Thoughts On The Helldivers 2 Buffs

[@saithvenomdrone]

The way I want to have a hard time in this game is by having enemies be overwhelming, not that my arsenal of tools suck.

[@Spider_Gooch]

@@saithvenomdrone I generally agree with what you’re saying but there’s a lot of nuance behind it. If enemies are more overwhelming we have to ask in what way. More of them or more variants or more health and damage? The higher you push the difficulty the more inadequacies will be found in an arsenal. Then we’re back to square one.

[@chrisedwards6573]

Arrowhead: "Why not both?"

[@Nartanek]

@@Spider_Gooch No, if weapons can deal with enemies effectively, even if there are tons of enemies, the game will feel challenging while also giving us the impression we have good weapons.

[@Spider_Gooch]

@@Nartanek I have to disagree. Everything being more effective now the game is less challenging than before. Ratotoskr states plainly he struggled at 7 and now finished super hell dive map clears with ease. I played a bit and can confirm that the challenge level has shifted significantly. At a certain point we will hit a critical mass of enemies that can be put on screen. It’s not a good solution to difficulty.

[@dmar3651]

​​@@Spider_Goochwhile I get what you're saying, the player numbers showed a clear undeniable proof that the direction that AH were taking before, ie more nerfs than buffs for the sake of balance, was the Wrong direction. Look at the Arc Thrower, which had, and Im not joking, a Buff to Nerf ratio of... wait for it... 1 to 8. That's right. 1 buff, for 8 nerfs. All of this, to make the game more "challenging". Sure, it's an Easy solution to adding challenge and difficulty to the game, but I would Hardly call it the Right one. I personally believe that a game should be fun, engaging and challenging. And I think that most players would agree with me here. I hope that AH see the numbers of players that have returned, see their feedback, and Learn from this experience. Remember, "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." AH now can take their time tweeking things, and focusing on QoL changes and new content, now that players are... playing again.

[@zokisan9554]

"complaining works." ~ ancient proverb

[@I-ONLY-BUILD-MECHS-AND-DUSTERS]

"radahn is a mess" *they fix it 2 months late* Like pottery

[@MrSggurcs]

Yay...nothing wrong can come of this.

[@postal3412]

A pretty common problem among doctors is thinking that the patient's thoughts on potential causes don't hold value. Seems like that applies here, too

[@MrThephonypope]

Should be noted that it's an even more common problem that a patient will self-diagnose or draw a wrong conclusion based on what evidence they are experiencing, or imagining they are experiencing (which isn't to say that doctors don't wrongly diagnose or make incorrect assumptions, patients need to know to advocate for themselves at all times and ideally have another witness with them during significant doctor visits) But yeah, think to all the folks during COVID who attributed any number of wild symptoms to the vaccine when they were more commonly unrelated I think a more pertinent question is if the developers are qualified enough at their craft to be the "doctors" in this simile, I have no reason to think one way or another here I haven't played any of the games they've developed, Helldivers 2 seems neat though

[@nickhoude21]

*remembering a story of a person complaining about a number of symptoms, multiple doctors brushing them off or accusing them of complaining for attention, a friend of theirs saying "that sounds like crohn's", and a doctor later diagnosing them with crohn's*

[@exemplify6593]

​@@MrThephonypope they were not qualified to make that call at all. I think your question is exactly the crux of this issue: the devs kept thinking that having piss-poor weaponry was the way to keep their difficulty fantasy alive. Allow me to draw a comparison: if you are, like me, a fan of Fromsoft titles, you're also a fan of challenges. Imagine if Elden Ring was as difficult as it was, but you could only upgrade some of your weapons to level 10, and some to level 15. No weapon could be upgraded to level 20. Every boss would feel like a slog for the average player, and would be less fun across the board. Even when players do soul-level 1 challenges, they always upgrade their weapons to max. That's because dying easily is fun when you can learn to combat it; learning enemy habits, move sets, etc. What isn't fun to the widest audience is feeling like you can't kill something in a reasonable amount of time

[@baconx6476]

In most cases, they would be correct to think that. While they should respect the patient's concern on the matter, they can't just go along with everyone's self diagnosis, as that would waste both time and resources that can be spent on other patients.

[@FazeParticles]

@@MrThephonypope if a patient is not insane then they simply need to state accurately what they did that's it. then the doctor will know what happened.

[@marcoasierrabernal4893]

A doctor can kill the patient if they are too cocky to not listen to the patient family telling the doctor their family member has a history of a disease. There are difficulties in games but there is fun and unfunny difficulties. Helldivers became unfair. It was not that you were bad it was because you got bombarded by enemies and you were unable to deal with those situations.

[@chrisedwards6573]

And as a consequence only certain weapons and stratagems worked and therefore were worth taking. Arrowhead acting like the players don't know what's wrong is the height of hubris.

[@AccordYeen]

I think the issue was that they were attached to the "horror" of being a helldiver, a disposable pawn from a totalitarian society, carelessly dumped into battles far outside their class; but that didn't mesh into the framework they'd built for the game. all their attempts to make the game "scary" instead made it "frustrating". probably because death is often instant, frequent, and quickly glossed over with the dropping of a new diver. we've all already made our peace with our deaths, and we don't have time to be scared: there's bugs that need killing.

[@Spider_Gooch]

@@AccordYeen I’m not sure there will ever be a good solution to the player having to both be under powered and super fragile while also indulging a power fantasy of being a super special soldier man with an entire arsenal at his fingertips. At its core it really doesn’t make sense and from a gameplay standpoint it can be contradictory at times. Making frequent death a novelty and not an annoyance might very well be impossible.

[@ZuckerbergsAi]

​@@Spider_Goochit should be a matter of underfunding. supply drops should be on a longer cooldown, and make it more economical to just drop a new diver. people are complaining that divers take too much damage. that is a step in the wrong direction.

[@Spider_Gooch]

@@ZuckerbergsAi I think this is a generally good idea. If anything I think going along with what you’re saying then the additional ammo booster and additional respawns should just be on by default. Maybe respawns could be made a tad faster. Then dying is less painful and you don’t have to worry about ammo as much. Also maybe strange but perhaps there could be an incentive to dying like reduce cool down on stratagems. I’m just spitballing but I think there’s potential there.

[@chickensofdeath490]

They had the right idea for this game, just a bad balance team. Now they have the wrong idea for this game and a bad balance team. Very sad the direction this game is heading.

[@ducasse8473]

I don't think they were attached to any kind of feel, they very clearly just assumed that players wouldn't enjoy OP weapons for the sale of saving difficulty.

