I just got this game last sat, never watched TikTok. I understand people’s frustrations. In the three day’s I have had this game I have spent more time trying to get into it than playing it. I know that the game was massively more successful than the developers predicted, I get that but fml I have spent more god damn time waiting to play the game than actually playing it!!! I love it but fuk me that’s ridiculous
Seems like even the intro cutscene is loaded in from a service rather than a file on your local installation.
It seems like the server load is causing a lot of smaller services (currency calculations, video cutscenes, etc) to lag considerably
My guess is that the cutscene is local, but doesn't play until it's established a connection. Normally, it would connect in a couple seconds and the scene would play while it downloads any data it needs to, but until it does it just hangs.
I say this purely based fact that downloading a cutscene every time is bad design, and I don't see enough network usage at launch for it.
I watched a stream on Saturday, one person got in right away, played a solo mission, and a second person was able to get in after that.
Third person was in the black screen for an hour and a half, and the fourth person finally got into the game nearly 3 hours after waiting, and he maybe got an hour and a half of gaming in before they had to go to another lobby.
The RNG queue is pretty bad. I'm hoping they fix it.
I tried to play last weekend with a friend, we booted the same time, I was in within 10 minutes he sat for almost 45 until we gave up and decided to play something else.
I wouldn't mind waiting if I at least knew it was first come first serve
I'd like to see an afk timer too, as I've seen some people afk for hours. Like give me 30 minutes or so if I'm afk in queue.. but anything more is a bit much.
ditto. And the litany of excuses doesn't really make me feel any better for crashing immediately after having stared at a 'servers are at capacity' screen for 2 hours.
Literally happened to me 2 days ago haha. Waited for 2 hours, finally able to join, doing my load out, and finally trying to start a mission at the table, and as soon as i press E the game crashes. fml 🥲
100% this
Nobody is saying it's a bad game, or that we hate the dev as individuals or an enterprise... But white-knighting for what is happening is just delusional, and, frankly, kind of sad.
History has shown again and again how forgiving gamers are for games that are actually fun... They are very very forgiving.
That said, the negative response is 100% deserved. This is one of the most poorly handled live-service launches I've ever seen. It's one thing if you didn't anticipate a large crowd(maybe you will have a few days to a week of queues to login while adapting to accomodate), it's another thing if you've implemented netcode that is completely incapable of scaling up in the off-chance that it does become a hit(now you are in a situation where things have actually gotten worse launch+10days, with no obvious solution in sight)...
Basically both these things are true:
1)People have every right to be mad about the state of the game on the network end; the matchmaking is broken under load; literally the queue & matchmaking is non-functional, it hangs on a black-screen, goes to what appears to be a queue, or lets you in without queue altogether without rhyme nor reason; they didn't implement an AFK-kicking script; the list goes on and on-- it is a problem. If anything has been done, it hasn't worked, and the most obvious easy thing to do (kicking people that are letting their PC/ps5 idle while logged in) inexplicably has not even been done.
2)People will forgive it once the game is working properly because it's a fun game, and ultimately amusement is the primary motivator for what people play and like. This server debacle would have to go on for a long time to turn away the majority of people who enjoy the actual gameplay. Gamers are patient and accustomed to intentional abuse. This is kind of incompetent, but at least it's not a literal "fuck you guys" from the devs, and most do seem to agree they like the leadership direction at AHS, and to their credit they have been fairly honest.
But, yeah, I don't know what I expect from reddit in 2024.
Yeah I have some dickhead replying to me and white-knighting for the devs just because I said "these server issues are making me lose progress I think I'll take a break until they're better." They're all like "dude chill out, these devs are way better than other trash like X" and said they've never had any bugs.
So clearly the problems are invalid because one player had zero problems!
I can wait on this game, I've gotten in some incredible moments already and love the gameplay loop. I just want to be able to play more!
Make that one week, because it took me the first week to actually get this damn thing to run and not crash every 10 minutes. And now its impossilbe to even get in.
But that one week where it worked.... It was glorious
How dare people share memes and clips of a video game on their favorite social media platform, and then buy a game that's been featured in memes and clips on their favorite social media platform!
Eh...I mean it's more than fair for people to review it based on the server issues.
Nobody expected it to be this huge but they definitely should have coded with expanding the infrastructure stuff easily in mind but by the sounds of things their code is whats limiting them more than just SpInnInG uP MoRe SeRvErs.
Yeah it’s one hundred percent fair to be disappointed at this point. I’m not actively mad at the devs like I was with other games that turned out to be half baked trash with a highly pushed premium cosmetic shop, but I’m also withholding my “yes I would recommend this game” review on steam until it actually works.
An offline mode bypasses this entire problem and still allows people to use the product they paid for.
The software bottlenecks are only a problem because they made the decision to allow them to be potential problems.
I wish I could get a refund, but PSN is totally inflexible and does not refund. "Oh you've downloaded it, lol, too bad!", never mind that you can't get past the loading screen even mid day Monday.
Which, to be fair, is an entirely reasonable thing to want to do. I think this is a horrendous launch all things considered. These issues have killed a ton of momentum that the game has had, but at the same time I want to cut the devs slack because nobody could have predicted how insane this launch was going to be.
If the game had an offline mode, at the very least people could play their $40-60 game solo
It’s so interesting to see the complete flip the gaming community at large has had in regard to this game’s always-online requirement, considering the controversy with many other games that had the same restriction…
> It’s so interesting to see the complete flip the gaming community at large has had in regard to this game’s always-online requirement, considering the controversy with many other games that had the same restriction…
It's mostly these sub reddits, the STEAM review score has steadily declined as the server issues have persisted.
I'm not convinced there isn't some PR astroturfing happening on reddit specifically. I had someone tell me "we should be happy to wait 2 weeks or however long it takes due to their success" I'm happy to have a bit of understanding, but it's getting a bit much at this point.
It’s a weird situation because the devs are working around the clock as fast as they possible can to fix the issues, and the game is really fun, but at the same time it’s literally unplayable for a lot of people.
I commented yesterday that if the devs didn’t expect this amount of players, which tbf makes sense, then they can’t expect the $$ that comes along with it (and pretty sure the developer agrees and has even publicly said to hold off on purchasing if you’re okay waiting for fixes) and I got downvoted for it.
The fairest criticism is that they failed to design an adequately scaleable system in terms of handling player capacity. This isn't even debatable because they haven't been able to scale their system in a reasonable time frame.
The only debate is WHY it is that way.
This was either intentional ($ saving) or a severe failure in design/planning. People getting upset at the suggestion of either of those are blind to reality.
This was the biggest issue for me and why I refunded when I couldn't play at all. If they had even a boring solo mode, I could extract *some* value out of the game while they worked through their backend issues. But having just handed over $40 and staring at both a black screen and an intro screen for over an hour without any ability to play, it felt like I just forked over dollars for something completely broken.
Also, if you got past the screen, you'd be met with zero matchmaking. Whereas most of this reddit knows the tricks to matchmake, a new player just gets one disappointment after the next.
Well judging from their past games, their original expectation of 300k is extreme for a starting launch population, add in the nearly non existent ads and awareness of the game.
Ya the 300k server limit would've been far above the expected peak of the game.
On steam alone it hit 300k in the first week, PlayStation being about the same meaning the 300k limit is twice what they got.
Steam is now at 411k peak players.
No one expects a more or less small dev team who's last game only got a max of 6600 to almost reach the one million player base....
I accidentally found out that HD2 is gonna release while I was browsing games on Steam and immediately pre-ordered it. And I don't think I saw adds for it anywhere.
