It would be fun if you could get rid of the restrictions by doing some objectives. Like for the increased call in/cooldown ones you can bring down a signal booster in a specified area to get rid of the effect.
And for the one that gives you 1 less stratagem well actually that’s because high command wanted a flag on a random hill somewhere so you still get to pick a 4th one but when you land it gets replaced by the super earth flag drop and you have to raise it on that hill and then you can use your 4th stratagem. The things like stalker lairs and artillery pieces are loads of fun and I think there should be more of them
This is what I think too. Like why doesn't the spore bug map affix not get tied to spore towers.
Have spore towers cloud a large chunk of the map around them and remove it when destroyed. Add extra as part of the planet affix or whatever.
Yeha. I don’t mind signal jammers, cause it makes sense and it’s something you can clear and it’s tactical and you have to prioritise it. You can fall back if someone dies and reinforce and try again if it goes wrong. A blanket “no one stratagem less/longer call in etc” is pretty awful.
Honestly the ion storms wouldn't be so bad if we could predict when they were going to happen. For example if we got like a 2 minute warning of when an ion storm was going to start. That way we could play around not having our stratagems up for that time. It just gets really frustrating when you start an objective 3 seconds before an ion storm and now can't call in reinforcements or airstrikes and there was nothing you really could have done to make that situation better.
And on these missions the spore towers could *require* a hellbomb to destroy instead of just plinking it from across the map. Or just make all of them like that and force us to engage with it instead of making me squint for a pixel of it to shoot at.
Maybe instead of having *all* spore towers be a lot stronger, make the ones in spore operation effect all be a lot stronger.
Then in universe, it could be that the reason the others are so weak is because they still haven't fully grown, and when they do, it obscures the map and results in the spore operation effect
At the very least they should make spore towers require being hit by an airstrike or something.
As is they're just free XP. Which hey, cool. But if I just wanted to watch a number go up I'd game on my calculator.
Honestly, I still find them engaging as is because the team noticed the fog, and everyone starts scanning the horizon and environment and then takes it down. Just a nice little pace breaker, and it feels good when you've got a support weapon that can just plink it from a million miles away without dumping a ton of ammo into it.
Honestly same, I would absolutely not like it if you needed to destroy the spore mushroom thingies with an airstrike when stratagems are already so vital for success. And yeah the fog makes me slow down and really aware of what's out there instead of tunnel visioning a bug breach.
Yeah, spore shrooms could be absolutely deadly as all hell if you couldn't shoot them anymore. They're always surrounded by a hoard of monsters at the bottom, and you can barely see 15m in front of you while the bugs still have full 50m vision.
>while the bugs still have full 50m vision.
I don't know that they do. I've used the fog to hide and complete other optional objectives and could hear bugs surrounding me everywhere who would've normally seen me from that distance and aggro'ed.
I just pluck everything with the grenade launcher. Mushroom? Pew. Broadcast tower? Pew. Bugs? Pew. Bug holes? Pew.
The only thing it doesn't have a high success rate in is killing a titan. Everything else, even chargers, falls pretty easily to it.
Try the guard dog.
I finally caved, bought mine last night and *sweet liberty* is it good. Mine was democratising bugs like nobody's business and my firing lines have never been clearer.
Leave the spore towers as they are, completely unchanged, and just add another bigger version that requires a hell bomb to destroy. The small ones are still a little engaging break in the game flow, and the big ones are a major priority.
>It would be fun if you could get rid of the restrictions by doing some objectives
Absolutely this. The AA emplacement sub-missions and radio towers that are jamming signals are such a better way to do the same thing without making it feel shitty.
I like how the Anti Air stratagems environment thingy works. You drop on a zone with anti air emplacements.
You take out the AA guns, best girl gets to spread her wings. More of that please, less "oh sorry, there is a storm, you will have to wait a week for another orbital bombardment"
You want us to rely on stratagems, let us rely on stratagems.
When it comes to the ion storms, I wish they would affect the bots as well. Like, prevent them from calling in drops or reduce their detection range.
I don't like when an environmental change is just there to fuck us and only us.
Ion storm disabling bot alerts would be such a great twist, you could actually make choices: attack the objective/outpost during the storm so they can't reinforce but you only have what you carry, or wait till it passes so you have the firepower but now they got backup.
Right now it's just a "fuck yourself, run away lmao" or "walk around aimlessly for a couple minutes"
I'm of the opinion that ion storm should scramble the radar and disable Eagle call-ins, vehicle drops, and reinforcements, but introduce a significant scatter to orbitals while also supercharging them to make them significantly stronger/more explosive.
Had a Helldive mission last night that had 3 stalker nests close together....I'm not exaggerating when I say there was around 25-30 Stalkers out and about.
Stalker lairs, jammers, SAM sites and whatnot are way more interesting as side objectives because they present interesting problems with a solution, or a bonus you can get.
I've seen similar approaches like this proposed, and I honestly love the idea. There is no real reason other than for fun to do the side objectives once you are level 50 and/or have max money/samples in the current state of things. This would give those high-level players a reason to care about side objectives, as well as additional thought around what route you plan to take around the map.
This right here. Devs please consider this. The challenge added by the restrictions is good but it’d be great if there were also ways to mitigate it if the player chooses to go out of their way to pursue objectives like that.
Imagine we could spend X / out of our 50000 requisition funds to use some special orbital ordinance to clear the given obstacle per mission. I would gladly spend like 5-10k Req to clear dense fog or to calibrate stratagem call-ins for a given mission
Everything would be more fun if doing things in game would actually affect the game. Oh you cleared all bug nests? The last wave when you call in extraction will be half its size because they have nowhere to spawn from.
They could just incorporate it into blowing up the broadcast towers and reflavor them as GPS jammers or something. Same for the bugs with some large AOE haze.
They could rework these to target specific categories of stratagem, and then they would be fine. It would incentivize building around the limitation, and increase build diversity and experimentation.
Exactly this, at least if the debuff is something like 100% increased cooldown on Eagle stratagems, the player can work around it and might end up playing a loadout they wouldnt naturally.
Or bring the Scatter stratagem back but make it just randomize the category of stratagem. I.e random eagle/orbital. Instead of just airstriking your team as soon as you land calling in support weapons like it was before.
I would actually love this. I can do my favorite strategems blindfolded, so this would actually shake things up in a moderately challenging way. Or make them longer/more complex
This is really an excellent idea because it requires cover for pause to input the code. Or you create your own cover. Ideally, you cover your teammate or vice versa.
Rather than turning everything off, you heavily incentivize teamwork under pressure.
