I think what I didn’t like is: I could maybe agree with their line of thought for the changes they made to the weapons. I don’t like that they prioritized these as the first balance patch.
As many have said it was meta because of the abundance of chargers/heavy enemies in 7-9 for folks trying to get the super samples.
Before the high difficulties felt chaotic but at least doable. Now… it still is but it’s even more running and kiting. To me it’s a less fun gameplay loop.
And the “arrogance” is probably perceived from the other dev comments like “get good” “stop clutching your pearls” “goodbye crutches”. If that’s how the devs feel, it’s easy to imagine the balance person, who prioritized removing tools vs making the reason the tools were needed first, thinks the same way.
I rather disliked the whole ‘your primary weapon is not supposed to be the weapon you primarily use’. Fine then rename them to small, medium, large or something instead of leading me to believe I should be able to kill a smaller horde without a Destroyer or Eagle.
It feels like the game balance team hasn’t played the game on the higher difficulties. If your primary weapon isn’t supposed to be able to deal with tanks, then your strategems are your only option. But nerfing the railgun without giving us other alternatives makes killing massive amounts of tanks impossible. I doubt the buffs to the flamethrower and laser cannon are going to be enough.
Meh, I disagree. With the “meta” loadout of breaker, shield, and railgun, even helldiver difficulty can be relatively easy as long as you can avoid getting surrounded. If the goal is to always feel like you need to work together and barely make it out alive, these changes make sense. I personally prefer that there isn’t one correct way to play the higher difficulties.
I personally prefer that there isn’t one correct way to play the higher difficulties.
I agree that there should be many viable ways to at higher difficulties. I just think that nerfing the only way that seems to work without providing alternatives doesn’t seem like the way to go about making that happen.
The man in the ivory tower even says under the railgun heading that they are aware that one of the reasons the railgun is popular is because other anti-armor sucks.
Respectfully sir that’s like the only reason.
Your CEO said on Twitter that the ass of a charger is not a weak point, merely an unarmored point; well all the same I need my partner to get the charger to face the other way to hit its butt since I need multiple recoilless rounds to kill it.
Maybe my friends are too drunk but with the shield and the railgun we still get about three bile titans per breach and breaches retrigger regularly. With automatons it is easy for us to kite circularly, thereby reducing the number of patrols we drag in, but the speed of bugs leads us to back pedal across the map. If you care to share advice I would welcome it.
Mostly just “keep moving”. If you spread out a bit, generally one person or group will take most of the heat while things are relatively quiet for the others. Heat team basically just has to keep running while the other team does the objective. If a bug hole opens up on the objective, run away and circle back. Chargers and hunters seem the most capable of catching up, but the hunters are pretty easy to kill. For the chargers, they seem almost hard coded to take a longer stagger if you dive out of the way instead of just moving out of their turn radius, so you can dodge a charge and gain a little more time to escape.
Don’t underestimate smoke, it can be pretty handy in keeping things off your back. Call down supplies often, even if you can’t necessarily get to them all. They have a pretty short cool down so don’t be afraid to waste a few or take multiple if no one else is nearby. Honestly I wouldn’t worry about bile titans too much unless they’re on an objective (or are an objective). They can be outrun and will eventually lose interest, and their attacks have fairly limited range with a big windup.
Granted I haven’t tried all this since the update so take it with a grain of salt. I do plan to try it again this weekend so I’ll report back.
I don’t think it’s arrogant, I think it’s actually really interesting how they talk about the “fantasy” of the game. I get not everyone plays the game for the same reason, but I understand the devs’ vision of the game really being about the feel of being a hero against the odds, not having the most effecient loadout or unlocking everything as fast as possible.
I’m getting irrationally angry at everyone crying about the hard difficulties being “too hard”. Diff 7, which is the last “mandatory” difficulty to obtain everything in the game, has decent balance imo. It’s not easy by any stretch but it’s not impossible, or even “too hard”. It’s challenging and can definitely get very chaotic, even if you bring your A-game, and that’s good.
Hard agree.
Arrowhead published a blog post where they went into detail about their design philosophy: https://www.arrowheadgamestudios.com/2024/03/balancing-the-firepower-in-helldivers-2/
I did not like the subtle arrogance behind their rationale here for the changes.