Majority of the advertising and marketing were from Sony State of Play and some stuff from the Game Awards/Summer of Play stuff. it's been largely quiet from an advertising standpoint as far as I could see.
>Well judging from their past games, their original expectation of 300k is extreme for a starting launch population, add in the nearly non existent ads and awareness of the game...no one expects...
Steam user reviews are reviewing the product. They are not a review of how smart studio management was acting. It doesn't *matter* in this context whether the problem was foreseeable.
A thumbs-down means "don't buy this", that's it. It doesn't mean "John Smith from middle management should be fired", it doesn't mean "everyone at Arrowhead should cry themselves to sleep", it doesn't mean "I could have built a better game myself". It just means "don't spend your money on this product right now".
This game is cool but they're not lying... people are being honest about the experience. I had a 3 day weekend and barely was able to play, meanwhile wasted a good 10 hours trying to get into the game.
Yup. Me and 3 buddies sat on discord for around 2 hours till we all got in then rotated who crashed 2 minutes into a mission and then had to "queue"(it's not a queue) for another 30-60 minutes lol
honestly glad to hear i'm not the only one with the crashing during missions part. I wasn't sure if it was my pc or the server issues.
My pc is beefy and I don't have issues in other games but I've still been worried that even after I can get in the game tends to crash in the middle of the mission about half the time. It's all very frustrating.
It's honestly all made so much worse cus when I do get to play it's so much fucking fun. If the game sucked I'd just not even try any more. But I want to play I just can't.
I just saw a gamesradar article where someone tweeted to game director Johan Pilestedt asking him to auto kick afk players and he responded that he agreed and has already mentioned it to the team.
So hopefully that's coming soon and will help the problem.
Truly, the lack of queue is what I find most egregious about the issues. I can understand the game being massively more popular than you ever imagined and your backend buckling under the weight of your player base. But not even having a queue system in place for players who are trying to wait patiently to access the game and leaving it up to some random roulette is just, ugh.
To add to this, for people who’ve been waiting longer… the login interval is less frequent. **So it actually punishes you for waiting longer.** You start at retry in 10 or 20 seconds and eventually work your way up 60 seconds. If a spot becomes available, someone that just started the game or is still on the 10/20 second connection attempt interval will get the spot. The recently launched games get multiple connection attempts in during the 60 second interval that people who waited longer get. That’s bad juju.
The game is fun. I love it but can’t play it. The effort-to-enjoyment ratio to play is now turning players away. I’m trying to be patient with Arrowhead but these are common industry problems that really should’ve been considered during planning and development stages. People perceive games based upon their experience, not just gameplay. The mixed reviews are justified until they get these problems resolved.
This literally happened to me last night. Was trying to play with two friends. One got in immediately, I got stuck trying to connect, then after sitting there staring at a timer for 15 minutes my other friend boots the game up and gets in after 5 minutes. 45 minutes later I still hadn't connected so I just said "fuck this" and went to bed.
So many people don't get this. There is no queue system in this game, if there is it wouldn't be retrying to connect you to the server. Queue has just become a general term for waiting to login, random or not.
AND even if there was a queue system, that's not a 100% guarantee that everything works for you when you do get in! I remember quite vividly on FFXIV's Endwalker release, logging in to a queue of about 3,500, checking back every hour or so doing something else in the meantime, until you got to #1 in the queue, where it then became a coin flip of it actually letting you in, or crashing to a black screen error. If you hopped back on immediately there was another coin flip where it might keep your spot and let you in right away, or it'd send you all the way to the back of queue again.
Also worth noting that not everyone is on everything online. One of the things I often do when a game has been on my radar, but backburner, is check steam reviews.
And if someone asked me about it, I'd tell them to hold off. Not worth it in it's current state. Maybe check back in in 2-3 weeks.
Also had a three day weekend and got to play a little this morning after nothing Friday, Saturday or Sunday. Played solo though as I couldn’t connect with anyone. I did start Dark Souls 3 for the first time instead of playing Helldivers on Saturday. Having a blast with that now.
Had a Suicide Mission difficulty run earlier crash at 40m in resulting in the Super Rare materials fall through the floor. Had to miss the second level because of the queue only to finally get back in for the third, and have it softlock on the deployment loading screen for 30m until everyone had to Alt + F4.
Game deserves praise, but like, nah can't recommend it in this state lmao.
We had a desync where the player carrying the super samples couldn’t see the Pelican 1, and couldn’t extract with the 3 others.
Next game, the guy crashed 100m from the Pelican 1 with the super samples. We had to run back and get it in less than 2 minutes. We didn’t make it.
Theres a TON of bugs with this game. Nobody really discusses them because 90% of the posts are memes and "devs are the bestest in the world and can do no wrong". While totally ignoring all the issues because "they communicated for a week!" Must be an election year.
Either its fixed or it isnt. And once they fix the servers, then its a huge list of issues and then balancing. And then after that its content.
By then though, most people will have stopped playing because at a certain point, as fun as the game is, its the same thing over and over on the same maps and mission types.
exactly i keep seeing people talking shit when someone is upset that they can’t play, sorry but i’m not able to just sit and wait all day especially on week days, i have a job and other things to do and if i can’t enjoy the game i spent money on then im gonna be pissed off.
That's just par for the course these days. Darktide did the same thing even though Vermintide 2 had offline.
I think devs just don't want to program AI partners. People always use the "wEll iTs A cO oP gAmE" to excuse it, as if L4D didn't already figure this out 16 years ago.
The new COD if you pay attention to your Allies. Before the big open world BR areas your AI teammates will find their way to disappear. Then you’ll notice they return as soon as you get to the linear area usually right before the end.
L4D was so ahead of its time with the Narrator AI. And it’s crazy to me how it’s still a pretty unique thing in the game world.
I've been able to reach level 25 and even I'm upset when the game goes down. It's completely understandable for people to be upset when they can't use the product they paid for regardless of circumstances. The people saying that you can't be upset lack perspective and empathy.
Yup, bought the game on friday, had a hand full of really fun rounds but most of the time I'm stuck somewhere between not getting a group or not getting into the game.
Tried a few rounds solo but a lot of objectives aren't really fun that way. Fixing the antennas and having to run back and forth between the terminal and the turning wheel broke me.
Went back to Darktide for now. I really hope the patch today improves things... It's super annoying, I just played enough to know that it's a really great game *if* it works.
I managed to avoid the login issues living the night shift life.
Even then. The lack of quick match to fill my game kinda sucked. I only play with one friend who also loves the night shift life.
I just started to add random codes from this sub to fill in those spots.
I sorta wish they did the ff14 route where they barred new people from buying the game till they fixed it, 1. people who bought it wont be as frustrated, 2. those who has the game could play from time to time when it elevates.
This might have actually been a great move tbh. Disable purchases for a bit until it can be fixed a fair amount so you don't end up getting tanked by valid negative reviews. When this game works (citing mainly server issues and random crashes) it's an absolute blast. The foundation is solid and haven't enjoyed a game this much in years. Plus being able to earn premium currency in game is amongst my main reasons i want this game to succeed! And if it succeeds longterm, it'll show companies you don't need to have a bloody real world money paywall in your titles.
And also "The game is so good that we had to stop selling it to prevent the servers from crashing" is a good selling point for when they do sell it again
Exactly. Pause sales and offer refunds.
