r/HelldiversMasochists

Now, obviously this is all terrible PR/unprofessional etc but it was a breath of fresh air clearly seeing that the devs had a clue about what harder difficulties were supposed to be.

Been seeing these "dev" messages being thrown around a lot recently completely stripped of any context painting them in a worser light so I fixed that. Devs were getting so much hate/shit on a daily bases but as soon as they fire a few shots back, suddenly everyone else is a victim.

As far as I'm concerned, these people are absolute morons, as the difficulty slider increases, the game should get harder and whatever makes the game too easy needs to get knocked down a few pegs and it was nice while it lasted that some devs also showed that they knew what difficulty meant.

The guy is absolutely spittin fire, PR nightmare but he spoke the truth.

Oh and they FOR SOME REASON SPAWN ON D3?!?

I'm stumped. A shadow nerf is something done in secret, something that's been done in such a way as to be deliberately deceptive.

The coyote is the only thing I can think of in helldivers 2 that has been truly shadow nerfed, I say truly here because the devs have been forgetting to put both buffs and nerfs into the patch notes since the first balance patch.

Even then, they were never "caught" shadow nerfing the coyote, it only came to light because a dev spilled the beans.

Any ideas to what 4 other things have been shadow nerfed?

1. Coyote

2. ?

3. ?

4. ?

5. ?

Picture this: you're playing HD2 because you want to have a fun, co-op, horde shooting experience. You see your teammates brought AT - but with a pure AT support weapon, they might struggle with chaffclear, even with their well-balanced build. So you bring something to complement the team - a stalwart, grenade launcher, MG-43, autocannon etc.

You play alongside them, running around, skewering a few piddly patrols, but you know the big fight's inevitable. Where your team's gonna have to pull out all the stops, hunker down and blast through a massive enemy swarm, with you and your teammate's weapons working in concert to deal with all of the enemies, adding value and covering your allies where you can. This is where the fun of the game's about to hit its full stride, as a bug breach gets called.

And then that guy with the dedicated AT weapon throws a napalm barrage. You sit there, wondering what you brought this weapon for. The breach is still going, but so is the napalm barrage, killing 90% of the reinforcements (and 100% of non-heavies). There's a few superheavy units crawling out of the hole - they each get one-shot as they spawn by the AT guy. You look around, hoping that there's a few units flanking you from a patrol - maybe there is, maybe there isn't. They get wiped instantly if they are, because it's just one patrol against 2-4 divers that still have another 10-15 stratagem slots to nuclear bomb the coughing babies.

The napalm barrage is still going. There's nothing to do for now. You leave the area to do objectives, hit a few buttons, walk to another POI, kill maybe three enemies. The napalm barrage is over, but the breach doesn't last for much longer - your team easily cleans up any remains, and there's once again very few enemies on the map. Less enemies, less pressure, means even less enemies successfully calling in breaches. Finally, an enemy does - aaand napalm barrage is off cooldown, so repeat.

---

This is what D10 terminids currently looks like in most games. Napalm barrage has a horrifically distorting effect on the difficulty, knocking D10 down to D4 at best. It is ABSOLUTE night and day, playing a match with even a single player bringing napalm barrage and doing nothing but throwing it on bug breaches, whilst also heavily skewing the meta for support weapons towards AT, enables players to even more easily lone-wolf the map as breaches aren't even a concern, and removes the fun for anyone who likes actually fighting enemies as a team.

All the kerfuffle about marginally overpowered primaries, secondaries that one-shot heavies, or whether or not coyote should ignite in 1 or 2 bullets absolutely PALES in comparison to how absolutely, disgustingly, fun-killingly powerful napalm barrage is. This is the EXACT thing that people were trying to warn about when it came to power creep, and how unchecked powercreep could lead to an unfun, unengaging experience that only gets dopamine from Warframe-style number-go-up. And it's been in the game since the 60 day update, festering and making terminids practically an unplayable faction in pub lobbies. We've just been ignoring it because it stopped being as big of a problem with hive worlds, and we've been focused on bots and squids for so long (thank everything that people haven't figured out it's almost as strong on bots too - squids are already easy so nobody cares lmao). But now that vanilla+ terminids are coming to the forefront again - this POS has completely destroyed any fun in public lobbies unless you decide to be a complete chud and kick the 5 or so people in a row that join with this thing.

