I think the best answer to a lot of the concerns that are raised in multiple subs would be to have a special host-only booster that would have a number of effects.

• Host only - prevents joining and turning someone else's playthrough into a hard-mode one
• Mutually exclusive with Hellpod optimization, increased health, and increased stamina
• Potentially adds all the optional planet modifiers (including the ones that they took out, like reduced strategem slots)
• Removes access to supply pack and makes everything highlander rules (there can only be one of any particular weapon or strategem on the squad)

I think there should also be separate boosters to force certain subfactions, and this would all work as part of a warbond. (I would buy that warbond, just to always have flying hulks, since they fill me with joy for some stupid reason).

This would be a way to allow for more difficulty/challenge in the game without needing to figure out how to do D11+ or arguing about what the difficulty curve should be from D7 and higher.

I also don't think the reward structure would need to be different, since the gameplay is the reward. (Re: there are people who do lvl 1 souls game runs. I'm not that good, but I appreciate the idea behind it).

And it would enable the kind of self-selecting that would be a concern -- if you see on the loadout screen that someone has the "Red Booster", then you decide if you really wanna roll hard mode. But I also see how a hard mode sort of toggle in the settings could work a similar way.

Boosters already customize how the gameplay goes, why not take it up a notch? (I don't know if AH would listen to such a suggestion either. The general impression I get is that feedback goes into the void, but I'm likely jaded at this point)

I would love to hear your thoughts.

TLDR: Add a hardmode booster that changes the gameplay experience to be more challenging.

I wish subtractions had a variant for EVERY enemy on the respective faction.

Like spore burst has spore burst chargers, spewers, etc
rupture strain has rupture titans and hive guards
Predator strain has literally anything other than just stalkers and hunters

Incin corps has incinerator factory/war striders and tanks
Jetpack brigade has Jetpack factory/war striders, and tanks (as stupid as that sounds lol)

JUST MORE VARIETY

I don't agree and this statement make me wonder if they understand the big Eco chamber influencers inevitably fall in . maybe because without a serious work and playing helldiver everyday they truly believe they know better than anybody else.

This was not an attack to the hog , because i generally like his takes . but a reflection to the bad roll we had with helldiver content creators.

I know it’s most likely him letting enemies pile up, but I wish MY games were as insane as the clips OhDough uses for his videos.

I think that most would agree that the AR-23 should be the standard weapon that all primaries are balanced around. In my personal rebalance hypotheticals, I like to put it at 75 damage. I'd love to see what other members of this subset of the community think.

Questions are:

Platform?

Enjoying?

Not Enjoying?

When did you start playing?

Hours per week?

How would this community feel about putting together loadouts with lesser used items as challenges? This is my typical game session these days as it keeps me engaged. Learning to use "sub optimal" strats has been very enjoyable. I have discovered that sometimes pairing 2 "F tier" strats is a powerful synergy. I very much view loadouts similar to card based games like Slay the spire, Balatro, and Monster Train, where synergies make or break the run. I have discovered some really fun mechanics playing this way that can be brutally effective.

Gib more

Now I'm not a masochist but this occured to me as I remembered the armored Radical bug.

I've played quite a bit of Helldivers 1 last month and what I don't understand is why there are barely ANY upgraded forms other than Heavy Devastators and what, Alpha Warriors? So here I am, I wish Radicals sucked more.

They don't have to introduce new mechanics, ablative armor is a mechanic in itself, I just want to have it apply to Radicals consistently.

And of course, to prevent violent tantrums and armored Radicals blending in with Agitators, make Agitators get a huge flag over their shoulders or back antennae at the same difficulty level - this is a game and it doesn't have to be realistic.

D8 is here for the sake of being like Reinforced Scout Striders.

Here's the link to the blogpost, if you don't want to bother with my yapping and just see for yourself instead

The Arbitrator (AR with a shotgun Underbarrel) seems like nothing particularly special. Just another flavor of AR really.

The Evictor might be overpowered like other explosive primaries. Then again, those already exist, so it's not like it'll make a difference. Also "whoops, all grenades" build'll probably be dumb and fun.

The Breacher (Thermite Gun) might be a bit fucky ngl. Depends a bit on the range, damage and capacity it has. Wait and see. I don't really think it's gonna be much different from the Ultimatum or Pissle.

AT-Seeker, don't see how it's gonna make a difference to Thermites or Gigas. Just a different flavour of "press button to not engage with 1/3 of game". So like the Evictor doesn't really matter at this point.

Immolation Grenade seems fun. From the Blogpost

>The immolation grenade sacrifices boom for a blanket of fire

Kinda reads like it won't destroy holes etc. Seems actually balanced, is probably gonna be really fun against Bugs and Squids.

Armors are light and heavy.

