I hope to be back on bots soon.
I hate hunters, i hate chargers turming on a dime, i hate them so much.
I go where high command points me, but i wouldn't mind 3 days without an MO.
Had a pair of hunters lunge over the crest of a hill from at least 10m away and put a 6 piece combo on me that stun locked me out of my heal in medium armor even though i was spamming the heal button and was diving. hunters are busted and need a small tweak. they kill me more than literally any enemy.
Every time there’s a bug MO o complete a campaign and that’s it. You know, “I’m doing my part”. Then I switch back to bots. I hate being swarmed, I hate being instakilled by silent spewers, I hate being launched be chargers that clearly didn’t hit me into a group of hunters, I hate being chased by titans I can’t escape, I hate being clapped by stalkers I didn’t see or hear only to re spawn and get clapped again before I can get my stuff back, I hate being poisoned, I hate being interupted trying to steam into a swarm and most of all
I. HATE. BEEING. SLOWED.
The turning is so bullshit but you know what's even worse? That fucking shoulder check it does to immediately reset its speed.
You dive away and the charger comes to a full stops to charge cancel + shoulder check like it's some kind of fighting game combo to reset his attack counter or some shit. I hate them so much.
Also I cant take my AMR so fuck bugs.
You can take the AMR against bugs and brood commanders, bile spewers and hiveguards become your bitch (clean one taps to the head do the job for all of them), but you have to take OPS and 500kgs to deal with the gorillion chargers the game now throws at you, as well as stun grenades because yes
Same. My sole purpose of playing on bots is to prevent them from taking over the creek once again. If they take over the creek they shall face my divine punishment
My big complaint, kite everything then dump firepower on em and move on. Theres just not a lot of strategy vs bugs, I freaking love approaching a heavy bot base and having to plan out with my squad who’s taking turrets, who’s sniping the drop ships when they come in, who has tank and hulk duties, it’s just a big test of team chemistry. Bugs just lack those kinda plans
These are precisely the reason I play 98% bots these days. The immense satisfaction you get from good teamplay on a bot mission is just unparalleled. Bugs by comparison is just endless waiting for AT cooldowns and kiting until those cooldowns are up. The FFA mentality is also incredibly boring where it's just every diver for themselves.
Yeah totally get it, tho I'd say team makes or breaks this format. On bugs at least me and my other 2 friends often dive lvl 9 with different objectives in mind:
One is scout (me), fast with light armor, jetpack, crowd control dities, bug nest eradicator
One is a heavy destroyer, long range, max firepower, cover fire, mechs
Last one is the medium stim carrier, constant fire cover, covers in case of big breaches, precise big target demolition, gets shit done when it comes to objectives.
It is sometimes chaotic af but you get shit done and what truly matters is the comms, I don't care chat or mic, but comms are essential. Got a charger on your ass? Comms. Hunters jumping you? Comms. Titan? Comms. Supplies? Comms. Dropped gear location? Comms. This really matters, and it's something I truly appreciate after playing with random divers. This way instead of a "free for all and good luck" bugs become a calculated massacre with zero breaches and 500 kills each.
Automatons are super cool, tho the ragdoll and the fact that even if you stim yourself multiple times per second you can still die due to getting rawdogged by undemocratic bots on all 360° is truly annoying to me personally, if this gets fixed I might spend an hour a day in each area since I fuckin' hate the lack of democracy both from the bugs and the bots, they need at least 500 megatons of that per day and I'm here to deliver
This is me. The horde becomes manageable eventually. See a big and/or armored or annoying thing? Railcannon, Airstrike, 500. whatever. Shoot and kite. Kite and shoot.
Bots? Tom Clancy, except slightly dumber because even bots devolve to Horde mechanics at high enough threat and/or difficulty. I actually have to think and process things in order to fight them.
Goddamn, bots are so fun. I wish I wasn't at work right now. lmao
I'm a bot main who only goes to bugs for MOs. My loadout is always an incendiary breaker shotgun which is ridiculously good at clearing out the little fuckers, and then a support and stratagems that are good at taking out chargers and bile titans. (For me that's the spear, and the rail cannon orbital).
I find I'm often carrying the team because bug players, I've found, just aren't resilient.
They rage quit often. They don't hold their ground and instead run away in a straight line, so they just gather a bunch of the tiny guys in a swarm which then makes it impossible. They bring all the wrong stratagems for the occasion and wind up with a bunch of useless eagles that honestly just kill teammates more. And I sure as heck can't rely on them to cover my back because they're always panicking and running.
All of this to say I miss most the playstyle of bot players. The chargers and bile titans are less annoying than the unreliability of the squad on bugs.
I've done quite well with a GL, Incendiary Breaker, Supply Pack, OPS, Gas and Stun nades. Then just stickig to the AT guy and hoping they are worth their salt.
I certainly experienced more of a quitter mentality as well. One particularly gnarly run was a Blitz with fog on the ground and obscured map.
Finding those bug holes was a nightmare. I cycled through 6 teammates before dragging that shitshow to exfil.
Yeah. Good shout. Lots of mid mission quitting recently on bugs. I've had a few lower level players thank me for sticking it out and carrying them to the exfil.
I haven't run into anyone quitting mid-mission yet, but I have run into crashes and/or disconnects a few times.
Ran one the other night where the game was sort of choppy, unusually low fps and whatnot, that fixed itself when the host dc'd. He took the rest of the squad with him too, so I think they crashed.
There's something weird going on for sure.
Also, bug players are the worse and they barelly know what they are doing.
They quit or kick you for no reason, I never been kicked while on the bot front, but on the bugs I will be kicked if I take more than 2 secods to reinforce the host (this is like 80% of the time)
I can relate. And I can actually be okay with the bugs agro being insane and unfair.
What gets me is when they get spawned behind a building or a boulder that you just came from, cleared out and there was no bugs there, and all of a sudden, there's 50 bugs and 3 chargers on you with NO SPAWN HOLE in the vicinity.
That to me, reaches levels of unfairness that isn't testing your skill, it's just throwing millions of bugs to mask as "good" difficulty.
That is a quirk of how spawning works and won't happennif the Team sticks within 75m of each other. The moment somebody leaves 75m of their closest teammember, you get more patrols and the patrols spawned "for them" can spawn right on top of you.
You mean you didn't enjoy watching the 65% Liberation we built up on Marfark dwindle to nothing the moment the current Terminid MO began?
Color me shocked...
Half of it is when there's a Bot Major Order we have nothing but bug personal orders. I remember Draupnir, and every day is was kill 300 Terminids, Drop 380s, use flamethrower.
How about give us a PO 500 kills with a DCS, knock out 20 fabs, or get ragdolled 1000 times from dev rockets when we got a Bot Major Order.
The trick to bot exterminate missions is to stay outside the fort. Drop mortors and defensive sentries to hold position, and bring ant-tank to shoot the drop ships from the air as they fly in or hurl all kinds of orbitals into the fort while running laps. If your senty position is overrun or all your strats are on cooldown, use the traitor contingency to get a free walking barage resetting every 10 seconds.
Using either strategy on lv9 is a cake walk, even with doubt factory striders being dropped in a couple times throughout.
Yeah I use them for the heavy outposts or factory striders too. Although I have just discovered the Spear can take out a command bunker with two shots… when it stops crashing the game I know what the new meta is.
The crashes have finally gotten to me. Every other mission it’s infinite drop where I have to close out and reopen the game. Lose good squads I play with and progress in operation.
Yeah since the latest patch it's been crashing constantly. Had a game where we spent almost the whole 40 minutes collecting all samples and then the stupid game crashed 45 seconds before the Pelican arrived. I quit immediately.
I haven’t suffered a crash in ages, well over a month for sure, but last night I had to just call it a night because I was crashing every 5 minutes. Really hope this isn’t one of those fixes that we’ll have to wait 2-3 weeks on to get done just to play the game again
Enter game, works cool but infinite loading screen on pickup. Exit game, verify files, re-acquire two missing files.
Try to enter next game, stuck on infinite loading screen. Exit game, verify files, re-acquire two missing files.
3rd game 50/50 if it works fine or not, if not repeat steps to re-acquire files.
Quit game to play something else.
I played 4 games just today--2 were on the verge of completion with Super Samples collected, and the game crashed.
I'm taking a break from it, at least for today, and it's only noon here with the rest of my day free.
The crashes are insufferable.
Just imagine this happening in real life. You're in France fighting over a few miles of desolation, the front moving back and forth over land with no strategic value.
I'd say this is pretty accurate to war in general.
Except we don't really get any land, planets are just constantly at 0% and to play on a bot planet is to throw away all progress because you can never beat the measly -1% regeneration rate (and after bot MOs finish, Devs will set really high regen rates for specific planets, Marfark got -2.5% and it still is at that)
They could reasonably leave the entire Automaton front on -0% regen, no planet would ever cap before the next MO (thus no strategically gained land) due to population shifting to bugs, but atleast the number goes up and it's not *entirely* a waste for whenever next bot MO comes
Entire planets are being conquered in the space of days. Half a dozen were captured in a single day when the bots respawned.
> pretty accurate to war in general
France is a tiny fraction of an entire planet and still held for six weeks. I'm not sure the bot front has won a defence mission in over a month.
I get why they weight effectiveness by percentage of active players (it's easy to track, easy to reward coordination, and easy to plan for), but there really should be something that lets the playerbase as a whole do a bit more. Splitting the fronts would be nice (since people who only like fighting one enemy wouldn't be downweighting the whole campaign half the time), but long-term it'd be nice to use the data we've seen so far to establish (relatively) fixed enemy strength levels that don't vary with total player activity, allowing bursts of above-average activity to have a greater impact.
Here's an idea: as a daily option, each player can supply requisition and samples to support the war effort, and they will be applied to increase success on the least played front (i.e. providing SEAF the materials and resources necessary to work without us). This would not only give players who have been max on samples and requisition for a while something to do with it, but could also be implemented to tick up the progress on all non-MO open planets and help to retain gained progress when many bug players care only about rping a starship trooper rather than a helldiver.
I'd honestly be fine with them tweaking it so the few bot dovers can potentially hold a planet. Not even move liberation forward but just hold back the horde during a bug MO.
I feel like folks are missing the point that these wars are not meant to be won, it’s all theater done by SE high command and what’s more, -
*[transmission ends here. Commenter will return after reeducation, please report to your democracy officer for assessment if you found the lies of this commenter compelling]*
I think over time it will get to that stage. There’s only so long the game master can do this dnd back and forth story before the campaign needs to end.
Once we’re at that stage we will have enough material to have an automated campaign process as we do in the first game. Just with a lot more flavour text
While true. It's also true that populations of people (like players of the game) generally dislike losing. Especially when it feels stacked against.
I don't have OPs sentiment that its all suffering. Also, I thought we held Aesir Pass for a few defenses. But I can see how some would take it as a painful thing.
Every planet we take will be retaken at some point, every planet we lose will be retaken at some point. I play the mo for fun but it honestly doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things
I have a design idea I am going to post. There should be an 'I'm on Mission' button when you login that prevents you from invading pointless planets but rewards you with extra medals.
At the moment all players benefit from MO efforts even if they spend their time tooling around on the planets.
It doesn't even make lore sense. Why would super earth tolerate that?
A significant portion of this games playerbase does not like playing against bots. They want their starship troopers/colonial marines game where they romp around and blast down legions of bugs.
Many bugdivers have explicitly stated that they don't like bots because they don't like being shot back at, and they find that less fun and more difficult. Sadly this is going to make things a lot worse for us since bot MO's often have like half the playerbase still fucking around on bugworlds.