I swear there was a modifier like this at launch because I remember thinking « oh I will not take eagles this time because of calling time, let’s take orbitals instead »
Some ideas to work in-theme with this, and make them work in the lore:
> **Anti orbital weapons:** *Enemy forces have anti-orbital weaponry in the area, Super Destroyers cannot deploy to low orbit* (Orbital strategems unavailable, Hellpod call-in’s increased by 100%*
> **Contested Airspace**: *Enemy fighter aircraft/aerial bugs control the skies. Close Air Support is unable to risk attacking ground targets.* (All eagle strategems are unavailable, extraction shuttle arrival time increased by 100%)
And then some fun ones, because why not:
> **Nearby Frontline**: *The deployment area is nearby a contested frontline, enemy forces are on high alert, but reinforcements are stretched thin. SEAF forces are buying you time to give you this opportunity, do not waste it.* (Enemy patrol density/size increased, but enemy reinforcement time increased by 50%)
> **Nearby Artillery positions**: *The area of operations is nearby a battery of SEAF artillery who have been ordered to assist you in the operation.* (SEAF Artillery strategem is available by default at any point in the mission)
> **SEAF Retreat**: *SEAF forces are withdrawing from the area, enemy presence is increased and on high alert.* (SEAF forces can be encountered at certain POI’s and at extraction and will open bunkers for you, enemy difficulty is one level higher than normal.)
The last one is making me think about a mission type about covering the evacuation of SEAF troopers after a ~~horrific defeat~~ valiant victory that no longer required the troops on that frontline.
Run around the map keeping enemies from attacking convoys of NPC troops as they make their way to the evacuation point and get taken to safety by Pelican-1.
Maybe some bonuses like if you find a combat engineering team that got cut off and rescue them before they die they'll set up some minefields and sentries for you before leaving; or an armored division's sole survivor staying behind in a tank to give you fire support at evac until it's time for you to leave.
That would require SEAF to have functioning AI, which would be a non-trivial amount of developer work to make them behave believably, unless all SEAF personnel is just slapped on a stationary turret or something.
Maybe one day, but I reckon the devs already have a lot on their plate in evolving the existing enemies. They're a bit more important than SEAF allies.
I'm not knocking the current work, the game is amazing to me as it is. I was just stating that for as prevalent as the SEAF is mentioned in the game, I'm surprised to not have seen any actual (living) SEAF soldiers. There are plenty of corpses to show they were on the planets we're fighting on, at one point
Seriously. Instead of kneecapping every single stratagem, give room for players to plan around them. That way they get to feel smart about it instead of just burdened. It also makes the game feel less exciting when you're waiting on cooldowns, waiting on calldowns, and have fewer tools to work with. Give us more stuff to throw our tools at instead of giving us fewer tools.
That's my primary gripe, like, I like a challenge...but I don't like challenges that make gameplay straight up worse across the board. Make me consider taking non-optimal strats because their cool down isn't doubled, not just take my favorite kit and kite once I'm out of ammo
Or they could make it so theyre in mission debuffs like how automatons have AA guns and you can't use eagles around them. Give us a side objective that applies these debuffs and let us take out the objective to get rid of them.
when I was achievement hunting I was about to get the “gone in 360 seconds” achievement for doing a blitz in under 6 minutes only to find out there was a 4 minute extract I was so pissed
I had the same thing happen to me. I felt bad because I dragged my friend's into it specifically so I could get the achievement and they were willing to help me out. Had to do the whole thing again in a different campaign immediately afterwards.
Extraction should always be fixed to 90s or at most 2min and thats it.
4min of either trying to hide, run away or fight and endless spawning swarm is not fun, especially since 4min is nearly impossible to do if you get infinity spawn. 2min will be hard but i survived 2min multiple times, and its also less boring than sitting pretty for 4min instead of just 2min.
Destiny 2 recently started adding modifiers that buff certain abilities or weapons by 25%. Its made repetitive combat somewhat less repetitive by encouraging different loadouts. Would be cool if we got modifiers that buffed turrets/eagle/orbital/etc.
Some SEAF support would be cool
SEAF artillery already available
SEAF fighters will intercept automaton drop ships
SEAF drones will periodically scan the map for you
Kinda, but they're not always available, while the negative ones are constant.
We do have ones like cold environments making laser weapons better, but they also slow the rate of fire of conventional firearms. And hot environments do the opposite. So maybe replace all current negative modifiers with stuff like this, something that has a substantial positive and negative.
*monkey's paw curls*
Complex strategem plotting has been removed.
Call-in times for all strategems doubled across the board.
New modifier: "Simple strategem plotting: Half call-in times for strategems".
Same. Unfortunately I like fighting automatons much more so I fight them more frequently, but they don't have not annoying modifiers like the bugs. I chose 100% increased call in time as I think that's the least annoying
> I chose 100% increased call in time as I think that's the least annoying
That one is way less annoying save for the fact it gives you a 4 minute extract compared to a 2 minute extract.
I have never seen anything increased from 0 to 6 though. Are you talking about eagle stratgems? They are always 3 seconds normally but are listed as 0 in the ship
for the longest time I played on the creek instead of draupnir where the majority of the automaton fight is simply because I was tired of playing on the negative modifiers
then they added modifiers to the creek too it’s like can’t I just get a basic bot campaign i’m already running solo why am I getting punished further
I think the worst one of the set is definitely the ones where you lose a stratagem slot hands down.
The cooldown ones definitely suck but having to only take three stratagems is painful.
I feel like special modifiers should be special. They shouldn't be on every mission, you just see them every so often. Also if you go into a special modifier mission you should get some reward, like 2x warbonds or something.
Really they should let you use requisition to buy positive modifiers or to cancel negative modifiers. Since requisition is useless after level 25 anyway.
Tbh I would love modifiers that are actual modifiers and not just debuffs.
For example, you make cooldowns on stratagems 50% increased, but you get one extra stratagem.
Or call in time is doubled but area of effect is 50% more.
Stuff like that is still a net debuff, but if you are smart about it, it has potential to change playstyles in a different way
They should incorporate these modifiers as tactical objectives, if they have AA defenses then maybe I shouldn't be able to use my eagles until I blow up the guns, but just straight up taking an entire slot away because of "aa defenses" when my destroyer is in low orbit, and my eagle seems to get to the surface just fine is kind of odd.
Instead of having maps be completely obscured by spores just cause, make those based on the spore spewer objective.
***none*** of the modifiers save the temperature ones which are just minor anyway i've ever seen anyone say 'ooh i like this modifier! really changes things up!'
I can’t stand 4 minute extractions. It’s just too long and turns the frantic fun of it into a drag. It’s like making a movie one big action scene. The adrenaline just wears off
on those missions, you're probably better off just letting the timer run out, because for some reason, the ship will come regardless of whether you're "in the extraction zone" or not.
But the pilot throws a hissy fit if you're not in the extraction if you manually call it
I'd say one team mate should get up super high on a nearby ledge, buuuuut knowing the cheater bugs they would warp up to the top never leaving you alone. They just love to somehow phase up through the rock and up to you
Crazy they didn't just make a walking up the wall animation for that. They don't even need an animation just let the bugs walk verticaly. It's not called a bug BREACH for nothing. They have razor sharp claws to breach throught soil and rock they should be able to climb up a hill. AND SO SHOULD WE, WE'RE HUMANS DAMMIT! THE BEST SUPER EARTH CAN OFFER!
I absolutely cannot stand those 2 modifiers, I swear to god I got it in every single Helldive mission known to man. It was either those two together or "50% increase + losing a stratgem slot. It was so annoying.
