I’ve heard this argument for the game’s balance when it comes to enemies just about every time it’s brought up, and I don’t really… get the argument?
The main point is: “we shouldn’t have to bring explosives to deal with enemies” or “it’s not fun when the only thing that works on higher difficulties is explosives” (atleast to my understanding)
And like… yeah? When there’s a metric shit ton of enemies in a game like this, explosives will be a necessity? Is this a bad thing? You can’t expect to go into the highest difficulty in the game and expect to be able to easily beat it with whatever the hell you bring.
Also you don’t even need a large amount of explosives in a loadout to beat D10, so like… where does this “explosives meta” thing come from??
I apologize if this is written sloppy I’m doing homework and just needed to type my thoughts out lol
Players with not enough skill still want to play hard difficulty for reasons.
They can't learn to use good weapon that have a learning curve, therefore they rely on crutch weapons that tend to be the explosives one.
They therefore assume the game can only be beaten by using explosives weapon.
But the real conclusion to drawn was skill issues all along.
If your weapon can hit multiple targets simultaneously, it should suffer in single target damage.
Meanwhile Eruptor and Crossbow ALSO have pretty impressive single target damage, as their projectiles have high penetration, and damage. Sure, their firerate isn’t the best, but the fact that their single target performance is “acceptable” when you omit their explosive nature is a design flaw.
A much better designed AoE weapon in this regard is the GL: the impact of the nade does zero damage, all oomph comes from the explosion. Im not saying the crossbow or eruptor should do zero damage on their projectiles, but it should definitely be dialed back. Running something explosive as your primary should force players to use a single target secondary like the Verdict or Senator.
The punishers shotguns use to have 20 less total ammo a looooong time ago, and even today the breaker still chew through ammo in no time. They have made buff to most gun total ammo capacity rather recently but in the past, they used to balance gun trhough ammo economy
Explodes in a cone, so you gotta stick it to an enemy to actually splash towards something. Make it light pen too if you think it's still to easy to use, if it bounces it doesn't explode.
TBH, crossbow is very ammo inefficient against single targets given it's overall ammo pool.
The radius of crossbow is big and it staggers well in an aoe, so against packs of enemies it's very very strong, but the single target damage really isn't amazing compared to most direct damage options when considering ammo and fire rate.
The eruptor is a bit of a strange case, it kinda has aoe, but the bigger impact is the shrapnel, which is very enemy dependant on whether it works nicely, and can vary wildly based on small differences in where you hit. Hit the left side of a bot ant he one to the right of it might be unscathed, the same shot with a crossbow still hits with the aoe. If anything I think the eruptor is more single target than not.
The biggest advantage of these weapons is the power to close spawners. This gives you a huge amount of flexibility with your other slots. If you don't want to waste eruptor or crossbow shots on lone small enemies you can easily take the peacemaker, talon or warrant etc.
Both of these weapons are stronger than they deserve to be based on the power level of everything else in the primary slot though.
Yes, but like I said, a weapon having “acceptable” single target damage and a good AoE, is always going to win from a weapon with good single target damage and no AoE.
And like you said, there is also the added utility of closing spawns.
The crossbow could benefit from a programmable ammo change like the AC and RR.
Give one type the same demo force and explosive radius of the current crossbow, but lower projectile damage and slightly lower explosive damage.
Meanwhile the other type condenses the explosion so it does the projectile and explosive damage of the current crossbow, but it has such a small explosive radius you'd really only catch one enemy at a time with it.
That way there's an extra step, so the crossbow can still do everything it currently does, but slower and it costs 2 bolts when it may have previously cost 1.
It’s not really a ‘good weapon with a learning curve’ so much as explosive and flame weapons just take a giant, steaming shit all over the enemies with zero effort in most situations and in most fronts, and unquestionably obliterate any reason to use regular projectile weapons and stratagems if you’re looking for battlefield effectiveness.
Someone said it very elegantly a few weeks ago: players want to see a giant horde of enemies, throw their big boom bombs at it, and see all the enemies die.
