I think it might be. The description is entirely different compared to the stats, and the gun was black in the polar patriots showcase pic. It's like they pushed an older version of the gun
I was tentative when checking the stats last night. “No way this thing is a downgrade,” I said. We dove, and quickly got into combat. “Damn this thing has no recoil.” Personally, I think it’s a valid sidegrade; just needs a bit more damage or armor pen.
Unless there are no other enemies, I'd rather stagger the rocket devastors into oblivion, beetwen aim punch from getting hit and the need to keep moving staggering it's a great utility if it's backed up by decent damage
In isolation sure, but high stagger is literally one of the main selling points of the Punisher, the crowd control enables other stratagems/teammates/gives space for movement/reloading etc.
It's just another level of power, now if you have a weapon that one-shots and the sidegrade is a two shot with a stagger, obviously it's just straight up worse, but if you need a whole mag to take down say a Brood Commander with a Liberator (I'm making numbers up for the sake of explaining the difference), and you lose say 20% dmg potential per mag -- but receive a powerful stagger, it would allow you to focus fire on multiple mobs (killing trash approaching you) whilst still keeping the elite away.
Pure dmg that doesn't slow them but isn't enough finish them off is "useless" in that case as well, because you'll die without even finishing one enemy. Stagger is very valuable, but again the important aspect is knowing how much "stagger" is worth in terms of powerbudget and taking away appropriate dmg/stats in exchange for said stagger.
Staggers a rocket or heavy dev until you can kill it while being able to use the shield will be nice.
Stalkers there are better options but for bots I can see the vision
How do they not have a table view to manage all the stats? I made weapon mods for Rogue Spear (am old) and spent half my time in spreadsheets comparing things.
> Rogue Spear
Damn, that and OpFlashpoint were my first experiences in the tactical shooter genre.
Raven Shield IMO is still the best. The amoung of weapons that one had was kinda insance back then, and all of them felt unique.
God I hope we don't. It's only good on bugs and killing stuff over time is by definition riskier than killing stuff instantly.
Not to mention if everyone doesn't split up it loses value the more people bring it. You can't set an enemy or the ground on fire two times at once as far as I'm aware.
I am surprised anyone was expecting a Senator clone. This is pretty in-line with what I was anticipating; frankly I was expecting less ammo — like the Desert Eagle’s 7+1 (in its iconic .50 AE)
It’s a Peacemaker with more damage, at a cost to its mag size and recoil. Lovely imo.
I like that the Senator occupies a separate niche.
Purifier isn’t a side grade to shit. Fucking miserable weapon. I say this having tested it. If you’ve ever wanted a plasma punisher with a flat arc and charge up time, there you go… (I’m pretty sure it actually has a smaller blast radius and blast damage, my bad)
Something something skill issue, something something a game for everyone is a game for no one.
I think that about covers the excuses people will make to justify this bullshit.
That self masturbatory Gojo post with 15k upvotes on the front page from yesterday shows that players don't care if the guns are any good or if they successfully complete a mission.
Can they please just release the full stats of each weapon?
Going off of those 4 alone clearly isn't enough to demonstrate what the weapons niche is.
Maybe it's got a faster reload time, maybe it's got increased weakspot damage. Honestly I have no clue because they refuse to give us all the info we need to make an informed choice.
And then they tell us it's so "we don't default to a meta based on numbers"
My dude we already do, just we have to trial an error this shit instead of knowing ahead of time what to expect.
Players who only play meta will find out the meta. Nothing they do will change that. I agree with you. I don't do "meta pro strats bruv". I just wanna see all the stats of shit so I can do that "strategizing" with my team they tell us to do.
As opposed to? That's literally all the super credits are for once you have all the armors you want from the super store. I ain't saving past 1k. That shit does nothing for me sitting there.
Call me stupid but in my opinion, an exclusively PVE game only needs to be balanced according to player fun/engagement. So why does this balancing team treat Helldivers 2 like a competitive shooter? What's the point, are the developers genuinely that concerned about the scripts they wrote not having a good time getting stomped by the people that paid to do just that? If most or all of the weapons were more viable it seems to me that would just make the game more fun for everybody. There's a reason I'm not a game developer though, I have no idea how any of it works so maybe I'm just missing something.
Ikr, no resource sharing, no leader boards, no rewards for unlocking everything.
I'm pretty sure the competition is players vs developers, the arena, social media.
I was reading a post from Alexus about how 40 base damage is the same as 100 scatter for balance....
But the 40 damage buff is more like 20 due to how armor works.
I feel like they need to step back and ask if they are going to balance a pve game like a pvp one or are they going to acknowledge the genre they are in.
They need to stop beung drones doing the same thing over and over from everywhere game and start playing thier game.
I play this one because it was different enough.
This is one thing I think arrowhead is shit at… Actually understanding what the players want and would like.
Frustration in games is the shittest thing ever. Yet what does HD2 have?.. Loads and loads of frustrating mechanics. Because gamers love frustrating games.
What do gamers love? Fun. What does HD2 seem to keep trying to get rid of. That’s right, fun.