[@risonyeo232]

now buff progression

[@Pr0phet_Taker_official]

Fr because suspiciously the super cred drops went from 100 every few pickups to 10 every pickup

[@ZuckerbergsAi]

nah we need passives on the helmet and cape first, got to learn how to walk before you run

[@LeadMetal82]

​@@Pr0phet_Taker_official Just farm credits on trivial or a couple levels up. I don't usually play high level for farming anyway, so this is a non issue personally

[@Pr0phet_Taker_official]

@@LeadMetal82 bro I tried that shii but the thing is I don't want to just walk around and get like maybe 30 at best if I have someone with me to get into the bunkers, I like to be in the filthy situations and all of a sudden find a bunker with 100 creds instead of grinding for pennies

[@LeadMetal82]

@@Pr0phet_Taker_official Not gonna argue with you on that. I miss getting 100 on helldive too, but chances for that is so slim, even in the earlier versions.

[@4evermilkman]

The pivot in balance thinking is definitely because they missed having 400k people logging into thier game.

[@RESGorilla]

Alternatively, getting 400k worth of differing responses regarding balance is fucking maddening

[@4evermilkman]

@@RESGorilla they could ignore it all and just look at player numbers and their own actions. Every update more people quit the game and now after a completely opposite update, the player base quadrupled over night

[@4evermilkman]

@@RESGorilla you are right thou, it must be maddening

[@Spider_Gooch]

@@4evermilkman tbf retaining peak player count would have basically been impossible. I think most games like this successfully retain maybe between 10-20 percent. Only time will tell if this new player surge will be sustained long term.

[@4evermilkman]

@@Spider_Gooch yea it's hard to say, some games build up slow but get strong playerbase, this one had a huge surge, kinda like Elden Ring, so many people were getting something that maybe they normally wouldn't have. The issue is that hard games with sort of repetitive gameplay are for a small crowd while horde or arcade style shooters can appeal to the masses. They can make everyone happy if they had new harder difficulty, and one more level of progression, but idk exactly what

[@NME10E]

COMPLAINING ALONE DOESN’T WORK. Voicing your complaints, threatening to leave if change doesn’t happen, then leaving after no change works.

[@deedeekreep9139]

Just sounds like alot of crying. I'm good

[@PapagenoX09]

...which is basically what happened. Primary and support weapons should do more than cause the enemy "mild discomfort."

[@RED_Theory038]

​@@deedeekreep9139well fuck you we got what we want

[@THENemesisXX99]

Guess the American Revolution came about from just a lot of crying huh?​@@deedeekreep9139

[@Jurgir09]

​@@deedeekreep9139 U tried 2 sound smart but end up sounding cringe

[@rhetro777]

You may often have an easier time on higher difficulties because you're more likely to get matched with experienced players who've been doing it for hours every day. How good or bad your teammates are is HUGE for how difficult missions feel. You dive with 3 veterans and all you have to do is not f**k it up for everybody. Play below 7 and there's tons of newbies doing more harm than good.

[@Icidulon]

Play at 7 and that's still true.

[@mattm3023]

Yeah Ive found 6 to be the hardest difficulty because its the minimum difficulty for super samples, so you get terrible players in there. Ive played level 6 disasters and sweeped through levels 10s with 0 deaths on the squad (pre buffs)

[@mitchelltaylor9958]

Yes this is a huge reason, good teammates make the missions a breeze. Solo diff 10 is objectively more deadly due to the player damage changes, albeit with the catch that you can also deal much more damage back. I will say though that it is in fact much easier due to players having many more options with dealing with fabricators and not needing a reason to stick around objectives much longer and the compounding change to weapons means a premade or a decent 4-man will easily do missions.

[@ReedSolutions]

Kinda funny. Difficulty 7 but the dude went for main objective and rush to extraction. Sadly im the team squad i had to kick him out. Atleast he didnt lose his sample.

[@PapagenoX09]

I'm completely in agreement with you, but the problem is everyone was a noob once, and needs to learn. I'm still not nearly as good as I could be with over 100 hours in (close to 200 I think). Part of it is that I'm older (63) so there's a natural limit on how good I can get-- the reaction times of yore aren't there anymore. But the other part of it is that the devs introduce all these different and new mission types (not to mention enemy types) with literally no guidance (AFAIK--if I'm wrong please enlighten me) on exactly what you're supposed to do for each particular mission type, enemy or side objective. You're just supposed to pick it up while the bugs and bots are trying to murder you. That's fine if the mission is "Wipe out bug nests" or "Destroy this many of the enemy" but some of the more elaborate ones could do with some guidance ahead of time.

[@SoulsBourne101]

5:51 stares down rocket like a chad

[@lolbuster01]

Liberty will protect me.

[@AdamantPetra]

"If I die, I die with freedom on my lips"

[@J_rolly.b]

The game feels like I'm only being punished for missplays at high difficulties instead of being punished for existing.

[@Degarth]

Even post patch, I have had cakewalk 10's and nightmare 10's. It has always been very random.

[@ZeroRulz0]

As a high skilled player(I can solo helldive) I do not want them to nerf anything lmao. And I don't know anyone on my level who wants them to nerf anything. What they could do though is revert the charger/bile titan spawning back to how it originally was and leave the mob density as is. Because that was an odd change when the original complaint was nothing felt good to use and all our anti charger/bile titan options felt bad to use.

[@ZeroRulz0]

It's also important to note that they did have stealth nerfs in this patch. Specifically to the HMG. For whatever reason they nerfed its durability damage from 55 to 35 and they buffed the head health on devastators.

[@Kohth_0]

I was thinking that samething tbh. Six bile titans from one bug breach would be defiantly make the game harder.

[@raemac9226]

I agree with you 100%, but they're gonna try and please the 90% of decent players rather than the top 1p%

[@hondaelias]

@@Kohth_0and wouldn't even be hard to deal with now. I run the engineer armor and thermite, i can essentially kill 5 titans within a couple seconds by hitting some nade headshots.

[@ZeroRulz0]

@@raemac9226 nah. They'll try and please the people in the discord who flip flop on everything because they're too busy polishing each other's knobs. They've gone from the game is going to die because of nerfs to the game is going to die because of buffs. What they need to do is ignore the discord and watch the streamer/KZbinrs and what the majority of the comments talk about

[@Aegxs]

Arrowhead did in fact, find an underlying issue. Yes it was among a bunch of buffs, but the most significant thing was armored foes. And Anti tanks and heavily armored enemies both got reworked heavily in the damage department. Overwhelmingly so, Chargers were frequently discussed as too strong, so devs addressed out capability to fight armored foes more efficiently. The primary guns getting buffed up was window dressing and good press while actually making meaningful changes to the real threats to balance. To use the doctor analogy, it’s like receiving candy at the end of a doctor’s visit.

[@notputtingmynamehere]

"Complaining works" More like losing most of the playerbase works

[@Rokumasu853]

Looking forward to the future “Dragon’s Dogma 2 Casual Mode” update video

[@FlutterSwag]

"No nerfs, only buffs" Proceeds to constantly buff the bugs and bots after this update

[@Darkwater1886]

Patient: Doctor my leg is broken!! I need a cast. AH Doctor: I know you think your leg is broken because it's bent at a broken angle however you are not a doctor like me. So have you tried not walking on it? Try this bandage and come back in 60 days. Now pay me.

