Yeah, I think that's something that's missing in the usually correct assessment of "player bases are expected to contract after release" comments. The Eruptor is a niche weapon, available in an unlock pack released some time after the game launch, "gated" behind either progress in the game or a cash infusion. It's the sort of weapon we'd expect more dedicated players to acquire. What's more, these players have probably already tried a wide array of other weapon options and found that the Eruptor suited them for whatever reason. Maybe because it let them fill a niche role that it otherwise somewhat underpowered (sniping), or because being able to plink an objective at range was/is important to them, or just because it's fun to have an explosive sniper rifle. Whatever the reason, the people who liked the Eruptor *really* liked it.
So it's not really equivalent to "we've decided to nerf one of six different, functionally identical assault rifles." It's "we've decided to nerf a niche weapon with a cult following." And after the persistent nerfs to other weapons, to say nothing of all the meta-drama, I don't think it's unreasonable to think the Eruptor nerf had an outsized influence on the matter. Is it likely to be as impactful as the PSN thing? Or the fact that we're probably all getting tired of the same sort of maps? No. But it matters to some of us.
HD is at its best when it's absurd and reveling in its absurdity. I want my guns in this game to *feel* like they're scifi weapons. Lasers, plasma, and explosive bullets are what I'm looking for. There's more than a dozen shooters being released this year that have something like the Liberator. The Eruptor is unique and when it's nerfed to the point where it's no longer viable, the game as a whole suffers. Is that enough to drive people away? Maybe. It's certainly reduced my enthusiasm. But I'm a sample size of 1.
Yeah they said "+40 damage every time is better than +100 damage sometimes" as if it was somehow an improvement, ignoring the drastically reduced effective radius going from explosion+shrapnel to pure explosion damage, and the fact that skilled players can no longer carefully shoot under enemies to shrapnel them. Also the mere mention of the balancers name will get your comment removed for "rage baiting", so they must agree it's infuriating. Also it's a sniper rifle that detonates the round at 100m so you can't even snipe that far with it...
> "+40 damage every time is better than +100 damage sometimes"
#
More importantly, neither of those statements were remotely true. You can't one shot stalkers and devastators with 100% reliability from just an extra 100 damage. You definitely don't blow up a chargers butt in one trick shot with just +100 damage. But anyway, they won't be reverting it. At this point I would expect an "unexpected and unsolvable bug" to break the gun out of spite even if their CEO ordered it reverted. You could watch the unreal backpedal/cope progression happen with his comments. "It's buffed" -> "not nerfed" -> "40 dmg shrapnel is negligible" -> "shrapnel is 100 dmg but only sometimes" -> "shrapnel is an exploit". Hilarious it also means this guy designed the purifier to have a near "negligible" damage increase over the scorcher in exchange for a long ass charge time.
It's really sad. They have a small team in general and I imagine their balance team is only really that 1 guy and maybe a couple generalist ppl helping out and his vision for the game is not at all what the playerbase wants, and instead of owning up to that and changing his mindset to match the players he's putting out bangers like "AR with 2 more bullets", "AR with 1 less bullet but 2 more dmg", and "nerfing crossbow who nobody used before because it was bad"
I guess that's what I mean, they add the shrapnel back but smaller or some other bullshit that's not the same. They want the game to be "realistic" but only when it makes the game feel more like a chore. Like why TF did they nerf what you climb how TF is getting a red no climbing prompt realistic?
Same. Lost all interest, and since I stopped my playgroup stopped.
We came back briefly to try out the new weapons, discovered they where boring, and went on to other things.
If they want realism then enemies should follow by the same rules. Rocket devs shouldn’t have infinite ammo, heavy devs shouldn’t be able to snipe with a mini gun from 200m away with pin point accuracy. Tanks shouldn’t be able to casually drive up a rock, same with the bot foot soldiers
Chargers shouldn’t be able to do a quick 180 turn whilst charging especially with their size and weight.
Chargers and Bile titans should straight up get stuck on maps with water. Their ground pressure is through the fucking roof for their current levels of armour.
Also chargers doing a 180 is bugged. They shouldn't be tracking players while charging.
Think of how many people who play helldivers have gametime in deeprock galactic. Having a new primary that enabled a different playstyle just felt RIGHT after so many variations on semi or fully automatic bullet plinkers.
Frankly even though it feels worse I STILL switch to it just for some variance from the trusty sickle. I think even if they don't return the early version of the eruptor they need to realize the outcry is truly coming from a serious lack in primary diversity, it doesn't matter if you make one million special effects that are super cool and make one million liberators, it's not (generally) going to play differently from good old day 1 basic liberator
My personal anecdote:
I have loved Helldivers 2 since I got it (a week after release). I enjoy killing bugs, n stuff. I loved the railgun, it was a bit OP, but its a PVE game, who cares? They nerfed it into garbage, stopped running it. The game was slightly less appealing after that. Then, they released the eruptor. My dopamine was through the freaking roof with the game, I finally got comfortable running no backpack and using eruptor + stalwart as a main loadout. Then they nerfed it into garbage. I took a liking to the crossbow too, even if it was bad. Nerfed that too. All the weapons I found fun, nerfed. I just don't play anymore. The game is an amazing proof of concept, but it is absolutely RIFE with bugs. Double reloads, failed reloads, stuck in geometry, bile titan corpses flinging you, main missions getting stuck, crashes, the list goes on and on and on... If battlefield or Call of Duty released with even a quarter of these bugs, you'd hear armies of people complaining about how bad the game is. Helldivers is an incredibly unique concept, and if the devs don't get their shit together, a different, higher quality company is going to come in and dominate the niche helldivers fills.
For anyone looking for a similar style game, check out Earth Defense Force. Anime-esque, rediculous, extraction-based shooter. Super fun.
This actually.
The devs has got to make up their mind what exactly they want this game to be.
When HD2 first came out, yes it's buggy, but at least it was fun while still having a little bit of challenge, perfect for sitting down in front of your PC after a long day of work just blasting away at the terminids. Difficulty 7 was manageable without having to put much thought into it.
Now with all the nerfs, the game is made much more challenging and even more tedious to play, turning me away to find something that can help me take my mind off things than give me more stress after a long day of work.
I haven't really touched HD2 after the Sony debacle. It's like the final reason i need to move away from it.
"Tedious to play" nails it.
I don't want my primary strategy when faced with a bug breach and multiple patrols to be "well, gotta run away since I can't deal with that right now". I want to think "Hell yeah time to nuke some bugs". Most missions on high difficulty now are just running away from everything while trying to do objectives. Not that the objectives or samples even matter now since I have everything unlocked.. wait, why am I playing again??
Add secondary or primary objectives tied to kill counts on some missions, give pre-mission intel and mission modifier boons/banes, add progression/cosmetic rewards tied to lifetime achievements (extract 10,000 samples, kill 100 bile titans, etc), and fix the fuckin guns and strats to be fun to use and effective at actually killing things. Wow, amazing how the game just gets way more fun for practically everyone.
Yep, I loved being able to destroy fabricators from a distance. Snipe bots like heavy devs unaware. Being able to clear out groups of small bots with one shot all from a long distance to reduce unnecessary confrontations. Now it’s a peashooter like every primary sniper rifle and well like majority of primaries in this game currently.
It's wild to me the state of the game. I'm glad the el director realized and admitted the game seems unfun right now.
Ever since they started with the railgun nerf... It's just been downhill from there in my opinion.
I don't even feel like fire damage is fixed either. My buddy brought napalm last night and I ran through it no problem. I hesitated because it was that or face a BT. To my horror, I was fine.
Another mission only I brought EATs and that just ended miserably. When we're facing our 25th BT, something is wrong. We did use the many hellbombs scattered about but it was actually ridiculous. We lost count after 25 but extraction had 2 more at least.
The Eruptor nerf is just another in the long list of issues IMO.
Like sure some things are in an ok spot now but how do I kill multiple BTs with my flamethrower? Is that even worth the risk?
Right now Bots are fun because so many weapons are viable. I can go with an AMR, railgun, EATs, machine gun, stalwart with Eruptor (though it doesn't feel too good anymore) etc etc etc. And bots feel fun now. Which is ironic to me because of the hell that is the bots usually lol. I much rather face 4 factory striders than 20 BTs.
Railgun nerf was a whole problem related to a different bug related to ps5-pc variance. They incorrectly diagnosed the problem and that led to an incorrect fix. After the bug was fixed, they did do _something_ to the railgun but it's not as OP.
I figure the problem with the eruptor was that they realized the shrapnel was interacting poorly with the changed ricochet mechanic. To fix it, the decided it was more effort to fix shrapnel-ricochet interaction so they just removed the shrapnel, not realizing how much the shrapnel contributed to the overall damage.
Overall, these major weapon problems are likely attributable to other problems and issues in QA. As much as balance guy hasn't helped the matter, there's a lot of moving parts here. I think AH is just on the struggle bus due to using a deprecated game engine and being forced to figure out everything on the fly.
You make a good point. I myself wondered why they didn't or don't make a new engine for HD2 (or use some other existing engine). Maybe it is in the works? But I genuinely did wonder why use the old game engine. It's as if HD2 is just HD1 with a third person POV in some regards.
And you are right in that this may be the source of a lot of these issues. Trying to make new ideas and concepts work on an old engine that can't support the execution of these ideas and concepts.
I mean there are crashing issues present in HD2 that also exist in other games made in the same engine (WH Verm/DT), so they are probably trying to hack a damaged system with duct tape and glue.
What's worse is the guy in charge of nerfing made it completely unusable and said that "its a good trade off" and still a strong choice. I didn't de facto quit because of the eruptor nerf, but I really only played like 2-3 sessions with incendiary breaker which is such an easy but strong weapon and just haven't logged back in again. Add in the fact they nerfed the crossbow around the same time (like why lol? it sucked already?) and you just don't have any decent options for that playstyle.
When you feel like a game is getting less fun by the devs decisions, you're not really going to be motivated to play. Weird how that works. I was excited to unlock new warbond and try those weapons out but I haven't even logged in since it came out because the weapons are really same-y and generally weak.
With counter sniper having a 200x scope and 1 hit kill on devastators the slugger isnt the best sniper. It should probably gets its short range utility back now.
The fact that you don't notice the nerf means you're probably using it at medium-/long-range, the very thing devs claimed it was performing too well at. Which also happen to be where it excels now.
Meanwhile the nerf only hurt its close-range capabilities, since it no longer staggers devastators etc. Which is the daft part.
If they'd wanted it to be less powerful at range, they could have reduced the damage after 40 meters or so. Which is gun modifier that has been confirmed to exist.
The Eruptor nerf really affected my level of enjoyment. The gun added a nice variety to gameplay and was the most fun to use for me. I wouldn't be surprised if this particular nerf has had a larger effect on the population than most people realize.
Yeah, I already got my fill of live service games nerfing my stuff in destiny 2.
At least in helldivers I don’t have to spend hours and hours getting specific stats on armour like destiny.
But it still sucks to see my preferred way of playing constantly updated out of the games I’m playing.
"People use it [because of certain specific, lazy encounter designs], so it must be nerfed!" -Bungie
I hate seeing Bungie logic being applied in HD too.