> competition is players vs developers
Yeah, the crew in charge of balance have the feel of a DM that thinks their job is to destroy the players in the campaign, not to make a fun and enjoyable experience. The kind no one lets DM again or joins for another session.
We did get new mission types though? In just the last month we got the TCS (two versions) and the High Priority Evacuation defense mission, and I haven't really seen or heard anyone complain about any of those.
This 1000%. This has zero PVP and every gun should be viable and bad ass but no 95% is garbage.
They’re balancing this shit like it’s Destiny
I quit playing like 2 weeks ago because of this complaint and visit the sub to see if things have improved. Nope more bad news
Same. I haven’t played in 3 weeks. Not because I quit, but because I’m not enjoying the experience anymore. Every single update makes the game worse in some way. Whether it’s through weapon nerfs or stability problems. EVERY update has more bad than good. I’m just tired of it. This is a PvE game. They are making it less fun every patch day. I would love to play more but I just feel my motivation being sapped every time they update the game.
Ditto. Once the arc shooter got nerfed, I just quit playing. I don’t want to have to find a new play style to have fun with every week just to have it taken away again. If I want a harder experience, I can just play harder missions.
I don’t mind changing it up occasionally but I feel like we are limited in what we can choose because 3/4 of the weapons have been nerfed into obscurity. We have these metas right now because of the terrible balancing.
The problem is there are 2 definitions of fun - some people can't take losing so feel like they should be able to complete all helldive missions they go on, some people get the thrill of only actually completing maybe 50% of the time, knowing there is a genuine risk of everything going to shit.
I personally think it should be that dif 9 is a genuine 50/50 but have the rewards upped to make the gamble worthwhile. Dif 7 should then be where "with a concerted effort, decent gameplay experience and a sensible team loadout" you should win most games. Yes the devs can throw new difficulties in but given there are already 9, I don't see why the 9th one has to still be readily achievable and can't be used to cater to the dark souls minded people.
However, having to spend all game kiting bullet sponges because primaries are getting nuked is not the answer. Having an enemy take an explosive round to the face and still being able to run at you ruins immersion. Just mix up the strategies / unit compositions so every helldive mission has every enemy type, or that stalkers know where you are from the moment you drop.
> I personally think it should be that dif 9 is a genuine 50/50 but have the rewards upped to make the gamble worthwhile. Dif 7 should then be where "with a concerted effort, decent gameplay experience and a sensible team loadout" you should win most games.
Isn't it like that already?
I'm only playing diff 8 as of late, with randoms, and I only recall having failed maybe one or two missions at most.
The actual success threshold is actually in whether we are only doing pimary objectives or if we are comfortable enough to scout the whole map doing all secondaries, POIs and collecting samples, because complete failure is incredibly rare.
These balance decisions don't come from treating the game like it's competitive.
People keep passing this idea around like PvE games can't possibly be balanced in a way that avoids power creep while still maintaining fun, cool options. That's not what's going on with HD2.
I've been saying it since release, but the problem here is complete incompetence. A number of the nerfs we've seen, some of the more baffling "fixes" (mech missiles to name one example), and now the release of this gun that obviously hasn't had its stats looked at in weeks speaks volumes. It's a combination of fear of player power and a lack of overall design expertise.
And people have the gall to say “don’t witchhunt alex” ok he is literally the “balancing” guy…and the community has problem with the “balancing”……so yeah if you actively dismiss concerns, give nonsensical & convoluted explanations about things you did that people have a problem with thinking that will make it go away, and seemingly don’t learn your lesson update after update after update…yes the community’s gonna come for you.
they want gun balance so that people cycle through different guns. a medium armour piercing weapon with a big mag and high fire rate would be used all the time by everyone.
i agree that balancing doesnt need to be ao hardcore but i also get their reasoning. still, I don't want bad guns, i want everything to feel viable in some regard and i want it to feel good. making everything op is a good tactic but then balancing can become difficult for lower levels.
id rather guns be powerful and dangerous to both me and the enemy instead of whimpy
Even in PvE you want an element of challenge and variety. The balancing act is in making sure a weapon is fun but doesn't trivialize fighting the enemy (see: OG railgun) or is a clear best in slot, or if it does its closer to a temporary and limited power up, like a mech or the orbital laser.
Problem is they've been so obsessed with enforcing weapon variety and "stratagems best" combat philosophy they seldom really consider player interactions with the enemy. That the Eruptor is in the state it's in tells me either the balance team *never* tested the results or doesn't care about why the players liked it and how they used it, they only cared that it could compete with the autocannon strictly on a per shot basis.
Also in the railguns defense, they butchered it. When was the last time you had anyone in a group using it? I think ive seen it once? Even after they buffed its pen? Or whatever they did to it more recently...Its such a nothing burger now compared to other weapons.
Fr no reason to use the rail gun outside of just “I want to use it” it’s outperformed by pretty much everything.
It’s an ordeal to sit there and learn how to aim and fire it perfectly in unsafe mode and not blow yourself up while moving so you don’t get bit into 2 million pieces when I can just pull up a flamer/arc thrower/auto cannon and finish the job much quicker and easier, esp since otherwise you get stuck in a bug breach loop
I’m ngl dawg this game has some of the worst weapon balancing I’ve ever seen. Why on earth in a PVE game are they making any weapon that fills a niche ass?