[@eafieeteafiee8022]

Higher difficulties in this game pre patch felt like Goat Simulator where you ragdoll all over the place.

[@jacobantaya7423]

Ragdoll is still an issue. If you dive on even slightly sloped ground chances are you'll Ragdoll, I think the length of time you can be in air before ragdolling should be doubled at least

[@dagdamor1]

This is the second time Pilesdt got heavily involved in a bailout patch, and he's honestly delivered big-time, two out of two. It's such a departure from the behavior of big name studios and developers, and I'm happy the HD2 community turned out to reward that kind of responsiveness to the players.

[@ImpPoster]

Skill expression > Difficulty. The ability to choose a decent loadout and be able to see how it could be skillfully used to progress a win condition. Post may patches made it feel like correctly using a primary or stratagem was a net loss.

[@bonehed1]

This is exactly on the money. I used to genuinely feel stupid if I spent too much time shooting things in this shooter game. The meta has always been to throw airstrikes at your problems and run away. Complete the objective ASAP, don't shoot at everything you see, don't fight longer than you need. It just wasn't fun, nor was it skillful. It just took basic game knowledge. The game is easier now, if you still play like this. But now, if you want to take everything head-on and get stuck in huge fights, you actually can enjoy yourself doing so. Getting rushed by massive breaches is where the fun is at, and where you will see actual skill expression.

[@r.k845]

@@bonehed1No you won’t lol

[@beardmaster6208]

The railgun nerf was bad from the begining. The reason it was good was because of a bug. Arrowhead in their infinite wisdom instead of looking into it a try to understand why it was so good, just nerf it.

[@deedeekreep9139]

Nahh that first nerf was deserved. Had nerds kicking people for not choosing the rail gun. That was a big reason why they did it

[@jacobantaya7423]

​@@deedeekreep9139 if people want to kick someone for not being meta let them. Probably don't want to play with those people anyway.

[@Underground3]

@@deedeekreep9139 They weren't kick because people didn't choose the meta weapon. They were likely kick for either poor mines placement or team killing with strategems.

[@deedeekreep9139]

@Underground3 hence why the nerf was good

[@jacobantaya7423]

@@Underground3 did you mean "they wereN'T kickED because..."? The tone and later sentences seem to be disagreeing with op but your initial phrase is agreeing with him. Yeah I've kicked people who were too inattentive with their strats, after getting hit by the 4th or 5th cluster bomb it stops being funny.

[@Joseph-mw2rl]

That doctor-patient analogy is WILD. Cause that's basically saying, we are right, you just don't know it. And turns out they were dead wrong FOR A YEAR, and almost killed their own god damn game

[@Americium-120]

No, they were right, they just used the wrong metaphor. The community were more like fat people and the developer a trainer. The community wanted to be fit and muscular, but didn't want to put in the time so they demanded the standard be changed. When it didn't change, the fat community started leaving and the gym started to empty. In fear of the gym closing down, they started telling everybody who was fat that they were healthy and all the fat people started telling the fit people "we're as good as you now, we put in the effort" by the mere act of complaining. In the same way that the fat people will still be fat even if they changed the standard, the bad people are still going to be bad and just not know it because everything is so easy now.

[@clems_first]

​@@Americium-120I absolutely disagree with you, as someone who could do diff 9 and diff 10 quite easely with any half decent random squad 1fter the escalation of Freedom update. The debuffs and enemies present made it pretty clear what I needed to take in every mission: anything that could kill as many heavy enemies, as quickly as possible. I had to bring at least 3 stratagems with me purely to deal with heavies and even still that was barely enough to hold out. Against bugs I was a pretty good at surviving encounters, killing enemies that were in my way, killing as many enemies in general and running off to and around objectives and eventually completing them (in some situations I was also almost able to complete an entire match by myself, usually stopped by bs). After the recent patch, I’ve been testing weapons I’ve never considered before. I have died way more often than before and since it has been a bit of a while since I last played I guess I am also a bit rusty to boot. But one thing is for sure, the game has become more fun. Now I die more from being overwhelmed, usually because I forgot the ”run away” part of survival (skill issue for sure). I no longer need to take 3 slots purely for heavies, it makes the standard machine gun an actually viable option for diff 10, with the quantity of medium and light enemies, since I no longer spend every footstep held back by an army of heavy enemies. I would agree that maybe a couple enemies need buffing. One of those I’ve found to be Stalkers, who die to the Flamer way too quickly (we’re talking seconds, in which they don’t even get to get close to me). Maybe add a couple more small enemies per patrol or reinforcement. But overall I would say the game has gotten a lot better. Playing diff 10 is actually more fun than it feels like a chore, which for a game; is usually good.

[@ewy4010]

@@Americium-120 hard disagree. 2 things: - When we're talking easy vs hard, we shouldn't be only talking about the types of enemies we're facing for each difficulty, we should also talk about the intensity and pressure by the enemies as is numbers. You can put the hardest enemy to kill like the bile titan / factory strider on difficulty 1, but it still wouldn't be hard because there's only a single of them and no other enemies pressure around. So the hardest enemy can become easy just by the quantity factor alone. But that also forces us to bring the appropriate weapon, which pre-update is only a handful of them. And in the case of bile titan, only hard AT and offensive strat can do that. So my first point is, difficulty also comes in numbers. The pre-patch problem when you're suggesting "just play easier difficulty if you can't handle 7-10", is that diff 6 has a VERY LOW enemy count which have a huge gap to 7. There's no intensity, no pressure, everything is a walk in a park. But when you want some intensity, you drop into 7 and the intensity & diff also increased significantly. This will alienate people who want intensity but not stepping into hardest difficulty. So there's this disparity between intensity & difficulty that AH haven't managed to scale the progression properly. - Second thing is meta. As I pointed out, all the hardest enemy can become easy as long as no other pressure present, but it also forces us to equip a narrow selection of tools that can be bring to the mission, which incidentally creates a narrow meta. Post-patch, most support weapon can handle titans & factory strider, but with a significantly lower TTK than the hard AT, which makes the hard AT still have a proper specialized place while the medium AT is more of a jack of all trade. This also opens up the meta, causing more weapon to be viable and makes more usage spread throughout the arsenal.

[@BackwardsPancake]

@@ewy4010 This is all true, and I think the note about difficulty/intensity not being handled well in particular is important and not recognized enough. Especially because of how difficulty interacts with "enemy constellations": Basically, for any given mission, the game will randomly choose a predefined set of enemy spawning parameters depending on the faction you're fighting. For example, when you're fighting terminids, you might get a mission that's all commanders and hunters with very few heavies, or the one that has a lot of nursing spewers, scavengers and chargers, or most noticeably a mission where you meet Bile Spewers, Bile Warriors, and Spitters (which never show up in the terminid lineup outside of this particular "constellation"). The interesting part is, the "constellations" are the same between difficulties, but some difficulties have certain enemy types banned or massively reduced from spawning. So that "nursing spewers, scavengers and chargers" constellation might be nothing but nursing spewers and scavengers on lower difficulties, since charger spawns are not allowed. So although the scenario is the same, going up just one difficulty could actually make an exponential difference in how practically challenging that mission actually is.

