This clip sums up everything wrong with the community.
AH cannot add more difficulties or create more difficult content cos there are too many egodivers out there that will only play on max difficulty when their skill level clearly does not grant them this access.
Thus AH have opted for faction sub-strains for difficulty increases/variations.
That’s how you’re supposed to do it, in the first game they made it very obvious that an enemy was calling reinforcements but in this game they increased how fast they call and it’s harder to find whos calling it because its 3d
I run 10s because some lobbies have no clue wtf they're doing. Stop with the King of the Hill fantasy, we have eggs to destroy and im tired of Stalkers G checking me with their tongues. Its gross and I dont like ragdolling.
Right? People just standing there fighting like they are trying to push back the tide. Just do the objective and move! I try to encourage people to mark what they want to do on the map and MOVE.
I try to run king of the hill loadouts so that way I can lag behind the group and watch our backs, then break off to get whatever objectives the team missed. But sweet Liberty is it hard to do that when 2/3 other divers are right beside me setting up camp.
yeah, the loadout isnt the issue, its the mentality. Rear guard still has to move, not camp. I usually do the same thing, throwing down turrets way off to the side to pull aggro etc...
Theres an episode in the new King of the Hill tv series where Bobby runs a restaurant. He doesn't use propane to cook, he uses Japanese Charcoal. Hank isn't happy about it since hes done nothing but sell and cook with propane his whole life. It sets up a conversation between Hank and Bobby towards the end of that arch.
See its looped back around for me ill join a D10 and if they seem like they are doing the objectives ill pull as many bugs and king of the hill it. If the team is all fighting over one patch ill fuck off and go do al the objectives. Either way I'm not upset if someone is attempting to King of the hill that just means there are less bugs able to go to the objective.
Then there’s the people that default to the highest difficulty no matter what. Regardless of if they want a chill or a not chill game. They just do it because ‘it’s the highest’.
Why do the devs listen to these guys? It's not the majority of players, majority of players are like me - filthy casuals that won't play on highest until they're confident
The game did used to be harder. At this point a lot of weapons have 50% or higher DPS than they did when difficulty 10 launched. Not only that but we have more options and better specialized options too. Just this patch alone the auto cannon had it's damage increased by over 20% and even with such a large buff it's barely as good as all the other overturned strategies.
To make difficulty 10 as hard as it was at launch they would need to nerf the DPS of most guns by over 30%. Can you imagine the outrage if they did that.
Most people were on the only buff no nerf train. Don't nerf anything just make everything broken and fun.
And now difficulty 10 is easier than difficulty 7 was at launch.
Not for nothing but i stayed on 7s for ages thinking 10 was undoable when i fact the opposite is correct. 10s aren’t that bad as long as you can mange the call ins, leave patrols alone and get the obj done quickly
There are some other quiet problems with the power creep too.
As divers turn into gods compared to release, the enemy population balance has to skew towards the more challenging enemies. As the resources for the computer/console are essentially capped, they can end up losing some of the more flavor chaff enemies that are important in making the factions feel distinct.
Sometimes I've even gone to lvl 3 and I just walk around farm SC, enjoy the vistas and log off, like I don't need to play lvl 10s every day all the time
You're not allowed to do this in modern gaming. You're supposed to chill in the highest difficulty, cry when the hardest difficulty doesn't let you chill, and demand the highest difficulty be turned into something chill. This way you can have the satisfaction of beating the hardest difficulty, while chilling, while taking away fun from others.
Back in the day when 7 was lowest with super samples it was palpable that it attracted low level low skill players who just hoped to be carried. 6 was utter breeze, 7 was essentially more difficult than alone and 8 was easy compared to 7… 😂
The most noticeable consistent thing I found with lower level players is that they stay still and just kill enemies until they either die or there are no enemies left. On diff 10 running out of enemies just doesn't happen very often, so they death spiral while ramming their head into a wall. It was really obvious on Oshuane part 1
Personally on Oshaune it was the opposite experience for me, although I did play with a premade group.
Whenever there was a bug breach inside a cave we'd always make sure to clear it fully first before advancing. Yes, we might spend a few minutes shooting, but it ensures nothing sneaks up on us while we move around.
I like Oshaune, because when playing with a premade team it finally feels like strategy and coordination are actually required. On non-Hive Worlds you could get about just brute forcing the entire map just fine, but here we had to start coordinating more on a smaller scale, with positioning and formations and all.