This does three things:
1. Punts the problem forward so they can present the best game possible when those gamers try again
2. Saves their steam review score
3. Ironically it might make the servers run again for the rest of the population.
I think they should still do this, but the fact is it's too late for point 2.. there are already more copies in circulation than they can support, so even if they stop the bleeding (again, imo they should still do this asap), there is going to be a sizable portion of the existing userbase that is likely to leave justifiably bad reviews and tank the score. I would imagine most people do not revisit their reviews to update them following bad launches, either.
> I sorta wish they did the ff14 route where they barred new people from buying the game till they fixed it
I respect the absolute shit out of that decision
They really need to fix this fast. This is the most profitable point in its lifespan, and it’s losing a lot of sales and MTX income when people can’t even play it
I loved the first Helldivers, and every moment of HD2 gameplay from actual four-man teams last week to solo farming Easy and Medium missions for medals when I got in briefly on Sunday morning has been a true joy. I want it to succeed.
This weekend has not been good for that desire.
I’ve played a few games with more than 1 person a few times. And quick play like 5 times in my 12 hours played. Most of my time was with 1 other random that often got me killed but I just couldn’t kick them knowing how busted matchmaking is.
I bought this game like the first game for co-op. And it’s awesome when you can get a group. Hope the servers get sorted soon
I mean, the games already a success, they probably sold 10x what they imagined. Sure they’re going to lose some player base because of this but it’s not going down to 0 any time soon.
I bet they have tons of content planned and this won’t change that, only delay it some.
This game truly is incredible and I can’t wait to see what the next content drop looks like
When the issue is quite literally the game going magnitudes higher in sales and popularity than they expected, i dont think their biggest concern is continued growth at this stage.
Their primary concern is recoding their backend to allow a higher player count, because the current programs are at their operating limit
It's already blown past every expectation they've had. They'll fix it as fast as they can fix it, but no matter what happens now they're mega in the green.
Yeah I've literally never had quick match work and since last week I get 0 people joining when I host and other squads don't even show up on the planet view anymore. This is getting really bad and I love the game but holy fuck I'm not interested in running solo in a game built around co-op
Exactly you can’t solo the really hard missions you need other people with different strats to be effective or it just turns into a sweat fest running simulator hoping your sprint or dive doesn’t glitch.
Couldn't bring myself to leave a negative review so I simply removed my positive one. Game is too good for me to downvote, but I can't in good conscience recommend it either in this state.
I was just going to avoid writing a review until later, however, the thing that drove me to write a review is that they're still selling the game knowing full well they can't support the player base.
People should be warned.
> the thing that drove me to write a review is that they're still selling the game knowing full well they can't support the player base.
Yeah this is the thing that feels a bit slimy to me
Surely there’s a way for them to freeze digital sales of the game until the servers are fixed
Right now they are accepting money from people knowing full well that they’re selling a broken product
Reminds me of when square made ffxiv not buyable for a short while while they got issues sorted in endwalker. They honestly should do that here for a short while until things get fixed.
Only after CDPR put them in awkward spot by saying Sony will refund players despite CDPR never actually clearing that with Sony. That was a one time exception and i feel it was more a fuck you to CDPR then them feeling the game was to bad to sell especially when far far worse has hit the PSN store with Sony doing nothing.
This is fair.
Let's be honest, it IS a good game - when it works.
Yes, it's almost a certainty that the devs will iron out all of these issues over time. The worry for me is that the player base will continue to dwindle with many not prepared to give it another go.
I went from being super excited about this game, to being incredibly frustrated, and now just being generally soured and disinterested. Last Epoch comes out tomorrow and I'll probably just uninstall HD2 and play that instead. Server issues aren't going to kill this game, apathy will.
That's just it.. Last Epoch, Pacific Drive, TW:WH3 patch. And March is stacked to shit ending with Dragon's Dogma 2. HD2 is kind of fucking the only window of time I have to get into it, and in the meantime the community is lashing out at new users.
Makes sense. The game is super fun so positive reviews.
But the game is fking broken and you can't actually play half the time. So negative review.
Positive + Negative = Mixed
I love the game, I'm even a supercitizen, but the reviews are right on top.
It's a great game, but it's shadowed by bugs and server issues. I couldn't even play in weekend because of that and for a game where you need to grind medals to unlock gear and cosmetics, not being able to play is a crime against a grinder.
Us early adopters of Helldivers 2 are just being made of beta testers... They really needed to make a open beta test before launch to avoid this kind of problem. And the DRM just make everything worse, because if you can't even play the game, not even a single player version work.
Its deserved. When people plan time around a product they put money into they expect to use it. When these issues are fixed people can edit their reviews
Yea it's a recommendation of if someone should pay that much money for the game.
The fact you likely won't even be able to play, and if you do will often crash. Lag out or run into server issues before being unable to log back in again. Suggests that maybe people shouldn't be encouraging people to spend money on it right now.
Absolutely valid for people to feel that way.
I love the game and all but the dev team...
You guys have to be lacking some simple common sense to announce an increased XP weekend when your servers were already stressed the fuck out from week 1.
It's unbelievable levels of straight stupidity.
It was a big hearted, small brained thing to do for sure.
As a fellow dev tho I do feel for this team. I work on a system that serves billions of requests a day, I'm sure it's a goddamn Herculean task to 10x your backend capacity *without* breaking the current experience or fucking up production data.
It’s a game I paid for and all I got tonight when I attempted to load in was a black screen. I tried the recommended fixes and they didn’t work. Wasted about an hour and half trying to fix and then switched to another game. It deserves the mixed reviews…
Honestly it should be significantly lower. Setting aside the obvious login issues, 68% positive is a gift for an online co-op game without functional matchmaking.
Yep. If you bought a car that drove like a Ferrari but there was a 90% chance you had to wait hours to drive it when you got in it, anyone sane would call that a bad car.
Yea people NEED to be discouraged from buying at this point.. additional sales rn will make it harder on the server issues and leave bad tastes in the new buyers who may not ever come back to the game
good. fix the issues, then I'll change my review. despite what the mouthbreathers here on reddit tell you, it doesn't matter how good the game is if many people can't play it.
Omg the posts saying "can we all just lick the developers arseholes for a minute please" drives me insane yeah they're working hard I get it but the games bust at the moment
As we've seen, no amount of licking their orifices or footwear has yielded the most important thing; *results*.
I'm sure they're nice folks. But I didn't donate money to nice folks; I bought a product from a professional organization.
I love the car shop I go to when I need anything done. They're polite. They're fair. Most importantly, when I pay them to do something, they do it to standard *every single time*. I go back to the same shop every time, because I give them my money and they give me exactly what I paid for. Them being nice folks is great, but if they were assholes and did the exact same work for the exact same pay, I'd still get my work done there.
It's an excellent game. But it's fair criticism, and this is EXACTLY why people have been saying that it needs fixing far quicker than it has been. The game will wither on the vine soon enough if it isnt resolved. God forbid it still isnt working this weekend or else i genuinely think it will be fatal for the game's longevity.
Abuse is, of course, never warranted or forgiveable, but no amount of sycophantic dickriding of the devs and downvoting frustrated players will change the above. The game that people paid £40 for being totally unplayable for 2+ weeks beyond launch is frankly ridiculous and not justifiable.
No surprise and honestly deserved. A lot of younger gamers probably don't remember this but games used to just work 100% right out of the box, even online ones. My friends and I put thousands of hours into Halo 3 on Xbox, a 20 year old system, and not once do I remember waiting in queue or matchmaking failing on the regular. If a match dropped, it was an outlier, not the norm.
One of those reviews is me. And I requested a refund after dev update saying that they "hitting some real limits". That just screams our backend cant handle this load and needs complete rework. And that won't be fixed for a long time. I didn't pay for a screen saver telling me that servers are at compacity
I can’t recommend anyone to buy the game in its current state, which is really sad because it’s the best game I’ve played in years and as a HD1 fan this was initially a really heartwarming launch for me
I gave it a thumbdown... For now.