[@Stierenkloot]

Yeah what a jackass. The only relevant metric is the fun players have. Balance doesn’t mean fucking shit. What a pompous arrogant ass

[@yourehorrible8082]

Yes. You have power as a consumer. Use it. That’s how you push tone deaf companies to better themselves and their product.

[@ncpolley]

"that's how the market works" The market is not an organism and has no incentive to purge itself of bad products so long as the bad product remains profitable.

[@italoviturino6386]

@@ncpolley your comment in no way refute his.

[@ncpolley]

@@italoviturino6386 How about I spell it out for you. The market does not work systemically to rid itself of "tone deaf companies" because the market does not "care" about companies ethics or how much they listen to consumers, only that money continues to flow to the company. As long as the incentives to buy (rational or irrational or induced or free) outweigh the incentives to stop buying, a company will continue to sell its products. You seem to think that consumers input matters when companies have a market advantage.

[@italoviturino6386]

@@ncpolley Of course the "market" does not care, bc it is an extrapolation of what is the amalgamation of all the inputs every single individual makes, if the number of (relevant) players that do care outweight the ones that dont, the "market" will reflect that, even if only long term. Yes of course i do think consumers matter, because they actually do, to think otherwise is absurd, especially in the entertainment industry.

[@ncpolley]

@@italoviturino6386 You seem dedicated to ignoring every qualifier I used.

[@plagueseer]

CEO: you see we’re the doctor and you’re the patient Gamers: I just asked for no pickles

[@atomicbanana55]

Thankfully, various people within AH have said that more buffs for some of the weapons and stratagems that were missed in the initial buff patch will be coming in upcoming updates as the 60 day balancing period is not over. I think the reasoning behind the sudden changes is manyfold, and community backlash played no small part in that. Right now, they're making all the weapons good, then making further adjustments from there to maintain challange and difficulty. What's more probable from this point on will be further difficulty levels, new enemy types or varients, and enemy buffs and changes to make them more challenging. One of my favorite things about the update is that the Emancipator is actually really nice now, so I plan to use it much more often. Really like the gas changes as well, as someone who's been a fan of gas since before it was cool. The scythe and dagger changes were also great, and it's really nice to have an effective precision sidearm now. I'm now confident that AH is capable of working out any remaining kinks in the system with time now that their hand was forced to try something different.

[@qu1253]

Unfortunately, the update isn't all good. We've already discovered two undocumented nerfs. The HMG had its durable damage cut by nearly half, from 55 all the way down to 35 (mind you, the HMG is nowhere even close to being a 'meta' weapon so this nerf is nonsensical). Devastator heads went from 125 HP no armor, to 100 HP light armor. One step forward, three steps back. I will seriously never understand why Arrowhead hates their players so much. Also, they've massively nerfed super credit drops to push more people into buying microtransactions. That needs to be called out.

[@atomicbanana55]

@@qu1253 I mean, those shadow nerfs are more like 5 steps forward, 1 step back. They certainly weren't necessary, but they're generally quite minor. I believe the HMG durable damage nerf was related to it being able to pen the armor of way more things now. Still probably wasn't needed, but also still generally better than it was before.

[@gigahertz7352]

@@atomicbanana55 yeah the changes on HP and armors of enemies made HMG so good now, yesterday i can't even believe me and my friend survived Diff 10 while me only using HMG and Suppl pack i could never imagine it during pre nerf

[@qu1253]

@@atomicbanana55 They also completely dumpstered armor and made it worthless. Light and heavy armor are a death sentence. The only armor class worth anything now is medium armor.

[@atomicbanana55]

@@qu1253 It's not worthless, but I do think they tweaked things a bit too much with the player armor. I hear light armor is pretty rough, but Medium and Heavy are still quite workable. I imagine Light armor enjoyers might have to use more CC to survive in the current state of the game since getting hit once or twice may be enough to take them out.

[@exemplify6593]

That quoute from one of the devs where they talked about being a doctor is so pompous and conceited. They were not qualified to make that call at all. It took the community the better part of a year to make them understand. The devs kept thinking that having piss-poor weaponry was the way to keep their difficulty fantasy alive. It was not. Let me explain. Allow me to draw a comparison: if you are like me, a fan of Fromsoft titles, you're also a fan of challenges. Imagine if Elden Ring was as difficult as it was, but you could only upgrade some of your weapons to level 10, and some to level 15. No weapon could be upgraded to level 20. Every boss would feel like a slog for the average player, and would be less fun across the board. Even when players do soul-level 1 challenges, they always upgrade their weapons to max. That's because dying easily is fun when you can learn to combat it; learning enemy habits, move sets, etc. What isn't fun to the widest audience is feeling like you can't kill something in a reasonable amount of time. Feeling like your slapping something with a balloon sword is much less interesting and engaging than feeling like somewhat of a glass cannon. We desperately needed this weapons patch. I'm excited to see the difficulty of this game intensify in healthier ways as we move forward!

[@spinone-d2]

Exactly, I'm a FromSoft fan as well and there is a reason their formula works and for Helldivers it doesn't. The game was better going in the direction of DRG - a co-op PVE horde shooter for everyone - that's how it was at launch and for those first few months when it felt great. Afterwards, they pivoted and lost the larger (and better imo) target audience by ruining our weapons to make the game more "difficult". I'm glad they reverted and I hope they continue in this direction, if people want more challenge, maybe that can be the Illuminate.

[@Planterobeets]

I don't think they understood FromSoft’s philosophy; maybe now they do, but I am unsure. See, the thing about most Fromsoft games(Sekiro being the exception) is that you can become a one-shot god or be a naked guy with a stick. It comes down to knowledge and how much time you're willing to spend gathering it. AH thought forcing players to be the naked guy with a stick without any other options was Fromsoft’s philosophy.

[@spinone-d2]

@ I agree yeah, I’m a FromSoft game you can beat a boss with skill, but in Helldivers it’s literally just running away

[@israelwilson4022]

Every now and then the doctor will be wrong and the patient will be right, looks like this is one of them

[@chi7818]

Who would have thought that in a live service game where you depend on people to continuously, that listening to the people playing would have positive effects.

[@OP10thNakama]

In the first game patrol alerts continuously spawned enemies. In this game there is an internal cool down that prevents more spawn. The weapons now feel more like the first game in that they kill quick BUT with endless enemy spawns you eventually have to run away because your resources get depleted.

[@Sabindurain]

Squeaky wheel gets the napalm

[@zackcab1471]

people forget that the first game had 15 difficulties. the challenge is coming.