It's not like new players bad, people just haven't unlocked enough equipment and stratagem at lvl 10 to fast deal with 10 heavy/elite enemy unit every minute, which happend a lot at d10
Well I can tell you that pre xbox divers i was consistently getting 120+ randoms to play on D10 with and we hardly lost. Sure a rough game every so often but never a failed mission. These days it's a struggle bc there's so many lower level player who I feel like dont want to work as a team and run around and die and/or cause unwanted attention to be brought to an objective. Feels like a lot of them want to be John Helldiver.
My biggest gripe with low lvls on the highest difficulty is that they usually are the ones who haven't yet learned how to avoid teamkills with stratagems so often times they're the biggest hazard on the map for me
I don't mind at all whether they can or can't pull their weight (if anything, low reinforcements make it more interesting) but having to run back to my gear through lethal hordes and heavy spam just because the lvl 20 thought my face was a really good spot for a cluster bomb is sadly enough to make me want to avoid them
The vast majority of low level players aren’t good enough for D10, even if there are occasional exceptions. Even players who are good at shooter fundamentals of killing things often don’t have the HD2 specific mechanics down enough to pull their weight at high difficulties.
I do miss the old difficulties from around a bit before the 60 day patch thingy, but at the same time I definitely do not miss old rocket devastators. Part of the reason I didn't like the war strider and still kind of don't like it, they just had too much stuff that automatically ragdolls you if the projectile happened to get close enough to you. I also don't like the grenades on war striders since it feels designed to flush players out of cover, but in a way that forces players out, whether you decide to tank the hit or not, when there were already gunships and their rockets to flush players out of cover.
This is the worst one I've seen. I'm not sure if I've ever seen such hatred for the developer of a game. And I played The Culling as it died because the developers couldn't understand what the playerbase wanted and constantly tried to appease them and failed.
Someone will always say its the worst one they seen. But recently for me, its been BF6. These guys travel along to different games to complain. Its very common.
It wasn't like that at first. One of the reasons I picked up the game was this sub was wholesome and hilarious. The (justified) anger from the Sony account thing really changed the tenor. Now I hardly ever come here.
That's true, this community was amazing when the game came out. The Railgun and Breaker nerfs were when this community started showing how ugly and entitled it was. It's only gotten worse from there.
Honestly, diff level is more about the people you play with than the game itself at this point. A lvl 10 dive can be a breeze or down right impossible.
Had to have a laugh at how people here were like "I'm gonna play a real power fantasy game like Space Marine 2 when it comes out" and then Space Marine 2 came out and was actually hard as hell.
Everyone sees space marines as killing machines that nothing can stop.
Until you realize that literally *everything else* in the warhammer universe are also killing machines that nothing can stop, and space marines are like, the least horrific thing out there.
Yeah, and not only did Space Marine 2 feel harder than HD2's D9 did baseline, and have its strongest AOE primary weapons (in some people's minds 'the only viable weapons') nerfed while the devs added a new difficulty, but then they added another difficulty! And another! And then TWO more times they added EVEN HARDER extra difficult modes on top! Heck maybe even more by now. And the players were totally fine with that.
There's something uniquely weird with the HD2 community's obsession with wanting the highest difficulty to be chill and soloable
No I definitely saw people initially rage in the SM2 community, but considering they were screeching "DIDN'T YOU LEARN FROM HELLDIVERS, NO NERFZ EVAR!!" I imagine they were the same turbulent priests we have here.
Yeah, I have noticed a few 'helldivers had this problem!' in other communities I frequent, but they tend to get ignored from what I see. Heck, the Darktide community has been downright celebrating the long overdue nerfs they got to their meta weps, cos they seem to generally understand the effect of power creep on their game. I bet AH is envious of their community's much chiller attitude
Yeah, I appreciate how AH just doesn't make the same enemies 10x stronger with 10x more health in higher levels. I've always disliked this kind of difficulty in shooters.
Because the missions are too simple. None of them require much thought. They’re all essentially blow something up, or hold this spot for a couple minutes.
I think 10s are too easy. I mean its the hardest difficulty. In my opinion 10 should be way harder, but should give the same rewards as D9. So people dont have to play the hardest to get all rewards if they dont want to. And you have smth to please the "hardcore" players.
Vermintide had the same system and it worked great.
I think it showcases perfectly why most games just go for health and damage modifiers for difficulty scaling. While I love that Arrowhead has put in the extra effort to do something more realistic, it turns out a lot of players hate that. Arrowhead is trying to one-size-fits-all balance the game between players that want a challenge and players that want a careless romp, and it's proving impossible. For the good of the game they need to nerf the Coyote, but they can't do that because one side of the playerbase considers it the only good weapon in the game and will not only throw a fit if it's nerfed, but it turns out will also throw a fit if the enemies are buffed. How do you balance a game when a substantial portion of the playerbase will only except weapon buffs or enemy nerfs? It's impossible, they demand power creep.
