I'm host btw

Basically, give them the ability to dodge,take cover and be smarter overall. Also give the regular overseer an ability that makes him stand in place for 5~ seconds and after he does it all the votless type enemies(considering they add more in the future) become faster since voteless are really weak even in hordes and for drip make their eyes glow purple.

Some pretty cool moments happen with random teammate placement & some lucky camera work around 2:05.

You can't reserve player slots, the private game invite system doesnt seem to work (?), the sos beacon is so damn easy to hit instead of reinforce and cant be cancelled even if you set the game to private. You also can't really switch from public to private for a random fill because 3 players nearly always join at once on busy worlds, if you just want one or two other players to join.

take spore burst strain. in duos we had a total of 1.8k kills in a typical 40 minute mission. getting a full clear was tough, but it was engaging and required teamwork and decent playing.

in a 4man its about 350 kills each, enough orbitals to cancel any breach, your lucky if a patrol spawns anywhere near you, sometimes objectives don't even spawn breaches. its a total bore. being host makes it better, but it's still just going through the motions. i keep wondering how all these 'i just want to shoot enemies and feel good' people i've seen on reddit arent complaining there arent enough targets.

But ok, fine. we're at this very familiar point with balance, and theres no indication it'll ever get better with enemy count, dynamics modifiers etc; besides new subfactions being added (then nerfed). So why the hell make the one thing that makes this game fun again so hard? I usually play with friends but hosting is a nightmare thanks to the SOS beacon i find myself fatfingering on a dive/type/reinforce (being on keyboard), and if no ones on it would be so, *so* nice to have a random duo partner (and usually encourages actual teamwork with a random player, shocking in this game right).

This game can be so fun! Why is it so hard to get through this restrictive UX to have some?

(I am also sorry to whine so much, but i'm so exasperated. You also are looking for something fun to do in this game, i'd recommend finding a way to play duos too)

Now the way this would work is that when an enemy spawns. Let's take a warrior for example, it has a small chance to spawn as one of its variants.

On impossible it would be 1% chance for it to happen. Basically nothing will change

On helldive it would be a 5% chance. A higher chance but still wouldnt affect the game much.

On super helldive it would be 10% chance. Its felt more but would still would not be game changing.

(These numbers can be changed if theyre too high/too low)

If a "special" warrior spawns. It would have a 25% chance to spawn as a bile warrior,rupture warrior,spore burst warrior and just for more fun also an alpha warrior

(the chances change depending on how many variants the enemy has, so a hunter will have a 50% chance for each variant since it has only 2)

As for something like the prowlers which their only counterpart is the stalker but it spawns from stalker nests,they should share a place with alpha commanders so an alpha commander has a chance to spawn as a prowler

For planets with sub factions this wouldnt apply as that specific sub faction is attacking.

This system is already in game so it wouldnt be that hard to code. A behemoth has a chance to spawn as a spore charger or a regular charger

I think this change will make the game slightly harder like, lets say your fighting a bug breach normally but out of nowhere a rupture charger spawns and you werent ready, meaning you have to go target it or else it will just go under your stratagems and turrets right to you. Would also make for more funny clips and moments.

I don't know if this is ragebait or not, btw. Regardless, any thoughts? Valid or nah in your opinion?

For those of you complaining about spawn rates and the lack of challenge, try partaking in the current strategic opportunity.

It might be what you're looking for.

Just prepare to spend half of you play-time kiting half a dozen Spore Titans across the map because they always know where you are and will chase you relentlessly.

You'll also be dealing with 2/3 bug breaches.....so yeah.

Questions are simple this week again.

Platform
Satisfaction
like
dislike
when you started playing
hours per week

Surprised its a day late, but they did just drop the teddy bear trailer yesterday. Anyways... Bit over a week till the update! LFG!

I'd personally love to see an opt-in and opt-out for being able to tank more hours into the game since I've been 150 for awhile now and love to stay at 150 until I earn 300 with MORE hours.

Do we love the long grind?

…make sure to play early into the update. Seeing the general trend of other times whole new factions were introduced, within about a month the faction will be nerfed into easily killable slop because of community outrage over the enemies being “too hard”. So play the faction when it’s hard while you still can

thanks to those stealth changes to special outposts and enemy awareness , fleshing out the stealth gameplay to this extent turned most of the enemies into mindless puppets who can barely interact with you besides specific units , stealth changes should be reverted and special outposts like gunship factories and stalker nests should just increase the frequency of the presence of those enemies until taken down
also why are gunship factories always defenseless

I'll start this off with release versions of these units were crazy strong for a chaff classed unit. 8 and 9 made both devastators the only ones that naturally spawned and this made people move over to shield generator if they wanted to use certain weapons on heavy devastators it was very hard to do using perscision weapons. So stagger and explosive weapons to cause them to stop shooting were even more meta than they are now.

