So the Fleshmob was designed bad on purpose

[Malidictus]

https://youtu.be/3pPGgHieWok?si=Dnra1L2fx9vb0hHG&t=194

The quote in question starts at 3:13, but here's what was said that I'm referring to in case you don't feel like watching the full video:

It's much faster than it looks, it's much more dangerous than it looks. Just count on throwing a lot of resources on it. [...] But that doesn't mean there's not gonna' be another one. There's gonna' be plenty of these.

This isn't me speculating or drawing inferences. It's not me fighting the enemy wrong or bringing the wrong weapons. This is the design goal behind the entire concept of the Fleshmob, spelled out in plain text: to be a resource sink.

Now, this could be my bias against the Illiminate's whole design talking, but... that'd describing an intentionally badly-designed enemy. The Fleshmob can't have weak points, because that would reduce its effective health and so reduce the resource cost in taking it down. It can't be slowed or staggered, because then players would be more easily able to evade them and thus avoid spending the resources. What, then is the point of discussing good balance or compelling gameplay in relation to an enemy that's intentionally designed to have neither?

I used to joke about Arrowhead's designiners building obvious weknesses into their enemies, then going back and removing all of them through mechanics. I'm not so sure it's a joke any more. In order to make the Fleshmob a proper ammo sink, all clever or creative ways of killing it had to be preemptively shut down, until we're left with the most basic, simplistic approach of "bring more DPS, bring more ammo".

And yes, I'm fully expecting the boilerplate "skill issue" responses. That's effectively a given on this forum. But consider this, before making that argument: Even if I were a god among men, able to take the Fleshmob down without ever being in danger or ever slowing down - would that change anything about its intended design? Would it make it less of a sandbag on legs, less of a DPS check? Being able to overcome bad design doesn't make that design any less bad. It just means we've found workarounds so we don't have to deal with it.

This has now become a pattern with Arrowhead. They design their enemies as hard gear checks first and foremost. If they have any more complex mechanics, it's entirely incidental and usually not terribly relevant to their intended design. After all, when the playerbase collectively discovered the unintended "Charger leg meta", Arrowhead's solution was to... remove it. Bump up leg armour and force players into shooting the Charger in the head - as it was apparently intended to be fought.

It genuinely feels like enemies in this game are all intended to be as boring as possible to fight. Any fun or creative ways of taking them down are unintended, and often rectified. Arrowhead rolled that back partially against Bug and Bot heavies, only to reintroduce it with the Illuminate all over again. This feels like Groundhog Day, and I don't like that feeling.

[NoDMoD]

Now that you mention it, it should have at least one weak point, like one stab from a meele weapon to the back to kill it with one blow.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by NoDMoD:

Now that you mention it, it should have at least one weak point, like one stab from a meele weapon to the back to kill it with one blow.

But that's the thing, though - this design philosophy precludes meaningful weak points altogether. If the Fleshmob had a spot you could shoot or stab for massive damage, then players wouldn't NEED to waste massive amounts of resources killing them. That goes against the Fleshmob's design as an everlasting gobstopper.

[NoDMoD]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

Originally posted by NoDMoD:

Now that you mention it, it should have at least one weak point, like one stab from a meele weapon to the back to kill it with one blow.

But that's the thing, though - this design philosophy precludes meaningful weak points altogether. If the Fleshmob had a spot you could shoot or stab for massive damage, then players wouldn't NEED to waste massive amounts of resources killing them. That goes against the Fleshmob's design as an everlasting gobstopper.

Yea, but having a hard to reach weak point that can only be attacked with a meelee weapon would suffice. Would be hard enough.

[Singularity's Marauder]

imo the fleshmob being a subversion is okay

i assume it s just supposed to be proof of illuminate s genius

i wish it had slightly less health though
it s not that i find it too challenging
i just find it a bit boring. Maybe even immersion breaking

it s like...
Why?
I guess they can keep it but it d be nice if they made another enemy of that kind and made the fleshmob less common

something that is a bit more fun to fight

and they should buff the interloper

[[Asgard] Thor]

Fire or explosives drop them pretty quick. I had a lot of luck with the scorcher and spreading around the little aoe on hit. Scythe or laser cannon burns very well with the new ticks. They need to fix the random times it gets a long melee attack and the ghosting through walls.