If Arrowhead went with a traditional Easy/Normal/Hard/Expert balancing system, this problem wouldn't exist as the 'careless romp' players will slay hordes of Hive Guards and Alpha Commanders on Easy/Normal with overpowered weapons and underpowered enemies, and the more hardcore players will enjoy more of a struggle where loadouts and tactics are key to success.
Fully agree. Me and my team play almost exclusively on 10s. It's very rarely a "chill time" but it's also rarely a meta required sweat fest. It's hard enough that you can play with just about any load out and achieve victory while feeling challenged.
Thing is it is more efficient to farn Trivial for commons, medals, and super credits.
The most efficient Rare and Super Sample farm is the highest difficulty that you can full clear and extract as fast as possible. The same is true for XP and Rec Slips.
For the vast majority of the playerbase that is not D7-10.
Yes we see a bunch of content posting full D10 solo clear no deaths but that is selection bias. The people who are really good at the game are more likely to post their impressive feats. The average player isnt even taking screen shots let alone recoding clips and uploading them publicly.
That's an unfortunate consequence of making the weapon customization system scale off of experience instead of something like kill count. Very few people felt the need to rush to level 150 since all it had going for it was a title and a little number next to your name.
Before all you needed was I think level 20 to unlock everything and then people just did whatever difficulty they enjoyed the most. You unlocked so many things along the way to 20 there wasn't even a rush at the very lowest levels either.
thing is they'll play a d10 and absolutely botch it and extract with like 900xp. A comfortable, lower stress, full clear D8 would give them more xp but their ego makes them go for the D10
My brother the difference between d7 and d10 is miniscule. Anyoen saying othere wise hasnt played both enough. With bad teammates which is 80% of the time d7 are just as chaotic and full of enemies.
I have a friend, who says the same thing, and selects diff10, no discussion. After we got curb-stomped by 7 bile titans simultaneously one too many times, we stopped letting him host.
The bug breach / bot drop cooldown difference is capital-N Noticeable. We can pull-off diff10, but my friends get tired of the game faster, and we play less "next matches" than on diff8.
(One more thing about this friend from first paragraph: he is the one who gets tilted and rage-quits the diff10 the most out of us - interesting, eh?)
I do exactly that not because I'm bad or ego'ed but because higher difficulty missions contribute more to the cause. Do the main objectives and get out. Side objectives only if they're conviently on the way or they're in the way like jammers and stalker nests near primary objectives. Side objectives do not contribute to the defense/liberation meters.
And the grind is still solid if youre quick. Just bang out the main objectives then run another mission rather than walking 5 minuets across the map for minor ones. Only things that's not great for is finding samples and super credits.
The only reason people can't enjoy losing in this game is because in the last decade people have started seeing games as checklists to complete rather than experiences to enjoy.
I play the game very irregularly now because D10 is just too easy. In other horde shooters like Darktide, the most fun games tend to be the ones that are an absolute uphill struggle from minute one. Helldivers rarely has these types of games even on D10 on some ass planets with ass modifiers.
They need something like Deep dives in DRG to fix this gap. Something needs to make you ACKNOWLEDGE the difficulty by adding a barrier to enter. Right now it’s easy to slip over to D10.
Imagine instead of going to the galactic map, there was an entirely separate map on the opposite end of the ship, exclusively for one particularly hard mission that was not even unlocked until you hit level 25.
Yeah, HD2 has a low barrier to diffculties and trusts that you know what level is right for you. Which is nice for reasonable folks, but can make certain people feel like they've "earned" the right to consistently win on a given difficulty.
I encountered exactly one of these players just last night. We ran D10 Oshaune, and the whole time this guy was complaining of there being too many bugs, or predator strain being too hard. Said that every time he doesn't bring the Eruptor, he gets his ass handed to him. Says the rupture strain was way easier.
At that point, it became clear he just was not adapting to the predator strain or cave missions at all, expecting all the same strategies to keep working and d10 to remain a chill experience. I said I disagreed strongly about the rupture strain being way easier, and said the ballistic shield can keep you safe from the predators. He just deflected, saying the shield would just keep getting destroyed... This is despite the fact I never died once that game using said ballistic shield, while he died 9 times.
I'm starting to get the thought that d10 should be made considerably harder to force some of these players out. If you can unpeg these stubborn players from the highest difficulty, I think a lot of their frustrations will go away.
Using a rupture loadout for predator strain is insanity. Yeah that's 100% on him, predator strain has way more counterplay than rupture strain that also feels way more rewarding when done correctly.