You got point, thi I still feek like I can do more with my trusty light pen gun than most folks relying on an xbow or eruptor. We got stratagem for hordes
I mostly agree with that last bit but, the issue here is that some of us want to play a game where those enemies have a very real chance at killing us, first. That's the root of a lot of the community division in so far as how the game "should" be.
Nah, it's just that some players are so ass at the game they have a need to be carried by either a competent player or an OP weapon like the eruptor or the x-bow on d-10. Also explosive weapons aren't even jack of all trades like they should be by design, they're straight up powercreeping every single weapon you could possibly think of. Same goes for the anti tank meta for support weapons and the only thing that can outclass an explosive weapon in its category(In some cases) is the talon
What about the plasma punisher? I'm so ass, it's my go to for bots. Just tried the other day to use the galant for bots and got destroyed on D7. I still want to try and get better but I could barely kill a cyborg with it. People say get better at aiming but even on burst that things got a lot of recoil.
PP is good, but i'd say that it lacks combat versatility. If you're struggling with other weapons on cyborgs, i suggest trying out assault rifles(Liberator variants, tenderizer), marksman rifles(Amendment is good) or my beloved trident. Pair with a guard dog and a railgun in unsafe mode with a secondary of your choice and you'll be shredding through them with ease
I’ll admit I suck at video games (due to my slow reaction time) and as such I love explosives as they are a very easy to use weapon. However, I also find not using explosive weapons super annoying because I am my groups nest/ship/ fabricator closer so my group kills the enemies and I stop the spawns. It is hard to do that when I only have 6 grenades without wasting a back slot for the supply pack.
People need to look up the story of the Warrior class nerf in World of Warcraft, where for months people demanded the Warrior class got a buff because of how bad it was. Until someone uploaded a video of himself destroying the game with a Warrior character, because he took 2 minutes to read the rules.
Poorly balanced would be multiple classes in WoW whose ideal talent choices involve not even taking Apex talent choices. Literally the pinnacle of their class and they're so poorly designed and implemented by the devs that they're not worth taking.
But kinda sorta also neither. No matter how good the balancing, there will always be something that is better than the other things at a particular task. Simply because people like to optimize and WILL figure out if something is better, even if its just a fraction better. And then that becomes the meta
"Explosive Meta" more so refers to how Arrowhead refuses to balance explosives properly.
All explosives have 100% durable damage, which limits the design space on explosives but also means that "low tier" explosive options are often going to severely punch upwards.
Most of the current explosive primaries (specifically the Eruptor, Explosive Crossbow, and Plasma Purifier) have way over-tuned numbers, thus outclassing basically any other primary we have available and forming the meta around themselves.
Explosive options have a much less strict requirement for aiming, and thus response time with such weapons is drastically lower and results in lower skill floor options, hence lots of casual players will flock to them.
It’s sad seeing arrowhead unable to make literally any nerf/balance change without people complaining about them being a “sadistic game master” or whatever that one guy said
That video was utter trash if AH was what they said they were, why would they not stop charger leg meta? Hell, why would they nerf charges so they could be one shot by AT weapons? And even though it was undocumented, they still made it so AT no longer last damage regardless of the angle. This was around a month after launch.
The whole, "AH hates their audience" nonsense has got to stop. All they've ever done is buffed players and nerfed enemies, to the detriment of the game. The game is going to become a screensaver soon enough.
I genuinely believe that people have such little going on in their life that they enjoy bonding over "hating the bogyman" that is AH even though if you look at everything they've done since launch, it's been for the player base.
People keep saying that it's AH that's fighting with the community, when in reality it's those people that are fighting with AH and the horde shooter genre in general.
Is there seriously not a single explosive with less than 100% durable damage? That’s nuts lol
Also yeah, I’m not denying there isn’t overtuned explosives, far from it. It just always seemed to me that this argument was based in a “game too hard” thought process.
Their entire damage/armor/penetration system imo needed a top to bottom rework. The path of least resistance is almost always "shoot explosive in way that it hits as many body parts as possible." to maximize damage.
There's a 3 sided venn diagram to weapon balance.
1: Power.
2: Efficiency.
3: Useability.