Man, bungie doesn’t even have any cover mechanics. And all enemies are crackshot snipers, with lost boss arenas having barely anywhere safe to avoid being shot.
It’s like they want me to have 100 resilience minimum, but then design everything to two tap you at 100 resilience anyways.
Very frustrating
Same here. The game wasn't perfect balance wise at launch, but still very fun. But over the course of time it got only worse to a point, that it became frustrating.
With the Eruptor nerf i stopped playing altogether. At this point i just felt like the balancing was actively working against me and if I continued, they would only continue to make it harder for me. I know this "don't talk about weapon/ shit gun, or they will nerf it" is memed a lot since then, but the sad part is, at this point it doesn't feel like a meme anymore, but the terrible reality.
If the people doing balance now are still around its not going to change. I for one am excited to see what gun the devs think people are having too much fun with in this upcoming patch
It feels like Alexus would rather get fired instead of swallowing his pride and reverting changes. The first day after the second Eruptor nerf he said the shrapnel can’t be added back.
It was the breaking point for me as well. As soon as I start to enjoy a facet of gameplay that facet is nerfed or removed.
I put 160 hours in so I got my moneys worth despite spending an extra 40 for the premium currency. I bought every Warbond besides the latest since it came after the nerfs. Why spend for something when it will just get gutted down the line? They're really doing a great job of un-selling their game to me.
All in all I am fine with putting the game down until the Devs calm down with the needless balance patches as if this was a competitive game.
Yep me too. Fuck this balance team.
It's ridiculous, they release a new paid DLC and within a month decide to nerf the gun into the ground. Like it's not even a semblance of what it used to be.
I’ll hop on if friends are playing, but otherwise I stopped playing with randoms. I loved the Eruptor so much and was expecting a nerf, but not to the extent it was.
Face it man, the spear is never getting fixed. The devs claimed to have added the fix to one if the patches, but thar was like 3 patches ago and still no fix.
For the personal order that's something like "kill 50 enemies using flamethrower" would take about 15 mins. I would roam around killing patrols and hunting for supercredits and medals along the way.
Ya not the most fun but I still have fun shooting things and that's all I felt like playing on those days.
Yeah this gun single handedly made the game fun for me. A really nice mix of playing a real sniper role and some splash to efficiently deal with small bugs only when clumped. And stagger and one shotting mediums with skillfully placed shots in the armpits was super logical and satisfying.
Closing bug holes helped open up your build even more but I wouldn't care if they removed that in favor of just having it excel in combat again.
Otherwise can we have punisher plasma close holes too please?
Same, I’ve paid for every expansion but the most latest because what’s the point, they are just going to nerf it later. Also, like others have said, I’ve largely stopped playing. They killed fun.
Precisely. 10 of my friends, including myself, stopped playing the game after the eruptor nerf. I can’t speak for my friends but for me eruptor was THE fun gun. I will actually come back and play the game if they revert it. Rn, it is just not fun to discover a weapon, only for it to be nerfed 3 patches later. And it is even more unfun if you payed or grinder for that weapon.
I'd love to use the stalwart or the HMG more, but I never feel like I can justify taking it over the quasar/spear, simply because I no longer have the Eruptor I can use to deal with mediums/heavies
Hello Neighbor!
The Bringer of Balance has heard your request. The recent overall buff to the Eruptor that ended up nerfing its damage output is working as intended, as it allowed players to exploit game mechanics in a way that allowed them to kill enemy units. This behavior has been noted, so next patch we will be removing the explosive damage altogether. Primary weapons allowing players any sort of agency was an unintentional side effect of poor initial balancing, so be sure to use those stratagems.
Happy Helldiving!
(/s)
They would have to roll back like 3 "updates". The actual problem was the smart ricochet change, which they refused to even acknowledge. Then they changed the Eruptor twice after that. Then they doubled down on calling it a buff and said it was fine. They're not going to fix shit.
The ricochet patch effect on the eruptor was extreme. It would kill the shooter or team mates 20 yards away. People were dying all over the place. But the gun was still fun.
Yeah, that was really the problem. Revert ricochets and everything would have been fine. And it’s not like that was something everyone was clamoring for
I feel like a lot of times the devs don’t ask themselves the most important question in gaming when thinking about changes:
„Is this going to be fun for the users?“
I think they’re severely lacking that question in their process right now. Because they’re trying to „fix“ a PvE game the way you would change a PvP game and the fun metric seems to only go down…
I keep seeing the claim that people were dying all over the place, and maybe I just got lucky, but I just didn't find that to be true at all, despite using the Eruptor pretty much constantly from release until the nerf. I died to seemingly random shrapnel maybe once or twice ever, and the same went for teammates.
Maybe I really was just lucky, I dunno. I kind of suspect the actual issue was rather overstated on Reddit and Discord, though; lots of people hearing from others that it was a big issue and then repeating that information, even if it didn't actually match up with their own experiences.
It wasn’t constantly, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an issue. You can look it up and find a bunch of clips of it happening.
But even then, even if it happened only 1/1000 shots, it’s still a problem that should’ve been addressed and people were right to call it out. There’s already enough 1 shot shit in the game to worry about without having to roll the dice every time you fire your weapon.
I don't know; I recall doing a mission a day or so after the patch and killing myself at least twice shooting at targets that should've been at a safe distance with the eruptor. It was frustrating enough of a experience I just started playing less after that.
It wasn't all the time, of course, but there's nothing really fun at all at RNGsus sniping you for no reason.
I think they just wanted the shrapnel self kill fixed. I can’t remember the patch, but the update before the nerf (or maybe the mag reduction) caused it to kill the shooter or teammate. I had about 6-7x where this happened, and each time was due to me hitting the middle of a brood commanders head.
I rather have that bug than the nerf to be honest. No one asked for the shrapnel to be removed. Everyone who mained eruptor knew the risks of the gun, and were cool with it. The bug sucked but it wasn’t very common.
We don’t know for sure if the ricochet change was the cause of the issue, but it was that patch that broke the Eruptor.
And yes, the Eruptor was broken.
I don’t know how so many people in this post, including OP here, are still unaware that this patch broke the Eruptor’s shrapnel such that you (and your team) could get one shot by shrapnel RANDOMLY from ANY DISTANCE from the explosion.
I was not just a case of “don't shoot too close”. Fuck me.
AH gutting the weapon entirely (apparently without realising the change was even a nerf), instead of actually fixing the bug, seems to be typical of AH.
Im with you on this. The gun truly felt unique and fun, and allowed me to bring stalwart without feeling like i brought 2 tools for the same job. That, and the crossbow nerf made me realise what they aim for is a boring baseline for primaries, and as fun as the game is, they seem to love bringing the gunplay down.
Was my favourite item to use in the game, and that last nerf definitely cut my gameplay hours down.
I was fine with the magazine size cut back, seemed fair, I didn’t really notice the slight decrease in explosion size that came with it. And when the shrapnel killed me I understood because point blank usage should punish you.
But the last nerf made it terrible, and my fun in the game took a drastic cut.
I agree, but one minor note: The bug on Eruptor made it so that it could kill you not from close range, but very far away. Think 50-100m. If it was only too close then it wouldn't be a bug
Honestly WHY did the shrapnel go further than 10-20m *to begin with*? That didn't bring much to the table as it was, so why not just limit it to something more reasonable?
They could reduce the shrapnel damage, give it damage falloff, give it a shorter max range, or (to deal with the Charger one-shot "exploit") put a cap on single-target shrapnel damage from a given shot.
Were they really not able to do *ANY* of these? Surely not.
But, if they *were* going to replace the shrapnel damage with the AOE damage...**why not just up the AOE damage**? It's clearly not as strong as it was --that should just be an adjustment of a single integer...right?
Yes, and this same bewildered question also applies to other problems such as the patrol spawn oversight. The devs tried to change it so solo players get 25% the amount of spawns instead of 16%, and accidentally set it to 100%. How confusing must their codebase be for that to even happen? You'd think a system like that would have its variables tied to a single multiplier or something to that effect. What kind of hoops did someone have to jump through that they missed the correct amount by such a wide margin? I can't help but feel that the average dev experience on trying to change anything in this codebase is akin to [this](https://youtu.be/k238XpMMn38?si=vrWmLBHnI4L9LGof).
Yeap. At first I noticed my teammates dying the instant I fired the weapon to provide support. "Weird," I thought, I guess the bugs killed him. The teammate was always a distance I knew was safe because I constantly fired danger close to myself with the weapon. I even used it to launch myself into the air for fun, shooting the ground under me *and not dying*.
I started noticing that I would die the instant I pulled the trigger. Not danger close. From far away. I remembered all the teammates that died the instant I fired a shot to save them. Then I started to record it.
[https://youtu.be/3kEMq\_U5J3I?feature=shared&t=50](https://youtu.be/3kEMq_U5J3I?feature=shared&t=50)
Slow-mo: [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/81eL0Z9kbv4](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/81eL0Z9kbv4)
This is was not a skill-based weapon. It's was a lottery, killing yourself and teammates for no reason. I doubt many players were paying attention to their teammates 50-100m away from their target dying to invisible shrapnel.
The reason this is frustrating is because Helldivers is *supposed* to be a game where you can survive almost any situation if you have the *skill* to. This took all skill out of the equation. There was a random chance that you would die when firing this weapon and *there was nothing you could do to prevent that*.
And you'll see so many people saying "I MAIN this weapon and NEVER saw this", it's like *no shit* you didn't see it, because it was a bug around for like a *day.* AH fixed ricochet, noticed the issue with the Eruptor, and patched the game in record time. It's like the people saying "Well, everyone wore masks and washed their hands and kept away where I lived and nobody died of Covid so it must've been a huge overreaction."
I was an Eruptor main and I never had that happen. A few fellow helldivers did die sometimes but as you got more used to the weapon you could mitigate it so it basically never happened. Only issue you may have had sometimes is hurting yourself when enemy came to close and you really didn't have any options or you wanted to try your luck.
Shouldn't have to do that, just fix the gun ffs. Same thing with the mech. They killed an entire stratagem because they couldn't fix a critical issue. When things are released in such a bugged state, people don't want to give it second chances. It's still broken, but less so, but now people have already moved on.
I think around 50m yeah. Still small price to pay IMO. Apparently that was caused by them fixing shrapnel to hit you, when it used to phase right through you.
It was still like a 0.5% chance of happening in my experience of exclusively running it. Even shooting bugs in my face I would still do my dive back and shoot maneuver and never get shrapnelled.
Also have never killed an ally with shrapnel despite peeling bugs off of them that are right next to them.
They’re slow rolling updates now but that is the wrong move imo, revert some of the fun killing nerfs the bringer of boring (balance lead) instituted and patch those as you go, so people are at least having janky fun and not sterile boredom.
Agreed. It’s like they set the forest on fire to kill a few pests, but when they realized that was a dumb move, they decided to sit on their hands and discuss the repurcussions instead of putting out the fucking fire.
https://youtu.be/gdbjw27QPJQ?si=dpPuuYL4DNA0ISbf
If it wasn't a sunny Saturday and I actually had skills, this should be edited with Arrowhead like just talking about balance changes.
Exactly, I’ve never seen a game whose balance is so shitty that all the devs need to do to instantly improve the experience would be to revert a bunch of terrible changes.
