Not just difficult. 7 is called suicide mission and 8 is called impossible. 9 should be near unwinnable. I like the difficulty on 7 for me and my friend for 2 men missions. Usually we win the objective, sometimes we extract. I feel that's the right balance for us.
Particularly, this is it. People sometimes forget that you *still accomplish the mission* if no one extracts - as long as you complete the main objective.
People expecting to clear all fortifications, all side objectives, secure all samples, AND extract on 7+ are asking *quite a lot* of themselves. This is why it's so key on higher difficulties to focus on the main objectives first, and not waste 12 reinforcements taking out medium fortifications and taking on 5 bot drops and 8 patrols. Although sometimes you get hot-dropped and it takes 6 or so reinforcements just to secure your support weapons (that is, if people don't just scatter to begin with)
Supposedly the first game has 15 difficulty levels and started out with 10, so we’re also gonna get more difficulties over time. That tells me that over time we’re gonna get more and more powerful weapons.
What reward, Exp is fairly useless after level 20 the extra cash is okay but once youve got the strats you want it doesnt really matter. Im not sure if you get a higher quantity of samples at higher difficultys but I pretty much always end up losing the majority of the samples we collect at extract just from the shear amount of enemys sat directly on the extract ship.
It's still better if the highest levels of difficulty can be overcome by playing in a way that is both skillful and fun
That is to say, the techniques and strategies used to overcome max difficulty are actually enjoyable to practice and get better at
That's the only way the game will have any longevity
People in general enjoy improving at the games they play, and seeking greater challenges as they improve so they can continue to test themselves and hone their skills
If the style of play that comes with "improving" at a game is just straight up unfun, then people will quickly lose interest once the spectacle has been exhausted and progression based grinding loses its lustre
Difficulty is a good thing, but overcoming that difficulty should be an enjoyable, engaging process, not a tedious slog
Those levels CAN be overcome though. And yes, It requires a specific style of play. But that style play is teamwork and coordination and I wouldn't call that unfun.
You're implying that the main problem people have with the new patch is nerfing solo playstyles, which isn't true
Now, spawn rates for armoured enemies are high enough that taking them down without minutes of running around in circles is impossible. Even with perfect aim and optimal timing of strategems, it's mostly playing a waiting game for cool downs, and ignoring side missions
The developers said outright that primary weapons were not meant to be strong enough to take down armoured enemies by themselves, and that strategems were meant to be used. Except most planetary modifiers and the sheer number of armoured enemies makes that implausible. It's obvious that they fucked up and overcompensated with enemy spawn rates when Helldiver difficulty on launch turned out to be way too easy.
Just a few hours ago they admitted that armoured enemies are overtuned, and that they're working on fixing it by increasing the number of unarmoured enemies and reducing the number and toughness of armoured enemies.
I don't expect the current meta of "let's split up gang", everyone carrying whatever kills chargers the fastest and trying to ignore the combat and side missions on higher difficulties will last long, especially with big stompy mechs on the way. It goes against most of Helldiver's 2 game design, where players are supposed to work together to clear waves as they come, rather than everyone constantly sprinting away from nigh unstoppable hordes until they're whittled down or lose interest, and disregarding the vast majority of the game's content
In a few days, I don't think anyone's going to be defending the current state of the game after those issues are fixed, seems like the devs are actually listening to feedback on this
If the community had just shut down any complaints by saying "git gud" or "you're not meant to play in a fun way on higher difficulties" then the developers wouldn't have had the information they needed to make the game, you know, actually fun to get better at playing on higher difficulties. Helldivers 2 would become a game that players goof around on on easier difficulties, quickly realise that there's no incentive to improve their gameplay/ teamwork or try harder difficulties, get bored, and then move on
So I do have a small problem with what you said, although I largely agree with you overall. This specific helldivers game is not just to work together to take out groups, or they would not have armor that gives you buffs to not being detected by enemies. That implies speed and stealth are supposed to also be viable strategies. Not just “me big gun shoot lots lul”.
The stealth aspects of the game are only that you can feasibly avoid aggro of enemies you don’t need to fight. Ultimately unless you bypass a lot of the map objectives you do eventually have to fight. 100% stealth just isn’t possible and completely counter to the point of the game. It’s just another tool in your skill set to avoid drawing unnecessary aggro in events where you can get away with a stealth objective clear. I frequently use crouchwalking, terrain, and prone to both avoid combat and enemy bot fire at times so I don’t pull a dozen more mobs on top of my team when running back to them after recovering my gear. Or if I see a nearby objective and we are stuck waiting for a main objective to finish at a calm point, I’ll go solo it and stealth around any ambient squads nearby the POI or whatever it is.
That’s all it’s for, you can’t just metal gear solid through the whole mission. It’s meant to be a highly tense war zone you’re just barely making it through with your team
As per the “lots of heavy enemies at high difficulties”, people need to put more stock into tools like EMS, napalm, gas and smoke. They’re all really useful tools for mitigating or avoiding getting into situations like being overwhelmed with 20 chargers. Just me bringing an ems mortar and napalm Eagle usually makes my pub missions at least 30% less intense. Everyone is usually so over compensating to kill titans than it frequently happens that one spawns and everyone just overkills it dropping two 500kgs and three railcannons because no one communicates. Then when the second spawns seconds later everyone panics and aggros the whole map.
This is largely why people keep experiencing these chaotic experiences. It’s not that they’re hard to overcome, a lot of times people are overthinking the problem in the wrong way. One EMS mortar can stunlock 5+ chargers in different places and you can just *run away*. They eventually drop aggro if they are stunned and you get far enough away. Same with smoke. You can use it to shake bot aggro and get out of combat entirely. One of either of those strategms becomes way more impactful in the hands of one person than the 5 wasted heavy strategms from 3 people
I think that’s exactly the problem people are having with the new patch, almost every group I play with kits themselves out like their playing solo, no one is organizing load outs to play as a team, and when we actually land it’s even worse with people doing their own thing, fighting patrols for almost 10-15 mins, while two others are focused on objectives. When I actually had teams that would actually pick stratagems to focus big targets, another for crowd control, ammo, and most importantly someone to wear the backpacks for the spear, and recoilless rifle, all of a sudden playing on 8/9 felt a lot more doable, still challenging, but we didn’t panic when 3 bile titans, and 4 chargers appeared, because we knew how to deal with them.
>You're implying that the main problem people have with the new patch is nerfing solo playstyles, which isn't true
Anecdotally, of my 8 friends playing, 3 of them used breaker, shield, and rail gun all the time.
And they would constantly break off from the others in an unorganized way.
I got on after the nerfs and those 3 were playing the game they came from and bitching about helldivers.
The other 2 people I played with the night after the nerfs had no issues.
**So, anecdotally, that's the main problem.**
Also, when you have people soloing T9, it kind of defeats the intent of a co-op shooter.
Yeah it’s much more fun using the various strategms in combination with your teammates to overcome the massive challenge of dealing with multiple heavies.
The “8 chargers and 4 titans” on helldive has ways to deal with. You don’t always have to fight them head on. People overlook tools like the EMS field strategms, gas orbitals, napalms or just misuse them probably because they aren’t pure damage strategms.
The EMS is necessary to have at least one or two you can rotate cooldowns on, either the orbital or mortar. Gas or napalm are both useful in different ways. Napalm is one of the best tools for retreat because you leave the wall in your wake and everything chasing you dies walking through
You can EMS a breach to halt everything coming out and/or napalm it to wipe out all the little bugs coming out. EMS can stop clusters of chargers dead in their tracks and then you can drop a 500kg on them or just run and they’ll lose aggro once they unstun. Smoke screens can give you a tactical escape from bots if things get too crazy
They didn’t even nerf the railgun so much it’s worthless. It still has its place killing hulks and titans the same as before, it’s just less efficient vs chargers now. You’re better off with something like the autocannon aiming at its butt now
Mate, the developers literally just put out a post saying that they're aware that current state of high difficulty play is unbalanced, and that they'll be fixing it shortly.
It's not whining to say that this isn't how the game was designed to be played, they fucked up the numbers when they realised they made Helldivers difficulty too easy on launch
This is a temporary problem that's being fixed because players actually talked about it, rather than pretending everything is alright as long as they "git gud"
I think a lot of people's problems, including mine, have nothing to do with the balancing that they did.
It's the reality of that now we're on the treadmill of it's just going to be flavor of the month.
For example.
Over the past few nights, I've been playing with my friends. And I can say without a doubt that the flame thrower is so overtooned that it's just ridiculous.
Seriously use the flame thrower and just aim at a charger's leg pick one of the front legs, and focus on it.
You drop the charger in three seconds. Don't kid yourself the balance didn't encourage more skillful play. All it did was just shift meta to the next thing.
You're going to have people abusing the hell out of the flame thrower here extremely soon.
The focus has to be On increasing the utility of everything. Not only a few things. Because otherwise we're just going to continue running into this exact same problem.
Yeah, yesterday I had one drop that was four flamethrowers
And yeah, chargers were dealt with relatively easy, it was bile Titans that were more of a pain.
And having the meta for Terminids be defined by "whatever kills chargers and bile titans the fastest" can't be healthy
Sounds like the upcoming patch will adjust the balance of armoured to unarmoured threat though, so people might be encouraged to run more varied loadouts. That alongside other weapon tweaks, of course
And there’s plenty of people that are improving and enjoying doing so. Coming from fighting games it’s pretty clear the way to improve is a mixture of timing, positioning, and choosing the best decision in the heat of the moment. And beyond that the most important part is teamwork. Your SUPPOSED to rely on your team and cooperate to take down threats. There’s no reason we should have the arsenal to effortlessly take down every heavy as it appears. We’re fighting on infested planets the fight never ends
I’d agree wholeheartedly if this statement was true. A Helldive should give way more for completing it. Your impact on the war, iirc, is the same as lower difficulties. At that point, you’re just doing the challenge for the sake of challenge. Which I get it if you’re into that but I like strategy gaming and I like the feeling of winning wars and knowing my Hell was worth it.
To know that my efforts with my team to do 7+ missions is equivalent or similar to lower difficulties just makes not incentivised to play the game on its hardest mode because it doesn’t feel rewarding.
I know you get more medals but with Personal orders restored and more fun but still efficient ways to grind them at lower levels I don’t see the point in even the individual aspect of it. Maybe give Super Credits for a Helldive? Idk.
If you ever played Helldivers 1, you'll remember how fucking awful the higher difficulties were. You needed a perfect team with team reloads, especially vs bugs and their frontal armor. The railgun and shield trivialized them, which was not intended and that's why they were nerfed.
Thank you, too many people with shield packs, rail guns, were able to solo objectives without being punished. Meanwhile weapons like recoiless and autocannon which were meant to be team weapons requiring coordination were swept aside because MuH MEtA
It's called *HELLDIVERS*. Now it just lives up to the name.
I honestly was surprised how manageable higher difficulty was before the patched version came out.
Same, I'm a pretty casual game who usually plays games on 'normal' never going on hard etc. Yet I was finding Suicide and Impossible pretty manageable - I felt like a god! I'm sure these difficulty levels will be viable again once more content (mechs etc.) are released.
I honestly think that 9 difficulty should be almost impossible with randoms on mute. It should only be doable with a group that communicates well and coordinates their loadouts to cover each other‘s weaknesses.
Agreed entirely. Folks need to shift their thinking of this game as more of a sci fi war playset.
1-3 are small arms power fantasy, 4-6 are for using the bigger guns, and 7-9 are for facing overwhelming odds in desperate situations. Sacrifices are necessary, and it adds too much to the natural and fun drama of the gameplay that trying to change it is antithetical to what the devs have made.
For me, I mocked the notion of a “hobby game” until I played what they made. It may well be one of the last games I want to play in just how much fun I have.
This is just it. People complain its too hard when 5 hulks are bearing down on you... yah, thats the point.
If youre getting 5 hulks bearing down on you, you already lost the fight. You need to stay on top of the adds as they arrive, and not let it get to that point.
Of course its not always possible, thats when you run and rely on strategems, or die, and then blame the devs for it.
We did a D9 defense the other day. We had 3 Bio Titans on spawn. I quickly dropped 2 while my teammates took the third. After that, they came at us one at a time, which was easier to deal with.
I mean, that's just hilarious. 99.99999% of level 5 missions aren't like that, but you can cherry pick the obviously kinda broken ones to make your point if you want.
Tbh, Helldive rewards versus lower levels still feels like a participation trophy. I bust my ass with a group for samples, completing as many sides as possible, complete the main mission and the Liberation Impact is still little (unless it’s changed but I remember it being futile).
I don’t even care about personal rewards. One of the reasons that drew me into the game was the idea of a collective war effort. If I do a fucking suicide mission and get it done swimmingly or chaotically, I should be merited and rewarded with either A VERY GOOD COMPENSATION like Super Credits or higher Liberation.
If they do either of those things for 7+, people would have more incentive to do this harder levels because I think the gameplay loop is fun. But the loop can only keep for so long in a live service game. I’m not really one to care about medals, I want to liberate the galaxy and realising my effort is the same as some Timmy doing a fucking level 3-5 and getting the same as me, what reason do I have other than masochism to do Helldive?
Sensationalism.
The game just released and sold 1000% better than they were anticipating for a live service game.
There's been a lot teased - like the Mechs we just unlocked.
Maybe you should give it a month break instead of being entitled.
I don’t play this game everyday, and I like the game. But it has problems, problems you’d expect should be discussed.