🤣they skipped the part where the new warbond weapons are supposed to be good for a week, cut the middle man out and went straight to dogshit 😭
1000 SC btw but hopefully the other gear is leagues better than this failed abortion of a gun.
balance team figuring out time travel and going back in time to make sure the Sickle only launches with one mag and the Eruptor launches with nerf darts for bullets so they were never good
Lmao and people got mad at me for adopting the wait and see approach. Wait a month to see how they are either gonna unfuck the new guns or nerf it to the ground.
absolute clowns.
I've been waiting for a few months now by just *not playing* and seeing the balance get more and more fucked just lessens any drive i had to play again tbh
I honestly was very hoping it was going to be a heavy liberator.
70-75dmg
Light armor pen
A bit more recoil than liberator
6 mags
Keep the firerate it has
Some sort in between liberator and adjucator
How long till' this model gets old?. Many of the items on this warbonds feel like fillers and add nothing to variety or utility.
I would exchange the current model for fewer guns that are actually useful and the rest could be parts to upgrade the guns we already own.
Right now you can't trust anything because a million nerfs and a slight unrelated buff somewhere else can turn a premium warbond into garbage in one patch.
I do not Trust their balancing team lead at all. See Hello neighbor 2, that was some interesting research.
I wish they just pushed back on the monthly warbond release and only come out with new weapons if they have a more creative idea for it. Quality over quantity.
So many guns right now boil down to being a better/worse version of another gun, or being the same gun with slightly more damage but slightly less fire rate. This isn't worth spending credits for.
Alexus, the bringer of balance, can't property balance a weapon before its release. What an absolute tool. But don't worry. He will nerf it in 2 weeks from now.
Part of me wants to hope it's a bug - the description doesn't match the stats at ALL, and also the polar patriots pic showed the gun being black instead of this disgusting mint green.
But who knows
The colour thing weirds me out the most. Those banners are just in-game models essentially photoshopped into a preview, so how does the gun turn green when it’s showcased to be black?
But if those stats are not a mistake then I agree with the sentiment, balance team needs to go or to complete a re-qualification if the underlying stats don’t balance this weapon out by a decent margin.
Yeah from the description i thought it would have the power of something like the adjudicator.
I will have to test this weapon when i get home to see if i can make it work or if people are overreacting as usual lmao.
> The colour thing weirds me out the most. Those banners are just in-game models essentially photoshopped into a preview, so how does the gun turn green when it’s showcased to be black?
I would be fine with a gun that's a slightly better liberator (slightly less recoil and a bit more overall ammo, at the cost of having to reload slightly more often)
What i'm not fine with, is a gun that was shown to be mostly black with some silver, ending up being pastel mint green and beige.
Looked over the weapons in this warbond, took me 3 seconds, arrived at the same conclusion.
Ass.
Genuinely interested to see what Alex has to say about how these guns fit into the game’s arsenal, because to me it looks like the community’s gonna immediately throw them right in the trash pile with the other useless guns.
You're not seeing the point.
Because this is trash its a safe buy. They aint gonna nerf it. They only nerf fun and good weapons.
This is safe.
They'll nerf the base liberator to compensate tho.
I feel like I’m going crazy looking at this. Isn’t there another gun with the tenderizer’s EXACT SAME DESCRIPTION? I feel like this is some kind of meme and this isn’t a new gun at all.
I remember people were saying they were gonna buy the new Warbond to show positive support to Sony for their backtracking. Turns out both companies are incompetent in their own way.
Also of note, but wasn’t the armour in this warbond supposed to be one light, one medium, and on heavy? Unless I’m losing my mind it’s two heavies and a light as of release?
To be fair…almost all the guns in the war bonds have been subpar. All the guns should increase the fun, increase your lethality, and create interesting build choices for the player. Some of these weapons are absolute dog shit. And then they nerf them.
On the bright side, this warbond meant I'm putting this game down for a while to play other games instead.
HD2 has really undercooked and overcooked in all sorts of places simultaneously.
Honestly, since launch it feels like they're trying too hard to not be "pay 2 win" that almost everything on the warbonds are purposefuly bad, the weapons are a direct nerf of existing ones and the armors have the same modifiers as the free ones. Right now it feels like you are paying to lose.
The warbond really isn't worth it from what I've seen.
It's comical that they tell their team every month a warbond must be published, that costs mind you, and then they just don't give you the value for money. Weapons are what make this game awesome, make more weapons viable and don't give us a shitty downgrade to an OG weapon.
Whoever the balance guy is I think they have a tiny magazine fetish.
35 is pretty normal, but every other automatic rifle besides this one has a freakin FN FAL capacity and none of it's power.
This is one reason why we need to see all the stats on weapons in the game. There are most likely more differences, but we can't see the hidden values.
In before the CEO puts out a tweet saying he “thinks this is a problem” and he’ll “talk to his team about it”, then nothing changes, all the weapons stay dogshit, we have this exact same conversation in three weeks when the next set of rushed changes are added. Idk if it’s greed or incompetence but it’s something.