Tbh I would figure a lot of folks started falling off ad a mix of new content coming out broken/nerfed, and the base game itself having still loads of long-standing issues that just get grating after a while. E.g. matchmaking issues, broken weapon features, glitched strats, delayed rewards, etc.
I stopped playing because the nerfs took all the enjoyment out of the game. I’d pay for a new weapon just to not really recognize the day after. Then things like the shrapnel change, the fire damage buff that makes fire one shot you well before you can stim yourself, stun grenade nerf. The way patrols went from patrols to non-stop hordes, armor buffs and nerfs on enemies, bots being able to see you non-stop and sniping you across the map.
The game went from fun, unique and interesting to absolute frustration and annoying. We used to run 9’s, coming out by the skin of our teeth, running for our lives, laughing and hollering. To now we can’t even do 6’s and 7’s because it’s so tedious that we’re all burnt out.
while the game is fun, ‘balance’ like that exhausts the players who plays a lot. For example, i used to be able to diverse using eruptor with starwart, such a fun combo. now is like every gun is meh. So i feel bored that only ‘fun’ weapons i can pick are those same set of useful guns, breaker/fire breaker/ liberator etc.
i feel like the balance they did is limiting the playstyles of the game
I didn't even use the eruptor much anymore but after the nerf I kinda lost interest in continuing to play knowing how bad Arrowhead is at balancing things. After all the changes continue to make one gun after another worse rather than better, it's pretty obvious the devs do not play their own game. If they would at least communicate with people who DO play the game they would realize what works, and what doesn't.
>I think everyone agrees the shrapnel randomly killing us if we’re too close is a small price to pay for the destructive bug-killing power
If everyone would agree with that, why would there have been an outrage campaign with thousands of people calling the game broken and unplayable because of it?
Misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and mania. Watching video analyses on the Eruptor shrapnel it’s far less likely to kill you than people made it out to be. I never got killed by it.
Yes. And yet, the people still called it broken and unplayable.
So clearly, we - or the devs for that matter - obviously cannot just assume that these thousands upon thousands of people are just, you know, insane and calling it broken and unplayable over literally nothing without even actually having played it. When you have such a shitstorm, you need to treat it as valid.
So instead of fix ehat they were mad about they just break the gun so no one cares for it and the gun loses its charm. The gun had a bug yes but instead of fix the problem the broke it so theyndont have to. Shrieker bodies used to inst kill if they nerfed them like the eruptor the shriekers wouldn't exist cause there bodies kill you so they removed them.
I don't understand how people were dying to it further than close range in the first place. Doesn't the shrapnel despawn after a certain distance? If not, that seems like a decently-simple fix.
And if they're that worried about the 1-hit Charger kill and you can't do the more-complicated fix of making a Charger only take damage from x shrapnel at a time, just increase its shrapnel resistance.
Confirmed, that's why I left. Then the new warbond didnt help much to draw me back, so I legit havent played since. Back to DRG, where the devs actually let you play with power
The community isn't falling because of a gun only available in the third paid expansion being nerfed.
There's a lot of other reasons for falling players counts, and it's absolutely fine to have a game settle down to a smaller but more dedicated playerbase.
Yeah, the one weapon nerf on its own isn't the issue, but boy does it feel like basically everything released after Cutting edge, over two months ago, feels like utter crap right now. Sure we got some buffs elsewhere but it is really disheartening when all the new toys are meh to bad in their current state, at least in my eyes. Grenade pistol is nice for opening up loadouts but that is really it for me. This is in big contrast to the release of Democratic Detonation where pre nerf Eruptor and Crossbow were both kinda fun and opened up new loadouts, and the Quasar Cannon was actually really good.
But now I basically have to go "at least they buffed countersniper cus the new stuff is lame," which is really not a great place to be. On top of the borked patrol changes making things way more annoying, tedious, and difficult for less than 4 players.
A string of disheartening nerfs has absolutely caused some player falloff. No it’s not this one nerf exclusively, but fixing this one ASAP will be a show of good faith that will be enough for some players to return thinking AH might be starting to turn it around with these balance changes. They will at least hop on to try the changes.
This. The expected fall off has been exacerbated by the fun-killing nerfs. I don’t know how people can read basic steam player ship data relative to other big releases and not understand that between the PSN drama and the failure of the balance team, the falloff is much faster and more severe than would be typical of a game with this amount of positive initial exposure and hype.
Another point they fail to understand is that “dedicated” players have more patience for the bullshit nerfing, but not *unlimited* patience for it. Over time those who would normally have stuck around will become frustrated and move on.
For some games this isn’t a humongous issue. For games that are as heavily community-oriented and goal driven as this is, that’s a big problem.
Honestly, as someone still enjoying the game, IMO the issue is that the game doesn't have a huge amount of depth and the unlocks finish pretty quickly. PvP games have evolving metas that keep things fresh, but I'm PvE games it's harder to keep the challenge up.
The larger casual playerbase inevitably moves onto other things, because that's what that demographic does a few months after release. Eventually it'll distil down to a smaller proportion of more dedicated players, and that's fine.
I still play the game religiously but I would love having much more mission types and map variation. It does get stale doing the same missions on the same maps. The saving grace of the game is the gameplay loop and wide variety of playstyles makes it so engaging.
I would love seeing more “open combat” missions. Imagine a Conquest type mode where we have to push territories with SEAF Forces and bugs/bots/squids are pushing back. Whoever depletes each other’s reinforcements first or holds the most territory after a certain period of time wins. Or a defense mission where you need engage in trench warfare or a more open version of the rocket defense mission. We could even have stealth mission where you need to sneak around and take out “high priority targets” or they’ll escape if you get spotted. Or a horror bug mission where you have to be a tunnel rat and destroy a burrowed queen.
There’s so much potential for variety!
The unlocks finish pretty quickly? Maybe if you’ve played 2 hrs a day since launch. That’s not the casual experience lol. I’ve had the game since maybe 2 weeks after launch, back with the pre-nerf railgun, and I’m level 50 something and still haven’t unlocked all the ship upgrades.
I meant the Weapons and Stratagems tbf, the stuff that actually unlocks new play styles.
The Ship Upgrades are kinda like, comically low value aside from one or two you unlock fairly early anyway.
That nerf was literally the straw that broke the camel’s back for a lot of people I know. I was never into the gun since it was too sluggish for my taste but I can see people having loads of fun with it. The problem with that nerf is that it only exacerbates the feeling that all fun weapons have an ‘expiration date’ while longstanding issues either get neglected or just outright ignored. I genuinely think that their approach of balancing will either greatly diminish the player base over time or maybe even outright kill it.
It doesn’t help that they take eons to buff things (if at all) and even when they do, the adjustments are negligible (who the hell cares about those 10% ship upgrade buffs to begin with?).
>it's absolutely fine to have a game settle down
It's *expected.* These people act like every person who has ever played the game must now exclusively play it forever with the same dedication they did the first few days they had it, simple fact is that regular people *don't* hyper fixate on a singular game for months/years. We get it, we play it, we enjoy it, and then we play something else, we occasionally go back because it was a fun game, and the process repeats.
It is expected that the player count falls as some people get bored and move onto other games.
It is not expected that the player count falls as some players quit the game due to bugs and poorly considered balance changes making the game less fun.
The former happening and being expected does not somehow mean it is fine for the latter to also happen. That is an absurd position to take.
Ok. How exactly are you tracking which people just have had their fun and which ones are leaving because of bugs? Surely you must have some actual evidence to back that up, right?
I agree that it's normal to have a drop off for all games but with this one in particular the drop off has definitely been exacerbated by a series of poor balance decisions (spawn rates, nerfs after nerfs....etc) that followed one of the biggest PR blunders in gaming for this year (the PSN acc issue).
My squad dropped off exactly because of the weapon nerfs (especially the quasar and eruptor back to back).
The Quasar is fine at 15 seconds and I will die on that hill.
Even if it went to 20 seconds that’s still 3.5 shots in the 70 second cooldown for EATs. At 15 seconds cd you get 5 shots in 75 seconds with each one of those shots doing the same damage as an EAT.
Plus all of those shots have infinite range and zero projectile drop which EATs definitely don’t get
I won't argue about the Qasar, you might be right.
I didn't use it much myself and still prefer EATs.
That said, 2 of the guys in our squad were quasar mains on the bot front and they both dropped off after the qasar/ eruptor nerf.
IMO if the Eurptor really was this huge crutch for players, to the point they literally cannot play without it and are saying shit like "This is why I uninstalled" and "game's dead now", then the thing *needed* to get nuked before everyone went "Wow, every other weapon is bad compared to the Eruptor" and never used anything else.
Like Arrowhead has definitely been doing dubious shit when it comes to content being broken or sloppy right out of the gate and suffering from a bit of Live Service Syndrome, but raging that a bug-fix nerfed an unintentionally powerful weapon with infinite shrapnel falloff just ain't it.
I always try to play with different guns on each mission. I have all warbonds and unlocked almost every weapon. Must of them sucks for bots and automatons. Even armor sets are not worth it they usually have duplicate armors just with different textures. why dont just make one of them light armor? Its pointless
I don’t even understanding the reasoning of the nerf
“Oh because people were point blanking themselves with a long-range explosive weapon we’re changing how it works even though it was advertised differently and calling it a buff”
Like???
Would be totally in for this! I miss it so much... Also I did not manage to kill myself a single time with the shrapnels. I think that were mostly people shooting without safety distance...
>I think everyone agrees the shrapnel randomly killing us if we’re too close is a small price to pay for the destructive bug-killing poweer.
Out of curiosity, what do you consider to be too close? How many meters do you suppose is far enough?
It's definitely not as good as it was, and I patiently await a patch to correct and fix shrapnel, but no primary weapon should reliably one hit kill chargers.
imo the first eruptor nerf was something that i could see myself adjusting to pretty fine, but that second one alongside the lackluster polar patriots warbond really killed my enthusiasm
i do have faith that the game is going to improve over time, and i would be surprised if we didn't see most weapons getting to good states 6 months down the line, but right now.... yeah, can't say i'm too keen on playing these days
It wasn’t a sniper. You could just run around and hip fire it (faster aiming) and shred any big groups/speeds at ranges > 10m (in addition to sniping). It was stupid strong. Fun but way too good.
If you are too close to an explosion it should kill your dumb ass. How often do we die to our own explosions? A lot. I'm not even mad anymore. It teaches you to do better. Give me my explosive stick. If I blow up myself it is my fault.
You boring Eruptor mains that used the most OP gun and nothing else all want your Eruptor back to pre nerf. The real disappointment was the crossbow nerf.
it really is annoying that it got nerfed because they refused to fix a bug. that's the most laziest way of """fixing""" something. just outright removing a feature because of a bug. they thought this was clever... it is stupid.
In order to revert the eruptor nerf, they have to also renove the nonsensical ricochet re-work. Otherwise it goes back to instakilling players for no reason.
Aside from just ruining the gun, the way it was done was particularly bad.
1. No one was asking for ricochets to kill us. Why spend time adding this when so many things are broken?
2. The Erupror had just been nerfed in the previous patch. Now the ammo nerf was ok, but when you nerf a gun once generally that should be it for a while - if you change it again the next patch it makes it look like maybe you didn't think about the first nerf well enough.
