uninspired loadouts, even worse when there's people out there berating and kicking players for not running ""the meta"" like this is some ranked cod game with bragging rights at stake.

[Weed Dragon]

i would totally love to drop down to lvl 5 and play with the machine gun and just doot around with my friends but no we all need super samples because thats all AH could come up with for end game. my friend has unlocked everything and has a max metal cap, hes missing all the major orders because hes not getting the rewards for them anymore. instead of having fun we're all sweating rolling half to full AT and yelling, and kicking dumb randos hogging reinforcements and you hit us with an ammo slash and half cooked buffs for some other primaries as recompense, weapons that needed FIXED not buffed for balance, they were such utter trash now they're just less trash. And what do they have agaisn't the crossbow, poor kid got demolished by some quack with a pen in Sweden.

What happens when all the guns do more or less the same DPS? how is that fun? how is it going to be fun to pick up a dead lvl 50 something's gun at lvl 7 and realize his end game gun that he grinded 1500 metals for is just the same as your beginner gun just with a fancier model and damage effect vfx. its going to be a turn off for that grind to the top of whatever war-bond that gun is from that's for sure.

ALSO why is thermate still useless for anything other than a circus pyrotechnic for the ArrowHead balancing act clown show.

[Onimaho]

Originally posted by SilentHero:

So glad they don't listen to you.

The game would look like and play like something from the 90's.

[PlazaLord]

Originally posted by Veridian:

Originally posted by Echo2Omega:

You can always lower the difficulty.

in a normal game upping the diff isn't a requirement to unlock everything for a better experience.

Guys:
Don't worry about super samples until you have the skill for it. Build up that skill, don't troll high level players please. Had a level 21 join and not look where he threw the clusters... highest tk count I've ever seen, and we ended up winning but cluster killed us when extraction was called. (mission timer was out) It doesn't even take that many to upgrade everything, once you play on 7-9 casually they will fill in.

The game will provide plenty of bs that we can do nothing about, playing on 7 is still rather easy though for me, at 200 hours. Loadouts should be picked strategically. And yes some of the balance changes were questionable at best, the "slightly reduced" explosion of the crossbow gave it the aeo of the scorcher, very small. Weapon is useless now.

I'm sure you(Veridian) already know this, but hopefully others reading will find it useful.

[Weed Dragon]

Originally posted by PlazaLord:

Originally posted by Veridian:

in a normal game upping the diff isn't a requirement to unlock everything for a better experience.

Guys:
Don't worry about super samples until you have the skill for it. Build up that skill, don't troll high level players please. Had a level 21 join and not look where he threw the clusters... highest tk count I've ever seen, and we ended up winning but cluster killed us when extraction was called. (mission timer was out) It doesn't even take that many to upgrade everything, once you play on 7-9 casually they will fill in.

The game will provide plenty of bs that we can do nothing about, playing on 7 is still rather easy though for me, at 200 hours. Loadouts should be picked strategically. And yes some of the balance changes were questionable at best, the "slightly reduced" explosion of the crossbow gave it the aeo of the scorcher, very small. Weapon is useless now.

I'm sure you(Veridian) already know this, but hopefully others reading will find it useful.

level 7 is the upper end of casual man. its casual until the moment a defend modifier is in play depending on how much Joel hates us that morning.

[Arocken]

Absolutely right! I'd also like to add to that several points:
Why does everything in the game have to be negative? Why can't we have positive modifiers like increased speed or a MO that comes with a free random stratagem that will actually be useful to the mission? More than half the weapons don't get used because they suck - I'll never use the flamethrower because constantly dying from fire is ridiculous. Same for the arc thrower. The whole armor setup needs a complete rework. And I refuse to purchase several of the new ship modules simply because one of them only affects 3 weapons while the other is only 2! Once you've aquired everything in the game, there is no reason to play other than fun. And every warbond and patch since launch has been one disappointment after another. Half my squad has already stopped playing. The rest are about there as well...