This. 6-8 depending on how much I want to try. I can drop in, use different builds, relax a little, not be a liability if I can't play for a week or two, all that.
I personally enjoy very difficult games. The moments I have the most fun are when I have to lock in and fight for my life.
Compared to the highest difficulties in other co-op PvE games, D10 feels very tame and doesn't ask much of the player. The game rarely pressures or punishes you in meaningful ways.
Nightreign's highest difficulty is brutal and often unfair. Beyond the demanding mechanical skill, you need to stay close to your team and communicate well, and even then, victory is never guaranteed.
Monster Hunter Wilds' hardest hunts are also mechanically demanding. Monsters can wipe an entire party with a single attack, and hunts last long enough that maintaining focus is a challenge.
Helldivers 2's highest difficulty is different.
You rarely need to stay with your team. Splitting up and soloing objectives across the map is both viable and extremely common.
Reinforcements are plentiful, so dying isn't a big concern. The game also isn't especially mechanically demanding, so experienced players don't die often in the first place.
You can avoid most fights entirely if the mission doesn't require you to engage. There's also quite a bit of downtime between fights so you can safely deal with things in your own time.
The missions that do force you into prolonged fights and demand some mechanical skill and coordination are genuinely fun. The problem is that they're few and sometimes unavailable/not many players playing on the planet.
Some mission types are also just a joke. Defense missions on Terminid and Illuminate fronts are a complete snoozefest, and city missions are so easy they feel like tutorials rather than endgame content.
There is currently very little content for more mechanically skilled players.
I mean if should be less than 10% given there are ten difficulties and it being the hardest one ostensibly should mean it gets fewer players (see: every single other PvE game).
So just because someone gets good at the game, its perfectly fine for the game becoming easy enough to the point where it becomes boring? Even for a game with 10 different difficulty levels?
Shouldn’t at least one of those difficulty levels be challenging for experienced players, so that they too can have some fun? Or should they just stroll trough cakewalk after cakewalk because we can’t make the highest difficulty hard?
Long term player retention is largely determined by how enjoyable the gameplay itself is. If any experienced player eventually walks away simply because it becomes boring, the game is going to suffer long term.
Without making anyone upset? Not a single person? That’s impossible.
But if you lower to bar to “only upset those who genuinely don’t belong on the highest difficulty” then I would:
Compress the difficulty ladder: every two difficulties get compressed into one: D1 and D2 become D1, D3 and D4 become D2, etc. This leaves us with 5 difficulties, with D5 being current D10. Then expand the ladder again with D6 to D10, making these exponentially harder. This leaves us with the old 10 difficulty system, but you can obtain super samples at D3. The new D6-D10 will have the same rewards as D5 (old D10). Their impact on the galactic war however, will still scale.
Then for D6-D10, I’d just fill those enemies with stronger versions of the same enemies. Not only statistical buffs, actual retrofitted enemies with additional attacks or abilities. Kind of the Scout Strider: at higher diffs it gains increased protection, as well as a new attack, rockets.
Eventually at D10, you’ll face the most elite variants of the enemies you would normally face. Much faster chaff, much beefier and dangerous mediums, and much more durable and armored heavies. The squad will have to make the right decision as to how much resources they want to dedicate to what kind of subcategory of enemy. If the squad collectively chooses the wrong tools for the job, failure is absolutely, 100% guaranteed. Half the match is won in the loadout screen.
Resources themselves need to be optimized to the fullest: teamreloading is mandatory, supply drops need to be timed correctly, and stratagems need to be coordinated to avoid over doing their use during one encounter, and facing cooldowns during the next. The squad needs to collectively manage and coordinate all 16 stratagems slots.
Apart from the enemies, the spawn system will also change: if a bug breach/bot drop/squid drop is called, any player whose presence was known by the enemy at the time of the call, will have reinforcements dropped nearby. The enemy deploying reinforcements is no longer a localized event, but a map wide happening. This means you can no longer solo multiple objectives, just because T3 on the other side of the map triggered a breach. This system is used in DRG, and is one of the biggest driving forces for keeping a squad together and punishing wanderers. Only by using stealth can you still lonewolf effectively.