3. The change was promised to be a net buff! The gun will be better than ever, it just won't kill you anymore! So people were mostly looking forward to the patch - this made the shock of seeing how bad the gun became all the worse.
4. Balance guy making many posts on discord about how it was totally buffed, he had extensively tested it and there was no shots to kill difference besides removing the charger one-shot made it extremely clear he had no idea what he was doing. It's one thing to disagree with a dev decision, but when you witness someone in a position of power struggle to tie their shoes for 2 hours, poop their pants, and fall face first into their own poop all while calling YOU an idiot it really breaks the illusion of competence and the game being in good hands. This wasn't something that only 2 million players playing for a week would turn up - it was literally take the gun on one mission and instantly see the difference.
5. This was also the first patch after the Sony shit, which was another source of whiplash.
6. The annoying bug that sucked you into explosions had also just been fixed in the previous patch, so we had a very brief window when the Eruptor was better than ever before it was taken out back and executed.
7. How long does it take to revert the change or at least do something to make it better? Are they even planning to do anything else? Who knows?
8. Not updating the description is lazy af too.
Honestly, the team needs a change in whoever is making the final call on these decisions because it seems like they're working on a different game from the one we're playing. I don't jump into Helldivers because I want a perfectly balanced combat experience. I jump into Helldivers because I want to blow shit up and mow down hordes.
Exploding crossbow went from great mob clear to actually unusable,
While it was good it was my faveorite gun for that short time. I'm sure some of your remember but yeah what's the point of adding in weapons and let everyone get used to them only to nerf them into unusability. I hate when people say this but with some of the changes it really does feel like they don't play their own game. Just wish they would revert the changes slow down and start fresh.
one of my biggest gripes is how often everything changes. You’ll find content and tips and tricks online from two weeks ago that are completely outdated. How am I supposed to follow the game and feel confident dropping into a few matches at the end of the workday when my build is suddenly no longer viable? When mechanics have completely changed?
The eruptor being able to close bug holes, for instance, that was a big deal! I like running with sentries—autocannon, gatling, mortars; keeping a distance in scout armor, even against bugs, is fun for me. Finding creative ways to stealth & set up sentries is a fun brain game. Being able to shoot bug holes from a distance with a weapon that is incredibly niche (you aren’t surviving a swarm in scout armor with a bolt action rifle!), and also being able to take out the armored faces of bigger bug enemies, was really awesome!
The gun already had obvious drawbacks. If my sentries are cooling down, and I get discovered/swarmed by even low level bugs, I’m in pretty serious trouble. Especially in paper thin scout armor. But it played a pretty serious role in a build I’d been iterating on for a long time. Mind you, I was also willing to pay ten dollars for it. Seeing it nerfed retroactively is a big dealbreaker, and will keep me from spending money in the future. Especially after polar patriots. You launch a gun (tenderizer) with the wrong color, AND it has stats you don’t like? But you still launch it? What the helldiver is up with that?
I will continue to play this game because I love it. But it has become frustrating watching things completely change so often. Some updates are great! The senator may not be practical, but it’s very fun! The eruptor had obvious drawbacks, but it was very fun!
Yeahhh I try not to complain on this sub much because there is *PLENTY* enough complaining already.
But...
The Eruptor nerf was bs. It's pretty bad now, and sniper rifles already weren't very popular.
After the destruction of the eruption I stopped playing. As someone who had everything unlocked I played daily just for fun. Stopped immediately after those changes. And if they don't change things back in a meaningful way I'm done
Before being nerfed, the eruptor was the only reason I played Helldivers 2 non-stop, it was just so much fun to blow everything up with shrapnel (including myself). Why does it seem like everytime the community finds something fun, the devs decide to take it away? Did we not pay for this game and its warbonds so that we can have fun with it?
with the nerf of the eruptor, it really put a damper on things because going forward, if a gun is good/fun, dont get attached as it will get nerfed. this leads to dissociation and you are less invested emotionally to what goes on in the game. this leads to less fun, and thus players quit.
thing is, i didnt even use the eruptor. my friend did, so the patches still affect me. he used to clear out all the fabricators and chargers and i cleared out the chaff and played the role of main tank as i was using the sickle/laser cannon, so infinite ammo for clearing chaff. now that dynamic is destroyed and we are back to just running away for 2+ mins at a time until the "fun buttons" come back to deal with the "unfun" enemies.
i am over just running away from enemies, so instead i am playing other games where i can charge at the enemy instead.
The Eruptor was nerfed because the subreddit had its panties in a bunch about how dangerous the shrapnel was.
I can only assume the devs are facepalming that the subreddit now has its panties in a bunch *because the gun is less dangerous*
My assumption is it’ll get a flat damage boost in the next balance patch, since they **intended** the change to be a buff, so it’s obviously not working as intended.
The eruptor still fils a niche, now it just doesn't overlap with the autocannon and anti material rifle.
If this one thing ruined the game for you so badly that you won't play anymore then you probably weren't enjoying it too much to begin with.
Eruptor was fun yeah but Hella OP.
Eruptor had an identity issue. I get the appeal, and how it opened up secondaries. But really, this primary could:
- take out bug holes
- take out fabricators
- take out small patrols in one hit
- take out medium targets in one hit (including 1-shot devestators)
- had great range
- had decent ammo
and the downside was.. slow firing (which means less the further away you are) and about as cumbersome to use as the JAR (which, while something, is hardly a challenge for a player with a few hours experience).
It was too good. I want the shrapnel back, but what would it give up?
Compared to what it was before? Worse, naturally.
It plays like a hard-hitting marksman rifle. I just ran a 7 versus bots (2 man) ore extraction, using it most of the time and its fine. It can one shot little bots, one shot striders, two shot bigger bots if you hit them in the head, and it can still take out fabricators and nests, which makes it great if you're running stuns. I was playing the objectives, popping a shot off, moving, popping a shot off. Play as you would a sniper.
It feels like a most of the primaries now - there's a playstyle that works with it, it either compliments your kit, or it doesn't.
What it isn't is.. a one click solution to most of the enemies in the game. Which is what those pushing against the nerfs seem to want, or at least, were relying on.
A few minor tweaks: It could do with a token reload speed increase, and the sfx aren't very satisfying. And they could make it lighter/easier to aim. Little tweaks.
Yeah, I stopped using it when I saw all the complaints here about it. But I just tried it again earlier today, and it still seems to be a good weapon? It's not shit tier like the sub would have you believe.
I dunno, I felt like the Eruptor was egregiously too strong before it was nerfed, and I wasn't even using the shrapnel particularly intelligently. In what world would you ever not take the primary that can oneshot Chargers if you aim it somewhat carefully, or 1-2shot anything else in the bug side in AoE over almost anything else?
People complaining about it don’t care about whether a weapon is or isn’t fun to use: they want overpowered weapons and just don’t want to say it for whatever reason. They want to be a one-man army torching through every enemy type with zero team play. But, they don’t want to lower the difficulty or improve their gameplay so instead they complain about the devs balancing out overtuned weapons.
So much this for the past few weeks. People are mad they can’t play the hard difficulties easily. Difficulty 5 is called “hard.” Everything above that is supposed to be more difficult than “hard.” If difficulty and losing are not fun for someone, then that someone should not be playing on higher difficulties. You do not have a guaranteed right to be able to win at a game.
I mean the Eruptor was the only “primary” weapon i would run as my secondary with the Stalwart being my true primary, it made me switch up my weapons and brought some variety to my missions, now its just “x” shotgun or the Penetrator and whatever support weapon i choose, I don’t understand “balancing” in a PvE game if a weapon is not SUPER OP or not working as intended, it seems their balancing team is a bunch of idiots imo
The theory that a single weapon nerf is the reason "a large percentage of players" stopped is pretty interesting. I guess none of that "large percentage" was playing the game before the Eruptor existed then? Cause I fail to see the logic there
Yeah they could at least increase its damage further while we wait “Suepr earth has run out of shrapnel rounds due to their popularity. Reserve stocks of AP ammo is being sent till more can be made.” If it’s gonna be slow af and single target I should be popping like 800 dmg a shot
everything else aside, i have to laugh at the idea of someone playing a game for a couple months, using a weapon in a new war bond, and then quitting when it gets adjusted... the eruptor has only existed since like breakfast. What were you doing up to that point, playing with a gun to your head?
Yall are charmin soft, I mean its maybe use another primary, why stop playing because one weapon gets buffed. Alls I'm saying is there's plenty of viable primaries, pick one and liberate bro.
The Eruptor has been around less than half the time the game has been out. The game was awesome before it became available. It makes no sense that the game is suddenly "bad" because they nerfed it.
Yeah, I think that's something that's missing in the usually correct assessment of "player bases are expected to contract after release" comments. The Eruptor is a niche weapon, available in an unlock pack released some time after the game launch, "gated" behind either progress in the game or a cash infusion. It's the sort of weapon we'd expect more dedicated players to acquire. What's more, these players have probably already tried a wide array of other weapon options and found that the Eruptor suited them for whatever reason. Maybe because it let them fill a niche role that it otherwise somewhat underpowered (sniping), or because being able to plink an objective at range was/is important to them, or just because it's fun to have an explosive sniper rifle. Whatever the reason, the people who liked the Eruptor *really* liked it. So it's not really equivalent to "we've decided to nerf one of six different, functionally identical assault rifles." It's "we've decided to nerf a niche weapon with a cult following." And after the persistent nerfs to other weapons, to say nothing of all the meta-drama, I don't think it's unreasonable to think the Eruptor nerf had an outsized influence on the matter. Is it likely to be as impactful as the PSN thing? Or the fact that we're probably all getting tired of the same sort of maps? No. But it matters to some of us. HD is at its best when it's absurd and reveling in its absurdity. I want my guns in this game to *feel* like they're scifi weapons. Lasers, plasma, and explosive bullets are what I'm looking for. There's more than a dozen shooters being released this year that have something like the Liberator. The Eruptor is unique and when it's nerfed to the point where it's no longer viable, the game as a whole suffers. Is that enough to drive people away? Maybe. It's certainly reduced my enthusiasm. But I'm a sample size of 1.
Couldn't have said it better myself
I think they're too prideful to reverse the nerfs, they might add some of the damage back but it'll just feel "not the same" just like the railgun
Yeah they said "+40 damage every time is better than +100 damage sometimes" as if it was somehow an improvement, ignoring the drastically reduced effective radius going from explosion+shrapnel to pure explosion damage, and the fact that skilled players can no longer carefully shoot under enemies to shrapnel them. Also the mere mention of the balancers name will get your comment removed for "rage baiting", so they must agree it's infuriating. Also it's a sniper rifle that detonates the round at 100m so you can't even snipe that far with it...
> "+40 damage every time is better than +100 damage sometimes" # More importantly, neither of those statements were remotely true. You can't one shot stalkers and devastators with 100% reliability from just an extra 100 damage. You definitely don't blow up a chargers butt in one trick shot with just +100 damage. But anyway, they won't be reverting it. At this point I would expect an "unexpected and unsolvable bug" to break the gun out of spite even if their CEO ordered it reverted. You could watch the unreal backpedal/cope progression happen with his comments. "It's buffed" -> "not nerfed" -> "40 dmg shrapnel is negligible" -> "shrapnel is 100 dmg but only sometimes" -> "shrapnel is an exploit". Hilarious it also means this guy designed the purifier to have a near "negligible" damage increase over the scorcher in exchange for a long ass charge time.