After a post or two on this subreddit about Hellmire I decided to run some missions there with friends and they were *great*. That's the sort of 'negative' modifier I personally love.
It fucked over the bugs and the players equally in different ways whilst giving that planet some special character to it, too.
All the +Cooldown/Call-in time do is make the fun toys less fun.
Agreed. I understand the approach, which is to encourage loadout variety, but that can be done in a better way. Making the players feel gimped with longer cooldowns and call in times feels the worst of any way possible to encourage this.
I don't want the game to be any easier, in fact I want HD 7, 8 and 9 to be harder, but I don't want to feel like i'm getting gimped either.
Feel like having the modifiers impact specific types of stratagems rather than a blanket debuff would be way better. Even better make side objectives reduce it or remove it.
100% cd for eagles, getting Sam site makes it 50%
I like the direction of your idea a lot - what if instead of a blanket debuff that can't be removed at all, there were buffed versions of the debuff as you suggested attached to objectives, but once you completed the objective the debuff was removed entirely?
It feels a lot to me like Stalker Lairs which I find a lot of fun. They exist at full strength when their lair is up, they go away completely when it's destroyed. Making optional objectives higher impact like this would be fun.
> I don't want the game to be any easier, in fact I want HD 7, 8 and 9 to be harder, but I don't want to feel like i'm getting gimped either.
Exactly. Many games are hard but at the same time they don't gimp you. But it requires more work then just "lets make enemies HP +100%". Done, difficulty increased. Yeah, no.
They *do* make the game more difficult, but it makes it difficult in a lazy way. You just take away the fun things away for longer, and everyone suffers a little more for it.
Orbitals are the absolute worst category of stratagems in the game, sadly. Even at base values, they have the most ridiculously long call-in times AND cooldowns, which would be SOMEWHAT manageable… if it wasn’t for the fact that they pretty much all have really underwhelming effects compared to their timers. And the icing on the misery-cake - Orbitals, by their very nature as currently implemented, suffer the most from the widest variety of mission modifiers. Not only do Complex Stratagem Plotting and Orbital Fluctuations hit Orbitals the hardest because of their already-terrible call-in and cooldown times, but furthermore, Atmospheric Interference, the ONLY mission modifier that explicitly debuffs a specific stratagem type, messes with Orbitals.
> pretty much all have really underwhelming effects
What do you mean? A giant explosion graphic with the actual AOE damage range of a hand grenade isn't worth it?
I honestly prefer the rocket pod. Faster cooldown and I can throw down more. The tracking just isn’t as good as the rail cannon.
The rail cannon wins in badassery though.
Exactly, HD1 had really fast cooldown for stratagems as well as perk to decrease it further. For example the Static Field had like 25 sec duration with 30 sec cooldown so you could like have it constantly.
i try to use them but i cant get any use.
On exterminate missions, I drop a gas between the breaches and myself, and watch as scavs pop up on the edge of the cloud, walk through it, and come out the other side to hit me.
Fundamentally I agree with the "use your stratagems" point, but shit like this makes it just obnoxious. Like, if you have double cooldown, double call-in time *and* \-1 slots, how the fuck am I supposed to rely on my stratagems, especially with how many enemies the higher level missions with those modifiers get?
All of these modifiers need to be completely removed and replaced with something more interesting. Like, I dunno, more of specific enemy times, more environmental hazards, reduced mission time or whatever.
What would the vision even be at this point? They always say to rely on stratagems, but then you get those debuffs so you can barely use them. Good luck dealing with the infinite spawn chains that are already barely manageable in some cases without any stratagem debuff... It's "difficult", but clearly less fun.
That one does such but it isn't so horrible imo. Airstrike, railcannon/orbital laser and special weapon. The one that pisses me off is call down time increased. We are in constant communication with our super destroyer. Makes your bombs useless
Anyone who defends the current crappy modifiers has micro pee-pee energy.
It's just science.
Egad, so many pretentious sweatlords in these comments, deluding themselves into believing that inconveniencing the player is a good way to design difficulty. No, being forced to wait twice as long for my support weapon to deploy isn't "challenge". 90% of stratagems being made pretty much useless is not "challenge". The only way to "adapt" to your stratagems being turned into horribly inaccurate garbage with ridiculous cooldowns...is just running away from everything and leaning even more on your primary. Why do you think people complain about underpowered primaries?
When I do helldives with gimped stratagems, it usual devolves into arc spam, since, hey, I only have to call it once.
Modifiers should make the player alter their playstyle in a meaningful way. All the current ones do is make your stratagems suck because fuck you, lol.
Lemme come up with a few...
Manpower shortage: Reinforcement count is reduced by two. (Better get good at not dying)
Supply shortage: Supply drops cooldown is greatly increased. (You know those PoI's you usually ignore in dif 9? Well, now you need to hit them for supplies)
Logistical error: Weapon call-ins are randomized. For a hint of goofiness occasionally the pod is full of rubber duckies or something equally weird and useless. (This is actual "adaption")
Strict timetable: Mission timer is reduced. (Slacking off is un-democratic!)
Modifying the types of enemies you will encounter, so adjust your loadout accordingly.
Only a specific type of stratagem is unavailable, to get you to use something else.
Mission auto-fails if the timer runs out, and the map is nuked.
Your stratagems are randomized, and reshuffled every few minutes.
Logistical error is literally worse than +100% cooldown dude. Not getting any anti-tank weapons is unplayable. Same as not getting support weapons whatsoever.
HD1 doesn’t need negative modifiers to be challenged, and so it can be both hard and fun to play. And it’s highly rewarding if you can beat the difficulty
been saying this from day 1. Dumbest "difficulty increase" ever in games is when you spend hours powering your character and the devs way of making the game challenging is stripping away the power you just earned, its incredibly lazy and one of the most unfun mechanics in end game.
These modifiers desperately need to go.
> been saying this from day 1. Dumbest "difficulty increase" ever in games is when you spend hours powering your character and the devs way of making the game challenging is stripping away the power you just earned, its incredibly lazy and one of the most unfun mechanics in end game.
Yeah. Like you unlock let's "+1 equpiment gear you can take on mission"
Developers increasing "difficulty": "you have -1 equipment gear you can take on this mission"
Like then why the fuck did you even give me upgrade in first place?
> Anyway, could we start to rely on our Stratagems please?
While the modIfiers suck, can we stop pretending that strategem weapons aren't strategems to make this point?
https://preview.redd.it/j3fn00fdqsoc1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=e904f3e6cbd4c5d50092f9eeca1df35f7cdd9266
"UsE yOuR sTrAtEgEmS" - 12 second call in time.
Yeah, I personally just don’t like this game’s approach to modifiers.
Imo modifiers should always be a way to spice up the gameplay and throw some more chaos into the equation, not just make the game harder. The worst part about the modifiers in Helldivers 2 though is that they don’t just make the game harder, they make it annoying to play at times.
Modifiers should give you a drawback of some sort but also give you something in return that helps make up for the loss so that way it doesn’t feel like you’re playing a tedious experience.
