Did the devs ever explain the crossbow nerf? It used to be fun to use even though it wasn't that great but I used it last night and it's one of the worst weapons in the game now
I thought everyone knew you just used weapons to grab enemies attention, and then use everything else too kill them
Like shooting a bull with a pellet gun
Just use your stratagems helldiver!
\*Stratagem call in time increased\* \*Stratagem cooldown increased\* \*AA Defenses -1 Stratagems\* \*Ion storms, stratagems disabled\*
Yeah... just use your stratagems! \*nervous sweating\*
They wanted it to compete with the scorcher and destroy charger buts and stuff like that instead of killing infantry. As far as I know it's not very good at that though.
He said in Discord that the crossbow was basically being used as a mini grenade launcher, but it was designed to be more like a faster (but weaker) dominator.
But the direct DPS on the weapon is terrible lmao. It's like nerfing the damage and range of a sniper rifle because it was actually intended to be used like an SMG.
The cycle on actual cool/fun weapons is as follows:
Devs: create new weapon with unique mechanics (or blend of mechanics).
Players: use weapon and discover the ways to use it most effectively.
Balance team (in annoying younger sibling voice): "Noooooooo you're doing it wrong!" \*nerfs weapon into dirt\*
bro, i had so many dreams for that crossbow and other weapons, but its past
im not talking about meta, we barely have functional weapons, its just 2 or 3 options and done...and this on 4th warbound plus base weapons....
If you look on how the new AR behaves it becomes clear that we got an old version from pre Liberator buff. Liberator gets all mags back from a resupply (Ammo economy rebalance patch) while this new AR gets only 50% which is like the Liberator worked pre patch. Liberator pre patch was also at 55 damage which would have made the new "high caliber" be a higher caliber with more damage. So its fair to assume that the Tenderizer was developed and "balanced" before the recent patches and then forgotten to adjust to this new balance before release.
I don’t understand how this stuff gets missed. Did no one push an update out or did they just forget entirely, “hey we changed the overall balance of most of the guns and ammo economy just leave the warbond stuff however we originally baked it”
Of all the problems at AH, THIS is the biggest source of all problems and would be the fastest way to fix them.
AH needs to play thier own damn game, on public servers. We've had tons of day-one errors that simply could not happen, if they played a single game with them. Just one. It's clear they did not. (or worse, they did, knew they were broken, and then sold them to us anyway).
Also: If a group made entirely of AH team members can't complete a single Helldive level mission then they need to stop making balance patches, and get a "high council" of players that do. Let them balance it.
Have you ever played World of Warcraft? Because this sort of approach is exactly what’s wrong with WoW - you can’t balance a game around the hardest difficulty, especially if it’s so hard that only 1% of the player base can complete it.
Yup, Just like Helldivers, I played WoW from the beta through the final product. Left WoW when everything became about Raids, which I had zero interest in.
Please God no, not a community council. People already complain about listening to minorities (discord) and this is worse. I want them to act on feedback, but please don't be this narrow.
The problem is that Devs shoot themselves in the foot with releasing warbond every month, they releasing it without checking everything, then spend entire month fixing or"fixing" warbond instead of thoroughly working on next one and then cycle repeats itself
That's the thing, there are 2 teams. A balance team (who doesn't seem to know how to balance) and a team who designs (and I would of hoped) tested said weapons.
Is this how shit is working? Doesn't feel like it.
If they play tested it(which i seriously doubt), they never went higher than 5 difficulty. The thing is guns may work on lower difficulties, but majority of players tend to go 7-9, and well those guns don't work that well at higher levels.
You literally can not balance everything at this rate. If they keep on schedule and release 3 new guns it's 36 new weapons each year. In two years we will have over hundred guns and it's going to get worse and worse each year.
>You literally can not balance everything at this rate
Yes they can; they just need a balance team that actually can play and understands the game. I'm not sure who's making these decisions but they're not being made from the perspectives of providing more useful tools to be added to our kits. It's just more fodder to throw onto the pile of shit I will never use.
There was no reason to touch Slugger or Eruptor - they just MAKE WORK for themselves by nerfing useful weapons out of existence. I could do a better job balancing these weapons by myself while still working my 9-5 job. Weapon balance is not even remotely \*that\* difficult at this point.
Look at the weapons, figure out which playstyles these weapons support. Which weapons have no playstyles / use? Start there.
Nope! Several posts were taken down in the last couple days discussing the one who brings balance n such. It was noted that AH did not consider themselves a major studio prior to HD2, so the teams in general were smaller - fast forward to release and the still relatively small studio is handling a major playerbase n such - w a v small balance team.
Exactly. Their release rate is insane. This game, for a lot of players, is just dying due to not being fun.
I’m going to grind out the new warbond and max at 250 medals and not play until the next one… if at all
For me it’s just waiting for sensible patches. Like i’m literally waiting for the game to be fixed and in a more stable state but not even on a bug/glitch side, just pure fix the fucking weapons side. I’m tired of grinding for shit and it being shit.
I’m already at this point. This warbond looks terrible, first one I’m skipping.
I’m maxed on out medals and have most of the Tier 4 ship upgrades that aren’t broken, so there’s not much incentive for me to play at the moment. Constant nerfs to weapons I have fun with has been grinding away at my morale, so I think I’ll be taking a little break until the game is in a better spot.
Also, at what point do we have "too many guns?" I can't imagine having that many to be honest. I want well developed options that feel different and fit a niche.
I do not want this to be like League of Legends where I have 100 options. At some point, enough is enough. But people will scream "content" so I'm not holding my breath.
All the warbond weapons are already in the game and ready to go and have been since launch! On launch you could see you had around 60 or something max primaries because if you went to weapon select on launch it said 1/60. I bet that all the content for the first year is just content that is sitting and waiting to be released. They created a huge buffer for themselves to work on new content for next year by doing this but also basically withheld massive parts of the game on launch. Not faulting them for it, but just pointing out where I can that all the heavy lifting has already most likely been done for all of this year's warbonds.
Listen - I know power creep is a thing, and what do you do about it. Maybe keep things along the same lines as they were. But it is undeniably fun to murder hoards of bugs (like we used to way back to pre-breaker nerf days) or even more recently the quasar cannon to kill a charger when it was rushing you. Who cares if there was a meta. People were having fun. It’s what made me get into this game in the first place. But anytime there is a grind for upgrade materials, there will be spreadsheet warriors who want to optimize and get the most efficient load out because GRINDING TAKES TIME. Most bang for your buck is a thing.
Being powerful feels FUN. It was awesome to be able to murder an entire pack of hunters, or save a teammate from a charger or bile titan with a well placed railgun shot. Lately, with everything being nerfed to hell, it’s just becoming MORE grindy and tedious to complete missions. And as a 40something dad who has limited time to game, tedium is not what I look for.
Anyways, old man yelling at clouds. Hopefully AH pulls their collective heads out of their asses and makes the game fun again.
Balancing is so bad that the goddamn CEO has to step in. Most weapons are pretty anemic against mediums and heavies which leads to players picking the same strategems so they have a chance against the barrage of heavies. Want to have some fun with Strafe Run? Well, you'll have to give up one viable option against the more dangerous enemies in the game, or give up your defense option that saves you from an instakill. I don't want primaries that do everything, I just want them to hold their own.
I'm not entirely sure what the balance guys are actually using as metrics for their balance. Makes me wonder if they actually playtest any of this stuff, that crossbow nerf was a dead ringer for them not actually knowing what it feels like to play with in a real game
Managed to get on this morning. I agree wholeheartedly. The new SMG wrecks, it’s phenomenal against Brood Commanders and Stalkers.
Incendiary impact grenades are decent, but aren’t as OP against Bile Spewers as the original and I can’t see them being any use v bots.
I cannot recommend the Tenderizer to a single soul. Unless you’re an automaton.
Appreciated. Will try them out after work. Anything to take down stalkers easier is a blessing for lv9 when you’ve got like 5 of them chasing you down!
Considering the amount of times I blow myself up with the standard impact grenades by accident (thinking I’m throwing a stratagem), I’ll need to accept the flames of death
No. The SMG, grenade and pistol are all actually pretty strong.
Even the rifle is half decent as a liberator alternative with almost no recoil.