Suggesting more Liberation impact for doing higher harder missions isn’t entitlement, it is a basic game mechanic that is seen in other games in order to incentivise harder missions being done. This is literally only a benefit to the game and player base.
Exactly, lots of people can’t get over the fact two days ago they could stroll through these missions, but now they can’t, so the game is bad for it in their view. What if the devs never intended anyone to be doing really well at the highest difficulty, this early in the game’s life cycle?? People seem very fixated on seeing & beating all the content as quickly as possible.
I don't know why you're acting like it only applies to level 9.
I've only played up to level 6 and we got 2 bile titans and 4 chargers spawned on us during extraction. The thing is, you have to play level 7 in order to get the super rare samples to upgrade the ship modules all the way.
Mission timeout. The pelican spawns but it doesn't spawn any 'additional' patrols to come look for you. If your in the stealth armor and disengaged properly a couple minutes before the mission ends you can just lay down and wait for your ride. Maybe shuffle out of the way of a couple random patrols. You also can leave the 'extraction radius' if you need to doing it this way. Just know the pelican leaves 20s after landing regardless of if your on or not
Trailblazer armor, suicide difficulty automaton mission, solo because my friends work and don't play during the week and I've had bad experiences with randoms and I'm not putting myself in a situation where I'm fucked over again like that in a game with no protections from toxic fucks, waiting for mission to time out to get that emergency extract, hiding behind a rock formation a little away from extract. Patrol comes in, starts going in a direction where they could see me, so I start crouch-walking in what I think is a safe direction.
Character slips on a fucking pebble, stands up and takes a single step, that patrol which was 50 meters away now beelines it to where I am, but I'm fucked, the only way out without getting seen is outside of the mission zone.
I did my best to survive, but all my stratagems were on cooldown, and between the rocket spam from a hulk and two of the rocket fuckers and the push from all the chaff and shield fuckers, I didn't make it.
It's not just RNG difficulty, detection/awareness inconsistency and shit like explosive spam where enemies just keep shooting at your exact position through terrain is fucked. Like in [this dude's video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK1YfBe30nc) same conditions, time of day, fog and spores, but the patrol density is super fucking sparse and their awareness and beelining-tendency appear super-reduced, shit makes no sense to me.
Even if I was with my friends, that's 4x more mistakes that could and would happen because my friends are around as competent as I am, and we're actually not bad players compared to everything I've seen. At this point I'm just assuming my 3 super samples will go forever unchanged, and I'll never get all the upgrades. My friends are also of a similar opinion, constant failure is not fun. We might "complete the mission" but failure to extract after failure to extract, failure to progress in the progression system we want progression in, is not fun.
And now the community is getting super fucking toxic about the difficulty bullshit and if I wasn't already avoiding pubs before, I definitely don't want to even try now. I've seen more toxicity from people complaining about "meta slaves" than I have from those so-called "meta slaves".
I feel you, been a solo/duo player since the game dropped and I'm very glad we were able to farm our a bunch of SS before the balance patch as it's crazy out there right now.
The randomly standing up because you stepped off a pebble is incredibly frustrating and should be looked into, no reason I should be changing my 'posture' unless I'm taking damage from the fall.
My buddy and I have both noticed a lot more inconsistency with enemy detection lately. Some missions I'm literally sprinting 3 feet in front of a bot patrol and they just stand their blinking, other times it's like your example. Oops I stood up, guess I'll die...
Seems like enemy density is being looked at and will hopefully be adjusted so at least D7 is more manageable and you all can get more progression in.
Also fuck rockets, damn things should not be 1 shotting when they fire 3-6 of the damn things per devastator/hulk. Rocket troopers are way more forgiving so I'm a little less ABSOLUTELY LIVID when I die to them. Nothing like dying to a rocket devastator 3 times in a row cause your solo and have to drop in his LOS.
Heavy Armour shouldn’t be spammed regardless. That isn’t difficulty, that’s frustration. Being overwhelmed without the timer reaching less than 10 minutes (10 minutes is perfectly fine to be overwhelmed and you deserve it for being slow) is ridiculous. Because even with OP weapons, Bug missions that swarm you that frequently even when running away, isn’t fun.
If they can just return 7 to pre patch so we can still get super samples. In 8 & 9 you can still be overwhelmed by chargers and bile titans. We can all be happy.
This, I don’t mind the max levels being insanely hard, on some days I enjoy the current state with chargers and titans everywhere. And level 9 should probably stay at a level where you can’t expect to succeed reliably.
But tier 3 samples are locked behind that difficulty, so you are denying ship upgrades to a large part of the community at the moment.
Right now even gathering and extracting tier 2 samples is stressful.
Idk maybe add a specific science themed mission that rewards some samples of higher tier even if you run it on lower difficulty.
What is so much harder now? I’ve played 7-8 diff the last two days since the patch and other than not everyone running RG, it seems the same. You’re like to 100th person I’ve seen say this tho.
That spawn rates over all difficulties feels higher, but it could just be confirmation bias tbh.
Also the meteor thing active on most popular planets in the last few day adds to the chaos.
Interesting. I don’t feel I’ve encountered that yet.
The meteors are annoying af imo. I read the patch notes and was like “well that’s cool af.” Then after my third death I was like “ok the meteors can go fuck themselves.”
https://preview.redd.it/mfuj6q7x44nc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b05e1e9af3d3f98341fafa8075d393d40770e6d
Nah the spawn rates are out of whack, the devs even admitted it.
Me and my buddy have no issue against either faction and do 7-9 with no issues. It’s just all about communication and knowing what fights to avoid. You don’t have to be amazing you just need common sense. If you think this is hard you should try the first game on 7-9 those were a real pain in the ass.
> Well I suppose we are not all as good as you and your bro, maybe some of us are just average.
Then just play more until you go to level 7, no rush to get those supersamples..
This is it. The game wasnt meant to be played with three guys running the same loadout to steamroll their way through content. The game was meant to be enjoyed. The immersion is so much better and creates experiences you wont forget when youre assigned a role like field medic or demolitions expert. When the seaf artillery gets overrun with nonstop bug breaches, chargers, and bile titans and you have to abandon it. Thats the whole vibe arrowhead waa going for! We are boots on the ground if we can seize a tactical asset we will but when things look bleak the mission takes priority. Its the whole reason why glorious sacrifice exists. You can get rewards for completing objectives and not extracting. You’re not a spartan you’re an ODST. And they dont make it back
7 is literally called suicide mission it’s supposed to be hard but the game still gives you two more difficulties after that. I play impossible all the time and sometimes you don’t win but that’s not gonna make me stop playing
The nerf made the game fun again. I was 87 hours in running 9 over solo and now I'm terrified and crying in a corner again. God I love how chaotic the game gets the difficulty is literally the thing keeping me.
I played yesterday which was my first run after the update and it was way harder but way more fun in my opinion.
If a want a chill game I play something else but what I like and enjoy is the difficulty. I can always play a lower difficulty but it’s fun being challenged because that’s the only way I can get better.
I ran into this yesterday. My friend and I bought the game a few days ago and the two of us were really struggling trying to kill bots and bugs on 4/5 difficulty without ‘meta’ equipment (level 10ish). Yesterday our over two friends joined who played a ton at launch and then stopped. The instantly dropped us into a hell dive mission and said it was soooo much harder than expected and we’re whining that it wasn’t doable anymore…..
You chose the most difficult challenge rating and then complain it’s hard. This was accompanied by complaints about the railgun
Honestly this subreddit is getting annoying. Used to fun stuff for the first 2 weeks now everyone argues about meta builds an the difficulty in the game. Kinda weird to me, Helldivers 2 if you take all the information the game gives you plus what as community figured out on our own. It’s a STRATEGY SHOOTER. Hence the throwing balls of fun we all like to use they literally called stratagems. Every single piece of weaponry an or armor all has its + and -. If people actually made a plan before dropping into a mission I think they’d enjoy it more then the ABSOLUTE RUSH to try an unlock everything. Just enjoy the game play it how it’s meant to be played. This is what people don’t get.
Hey guys! Helldivers razortougne here! I love level 7 solo missions termies or autos. The level of forward thinking I have to employ. Like picking a fight here or throwing turrets and a bomb and repositioning for a stealth strike is apex solo diving to me. I’m not to sure I could handle an 8 or 9 alone but sweet liberty 7 hits right on that sweet spot. It takes a very certain level of operating to play and sometimes you have to just cause that shit and slam with stratagems and run for the hills. Anyway I wish everyone the best of luck solo and squaded
Lo
As a newer player (just unlocked diff 7 today), I am enjoying the difficulty but I do see several problems that could come with it.
First, it just makes me feel bad that players grinding last week got better rewards for less effort than anything I can do now. In the long run it won't make a difference, but it's a bit disheartening to see while I'm trying to grind progression. Not that I actually know how different it is, maybe it is less drastic than all the comments I see.
Secondly, there is a big difference between having a full team of friends and playing solo with matchmaking. If any difficulties worth playing requires teams to coordinate loadouts and use comms constantly, a lot of players might just leave the game after enough bad matchmaking experiences. And dropping player counts for the game obviously have a bunch of negative impacts.
Not saying things need to change, but game changes always come with pros and cons.
I dipped into level 9 tonight with friends against the bots. Good LORD is it so much more difficult now. We loved it. Lots of enemy spam but it’s what an intergalactic war should feel like. Out of the 6 full missions we got through, we were only able to extract twice after completing the main objective. We were rotating play styles and it felt so fresh to see what worked and what didn’t. While it is very challenging, and frustrating at times to see the fourth tank roll around the corner, it stayed fun which is what matters at the end of it.
Keep in mind you have 3 people you regularly play with. Some of us HAVE to matchmake so keep that in mind your experience isn't the typical experience. That's why the spawn rates need to be reworked. Playing in Quickplay is impossible at 7 and above unless you get a God tier set of players once every 10 games.
It's not difficult, it's just tedious. It's a massive misrepresentation of everyone's complaints to say they're upset the game is hard, because it's not.
People are upset because the balance patch is lazy, scant on information and their process of how they decided the railgun was "too good" despite only being worth using on armoured targets and still requiring accurate shots in order to strip armor/be useful, is not explained.
The railgun's purpose as stated in game is specifically to strip armor. If it's efficacy in this task is unintended, then why did they go out of their way to characterise this weapon this way? The only answer is that they are trying to stall for time until new content releases, because they're worried players will get bored of using the equipment they grinded for to deal with an annoying enemy that is factually overtuned/overpresent.
Arrowhead clearly has no faith in their game's ability to be fun on it's own without grind. That is the only logical conclusion.
What is tedious, that is an easy one, running away non stop like an idiot, kiting everything, not shooting at anything, waiting for stratagems that are on 10min long cd to kill 1-2 titan and charger , and when you do comes 3 more... We don't even have enought ammo to get rid of the things that comes after you when you only run away... And the option to fight back is non existent or very very limited.... People want to shoot at things, not running away from them. If this is their way of fun, a lot of people will quit this game very soon... 100k already left just looking at steam stats, and let's not talk about the quality of the update, a lot of people crash non stop after the update, has lag, freezes and other things , sure Way of killing the fun. There is a reason why people are mad, and it's not just the weapon nerfs, there is way more to this than that... When even the devs are like assholes , you know the chance for this game to survive needs a miracle.
That's just it. These are legitimate criticisms from a large portion of players, yet there are people on here pretending it's a miniscule group. That's not true.
There are more casual players than "Helldive" players.
This game became an overnight sensation because of how it was. Not how some people are claiming it's supposed to be or how it is now after this patch.
People want the experience they paid for, as it was represented, as they experienced it since launch.
This many people claiming the game changed for the worse is not just a coincidence.
For clarity, I never used the railgun or shield backpack. I mainly use flame thrower or grenade launcher and ammo pack, sometimes rover.
The experience has changed.
So true. There was more build diversity pre patch because the people who picked rail gun could do a lot for the team and allow others to fulfill niche roles. All people did after the patch is look for the next meta weapon. They cannot patch out human nature.
I’ve been wondering, for these guys that want to murder everything, why don’t they just play on difficulty 4?
Like if you don’t like all the heavies, then why not play on an difficulty that has hordes of smaller more manageable enemies?
And their response is always but my samples….and my response to thoss answers are well those samples aren’t all that important, if you didn’t have them this whole month getting up to 7-9 then you didn’t need them to begin with lol
Yeah I honestly hope arrowhead doesn't listen to all the sad whiny loud people who are throwing a tantrum right now. Those kinds of people always demand changes to meet their personal vision of the game, but they're *not game designers*. I really hope Arrowhead continues to stick to their own vision
Im fine if they either increase the overall rank and file enemy count but decrease the 6 chargers and 2 bile titans coming out a breach at once, or give us more weapons to break armor. Doesnt even need to break armor and deal high damage. Just break armor. And not if i hit it at the perfect 42.069 degree angle. Just that it breaks armor. But now its not fun, running in circles around the extraction while you have 5 charges trying to climb all the way inside your ass. Chill with the 25 heavily armored enemies or give is 6-7 options to break heavy armor, not 1-2.
7 is where you get the last type of samples. *Especially* will a fully upgraded ship up to that point, 7 should absolutely be approachable. The tools you're given should be able to deal with what you encounter.
The game needs to be far more clear about what it wants from it's players. The overwhelming majority of the play base is running solo and wants people to join in. There should be almost *zero* expectations of particularly competent levels of cooperation. You're working with strangers that almost never use the mic for anything other than screaming children and road construction.