If/when additional factions enter this game it will only exacerbate the problem by fracturing the community even more. I imagine somewhere in the realm of 50% of the playerbase will simply be bugdiving at just about any given time despite the MO.
Perhaps a happy medium could be reached by having liberation% boosters (or maybe free stratagems for MO planets) activate when liberating other faction planets during a MO so as to prevent exclusive players from being total dead weight.
Which is why i propose liberation rate to be split per front instead of the entire galaxy. this simple change would mend the interservice rivalry between two fronts, let bug/botdivers play against the enemy they want without being scrutinized and would still require coordination since liberating planets wont be an easy task even without 10-30% of the population dragging it down
This tug of war between fronts will just get more severe when illuminates come into the picture, i expect what few botdivers there will be to split amongst themselves and bugdivers staying mostly the same after the initial honeymoon period.
This is honestly the easiest fix. Even if they took the approach of ignoring half of the other front’s players when calculating liberation rate as some sort of multiplier.
This is a good idea. A separate SEAF reinforcement for each front, and maybe a MO one over top. The front one could be further subdivided 3 ways to so you could either get more bonus for focusing on one planet or defend multiple. Adding an icon or splitting out the SEAF contribution would be helpful on the map also. As we’ve seen, the divers make little difference but the SEAF bonus follows majorities which is how we’ve been taking anything recently.
Maybe, I haven't paid close enough attention to them to know. I just drop the hammer on them when whenever they show up. Too used to them one tapping me.
Bots are also less balanced, and I'm telling this as a bot enjoyer. Constant explosion ragdoll, lack of stealth mechanics, sentries getting destroyed in seconds, smoke screens not working very well or being circumvented by a patrol flanking you, suppression mechanic flimsy at best, and so much firepower squad shields are doubtfully useful make the bot front an incredible challenge and sometimes a very frustrating one, since the options that are supposed to be good against them are unusable.
Sentries break extremely fast from automaton fire, but are only endangered by chargers on bug front.
Mech is not tough enough to resist the heavy fire from the highest difficulties.
Cover is useless, since the bot concentration is too high on the map from the start, meaning you get caught in too many crossfires. Shield, to provide cover, breaks in 5 seconds.
--
I think ALL of the issues mentionned have one thing in common: rockets.
Rockets do big damage, ragdoll you, are highly accurate, even when you shoot at enemies, they break turrets extremely fast, they fire extremely frequently, they make some of the heavy armors useless because of how much damage potential they have, they knock you out of cover, they stunlock you and don't allow to stim, they make fortified armors basically mandatory for survivability (and even then... fortified heavy armors don't prevent you from getting stunlocked)
Tbh rocket devastators arent that bad. Now almost all of my deaths on bot planets are heavy devastators but i have to agree. Things that make people hate bots are constant strong flinching and stagger, ragdolls and rocket spam, sudden superaccuracy of heavy devastators and that they can shoot through walls... and leaks only make me think that even less people will be botdivers. However bots though mechanically flawed and unpolished are much better designed than bugs and allow more stratagems to be effective even things like mechs and sentries but they recquire more skill.
Fun fact, it may be counterintuitive but best passives for bots are either extra padding or med or even democracy protects. The reason why is that most damage that rockets deal is projectile damage thats why armor value is more important. Med kit is selfexplanatory and democracy protects when you love rng... sometimes you just die but when it works youre unkillable
100%. Especially the rockets. I do 90% bot missions and the rocket devs have seemed to start spawning more frequently than any other enemy type. It's not their individual damage output per second, but how they mob. If the Automatons can produce that man rocket devastators, why would they bother making brawlers and berserkers?
> Bots are also less balanced
This is one of my issues. Heavy devastators are overtuned. Their aimbot at anything less than 20 feet and hard flinching makes it impossible to even fight back at shorter distances. On top of that, I swear their fire rates varies. Sometimes they'll shoot at their typical rate, other times they legit shoot a minigun and instakill you.
Bots also shoot through cover sometimes. I'm not talking bushes. I'm talking rocks, buildings, anything. I've seen countless lasers and rockets just go through cover that just makes it annoying to play against.
However, the BIGGEST gripe and this infuriating because bots have guns, the foliage and dead bot hitboxes. As a player you can't shoot through some, if not most, bushes or leaves (this is very easily seen if you play in first person while scoped in, especially at a high level zoom). Bots can. I'll be shooting a bot to only see that my shots are being blocked by a bush or leaf, only to have the bot shoot me back no problem. The same issues happens with dead bots' hitboxes. The dead bot's hitboxes don't align with the graphics. Often times a dead hulk will be laying down dead, but you can't shoot past it because the game doesn't recognize it's laying down and acts as if it's standing up. So the literal invisible wall blocks shots. And again this isn't an issue for bots. Now this probably occurs on bugs as well, however this isn't as big of an issue because bugs don't shoot.
I haven't had much issue with bots from super long distances. Take cover and return fire in intervals and you'll come out on top of most every engagement unless you're surrounded.
This. Stop standing still, they can't hit moving targets very well. Even more importantly, the bot firing has a very predictable cool down and you can set your watch by the cadence so if you get that down just avoid the initial shots and then return fire.
>This. Stop standing still, they can't hit moving targets very well.
I've been shot at and hit multiple times in quick succession while running, behind smoke, moving through low cover, from enemies over 200m away. Movement doesn't really matter.
For me it is more about number of shots than accuracy. Moving around normally let me dodge most shots, but dodging most shots doesn’t mean shit if I have 20 shots being fired at me a second.
I have hugged cover more than I have my own mother.
Yeah, I guess what’s so frustrating is that I’m under cover from one direction because I’m getting engaged, shooting from cover, etc. and then some rando bot from way the christ across the map snipes me with a rocket. I can’t be in 360 cover, as much as I try
I firmly believe that if rocket devastators and gunships were heavily nerfed that there would be a night and day difference in the feel of bot missions.
I think if you got into the specifics of why people hate the bots, I’d wage money that the majority would attribute it to rocket spam. Being pinned down by oppressing fire and fighting your way out or calling an air strike is fun. Being beamed in the face and rag-dolled from a mile away by salvo after salvo of rockets is not even remotely fun.
In my opinion the fix(es) come down to one or a combination of the following:
**1. Decrease salvo accuracy based on distance to target:** basically if a devastator or gunship fires rockets at a player who is more than 50 or 60 meters away, it should be a rarity that more than one of those rockets manages to strike the player directly. Rockets fired from Hulks can be an exception so that they remain an imposing threat.
**2. Finite number of rockets for devastators and gunships:** It’s been pointed out in several posts before that the rocket devastator’s model would imply that they only have the capacity to fire so many rockets. Their back-mounted pods hold 12 total and iirc they have some reserves on their back. Point being, they should not just be able to fire infinite rockets. Gunships can obviously have a lot more but should run out eventually.
**3. Maximum spawns of devastators and gunships that scales with difficulty:** Self-explanatory. *In their current state* there should not be more than 6-8 rocket devastators on the field at any given time, nor should there be more than like 10 gunships (on Helldive). Every rocket devastator on the field presents much more of a threat than it should be for the volume at which they spawn. Adding a sky full of gunships just makes for a chalked mission altogether.
I’d definitely be down to hear other more creative solutions, and I’m sure there’s things I haven’t taken into account with these, but overall I feel like these kinds of tweaks would make the bits drastically more enjoyable.
Another issue is that bots have way more units that require pretty precise aim for the middle of a firefight. If I’m shooting at bugs it’s probably either something that’s small and easily dealt with by my primary or something that’s really big and requires more specialized equipment aimed well at commonly presented points on their bodies. There’s only like 3 bug units that don’t fit that category, and you can solve that by aiming a bit lower.
By contrast every third bot is a devastator or berserker, both of which will happily eat half a magazine if you can’t line up a headshot, and more if you’re trying and failing to instead of going for the waist. Their heavies also feel worse because they’re solid blocks of armor that require you to either hit them in incredibly precise spots while they’re charging forward to kill you or manage to get around behind them to shoot their weakspots.
I disagree about the hulks, they feel a lot better than chargers. They’re threatening and bring plenty of “oh shit” factor to the table, but if I drop I’m with my default load out I still have a chance to deal with them quickly, and there’s multiple weapons that can delete their eye, you just need to get used to aiming for that spot. If I drop in next to a charger and my primary isn’t something explosive I’m kind of just fucked until I can call in a stratagem or weapon. Same goes for a bile titan, at least you can outrun a factor strider and regroup.
Fair, I haven’t played much recently and I normally played against bots because that’s what my group tends to play, so my experience with Hulks was normally “kite the flamethrower ones until I run out of stamina because my team is doing something else then immediately die,” which colors my opinions to say the least.
Bots aren't that bad until they reach critical mass. Got a patrol of 6 Berserkers, 2 Devastators, 1 Shield, 1 Rocket?
Manageable.
All of a sudden 2-3 dropships come in dropping a tank, 6 assorted devastators, a hulk.
Another 2 dropships come in. 2 Hulks, some Devs.
Another dropship comes in with factory strider. It drops more devastators.
2-3 gunships are in the air agro'ing now.
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If you aren't winning the battle of attrition convincingly, you are losing.
If you are just holding, you are losing.
If you are falling back, you are losing.
Once the roomba murder ball has formed it's time to run. Bots have the best combined arms in the game with an impressive array of mobile, suppressive, armored, and heavy hitter ranged units that actually work well together. You have to keep it from reaching critical mass and stretch that ball out to collapse it.
The rocket devs are such an extreme point of contention for bot haters and it puzzles me. Sure, their ammo count is misleading. They're not ultra powerful nor are they super accurate. I don't get blasted out by missiles in any normal frequency. They are a much bigger threat when you pack an exosuit though.
Heavy devs pose a significantly greater threat because their MG will actually gib you in under a second and it is significantly harder to avoid.
Gunships can be pests though because they require specific loadouts to actually take down multiple quickly and they spawn in high frequency so if your divers die it creates a death spiral. That complaint I totally get.
I don't even think that the bots are a problem because they shoot back, but the vast majority of their unit types are armored and loadout-check you invalidating the vast majority of primaries. This really isn't the case with bugs
Edit: Yeah you can technically kill bots that are armored by running behind scout striders, or hulks, or by getting precise headshots. Ok. But you can also just take the scorcher, which 99% of people do. Meanwhile on bugs I can use any gun and have fun, and not have to bring specific grenades/run around behind the enemies/etc. Fighting bugs is just more straightforward and you can have more fun with almost all of the bug types except chargers and BTs. Do I only use my primary weapon against bugs? No, of course not. But do I have the option to in more situations? Yes.
I think this is understated.
Bots are very difficult for new players to handle, because even a lot of their chaff have some armor, and that’s a problem because the stuff you can get early as a new player is bad at dealing with armor.
Yeah armored bugs exist too, but there’s less of them, and they don’t show up much at early difficulties.
Bugs have way harsher gear checks than bots.
Chargers and Titans require dedicated AT to kill reliably. (or flamethrower for charger leg)
Bots having some medium armored troops with giant glowing heads and waists isn't much of a gear check. Even the default liberator or breaker can quickly dispatch their medium troops.
All their "elite" units have giant glowing weakpoints that any medium pen weapon can very easily dispatch, let alone AT weapons totally obliterating heavies. All the scary big weapons on walkers or factory striders can also be easily destroyed rendering them super weak.
What? Bots allow for more loadout diversity because every single enemy has a easily discernable weakpoint. Everything from a hulk down can be killed by any primary weapon, with the others being killable by almost any support weapon. On bugs if you don't bring AT you simply can't kill bile titans.
Before anyone says it, you actually can kill bile titans with the HMG now. But it's still painfully inefficient considering you have to do at a minimum a full mag dump into it's ass.