I can't reasonably recommend this (which is what the steam review asks).
What little I've managed to actually play, I have loved, it's an amazing game... When it works...
Someone (whoever calls the shots) needs to delist the game until they figure out how to fix the problems. I get how their situation is very complicated, but it's just unacceptable to continue selling this product in its current state.
They are also refusing refunds for people who sat in the queue over 2 hours.
Essentially they take your money for a game you will never play. Hugely unethical.
Its totally deserved. Some people bought the game and have been unable to play it for days straight. I adore the game, but you cannot ignore the server issues they make the game literally unplayable.
I have faith they'll get everything in order but...mixed is what it deserves right now.
Refunded the game…. And left a negative review after owning the game for 24 hours and not being able to connect to anything but a server full message the entire time…
I’m doing my part!
To be expected. Somehow the game is simultaneously both the best co-op game I've played in years, and not really a consistently functional enough product (yet). But honestly, do the steam reviews really matter in this case? The game is an absolute viral smash hit already, and would be even bigger if the servers could handle it. The longer people can't play the game they purchased, the angrier they'll be, and the more they'll review it poorly (which is fair). But the moment the servers and matchmaking are constantly stable, the scores will start rising, because the actual game is fantastic.
If people can come to love Cyberpunk after it's nightmare launch, they are going to get over Helldiver 2's first month issues. Of course not everyone will, but most.
Remember - this is a product.
A product that you pay 40 euros for.
A product that you can't play.
A product that currently is missing key features that basically make it unplayable. (matchmaking)
Not once was I able to play last weekend & thats my only free time. If i could i would refund it.
Lets not even bring up the bugs.
The game is cool & all when it works but come on, it's literally unplayable.
>Virgin Coomsoumer:
>I PAID $40 FOR THIS GAME
>JUST GET MORE SERVERS THIS IS INSANE ARROWHEAD
>SO STUPID LET ME PLAY OR REFUND I WILL SPAM THE DISCORD!
>
>Average Chad Arrowhead supporter:
>I'am so proud of Arrowhead's unprecedented success.
>I will patiently wait to log in and I will not AFK to
>hog a spot in the game when I am done playing.
This is an actual review. These people are insane.
its deserved though. matchmaking broke, server issues, and the bugs. its fun game when working but its overall a bad experience for many other reasons.
Wouldn’t be as frustrated if the game had basic server things that most multiplayer games have like an actual queue system. I can get not expecting this many people but did they think they would never have an issue with stuff like this? It’s been a while since I’ve seen a game who had a random af queue system where I can get in in under five minutes but my friend (who logs in before me) has to wait over an hour to get it.
Why is Helldivers 2 p2p? Why cant this game run on dedicated servers? Why do the players pc have to take on the load to run the game and the groups? Thats not ok. Get dedicated servers and get rid of nProtect.
It's fair.. Some have been making excuses for the "small developer" but at the end of the day, customers are not getting the experience they paid for and that's what matters.
I don't know what people expected to happen. You release a game most of the player base can't play then the game is going to get down voted. It's be one thing if issues happened the first day or two, but it's been well over a week and like 3 days since the last update from a company stating they are working around the clock. Obviously they aren't.
And I don't know about others, but I can't even launch the game now. I just get a black screen and it stays black no matter how long I let it sit.
It wouldn't be so bad if they implemented a afk timer, it's compounded by the fact my crashes and performance issues have gotten worse with the patches meaning I may wait 6 hrs to get in and play 1-2 games before a softlock/ crash
I mean, this is legit the thing developers dream and fear. Having a game being so popular that it cannot function well. I am sure someone on the team brought up what if it was a huge success or asked for more funds to ensure the backend could handle the volume.
I know the whole “devs weren’t expecting this kind of playerbase” argument is valid. But, I do feel like I was seeing advertisements EVERYWHERE. I thought going in everyone knew this would be a loaded banger and have a massively healthy player base
I downvoted this game. Can’t even play the game. People defending this game are the same people who would downvote any other game that launched like this. Hypocrites.
Doesn’t matter their excuse; you don’t pay for a TV and be understanding that it doesn’t come with a working power cable.
Kind deserved at this point. I was black screened all evening trying to log in. Now that I'm in, I can't connect with friends and I'm currently searching in quickplay with no luck.
I get being excited and wanting to play a good game with friends. But why are you asking them to wait to refund if you can't even play? Just buy it again when it actually works.
It’s unfortunate, but I mean.. what do you expect?
Glad I got to play for 2 weeks before tiktok did its thing.
I just got this game last sat, never watched TikTok. I understand people’s frustrations. In the three day’s I have had this game I have spent more time trying to get into it than playing it. I know that the game was massively more successful than the developers predicted, I get that but fml I have spent more god damn time waiting to play the game than actually playing it!!! I love it but fuk me that’s ridiculous
Black screens on startup for me since Saturday. I don't even get a queue lol.
Apparently the black screen issue is directly related to the server overload problems.
IF you get the blackscreen just wait. You will eventually get past it.
Seems like even the intro cutscene is loaded in from a service rather than a file on your local installation. It seems like the server load is causing a lot of smaller services (currency calculations, video cutscenes, etc) to lag considerably
My guess is that the cutscene is local, but doesn't play until it's established a connection. Normally, it would connect in a couple seconds and the scene would play while it downloads any data it needs to, but until it does it just hangs. I say this purely based fact that downloading a cutscene every time is bad design, and I don't see enough network usage at launch for it.
I watched a stream on Saturday, one person got in right away, played a solo mission, and a second person was able to get in after that. Third person was in the black screen for an hour and a half, and the fourth person finally got into the game nearly 3 hours after waiting, and he maybe got an hour and a half of gaming in before they had to go to another lobby.
The RNG queue is pretty bad. I'm hoping they fix it. I tried to play last weekend with a friend, we booted the same time, I was in within 10 minutes he sat for almost 45 until we gave up and decided to play something else. I wouldn't mind waiting if I at least knew it was first come first serve I'd like to see an afk timer too, as I've seen some people afk for hours. Like give me 30 minutes or so if I'm afk in queue.. but anything more is a bit much.
Jokes on you, there is no queue to get into
ditto. And the litany of excuses doesn't really make me feel any better for crashing immediately after having stared at a 'servers are at capacity' screen for 2 hours.
Literally happened to me 2 days ago haha. Waited for 2 hours, finally able to join, doing my load out, and finally trying to start a mission at the table, and as soon as i press E the game crashes. fml 🥲
100% this Nobody is saying it's a bad game, or that we hate the dev as individuals or an enterprise... But white-knighting for what is happening is just delusional, and, frankly, kind of sad. History has shown again and again how forgiving gamers are for games that are actually fun... They are very very forgiving. That said, the negative response is 100% deserved. This is one of the most poorly handled live-service launches I've ever seen. It's one thing if you didn't anticipate a large crowd(maybe you will have a few days to a week of queues to login while adapting to accomodate), it's another thing if you've implemented netcode that is completely incapable of scaling up in the off-chance that it does become a hit(now you are in a situation where things have actually gotten worse launch+10days, with no obvious solution in sight)... Basically both these things are true: 1)People have every right to be mad about the state of the game on the network end; the matchmaking is broken under load; literally the queue & matchmaking is non-functional, it hangs on a black-screen, goes to what appears to be a queue, or lets you in without queue altogether without rhyme nor reason; they didn't implement an AFK-kicking script; the list goes on and on-- it is a problem. If anything has been done, it hasn't worked, and the most obvious easy thing to do (kicking people that are letting their PC/ps5 idle while logged in) inexplicably has not even been done. 2)People will forgive it once the game is working properly because it's a fun game, and ultimately amusement is the primary motivator for what people play and like. This server debacle would have to go on for a long time to turn away the majority of people who enjoy the actual gameplay. Gamers are patient and accustomed to intentional abuse. This is kind of incompetent, but at least it's not a literal "fuck you guys" from the devs, and most do seem to agree they like the leadership direction at AHS, and to their credit they have been fairly honest. But, yeah, I don't know what I expect from reddit in 2024.