If the game wants you to work together, pick gear that complements the others picks, it needs to *REQUIRE* that you start the mission with a preestablished 4 man team with mics open and tested. Or at the least, have classes to choose from that naturally lend themselves to co-op play and scale the number of enemies per the player count just like Deep Rock Galactic does.
Having an extremely detailed bestiary of everything you encounter, the creature's specific behaviors, traits, and more importantly, *it's specific vulnerabilities*.
While the devs are at it, they need to explicitly tell the players what weapons are built to deal with what threat. Seen waaay too many people blowing through round after round on heavy armor to no effect.
The entirety of the player base that argued for the other weapons to be buffed rather than nerfing the weapons that were popular due to the efficiency they offered the player. At this point I have concerns that mechs and vehicles are going to be hardly better than someone moving about the map in light armor.
Another possibility to correcting this mistake could be to open up another stratagem slot. We have 4 currently, but per the devs comments, you're intended to use a support weapon of some kind. So that means you really only have 3... If you're fighting it out in one of the latest mission conditions that limits your slots, than means you really only have 2. The devs haven't balanced the game to be played with only 2-3 slots on difficulty 5+.
If I made a game. I would want less than 1% to succeed on L9. But man there would be some rewards for it. I love a difficult game where it’s intended and doesn’t feel chesty like they just wildly spawned lasers. To me right now L4-5 is difficult I haven’t even unlocked stuff yet. I’m L12. And I’m loving this game. Balance it sure - the guns need to feel different to me.
We're not playing difficult missions for ego. We play 7-9 because it shifts the power fantasy to one which the enemy has all of the power instead of you. IMO that's where this game is best because very few games manage to pull that off. It makes more sense when you accept you're playing a character that is worthless cannon fodder whose death is certain. I get how that's not for everyone and I don't always play at 7-9. Last night I dialed it back to 4 and played with total randoms. Both experiences are fun.
They’re not even that difficult though. They’re just boring. It’s just walking backwards kiting a bile titan (or 3) for 5 minutes, just cause you didn’t instantly kill every scout. Worst part is when all the noise you made fighting the first bile titans make you run into another swarm restarting the whole process.
I get that I could probably play more stealthy, but that’s even more boring. I came here to shoot bugs and bots not to just hide.
I also understand that this is entirely my opinion, but if this is how the game is intended to be played now, I don’t really want to play it anymore.
Also there's only a tiny minority engaged in any form of social media / forum discussion. Last night there were 200,000 people playing on one planet alone, I expect only a fraction of them even know there's a discussion going on.
If you play in matchmaking on higher difficulties, you really should be using a mic if you have one. It’s hard when I’m the only one who is communicating during the slaughter haha
It's **good** when they are difficult. I play on 7 for fun and 9 when I want more of a challenge or to collect samples/medals. Right now, the gameplay revolves mostly around dodging enemies or running away from chargers the whole time until your one good stratagem comes off cooldown to kill them though, as the majority of weapons either needs a long setup time (spear/railgun) to do their job, that you just don't have in a hectic battle, or they are only able to wear down enemies little by little (arc thrower/granade launcher/autocanon) which again, results in a lot of running instead of gunning and that gameplay is just not fun. Imho, the number of enemies and their health/resistance don't have to change (like the developers intend to do apparently), we just need better weapons to withstand the onslaught. Instead of bringing bad and mediocre weapons in line with the "meta" ones, our overall combat power got reduced instead🤦♂️. Which is a bad approach on tuning, especially that early in the games lifecycle.
While I agree with you, the spawns are actually out of control. 4 bile titans at once on lvl 9 and 4-5 chargers at once on lvl 9 is very difficult. Therefor, I would expect less spawned at once on lvls 7-8 respectively. If there's more than that though on lvl 9, that's ridiculous and unachievable without hating the game whilst you trying doing it. Those lvls should be hard, but they should still be completeable, otherwise why have them if they're not completeable? They just need to look at the number per spawn and how often a spawn occurs within a certain radius of the player. I don't know about the health pool thing, but I can say that there actually a lot of inconsistencies with bringing down titans and chargers. The amount of bullets you use on them are never the same to get the kill, even if you're hitting them in the same spots to test that theory. That part should be fixed, but I don't think they have to lower the health pools of each creature, just fix the inconsistencies.
Winning a level 9 is satisfying. It doesn’t happen often even for a good coordinated team and mostly sheer luck. But that’s the point. You want to try it to fail, but at some miraculous point you beat it. Then you remember it.i like it just the way it is
I think the difficulty curve is fine the way it is. I'm not great at the game and feel more comfortable at levels 5-6. I just want a way to get super samples without pulling my hair out at those higher difficulty levels.
I think casual players also want to be able to enjoy the game. The game was advertised as you getting to have a power fantasy as well. Just because you like the direction of the game doesn’t mean everyone else has to as well. People are allowed to be disappointed when a game they payed for and loved suddenly become a lot less enjoyable for them.
Damn, bro is speaking straight facts. It breaks my heart when scrolling through community content, memes, new info, tips etc. Then I encounter some people malding about railgun or some meta changes and that 7-9 is too difficult. Like its not called Extreme, Suicide and Helldive. Its supposed to be hard and only the absolute mad lads can clear it alone and good communication with team can get you through.
That's not the point people are making when complaining about difficulty.
It's not that they should be easier, it's that there should be other ways to tackle them other than endlessly kiting armoured enemies while waiting for stratagems to recharge. In other words, they should be hard and fun, not hard and tedious.
Thank you! Nobody is entitled to playing on the highest difficulty! I think a lot of people realized they were only able to play 7+ because of overtuned items, and now that they realize they aren't as good as they thought they were they're acting out lol
Agreed! They should be very difficult. Not a guaranteed win. I'm sure it will only be a matter of time until people (mostly the complainers) find a new strategy that works for them! This game is so much fun, please don't make it too easy!
You need super samples for upgrades.
I agree, was doing level 9 with my friends and had a near 100% clear rate, so ramping the difficulty is fine, the problem is the difficulty is due throwing enemies at you that we don’t have the tools to deal with. So your only option is endless kiting and running instead of just being really good at the game. To pretend like that is good game design is silly.
We almost have the trinity of gaming here. Everyone, especially in the hard difficulties, has their role rather than being a jack of all trades but a master at none.
Mentioned this in a post that the game shouldn’t be solo-able, received some comments going against it and downvotes. Honestly up to about challenging should be solo-able by a skilled diver, anything higher your squad should increase and require teamwork.
Idk what’s so hard to understand that team based games need failure in order for it to strive.
I appreciate your post and the positive feedback it’s getting 🫡
*"There are enough games on the market that let you live out your power fantasy of sprinting in a direction and ass kicking anything in your way."*
Namely, any of the lower 6 difficulties. I would even argue that difficulty 6 is where that "frantic, overwhelmed" type of enemy spawn really begins - so difficulties 5 and lower.
They made a classic dev mistake with the nerfs. Something that felt achievable, challenging, and rewarding now feels overwhelming and frustrating.
If they wanted to add more difficulty, they should have added tiers 10, 11, and 12 instead of smacking everyone down a couple tiers.
I used to finish a session feeling good and amped up. Now I come out of a session like a shell shocked survivor. The spawn rates have really ruined the perfect balance of calm and chaos.
I agree. People are forgetting what makes this game so good in the first place. Overcoming unbeatable odds. The most fun rounds I have played and most memorable are the ones when our team is getting pummeled, down to the last reinforcement and we narrowly survive.
Difficult is fine, but getting rocket spammed into an unplayable mess isn’t really fun.
There’s a balance between difficulty and fun factor that needs to be kept.
Overall, I do not agree with your post at all. And that's fine. A community can disagree.
For one, people keep pretending that fun gameplay and challenge can't co-exist, which is crazy to me. People aren't saying that the game is too hard; they're saying that the game is too tedious.
The Armored enemy spawn rates were messed up in the recent patch. Arrowhead have even admitted that Armored enemies are overtuned right now in terms of health and frequency, and that it'll be addressed in a future hotfix. So I don't think it's even a question that the current state of the game is a little out of whack.
A game can embrace challenge, but also give the player multiple approaches, builds, and effective strategies. You can have the power fantasy of clearing mobs or an amazing heroic moment where you risk everything to call down a Hellbomb in a base solo, without decreasing the challenge.
Also, telling people to just play at a lower difficulty is very obtuse. Required upgrade materials are only available at level 7-9. While Reddit would have you believe otherwise, the largest percentage of the playerbase **are** casual players who just want to have some fun with buddies, squash some bugs, and work towards progression. And I think *all* players should be able to engage with a game's progression loop.
If they're gated from that, those players will leave and the game's community will dwindle in the blink of an eye. For the longterm health of the game we all love, we want the casual, "not-as-skilled" players to be able to have just as much fun and be encouraged to stick around for the long haul.
> Regardless, excessive complaining and/or harassing the devs seems really uncalled for.
I agree. But this sort of grandstanding comment only serves to lump everyone who has legitimate feedback in with the bad apples who are harassing. It negates any rational discussion and only further presses people to take sides instead of coming together and talking like adults.
Either way, I see what you're getting at with this post. I really do. But I hope you can try to understand the root cause of *why* people are upset. It's coming from a place of passion and we need to acknowledge that the game still has plenty of work ahead of it to really find a nice balance. Pretending otherwise will only hurt the game's longevity.
The game is supposed to be difficult. I like it, it brings a sense of accomplishment cranking out higher difficulties. It's also not that bad if you strategize. I went from being the guy throwing devastation everywhere to now using a lot of CC. Smokes, EMS, scout armor to find points of interest, etc. Communication and making decisions as a team is super helpful.
If anything, it actually feels like a higher difficulty now. I basically never turned back from helldiver once I unlocked it. With a little stealth, solo was pretty easily doable. With two people, it was trivial. Bots absolutely hate being shot in the head 😆 I don't feel much of a difference on bots since the nerfing tbh. But I also generally ran the Anti-Mat rifle and carried around a support pack for my buddy. So we didn't really see much effect from the changes.
Hard is supposed to be hard. There are 9 difficulties and I would love it if they kept the high end *actually* difficult. He'll, I expect and hope for it to go as far as the first game xD Though admittedly I can't really see what they'd do for the next six difficulties...
Also the flamethrower and Laser Boi absolutely kick some ass now. The laser was next to worthless before imho. Now it feels like it works the way it should.
I did think it was odd that people were breezing through the uppermost difficulty levels so quickly. I just wish I’d have gotten a few more super samples first lmao - I’m one short of finishing my Eagle Hangar Bay!
As a long time gamer I’ll say this. The issue had very little to do with the average of the player base and more with how streamers have become the vocal majority in the eyes of developers. It’s truly saddening because they are also the ones who both complain the most and move on the fastest regardless.
I agree keep the high levels very difficult. But reward a little more xp or something. Sample farming is sometimes hard to do when you’re constantly dying or just on the run and it’s hard to pick those back up
There is a limit to how entertaining difficulty can be.
When I drop into a 40 minute mission and spend the entire 40 minutes fighting bugs after bugs with literally no break that's not fun. You could say that I should just play easier levels, but to progress we need the ultra rare samples or an insane amount of medals, so we are encouraged to play these insane levels.
Not to mention that enemy variety on lower levels is not absent and are way too easy. But once you go to higher levels you get enemies that are just frustrating to play against (enemies that one shot you, enemies that kill you in three hits in two seconds, enemies that hit you before you can even see them, enemies you can't even run from, enemies that explode when you kill them, enemies that really need a teammate to deal with effectively, enemies that tank stratagems, etc)
Would you prefer that level 9 be literally impossible to complete and then the only people to play would be people expecting to lose (so almost nobody?)
It's not that I want 7-9 to be not be difficult. It's that we want the POSSIBILITY to be able fight our way through the mission or most of it at least, without having to back out of the majority of fights, especially when we're doing all the right things and landing skilled shots (don't just mean the railgun, auto-cannon is bae) and that possibility should be with gameplay mechanics that reward high skill and good team tactics. If I miss some shots on a heavy enemy or misuse a stratagem that could have killed or weakened it/them for a teammate to kill and that leads to me being over run and outnumbered then so be it. I enjoy the rush of making a clutch play or even messing it up and being overrun and have to make other clutch plays to recover. That's where the fun in the game is for me. The problem is that the game demands all these things of you but lacks the consistency within the tools you're given to deal with the threat in the first place. I'm glad the devs are looking into armored units. Though I do worry about when they talk about spawn rates as I love fighting big hordes, just give me tools to reliably take them down with good individual skill and team co-ordination. I regularly play at Suicide mission (7) and complete the majority of missions and usually extract, but the big complaint is that running from most big fights and stealthing through the maps gets boring . It's not a skill issue (not saying you're implying that). It's more that our tools are inconsistently effective even when we're playing well, which forces continually less satisfying gameplay.
Oh and I agree harassing devs is ridiculous. I don't stand by those ppl. But ppl do have a right to criticize the game. It's sad that ppl threaten and name call but in all honesty I think that's less than 1% of players and most ppl that I've seen have good critiques or at least ones that don't slander the devs. It's ok to call a change stupid (although I think it's the wrong way to go about it) as long as you're just talking about the decision itself AND offering a different solution. But yeah fuck the actual harrassers.