[@malicmarrow4726]

Well they did buff enemy damage which is really cool.

[@kalashydra9016]

6:40 nah its still hard . it depends on what kind of enemies, objective placements etc you get in the mision . sometimes you get easier map , sometimes you get harder map. and sometimes you get stupid temmates (or they just have bad luck) and the mision gets pretty dificult

[@deedeekreep9139]

Pretty damn easy in comparison though

[@jacobantaya7423]

​@@deedeekreep9139 not really no. Play with only 2 people it feels better, something is weird with the spawn rates, playing with 4 is super easy but 2 felt good. Probably could still use more chaff enemies like hunters and alpha warriors. So obviously they need to triple the spawn rates for 4 mans, particularly more chaff like warriors and hunters. But that was the case before this patch, easy then easy now.

[@deedeekreep9139]

@@jacobantaya7423 literally easy as fuk now

[@evazinz9755]

he is exaggerating big time, there's no way pre-patched difficulty 5 was harder than current difficulty 10.

[@jacobantaya7423]

@@deedeekreep9139 play with fewer people and take all the fights. The game was easy before if your goal is just completing the mission. Now it's fun to battle it out. But if you're 4 manning then yeah it's easy, but the weapons aren't the issue it's the spawn rates and mission design. More hunters, more alpha warriors, more objectives that force the team to hold on say a hill or something for 2 1/2 minutes. Weapons don't need to feel like piss to increase the difficulty.

[@MOTAGORO]

Oh don't worry....we got something coming. We will be reminded why we are Helldivers. But for now lets have fun.

[@asinineintentions7773]

Something I said a while ago was that Difficulty is not, and was never the problem. The game was never "too hard" for me. The issue was the lack of viability and variety. Every top difficulty squad always had to have certain staple weapons or it was effectively impossible to play. Players were getting kicked for taking a "bad loadout", weapons that you spent time and effort unlocking were simply downgrades to others. Not sidegrades, and not even slight downgrades, they were straight up bad. I was so excited when they mentioned decreasing the number of heavily armoured enemies and substituting them for MORE enemies in general a while before the patch. To be honest, I never noticed the difference, at least not in a meaningful enough way to change my loadouts. Chargers and especially Bile Titans, as you were slowly grinding up through the difficulties, started off feeling like Left 4 Dead special infected, and that was really fun. Each presented a unique challenge and necessitated changes in strategy, but the caveat is that this happened WHEN they showed up. Each BT spawn was an "oh shit get the AT" moment. Then you get to diff 9 and the AT never fuckin left your hands.

[@john-paul3271]

Careful with blanket statements. They didn’t buff everything. They nerfed head and limb health. You’ll find you die even quicker now in game. Time to kill player was already immensely fast though prior. With all the buffs, this sort of got glossed over.

[@petercottantail7850]

oh is that why i die so much now? im pretty much only running shield pack now cause I'm sick of things surprise killing me

[@Wizard_Pikachu]

A buff to strategem upgrades would be a welcome change. Still waiting for another update before trying it again.

[@4evermilkman]

It's gonna be in about 28 days or so

[@zeppelinfan9999]

I tried it, best way to put it is "it's better... But the spark is gone"

[@Deadspace251]

​@@zeppelinfan9999 the Spark's gone from you?

[@zeppelinfan9999]

Nothing AH does anymore feels exciting, just expected or desperate. E.g. new enemies feel expected (still no new faction btw), reverting nerfs feels desperate (albeit necessary). Nothing here feels exciting, or even really a proper attempt to bring the playerbase back. It feels like the same, kinda shitty, but still kinda endearing(but way less than before) game I left in April.

[@TooTrue22-24]

⁠@@zeppelinfan9999game is in the best state it’s ever been in. You are being pissy because you enjoy being pissy.

[@ZanderSabbag]

As an actual doctor, I can tell you this: the patient may sometimes be wrong about or not know why they are in pain, but we still give them the fucking painkillers as we continue to investigate the reason, and reassure them things will be dealt with as best as possible, instead of mocking.

[@MrPlastyfikator]

This is older than computer games, it's being a good DM 101. If your players got hold of a powerful weapon or artifact that trivialize your game sessions you can: A. Let them steamroll everything without adjusting anything B. Make BS excuse to take away their powerful stuff C. Let them keep the powerful stuff but introduce new challenges that promotes smart usage of their powerful stuff. A is boring and kills the fun, B is unfair and makes players want to kill DM (that's what AH did for some dumb reason), C is what good DMs (and game developera) should always strive to do. Helldivers 1 has 15 difficulty levels, HD2 only 10. If AH correctly increaes difficulty then the game will be fun.

[@Morbak546]

I'm all for realism. An rpg would destroy a charger like it would a tank

[@Stierenkloot]

Exactly. No large bug should be a match for heavy modern weaponry. And now they have fixed this balance. I’m very very happy.

[@Planterobeets]

6:33 Players who are that good can play solo and create their own challenges and limitations. One player who was doing no Deaths solo runs can now, after the buffs, do No Damage solo runs. They say it takes them up to 8 hours of non-stop gameplay to pull off.

[@lancehaderlie9587]

I think they can return spawn rates to what they were before the nerfs now. Plus I'm hoping they can increase enemy aggression on higher difficulty, maybe add more enemy variants of heavies

[@Fatlumpthe1st]

I think they already did revert the spawn rates, or at least increased them a bit. I played a couple days before and after the update and the enemy count skyrocketed. I saw maybe one or two Factory Striders at most before the update and afterwards there was one or two at a time every few minutes 😂

[@TheBlackCoyoteGaming]

Nope they gave you casuals what you wanted you wanted it easier game at the hardest difficulty that's what you got I don't I hope they don't change anything I hope they make it even easier just to make the point that you all were wrong for complaining about how hard the game was so leave it alone don't add no difficulties don't add no enemies leave it where it's at you cried and cried and cried they gave you what you want now you guys are saying oh make it harder who won the game to be challenging or you want the game to be like it is now a easy walk in the park for you casuals

[@isaacaderogba1199]

Yeah, I really don't see the game getting more difficult from here on out. There's only so many ways you can make a game more difficult, which mainly either includes direct nerfs to your weapons or indirect nerfs to your weapons (by making the enemies tougher)

[@effive7817]

​@@isaacaderogba1199You're being very uncreative. Impalers are a perfect example of making the game more difficult. Difficulty is so much more than a sheet of health and damage numbers. Increase spawn rates and add more content, bam.

[@effive7817]

​@@TheBlackCoyoteGamingThe casuals are still losing plenty, so they arent whining about how easy it is.

[@snowpaletehdog]

its not fun to work so hard to unlock a new weapon just to realize it sucks and i just end up going back to the only few guns that are actually viable.

[@4evermilkman]

The mech ismy favorite also! I consider myself more of a pilot than a grunt diver at this point

[@lorcan8407]

Even as a fairly mid player, I'm mostly pro nerf, I want difficulty 7+ to be vicious. My main issue is that that those highest difficulties arn't well incentivised, higher super credit drops (probably on mission completion) or similar would do it.

