Problems With The Major Orders System And Clueless Developers

[Majorita]

If the next few Major Orders are similarly complicated or difficult (taking multiple planets in sequence), I entirely look forward to the dev team perhaps maybe realizing... oh wait.

They realized nothing.

If you look at their last official communique (on the Discord) they actually blamed the players.

Originally posted by HD2 Discord:

"Another significant obstacle in our operations has been the ongoing support of expeditionary forces on Malevelon Creek. Long standing as a bastion of human endurance and a symbol of our resistance against the Automatons, Malevelon Creek remains locked in a stalemate with an average 25% of our forces committed to its defense and eventual liberation, though success on Draupnir, Ubanea, and eventually Tibit seems unlikely with such a large contingent diverted elsewhere..."

I read this as "please move to the correct planet Helldivers, stop playing on the wrong planet"

So let's open with that. The developers have no idea that their system is flawed. I would like to extrapolate on that and add, that perhaps this means they don't actually even know that the rest of their game is positively riddled with flaws, but let's move on.

So this time, we had to deal with taking a couple different planet all in one go and we failed to manage this. Because we failed, we basically got locked out of completion of the order. Just not enough time.

I would argue this is entirely the fault of the developers for not making it CLEAR to players, that they want them to go way over there to a specific world and play only on that planet. If they want us to follow Major Orders, they need to make it really obvious to everyone who looks at the galactic war map.

I've said elsewhere but I am sure that there are players who don't know anything about the Major Order system, don't interact with it by their own volition, and probably don't even know how to, because they aren't being told.

I am assuming here that the first few we've had to do, involving like one or two planets or whatever, probably aren't that complicated, deliberately. If they are gonna get more complicated, at this rate we're going to fail all of them.

I personally suspect that the numbers we had on Creek past few days reflects not like, an unwillingness to do the objective, but probably an ignorance.

There's no point in blaming each other, other players, when it's on the devs to specifically get this message across, and also to sufficiently reward players for doing this thing they want them to do. But alas, even the developers are blaming us, just because some people were playing on Creek.

The developers are responsible for giving them the CHOICE to play on Creek.

If they really wanted people to do the thing, why not literally just gate planets off so if you wanna play bots, you can ONLY play the objective.

To go a step further they could probably lock all planets except objective planets, but I am sure there would be players who might complain and entirely stop playing the game altogether while that major order is happening because they are just that averse to fighting bots.

The source of 'why' players might be averse to fighting bots, can be traced further but again - that obviously leads to and suggests problems with the game itself, NOT the players.

Such sources of avoidance of automatons might be that bots aren't fun, are too challenging, are maybe even impossible for lower level players (the majority of the playerbase), and don't reward you for your time spent as much as bugs do. It can even be harder to extract and get anything out of your time spent even if you see that big 'mission complete'.

And again, that's on the developers.

So really what do we all get out of this? What have we learned? Well, all I know is I hope the developers wake up soon and try to make some changes to the Major Order system, make it more visible to players, and limit players to playing on objective planets - or make more planets that players play on objective planets, because otherwise I bet you if they don't do something soon, we're probably gonna start failing all the orders they give us.

I think even all we need is a GIANT blinking arrow on the map that points to the planet they WANT us to go to, so at least people who don't know any better can see it and go OH, I SHOULD GO THERE?

Or even add this to a visual zoom. If when you opened the map, it immediately zoomed to and opened on the next planet they wanted you to take and explained, for example, "Tibit is the current Major Order planet! Check it out!" and it strongly recommended you play on that planet, I don't know, it'd probably help a bit.

The developers have no presence here, obviously, and that's not really the point of this thread. I'm not really here to point fingers, and I don't strongly care about us failing the order or whatever, this is all purely observational because I can see where this is all gonna go in six months if something isn't done. This is just my editorial on the situation, my little opinion.

[Kurteous]

It would help if they put any form of indication of which planet to move onto next when we're trying to get to the main one. That way, there would be less confusion on guessing what we need to do next.