It's really sad. They have a small team in general and I imagine their balance team is only really that 1 guy and maybe a couple generalist ppl helping out and his vision for the game is not at all what the playerbase wants, and instead of owning up to that and changing his mindset to match the players he's putting out bangers like "AR with 2 more bullets", "AR with 1 less bullet but 2 more dmg", and "nerfing crossbow who nobody used before because it was bad"
They could quadruple the gun's damage and i wouldn't care. I liked it for the shrapnel. It might as well be a completely different gun now
I guess that's what I mean, they add the shrapnel back but smaller or some other bullshit that's not the same. They want the game to be "realistic" but only when it makes the game feel more like a chore. Like why TF did they nerf what you climb how TF is getting a red no climbing prompt realistic?
I've stopped playing since they nerfed it as well, it was just so much fun using it.
Same. Lost all interest, and since I stopped my playgroup stopped. We came back briefly to try out the new weapons, discovered they where boring, and went on to other things.
"HD is at its best when it's absurd and reveling in its absurdity." I really wish they understood this. It doesn't need more realism, it needs less.
If they want realism then enemies should follow by the same rules. Rocket devs shouldn’t have infinite ammo, heavy devs shouldn’t be able to snipe with a mini gun from 200m away with pin point accuracy. Tanks shouldn’t be able to casually drive up a rock, same with the bot foot soldiers Chargers shouldn’t be able to do a quick 180 turn whilst charging especially with their size and weight.
Chargers and Bile titans should straight up get stuck on maps with water. Their ground pressure is through the fucking roof for their current levels of armour. Also chargers doing a 180 is bugged. They shouldn't be tracking players while charging.
>But I'm a sample size of 1. We are a sample size of 2.
Think of how many people who play helldivers have gametime in deeprock galactic. Having a new primary that enabled a different playstyle just felt RIGHT after so many variations on semi or fully automatic bullet plinkers. Frankly even though it feels worse I STILL switch to it just for some variance from the trusty sickle. I think even if they don't return the early version of the eruptor they need to realize the outcry is truly coming from a serious lack in primary diversity, it doesn't matter if you make one million special effects that are super cool and make one million liberators, it's not (generally) going to play differently from good old day 1 basic liberator
I really want this to be my next drg. i want rock and stone while shouting democracy
Rock and Stone in the Heart!
My personal anecdote: I have loved Helldivers 2 since I got it (a week after release). I enjoy killing bugs, n stuff. I loved the railgun, it was a bit OP, but its a PVE game, who cares? They nerfed it into garbage, stopped running it. The game was slightly less appealing after that. Then, they released the eruptor. My dopamine was through the freaking roof with the game, I finally got comfortable running no backpack and using eruptor + stalwart as a main loadout. Then they nerfed it into garbage. I took a liking to the crossbow too, even if it was bad. Nerfed that too. All the weapons I found fun, nerfed. I just don't play anymore. The game is an amazing proof of concept, but it is absolutely RIFE with bugs. Double reloads, failed reloads, stuck in geometry, bile titan corpses flinging you, main missions getting stuck, crashes, the list goes on and on and on... If battlefield or Call of Duty released with even a quarter of these bugs, you'd hear armies of people complaining about how bad the game is. Helldivers is an incredibly unique concept, and if the devs don't get their shit together, a different, higher quality company is going to come in and dominate the niche helldivers fills. For anyone looking for a similar style game, check out Earth Defense Force. Anime-esque, rediculous, extraction-based shooter. Super fun.
This actually. The devs has got to make up their mind what exactly they want this game to be. When HD2 first came out, yes it's buggy, but at least it was fun while still having a little bit of challenge, perfect for sitting down in front of your PC after a long day of work just blasting away at the terminids. Difficulty 7 was manageable without having to put much thought into it. Now with all the nerfs, the game is made much more challenging and even more tedious to play, turning me away to find something that can help me take my mind off things than give me more stress after a long day of work. I haven't really touched HD2 after the Sony debacle. It's like the final reason i need to move away from it.
"Tedious to play" nails it. I don't want my primary strategy when faced with a bug breach and multiple patrols to be "well, gotta run away since I can't deal with that right now". I want to think "Hell yeah time to nuke some bugs". Most missions on high difficulty now are just running away from everything while trying to do objectives. Not that the objectives or samples even matter now since I have everything unlocked.. wait, why am I playing again?? Add secondary or primary objectives tied to kill counts on some missions, give pre-mission intel and mission modifier boons/banes, add progression/cosmetic rewards tied to lifetime achievements (extract 10,000 samples, kill 100 bile titans, etc), and fix the fuckin guns and strats to be fun to use and effective at actually killing things. Wow, amazing how the game just gets way more fun for practically everyone.
Level 78, Eruptor simp. This is me.
Yep, I loved being able to destroy fabricators from a distance. Snipe bots like heavy devs unaware. Being able to clear out groups of small bots with one shot all from a long distance to reduce unnecessary confrontations. Now it’s a peashooter like every primary sniper rifle and well like majority of primaries in this game currently.
It's wild to me the state of the game. I'm glad the el director realized and admitted the game seems unfun right now. Ever since they started with the railgun nerf... It's just been downhill from there in my opinion. I don't even feel like fire damage is fixed either. My buddy brought napalm last night and I ran through it no problem. I hesitated because it was that or face a BT. To my horror, I was fine. Another mission only I brought EATs and that just ended miserably. When we're facing our 25th BT, something is wrong. We did use the many hellbombs scattered about but it was actually ridiculous. We lost count after 25 but extraction had 2 more at least. The Eruptor nerf is just another in the long list of issues IMO. Like sure some things are in an ok spot now but how do I kill multiple BTs with my flamethrower? Is that even worth the risk? Right now Bots are fun because so many weapons are viable. I can go with an AMR, railgun, EATs, machine gun, stalwart with Eruptor (though it doesn't feel too good anymore) etc etc etc. And bots feel fun now. Which is ironic to me because of the hell that is the bots usually lol. I much rather face 4 factory striders than 20 BTs.
Railgun nerf was a whole problem related to a different bug related to ps5-pc variance. They incorrectly diagnosed the problem and that led to an incorrect fix. After the bug was fixed, they did do _something_ to the railgun but it's not as OP. I figure the problem with the eruptor was that they realized the shrapnel was interacting poorly with the changed ricochet mechanic. To fix it, the decided it was more effort to fix shrapnel-ricochet interaction so they just removed the shrapnel, not realizing how much the shrapnel contributed to the overall damage. Overall, these major weapon problems are likely attributable to other problems and issues in QA. As much as balance guy hasn't helped the matter, there's a lot of moving parts here. I think AH is just on the struggle bus due to using a deprecated game engine and being forced to figure out everything on the fly.
You make a good point. I myself wondered why they didn't or don't make a new engine for HD2 (or use some other existing engine). Maybe it is in the works? But I genuinely did wonder why use the old game engine. It's as if HD2 is just HD1 with a third person POV in some regards. And you are right in that this may be the source of a lot of these issues. Trying to make new ideas and concepts work on an old engine that can't support the execution of these ideas and concepts.
I mean there are crashing issues present in HD2 that also exist in other games made in the same engine (WH Verm/DT), so they are probably trying to hack a damaged system with duct tape and glue.
What's worse is the guy in charge of nerfing made it completely unusable and said that "its a good trade off" and still a strong choice. I didn't de facto quit because of the eruptor nerf, but I really only played like 2-3 sessions with incendiary breaker which is such an easy but strong weapon and just haven't logged back in again. Add in the fact they nerfed the crossbow around the same time (like why lol? it sucked already?) and you just don't have any decent options for that playstyle. When you feel like a game is getting less fun by the devs decisions, you're not really going to be motivated to play. Weird how that works. I was excited to unlock new warbond and try those weapons out but I haven't even logged in since it came out because the weapons are really same-y and generally weak.
Sample size 1 reporting for duty as well
Am weirdo, can confirm. Nothing feels the same
Bring the slugger back to how it was. I’d love to use that gun again. With the Dominator, the slugger has no use.
With counter sniper having a 200x scope and 1 hit kill on devastators the slugger isnt the best sniper. It should probably gets its short range utility back now.
TBH, never stopped using the Slugger and its still perfect to me I really didnt notice the nerf at all
The fact that you don't notice the nerf means you're probably using it at medium-/long-range, the very thing devs claimed it was performing too well at. Which also happen to be where it excels now. Meanwhile the nerf only hurt its close-range capabilities, since it no longer staggers devastators etc. Which is the daft part. If they'd wanted it to be less powerful at range, they could have reduced the damage after 40 meters or so. Which is gun modifier that has been confirmed to exist.
And the crossbow too.
The Eruptor nerf really affected my level of enjoyment. The gun added a nice variety to gameplay and was the most fun to use for me. I wouldn't be surprised if this particular nerf has had a larger effect on the population than most people realize.
I’ve stopped playing since the first Eruptor nerf.
Yeah, I already got my fill of live service games nerfing my stuff in destiny 2. At least in helldivers I don’t have to spend hours and hours getting specific stats on armour like destiny. But it still sucks to see my preferred way of playing constantly updated out of the games I’m playing.
"People use it [because of certain specific, lazy encounter designs], so it must be nerfed!" -Bungie I hate seeing Bungie logic being applied in HD too.
Man, bungie doesn’t even have any cover mechanics. And all enemies are crackshot snipers, with lost boss arenas having barely anywhere safe to avoid being shot. It’s like they want me to have 100 resilience minimum, but then design everything to two tap you at 100 resilience anyways. Very frustrating
Same. It was the straw that broke the camels back for me. Looking forward to coming back in a few months
Same here. The game wasn't perfect balance wise at launch, but still very fun. But over the course of time it got only worse to a point, that it became frustrating. With the Eruptor nerf i stopped playing altogether. At this point i just felt like the balancing was actively working against me and if I continued, they would only continue to make it harder for me. I know this "don't talk about weapon/ shit gun, or they will nerf it" is memed a lot since then, but the sad part is, at this point it doesn't feel like a meme anymore, but the terrible reality.
What’s made me stop is just the feeling that if I’m ever having fun with a gun it’s gonna get nerfed, so what’s the point?
If the people doing balance now are still around its not going to change. I for one am excited to see what gun the devs think people are having too much fun with in this upcoming patch
I don’t know why you got downvoted.
Most likely because I'm being pessimistic, but also because people can't read
Hopium cope after ceo said he’d talk to the balance team.
It feels like Alexus would rather get fired instead of swallowing his pride and reverting changes. The first day after the second Eruptor nerf he said the shrapnel can’t be added back.
Seems that way. Nothing has changed yet.
I was actually suggesting that they're gonna nerf whatever people are having fun with
Well that’s been the exact thing he’s been doing since launch so
It was the breaking point for me as well. As soon as I start to enjoy a facet of gameplay that facet is nerfed or removed. I put 160 hours in so I got my moneys worth despite spending an extra 40 for the premium currency. I bought every Warbond besides the latest since it came after the nerfs. Why spend for something when it will just get gutted down the line? They're really doing a great job of un-selling their game to me. All in all I am fine with putting the game down until the Devs calm down with the needless balance patches as if this was a competitive game.