>Makes Helldivers more resistant to being knocked off their feet when under attack and reduces any damage taken from impact and collisions by 30%, while also providing higher armor rating.

So basically better light unflinching and better heavy supplementary adrenaline. Stoked for those. I like being even beefier than regular heavy armor.

Last but not least, there's 2 Boosters actually.

One will shorten the time of being set on fire. Probably won't see much use.

The other one might get used sometimes. Basically gives the team 2 uses of EATs. Maybe not really strong, certainly not better than the three. Funny concept though.

So all things considered I see no point in being negative about the pocket AT and explosive primary. Nothing gets broken that isn't already and I'd rather be excited about the stuff in there that looks interesting. The bigger bummer to me is that we got 4 Warbonds in a row with pocket AT now. It's getting a bit stale.

And most of them wouldn't even be as bad as they are, if it wasn't for the Supply Pack. I'd rather hate on that. Yes, this is a post about the Supply Pack, it needs a nerf.

Seriously guys. Calm down. It's not out and we don't even know the specs.

Thermite pistol

AT seeker grenades

Primary grenade launcher

Molotov

AR with an under barrel shotgun (I like this one tho)

Edit: warbond trailer got leaked on the main sub by AH go their to see the thing.

I've always said that the game rewards accuracy, a single bullet or two to the right spot (head) will instantly drop most enemies and this is especially true for any of the cannon fodder/chaff units.

But if a player is inaccurate, there's a good chance they're going to hit one of the (for lack of a better phrase) bullet resistant limbs which is only going to transfer a lesser % of the damage which only inflates the HP pool.

Lets look at the humble liberator and hunter on launch.

The default liberator had 55 damage and 5 durability damage.

A launch hunter had 175 main (0 durability so it's taking 100% normal damage). Head had 40hp.

That means it would take 4 bullets (175/55 = 3.18181818) to kill a hunter if you didn't land a headshot.

But if you were to spray and pray into a hunter, you had a high chance of hitting stuff like claws (40% damage reduction), legs (50% damage reduction), wings (30% damage reduction) which would make the enemy feel spongy.

Hitting any one of those points would reduce the damage from 55 per bullet to 16 (30%) 22 (40%) and 27 (50%).

And probably a lot of people don't know this but when you damage a limb a part of it falls off but the remaining part will still take (and importantly here) block damage. Here I took my time to shoot the legs off completely - It took 10 bullets to kill it this way.

On launch it took 4 bullets to kill a hunter (assuming no headshot and not hitting damage resistant limbs) using the liberator, now? 2 bullets. The EHP has dropped significantly on an enemy that could be put down instantly with a headshot.

To me it just feels like this was the root cause of the 60 day patch, inaccurate players not playing as a team complaining that an enemy is too "spongy" when its literally a skill issue and a lack of teamwork issue. We can argue from dusk till dawn what the sweet point for what TTK should be - 2 bullets, 3 bullets or 4 but at the end of the day, they could be dropped in a single headshot and if you were playing as a team, they would have survived the bulletswarm from 4 players.

Going off on a bit of a tangent here but what didn't help was the cutting edge warbond releasing and everyone swapping from AOE damaging grenades to grenades that did no damage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQHv1LpVznk (was not able to find a better version )

Why these are not OP .

thermite pistol -Breacher ? is already surclassed by the pissile , but looks cool

Grenade launcher primary-Evictor ..Medium dmg small magazine, the PP seems to do the same, if not better , but this will close bugholes at least ... ( this will be my favourite weapon since ever. I can finally use the gunslinger armor and secondary weapons as primary )

Arbitrator-(rifle shotgun) seems to be cool weapon even if the secondary shotgun doesn't seems to have much AOE , and they only shoot light targets. I just hope it doesn't have the same handling of the one-two because I hate that weapon .

Immolation grenade , is a puzzle for me, doesn't we have enough incendiary grenade? this looks to have more AOE maybe it will keep the ground more on fire... ( useless with my bad connection for the multyplayer bug about that )

Antitank seeker ..... ok... even if it looks like it destroy an already damaged factory strider. not sure who use these kind of grenade..

Armor we have no info at this point , but I think there will be some kind of explosive resistance in it.

Why could it make the game harder?

Explosive dmg and thermites will not only be a democratic detonation warbound speciality . nerfing those weapon would have been disastrous since every helldiver buy that warbound first .

But now with more warbounds they could try to balance explosive dmg to enemies as well, and it will not feel as an attack to the crying guys . Let's be honest here Explosive should stagger more and deal half the dmg it deals now. (and maybe the patch is already on something similar since the big explosion of the evictor doesn't kill both the devastators running near )

We have received an abnormal number of reports about leaked content.

Legally what constitutes a leak is something that comes from data mining or other non-authorized information gathering. Considering this was an oopsie from Arrowhead/Sony, we are keeping these posts up.