[Catteus Of Mars]

my man we are loosing this BY DESIGN we are not supposed to win all the battles :D

[Majorita]

Originally posted by Kurteous:

It would help if they put any form of indication of which planet to move onto next when we're trying to get to the main one. That way, there would be less confusion on guessing what we need to do next.

I agree.

Originally posted by Catteus Of Mars:

my man we are loosing this BY DESIGN we are not supposed to win all the battles :D

This is an example of the exact player I am talking about in my initial post. This is literally my entire point wrapped up into one comment. If you want a tl;dr look at what this guy just said, and tell me that the Major Order System is concise and easily understood by ALL players.

[Ishan451]

Originally posted by Catteus Of Mars:

my man we are loosing this BY DESIGN we are not supposed to win all the battles :D

There is no loss by design in this one. It was all predictable game mechanics as outlined here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b5spnm/galaxy_war_101_how_to_efficiently_liberate/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b5u34s/galaxy_war_102_supply_lines_what_happens_to/

The lack of awareness of supply lines likely cost us the victory, and it's been a topic of discussions all weekend as result of it. Spitz writing up some story about it after the fact to give it a bit of a Roleplay spin doesn't mean that what happened was pre-planned.

If we / the people fighting on the creek had defended draupnir we wouldn't have lost access to ubenae... if they had supported Ubenea instead of fighting on the creek, we would have captured the planet before we lost access by the loss of the Draupnir defense.

But alas, people being people. But nothing of this had anything to do with some conspiracy theories of devs influencing the outcome. It was predictable, based on how the game mechanics work.

[Majorita]

Originally posted by Ishan451:

There is no loss by design in this one. It was all predictable game mechanics as outlined here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b5spnm/galaxy_war_101_how_to_efficiently_liberate/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b5u34s/galaxy_war_102_supply_lines_what_happens_to/

The lack of awareness of supply lines likely cost us the victory, and it's been a topic of discussions all weekend as result of it. Spitz writing up some story about it after the fact to give it a bit of a Roleplay spin doesn't mean that what happened was pre-planned.

If we / the people fighting on the creek had defended draupnir we wouldn't have lost access to ubenae... if they had supported Ubenea instead of fighting on the creek, we would have captured the planet before we lost access by the loss of the Draupnir defense.

But alas, people being people. But nothing of this had anything to do with some conspiracy theories of devs influencing the outcome. It was predictable, based on how the game mechanics work.

No, it's not on the 'people being people' it is on the DEVELOPERS.

You cannot expect every single person who plays the video game to intuit and understand a system that is never explained to the player.

[Archfiend]

I was hoping the order would fail as I think we will probably get more interesting lore and content if we let the bots push over to Cyberstan.

[VIRUSOID]

>Players dont give a damn about the order
>loosing order in result
>"Developers, it's your fault!"
Bruh

[Kain]

When for the first time, a major order demanded conquering a planet that was not selectable for missions, I was confused and didn't know what to do. I subsequently just dived into planets reachable in its neighborhood. These could have provided supply lines, but didn't had to. I didn't knew the system behind which planet is reachable.

Displaying the supply lines could already make all the difference.

[BigJ]

We get a massive announcement when we log in and a major order is presented.

People just don't wanna do it. Bug players never touch bots and bot players rarely go outside of the Creek.

[GrinningRabbit]

ill simplify it for people to understand.

1. Do the objective in bold (MAJOR ORDER) when you look at the map on your ship.
2. if you are confused as to what planet to do to work towards the current objective.. try the planet literally next to the main obj that has THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE HITTING IT... really! its that simple!....
3. Ahem.. three if at any time you see DEFEND.. you know in BIG BOLD EMERGENCY LETTERS above a planet thats in a previous sector that we had to clear just to get to this one.. stop EVERYTHING and go and defend that please.. it has a MUCH shorter time bar than our current objective. Otherwise.. we lose access like we did last night..
4. After any defending simply go back to pushing a current objective.