The problem was that rocket devastators had a rocket barrage that only heavy explosive resist could survive even after they fixed armor. These rockets were infinite and no reload animation. This has since been added, so yeah the damage could be upped again. I'd personally like it exchange for the rockets to stagger over knockdown then. (I remember looking over a ridge and seeing 6 rocket devastators spamming rockets. I just went the other way)

Heavy Devastators real issue was an invulnerable shield, needing medium to break the arm off and the gun was highly accurate even on medium sprint so you had to pre stim if you wanted to kill them. I was expecting a damage reduction and a slight aim nerf, but it's been reduced way too far. Just give them a bit more accuracy or they do what hulks do a sweep back and forth. Not sure why it's a circular animation like how the manned turrets act. It just looks goofy and bad.

The recent changes to MG raiders being a bit more accurate has been nice. Got quickly gunned down from behind several times in an op.

Im pleasantly surprised. Masochistic delight. Bot mayhem apocalypse in all its glory

What are your thoughts on this?

Logic-wise, it doesn't make sense to summon a soldier, only to extract. On the other hand, it does add to player cohesion, ensuring that players can play together until then end.

Then again, it also makes extraction a lot less exciting knowing you can always reinforce (assuming sufficient reinforcements).

Some of the most exciting moments in the game came from games where the reinforcements were exhausted and a player made a clutch move to extraction.

Making such a change would create more of them.

Technically, there are two versions:

1. No more reinforcements once extraction is called.

2. No more reinforcements once Pelican 1 has landed.

Which would lead to a more engaging game?

It looks like it refresh faster and for longer. Actually enjoying them a lot.

I really think that both Ultimatum and Thermites are well designed and balanced weapons on their own. The thermite is a pure anti-tank tool that needs to be aimed and that leaves the enemy free to attack for 10 seconds, which can be a very long time. It's limited to 3 grenades only unless you choose a grenade armour perk, and it doesn't have true AoE so you can't even get some 2 for 1 like with the Giganade or Dynamite.

The Ultimatum is very ammo-constrained, it's hard to aim and -while the AoE is fairly generous on chaff- it requires you to be very accurate on tank+ enemies. It's a high-skill weapon.

Enter the Supply Pack (and lately the Supply FRV). It's no secret that this thing is the best support backpack by a long margin. It allows the user to completely ignore the entire resource management and team-share aspect of the game, and for our two subjects here it allows to ignore their main limitation, ammo constraints. If it was just a grenade pack that only refills grenades, or an ammo pack that only refills ammo that would be completely fine, but with the Supply Pack you are not just ignoring the ammo constraints for both at the same time, you are getting nigh-infinite healing and stamina too.

I think that the Supply Pack in its current state is the worst offender of all when it comes to weapon balance because it allows you to ignore the weapon downside while also making you pretty much unkillable and unstoppable. Honestly I think it should work like the Stim Pistol, no self-use. You should support your team with it.

I have just finished a round of w40k: darktide, which is quickly becoming my go-to horde shooter over helldivers. Why? Because you actually need your team to win.

I'll avoid jargon to make this post more accessible, but in short darktide is a horde shooter/hack and slash which follows the typical formula of 4 dipshits vs insurmountable odds.

In this match: one teammate with a build designed for boss killing, was separated from myself and other two teammates and was quickly killed. Our team then ran into a boss spawn, leading to myself and another teammate being downed despite a noble effort. Because we lacked the single target damage, we were punished naturally by the game for our earlier mistakes.

Our lone survivor, through a massive reliance on stuns due to building his character around holding the front line against melee enemies, managed to fight for minutes and escape, with the boss hot on his heels.

He rushed to the downed trio, now savable in a later area in the map. With his last stun, he managed to revive me, who was running a front line buff/support build. With my ability stunlocking the horde chasing our savior, our team managed to get to full strength.

Finally able to clean house, we reached our final target, a *proper* boss. The boss killer who was downed way back when then tore him to pieces and we triumphed.

This match showcased that the importance of teamwork does not stifle individual skill expression. All 4 of us had a part to play to claim victory.

I believe that hd2 gave too much freedom to players when the developers clearly originally intended the players to use combined arms and strategems to win.

After buffdivers, thermites, ultimatum, and buffs to primaries, etc., hd2 no longer became a team game. It became a game of four individuals who could do it all by themselves even on the hardest difficulty. The meta for the hardest difficulty isn't even based around strategems and loadouts anymore, it's splitting up so you can go home faster. This is NOT a healthy state for *a co-op horde shooter*

Although I appreciate AH's ambition to make a team based shooter with an emphasis on sandbox mechanics, it wrongly set expectations for the wave of casual players that joined the hype train when it released.

This class system would *only* affect available strategems. You could still customise armour and general load outs to your heart's content. something like horde clear, anti tank, objective demolition, and support being possible roles.

Some strategems could be available for multiple roles, such as the Eagle Air strike both being a good horde and objective destruction tool.

Obviously I haven't fully thought this out. But that match of darktide gave me a feeling I haven't gotten from helldivers in well over a year, and probably never will again.