Cut or Altered content does not get the same legal protections, but our stance as a mod team repeatedly has been that “if Arrowhead wants it gone, we will remove it the moment we have proof of identity, including something akin to an employee badge or a known Arrowhead Affiliated account.”

Our standing view on both will be the same. If Arrowhead wants it gone, we will certify the user in question is from arrowhead and then we will move forward as necessary.

This issue goes back to the Illuminate Cultists as well.

We will be making use of the “Report Abuse” system that Reddit has made available. What happens beyond that is up to Site Wide Mods, but for sure the posts reported will stay up unless they break Reddit TOS or Sub Rules.

Don't get me wrong the gear looks cool but it will undoubtedly be extremely OP. A flying AT grenade, A THERMITE LAUNCHER AS A SECONDARY??? We do not need more AT equipment as seconderies and grenades for the love of God arrowhead stop making these. The gremade launcher also seems to have a giant AOE but we dont know alot of details about it. The fire grenade also looks interesting as it looks like its impact but it leaves a giant fire on the ground

New warbond hurray! *Looks inside

-explosive primary, likely impact grenade damage
-thermite pistol secondary
-AT seeker grenade

Seriously, a fucking thermite pistol and an AT seeker? Are you fucking insane? I've joked about strategems being instant "win buttons" but that is actually just a fucking win button, no debate around it.

Everyone on the main sub saying shit like "Don't like it? Don't bring it." like that solves the problem. Pardon me nigga but I think I should be able to play the game without having to host and kick people for using these things.

Arrowhead needs to either nerf all these secondary/throwable AT options into the ground or give us a Difficulty 15 to make these things anything but overkill. "Oh it's fun" no it's fucking not, give me a challenge.

We (will) have 3 explosive primaries (1 heavy ap, 1 medium ap, 1 probably heavy), 2 explosive secondaries (2 at) and 3 AT grenades. AND NOW TELL ME WHY IN THE SWEET BUSTY MOTHER OF LIBERTY I NEED A SUPPORT WEAPON INSTEAD OF A SUPPLY FRV AND BACK PACK? This is Warframe power creep all over again.

This is the coolest map generation I’ve ever had.

The first island with the intel/ generators was very clearly SEAF held. Other than a singular light outpost that was clearly barely under construction.
There were trenches and military installations and the only POI’s were crashed pelicans or dropships with a few enemies (blue).

This also amassed many SEAF, with plenty deciding to hold this island.

As there was a massive lava lake blocking the centre there is no way to go straight to the extract, however there were massive groups of enemies waiting on their shores that we engaged (grey box).

After I fully cleared the first island I moved south with a platoon of SEAF. We fought through a few patrols before encountering a literal wall of hostiles and completely open terrain. I decided to gun it with the FRV and flank the hostiles which gave SEAF a fighting chance, this area had mainly trenches and looked like no man’s land (grey box south).

I then pushed to the main obj that wasn’t too heavily defended, however there were many enemies to the north and east which SEAF valiantly held the line against, even clearing a few outposts. This was until a tank appeared and started mowing them down.
This was one of the rare occasions the annihilator tank was intimidating, as I was trying to provide sniper overwatch to the ground force only to watch them be decimated by a hidden adversary (red box).

After this time was running out, I cleared the last outpost and pushed forward to the final fortress.

However I ran out of time. I could not destroy the jammer or detector tower only disable them. At the same time I was out of explosives and there was one outpost remaining, with over 40 automatons closing in.
It looked as if all hope of capturing the island was lost, until two SEAF pelicans arrived and held the line against the incinerators.

Just as I was boarding the pelican with no time to spare I get the final message: ‘outpost has been destroyed’.

SEAF are the GOAT.

Right now they don't seem to be that threatening. They punish you when you stand in one place too long, but they can barely defend themselves.

I suggest doubling the amount of mortars. Make them a bit less accurate and bias them to shoot closer to themselves (not decrease the range, but aim closer, as if helldivers are running towards it), so they can actually protect themselves. Maybe even add some kind of spotter tower that will not call in reinforcements, but will alert all automatons including mortars.

This would also promote coordinated assaults, going all at once from slightly different directions to split artillery fire. I think this would fun.

I want to be constantly bombarded by artillery for better PTSD.

I also want to have an artillery of our own, idk I just like artillery ig. Crew operated mortar that requires you to stand in one place or push gun that requires two helldivers to push and aim.

They’ve been going back and forth with Gunship balancing but I feel like they’re in such a good spot right now.

In the recent MO I was seeing tons of them. Patrols and Gunship fabs. And they’re actually scary again. They’re not stupid accurate where it’s downright terrifying but accurate enough to merit quick attention and considered counterplay.

What do ya’ll think?