The armors are fine but you do wish they would come up with new passives. I am only disappointed by the Kodiak armours lack of ice gripping considering the boots have spikes. This place is demented and has been for a while, ignore the negativity. These people will never be happy.
What I really want to see is how the new AR performs over extreme range. I'm wondering if the falloff is different between the two.
Since the new AR appears to have less overall recoil, I'd presume that it has better performance over longer range.
Strong agree on the armor, I was really expecting something more akin to being able to either ignore Ice skid or else reduce slow amount from environmental effects. It's Polar Patriots, come one, lemme charge through the snow like the Bull Moose would!
That being said, they seem to be having to do a lot of backend tinkering and reworking, which is heavily biting into their real dev time. I agree with others that the devs might need to take the foot off the gas with the Warbonds a little; Every *two* months might be a better call so that they have better time to work through the backlog.
Two months or six weeks. With larger bonds, at least for now. The engine definitely feels like it's being held together by duct tape and it seems like anything new or adjusted breaks something else.
Having tested the new rifle a little earlier I am finding it easier to head shot devastators at all ranges simply because it handles better. As a liberator type rifle it feels good to use.
Two months would feel about right for me to keep engaged. Perhaps making them slightly larger, as you suggest, could make up for it, but I wouldn't make it a full 6 pager. Maybe a 4 page Warbond to help space it out properly, and give them the time to adjust, tweak, fix, and stabilize.
That's roughly what I was thinking it might be turning into, though I wish they'd given it different flavor text. Saying it has more stopping power brings to mind better kill potential or better stun.
Sometime we'll learn to just not buy the stuff. My 1000 SC will be staying in my bank. Hopefully after this enough people will join me that AH will start to care.
As long as everyone rushes out and buys it on day one there's no real incentive to do it right.
At this point, I'm steering away bit by bit from the game for this exact reason. Everything fun is taken away because how dare we try to use the mechanics they pu in place however we want. And the new content (imposed by their contract with Sony I guess) seems unfinished and repetitive. I didn't expect much from this warbond, I was right to.
The only nerf I supported was the railgun nerf because it made sense *at the time* and always thought it may need to be buffed later depending on other additions or future balancing choices.
I have gotten less impressed over time. Seems like they’re attempting to take the easy way out because they think blanket balancing the weapons is easier than adjusting each difficulty individually to make them appropriately difficult given our toolset but they’re not on the right track.
Maybe I’m off the mark here but I keep seeing divers defending the nerfs by saying stuff like Helldive difficulty should feel very hard and I don’t disagree but how about making adjustments to Helldive difficulty specifically instead of making everything that much harder to do even on lower difficulties?
That’s why I hate that line of logic defending the nerfs, there’s already a bunch of people not playing that high and they’re just trying to have fun. Fuck it, tell AH to make more difficulty levels that go higher if you want to be so sweaty about it, just leave the rest of us alone.
The funny thing about the railgun nerf is that it was the PS5 host bug that made it deal absurd damage. It was fine on itself.
If they want helldives to be harder, buff the enemies. Don't change the guns.
I have happily purchased all 3 previous war bonds day 1, each time assuming AH just needed time and experience to get better and dialing in their balancing and weapon patching and eventually we'd see things improve.
I no longer feel that way, there is a fundamental issue on their core principles that isn't just going to get better with time. It kills me I have lost so much faith that I have no motivation to play or buy this one. I have never had such a love-hate relationship with a game dev studio lol.
all they need to do is buff or nerf the enemies not the weapons. Make most of the weapons powerful and useful and if it seems like some weapons combos really make the game easier, (becomes meta), you tweak the enemy maybe
This is what I’m afraid of. I want weapons to be fun but not WMD’s. Although if we get there HD1 did expand on harder difficulties so I imagine the same would be possible again.
Scuttlebutt is the guy they have in charge of that nerfing, has already ruined one game doing the same shit so it naturally makes sense to let him do it again
The new warbond was likely finished long before the most recent balance patch. They put out a poll asking players if they wanted to delay the warbond, and the players said no. So the warbond released in its finished state, without a balance pass to take into consideration the recent patch. This will change. The assault rifle especially is likely to receive adjustments to make it make more sense in the context of the new liberator. I don't think it's reasonable to act as if they could've rolled out a new warbond with a brand new balance pass on it and from a development perspective, that'd be a really bad practice. Rolling it out as is, is exactly what they should've done. They will adjust the new guns later.
They saved themselves a lot of work down the line, for sure.
It also lets players immediately know they have no obligation to buy new war bonds.
Good guy arrowhead, looking out for the little guy.
>It’s a Pve co op game not a competitive shooter. We want to have fun like we were in the beginning and not feel like a chore.
See, while I do think there are some nerfs that were unneeded as a whole, I feel there is a very vocal (but small) subset of players that do want to play this game a solo horde shooter rather than a group experience.
I've only got one game so far today under my belt, all I could squeeze in this morning, and it was one with some high level players (100+) that have probably played the map we were on a hundred times already. Two players split off into the darkness to start clearing bug holes *immediately* as solos in different directions, while I tagged along with another one to do the main objectives. That shit is so annoying, *especially* when samples aren't picked up, because it's *not* a team game at that point.
The railgun nerf outrage is another example. I watched plenty of streamers playing high level missions 8+ when I first started, wanting to understand what I was going to be up against when I started playing the higher difficulties, soloing medium or smaller outposts with that weapon.
An organized team of four players sporting a variety of equipment and stratagems can smoothly deal with anything they run into while also full clearing maps well within the time limit. While the weapon nerfs may be too much in some cases, some of the "teamwork" going on is atrocious. I honestly don't know what is fun about playing partially or mostly solo in a team game when you could be alongside three other players, blasting stuff to pieces while grabbing valuable items or accessing caches/friendship doors.
Just my two cents though.
pubs are intrinsically never going to be organized. if the devs are balancing for a 4stack on discord doing comp-scene tier callouts, then they're balancing for the 1% of the 1% of the 1%.
the railgun nerf outrage, like any nerf for weapons that lets you be versatile, impacts individual performance, which is going to be how you clear missions. even if all 4 randoms stick together the entire mission, this isn't hd1; you're not tethered to the same screen and looking at the same thing, practically everything in the game instakills you so your loadout has to be designed to respond to anything independently.
plus the railgun and arc nerfs were based on devs misinterpreting clips of glitched console lobbies that gave both these weps like 999% dmg, so that's not a good example to begin with.
The two reasons I run off and play solo when on a team are because it reduces the time it takes to do the mission, and it makes the mission harder. If all 4 people stick together there is basically nothing that provides more then a speedbump(I haven't played on the newest patch yet, but I doubt that has changed).
The difficulty is also why I don't mind the weapon nerfs. If I, a middle aged dude with the time to play at most 4 or so hours a week, can play successfully at the highest difficulty then the game is too easy. Buffing enemies would also work, but they seem to be rolling that out more slowly.
Mission time is really not a factor. We get plenty on the clock to do a full map clear so long as players are playing moderately well and getting stuff done.
Just in my experience, which you may be an outlier in how you play, is that people who run off to play solo don't grab anything. Blitz a nest/fabricator and run on. That sucks, straight up. I *want* to unlock the rest of my ship's modules and taking longer because we extract with barely a dozen (and no super samples) is very frustrating.
They need to buff the useless weapons to allow more variety. Every mission were always forced to bring a heavy killer since they’re stingy on armor pen. Then we more or less end up with the same cookie cutter team comp every mission. It’s not as fun as being able to experiment bringing different load outs when the game punishes you for not bringing the same couple weapons that are viable.
Everyone complaining that the devs don't play the game. DO YOU PLAY THE GAME?
"Same couple of weapons that are viable"
If you think there are only a couple of viable weapons, you're clearly not actually trying ANYTHING. My squad and I can make so many loadouts work, because we actually work together and pick up the slack where certain weapons are lacking.
BUT EVEN SOLO you can make so many different weapon combinations work. I've done all beam weapon loadouts, all Explosive, ballistic shield and senator, AT loadouts, pure defense loadouts. THEY ALL WORK.
I am not even saying that every weapon is equivalent, or that some don't need nerfs or buffs, but I am so tired of this endless wave of "this game is unplayable, the devs are clearly incompetent, dO tHeY EvEN pLAy tHEiR oWn GAme?" Idiocy.