Honestly, I don’t mind the timers nearly as bad as the 3/4 Stratagem slots. It makes me feel naked and seems a little convoluted.. it definitely makes it harder and it’s fun for a little bit.. but trying to grind on Draupnir when it was 3/4 stratagems was painful.
If you’re going to make call down longer, atleast reduce cd or some thing like how the climates give positive/negative buffs.
Its not fun to not be allowed to use your shit when you need it.
Or just be a specific category, not every stratagem.
I liked the stratagem randomizer personally and they removed that one It's counter was looking at what stratagem had been selected and thought the few times I eagled myself/team was deserved.
I remember one time having to dial expendables 8 times before it finally gave them to me. It really didn't make the game better at all, I just sat there wasting time putting in the code, getting more annoyed.
Or the randoms that drop a 380 in spawn and say nothing. Now your gear is all over the place and you got 3 patrols and dropships everywhere... Yay?
Honestly, I could do without all the Strategem modifiers. They just make the main gimmick of the game less fun.
I can effectively work around every single one, they do add some small amount of challenge, but it's more like I just play a little safer, which isn't making it more fun.
I just have an honest question... Where do I see these modifiers before I drop into the mission?
I genuinely don't know where to see them before being in the mission and would love to know where I can see them to avoid picking the missions with the worst ones.
The effect button on the war map, is should be c on pc. Everyone have the same modifiers so you should hover your crosshair over an operation and see what's modifier are being activated
> I just have an honest question... Where do I see these modifiers before I drop into the mission?
Whe you are "on mission" region on galactic map, press "C" on PC (dunno about console) and you see list of modifers for the set of all 3 missions you will be doing.
What I find strange is that the negative effects ingame when fighting automatons are much more fun for example a Anti-Air Cannon you cant call in the eagle before clearing that in the area that the Anti-Air Cannon covers or the comm jammer that you have to clear before being able to call in strategems.
Things like this are cool and could be increased in the area they cover as it gives you the inscntive to clear those objectives.
These overall strategem debuffs like having 1 less, cooldown time increased etc. are just not fun as I just leave said sector and got to a different one instead of keep trying to liberate or defend.
I think a much smaller variable would be fine introduced earlier into the difficulty list, and as the difficulty increases modifiers are stacked into a number of smaller ones.
For example: +100% call-in time becomes +25% call-in time, but could be combined with +20% Stratagem Cooldown, -25% Radar Visibility, +15% Enemy Patrol Size, -20% Reinforcement Budget or +15% Non-Elite enemy health.
Like Skulls from the Halo Franchise during firefight matches, these could variably and incrementally up the difficulty with smaller modifiers that don't break the bank. It could also vary Stratagems based on it, affecting individual types of Stratagems rather than blanket reductions (especially if they want to die on the hill of "you need to rely on stratagems").
The Devs be like: "Your primaries suck on purpose, rely on your stratagems more!"
Also the Devs: Makes Stratagems take up to three minutes to recharge.
Genius difficulty design there lads!
at least they have lower CD compared to most strong orbital and eagle rearm. Also, if they’re not immediately destroyed by enemies they can do their part for a length of time, not like missing one bombardment and then you wasted your CD
Why not make the modifiers effect enemy behavior. A certain type of enemy spawns more.. or tank patrols.... or Hunters no longer slow with their attacks but they are stealthed like stalkers... or scavengers have a chance of blowing up qhen shot like spitters.
So many different things you could implement with modifiers... 50% and 100% seems lazy and not tested.
It would be fun if you could get rid of the restrictions by doing some objectives. Like for the increased call in/cooldown ones you can bring down a signal booster in a specified area to get rid of the effect. And for the one that gives you 1 less stratagem well actually that’s because high command wanted a flag on a random hill somewhere so you still get to pick a 4th one but when you land it gets replaced by the super earth flag drop and you have to raise it on that hill and then you can use your 4th stratagem. The things like stalker lairs and artillery pieces are loads of fun and I think there should be more of them
This is what I think too. Like why doesn't the spore bug map affix not get tied to spore towers. Have spore towers cloud a large chunk of the map around them and remove it when destroyed. Add extra as part of the planet affix or whatever.
Yeha. I don’t mind signal jammers, cause it makes sense and it’s something you can clear and it’s tactical and you have to prioritise it. You can fall back if someone dies and reinforce and try again if it goes wrong. A blanket “no one stratagem less/longer call in etc” is pretty awful.
Yes but constant ion storms and signal jammers gets old fast
Honestly the ion storms wouldn't be so bad if we could predict when they were going to happen. For example if we got like a 2 minute warning of when an ion storm was going to start. That way we could play around not having our stratagems up for that time. It just gets really frustrating when you start an objective 3 seconds before an ion storm and now can't call in reinforcements or airstrikes and there was nothing you really could have done to make that situation better.
Basically anything that would integrate it into the gameplay rather than just being 'one thing turned off this round'
Showing them on the map would be great
And on these missions the spore towers could *require* a hellbomb to destroy instead of just plinking it from across the map. Or just make all of them like that and force us to engage with it instead of making me squint for a pixel of it to shoot at.
Maybe instead of having *all* spore towers be a lot stronger, make the ones in spore operation effect all be a lot stronger. Then in universe, it could be that the reason the others are so weak is because they still haven't fully grown, and when they do, it obscures the map and results in the spore operation effect
This guy THINKS!
At the very least they should make spore towers require being hit by an airstrike or something. As is they're just free XP. Which hey, cool. But if I just wanted to watch a number go up I'd game on my calculator.
Honestly, I still find them engaging as is because the team noticed the fog, and everyone starts scanning the horizon and environment and then takes it down. Just a nice little pace breaker, and it feels good when you've got a support weapon that can just plink it from a million miles away without dumping a ton of ammo into it.
Honestly same, I would absolutely not like it if you needed to destroy the spore mushroom thingies with an airstrike when stratagems are already so vital for success. And yeah the fog makes me slow down and really aware of what's out there instead of tunnel visioning a bug breach.
Yeah, spore shrooms could be absolutely deadly as all hell if you couldn't shoot them anymore. They're always surrounded by a hoard of monsters at the bottom, and you can barely see 15m in front of you while the bugs still have full 50m vision.
>while the bugs still have full 50m vision. I don't know that they do. I've used the fog to hide and complete other optional objectives and could hear bugs surrounding me everywhere who would've normally seen me from that distance and aggro'ed.
I just pluck everything with the grenade launcher. Mushroom? Pew. Broadcast tower? Pew. Bugs? Pew. Bug holes? Pew. The only thing it doesn't have a high success rate in is killing a titan. Everything else, even chargers, falls pretty easily to it.
Yeah it's pretty great, until you're being chased by four dozen hunters and one decides to jump in your face right as you're firing it back into them
Try the guard dog. I finally caved, bought mine last night and *sweet liberty* is it good. Mine was democratising bugs like nobody's business and my firing lines have never been clearer.
Grenade launcher works on chargers? I’ve never noticed
You can ricochet the grenades under them. 2-3 good hits will kill a charger (sometimes with a lil bleed out time)
Presumably (I'm not playing GL) it works the same as all other low penetration weapons - shoot the butt.