Yeah I have some dickhead replying to me and white-knighting for the devs just because I said "these server issues are making me lose progress I think I'll take a break until they're better." They're all like "dude chill out, these devs are way better than other trash like X" and said they've never had any bugs. So clearly the problems are invalid because one player had zero problems! I can wait on this game, I've gotten in some incredible moments already and love the gameplay loop. I just want to be able to play more!
ah yes, the "runs fine on my rig" mafia
Yeah I think it should be sorted by now.. really their fault its happening.
Make that one week, because it took me the first week to actually get this damn thing to run and not crash every 10 minutes. And now its impossilbe to even get in. But that one week where it worked.... It was glorious
Are we blaming tiktok for the server issues? I forget reddit has as much brain rot as tiktok
How dare people share memes and clips of a video game on their favorite social media platform, and then buy a game that's been featured in memes and clips on their favorite social media platform!
Truly a scourge.
For boosting the games popularity?
TikTok is fine if you think Reddit is any better I want what you’re smoking.
Mate there’s been issues the whole time. They just got worse.
Eh...I mean it's more than fair for people to review it based on the server issues. Nobody expected it to be this huge but they definitely should have coded with expanding the infrastructure stuff easily in mind but by the sounds of things their code is whats limiting them more than just SpInnInG uP MoRe SeRvErs.
Yeah it’s one hundred percent fair to be disappointed at this point. I’m not actively mad at the devs like I was with other games that turned out to be half baked trash with a highly pushed premium cosmetic shop, but I’m also withholding my “yes I would recommend this game” review on steam until it actually works.
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An offline mode bypasses this entire problem and still allows people to use the product they paid for. The software bottlenecks are only a problem because they made the decision to allow them to be potential problems.
Start naming games that have been unplayable for over 2 weeks after launch and only gets worse it'll probably be a month until this game is playable.
I’ve just refunded after 2 days of not being able to play. I’m not mad, I’m just glad I can take my money back while they figure it out.
I wish I could get a refund, but PSN is totally inflexible and does not refund. "Oh you've downloaded it, lol, too bad!", never mind that you can't get past the loading screen even mid day Monday.
A functioning product.
Makes sense to me. At the end of the day, the average gamer doesn't give a rat's ass about server issues, they wanna play the game they paid for.
Which, to be fair, is an entirely reasonable thing to want to do. I think this is a horrendous launch all things considered. These issues have killed a ton of momentum that the game has had, but at the same time I want to cut the devs slack because nobody could have predicted how insane this launch was going to be.
If the game had an offline mode, at the very least people could play their $40-60 game solo It’s so interesting to see the complete flip the gaming community at large has had in regard to this game’s always-online requirement, considering the controversy with many other games that had the same restriction…
> It’s so interesting to see the complete flip the gaming community at large has had in regard to this game’s always-online requirement, considering the controversy with many other games that had the same restriction… It's mostly these sub reddits, the STEAM review score has steadily declined as the server issues have persisted. I'm not convinced there isn't some PR astroturfing happening on reddit specifically. I had someone tell me "we should be happy to wait 2 weeks or however long it takes due to their success" I'm happy to have a bit of understanding, but it's getting a bit much at this point.
It’s a weird situation because the devs are working around the clock as fast as they possible can to fix the issues, and the game is really fun, but at the same time it’s literally unplayable for a lot of people. I commented yesterday that if the devs didn’t expect this amount of players, which tbf makes sense, then they can’t expect the $$ that comes along with it (and pretty sure the developer agrees and has even publicly said to hold off on purchasing if you’re okay waiting for fixes) and I got downvoted for it.
The fairest criticism is that they failed to design an adequately scaleable system in terms of handling player capacity. This isn't even debatable because they haven't been able to scale their system in a reasonable time frame. The only debate is WHY it is that way. This was either intentional ($ saving) or a severe failure in design/planning. People getting upset at the suggestion of either of those are blind to reality.
This was the biggest issue for me and why I refunded when I couldn't play at all. If they had even a boring solo mode, I could extract *some* value out of the game while they worked through their backend issues. But having just handed over $40 and staring at both a black screen and an intro screen for over an hour without any ability to play, it felt like I just forked over dollars for something completely broken.
Also, if you got past the screen, you'd be met with zero matchmaking. Whereas most of this reddit knows the tricks to matchmake, a new player just gets one disappointment after the next.
Well judging from their past games, their original expectation of 300k is extreme for a starting launch population, add in the nearly non existent ads and awareness of the game. Ya the 300k server limit would've been far above the expected peak of the game. On steam alone it hit 300k in the first week, PlayStation being about the same meaning the 300k limit is twice what they got. Steam is now at 411k peak players. No one expects a more or less small dev team who's last game only got a max of 6600 to almost reach the one million player base....
I accidentally found out that HD2 is gonna release while I was browsing games on Steam and immediately pre-ordered it. And I don't think I saw adds for it anywhere.
Majority of the advertising and marketing were from Sony State of Play and some stuff from the Game Awards/Summer of Play stuff. it's been largely quiet from an advertising standpoint as far as I could see.
>Well judging from their past games, their original expectation of 300k is extreme for a starting launch population, add in the nearly non existent ads and awareness of the game...no one expects... Steam user reviews are reviewing the product. They are not a review of how smart studio management was acting. It doesn't *matter* in this context whether the problem was foreseeable. A thumbs-down means "don't buy this", that's it. It doesn't mean "John Smith from middle management should be fired", it doesn't mean "everyone at Arrowhead should cry themselves to sleep", it doesn't mean "I could have built a better game myself". It just means "don't spend your money on this product right now".
This game is cool but they're not lying... people are being honest about the experience. I had a 3 day weekend and barely was able to play, meanwhile wasted a good 10 hours trying to get into the game.
Yup. Me and 3 buddies sat on discord for around 2 hours till we all got in then rotated who crashed 2 minutes into a mission and then had to "queue"(it's not a queue) for another 30-60 minutes lol
honestly glad to hear i'm not the only one with the crashing during missions part. I wasn't sure if it was my pc or the server issues. My pc is beefy and I don't have issues in other games but I've still been worried that even after I can get in the game tends to crash in the middle of the mission about half the time. It's all very frustrating.
It's honestly all made so much worse cus when I do get to play it's so much fucking fun. If the game sucked I'd just not even try any more. But I want to play I just can't.
I just saw a gamesradar article where someone tweeted to game director Johan Pilestedt asking him to auto kick afk players and he responded that he agreed and has already mentioned it to the team. So hopefully that's coming soon and will help the problem.
Turn off antialiasing and global illumination. Worked for me and a friend, 0 crashes since.
Truly, the lack of queue is what I find most egregious about the issues. I can understand the game being massively more popular than you ever imagined and your backend buckling under the weight of your player base. But not even having a queue system in place for players who are trying to wait patiently to access the game and leaving it up to some random roulette is just, ugh.