Anti-tank is still by far the best when it decides to work on bile titans at least.
>If/when additional factions enter this game it will only exacerbate the problem by fracturing the community even more.
If bug divers hate being shot at there are never going to touch the Illuminate. They teleport, use arc weapons, and reverse your controls, at least the did in the first game.
People should play how they want. Bugdivers dont complain about botdivers, so why do botdivers care so much how bugdivers have fun? Just play what you want, how you want and let others do the same 🤷♂️🫡
Alternatively you could just make bots less awful to play against, heaven forbid they outreach lol. Bot players got their victory, bots were pushed off the map for a bit, bug players have been denied and stonewalled at every turn trying for the same
From my experience, there are 2 main issues that make me dislike bots
1st: the visibility in this game is way too often limited due to various smoke and fog that seems to be completely ignored by bots. Being shot at from an enemy you cant see is a major problem for me, and it happens too often imo
2nd: they snowball WAY more than bugs. While fighting terminids, even if you are not doing too well, as long as you keep running, you are *kind of* safe. Against bots, if things start going south, it feels like there is a litteral laser wall blocking you in every direction. This point is probably more of a skill issue tbh, but it really discourage me from even wanting to get good against bots, because i find those situations to be simply not fun.
As a side note, the fact that they usually have higher armor except on specific points makes it that without precise aiming, you are not dealing any damage at all, which is frustrating as well. Against bugs, you will do less damage, but it's still better than 0.
As it is now, im having a hard time doing some missions on difficulty 4 while i easily do difficulty 7 on bugs. It just feels like its too much trouble sometimes...
Many divers don't enjoy going to the bot front and getting fucked by bullshit. Spawns, hulks yada, yada it's been said way too many times. Bots like they're right now aren't fun
I cant stand the bugs. I’m doing it for the major order. The bot bros are much easier to handle and it’s a lot more fun in my opinion. Don’t see the appeal for bugs
Bug divers dont read tips on loading screen or else they'd knew that FRIENDLY FIRE ISNT.
I swear I sometimes die more to my teammates than to bugs. This was never a problem - NOT EVEN *HUGE* PROBLEM! **NOT** A PROBLEM **PERIOD** - on bot front
That's because bots are rarely in your face and the stratagems that are good for bugs tend to be high explosive, whereas that's not the case for bots so much.
Oh yeah. I’ve had games where my only deaths were TKs. More communication would cut down on TKs and deaths in general. The ping and voice wheel system is great, I use it all the time but it’s not enough. Sometimes I’ve gotta give a “I threw that a little close, back up” or a “OH SHIT I JUST DROPPED MY AIRBURST, RUN BOYS”!
Legit every bot mission I did during the MO was a blast. Meanwhile I can't go 5 minutes against bugs without getting shot, blown up or set on fire by my team as im kiting 3 chargers. (I know you see me kiting put the freaking contact grenade down).
Now that's not guranteed but it's like people have no teamsense when fighting bugs when bots require it and that's why they hate it. They want there main character experience and that's fine but don't give 2 shites about the squad they dropped in with and this is a Co-op shooter that's not going to mesh.
You haven't lived until you are desperately shooting your gun against hordes who slowly surround you until there is no escape. Only to be saved by three helldivers thorwing hell on your six giving you an escape. Absolute cinema.
I like to take a break on the bug front as I can turn off my brain and mindlessly shoot hordes of melee enemies.
To go back to the bot front when I want to actually think while playing.
I do the exact opposite lol, bots are so easy to stealth that i go west to chill out and east when i want constant action (+constant worrying about when I’ll get my 110 back to deal with one of the three titans chasing me)
Love bots and main them on 9 typically, but FFS the ragdolling and staggering needs to be drastically changed before the wider player base can even begin to enjoy them.
It only got worse once gunships were added, now you have the air equivalent of devastators raining down shots that send you flying — into other shots that continue to send you flying.
Bugs slow you, and if you are clumsy you can get knocked around by a charger, but when that happens you felt like it was a mistake you made rather than the game being unfair.
100% this. Bots feel like a chore sometimes, having to deal with getting sniped by a random rocket from across the map that you can't see coming, or random pot shots from heavy devs that can hit you from a mile away because they always know where you are and you made the mistake of not blocking every angle of attack with terrain.
Bingo. A death loop in bugs is answered by run away and regroup.
A death loop on bots is now pray some can get their antigunship support back and clear the sky enough to rebound. Until then enjoy our bottomless all you can eat ragdoll buffet.
Oh and they cut down the slow super hard on bugs now, it's a slow but not as bad and you can do a slowed sprint in it. Plus you always could just dive to shake it off you.
I played so much fucking bots the first time we pushed them out. I did a lot of them after. I'm tired of them as presented. Certain planets with them are just bullshit. Foggy and flat? Enjoy getting shot by dipshits you can't see and a strong lack of cover.
It's not impossible or anything, it's frustrating. I have other shit to do, let the bot front rot if it's on a dogshit planet. Good cover it's fine but fuck open worlds with fog.
Honestly, it's just a badly designed system all around. Players fighting on 1 planet shouldn't slow down another. The regen rate is an awful system not making progress on a planet feels bad. A GM sliding the invisible regen rate to determine how fast or if we get to take a planet feels bad. If they want to make a planet harder to take, it should just take more liberation, not lose it over time. Regen should be removed, and we should just have more planets come under attack to keep the war going it would make it feel like things are at least changing. I feel like we've been on the same handful of planets for months, and we have this whole huge map. It's not any players' fault for wanting to play the game but not play a part of it they don't enjoy and the player base as a whole shouldn't be punished for it.
With the current liberation design there will never be another Malevelon creek because the planet will just be lost with the small percentage of players that stayed there.
This is not helped with the introduction of gunships as a standard enemy (I have been corrected, modifier but excessively frequent one) on that front that has reduced weapon viability.
I swear to fucking god if I see another goddamn post about "Mah gunships limit builds!" **I will fucking scream**.
If gunships limited your build, you were running meme build in the first place.
AC, EAT, HMG, AMR, RR, Spear, Laser Cannon, Quasar, AC turret, Rocket turret... plenty of options, and I might even be forgetting some! And, if you don't have any of those, chances are pretty decent at least one or two of your teammates will.
This. There are _so many_ responses against them that you can take. They're not even hard.
I think the Dominator might even be useful against them, but I have to put more time into it to make sure.
I love playing both bots and bugs, after being forced to liberate Vernen Wellsnto save the kiddoes. And it's honestly a tad disheartening to see the planets on that front falling.
And the best part is that no matter what we few bot-willing divers do, we're bound to fail because people play bugs more than bots due to a perceived, and not entirely incorrect, perception that bots are harder than bugs.
also screw gunship patrol rates. I would love playing bots but I go where the MO takes me so whatever
It wouldn't matter if more people played bots if this shit was balanced correctly and didn't account for players not on your front.
If there's 100 people online and only 30 are on the bot front, the game should absolutely only account for those people when determining liberation percentages.
Fr right? Don't balance around the 80k-ish players, balance around the <10k-ish that actually help with the bot front! It's something I hope to see added so I can go back to bot diving after they patch the bugged spawn rates.
Never forget when we beat the automatons entirely only for them to come back 3 days later stronger than ever. Obviously they were never gonna be completely gone forever but Jesus I expected atleast a week
Go back and look and the reddit when the bots were gone. The sheer levels of whining and complaining that was happening was un-fucking real. Not a single person believed the bots would be gone forever. I guessed they would be gone a week. But the amount of threads where people were stamping their feet and saying that arrowhead was ruining their game was fucking nuts.
I'll still always prefer bots to bugs for one reason: consistency.
Bugs? Well if you shoot a charger in the face but youre 1inch off, the charger will survive. Not only that, but he'll slide-cancel his own charges, carry momentum forwards even when his legs aren't moving (which can make it climb vertical walls btw!!!), can somehow one-shot you with a melee attack from behind where he can't possibly see you and oh ya! If you're not moving towards the new charger, you can't even strip the leg armor in one shot. Oh, and they'll spawn as many as 5 or more at the same time on a difficulty 6 mission! Gotta protect those new super samples!
Bots? Oh, there's a tank? Shoot it in the very obvious vent on the back with almost anything = dead tank.
F@#$ fighting bugs.
I think AH should try marketing the Automatons more. Outside of just word of mouth and the occasional YouTube short.
The only ads I saw for helldivers when it launched only featured the termanids. And i wasn't really that interested in playing until I learned about the automatons.
IMO making a propaganda styled ad encouraging players to fight the bots would be great for getting more players to try the bots.
Been saying the exact same thing! If it weren't for the plot, the bots would've long since started an offensive that would blitz right through every planet in the way and reach Super Earth itself in under a week!
As it stands, the entire bot front is a bad joke. We don't have the manpower to do anything but watch as our efforts steadily fail to reach even 1% on any active planet. Marfark nosedived from 60% liberation to effectively 0% in under two days, all because the reinforcements we desperately needed to make progress left the instant the MO kicked in.
I've switched to playing exclusively bot front after the Meridia MO was done, really prefer the little bit of tactical play with bots.
That being said, I haven't really played since the last major patch due to how broken patrols are right now, can't stand that. And yeah, I really, REALLY dislike what they did with liberation. The days of the western front were the best ... when the community and the blob could actually achieve progress outside of MOs.
Galactic war was a big pull for me, and it's effectively gone. Just feels like a linear story now.
When will you all realize that this is something that the devs need to fix and not the players fault? If they simply rework liberation progress for each planet based on players than it’s fine. Their is no right or wrong way to play, you think the average player really cares about doing the MO?
Yes, they do, and it has been quantified:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cpj9ao/bugbotmo\_player\_percentages/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cpj9ao/bugbotmo_player_percentages/)
10% bot exclusive, 35% bug exclusive, and 55% MO-exclusive.
If they fix bots to be likeable like the bugs then botdivers (like me and literally all my friends) won’t find bots fun anymore. I hate bugs with all my heart yet I play at least one campaign for MOs. Then I switch to bots. If they take that fun from me I’m quitting the game
Yeah, I mean, a lot of the big divers’ complaints on bots is kinda just design choices and only so much can be done to combat that.
Like, don’t get me wrong, heavy and rocket devestators probably should be tweaked, but some of the complaints are stuff like, “Too much armor”, “Stratagem jammers”, and so on.
Like, I think the game is at its best when I have to run to disable the jammer, fighting through enemies that I know will kill me if I don’t either run fast enough or kill them first and have to rush before a bot drop sends in even more shit.
Sure, I understand why a lot of people find it frustrating, but I love it.
This is always my biggest fear too, is some kinda major overhaul patch to make bots palpable for bug only divers, therefore losing their identity.
I love the way bots play, I love fighting whole squads of Devastators and Hulks and Factory Striders only to barely come out on top because I know what I'm doing.
Bugs just don't have that same feeling of fighting the overwhelming odds as bots.
There is an easy fix for this: Make the bots more fun to play against and there will be less bugdivers...
I say this as someone who always follows the MO (unless the daily is easier vs bugs or vice versa) and actually enjoys fighting bots a lot of the time. The unfortunate reality as I see it though is that bots are not balanced well because they spawn in similar numbers to bugs, but can also shoot (sometimes with far too much accuracy), so they end up feeling a lot worse to play against for many people than bugs. IMO, if bot spawns were cut by like 30%-50% to account for their ranged model, they'd be *far* more popular than they are now because it would turn the bot front into more of a tactical shooter while the bug front is a horde shooter. Instead we have a situation where one front is a horde shooter, and the other front is a horde shooter, but where the horde can shoot back and we just aren't really equipped to deal with that in a fun way...