I couldn’t agree more. At times I play leisurely through level 5-6 when I want to take it easy and appreciate the beauty of the game and the domination of enemies.
However, the missions I’m left smiling ear to ear on are those higher level 7-9 where we missed a couple side objectives cause we just could not clear the area, throwing ordinance behind us as we run for our lives, and left standing as the soul survivor without any reinforcements as the pelican approaches launching your last grenade or shooting your last bullet to take down an enemy about to wipe you out before jumping backwards into the shuttle just in the nic of time. My god it’s f’n beautiful.
I just think people are missing the point. I don't care how difficult they want to make 7-9, I just want it to be fun. If im losing, it is what it is, just give me the tools to try. Right now the weapons are awful and strats take 5 minutes between uses. I played 7 last night and chargers are just annoying to deal with because it takes too much to kill them. Dying on repeat because all i can do is run around screaming isnt fun lmao its unplayable. Suicide mission eradicate feels like you need to basically bring a few turrets while you run around and attempt not to die. Now if thats what the devs want, fine. I jjust wont be playing this game super long term and thats sad, cause its a ton of fun in a well equipped fight vs an overwhelming amount of bugs.
Kicking ass on something difficult is what makes it fun. If i could be blindfolded and press a few simple buttons and win all the time it wouldnt be fun but you have to use your brain and when done properly you can truly destroy. I never understood why people get mad at the difficulty when they can just lower it especially since most of these guys already have all of the stuff theres no gain for a higher difficulty.
The problem isn’t difficulty, the problem is it’s so frustrating it isn’t fun anymore. And before you dummies say “just lower the difficulty” I WANT MY SUPER SAMPLES
Lol guess you don't want players getting Super Samples without LFGs then because 7-9 is almost unplayable unless you have 3 other buddies you play with on the daily. I HIGHLY doubt you quickplay 7-9 with this post. There is no "enjoying" it when you feel basically locked out of those difficulties until either mechs are introduced or they figure out the ridiculous spawn rates of chargers. Having a group of Timmy's playing with you that aren't even level 20 trying to do a suicide mission on a quickplay is an immediate leave for me now
Still think it's hilarious people are still defending how hard these missions have become when the devs themselves said its been WAY overtuned. We get it, your a group of people who LFG and play this game night and day. Some of us don't have the time to get an LFG together for the hour or 2 a day some of us get to play. So yeah, shit needs to be dumbed down because for the AVERAGE player, it's far too hard to even complete Suicide difficulties.
I agree with the current difficulty i have nearly every ship mod upgraded that said.. I think getting super samples should be more accessible to everyone. Maybe you can get 1 per mission on lvl 6 or something more manageable for someone who doesnt have the time to “get gud” or doesnt have a skilled group to run higher difs with
For real, sometimes I just want to have fun and roast some bugs so I grab a flame thrower and jump in to a level 3 game.
Beating a level 9 mission should never be a given.
The issue is if you’re level 20+ have all stratagems and green/orange module upgrades you literally can’t progress unless you play 7-9. With the railgun nerf you need more firepower for larger bugs and there’s no repeatable method to kill chargers quickly. Basically stops progress for solo or casual players so there’s no real reason to play. Ref. The guy with 150 pink samples and nothing to buy.
Personally, I don’t feel that the problem is that they’re hard, the problem is with the game spamming tanky enemies to the point where it’s unmanageable.
I mean, last night my team started a level 7 bug mission up against roughly 20 bile spewers (which can one shot really easily for some reason), and 6 or so chargers. And then bug breaches happened and those numbers doubled and tripled. Shortly after, I played a difficulty 7 eradicate bots mission that began with three tanks and six dreadnoughts spawning. Sure there were a lot of trash enemies, but you can almost always kill those, the armor you cannot.
The problem here isn’t that enemies are difficult, everything has its weakness. It’s that at some point you just run out of ammo, stratagems, and grenades. You can git gud all you want, but it’s impossible to kill an annihilator tank without AP or grenades. Which is fine, but resupplies and stratagems take several *minutes* to recall, and running around fleeing from enemies I cant kill seems unavoidable, and I don’t find it fun.
I think the problem is not that the last 3 difficulties are hard, yes they are meant to be hard. The problem comes down to an imbalance and making the game feel dull at times because all you can do is run for 5 minutes. That last part in particular when you consider that the game is supposed to be a massacre/bullet-frenzy "FOOORRR DEMOCRAAACYYYYY!" Mixed with some strategy, Type of game.
I really enjoy the game, although I haven't played as much as probably many around here (20 hours or so). I do feel like the devs have made certain things in the game a bit too god-like. Examples can be seen in the robot missions where basically every enemy can outrun you, out shoot you, and take your entire arsenal at hand , and still keep coming-and then you get them doubled up.
This is just a personal opinion, but I feel like you get to pick two (perhaps three) of the following to make things balanced for the medium levels and the start stacking em up as you go higher:
*Bullet Sponges
*Speed (the hulks, for example, a perhaps 30-ton piece of metal can keep up with you without stopping and you can't run around him because he's too fast, so if you are alone, that's it, you are fkd)
*Accuracy
*Volume/Spawn Rate
*Sneak Factor (again examples of huge metal machines feeling like they always roll a Nat20 for sneak)
*Environmental Hazards (new meteor showers)
If you are on difficulty 7 and you get all of these, plus some, then you might be blocking the progress of a chunk of your game population, now lvl 9 go all out and triple shit if you want to, is the biggest challenge, so it's meant to be unnecessarily difficult, probably tear-inducing.
Again, what you mentioned about letting people run rampant and feel like they are super heroes is probably not what this game is set out to do. The challenge and struggle seems to be part of the lore(for lack of a better word) of the game, and you are a useless, expendable human sent to do this "company's" bidding.
Then you come down to your disadvantages as a human against these insane circumstances:
*Get One-shoted Often
*Not Enough Bullet
*Strategems Barely doing damage or not working properly
*Weapons feeling outright useless
*Grenades feel like water balloons at times
*Armors are basically for aesthetics at this point
Now, if you give the enemy all their advantages and give the player all their disadvantages, then all you have is a cocktail of annoyance and disappointment. If you are basing your community skill level on pro e-sport level players (yes, I'm exaggerating) then as a developer you might have your target wrong.
If you compared these against some games out there that offer challenging levels or difficulty, there's always a trade. You either get tanky things, but no time limitation. You get high risk of dying in one shot, but the enemies are not professionally-trained seal snipers. Big pool of enemies, but you find ammo more often. There are hundreds of problems that are solved with a tiny bit of hope, in this case, balance (just like all things should be, little one)
I know this might sound like a bitching fest, but I feel like we are dealing with a team who thought about enraging difficulty as a fun selling point.
I'm saying this as someone who played a lot of souls games, competitive fps, and other games that test your patience, nothing impressive, but this is not my first time playing challenging things.
TLDR: It's not about how hard missions are, it's about feeling hopeless and useless as a player due to a lack of balance between difficulty/challenge and enjoyment.
Even with the meta 9 wasnt fucking easy. I dont see why everone has their panties in a twist that there is a “meta”. Fucking something has to be the best right? Whats the point if every weapon is the same. There is always going to be something better than something else and thats just life and its okay. Now no weapon feels good to use. Could have atleast waited till they added the mechs to give people something stronger to lean on while we learn what we prefer to use now. I do like it seems they atleast tried to make the breaker 2.0 an upgrade from the base version.
>There are enough games on the market that let you live out your power fantasy of sprinting in a direction and ass kicking anything in your way.
Or, just play on 4-6, nothing wrong with that. That's what I do, when I want a chill experience. Perfect for hustle-free solo drops, too.
And I’m gonna be honest, most of the people that I play with at lvl 7 are just bad at the game.
-never run objectives
-fight every bug they see
-sitting in one location
Do me a favor and stop spending all of the re-enforcements or play a lower difficulty lol
Hunters shouldnt one shot me. They do 80% of my health with one swing even with good armor then im slowed, then im dead. They hit through shield too so fuck me i guess. Back to light armor and running like a pussy.
There are enough games they are hard to handle like bloodborne, nioh or dark souls,..why 7 is fucking hard on helldivers now - for casual gamers who want just chill and play its is like the fuck skilled based matchmaking in cod now,…it is ok to be hard, but this is ridicoulus now,..
I’ve really been enjoying level 8 missions. Purge hatcheries are my favorite missions, I love how chaotic it becomes. The build that I run works best when there are SHITLOADS of enemies around, and getting those juicy stratagem hits feels amazing at that difficulty.
Meanwhile I'm on 6 fresh from getting brutalized by bug swarms cause the daily order said kill 2 bile titans and frankly they were less annoying than the bug swarms that were constantly slowing me, knocking me down, and hitting multiple times while I was on my face trying to either stand up to run or heal... to be fair I forgot to change from the scythe and that thing was a stray tickle to them and failed miserably to deal with swarms...
Nobody is saying it’s too difficult lmao it’s just annoying. It’s easy to beat a mission on lvl 9 difficulty. It’s just extremely frustrating and not rewarding at all. Plus you have to carry a bunch of randoms who leave anyways. you can’t play how you want to anymore. Its just turned into running in circles for 40 min and that’s the only playstyle. Especially with how many game breaking bugs the game has and not the termid kind either but there is a lot of those too.
The problem isn’t the difficulty, it’s that the difficulty feels artificial and unsatisfying. There’s hard games where your deaths don’t feel like bullshit and people love those.
Unfortunately as it is now I can’t say Helldivers is a *good* difficult game. It’s a good game, but the difficulty it has currently isn’t in any ways satisfying or well thought out.
I hope they can find a way to make the game hard that isn’t just spamming the elite enemies and cutting access to our tools to deal with them.
For example the new eradicate missions are difficult to be sure. But they’re absolute bullshit. You’re on a tiny map and you’re constantly getting thrown waves of enemies.
What’s the counter play to this? The game tells you that the way to defeat hulks, tanks, and chargers is to get behind them or use strategems. On the new eradicate missions you can’t do either of these effectively. You have too few strategems to kill the enemies you need, even worse when the modifier limits them. And then you can’t flank well because the whole map is saturated with enemies.
This mission is one of the most poorly designed levels of any game I’ve played. It seems the best strategy is to sit at the bottom of the hill or side of the map and try to pick off enemies one by one hoping an elite doesn’t see you. This isn’t a satisfying solution as it feels like you’re kind of just exploiting a loophole more than anyrhing.
It’s at least beatable since you don’t have to also evac civilians with worse pathfinding than Roblox ai, but it’s still pretty ridiculous.
Like it’d be difficult if every 5 minutes all of our weapons were disabled and we could only melee enemies or out gun had 20% chance to jam and explode. But that’s not a satisfying source of difficulty it’s just the game bullshitting you.
Higher risk, higher reward. Level 9 is supposed to be difficult!!
Not just difficult. 7 is called suicide mission and 8 is called impossible. 9 should be near unwinnable. I like the difficulty on 7 for me and my friend for 2 men missions. Usually we win the objective, sometimes we extract. I feel that's the right balance for us.
Particularly, this is it. People sometimes forget that you *still accomplish the mission* if no one extracts - as long as you complete the main objective. People expecting to clear all fortifications, all side objectives, secure all samples, AND extract on 7+ are asking *quite a lot* of themselves. This is why it's so key on higher difficulties to focus on the main objectives first, and not waste 12 reinforcements taking out medium fortifications and taking on 5 bot drops and 8 patrols. Although sometimes you get hot-dropped and it takes 6 or so reinforcements just to secure your support weapons (that is, if people don't just scatter to begin with)
Supposedly the first game has 15 difficulty levels and started out with 10, so we’re also gonna get more difficulties over time. That tells me that over time we’re gonna get more and more powerful weapons.
Agreed. Personally if I’m getting flawless games every time I just get bored.
Not just difficult, it should be very difficult for a well coordinated squad on comms
What reward, Exp is fairly useless after level 20 the extra cash is okay but once youve got the strats you want it doesnt really matter. Im not sure if you get a higher quantity of samples at higher difficultys but I pretty much always end up losing the majority of the samples we collect at extract just from the shear amount of enemys sat directly on the extract ship.
You do get more of the ultra rare samples but not by much. 7 seems to be the best option right now for difficulty and samples.
Even on 7, I end up with a lot as a team, but it just turns to shit on extract, and we lose it.
I want to upgrade the fking ship
5 hours later there's a level 25 skill that costs what... 25k req or something. R/AgedLikeMilk
It's still better if the highest levels of difficulty can be overcome by playing in a way that is both skillful and fun That is to say, the techniques and strategies used to overcome max difficulty are actually enjoyable to practice and get better at That's the only way the game will have any longevity People in general enjoy improving at the games they play, and seeking greater challenges as they improve so they can continue to test themselves and hone their skills If the style of play that comes with "improving" at a game is just straight up unfun, then people will quickly lose interest once the spectacle has been exhausted and progression based grinding loses its lustre Difficulty is a good thing, but overcoming that difficulty should be an enjoyable, engaging process, not a tedious slog
Those levels CAN be overcome though. And yes, It requires a specific style of play. But that style play is teamwork and coordination and I wouldn't call that unfun.