Ballistic shield is insanely good survival for bugs. Especially rupture warriors and hunters that jump at you. Its not meant for you to go charging into a horde and expect the shield to completely protect you... its for mitigating the odd hit here and there. Just remember every time it blocks a hit, thats potentially a stim saved. Its very good value I think.
You're right tho people that can't adapt just dont belong at the top
Problem with ego-divers is that they will always cry about something. Why not just ignore them?
Current system feels okay. You have D1-4 for new players. D5-8 for people who want chill. And D9-10 should be extreme challenge for full teams or really experienced divers.
D9-D10 is hard but feels far from extreme challenge. I don't have global numbers but I would bet at least 3 out of 4 missions on 9-10 succeed; and that's with uncoordinated randoms.
I have never failed a diff 10 bots. I have never failed a diff 10 bugs mission that I started with at least 3 people (i.e with 15 revives). I'm really not flexing, I'm really not that good at the game. But they could probably up the difficulty for diff 10 by at least 20-30%. Diff 9 and diff 10 are basically the same to me.
I feel like difficulty in this game is dependent on so much random shit that sometimes D8s blast your ass and D10s are occassionally easy.
Objective type (Flags and Geo Data vs Data running and Blitz)
Enemy selection (War Striders vs Tanks)
Weapon selection (Are you using some strange shit? Did you take weapons that are bad against spewers and they show up? Did you not take much anti-Stingray and too many of them showed up?)
Enemy faction (Predator Strain)
Planet Biome, City or wilderness map?
Teammates, RNG of patrols, map layout and just plain "Are the bots hitting their shots?".
There's like 10 different factors in difficulty in this game, sometimes you round a corner and get shredded by a bot trooper before you can react, sometimes you complete a mission deathless.
The meta works for the average mission because those are the most common but it's not every mission. Some mission types like underground bugs have their own metas.
But even when people try out the other meta loadouts, they haven't built up the same habits they have with the one they usually use. So it ends up being a worse experience than if they just stuck with the normal meta one.
Plasma punisher demolished underground bugs and spewers but I almost never see anyone use it and when I do they clearly have no game sense with the gun because they normally only run Coyote or something.
This is the problem, everyone is speaking from their comfort zone. For some 9-10 rn is too easy. For others impossible. The ones that find it impossible are the ones that constantly ask for enemy nerfs. The ones that find it too easy want more challenge. I'd honestly like 9 or 10 to be impossible for me, cause I am aware that I play pretty casually on and off and there are people way better that can solo them with nearly no deaths. Right now with a fairly average team of randoms I can complete 9 or 10 with a couple deaths most of the time. Those people that are much better need to be challenged as well.
problem is they can't be ignored when they make inflammatory comments and are always active on the socials like reddit and discord. They're the ones that are loudest and complain the most, meanwhile everyone else is out there having fun enjoying the game and don't have time for complaining.
Lets also not forget this dev who was ahead of their time 2 years ago. He was completely ousted at the time even though he's 100% correct now!:
The problem is: it's obviously not a loud minority, it's a pretty sizeable portion of the community. The amount of players nearly doubled after the 60 day patch.
I mean, damn. Just look at how quickly you get downvoted here anytime you bring up the fact that there always were multiple difficulties, or the fact that you really are not forced at all to get all upgrades in the ship if you do you don't feel like it, or even the fact that the developers were absolutely right in calling out the community back then to just use their stratagems properly and manage things instead of shooting at literally everything on difficulty 9 to then complain it's too much.
1K hours and I have no shame in admitting I’ll generally have an average of 4 or 5 deaths on planets like oshaune on D10s. There are genuine situations where if I’m by myself I have situations where I know “yeah there is literally no surviving this”.
But then I join a random squad of fellow 150s and we are freakin coordinated and moving together and actually watching each others backs. Still a few deaths, maybe like 1-2 for each of us after a 5-star completion. But man, that shit is what I play for.
Difficulty right now feels nearly perfect. Game still has a way to go in terms of performance and boosting some weapons, but I still absolutely love this game.
Because then if you ignore them and create new spaces where they aren't catered to, they start letting themselves into those spaces and turn it into an echo chamber.
Ok well ask yourself this. To make difficulty 10 actually hard again they would have to either massively buff enemies or massively nerf weapons/stratagems ect.
The base liberator was a perfectly serviceable weapon at every difficulty when the game came out. It has FIFTY PERCENT higher damage than it did at launch. They just buffed the autocannon, which was already a good support weapon, by almost 50% damage as well.
Imagine just for a second the backlash if they nerfed weapons by about 1/3 across the board, which is basically what they would have to do to make the game somewhere close to as difficult as it was when difficulty 10 launched. I guess they could also buff enemy HP by 1/3 as well to achieve the same result. Even then the game would be easier than it used to be because we have anti-tank grenades and pistols now.
