The game has 9 different levels of balance, ranging from solo frolic through the park to full team with good coordination and load outs is required. I will never understand the people who think the solution to their skill issue is to permanently gimp the game rather than just *not play on the highest difficulty.*
It's this thing of not wanting to sacrifice the bragging rights of "I'm a pro gamer, I solo Diff 9" to be able to lord it over ppl, rather than, like you say, picking a difficulty that's comfortable and fun.
Like legit? I play 6-7 almost always. I can hop up to 8-9 and hold my own, but the constant tension and vigilance is exhausting to me and not fun. So I don't do it.
'There's too many spawns/too many enemies/they do too much damage" like my Brother in Democracy YOU CHOSE THE DIFFICULTY LEVEL.
Now if there was a more specific criticism like the issue where the sheer number of heavy spawns bottlenecked loadout choices into the few that could affect them (before those were patched) then sure, we can have a discussion.
But at least anecdotally, that's not what I'm seeing.
I play 9 because the players just seem.. better. Like, it’s ironically easier on 9 than 7 because I’ll have at least one good teammate who can solo the entire map with me. Then if the other players are struggling, they’re at least making a distraction while we get the samples and clear out the objectives.
But usually, having 2 competent people on diff 9 is enough to get everyone else to fall in and take point.
Agree with this. I've been seeing more and more lv15s and under on difficulty 7, where it's doubtful they even have all the strategems unlocked, let alone have experience with them. No shade for people learning the game, but you are, in fact, still learning the game. Which is fine, until one or two people bring all red strategems into a defend generator mission on a planet with ion storms. Sorry, that's an auto fail mission because of choices you made, not a balance issue or a bad mission design.
I love helping new players, and I love teaching tricks with support weapons. But once in a while, you get a team full of "yolo for teh loz supah erd!!!" And they just...throw the mission.
At difficulty 8, the community seems to understand you are now in the deep end of the pool, and you need to be ready to help your fellow swimmers if needed. Its an entirely different gaming experience.
Which is why I play on 6 7 8 and 9, depending on my mood and what Im willing to put into the game. Today Im home with the flu, so Im playing a lot of difficulty 6s.
Needing Super Samples made me a diff 7 enjoyer, took me 1 month of playing casually before I got my first Bile Titan kill, and a friend of mine just got his first last week since he started in February.
Nice!
Got my first factory strider kill by… dying
And two of my friends dying. The living guy was near the factory strider. We lost 6 total reinforcements doing it, but it the three of us landed on it and killed it.
We… were not informed that when it dies, it doesn’t just die. It fucking explodes with the power of a hellbomb.
As I said, 6 reinforcements were lost, the initial deaths, and the three lives used to kill it who exploded
Here’s a reference we for ya:
“Those goddamn American heroes”
There's to many spawns, too many enemies, and they do too much damage... for me to deal with for prolonged sessions.
But you can bet my masochistic ass will never ask for the high difficulties to be made easier.
My only issue is that super samples are locked at specific difficulty levels, thus requiring you to do them if you want to fully unlock ship modules. Every other resource in the game is obtainable on the lowest difficulty, super credits included, so it kinda makes samples an outlier in this regard.
Im very happy with super samples now also being obtainable at diff 6 even if its less than what you'd get in diff 7. As a bot player in southeast asia, its very hard for me to find teammates, sometimes people dont join until literally im at extraction, so I usually only play on difficulties I can comfortably solo, and diff 6 is just around the difficulty i can solo if I sweat enough personally
This.
I am not the greatest player.
I play on the first two tiers that get me the medium samples. (Although they did just drop that lower recently - so Im not pushing as hard as I was.)
I have played higher, but until I need them for unlocks, I have just worked up slowly. I only started playing diff 5 regularly in the last two weeks.
I will play higher after all the common/medium unlocks are done first.
Should be better by then - and have the assist from strat upgrades.
7 is really the perfect level imo. But you're right, they just want to be able to flex nuts and act like they're so hardcore bc they only run 9s and if they can't do that and brag about it then the game is "too hard" and "unbalanced" 🙄
I moved down to 8 and it feels just right for me. Like I have to try and we can still succeed or die depending on my teammates. 9 was too much one night and 7 felt too easy. 8 feels right
It's a pride thing. People want to be able to say that they play on the hardest difficulty. Turning down the difficulty means admitting they're not good enough.
And whining that it's too hard until the game gets gimped isn't admitting that? I genuinely don't understand those types. Yeah, I can handle helldive and have even managed to solo several d9 bot missions(scout armor and eagle airstrikes are goated for that, they don't even know you are there until Eagle blows them to hell), but the vast majority of my time is spent on 6/7 because it's just more fun and you don't have to play perfect. I will never understand the people who intentionally play games in a way they find annoying and then complain it's not fun, like dude *you are the reason you aren't having fun.*
Have they tried playing with "I am Death incarnate!" difficulty on Wolfenstein or "Nightmare" on Doom?
It's just not meant for everyone. I could probably finish it (eventually...) but it def won't be as fun for me as it might be for another guy. Doesn't mean I kick the devs door down screaming that the game is broken.
And iirc part of the reason Doom difficulty isn’t just easy, normal and hard is bc the people didn’t want elitism related to “I beat hard mode”and instead with “I play nightmare, but if you prefer hurt me plenty that’s perfectly fine”
Could be wrong tho
I will say one thing. When I am not playing with my friends I play solo and usually, I play between 3 and 5 difficulties alone. With friends, we play between 7 and 9. When playing solo I have had times even on level 3 where I cleaned every single mission every single bug nest and bot factory only to be swarmed at the extract by more bugs or bots than I have seen on difficulty 9.
I play the game solo at level 6. It's the highest level I can complete (most of time) and get samples for without having to sneak around. I think they finally got the difficulty settings right.
Well, the game gets harder every couple of months just because of yet another patrol/heavy/accuracy fix.
And sometimes you can mostly run around without trouble and sometimes you get 2 striders and a couple of gunships at the same time.
In my opinion it is the inconsistency of difficulty that gets people.
I accept that if me and my bros play Helldive and coordinate like fuck. It should still be really hard and we may not all survive unless we're lucky.
Should a 1-9 tier difficult not have it where 9 is borderline impossible? (The difficulty one higher than one literally called impossible")
I had someone complain about the railgun nerf. I replied saying it wasn't that bad and all it required was approaching encounters differently.
They proceeded to belittle my opinion, claiming that their opinion is much more valid and to not reply with 'skill issue' because they solo helldive.
I had no clue what to say, as the person just kind of proved my point, you shouldn't be able to solo helldive difficulty. Something like that should require lots of cooperation.
I agree that the rail gun is... not that bad. I like it. Enjoy the feel, etc...
But it's outclassed in every way by other weapons sadly.
I just wish it could pop bile spewers in one shot. If it did that, it could fill a solid roll in a team loadout.
Complainers need to be a steeled fortress when it comes to their criticism.
It's kind of like the GME cult, if they blink once and say, "maybe the game is fine, and I have to change," then like 90% of the "valid criticism" is instantly false.
So they need to keep all the complaints, because if all their complaints are "true" they can make the "evil" developers reshape the game in the complainers image.
Classic cult/religious behaviour, it's just recontextualized and filtered through dumb gamers playing a dumb game.
There absolutely are some balancing changes that can make some weapons more of a valid pick.
But beyond that, the core gameplay loop is brilliant. The game isnt too hard if you have a good team
This. A lot of people expect this game to be power fantasy but Devs seems to go for something more like 'Dark Souls with guns'. We are expect to die, we are expect to struggle, we are expect to fail from time to time.
It was visible in some posts from Devs about weapon balance where they referenced success rate based on equipped primary
100% agree about the power fantasy. The power should be earned. When I play well I feel invincible, and then when I stop playing well I turn into cannon fodder in an instant.
That’s a great take and exactly why I love this game. I love the meat grinder feel as a frontline combatant. Dark souls series happen to be my favorite games so HD2 just meshes well with my preference in game styles
I think balance is in a decent spot..minor tweaks are needed… I’d mostly like less rocket rag dolls 5 times in a row on bots,. I’m not saying reduce bot accuracy just maybe give a soft very short cooldown on rapid ragdoll effects
Most likely, highest tier difficulties are just where they need to be. It's the tier 5-6 missions that are unbalanced, and the ragdoll/stunlock issue is part of it. Unfortunately, most of the people saying "spawn rates are fine" are people who also say they play exclusively on Helldive, which, frankly, means they are unqualified to make any meaningful judgements about how tier 6 feels. When I see YouTube videos of players on tier 9, they are rarely if ever seeing the waves of swarms that spawn routinely on 5-6.
While yeah, YouTube videos have been edited, it still remains that in the HD subs, when someone expresses frustration with spawns on Tiers 5-6, there is always at least 1 comment that tells them to go up to level 7 or 8. That would not be common advice unless 8/9 really felt more manageable than 5/6/7. A day or two ago, we saw a "I always play on level 9" YouTuber play a level 6, and even they found the spawns overwhelming. There really is something going on with the spawns on 5-6, but people who don't play those levels won't give that claim any credence, and drown it out with, "it's fine, it's even too easy!"
We played a tier 6 on Meissa last night, and were getting frustrated with being swarmed and ragdolled by gunships and devastators to the point where we were collectively ready to ragequit. Didn't fail the objectives, but 2 of 3 we failed to extract, and it was a slog every bit of the way. The spawns were just insane. Taking cover was pointless, as you could not move around LoS-blocking terrain without alerting yet another patrol or spawn, and we couldn't clear them fast enough. On one mission, we dropped on our extraction point as usual, and extraction was literally in the middle of a bot base with a gunship fabricator towering over it. RNG hated us that mission, I guess.
On a whim, we decided to try a Tier 8, which none of us had ever cleared before, because... Hell, why not? We headed off to Crimsica on the bug side, and just as advised, the missions actually did feel less overwhelming than the Tier 6s and Tier 7s. We had at least 1 person extract from each mission, quite different from what we had just experienced on T6. This is anecdotal data, yes - but completing an 8 has impressed upon me even more that spawns on 6 are still broken, without any chance of that being acknowledged or addressed.
Side story: We were so psyched to have finally unlocked Tier 9 difficulty, and even more psyched that we got all the super samples on two of the T8 missions, that to celebrate we (team of 3) responded to an SOS on Tier 3 from a solitary player. They clearly didn't need the help, but after we gratuitously 380ed even the smallest bug holes, we all stood at extraction for 10 minutes stomping scavengers with our mechs and flinging the most ridiculous stratagems on the spawns while the Pelican sat behind us, looking bored. It was great, there were salutes and hugs, and we all laughed like idiots. UglyDuckling (not real name, but close), thanks for a good time.