[@Alex.Holland]

and ironically, a player only needs a few dozen purples from the high level missions, and then its back to farming 2s for super credits or 4-6 for the thousands of oranges you need.

[@huntless4689]

The way I want to see them go forward from here is upping the amount of enemies on lower difficulties and then introduce more complex missions objectives for the high difficulties. Another thing I had in mind is bile titans spawning small hordes of acid enemies similar to how the brood commanders spawn warriors. It’d make it so that even though they are easily taken out by anti-tank weapons they’d still feel like a threat and something you need to deal with or face the consequences.

[@inklie]

*being right works Complaining is just really loud and it gets people’s attention. The devs clearly listened to the right folks because some (not all) of the complaints were braindead

[@InfinityZwei]

The only complaint I have regarding difficulty now isn't necessarily that "things die too quick" -- it's that the mechanic that made things so interesting when the game first came out and weapons like the Railgun made great was the destruction of armored parts, or failing that having to work your way toward a difficult-to-reach weak point. I think buffing the armor on very specific points of certain larger enemies while ensuring their weak points are consistently weak (and not fake-outs like the Charger's butt) to create a strategy-vs-muscle-through route to combat and loadouts would be the way to go, and to introduce some of these concepts to particular enemies incrementally so players don't feel like their buffs are being suddenly overruled by a kneejerk combat change. This wouldn't require reversing weapon buffs, but simply buffing very specific components of enemies to reintroduce those strategic elements while keeping the general purpose power of these weapons where they are at now. This is mostly a problem for Bugdivers, though some of the newer full-armor walkers and such on the Automaton side suffer from this same design problem.

[@EgoEroTergum]

I used to be really good at stripping armor from charger legs with the railgun. Then they made it clear that bugs were supposed to be "shoot the head only" like every other game, and tweaked armor stripping out of the vyable tactics. Very strange decision.

[@InfinityZwei]

@@EgoEroTergum Yeah, I'm under the impression that a lot of things we found fun or interesting with the game were the results of technical bugs and emergent gameplay. The Devs were so keen to push their vision -- despite resulting in a far more limited product -- that they ended up destroying many of the very things that gave their game character. Even now, Pilestadt and the rest still thinks the majority of complaints are strictly the result of a TTK problem when, a good part of it was a actually a mechanics issue they themselves had perpetuated through their constant "fixes". They're obviously trying really hard to please us again but I don't really get the impression that they're listening nearly as closely as they should because I'm pretty sure I've seen others echo my same points.

[@jeremyfisher8512]

They want these big scary enemies like bile titans but then they also spam them out to the point where they just become an annoyance. Its no longer "oh god its a bile titan!" to "god damnit its ANOTHER bile titan".

[@jactstone]

I don't know if it was this patch, but I noticed that I'm not in an assured deathtrap anymore when my helldiver got out of the exosuit wreck when I accidentally stepped onto an autocannon turret line of fire. It's a one time case, so not sure. Also AH still did unlisted weapon adjustments with the HMG support weapon damage nerf and anti-tank mine damage and aoe buff with the recent hotfix to shield backpack not registering melee damage.

[@itsnoblesse]

Buffing underpowered weapons is a good idea, but making the game overall significantly easier at the highest end is really disappointing. People are so averse to the hardest difficulty in a videogame being genuinely hard and being okay with the fact that it isn't for everyone. If you can't play on the hardest difficulty there is plenty else to do in the game, you have the choice to continue to improve or to be happy where you are. Both options are fine as long as they make you happy,.

[@inversepie6512]

EDF's Infero difficulty is an interesting contrast for difficulty. On the one hand, it allows all weapons and unlimited armor, so in some ways it can be easier than lower difficulties. The main increase in difficulty is qualitative because enemies do insane damage (you can kill them faster, but so can they kill you faster) and also enemies move much more quickly, attack from father away, and their bullets go faster so you have less opportunity to get out of the way. In Helldivers 2, there is no limiting strong weapons on low difficulties, and enemies are identical in all difficulties except in which types appear and in what quantities. They could change that if they wanted and use EDF as inspiration

[@dikathemas6713]

As an EDF player i dont want 100 hr spend grinding boxes 😂

[@robcall8660]

the studio needed breathing room and this patch gave them that ... hopefully they can use some of that runway to focus on stability and progression (e.g. difficulty, weapon perks, selectable modifiers, et al.)

[@kanaria-cu3uv]

they were so strong headed right up until they lost 95% of their player base that put the fear of god into them

[@HardWear-bu1dt]

Sometimes doctors can misdiagnose patients and patients end up dead.

[@Lordoftherobe]

Your welcome for the hell I went through complaining from fanatics burning me at the stake to Arrowhead reporting my Twitter account. I did it for this day.

[@Lkwai8]

it is not complaining - player base literally reduced by 90% compared to 450k daily player

[@HappiestSadGuy]

I wonder why it took so long tbh but, I'm happy for those who didnt quit the game.

[@PapagenoX09]

I like the idea of having a Level 11 or even 12 difficulty for people who are super -1337 vs another round of nerfing, which would really suck.

[@sentient_trash]

It’s crazy how the new patch making the game fun made me play it again

[@Apheront]

Actually something I realized after the buff, I used to play at most difficulty 4 because anything above that was just annoying and time consuming, missions were slow due to the weak weapons and now I feel like lower difficulties are not so fun because now I can face the cool enemies without feeling overwhelmed, now I'm having fun in higher difficulties

[@EravinVT]

I’m having more fun then ever because the game was never particularly hard, it just wasn’t fun having such a stale amount of top performing gear to choose from. Now I feel like I can pick most of the gear and not feel like I’m intentionally weakening myself which is great.

[@ajiqo]

Lmao this is like the monhun 'balance' but reverse, such an irony 💀💀💀

[@maxtonlopez]

As an explosive crossbow user, I am very happy right now.

[@psf_dioufmaulana3040]

Now if only this work on a government

[@Rheinwald]

I went into this video expecting you to go “they made the game easier 😢” but I was pleasantly surprised

[@Nynyso]

I think that Warhammer 40k space marine 2 did a good job of making you feel overwhelmed, the fact that at maximum difficulty in the campaign you have so many enemies on screen that if you make a mistake, you're gonna die quite quickly. They should try to replicate this on helldivers 2 not by nerfing the weapons that you use, but by putting more enemies on screen.