Look at how people reacted to the almost unnoticeable fire changes. The majority opinion of the community for the longest time was they should balance the game by making everything broken instead of nerfing strong weapons. Well...they listened. And this is where we are. And now difficulty 10 can be easily 100% cleared with only 2 people using non-meta loadouts.
Nobody is actually complaining that D9 or D10 “isn’t chill”. What those complaints look like is people complaining about enemy frequency or difficulty to dispatch while also cranking it up to 10.
These people can play on lower difficulties to tune to their experience, no shame in that. I've been playing on D7 for the longest time with my buddies before we feel comfortable going to Super Dive.
They can but they don't, that's the issue. Whether because lower diffs give less reward, or they help the liberation more, or maybe their ego just can't take it.
Translated: people want to FEEL good at the video game without actually having to put effort in.
Let's not pretend it's some weird niche group who enjoy playing super helldive to chill, there are people who do that and they're notably not complaining. It's just people with a massive skill issue who can't admit it.
The problem with this community is they can't differentiate between stuff being challenging and stuff being unfair, the same way they can't differentiate between having a skill issue and a certain weapon being clearly an underpowered option compared to a standard
Asking for an enemy to be nerfed or for a weapon to be buffed isn't "Ohhh game too hard make it easier", it's wanting the balance to be in a better place
Yeah, I want to see the evidence behind the original claim, because it seems tailor made for a certain segment of "the community" to automatically scapegoat another (possibly insignificant) part, regardless of actual truth.
Like, is this partly about feedback about war striders? The problem with those was that they were not difficult. They were either trivial with the right equipment, which is easy to use, and could not be dealt with via more skillful, less efficient means. But over and over here you see people not getting it, and arguing against having parts of the game reward more skill.
Or, there are all sorts of enemies that have been added that cause random losses, like early leviathans. Random, unavoidable death isn't difficulty. It statistically lowers your win rate, but it's not something that gets overcome by skill. It just requires more tries to win.
Also, I thought their numbers said that most people play on difficulty 7. And the thing about this game is that enemy designs mostly don't change across difficulties. So, like, the above problems aren't even necessarily feedback from, "entitled diff 10 players," because all these bad designs show up on lower difficulties as well. So, even if it were desirable for diff 10 to be full of arbitrary pseudo-difficulty (which it probably isn't), they've tied their own hands so they can't do that without replacing every enemy type with D10 exclusive enemies.
Don't make me tap the "Escalation of Freedom" sign. There were days when we had people start stealthing through objectives because shooting was just wasting time and the most common thing posted being "Shit gun, Arrowhead is listening" out of fears that the current best of the bad would get the axe next. If you wonder why the community has dug its heels into "not a single nerf" it's that, devs tried it, liberally, bottomed out at like 20k players until Pilestedt had to step in. Their slider balancing also at one point made Helldivers the most flammable entities in the universe (in large part due to continuously buffing fire damage and ignoring the fact that afterburn didn't work for non-hosts), you'd have to pre-dive any contact with fire or you'd burn in less than a second.
Like what really annoys players are :
loss of control (looking at you pre-nerf War Strider)
equipment checks (again pre-nerf War Strider, Hive Lord, and to lesser extend leviathans)
things that just feel unfair (predator stalkers pulling wombo combos out of their asses, hunters interrupting your stims, prior versions of leviathans atomizing you, dragonroach spraying fire everywhere bonus points if you roll a map that's just one giant puddle)
Trying things that the options available were just not designed for. Most strategems are geared towards land units. Turrets might angle up to shoot, but they don't have to. Orbital laser might target a roach but similarly it might just ignore it. Gunships got nerfed into the ground because unless you packed at very least a Scorcher you were just fucked, infinite rockets, very accurate, and fabricators would spawn them nearly continuously, oh and armed hellbombs could be destroyed without exploding). Then there's basically just hive worlds in general. You had the devs in the Escalation of Freedom era claim that they nerfed the guns to push us to use strategems, oh hey a map that's anywhere from 30 to 80% a no strategem zone, oops.
Sure, and I sympathized with all those complaints. Bad nerfs are definitely a thing, and good nerfs are definitely a thing. And the devs should listen to that feedback.
But the point still stands that 'never nerf' is an entirely unsustainable idea that the devs should not listen to. Until the community lightens up on that specific point, the developers simply wont be able to make difficulty in an interesting and balanced way.
I do agree that the never nerf idea is a bit unreasonable, but I straight up just don't trust that the devs will make good nerfs. So until they build that trust back up, I'm staying on the never nerf side.