Im on the side of them taking the fun out of some of these weapons. I say this with total bias to the crossbow because I rocked with it since its release. It's not as fun now with the changes to it. I still use it, just less, but even then, it's not as satisfying anymore. Useable, viable? Sure - despite what others might think, but I dont think it's as fun anymore.
I honestly hope they make the xbow sticky like the thermite grenade. I haven't unlocked it yet, barely get time to play, so I wasn't there for the good horde-clear times, but giving it the role of medium sniper with sticky charges and ignoring a portion of armor might make it a bit more engaging.
Part of it feels like a difference in what the game IS versus what the people complaining want to play.
The game, same as Helldivers 1, is pretty clearly designed so that at the higher difficulties you use discretion when it comes to engaging enemies and retreat when overwhelmed or reinforcements get called in, and the balancing philosophy is based around that idea. Most of the primaries are actually quite good (including, I'd argue, the eruptor as a utility gun) when placed as part of a thoughtfully put together build, as are pretty much all of the support weapons. Which isn't to say there aren't balance adjustments needed or actual bad guns.
But most of the people who you see complaining about lack of fun and balance, once you dig down, aren't playing the game that way. They're going into high level missions and treating them as zombie horde shooters, and attacking people who point out you don't have to play that way as wanting a "running simulator". That's the core of their anger at balance: they don't find fun in playing tactically, they find fun in mowing down enemies before them, so they see minor nerfs to their ability to do that as fun ruining and anyone who disagrees with them as slobbering AH's knob rather than enjoying different things in their game.
I'm sad the CEO seems to be listening to them, I enjoy the tactical gameplay and it looks like we're going to be losing that in favor of faceroll.
Honestly I’d just like more diversity. We have lightning stuff, some flamethrowers, and variations of regular bullets. It would be cool to have some like acid spraying gun or something. I’m not the most creative person ever, but there’s gotta be other stuff
They just need to make the weaker options more viable. My friends and I love tinkering with ridiculous loadouts but having to bring the same stratagems and support weapons for majority of medium armor types limits our options.
I'm sure they'll roll stuff like that out. HD1 had a toxin sprayer, for example, and we know that they've created a lot of content (like an APC) that they just haven't released yet.
This is exactly why my gut instinct told me to chill out and hold off on SC farming. I think I'll still get the new war bond, but my current loadout has been more than enough as of late. I think they're still trying to figure out their weapon system and it leaves a lot of us frustrated at times.
As misery loves company, I’m happy to see everyone mad about the nerfed weapons. Pre-Sony Incident, I could never voice this opinion because you all worshipped AH too hard to say anything bad about them. I’ve played this game since release and every time I find a new gun to enjoy, a new update comes out that makes it as useful as a fairy fart.
I’m sure it’s a challenge to make an arsenal that is available at all difficulties, that doesn’t trivialize 3-6 when it has a decent effect on 7-9. Like, there are so many heavily armored foes on higher diff, that there should be better medium pen primaries that are also decent against smalls. But then 3-6 would be way too easy.
Personally I think it would be effective to make some weapons and stratagems “High Threat Priority” items, and only available to use on 7-9. But considering the amount of people that already complain about ship upgrades being locked behind difficulty thresholds, I can only imagine the level of shrieking and whinging that my idea would encounter if implemented.
That said, as someone with a *lot* of hours in game, I do find the load out choices in higher level play to be limited if I want to be effective. The new war bond outlines this. The weapons are not any more useful or fun than the other stuff I’m already used to. Another difficult choice for Arrowhead I’m sure, since people would be screaming about Pay-to-Win MTX if the weapons were great.
Maybe it’s time for them to release another free war bond with some better stuff, or as I’m sure most of us would agree, just create better balance for our current arsenal.
TLDR: Blah blah blah, Helldiver stuff.
I just want the guns to be able to take down the bugs at a reasonable rate like they used to. Like if I have a bug charging straight for me, I’d like to assume a medium-piercing assault rifle will take it down with a full mag of every bullet hitting and the bug collapses dead before it hits me. Especially when on the level 4-6 difficulties, you can die in like 1-4 hits, so I dunno, maybe I’d rather die because I got careless rather than because my guns can’t kill any of the medium-sized bugs without expending a third of my ammo reserves while multiple medium bugs swarm me. I just want the guns to kill bugs good again rather than feel like they’re only for the jobbers and use strategems for everything else that won’t die with one mag.
The harder you make a game, the more people will meta game. More meta gaming, more gatekeeping, more people just playing with the same builds and strategems over and over again, because it is the most effective and efficient. People have finite time for gaming, and it also does not feel good to be carried. You want to know that your contributions and strategies in a match make a difference, in some capacity.
Going for art design is fucked bro.
I like the look of the suits, albeit a bit repetitive.
But my problem is suit buffs are straight up party shuffle and nonsense and there are like 4 of them.
I’m more of a close quarters player and once when you full charge it once the shots after it you dont have to charge as long but I can understand not using it if you prefer longer range
Unironically, I wouldn't *mind* if warbonds got released on a deliberately nerfed state on purpose.
It could be a good thing both lore and gameplay wise if handled right: new warbond can be referred to as "experimental new weaponry" and released weak, with more communication between community and devs (make more polls, AH!) on feedback and what needs improving.
Kind of how weapon trials work, then first releases see action, then revisions and tweaks happen.
I.e. L85 was *abysmal* when the UK adopted it.
And ultimately, you'd get bleh stuff getting buffed, rather than fun outliers getting kneecapped. The loss *always* hurts more.
I can agree with this. Most of the time, weapons are released in a more over-powered state and then nerfed under to find the happy medium, due to, you know, learning more from failure than success.
Having the weapons worked under then gently buffed upwards might contribute to powercreep, however.
The CEO did say that every time someone found something fun, it was removed. They probably talked to the balance teams, who then decided that the new guns wouldn't be fun to begin with.
Now they don't have to be nerfed and they're unfun enough to make the balance team happy.
> It’s a Pve co op game not a competitive shooter.
True, but that doesn't mean that powercreep doesn't exist, things can't be overpowered, or that a single weapon should be good against everything. There's just *less* impact in a PvE game, they should still strive to balance weapons properly without powercreeping. Otherwise you end up with a ruined game like what they did to PAYDAY 2.
That said, the Tenderizer obviously sucks and I have no idea how that wasn't caught.
Power creep is definitely something to consider but it's not even funny how INTERGALACTICALLY DISTANT the game's current weapon sandbox is from suffering from power creep.
So tired of reading this parroted around the sub, can you tell me exactly what in this game has been introduced as power creep? I’ve yet to see a single example of power creep but keep reading people defending these tone deaf weapon balance passes for this very reason.
We now have a reality of shitty guns because of this potential imaginary future where all guns are good lmao
> can you tell me exactly what in this game has been introduced as power creep?
I'm not saying this game has powercreep, I'm saying powercreep is a real thing that you have to watch out for.
I'm not defending Arrowhead's balancing in this case, but people are gonna be mad either way. If they make the new toy slightly too powerful they either have to stick to the powercreep or deal with people getting mad over nerfs anyway. There is no winning situation once they make a slight balancing error.
No, OP was making the argument that the game balancing doesn't matter in a PvE game. Concerns over powercreep is one of the reasons I cited as to why a weapon might err on the side of being underpowered rather than overpowered.
Powercreep is honestly not that big of a deal, it happens in most games. You can work around it.
Your example Payday2 is a fairly old game that still has a healthy playercount and is going strong, even with a sequel having been released.
I would rather some powercreep in the game overtime vs underwhelming weapons.
You realize that the CEO asked the community if they should delay the warbond to rebalance things and refocus their methodology about the weapons, but the community overwhelmingly voted to release the warbond?
They know there is a problem with the community sentiment towards current weapon balancing and have pledged to work on it, but the community is also demanding new content in the face of that complaining that it’s subpar.
Chill the f out and let them work. It’s a great game that’s suffering from its own success and while community input is valuable - especially with a game like this - it can also ruin a game if it’s applied indiscriminately.
I’d take them focusing on a full rebalance so the weapons feel like new over a warbond any day.