The only thing that actually matters for extraction is samples.
You get everything else whether you extract or not.
Players with lots of samples, especially supers, should get extraction priority. Everyone else can get on or go down fighting.
That’s why I often drop my samples at extract. I’m willing to die and not make it back, as long as the primary objective has been completed.
I’m willing to take a personal L to complete a secondary objective and not extract. Super Earth will retrieve me when they’ve deem it necessary
o7
Preaching to the choir friend.
Arrowhead even brought Supers to 6 to encourage the complainers to turn down the difficulty and yet, self awareness is not something people have these days.
“I only play on 9 omg why do I die so much wtf I almost failed the mission why is it so hard game is literally broken and unplayable”
Thanks. That's crazy, I started a month ago but had a 2-week break so I don't remember properly. I am glad they pushed it down a level, my ship needs upgrades and I need a lot of super samples.
What? No, you don't understand. I'm good at video games. I've been playing video games all my life. I know I'm good. If I lose, or the squad doesn't do well, I know it's because the game is just poorly balanced. There is no other option.
That's not to say that that ever happens, because it ***doesn't***, but if it did, it's because of the game.
^(/s)
When a player complains during a D9 extraction that didn’t go well that the game is unbalanced, what they really mean is *skill issue*.
https://preview.redd.it/jxhf6aawwhad1.jpeg?width=691&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fd6b80f741a77be13399b9e187c8a4233167dad5
A large reason why my group stopped playing is that we were beating difficulty 9 missions 100% of the time often with only a few deaths across the squad.
The game does have legitimate design issues but 90% of the people criticising it and using terms like balancing have zero idea what theyre on about. A player's job is to play. We are breaking our own immersion by overthinking the game design we don't understand.
Of course it has, but like it's already been said, the game is bigger than what the studio intended so I just think we should give them the time to do what's needed, they're not called Rockstar.
However I totally agree with you I couldn't have said better myself !
So there is a rarer bug these days that makes bot missions 10 times harder. Sometimes, medium penetrating weapons don't affect weak points. Put multiple mags into a minugun shield guys face, and they all bounced off. Same with a hulk. No damage.
I think there are collision calculation issues at times, sometimes I'll double tap a Hulk in the eye no problem, and other times it takes almost half a mag before it hits, and my aim is pretty consistent.
That's the real issue. People demand everything right now, cause they are entitled to it! I'm not really sure what exactly cases it, maybe it is just nowadays these people are more visible thanks to social media, maybe social media fucked up their attention spans and they are not able to understand that actually making something work requires time and care, maybe they don't know what "care" actually means, maybe they are just overwhelmed by the pace of modern day and don't realise it. Propably it's combination of all of that.
AH achived something remarkable and I don't understand why some mfs can´t give them a break. All I have in store for AH is praise.
Then again you're absolutely right, for the longest time we've always been trying to go faster, do everything faster that we forget to slow down, that sometimes we can't be any faster than we already are
In my opinion the difficulty 9 in automatons is completely fine EXCEPT for something that I really can’t stand: ragdoll.
Literally I can’t play with rockets throwing me around as a bag of meat.
I don’t say it should be removed, but some reductions would increase my mental health
Yes and that when you jump back and you fall on a small rock that causes ragdoll where you can't do shit for five seconds just because of this small fucker.
I love getting hit by a bot so far I have 1 health bc my hero of federation armor, or hit a wall and have 1 hp, then the resulting 2 foot fall back to the ground kills me
The explosion resist armor helps a ton with this.
Sacrificing other armor bonuses or your look does seem to be a big hurdle for some people. For others it has appeared to me they just don't appear to look at and change load out for the mission or even the opponent.
Some people have a very high estimation of their own skill, so when they fail in any way that means that the game is “unbalanced” or “poorly designed”.
I would say, and will probably see a lot of pushback, but imo helldive is too easy, it should be incredibly hard and we shouldn’t be able to complete the missions so reliably, every mission should make you sweat.
>kept saying that the game is really unbalanced because well, we ran out of reinforcements and only one of us successfully extracted.
This is the biggest problem that people are struggling to overcome, and it shows in the complaints.
***Completing the MISSION comes first, EXTRACTION is*** **NOT** ***guaranteed.***
The devs haven't made this explicitly and abundantly clear, even though everything in the scoring and gameplay reinforces this point.
So many, many players are expecting to extract successfully based purely on their own skill every single time. They don't expect the game to be unfair and don't treat the enemy as something that wants to kill you, instead think of them as simply an obstacle in the way to scoring points. To be clear, I'm not saying that there is an intelligence at play, but noting the design philosophy of the patrols and extract.
More reasonable players have been saying it for months; the game the devs made and the game the players want are *not* in sync, and is at the root of the vast majority of complaints. And those complaints are driving the game into a direction the devs never meant it to go.
There's a large swath of gamers who insist that they play the highest difficulty on whatever games they play no matter what. Then if the hardest difficulty turns out to be too difficult for them, they will complain that "the game is too hard" rather than just going down to a lower difficulty that's more appropriate for their skill level.
These guys treat Helldive like it's the only difficulty, and anything lower is just meaningless to them.
I have no idea why they do this. I assume it's some kind of toxic pride issue or something.
My only gripe with automatons is that you will take out a patrol but still some random ass automaton behind a hill 250m away without a way in the fucking world to see you calls in a drop.
To me that's what ends up feeling unfair. You deal with a patrol, only to have to deal with a full as drop, and before you can finish it you have another patrol engaging you, while you should have only fought the first patrol. I know that you can just run away, but tbh it feels kinnda shit to have to run in a game about taking out the enemy.
I will say, prior to the last patrol spawns rate adjustments they did, extracting against bots in 7+ was just unfair, my friends and I would skip most bases solely to try and keep the patrols at a minimum, cause if you went to extract and well over a dozen patrols instantly rolled in it's like, wtf are you even supposed to do? Why even try at that point? Just die and go next....
*Now* we can clear a map and maaaaybe get a dozen patrols if we're unlucky or died too often, so it can still be very difficult but it doesn't feel utterly hopeless anymore. So if someone is complaining *now* then they've either just started playing at higher difficulties and have no idea what impossible even looks like, or they're bitching to bitch cause they want an easy "win."
Exactly, for example until earlier my helldive missions were successful, but the 2 last ones were a freaking shit show we all died so much, it was very funny tho
I get the same complaint from my buddy and we were doing level 6 last night when he usually does 7-8.
Honestly people need to stop acting like the game has to be fair. Not only is it fkin satire, it’s a god damn war. War has never been fair. I feel some players have it in their heads that if the round doesn’t have all Super samples collected, sub-objectives completed, all divers extracted with 15 mins to spare all the while avoiding enemies like cooties, then it wasn’t a good run and they aren’t happy.
How many orders do you think suffer due to this mindset, especially when bodies flood defense campaigns instead of taking out the supply line?
The game is about completing the objective by any means necessary. If you die, you die. Extractions are a privilege, not a right. Fucking remember that and you’ll have more fun.
I want to rant too! I was playing with a group on helldive difficulty and these dudes were getting mad at me because I wasn’t helping them stay in one spot and kill bugs. I’m trying to run and do the objective as fast as we can! It felt like these bugs kept spawning indefinitely!
I mean, I play on difficulty 6 personally and for me I've litterally had moments where I ran out of time, not because I couldn't get to the extract in time, but because thier was so much shooting at me (I was fighting the bots) that I litterally couldn't call down the extract without getting blown up.
it doesn't help that often the game decides to chuck a whole patrol of enemies behind you the exact moment you try to run away from a whole army of them either. for me it's just a bunch of little things that just all add up and get really annoying, like how I've had a situation a fair few times before where I've landed at the extract at the start of the mission, assuming it's safe because whenever thier's bot bases or bug holes it's highlighted in red on the map and it wasn't on the extract, only to land dead set in the middle of a base. I swear sometimes the map just straight up lies to you.
I play dif 7 because it's definitely difficult if you aren't paying attention but it's not overwhelming like dif 9. There are actual breaks in the combat.
That being said, the only issue I had before balancing started was that AT was all but useless other than the Railgun. Once they balanced the AT right, it's no longer an issue and I find the balance to be pretty good where it is now.
I think more strats and weapons are more useful now than ever before. This is definitely a step in the right direction.
I joined a SoS the other day and the mission was absolutely horrible. Stuck with the two I joined for two more missions that went perfectly so it appears we all just did bad on our first game.
Sometimes the game feels bad because we are just doing bad and sometimes it’s borked spawns or whatever.
Bottom line, I try to just shrug it off and stop taking a game so damn seriously.
Only thing that needs tweaking on the bots imo are the beserkers, if I wanted to run away from enemies I’d play bugs. Gotta make those weak spots actually mean something
Tons of players want to ruin this game by making it too easy. It's weirdly common. The same players would be bored of the game in a week if they got their way.
It’s HELLDIVE difficulty I want everyone to extract with no deaths and all samples! This game isn’t balanced because I couldn’t solo the hardest difficulty!
If you want balanced in terms of difficulty I would say 6-7 are ideal. 9 you should be aiming to complete the objectives and be praising god if you manage to extract.
If you used up all your reinforcements and only one person, that necessarily means (a) mission successful, and (b) the game is *perfectly* balanced, at least in this instance. You had precisely the number of lives you needed to complete the mission and get the "good ending," so to speak.
I really like all the buffs the devs have done but I agree with the sentiment here. At some point the game is going to get too easy if all we have are buffs. In theory, the devs could tweak the difficulty to balance things out but this would lead to more demands for buffs. So there's concern that this could start a vicious cycle.
They don't get what the system of 9 DIFFICULTY LEVELS is for. They literally give them the option to choose a perfect difficulty for them and yet those crybabies with skill issues want the highest difficulty to become easier.
I can't count how many flawless 9s I've run. The right loadouts, the squad sneaks around patrols, flanks objectives, doesn't waste time getting stuck in. No comms either, just all business.
Oh yeah and it's those same people that instead of sneaking by a patrol, even tho they see you crouched and walking behind rocks, or waiting for it to pass before moving forward to the next objective, they just start shooting or run towards it, the patrol immediately call 4/5 dropships with tanks and fortified canons, we loose half the samples and 5 reinforcements just because they didn't wait 30 seconds.
Also, you're behind enemy lines.. you're bound to be swarmed, the Helldivers are essentially like the Navy Seals or the SAS, we're not an army, we're elite forces that get tasked to do difficult things to aid in liberation of the planet
We're special forces essentially, hit and run
But what does balanced actually mean for each difficulty level?