This thing is the 'light pen peacemaker that instantly wins the match for you' people meme on. I am not exaggerating with any of this, it's just that fucking OP and many have probably not experienced how fun D10 bugs can still be without it, even to masochists. AP4 grenade launcher has NOTHING on this. And as the game gets harder, more and more people are choosing the easy route as they want to stay on D10 - I expect its usage rate to hit above 40% if they make an even harder terminid subfac. (Heck, it hit 53% usage rate on rupture strain last patch).

The worst part is, it's fucking awesome and I want to use it - it could even be balanced, even without giving it limited uses or drastically longer cooldown. But it requires so much additional effort on the part of the devs, and we all know that this studio is glacial at best. Make the reinforcement breach avoid active hazard zones and move around - make a lot more enemies spawn in patrols and less in reinforcements - make some enemy that counters it, could all work. Ofc, the fact that it needs the game to warp around it is another warning sign that it's just that hilariously OP. But I don't care what they do with it at this point - the game is essentially non-functional when this is in your lobby. It needs changing before anything else if D10 is to ever have any hope of providing a fun, balanced experience. It needs to be taken out back.

If there's any one thing that should band the playerbase together to fix, it's this. All other balance issues are small fry - this one just breaks the game over its knee, pushes players hard into an AT meta, and makes players just plain feel superfluous and unneeded for the completion of the mission. Next time you give AH feedback, mention that they should do something about napalm barrage, since it's neutering their latest content (spore burst).

To those uninformed,
Helldivers has a unique mechanic known by many as constellations. These essentially dictate what can and cannot spawn in a mission, and sometimes are the only way that you can encounter specific enemies.

Great examples of this that you are definitely familiar with are the bile spewer constellation and warstrider constellation.
With the former being the only way that bile spewers, bile spitters, and bile warriors will ever spawn.

The main intention of this mechanic is to diversify the game and offer you different threats each mission so you never get too bored of your opponents. And in that regard, constellations do their job pretty well.

But why does this feature suck?

Well there is the obvious reason being that you cannot effectively tailor your loadout to counter specific enemies when you have absolutely no idea what you will be up against.
But there is also a more pressing concern that I have in regard to overall game difficulty.

Some constellations are just straight up easier than others.

There are constellations that utterly REFUSE to spawn high tier enemies, there are constellations that spawn nothing BUT high tier enemies, and there is the perfect middle ground which feels oh so sweet whenever you get it.

This ends up throwing the games difficulty curve all over the place in many cases. Certain constellations can make a dif 6 mission feel like dif 10, or vice versa, which, at least in my opinion, kinda blows.

When the core difficulty in a game is not so much determined by what the player actually has selected, but rather by a seemingly random system instead, it doesn't feel good.

Inconsistency sucks. We need less of it.

Maybe constellations could be tied to difficulties? With the harder ones (like warstriders) being present only on 9 or 10, while easier ones like hunter constellations or tank constellations could be reserved for easier difficulties? Idk man.

TL;DR

I just don't like the randomness in this game.
I want my silly little max difficulty to always feel like its supposed to.

I keep seeing stuff like this, I even saw someone say the RR was nerfed a few days ago.

and when I say casual I dont mean in the nerdy self jerk way, these are obviously players that hop on the game every now and then and probably sit around level 30-50, and the hatred has swelled so much that people are literally telling each other false nerfs ON THE NORM.

also I may be wrong on the vox engine and bile titan breakpoints, I do not run thermites too often.

Tank Chronicles on Marfak , choo choo

I could post more, but you get the general idea. I mean, to me at least it was clear that the negative reviews were mostly due to that horrible AMA. What do you mean no endgame content? Arrowhead, how do you expect longtime players to not quit in droves if theres nothing for them to work towards? Giving up on weapon customization because people "didn't use it as much as we thought" is the silliest idea imaginable. The point of it isn't for it to be used, its a hypothetical thing to be worked towards, but weapon customization is just one idea. There are plenty of ways to add endgame content like, I don't know... transmog? Maybe let people have to level up an armor set in order to unlock its ability permanently so they can transfer its power onto another set? Let people work for their cool armor. You can literally kill two birds with one stone by adding transmog (something the community has begged for since launch) AND make it late game material to work towards. The hiveguard change was very much a case of the straw breaking the camels back IMO. I mean, even outside of this sub people were asking that you just add a hiveguard heavypen VARIANT instead of just lazily buffing the thing.