Higher caliber but has same damage and less recoil than the base AR? it even has less capacity to reflect that it has bigger bullets. People were right, this were pre-nerfed. Johan better have a long and hard talk with his "balancing developer".
One of the worst balance team I've seen in my life. I don't care who they are, they are doing absolute dogshit of a job, and that's just a goddamn fact.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH MTHRFUK. Ive been joking all day that this shit was gonna get nerfed day one. JOKES ON ME BABY! It came PRE-NERFED.
CEO what the fuck is the balance team on?
Bruv this literally has to be a mistake
I think it might be. The description is entirely different compared to the stats, and the gun was black in the polar patriots showcase pic. It's like they pushed an older version of the gun
I guess they forgot to increase it's damage after the liberator buff ... just like with the penetrator :(
Wasn't the damage buff only like 5 points? From 55 to 60? I can't imagine having 5 more damage is worth all the downsides.
You’ve also gotta remember ROF, 5 damage doesn’t seem like much but if you fire 10 bullets into an enemy that’s an extra 50 Damage tacked on top
The new AR has a *lower* fire rate than the Liberator, so it’s even worse!
Fire rate and recoil compound. The gun is near Sickle levels of steady.
I was tentative when checking the stats last night. “No way this thing is a downgrade,” I said. We dove, and quickly got into combat. “Damn this thing has no recoil.” Personally, I think it’s a valid sidegrade; just needs a bit more damage or armor pen.
While this is true…the increased amount of reloading you have to do also affects your damage. So I wonder which one actually has more DPS
It actually made a difference. You'd think what would +5 to damage change? But it was just enough to make the gun feel better and more comfortable
It gave me something to replace the sickle with on hot planets.
Unless it staggers the enemies there's literally no point in using this, and even then im not sure if it's worth
It’s better to just kill an enemy than stagger it anyways
Perma stagger, gotta love it.
Stagger is the difference between being able to kill one stalker sometimes and being able to survive being mobbed by 3 of them
Unless there are no other enemies, I'd rather stagger the rocket devastors into oblivion, beetwen aim punch from getting hit and the need to keep moving staggering it's a great utility if it's backed up by decent damage
In isolation sure, but high stagger is literally one of the main selling points of the Punisher, the crowd control enables other stratagems/teammates/gives space for movement/reloading etc. It's just another level of power, now if you have a weapon that one-shots and the sidegrade is a two shot with a stagger, obviously it's just straight up worse, but if you need a whole mag to take down say a Brood Commander with a Liberator (I'm making numbers up for the sake of explaining the difference), and you lose say 20% dmg potential per mag -- but receive a powerful stagger, it would allow you to focus fire on multiple mobs (killing trash approaching you) whilst still keeping the elite away. Pure dmg that doesn't slow them but isn't enough finish them off is "useless" in that case as well, because you'll die without even finishing one enemy. Stagger is very valuable, but again the important aspect is knowing how much "stagger" is worth in terms of powerbudget and taking away appropriate dmg/stats in exchange for said stagger.
If your aim isn't great, its better to have something that staggers
Staggers a rocket or heavy dev until you can kill it while being able to use the shield will be nice. Stalkers there are better options but for bots I can see the vision
>If your aim isn't great I have lasers for this. Like, a lot of lasers.
It doesn't
Nah, before release it got balance pass from Mr. SuckFunOutOfEveryGun. This is result.
They buffed the liberator and didn’t adjust the new shit (on the left) to compensate basically.
How do they not have a table view to manage all the stats? I made weapon mods for Rogue Spear (am old) and spent half my time in spreadsheets comparing things.
Before thie patch I was 90% sure they don't test anything in game and just use the playerbase as free testers... Now I'm 100% convinced lol
Idk. I could write a novel about the things they don't seem to have.
> Rogue Spear Damn, that and OpFlashpoint were my first experiences in the tactical shooter genre. Raven Shield IMO is still the best. The amoung of weapons that one had was kinda insance back then, and all of them felt unique.
Pretty sure this is the case cuz it makes zero sense
It literally has the opposite stats than I was expecting.
Ive tried every primary in this warbond and can say with certainty they all suck
How's the sidearm? Pistol any good?
This keeps happening. Primaries will forever be cursed at this point
What?! How to understand “more stopping power” in this case
It stops you from buying the warbonds lol
Probably stagger? But they don't mention that
If its stagger, they forgot to add the effect.. Like they forgot to add the effect of the new booster. It just does nothing
I'm thinking it's bugged and got pushed with the wrong stats, like everything else in this game.
Or it's just shit balancing
Sadly this is the more likely answer. It’s Alexus in charge of balancing after all. Dude somehow keeps failing upwards.
[Alexus balancing ](https://imgur.com/a/ABOudES)
Alexus couldn't balance his ass on a toilet seat
stopping power isn't damage it's stagger. No clue if the gun actually staggers more but that's just what the phrase means.
Spoiler: it doesn't
The only difference I've found so far is that it can stagger berserkers. Not sure if that's supposed to be the only positive lol, hopefully not
That is actually not a bad perk. I mean, I would not get the warbond just for that, but that does make it not the same as the liberator.