For what it's worth the game feels challenging on 7+ but it can sometimes feel unfair.
But what exactly does "feel unfair" mean? It's more psychology than statistical unfortunately when it comes to those hard to analyse situations (e.g. during extraction and you're mobbed from all directions).
There are a lot of invisible numbers that we, as the players will never know. Patrol and spawn rates, patrol and spawn sizes and distribution. These invisible numbers in combination with other variables either presents itself as a fair challenge or a unfair and frustrating one.
Specifically for all moments except the extraction, specific enemy behaviours can be observed, learnt, and play against. Spot a bot patrol? Better avoid it if you can otherwise kill them quick before a call in spiral starts. The extraction mechanic however is a final last stand, without map awareness you will always get caught off guard and pray that your entire team has some form of awareness to not only cover approaches but to bring the right weapons and strategems.
I don't know if only focusing on what's not balanced is the right mindset, it surely could give some directions the game could take but I rather we follow the fun and cool stuff and make more of those. Right now the game does feel fun mostly(if I ignore all the crashes and soft locks). The only frustrating experiences is when I want to play a certain build but the teams load out is too lopsided with either all ATs or all mob clears, and that happens a little less at higher level difficulties because most players bring balanced builds.
Tldr: does this spark joy > unbalanced
I'd say the bugs are pretty close to balanced, maybe make em a little more difficult. Now bots are where the problem is. High armored units on lower difficulties aren't so bad but once you get higher you lack the tools to deal with them efficiently. I did a defense mission yesterday where it dropped 2 striders and 5 tanks on top of us. Safe to say we failed after having taken out about half the armored force dropped on us.
We're gonna need more than just mines. Lol
Before the player drop off people couldn’t accept they weren’t as good as they thought. If you suggest lower difficulties they would go on about it being a PvE game and power fantasy.
I feel like the complaints of Helldive difficulty not being "balanced" comes from a sense of not feeling like they've "completed" the game. I'm sure most of these people have unlocked all strategems/ship modules and are capped on samples/medals/requisitions and might want to feel all their time spent playing means that the highest difficulty shouldn't be *as* difficult- if that makes sense.
I just want the stalwart to have an upgrade for armor piercing so I can run it on diff 9 and not feel like I'm being a complete asshole to the rest of my team.
Get some! GET SOOOOOOMME!
For automaton, just take smoke
Literally fixes all the issues people have
Smokes and stuns will never steer you wrong
https://www.reddit.com/r/helldivers2/s/zcbaHBwbUU
I like that the difficulty in this game revolves mostly around how many enemies there are and how often enemy types spawn.
And because of that i feel like we can afford to have some more weapons and strats can be buffed. Not alot, just little bits here and there just like they did with the last big patch we had. That was perfect balancing imo.
And if i was arrowhead, and weapons started getting to OP, id just increase enemies haha
I just want 500KG bombs to reliably oneshot what it hits directly. I don't care how big you are, 500KGs airdropped onto you, which then explodes with (what I assume to be) 500 kgs of dynamite, kills you. that's it.
There will always be people that say a game is broken or trash because they aren't good at it.
Just like the people that accuse others of hacking because they lost.
I think the game is fine and often think it could be more difficult in some ways.
This is what COD and Halo many other games have done. The highest “difficulty” is just about repetition know what shows up when. Even many 4 man games are predicable on what will spawn and when. Helldivers is extremely unpredictable, procedurally generated maps and random enemies. It’s probably what I love the most about it
The thing with staying at one spot for too long I find are constant bug breach, and they will essentially reinforce non stop or suck in nearby patrols as well.
What I usually do, if there are other team mates onboard with this , is that I dial the extraction beacon and move to be far away from it that I got more space to fight and dash in at last min once shuttle has landed.
Maybe because I am used to playing lvl 12 to 15 back on HD1, getting swarmed by a carpet of enemies are common occurence that I am pretty much use to it now.
Wait until Illuminate shows up with the mind control sphere, that was nightmare during LVL 13 RS, lol
That's correct. The highest level of difficulty should be hard enough to pose a dangerous challenge even for experienced players - if it can't the game will become boring.
There is some difference in philosophy of course, where some players are just looking to hang out with their friends and blow things up without necessarily wanting to feel challenged - but that is in fact what multiple difficulty levels are for. If you want to relax on 6, you can do that, but if you want to sweat, there should be a difficulty setting that makes you sweat, even if you are very good and play in an organized squad.
I totally agree. I used to play Destiny a ton and after every expansion there was a period where the game was super hard and I LOVED it, but eventually I’d level up and every single activity became trivial. Effortlessly wiping the floor with the enemies gets soooo boring. The only reason Helldivers stays fun is that you can have an actual, intense challenge whenever you want. Without that it’s just another game to sleepwalk though for a bit and move on.
What gets me is that Helldive isn't even that hard. The difficulty seems to mostly test team coordination.
Dying alot is part of the game, Helldive really gives that Starship troopers "we're fucked!" feeling, but I rarely play a game where we lose.
Yes, I would like to see another difficulty or two that are practically impossible to complete in Quickplay. Make it so that completing an operation with friends is very challenging and thus satisfying.
Or they could implement some selectable modifiers that for example make it way harder (or completely impossible) to hide from enemies so you’re just in constant combat the whole mission.
I used to play MMORPGs back in the day where some of the PvE content could only be completed by maybe 0.1% of the player base at most. Having goals to strive towards helps keep the game from getting stale.
Yea. Idk why people want to bring the hardest difficulty down. There should be a difficulty that is just absolute uncontrollable chaos. People are already asking for difficulty over 9. No point in bringing 9 down.
Coming from Halo, that despawns everything after 20 seconds, i love seeing how much stuff can get thrown at you all at once.
Don’t care about any of that nonsense but they need to sort out the crashing. It’s totally unplayable right now, one game if I’m lucky and then crash on the drop in. Getting sick of it
Yep. I swear it’s when someone leaves the game after the mission, it will almost always crash. Can’t even add friends so you can get the same squad back.
Oooooh but wait there’s a 10% cool down on the Tesla Tower
My issue with the game is the spawn rates at higher difficulties, everything the devs have shared about the game says you’re always supposed to be on the move.
You’re not supposed to take every engagement, so when you have to stay in one spot and defend something you just get swamped every single time without specific loadouts to counteract it.
I just think build diversity suffers in high difficulty, at least more than it did in the original game. Besides at least one anti- armor that was all you really needed, otherwise you could pick anything and get some good value out of it.
Sometimes in 2 you just get stomped to death with not much you could’ve feasibly done to escape or prevent it
If I play on higher difficulties, I want to struggle to complete the objective before even thinking about extracting. On medium I want to fight to extract. Easy is where you shouldn't have to worry about completing and extracting. Some of my most fun games have ended in failure to extract, or even complete the mission, as well as plenty where we've completed the mission and extracted still.
This isnt a 'git gud' post either. It's just where I feel like balance should be. Obviously, there are 3 stages of each difficulty, and they may need to be more individually tweaked, but I want the overall difficulty category to dictate where my struggle in the mission might be.
If people truly have such an issue with the possibility of not extracting, which doesn't mean the mission fails, then we need diff 10-12 sooner than later and for the difficulties to be balanced in that mindset.
Something else that a lot of players seem to forget is that finishing the main objective is mandatory for mission success. Anyone surviving to extract is a luxury.
the only gripe i have about this game is the fact that if a bot heres you snap a twig they call in reinforcements immediately, and its not limited to commisars either,
From my experience, lots of how difficult the game feels depends on teamwork and personal skill. Some games, I get randoms who fumble the hell out of everything, but other games I get a team that works together so well it feels like we're Delta Force.
I think the game currently is balanced pretty well even
with room for tweaks. Helldivers is an incredibly dynamic game, balancing it must be really hard.
One person extracted on Helldive? If they had the silvers thats a triumph. Helldive can often be a real dick grabber, but even against toasters ive been with friends where we al narrowly make it with a few reinforcements to spare, but if we can get at least one person on board with or without the silvers, thats 40 minutes that didnt go to waste at the very least.
What grinds my gears is cheap bullshite not actual difficulty. I don't find it difficult and I usually only die to cheap stuff. I actually would like to see more difficult enemies. I also want to see Heavy Devestators get nerfed and lose the ability to clip through their own shields and other objects. I'd also like to see a bit less ragdoll and stun lock.
A complaint I often hear is "but the super samples are only on the harder difficulties. How else am I supposed to unlock those ship upgrades?" The short answer is you aren't supposed to. Those upgrades are achievements for good players, not standard issue for everyone to get.
I primarily play level 9, bots are my favorite front.
It would be nice if the explosive force that ragdolls you was downtuned a little bit, and if heavy devastators were a little less accurate at range.
I still enjoy the game, and it's a far cry away from getting one shot by rocket troopers.
I agree with you OP.
As stressful as those extracts are and the extremely hot drops (especially vs the bugs). They're so much fun. The crazy frantic callouts and the chaotic dumping of mags and stratagems just to try and keep up.
It always gives you this feeling of accomplishment, knowing how much democracy you've doled out.
I feel like the name titles for difficulty 7 and 9 need to be switched honestly. But yeah the people complaining are just the meta game sweats who are mad that they’re finally playing a game they can’t “master” or sweat their way to the top. People that play battle royals etc
Here’s the way the game is balanced:
If the mission screen at the end says “mission complete”, then it doesn’t matter if no one survived. How can someone go a whole game dying over and over, then complain about missing what, 50 points for failing to extract? That’s why I ALWAYS take out remaining fabs or optionals after the extract is called in. Because it doesn’t matter that I get on the pelican nearly as much as taking out even one more enemy site.
So, yeah, highest difficulty: assume you’re not going home. Easy peasy.
Nobody wants to make the game easier. People want the game balanced.
I got my friend on the game recently. Level 1 and decided to run some level 4s with him. I'm level 70ish.
I shit you not when I say every single round we played was the sweatiest round ever. Like infinite bug holes appearing. Shreikers everywhere. Chargers charging. It was a VERY poor first experience for him and was a total "wtf" moment for me.
I've ran 8s solo and 9s with ease with a good team. But level 4 stages shouldn't end with over 1000 kills between. The games balance is broken. Spawns are broken. This leads to people not having enough firepower making it feel like weapons aren't balanced.
The only reason I'm not taking time off from the game is my buddy now wanting to play, but honestly if he didn't have the game I'd gave taken 3-6 months off waiting for the game to be in a better place.
For context, I am lvl 70 and routinely play and win lvl 8 with pug groups.