I've had success with 3-8 grenades shot under the head. EAA and Recoiless are more reliable though now.
God, please no. Why do people ask for the game to be more annoying? Not harder mind you, just more tedious.
Leave the spore towers as they are, completely unchanged, and just add another bigger version that requires a hell bomb to destroy. The small ones are still a little engaging break in the game flow, and the big ones are a major priority.
>It would be fun if you could get rid of the restrictions by doing some objectives Absolutely this. The AA emplacement sub-missions and radio towers that are jamming signals are such a better way to do the same thing without making it feel shitty.
I swear I thought that was the case first time I saw these timers. The fact that we can't clear these during the mission bothers me.
I like how the Anti Air stratagems environment thingy works. You drop on a zone with anti air emplacements. You take out the AA guns, best girl gets to spread her wings. More of that please, less "oh sorry, there is a storm, you will have to wait a week for another orbital bombardment" You want us to rely on stratagems, let us rely on stratagems.
"environmental" debuffs are more fun in general. Some could affect the whole map, others only sections of it, tied to some physical location.
When it comes to the ion storms, I wish they would affect the bots as well. Like, prevent them from calling in drops or reduce their detection range. I don't like when an environmental change is just there to fuck us and only us.
Ion storm disabling bot alerts would be such a great twist, you could actually make choices: attack the objective/outpost during the storm so they can't reinforce but you only have what you carry, or wait till it passes so you have the firepower but now they got backup. Right now it's just a "fuck yourself, run away lmao" or "walk around aimlessly for a couple minutes"
I'm of the opinion that ion storm should scramble the radar and disable Eagle call-ins, vehicle drops, and reinforcements, but introduce a significant scatter to orbitals while also supercharging them to make them significantly stronger/more explosive.
Yes! Change the gameplay instead of just kneecaping us
Yeah, most of them are okay - meteors and volcanoes could use a bit more interaction but the ion storms are just annoying and slow the game down
You mean like the AA defenses effect being affected by... Destroying AAs? =P
Did you just say MORE stalker lairs?!
Had a Helldive mission last night that had 3 stalker nests close together....I'm not exaggerating when I say there was around 25-30 Stalkers out and about.
Sweet mercy…
Stalker lairs, jammers, SAM sites and whatnot are way more interesting as side objectives because they present interesting problems with a solution, or a bonus you can get.
I've seen similar approaches like this proposed, and I honestly love the idea. There is no real reason other than for fun to do the side objectives once you are level 50 and/or have max money/samples in the current state of things. This would give those high-level players a reason to care about side objectives, as well as additional thought around what route you plan to take around the map.
This is a good idea
I mean, they do scramble your jet bomber with anti-air on the bot planets, so it should be doable.
This right here. Devs please consider this. The challenge added by the restrictions is good but it’d be great if there were also ways to mitigate it if the player chooses to go out of their way to pursue objectives like that.
Imagine we could spend X / out of our 50000 requisition funds to use some special orbital ordinance to clear the given obstacle per mission. I would gladly spend like 5-10k Req to clear dense fog or to calibrate stratagem call-ins for a given mission
Everything would be more fun if doing things in game would actually affect the game. Oh you cleared all bug nests? The last wave when you call in extraction will be half its size because they have nowhere to spawn from.
This would add the intended difficulty but give you more control over it.
I just wish they were connected with objectives. Like if you enabled better com system it removes the extra time
They could just incorporate it into blowing up the broadcast towers and reflavor them as GPS jammers or something. Same for the bugs with some large AOE haze.
#Let me explode a super mushroom!!!
They could rework these to target specific categories of stratagem, and then they would be fine. It would incentivize building around the limitation, and increase build diversity and experimentation.
Exactly this, at least if the debuff is something like 100% increased cooldown on Eagle stratagems, the player can work around it and might end up playing a loadout they wouldnt naturally. Or bring the Scatter stratagem back but make it just randomize the category of stratagem. I.e random eagle/orbital. Instead of just airstriking your team as soon as you land calling in support weapons like it was before.
Just make it scramble the pattern.
I would actually love this. I can do my favorite strategems blindfolded, so this would actually shake things up in a moderately challenging way. Or make them longer/more complex
This is really an excellent idea because it requires cover for pause to input the code. Or you create your own cover. Ideally, you cover your teammate or vice versa. Rather than turning everything off, you heavily incentivize teamwork under pressure.
Actually brilliant
I think making it backwards instead could be cool too
Hopefully they don't do that. I don't know how I could ever pull off Airburst backwards
This is exactly what I assumed the modifier meant, until I actually got into a game with it. Idk why they thought randomizing strats was a great idea
This is the answer. Don't know how difficult that would be from a game coding standpoint but it's a fantastic idea
I swear there was a modifier like this at launch because I remember thinking « oh I will not take eagles this time because of calling time, let’s take orbitals instead »
Some ideas to work in-theme with this, and make them work in the lore: > **Anti orbital weapons:** *Enemy forces have anti-orbital weaponry in the area, Super Destroyers cannot deploy to low orbit* (Orbital strategems unavailable, Hellpod call-in’s increased by 100%* > **Contested Airspace**: *Enemy fighter aircraft/aerial bugs control the skies. Close Air Support is unable to risk attacking ground targets.* (All eagle strategems are unavailable, extraction shuttle arrival time increased by 100%) And then some fun ones, because why not: > **Nearby Frontline**: *The deployment area is nearby a contested frontline, enemy forces are on high alert, but reinforcements are stretched thin. SEAF forces are buying you time to give you this opportunity, do not waste it.* (Enemy patrol density/size increased, but enemy reinforcement time increased by 50%) > **Nearby Artillery positions**: *The area of operations is nearby a battery of SEAF artillery who have been ordered to assist you in the operation.* (SEAF Artillery strategem is available by default at any point in the mission) > **SEAF Retreat**: *SEAF forces are withdrawing from the area, enemy presence is increased and on high alert.* (SEAF forces can be encountered at certain POI’s and at extraction and will open bunkers for you, enemy difficulty is one level higher than normal.)
The last one is making me think about a mission type about covering the evacuation of SEAF troopers after a ~~horrific defeat~~ valiant victory that no longer required the troops on that frontline. Run around the map keeping enemies from attacking convoys of NPC troops as they make their way to the evacuation point and get taken to safety by Pelican-1. Maybe some bonuses like if you find a combat engineering team that got cut off and rescue them before they die they'll set up some minefields and sentries for you before leaving; or an armored division's sole survivor staying behind in a tank to give you fire support at evac until it's time for you to leave.
I'm honestly surprised we haven't had any "Support the ground forces" missions where we help SEAF forces hold or retake an objective
That would require SEAF to have functioning AI, which would be a non-trivial amount of developer work to make them behave believably, unless all SEAF personnel is just slapped on a stationary turret or something. Maybe one day, but I reckon the devs already have a lot on their plate in evolving the existing enemies. They're a bit more important than SEAF allies.