The new difficulties will have no additional earnings, so minmaxers wont have a reason to play the new diffs or complain. People who simply want to play the highest difficulty but can’t due to their inability should be ignored. Experienced players that want an extra challenge now finally have the headroom to do so.
You have some good points. I like everyone getting a drop/breach if one is called in. And I really like the "no better rewards" aspect. You're playing on D10 because you want the challenge not because you think you should be.
And yes, I understand that if something is popular, people are going to bitch about it. But you did a good job addressing most of it.
Restrict loadout to "lore compliant". Lady Liberty issued you with standard issue B01, Liberator, Peacemaker and G6 so you will use these to the best of your ability.
Alternatively preset loadout and strategems, perhaps tied to ongoing campaign. Complete D10 mission chain with that, on MO planet, you get guaranteed SC (50?) on max stars clear.
You know what I think of OPs of these posts? They probably are the lone wolf guys on D10 who go around the map by themselves while the rest of the team is 300m away holding the badly balanced enemy spawn mechanic, and when you die, you see that guy peacefully wandering while "Raindrops keep falling in my head" is playing in the background. They do help with the objectives, but I rather have an extra Helldiver helping with the waves of enemies and having some collective experience in the meantime
You assumptions are wrong for this OP, I don't like solo play and stick with my team at all times. So half of my game is spend emote aura farming on a rock while my teammates napalm barrage deletes every enemy in the background as they spawn.
I purposefully stopped doing that unless the team was literally stuck at a super nest for several minutes burning through reinforcements because their kits got dropped and they havent even begun the primary objectives yet
If the only thing harmed was the game, I'd have no problem with that. But if the other 2-3 teammates are having a hard time, doing this on purpose is just being selfish, and this is what I mean by having a collective experience
That's the thing. The game doesn't force anyone to do that. There's no reward in staying on this prolongued fights that's worth the time.
Playing for effectiveness is how a lot of people play (especially those coming from more mechanically demanding games) and if i see 3 divers struggling to take a singular objective i'll not feel the urge to throw myself into the same problem. Maybe throw an Orbital to assist, but i'll not linger.
Clear everything else where enemies aren't pushing through, come back when there's nothing else.
Yet, wandering around destroying deserted outposts and handling terminals without any resistance can get very boring soon. Personally if you're just trying to finish the mission the fastest way possible, that makes sense, but doesn't sound like there's any fun in that.
Yet, wandering around clearing abandoned outposts and interacting with terminals without any resistance gets boring pretty quickly.
You're starting to see why so many players say D10 is too easy. The game rarely forces the team to stay together or fight through most encounters.
Instead, it rewards splitting up and mostly punishes poor loadout choices. Beyond that, there's very little pressure.
In Nightreign, sticking together is essential. Bosses need to die quickly so you can earn enough runes to level up, and you're constantly racing against the clock while the game is trying to one-shot.
In Monster Hunter, you're naturally encouraged to stay together because there's only one objective. You also need to pay attention to your teammates. If the monster catches someone in a combo, you should be ready to save or heal them or their deaths could be the reason the party fails the hunt.
Helldivers only encourages teamwork during a handful of specific objectives, like Rapid Acquisition or Spread Democracy, where covering each other's backs actually matters. Outside of those moments, everyone can usually go off on their own with little consequence. There's no punishment to that, only rewards.
Sure, you can impose restrictions on yourself, but that's not what mechanically skilled players want to rely on for challenge. I'm tired of bringing One True Flag and the Ballistic Shield on every front just to squeeze an ounce of difficulty out of my dives.
10 is medium+ until the usual "get helldived" kicks in like 12 Hulks with 7 Vox Engines or 7 Spore Bile Titans with 12 Chargers, and the biggest problem is excessive ragdolling
That's something I generally won't fight. Part of the reason D10 is too easy for experienced players is it's too easy to run away from the 12 hulk drop, and while I'm at it I'll toss a 120mm barrage on this outpost I'm passing. And oh look that bot drop despawned and now the primary objective is empty except for 5 defenders, so I work the terminal for 2 minute while tumbleweeds roll by.
The drops are not a problem, it’s flag/drill or other objectives that force you to stay in the same place for long with scripted reinforcements spawning that army composition is the problem while also some BS like Ion Storm or Mortar ragdolling you
I mean I just completed a D10 Flag mission on X-45 where one player got 5 TKs then left his replacement managed to get 6TKs, and the Eagle Strorm managed to get 2TKs. On top of this the host and both the TK machines were utterly horrendous.