It is as simple as that. when in doubt.. always do the defends on the same map side of the objective before going back to doing the main objective.

[Majorita]

Originally posted by GrinningRabbit:

ill simplify it for people to understand.

1. Do the objective in bold (MAJOR ORDER) when you look at the map on your ship.
2. if you are confused as to what planet to do to work towards the current objective.. try the planet literally next to it that has THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE HITTING IT... really! its that simple!....
3. Ahem.. three if at any time you see DEFEND.. you know in BIG BOLD EMERGENCY LETTERS above a planet thats in a previous sector that we had to clear just to get to this one.. stop EVERYTHING and go and defend that please.. it has a MUCH shorter time bar than our current objective. Otherwise.. we lose access like we did last night..
4. After any defending simply go back to pushing a current objective.

It is as simple as that. when in doubt.. always do the defends on the same map side of the objective before going back to doing the main objective.

"It is as simple as that," he said, after an elaborate four step process with lots of conditionals that aren't explained within the game anywhere.

Actually I'd say it's very complex for the layperson to understand, if you look at the links posted earlier in the thread. And this is the fault of the developers for none of this being explained in the video game.

Originally posted by VIRUSOID:

>Players dont give a damn about the order
>loosing order in result
>"Developers, it's your fault!"
Bruh

Well, I feel I went over this already in sufficient detail but let's break it down.

Players don't care about the order. Okay why? Well, a variety of reasons.

Let's say insufficient reward. Okay that's the developer's fault. Let's say, because they prefer one or the other faction. That might just be personal preference, or it could have an underlying cause in that bots or bugs aren't fun to fight. Which is on the developers. Then what else?

How about, it has a fundamental relation to the fact that players are given the choice to go wherever they want, and aren't given any coordination or direction from the people running the video game, and no strong indication for where they want people to go?

That's on the developers.

Originally posted by BigJ:

We get a massive announcement when we log in and a major order is presented.

People just don't wanna do it. Bug players never touch bots and bot players rarely go outside of the Creek.

I actually didn't even get any kind of announcement for this one, not sure why. Maybe I'm an anomaly, maybe others missed it too, but either way, it isn't good enough given it doesn't explain moment-to-moment what the current objective is.

If the Major Order is the primary objective, then sub-objectives like holding a specific planet, supply lines, etc, are all things that the game needs to TELL you about, or at least, like I suggested earlier, it needs to point them out, REALLY CLEARLY.

This is all the responsibility of the developer because no matter how much the community itself wants to try and fight, as a community or whatever, people are gonna fall through the cracks and not pay attention to Reddit, Steam forums, or even the in-game chat.

It's on the developers to make it abundantly clear to the users.

[SexualChocolate]

Too many people obsessed with the creek. Then again it can be a fun planet and people play for fun. Lots of people have a little time each day to enjoy their game so they probably just go to their favourite planet. For some it's space Vietnam and for others it's blasting bugs on Fori Prime.

IMO a great way to boost player numbers on the major order and defend order planets is to boost medals on them. If not medals then some other reward as the major order doesn't seem to appeal to a lot of people.

[RobeRonin]

yep

[shadain597]

If they really wanted people to do the thing, why not literally just gate planets off so if you wanna play bots, you can ONLY play the objective.

Oh hell no, don't give these devs any terrible ideas. You give paying customers carrot incentives, not the stick.

The biggest issue is that, quite simply, the devs don't explain anything in-game. Forcing casual players to get their info (on core game mechanics!) from a Discord channel, Reddit, unofficial wiki, or official Steam forum is setting them up for failure.

[TNinja]

I ignored a few Major Orders, because I didn't know you had to unlock the planets by taking specific planets in order, so I just went and did my own thing.

Look, I'm just here to shoot things, because my online feature is bugged.

I'm not gonna spend extra time looking up how this cryptic system work, outside a videogame I launched.