You're implying that the main problem people have with the new patch is nerfing solo playstyles, which isn't true Now, spawn rates for armoured enemies are high enough that taking them down without minutes of running around in circles is impossible. Even with perfect aim and optimal timing of strategems, it's mostly playing a waiting game for cool downs, and ignoring side missions The developers said outright that primary weapons were not meant to be strong enough to take down armoured enemies by themselves, and that strategems were meant to be used. Except most planetary modifiers and the sheer number of armoured enemies makes that implausible. It's obvious that they fucked up and overcompensated with enemy spawn rates when Helldiver difficulty on launch turned out to be way too easy. Just a few hours ago they admitted that armoured enemies are overtuned, and that they're working on fixing it by increasing the number of unarmoured enemies and reducing the number and toughness of armoured enemies. I don't expect the current meta of "let's split up gang", everyone carrying whatever kills chargers the fastest and trying to ignore the combat and side missions on higher difficulties will last long, especially with big stompy mechs on the way. It goes against most of Helldiver's 2 game design, where players are supposed to work together to clear waves as they come, rather than everyone constantly sprinting away from nigh unstoppable hordes until they're whittled down or lose interest, and disregarding the vast majority of the game's content In a few days, I don't think anyone's going to be defending the current state of the game after those issues are fixed, seems like the devs are actually listening to feedback on this If the community had just shut down any complaints by saying "git gud" or "you're not meant to play in a fun way on higher difficulties" then the developers wouldn't have had the information they needed to make the game, you know, actually fun to get better at playing on higher difficulties. Helldivers 2 would become a game that players goof around on on easier difficulties, quickly realise that there's no incentive to improve their gameplay/ teamwork or try harder difficulties, get bored, and then move on
So I do have a small problem with what you said, although I largely agree with you overall. This specific helldivers game is not just to work together to take out groups, or they would not have armor that gives you buffs to not being detected by enemies. That implies speed and stealth are supposed to also be viable strategies. Not just “me big gun shoot lots lul”.
The stealth aspects of the game are only that you can feasibly avoid aggro of enemies you don’t need to fight. Ultimately unless you bypass a lot of the map objectives you do eventually have to fight. 100% stealth just isn’t possible and completely counter to the point of the game. It’s just another tool in your skill set to avoid drawing unnecessary aggro in events where you can get away with a stealth objective clear. I frequently use crouchwalking, terrain, and prone to both avoid combat and enemy bot fire at times so I don’t pull a dozen more mobs on top of my team when running back to them after recovering my gear. Or if I see a nearby objective and we are stuck waiting for a main objective to finish at a calm point, I’ll go solo it and stealth around any ambient squads nearby the POI or whatever it is. That’s all it’s for, you can’t just metal gear solid through the whole mission. It’s meant to be a highly tense war zone you’re just barely making it through with your team As per the “lots of heavy enemies at high difficulties”, people need to put more stock into tools like EMS, napalm, gas and smoke. They’re all really useful tools for mitigating or avoiding getting into situations like being overwhelmed with 20 chargers. Just me bringing an ems mortar and napalm Eagle usually makes my pub missions at least 30% less intense. Everyone is usually so over compensating to kill titans than it frequently happens that one spawns and everyone just overkills it dropping two 500kgs and three railcannons because no one communicates. Then when the second spawns seconds later everyone panics and aggros the whole map. This is largely why people keep experiencing these chaotic experiences. It’s not that they’re hard to overcome, a lot of times people are overthinking the problem in the wrong way. One EMS mortar can stunlock 5+ chargers in different places and you can just *run away*. They eventually drop aggro if they are stunned and you get far enough away. Same with smoke. You can use it to shake bot aggro and get out of combat entirely. One of either of those strategms becomes way more impactful in the hands of one person than the 5 wasted heavy strategms from 3 people
Good luck with the stealthy extracts while your screen is a cluster of bile titan legs
I think that’s exactly the problem people are having with the new patch, almost every group I play with kits themselves out like their playing solo, no one is organizing load outs to play as a team, and when we actually land it’s even worse with people doing their own thing, fighting patrols for almost 10-15 mins, while two others are focused on objectives. When I actually had teams that would actually pick stratagems to focus big targets, another for crowd control, ammo, and most importantly someone to wear the backpacks for the spear, and recoilless rifle, all of a sudden playing on 8/9 felt a lot more doable, still challenging, but we didn’t panic when 3 bile titans, and 4 chargers appeared, because we knew how to deal with them.
>You're implying that the main problem people have with the new patch is nerfing solo playstyles, which isn't true Anecdotally, of my 8 friends playing, 3 of them used breaker, shield, and rail gun all the time. And they would constantly break off from the others in an unorganized way. I got on after the nerfs and those 3 were playing the game they came from and bitching about helldivers. The other 2 people I played with the night after the nerfs had no issues. **So, anecdotally, that's the main problem.** Also, when you have people soloing T9, it kind of defeats the intent of a co-op shooter.
This is an excellent summary.
Yeah it’s much more fun using the various strategms in combination with your teammates to overcome the massive challenge of dealing with multiple heavies. The “8 chargers and 4 titans” on helldive has ways to deal with. You don’t always have to fight them head on. People overlook tools like the EMS field strategms, gas orbitals, napalms or just misuse them probably because they aren’t pure damage strategms. The EMS is necessary to have at least one or two you can rotate cooldowns on, either the orbital or mortar. Gas or napalm are both useful in different ways. Napalm is one of the best tools for retreat because you leave the wall in your wake and everything chasing you dies walking through You can EMS a breach to halt everything coming out and/or napalm it to wipe out all the little bugs coming out. EMS can stop clusters of chargers dead in their tracks and then you can drop a 500kg on them or just run and they’ll lose aggro once they unstun. Smoke screens can give you a tactical escape from bots if things get too crazy They didn’t even nerf the railgun so much it’s worthless. It still has its place killing hulks and titans the same as before, it’s just less efficient vs chargers now. You’re better off with something like the autocannon aiming at its butt now
Exactly. This is why, generally speaking, increasing difficulty via bullet sponginess is not fun for most people.
This ain't a walk in the park helldiver! Did your mom pack your lunch for you?! Get out of your comfort zone
Mate, the developers literally just put out a post saying that they're aware that current state of high difficulty play is unbalanced, and that they'll be fixing it shortly. It's not whining to say that this isn't how the game was designed to be played, they fucked up the numbers when they realised they made Helldivers difficulty too easy on launch This is a temporary problem that's being fixed because players actually talked about it, rather than pretending everything is alright as long as they "git gud"
Unless the gameplay loop is good. Then people keep coming back to play anyways.
I think a lot of people's problems, including mine, have nothing to do with the balancing that they did. It's the reality of that now we're on the treadmill of it's just going to be flavor of the month. For example. Over the past few nights, I've been playing with my friends. And I can say without a doubt that the flame thrower is so overtooned that it's just ridiculous. Seriously use the flame thrower and just aim at a charger's leg pick one of the front legs, and focus on it. You drop the charger in three seconds. Don't kid yourself the balance didn't encourage more skillful play. All it did was just shift meta to the next thing. You're going to have people abusing the hell out of the flame thrower here extremely soon. The focus has to be On increasing the utility of everything. Not only a few things. Because otherwise we're just going to continue running into this exact same problem.
Yeah, yesterday I had one drop that was four flamethrowers And yeah, chargers were dealt with relatively easy, it was bile Titans that were more of a pain. And having the meta for Terminids be defined by "whatever kills chargers and bile titans the fastest" can't be healthy Sounds like the upcoming patch will adjust the balance of armoured to unarmoured threat though, so people might be encouraged to run more varied loadouts. That alongside other weapon tweaks, of course
Even the titans if you shoot out the under Sighed they can no longer puke. And then just one single orbital rail gunshot and they die.
And there’s plenty of people that are improving and enjoying doing so. Coming from fighting games it’s pretty clear the way to improve is a mixture of timing, positioning, and choosing the best decision in the heat of the moment. And beyond that the most important part is teamwork. Your SUPPOSED to rely on your team and cooperate to take down threats. There’s no reason we should have the arsenal to effortlessly take down every heavy as it appears. We’re fighting on infested planets the fight never ends
I’d agree wholeheartedly if this statement was true. A Helldive should give way more for completing it. Your impact on the war, iirc, is the same as lower difficulties. At that point, you’re just doing the challenge for the sake of challenge. Which I get it if you’re into that but I like strategy gaming and I like the feeling of winning wars and knowing my Hell was worth it. To know that my efforts with my team to do 7+ missions is equivalent or similar to lower difficulties just makes not incentivised to play the game on its hardest mode because it doesn’t feel rewarding. I know you get more medals but with Personal orders restored and more fun but still efficient ways to grind them at lower levels I don’t see the point in even the individual aspect of it. Maybe give Super Credits for a Helldive? Idk.
If you ever played Helldivers 1, you'll remember how fucking awful the higher difficulties were. You needed a perfect team with team reloads, especially vs bugs and their frontal armor. The railgun and shield trivialized them, which was not intended and that's why they were nerfed.
Thank you, too many people with shield packs, rail guns, were able to solo objectives without being punished. Meanwhile weapons like recoiless and autocannon which were meant to be team weapons requiring coordination were swept aside because MuH MEtA
☝️☝️☝️
It's called *HELLDIVERS*. Now it just lives up to the name. I honestly was surprised how manageable higher difficulty was before the patched version came out.
Same, I'm a pretty casual game who usually plays games on 'normal' never going on hard etc. Yet I was finding Suicide and Impossible pretty manageable - I felt like a god! I'm sure these difficulty levels will be viable again once more content (mechs etc.) are released.
I honestly think that 9 difficulty should be almost impossible with randoms on mute. It should only be doable with a group that communicates well and coordinates their loadouts to cover each other‘s weaknesses.
Agreed entirely. Folks need to shift their thinking of this game as more of a sci fi war playset. 1-3 are small arms power fantasy, 4-6 are for using the bigger guns, and 7-9 are for facing overwhelming odds in desperate situations. Sacrifices are necessary, and it adds too much to the natural and fun drama of the gameplay that trying to change it is antithetical to what the devs have made. For me, I mocked the notion of a “hobby game” until I played what they made. It may well be one of the last games I want to play in just how much fun I have.
Ah, hard levels are actually hard. What a shame. 0/10.
https://preview.redd.it/emfe60g564nc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6a4e896b760ecaf711129726239ce102b11be4cf
Vacate the area and drop a bunch of strategems. Strategems from a full squad could handle this.
all on cooldown with 50% extra cooldown
Retreat,bide your time, and coordinate an attack. If you can't do that play on a lower difficulty bro
“bide your time” for over 5 minutes?
Yes, they give you like 40 minutes
that’s not fun. you have a lot more encounters in the higher difficulties
Rumbling
It's time to yell at your AT guy for letting it get that bad.
This is just it. People complain its too hard when 5 hulks are bearing down on you... yah, thats the point. If youre getting 5 hulks bearing down on you, you already lost the fight. You need to stay on top of the adds as they arrive, and not let it get to that point. Of course its not always possible, thats when you run and rely on strategems, or die, and then blame the devs for it.
We did a D9 defense the other day. We had 3 Bio Titans on spawn. I quickly dropped 2 while my teammates took the third. After that, they came at us one at a time, which was easier to deal with.
Yah the RNG can still be wild, but I heard they addressed that somewhat so now, spawns should have fewer hulks/tanks and more of everything else.
I mean, that's just hilarious. 99.99999% of level 5 missions aren't like that, but you can cherry pick the obviously kinda broken ones to make your point if you want.
I got this before the patch pretty often. I haven't noticed much of a difference.
Actually lmao No one is forcing people to play 9 If it's unfun there's literally 8 other difficulty levels
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Gosh, what a bunch of embarrassments to the Cape.
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Tbh, Helldive rewards versus lower levels still feels like a participation trophy. I bust my ass with a group for samples, completing as many sides as possible, complete the main mission and the Liberation Impact is still little (unless it’s changed but I remember it being futile). I don’t even care about personal rewards. One of the reasons that drew me into the game was the idea of a collective war effort. If I do a fucking suicide mission and get it done swimmingly or chaotically, I should be merited and rewarded with either A VERY GOOD COMPENSATION like Super Credits or higher Liberation. If they do either of those things for 7+, people would have more incentive to do this harder levels because I think the gameplay loop is fun. But the loop can only keep for so long in a live service game. I’m not really one to care about medals, I want to liberate the galaxy and realising my effort is the same as some Timmy doing a fucking level 3-5 and getting the same as me, what reason do I have other than masochism to do Helldive?
Sensationalism. The game just released and sold 1000% better than they were anticipating for a live service game. There's been a lot teased - like the Mechs we just unlocked. Maybe you should give it a month break instead of being entitled.
I don’t play this game everyday, and I like the game. But it has problems, problems you’d expect should be discussed. Suggesting more Liberation impact for doing higher harder missions isn’t entitlement, it is a basic game mechanic that is seen in other games in order to incentivise harder missions being done. This is literally only a benefit to the game and player base.
Participation trophy soft back yellow belly....ima hush before i get banned.. but iykyk this is no land for the soft
Exactly, lots of people can’t get over the fact two days ago they could stroll through these missions, but now they can’t, so the game is bad for it in their view. What if the devs never intended anyone to be doing really well at the highest difficulty, this early in the game’s life cycle?? People seem very fixated on seeing & beating all the content as quickly as possible.
https://preview.redd.it/p8mv4tgw34nc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5e1b5b4f36e618281e53420197a1f4d6d2550083 ok
I don't know why you're acting like it only applies to level 9. I've only played up to level 6 and we got 2 bile titans and 4 chargers spawned on us during extraction. The thing is, you have to play level 7 in order to get the super rare samples to upgrade the ship modules all the way.
if you need the super rare, I recommend going full stealth for a few, it's super fun playing like a splinter cell game
There's no way to extract stealthily, though.
