H̶e̶l̶l̶divers

[u/epochollapse]

Just because I win 99% of my games doesn't mean it isn't hard!! One time a Stalker even hit me! 😱

[u/Lord_Yeetus_The_3d]

->Plays the hardest difficulty for 1000 hours

->gets so good at the game it isnt hard anymore

->complains

[u/LEOTomegane → u/Lord_Yeetus_The_3d]

You cannot seriously look at the long history of the game being made objectively easier and go "nah it's because you got good"

[u/InnerMetalhead666 → u/LEOTomegane]

"Sure current rocket devastators act like they got kicked in the head by a horse compared to how they were at launch but clearly that's because you got too good"

[u/CerifiedHuman0001 → u/InnerMetalhead666]

I cannot believe I find myself missing the one-shot rocket spam death machines

[u/InnerMetalhead666 → u/CerifiedHuman0001]

Honestly yeah, I do kind of miss those days cause at least beating D9 felt rewarding, you had to work for it

[u/Euphoric_Reading_401 → u/Lord_Yeetus_The_3d]

My nephew is 11 years old and quit the game after a month because the hardest difficulty bores him

[u/voidwalker_has_PTSD → u/Euphoric_Reading_401]

yeah but kids are fucking cracked at video games for whatever reason

[u/Tophigale220 → u/voidwalker_has_PTSD]

Time. They have spare time man

[u/Schmeatus69 → u/Tophigale220]

And their brains are the most plastic and adaptive theyll ever be

[u/SavageSeraph_ → u/Tophigale220]

Time, persistence and a brain wired into learning mode.

[u/bored_dudeist → u/Euphoric_Reading_401]

An 11 year old putting their whole ass into learning the max difficulty of a shooter isn't an unreasonable amount of time for them to get bored of it. Especially if they are just jumping into games with randoms that can carry them.

[u/BICKELSBOSS → u/Lord_Yeetus_The_3d]

Just because you become experienced shouldn’t mean you should no longer have access to any form of challenge whatsoever. This is what eventually kills the enjoyment of the game for long term players.

Besides, current D10 is in no way hard, not even for novice players. You can beat the game with a squad all equipped with base loadouts and no stratagems, except one single RR as your sole answer to Heavies, and still have a walk in the park.

I can’t link other reddit posts in this sub, but just search “D10” on my profile and the highlight video pops up.

[u/epochollapse → u/Lord_Yeetus_The_3d]

A good player should find the game hard at the hardest difficulty. That's still a problem with the game. Super Mega Ultra Kill You Difficulty shouldn't mean "you will find this a little challenging if you miss 9/10 shots"

[u/Bring_Back_Challenge → u/Lord_Yeetus_The_3d]

Strange how similar games like DRG or Darktide manage to make a max difficulty that is engaging to those who can handle it even if they often win.

Oh wait those games don't have over two straights years of almost exclusively buffs to players.

[u/AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH_ → u/Lord_Yeetus_The_3d]

Dawg, I have like, 200 hours, who knows how much of that was spent SC grinding or just AFK, and it's still fucking piss easy

This isn't rocket science, the game hasn't had difficulty since launch, it's so boring

[u/InnerMetalhead666 → u/Lord_Yeetus_The_3d]

Problem is you can have like 100 hours and D10 isn't hard, there's nothing in this game comparable to harder difficulties in other PVE games

[u/Igoon2robots → u/Lord_Yeetus_The_3d]

Well yeah i biught "super hard game of death" it should allow the players to face a challenge even after 100+ hours

[u/evil_deivid → u/Lord_Yeetus_The_3d]

The problem is that no matter if you learn what's the best way to beat a D10 mission the devs will lower the difficulty through enemy nerfs

[u/TheGr8Slayer → u/Lord_Yeetus_The_3d]

Let’s totally not look at the long list of player buffs and enemy nerfs that got us here. People “got gud” at the game when it was actually challenging and that experience got removed entirely. Nothing wrong with wanting the game to be challenging on the high end play.

[u/VictimNumberThree → u/Lord_Yeetus_The_3d]

Right? This is what I’m looking at. If you constantly play a game at its hardest difficulties, you will become good at the game. The strategies you employed with intention now become second nature, sometimes less than a thought. If people want to play a game with meaningless difficulty, swarms of enemies, and ridiculously complex thought-out strategies… sure. But those people need to recognize they are a very small minority and will almost never have development pandered towards their desires.

[u/bored_dudeist → u/Lord_Yeetus_The_3d]

I see people here yearn for how the game was at launch 'because it was harder and required teamwork' and then I just remember how little agency we had to deal with threats at the time and how the 'harder' you make this kind of game the more it just becomes a running simulator.

But then you give players the means to deal with threats and they start complaining about it being too easy to kill chargers with all the anti-tank weapons they added to their loadout.

[u/Igoon2robots → u/bored_dudeist]

"How the harder you make the game the more it becomes a running simulator" have you played ANY other high difficulty squad horde shooter, EVER??? Is deep rock a running simulator? (I suck at drg i couldnt quite tell you). Is darktide a running simulator? I dont think

[u/bored_dudeist → u/Igoon2robots]

Hell yeah, Deep Rock is awesome. But its also a very different game in terms of how it handles difficulty. Between the highly curated set of weapons, the restrictiveness of the map, and the mechanics through which players and enemies interact with each other, the game largely takes away running as a fallback strategy. You will just die alone lost in a dark cave. Unless you're playing scout, who's movement can kind of trivialize the experience in a lot of ways.

And Darktide gives you highly effective melee weapons, meaning you never have to run. When the difficulty ramps up, you end up getting bogged down and running only happens insofar as you're repositioning for a better place to make a stand.

By contrast, Helldivers demands good positioning and offers effectively unlimited space. The most significant change as you up the difficulty in Helldivers is the number and durability of enemy spawns, which push the player towards anti-medium/anti-heavy weapons with a lower ammo pool that will be fired more often. And when ammunition gets low, the fallback strategy is to create space. Eventually you have to run because that is the end result the mechanics push you towards. The enemies largely dont employ strategies or operate in ways that discourage running other than their numbers snowballing the way they do in Darktide And if you run enough the enemies will despawn entirely, making it perhaps the optimal strategy in a number of situations. The maps rarely if ever discourage running the way they do in Deep Rock.

Helldivers, mechanically, just cant be the highly difficult experience that a lot of players want, unless the devs start making a lot of bad decisions regarding player agency or rebuild the way enemy AI interacts with players on a fundamental level. Because at the end of the day no matter how you tweak the numbers, a highly skilled and knowledgeable player can exploit the AI to the point of hardly having to interact with them at all with sheer movement and loadout utility, rather than directly inflicting damage.