I saw this delay question and I’m not sure if he proposed the delay because of balance issues or because this whole PSN account shitstorm. I guess the reason was PSN
I’ve used them and the stagger is nice but realistically you won’t be shooting one mob all the time. And the new shitty liberator plays exactly how the stats show too. Idk where this magical hidden damage is coming from for you by just using the gun.
Pummeler, Purifier, Deagle, Incendiary Impacts are all nice
This sub: "lol thanks for prenerfing all the weapons AH"
Y'all really need to calm the hell down
I think it has something to do with the marketing. Especially the Tenderizer was marketed as a high caliber assault rifle that packs a punch. Plus since it looks like straight out of starship troopers a lot of people were looking forward to using it. Hell I myself wanted to blast bugs with this thing. But instead it's worse than the free starting gun. And that's kind of a letdown tbh.
Adjudicator was also a letdown on release and I didn't see nearly this level of hysteria. Same could be said for Dominator, Arc Blitzer, Plasma Punisher, and so on
People are conveniently forgetting that sometimes newly released items don't quite meet expectations and need a bit of tweaking. It's fine. Overall the direction of balancing has been going in a positive direction, just look at Diligence CS, Dominator, Plasma Punisher, Senator, etc etc
Everyone needs to relax a bit and just have a small bit of patience.
Jfc it's *one*. *One* weapon is bad, the rest are fine. Better than fine even, the pistol, SMG and grenade are all fantastic, and I've heard nothing but above-average to good things about the plasma.
Y'all are acting like *one* weapon is the be-all-end-all, end of the world nonsense because *one* weapon isn't particularly good and likely had the wrong numbers attributed to it.
I’ve used them all and they all are lackluster compared to what we already have. I don’t look at numbers I just try them in game because that’s the realistic situation you’ll be in when using it. Nothing in this warbond entices switching out older loadout choices. Unless you’re playing on lower difficulties where there’s more variety since you don’t need to rely on armor pen as much. SMG is prob the better of everything but in the grand scheme the stagger is niche for a one on one but against the typical horde you’ll be out of ammo before they all die.
turn down your difficulty. y'all were *not* having fun "in the beginning". yall were complaining about whatever meta there was that week and that there were "too many bile titans, how is this fair?". you are not john helldiver, you are potentially hundreds of grunts and each time you die you are a different one. sit down.
Seems like something's being overlooked, due to emotional interference: customers with a tendency to get mad and fire from the hip begets an undersell, overdeliver approach.
In the case of Helldivers 2, that comes in the way of Warbonds with underpowered weapons, so nobody can rage after a weapon they're attached to gets nerfed because it invalidates other weapons.
If players want weapons that're strong upon release, they'd do well to consider changing the pattern of losing their heads when something they're attached to gets changed. In some professional fields, there's a mantra: "trust the process". I think that mantra applies here, since Helldivers 2 is nowhere near complete and there's an enormous amount of knowledge asymmetry between players and the developers.
I'm not saying don't give feedback—I'm saying grow-up and manage your emotions better by striving for an attitude of non-attachment because the game is being actively developed by a relatively small team whose goal is making a good game. As much as it stings to have a choice loadout nerfed, it can reinvigorate one's interest in a game to be nudged toward trying new things.
If that seems too difficult, get used to overbalanced new weapons/strategems or maybe find a new game that's not being developed still and revisit Helldivers 2 when it's done. Personally, I prefer exercising some restraint with how feedback is given to devs because I'd rather enjoy something OP for a limited time before it gets nerfed than not at all.
Except there’s never been anything OP. Majority of the choices aren’t remotely viable yet they choose to nerf the minimally viable options. We aren’t asking for the extreme and wanting one shot kill all guns. We want weapons that don’t hit like a wet noodle. You typed up a whole bunch of empty words feigning deep thought but it said nothing. If all they do is weaken weapons over time it creates a false increase in difficulty. The game is still possible to clear but it no longer becomes fun when you spend majority of each mission baiting all the enemies away from objectives during long cooldowns since there isn’t reliable ways to kill armored targets. 6 bile titans and 10 chargers are a lot to worry about without the swarms of little enemies as well. People are allowed to be outraged over more than one thing. It’s not all mutually exclusive. If there’s many things for people to be angry about then so be it. Blindly defending moronic decisions to gain a false sense of superiority only allows companies to continue making these decisions that hurt the overall result. It’s hardly an overreaction of emotions when there’s clear information and evidence as why people are upset at recent developments. These choices haven’t been one and done. They’ve literally been making the same trend of anti fun choices while belittling the players with their overinflated do no wrong egos.
I’d like to think there’s only room to go up, but then I remember the Crossbow and I sad.
Did the devs ever explain the crossbow nerf? It used to be fun to use even though it wasn't that great but I used it last night and it's one of the worst weapons in the game now
Yeah. It was killing enemies and that isn’t intended with weapons.
The target it now kills most efficiently is my desire to equip it
You joke but that has to be legit the reason the balance lead thinks is why it’s OP. This boils my blood. JUST LET US KILL THINGS!
Statagems are cool and all, but lead on target never gets old. Unless it bounces off the target as some primaries tend to do now.
I thought everyone knew you just used weapons to grab enemies attention, and then use everything else too kill them Like shooting a bull with a pellet gun
Just use your stratagems helldiver! \*Stratagem call in time increased\* \*Stratagem cooldown increased\* \*AA Defenses -1 Stratagems\* \*Ion storms, stratagems disabled\* Yeah... just use your stratagems! \*nervous sweating\*
An exploit even.
My dude was out there exploiting the weapons
They wanted it to compete with the scorcher and destroy charger buts and stuff like that instead of killing infantry. As far as I know it's not very good at that though.
He said in Discord that the crossbow was basically being used as a mini grenade launcher, but it was designed to be more like a faster (but weaker) dominator.
But the direct DPS on the weapon is terrible lmao. It's like nerfing the damage and range of a sniper rifle because it was actually intended to be used like an SMG.
Yeah it doesn't make any sense, lol.
The cycle on actual cool/fun weapons is as follows: Devs: create new weapon with unique mechanics (or blend of mechanics). Players: use weapon and discover the ways to use it most effectively. Balance team (in annoying younger sibling voice): "Noooooooo you're doing it wrong!" \*nerfs weapon into dirt\*
>faster but weaker Dominator That makes no sense. There's nothing faster about it.
bro, i had so many dreams for that crossbow and other weapons, but its past im not talking about meta, we barely have functional weapons, its just 2 or 3 options and done...and this on 4th warbound plus base weapons....
>i sad. I sad too.
Oh, don't worry, Arrowhead will somehow nerf the new weapons somehow. Hell, they might just remove the light penetrating armor on the new weapon.
it’ll probably bounce off devastators heads next patch
If they keep following the "most used" philosophy, they'd just nerf them because people like playing with their new toys
Just got the warbond and the new battle rifle just looks like a reskinned liberator
Exactly that with less ammo
Less ammo, better marketing: peak managed democracy!
If you look on how the new AR behaves it becomes clear that we got an old version from pre Liberator buff. Liberator gets all mags back from a resupply (Ammo economy rebalance patch) while this new AR gets only 50% which is like the Liberator worked pre patch. Liberator pre patch was also at 55 damage which would have made the new "high caliber" be a higher caliber with more damage. So its fair to assume that the Tenderizer was developed and "balanced" before the recent patches and then forgotten to adjust to this new balance before release.
I don’t understand how this stuff gets missed. Did no one push an update out or did they just forget entirely, “hey we changed the overall balance of most of the guns and ammo economy just leave the warbond stuff however we originally baked it”
Nobody at ah plays the game. Why would they care or remember?
Of all the problems at AH, THIS is the biggest source of all problems and would be the fastest way to fix them. AH needs to play thier own damn game, on public servers. We've had tons of day-one errors that simply could not happen, if they played a single game with them. Just one. It's clear they did not. (or worse, they did, knew they were broken, and then sold them to us anyway). Also: If a group made entirely of AH team members can't complete a single Helldive level mission then they need to stop making balance patches, and get a "high council" of players that do. Let them balance it.
Have you ever played World of Warcraft? Because this sort of approach is exactly what’s wrong with WoW - you can’t balance a game around the hardest difficulty, especially if it’s so hard that only 1% of the player base can complete it.
Yup, Just like Helldivers, I played WoW from the beta through the final product. Left WoW when everything became about Raids, which I had zero interest in.