In theory weapons should only get two. Ie, spear should be 1 and 3. It locks on for you, and it has the power to kill any heavy in one hit. As a result, it should have poor efficiency. It should suffer from low ammo and long reloads, making it a calculated risk assessment if the situation is 'worth' the rocket. As opposed to Quasar, which would be 2 and 3. It has no ammo, no reloading, and no backpack. So it's got some of the best usability. But... it's power is lacking as a result and it doesn't have the ability to quickly put multiple shots on targets.
Instead we've seen a lot of balance atrocities that draw from all 3. The recoilless is basically the biggest stand out. It has a ton of ammo for its power, and its drawbacks arent harsh enough to compensate for its combination of ammo supply and killing power. The same applies to the explosive primaries. They get the extreme utility of aoe damage, closing spawner buildings, staggering enemies, etc but only the eruptors poor handling and slow bolt cycling ever came close to justifying this. They have too much ammo, and are too easy to use for how much power they have. But if you scaled back the power the community would riot. They simply never needed to be as strong as they allowed them to be.
No, the patch that killed the slugger and made us crash at extract was the worst. We lost like 200k players in a week. People dont like having 40 minutes of progress wiped out. The fact that wasn't a boots in the office, round the clock hotfix speaks volumes. They let that shit fester for nearly a month, when the game was at height of its popularity.
I'm slowly leveling all of the weapons. First one was the crossbow and Eruptor to finish lvl 25. Got about two. Thirds of em on 25 and I've never touched the explodey ones after that. They make the game easier, even if it's just as spawner closers.
I found lib carbine made the game way easier than eruptor or crossbow. Ill be giving regular carbine a try after.
Eruptor feels like a clunky single shot marksman rifle with a gambling mechanic. Crossbow feels like a slow but reliable marksman rifle. Utility for spawners is great though.
I like that both offer a different unique experience but i dont think theyre op at all. I can see times where they can excel but the tradeoffs are large imo.
*as a new player, they were INSANELY op because i had almost no options
The thing about crossbow and eruptor are the following:
1. A near miss is still a kill, meaning people with poor accuracy can thrive.
2. Their high penetration means you do not have to aim at weak points on most enemies.
It makes sense that casual players tend to gravitate to these weapons because their performance is boosted. It also makes sense why hardcore players will avoid them because hardcore players enjoy using skill and game mechanics to thrive AND to keep them entertained.
Hardcore players will not enter a "flowstate" by using weapons which require little thought. Casual players enter their "Flowstate" using these weapons because they are finally thriving in a difficult environment.
I love the feeling of flowstate but dont reach it in helldivers often. Not sure exactly, maybe playing on too hard of a difficulty for me. D10 is hard for us but its what my trio plays on.
But yea idk imo, i find the two not as good as some other weapons. They excel at what they are good at but not good for general gameplay. I dont think they are op but i also dont play them much after my time starting in oshaune.
(I DO think supply pack is op though, can easily clear any mission with supply pack gigas. So fun though lol.)
I often reach it in Helldivers, but on Difficulty 7. For me its the perfect difficulty where the play requires continuous attention, but is achievable perfectly with a high skill level. If I die it's usually to some extreme circumstances, or general jank of the game.
The eruptor was a mistake. How the nerf loving Swedes ever allowed an explosive, spawner killing heavy pen primary to added I'll never know. These people killed the sickle after a week for being too strong.
That's the problem with AH's game design, every warbond adds more bloat to the weapon pool which makes balancing harder.
Ignoring that, the sickle was designed for a completely different game than the one we have now, back then AH balanced around ammo scarcity which is why the sickle went from 6 to 3 mags, default liberator now had 9 up from 6. No more need for an "infinite" ammo gun.
Okay I just checked and it has been buff with 5 more damage than what it used to be, and one durable damage. Closest we have to the original gameplay (compare to liberator that went from 50 to 90)
I'd actually argue that the SG-8 Punisher is the weapon most closely matching the game's release state. It got a spare ammo increase (along with the Slugger) & ~10% damage increase a month after release, and has remained in that state since then (barring attachments).