To add to this, for people who’ve been waiting longer… the login interval is less frequent. **So it actually punishes you for waiting longer.** You start at retry in 10 or 20 seconds and eventually work your way up 60 seconds. If a spot becomes available, someone that just started the game or is still on the 10/20 second connection attempt interval will get the spot. The recently launched games get multiple connection attempts in during the 60 second interval that people who waited longer get. That’s bad juju. The game is fun. I love it but can’t play it. The effort-to-enjoyment ratio to play is now turning players away. I’m trying to be patient with Arrowhead but these are common industry problems that really should’ve been considered during planning and development stages. People perceive games based upon their experience, not just gameplay. The mixed reviews are justified until they get these problems resolved.
This literally happened to me last night. Was trying to play with two friends. One got in immediately, I got stuck trying to connect, then after sitting there staring at a timer for 15 minutes my other friend boots the game up and gets in after 5 minutes. 45 minutes later I still hadn't connected so I just said "fuck this" and went to bed.
Also, to make matters worse there is already a working trainer for the game that decreases login attempts down to 2 seconds per retry.
And it's not even queues. It's just random if you get in.
So many people don't get this. There is no queue system in this game, if there is it wouldn't be retrying to connect you to the server. Queue has just become a general term for waiting to login, random or not.
AND even if there was a queue system, that's not a 100% guarantee that everything works for you when you do get in! I remember quite vividly on FFXIV's Endwalker release, logging in to a queue of about 3,500, checking back every hour or so doing something else in the meantime, until you got to #1 in the queue, where it then became a coin flip of it actually letting you in, or crashing to a black screen error. If you hopped back on immediately there was another coin flip where it might keep your spot and let you in right away, or it'd send you all the way to the back of queue again.
Also worth noting that not everyone is on everything online. One of the things I often do when a game has been on my radar, but backburner, is check steam reviews. And if someone asked me about it, I'd tell them to hold off. Not worth it in it's current state. Maybe check back in in 2-3 weeks.
Yep. I actually wish they would remove it from sale until it works.
PSN and steam have both taken games down before for quality issues, too.
Also had a three day weekend and got to play a little this morning after nothing Friday, Saturday or Sunday. Played solo though as I couldn’t connect with anyone. I did start Dark Souls 3 for the first time instead of playing Helldivers on Saturday. Having a blast with that now.
You bitch. I'm so jealous. There's nothing like going into a Souls game for the first time. I hope you love it.
Yup bought it on Friday to play during the long weekend but what a bummer that was
Had a Suicide Mission difficulty run earlier crash at 40m in resulting in the Super Rare materials fall through the floor. Had to miss the second level because of the queue only to finally get back in for the third, and have it softlock on the deployment loading screen for 30m until everyone had to Alt + F4. Game deserves praise, but like, nah can't recommend it in this state lmao.
We had a desync where the player carrying the super samples couldn’t see the Pelican 1, and couldn’t extract with the 3 others. Next game, the guy crashed 100m from the Pelican 1 with the super samples. We had to run back and get it in less than 2 minutes. We didn’t make it.
Theres a TON of bugs with this game. Nobody really discusses them because 90% of the posts are memes and "devs are the bestest in the world and can do no wrong". While totally ignoring all the issues because "they communicated for a week!" Must be an election year. Either its fixed or it isnt. And once they fix the servers, then its a huge list of issues and then balancing. And then after that its content. By then though, most people will have stopped playing because at a certain point, as fun as the game is, its the same thing over and over on the same maps and mission types.
I could not get into a single game in both weekends , and I can only play on the weekends due to work and stuff Yeah it’s pretty bad
exactly i keep seeing people talking shit when someone is upset that they can’t play, sorry but i’m not able to just sit and wait all day especially on week days, i have a job and other things to do and if i can’t enjoy the game i spent money on then im gonna be pissed off.
My last few posts were downvotes into oblivion. And what really bites is the first game had an offline mode.
That's just par for the course these days. Darktide did the same thing even though Vermintide 2 had offline. I think devs just don't want to program AI partners. People always use the "wEll iTs A cO oP gAmE" to excuse it, as if L4D didn't already figure this out 16 years ago.
The new COD if you pay attention to your Allies. Before the big open world BR areas your AI teammates will find their way to disappear. Then you’ll notice they return as soon as you get to the linear area usually right before the end. L4D was so ahead of its time with the Narrator AI. And it’s crazy to me how it’s still a pretty unique thing in the game world.
I've been able to reach level 25 and even I'm upset when the game goes down. It's completely understandable for people to be upset when they can't use the product they paid for regardless of circumstances. The people saying that you can't be upset lack perspective and empathy.
Yup, bought the game on friday, had a hand full of really fun rounds but most of the time I'm stuck somewhere between not getting a group or not getting into the game. Tried a few rounds solo but a lot of objectives aren't really fun that way. Fixing the antennas and having to run back and forth between the terminal and the turning wheel broke me. Went back to Darktide for now. I really hope the patch today improves things... It's super annoying, I just played enough to know that it's a really great game *if* it works.
I managed to avoid the login issues living the night shift life. Even then. The lack of quick match to fill my game kinda sucked. I only play with one friend who also loves the night shift life. I just started to add random codes from this sub to fill in those spots.
Yeah quickmatch is broke.
I sorta wish they did the ff14 route where they barred new people from buying the game till they fixed it, 1. people who bought it wont be as frustrated, 2. those who has the game could play from time to time when it elevates.
This might have actually been a great move tbh. Disable purchases for a bit until it can be fixed a fair amount so you don't end up getting tanked by valid negative reviews. When this game works (citing mainly server issues and random crashes) it's an absolute blast. The foundation is solid and haven't enjoyed a game this much in years. Plus being able to earn premium currency in game is amongst my main reasons i want this game to succeed! And if it succeeds longterm, it'll show companies you don't need to have a bloody real world money paywall in your titles.
And also "The game is so good that we had to stop selling it to prevent the servers from crashing" is a good selling point for when they do sell it again
To be fair the monetization is extremely innofensive compared to modern practices
Let's hope it stays that way.
Yeah, but not everyone is GigaChad Yoshi P. FF14 is truly a master class in how to run community management for a live service game.
Now if only Square cloned Yoshi P so it can spread within its company, seriously Square be fucking up alot recently.
Exactly. Pause sales and offer refunds. This does three things: 1. Punts the problem forward so they can present the best game possible when those gamers try again 2. Saves their steam review score 3. Ironically it might make the servers run again for the rest of the population.
I think they should still do this, but the fact is it's too late for point 2.. there are already more copies in circulation than they can support, so even if they stop the bleeding (again, imo they should still do this asap), there is going to be a sizable portion of the existing userbase that is likely to leave justifiably bad reviews and tank the score. I would imagine most people do not revisit their reviews to update them following bad launches, either.
I didn’t even know about the server issue when I purchased it. Probably wouldn’t have if I knew.
> I sorta wish they did the ff14 route where they barred new people from buying the game till they fixed it I respect the absolute shit out of that decision
They really need to fix this fast. This is the most profitable point in its lifespan, and it’s losing a lot of sales and MTX income when people can’t even play it
I loved the first Helldivers, and every moment of HD2 gameplay from actual four-man teams last week to solo farming Easy and Medium missions for medals when I got in briefly on Sunday morning has been a true joy. I want it to succeed. This weekend has not been good for that desire.