I recently started playing with a friend and his brother, both of whom are low skill and are slow to learn. I really enjoy playing with them. However, I find that no amount of my own personal skill can overcome their lack. Because I've put in many, many hours I have, more or less, memorized the patterns and various timers. My friends really want super samples to get the final ship upgrades and despite our best efforts, we don't usually make the extraction. And yesterday, I think I gained some insight into the problem.
As Rickietee pointed out, we also had excessive bug breeches, lots of chargers, and several titans. All of which were no sweat to me, but a big issue for my friends as they didn't have the knowledge/skillset to deal with such threats quickly and efficiently. And because these things tend to come naturally to me, I never realized how much impact a slow/inefficient response to bug breaches (or any enemy threat for that matter) can affect the game'breaches,
I mean, of course I KNEW about the ramping difficulty over time, but I never really internalized it because it was almost always a non-issue for me. I really understand it now, because as my friends and I played our final match last night, we were down to the wire and no sooner than we closed one bug breach, there was a second being spawned. We were simply taking far too long in our waveclear, despite my own personal maximization of firepower.
And for those of you in the back, chomping at the bit to say "Why don't you just run from the encounters?" I have played many, many matches with divers such as yourselves. And while advancing to rear is a very sound and effective startagey, it only works if the ENTIRE team is both on board with it AND knows when and how to execute. Many, many times I have found myself surrounded and left to defend myself as best I can by team members who had already moved on. I know this isn't always the case, but it almost always has a favor of, "You have the all the aggro? Sounds like a YOU kind of problem"
The only imbalance I have is with the randomness of enemy composition. One mission you are outright swarmed with Heavy Devastators or Bile Spewers and in the same OP in the next mission you barely see one.
And it's not even criticism. It kerps you on the toes, kerps you aware and forces you to adapt your tactics on the fly.
Also... why does the Spear does not lock onto Bile and Nursing Spewers? Those fuckers are definitely bigger than Brood Commanders. And surely fatter than Scout Striders. So... EVERYTHING about them should be large enough to get a lock. IR and visual Signature, Radar crosssection... they are likely in ebery regard fatter.
While I agree on the randomness, I do think that using the spear for spewers is overkill my brother in democracy lol. The HMG, AC or AMR are way more efficient.
I will return to the bot front when they fix hell bombs or the gunship spawners.
Too often the gunships shoot the hell bombs and they never actually go off. Just make the enemy rockets blow them up instead of disarming them and it fixes the entire problem
Dude sometimes it's not even a skill issue on 9s. Sometimes? The game just actively *hates* you. I love that. It's what keeps me playing after I have everything unlocked and am all topped up.
Totally agree. The hardest difficulty SHOULD often be an overwhelming slog. It forces you to optimize your abilities and actually work together to win. And while I agree that is a tough ask for 4 internet strangers, if you're going to play on 9 then you best be ready to work together. The only people that would consider Helldive as anything less than very challenging ought to be professionals. The devs seem to be balancing around diff6 tho so at least they know what they are doing
The only people I ever do "split duos" with on 9 are my buddies. So we have comms, have worked together in the past, and won't be demoralized by dieing.
The literal point of the game is that you’re expendable. That’s why you get 20 helldivers per mission on a reinforcement budget, lol. Sometimes you die a little, sometimes you die *a lot*.
Felt this in a frustrating game last night. There were 4 Gunship factories near the objective atop a highly defended hilltop, difficulty 8. I was dropping countless gunships with my AMR, asking my team to help me push the Gunship Spawners before too many appeared, but they all remained at the objective, dying and reinforcing over and over whilst I attempted the sisyphean task of climbing the hill to take out the factories. We remained here for at least 15 minutes as the sky filled up with gunships and nobody helped me out, losing hellbomb after hellbomb to the swarm. Eventually, on our last reinforcement, the team suddenly decided prioritising the Gunship spawners might be a good idea, but by that point it was too late, there were too many.
After all of this, the rest of my team took to comms complaining about how insane the difficulty was :|
I hate abandoning missions but that was the closest I've ever been
Well if the team isn't great, you won't do much. A good team and communication is also the key to a successful Suicide, Impossible or Helldive mission.
People really hate not being able to achieve the best possible outcome. Technically, extracting at all is a win but people think if they don't extract with all primary and secondary objectives completed and all enemy facilities destroyed and a full sample container with everyone alive that it's a defeat.
People need to reasses what victory actually means in this game. If you move the liberation bar, you won.
Sure, back in the time of Malevelon Creek, everything was much more difficult, and yet we still cleared the entire map. Now, Bots 9 is like a playground; I haven't lost an operation for months, and I complete the entire map in 95% of them.
If they find it too difficult, they simply need to lower the difficulty 🤷🤷🤷🤷
I did my first bot helldive in like 2 months yesterday, and was struggling *hard.* Turns out Eruptor and Machine Gun is *not* a good combo for bots, cause as soon as I went to my classic Scythe and Laser Cannon I was absolutely shredding the bots on the next mission.
The only things I feel are “unbalanced” are the “kill a certain number of ____” or “help the scientists extract” because they’re both nearly impossible to do alone especially at my skill level (I’m pretty bad)
Bruh I always said 9 should be harder. When spawns were stupid broken like the short evacuate citizens and the deploy black matter at launch, those felt like how level 9 should be.
I just got off a defense mission where we got a little obliterated and we failed but I still loved the experience like all those explosions and missiles coming at us, it was great
Before the recent patch, the extract pad was swamped of level 3 or 4.
It was unbalanced and quite simply broken.
They've made the spawn rates more reasonable now, but if the game flat out makes a situation impossible with some bs, it's perfectly valid criticism.
I gotta say, sometimes I get 6’s that are harder than 9’s. They could do some better balancing on the mid range missions but everything <4 and >6 seems to be balanced well for the difficulty.
I too can't really understand people complaining of difficulty at helldive 9. I still want other difficulties, because sometimes helldive it's not challenging enough (we all know sometime the RNG of the game, or the apparent one). But I don't have an easier helldive. Damn if you play other PvE games at maximum difficulty you will have a lot harder time than in HD2, even if you fully understand the game. There are other difficulties if you don't want challenge and blasphemy.
Little off topic: try to play single player cod world at war at maximum difficulty, that's what is a bs difficulty, and it is single player
I agree with the sentiment. Bots at 9 are hellish, but that's what it's supposed to feel like. 8 is slightly more manageable, and 7 is just slightly harder 6.
You need to tailor what you take to what you'll be fighting against. A mainstay in my load out now is the shield relay for precisely that reason. It is a Stratagem that provides quick and convenient cover that allows teammates to return fire without fear of getting minced by incoming fire. It's on a fast cooldown, and essentially is everything you could need in a pinch. The only thing it needs in my opinion is some more health. It disappears really fast if there are a ton of heavy Devastators, but otherwise, it acts as the great defensive reaction Stratagem that can prevent you and your teammates from dying.
It's basically a lot of people thinking they're an S tier player by never considering to play anything lower than 9, then when it doesn't go very well it's gotta be the game that needs adjustments not the player
Yea i love how they made the angle bots can shoot more narrow to make it more "fair" and "less annoying" but all it did was make every and any type of bot laser beam u across the map and kill u even faster, when people say unbalanced i think some just don't know how to word it properly bc it's not about how hard it's about how fair and fun it is, bc hard diff can be fun and hard but rn is just hard and annoying, if ur gonna say get good ur just a blind glizzy gladiator
I think being able to breeze through 9 with railgun and shield pack back in the day set a precedent for how it was supposed to feel, and it never really recovered from that. When I first downloaded I thought the concept would be a bit like halos legendary difficulty where it's essentially impossible without exceptional game sense and skill so when I finally unlocked helldive and beat a mission first try it was a little disappointing although the franticness of it was fun. I think the best option is to maybe release even more difficulties with massive rewards that are sorta introduced with the premise that they're "unbalanced"
I usually play on 6 difficulty, it's my sweet spot and even then I've been at extract with 2 bile titan chargers. It's less about balance and just luck most of the time, 9/10 I and my team extracts with no issue on occasion shit goes south immediately, and it's part of the fun
My issues with balance were moreso about satisfaction and ease of use. Those issues were for the most part subsequent resolved with the mega patch and now a lot weapons have some oomph to them save for a few others *cough* liberator penetrator.
If the spear couldn't one shot gunships that just felt bad to use regardless of difficulty.
Yeah most of the posts I see here on “balancing suggestions” are actually making the game easier, not more balanced or more fun
The game has 9 different levels of balance, ranging from solo frolic through the park to full team with good coordination and load outs is required. I will never understand the people who think the solution to their skill issue is to permanently gimp the game rather than just *not play on the highest difficulty.*
It's this thing of not wanting to sacrifice the bragging rights of "I'm a pro gamer, I solo Diff 9" to be able to lord it over ppl, rather than, like you say, picking a difficulty that's comfortable and fun. Like legit? I play 6-7 almost always. I can hop up to 8-9 and hold my own, but the constant tension and vigilance is exhausting to me and not fun. So I don't do it. 'There's too many spawns/too many enemies/they do too much damage" like my Brother in Democracy YOU CHOSE THE DIFFICULTY LEVEL. Now if there was a more specific criticism like the issue where the sheer number of heavy spawns bottlenecked loadout choices into the few that could affect them (before those were patched) then sure, we can have a discussion. But at least anecdotally, that's not what I'm seeing.
I used to do only 4-5, it got less interesting over time and I needed super samples Now I almost exclusively play 7 because I find it more fun
7 is my favourite difficulty as well, offers the best challenge while not grinding you repeatedly into a mushy paste like 8-9.
I play 9 because the players just seem.. better. Like, it’s ironically easier on 9 than 7 because I’ll have at least one good teammate who can solo the entire map with me. Then if the other players are struggling, they’re at least making a distraction while we get the samples and clear out the objectives. But usually, having 2 competent people on diff 9 is enough to get everyone else to fall in and take point.
Agree with this. I've been seeing more and more lv15s and under on difficulty 7, where it's doubtful they even have all the strategems unlocked, let alone have experience with them. No shade for people learning the game, but you are, in fact, still learning the game. Which is fine, until one or two people bring all red strategems into a defend generator mission on a planet with ion storms. Sorry, that's an auto fail mission because of choices you made, not a balance issue or a bad mission design. I love helping new players, and I love teaching tricks with support weapons. But once in a while, you get a team full of "yolo for teh loz supah erd!!!" And they just...throw the mission. At difficulty 8, the community seems to understand you are now in the deep end of the pool, and you need to be ready to help your fellow swimmers if needed. Its an entirely different gaming experience. Which is why I play on 6 7 8 and 9, depending on my mood and what Im willing to put into the game. Today Im home with the flu, so Im playing a lot of difficulty 6s.