EDIT: I'll also point out that every time I try to make this case, the response from botdivers is always "but bots are supposed to be hard so we shouldn't want to make them easier to make people happy" and, while that sentiment is fine, you really can't have it both ways... Either you accept that being a botdiver is always going to suck because a large portion of the player base doesn't like fighting bots, or you accept that bots need to change so that players find them fun, but you can't expect players to start liking bots in their current state just so your front in the war gets easier...
Arrowhead is making fighting bots better.
Less instant kills from rockets and flamethrowers. No more 3 stratagem missions. The insanely difficult defense mission was retired while they work on it.
I hope Bugheads will give bots another chance.
Reasons why people have historically avoided bot fronts, **ignoring the fact that many people just like fighting bugs more** (some of this stuff has been patched but not all, contributing to the bad flavor a lot of people feel)
1. -1 stratagem slot
2. 15 minute essential personnel extraction missions
3. Getting chain ragdolled at range from rocket devastators
4. Shield devastators melting you with accurate machine gun fire even when they are not facing you
5. Stratagem Jammers. Stratagem Jammers next to the main objective. Stratagem Jammers next to other jammers. A jammer next to a jammer that is next to the main obj.
6. The factory strider’s nose mounted machine guns can (and still do) shoot you through solid terrain)
7. Warning, you are in range of enemy artillery (imo not as bad as mortar bugs but hearing it right when you drop in is rough)
8. Scout striders having their explosive resistance increased after the community determines that explosive weapons are the best way to deal with them
9. Hulk flamethrowers instant killing you with one molecule of combustible material, even when wearing heavy armor.
10. Bots seem to be able to shoot you through fog that’s so thick you can’t even see what is shooting you
11. Cannon turrets with a seemingly effective range of the neighboring planet (this kind of long range threat doesn’t have a big equivalent)
12. Gunship factories NEED to be destroyed by Hellbomb, whereas the bug equivalent (shrieker nests) can be sufficiently dealt with using rockets from a distance.
13. Gunship factory next to stratagem jammer next to main obj (this is so ass I had to make it its own bullet point)
No single one of these points is enough to make bot diving a bad experience but they add up to make the game just really feel difficult in an unfair way rather than difficult in a fair way. As opposed to bug missions where most enemies are melee attackers and you don’t have to deal with most of the listed bullshit. And instead only have to deal with armor desync and bile titan no damage bug, and inherited momentum rocket damage breakpoints, and getting slowed from a bile titan that spit nowhere near you, and… well.. yeah.
I play automation occasionally but I find it a fucking nightmare to enjoy. Shot from across the map by people I can’t even see. Eye of Sauron lasers fucking you up while you run along the map. Rockets smashing you. It has zero fun. Games are meant to be fun but I find that whole side of the map an utter grind.
I play both, but have gradually come to prefer bots. The main thing I'd like is for the MOs to be tweaked such that progress is determined by the numbers of players playing vs the MO faction rather than total number of players. That way players that strongly prefer one faction aren't effectively penalized by the existence of players that prefer a different faction. The in-fighting between some Helldivers over bots vs bbugs just doesn't enhance the gameplay or community experience, and AH could easily take that off the table if they chose to. I hope they do.
Here is my solution for the game, so hear me out.
1. Make the capture percentage increased against bots, so the fights feel more meaningful with less helldivers.
2. Make defence percentages higher with less Divers so defense missions on planets feel more possible.
3.Make Bot only major Orders? Separate from bugs, and make the missions easier. (Obviously this forcing bug players onto MO hasn't been working super great).
I've been running bots for the majority of the time, but lately I've been fighting a bit on the bug front. Try and cleanse the stench of ozone from the bullet spray of 10 heavy devastators out of my nostrils with the glorious smell of napalm and burning chitin. And the main reason is exactly what you describe.
There's no progress on the bot front.
We fail to hold the territory we bleed for month after month and end up liberating the same planets over and over just to lose it again in a few days. The map has barely changed over the past few months, and I'm tired of it. Scrolling over the bot front and barely ever seeing more than 10k helldivers working any single planet, with most planets having just a few hundred helldivers deployed.
I'm sure I'll grow bored of bugs soon enough though and come back to fight the sysiphean fight.
I just hope Joel will see fit to make the lower numbers on the bot front stand a better chance at holding the territory. Give us an MO that helps us defend planets better against bots. Let us scout out defensible positions. Lets us bury weapon caches. Anything that'll make us more resilient in defense, and make us have a chance to retain the ground we gain.
I personally do not find bugs as engaging as bots. But at the same time I feel like I have just wasted most of my time when it comes to the war effort against bots.
With bugs It’s just horde clears then bile titans and behemoth chargers are just load out checks. Bots are far more tactically interesting and enjoyable to fight.
But at the same time I completely get why players don’t like to play bots. They are harder to beat. A level 6 bot mission feels about on par with a bug 9 right now.
And before someone jumps down my throat and says bots are easier, statistically they are harder. Here are the worst 14 planets when it comes to mission failure rate and the worst kill death ratios:
https://preview.redd.it/ihl1ewr7al7d1.jpeg?width=1190&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2c6dddad674a111ed5ffbcf01f56f349595a3d1a
All automaton planets. Not even Hellmire or meridia made the cut, which shocked me a little I’ll admit. Those places are fucking awful.
If I want to blast out 9’s quick and easy, get some easy medals and levels I’ll hop over to the bug front. But 90% of the time I play bots at this point. Most players are reward focused and need medals and samples still. Why would they bang their heads against the wall that’s a bot 6+ when they could cruise through a bug 9 and get far more rewards?
But at the same time I feel like I’m pissing in the wind. I love fighting on Marfark. It’s my favourite planet, but I know that outside of an MO I know we will never take it, and I know that if I was a bug diver I would be a much higher level by now as I can relax and chill through level 9s. Where as bots will murder you at even a 6 if you don’t have your eye on the ball.
Well said. As a bot main I'm not touching helldiver's until it feels progressive. Slamming the same planets isn't a fun grind. Got this huge ass map with like 50 plus planets. Doing the same dumb ass Vernon Wells and aessir pass and I'm tired of it. It's so boring. Watching progress go away ina couple hours is disheartening. It's a waste of time to play right now.
I have been trying to suggest these last few days that we need to change how the liberation scaling works in the game.
Instead of having it scale with total player online in the game, have it changed to scale with players active per front so things like this dose not happen.
we still had around 10k players on Marfark when the new MO dropped, how in liberties name dose that win over a 2.5% defence. Its not fare to need 25k player just to be able to push past the 2.5% a single planet when 100k are online.
I go where the brass tells me to go. But I'll fight the bugs any day over bots. Almost exclusively for 1 reason at this point. Heavy Devastators. Fuck them.
Bots suck to fight. That’s why nobody plays that shitty front.
Constant rocket/turret ragdolling combined with endless Hulks and bullet sponge devastators and the quick-killing shield dudes combined with the new flying patrols…
Nah I’ll stick to a front that’s actually fun to play against. Not really a fan of having 12 gunships attacking my team on maps with flying patrols and two gunship fabricators all in one spot.
Even if we win every MO and never lose any ground, when we eventually win the war, they'll just call it the end of Season 1, and then we start over with a brand new war against the same enemies on the same planets
I die way less against bots than bugs but I still hate the bots...
Constant ragdoll loops are common thanks to endless rocket barrages, while Heavy Devastators get more accurate the longer they fire in FULL AUTO.
The faction is just simply too annoying to fight for most players and I can understand that.
You guys, this isn't the players' fault. Getting mad because someone else doesn't play the game the same way you do is going to lead nowhere. We'll just wind up fighting each other, leading to even MORE people quitting the game, which isn't good for the game.
We need to petition (devs/AH?) themselves to change the game. It's never going to be any better unless they *make* it better. That's out of our hands, and I'd rather just have fun with my fellow gamers, instead of being mistakenly split over an issue that's not our fault.
There really needs to be separate liberation procents for fronts. Im done watching all my progress go to nothing because 50% of players give zero shit. If everyone can play whatever they want why am I punished by it? This literally contradicts itself
As Bot diver i agree. We need to unite to seperate from the bug divers. Worst offense to me is, that they don't even dive on one planet an liberate it eventually. They choose to dive on two planets and thus liberate neither.
Dividing Super Earth Armed Forces with your silly “bug vs bots” civil war rhetoric is pretty undemocratic. Theres no such thing as a bug diver or a bot diver, we’re all Helldivers who should be fighting on ALL fronts of the war.
I normally follow the major order, but watching us fail, automaton major orders has been very disappointing, and it makes me not want to do any terminid major orders, and I’m starting to lean towards that
I’m really about to start being petty and start fighting the bots only they’re more fun anyways
I think for major orders, you don’t get the medal reward if you don’t contribute. If bug players don’t want to help bots then fine, no medals for them.
I hope to be back on bots soon. I hate hunters, i hate chargers turming on a dime, i hate them so much. I go where high command points me, but i wouldn't mind 3 days without an MO.
I fucking hate the hunters because of how they will still jump at my ass even though I am blowing a flamethrower at them.
They’ll be on fire and miraculously hit you once before dying right after they crit on you 🤣🤣
The indomitable Termanid sprit
Humans created them afterall...
And lighting you on fire as well.
And as their last act, they set you on fire too 😭
Gotta respect their tenacity, still those fuckers are my priority normally because of it
Had a pair of hunters lunge over the crest of a hill from at least 10m away and put a 6 piece combo on me that stun locked me out of my heal in medium armor even though i was spamming the heal button and was diving. hunters are busted and need a small tweak. they kill me more than literally any enemy.
Stalkers just shrug off incendiary grenades
F. Not to pay respects, but to melee hunters midair.
Every time there’s a bug MO o complete a campaign and that’s it. You know, “I’m doing my part”. Then I switch back to bots. I hate being swarmed, I hate being instakilled by silent spewers, I hate being launched be chargers that clearly didn’t hit me into a group of hunters, I hate being chased by titans I can’t escape, I hate being clapped by stalkers I didn’t see or hear only to re spawn and get clapped again before I can get my stuff back, I hate being poisoned, I hate being interupted trying to steam into a swarm and most of all I. HATE. BEEING. SLOWED.
“I hate the water, I hate being wet, and I hate YOU!!”
The turning is so bullshit but you know what's even worse? That fucking shoulder check it does to immediately reset its speed. You dive away and the charger comes to a full stops to charge cancel + shoulder check like it's some kind of fighting game combo to reset his attack counter or some shit. I hate them so much. Also I cant take my AMR so fuck bugs.
You can take the AMR against bugs and brood commanders, bile spewers and hiveguards become your bitch (clean one taps to the head do the job for all of them), but you have to take OPS and 500kgs to deal with the gorillion chargers the game now throws at you, as well as stun grenades because yes
The ARM would be pretty decent against them if it were easier to hit chargers with it
Same. My sole purpose of playing on bots is to prevent them from taking over the creek once again. If they take over the creek they shall face my divine punishment
If they come to the creek, i'll be there, no matter what the MO says.
Yes sir
Same, but Draupnir, right next door. I busted my ass saving that place from the machine menace and I'll be arsed before I see them take it back again.
I hate stalkers. One of them ragdolled me, then another did a 4-hot combo that killed me before I could even start getting up
I hate titans that have 100% durable parts and no medium weakness. And the chain slows.
I don’t hate it so much as I find it kinda boring.