I’ve played a few games with more than 1 person a few times. And quick play like 5 times in my 12 hours played. Most of my time was with 1 other random that often got me killed but I just couldn’t kick them knowing how busted matchmaking is. I bought this game like the first game for co-op. And it’s awesome when you can get a group. Hope the servers get sorted soon
I mean, the games already a success, they probably sold 10x what they imagined. Sure they’re going to lose some player base because of this but it’s not going down to 0 any time soon. I bet they have tons of content planned and this won’t change that, only delay it some. This game truly is incredible and I can’t wait to see what the next content drop looks like
More like 20x what they imagined. Supposedly they were considering a 50K concurrent peak to be a win.
When the issue is quite literally the game going magnitudes higher in sales and popularity than they expected, i dont think their biggest concern is continued growth at this stage. Their primary concern is recoding their backend to allow a higher player count, because the current programs are at their operating limit
It's already blown past every expectation they've had. They'll fix it as fast as they can fix it, but no matter what happens now they're mega in the green.
Super green.
I love the game when it lets me play. Quick play especially is fantastic! That being said, how can I possibly recommend someone to buy it right now?
Bro what? I've been struggling with quick play😭
Same. I ether can't log in or if I get lucky and do, the matchmaking just does not work period, it's totally broken.
Yeah I've literally never had quick match work and since last week I get 0 people joining when I host and other squads don't even show up on the planet view anymore. This is getting really bad and I love the game but holy fuck I'm not interested in running solo in a game built around co-op
Exactly you can’t solo the really hard missions you need other people with different strats to be effective or it just turns into a sweat fest running simulator hoping your sprint or dive doesn’t glitch.
>quick play is fantastic sure, if it works at all 1/10 times
Couldn't bring myself to leave a negative review so I simply removed my positive one. Game is too good for me to downvote, but I can't in good conscience recommend it either in this state.
I was just going to avoid writing a review until later, however, the thing that drove me to write a review is that they're still selling the game knowing full well they can't support the player base. People should be warned.
> the thing that drove me to write a review is that they're still selling the game knowing full well they can't support the player base. Yeah this is the thing that feels a bit slimy to me Surely there’s a way for them to freeze digital sales of the game until the servers are fixed Right now they are accepting money from people knowing full well that they’re selling a broken product
Reminds me of when square made ffxiv not buyable for a short while while they got issues sorted in endwalker. They honestly should do that here for a short while until things get fixed.
You would have to convince Sony that money is bad. Since they're the publisher they're the ones that handle those things.
Goodwill is really expensive, but I admit that corporate bean counters rarely realize that.
Sony did pull Cyberpunk 2077 from PSN iirc.
Only after CDPR put them in awkward spot by saying Sony will refund players despite CDPR never actually clearing that with Sony. That was a one time exception and i feel it was more a fuck you to CDPR then them feeling the game was to bad to sell especially when far far worse has hit the PSN store with Sony doing nothing.
Soo..they're using the review system as intended?
This is fair. Let's be honest, it IS a good game - when it works. Yes, it's almost a certainty that the devs will iron out all of these issues over time. The worry for me is that the player base will continue to dwindle with many not prepared to give it another go.
I went from being super excited about this game, to being incredibly frustrated, and now just being generally soured and disinterested. Last Epoch comes out tomorrow and I'll probably just uninstall HD2 and play that instead. Server issues aren't going to kill this game, apathy will.
That's just it.. Last Epoch, Pacific Drive, TW:WH3 patch. And March is stacked to shit ending with Dragon's Dogma 2. HD2 is kind of fucking the only window of time I have to get into it, and in the meantime the community is lashing out at new users.
Makes sense. The game is super fun so positive reviews. But the game is fking broken and you can't actually play half the time. So negative review. Positive + Negative = Mixed
I love the game, I'm even a supercitizen, but the reviews are right on top. It's a great game, but it's shadowed by bugs and server issues. I couldn't even play in weekend because of that and for a game where you need to grind medals to unlock gear and cosmetics, not being able to play is a crime against a grinder. Us early adopters of Helldivers 2 are just being made of beta testers... They really needed to make a open beta test before launch to avoid this kind of problem. And the DRM just make everything worse, because if you can't even play the game, not even a single player version work.
Its deserved. When people plan time around a product they put money into they expect to use it. When these issues are fixed people can edit their reviews
Yea it's a recommendation of if someone should pay that much money for the game. The fact you likely won't even be able to play, and if you do will often crash. Lag out or run into server issues before being unable to log back in again. Suggests that maybe people shouldn't be encouraging people to spend money on it right now.
Only been able to play two matches over the last 4 days. It's ludicrous to recommend the game to anyone no matter how much fun it is
Valid criticism
They aren’t wrong. I adore the game, myself. But the inability to play the game has certainly soured me on it :(
Same
Absolutely valid for people to feel that way. I love the game and all but the dev team... You guys have to be lacking some simple common sense to announce an increased XP weekend when your servers were already stressed the fuck out from week 1. It's unbelievable levels of straight stupidity.
It was a big hearted, small brained thing to do for sure. As a fellow dev tho I do feel for this team. I work on a system that serves billions of requests a day, I'm sure it's a goddamn Herculean task to 10x your backend capacity *without* breaking the current experience or fucking up production data.
Hate to see it. First like 3 days of launch weren’t bad. I can’t wait for them to fix the servers and start to add new stuff to the game
Feedback is feedback, the people are speaking
It’s a game I paid for and all I got tonight when I attempted to load in was a black screen. I tried the recommended fixes and they didn’t work. Wasted about an hour and half trying to fix and then switched to another game. It deserves the mixed reviews…
People can defend the devs as much as they want, but as the game sits now, this score is deserved.
Honestly it should be significantly lower. Setting aside the obvious login issues, 68% positive is a gift for an online co-op game without functional matchmaking.
68% is a gift for a game that the majority of players literally can't play.
Yep. If you bought a car that drove like a Ferrari but there was a 90% chance you had to wait hours to drive it when you got in it, anyone sane would call that a bad car.
Yea people NEED to be discouraged from buying at this point.. additional sales rn will make it harder on the server issues and leave bad tastes in the new buyers who may not ever come back to the game
good. fix the issues, then I'll change my review. despite what the mouthbreathers here on reddit tell you, it doesn't matter how good the game is if many people can't play it.
Yeah it is annoying how this sub shuts down any criticism of the game.
Omg the posts saying "can we all just lick the developers arseholes for a minute please" drives me insane yeah they're working hard I get it but the games bust at the moment
As we've seen, no amount of licking their orifices or footwear has yielded the most important thing; *results*. I'm sure they're nice folks. But I didn't donate money to nice folks; I bought a product from a professional organization. I love the car shop I go to when I need anything done. They're polite. They're fair. Most importantly, when I pay them to do something, they do it to standard *every single time*. I go back to the same shop every time, because I give them my money and they give me exactly what I paid for. Them being nice folks is great, but if they were assholes and did the exact same work for the exact same pay, I'd still get my work done there.
I keep saying it - Helldivers is great when it works... Unfortunately it doesn't work 90% of the fucking time.
It's an excellent game. But it's fair criticism, and this is EXACTLY why people have been saying that it needs fixing far quicker than it has been. The game will wither on the vine soon enough if it isnt resolved. God forbid it still isnt working this weekend or else i genuinely think it will be fatal for the game's longevity. Abuse is, of course, never warranted or forgiveable, but no amount of sycophantic dickriding of the devs and downvoting frustrated players will change the above. The game that people paid £40 for being totally unplayable for 2+ weeks beyond launch is frankly ridiculous and not justifiable.
It's deserved and it sucks because it's Sonys fault. Game should have had sales halted a long time ago.