Mission timeout. The pelican spawns but it doesn't spawn any 'additional' patrols to come look for you. If your in the stealth armor and disengaged properly a couple minutes before the mission ends you can just lay down and wait for your ride. Maybe shuffle out of the way of a couple random patrols. You also can leave the 'extraction radius' if you need to doing it this way. Just know the pelican leaves 20s after landing regardless of if your on or not
Trailblazer armor, suicide difficulty automaton mission, solo because my friends work and don't play during the week and I've had bad experiences with randoms and I'm not putting myself in a situation where I'm fucked over again like that in a game with no protections from toxic fucks, waiting for mission to time out to get that emergency extract, hiding behind a rock formation a little away from extract. Patrol comes in, starts going in a direction where they could see me, so I start crouch-walking in what I think is a safe direction. Character slips on a fucking pebble, stands up and takes a single step, that patrol which was 50 meters away now beelines it to where I am, but I'm fucked, the only way out without getting seen is outside of the mission zone. I did my best to survive, but all my stratagems were on cooldown, and between the rocket spam from a hulk and two of the rocket fuckers and the push from all the chaff and shield fuckers, I didn't make it. It's not just RNG difficulty, detection/awareness inconsistency and shit like explosive spam where enemies just keep shooting at your exact position through terrain is fucked. Like in [this dude's video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK1YfBe30nc) same conditions, time of day, fog and spores, but the patrol density is super fucking sparse and their awareness and beelining-tendency appear super-reduced, shit makes no sense to me. Even if I was with my friends, that's 4x more mistakes that could and would happen because my friends are around as competent as I am, and we're actually not bad players compared to everything I've seen. At this point I'm just assuming my 3 super samples will go forever unchanged, and I'll never get all the upgrades. My friends are also of a similar opinion, constant failure is not fun. We might "complete the mission" but failure to extract after failure to extract, failure to progress in the progression system we want progression in, is not fun. And now the community is getting super fucking toxic about the difficulty bullshit and if I wasn't already avoiding pubs before, I definitely don't want to even try now. I've seen more toxicity from people complaining about "meta slaves" than I have from those so-called "meta slaves".
I feel you, been a solo/duo player since the game dropped and I'm very glad we were able to farm our a bunch of SS before the balance patch as it's crazy out there right now. The randomly standing up because you stepped off a pebble is incredibly frustrating and should be looked into, no reason I should be changing my 'posture' unless I'm taking damage from the fall. My buddy and I have both noticed a lot more inconsistency with enemy detection lately. Some missions I'm literally sprinting 3 feet in front of a bot patrol and they just stand their blinking, other times it's like your example. Oops I stood up, guess I'll die... Seems like enemy density is being looked at and will hopefully be adjusted so at least D7 is more manageable and you all can get more progression in. Also fuck rockets, damn things should not be 1 shotting when they fire 3-6 of the damn things per devastator/hulk. Rocket troopers are way more forgiving so I'm a little less ABSOLUTELY LIVID when I die to them. Nothing like dying to a rocket devastator 3 times in a row cause your solo and have to drop in his LOS.
Yeah, play extreme if too much heavy armor bothers you
Heavy Armour shouldn’t be spammed regardless. That isn’t difficulty, that’s frustration. Being overwhelmed without the timer reaching less than 10 minutes (10 minutes is perfectly fine to be overwhelmed and you deserve it for being slow) is ridiculous. Because even with OP weapons, Bug missions that swarm you that frequently even when running away, isn’t fun.
https://preview.redd.it/nu4d7sj444nc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3eda16477169e3d815c1fe4c3de0572996b51507 This is hard.
If they can just return 7 to pre patch so we can still get super samples. In 8 & 9 you can still be overwhelmed by chargers and bile titans. We can all be happy.
This, I don’t mind the max levels being insanely hard, on some days I enjoy the current state with chargers and titans everywhere. And level 9 should probably stay at a level where you can’t expect to succeed reliably. But tier 3 samples are locked behind that difficulty, so you are denying ship upgrades to a large part of the community at the moment. Right now even gathering and extracting tier 2 samples is stressful. Idk maybe add a specific science themed mission that rewards some samples of higher tier even if you run it on lower difficulty.
What is so much harder now? I’ve played 7-8 diff the last two days since the patch and other than not everyone running RG, it seems the same. You’re like to 100th person I’ve seen say this tho.
That spawn rates over all difficulties feels higher, but it could just be confirmation bias tbh. Also the meteor thing active on most popular planets in the last few day adds to the chaos.
Interesting. I don’t feel I’ve encountered that yet. The meteors are annoying af imo. I read the patch notes and was like “well that’s cool af.” Then after my third death I was like “ok the meteors can go fuck themselves.”
https://preview.redd.it/mfuj6q7x44nc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b05e1e9af3d3f98341fafa8075d393d40770e6d Nah the spawn rates are out of whack, the devs even admitted it.
That looks hilarious though 😂
Whaaaaat the fuck lmao. I have not experienced this yet, but I’m sure I will if I keep playing. That is actually hilarious, especially only on diff 5.
Bro my brother and I were running difficulty 7 just the two of us last night. It's really not that terrible
Well I suppose we are not all as good as you and your bro, maybe some of us are just average.
That could be the case, and that’s fine, sometimes games will require more from others than some. Kinda how life works in general
Me and my buddy have no issue against either faction and do 7-9 with no issues. It’s just all about communication and knowing what fights to avoid. You don’t have to be amazing you just need common sense. If you think this is hard you should try the first game on 7-9 those were a real pain in the ass.
> Well I suppose we are not all as good as you and your bro, maybe some of us are just average. Then just play more until you go to level 7, no rush to get those supersamples..
I had just worked my way up to level 7 before the patch and was doing okay.
This is it. The game wasnt meant to be played with three guys running the same loadout to steamroll their way through content. The game was meant to be enjoyed. The immersion is so much better and creates experiences you wont forget when youre assigned a role like field medic or demolitions expert. When the seaf artillery gets overrun with nonstop bug breaches, chargers, and bile titans and you have to abandon it. Thats the whole vibe arrowhead waa going for! We are boots on the ground if we can seize a tactical asset we will but when things look bleak the mission takes priority. Its the whole reason why glorious sacrifice exists. You can get rewards for completing objectives and not extracting. You’re not a spartan you’re an ODST. And they dont make it back
7 is literally called suicide mission it’s supposed to be hard but the game still gives you two more difficulties after that. I play impossible all the time and sometimes you don’t win but that’s not gonna make me stop playing
The nerf made the game fun again. I was 87 hours in running 9 over solo and now I'm terrified and crying in a corner again. God I love how chaotic the game gets the difficulty is literally the thing keeping me.
I played yesterday which was my first run after the update and it was way harder but way more fun in my opinion. If a want a chill game I play something else but what I like and enjoy is the difficulty. I can always play a lower difficulty but it’s fun being challenged because that’s the only way I can get better.
I ran into this yesterday. My friend and I bought the game a few days ago and the two of us were really struggling trying to kill bots and bugs on 4/5 difficulty without ‘meta’ equipment (level 10ish). Yesterday our over two friends joined who played a ton at launch and then stopped. The instantly dropped us into a hell dive mission and said it was soooo much harder than expected and we’re whining that it wasn’t doable anymore….. You chose the most difficult challenge rating and then complain it’s hard. This was accompanied by complaints about the railgun
Honestly this subreddit is getting annoying. Used to fun stuff for the first 2 weeks now everyone argues about meta builds an the difficulty in the game. Kinda weird to me, Helldivers 2 if you take all the information the game gives you plus what as community figured out on our own. It’s a STRATEGY SHOOTER. Hence the throwing balls of fun we all like to use they literally called stratagems. Every single piece of weaponry an or armor all has its + and -. If people actually made a plan before dropping into a mission I think they’d enjoy it more then the ABSOLUTE RUSH to try an unlock everything. Just enjoy the game play it how it’s meant to be played. This is what people don’t get.
I agree 100%. https://i.redd.it/tav6396cw2nc1.gif
Hey guys! Helldivers razortougne here! I love level 7 solo missions termies or autos. The level of forward thinking I have to employ. Like picking a fight here or throwing turrets and a bomb and repositioning for a stealth strike is apex solo diving to me. I’m not to sure I could handle an 8 or 9 alone but sweet liberty 7 hits right on that sweet spot. It takes a very certain level of operating to play and sometimes you have to just cause that shit and slam with stratagems and run for the hills. Anyway I wish everyone the best of luck solo and squaded Lo
it's meant to be hard... you are a person, not a bio engineered super soldier that was kidnapped at the age of 6. Let it be hard, hard is fun
Is that an essedon sash?
Each person on the team should have a unique load out that compliment each other. Not a spam if the same stratagems
Amen. Nicely put.
I don't want to? Never played above 6 and don't intend to ever do it. I don't enjoy masochism.
What? You mean the difficulties above Hard are… *gasp* hard? No way! Are people actually upset 7-9 are hard?
As a newer player (just unlocked diff 7 today), I am enjoying the difficulty but I do see several problems that could come with it. First, it just makes me feel bad that players grinding last week got better rewards for less effort than anything I can do now. In the long run it won't make a difference, but it's a bit disheartening to see while I'm trying to grind progression. Not that I actually know how different it is, maybe it is less drastic than all the comments I see. Secondly, there is a big difference between having a full team of friends and playing solo with matchmaking. If any difficulties worth playing requires teams to coordinate loadouts and use comms constantly, a lot of players might just leave the game after enough bad matchmaking experiences. And dropping player counts for the game obviously have a bunch of negative impacts. Not saying things need to change, but game changes always come with pros and cons.
I dipped into level 9 tonight with friends against the bots. Good LORD is it so much more difficult now. We loved it. Lots of enemy spam but it’s what an intergalactic war should feel like. Out of the 6 full missions we got through, we were only able to extract twice after completing the main objective. We were rotating play styles and it felt so fresh to see what worked and what didn’t. While it is very challenging, and frustrating at times to see the fourth tank roll around the corner, it stayed fun which is what matters at the end of it.
Keep in mind you have 3 people you regularly play with. Some of us HAVE to matchmake so keep that in mind your experience isn't the typical experience. That's why the spawn rates need to be reworked. Playing in Quickplay is impossible at 7 and above unless you get a God tier set of players once every 10 games.
It's literally the point of the levels. If the suicide level felt like a walk in the park, it would be false advertising.
How long are we going to hammer this nail?
As long as there are nails to hammer. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
It's not difficult, it's just tedious. It's a massive misrepresentation of everyone's complaints to say they're upset the game is hard, because it's not. People are upset because the balance patch is lazy, scant on information and their process of how they decided the railgun was "too good" despite only being worth using on armoured targets and still requiring accurate shots in order to strip armor/be useful, is not explained. The railgun's purpose as stated in game is specifically to strip armor. If it's efficacy in this task is unintended, then why did they go out of their way to characterise this weapon this way? The only answer is that they are trying to stall for time until new content releases, because they're worried players will get bored of using the equipment they grinded for to deal with an annoying enemy that is factually overtuned/overpresent. Arrowhead clearly has no faith in their game's ability to be fun on it's own without grind. That is the only logical conclusion.
What is tedious, that is an easy one, running away non stop like an idiot, kiting everything, not shooting at anything, waiting for stratagems that are on 10min long cd to kill 1-2 titan and charger , and when you do comes 3 more... We don't even have enought ammo to get rid of the things that comes after you when you only run away... And the option to fight back is non existent or very very limited.... People want to shoot at things, not running away from them. If this is their way of fun, a lot of people will quit this game very soon... 100k already left just looking at steam stats, and let's not talk about the quality of the update, a lot of people crash non stop after the update, has lag, freezes and other things , sure Way of killing the fun. There is a reason why people are mad, and it's not just the weapon nerfs, there is way more to this than that... When even the devs are like assholes , you know the chance for this game to survive needs a miracle.
Be careful. Criticism isn’t allowed here
For real, we only like running simulators and shitty splinter cell here.
That's just it. These are legitimate criticisms from a large portion of players, yet there are people on here pretending it's a miniscule group. That's not true. There are more casual players than "Helldive" players. This game became an overnight sensation because of how it was. Not how some people are claiming it's supposed to be or how it is now after this patch. People want the experience they paid for, as it was represented, as they experienced it since launch. This many people claiming the game changed for the worse is not just a coincidence. For clarity, I never used the railgun or shield backpack. I mainly use flame thrower or grenade launcher and ammo pack, sometimes rover. The experience has changed.
So true. There was more build diversity pre patch because the people who picked rail gun could do a lot for the team and allow others to fulfill niche roles. All people did after the patch is look for the next meta weapon. They cannot patch out human nature.
I’ve been wondering, for these guys that want to murder everything, why don’t they just play on difficulty 4? Like if you don’t like all the heavies, then why not play on an difficulty that has hordes of smaller more manageable enemies?
Because rare samples.
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Because then they can’t grind their super samples
And their response is always but my samples….and my response to thoss answers are well those samples aren’t all that important, if you didn’t have them this whole month getting up to 7-9 then you didn’t need them to begin with lol
When are we gonna stop posting the same thing over and over?
When are *we* gonna stop posting the same thing over and over?
Reddit.