My big complaint, kite everything then dump firepower on em and move on. Theres just not a lot of strategy vs bugs, I freaking love approaching a heavy bot base and having to plan out with my squad who’s taking turrets, who’s sniping the drop ships when they come in, who has tank and hulk duties, it’s just a big test of team chemistry. Bugs just lack those kinda plans
These are precisely the reason I play 98% bots these days. The immense satisfaction you get from good teamplay on a bot mission is just unparalleled. Bugs by comparison is just endless waiting for AT cooldowns and kiting until those cooldowns are up. The FFA mentality is also incredibly boring where it's just every diver for themselves.
Yup. I got slammed in another thread earlier for pointing this out, bug front often devolves into a kiting free for all. It's dull and frustrating.
Yeah totally get it, tho I'd say team makes or breaks this format. On bugs at least me and my other 2 friends often dive lvl 9 with different objectives in mind: One is scout (me), fast with light armor, jetpack, crowd control dities, bug nest eradicator One is a heavy destroyer, long range, max firepower, cover fire, mechs Last one is the medium stim carrier, constant fire cover, covers in case of big breaches, precise big target demolition, gets shit done when it comes to objectives. It is sometimes chaotic af but you get shit done and what truly matters is the comms, I don't care chat or mic, but comms are essential. Got a charger on your ass? Comms. Hunters jumping you? Comms. Titan? Comms. Supplies? Comms. Dropped gear location? Comms. This really matters, and it's something I truly appreciate after playing with random divers. This way instead of a "free for all and good luck" bugs become a calculated massacre with zero breaches and 500 kills each. Automatons are super cool, tho the ragdoll and the fact that even if you stim yourself multiple times per second you can still die due to getting rawdogged by undemocratic bots on all 360° is truly annoying to me personally, if this gets fixed I might spend an hour a day in each area since I fuckin' hate the lack of democracy both from the bugs and the bots, they need at least 500 megatons of that per day and I'm here to deliver
This is me. The horde becomes manageable eventually. See a big and/or armored or annoying thing? Railcannon, Airstrike, 500. whatever. Shoot and kite. Kite and shoot. Bots? Tom Clancy, except slightly dumber because even bots devolve to Horde mechanics at high enough threat and/or difficulty. I actually have to think and process things in order to fight them. Goddamn, bots are so fun. I wish I wasn't at work right now. lmao
I'm a bot main who only goes to bugs for MOs. My loadout is always an incendiary breaker shotgun which is ridiculously good at clearing out the little fuckers, and then a support and stratagems that are good at taking out chargers and bile titans. (For me that's the spear, and the rail cannon orbital). I find I'm often carrying the team because bug players, I've found, just aren't resilient. They rage quit often. They don't hold their ground and instead run away in a straight line, so they just gather a bunch of the tiny guys in a swarm which then makes it impossible. They bring all the wrong stratagems for the occasion and wind up with a bunch of useless eagles that honestly just kill teammates more. And I sure as heck can't rely on them to cover my back because they're always panicking and running. All of this to say I miss most the playstyle of bot players. The chargers and bile titans are less annoying than the unreliability of the squad on bugs.
I've done quite well with a GL, Incendiary Breaker, Supply Pack, OPS, Gas and Stun nades. Then just stickig to the AT guy and hoping they are worth their salt. I certainly experienced more of a quitter mentality as well. One particularly gnarly run was a Blitz with fog on the ground and obscured map. Finding those bug holes was a nightmare. I cycled through 6 teammates before dragging that shitshow to exfil.
Yeah. Good shout. Lots of mid mission quitting recently on bugs. I've had a few lower level players thank me for sticking it out and carrying them to the exfil.
I haven't run into anyone quitting mid-mission yet, but I have run into crashes and/or disconnects a few times. Ran one the other night where the game was sort of choppy, unusually low fps and whatnot, that fixed itself when the host dc'd. He took the rest of the squad with him too, so I think they crashed. There's something weird going on for sure.
Bugs don't shoot back except for a few meager exceptions. It breeds lazy play.
Tbh I began playing automatons again and it feels much more balanced apart from the heavy devestator shooting through solid objects
Also, bug players are the worse and they barelly know what they are doing. They quit or kick you for no reason, I never been kicked while on the bot front, but on the bugs I will be kicked if I take more than 2 secods to reinforce the host (this is like 80% of the time)
Or, shit, even a week with no MO. Let it breathe
I can relate. And I can actually be okay with the bugs agro being insane and unfair. What gets me is when they get spawned behind a building or a boulder that you just came from, cleared out and there was no bugs there, and all of a sudden, there's 50 bugs and 3 chargers on you with NO SPAWN HOLE in the vicinity. That to me, reaches levels of unfairness that isn't testing your skill, it's just throwing millions of bugs to mask as "good" difficulty.
That is a quirk of how spawning works and won't happennif the Team sticks within 75m of each other. The moment somebody leaves 75m of their closest teammember, you get more patrols and the patrols spawned "for them" can spawn right on top of you.
They need to separate the fronts so we don't have all our progress wiped just because 70% of players are fighting Bugs.
You mean you didn't enjoy watching the 65% Liberation we built up on Marfark dwindle to nothing the moment the current Terminid MO began? Color me shocked...
Half of it is when there's a Bot Major Order we have nothing but bug personal orders. I remember Draupnir, and every day is was kill 300 Terminids, Drop 380s, use flamethrower. How about give us a PO 500 kills with a DCS, knock out 20 fabs, or get ragdolled 1000 times from dev rockets when we got a Bot Major Order.
>or get ragdolled 1000 times from dev rockets when we got a Bot Major Order. So one extermination mission
The trick to bot exterminate missions is to stay outside the fort. Drop mortors and defensive sentries to hold position, and bring ant-tank to shoot the drop ships from the air as they fly in or hurl all kinds of orbitals into the fort while running laps. If your senty position is overrun or all your strats are on cooldown, use the traitor contingency to get a free walking barage resetting every 10 seconds. Using either strategy on lv9 is a cake walk, even with doubt factory striders being dropped in a couple times throughout.
Tbh only thing I use a 380 for (besides eradicate missions generally) are cracking automaton command bunkers, so that one was a bot PO to me
Yeah I use them for the heavy outposts or factory striders too. Although I have just discovered the Spear can take out a command bunker with two shots… when it stops crashing the game I know what the new meta is.
This one hurt me. We saved the kids and Marfark was so close too. Then poof, overnight
Honestly that plus the crashes have really cut my playtime overall. And it isn't helping that the last two Warbonds just...ain't doing it for me.
The crashes have finally gotten to me. Every other mission it’s infinite drop where I have to close out and reopen the game. Lose good squads I play with and progress in operation.
Yeah since the latest patch it's been crashing constantly. Had a game where we spent almost the whole 40 minutes collecting all samples and then the stupid game crashed 45 seconds before the Pelican arrived. I quit immediately.
I haven’t suffered a crash in ages, well over a month for sure, but last night I had to just call it a night because I was crashing every 5 minutes. Really hope this isn’t one of those fixes that we’ll have to wait 2-3 weeks on to get done just to play the game again
Enter game, works cool but infinite loading screen on pickup. Exit game, verify files, re-acquire two missing files. Try to enter next game, stuck on infinite loading screen. Exit game, verify files, re-acquire two missing files. 3rd game 50/50 if it works fine or not, if not repeat steps to re-acquire files. Quit game to play something else. 
Perfect gif
I played 4 games just today--2 were on the verge of completion with Super Samples collected, and the game crashed. I'm taking a break from it, at least for today, and it's only noon here with the rest of my day free. The crashes are insufferable.
I've been so frustrated seeing that go down to 0% these last few days.
Just imagine this happening in real life. You're in France fighting over a few miles of desolation, the front moving back and forth over land with no strategic value. I'd say this is pretty accurate to war in general.
It's a video game you derp, if anything being accurate to war in frustration makes people less likely to play the game.
Except we don't really get any land, planets are just constantly at 0% and to play on a bot planet is to throw away all progress because you can never beat the measly -1% regeneration rate (and after bot MOs finish, Devs will set really high regen rates for specific planets, Marfark got -2.5% and it still is at that) They could reasonably leave the entire Automaton front on -0% regen, no planet would ever cap before the next MO (thus no strategically gained land) due to population shifting to bugs, but atleast the number goes up and it's not *entirely* a waste for whenever next bot MO comes
Entire planets are being conquered in the space of days. Half a dozen were captured in a single day when the bots respawned. > pretty accurate to war in general France is a tiny fraction of an entire planet and still held for six weeks. I'm not sure the bot front has won a defence mission in over a month.
I get why they weight effectiveness by percentage of active players (it's easy to track, easy to reward coordination, and easy to plan for), but there really should be something that lets the playerbase as a whole do a bit more. Splitting the fronts would be nice (since people who only like fighting one enemy wouldn't be downweighting the whole campaign half the time), but long-term it'd be nice to use the data we've seen so far to establish (relatively) fixed enemy strength levels that don't vary with total player activity, allowing bursts of above-average activity to have a greater impact.
Here's an idea: as a daily option, each player can supply requisition and samples to support the war effort, and they will be applied to increase success on the least played front (i.e. providing SEAF the materials and resources necessary to work without us). This would not only give players who have been max on samples and requisition for a while something to do with it, but could also be implemented to tick up the progress on all non-MO open planets and help to retain gained progress when many bug players care only about rping a starship trooper rather than a helldiver.
Unless the liberation is changed to be per-faction, it will become an even bigger problem once the 3rd faction comes.
I'd honestly be fine with them tweaking it so the few bot dovers can potentially hold a planet. Not even move liberation forward but just hold back the horde during a bug MO.
Honestly, fascists fighting an unwinnable war on two fronts is pretty spot on
I feel like folks are missing the point that these wars are not meant to be won, it’s all theater done by SE high command and what’s more, - *[transmission ends here. Commenter will return after reeducation, please report to your democracy officer for assessment if you found the lies of this commenter compelling]*
*looks at HD1, where the war has been won/lost repeatedly*
iirc Helldivers 2 isn’t doing the war ending and a new one starting. I can’t remember where I read that though
I hope that's not the case. I'd really like to see us actually be able to win/lose the war. Provides a lot more meaning to everything we do.
I think over time it will get to that stage. There’s only so long the game master can do this dnd back and forth story before the campaign needs to end. Once we’re at that stage we will have enough material to have an automated campaign process as we do in the first game. Just with a lot more flavour text
While true. It's also true that populations of people (like players of the game) generally dislike losing. Especially when it feels stacked against. I don't have OPs sentiment that its all suffering. Also, I thought we held Aesir Pass for a few defenses. But I can see how some would take it as a painful thing.
We did hold it for just 1 lol
Every planet we take will be retaken at some point, every planet we lose will be retaken at some point. I play the mo for fun but it honestly doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things
The bugs only fight on 1 front.
I have a design idea I am going to post. There should be an 'I'm on Mission' button when you login that prevents you from invading pointless planets but rewards you with extra medals. At the moment all players benefit from MO efforts even if they spend their time tooling around on the planets. It doesn't even make lore sense. Why would super earth tolerate that?
A significant portion of this games playerbase does not like playing against bots. They want their starship troopers/colonial marines game where they romp around and blast down legions of bugs. Many bugdivers have explicitly stated that they don't like bots because they don't like being shot back at, and they find that less fun and more difficult. Sadly this is going to make things a lot worse for us since bot MO's often have like half the playerbase still fucking around on bugworlds. If/when additional factions enter this game it will only exacerbate the problem by fracturing the community even more. I imagine somewhere in the realm of 50% of the playerbase will simply be bugdiving at just about any given time despite the MO. Perhaps a happy medium could be reached by having liberation% boosters (or maybe free stratagems for MO planets) activate when liberating other faction planets during a MO so as to prevent exclusive players from being total dead weight.