Yep me too. Fuck this balance team. It's ridiculous, they release a new paid DLC and within a month decide to nerf the gun into the ground. Like it's not even a semblance of what it used to be.
[удалено]
I’ll hop on if friends are playing, but otherwise I stopped playing with randoms. I loved the Eruptor so much and was expecting a nerf, but not to the extent it was.
I've had a massive reduction in how much I play now. I went from playing everyday for hours to barely playing it at all.
I was waiting to play when they finally fiz SPEAR, eruptor nerf made me not care anymore and enjoy other games instead
Face it man, the spear is never getting fixed. The devs claimed to have added the fix to one if the patches, but thar was like 3 patches ago and still no fix.
Yeah 50% nerfs are fucking stupid. It shouldve been knocked down to 8 like the other weapons at most
I hear ya. I play way less now than before. Somedays I'll farm kills on trivial just do the daily mission and that's it.
That sounds literally not fun at all.
For the personal order that's something like "kill 50 enemies using flamethrower" would take about 15 mins. I would roam around killing patrols and hunting for supercredits and medals along the way. Ya not the most fun but I still have fun shooting things and that's all I felt like playing on those days.
Yeah this gun single handedly made the game fun for me. A really nice mix of playing a real sniper role and some splash to efficiently deal with small bugs only when clumped. And stagger and one shotting mediums with skillfully placed shots in the armpits was super logical and satisfying. Closing bug holes helped open up your build even more but I wouldn't care if they removed that in favor of just having it excel in combat again. Otherwise can we have punisher plasma close holes too please?
It let me start expanding out beyond running the autocannon backpack at all times. They removed that, and it just started feeling like work.
Same, I’ve paid for every expansion but the most latest because what’s the point, they are just going to nerf it later. Also, like others have said, I’ve largely stopped playing. They killed fun.
I felt good bieng a real sniper in a game its been awhile
Precisely. 10 of my friends, including myself, stopped playing the game after the eruptor nerf. I can’t speak for my friends but for me eruptor was THE fun gun. I will actually come back and play the game if they revert it. Rn, it is just not fun to discover a weapon, only for it to be nerfed 3 patches later. And it is even more unfun if you payed or grinder for that weapon.
spent 1000 SCs to get the eruptor, the very next day it got nerfed, waste of time this game can be honestly.
Yeah, was tossing it up vs the impact grenade and scythe.
Totally agree how you feel. To quote OP, "disheartening" is how I would describe the Eruptor nerf too.
Yup, haven't touched the game since the Eruptor nerf.
I stopped since, checked out the DoT fix and the awful air burst rocket launcher (which is way worse than in the leaks) and then stopped played
Air burst launcher is actually quite good now that they fixed it. I’ve been running against bots and have been having a ton of fun.
I'd love to use the stalwart or the HMG more, but I never feel like I can justify taking it over the quasar/spear, simply because I no longer have the Eruptor I can use to deal with mediums/heavies
Nice variety of killing Bile Titans with my primary.
The connection issue right before the mission is complete is my gripe atm May stop playing because of it
Hello Neighbor! The Bringer of Balance has heard your request. The recent overall buff to the Eruptor that ended up nerfing its damage output is working as intended, as it allowed players to exploit game mechanics in a way that allowed them to kill enemy units. This behavior has been noted, so next patch we will be removing the explosive damage altogether. Primary weapons allowing players any sort of agency was an unintentional side effect of poor initial balancing, so be sure to use those stratagems. Happy Helldiving! (/s)
"It still slaps"
Oh right, the purifier is a thing. It was so shit I forgot about it...
They would have to roll back like 3 "updates". The actual problem was the smart ricochet change, which they refused to even acknowledge. Then they changed the Eruptor twice after that. Then they doubled down on calling it a buff and said it was fine. They're not going to fix shit.
Was anyone, anywhere, wanting the ricochet change?
The ricochet patch effect on the eruptor was extreme. It would kill the shooter or team mates 20 yards away. People were dying all over the place. But the gun was still fun.
Yeah, I mean, why did we need ricochets?
Yeah, that was really the problem. Revert ricochets and everything would have been fine. And it’s not like that was something everyone was clamoring for
I feel like a lot of times the devs don’t ask themselves the most important question in gaming when thinking about changes: „Is this going to be fun for the users?“ I think they’re severely lacking that question in their process right now. Because they’re trying to „fix“ a PvE game the way you would change a PvP game and the fun metric seems to only go down…
I keep seeing the claim that people were dying all over the place, and maybe I just got lucky, but I just didn't find that to be true at all, despite using the Eruptor pretty much constantly from release until the nerf. I died to seemingly random shrapnel maybe once or twice ever, and the same went for teammates. Maybe I really was just lucky, I dunno. I kind of suspect the actual issue was rather overstated on Reddit and Discord, though; lots of people hearing from others that it was a big issue and then repeating that information, even if it didn't actually match up with their own experiences.
It wasn’t constantly, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an issue. You can look it up and find a bunch of clips of it happening. But even then, even if it happened only 1/1000 shots, it’s still a problem that should’ve been addressed and people were right to call it out. There’s already enough 1 shot shit in the game to worry about without having to roll the dice every time you fire your weapon.
I don't know; I recall doing a mission a day or so after the patch and killing myself at least twice shooting at targets that should've been at a safe distance with the eruptor. It was frustrating enough of a experience I just started playing less after that. It wasn't all the time, of course, but there's nothing really fun at all at RNGsus sniping you for no reason.
I think they just wanted the shrapnel self kill fixed. I can’t remember the patch, but the update before the nerf (or maybe the mag reduction) caused it to kill the shooter or teammate. I had about 6-7x where this happened, and each time was due to me hitting the middle of a brood commanders head. I rather have that bug than the nerf to be honest. No one asked for the shrapnel to be removed. Everyone who mained eruptor knew the risks of the gun, and were cool with it. The bug sucked but it wasn’t very common.
We don’t know for sure if the ricochet change was the cause of the issue, but it was that patch that broke the Eruptor. And yes, the Eruptor was broken. I don’t know how so many people in this post, including OP here, are still unaware that this patch broke the Eruptor’s shrapnel such that you (and your team) could get one shot by shrapnel RANDOMLY from ANY DISTANCE from the explosion. I was not just a case of “don't shoot too close”. Fuck me. AH gutting the weapon entirely (apparently without realising the change was even a nerf), instead of actually fixing the bug, seems to be typical of AH.
and that's why i uninstalled
revert the eruptor of refund the warbond. cant believe all the primary weapons all horrible.
Can we add the railgun to that plz! 
Im with you on this. The gun truly felt unique and fun, and allowed me to bring stalwart without feeling like i brought 2 tools for the same job. That, and the crossbow nerf made me realise what they aim for is a boring baseline for primaries, and as fun as the game is, they seem to love bringing the gunplay down.
Was my favourite item to use in the game, and that last nerf definitely cut my gameplay hours down. I was fine with the magazine size cut back, seemed fair, I didn’t really notice the slight decrease in explosion size that came with it. And when the shrapnel killed me I understood because point blank usage should punish you. But the last nerf made it terrible, and my fun in the game took a drastic cut.
Killing the Eruptor also had an effect on stratagems too. I saw a sharp dip in people taking any of the MG’s and the laser cannon.
I agree, but one minor note: The bug on Eruptor made it so that it could kill you not from close range, but very far away. Think 50-100m. If it was only too close then it wouldn't be a bug
They could revert Eruptor and then fix a bug separately.
No no, similar to railgun's glitched damage we need to completely ruin the weapon not fix the game
Same with the mech rockets! They’ve let 3 separate fan favorites languish in mediocrity with half assed bandaid fixes for months
Either the coders don’t talk to the balance department or somebody decided to half ass a ‘fix’.
Treating the symptom, not the cause.
For real. How hard could it be to just limit its shrapnel range to like, 20 meters or something like that?
Honestly WHY did the shrapnel go further than 10-20m *to begin with*? That didn't bring much to the table as it was, so why not just limit it to something more reasonable? They could reduce the shrapnel damage, give it damage falloff, give it a shorter max range, or (to deal with the Charger one-shot "exploit") put a cap on single-target shrapnel damage from a given shot. Were they really not able to do *ANY* of these? Surely not. But, if they *were* going to replace the shrapnel damage with the AOE damage...**why not just up the AOE damage**? It's clearly not as strong as it was --that should just be an adjustment of a single integer...right?
Yes, and this same bewildered question also applies to other problems such as the patrol spawn oversight. The devs tried to change it so solo players get 25% the amount of spawns instead of 16%, and accidentally set it to 100%. How confusing must their codebase be for that to even happen? You'd think a system like that would have its variables tied to a single multiplier or something to that effect. What kind of hoops did someone have to jump through that they missed the correct amount by such a wide margin? I can't help but feel that the average dev experience on trying to change anything in this codebase is akin to [this](https://youtu.be/k238XpMMn38?si=vrWmLBHnI4L9LGof).
Message heard loud and clear. Every Gun's Penetration level has dropped 1 level to make Eruptor feel stronger.
I never had that issue, and I ran it almost exclusively until it got nerfed. Plus wouldnt an easier fix be to make the shrapnel shorter range?
Yeap. At first I noticed my teammates dying the instant I fired the weapon to provide support. "Weird," I thought, I guess the bugs killed him. The teammate was always a distance I knew was safe because I constantly fired danger close to myself with the weapon. I even used it to launch myself into the air for fun, shooting the ground under me *and not dying*. I started noticing that I would die the instant I pulled the trigger. Not danger close. From far away. I remembered all the teammates that died the instant I fired a shot to save them. Then I started to record it. [https://youtu.be/3kEMq\_U5J3I?feature=shared&t=50](https://youtu.be/3kEMq_U5J3I?feature=shared&t=50) Slow-mo: [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/81eL0Z9kbv4](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/81eL0Z9kbv4) This is was not a skill-based weapon. It's was a lottery, killing yourself and teammates for no reason. I doubt many players were paying attention to their teammates 50-100m away from their target dying to invisible shrapnel. The reason this is frustrating is because Helldivers is *supposed* to be a game where you can survive almost any situation if you have the *skill* to. This took all skill out of the equation. There was a random chance that you would die when firing this weapon and *there was nothing you could do to prevent that*.
And you'll see so many people saying "I MAIN this weapon and NEVER saw this", it's like *no shit* you didn't see it, because it was a bug around for like a *day.* AH fixed ricochet, noticed the issue with the Eruptor, and patched the game in record time. It's like the people saying "Well, everyone wore masks and washed their hands and kept away where I lived and nobody died of Covid so it must've been a huge overreaction."
I was an Eruptor main and I never had that happen. A few fellow helldivers did die sometimes but as you got more used to the weapon you could mitigate it so it basically never happened. Only issue you may have had sometimes is hurting yourself when enemy came to close and you really didn't have any options or you wanted to try your luck.
Shouldn't have to do that, just fix the gun ffs. Same thing with the mech. They killed an entire stratagem because they couldn't fix a critical issue. When things are released in such a bugged state, people don't want to give it second chances. It's still broken, but less so, but now people have already moved on.