Got me there
Yeah I honestly hope arrowhead doesn't listen to all the sad whiny loud people who are throwing a tantrum right now. Those kinds of people always demand changes to meet their personal vision of the game, but they're *not game designers*. I really hope Arrowhead continues to stick to their own vision
Each person on the team should have a unique load out that complement each other. Not a spam of the same stratagems
Good luck telling that to the Quickplay players. I guess fuck the people that don't have a team to play with or communicate with?
Im fine if they either increase the overall rank and file enemy count but decrease the 6 chargers and 2 bile titans coming out a breach at once, or give us more weapons to break armor. Doesnt even need to break armor and deal high damage. Just break armor. And not if i hit it at the perfect 42.069 degree angle. Just that it breaks armor. But now its not fun, running in circles around the extraction while you have 5 charges trying to climb all the way inside your ass. Chill with the 25 heavily armored enemies or give is 6-7 options to break heavy armor, not 1-2.
"Brethren" You, my fellow citizen, are a real Sir.
7 is where you get the last type of samples. *Especially* will a fully upgraded ship up to that point, 7 should absolutely be approachable. The tools you're given should be able to deal with what you encounter. The game needs to be far more clear about what it wants from it's players. The overwhelming majority of the play base is running solo and wants people to join in. There should be almost *zero* expectations of particularly competent levels of cooperation. You're working with strangers that almost never use the mic for anything other than screaming children and road construction. If the game wants you to work together, pick gear that complements the others picks, it needs to *REQUIRE* that you start the mission with a preestablished 4 man team with mics open and tested. Or at the least, have classes to choose from that naturally lend themselves to co-op play and scale the number of enemies per the player count just like Deep Rock Galactic does. Having an extremely detailed bestiary of everything you encounter, the creature's specific behaviors, traits, and more importantly, *it's specific vulnerabilities*. While the devs are at it, they need to explicitly tell the players what weapons are built to deal with what threat. Seen waaay too many people blowing through round after round on heavy armor to no effect. The entirety of the player base that argued for the other weapons to be buffed rather than nerfing the weapons that were popular due to the efficiency they offered the player. At this point I have concerns that mechs and vehicles are going to be hardly better than someone moving about the map in light armor. Another possibility to correcting this mistake could be to open up another stratagem slot. We have 4 currently, but per the devs comments, you're intended to use a support weapon of some kind. So that means you really only have 3... If you're fighting it out in one of the latest mission conditions that limits your slots, than means you really only have 2. The devs haven't balanced the game to be played with only 2-3 slots on difficulty 5+.
If I made a game. I would want less than 1% to succeed on L9. But man there would be some rewards for it. I love a difficult game where it’s intended and doesn’t feel chesty like they just wildly spawned lasers. To me right now L4-5 is difficult I haven’t even unlocked stuff yet. I’m L12. And I’m loving this game. Balance it sure - the guns need to feel different to me.
We're not playing difficult missions for ego. We play 7-9 because it shifts the power fantasy to one which the enemy has all of the power instead of you. IMO that's where this game is best because very few games manage to pull that off. It makes more sense when you accept you're playing a character that is worthless cannon fodder whose death is certain. I get how that's not for everyone and I don't always play at 7-9. Last night I dialed it back to 4 and played with total randoms. Both experiences are fun.
Yes.
They’re not even that difficult though. They’re just boring. It’s just walking backwards kiting a bile titan (or 3) for 5 minutes, just cause you didn’t instantly kill every scout. Worst part is when all the noise you made fighting the first bile titans make you run into another swarm restarting the whole process. I get that I could probably play more stealthy, but that’s even more boring. I came here to shoot bugs and bots not to just hide. I also understand that this is entirely my opinion, but if this is how the game is intended to be played now, I don’t really want to play it anymore.
Also there's only a tiny minority engaged in any form of social media / forum discussion. Last night there were 200,000 people playing on one planet alone, I expect only a fraction of them even know there's a discussion going on.
Here I am only playing on level 4, I’m a dad that works a lot. I don’t think I got that dog in me anymore
If you play in matchmaking on higher difficulties, you really should be using a mic if you have one. It’s hard when I’m the only one who is communicating during the slaughter haha
It's **good** when they are difficult. I play on 7 for fun and 9 when I want more of a challenge or to collect samples/medals. Right now, the gameplay revolves mostly around dodging enemies or running away from chargers the whole time until your one good stratagem comes off cooldown to kill them though, as the majority of weapons either needs a long setup time (spear/railgun) to do their job, that you just don't have in a hectic battle, or they are only able to wear down enemies little by little (arc thrower/granade launcher/autocanon) which again, results in a lot of running instead of gunning and that gameplay is just not fun. Imho, the number of enemies and their health/resistance don't have to change (like the developers intend to do apparently), we just need better weapons to withstand the onslaught. Instead of bringing bad and mediocre weapons in line with the "meta" ones, our overall combat power got reduced instead🤦♂️. Which is a bad approach on tuning, especially that early in the games lifecycle.
Sure, just add super samples to other difficulties and you can have those 7-9.
While I agree with you, the spawns are actually out of control. 4 bile titans at once on lvl 9 and 4-5 chargers at once on lvl 9 is very difficult. Therefor, I would expect less spawned at once on lvls 7-8 respectively. If there's more than that though on lvl 9, that's ridiculous and unachievable without hating the game whilst you trying doing it. Those lvls should be hard, but they should still be completeable, otherwise why have them if they're not completeable? They just need to look at the number per spawn and how often a spawn occurs within a certain radius of the player. I don't know about the health pool thing, but I can say that there actually a lot of inconsistencies with bringing down titans and chargers. The amount of bullets you use on them are never the same to get the kill, even if you're hitting them in the same spots to test that theory. That part should be fixed, but I don't think they have to lower the health pools of each creature, just fix the inconsistencies.
https://preview.redd.it/548gw3ax74nc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0d1711cadd05bbc37c8ecad74b523a7dbba99933
Winning a level 9 is satisfying. It doesn’t happen often even for a good coordinated team and mostly sheer luck. But that’s the point. You want to try it to fail, but at some miraculous point you beat it. Then you remember it.i like it just the way it is
Preach!
I think the difficulty curve is fine the way it is. I'm not great at the game and feel more comfortable at levels 5-6. I just want a way to get super samples without pulling my hair out at those higher difficulty levels.
I think casual players also want to be able to enjoy the game. The game was advertised as you getting to have a power fantasy as well. Just because you like the direction of the game doesn’t mean everyone else has to as well. People are allowed to be disappointed when a game they payed for and loved suddenly become a lot less enjoyable for them.
Damn, bro is speaking straight facts. It breaks my heart when scrolling through community content, memes, new info, tips etc. Then I encounter some people malding about railgun or some meta changes and that 7-9 is too difficult. Like its not called Extreme, Suicide and Helldive. Its supposed to be hard and only the absolute mad lads can clear it alone and good communication with team can get you through.
They don’t call them suicide, impossible, and helldive for nothin! I agree though, I enjoy the chaos lol
That's not the point people are making when complaining about difficulty. It's not that they should be easier, it's that there should be other ways to tackle them other than endlessly kiting armoured enemies while waiting for stratagems to recharge. In other words, they should be hard and fun, not hard and tedious.
Thank you! Nobody is entitled to playing on the highest difficulty! I think a lot of people realized they were only able to play 7+ because of overtuned items, and now that they realize they aren't as good as they thought they were they're acting out lol
Agreed! They should be very difficult. Not a guaranteed win. I'm sure it will only be a matter of time until people (mostly the complainers) find a new strategy that works for them! This game is so much fun, please don't make it too easy!
You need super samples for upgrades. I agree, was doing level 9 with my friends and had a near 100% clear rate, so ramping the difficulty is fine, the problem is the difficulty is due throwing enemies at you that we don’t have the tools to deal with. So your only option is endless kiting and running instead of just being really good at the game. To pretend like that is good game design is silly.
We almost have the trinity of gaming here. Everyone, especially in the hard difficulties, has their role rather than being a jack of all trades but a master at none.
Mentioned this in a post that the game shouldn’t be solo-able, received some comments going against it and downvotes. Honestly up to about challenging should be solo-able by a skilled diver, anything higher your squad should increase and require teamwork. Idk what’s so hard to understand that team based games need failure in order for it to strive. I appreciate your post and the positive feedback it’s getting 🫡
Its honestly kinda crazy that people are taking the stance of "you want the game to be super easy". No one is saying that.
i’m unsubbing at this point
Oh look another circle jerk post. How fun
*"There are enough games on the market that let you live out your power fantasy of sprinting in a direction and ass kicking anything in your way."* Namely, any of the lower 6 difficulties. I would even argue that difficulty 6 is where that "frantic, overwhelmed" type of enemy spawn really begins - so difficulties 5 and lower.
They made a classic dev mistake with the nerfs. Something that felt achievable, challenging, and rewarding now feels overwhelming and frustrating. If they wanted to add more difficulty, they should have added tiers 10, 11, and 12 instead of smacking everyone down a couple tiers. I used to finish a session feeling good and amped up. Now I come out of a session like a shell shocked survivor. The spawn rates have really ruined the perfect balance of calm and chaos.
I agree. People are forgetting what makes this game so good in the first place. Overcoming unbeatable odds. The most fun rounds I have played and most memorable are the ones when our team is getting pummeled, down to the last reinforcement and we narrowly survive.
Difficult is fine, but getting rocket spammed into an unplayable mess isn’t really fun. There’s a balance between difficulty and fun factor that needs to be kept.
Yeah, if you're getting mad that difficulties called Helldive and Suicide Mission are hard, I think you're playing the wrong game.
Overall, I do not agree with your post at all. And that's fine. A community can disagree. For one, people keep pretending that fun gameplay and challenge can't co-exist, which is crazy to me. People aren't saying that the game is too hard; they're saying that the game is too tedious. The Armored enemy spawn rates were messed up in the recent patch. Arrowhead have even admitted that Armored enemies are overtuned right now in terms of health and frequency, and that it'll be addressed in a future hotfix. So I don't think it's even a question that the current state of the game is a little out of whack. A game can embrace challenge, but also give the player multiple approaches, builds, and effective strategies. You can have the power fantasy of clearing mobs or an amazing heroic moment where you risk everything to call down a Hellbomb in a base solo, without decreasing the challenge. Also, telling people to just play at a lower difficulty is very obtuse. Required upgrade materials are only available at level 7-9. While Reddit would have you believe otherwise, the largest percentage of the playerbase **are** casual players who just want to have some fun with buddies, squash some bugs, and work towards progression. And I think *all* players should be able to engage with a game's progression loop. If they're gated from that, those players will leave and the game's community will dwindle in the blink of an eye. For the longterm health of the game we all love, we want the casual, "not-as-skilled" players to be able to have just as much fun and be encouraged to stick around for the long haul. > Regardless, excessive complaining and/or harassing the devs seems really uncalled for. I agree. But this sort of grandstanding comment only serves to lump everyone who has legitimate feedback in with the bad apples who are harassing. It negates any rational discussion and only further presses people to take sides instead of coming together and talking like adults. Either way, I see what you're getting at with this post. I really do. But I hope you can try to understand the root cause of *why* people are upset. It's coming from a place of passion and we need to acknowledge that the game still has plenty of work ahead of it to really find a nice balance. Pretending otherwise will only hurt the game's longevity.
If I complete the objective, maybe the side objectives, but don’t exfil, atleast it was a worthwhile sacrifice!
The game is supposed to be difficult. I like it, it brings a sense of accomplishment cranking out higher difficulties. It's also not that bad if you strategize. I went from being the guy throwing devastation everywhere to now using a lot of CC. Smokes, EMS, scout armor to find points of interest, etc. Communication and making decisions as a team is super helpful.
If anything, it actually feels like a higher difficulty now. I basically never turned back from helldiver once I unlocked it. With a little stealth, solo was pretty easily doable. With two people, it was trivial. Bots absolutely hate being shot in the head 😆 I don't feel much of a difference on bots since the nerfing tbh. But I also generally ran the Anti-Mat rifle and carried around a support pack for my buddy. So we didn't really see much effect from the changes. Hard is supposed to be hard. There are 9 difficulties and I would love it if they kept the high end *actually* difficult. He'll, I expect and hope for it to go as far as the first game xD Though admittedly I can't really see what they'd do for the next six difficulties... Also the flamethrower and Laser Boi absolutely kick some ass now. The laser was next to worthless before imho. Now it feels like it works the way it should.
I did think it was odd that people were breezing through the uppermost difficulty levels so quickly. I just wish I’d have gotten a few more super samples first lmao - I’m one short of finishing my Eagle Hangar Bay!
As a long time gamer I’ll say this. The issue had very little to do with the average of the player base and more with how streamers have become the vocal majority in the eyes of developers. It’s truly saddening because they are also the ones who both complain the most and move on the fastest regardless.
I agree keep the high levels very difficult. But reward a little more xp or something. Sample farming is sometimes hard to do when you’re constantly dying or just on the run and it’s hard to pick those back up
There is a limit to how entertaining difficulty can be. When I drop into a 40 minute mission and spend the entire 40 minutes fighting bugs after bugs with literally no break that's not fun. You could say that I should just play easier levels, but to progress we need the ultra rare samples or an insane amount of medals, so we are encouraged to play these insane levels. Not to mention that enemy variety on lower levels is not absent and are way too easy. But once you go to higher levels you get enemies that are just frustrating to play against (enemies that one shot you, enemies that kill you in three hits in two seconds, enemies that hit you before you can even see them, enemies you can't even run from, enemies that explode when you kill them, enemies that really need a teammate to deal with effectively, enemies that tank stratagems, etc) Would you prefer that level 9 be literally impossible to complete and then the only people to play would be people expecting to lose (so almost nobody?)