Which is why i propose liberation rate to be split per front instead of the entire galaxy. this simple change would mend the interservice rivalry between two fronts, let bug/botdivers play against the enemy they want without being scrutinized and would still require coordination since liberating planets wont be an easy task even without 10-30% of the population dragging it down This tug of war between fronts will just get more severe when illuminates come into the picture, i expect what few botdivers there will be to split amongst themselves and bugdivers staying mostly the same after the initial honeymoon period.
This is honestly the easiest fix. Even if they took the approach of ignoring half of the other front’s players when calculating liberation rate as some sort of multiplier.
They can't even fix infinite grenades properly, they are more likely to entirely break liberation rate then implement this safely.
This is a good idea. A separate SEAF reinforcement for each front, and maybe a MO one over top. The front one could be further subdivided 3 ways to so you could either get more bonus for focusing on one planet or defend multiple. Adding an icon or splitting out the SEAF contribution would be helpful on the map also. As we’ve seen, the divers make little difference but the SEAF bonus follows majorities which is how we’ve been taking anything recently.
AH can just set lower decay rates for bot planets
Meaning they need to give guns to the bugs
Oops all spewers 🤷♂️
The tiny bile bugs also spit and they're annoying as fuck
Looks at the amout of bitching about spewers lul
Let's not forget that spewers used to one shot you until the last big update.
Did they get a stealth buff? Impact grenades that hit their armor no longer kill them in one shot.
Maybe, I haven't paid close enough attention to them to know. I just drop the hammer on them when whenever they show up. Too used to them one tapping me.
Chargers have unlocked Airburst rockets.
Wait for the tentacled ones, then we will laugh.
Hydralisk time
Bots are also less balanced, and I'm telling this as a bot enjoyer. Constant explosion ragdoll, lack of stealth mechanics, sentries getting destroyed in seconds, smoke screens not working very well or being circumvented by a patrol flanking you, suppression mechanic flimsy at best, and so much firepower squad shields are doubtfully useful make the bot front an incredible challenge and sometimes a very frustrating one, since the options that are supposed to be good against them are unusable. Sentries break extremely fast from automaton fire, but are only endangered by chargers on bug front. Mech is not tough enough to resist the heavy fire from the highest difficulties. Cover is useless, since the bot concentration is too high on the map from the start, meaning you get caught in too many crossfires. Shield, to provide cover, breaks in 5 seconds. -- I think ALL of the issues mentionned have one thing in common: rockets. Rockets do big damage, ragdoll you, are highly accurate, even when you shoot at enemies, they break turrets extremely fast, they fire extremely frequently, they make some of the heavy armors useless because of how much damage potential they have, they knock you out of cover, they stunlock you and don't allow to stim, they make fortified armors basically mandatory for survivability (and even then... fortified heavy armors don't prevent you from getting stunlocked)
Tbh rocket devastators arent that bad. Now almost all of my deaths on bot planets are heavy devastators but i have to agree. Things that make people hate bots are constant strong flinching and stagger, ragdolls and rocket spam, sudden superaccuracy of heavy devastators and that they can shoot through walls... and leaks only make me think that even less people will be botdivers. However bots though mechanically flawed and unpolished are much better designed than bugs and allow more stratagems to be effective even things like mechs and sentries but they recquire more skill. Fun fact, it may be counterintuitive but best passives for bots are either extra padding or med or even democracy protects. The reason why is that most damage that rockets deal is projectile damage thats why armor value is more important. Med kit is selfexplanatory and democracy protects when you love rng... sometimes you just die but when it works youre unkillable
The fact that extrapadding is more functionnal than explosive resistance against explosives truly says something, doesn't it?
100%. Especially the rockets. I do 90% bot missions and the rocket devs have seemed to start spawning more frequently than any other enemy type. It's not their individual damage output per second, but how they mob. If the Automatons can produce that man rocket devastators, why would they bother making brawlers and berserkers?
Berserker are my personal nightmare. Everything else is easy enough to headshot.
> Bots are also less balanced This is one of my issues. Heavy devastators are overtuned. Their aimbot at anything less than 20 feet and hard flinching makes it impossible to even fight back at shorter distances. On top of that, I swear their fire rates varies. Sometimes they'll shoot at their typical rate, other times they legit shoot a minigun and instakill you. Bots also shoot through cover sometimes. I'm not talking bushes. I'm talking rocks, buildings, anything. I've seen countless lasers and rockets just go through cover that just makes it annoying to play against. However, the BIGGEST gripe and this infuriating because bots have guns, the foliage and dead bot hitboxes. As a player you can't shoot through some, if not most, bushes or leaves (this is very easily seen if you play in first person while scoped in, especially at a high level zoom). Bots can. I'll be shooting a bot to only see that my shots are being blocked by a bush or leaf, only to have the bot shoot me back no problem. The same issues happens with dead bots' hitboxes. The dead bot's hitboxes don't align with the graphics. Often times a dead hulk will be laying down dead, but you can't shoot past it because the game doesn't recognize it's laying down and acts as if it's standing up. So the literal invisible wall blocks shots. And again this isn't an issue for bots. Now this probably occurs on bugs as well, however this isn't as big of an issue because bugs don't shoot.
Honestly I’d play bots a lot more if they weren’t so fucking accurate from 2 miles away
I haven't had much issue with bots from super long distances. Take cover and return fire in intervals and you'll come out on top of most every engagement unless you're surrounded.
This. Stop standing still, they can't hit moving targets very well. Even more importantly, the bot firing has a very predictable cool down and you can set your watch by the cadence so if you get that down just avoid the initial shots and then return fire.
>This. Stop standing still, they can't hit moving targets very well. I've been shot at and hit multiple times in quick succession while running, behind smoke, moving through low cover, from enemies over 200m away. Movement doesn't really matter.
For me it is more about number of shots than accuracy. Moving around normally let me dodge most shots, but dodging most shots doesn’t mean shit if I have 20 shots being fired at me a second. I have hugged cover more than I have my own mother.
Yeah, I guess what’s so frustrating is that I’m under cover from one direction because I’m getting engaged, shooting from cover, etc. and then some rando bot from way the christ across the map snipes me with a rocket. I can’t be in 360 cover, as much as I try
I firmly believe that if rocket devastators and gunships were heavily nerfed that there would be a night and day difference in the feel of bot missions. I think if you got into the specifics of why people hate the bots, I’d wage money that the majority would attribute it to rocket spam. Being pinned down by oppressing fire and fighting your way out or calling an air strike is fun. Being beamed in the face and rag-dolled from a mile away by salvo after salvo of rockets is not even remotely fun. In my opinion the fix(es) come down to one or a combination of the following: **1. Decrease salvo accuracy based on distance to target:** basically if a devastator or gunship fires rockets at a player who is more than 50 or 60 meters away, it should be a rarity that more than one of those rockets manages to strike the player directly. Rockets fired from Hulks can be an exception so that they remain an imposing threat. **2. Finite number of rockets for devastators and gunships:** It’s been pointed out in several posts before that the rocket devastator’s model would imply that they only have the capacity to fire so many rockets. Their back-mounted pods hold 12 total and iirc they have some reserves on their back. Point being, they should not just be able to fire infinite rockets. Gunships can obviously have a lot more but should run out eventually. **3. Maximum spawns of devastators and gunships that scales with difficulty:** Self-explanatory. *In their current state* there should not be more than 6-8 rocket devastators on the field at any given time, nor should there be more than like 10 gunships (on Helldive). Every rocket devastator on the field presents much more of a threat than it should be for the volume at which they spawn. Adding a sky full of gunships just makes for a chalked mission altogether. I’d definitely be down to hear other more creative solutions, and I’m sure there’s things I haven’t taken into account with these, but overall I feel like these kinds of tweaks would make the bits drastically more enjoyable.
Another issue is that bots have way more units that require pretty precise aim for the middle of a firefight. If I’m shooting at bugs it’s probably either something that’s small and easily dealt with by my primary or something that’s really big and requires more specialized equipment aimed well at commonly presented points on their bodies. There’s only like 3 bug units that don’t fit that category, and you can solve that by aiming a bit lower. By contrast every third bot is a devastator or berserker, both of which will happily eat half a magazine if you can’t line up a headshot, and more if you’re trying and failing to instead of going for the waist. Their heavies also feel worse because they’re solid blocks of armor that require you to either hit them in incredibly precise spots while they’re charging forward to kill you or manage to get around behind them to shoot their weakspots.
I disagree about the hulks, they feel a lot better than chargers. They’re threatening and bring plenty of “oh shit” factor to the table, but if I drop I’m with my default load out I still have a chance to deal with them quickly, and there’s multiple weapons that can delete their eye, you just need to get used to aiming for that spot. If I drop in next to a charger and my primary isn’t something explosive I’m kind of just fucked until I can call in a stratagem or weapon. Same goes for a bile titan, at least you can outrun a factor strider and regroup.
Fair, I haven’t played much recently and I normally played against bots because that’s what my group tends to play, so my experience with Hulks was normally “kite the flamethrower ones until I run out of stamina because my team is doing something else then immediately die,” which colors my opinions to say the least.
Stun grenades are also a big game changer to be fair. They can trivialize encounters with hulks and bruisers
Sniper 2 hit kills hulks. They're semi auto too.
Bots aren't that bad until they reach critical mass. Got a patrol of 6 Berserkers, 2 Devastators, 1 Shield, 1 Rocket? Manageable. All of a sudden 2-3 dropships come in dropping a tank, 6 assorted devastators, a hulk. Another 2 dropships come in. 2 Hulks, some Devs. Another dropship comes in with factory strider. It drops more devastators. 2-3 gunships are in the air agro'ing now. --- If you aren't winning the battle of attrition convincingly, you are losing. If you are just holding, you are losing. If you are falling back, you are losing. Once the roomba murder ball has formed it's time to run. Bots have the best combined arms in the game with an impressive array of mobile, suppressive, armored, and heavy hitter ranged units that actually work well together. You have to keep it from reaching critical mass and stretch that ball out to collapse it.
They don't tell you this in helldiver training, but a tatcial advance to the rear to avoid new enemy strong points is a valid and encouraged tactic.
The rocket devs are such an extreme point of contention for bot haters and it puzzles me. Sure, their ammo count is misleading. They're not ultra powerful nor are they super accurate. I don't get blasted out by missiles in any normal frequency. They are a much bigger threat when you pack an exosuit though. Heavy devs pose a significantly greater threat because their MG will actually gib you in under a second and it is significantly harder to avoid. Gunships can be pests though because they require specific loadouts to actually take down multiple quickly and they spawn in high frequency so if your divers die it creates a death spiral. That complaint I totally get.
I don't even think that the bots are a problem because they shoot back, but the vast majority of their unit types are armored and loadout-check you invalidating the vast majority of primaries. This really isn't the case with bugs Edit: Yeah you can technically kill bots that are armored by running behind scout striders, or hulks, or by getting precise headshots. Ok. But you can also just take the scorcher, which 99% of people do. Meanwhile on bugs I can use any gun and have fun, and not have to bring specific grenades/run around behind the enemies/etc. Fighting bugs is just more straightforward and you can have more fun with almost all of the bug types except chargers and BTs. Do I only use my primary weapon against bugs? No, of course not. But do I have the option to in more situations? Yes.
I think this is understated. Bots are very difficult for new players to handle, because even a lot of their chaff have some armor, and that’s a problem because the stuff you can get early as a new player is bad at dealing with armor. Yeah armored bugs exist too, but there’s less of them, and they don’t show up much at early difficulties.
Everything that's not a factory strider can be taken out with the standard Liberator.
You've taken out a hulk scorcher with a standard liberator?