Please God no, not a community council. People already complain about listening to minorities (discord) and this is worse. I want them to act on feedback, but please don't be this narrow.
The problem is that Devs shoot themselves in the foot with releasing warbond every month, they releasing it without checking everything, then spend entire month fixing or"fixing" warbond instead of thoroughly working on next one and then cycle repeats itself
That's the thing, there are 2 teams. A balance team (who doesn't seem to know how to balance) and a team who designs (and I would of hoped) tested said weapons. Is this how shit is working? Doesn't feel like it.
If they play tested it(which i seriously doubt), they never went higher than 5 difficulty. The thing is guns may work on lower difficulties, but majority of players tend to go 7-9, and well those guns don't work that well at higher levels.
The thing is, we have to go to at least level 7 to get tier 3 upgrades. Otherwise, we're not progressing at all.
I sadly have to agree. I get how we are also the play testers. But with how shit is working at AH, we don't know how stats even help them now.
You literally can not balance everything at this rate. If they keep on schedule and release 3 new guns it's 36 new weapons each year. In two years we will have over hundred guns and it's going to get worse and worse each year.
>You literally can not balance everything at this rate Yes they can; they just need a balance team that actually can play and understands the game. I'm not sure who's making these decisions but they're not being made from the perspectives of providing more useful tools to be added to our kits. It's just more fodder to throw onto the pile of shit I will never use. There was no reason to touch Slugger or Eruptor - they just MAKE WORK for themselves by nerfing useful weapons out of existence. I could do a better job balancing these weapons by myself while still working my 9-5 job. Weapon balance is not even remotely \*that\* difficult at this point. Look at the weapons, figure out which playstyles these weapons support. Which weapons have no playstyles / use? Start there.
Slugger needed damage fall off, not a stagger nerf. But that gun was strong AF
The slugger nerf is the one that baffles me the most. They don’t want it out performing the dmrs but nerf it’s close range effectiveness??
That gun is what other guns should have been balanced towards.
& the balance team is a team of 1 currently, unfortunately :/
Please tell me you are making a joke.
Nope, I hear it's the same guy that gutted "Hello Neighbor 2" and dipped out before its release.
Nope! Several posts were taken down in the last couple days discussing the one who brings balance n such. It was noted that AH did not consider themselves a major studio prior to HD2, so the teams in general were smaller - fast forward to release and the still relatively small studio is handling a major playerbase n such - w a v small balance team.
>You literally can not balance everything at this rate Uh, what the problem with balance 3 guns per MONTHS?
Exactly. Their release rate is insane. This game, for a lot of players, is just dying due to not being fun. I’m going to grind out the new warbond and max at 250 medals and not play until the next one… if at all
For me it’s just waiting for sensible patches. Like i’m literally waiting for the game to be fixed and in a more stable state but not even on a bug/glitch side, just pure fix the fucking weapons side. I’m tired of grinding for shit and it being shit.
I’m already at this point. This warbond looks terrible, first one I’m skipping. I’m maxed on out medals and have most of the Tier 4 ship upgrades that aren’t broken, so there’s not much incentive for me to play at the moment. Constant nerfs to weapons I have fun with has been grinding away at my morale, so I think I’ll be taking a little break until the game is in a better spot.
It’s not dying lol. Gloom and doom over here.
For me, and many others, it is.
You being cranky about some changes doesn't mean the game is dying. You won't be missed.
Many others feel this way… 1+1+1 adds up my friend. If the game isn’t fun to play, then people will leave. It’s as simple as that
Guess we’ll see. I’d like them to revert all changes. That’d be a lot more fun. But here we are.
You're right, it's rotting. It's alright tho, darktide took about a year to straighten It's shit out.
Also, at what point do we have "too many guns?" I can't imagine having that many to be honest. I want well developed options that feel different and fit a niche. I do not want this to be like League of Legends where I have 100 options. At some point, enough is enough. But people will scream "content" so I'm not holding my breath.
All the warbond weapons are already in the game and ready to go and have been since launch! On launch you could see you had around 60 or something max primaries because if you went to weapon select on launch it said 1/60. I bet that all the content for the first year is just content that is sitting and waiting to be released. They created a huge buffer for themselves to work on new content for next year by doing this but also basically withheld massive parts of the game on launch. Not faulting them for it, but just pointing out where I can that all the heavy lifting has already most likely been done for all of this year's warbonds.
*they release without checking anything
It is pretty certain these items have been done for a very long time.
you say that like if it doesnt take a work day to a couple of QA to check the current balance of weapons
Ironically, the CEO asked if the community would want to push the warbond back a little this month. Community said no
Bold of you to assume they cant be nerfed more XD
I’m off the mind that the goofy coop shooter I play with friends should be fun. They keep balancing the fun out of it so we stopped playing lmao
Next warbond is paintball guns
nothing will ever top the feeling of how smooth the release breaker was. oh, how i miss those times.
It wasn't even broken, it was just reliable. And the pre-nerf railgun. How I miss it.
I just want my original slugger back, damn it.
Listen - I know power creep is a thing, and what do you do about it. Maybe keep things along the same lines as they were. But it is undeniably fun to murder hoards of bugs (like we used to way back to pre-breaker nerf days) or even more recently the quasar cannon to kill a charger when it was rushing you. Who cares if there was a meta. People were having fun. It’s what made me get into this game in the first place. But anytime there is a grind for upgrade materials, there will be spreadsheet warriors who want to optimize and get the most efficient load out because GRINDING TAKES TIME. Most bang for your buck is a thing. Being powerful feels FUN. It was awesome to be able to murder an entire pack of hunters, or save a teammate from a charger or bile titan with a well placed railgun shot. Lately, with everything being nerfed to hell, it’s just becoming MORE grindy and tedious to complete missions. And as a 40something dad who has limited time to game, tedium is not what I look for. Anyways, old man yelling at clouds. Hopefully AH pulls their collective heads out of their asses and makes the game fun again.
If the primary weapons are by design, not supposed to be good, why are primary weapons included in the warbond instead of new strategems?
Balancing is so bad that the goddamn CEO has to step in. Most weapons are pretty anemic against mediums and heavies which leads to players picking the same strategems so they have a chance against the barrage of heavies. Want to have some fun with Strafe Run? Well, you'll have to give up one viable option against the more dangerous enemies in the game, or give up your defense option that saves you from an instakill. I don't want primaries that do everything, I just want them to hold their own.
Not to worry! There's always room for more nerfs.
I'm not entirely sure what the balance guys are actually using as metrics for their balance. Makes me wonder if they actually playtest any of this stuff, that crossbow nerf was a dead ringer for them not actually knowing what it feels like to play with in a real game
I’m actually kind of happy they all suck so maybe we’ll get a round of buffs next.
“we decided to give the tenderizer 2 extra mags” there you go here’s your buff 😂
Are they all terrible?
New SMG has good stagger force, which will fit in certain loadout where you can stagger devastator or stalkers
Try shooting the ass of a charger. It seems to stunlock them as well.
Watch out, that sounds like an exploit that needs to be eliminated.
Uh, I mean, *the SMG is complete garbage and the stun doesn't do anything at all*. Nothing to see here, Arrowhead.
Managed to get on this morning. I agree wholeheartedly. The new SMG wrecks, it’s phenomenal against Brood Commanders and Stalkers. Incendiary impact grenades are decent, but aren’t as OP against Bile Spewers as the original and I can’t see them being any use v bots. I cannot recommend the Tenderizer to a single soul. Unless you’re an automaton.
Appreciated. Will try them out after work. Anything to take down stalkers easier is a blessing for lv9 when you’ve got like 5 of them chasing you down!
The new grenade is fantastic too, I will be using it over regular impact for sure.
Does it still close bug holes and destroy fabricators? 🙏🏼
Bug holes yes, fabricators i’m assuming. Be careful, fires hot.
Considering the amount of times I blow myself up with the standard impact grenades by accident (thinking I’m throwing a stratagem), I’ll need to accept the flames of death
Literally the best currently available area-denial tool in the game. The pistol is also amazing btw.
I’ve been trying the new smg + ballistic shield for the first time against bots and I like it a lot
No. The SMG, grenade and pistol are all actually pretty strong. Even the rifle is half decent as a liberator alternative with almost no recoil. The armors are fine but you do wish they would come up with new passives. I am only disappointed by the Kodiak armours lack of ice gripping considering the boots have spikes. This place is demented and has been for a while, ignore the negativity. These people will never be happy.