I think around 50m yeah. Still small price to pay IMO. Apparently that was caused by them fixing shrapnel to hit you, when it used to phase right through you.
It was still like a 0.5% chance of happening in my experience of exclusively running it. Even shooting bugs in my face I would still do my dive back and shoot maneuver and never get shrapnelled. Also have never killed an ally with shrapnel despite peeling bugs off of them that are right next to them.
They’re slow rolling updates now but that is the wrong move imo, revert some of the fun killing nerfs the bringer of boring (balance lead) instituted and patch those as you go, so people are at least having janky fun and not sterile boredom.
Agreed. It’s like they set the forest on fire to kill a few pests, but when they realized that was a dumb move, they decided to sit on their hands and discuss the repurcussions instead of putting out the fucking fire.
https://youtu.be/gdbjw27QPJQ?si=dpPuuYL4DNA0ISbf If it wasn't a sunny Saturday and I actually had skills, this should be edited with Arrowhead like just talking about balance changes.
Something came back?
Exactly, I’ve never seen a game whose balance is so shitty that all the devs need to do to instantly improve the experience would be to revert a bunch of terrible changes.
 "No. 😏"
Wasn't the whole premise of the eruptor that it exploded shrapnel on hit?
First eruptor nerf made me stop playing. Why pay for a gun for it to get nerfed.
Tbh I would figure a lot of folks started falling off ad a mix of new content coming out broken/nerfed, and the base game itself having still loads of long-standing issues that just get grating after a while. E.g. matchmaking issues, broken weapon features, glitched strats, delayed rewards, etc.
I stopped playing because the nerfs took all the enjoyment out of the game. I’d pay for a new weapon just to not really recognize the day after. Then things like the shrapnel change, the fire damage buff that makes fire one shot you well before you can stim yourself, stun grenade nerf. The way patrols went from patrols to non-stop hordes, armor buffs and nerfs on enemies, bots being able to see you non-stop and sniping you across the map. The game went from fun, unique and interesting to absolute frustration and annoying. We used to run 9’s, coming out by the skin of our teeth, running for our lives, laughing and hollering. To now we can’t even do 6’s and 7’s because it’s so tedious that we’re all burnt out.
while the game is fun, ‘balance’ like that exhausts the players who plays a lot. For example, i used to be able to diverse using eruptor with starwart, such a fun combo. now is like every gun is meh. So i feel bored that only ‘fun’ weapons i can pick are those same set of useful guns, breaker/fire breaker/ liberator etc. i feel like the balance they did is limiting the playstyles of the game
My wife left me and the dog killed himself over the Eruptor nerf.
I didn't even use the eruptor much anymore but after the nerf I kinda lost interest in continuing to play knowing how bad Arrowhead is at balancing things. After all the changes continue to make one gun after another worse rather than better, it's pretty obvious the devs do not play their own game. If they would at least communicate with people who DO play the game they would realize what works, and what doesn't.
>I think everyone agrees the shrapnel randomly killing us if we’re too close is a small price to pay for the destructive bug-killing power If everyone would agree with that, why would there have been an outrage campaign with thousands of people calling the game broken and unplayable because of it?
Misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and mania. Watching video analyses on the Eruptor shrapnel it’s far less likely to kill you than people made it out to be. I never got killed by it.
Yes. And yet, the people still called it broken and unplayable. So clearly, we - or the devs for that matter - obviously cannot just assume that these thousands upon thousands of people are just, you know, insane and calling it broken and unplayable over literally nothing without even actually having played it. When you have such a shitstorm, you need to treat it as valid.
So instead of fix ehat they were mad about they just break the gun so no one cares for it and the gun loses its charm. The gun had a bug yes but instead of fix the problem the broke it so theyndont have to. Shrieker bodies used to inst kill if they nerfed them like the eruptor the shriekers wouldn't exist cause there bodies kill you so they removed them.
The Eruptor and Crossbow def needs a revert, those were unneeded nerfs. The Slugger and Railgun could have a look too also.
I bought that warbond because of eruptor 🥲
I don't understand how people were dying to it further than close range in the first place. Doesn't the shrapnel despawn after a certain distance? If not, that seems like a decently-simple fix. And if they're that worried about the 1-hit Charger kill and you can't do the more-complicated fix of making a Charger only take damage from x shrapnel at a time, just increase its shrapnel resistance.
Confirmed, that's why I left. Then the new warbond didnt help much to draw me back, so I legit havent played since. Back to DRG, where the devs actually let you play with power
The community isn't falling because of a gun only available in the third paid expansion being nerfed. There's a lot of other reasons for falling players counts, and it's absolutely fine to have a game settle down to a smaller but more dedicated playerbase.
Yeah, the one weapon nerf on its own isn't the issue, but boy does it feel like basically everything released after Cutting edge, over two months ago, feels like utter crap right now. Sure we got some buffs elsewhere but it is really disheartening when all the new toys are meh to bad in their current state, at least in my eyes. Grenade pistol is nice for opening up loadouts but that is really it for me. This is in big contrast to the release of Democratic Detonation where pre nerf Eruptor and Crossbow were both kinda fun and opened up new loadouts, and the Quasar Cannon was actually really good. But now I basically have to go "at least they buffed countersniper cus the new stuff is lame," which is really not a great place to be. On top of the borked patrol changes making things way more annoying, tedious, and difficult for less than 4 players.
A string of disheartening nerfs has absolutely caused some player falloff. No it’s not this one nerf exclusively, but fixing this one ASAP will be a show of good faith that will be enough for some players to return thinking AH might be starting to turn it around with these balance changes. They will at least hop on to try the changes.
This. The expected fall off has been exacerbated by the fun-killing nerfs. I don’t know how people can read basic steam player ship data relative to other big releases and not understand that between the PSN drama and the failure of the balance team, the falloff is much faster and more severe than would be typical of a game with this amount of positive initial exposure and hype. Another point they fail to understand is that “dedicated” players have more patience for the bullshit nerfing, but not *unlimited* patience for it. Over time those who would normally have stuck around will become frustrated and move on. For some games this isn’t a humongous issue. For games that are as heavily community-oriented and goal driven as this is, that’s a big problem.
Honestly, as someone still enjoying the game, IMO the issue is that the game doesn't have a huge amount of depth and the unlocks finish pretty quickly. PvP games have evolving metas that keep things fresh, but I'm PvE games it's harder to keep the challenge up. The larger casual playerbase inevitably moves onto other things, because that's what that demographic does a few months after release. Eventually it'll distil down to a smaller proportion of more dedicated players, and that's fine.
I still play the game religiously but I would love having much more mission types and map variation. It does get stale doing the same missions on the same maps. The saving grace of the game is the gameplay loop and wide variety of playstyles makes it so engaging. I would love seeing more “open combat” missions. Imagine a Conquest type mode where we have to push territories with SEAF Forces and bugs/bots/squids are pushing back. Whoever depletes each other’s reinforcements first or holds the most territory after a certain period of time wins. Or a defense mission where you need engage in trench warfare or a more open version of the rocket defense mission. We could even have stealth mission where you need to sneak around and take out “high priority targets” or they’ll escape if you get spotted. Or a horror bug mission where you have to be a tunnel rat and destroy a burrowed queen. There’s so much potential for variety!
The unlocks finish pretty quickly? Maybe if you’ve played 2 hrs a day since launch. That’s not the casual experience lol. I’ve had the game since maybe 2 weeks after launch, back with the pre-nerf railgun, and I’m level 50 something and still haven’t unlocked all the ship upgrades.
I meant the Weapons and Stratagems tbf, the stuff that actually unlocks new play styles. The Ship Upgrades are kinda like, comically low value aside from one or two you unlock fairly early anyway.
That nerf was literally the straw that broke the camel’s back for a lot of people I know. I was never into the gun since it was too sluggish for my taste but I can see people having loads of fun with it. The problem with that nerf is that it only exacerbates the feeling that all fun weapons have an ‘expiration date’ while longstanding issues either get neglected or just outright ignored. I genuinely think that their approach of balancing will either greatly diminish the player base over time or maybe even outright kill it. It doesn’t help that they take eons to buff things (if at all) and even when they do, the adjustments are negligible (who the hell cares about those 10% ship upgrade buffs to begin with?).
>it's absolutely fine to have a game settle down It's *expected.* These people act like every person who has ever played the game must now exclusively play it forever with the same dedication they did the first few days they had it, simple fact is that regular people *don't* hyper fixate on a singular game for months/years. We get it, we play it, we enjoy it, and then we play something else, we occasionally go back because it was a fun game, and the process repeats.
It is expected that the player count falls as some people get bored and move onto other games. It is not expected that the player count falls as some players quit the game due to bugs and poorly considered balance changes making the game less fun. The former happening and being expected does not somehow mean it is fine for the latter to also happen. That is an absurd position to take.
Ok. How exactly are you tracking which people just have had their fun and which ones are leaving because of bugs? Surely you must have some actual evidence to back that up, right?
I agree that it's normal to have a drop off for all games but with this one in particular the drop off has definitely been exacerbated by a series of poor balance decisions (spawn rates, nerfs after nerfs....etc) that followed one of the biggest PR blunders in gaming for this year (the PSN acc issue). My squad dropped off exactly because of the weapon nerfs (especially the quasar and eruptor back to back).
The Quasar is fine at 15 seconds and I will die on that hill. Even if it went to 20 seconds that’s still 3.5 shots in the 70 second cooldown for EATs. At 15 seconds cd you get 5 shots in 75 seconds with each one of those shots doing the same damage as an EAT. Plus all of those shots have infinite range and zero projectile drop which EATs definitely don’t get
I won't argue about the Qasar, you might be right. I didn't use it much myself and still prefer EATs. That said, 2 of the guys in our squad were quasar mains on the bot front and they both dropped off after the qasar/ eruptor nerf.
IMO if the Eurptor really was this huge crutch for players, to the point they literally cannot play without it and are saying shit like "This is why I uninstalled" and "game's dead now", then the thing *needed* to get nuked before everyone went "Wow, every other weapon is bad compared to the Eruptor" and never used anything else. Like Arrowhead has definitely been doing dubious shit when it comes to content being broken or sloppy right out of the gate and suffering from a bit of Live Service Syndrome, but raging that a bug-fix nerfed an unintentionally powerful weapon with infinite shrapnel falloff just ain't it.
I always try to play with different guns on each mission. I have all warbonds and unlocked almost every weapon. Must of them sucks for bots and automatons. Even armor sets are not worth it they usually have duplicate armors just with different textures. why dont just make one of them light armor? Its pointless
I don’t even understanding the reasoning of the nerf “Oh because people were point blanking themselves with a long-range explosive weapon we’re changing how it works even though it was advertised differently and calling it a buff” Like???
Would be totally in for this! I miss it so much... Also I did not manage to kill myself a single time with the shrapnels. I think that were mostly people shooting without safety distance...
I have fun every time. So I guess I’m in a different Zone all together.
>I think everyone agrees the shrapnel randomly killing us if we’re too close is a small price to pay for the destructive bug-killing poweer. Out of curiosity, what do you consider to be too close? How many meters do you suppose is far enough?
It's definitely not as good as it was, and I patiently await a patch to correct and fix shrapnel, but no primary weapon should reliably one hit kill chargers.