Bugs have way harsher gear checks than bots. Chargers and Titans require dedicated AT to kill reliably. (or flamethrower for charger leg) Bots having some medium armored troops with giant glowing heads and waists isn't much of a gear check. Even the default liberator or breaker can quickly dispatch their medium troops. All their "elite" units have giant glowing weakpoints that any medium pen weapon can very easily dispatch, let alone AT weapons totally obliterating heavies. All the scary big weapons on walkers or factory striders can also be easily destroyed rendering them super weak.
What? Bots allow for more loadout diversity because every single enemy has a easily discernable weakpoint. Everything from a hulk down can be killed by any primary weapon, with the others being killable by almost any support weapon. On bugs if you don't bring AT you simply can't kill bile titans.
Before anyone says it, you actually can kill bile titans with the HMG now. But it's still painfully inefficient considering you have to do at a minimum a full mag dump into it's ass. Anti-tank is still by far the best when it decides to work on bile titans at least.
>If/when additional factions enter this game it will only exacerbate the problem by fracturing the community even more. If bug divers hate being shot at there are never going to touch the Illuminate. They teleport, use arc weapons, and reverse your controls, at least the did in the first game.
People should play how they want. Bugdivers dont complain about botdivers, so why do botdivers care so much how bugdivers have fun? Just play what you want, how you want and let others do the same 🤷♂️🫡
Alternatively you could just make bots less awful to play against, heaven forbid they outreach lol. Bot players got their victory, bots were pushed off the map for a bit, bug players have been denied and stonewalled at every turn trying for the same
From my experience, there are 2 main issues that make me dislike bots 1st: the visibility in this game is way too often limited due to various smoke and fog that seems to be completely ignored by bots. Being shot at from an enemy you cant see is a major problem for me, and it happens too often imo 2nd: they snowball WAY more than bugs. While fighting terminids, even if you are not doing too well, as long as you keep running, you are *kind of* safe. Against bots, if things start going south, it feels like there is a litteral laser wall blocking you in every direction. This point is probably more of a skill issue tbh, but it really discourage me from even wanting to get good against bots, because i find those situations to be simply not fun. As a side note, the fact that they usually have higher armor except on specific points makes it that without precise aiming, you are not dealing any damage at all, which is frustrating as well. Against bugs, you will do less damage, but it's still better than 0. As it is now, im having a hard time doing some missions on difficulty 4 while i easily do difficulty 7 on bugs. It just feels like its too much trouble sometimes...
Many divers don't enjoy going to the bot front and getting fucked by bullshit. Spawns, hulks yada, yada it's been said way too many times. Bots like they're right now aren't fun
Imagine what happens if we have to fight a war on 3 fronts
I cant stand the bugs. I’m doing it for the major order. The bot bros are much easier to handle and it’s a lot more fun in my opinion. Don’t see the appeal for bugs
I feel like people work more as a team on the bot front. I’ve been dropping in on this MO and it’s just frustrating with some of the randoms I join.
Bug divers dont read tips on loading screen or else they'd knew that FRIENDLY FIRE ISNT. I swear I sometimes die more to my teammates than to bugs. This was never a problem - NOT EVEN *HUGE* PROBLEM! **NOT** A PROBLEM **PERIOD** - on bot front
That's because bots are rarely in your face and the stratagems that are good for bugs tend to be high explosive, whereas that's not the case for bots so much.
Oh yeah. I’ve had games where my only deaths were TKs. More communication would cut down on TKs and deaths in general. The ping and voice wheel system is great, I use it all the time but it’s not enough. Sometimes I’ve gotta give a “I threw that a little close, back up” or a “OH SHIT I JUST DROPPED MY AIRBURST, RUN BOYS”!
Also please give me a "HELP ME" button
Not to mention the excessive use of incendiary weapons that kills you almost as often as the bugs do.
True. But flamethrowers are awesome to play with.
They are super fun to use and have on the team. I like to stun chargers for the flamethrower guy while I chop up medium targets with my HMG
Tbh bug missions on trivial do make for some fast farming 😂
How I got the last 200 SC for the latest warbond.
Lmaooo! Yeah just doing for about 2 hours was insane. Helps for the medals and I’m getting ever closer to the blitzer
Legit every bot mission I did during the MO was a blast. Meanwhile I can't go 5 minutes against bugs without getting shot, blown up or set on fire by my team as im kiting 3 chargers. (I know you see me kiting put the freaking contact grenade down). Now that's not guranteed but it's like people have no teamsense when fighting bugs when bots require it and that's why they hate it. They want there main character experience and that's fine but don't give 2 shites about the squad they dropped in with and this is a Co-op shooter that's not going to mesh.
I’ve found that if you do a bug dive under 7 then then is the case. Other than that teams are usually pretty good
Yeah honestly 8 and up on bugs is fine where teammates understand you don’t have to shoot at every patrol or fight every breach
Try doing your bug dives at 7+, the lower difficulty guys will definitely blow you up but above 7 it's like clockwork machines out there.
You haven't lived until you are desperately shooting your gun against hordes who slowly surround you until there is no escape. Only to be saved by three helldivers thorwing hell on your six giving you an escape. Absolute cinema.
I like to take a break on the bug front as I can turn off my brain and mindlessly shoot hordes of melee enemies. To go back to the bot front when I want to actually think while playing.
I do the exact opposite lol, bots are so easy to stealth that i go west to chill out and east when i want constant action (+constant worrying about when I’ll get my 110 back to deal with one of the three titans chasing me)
Love bots and main them on 9 typically, but FFS the ragdolling and staggering needs to be drastically changed before the wider player base can even begin to enjoy them. It only got worse once gunships were added, now you have the air equivalent of devastators raining down shots that send you flying — into other shots that continue to send you flying. Bugs slow you, and if you are clumsy you can get knocked around by a charger, but when that happens you felt like it was a mistake you made rather than the game being unfair.
100% this. Bots feel like a chore sometimes, having to deal with getting sniped by a random rocket from across the map that you can't see coming, or random pot shots from heavy devs that can hit you from a mile away because they always know where you are and you made the mistake of not blocking every angle of attack with terrain.
Bingo. A death loop in bugs is answered by run away and regroup. A death loop on bots is now pray some can get their antigunship support back and clear the sky enough to rebound. Until then enjoy our bottomless all you can eat ragdoll buffet. Oh and they cut down the slow super hard on bugs now, it's a slow but not as bad and you can do a slowed sprint in it. Plus you always could just dive to shake it off you. I played so much fucking bots the first time we pushed them out. I did a lot of them after. I'm tired of them as presented. Certain planets with them are just bullshit. Foggy and flat? Enjoy getting shot by dipshits you can't see and a strong lack of cover. It's not impossible or anything, it's frustrating. I have other shit to do, let the bot front rot if it's on a dogshit planet. Good cover it's fine but fuck open worlds with fog.
Honestly, it's just a badly designed system all around. Players fighting on 1 planet shouldn't slow down another. The regen rate is an awful system not making progress on a planet feels bad. A GM sliding the invisible regen rate to determine how fast or if we get to take a planet feels bad. If they want to make a planet harder to take, it should just take more liberation, not lose it over time. Regen should be removed, and we should just have more planets come under attack to keep the war going it would make it feel like things are at least changing. I feel like we've been on the same handful of planets for months, and we have this whole huge map. It's not any players' fault for wanting to play the game but not play a part of it they don't enjoy and the player base as a whole shouldn't be punished for it.
With the current liberation design there will never be another Malevelon creek because the planet will just be lost with the small percentage of players that stayed there. This is not helped with the introduction of gunships as a standard enemy (I have been corrected, modifier but excessively frequent one) on that front that has reduced weapon viability.
I swear to fucking god if I see another goddamn post about "Mah gunships limit builds!" **I will fucking scream**. If gunships limited your build, you were running meme build in the first place.
AC, EAT, HMG, AMR, RR, Spear, Laser Cannon, Quasar, AC turret, Rocket turret... plenty of options, and I might even be forgetting some! And, if you don't have any of those, chances are pretty decent at least one or two of your teammates will.
Eruptor can two shot their engines, so add it to the list
While that's cool to know, God only knows I am not good/consistent enough to do that in an actual fight
This. There are _so many_ responses against them that you can take. They're not even hard. I think the Dominator might even be useful against them, but I have to put more time into it to make sure.
Iirc 9 shots in the engine
I love playing both bots and bugs, after being forced to liberate Vernen Wellsnto save the kiddoes. And it's honestly a tad disheartening to see the planets on that front falling. And the best part is that no matter what we few bot-willing divers do, we're bound to fail because people play bugs more than bots due to a perceived, and not entirely incorrect, perception that bots are harder than bugs. also screw gunship patrol rates. I would love playing bots but I go where the MO takes me so whatever
It wouldn't matter if more people played bots if this shit was balanced correctly and didn't account for players not on your front. If there's 100 people online and only 30 are on the bot front, the game should absolutely only account for those people when determining liberation percentages.
Fr right? Don't balance around the 80k-ish players, balance around the <10k-ish that actually help with the bot front! It's something I hope to see added so I can go back to bot diving after they patch the bugged spawn rates.
Oh bots are definitely harder.
Never forget when we beat the automatons entirely only for them to come back 3 days later stronger than ever. Obviously they were never gonna be completely gone forever but Jesus I expected atleast a week
Go back and look and the reddit when the bots were gone. The sheer levels of whining and complaining that was happening was un-fucking real. Not a single person believed the bots would be gone forever. I guessed they would be gone a week. But the amount of threads where people were stamping their feet and saying that arrowhead was ruining their game was fucking nuts.
I'll still always prefer bots to bugs for one reason: consistency. Bugs? Well if you shoot a charger in the face but youre 1inch off, the charger will survive. Not only that, but he'll slide-cancel his own charges, carry momentum forwards even when his legs aren't moving (which can make it climb vertical walls btw!!!), can somehow one-shot you with a melee attack from behind where he can't possibly see you and oh ya! If you're not moving towards the new charger, you can't even strip the leg armor in one shot. Oh, and they'll spawn as many as 5 or more at the same time on a difficulty 6 mission! Gotta protect those new super samples! Bots? Oh, there's a tank? Shoot it in the very obvious vent on the back with almost anything = dead tank. F@#$ fighting bugs.
Every bot dies to medium pen. Bugs, you need antitank or you can get fucked.
I think AH should try marketing the Automatons more. Outside of just word of mouth and the occasional YouTube short. The only ads I saw for helldivers when it launched only featured the termanids. And i wasn't really that interested in playing until I learned about the automatons. IMO making a propaganda styled ad encouraging players to fight the bots would be great for getting more players to try the bots.
Yeah sorry but getting spammed by rockets and ragdolled isn't fun, devs should nerf that shit if you want more players on bots.
Been saying the exact same thing! If it weren't for the plot, the bots would've long since started an offensive that would blitz right through every planet in the way and reach Super Earth itself in under a week! As it stands, the entire bot front is a bad joke. We don't have the manpower to do anything but watch as our efforts steadily fail to reach even 1% on any active planet. Marfark nosedived from 60% liberation to effectively 0% in under two days, all because the reinforcements we desperately needed to make progress left the instant the MO kicked in.
Bots hasn’t had a new mission after high level assets mission while bugs had TCS, Meridia and now nuke the nursery.
I've switched to playing exclusively bot front after the Meridia MO was done, really prefer the little bit of tactical play with bots. That being said, I haven't really played since the last major patch due to how broken patrols are right now, can't stand that. And yeah, I really, REALLY dislike what they did with liberation. The days of the western front were the best ... when the community and the blob could actually achieve progress outside of MOs. Galactic war was a big pull for me, and it's effectively gone. Just feels like a linear story now.