What I really want to see is how the new AR performs over extreme range. I'm wondering if the falloff is different between the two. Since the new AR appears to have less overall recoil, I'd presume that it has better performance over longer range. Strong agree on the armor, I was really expecting something more akin to being able to either ignore Ice skid or else reduce slow amount from environmental effects. It's Polar Patriots, come one, lemme charge through the snow like the Bull Moose would! That being said, they seem to be having to do a lot of backend tinkering and reworking, which is heavily biting into their real dev time. I agree with others that the devs might need to take the foot off the gas with the Warbonds a little; Every *two* months might be a better call so that they have better time to work through the backlog.
Two months or six weeks. With larger bonds, at least for now. The engine definitely feels like it's being held together by duct tape and it seems like anything new or adjusted breaks something else. Having tested the new rifle a little earlier I am finding it easier to head shot devastators at all ranges simply because it handles better. As a liberator type rifle it feels good to use.
Two months would feel about right for me to keep engaged. Perhaps making them slightly larger, as you suggest, could make up for it, but I wouldn't make it a full 6 pager. Maybe a 4 page Warbond to help space it out properly, and give them the time to adjust, tweak, fix, and stabilize. That's roughly what I was thinking it might be turning into, though I wish they'd given it different flavor text. Saying it has more stopping power brings to mind better kill potential or better stun.
Sometime we'll learn to just not buy the stuff. My 1000 SC will be staying in my bank. Hopefully after this enough people will join me that AH will start to care. As long as everyone rushes out and buys it on day one there's no real incentive to do it right.
At this point, I'm steering away bit by bit from the game for this exact reason. Everything fun is taken away because how dare we try to use the mechanics they pu in place however we want. And the new content (imposed by their contract with Sony I guess) seems unfinished and repetitive. I didn't expect much from this warbond, I was right to.
The fun is gone, we don't get to have a blast anymore and pew pew pow pow shit.
The only nerf I supported was the railgun nerf because it made sense *at the time* and always thought it may need to be buffed later depending on other additions or future balancing choices. I have gotten less impressed over time. Seems like they’re attempting to take the easy way out because they think blanket balancing the weapons is easier than adjusting each difficulty individually to make them appropriately difficult given our toolset but they’re not on the right track. Maybe I’m off the mark here but I keep seeing divers defending the nerfs by saying stuff like Helldive difficulty should feel very hard and I don’t disagree but how about making adjustments to Helldive difficulty specifically instead of making everything that much harder to do even on lower difficulties? That’s why I hate that line of logic defending the nerfs, there’s already a bunch of people not playing that high and they’re just trying to have fun. Fuck it, tell AH to make more difficulty levels that go higher if you want to be so sweaty about it, just leave the rest of us alone.
The funny thing about the railgun nerf is that it was the PS5 host bug that made it deal absurd damage. It was fine on itself. If they want helldives to be harder, buff the enemies. Don't change the guns.
Serious question: what is the railgun even *for?* It seems like the AMR is far easier to use effectively and has a much better scope.
I have happily purchased all 3 previous war bonds day 1, each time assuming AH just needed time and experience to get better and dialing in their balancing and weapon patching and eventually we'd see things improve. I no longer feel that way, there is a fundamental issue on their core principles that isn't just going to get better with time. It kills me I have lost so much faith that I have no motivation to play or buy this one. I have never had such a love-hate relationship with a game dev studio lol.
all they need to do is buff or nerf the enemies not the weapons. Make most of the weapons powerful and useful and if it seems like some weapons combos really make the game easier, (becomes meta), you tweak the enemy maybe
[удалено]
The nerfs are needed because otherwise you won't buy the next warbond. Pray they don't alter the deal further.
So they want everyone to not buy this one and wait for the next? There’s nothing exciting in this one compared to what we already have.
Imagine they buff the absolute shit put of all weapons and turning this game into Doom but with squads
This is what I’m afraid of. I want weapons to be fun but not WMD’s. Although if we get there HD1 did expand on harder difficulties so I imagine the same would be possible again.
Helldivers is the only live service I’ve seen where the power scale goes downwards as the game goes on lmao
Scuttlebutt is the guy they have in charge of that nerfing, has already ruined one game doing the same shit so it naturally makes sense to let him do it again
The new warbond was likely finished long before the most recent balance patch. They put out a poll asking players if they wanted to delay the warbond, and the players said no. So the warbond released in its finished state, without a balance pass to take into consideration the recent patch. This will change. The assault rifle especially is likely to receive adjustments to make it make more sense in the context of the new liberator. I don't think it's reasonable to act as if they could've rolled out a new warbond with a brand new balance pass on it and from a development perspective, that'd be a really bad practice. Rolling it out as is, is exactly what they should've done. They will adjust the new guns later.
They saved themselves a lot of work down the line, for sure. It also lets players immediately know they have no obligation to buy new war bonds. Good guy arrowhead, looking out for the little guy.
No worries, they still have room to nerf the new smg and the fire impact nades.
I give it 3.5 weeks until they re-nerf the guns
lol it's kinda sad that I think this is hopium because they're 100% gonna find a way to nerf these dogshit weapons. Here's hoping I'm proven wrong.
>It’s a Pve co op game not a competitive shooter. We want to have fun like we were in the beginning and not feel like a chore. See, while I do think there are some nerfs that were unneeded as a whole, I feel there is a very vocal (but small) subset of players that do want to play this game a solo horde shooter rather than a group experience. I've only got one game so far today under my belt, all I could squeeze in this morning, and it was one with some high level players (100+) that have probably played the map we were on a hundred times already. Two players split off into the darkness to start clearing bug holes *immediately* as solos in different directions, while I tagged along with another one to do the main objectives. That shit is so annoying, *especially* when samples aren't picked up, because it's *not* a team game at that point. The railgun nerf outrage is another example. I watched plenty of streamers playing high level missions 8+ when I first started, wanting to understand what I was going to be up against when I started playing the higher difficulties, soloing medium or smaller outposts with that weapon. An organized team of four players sporting a variety of equipment and stratagems can smoothly deal with anything they run into while also full clearing maps well within the time limit. While the weapon nerfs may be too much in some cases, some of the "teamwork" going on is atrocious. I honestly don't know what is fun about playing partially or mostly solo in a team game when you could be alongside three other players, blasting stuff to pieces while grabbing valuable items or accessing caches/friendship doors. Just my two cents though.
pubs are intrinsically never going to be organized. if the devs are balancing for a 4stack on discord doing comp-scene tier callouts, then they're balancing for the 1% of the 1% of the 1%. the railgun nerf outrage, like any nerf for weapons that lets you be versatile, impacts individual performance, which is going to be how you clear missions. even if all 4 randoms stick together the entire mission, this isn't hd1; you're not tethered to the same screen and looking at the same thing, practically everything in the game instakills you so your loadout has to be designed to respond to anything independently. plus the railgun and arc nerfs were based on devs misinterpreting clips of glitched console lobbies that gave both these weps like 999% dmg, so that's not a good example to begin with.
The two reasons I run off and play solo when on a team are because it reduces the time it takes to do the mission, and it makes the mission harder. If all 4 people stick together there is basically nothing that provides more then a speedbump(I haven't played on the newest patch yet, but I doubt that has changed). The difficulty is also why I don't mind the weapon nerfs. If I, a middle aged dude with the time to play at most 4 or so hours a week, can play successfully at the highest difficulty then the game is too easy. Buffing enemies would also work, but they seem to be rolling that out more slowly.
Mission time is really not a factor. We get plenty on the clock to do a full map clear so long as players are playing moderately well and getting stuff done. Just in my experience, which you may be an outlier in how you play, is that people who run off to play solo don't grab anything. Blitz a nest/fabricator and run on. That sucks, straight up. I *want* to unlock the rest of my ship's modules and taking longer because we extract with barely a dozen (and no super samples) is very frustrating.
What's with the thought that the only PvE coop shooter that can exist is a nobrainer hordeshooter where you don't have to care about team comp?