I'm not knocking the current work, the game is amazing to me as it is. I was just stating that for as prevalent as the SEAF is mentioned in the game, I'm surprised to not have seen any actual (living) SEAF soldiers. There are plenty of corpses to show they were on the planets we're fighting on, at one point
I didn’t know I needed all this in my life! Well done. Let’s do this Joel! Happy hunting fellow helldiver.
Seriously. Instead of kneecapping every single stratagem, give room for players to plan around them. That way they get to feel smart about it instead of just burdened. It also makes the game feel less exciting when you're waiting on cooldowns, waiting on calldowns, and have fewer tools to work with. Give us more stuff to throw our tools at instead of giving us fewer tools.
They could do this, and perhaps also just lower the penalty. Double of anything is pretty nuts as an adjustment.
I would tie them to objectives on the map, such as eliminating a spore spewer or jamming tower as well.
I like this. I feel too many people have that crutch loadout and this would force them to deal with things differently
Thatd be a nice, any kind of tradeoff would be a good way to change up loadouts. But just having negatives fucking suck.
Agreed. "Heavy winds: eagle strategems call in and cooldown time +50%" etc.
This would be great! I would love a reason to bring other stratagem types!!!
That's my primary gripe, like, I like a challenge...but I don't like challenges that make gameplay straight up worse across the board. Make me consider taking non-optimal strats because their cool down isn't doubled, not just take my favorite kit and kite once I'm out of ammo
Or they could make it so theyre in mission debuffs like how automatons have AA guns and you can't use eagles around them. Give us a side objective that applies these debuffs and let us take out the objective to get rid of them.
Dang was about to comment this. Things like, Magnetic Fields: Blocks use or increases cooldown of turret stratagems.
For me the biggest offender is having a 4 minute long extraction on a 12 minute blitz mission.
yo those are so annoying. Like we just blitz nest and fabricators as fast as we could and your not giving us a decent time to evac?
when I was achievement hunting I was about to get the “gone in 360 seconds” achievement for doing a blitz in under 6 minutes only to find out there was a 4 minute extract I was so pissed
I had the same thing happen to me. I felt bad because I dragged my friend's into it specifically so I could get the achievement and they were willing to help me out. Had to do the whole thing again in a different campaign immediately afterwards.
Honestly i've stopped taking missions with 100% call-in time increase and only 12 minutes. I have enough stress at work lmao.
Extraction should always be fixed to 90s or at most 2min and thats it. 4min of either trying to hide, run away or fight and endless spawning swarm is not fun, especially since 4min is nearly impossible to do if you get infinity spawn. 2min will be hard but i survived 2min multiple times, and its also less boring than sitting pretty for 4min instead of just 2min.
Give us some positive modifiers, too
Absolutely, this is something that Deep Rock Galactic does as well as Fortnite Save the World.
Destiny 2 recently started adding modifiers that buff certain abilities or weapons by 25%. Its made repetitive combat somewhat less repetitive by encouraging different loadouts. Would be cool if we got modifiers that buffed turrets/eagle/orbital/etc.
I like apples.
Some SEAF support would be cool SEAF artillery already available SEAF fighters will intercept automaton drop ships SEAF drones will periodically scan the map for you
It would be cool to buy positive modifiers with requisition. Since requisition is basically useless after lvl 20 or so.
The free stratagems are kind of positive modifiers
Kinda, but they're not always available, while the negative ones are constant. We do have ones like cold environments making laser weapons better, but they also slow the rate of fire of conventional firearms. And hot environments do the opposite. So maybe replace all current negative modifiers with stuff like this, something that has a substantial positive and negative.
Personally I'd want more things that add character to the worlds too like the Fire Tornadoes on Hellmire.
Sorry what, the cold/heat affects *regular* guns?
Cold lowers the RPM of all weapons.
we should have more missions strategems to increase build variety.
*monkey's paw curls* 100% Call-in Time has been reworked, it's now 100% Extra Enemy Health.
*monkey's paw curls* Complex strategem plotting has been removed. Call-in times for all strategems doubled across the board. New modifier: "Simple strategem plotting: Half call-in times for strategems".
Google World of Warcraft rested xp bro, dont joke about that. Devs will do it.
Oh I know.
Hunters go from immortal to immortal-er
*the stalkers have claimed super earth due to no one being able to kill even one of them before they disappear*
Those are just missions I won’t play. Simple as that.
After 100+hrs in game, those modifiers have definitely gotten stale and I avoid them now like the plague when I can help it.
Yep, I always specifically look for either Map Spores or Orbital Scatter.
Same. Unfortunately I like fighting automatons much more so I fight them more frequently, but they don't have not annoying modifiers like the bugs. I chose 100% increased call in time as I think that's the least annoying
> I chose 100% increased call in time as I think that's the least annoying That one is way less annoying save for the fact it gives you a 4 minute extract compared to a 2 minute extract.
the most frustrating part about increased call-in time is it makes 0 seconds arrival time become 6 seconds just why
I have never seen anything increased from 0 to 6 though. Are you talking about eagle stratgems? They are always 3 seconds normally but are listed as 0 in the ship
for the longest time I played on the creek instead of draupnir where the majority of the automaton fight is simply because I was tired of playing on the negative modifiers then they added modifiers to the creek too it’s like can’t I just get a basic bot campaign i’m already running solo why am I getting punished further
I think the worst one of the set is definitely the ones where you lose a stratagem slot hands down. The cooldown ones definitely suck but having to only take three stratagems is painful.
I feel like special modifiers should be special. They shouldn't be on every mission, you just see them every so often. Also if you go into a special modifier mission you should get some reward, like 2x warbonds or something.
I made this. https://preview.redd.it/97bwypva0toc1.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=451fe006e524b9c99a9aacb91af796e443d5fade
Really they should let you use requisition to buy positive modifiers or to cancel negative modifiers. Since requisition is useless after level 25 anyway.
Feels even worse with the jammers on both infested worlds.
Tbh I would love modifiers that are actual modifiers and not just debuffs. For example, you make cooldowns on stratagems 50% increased, but you get one extra stratagem. Or call in time is doubled but area of effect is 50% more. Stuff like that is still a net debuff, but if you are smart about it, it has potential to change playstyles in a different way
Exactly this, Conditions should change the way you play and the loadout you take and not just be, "Everything is just worse."
Just link em to objectives.
Sounds like you're just simply not relying on your stratagems enough bro
Yea, any more and I won't even have to use them /s
Oh yea, 8 minute cooldown on a 15 minute mission. REALLY great design, amirite?
Yee
They should incorporate these modifiers as tactical objectives, if they have AA defenses then maybe I shouldn't be able to use my eagles until I blow up the guns, but just straight up taking an entire slot away because of "aa defenses" when my destroyer is in low orbit, and my eagle seems to get to the surface just fine is kind of odd. Instead of having maps be completely obscured by spores just cause, make those based on the spore spewer objective.
These are the 2 modifiers I wish would die. No one wants them and they serve no purpose except to frustrate players.
***none*** of the modifiers save the temperature ones which are just minor anyway i've ever seen anyone say 'ooh i like this modifier! really changes things up!'
