u/Absolute_Gaymer

So i've been playing the game a bunch, having a blast and all, but anytime i watch videos or clips of other people playing, i can't help but notice that my visual effects are much less intense than for other players.

Ammo, gold, etc, all have much less visible or shiny loot beams, which i personally am okay with. The problem comes with the floating cannons as they absolutely have no distinct aura/bubble around them, i just see the floating skeletons and nothing else, which makes it hard to shoot them during storms or if they blend into the background.

Is this all a bug or a visual/accessibility setting thing? Changing my settings does not seem to affect any of it.

https://preview.redd.it/ocrx8gmffq0h1.png?width=246&format=png&auto=webp&s=03ebd5191b5973dd7fb84b281f323857eba49509

https://preview.redd.it/xx2lm07gfq0h1.png?width=584&format=png&auto=webp&s=19b832257c0cf45019657d471548248cb7bbf527

A lot of people point to the hiveguard change, or any other recent change and say "it's just one small change, who cares" but actually this weirdly backwards philosophy has been present since the launch of helldivers.

But first, what "weird philosophy"? Well, arrowhead has went on record consistently stating that they "never want to have a meta" or that they hate metas, because they were afraid of people kicking others for bringing "weak" things over what the meta was.

Now, ignoring the fact that it is literally not possible to not have a meta for something, a lot of their changes, if not the vast majority, have gone against that "core" principle.

Let's look back to the early days of helldivers when the stun grenade released. Now, i want you to picture what the meta is/was for killing a regular bile titan. RR? EAT-17s? 500KG? If you answered any of those then congratulations, you were mostly right. There was still a bug circulating that let railgun 2 tap bile titans if you were not host, but bugs aside, one RR shot in the head killed a bile titan instantly (in 0.0 seconds) and that was that.

But, there was a huge issue. You could...*sniff*...you...could stun..the bile titan....with a stun grenade...and...and you could use an hmg to kill it by shooting it's ass out..for like 20 seconds straight..while other bugs ran up on you...

What's that? An infinitely more time consuming and risky strategy that put you in more danger and required you to use more of your kit to do? Something that was off meta and unusual and already not preferable to an RR most of the time?

> stun grenades can no longer stun bile titans.

These changes have happened throughout the entire history of the game. War striders. Flesh mobs. "Fixing" ultimatum leg oneshots for factory striders. "Fixing" charger leg strip meta(that they said they would not nerf btw) in favor of just oneshotting it in the head. Hive guard ap4.

In some cases, the devs realise that "making an enemy that dies to one RR shot and is giga ultra mega cancer to kill with any other gun makes the meta more concentrated", but not always.

So let's be clear here, this is not ONE change. This is not a "skill issue". Almost everything i listed here took infinitely more skill to do than it's alternative (one rr shot to the head, or in the case of ap 4 hiveguards, one crossbow shot/napalm barrage).

If your stance is that you hate meta, and that you want the game to be as diverse as possible, then you should encourage players to kill enemies in diverse ways. Add small weakspots for DMRs. Buff an enemy's resistance to META stuff like explosives, reducing the oneshot hitbox to make you have to aim more with the oneshot meta weapons. Etc etc.

Yet time and time again, we come here, to the 60 day patch, to the reversal of the hive guard changes. This is dumb.