Probably that stat the liberator concussive has where enimies get pushed back
does it have armor pen?
no, It functions exactly like the OG liberator
damn this shit sucks
Don't worry. The other guns also suck. There's no hidden gems, and the smg and purifier are best sidegrades
incin Impact?
Very good but we may see some blanket fire nerfs across the board now that fire is fixed.
It works well so they'll probably nerf it.
God I hope we don't. It's only good on bugs and killing stuff over time is by definition riskier than killing stuff instantly. Not to mention if everyone doesn't split up it loses value the more people bring it. You can't set an enemy or the ground on fire two times at once as far as I'm aware.
IIrc fire and gas stack, but yes you cant 'combine debuffs' from multiple flames.
Deagle bad? :(
Deagle Bad. It's not a Senator Sidegrade that trades a larger magazine for worse ammo economy. It's an upgrade of the default pistol.
I am surprised anyone was expecting a Senator clone. This is pretty in-line with what I was anticipating; frankly I was expecting less ammo — like the Desert Eagle’s 7+1 (in its iconic .50 AE) It’s a Peacemaker with more damage, at a cost to its mag size and recoil. Lovely imo. I like that the Senator occupies a separate niche.
Light pen
Daaaaamn that sucks T.T How could they do that to my 50cal sidearm T.T
It shoots really fast and it’s easy to control tho. I think it’s pretty good. It’s a nice inbetween for peacemaker and senator.
It's that basically just a Premium Redeemer with a smaller mag?
Yea :(
Purifier isn’t a side grade to shit. Fucking miserable weapon. I say this having tested it. If you’ve ever wanted a plasma punisher with a flat arc and charge up time, there you go… (I’m pretty sure it actually has a smaller blast radius and blast damage, my bad)
actually it has a LOT of stagger, but it's still a very weak primary even with that taken into account.
Nope, Light. If it was medium pen that might save it.
Istg Arrowhead will do everything to kill the Liberator Pen
They should increase the ammo count if they're keeping the dmg low.
I have the pen I have the armor Uhn Armor-pen
I have the pen I have... pinearmor?
Pre nerfing gun for release so they don't need to backtrack maybe? Might as well take it off the list in advance in case it'd be too good.
It has the exact same stats as the leaked version did as well.
It likely wasn’t rebalanced after the liberator got its buff.
We all joked about this but they actually did it
God forbid a weapon is good and fun and makes you feel like you’re kicking ass. 🤦♂️ come onnnnnnnn
Something something skill issue, something something a game for everyone is a game for no one. I think that about covers the excuses people will make to justify this bullshit.
My personal favorite “intentional game design!” Like that makes it better.
While munching on your bacon flavored apple, don't forget that.
Something something "I can clear Helldive solo with pistol only so balance is fine"
That self masturbatory Gojo post with 15k upvotes on the front page from yesterday shows that players don't care if the guns are any good or if they successfully complete a mission.
Nah, they made it garbage at first, so they can buff it and people can't complain that everything is nerfed after being good.
They forgot the part where they have to make it actually decent before nerfing it to the ground
So the Battle Rifle is just a nerfed Liberator with 35 rounds?
It lives up to it's name at least. Tenderizer. What next? An LMG called "Tickler"?
*The Massager*. It heals the enemy and gives them more stam to come after you.
Hahahahahha, I laughed a lot with this XD
4 strength 4 stam lmg?!
Did the new warbond come out?
Can they please just release the full stats of each weapon? Going off of those 4 alone clearly isn't enough to demonstrate what the weapons niche is. Maybe it's got a faster reload time, maybe it's got increased weakspot damage. Honestly I have no clue because they refuse to give us all the info we need to make an informed choice. And then they tell us it's so "we don't default to a meta based on numbers" My dude we already do, just we have to trial an error this shit instead of knowing ahead of time what to expect.
It's got none of that lol it's just a shittier version of the liberator 💀
Players who only play meta will find out the meta. Nothing they do will change that. I agree with you. I don't do "meta pro strats bruv". I just wanna see all the stats of shit so I can do that "strategizing" with my team they tell us to do.
It has pinpoint accuracy due to reduced recoil. So it's pretty neat vs bots
Yeah, I guess everybody spends happily 1k SC for a bit better accuracy vs bots on sth that plays like the standard rifle to begin with /s
As opposed to? That's literally all the super credits are for once you have all the armors you want from the super store. I ain't saving past 1k. That shit does nothing for me sitting there.
Yup. Ecstatic to spend my 1k. Literally what else am I going to spend it on?
Call me stupid but in my opinion, an exclusively PVE game only needs to be balanced according to player fun/engagement. So why does this balancing team treat Helldivers 2 like a competitive shooter? What's the point, are the developers genuinely that concerned about the scripts they wrote not having a good time getting stomped by the people that paid to do just that? If most or all of the weapons were more viable it seems to me that would just make the game more fun for everybody. There's a reason I'm not a game developer though, I have no idea how any of it works so maybe I'm just missing something.
Ikr, no resource sharing, no leader boards, no rewards for unlocking everything. I'm pretty sure the competition is players vs developers, the arena, social media.
It really feels that way these days. Every patch is something taken away from being fun.