[@caustic_crow4332]

Squeaky wheel gets greased

[@FreeEarthSoda]

The issue I felt was, it just felt like I couldn't fight back. It sucked that it felt like my arsenal did nothing. I don't wanna feel stronger than my enemies, I wanna feel like I have a chance. Depending on stratagems is fair to say. But even when the stratagems suck that's also an issue

[@ThatRandomOldGuy]

Personally the best solution i think might be is to have "glass cannons" aka Players are the glass, the weapons are the cannon, the game is fairly lethal now, but whenever you die its fine because you still have fun, if you are a good player, using cover etc then you should be rewarded for it, it gives more of a skill based system where if you just run like a headless chicken you will die, furthermore, they could add variants of enemies, we already know there are new tiers of enemies, so they could just boost that more, add more dangerous enemies, or overall buff health on enemies a little, there is a lot of ways to change things for the better without nerfing enemies, hell if we talk about bots, make 20% of them out of a "new alloy" change the colors on them a little, and boost those enemies health by 20% there is so many creative ways they can do fun things and still make it hard. or just accept that people want a bit of a power fantasy and enjoy that

[@italoviturino6386]

I can finally use anti-material rifle without wanting to off myself after only 5 minutes of game time, this alone makes these changes Goat'ed

[@Nada-mm2nk]

Games are a reality escape. This has always been true. ALWAYS. Some people want that escape to give them false acomplishment by being hard others power fantasy. You are selling entertainment, if you happen to stumble across a winning combo among a large majority, you stick with them, "your vision" for your game costs you your majority is a failing. Arrowhead is learning their market, isnt who they aimed for.

[@M8Stealth]

Condensed version: Johan designed the game. Alexus ruined it; so Johan had to fix it.

[@VeneficusCubes]

The thing is that every change take time. Both on the side of the players who need time to properly test new balance. And the dev team who need time to code the changes. This effectively creates the lag between complaining and getting the fixes. Where we as players might find a bug, but the fix wont be ready for the next patch. Additionally it is very helpfull to know all other items related to the topic and not only "this weapon sucks" or ect. Mech buffs in the last patch seems to be last minute addition as CCO stated that both mechs and jump pack are planned for the next patch. They probably just figured they can simply tweak some numbers here while proper mech buff is still in development. Additionally the new Gas warbound will probably also be rebalanced as it probably also suffers due to said development lag. The warbound itself is really good, but the stratagems and stim pistol (which sadly make up most of its value) are subpar due to various changes. In case of the stim pistol its actually the fact they rebalanced player health, and the pistol just doesnt provide enough healing power nor players have enough opportunities to actually use it mid combat. And this is an issue since launch with all medic armors. If you are wearing medic armour your own stims are noticably better, but due to us being glass canons players are trained into stiming instantly after taking damage, casing the ability to stim your friends to be a very situational and most of the time onlt used when they are out of stims entirely. So i assume the stim pistol, alongside steryliser support weapon will recieve some sort of rework/buff in the future.

[@shadboi8927]

very good take, tbh i dont mind the buff, indeed it makes the game easier in some aspects, but from now on, they can focus in making harder enemies rather than nerfing for the sake of difficult.

[@re_4merchant]

I fell like if they add an even higher difficulty, it shouldn’t be required to unlock anything with functionality. At most, armor. That way they can focus on buffing, or nerfing enemies. And everyone will be able to have everything unlocked by then, and can focus on making specific builds in preparation for the new difficulty. And the only thing they need to worry about in the way of weapons, is making sure they are all relatively viable.

[@vindex57]

I feel like the current difficulty is nice. The only thing I'd still change is decoupling difficulty from operation length. I like playing on helldive, but I don't always have the time to complete a full operation.

[@Mfolsom245]

This was a huge step in the right direction, but they definitely need to tune the harder difficulties, its wayyy too easy now.

[@SliKJonZe]

I think all they have to do for difficulty is just spawn more enemies. They could like quadruple the chaff and double the heavies now that we have the firepower to deal with them. I honestly wouldn't mind if they went back to when the spawns were bugged and there were like 75 bial Titans on the map per spawn.

[@OMARANT100]

My position on weapon balance is that the Devs should have put the warbonds in a big tree with SC and medal requirements to get to each level of each branch. Let there be weapons levelled 1-9, where weapons are approximately balanced for the corresponding helldive difficulty. This way, you can customize difficulty to your own liking.

[@vintajecheese7803]

I think a good place to start would be to revert the heavy spawns back to what it was a few months ago. We have the power now to deal with 4 bile titans from one breech/ 3 factory striders from a drop along side more chargers and hulks. Impaler still feels a bit awkward for me but I'm sure 1 or 2 more wouldn't hurt.

[@th3narrat0r5]

Really really like the buffs, yes the difficulty is down but the top difficulty doesnt feel like a form of self harm anymore, post escalation of freedom and pre buff update I found myself just starting a mission, then admittedly dying once and alt f4ing as i recalled how frustrating it was. Just finished a full operation post buff update in a single sitting happy and satisfied, the AT weapons hit like AT weapons, the cult of the Auto Cannon the bot front is waning on the bot front because suddenly everything else is at least viable, it just feels...nice. I do hope they get everything to this level then increase the difficulty with the enemies and adding higher difficulties

[@QAnswer]

Level 8-9 Bug is about what level 7 use to be, it fun and challenging, I had fun orbital napalm and trying out those less popular weapons with random team last night 😁👍

[@Stierenkloot]

They found the right balance and let me explain why. Regular enemies take a certain effort with regular guns. And armored enemies now take the same amount of effort but with strategem weapons. That’s how it should be. You can’t take on armored enemies Willy Billy unless you have the right gun.

[@Eisenight]

I think this is their way of admitting they're not capable in realising their vision rather than them admitting they're wrong. They've always wanted to do that fun struggle fantasy game but it seems that for now they let difficulty 1-10 as a power fantasy game. As the players are accustomed to D10 they'll add D11-13 according to their vision when they're capable enough to make them without the weapons nerfs. Of course after fixing the various bug in the meanwhile. I think that's a solid plan if this is what they're planning.

[@AlexDenton0451]

TBH Despite the game becoming much easier, I find it so much significantly more fun. Generally I agree, I think enemies should be a big threat, however I no longer feel like I am getting tripped over, launched, or waiting on Timers to be allowed to kill an enemy either with a specific strategem or weapon.

[@yeahplayz7979]

for a second there, i thought this was an ohdough video

[@jam227]

whilst it would be good for super helldive to be a difficulty to flex your nuts, it would be nice for it to be done in a way that wasnt reliant on exactly 2 loadouts. the simplest and best buff is how anti-mat and autocannon can damage through tough armour so its not utter useless or requires high aim skill to deal with anything tough. unoptimal shouldnt meant utterly useless

[@ThatGuySquippy]

Placing the camera directly over top of the mech so that it is centered _could_ possibly solve the missile trajectory issue, but it will _absolutely_ create an entirely new visibility issue for the player. The Helldiver isn't even center screen because the player model would be in the way of seeing what is directly in front of you. Even if you were to raise the camera higher above the mech to allow better visibility, now you would be dealing with an awkward camera angle at best and an overly advantageous camera angle at worst (due to seeing more of the battlefield than intended, despite the Helldiver's conversely even _more_ limited field of view from within the mech). Come to think of it, perhaps a cockpit view while piloting a mech could balance out its usefulness. Then perhaps red warning lights/signs on either sides of your AR-esque pass-through screens to alert you to nearby enemies outside your peripherals.