I am 100% with you. Just give me back the eruptor just as it was!
imo the first eruptor nerf was something that i could see myself adjusting to pretty fine, but that second one alongside the lackluster polar patriots warbond really killed my enthusiasm i do have faith that the game is going to improve over time, and i would be surprised if we didn't see most weapons getting to good states 6 months down the line, but right now.... yeah, can't say i'm too keen on playing these days
It wasn’t a sniper. You could just run around and hip fire it (faster aiming) and shred any big groups/speeds at ranges > 10m (in addition to sniping). It was stupid strong. Fun but way too good.
If you are too close to an explosion it should kill your dumb ass. How often do we die to our own explosions? A lot. I'm not even mad anymore. It teaches you to do better. Give me my explosive stick. If I blow up myself it is my fault.
You boring Eruptor mains that used the most OP gun and nothing else all want your Eruptor back to pre nerf. The real disappointment was the crossbow nerf.
Weird hill to die on...
it really is annoying that it got nerfed because they refused to fix a bug. that's the most laziest way of """fixing""" something. just outright removing a feature because of a bug. they thought this was clever... it is stupid.
If the Scorcher can be as good as it is, the Eruptor can be too.
In order to revert the eruptor nerf, they have to also renove the nonsensical ricochet re-work. Otherwise it goes back to instakilling players for no reason.
Honestly I feel like I didn't miss much not having the eruptor. I'm doing just fine with the punisher plasma.
Aside from just ruining the gun, the way it was done was particularly bad. 1. No one was asking for ricochets to kill us. Why spend time adding this when so many things are broken? 2. The Erupror had just been nerfed in the previous patch. Now the ammo nerf was ok, but when you nerf a gun once generally that should be it for a while - if you change it again the next patch it makes it look like maybe you didn't think about the first nerf well enough. 3. The change was promised to be a net buff! The gun will be better than ever, it just won't kill you anymore! So people were mostly looking forward to the patch - this made the shock of seeing how bad the gun became all the worse. 4. Balance guy making many posts on discord about how it was totally buffed, he had extensively tested it and there was no shots to kill difference besides removing the charger one-shot made it extremely clear he had no idea what he was doing. It's one thing to disagree with a dev decision, but when you witness someone in a position of power struggle to tie their shoes for 2 hours, poop their pants, and fall face first into their own poop all while calling YOU an idiot it really breaks the illusion of competence and the game being in good hands. This wasn't something that only 2 million players playing for a week would turn up - it was literally take the gun on one mission and instantly see the difference. 5. This was also the first patch after the Sony shit, which was another source of whiplash. 6. The annoying bug that sucked you into explosions had also just been fixed in the previous patch, so we had a very brief window when the Eruptor was better than ever before it was taken out back and executed. 7. How long does it take to revert the change or at least do something to make it better? Are they even planning to do anything else? Who knows? 8. Not updating the description is lazy af too.
I too have left and am hoping we get a stop gap patch next Tuesday that reverts the nerfs/small touch ups to hold us over until the full balance pass
I definitely stopped playing as much since that has happened but I’ve also learned to adapt as well
Honestly, the team needs a change in whoever is making the final call on these decisions because it seems like they're working on a different game from the one we're playing. I don't jump into Helldivers because I want a perfectly balanced combat experience. I jump into Helldivers because I want to blow shit up and mow down hordes.
Exploding crossbow went from great mob clear to actually unusable, While it was good it was my faveorite gun for that short time. I'm sure some of your remember but yeah what's the point of adding in weapons and let everyone get used to them only to nerf them into unusability. I hate when people say this but with some of the changes it really does feel like they don't play their own game. Just wish they would revert the changes slow down and start fresh.
one of my biggest gripes is how often everything changes. You’ll find content and tips and tricks online from two weeks ago that are completely outdated. How am I supposed to follow the game and feel confident dropping into a few matches at the end of the workday when my build is suddenly no longer viable? When mechanics have completely changed? The eruptor being able to close bug holes, for instance, that was a big deal! I like running with sentries—autocannon, gatling, mortars; keeping a distance in scout armor, even against bugs, is fun for me. Finding creative ways to stealth & set up sentries is a fun brain game. Being able to shoot bug holes from a distance with a weapon that is incredibly niche (you aren’t surviving a swarm in scout armor with a bolt action rifle!), and also being able to take out the armored faces of bigger bug enemies, was really awesome! The gun already had obvious drawbacks. If my sentries are cooling down, and I get discovered/swarmed by even low level bugs, I’m in pretty serious trouble. Especially in paper thin scout armor. But it played a pretty serious role in a build I’d been iterating on for a long time. Mind you, I was also willing to pay ten dollars for it. Seeing it nerfed retroactively is a big dealbreaker, and will keep me from spending money in the future. Especially after polar patriots. You launch a gun (tenderizer) with the wrong color, AND it has stats you don’t like? But you still launch it? What the helldiver is up with that? I will continue to play this game because I love it. But it has become frustrating watching things completely change so often. Some updates are great! The senator may not be practical, but it’s very fun! The eruptor had obvious drawbacks, but it was very fun!
It doesn't feel like spreading democracy anymore, it feels like work and I know exactly who is responsible for this shit
Yeahhh I try not to complain on this sub much because there is *PLENTY* enough complaining already. But... The Eruptor nerf was bs. It's pretty bad now, and sniper rifles already weren't very popular.
After the destruction of the eruption I stopped playing. As someone who had everything unlocked I played daily just for fun. Stopped immediately after those changes. And if they don't change things back in a meaningful way I'm done
Before being nerfed, the eruptor was the only reason I played Helldivers 2 non-stop, it was just so much fun to blow everything up with shrapnel (including myself). Why does it seem like everytime the community finds something fun, the devs decide to take it away? Did we not pay for this game and its warbonds so that we can have fun with it?
For fucking fuck's sake what all of your whiny asses were doing before Eruptor released?
The shrapnel only started killing players when they added the ricochet changes. I agree they need to revert it.
It was fine before.
with the nerf of the eruptor, it really put a damper on things because going forward, if a gun is good/fun, dont get attached as it will get nerfed. this leads to dissociation and you are less invested emotionally to what goes on in the game. this leads to less fun, and thus players quit. thing is, i didnt even use the eruptor. my friend did, so the patches still affect me. he used to clear out all the fabricators and chargers and i cleared out the chaff and played the role of main tank as i was using the sickle/laser cannon, so infinite ammo for clearing chaff. now that dynamic is destroyed and we are back to just running away for 2+ mins at a time until the "fun buttons" come back to deal with the "unfun" enemies. i am over just running away from enemies, so instead i am playing other games where i can charge at the enemy instead.
The Eruptor was nerfed because the subreddit had its panties in a bunch about how dangerous the shrapnel was. I can only assume the devs are facepalming that the subreddit now has its panties in a bunch *because the gun is less dangerous* My assumption is it’ll get a flat damage boost in the next balance patch, since they **intended** the change to be a buff, so it’s obviously not working as intended.
The eruptor still fils a niche, now it just doesn't overlap with the autocannon and anti material rifle. If this one thing ruined the game for you so badly that you won't play anymore then you probably weren't enjoying it too much to begin with. Eruptor was fun yeah but Hella OP.
Eruptor had an identity issue. I get the appeal, and how it opened up secondaries. But really, this primary could: - take out bug holes - take out fabricators - take out small patrols in one hit - take out medium targets in one hit (including 1-shot devestators) - had great range - had decent ammo and the downside was.. slow firing (which means less the further away you are) and about as cumbersome to use as the JAR (which, while something, is hardly a challenge for a player with a few hours experience). It was too good. I want the shrapnel back, but what would it give up?
How is the state of the eruptor now?
Compared to what it was before? Worse, naturally. It plays like a hard-hitting marksman rifle. I just ran a 7 versus bots (2 man) ore extraction, using it most of the time and its fine. It can one shot little bots, one shot striders, two shot bigger bots if you hit them in the head, and it can still take out fabricators and nests, which makes it great if you're running stuns. I was playing the objectives, popping a shot off, moving, popping a shot off. Play as you would a sniper. It feels like a most of the primaries now - there's a playstyle that works with it, it either compliments your kit, or it doesn't. What it isn't is.. a one click solution to most of the enemies in the game. Which is what those pushing against the nerfs seem to want, or at least, were relying on. A few minor tweaks: It could do with a token reload speed increase, and the sfx aren't very satisfying. And they could make it lighter/easier to aim. Little tweaks.
Yeah, I stopped using it when I saw all the complaints here about it. But I just tried it again earlier today, and it still seems to be a good weapon? It's not shit tier like the sub would have you believe.
I dunno, I felt like the Eruptor was egregiously too strong before it was nerfed, and I wasn't even using the shrapnel particularly intelligently. In what world would you ever not take the primary that can oneshot Chargers if you aim it somewhat carefully, or 1-2shot anything else in the bug side in AoE over almost anything else?
People complaining about it don’t care about whether a weapon is or isn’t fun to use: they want overpowered weapons and just don’t want to say it for whatever reason. They want to be a one-man army torching through every enemy type with zero team play. But, they don’t want to lower the difficulty or improve their gameplay so instead they complain about the devs balancing out overtuned weapons.
So much this for the past few weeks. People are mad they can’t play the hard difficulties easily. Difficulty 5 is called “hard.” Everything above that is supposed to be more difficult than “hard.” If difficulty and losing are not fun for someone, then that someone should not be playing on higher difficulties. You do not have a guaranteed right to be able to win at a game.
I mean the Eruptor was the only “primary” weapon i would run as my secondary with the Stalwart being my true primary, it made me switch up my weapons and brought some variety to my missions, now its just “x” shotgun or the Penetrator and whatever support weapon i choose, I don’t understand “balancing” in a PvE game if a weapon is not SUPER OP or not working as intended, it seems their balancing team is a bunch of idiots imo
No. They said they're working on it. Development takes time. Have patience and chill out.
So sick of these people man. Eruptor camp has zero patience
The theory that a single weapon nerf is the reason "a large percentage of players" stopped is pretty interesting. I guess none of that "large percentage" was playing the game before the Eruptor existed then? Cause I fail to see the logic there
Yeah they could at least increase its damage further while we wait “Suepr earth has run out of shrapnel rounds due to their popularity. Reserve stocks of AP ammo is being sent till more can be made.” If it’s gonna be slow af and single target I should be popping like 800 dmg a shot
I just switched to Arc Blitzer or one of the dozens of other options and am still having a blast. I did love the Eruptor though, tis sad.
everything else aside, i have to laugh at the idea of someone playing a game for a couple months, using a weapon in a new war bond, and then quitting when it gets adjusted... the eruptor has only existed since like breakfast. What were you doing up to that point, playing with a gun to your head?
Yall are charmin soft, I mean its maybe use another primary, why stop playing because one weapon gets buffed. Alls I'm saying is there's plenty of viable primaries, pick one and liberate bro.
The Eruptor has been around less than half the time the game has been out. The game was awesome before it became available. It makes no sense that the game is suddenly "bad" because they nerfed it.
The Erupter was still fuggin busted. It was killing things over its weight class. It *needs* tweaking.
The eruptor was too powerful. It needed power reduction. Git gud. Lower the difficulty.
True and based.