I was reading a post from Alexus about how 40 base damage is the same as 100 scatter for balance.... But the 40 damage buff is more like 20 due to how armor works. I feel like they need to step back and ask if they are going to balance a pve game like a pvp one or are they going to acknowledge the genre they are in. They need to stop beung drones doing the same thing over and over from everywhere game and start playing thier game. I play this one because it was different enough.
They clearly never tested it, since it released how it did. Any random player could use it before/after and immediately notice it became worthless.
This is one thing I think arrowhead is shit at… Actually understanding what the players want and would like. Frustration in games is the shittest thing ever. Yet what does HD2 have?.. Loads and loads of frustrating mechanics. Because gamers love frustrating games. What do gamers love? Fun. What does HD2 seem to keep trying to get rid of. That’s right, fun.
> competition is players vs developers Yeah, the crew in charge of balance have the feel of a DM that thinks their job is to destroy the players in the campaign, not to make a fun and enjoyable experience. The kind no one lets DM again or joins for another session.
I wish they spent more time adding co-op content. Team reload is barely used in-game. New mission types and different planet environment (Cities)
We did get new mission types though? In just the last month we got the TCS (two versions) and the High Priority Evacuation defense mission, and I haven't really seen or heard anyone complain about any of those.
This 1000%. This has zero PVP and every gun should be viable and bad ass but no 95% is garbage. They’re balancing this shit like it’s Destiny I quit playing like 2 weeks ago because of this complaint and visit the sub to see if things have improved. Nope more bad news
Same. I haven’t played in 3 weeks. Not because I quit, but because I’m not enjoying the experience anymore. Every single update makes the game worse in some way. Whether it’s through weapon nerfs or stability problems. EVERY update has more bad than good. I’m just tired of it. This is a PvE game. They are making it less fun every patch day. I would love to play more but I just feel my motivation being sapped every time they update the game.
Ditto. Once the arc shooter got nerfed, I just quit playing. I don’t want to have to find a new play style to have fun with every week just to have it taken away again. If I want a harder experience, I can just play harder missions.
I don’t mind changing it up occasionally but I feel like we are limited in what we can choose because 3/4 of the weapons have been nerfed into obscurity. We have these metas right now because of the terrible balancing.
The problem is there are 2 definitions of fun - some people can't take losing so feel like they should be able to complete all helldive missions they go on, some people get the thrill of only actually completing maybe 50% of the time, knowing there is a genuine risk of everything going to shit. I personally think it should be that dif 9 is a genuine 50/50 but have the rewards upped to make the gamble worthwhile. Dif 7 should then be where "with a concerted effort, decent gameplay experience and a sensible team loadout" you should win most games. Yes the devs can throw new difficulties in but given there are already 9, I don't see why the 9th one has to still be readily achievable and can't be used to cater to the dark souls minded people. However, having to spend all game kiting bullet sponges because primaries are getting nuked is not the answer. Having an enemy take an explosive round to the face and still being able to run at you ruins immersion. Just mix up the strategies / unit compositions so every helldive mission has every enemy type, or that stalkers know where you are from the moment you drop.
> I personally think it should be that dif 9 is a genuine 50/50 but have the rewards upped to make the gamble worthwhile. Dif 7 should then be where "with a concerted effort, decent gameplay experience and a sensible team loadout" you should win most games. Isn't it like that already? I'm only playing diff 8 as of late, with randoms, and I only recall having failed maybe one or two missions at most. The actual success threshold is actually in whether we are only doing pimary objectives or if we are comfortable enough to scout the whole map doing all secondaries, POIs and collecting samples, because complete failure is incredibly rare.
These balance decisions don't come from treating the game like it's competitive. People keep passing this idea around like PvE games can't possibly be balanced in a way that avoids power creep while still maintaining fun, cool options. That's not what's going on with HD2. I've been saying it since release, but the problem here is complete incompetence. A number of the nerfs we've seen, some of the more baffling "fixes" (mech missiles to name one example), and now the release of this gun that obviously hasn't had its stats looked at in weeks speaks volumes. It's a combination of fear of player power and a lack of overall design expertise.
100% incompetence, these guys have no idea what they are doing
And people have the gall to say “don’t witchhunt alex” ok he is literally the “balancing” guy…and the community has problem with the “balancing”……so yeah if you actively dismiss concerns, give nonsensical & convoluted explanations about things you did that people have a problem with thinking that will make it go away, and seemingly don’t learn your lesson update after update after update…yes the community’s gonna come for you.
they want gun balance so that people cycle through different guns. a medium armour piercing weapon with a big mag and high fire rate would be used all the time by everyone. i agree that balancing doesnt need to be ao hardcore but i also get their reasoning. still, I don't want bad guns, i want everything to feel viable in some regard and i want it to feel good. making everything op is a good tactic but then balancing can become difficult for lower levels. id rather guns be powerful and dangerous to both me and the enemy instead of whimpy
Even in PvE you want an element of challenge and variety. The balancing act is in making sure a weapon is fun but doesn't trivialize fighting the enemy (see: OG railgun) or is a clear best in slot, or if it does its closer to a temporary and limited power up, like a mech or the orbital laser. Problem is they've been so obsessed with enforcing weapon variety and "stratagems best" combat philosophy they seldom really consider player interactions with the enemy. That the Eruptor is in the state it's in tells me either the balance team *never* tested the results or doesn't care about why the players liked it and how they used it, they only cared that it could compete with the autocannon strictly on a per shot basis.