Subtle arrogance? It seems like a completely reasonable and well thought out post. People read way too much into normal posts.
I think what I didn’t like is: I could maybe agree with their line of thought for the changes they made to the weapons. I don’t like that they prioritized these as the first balance patch.
As many have said it was meta because of the abundance of chargers/heavy enemies in 7-9 for folks trying to get the super samples.
Before the high difficulties felt chaotic but at least doable. Now… it still is but it’s even more running and kiting. To me it’s a less fun gameplay loop.
And the “arrogance” is probably perceived from the other dev comments like “get good” “stop clutching your pearls” “goodbye crutches”. If that’s how the devs feel, it’s easy to imagine the balance person, who prioritized removing tools vs making the reason the tools were needed first, thinks the same way.
I rather disliked the whole ‘your primary weapon is not supposed to be the weapon you primarily use’. Fine then rename them to small, medium, large or something instead of leading me to believe I should be able to kill a smaller horde without a Destroyer or Eagle.
It feels like the game balance team hasn’t played the game on the higher difficulties. If your primary weapon isn’t supposed to be able to deal with tanks, then your strategems are your only option. But nerfing the railgun without giving us other alternatives makes killing massive amounts of tanks impossible. I doubt the buffs to the flamethrower and laser cannon are going to be enough.
Meh, I disagree. With the “meta” loadout of breaker, shield, and railgun, even helldiver difficulty can be relatively easy as long as you can avoid getting surrounded. If the goal is to always feel like you need to work together and barely make it out alive, these changes make sense. I personally prefer that there isn’t one correct way to play the higher difficulties.
I agree that there should be many viable ways to at higher difficulties. I just think that nerfing the only way that seems to work without providing alternatives doesn’t seem like the way to go about making that happen.
The man in the ivory tower even says under the railgun heading that they are aware that one of the reasons the railgun is popular is because other anti-armor sucks.
Respectfully sir that’s like the only reason. Your CEO said on Twitter that the ass of a charger is not a weak point, merely an unarmored point; well all the same I need my partner to get the charger to face the other way to hit its butt since I need multiple recoilless rounds to kill it.
Maybe my friends are too drunk but with the shield and the railgun we still get about three bile titans per breach and breaches retrigger regularly. With automatons it is easy for us to kite circularly, thereby reducing the number of patrols we drag in, but the speed of bugs leads us to back pedal across the map. If you care to share advice I would welcome it.
Mostly just “keep moving”. If you spread out a bit, generally one person or group will take most of the heat while things are relatively quiet for the others. Heat team basically just has to keep running while the other team does the objective. If a bug hole opens up on the objective, run away and circle back. Chargers and hunters seem the most capable of catching up, but the hunters are pretty easy to kill. For the chargers, they seem almost hard coded to take a longer stagger if you dive out of the way instead of just moving out of their turn radius, so you can dodge a charge and gain a little more time to escape.
Don’t underestimate smoke, it can be pretty handy in keeping things off your back. Call down supplies often, even if you can’t necessarily get to them all. They have a pretty short cool down so don’t be afraid to waste a few or take multiple if no one else is nearby. Honestly I wouldn’t worry about bile titans too much unless they’re on an objective (or are an objective). They can be outrun and will eventually lose interest, and their attacks have fairly limited range with a big windup.
Granted I haven’t tried all this since the update so take it with a grain of salt. I do plan to try it again this weekend so I’ll report back.
Played today. The buffs are not nearly enough.
Yeah, we were struggling with heavies playing just on Hard. We didn’t even bother to play anything higher than that.
I don’t think it’s arrogant, I think it’s actually really interesting how they talk about the “fantasy” of the game. I get not everyone plays the game for the same reason, but I understand the devs’ vision of the game really being about the feel of being a hero against the odds, not having the most effecient loadout or unlocking everything as fast as possible.
I’m getting irrationally angry at everyone crying about the hard difficulties being “too hard”. Diff 7, which is the last “mandatory” difficulty to obtain everything in the game, has decent balance imo. It’s not easy by any stretch but it’s not impossible, or even “too hard”. It’s challenging and can definitely get very chaotic, even if you bring your A-game, and that’s good.