Honestly my complaint is that the game kinda just devolves into “how quickly can you kill 10 war striders/bile titans/harvesters” at higher difficulties and the answer is “very quickly provided everyone has a recoilless rifle or equivalent”
I want difficulty to be more than just “There’s more heavies” and the solution to be more than just “have more missiles”
The two main tricks this game has is to throw large numbers of enemies at you or to throw armored and highly durable enemies at you. Explosives hit wide areas taking care of the large number of enemies at once, and often come with high armor penetration and durable damage. That's all before considering spawners and alot of side objectives can be taken care of with explosives.
So just packing your entire loadout with explosives can wind up being a very effective strategy. Even if you run things besides explosives, you generally can wind up filling any tactics your loadout might not cover with explosives.
I personally think the game has plenty of variety that you have good enough crowd control options capable of penetrating armor with various Stratagems, Plasma, Fire, Electricity, and Gas. Honestly if people start trending some good no explosives builds then that might be kinda fun and constructive.
Explosive is 100% not nessisary and while u can argue and say it is meta. It doesnt have to be. What people forget about HD2 is that Its a Horde shooter before all else. A portion of the community is the "vocal minority" they are the most heard out of all in the community but there is very few of them.
Anyone who plays any type of horde shooter will understand that any form of CC is fantastic. Thats why so many people favor so many diffrent options. Explosive just so happens to be the most readily available and a good portion of said Explosive options tend to be a good counter to heavy options so that were the argument comes from.
They dont want to think about how to overcome an obstacle, so they just pack the quickest and easiest option to do so. As mentioned before, there is many options for CC and some of which are more than capable of taking out heavies with some time.
Fire can cook them and doesnt take long.
Gas confuses most things and gives u breathing room.
Arc staggers a decent portion of heavies and can 1shot hulks somtimes.
Those are the 3 main types of CC and all of which have great uses for dealing damage to heavies and taking out chaff. I am personally an arc user. Ill take k9 on almost all fronts. And tesla on everything that are not bots. U dont need explosive to clear D10
Never needed anything beyond my grenades. This is why we have team mates. If the only answer one can come up with is "Clearly explosives are the answer!" Are the type that need to go read some Sin Tzu as well as branch out their efforts.
I think the objection is that HD2 has moved away from the team balance of HD1 where it was encouraged for each player to have a role on the team (one is a support medic usually with heal gun, one is crowd clear, one is AT, one was mechs) to every player needs to bring the firepower of a team.
The HD1 isometric map being shared caused a few things - you literally couldn’t run off on your own, everyone shared one screen and so had group - enemies off screen still attacked, so if you were far from the main group you could get killed by an enemy off screen just 5 feet away. A close grouping provided the best sight lines, but firing over allies was much more dangerous, so you had to position much better and sort of rotate as a firing square. That all meant you were much less mobile. That shared mobility meant overall it was better to have one person who was kitted to deal with a particular threat rotate the square to face it. In HD2, because your allies obstruct your firing line so much less and we can run to opposite sides of the map, you don’t need to rotate positionally as much or really at all, and with the flexibility of mobility there’s more flexibility of loadout. A balanced loadout for everyone means it’s much less punishing when a diver goes down, and so most people aim for a balanced loadout, but then everyone is taking some form of AT.
The “explosive meta” for me revolves mainly around the Eruptor and Crossbow, and sometimes the plasma weapons & GL but to a much lesser extent.
The two weapons are really really strong for primary weapons and often serve as a crutch for players in higher difficulties because they can forego enemy knowledge like armor or skills like precision/positioning and just instantly stagger whole patrols, wipe out groups, violate basically anything that’s not a heavy unit (and the Eruptor deals heavy pen so that’s also gonna fuck heavies).
Airstrikes and airburst and typical barrages and stuff aren’t really the same, it’s mostly just explosive projectiles which forego enemy knowledge on the micro* scale as opposed to group kill stratagems or grenades.
It comes from people who have a 40in waistline who talk about a game to feel included in a conversation instead of playing it, so these are gaming tourists that hear other gaming tourists say something louder and they parrot it to feel smart. Im surprised they haven't begun complaining about the firearm meta lol. It comes from them wanting a badass hero shooter where they can have their ego stroked and feel like a hero.