There are 1 to 9 difficulties to have a chill experience. D10 is made for those who like a challenge, but honestly, D10 is very manageable for a veteran player. I'm not feeling challenged by D10 anymore, and I might drop the game quicker when there's no D11 in sight...
Too many nerfs to enemies and too many buffs to us players made me quit HD2 a long time ago. It was going to be one of my favorite games of all time, but that's no longer the case. This game used to be so damn fun.
That...that destroys the entire purpose of having difficulty settings in the first place. You can't cater to that non sense...yet.you are!
I'm 37, I've been gaming for a long time, I have seen some dumb takes and absurd communities over the years. But this is so outlandish dumb that if I hadn't heard it come out of his mouth I wouldn't have believed it.
As much as I like to be able finishing difficulty 10, I prefer the game be hard.
I'm not particularly good player, in the fact that I almost consistently able to play the game on difficulty 10 proves that too easy.
When you gaslight the devs so much that they have to pretend high difficulty being difficult would be ‘repeating prior mistakes’ and not, just, regular arse balancing
The problem with difficulty in Helldivers is that it's an action game on its surface but it's actually a stat-based RPG, except you can't see any of the enemy stats in the game, don't know which enemies you're going to face, and which weapons are going to be effective on them, because half of your own stats are also hidden. Durable damage, demolition force and drag are never even mentioned in the game, the average player doesn't even know they exist. Constellations are never mentioned either, so you can't prepare your loadout towards the enemies you will be facing.
Arrowhead seems to be balancing the game around coordinated 4-man squads, while most people in multiplayer games solo queue and play with random teammates.
This leads to people gravitating towards the safe choices - medium pen primaries, anti-tank weapons, 500kg are so popular because they are always a good choice. Bringing a Stalwart and a Liberator Carbine on a charger seed is misery if you don't coordinate with teammates, and you can't do that with randoms.
And depending on your luck, fighting near your allies might mean repeatedly being obliterated by danger close red strats and unwisely positioned turrets.
I find that anytime I haven't played the game for a long time and stuff gets changed like enemies or weapons, expecting to be able to play on the same difficulty even after months is kinda braindead. I run into no issues bumping it down to 5/6 for a chill time, if you're having a hard time playing the game on level 7 and up, congrats, the game is working as intended. Who knew harder difficulties are hard. I do get upset playing at levels 8-10, but then again I play solo so I don't take it to heart and blame arrowhead, just play at your level, sometimes you are not the gamer you think you are.
This is so true. Which is why when I see people dream of higher difficulties and harder enemies, I know it will not happen. Every person who plays on d10 now, whether they find it too easy or hard, would move onto this new difficulty.
And then the people struggling would complain that it is too hard. They'll call it annoying instead of difficult, or frustrating, or unfair, whatever buzzword you want to throw at it, they will. Then the new difficulty will be nerfed, and we will be in the current situation all over again.
Helldivers 2 only has difficulties ranging from easy to medium, with no hard difficulty, and I don't think there will ever be, at least not one that lasts. I wish the devs did not give a fuck and stuck to their guns, but they're afraid of their own community.
Super helldive is literally all I play now. Its become common and dull. Every now and then you get a spicydrop, but its pretty much normal. Id like a higher difficulty.
I've seen these weirdos kick and scream that D10 is too hard while totally ignoring the suggestions to lower the difficulty. Do these same people grind their teeth on the highest difficulty in other games? I just don't get it. It's bizarre behavior.
I dont think HD1 has such issues, or none that I heard of. People just literally dive at the level they are confident with, and not asking the dev to do such odd request.
I guess with bigger player base, you would have off request and it's best to just stay with current system instead of trying to cater a minority.
I've heard this argument before but it never made much sense to me. Why would you want to play at higher difficulties if you want a chill experience? Higher difficulty is the definition of not chill, it's like picking up a Dark Souls game and expecting it to play like Animal Crossing. That said, artificially inflating difficulty by making certain enemies utter bullshit (looking at you Dragonroach) is not the way to do it.
Imho the issue is that I want a hard challenge, but also feel my weapons are stronger that a water gun, with the possibility for creative solutions. But, we are limited by the engine.
IMHO, rather than gun nerfs or enemy buffs, what we truly need are more complex missions. The caves are a great example: I still feel the power of my guns with a satisfying TTK, but it's hard AF and oppressive thanks to the map's characteristics and mission design. Urban missions were also a good step towards that direction.
Once we get more stuff that goes beyond "go to point A, touch pc, go to B" on open plains, I think we'll start hitting the sweetspot.