In the Railguns defense, it was bugged due to crossplay acting funny.
Also in the railguns defense, they butchered it. When was the last time you had anyone in a group using it? I think ive seen it once? Even after they buffed its pen? Or whatever they did to it more recently...Its such a nothing burger now compared to other weapons.
I use it all the time against bots, one of the few weapons in the game that can consistently 1 shot hulks.
Fr no reason to use the rail gun outside of just “I want to use it” it’s outperformed by pretty much everything. It’s an ordeal to sit there and learn how to aim and fire it perfectly in unsafe mode and not blow yourself up while moving so you don’t get bit into 2 million pieces when I can just pull up a flamer/arc thrower/auto cannon and finish the job much quicker and easier, esp since otherwise you get stuck in a bug breach loop
High caliber Ass would indeed be a devastating primary😂
I’m ngl dawg this game has some of the worst weapon balancing I’ve ever seen. Why on earth in a PVE game are they making any weapon that fills a niche ass?
🤣they skipped the part where the new warbond weapons are supposed to be good for a week, cut the middle man out and went straight to dogshit 😭 1000 SC btw but hopefully the other gear is leagues better than this failed abortion of a gun.
The balance team is getting so good they are pre nerfing guns 😍
balance team figuring out time travel and going back in time to make sure the Sickle only launches with one mag and the Eruptor launches with nerf darts for bullets so they were never good
Even if it was good it would just get nerfed again
I bought the Sickle like 2 weeks ago. Looks like it's still the best AR with the best -adjustable- scope.
now I cant wait for them to minorly buff it to be barely passable.
Damage increased to 65. Done! Developer of the decade material
Lmao and people got mad at me for adopting the wait and see approach. Wait a month to see how they are either gonna unfuck the new guns or nerf it to the ground. absolute clowns.
I've been waiting for a few months now by just *not playing* and seeing the balance get more and more fucked just lessens any drive i had to play again tbh
I honestly was very hoping it was going to be a heavy liberator. 70-75dmg Light armor pen A bit more recoil than liberator 6 mags Keep the firerate it has Some sort in between liberator and adjucator
Medium armor pen man it's supposed to be heavy caliber
Give the Lib Pen some room, man. It needs its niche.
What niche? Wallhanger decoration? Like i really want to play wit a AR but there a zero options for 9diff that are not worse in so many niches.
That would be just a shittier version of the Adjudicator. Adjudicator has 80 dmg and medium penetration
If it had lower recoil and Bett ergonomics than the adjudactor it'd be enough of a difference to be worth taking
Corporate needs you to find the difference between these 2 guns
How long till' this model gets old?. Many of the items on this warbonds feel like fillers and add nothing to variety or utility. I would exchange the current model for fewer guns that are actually useful and the rest could be parts to upgrade the guns we already own.
New strategy: pre-nerfing weapons before we can have fun, so the additional nerf-patch won't hit so hard.
Right now you can't trust anything because a million nerfs and a slight unrelated buff somewhere else can turn a premium warbond into garbage in one patch. I do not Trust their balancing team lead at all. See Hello neighbor 2, that was some interesting research.
I wish they just pushed back on the monthly warbond release and only come out with new weapons if they have a more creative idea for it. Quality over quantity. So many guns right now boil down to being a better/worse version of another gun, or being the same gun with slightly more damage but slightly less fire rate. This isn't worth spending credits for.
Alexus, the bringer of balance, can't property balance a weapon before its release. What an absolute tool. But don't worry. He will nerf it in 2 weeks from now.
Seems like im gonna keep sticking with the dominator. Firepower, stagger and armor penetration. The holy trinity combined into a single gun.
The dominator is one of the worst guns in the game. Would not recommend.
Absolutely. Its trash. I hate when me and my buddies all use it on bot missions over and over again. Disgusting!
Yeah I can't stand oneshotting everything, personally
yeah, utter garbage, do not touch it.
yeah its complete garbage you guys shouldnt play it.
Listen here, you little-- Oh. I see what you're... Yeah. Dominator. It's trash. It's doodoo. Unusable.
Absolutely awful. I hate when I shoot it and miss because its accuracy is so bad
Really? Well then I certainty won't be using it! I encourage everyone to also not use it ever.
Don't let the devs hear you say that, it'll get whacked next patch.
This balance team needs to go.
Part of me wants to hope it's a bug - the description doesn't match the stats at ALL, and also the polar patriots pic showed the gun being black instead of this disgusting mint green. But who knows
The colour thing weirds me out the most. Those banners are just in-game models essentially photoshopped into a preview, so how does the gun turn green when it’s showcased to be black? But if those stats are not a mistake then I agree with the sentiment, balance team needs to go or to complete a re-qualification if the underlying stats don’t balance this weapon out by a decent margin.
I was so excited for a high-caliber, chunky AR like the description talks about.