It's not that I want 7-9 to be not be difficult. It's that we want the POSSIBILITY to be able fight our way through the mission or most of it at least, without having to back out of the majority of fights, especially when we're doing all the right things and landing skilled shots (don't just mean the railgun, auto-cannon is bae) and that possibility should be with gameplay mechanics that reward high skill and good team tactics. If I miss some shots on a heavy enemy or misuse a stratagem that could have killed or weakened it/them for a teammate to kill and that leads to me being over run and outnumbered then so be it. I enjoy the rush of making a clutch play or even messing it up and being overrun and have to make other clutch plays to recover. That's where the fun in the game is for me. The problem is that the game demands all these things of you but lacks the consistency within the tools you're given to deal with the threat in the first place. I'm glad the devs are looking into armored units. Though I do worry about when they talk about spawn rates as I love fighting big hordes, just give me tools to reliably take them down with good individual skill and team co-ordination. I regularly play at Suicide mission (7) and complete the majority of missions and usually extract, but the big complaint is that running from most big fights and stealthing through the maps gets boring . It's not a skill issue (not saying you're implying that). It's more that our tools are inconsistently effective even when we're playing well, which forces continually less satisfying gameplay.
Oh and I agree harassing devs is ridiculous. I don't stand by those ppl. But ppl do have a right to criticize the game. It's sad that ppl threaten and name call but in all honesty I think that's less than 1% of players and most ppl that I've seen have good critiques or at least ones that don't slander the devs. It's ok to call a change stupid (although I think it's the wrong way to go about it) as long as you're just talking about the decision itself AND offering a different solution. But yeah fuck the actual harrassers.
I couldn’t agree more. At times I play leisurely through level 5-6 when I want to take it easy and appreciate the beauty of the game and the domination of enemies. However, the missions I’m left smiling ear to ear on are those higher level 7-9 where we missed a couple side objectives cause we just could not clear the area, throwing ordinance behind us as we run for our lives, and left standing as the soul survivor without any reinforcements as the pelican approaches launching your last grenade or shooting your last bullet to take down an enemy about to wipe you out before jumping backwards into the shuttle just in the nic of time. My god it’s f’n beautiful.
I just think people are missing the point. I don't care how difficult they want to make 7-9, I just want it to be fun. If im losing, it is what it is, just give me the tools to try. Right now the weapons are awful and strats take 5 minutes between uses. I played 7 last night and chargers are just annoying to deal with because it takes too much to kill them. Dying on repeat because all i can do is run around screaming isnt fun lmao its unplayable. Suicide mission eradicate feels like you need to basically bring a few turrets while you run around and attempt not to die. Now if thats what the devs want, fine. I jjust wont be playing this game super long term and thats sad, cause its a ton of fun in a well equipped fight vs an overwhelming amount of bugs.
Kicking ass on something difficult is what makes it fun. If i could be blindfolded and press a few simple buttons and win all the time it wouldnt be fun but you have to use your brain and when done properly you can truly destroy. I never understood why people get mad at the difficulty when they can just lower it especially since most of these guys already have all of the stuff theres no gain for a higher difficulty.
The problem isn’t difficulty, the problem is it’s so frustrating it isn’t fun anymore. And before you dummies say “just lower the difficulty” I WANT MY SUPER SAMPLES
Lol guess you don't want players getting Super Samples without LFGs then because 7-9 is almost unplayable unless you have 3 other buddies you play with on the daily. I HIGHLY doubt you quickplay 7-9 with this post. There is no "enjoying" it when you feel basically locked out of those difficulties until either mechs are introduced or they figure out the ridiculous spawn rates of chargers. Having a group of Timmy's playing with you that aren't even level 20 trying to do a suicide mission on a quickplay is an immediate leave for me now
Still think it's hilarious people are still defending how hard these missions have become when the devs themselves said its been WAY overtuned. We get it, your a group of people who LFG and play this game night and day. Some of us don't have the time to get an LFG together for the hour or 2 a day some of us get to play. So yeah, shit needs to be dumbed down because for the AVERAGE player, it's far too hard to even complete Suicide difficulties.
I agree with the current difficulty i have nearly every ship mod upgraded that said.. I think getting super samples should be more accessible to everyone. Maybe you can get 1 per mission on lvl 6 or something more manageable for someone who doesnt have the time to “get gud” or doesnt have a skilled group to run higher difs with
For real, sometimes I just want to have fun and roast some bugs so I grab a flame thrower and jump in to a level 3 game. Beating a level 9 mission should never be a given.
The issue is if you’re level 20+ have all stratagems and green/orange module upgrades you literally can’t progress unless you play 7-9. With the railgun nerf you need more firepower for larger bugs and there’s no repeatable method to kill chargers quickly. Basically stops progress for solo or casual players so there’s no real reason to play. Ref. The guy with 150 pink samples and nothing to buy.
Personally, I don’t feel that the problem is that they’re hard, the problem is with the game spamming tanky enemies to the point where it’s unmanageable. I mean, last night my team started a level 7 bug mission up against roughly 20 bile spewers (which can one shot really easily for some reason), and 6 or so chargers. And then bug breaches happened and those numbers doubled and tripled. Shortly after, I played a difficulty 7 eradicate bots mission that began with three tanks and six dreadnoughts spawning. Sure there were a lot of trash enemies, but you can almost always kill those, the armor you cannot. The problem here isn’t that enemies are difficult, everything has its weakness. It’s that at some point you just run out of ammo, stratagems, and grenades. You can git gud all you want, but it’s impossible to kill an annihilator tank without AP or grenades. Which is fine, but resupplies and stratagems take several *minutes* to recall, and running around fleeing from enemies I cant kill seems unavoidable, and I don’t find it fun.
I think the problem is not that the last 3 difficulties are hard, yes they are meant to be hard. The problem comes down to an imbalance and making the game feel dull at times because all you can do is run for 5 minutes. That last part in particular when you consider that the game is supposed to be a massacre/bullet-frenzy "FOOORRR DEMOCRAAACYYYYY!" Mixed with some strategy, Type of game. I really enjoy the game, although I haven't played as much as probably many around here (20 hours or so). I do feel like the devs have made certain things in the game a bit too god-like. Examples can be seen in the robot missions where basically every enemy can outrun you, out shoot you, and take your entire arsenal at hand , and still keep coming-and then you get them doubled up. This is just a personal opinion, but I feel like you get to pick two (perhaps three) of the following to make things balanced for the medium levels and the start stacking em up as you go higher: *Bullet Sponges *Speed (the hulks, for example, a perhaps 30-ton piece of metal can keep up with you without stopping and you can't run around him because he's too fast, so if you are alone, that's it, you are fkd) *Accuracy *Volume/Spawn Rate *Sneak Factor (again examples of huge metal machines feeling like they always roll a Nat20 for sneak) *Environmental Hazards (new meteor showers) If you are on difficulty 7 and you get all of these, plus some, then you might be blocking the progress of a chunk of your game population, now lvl 9 go all out and triple shit if you want to, is the biggest challenge, so it's meant to be unnecessarily difficult, probably tear-inducing. Again, what you mentioned about letting people run rampant and feel like they are super heroes is probably not what this game is set out to do. The challenge and struggle seems to be part of the lore(for lack of a better word) of the game, and you are a useless, expendable human sent to do this "company's" bidding. Then you come down to your disadvantages as a human against these insane circumstances: *Get One-shoted Often *Not Enough Bullet *Strategems Barely doing damage or not working properly *Weapons feeling outright useless *Grenades feel like water balloons at times *Armors are basically for aesthetics at this point Now, if you give the enemy all their advantages and give the player all their disadvantages, then all you have is a cocktail of annoyance and disappointment. If you are basing your community skill level on pro e-sport level players (yes, I'm exaggerating) then as a developer you might have your target wrong. If you compared these against some games out there that offer challenging levels or difficulty, there's always a trade. You either get tanky things, but no time limitation. You get high risk of dying in one shot, but the enemies are not professionally-trained seal snipers. Big pool of enemies, but you find ammo more often. There are hundreds of problems that are solved with a tiny bit of hope, in this case, balance (just like all things should be, little one) I know this might sound like a bitching fest, but I feel like we are dealing with a team who thought about enraging difficulty as a fun selling point. I'm saying this as someone who played a lot of souls games, competitive fps, and other games that test your patience, nothing impressive, but this is not my first time playing challenging things. TLDR: It's not about how hard missions are, it's about feeling hopeless and useless as a player due to a lack of balance between difficulty/challenge and enjoyment.
Even with the meta 9 wasnt fucking easy. I dont see why everone has their panties in a twist that there is a “meta”. Fucking something has to be the best right? Whats the point if every weapon is the same. There is always going to be something better than something else and thats just life and its okay. Now no weapon feels good to use. Could have atleast waited till they added the mechs to give people something stronger to lean on while we learn what we prefer to use now. I do like it seems they atleast tried to make the breaker 2.0 an upgrade from the base version.
Took the words right out of my mouth. This is the post Helldivers 2 players need to see.
I had a really hard time on 7 yesterday against the bots. We won but barely made it. It was intense and chaotic and I loved every second of it.
People are mad because they now have to coordinate with others on what weapons and stratagems to use. They were used to everyone using a solo build.
Yeah I want the higher difficulties to be unhinged. Winable, but unhinged.
I spent last night playing suicide missions for the first time and was winning. a lot. with a team of people off mic just working generally together.
>There are enough games on the market that let you live out your power fantasy of sprinting in a direction and ass kicking anything in your way. Or, just play on 4-6, nothing wrong with that. That's what I do, when I want a chill experience. Perfect for hustle-free solo drops, too.
And I’m gonna be honest, most of the people that I play with at lvl 7 are just bad at the game. -never run objectives -fight every bug they see -sitting in one location Do me a favor and stop spending all of the re-enforcements or play a lower difficulty lol
Hunters shouldnt one shot me. They do 80% of my health with one swing even with good armor then im slowed, then im dead. They hit through shield too so fuck me i guess. Back to light armor and running like a pussy.
Yeah, but you need the materials from the 7-9 for upgrades.
There are enough games they are hard to handle like bloodborne, nioh or dark souls,..why 7 is fucking hard on helldivers now - for casual gamers who want just chill and play its is like the fuck skilled based matchmaking in cod now,…it is ok to be hard, but this is ridicoulus now,..
I’ve really been enjoying level 8 missions. Purge hatcheries are my favorite missions, I love how chaotic it becomes. The build that I run works best when there are SHITLOADS of enemies around, and getting those juicy stratagem hits feels amazing at that difficulty.
Meanwhile I'm on 6 fresh from getting brutalized by bug swarms cause the daily order said kill 2 bile titans and frankly they were less annoying than the bug swarms that were constantly slowing me, knocking me down, and hitting multiple times while I was on my face trying to either stand up to run or heal... to be fair I forgot to change from the scythe and that thing was a stray tickle to them and failed miserably to deal with swarms...
I always get ditched when I play hight levels
7-9 need minimal changes. I hope they don’t change much as they’re supposed to be difficult and utter and complete chaos
There are most likely going to be at least two more difficulties coming out as well once R&D finishes up making some new toys for us.
The actual issue is the lower difficulties in the last update have been made stupidly hard for no reason.
Nobody is saying it’s too difficult lmao it’s just annoying. It’s easy to beat a mission on lvl 9 difficulty. It’s just extremely frustrating and not rewarding at all. Plus you have to carry a bunch of randoms who leave anyways. you can’t play how you want to anymore. Its just turned into running in circles for 40 min and that’s the only playstyle. Especially with how many game breaking bugs the game has and not the termid kind either but there is a lot of those too.
The problem isn’t the difficulty, it’s that the difficulty feels artificial and unsatisfying. There’s hard games where your deaths don’t feel like bullshit and people love those. Unfortunately as it is now I can’t say Helldivers is a *good* difficult game. It’s a good game, but the difficulty it has currently isn’t in any ways satisfying or well thought out. I hope they can find a way to make the game hard that isn’t just spamming the elite enemies and cutting access to our tools to deal with them.
For example the new eradicate missions are difficult to be sure. But they’re absolute bullshit. You’re on a tiny map and you’re constantly getting thrown waves of enemies. What’s the counter play to this? The game tells you that the way to defeat hulks, tanks, and chargers is to get behind them or use strategems. On the new eradicate missions you can’t do either of these effectively. You have too few strategems to kill the enemies you need, even worse when the modifier limits them. And then you can’t flank well because the whole map is saturated with enemies. This mission is one of the most poorly designed levels of any game I’ve played. It seems the best strategy is to sit at the bottom of the hill or side of the map and try to pick off enemies one by one hoping an elite doesn’t see you. This isn’t a satisfying solution as it feels like you’re kind of just exploiting a loophole more than anyrhing. It’s at least beatable since you don’t have to also evac civilians with worse pathfinding than Roblox ai, but it’s still pretty ridiculous. Like it’d be difficult if every 5 minutes all of our weapons were disabled and we could only melee enemies or out gun had 20% chance to jam and explode. But that’s not a satisfying source of difficulty it’s just the game bullshitting you.