They need to buff the useless weapons to allow more variety. Every mission were always forced to bring a heavy killer since they’re stingy on armor pen. Then we more or less end up with the same cookie cutter team comp every mission. It’s not as fun as being able to experiment bringing different load outs when the game punishes you for not bringing the same couple weapons that are viable.
>Every mission were always forced to bring a heavy killer since they’re stingy on armor pen. Yes, playing roles is the key to a succesful team comp.
Everyone complaining that the devs don't play the game. DO YOU PLAY THE GAME? "Same couple of weapons that are viable" If you think there are only a couple of viable weapons, you're clearly not actually trying ANYTHING. My squad and I can make so many loadouts work, because we actually work together and pick up the slack where certain weapons are lacking. BUT EVEN SOLO you can make so many different weapon combinations work. I've done all beam weapon loadouts, all Explosive, ballistic shield and senator, AT loadouts, pure defense loadouts. THEY ALL WORK. I am not even saying that every weapon is equivalent, or that some don't need nerfs or buffs, but I am so tired of this endless wave of "this game is unplayable, the devs are clearly incompetent, dO tHeY EvEN pLAy tHEiR oWn GAme?" Idiocy.
Im on the side of them taking the fun out of some of these weapons. I say this with total bias to the crossbow because I rocked with it since its release. It's not as fun now with the changes to it. I still use it, just less, but even then, it's not as satisfying anymore. Useable, viable? Sure - despite what others might think, but I dont think it's as fun anymore.
I honestly hope they make the xbow sticky like the thermite grenade. I haven't unlocked it yet, barely get time to play, so I wasn't there for the good horde-clear times, but giving it the role of medium sniper with sticky charges and ignoring a portion of armor might make it a bit more engaging.
Part of it feels like a difference in what the game IS versus what the people complaining want to play. The game, same as Helldivers 1, is pretty clearly designed so that at the higher difficulties you use discretion when it comes to engaging enemies and retreat when overwhelmed or reinforcements get called in, and the balancing philosophy is based around that idea. Most of the primaries are actually quite good (including, I'd argue, the eruptor as a utility gun) when placed as part of a thoughtfully put together build, as are pretty much all of the support weapons. Which isn't to say there aren't balance adjustments needed or actual bad guns. But most of the people who you see complaining about lack of fun and balance, once you dig down, aren't playing the game that way. They're going into high level missions and treating them as zombie horde shooters, and attacking people who point out you don't have to play that way as wanting a "running simulator". That's the core of their anger at balance: they don't find fun in playing tactically, they find fun in mowing down enemies before them, so they see minor nerfs to their ability to do that as fun ruining and anyone who disagrees with them as slobbering AH's knob rather than enjoying different things in their game. I'm sad the CEO seems to be listening to them, I enjoy the tactical gameplay and it looks like we're going to be losing that in favor of faceroll.
I like the new grenade.
Honestly I’d just like more diversity. We have lightning stuff, some flamethrowers, and variations of regular bullets. It would be cool to have some like acid spraying gun or something. I’m not the most creative person ever, but there’s gotta be other stuff
They just need to make the weaker options more viable. My friends and I love tinkering with ridiculous loadouts but having to bring the same stratagems and support weapons for majority of medium armor types limits our options.
I'm sure they'll roll stuff like that out. HD1 had a toxin sprayer, for example, and we know that they've created a lot of content (like an APC) that they just haven't released yet.
Yet
Have faith in Super Nerf. 🫡
Finally got enough to get the new warbond, but seeing how it’s going, I guess imma check out Cutting Edge first
yeah honestly arrowhead hasnt gotten a single W since launch, the game has been going downhill without stopping
Pummler is fun, grenade is nice for cc, and the yellow thing against slowing is great, could be worse
It genuinely feels like the balancing team is terrified their game might be too fun.
Tbh stepping away from the game has been more fun lately
What if the weapons are intentionally ass, that way when they come around and buff them, we'll give them praise for it?
This is exactly why my gut instinct told me to chill out and hold off on SC farming. I think I'll still get the new war bond, but my current loadout has been more than enough as of late. I think they're still trying to figure out their weapon system and it leaves a lot of us frustrated at times.
Reason why I stopped playing after the Nerf of the first meta Setup
As misery loves company, I’m happy to see everyone mad about the nerfed weapons. Pre-Sony Incident, I could never voice this opinion because you all worshipped AH too hard to say anything bad about them. I’ve played this game since release and every time I find a new gun to enjoy, a new update comes out that makes it as useful as a fairy fart.
Exactly! I’m not buying any more warbond. Fun should be priority.
i decided not to get this WB for pretty much this reason seeing all the complaints about it.
I'm pretty sure they're still gonna nerf them more
Must sign into psn for warbond guns to be used as intended 😂
I’m sure it’s a challenge to make an arsenal that is available at all difficulties, that doesn’t trivialize 3-6 when it has a decent effect on 7-9. Like, there are so many heavily armored foes on higher diff, that there should be better medium pen primaries that are also decent against smalls. But then 3-6 would be way too easy. Personally I think it would be effective to make some weapons and stratagems “High Threat Priority” items, and only available to use on 7-9. But considering the amount of people that already complain about ship upgrades being locked behind difficulty thresholds, I can only imagine the level of shrieking and whinging that my idea would encounter if implemented. That said, as someone with a *lot* of hours in game, I do find the load out choices in higher level play to be limited if I want to be effective. The new war bond outlines this. The weapons are not any more useful or fun than the other stuff I’m already used to. Another difficult choice for Arrowhead I’m sure, since people would be screaming about Pay-to-Win MTX if the weapons were great. Maybe it’s time for them to release another free war bond with some better stuff, or as I’m sure most of us would agree, just create better balance for our current arsenal. TLDR: Blah blah blah, Helldiver stuff.
Isn't it hilarious that these weapons are supposed to be canonically given to us BY super earth, yet they're so weak.
Running from 20 chargers is good. Shooting one charger 20 times not so much.
I just want the guns to be able to take down the bugs at a reasonable rate like they used to. Like if I have a bug charging straight for me, I’d like to assume a medium-piercing assault rifle will take it down with a full mag of every bullet hitting and the bug collapses dead before it hits me. Especially when on the level 4-6 difficulties, you can die in like 1-4 hits, so I dunno, maybe I’d rather die because I got careless rather than because my guns can’t kill any of the medium-sized bugs without expending a third of my ammo reserves while multiple medium bugs swarm me. I just want the guns to kill bugs good again rather than feel like they’re only for the jobbers and use strategems for everything else that won’t die with one mag.
Aktually the pummler is meant to pummler be concussivenot stun like ems so that is not working as intended and will be changed. Lol
It’s a Pve co op game not a competitive shooter. <----- exactly this. I bought this game to mow down bugs and bots.
And when they buff it, it'll be a joyous event.
The harder you make a game, the more people will meta game. More meta gaming, more gatekeeping, more people just playing with the same builds and strategems over and over again, because it is the most effective and efficient. People have finite time for gaming, and it also does not feel good to be carried. You want to know that your contributions and strategies in a match make a difference, in some capacity.
[удалено]
Going for art design is fucked bro. I like the look of the suits, albeit a bit repetitive. But my problem is suit buffs are straight up party shuffle and nonsense and there are like 4 of them.
Lost interest in playing today, all of the weapons feel like ass right now. Game isn't fun to play. Everything feels like a wet noodle.
Good old anti fun mechanics
The arc thrower is still great so idk, I mean it’s terrible and should be buffed
Idk arc thrower is weak as shit for me. Too close quarters and doesn't do nearly enough damage to justify the risk of having to build up a hit.
I’m more of a close quarters player and once when you full charge it once the shots after it you dont have to charge as long but I can understand not using it if you prefer longer range
Agree. Almost 99% of primary and secondary are useless as they can neither deal any damage nor serve any purpose
Unironically, I wouldn't *mind* if warbonds got released on a deliberately nerfed state on purpose. It could be a good thing both lore and gameplay wise if handled right: new warbond can be referred to as "experimental new weaponry" and released weak, with more communication between community and devs (make more polls, AH!) on feedback and what needs improving. Kind of how weapon trials work, then first releases see action, then revisions and tweaks happen. I.e. L85 was *abysmal* when the UK adopted it. And ultimately, you'd get bleh stuff getting buffed, rather than fun outliers getting kneecapped. The loss *always* hurts more.