[@TheCrateKing]

I am a little worried about the new warbond, and how it doesn't really add a lot of weapons and is primarily cosmetics. Previous warbonds felt like they had a lot more meat on their bones.

[@doodleEeto]

Can't wait to complain to Sabre to fix whatever tf they cooked with Space Marine 2 combat.

[@AD3SPG]

Apparently all the buffed guns when the game released was a bug so they nerfed and put most guns back to launch % damage if not more after the backlash.

[@Zulban48]

I posted about the rockets on the exosuit to Reddit (Yeah, that was a mistake) and everyone said that I didn't know what I was talking about and that the rockets were fine, so apparently you are the only one who is having this issue. As for the buffs, I'm wondering just how many of them are going to stick around. One of my friends feels the stun on the arc thrower is probably too strong to stay the way it is long term, and I personally think that they might lower the damage of certain "light AT" weapons like the Autocannon against heavier enemies. It feels great being able to deal with heavy enemies now but they might make it more of a time/ammo commitment without a proper AT weapon than it is currently. Conversely, shredding certain enemies with the heavy MG emplacement is such a fun power trip but it's balanced by you being immobile and having such limited ammo. I always felt that the Recoiless Rifle should be the strongest AT support weapon in the game because of the way it works, and right now that dream is almost a reality, really only being outclassed by the Spear in terms of damage.

[@Stierenkloot]

Maybe arrowhead could add different planets where the enemies are noticeably buffed. Then you can choose that on top of difficulty levels. Everybody is happy

[@Jyoryaxx]

Well it probably feels too easy because difficulty wasn't ever directly the problem, it was the gameplay issues that also caused it to be difficult.

[@petercottantail7850]

yea this is a good point, now that i think about it, its almost always jank i die to, with us being more consistent at killing things means less jank can happen.

[@Jyoryaxx]

@@petercottantail7850 Also. Not only the jank but also in general the game felt wrong. The game was very obviously a horde shooter, which doesn't make it inherently easy. It's very obvious how super earth succeeds against its enemies in helldivers. It's a futuristic tactical military that doesn't use large armies but can send in 4 very patriotic citizens against thousands of robotic soldiers because their technological backup is insanely advanced with precise instant airstrikes, orbital bombardments and advanced support weapons. To add difficulty, the game is supposed to feel like we have amazingly advanced power that has to be used intelligently, because we can also get easily overwhelmed by pure numbers if we are sloppy with it. Instead they made most weapons feel weak, and death is mostly because of the power of one enemy type along with an army, and the only reason you can win at all is because they can't think like humans. The fact that it was so easy to lose made people complain about ''difficulty'' but the issue is more with game design, that was consequently making the game hard in the wrong way, not with just simple ''difficulty'' in general, because there's no such thing.

[@teemuhella1511]

Game feels great now but the intensity is mostly gone. Current patrol system does not challenge players. We need main objectives to trigger breaches/drop pods that come in waves until the objective area is completed. Some missions already do this (Like Geological Survey, Spread Democracy) but most don't. I think that would help a lot for starters.

[@Shaojackify]

kinda nice change, i mostly play solo cuz the griefing just spoiled any desire to play with others. They could have just buffed the shit that was bad and never used but as a player you can create the experience you want in the end. If you use all the most broken shit and cheese strats you found online. You set the game to easy mode yourself way before the devs did anything.

[@invisibleloveone]

I noticed that I was dying more. Did anyone else notice a delay in the stim recovery? When I am messing around and I get surrounded by bugs. When I use the stim, I see and hear the stim being used, but there is about a half second delay before refill, and I can be attacked before it recovers.

[@blackhammer5035]

Closing the barn door after it burned down, unfortunately. AH’s problem has always been knee-jerk adjustments on a large scale, instead of incremental changes over time. On release, they admitted the armor system was not working, but still nerfed the personal force field almost immediately. How do you know how to balance one defensive tool when two others (armor and the ballistic shield) are broken? You don’t. Arrowhead just slams in numbers based on gut instincts. They don’t balance on proper data because they have repeatedly rolled out changes when the data in question didn’t exist, and they are still doing this. Guns shouldn’t lose 30% of their ammo overnight. Big changes to enemy health and hit locations should never accompany any weapon adjustments aside from fixing exploits and small buffs to grossly underperforming weapons. Yet repeatedly, they move multiple goalposts at once, and then claim they know what they are doing despite ruining the feel of the game overnight. Once again, they’ve made the same mistake, just on a larger scale and with buffs instead of all nerfs.

[@infinitekarma4949]

I think one way they could add more difficulty is making enemies a little more dynamic or adding more unique enemy types. Simply adding tankier units to higher difficulties is not going to truly make the game more challenging in a fun way. It just makes them take more bullets. I think that’s fine to an extent but that shouldn’t be the main reason the higher difficulties are “harder.” One new enemy I like from the EoF update are the new warriors that spawn from alpha commanders. Even though they are just faster warriors, they add a bit more challenge by becoming hyper aggressive and in many cases, force you to make a quick decision or you’ll be dead in seconds. They will outrun you and kill you faster than you can turn around. Although they’re squishy like hunters, they add more engaging challenge to the game. However, they’re by no means a “new enemy.” They’re just a better version of one. Another way the devs can make the higher difficulties harder is with modifiers. Stalker patrols or stalkers spawning on bug breaches (as a high level mechanic); all bugs explode with acid when killed; devastators have armored heads; “Spy Intel” where a special patrol may spawn from time to time that will hone in on players throughout the match with precise accuracy (likely just marauders or troopers); “Cloak Mutation” where bug patrols all have the stalker invisibility until they are aggroed; “Heightened Senses” where all bugs will pick up on divers’ musky scent and continue following them unless they get out of range (this will especially encourage sticking together). I can go on and on but the point is, modifiers and intricate game design are what make the game challenging in a fun way. You know what’s not fun? Having ED stratagems or weapons and cool downs. I know additions like these take time and that’s fine but I think they should keep the overpowered weapons. Instead of toning them down, they should make the higher difficulties have more and more modifiers (within reason) as well as special exclusive mechanics that make them a challenge. I actually like that we take more damage because I can still do tons of damage back. This adds more skill. Now, I know this also makes it easier to die in stupid ways but the devs don’t have to add enemies that are toxically oppressive. They can instead add numerous types of enemies or mechanics (maybe even add enemy coordination that will cause them to act in certain ways if nearby other enemies, such as chaff running close behind chargers if they are running at a diver, or hive guards forming shield walls to cover their squishy mates behind them) There are so many things that can be done. I’ll stop here because I’ll yap on and on but I think most experienced players can at least agree with my general idea