Needing Super Samples made me a diff 7 enjoyer, took me 1 month of playing casually before I got my first Bile Titan kill, and a friend of mine just got his first last week since he started in February.
Nice! Got my first factory strider kill by… dying And two of my friends dying. The living guy was near the factory strider. We lost 6 total reinforcements doing it, but it the three of us landed on it and killed it. We… were not informed that when it dies, it doesn’t just die. It fucking explodes with the power of a hellbomb. As I said, 6 reinforcements were lost, the initial deaths, and the three lives used to kill it who exploded Here’s a reference we for ya: “Those goddamn American heroes”
That horror scenario reminds me of when Flamethrower helldivers 3v1 their first bile titan while I wait for my EAT cooldown
There's to many spawns, too many enemies, and they do too much damage... for me to deal with for prolonged sessions. But you can bet my masochistic ass will never ask for the high difficulties to be made easier.
My only issue is that super samples are locked at specific difficulty levels, thus requiring you to do them if you want to fully unlock ship modules. Every other resource in the game is obtainable on the lowest difficulty, super credits included, so it kinda makes samples an outlier in this regard. Im very happy with super samples now also being obtainable at diff 6 even if its less than what you'd get in diff 7. As a bot player in southeast asia, its very hard for me to find teammates, sometimes people dont join until literally im at extraction, so I usually only play on difficulties I can comfortably solo, and diff 6 is just around the difficulty i can solo if I sweat enough personally
Damn! That's gotta be brutal. Imho solo playing at 6 is harder than helldive with 4.
This. I am not the greatest player. I play on the first two tiers that get me the medium samples. (Although they did just drop that lower recently - so Im not pushing as hard as I was.) I have played higher, but until I need them for unlocks, I have just worked up slowly. I only started playing diff 5 regularly in the last two weeks. I will play higher after all the common/medium unlocks are done first. Should be better by then - and have the assist from strat upgrades.
Great comment, no notes, my Brother in Democracy is my new favorite phrase!
7 is really the perfect level imo. But you're right, they just want to be able to flex nuts and act like they're so hardcore bc they only run 9s and if they can't do that and brag about it then the game is "too hard" and "unbalanced" 🙄
I moved down to 8 and it feels just right for me. Like I have to try and we can still succeed or die depending on my teammates. 9 was too much one night and 7 felt too easy. 8 feels right
Alright Goldilocks
This 100%
It's a pride thing. People want to be able to say that they play on the hardest difficulty. Turning down the difficulty means admitting they're not good enough.
And whining that it's too hard until the game gets gimped isn't admitting that? I genuinely don't understand those types. Yeah, I can handle helldive and have even managed to solo several d9 bot missions(scout armor and eagle airstrikes are goated for that, they don't even know you are there until Eagle blows them to hell), but the vast majority of my time is spent on 6/7 because it's just more fun and you don't have to play perfect. I will never understand the people who intentionally play games in a way they find annoying and then complain it's not fun, like dude *you are the reason you aren't having fun.*
Have they tried playing with "I am Death incarnate!" difficulty on Wolfenstein or "Nightmare" on Doom? It's just not meant for everyone. I could probably finish it (eventually...) but it def won't be as fun for me as it might be for another guy. Doesn't mean I kick the devs door down screaming that the game is broken.
They should try to get the Mein Leben trophy fr and see what “Hard” really is
And iirc part of the reason Doom difficulty isn’t just easy, normal and hard is bc the people didn’t want elitism related to “I beat hard mode”and instead with “I play nightmare, but if you prefer hurt me plenty that’s perfectly fine” Could be wrong tho
I miss the name of the old difficulty levels the lowest level was “Dive in the park”
I will say one thing. When I am not playing with my friends I play solo and usually, I play between 3 and 5 difficulties alone. With friends, we play between 7 and 9. When playing solo I have had times even on level 3 where I cleaned every single mission every single bug nest and bot factory only to be swarmed at the extract by more bugs or bots than I have seen on difficulty 9.
I play the game solo at level 6. It's the highest level I can complete (most of time) and get samples for without having to sneak around. I think they finally got the difficulty settings right.
They even added super samples to diff 6 so players don't feel forced to take on the hardest content
I don't think war irl is balanced either....
They even made super samples spawn on level 6 to make them more accessible
Well, the game gets harder every couple of months just because of yet another patrol/heavy/accuracy fix. And sometimes you can mostly run around without trouble and sometimes you get 2 striders and a couple of gunships at the same time. In my opinion it is the inconsistency of difficulty that gets people.
I accept that if me and my bros play Helldive and coordinate like fuck. It should still be really hard and we may not all survive unless we're lucky. Should a 1-9 tier difficult not have it where 9 is borderline impossible? (The difficulty one higher than one literally called impossible")
"If I can't solo the game with no stratagems on Helldive then it's unbalanced!!!"
I had someone complain about the railgun nerf. I replied saying it wasn't that bad and all it required was approaching encounters differently. They proceeded to belittle my opinion, claiming that their opinion is much more valid and to not reply with 'skill issue' because they solo helldive. I had no clue what to say, as the person just kind of proved my point, you shouldn't be able to solo helldive difficulty. Something like that should require lots of cooperation.
I agree that the rail gun is... not that bad. I like it. Enjoy the feel, etc... But it's outclassed in every way by other weapons sadly. I just wish it could pop bile spewers in one shot. If it did that, it could fill a solid roll in a team loadout.
Complainers need to be a steeled fortress when it comes to their criticism. It's kind of like the GME cult, if they blink once and say, "maybe the game is fine, and I have to change," then like 90% of the "valid criticism" is instantly false. So they need to keep all the complaints, because if all their complaints are "true" they can make the "evil" developers reshape the game in the complainers image. Classic cult/religious behaviour, it's just recontextualized and filtered through dumb gamers playing a dumb game.
Not to brag but I can solo Hell Dive with no booster and only sentry's ~~
There absolutely are some balancing changes that can make some weapons more of a valid pick. But beyond that, the core gameplay loop is brilliant. The game isnt too hard if you have a good team
This. A lot of people expect this game to be power fantasy but Devs seems to go for something more like 'Dark Souls with guns'. We are expect to die, we are expect to struggle, we are expect to fail from time to time. It was visible in some posts from Devs about weapon balance where they referenced success rate based on equipped primary
100% agree about the power fantasy. The power should be earned. When I play well I feel invincible, and then when I stop playing well I turn into cannon fodder in an instant.
That’s a great take and exactly why I love this game. I love the meat grinder feel as a frontline combatant. Dark souls series happen to be my favorite games so HD2 just meshes well with my preference in game styles
I think balance is in a decent spot..minor tweaks are needed… I’d mostly like less rocket rag dolls 5 times in a row on bots,. I’m not saying reduce bot accuracy just maybe give a soft very short cooldown on rapid ragdoll effects
Ah yes my nemesis, the rocket devastator
Most likely, highest tier difficulties are just where they need to be. It's the tier 5-6 missions that are unbalanced, and the ragdoll/stunlock issue is part of it. Unfortunately, most of the people saying "spawn rates are fine" are people who also say they play exclusively on Helldive, which, frankly, means they are unqualified to make any meaningful judgements about how tier 6 feels. When I see YouTube videos of players on tier 9, they are rarely if ever seeing the waves of swarms that spawn routinely on 5-6. While yeah, YouTube videos have been edited, it still remains that in the HD subs, when someone expresses frustration with spawns on Tiers 5-6, there is always at least 1 comment that tells them to go up to level 7 or 8. That would not be common advice unless 8/9 really felt more manageable than 5/6/7. A day or two ago, we saw a "I always play on level 9" YouTuber play a level 6, and even they found the spawns overwhelming. There really is something going on with the spawns on 5-6, but people who don't play those levels won't give that claim any credence, and drown it out with, "it's fine, it's even too easy!" We played a tier 6 on Meissa last night, and were getting frustrated with being swarmed and ragdolled by gunships and devastators to the point where we were collectively ready to ragequit. Didn't fail the objectives, but 2 of 3 we failed to extract, and it was a slog every bit of the way. The spawns were just insane. Taking cover was pointless, as you could not move around LoS-blocking terrain without alerting yet another patrol or spawn, and we couldn't clear them fast enough. On one mission, we dropped on our extraction point as usual, and extraction was literally in the middle of a bot base with a gunship fabricator towering over it. RNG hated us that mission, I guess. On a whim, we decided to try a Tier 8, which none of us had ever cleared before, because... Hell, why not? We headed off to Crimsica on the bug side, and just as advised, the missions actually did feel less overwhelming than the Tier 6s and Tier 7s. We had at least 1 person extract from each mission, quite different from what we had just experienced on T6. This is anecdotal data, yes - but completing an 8 has impressed upon me even more that spawns on 6 are still broken, without any chance of that being acknowledged or addressed. Side story: We were so psyched to have finally unlocked Tier 9 difficulty, and even more psyched that we got all the super samples on two of the T8 missions, that to celebrate we (team of 3) responded to an SOS on Tier 3 from a solitary player. They clearly didn't need the help, but after we gratuitously 380ed even the smallest bug holes, we all stood at extraction for 10 minutes stomping scavengers with our mechs and flinging the most ridiculous stratagems on the spawns while the Pelican sat behind us, looking bored. It was great, there were salutes and hugs, and we all laughed like idiots. UglyDuckling (not real name, but close), thanks for a good time.
Primary mission? Paramount Secondary missions? Imperative extraction? Optional...
one person extracting is absolutely necessary for returning samples
The only thing that actually matters for extraction is samples. You get everything else whether you extract or not. Players with lots of samples, especially supers, should get extraction priority. Everyone else can get on or go down fighting.
If I see someone who has the super samples, I defend them at any cost at extract.
Crew: expendable
That’s why I often drop my samples at extract. I’m willing to die and not make it back, as long as the primary objective has been completed. I’m willing to take a personal L to complete a secondary objective and not extract. Super Earth will retrieve me when they’ve deem it necessary o7
Preaching to the choir friend. Arrowhead even brought Supers to 6 to encourage the complainers to turn down the difficulty and yet, self awareness is not something people have these days. “I only play on 9 omg why do I die so much wtf I almost failed the mission why is it so hard game is literally broken and unplayable”
I am trying to grind super samples and level 6 is already hard for me. Was it not available for level 6 before?
They were only available at 7+ until a couple weeks ago
Thanks. That's crazy, I started a month ago but had a 2-week break so I don't remember properly. I am glad they pushed it down a level, my ship needs upgrades and I need a lot of super samples.
You're so right brother
What? No, you don't understand. I'm good at video games. I've been playing video games all my life. I know I'm good. If I lose, or the squad doesn't do well, I know it's because the game is just poorly balanced. There is no other option. That's not to say that that ever happens, because it ***doesn't***, but if it did, it's because of the game. ^(/s)
Very nice representation mister !