(The Officer Helldiver and Cadet Helldiver are discussing loadouts)

Officer: "The RR isn't meta, okay? You're glazing a little. . . not quite the correct opinion, all good, here we go. . ."

(The Cadet equips an RR)

"Sorry, you're whining a little now. All set . . . "

(The Cadet equips an Arc Thrower)

"You're glazing."

(The Officer nods, puts his hand on a Scavenger corpse, then chucks it straight at the Cadet's head)

"WHY do you suppose I just hurled a Scavenger at your head, Cadet??"

Cadet: "I- I d-don't... kno-"

"Yes you do."

"M... my- my opinions..."

"Were you glazing or were you whining?"

"I, I- have no idea..."

"Start giving me takes, Cadet."

(Quietly) "The Eruptor shouldn't be AP4-"

"IN NORMAL WORDS DAMMIT!"

"Eruptor... shouldn't be heavy-"

(The Officer slaps the Cadet)

"H-heavies are too weak... (slap) gas needs a rework... (slap)"

"Now, was it glazing or was it whining?"

"I... don't kno-"

"Give opinions again."

"People need to stop overreacting- (slap) customization was a mistake- (slap)"

"GLAZING OR WHINING?"

"Glazing..."

"SO YOU DO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE! If you deliberately sabotage my power fantasy, I will LIBERATE you like a CYBORG. Now are you a Glazediver... or are you a Whinediver? OR ARE YOU GOING TO REVIEW THE GAME HOW I WANT?"

"I'm gonna review the game how you want-"

"What does that say?"

"AP4 on Hive Guard..."

"Tell me how you're supposed to respond."

"Revert Hive Guards, revert Hive Guards, revert..."

"LADY FUCKING LIBERTY! I DIDN'T KNOW THEY ALLOWED FASCISTS INTO THE HELLDIVER CORPS. !! AM I TO UNDERSTAND THAT YOU CANNOT READ REDDIT AND YOUTUBE POSTS ALL DAY? CAN YOU EVEN FORM YOUR OWN FUCKING OPINION? WHAT IS THAT?"

"Player counts."

"YES, WHAT IS THAT?"

"Developer commentary."

"Read me what the Redditors are saying..."

"T-t-t-the reviews are about the AMA..."

"WHAT the fuck are you, a parrot? Tell me what they're actually saying."

"T-they actually care about balance more than the drama but stay quiet when it makes the game easier."

"Now answer the question, were you glazing... or whining. ANSWER!!"

"Glazing..." (a tear rolls out of the Cadet's helmet)

"Oh my dear Democracy. Are you one of those 'everyone is passionate about the game' Divers? Do I look like a developer to you? You must think I'm a whiner, do you think I'm a whiner?"

"No..."

"No, so you just know all of your opinions are wrong-"

"I do think my opinions make more sense-"

"So, you do think I'm a whiner, yes or fucking no? Yes, you do think I'm a whiner-"

"Y-yeah..."

"Say it."

"You're a whiner."

"Say it so the whole subreddit can hear you."

"He's a whiner."

"LOUDER."

"He's a WHINER."

"LOUUUDEER."

"HE'S A WHINER."

"YOU ARE A WORTHLESS, COMMUNIST, SQU'UITH-LIPPED LITTLE PIECE OF FODDER WHOSE DEMOCRACY OFFICER MARTYRED HIMSELF, ONCE HE FIGURED OUT HE WASN'T GENERAL BRASCH, AND WHO IS NOW WEEPING AND BAITING ALL OVER MY FORUM, LIKE A FUCKING VOTELESS. SO FOR THE FINAL, GAME-KILLING TIME, SAY IT LOUDER!"

"HE'S A WHINER!"

"Form your own opinions, Cadet."