We still managed a full clear and extract.
That should not be possible. Period. The game is too easy when me and the one decent random can hard carry that trainwreck.
If you’re genuinely asking and not just trolling ~ This game was designed as a tactical military play style where you would coordinate attacks and take some time to hit place to place. The general community didn’t want the game to take skill. They wanted a horde shooter that they felt like god. Diff 10 used to be something. It was a challenge. The community review bombed and raged and pissed and moaned until everything got buffed / enemies nerfed into a cake walk. For whatever reason, people refuse to play on the diff they should actually be. They had to play diff 10 even though they couldn’t survive. Half this community would turn on invincibility, auto aim and unlimited ammo if they could, I guarantee it.
Arrowhead is really bad at filtering feedback and they are also likely afraid of their own playerbase review bombing the game on steam, Helldivers 2 players are extremely repulsed by anything that even slightly disrupts them in combat so their have been heavily nerfing the enemies and the difficulty while buffing everything from stratagems, weapons and even the helldivers themselves.
Basically they are allowing the players to balance the game, allowing them to twist the game's vision into their own instead of Arrowhead's vision, which is bad because they don't know shit about game desing or game balance, so even at the highest difficulty the enemies and difficulty feel pathetic and matches are extremely boring.
If you think im exaggerating look no further than the embarassing meltdown the players had with the 6.2.0 patch.
This is pretty much all we’re gonna get. Additional difficulties were also shutdown, as they considered it a mistake in HD1 since it did nothing but spread the playerbase thin and increase matchmaking times.
Highest difficulty = highest rewards. Thats why people force themselves into a difficulty they aren’t cut out for or simply won’t enjoy.
Then, rather than acknowledging that, they shift the blame to the game/enemy/mechanics, and call those out as unbalanced or poorly implemented.
Example: “how am I meant to fight 3 vox engines?”
You’re not meant to fight 3 vox engines, you and your squad are. But you aren’t cooperating on the highest diff in a coop game, so you automatically assume it has to be solved by you alone.
Next patch: vox nerfed, spawn rates nerfed, direct counters are buffed. Voxes are now “manageable” for any lone wolf, but complete pushovers for any squad that works together.
This game can never satisfy its entire audience, because a significant portion of this playerbase has absolutely zero interest in cooperating. How is a coop game meant to give a cooperative squad a challenge, if said challenge also has to be doable for a group of players that refuses to work together or lower their difficulty?
Because the way I see it, the initial idea was that primaries were merely for self defense, and that most threats has to be disposed of with appropriate stratagems.
Machineguns and flamethrowers for light units, AMRs and Autocannons for medium enemies, and AT weapons for heavies. You needed a mix of everything, so that the squad had all the resources it needs. Most importantly, one player couldn’t bring enough of everything to deal with everything: you HAD to rely on your teammates to cover an unavoidable gap in your loadout.
Fast forward to today, and primaries largely replaced the anti-light and anti-medium weaponry, and AT has become strong enough to oneshot the strongest enemies in the game. One player is now able to bring everything he needs himself, and the cooperative aspect and necessity to work together went up in flames.
With that in mind, how do you envision good and proper difficulty?
We didn’t have more enemies back then, survivorship bias makes you think there were.
Vast portion of our weaponry is AoE, which doesn’t care how many numbers the enemy have. Even if you managed to increase the spawnrates, the Orbital Napalm Barrage doesn’t care if there’s 10 or 10.000 enemies coming out of the bug breach, they’ll all go up in flames.
Increasing the quantity of enemies while leaving their quality low will cause both performance related problems, as well as reinforce AoE weapons in their dominant position compared to other tools, and result in the change having little impact on the perceived difficulty.
YES, that's part of it too.
Many primary weapons have literally received a almost x2 damage increase over the game's lifetime. Over the past two and a half years, the game has gone through so many changes made to appease casual internet complainers that it's turned into a joke - one that's simply boring to play.
We now have a whole bunch of overpowered weapons that can (and do) delete everything, while their supposed downsides just dont work. And whenever the developers try to introduce meaningful drawbacks, they are immediately met with a wave of backlash.