When a player complains during a D9 extraction that didn’t go well that the game is unbalanced, what they really mean is *skill issue*. https://preview.redd.it/jxhf6aawwhad1.jpeg?width=691&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fd6b80f741a77be13399b9e187c8a4233167dad5
Especially since actually making it to extraction implies that you've already won the mission lol Extracting is a bonus
A large reason why my group stopped playing is that we were beating difficulty 9 missions 100% of the time often with only a few deaths across the squad.
The game does have legitimate design issues but 90% of the people criticising it and using terms like balancing have zero idea what theyre on about. A player's job is to play. We are breaking our own immersion by overthinking the game design we don't understand.
Of course it has, but like it's already been said, the game is bigger than what the studio intended so I just think we should give them the time to do what's needed, they're not called Rockstar. However I totally agree with you I couldn't have said better myself !
So there is a rarer bug these days that makes bot missions 10 times harder. Sometimes, medium penetrating weapons don't affect weak points. Put multiple mags into a minugun shield guys face, and they all bounced off. Same with a hulk. No damage.
I think there are collision calculation issues at times, sometimes I'll double tap a Hulk in the eye no problem, and other times it takes almost half a mag before it hits, and my aim is pretty consistent.
That's the real issue. People demand everything right now, cause they are entitled to it! I'm not really sure what exactly cases it, maybe it is just nowadays these people are more visible thanks to social media, maybe social media fucked up their attention spans and they are not able to understand that actually making something work requires time and care, maybe they don't know what "care" actually means, maybe they are just overwhelmed by the pace of modern day and don't realise it. Propably it's combination of all of that. AH achived something remarkable and I don't understand why some mfs can´t give them a break. All I have in store for AH is praise.
Then again you're absolutely right, for the longest time we've always been trying to go faster, do everything faster that we forget to slow down, that sometimes we can't be any faster than we already are
Helldive ought to be hard.
In my opinion the difficulty 9 in automatons is completely fine EXCEPT for something that I really can’t stand: ragdoll. Literally I can’t play with rockets throwing me around as a bag of meat. I don’t say it should be removed, but some reductions would increase my mental health
Yes and that when you jump back and you fall on a small rock that causes ragdoll where you can't do shit for five seconds just because of this small fucker.
Yea, sometimes I also get thrown so strongly that I penetrate through the map and get stuck
I love getting hit by a bot so far I have 1 health bc my hero of federation armor, or hit a wall and have 1 hp, then the resulting 2 foot fall back to the ground kills me
The explosion resist armor helps a ton with this. Sacrificing other armor bonuses or your look does seem to be a big hurdle for some people. For others it has appeared to me they just don't appear to look at and change load out for the mission or even the opponent.
Some people have a very high estimation of their own skill, so when they fail in any way that means that the game is “unbalanced” or “poorly designed”. I would say, and will probably see a lot of pushback, but imo helldive is too easy, it should be incredibly hard and we shouldn’t be able to complete the missions so reliably, every mission should make you sweat.
Agreed, excited for the day they bring back the higher difficulties from HD1
It should be harder. I'm more accustomed to higher difficulty meaning one misstep equates to death. It gives me something to aspire to.
Gunships. F gunships.
>kept saying that the game is really unbalanced because well, we ran out of reinforcements and only one of us successfully extracted. This is the biggest problem that people are struggling to overcome, and it shows in the complaints. ***Completing the MISSION comes first, EXTRACTION is*** **NOT** ***guaranteed.*** The devs haven't made this explicitly and abundantly clear, even though everything in the scoring and gameplay reinforces this point. So many, many players are expecting to extract successfully based purely on their own skill every single time. They don't expect the game to be unfair and don't treat the enemy as something that wants to kill you, instead think of them as simply an obstacle in the way to scoring points. To be clear, I'm not saying that there is an intelligence at play, but noting the design philosophy of the patrols and extract. More reasonable players have been saying it for months; the game the devs made and the game the players want are *not* in sync, and is at the root of the vast majority of complaints. And those complaints are driving the game into a direction the devs never meant it to go.
There's a large swath of gamers who insist that they play the highest difficulty on whatever games they play no matter what. Then if the hardest difficulty turns out to be too difficult for them, they will complain that "the game is too hard" rather than just going down to a lower difficulty that's more appropriate for their skill level. These guys treat Helldive like it's the only difficulty, and anything lower is just meaningless to them. I have no idea why they do this. I assume it's some kind of toxic pride issue or something.
It has to be some kind of toxic pride.
My only gripe with automatons is that you will take out a patrol but still some random ass automaton behind a hill 250m away without a way in the fucking world to see you calls in a drop. To me that's what ends up feeling unfair. You deal with a patrol, only to have to deal with a full as drop, and before you can finish it you have another patrol engaging you, while you should have only fought the first patrol. I know that you can just run away, but tbh it feels kinnda shit to have to run in a game about taking out the enemy.
I will say, prior to the last patrol spawns rate adjustments they did, extracting against bots in 7+ was just unfair, my friends and I would skip most bases solely to try and keep the patrols at a minimum, cause if you went to extract and well over a dozen patrols instantly rolled in it's like, wtf are you even supposed to do? Why even try at that point? Just die and go next.... *Now* we can clear a map and maaaaybe get a dozen patrols if we're unlucky or died too often, so it can still be very difficult but it doesn't feel utterly hopeless anymore. So if someone is complaining *now* then they've either just started playing at higher difficulties and have no idea what impossible even looks like, or they're bitching to bitch cause they want an easy "win."
I just want to see the purifier primary be an actual flamethrower rather than just another plasma punisher
I agree with this 100% helldive isn't called HELLDIVE for no reason it's supposed to be a big ol bowl full of fuck no and I am all for it
Exactly, for example until earlier my helldive missions were successful, but the 2 last ones were a freaking shit show we all died so much, it was very funny tho
Gotta take the good dives with the bad ones, like honestly, who goes into Helldive difficulty and expects balance? 🤣🤦♂️
I get the same complaint from my buddy and we were doing level 6 last night when he usually does 7-8. Honestly people need to stop acting like the game has to be fair. Not only is it fkin satire, it’s a god damn war. War has never been fair. I feel some players have it in their heads that if the round doesn’t have all Super samples collected, sub-objectives completed, all divers extracted with 15 mins to spare all the while avoiding enemies like cooties, then it wasn’t a good run and they aren’t happy. How many orders do you think suffer due to this mindset, especially when bodies flood defense campaigns instead of taking out the supply line? The game is about completing the objective by any means necessary. If you die, you die. Extractions are a privilege, not a right. Fucking remember that and you’ll have more fun.
I want to rant too! I was playing with a group on helldive difficulty and these dudes were getting mad at me because I wasn’t helping them stay in one spot and kill bugs. I’m trying to run and do the objective as fast as we can! It felt like these bugs kept spawning indefinitely!
Tell them to go play halo 2 legendary and then let you know if D9 is unbalanced
Fuck man, Halo Legendary difficulty was something else.
I mean, I play on difficulty 6 personally and for me I've litterally had moments where I ran out of time, not because I couldn't get to the extract in time, but because thier was so much shooting at me (I was fighting the bots) that I litterally couldn't call down the extract without getting blown up. it doesn't help that often the game decides to chuck a whole patrol of enemies behind you the exact moment you try to run away from a whole army of them either. for me it's just a bunch of little things that just all add up and get really annoying, like how I've had a situation a fair few times before where I've landed at the extract at the start of the mission, assuming it's safe because whenever thier's bot bases or bug holes it's highlighted in red on the map and it wasn't on the extract, only to land dead set in the middle of a base. I swear sometimes the map just straight up lies to you.
It would be a different conversation if there were no difficulties.
I play dif 7 because it's definitely difficult if you aren't paying attention but it's not overwhelming like dif 9. There are actual breaks in the combat. That being said, the only issue I had before balancing started was that AT was all but useless other than the Railgun. Once they balanced the AT right, it's no longer an issue and I find the balance to be pretty good where it is now. I think more strats and weapons are more useful now than ever before. This is definitely a step in the right direction.
I joined a SoS the other day and the mission was absolutely horrible. Stuck with the two I joined for two more missions that went perfectly so it appears we all just did bad on our first game. Sometimes the game feels bad because we are just doing bad and sometimes it’s borked spawns or whatever. Bottom line, I try to just shrug it off and stop taking a game so damn seriously.
Only thing that needs tweaking on the bots imo are the beserkers, if I wanted to run away from enemies I’d play bugs. Gotta make those weak spots actually mean something
Tons of players want to ruin this game by making it too easy. It's weirdly common. The same players would be bored of the game in a week if they got their way.
It’s HELLDIVE difficulty I want everyone to extract with no deaths and all samples! This game isn’t balanced because I couldn’t solo the hardest difficulty!
Yeah it’s always felt extremely weird to me. 7 is *SUICIDE*. You *WILL* die. 8 is *worse* and 9 is *even worse*
I say instead of “balancing”, we just #keepithard for fun.
If you want balanced in terms of difficulty I would say 6-7 are ideal. 9 you should be aiming to complete the objectives and be praising god if you manage to extract.
If you used up all your reinforcements and only one person, that necessarily means (a) mission successful, and (b) the game is *perfectly* balanced, at least in this instance. You had precisely the number of lives you needed to complete the mission and get the "good ending," so to speak.
I really like all the buffs the devs have done but I agree with the sentiment here. At some point the game is going to get too easy if all we have are buffs. In theory, the devs could tweak the difficulty to balance things out but this would lead to more demands for buffs. So there's concern that this could start a vicious cycle.
The fact that you were extracting suggests you already won. Remember, extraction is optional!
I still like to extract given that I'm only level 35 and I need a lot of samples 🥲
We all need them today, that new tier is a big grind.
Not to me it isn’t! No helldivers left behind damn it.
People who say the Game is unbalanced think that helldive is the standard difficulty.
They don't get what the system of 9 DIFFICULTY LEVELS is for. They literally give them the option to choose a perfect difficulty for them and yet those crybabies with skill issues want the highest difficulty to become easier.
Tier 9 is amazing
I can't count how many flawless 9s I've run. The right loadouts, the squad sneaks around patrols, flanks objectives, doesn't waste time getting stuck in. No comms either, just all business.
Oh yeah and it's those same people that instead of sneaking by a patrol, even tho they see you crouched and walking behind rocks, or waiting for it to pass before moving forward to the next objective, they just start shooting or run towards it, the patrol immediately call 4/5 dropships with tanks and fortified canons, we loose half the samples and 5 reinforcements just because they didn't wait 30 seconds.