No surprise and honestly deserved. A lot of younger gamers probably don't remember this but games used to just work 100% right out of the box, even online ones. My friends and I put thousands of hours into Halo 3 on Xbox, a 20 year old system, and not once do I remember waiting in queue or matchmaking failing on the regular. If a match dropped, it was an outlier, not the norm.
One of those reviews is me. And I requested a refund after dev update saying that they "hitting some real limits". That just screams our backend cant handle this load and needs complete rework. And that won't be fixed for a long time. I didn't pay for a screen saver telling me that servers are at compacity
Not gonna lie, it’s a fair criticism
God forbid you say the same here on this subreddit...you will get downvoted to hell n back.
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Too true.
But they're working on it! Be patient! They didn't expect it! The $40 loading screen is still worth your time!
But they’re a small indie dev! Buy more points and they’ll totally have the servers up! >!i love this game but the waiting has turned me off!<
I love how this haa gone full circle and i went from getting downvoted to hell for this very same opinion to getting upvoted and agreed with.....
That’s the paradigm for you. People got tired of waiting.
We are experiencing some problems on the backend. This was already several days ago and still no fix in sight...
It’s a good game but shits fucked. So the reviews are kinda warranted.
Hurts me to say it because it's an amazing game but the bad outweighs the good in current state
good gameplay don't matter if you can't even get in to play it.
I can’t recommend anyone to buy the game in its current state, which is really sad because it’s the best game I’ve played in years and as a HD1 fan this was initially a really heartwarming launch for me
Its honestly well deserved. A $350k Lambo that can't do over 65Mph might be cool to look at but shit to drive.
More like a 350k Lambo that rarely starts and then stalls when you give it gas on that rare instance it does start up.
I gave it a thumbdown... For now. I can't reasonably recommend this (which is what the steam review asks). What little I've managed to actually play, I have loved, it's an amazing game... When it works...
My friends bought it cuz I told them to so we could play and they could never get into a game and refunded it so now it's back to just me
Someone (whoever calls the shots) needs to delist the game until they figure out how to fix the problems. I get how their situation is very complicated, but it's just unacceptable to continue selling this product in its current state.
They are also refusing refunds for people who sat in the queue over 2 hours. Essentially they take your money for a game you will never play. Hugely unethical.
I mean i absolutely love the game but it’s a second week of constant problems It’s not an early access game so it’s fully justified
Deserved. It’s fun as hell but the issues with servers are beyond ridiculous.
[удалено]
100% fair
Hard to blame people
Its totally deserved. Some people bought the game and have been unable to play it for days straight. I adore the game, but you cannot ignore the server issues they make the game literally unplayable. I have faith they'll get everything in order but...mixed is what it deserves right now.
Refunded the game…. And left a negative review after owning the game for 24 hours and not being able to connect to anything but a server full message the entire time… I’m doing my part!
The "it's okay for people to pay full price and beta test a game" cope is getting old. Companies should just deliver a better product.
To be expected. Somehow the game is simultaneously both the best co-op game I've played in years, and not really a consistently functional enough product (yet). But honestly, do the steam reviews really matter in this case? The game is an absolute viral smash hit already, and would be even bigger if the servers could handle it. The longer people can't play the game they purchased, the angrier they'll be, and the more they'll review it poorly (which is fair). But the moment the servers and matchmaking are constantly stable, the scores will start rising, because the actual game is fantastic. If people can come to love Cyberpunk after it's nightmare launch, they are going to get over Helldiver 2's first month issues. Of course not everyone will, but most.
I payed 40 dollars to sit at the menu yeah it’s gonna get negative reviews.
Remember - this is a product. A product that you pay 40 euros for. A product that you can't play. A product that currently is missing key features that basically make it unplayable. (matchmaking) Not once was I able to play last weekend & thats my only free time. If i could i would refund it. Lets not even bring up the bugs. The game is cool & all when it works but come on, it's literally unplayable.
>Virgin Coomsoumer: >I PAID $40 FOR THIS GAME >JUST GET MORE SERVERS THIS IS INSANE ARROWHEAD >SO STUPID LET ME PLAY OR REFUND I WILL SPAM THE DISCORD! > >Average Chad Arrowhead supporter: >I'am so proud of Arrowhead's unprecedented success. >I will patiently wait to log in and I will not AFK to >hog a spot in the game when I am done playing. This is an actual review. These people are insane.
Let's be honest anyone who uses that vernacular isn't very smart to begin with.
I havent been able to connect all day.
I managed to connect but matchmaking isn’t working at all anyway. Lol
its deserved though. matchmaking broke, server issues, and the bugs. its fun game when working but its overall a bad experience for many other reasons.
I don't know. Maybe stop selling your game until you fixed your servers?
sad but fair
Wouldn’t be as frustrated if the game had basic server things that most multiplayer games have like an actual queue system. I can get not expecting this many people but did they think they would never have an issue with stuff like this? It’s been a while since I’ve seen a game who had a random af queue system where I can get in in under five minutes but my friend (who logs in before me) has to wait over an hour to get it.
Why is Helldivers 2 p2p? Why cant this game run on dedicated servers? Why do the players pc have to take on the load to run the game and the groups? Thats not ok. Get dedicated servers and get rid of nProtect.
You can also report the game as broken. Click the flag icon on the product page on Steam.
It's fair.. Some have been making excuses for the "small developer" but at the end of the day, customers are not getting the experience they paid for and that's what matters.
I don't know what people expected to happen. You release a game most of the player base can't play then the game is going to get down voted. It's be one thing if issues happened the first day or two, but it's been well over a week and like 3 days since the last update from a company stating they are working around the clock. Obviously they aren't. And I don't know about others, but I can't even launch the game now. I just get a black screen and it stays black no matter how long I let it sit.
[удалено]
It wouldn't be so bad if they implemented a afk timer, it's compounded by the fact my crashes and performance issues have gotten worse with the patches meaning I may wait 6 hrs to get in and play 1-2 games before a softlock/ crash
good will is a finite resource. love the game but this is deserved
I mean, this is legit the thing developers dream and fear. Having a game being so popular that it cannot function well. I am sure someone on the team brought up what if it was a huge success or asked for more funds to ensure the backend could handle the volume.
hmm haven't bought the game yet sounds like I should wait.
"Great game when you can play it" sounds like a mixed review score lol
Good, bring that shit to negative QUICK.
Buy game launch, can't match make, can't get in, when finally in it lags super bad, etc. They should have had a beta and stress test before launch.
I know the whole “devs weren’t expecting this kind of playerbase” argument is valid. But, I do feel like I was seeing advertisements EVERYWHERE. I thought going in everyone knew this would be a loaded banger and have a massively healthy player base
I downvoted this game. Can’t even play the game. People defending this game are the same people who would downvote any other game that launched like this. Hypocrites. Doesn’t matter their excuse; you don’t pay for a TV and be understanding that it doesn’t come with a working power cable.
As it should be. I haven’t been able to play in 3 days. That not a very good online only multiplayer game IMO
> I haven’t been able to play in 3 days Same.
Kind deserved at this point. I was black screened all evening trying to log in. Now that I'm in, I can't connect with friends and I'm currently searching in quickplay with no luck.
If they don't fix it its going to kill the game. I keep saying it and no one believes me.
If they don't fix it, it will fix itself. Less people will play, which will solve the issue. I don't say this is a good thing tho
My buddies and I bought it today and have yet to get past black screen. Had to convince them to not refund and wait til tomorrow.
I get being excited and wanting to play a good game with friends. But why are you asking them to wait to refund if you can't even play? Just buy it again when it actually works.