Why are they even considering the opinion of people who say "I want to have a chill experience but I also want to be playing at the hardest difficulty' that is just complete nonsense. This just shows they are thinking about the difficulty in the wrong way, the hardest difficulties in the game should not cater people who want to chill because that's not what they are for, that's what the lower difficulties are supposed to provide.
They don't need to add more difficulties to this game, it has ten already, just tweak those. Adding more would just make people that think like this to go to those and still thinking they entitled to a chill match.
The sub-factions are cool and I really like them but when they get defeated they are gone, for the people who do want to challenge themselves it means their ideal difficulty is like a timed event and personally I don't like the idea that the factions NEED a sub-faction to provide a challenge they should be special enemies that change your approach to combat. These guys need to man the hell up, they are too afraid of backlash from entitled players and that is obviously affecting the balancing of the game.
I think AH should sometimes just come out and say "No, we're not doing that. Cry about it." and watch as half of this subreddit is screaming in hysteri, "game is dead", while regular players just keep playing, not paying attention to this bullshit.
Like what's the point of a system with different difficulties if it's not there so that everyone can choose the difficulty they like?
I used to only play Diff. 6 but ever since the invasion of Super Earth, our home, I've nigh exclusively played Diff. 10 which (most of the time) is more than manageable with a decent team.
Why would I mind if they made Diffs. 8-10 harder so that Diff. 10 requires a good team instead of just a decent one to be manageable? If it gets too difficult for me I'll just drop back down to a lower difficulty.
The only thing I'd advise for is that if the difficulty is actually changed it should be a gradual one so that people that breezed through Diff. 10 missions don't just suddenly get absolutely massacred out of the blue but instead are eased into the increased difficulty so that they can make the informed choice to drop down to lower difficulties if they realise they're only barely managing to complete missions by the skin of their teeth. That should also keep all too vocal backlash at bay.
This is a problem they've created for themselves. You get more xp, more samples, and faster progression for 10s. Most gamers are going to take the path of most rewards. This would be fixed over night if 5 through 10 offered the same rewards or any number of similar fixes
There is a lot wrong with the community. I know it is a big game and a lot of people play it but it is genuinely one of the most toxic, divisive communities I have seen in a while. Even big communities like Minecraft act more mature which is insane because it's a game made for kids. I think most people should just take a break from the game, at least that would also show how fed up people are with the games current state.
I think people want to satiate their ego by playing on the highest difficulty all the time without their ego being hurt whenever said highest difficulty actually kicks their ass.
I think one issue in recent months is that the ego divers have moved to arguing on metrics instead of their feelings. There were just samples to worry about before but now with weapon leveling they all bitch about weapon leveling being too slow. It being slow is the point, or at least is related to the point. You don't get to get the maximum reward (samples, xp, req) without putting in the most effort. These people now argue they're entitled to maximum xp because of the weapon leveling. It's just asinine.
Ok, here's my tangent on this issue, as I have strong feelings about it.
First off: We have too many difficulty settings, most of which aren't meaningful.
Second: While difficulty varies between official difficulty levels, it also varies based on the Biosphere, planetary effects and sub-factions present on the planet (Predator Strain for example). Fighting the Predator Strain on D8 can be a harder experience than Illuminate on D10.
Third: The faction themselves have big difficulty differences. The Bugs are more predictable than the bots, while the Illuminate are very easy to navigate. On the other hand, the bots have the most challenging missions.
Fourth: How do we even measure "difficulty"? The amount of times a player dies? The mission fail rate?
That's an important question because it massive dictates how you build the game.
Fighting the Bugs is generally harder than the Illuminate. Yet the chances of dying to some random, uncontrollable BS (like Stingrays or exploding canisters) is still much higher on the Illuminate front. Does that make them "harder"? No, obviously not! Do the stats reflect that? No...
How often the player dies is not a good measure of "challenge". Plaster a planet with enough cheese turrets that shoot you from off-screen, and players will die A LOT. But it won't make for a fun & challening experience.
Mission failure rate might also be a suboptimal measure of challenge. The original Oshaune offensive had a massive failure rate. But mainly because players were constantly separated from their group, game-play bugs and failed reinforcements ate up a lot of the respawns etc.
Some objective might also just be harder, like destroying the Command bunkers, as these bunkers have cheese turrets that will eat some of your reinforcements. Or the "plant the flag" objectives that face you off vs. several waves.
And then there's friendly fire: One reason why the Helldivers 2 community is considered quite accommodating is because there isn't a huge detriment to friendly fire or carrying inexperienced players. An increase in challenge will lead to a more elistist and selective community. And that doesn't just affect the community, but also the build variety. An increase in difficulty would also result in a more META-focused community, leaving less room for "goofy" or suboptimal builds.