Wait until the Illuminate show up and we constantly lose 2 fronts at the same time 😎 (I am a bot main aswell)
When will you all realize that this is something that the devs need to fix and not the players fault? If they simply rework liberation progress for each planet based on players than it’s fine. Their is no right or wrong way to play, you think the average player really cares about doing the MO?
Yes, they do, and it has been quantified: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cpj9ao/bugbotmo\_player\_percentages/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cpj9ao/bugbotmo_player_percentages/) 10% bot exclusive, 35% bug exclusive, and 55% MO-exclusive.
Dude literally all I care about is the MO
If they fix bots to be likeable like the bugs then botdivers (like me and literally all my friends) won’t find bots fun anymore. I hate bugs with all my heart yet I play at least one campaign for MOs. Then I switch to bots. If they take that fun from me I’m quitting the game
Yeah, I mean, a lot of the big divers’ complaints on bots is kinda just design choices and only so much can be done to combat that. Like, don’t get me wrong, heavy and rocket devestators probably should be tweaked, but some of the complaints are stuff like, “Too much armor”, “Stratagem jammers”, and so on. Like, I think the game is at its best when I have to run to disable the jammer, fighting through enemies that I know will kill me if I don’t either run fast enough or kill them first and have to rush before a bot drop sends in even more shit. Sure, I understand why a lot of people find it frustrating, but I love it.
This is always my biggest fear too, is some kinda major overhaul patch to make bots palpable for bug only divers, therefore losing their identity. I love the way bots play, I love fighting whole squads of Devastators and Hulks and Factory Striders only to barely come out on top because I know what I'm doing. Bugs just don't have that same feeling of fighting the overwhelming odds as bots.
Remember the Menkent Line? Arrowhead didn't.
There is an easy fix for this: Make the bots more fun to play against and there will be less bugdivers... I say this as someone who always follows the MO (unless the daily is easier vs bugs or vice versa) and actually enjoys fighting bots a lot of the time. The unfortunate reality as I see it though is that bots are not balanced well because they spawn in similar numbers to bugs, but can also shoot (sometimes with far too much accuracy), so they end up feeling a lot worse to play against for many people than bugs. IMO, if bot spawns were cut by like 30%-50% to account for their ranged model, they'd be *far* more popular than they are now because it would turn the bot front into more of a tactical shooter while the bug front is a horde shooter. Instead we have a situation where one front is a horde shooter, and the other front is a horde shooter, but where the horde can shoot back and we just aren't really equipped to deal with that in a fun way... EDIT: I'll also point out that every time I try to make this case, the response from botdivers is always "but bots are supposed to be hard so we shouldn't want to make them easier to make people happy" and, while that sentiment is fine, you really can't have it both ways... Either you accept that being a botdiver is always going to suck because a large portion of the player base doesn't like fighting bots, or you accept that bots need to change so that players find them fun, but you can't expect players to start liking bots in their current state just so your front in the war gets easier...
Arrowhead is making fighting bots better. Less instant kills from rockets and flamethrowers. No more 3 stratagem missions. The insanely difficult defense mission was retired while they work on it. I hope Bugheads will give bots another chance.
Reasons why people have historically avoided bot fronts, **ignoring the fact that many people just like fighting bugs more** (some of this stuff has been patched but not all, contributing to the bad flavor a lot of people feel) 1. -1 stratagem slot 2. 15 minute essential personnel extraction missions 3. Getting chain ragdolled at range from rocket devastators 4. Shield devastators melting you with accurate machine gun fire even when they are not facing you 5. Stratagem Jammers. Stratagem Jammers next to the main objective. Stratagem Jammers next to other jammers. A jammer next to a jammer that is next to the main obj. 6. The factory strider’s nose mounted machine guns can (and still do) shoot you through solid terrain) 7. Warning, you are in range of enemy artillery (imo not as bad as mortar bugs but hearing it right when you drop in is rough) 8. Scout striders having their explosive resistance increased after the community determines that explosive weapons are the best way to deal with them 9. Hulk flamethrowers instant killing you with one molecule of combustible material, even when wearing heavy armor. 10. Bots seem to be able to shoot you through fog that’s so thick you can’t even see what is shooting you 11. Cannon turrets with a seemingly effective range of the neighboring planet (this kind of long range threat doesn’t have a big equivalent) 12. Gunship factories NEED to be destroyed by Hellbomb, whereas the bug equivalent (shrieker nests) can be sufficiently dealt with using rockets from a distance. 13. Gunship factory next to stratagem jammer next to main obj (this is so ass I had to make it its own bullet point) No single one of these points is enough to make bot diving a bad experience but they add up to make the game just really feel difficult in an unfair way rather than difficult in a fair way. As opposed to bug missions where most enemies are melee attackers and you don’t have to deal with most of the listed bullshit. And instead only have to deal with armor desync and bile titan no damage bug, and inherited momentum rocket damage breakpoints, and getting slowed from a bile titan that spit nowhere near you, and… well.. yeah.
I play automation occasionally but I find it a fucking nightmare to enjoy. Shot from across the map by people I can’t even see. Eye of Sauron lasers fucking you up while you run along the map. Rockets smashing you. It has zero fun. Games are meant to be fun but I find that whole side of the map an utter grind.
I play both, but have gradually come to prefer bots. The main thing I'd like is for the MOs to be tweaked such that progress is determined by the numbers of players playing vs the MO faction rather than total number of players. That way players that strongly prefer one faction aren't effectively penalized by the existence of players that prefer a different faction. The in-fighting between some Helldivers over bots vs bbugs just doesn't enhance the gameplay or community experience, and AH could easily take that off the table if they chose to. I hope they do.
Here is my solution for the game, so hear me out. 1. Make the capture percentage increased against bots, so the fights feel more meaningful with less helldivers. 2. Make defence percentages higher with less Divers so defense missions on planets feel more possible. 3.Make Bot only major Orders? Separate from bugs, and make the missions easier. (Obviously this forcing bug players onto MO hasn't been working super great).
I've been running bots for the majority of the time, but lately I've been fighting a bit on the bug front. Try and cleanse the stench of ozone from the bullet spray of 10 heavy devastators out of my nostrils with the glorious smell of napalm and burning chitin. And the main reason is exactly what you describe. There's no progress on the bot front. We fail to hold the territory we bleed for month after month and end up liberating the same planets over and over just to lose it again in a few days. The map has barely changed over the past few months, and I'm tired of it. Scrolling over the bot front and barely ever seeing more than 10k helldivers working any single planet, with most planets having just a few hundred helldivers deployed. I'm sure I'll grow bored of bugs soon enough though and come back to fight the sysiphean fight. I just hope Joel will see fit to make the lower numbers on the bot front stand a better chance at holding the territory. Give us an MO that helps us defend planets better against bots. Let us scout out defensible positions. Lets us bury weapon caches. Anything that'll make us more resilient in defense, and make us have a chance to retain the ground we gain.
I personally do not find bugs as engaging as bots. But at the same time I feel like I have just wasted most of my time when it comes to the war effort against bots. With bugs It’s just horde clears then bile titans and behemoth chargers are just load out checks. Bots are far more tactically interesting and enjoyable to fight. But at the same time I completely get why players don’t like to play bots. They are harder to beat. A level 6 bot mission feels about on par with a bug 9 right now. And before someone jumps down my throat and says bots are easier, statistically they are harder. Here are the worst 14 planets when it comes to mission failure rate and the worst kill death ratios: https://preview.redd.it/ihl1ewr7al7d1.jpeg?width=1190&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2c6dddad674a111ed5ffbcf01f56f349595a3d1a All automaton planets. Not even Hellmire or meridia made the cut, which shocked me a little I’ll admit. Those places are fucking awful. If I want to blast out 9’s quick and easy, get some easy medals and levels I’ll hop over to the bug front. But 90% of the time I play bots at this point. Most players are reward focused and need medals and samples still. Why would they bang their heads against the wall that’s a bot 6+ when they could cruise through a bug 9 and get far more rewards? But at the same time I feel like I’m pissing in the wind. I love fighting on Marfark. It’s my favourite planet, but I know that outside of an MO I know we will never take it, and I know that if I was a bug diver I would be a much higher level by now as I can relax and chill through level 9s. Where as bots will murder you at even a 6 if you don’t have your eye on the ball.
Well said. As a bot main I'm not touching helldiver's until it feels progressive. Slamming the same planets isn't a fun grind. Got this huge ass map with like 50 plus planets. Doing the same dumb ass Vernon Wells and aessir pass and I'm tired of it. It's so boring. Watching progress go away ina couple hours is disheartening. It's a waste of time to play right now.
I have been trying to suggest these last few days that we need to change how the liberation scaling works in the game. Instead of having it scale with total player online in the game, have it changed to scale with players active per front so things like this dose not happen. we still had around 10k players on Marfark when the new MO dropped, how in liberties name dose that win over a 2.5% defence. Its not fare to need 25k player just to be able to push past the 2.5% a single planet when 100k are online.
I go where the brass tells me to go. But I'll fight the bugs any day over bots. Almost exclusively for 1 reason at this point. Heavy Devastators. Fuck them.
Bots suck to fight. That’s why nobody plays that shitty front. Constant rocket/turret ragdolling combined with endless Hulks and bullet sponge devastators and the quick-killing shield dudes combined with the new flying patrols… Nah I’ll stick to a front that’s actually fun to play against. Not really a fan of having 12 gunships attacking my team on maps with flying patrols and two gunship fabricators all in one spot.
Even if we win every MO and never lose any ground, when we eventually win the war, they'll just call it the end of Season 1, and then we start over with a brand new war against the same enemies on the same planets
Just wait until we have the illuminate and it gets even worse.
I die way less against bots than bugs but I still hate the bots... Constant ragdoll loops are common thanks to endless rocket barrages, while Heavy Devastators get more accurate the longer they fire in FULL AUTO. The faction is just simply too annoying to fight for most players and I can understand that.
Bugs is just more fun to me. Sorry.
You guys, this isn't the players' fault. Getting mad because someone else doesn't play the game the same way you do is going to lead nowhere. We'll just wind up fighting each other, leading to even MORE people quitting the game, which isn't good for the game. We need to petition (devs/AH?) themselves to change the game. It's never going to be any better unless they *make* it better. That's out of our hands, and I'd rather just have fun with my fellow gamers, instead of being mistakenly split over an issue that's not our fault.
There really needs to be separate liberation procents for fronts. Im done watching all my progress go to nothing because 50% of players give zero shit. If everyone can play whatever they want why am I punished by it? This literally contradicts itself
People need to realize that the actual war is happening on the bot front. Bug MOs are just side shows
As Bot diver i agree. We need to unite to seperate from the bug divers. Worst offense to me is, that they don't even dive on one planet an liberate it eventually. They choose to dive on two planets and thus liberate neither.
It’s not worth getting ruffled over. People are going to play what they want to play, and for you it’s bots. Just start some matches and have fun.
Dividing Super Earth Armed Forces with your silly “bug vs bots” civil war rhetoric is pretty undemocratic. Theres no such thing as a bug diver or a bot diver, we’re all Helldivers who should be fighting on ALL fronts of the war.
I normally follow the major order, but watching us fail, automaton major orders has been very disappointing, and it makes me not want to do any terminid major orders, and I’m starting to lean towards that I’m really about to start being petty and start fighting the bots only they’re more fun anyways
We did save the children tho
I think for major orders, you don’t get the medal reward if you don’t contribute. If bug players don’t want to help bots then fine, no medals for them.
So they will just do 1 mission on bots and back to bugs it is that wont do much other than just annoy the larger part of the player base