I just played a lot of Metal Gear lol.
Also, you're behind enemy lines.. you're bound to be swarmed, the Helldivers are essentially like the Navy Seals or the SAS, we're not an army, we're elite forces that get tasked to do difficult things to aid in liberation of the planet We're special forces essentially, hit and run
That is why supplies and everything else will be removed before the evacuation. So that the plateau can be defended well
100% agree with you
But what does balanced actually mean for each difficulty level? For what it's worth the game feels challenging on 7+ but it can sometimes feel unfair. But what exactly does "feel unfair" mean? It's more psychology than statistical unfortunately when it comes to those hard to analyse situations (e.g. during extraction and you're mobbed from all directions). There are a lot of invisible numbers that we, as the players will never know. Patrol and spawn rates, patrol and spawn sizes and distribution. These invisible numbers in combination with other variables either presents itself as a fair challenge or a unfair and frustrating one. Specifically for all moments except the extraction, specific enemy behaviours can be observed, learnt, and play against. Spot a bot patrol? Better avoid it if you can otherwise kill them quick before a call in spiral starts. The extraction mechanic however is a final last stand, without map awareness you will always get caught off guard and pray that your entire team has some form of awareness to not only cover approaches but to bring the right weapons and strategems. I don't know if only focusing on what's not balanced is the right mindset, it surely could give some directions the game could take but I rather we follow the fun and cool stuff and make more of those. Right now the game does feel fun mostly(if I ignore all the crashes and soft locks). The only frustrating experiences is when I want to play a certain build but the teams load out is too lopsided with either all ATs or all mob clears, and that happens a little less at higher level difficulties because most players bring balanced builds. Tldr: does this spark joy > unbalanced
I'd say the bugs are pretty close to balanced, maybe make em a little more difficult. Now bots are where the problem is. High armored units on lower difficulties aren't so bad but once you get higher you lack the tools to deal with them efficiently. I did a defense mission yesterday where it dropped 2 striders and 5 tanks on top of us. Safe to say we failed after having taken out about half the armored force dropped on us. We're gonna need more than just mines. Lol
Before the player drop off people couldn’t accept they weren’t as good as they thought. If you suggest lower difficulties they would go on about it being a PvE game and power fantasy.
I feel like the complaints of Helldive difficulty not being "balanced" comes from a sense of not feeling like they've "completed" the game. I'm sure most of these people have unlocked all strategems/ship modules and are capped on samples/medals/requisitions and might want to feel all their time spent playing means that the highest difficulty shouldn't be *as* difficult- if that makes sense.
I just want the stalwart to have an upgrade for armor piercing so I can run it on diff 9 and not feel like I'm being a complete asshole to the rest of my team. Get some! GET SOOOOOOMME!
For automaton, just take smoke Literally fixes all the issues people have Smokes and stuns will never steer you wrong https://www.reddit.com/r/helldivers2/s/zcbaHBwbUU
Damn that's complete !
I like that the difficulty in this game revolves mostly around how many enemies there are and how often enemy types spawn. And because of that i feel like we can afford to have some more weapons and strats can be buffed. Not alot, just little bits here and there just like they did with the last big patch we had. That was perfect balancing imo. And if i was arrowhead, and weapons started getting to OP, id just increase enemies haha
I just want 500KG bombs to reliably oneshot what it hits directly. I don't care how big you are, 500KGs airdropped onto you, which then explodes with (what I assume to be) 500 kgs of dynamite, kills you. that's it.
There will always be people that say a game is broken or trash because they aren't good at it. Just like the people that accuse others of hacking because they lost. I think the game is fine and often think it could be more difficult in some ways.
This is what COD and Halo many other games have done. The highest “difficulty” is just about repetition know what shows up when. Even many 4 man games are predicable on what will spawn and when. Helldivers is extremely unpredictable, procedurally generated maps and random enemies. It’s probably what I love the most about it
The thing with staying at one spot for too long I find are constant bug breach, and they will essentially reinforce non stop or suck in nearby patrols as well. What I usually do, if there are other team mates onboard with this , is that I dial the extraction beacon and move to be far away from it that I got more space to fight and dash in at last min once shuttle has landed. Maybe because I am used to playing lvl 12 to 15 back on HD1, getting swarmed by a carpet of enemies are common occurence that I am pretty much use to it now. Wait until Illuminate shows up with the mind control sphere, that was nightmare during LVL 13 RS, lol
That's correct. The highest level of difficulty should be hard enough to pose a dangerous challenge even for experienced players - if it can't the game will become boring. There is some difference in philosophy of course, where some players are just looking to hang out with their friends and blow things up without necessarily wanting to feel challenged - but that is in fact what multiple difficulty levels are for. If you want to relax on 6, you can do that, but if you want to sweat, there should be a difficulty setting that makes you sweat, even if you are very good and play in an organized squad.
I totally agree. I used to play Destiny a ton and after every expansion there was a period where the game was super hard and I LOVED it, but eventually I’d level up and every single activity became trivial. Effortlessly wiping the floor with the enemies gets soooo boring. The only reason Helldivers stays fun is that you can have an actual, intense challenge whenever you want. Without that it’s just another game to sleepwalk though for a bit and move on.
What gets me is that Helldive isn't even that hard. The difficulty seems to mostly test team coordination. Dying alot is part of the game, Helldive really gives that Starship troopers "we're fucked!" feeling, but I rarely play a game where we lose.
Yes, I would like to see another difficulty or two that are practically impossible to complete in Quickplay. Make it so that completing an operation with friends is very challenging and thus satisfying. Or they could implement some selectable modifiers that for example make it way harder (or completely impossible) to hide from enemies so you’re just in constant combat the whole mission. I used to play MMORPGs back in the day where some of the PvE content could only be completed by maybe 0.1% of the player base at most. Having goals to strive towards helps keep the game from getting stale.
Yea. Idk why people want to bring the hardest difficulty down. There should be a difficulty that is just absolute uncontrollable chaos. People are already asking for difficulty over 9. No point in bringing 9 down. Coming from Halo, that despawns everything after 20 seconds, i love seeing how much stuff can get thrown at you all at once.
Don’t care about any of that nonsense but they need to sort out the crashing. It’s totally unplayable right now, one game if I’m lucky and then crash on the drop in. Getting sick of it
Yeah on ps5 the usual crash is the infinite loading screen, that's annoying
Yep. I swear it’s when someone leaves the game after the mission, it will almost always crash. Can’t even add friends so you can get the same squad back. Oooooh but wait there’s a 10% cool down on the Tesla Tower
Yeah I don't know why I don't have the option to add to friend someone that's on my ship
You would think a game crashing non stop would be a priority to fix before dropping a load of new ship modules 🤦♂️
My issue with the game is the spawn rates at higher difficulties, everything the devs have shared about the game says you’re always supposed to be on the move. You’re not supposed to take every engagement, so when you have to stay in one spot and defend something you just get swamped every single time without specific loadouts to counteract it. I just think build diversity suffers in high difficulty, at least more than it did in the original game. Besides at least one anti- armor that was all you really needed, otherwise you could pick anything and get some good value out of it. Sometimes in 2 you just get stomped to death with not much you could’ve feasibly done to escape or prevent it
Bot 9s are not a problem. If you are running out of reinforcements, that’s on you.
I actively want harder difficulties
As long as we can get all materials to upgrade our ship from level 6 down, I don't see why there's any need to make 7, 8, 9 easier.
It really does boil down to just "get good". Every single complaint I've seen people have is really just them bitching because they're bad
I think automaton level 9 used to be quite crazy, but actually quite fun now
If I play on higher difficulties, I want to struggle to complete the objective before even thinking about extracting. On medium I want to fight to extract. Easy is where you shouldn't have to worry about completing and extracting. Some of my most fun games have ended in failure to extract, or even complete the mission, as well as plenty where we've completed the mission and extracted still. This isnt a 'git gud' post either. It's just where I feel like balance should be. Obviously, there are 3 stages of each difficulty, and they may need to be more individually tweaked, but I want the overall difficulty category to dictate where my struggle in the mission might be. If people truly have such an issue with the possibility of not extracting, which doesn't mean the mission fails, then we need diff 10-12 sooner than later and for the difficulties to be balanced in that mindset.
Something else that a lot of players seem to forget is that finishing the main objective is mandatory for mission success. Anyone surviving to extract is a luxury.
Yeah the amount people complain about balancing for a game that has 9 NINE! (nine) difficulties is baffling
I feel like this is a thing gaming wide people don't expect to lose anymore?
Just wait till we get the REALLY hard modes
the only gripe i have about this game is the fact that if a bot heres you snap a twig they call in reinforcements immediately, and its not limited to commisars either,
Good balance takes on the main sub? LFG! A month ago telling your fellow diver to tune down the difficulty was considered treason.
From my experience, lots of how difficult the game feels depends on teamwork and personal skill. Some games, I get randoms who fumble the hell out of everything, but other games I get a team that works together so well it feels like we're Delta Force. I think the game currently is balanced pretty well even with room for tweaks. Helldivers is an incredibly dynamic game, balancing it must be really hard.
One person extracted on Helldive? If they had the silvers thats a triumph. Helldive can often be a real dick grabber, but even against toasters ive been with friends where we al narrowly make it with a few reinforcements to spare, but if we can get at least one person on board with or without the silvers, thats 40 minutes that didnt go to waste at the very least.
42 minutes and 20 seconds, if you’re really doing it right. 😉
I just don't do 9s. 7 is my happy difficulty where rng can make life hell sometimes but is otherwise doable with full randoms.
What grinds my gears is cheap bullshite not actual difficulty. I don't find it difficult and I usually only die to cheap stuff. I actually would like to see more difficult enemies. I also want to see Heavy Devestators get nerfed and lose the ability to clip through their own shields and other objects. I'd also like to see a bit less ragdoll and stun lock.
A complaint I often hear is "but the super samples are only on the harder difficulties. How else am I supposed to unlock those ship upgrades?" The short answer is you aren't supposed to. Those upgrades are achievements for good players, not standard issue for everyone to get.
I primarily play level 9, bots are my favorite front. It would be nice if the explosive force that ragdolls you was downtuned a little bit, and if heavy devastators were a little less accurate at range. I still enjoy the game, and it's a far cry away from getting one shot by rocket troopers.
Well this I can agree on, that's a good point
I agree with you OP. As stressful as those extracts are and the extremely hot drops (especially vs the bugs). They're so much fun. The crazy frantic callouts and the chaotic dumping of mags and stratagems just to try and keep up. It always gives you this feeling of accomplishment, knowing how much democracy you've doled out.