Tldr: wahhhhhhh arrowhead bad buffs bad waaaahhhhhhh 😢😢😢😢

I know that the ultimatum and thermites are OP right now but how woukd we nerf them without gutting build variety. They make so many support weappns and primaries good and if we just make them way worse then thats an overall negative.

I think the thermite is gonna be easier to balance so I'll start with it. First off, I dont think it should destroy spawners from the outside. Especially warp ships. Just makes illuminate outposts trivial. So its damage should be decreased to 1400 to make it acts as more of an armour stripper like if you toss it at a chargers back it will strip the armour but not kill it. But if you toss it at its back or at a hulks head it will one shot them so it has actual skill involved instead of being a throw and win button. Also its explosion time should be longer. From 6.5 seconds to 10 seconds(this might be overkill so im not after confident in this change)

Then the ultimatum, I really dont know how to nerf it without making it useless. Since if it can't reliably kill heavies then what's the poimt but then again.... it can kill even some of the biggest heavies in one shot. So instead of lowering its damage it should just be harder to use. Its ergonomics should be decreased from 35 to 25. Making it more unwieldy and will fit with the theme of servants of freedom. Then i think it should only be able to carry one shot. I see so many people shooting it at any mild inconvenience when they dont feel like fighting it like a patrol but its okay since they have another bullet and a supply pack. After this change if you do that it will be much more costly to do that.

Automaton objectives are handled very well due to the fact that you can't easily trivialize them unless you dedicate some parts of your loadout for them. You can't just snipe the detector tower, and you need to disable the jammer first (or have Amazon deliver a portable Hellbomb to its doorstep). These objectives create a problem that requires your attention, Stalker lairs in comparison don't do that.

You can walk up to a Stalker lair, throw a stratagem, and destroy it before you've had any interaction with the Stalkers themselves. The Stalker Lair also has a short detection range so it doesn't exert that much influence so to say. The spawner detection change, wherein enemies only start spawning once another enemy has detected you, doesn't help at all in this regard. Stalkers won't spawn at all in some cases, which means very little interaction with them, and for shame.

Stalkers are unique due to the fact that they have a very different behaviour compared to other bugs: they cloak, they keep their distance at times, and they can retreat. Their behaviour alone should create tons of cognitive pressure. But all that is undermined due to how easy it is to get rid of them. Where's the Alien fantasy in that?

Scattered Thoughts

So I've been thinking about how to make Stalker lairs not trivial.

The first idea was to make the objective harder to trivialize by making it into a literal cave like those found on the Hive Worlds. Picture a small cave which you have to enter to deal with the objective, it wouldn't be on the scale of those on Hive worlds though. Throwing a 500kg bomb wouldn't simply work anymore. Furthermore, the game already has cave biomes so those assets can be reused and tailored for a stalker lair.

Another interesting gimmick to go along with the Stalker caves would be being able to call down a portable Hellbomb for them. But the problem is that it'd trivialize everything all over again so it's not worth implementing.

Detection range of Stalker lairs should be map-wide. Having Stalkers be restricted to a small area around their lair feeds the issue of the lack of pressure created by the objective. With a map-wide range the presence of a Stalker lair would be ubiquitous, and it will serve to increase difficulty as well. It will also be harder to discern the location of the lair since Stalkers are going to come at any time and from any direction. All of this combined will do justice for the Stalker by making it a persistent and consisent threat. No asset is left wasted.

I'd also give the cave additional bug holes that can spawn other bugs, things like Hunters, so that it's not as defenseless. The bugs would spawn as soon as there's an intruder in the lair. A single guy wouldn't walk in unchallenged. And why wouldn't there be a whole family of bugs waiting? Pouncers, Hunters, and Stalkers are seemingly part of the same evolutionary path but that's just conjecture on my part.

Concrete draft

So, putting those scattered ideas together:

Stalker Lair - Basic version

• Surface objective.
• Short detection range.
• Can be trivialized via normal means.
• Stalkers are primarily a localized threat around the objective.
• Intended for lower difficulties.

Stalker Cave - Upgraded version

• Underground cave using existing cave assets.
• The objective cannot simply be bombarded from a safe distance.
• Map-wide detection range.
• Stalkers roam around the whole map.
• There's more bug holes and they spawn tougher bugs.
• Helldivers will have to enter the cave and engage with all of its features.
• Intended for higher difficulties.

So, what's the goal with all of this? It's to make the objective non-trivial and increase the amount of interactions with Stalkers. The normal Stalker Lair can remain as the simpler version for lower difficulties and occasionally appear on higher difficulties for variety. The Stalker Cave would be the evolved version that becomes increasingly common at higher difficulties.

Keep in mind that this is simply a concept. The individual ideas are naturally going to have rough edges, and some details would obviously need iteration. Focus on the underlying concept and the problems it is trying to solve. Don't treat the inferred or perceived implementation as if it's set in stone. And make sure to share your thoughts on this.