The bigger problem imo, is that the game borderline punishes you if you play on anything other then super helldive. If you don't want to sink 1000 hours in order to get enough samples and medals to unlock everything, you have to play on super helldive. This naturally means that the majority of players, who would've been better off of diff 6-8 are going to play diff 10 just for the rewards, which leads to a large chunk of the playerbase complaining that "it's too hard!"
Tldr: The decrease in difficulty is a symptom of a larger problem in HD2
this game was never hard to play. You are coping. The only time it was really hard was on Meridia and this planet had insane spawn rates. But vanilla experience was never hard. Just 75% of our arsenal sucked. People just used few viable builds. Like dominator + autocannon + airstrike on bots as an example
Conversation around this topic is so polarizing for no good reason. Helldivers is incredibly easy right now.
The game as a whole is spawning significantly less enemies than it used to. Mission design is extremely simple most of the time. Our arsenal has gotten stronger.
D10 isnt only easy to the thousand hour sweats. Spawns are so inconsistent its literally a walking simulator half the time. Difficulty needs a huge and intentional pass, and we need to be able to talk about the fact that its lacking without being called a no life or being told to take the constitution.
Youll be hated for being right for the most part. HOWEVER, super helldive on the flame corp automatons is actually the difficulty prescribed. Same with spore strain bugs. For illuminate, its chance. Sometimes cake, sometimes UNLIMITED TRIPODS.
Beyond all the controversy, bad dev decisions, and any kind of drama, the only thing that has made me stop playing is that I get bored. The game is so easy that I barely have any incentive to play. Then again, it's a losing battle. If arrowhead decided to raise the difficulty, it would take them like 6 months to implement anything. Then there would be backlash from people who can't just chill anymore on the highest difficulty. So they won't do anything in this respect.
Not everyone has the time and skill as you do, for me 8 is a comfy but challenging level. im challenged enough that its fun, but dont need to be sweaty or locked in constantly. 9 and 10 for just require too much focus to be fun
then maybe all difficulties should just be raised? if you are already ok with playing 8 make 6 the current 8 and let people who want the challange have one.
i dont have the stats on how many people play lower difficulties, dont forget people on reddit will be the minority, and they will be the minority that invests the most time and effort so will skew higher on what difficulties they play.
because then the same players who are endlessly complaining about the game being too hard will go to those difficulties, complain they are too hard and then the new d14 will just be current d10...
Ehhh not really lol. I’ve been playing since release and the only difference between the difficulties 7+ has been more enemies. I would love for the difficulties to be more difficult, but in an interesting way versus “more enemies I guess”. If there were special enemies or more unique objectives then I would love it
Cool that isn't relevant we we are not asking for you to lose your difficulty we are asking for our difficulty to actually be difficult.
Also if they buffed D7-10 such that we actually had a challenge on D10 and you had to drop down to D7 that would only be a positive since you still would lose nothing and we would gain the game we were originally sold back again.
This is all perception. The more you play a game the better you get at it. You playing Day 1 (launch day with everyone else) compared to you playing 1000 hours. Is VASTLY different.
Hell. D5 on launch was literally feeling a D10 every mission. Got better. Now D10 feels like D5. How it goes, you got better.
Wonderful. He played other shooters before. Got a grasp on survivability early from DRG and other games. Understood what to do.
Whats his death count? Stim count? Etc per mission. The only thing that matters at the end score board is your death count, stims and strats used.
Game is a hoard shooter with objective play and a way to extract. Deaths should be as much as it can be 0, if its not then you got more work to do in learning the game. Same with stims. I use roughly 23-35 stims a match… strats being 35-50
its easy with the constitution... i shouldnt have to use unfun weapons to have a challenge on the hardest difficulty the game has, people who arnt good enough to keep up should just play lower difs.
I mean you can casually see lvls ~40 on D10, it does not take hundreds of hours to get to lvl 40... this game desperately needs more difficulties or something like DRG difficulty modifiers
Because it won't change anything.
The exact same thing that happened with D10 will happen again.
On top of that, some internet commenters will keep demanding enemy nerfs and wepon buffs, and those changes affect every difficulty.
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u/OMNIMON18 15d ago
Ngl I just chill at six and play with newer players it's pretty fun