[Fuzzyballs01 ꦙ]

Originally posted by NoDMoD:

Originally posted by Malidictus:

But that's the thing, though - this design philosophy precludes meaningful weak points altogether. If the Fleshmob had a spot you could shoot or stab for massive damage, then players wouldn't NEED to waste massive amounts of resources killing them. That goes against the Fleshmob's design as an everlasting gobstopper.

Yea, but having a hard to reach weak point that can only be attacked with a meelee weapon would suffice. Would be hard enough.

if I can meelee it, I can shoot that weak point
stupid idea

[Lunaire]

There are some weapons that can melt them pretty easily and economically. (wasp)
I think the real problem is, if you try to solo the game(if you take the wasp to deal with fleshmobs and overseers, you don't have anything to deal with airplanes and tripods) but then, it was meant to be cooped.

[Kibou]

lol, flying overseers are still the most dangerous illuminate enemy by far, with the crescent ones in second place now. git gud

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Asgard Thor:

Fire or explosives drop them pretty quick.

Originally posted by Lunaire:

There are some weapons that can melt them pretty easily and economically.

Right, I'm not arguing that there aren't good ways to kill the Fleshmob. Rather, I'm arguing that they're incidental. If that video is to be believed, Arrowhead don't WANT us killing the Fleshmob easily. The whole point of the enemy is to drain our resources. It's the core design that's bad - even if we can find ways around it. I'm just surprised to see a developer come out and say the quiet part out loud: "We designed an enemy specifically to waste your ammo."

[NoDMoD]

Originally posted by Fuzzyballs01 ꦙ:

Originally posted by NoDMoD:

Yea, but having a hard to reach weak point that can only be attacked with a meelee weapon would suffice. Would be hard enough.

if I can meelee it, I can shoot that weak point
stupid idea

No, it could be a custom animation with a sword attack. No need to make it vulnerable to shots.

[Gnome_Bandit]

It's a tank that can be damaged by light-pen weapons. Of course it has a ton of HP.

[Singularity's Marauder]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

Originally posted by Asgard Thor:

Fire or explosives drop them pretty quick.

Originally posted by Lunaire:

There are some weapons that can melt them pretty easily and economically.

Right, I'm not arguing that there aren't good ways to kill the Fleshmob. Rather, I'm arguing that they're incidental. If that video is to be believed, Arrowhead don't WANT us killing the Fleshmob easily. The whole point of the enemy is to drain our resources. It's the core design that's bad - even if we can find ways around it. I'm just surprised to see a developer come out and say the quiet part out loud: "We designed an enemy specifically to waste your ammo."

can't we just have enemies that challenge us though?
Why is it bad that there is an enemy that can't be killed easily and drains our resources?
Isn't that why specifically the Illuminate made it?

[Random Person]

Originally posted by Singularity's Marauder:

Originally posted by Malidictus:

Right, I'm not arguing that there aren't good ways to kill the Fleshmob. Rather, I'm arguing that they're incidental. If that video is to be believed, Arrowhead don't WANT us killing the Fleshmob easily. The whole point of the enemy is to drain our resources. It's the core design that's bad - even if we can find ways around it. I'm just surprised to see a developer come out and say the quiet part out loud: "We designed an enemy specifically to waste your ammo."

can't we just have enemies that challenge us though?
Why is it bad that there is an enemy that can't be killed easily and drains our resources?
Isn't that why specifically the Illuminate made it?

You can make enemies a challenge in far more effective way than just making them tanky. If you want to see a version of the Illuminate thats actually a threat to a full team of Helldivers, play against them in the first game on max difficulty.

Also, I don't think the fleshmob being tanky is the issue. Its the fact they literally don't have weak points, because they figured it would get in the way of how tanky it was, even though its a mind numbingly basic enemy that direly need the depth to encountering it, because right now its just game of juking and shooting until it dies.

[CadiMossy]

Brah stop crying, you are just trash, and don't want to learn the game. Shoot the damn faces on it those are the weak spots. They have no armor. Thermite nades. Eagle strafing run one taps it.Eagle cluster bombs and Airburst rocket launcher. Let it charge you like a charger and shoot more faces after you dodge it. Flamethrowers. Machine gun turrent. All effective.

[Robert II. Flanderský]

Originally posted by Asgard Thor:

Fire or explosives drop them pretty quick.

I dont know what i am doing wrong, but support flamethrower will take one out in about 70% of one mag. And it takes few seconds.
Which, even if they dont rush into you, is sub ideal.