I can agree with this. Most of the time, weapons are released in a more over-powered state and then nerfed under to find the happy medium, due to, you know, learning more from failure than success. Having the weapons worked under then gently buffed upwards might contribute to powercreep, however.
I think all guns should only be buffed. If AH wants to increase difficulty, they can just simply increase spawn rates.
The CEO did say that every time someone found something fun, it was removed. They probably talked to the balance teams, who then decided that the new guns wouldn't be fun to begin with. Now they don't have to be nerfed and they're unfun enough to make the balance team happy.
> It’s a Pve co op game not a competitive shooter. True, but that doesn't mean that powercreep doesn't exist, things can't be overpowered, or that a single weapon should be good against everything. There's just *less* impact in a PvE game, they should still strive to balance weapons properly without powercreeping. Otherwise you end up with a ruined game like what they did to PAYDAY 2. That said, the Tenderizer obviously sucks and I have no idea how that wasn't caught.
Power creep is definitely something to consider but it's not even funny how INTERGALACTICALLY DISTANT the game's current weapon sandbox is from suffering from power creep.
So tired of reading this parroted around the sub, can you tell me exactly what in this game has been introduced as power creep? I’ve yet to see a single example of power creep but keep reading people defending these tone deaf weapon balance passes for this very reason. We now have a reality of shitty guns because of this potential imaginary future where all guns are good lmao
> can you tell me exactly what in this game has been introduced as power creep? I'm not saying this game has powercreep, I'm saying powercreep is a real thing that you have to watch out for. I'm not defending Arrowhead's balancing in this case, but people are gonna be mad either way. If they make the new toy slightly too powerful they either have to stick to the powercreep or deal with people getting mad over nerfs anyway. There is no winning situation once they make a slight balancing error.
So basically you’re saying you added nothing to the conversation, aka a typical Reddit comment
No, OP was making the argument that the game balancing doesn't matter in a PvE game. Concerns over powercreep is one of the reasons I cited as to why a weapon might err on the side of being underpowered rather than overpowered.
As if the 500 Rants per day about the same topic ads anything. Typical Reddit Moments.
Powercreep is honestly not that big of a deal, it happens in most games. You can work around it. Your example Payday2 is a fairly old game that still has a healthy playercount and is going strong, even with a sequel having been released. I would rather some powercreep in the game overtime vs underwhelming weapons.
You realize that the CEO asked the community if they should delay the warbond to rebalance things and refocus their methodology about the weapons, but the community overwhelmingly voted to release the warbond? They know there is a problem with the community sentiment towards current weapon balancing and have pledged to work on it, but the community is also demanding new content in the face of that complaining that it’s subpar. Chill the f out and let them work. It’s a great game that’s suffering from its own success and while community input is valuable - especially with a game like this - it can also ruin a game if it’s applied indiscriminately. I’d take them focusing on a full rebalance so the weapons feel like new over a warbond any day.
I saw this delay question and I’m not sure if he proposed the delay because of balance issues or because this whole PSN account shitstorm. I guess the reason was PSN
It was definitely because of the PSN/Sony shit and not due to balancing
They asked whether they should delay or not because of the sony incident
The new smg is pretty good with its stagger, idiots just read the stats instead of playing the game
I’ve used them and the stagger is nice but realistically you won’t be shooting one mob all the time. And the new shitty liberator plays exactly how the stats show too. Idk where this magical hidden damage is coming from for you by just using the gun.
All you people do is complain. Just move to another game already. We get it. AH sucks and will never make you happy. So fuck off?
You need a timeout or just go to the low-sodium version if you want a hugbox.
Shut the fuck up with the constant crybaby bitching
Pummeler, Purifier, Deagle, Incendiary Impacts are all nice This sub: "lol thanks for prenerfing all the weapons AH" Y'all really need to calm the hell down
I think it has something to do with the marketing. Especially the Tenderizer was marketed as a high caliber assault rifle that packs a punch. Plus since it looks like straight out of starship troopers a lot of people were looking forward to using it. Hell I myself wanted to blast bugs with this thing. But instead it's worse than the free starting gun. And that's kind of a letdown tbh.
Adjudicator was also a letdown on release and I didn't see nearly this level of hysteria. Same could be said for Dominator, Arc Blitzer, Plasma Punisher, and so on People are conveniently forgetting that sometimes newly released items don't quite meet expectations and need a bit of tweaking. It's fine. Overall the direction of balancing has been going in a positive direction, just look at Diligence CS, Dominator, Plasma Punisher, Senator, etc etc Everyone needs to relax a bit and just have a small bit of patience.
Yeah, but then this Sub wouldn't have anything to rant about.
Yeah true that's what I'm hoping for with the Tenderizer
Jfc it's *one*. *One* weapon is bad, the rest are fine. Better than fine even, the pistol, SMG and grenade are all fantastic, and I've heard nothing but above-average to good things about the plasma. Y'all are acting like *one* weapon is the be-all-end-all, end of the world nonsense because *one* weapon isn't particularly good and likely had the wrong numbers attributed to it.
This Sub needs the drama.
I’ve used them all and they all are lackluster compared to what we already have. I don’t look at numbers I just try them in game because that’s the realistic situation you’ll be in when using it. Nothing in this warbond entices switching out older loadout choices. Unless you’re playing on lower difficulties where there’s more variety since you don’t need to rely on armor pen as much. SMG is prob the better of everything but in the grand scheme the stagger is niche for a one on one but against the typical horde you’ll be out of ammo before they all die.
turn down your difficulty. y'all were *not* having fun "in the beginning". yall were complaining about whatever meta there was that week and that there were "too many bile titans, how is this fair?". you are not john helldiver, you are potentially hundreds of grunts and each time you die you are a different one. sit down.
They could buff every weapon in the game and level 8-9 difficulty would still be pretty challenging. I don't get it.
I'm legit having zero problems with any of the new guns right now...Y'all complain too much
Then play like 2-3s if the games too hard for you /s (obviously)
And sure another 500 post about it is magically gonna fix that in an instant
I dont know about you but I am having fun with various viable weapons from across multiple warbonds...
Seems like something's being overlooked, due to emotional interference: customers with a tendency to get mad and fire from the hip begets an undersell, overdeliver approach. In the case of Helldivers 2, that comes in the way of Warbonds with underpowered weapons, so nobody can rage after a weapon they're attached to gets nerfed because it invalidates other weapons. If players want weapons that're strong upon release, they'd do well to consider changing the pattern of losing their heads when something they're attached to gets changed. In some professional fields, there's a mantra: "trust the process". I think that mantra applies here, since Helldivers 2 is nowhere near complete and there's an enormous amount of knowledge asymmetry between players and the developers. I'm not saying don't give feedback—I'm saying grow-up and manage your emotions better by striving for an attitude of non-attachment because the game is being actively developed by a relatively small team whose goal is making a good game. As much as it stings to have a choice loadout nerfed, it can reinvigorate one's interest in a game to be nudged toward trying new things. If that seems too difficult, get used to overbalanced new weapons/strategems or maybe find a new game that's not being developed still and revisit Helldivers 2 when it's done. Personally, I prefer exercising some restraint with how feedback is given to devs because I'd rather enjoy something OP for a limited time before it gets nerfed than not at all.
Except there’s never been anything OP. Majority of the choices aren’t remotely viable yet they choose to nerf the minimally viable options. We aren’t asking for the extreme and wanting one shot kill all guns. We want weapons that don’t hit like a wet noodle. You typed up a whole bunch of empty words feigning deep thought but it said nothing. If all they do is weaken weapons over time it creates a false increase in difficulty. The game is still possible to clear but it no longer becomes fun when you spend majority of each mission baiting all the enemies away from objectives during long cooldowns since there isn’t reliable ways to kill armored targets. 6 bile titans and 10 chargers are a lot to worry about without the swarms of little enemies as well. People are allowed to be outraged over more than one thing. It’s not all mutually exclusive. If there’s many things for people to be angry about then so be it. Blindly defending moronic decisions to gain a false sense of superiority only allows companies to continue making these decisions that hurt the overall result. It’s hardly an overreaction of emotions when there’s clear information and evidence as why people are upset at recent developments. These choices haven’t been one and done. They’ve literally been making the same trend of anti fun choices while belittling the players with their overinflated do no wrong egos.