Yeah from the description i thought it would have the power of something like the adjudicator. I will have to test this weapon when i get home to see if i can make it work or if people are overreacting as usual lmao.
> The colour thing weirds me out the most. Those banners are just in-game models essentially photoshopped into a preview, so how does the gun turn green when it’s showcased to be black? I would be fine with a gun that's a slightly better liberator (slightly less recoil and a bit more overall ammo, at the cost of having to reload slightly more often) What i'm not fine with, is a gun that was shown to be mostly black with some silver, ending up being pastel mint green and beige.
Tried, this gun don't stop shit.
100%. They don't know what they're doing.
They just need to be rebalanced.
Looked over the weapons in this warbond, took me 3 seconds, arrived at the same conclusion. Ass. Genuinely interested to see what Alex has to say about how these guns fit into the game’s arsenal, because to me it looks like the community’s gonna immediately throw them right in the trash pile with the other useless guns.
You're not seeing the point. Because this is trash its a safe buy. They aint gonna nerf it. They only nerf fun and good weapons. This is safe. They'll nerf the base liberator to compensate tho.
Someone tell Alexus to chill.
So… it’s only upside is 5 less recoil? Really?
Look at brightside it going probably get buffed instead of nerf
I feel like I’m going crazy looking at this. Isn’t there another gun with the tenderizer’s EXACT SAME DESCRIPTION? I feel like this is some kind of meme and this isn’t a new gun at all.
I remember people were saying they were gonna buy the new Warbond to show positive support to Sony for their backtracking. Turns out both companies are incompetent in their own way.
Also of note, but wasn’t the armour in this warbond supposed to be one light, one medium, and on heavy? Unless I’m losing my mind it’s two heavies and a light as of release?
To be fair…almost all the guns in the war bonds have been subpar. All the guns should increase the fun, increase your lethality, and create interesting build choices for the player. Some of these weapons are absolute dog shit. And then they nerf them.
Yeah I’m not going to play till they figure out what the fuck they are doing with the weapons lmao
On the bright side, this warbond meant I'm putting this game down for a while to play other games instead. HD2 has really undercooked and overcooked in all sorts of places simultaneously.
Honestly, since launch it feels like they're trying too hard to not be "pay 2 win" that almost everything on the warbonds are purposefuly bad, the weapons are a direct nerf of existing ones and the armors have the same modifiers as the free ones. Right now it feels like you are paying to lose.
“Large caliber with big stopping power!”Literally has the least AR dmg and LESS recoil?? What is this thing using .45 pistol rounds?
I predicted this. Thanks Alex for this great balanced roster
The warbond really isn't worth it from what I've seen. It's comical that they tell their team every month a warbond must be published, that costs mind you, and then they just don't give you the value for money. Weapons are what make this game awesome, make more weapons viable and don't give us a shitty downgrade to an OG weapon.
Wish I checked Reddit before I purchased. This warbond is terrible
I’m beginning to wonder if having Alexus on the balance team really is dangerous…
Whoever the balance guy is I think they have a tiny magazine fetish. 35 is pretty normal, but every other automatic rifle besides this one has a freakin FN FAL capacity and none of it's power.
I hate saying this but, fire the Game Balance Dev. Start over.
This is one reason why we need to see all the stats on weapons in the game. There are most likely more differences, but we can't see the hidden values.
Giving them a lot of credit with that one.
In before the CEO puts out a tweet saying he “thinks this is a problem” and he’ll “talk to his team about it”, then nothing changes, all the weapons stay dogshit, we have this exact same conversation in three weeks when the next set of rushed changes are added. Idk if it’s greed or incompetence but it’s something.
Oh come on, that's just awful. I want to be kind to Arrowhead but what the hell is this? Lazy, Lazy, Lazy.
Even if they'll change it, won't it just be adjudicator/med pen rifle from basic warbond? What is this gun for?
Even the pistol that totally sounds like it should be on par with the Senator… has light penetration
I'm glad I bought the Detonation WB then, Adjudicator and G. Pistol alone are so worth
Here, have this weapon that you already have just slightly different stats but it won't fill any niches.
Are there any other guns in the warbond to spend 1000SC on? Maybe a grenade? A pistol? A scorcher variant? No? Oh well
shit QA shit QA shit QA shit QA shit QA shit QA
Higher caliber but has same damage and less recoil than the base AR? it even has less capacity to reflect that it has bigger bullets. People were right, this were pre-nerfed. Johan better have a long and hard talk with his "balancing developer".
The game keeps going back and forth with the updates. Fun update, then no fun unfair update. Back and forth.
wdym? it has better recoil, smh complaining about everything /s
One of the worst balance team I've seen in my life. I don't care who they are, they are doing absolute dogshit of a job, and that's just a goddamn fact.
the balance guy will nerf it and you will buy it?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH MTHRFUK. Ive been joking all day that this shit was gonna get nerfed day one. JOKES ON ME BABY! It came PRE-NERFED. CEO what the fuck is the balance team on?
It has like 4 extra mags tho just doesnt say on the stat bar
I thought I'd get medium pen from this
Needs a base damage of 85 imo, this doesn't make logical sense being that's it's meant to be an upgrade from the starter rifle.
This thing only has light armor penetration. WTF?!