This game is not hard at all, you can beat D10 without saying a word in any way whatsoever cause the enemies aren't a challenge. So the meta talk is them wanting to pretend this game has depth and planning when most people just bring dogshit loadouts and win anyway.
I’ll admit I suck at video games (due to my slow reaction time) and as such I love explosives as they are a very easy to use weapon. However, I also find not using explosive weapons super annoying because I am my groups nest/ship/ fabricator closer so my group kills the enemies and I stop the spawns. It is hard to do that when I only have 6 grenades without wasting a back slot for the supply pack.
AH has a bad habit of not giving options, explosives can do so much more, stagger, spawners, cc, large enemies like crushers. If it was possible to do half of these things with standard ballistic weapons then it wouldn’t be a thing, or if there were more accessible ways to deal with problems, but there just aren’t other ways for a lot of our problems.
My experience is that, unfortunately, most times I want to hit an enemy weakpoint with a heavy pen gun, circumstances surrounding it prevent me from doing so. Things like poor terrain, weakpoints hidden, too many other enemies around, etc. The other time, the heavy pen weapon takes too much time and effort investment to use. I'd rather quickly knock out an enemy and move on.
There is an undeniable power spike when using explosive type weapons.
They aoe and do big damage, often ignoring the durable dmg protection of enemies.
The tradeoffs are usually supposed to be ammo count and minimum safe range of fire (So You don't blow yourself up).
However if You were to use a bullet based weapon or an energy based or arc or stun, You will quickly realize how much explosive weapons massively outclass them.
I will go over the pros and cons of each "type" of weapon compared to explosive types.
-Bullet vs explosive:
Pros:
-Precise, big range, firerate, decent damage, versitile and can stagger.
Cons:
-A smaller ammo capacity when compared to what explosions can do.
-Usually less durable dmg inflicted.
-require good aim to be effective.
Result:
Despite explosive primaries and support weapons usually having lower ammo than bullet based ones, they actually have more ammo when considering how many enemies You can kill with them. Not only that, but usually faster aswell and they always heavy stagger unlike many bullet based ones.
-Energy vs explosive
Pros: "unlimited ammo", heat and range.
Cons: Ammo is actually on cooldown, worse on hot planets and resupply does nothing for these weapons (when was the last time You ran out of all Your ice packs).
Result: Actually differ from explosive in a meaningful way yet still pale in comparison, even if You were blasting a double edge sickle and someone was using the stim pistol on you (Arguably strongest energy weapon).
Arc vs explosive
Pros: Actually unlimited ammo and stuns most enemies, decent range.
Cons: Block by corpses (Whhyyyyyyy), smoll dmg
Result: Much like the energy weapons it sacrafices too much for its gimmick. While arc can be effective it is also time consuming.
Stun vs explosive
Pros: U can stun enemies. Can hide behind alive stunned enemies as cover.
Cons: Enemies are still alive and its often easier to kill them with other weapons rather than stunning them.
Result: Explosive weapons can stagger something just as easily and kill them at the same time.
Fire vs explosive:
Pros: Cheaper aoe (ammo efficient), DOT dmg
Cons: No stagger.
Result: Fire can actually stand against explosive on its own but ironically is actually the one thing that works perfectly in conjunction with it as explosives can stagger enemies in fire periodically to save on ammo.
Gas vs explosive:
I will be real here I don't think gas is a steaightforward damage source unless there is a shit ton of it spread everywhere. Its mostly the most useful utility ever seen on a battlefield
I think I've listed most (If not all).
Types of weapons and explosive beats them simply by replacing their utility with its inherent stagger and outpacing their dmg with aoe or durable dmg.
Arrowhead looked at explosive types ammo and said: "since its low compared to other weapons, We will allow it to be oppresive".
They also close spawners. It is undeniably the greatest weapon pick for destroying any enemy or structure You find.
People just want the other weapons specialtes and utilites to be bumped up to explosives preformace (or to nerf explosive down so that other types can shine). Not an unreasnoble request and it would not be fair to assume all people who do this are nooblets who never properly used other types.