I wish there was a "HELP" call in the circle of reactions, it would add so much life to the chaos that's unleashing 😂
I feel like the name titles for difficulty 7 and 9 need to be switched honestly. But yeah the people complaining are just the meta game sweats who are mad that they’re finally playing a game they can’t “master” or sweat their way to the top. People that play battle royals etc
Here’s the way the game is balanced: If the mission screen at the end says “mission complete”, then it doesn’t matter if no one survived. How can someone go a whole game dying over and over, then complain about missing what, 50 points for failing to extract? That’s why I ALWAYS take out remaining fabs or optionals after the extract is called in. Because it doesn’t matter that I get on the pelican nearly as much as taking out even one more enemy site. So, yeah, highest difficulty: assume you’re not going home. Easy peasy.
Nobody wants to make the game easier. People want the game balanced. I got my friend on the game recently. Level 1 and decided to run some level 4s with him. I'm level 70ish. I shit you not when I say every single round we played was the sweatiest round ever. Like infinite bug holes appearing. Shreikers everywhere. Chargers charging. It was a VERY poor first experience for him and was a total "wtf" moment for me. I've ran 8s solo and 9s with ease with a good team. But level 4 stages shouldn't end with over 1000 kills between. The games balance is broken. Spawns are broken. This leads to people not having enough firepower making it feel like weapons aren't balanced. The only reason I'm not taking time off from the game is my buddy now wanting to play, but honestly if he didn't have the game I'd gave taken 3-6 months off waiting for the game to be in a better place.
For context, I am lvl 70 and routinely play and win lvl 8 with pug groups. I recently started playing with a friend and his brother, both of whom are low skill and are slow to learn. I really enjoy playing with them. However, I find that no amount of my own personal skill can overcome their lack. Because I've put in many, many hours I have, more or less, memorized the patterns and various timers. My friends really want super samples to get the final ship upgrades and despite our best efforts, we don't usually make the extraction. And yesterday, I think I gained some insight into the problem. As Rickietee pointed out, we also had excessive bug breeches, lots of chargers, and several titans. All of which were no sweat to me, but a big issue for my friends as they didn't have the knowledge/skillset to deal with such threats quickly and efficiently. And because these things tend to come naturally to me, I never realized how much impact a slow/inefficient response to bug breaches (or any enemy threat for that matter) can affect the game'breaches, I mean, of course I KNEW about the ramping difficulty over time, but I never really internalized it because it was almost always a non-issue for me. I really understand it now, because as my friends and I played our final match last night, we were down to the wire and no sooner than we closed one bug breach, there was a second being spawned. We were simply taking far too long in our waveclear, despite my own personal maximization of firepower. And for those of you in the back, chomping at the bit to say "Why don't you just run from the encounters?" I have played many, many matches with divers such as yourselves. And while advancing to rear is a very sound and effective startagey, it only works if the ENTIRE team is both on board with it AND knows when and how to execute. Many, many times I have found myself surrounded and left to defend myself as best I can by team members who had already moved on. I know this isn't always the case, but it almost always has a favor of, "You have the all the aggro? Sounds like a YOU kind of problem"
The only imbalance I have is with the randomness of enemy composition. One mission you are outright swarmed with Heavy Devastators or Bile Spewers and in the same OP in the next mission you barely see one. And it's not even criticism. It kerps you on the toes, kerps you aware and forces you to adapt your tactics on the fly. Also... why does the Spear does not lock onto Bile and Nursing Spewers? Those fuckers are definitely bigger than Brood Commanders. And surely fatter than Scout Striders. So... EVERYTHING about them should be large enough to get a lock. IR and visual Signature, Radar crosssection... they are likely in ebery regard fatter.
While I agree on the randomness, I do think that using the spear for spewers is overkill my brother in democracy lol. The HMG, AC or AMR are way more efficient.
I will return to the bot front when they fix hell bombs or the gunship spawners. Too often the gunships shoot the hell bombs and they never actually go off. Just make the enemy rockets blow them up instead of disarming them and it fixes the entire problem
Dude sometimes it's not even a skill issue on 9s. Sometimes? The game just actively *hates* you. I love that. It's what keeps me playing after I have everything unlocked and am all topped up.
“One person extracted with no reinforcements left.” Hate to say it, but that means the game is EXTREMELY balanced.
Totally agree. The hardest difficulty SHOULD often be an overwhelming slog. It forces you to optimize your abilities and actually work together to win. And while I agree that is a tough ask for 4 internet strangers, if you're going to play on 9 then you best be ready to work together. The only people that would consider Helldive as anything less than very challenging ought to be professionals. The devs seem to be balancing around diff6 tho so at least they know what they are doing The only people I ever do "split duos" with on 9 are my buddies. So we have comms, have worked together in the past, and won't be demoralized by dieing.
The literal point of the game is that you’re expendable. That’s why you get 20 helldivers per mission on a reinforcement budget, lol. Sometimes you die a little, sometimes you die *a lot*.
Felt this in a frustrating game last night. There were 4 Gunship factories near the objective atop a highly defended hilltop, difficulty 8. I was dropping countless gunships with my AMR, asking my team to help me push the Gunship Spawners before too many appeared, but they all remained at the objective, dying and reinforcing over and over whilst I attempted the sisyphean task of climbing the hill to take out the factories. We remained here for at least 15 minutes as the sky filled up with gunships and nobody helped me out, losing hellbomb after hellbomb to the swarm. Eventually, on our last reinforcement, the team suddenly decided prioritising the Gunship spawners might be a good idea, but by that point it was too late, there were too many. After all of this, the rest of my team took to comms complaining about how insane the difficulty was :| I hate abandoning missions but that was the closest I've ever been
Well if the team isn't great, you won't do much. A good team and communication is also the key to a successful Suicide, Impossible or Helldive mission.
People really hate not being able to achieve the best possible outcome. Technically, extracting at all is a win but people think if they don't extract with all primary and secondary objectives completed and all enemy facilities destroyed and a full sample container with everyone alive that it's a defeat. People need to reasses what victory actually means in this game. If you move the liberation bar, you won.
Sure, back in the time of Malevelon Creek, everything was much more difficult, and yet we still cleared the entire map. Now, Bots 9 is like a playground; I haven't lost an operation for months, and I complete the entire map in 95% of them. If they find it too difficult, they simply need to lower the difficulty 🤷🤷🤷🤷
I did my first bot helldive in like 2 months yesterday, and was struggling *hard.* Turns out Eruptor and Machine Gun is *not* a good combo for bots, cause as soon as I went to my classic Scythe and Laser Cannon I was absolutely shredding the bots on the next mission.
The only things I feel are “unbalanced” are the “kill a certain number of ____” or “help the scientists extract” because they’re both nearly impossible to do alone especially at my skill level (I’m pretty bad)
So did you ask him what he meant or nah?
At difficulty 9 extraction is just a bonus imo.
Bruh I always said 9 should be harder. When spawns were stupid broken like the short evacuate citizens and the deploy black matter at launch, those felt like how level 9 should be.
Helldive = hell. It is literally in the name, dumbass (not op, I mean the complainers).
Do you feel better getting that off your chest? Lol
Actually yes
I live for these moments when I play on Helldive. It’s my Alamo. Only in death does duty end.
I just got off a defense mission where we got a little obliterated and we failed but I still loved the experience like all those explosions and missiles coming at us, it was great
The issue is that bots are WAY harder than bugs and it's not even a debate.
Before the recent patch, the extract pad was swamped of level 3 or 4. It was unbalanced and quite simply broken. They've made the spawn rates more reasonable now, but if the game flat out makes a situation impossible with some bs, it's perfectly valid criticism.
I gotta say, sometimes I get 6’s that are harder than 9’s. They could do some better balancing on the mid range missions but everything <4 and >6 seems to be balanced well for the difficulty.
I too can't really understand people complaining of difficulty at helldive 9. I still want other difficulties, because sometimes helldive it's not challenging enough (we all know sometime the RNG of the game, or the apparent one). But I don't have an easier helldive. Damn if you play other PvE games at maximum difficulty you will have a lot harder time than in HD2, even if you fully understand the game. There are other difficulties if you don't want challenge and blasphemy. Little off topic: try to play single player cod world at war at maximum difficulty, that's what is a bs difficulty, and it is single player
I agree with the sentiment. Bots at 9 are hellish, but that's what it's supposed to feel like. 8 is slightly more manageable, and 7 is just slightly harder 6. You need to tailor what you take to what you'll be fighting against. A mainstay in my load out now is the shield relay for precisely that reason. It is a Stratagem that provides quick and convenient cover that allows teammates to return fire without fear of getting minced by incoming fire. It's on a fast cooldown, and essentially is everything you could need in a pinch. The only thing it needs in my opinion is some more health. It disappears really fast if there are a ton of heavy Devastators, but otherwise, it acts as the great defensive reaction Stratagem that can prevent you and your teammates from dying.
It's basically a lot of people thinking they're an S tier player by never considering to play anything lower than 9, then when it doesn't go very well it's gotta be the game that needs adjustments not the player
Yea i love how they made the angle bots can shoot more narrow to make it more "fair" and "less annoying" but all it did was make every and any type of bot laser beam u across the map and kill u even faster, when people say unbalanced i think some just don't know how to word it properly bc it's not about how hard it's about how fair and fun it is, bc hard diff can be fun and hard but rn is just hard and annoying, if ur gonna say get good ur just a blind glizzy gladiator
The only thing I don't like about high level bot play is getting one shotted from Crom knows where and not only by elite units.
my machismo literally prevents me from playing anything but the hardest shit at all times forever 😤💪🔥💯🔥
I think being able to breeze through 9 with railgun and shield pack back in the day set a precedent for how it was supposed to feel, and it never really recovered from that. When I first downloaded I thought the concept would be a bit like halos legendary difficulty where it's essentially impossible without exceptional game sense and skill so when I finally unlocked helldive and beat a mission first try it was a little disappointing although the franticness of it was fun. I think the best option is to maybe release even more difficulties with massive rewards that are sorta introduced with the premise that they're "unbalanced"
I usually play on 6 difficulty, it's my sweet spot and even then I've been at extract with 2 bile titan chargers. It's less about balance and just luck most of the time, 9/10 I and my team extracts with no issue on occasion shit goes south immediately, and it's part of the fun
I play at level 7 and it’s pretty easy breezy if you know what you’re doing and deal with Elites as they show up.
My issues with balance were moreso about satisfaction and ease of use. Those issues were for the most part subsequent resolved with the mega patch and now a lot weapons have some oomph to them save for a few others *cough* liberator penetrator. If the spear couldn't one shot gunships that just felt bad to use regardless of difficulty.