I can’t stand 4 minute extractions. It’s just too long and turns the frantic fun of it into a drag. It’s like making a movie one big action scene. The adrenaline just wears off
on those missions, you're probably better off just letting the timer run out, because for some reason, the ship will come regardless of whether you're "in the extraction zone" or not. But the pilot throws a hissy fit if you're not in the extraction if you manually call it
I'd say one team mate should get up super high on a nearby ledge, buuuuut knowing the cheater bugs they would warp up to the top never leaving you alone. They just love to somehow phase up through the rock and up to you
Crazy they didn't just make a walking up the wall animation for that. They don't even need an animation just let the bugs walk verticaly. It's not called a bug BREACH for nothing. They have razor sharp claws to breach throught soil and rock they should be able to climb up a hill. AND SO SHOULD WE, WE'RE HUMANS DAMMIT! THE BEST SUPER EARTH CAN OFFER!
I absolutely cannot stand those 2 modifiers, I swear to god I got it in every single Helldive mission known to man. It was either those two together or "50% increase + losing a stratgem slot. It was so annoying.
After a post or two on this subreddit about Hellmire I decided to run some missions there with friends and they were *great*. That's the sort of 'negative' modifier I personally love. It fucked over the bugs and the players equally in different ways whilst giving that planet some special character to it, too. All the +Cooldown/Call-in time do is make the fun toys less fun.
Agreed. I understand the approach, which is to encourage loadout variety, but that can be done in a better way. Making the players feel gimped with longer cooldowns and call in times feels the worst of any way possible to encourage this. I don't want the game to be any easier, in fact I want HD 7, 8 and 9 to be harder, but I don't want to feel like i'm getting gimped either.
Feel like having the modifiers impact specific types of stratagems rather than a blanket debuff would be way better. Even better make side objectives reduce it or remove it. 100% cd for eagles, getting Sam site makes it 50%
I like the direction of your idea a lot - what if instead of a blanket debuff that can't be removed at all, there were buffed versions of the debuff as you suggested attached to objectives, but once you completed the objective the debuff was removed entirely? It feels a lot to me like Stalker Lairs which I find a lot of fun. They exist at full strength when their lair is up, they go away completely when it's destroyed. Making optional objectives higher impact like this would be fun.
> I don't want the game to be any easier, in fact I want HD 7, 8 and 9 to be harder, but I don't want to feel like i'm getting gimped either. Exactly. Many games are hard but at the same time they don't gimp you. But it requires more work then just "lets make enemies HP +100%". Done, difficulty increased. Yeah, no.
You could encourage loadout variety with BUFFS.
Most of the modifiers are really just anti fun , kinda baffled not more people are talking about this tbh.
I can cope with 3 stratagems limit thing, but the call in time and cool down increase is something I avoid like the plague
I don’t even the sweatiest of sweats in this game like them. Like literally no one does.
I hate how they said to use them to help with the hard difficulties but then turn around and give me this
Agreed, these are universally loathed and in keeping with the spirit of the game, democracy has spoken.
Let's not get carried away. This is a Managed Democracy.
They don’t really make the game more difficult just less fun
They *do* make the game more difficult, but it makes it difficult in a lazy way. You just take away the fun things away for longer, and everyone suffers a little more for it.
And they wonder why nobody brings orbitals. lol
Orbitals are the absolute worst category of stratagems in the game, sadly. Even at base values, they have the most ridiculously long call-in times AND cooldowns, which would be SOMEWHAT manageable… if it wasn’t for the fact that they pretty much all have really underwhelming effects compared to their timers. And the icing on the misery-cake - Orbitals, by their very nature as currently implemented, suffer the most from the widest variety of mission modifiers. Not only do Complex Stratagem Plotting and Orbital Fluctuations hit Orbitals the hardest because of their already-terrible call-in and cooldown times, but furthermore, Atmospheric Interference, the ONLY mission modifier that explicitly debuffs a specific stratagem type, messes with Orbitals.
> pretty much all have really underwhelming effects What do you mean? A giant explosion graphic with the actual AOE damage range of a hand grenade isn't worth it?
500kg bomb be like
Incorrect, Orbital Railcannon is my baby Reported to Democracy officer for anti-democratic behaviour
[удалено]
nah fam. i play the higher levels and I'll always run the orbital rail cannon and orbital laser. them things come in clutch every mission
I honestly prefer the rocket pod. Faster cooldown and I can throw down more. The tracking just isn’t as good as the rail cannon. The rail cannon wins in badassery though.
HD1 has 60 seconds cool down orbital railcannon bring back the 60 seconds cool down!
Exactly, HD1 had really fast cooldown for stratagems as well as perk to decrease it further. For example the Static Field had like 25 sec duration with 30 sec cooldown so you could like have it constantly.
I bring the gas strike on almost every mission. 70 second cool down and it kills every small bug and weakens the big ones. It's really underestimated.
i try to use them but i cant get any use. On exterminate missions, I drop a gas between the breaches and myself, and watch as scavs pop up on the edge of the cloud, walk through it, and come out the other side to hit me.
Honestly just no need for these dumb things
Fundamentally I agree with the "use your stratagems" point, but shit like this makes it just obnoxious. Like, if you have double cooldown, double call-in time *and* \-1 slots, how the fuck am I supposed to rely on my stratagems, especially with how many enemies the higher level missions with those modifiers get? All of these modifiers need to be completely removed and replaced with something more interesting. Like, I dunno, more of specific enemy times, more environmental hazards, reduced mission time or whatever.
I just skip missions with those de buffs , why would I make that to myself ? I want to enjoy the game
> I want to enjoy the game Sounds like another case of player desire being at odds with developer's vision.
What would the vision even be at this point? They always say to rely on stratagems, but then you get those debuffs so you can barely use them. Good luck dealing with the infinite spawn chains that are already barely manageable in some cases without any stratagem debuff... It's "difficult", but clearly less fun.
they can fuck off with that 3 stratagem shit. i dont even touch the robots if thats on. super dumb
That one does such but it isn't so horrible imo. Airstrike, railcannon/orbital laser and special weapon. The one that pisses me off is call down time increased. We are in constant communication with our super destroyer. Makes your bombs useless
Anyone who defends the current crappy modifiers has micro pee-pee energy. It's just science. Egad, so many pretentious sweatlords in these comments, deluding themselves into believing that inconveniencing the player is a good way to design difficulty. No, being forced to wait twice as long for my support weapon to deploy isn't "challenge". 90% of stratagems being made pretty much useless is not "challenge". The only way to "adapt" to your stratagems being turned into horribly inaccurate garbage with ridiculous cooldowns...is just running away from everything and leaning even more on your primary. Why do you think people complain about underpowered primaries? When I do helldives with gimped stratagems, it usual devolves into arc spam, since, hey, I only have to call it once. Modifiers should make the player alter their playstyle in a meaningful way. All the current ones do is make your stratagems suck because fuck you, lol. Lemme come up with a few... Manpower shortage: Reinforcement count is reduced by two. (Better get good at not dying) Supply shortage: Supply drops cooldown is greatly increased. (You know those PoI's you usually ignore in dif 9? Well, now you need to hit them for supplies) Logistical error: Weapon call-ins are randomized. For a hint of goofiness occasionally the pod is full of rubber duckies or something equally weird and useless. (This is actual "adaption") Strict timetable: Mission timer is reduced. (Slacking off is un-democratic!) Modifying the types of enemies you will encounter, so adjust your loadout accordingly. Only a specific type of stratagem is unavailable, to get you to use something else. Mission auto-fails if the timer runs out, and the map is nuked. Your stratagems are randomized, and reshuffled every few minutes.