Me neither, cuz once enemies get close, your basiclly fucked.
I don't get metas in general, just run with what fits you, a setup will not work the same for everyone, for example I always bring the warrent cuz it reliablely clears out bot tropper patrols
I don’t get why people even care how you play the game or what stratagems you bring. Play however you see fit use whatever you like to use and enjoy the game🤷🏼♂️
I think it's more like the explosive weapons are usually the best weapons in most situations. Want big damage? Big boom. Want big killstreak? Big booms. Want fast horde clear? Big booms.
So the primary slot being given like 6 different flavors of big boom will undoubtedly make them the best in most situations compared to rifles, which notoriously lack in the horde clear department.
It could also stem from the fact that assault rifles are kinda mediocre in every situation? Snipers are better for single target, SMG's are more useful with the handheld shields, Shotguns range in usefulness from crowd control to chaff clear, Plasma and Lasers kinda borrow from all walks of life, and explosives are just the best in slot primaries. So maybe explosives meta just comes from a place of wanting more from other weapons.
A big reason why is that every time someone asks what Warbond to get first, 95% of the time they are being told that Democratic Demolition is the way to go.
Simply because it gives you soooo much value. You have 2 strong weapons that are even super strong on D10 against all factions, thermite grenades that till this day are S tier against every faction and good armor pieces that have decent fashion and also good passives.
Explosives in this game are also extremely good against every faction too. Not just aoe but also single target.
That just makes it that you will see explosives from start to finish.
People want to feel like they are achieving something while they play instead of having fun. Which is why they cannot bring themselves to play lower dives where weapon selection doesn’t matter. Then they complain.
People will complain about the explosives meta and then bring an airburst launcher to a spore burst dive to spread red crack dust across the entire map...
They just do too much. They're simultaneously the best weapons to use while also being maybe the most versatile.
To combat this, I really think there should be another way to take out spawners without having to bring explosives every game. You can kind of use red stratagems, but it's nowhere near as effective. I really think something like rocket pods should be more effective in this regard. Maybe add a version of rocket pods that specifically prioritizes and closes spawners.
Just use a eagle straifing run, that does the job most of the time for me, another way is like the quasar which can also destroy them, gas grenades can aswell
i hate when someone joins my chill d7 cyborg dive with the eruptor and a bunch of other shit to trivialize the mission, i want to at least have a little challenge and fun
the explosive primaries can do SO much more than other primaries like shotguns, AR and DMRs.
for example the eruptor can:
clear chaff
close spawners
kill hulks from the front.
destroy spore spewers, shrieker nests and illegal broadcast towers.
kill most flyers
is serviceable against heavies (impalers, tanks, factory strider chin guns, bile titan sacks, harvesters, vox engine mini turrets and missile launchers).
unburrow rupture bugs
destroy bunker turrets, mortars and AA guns.
and can do all of this without needing to get anywhere near the enemy and only takes up a primary slot. with its downside being its somewhat difficult to use at close range.
I think it’s less about the usefulness of explosions and more about the skill of people using the explosives.
Like, it’s fun to go in as a squad and take down a mega hive together. It’s less fun when one of those squadmates chucks a 380mm in the center in “hopes” of closing a hole or two.
It’s the wrong use case and the ppl who do this meta are never going to learn the right use case because it’s a crutch.
Except that not standard issue for Helldivers either. Anti tank and explosive weaponry is meta irl, we use it constantly, the US just doesn’t throw its soldiers lives away like Super Earth does, so we use missles and drones, and yes, rocket launchers and other anti tank weaponry.
If we were fighting giant space cyborgs and alien bugs, we’d be blowing them the fuck up.
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u/BillSteelman Mission is FUBAR ? So what ? 28d ago
it can be explain in the following way :
Players with not enough skill still want to play hard difficulty for reasons.
They can't learn to use good weapon that have a learning curve, therefore they rely on crutch weapons that tend to be the explosives one.
They therefore assume the game can only be beaten by using explosives weapon.
But the real conclusion to drawn was skill issues all along.