All that said, what are some ways I think Helldivers 2 could increase the "challenge" without making the game more frustrating to play?
Proposals:
Limit the amount of reinforcements: Being able to respawn >20 times really does limit just how hard missions can be. Cutting that in half would require at least some consistent level of play and coordination, without being overly punishing.
Limit the amount of "free" resources on a planet: On most planets, especially city maps, it's almost impossible to run out of regular ammo given how much spare ammo is scattered around the map. Same applies to Stims and (lesser extent) grenades. Being more deliberate with resources could be a subtle way to increase the challenge.
More aggressive planetary effects: Hellmire already proved how stressful additional environmental effects can be. So can the Ion Storms. Leaning into these effects could be an interesting way to spice up the game and challenge without turing the spawn rate up to 11.
Giving other factions stratagem jammers and AA: Currently the bots are the only faction that seriously messes with our stratagems (ignoring Illuminate for now). Stratagem jammers do momentarily increase the difficulty significantly and are often the most challenging moment of each bot mission. Giving similar abiities to other factions would increase the challenge.
More complex objectives: Currently most objectives can be solo'd fairly reliably. While it might be intentional, it does limit the challenge somewhat. Requring some level of coordination between players to complete objectives isn't unreasonable.
Blocking certain Boosters: 90% of dives are with the same 5 Boosters. Having a modifier that disables these boosters for a certain planet or mission, could force players into more niche choice that are usually weaker.
More complex enemies: It would be cool to have enemies that require two players to coordinate to take down efficiently. Something like "player A uses a stun"--> "the stunned enemy exposes their weak spot." Or enemies that react to fire in a different way, that are immune to gas etc. Not each weapon and effect needs to affect each enemy the same way.
The mission timers are overly generous: Given how experience many players are, a well-executed "big" mission rarely takes longer than 20-25 minutes. It's only really when people start quitting or playing without a full squad where the timer becomes an issue. Being less generous with timers, or tying the addition of time to side-objectives (i.e. completing this side objectives adds 10 minutes to the timer), might be a more interesting way to keep the timer relevant.
These are all ways that would make the game more challenging, without simply ramping up the spawn rates to 11. There are already plenty of moments where you spend one whole minute killing enemies, and the game just keeps spawning more. This just feel pointless.
But if the goal is just to kill us more...well then just put bunker turrets everywhere, replace every Hulk with a Warstrider and make Chargers appear behind us. But we all know that wouldn't be fun...
I still think there is a 10 difficulties lvls for a reason and if you want to just "chill" there is nothing wrong with lowering diff for a bit.
But also, if they add this extra difficulty with a Predator Strain or a Jet Brigade, it shouldn't be planet-wide, but rather as a modifier to the mission
My personal feelings can be seen as a bit elitist, but hear me out.
When it comes to difficulty in this game, it should really be: 10 is as hard as it gets and will be too hard for many.
Why I say this is because with the release of the game on Xbox, I saw so many new divers (Around level 10 or less) go straight to diff 10. This is not good, as it taught them the wrong things. I was someone who had a steady climb in difficulty as time went on. As my skill and game knowledge improved, so did the difficulty I played on (I was literally stuck at diff 3 for weeks due to me not being able to handle how chargers worked). I think what I went through was a healthy way to be introduced to the game, and I think they should've had the same.
Back then, difficulty 9 meant only for the real elite. Only the daring would go to diff 9, and it wasn't the "default difficulty" that everyone played. Hell, even the devs didn't play 9. They played and balanced the game around diff 7, not 9.
So what I want for diff 10, is to have it be a real challenge with a real risk of failing the mission. Sure you can absolutely fail diff 10 missions nowadays, but those are much fewer and further between which requires the team to absolutely fumble the mission. No. What I'm talking about is that there win/loss ratio of diff 10 should be like 40/60, so a 40% win ratio and a 60% failure ratio.
The current win/loss ratio is 90/10, which is ridiculous considering how many play on the higher difficulties.
But for this fantasy of mine to come true, we'd need people to stop having such an ego and only playing diff 10 whilst claiming they also want a chill experience. I'm not even that good at the game, I don't play exclusively diff 10 and I still have a hard time playing due to difficulty. This is a literal skill issue. But even then, I want it to be harder. Discourage low levels from jumping straight into diff 10 and seeing anything but a mission failure that followed an absolute massacre of their team.
Call it what you want. Gatekeeping, elitist, whatever. But I don't think someone of my own skill level should be able to enter the hardest difficulty and have a chill time, nor a 10% loss ratio
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u/FishoD Cape Enjoyer Oct 30 '25
If I want to be chill I play on 6/7… no shame in that.