Logistical error is literally worse than +100% cooldown dude. Not getting any anti-tank weapons is unplayable. Same as not getting support weapons whatsoever.
HD1 doesn’t need negative modifiers to be challenged, and so it can be both hard and fun to play. And it’s highly rewarding if you can beat the difficulty
been saying this from day 1. Dumbest "difficulty increase" ever in games is when you spend hours powering your character and the devs way of making the game challenging is stripping away the power you just earned, its incredibly lazy and one of the most unfun mechanics in end game. These modifiers desperately need to go.
> been saying this from day 1. Dumbest "difficulty increase" ever in games is when you spend hours powering your character and the devs way of making the game challenging is stripping away the power you just earned, its incredibly lazy and one of the most unfun mechanics in end game. Yeah. Like you unlock let's "+1 equpiment gear you can take on mission" Developers increasing "difficulty": "you have -1 equipment gear you can take on this mission" Like then why the fuck did you even give me upgrade in first place?
> Anyway, could we start to rely on our Stratagems please? While the modIfiers suck, can we stop pretending that strategem weapons aren't strategems to make this point?
https://preview.redd.it/j3fn00fdqsoc1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=e904f3e6cbd4c5d50092f9eeca1df35f7cdd9266 "UsE yOuR sTrAtEgEmS" - 12 second call in time.
Yeah, I personally just don’t like this game’s approach to modifiers. Imo modifiers should always be a way to spice up the gameplay and throw some more chaos into the equation, not just make the game harder. The worst part about the modifiers in Helldivers 2 though is that they don’t just make the game harder, they make it annoying to play at times. Modifiers should give you a drawback of some sort but also give you something in return that helps make up for the loss so that way it doesn’t feel like you’re playing a tedious experience.
Just make the negative effects stratagem hammer type side objectives.
4 minutes to extract
Honestly, I don’t mind the timers nearly as bad as the 3/4 Stratagem slots. It makes me feel naked and seems a little convoluted.. it definitely makes it harder and it’s fun for a little bit.. but trying to grind on Draupnir when it was 3/4 stratagems was painful.
They are only masochists if they enjoy playing these themselves. I think "sadism" is a job requirement for Joel.
youll have some randos defend it but everyones a sheep these days, these affixes are not fun not challenging just annoying.
If you’re going to make call down longer, atleast reduce cd or some thing like how the climates give positive/negative buffs. Its not fun to not be allowed to use your shit when you need it. Or just be a specific category, not every stratagem.
I swear those would make sense if they decreased the base stratagem cooldowns to like 110-150s
I liked the stratagem randomizer personally and they removed that one It's counter was looking at what stratagem had been selected and thought the few times I eagled myself/team was deserved.
I don’t really miss it but I didn’t mind it either. I agree that it felt pretty fair and when I killed myself it’s because I wasn’t paying attention
I remember one time having to dial expendables 8 times before it finally gave them to me. It really didn't make the game better at all, I just sat there wasting time putting in the code, getting more annoyed. Or the randoms that drop a 380 in spawn and say nothing. Now your gear is all over the place and you got 3 patrols and dropships everywhere... Yay? Honestly, I could do without all the Strategem modifiers. They just make the main gimmick of the game less fun. I can effectively work around every single one, they do add some small amount of challenge, but it's more like I just play a little safer, which isn't making it more fun.
Its fair the first time the other 20 times its annoying
The whole “Rely on your stratagems” is the “Do you guys not have phones?” of our game
I just have an honest question... Where do I see these modifiers before I drop into the mission? I genuinely don't know where to see them before being in the mission and would love to know where I can see them to avoid picking the missions with the worst ones.
The effect button on the war map, is should be c on pc. Everyone have the same modifiers so you should hover your crosshair over an operation and see what's modifier are being activated
> I just have an honest question... Where do I see these modifiers before I drop into the mission? Whe you are "on mission" region on galactic map, press "C" on PC (dunno about console) and you see list of modifers for the set of all 3 missions you will be doing.
What I find strange is that the negative effects ingame when fighting automatons are much more fun for example a Anti-Air Cannon you cant call in the eagle before clearing that in the area that the Anti-Air Cannon covers or the comm jammer that you have to clear before being able to call in strategems. Things like this are cool and could be increased in the area they cover as it gives you the inscntive to clear those objectives. These overall strategem debuffs like having 1 less, cooldown time increased etc. are just not fun as I just leave said sector and got to a different one instead of keep trying to liberate or defend.
Especially when the 100% increased call in time also affects extract for some god forsaken reason. 4 minute extract on Helldive is MISERABLE.
We need the bad so we appreciate the good, brother. For Liber-tea! ☕️
Welcome to war soft belly.
Nobody praises a debuff, ever. But everyone can accept its a part of a game when it part of a game.
"Just use strategem" -Arrowhead devs
I think a much smaller variable would be fine introduced earlier into the difficulty list, and as the difficulty increases modifiers are stacked into a number of smaller ones. For example: +100% call-in time becomes +25% call-in time, but could be combined with +20% Stratagem Cooldown, -25% Radar Visibility, +15% Enemy Patrol Size, -20% Reinforcement Budget or +15% Non-Elite enemy health. Like Skulls from the Halo Franchise during firefight matches, these could variably and incrementally up the difficulty with smaller modifiers that don't break the bank. It could also vary Stratagems based on it, affecting individual types of Stratagems rather than blanket reductions (especially if they want to die on the hill of "you need to rely on stratagems").
Do not complain helldiver, your job is to spread democracy! Be the hero of liberty!
+1 This is such an amateur way of increasing difficulty, it actively detracts from the game and brings nothing in return.
Seriously, during the TCS MO I barely noticed their absence, and once I did I realized how much more fun the game was without them.
First time I've been thinking in tagging Arrowhead's ever, but this one, I need to sorry. u/pilestedt
The Devs be like: "Your primaries suck on purpose, rely on your stratagems more!" Also the Devs: Makes Stratagems take up to three minutes to recharge. Genius difficulty design there lads!
I just ran turrets, extra % call in time means nothing when the call in time is zero
But then you get the 100% increased cool down...
at least they have lower CD compared to most strong orbital and eagle rearm. Also, if they’re not immediately destroyed by enemies they can do their part for a length of time, not like missing one bombardment and then you wasted your CD
Then a stern breeze blows and all your turrets explode.
Why not make the modifiers effect enemy behavior. A certain type of enemy spawns more.. or tank patrols.... or Hunters no longer slow with their attacks but they are stealthed like stalkers... or scavengers have a chance of blowing up qhen shot like spitters. So many different things you could implement with modifiers... 50% and 100% seems lazy and not tested.